Friday, March 22, 2013

Frightday Night Fun

After days of tsuris with youtubian contrarian BS, I've loaded a new version of my browser and gotten back to viewing lovely old programs. Among a lot of dross there are fabulous series that I loved as a kid. Back then they scared me silly but I couldn't wait to watch them, late on a Friday night. I love them still. Especially when you see them now and find Captain Kirk and Mrs. Howell with a haunted painting in Boris Karloff's Thriller Theatre:



Or with John Newland's One Step Beyond, with stories based on actual events. I can't count the nights that watching this show kept me up, wide-eyed and spooked, hiding under the covers.


And then there's the Rolls Royce of creepy tv shows. Of all of them, this is my dearest favorite episode:
                                         http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjXip6svWkQ
 

On each of those pages, you'll find many other episodes of these shows, plenty to keep you entertained by another era, when being chilled and disturbed didn't involve torture and buckets of fake blood.

I'm going to go pop some corn and melt some butter, Pleasant dreams.

10 comments:

Geo. said...

Among the happiest advantages of this century's technology is its preservation of these good old shows. Delightful, Austan!

Anonymous said...

I always enjoyed the twilight zone....

Starting Over, Accepting Changes - Maybe said...

I will have to check them out on my computer; my iPad will not bring them up.

Susan Flett Swiderski said...

I loved a lot of the old shows, too. It's funny how easy it was to entertain us (me, anyway) in the '50s and early '60s. Now, I look at some of those old shows... like "Flash Gordon", where you could honest-to-God see the strings holding the "rocket" up, and have a somewhat different take on them. Not "Twilight Zone", though. Those shows may not have been very high-tech, but they were clever and thought-provoking as all get-out. And still are.

By the way, I don't know if you keep track of how much "space" you've used on Picasa by posting images and videos on your blog, but I just thought I'd let you know. Videos under fifteen minutes are "free", meaning you can post them to your heart's content, without affecting the amount of free space you have available for your blog. Videos beyond that can deplete your free space pretty quickly. (However, you can purchase additional space... a LOT of additional space... for like five bucks. But I'm, uh... cheap. Scratch that... make that "frugal".)

klahanie said...

Hey Laura,

I also remember "Captain Kirk" in an episode of "The Twilight Zone". He's in a restaurant with his wife and they keep reading these predictions out of some machine at their table. Anyway, my comment has reached the "outer Limits" :)

Stay warm and relax.

Gary
x

Austan said...

Geo.- it really is a perk to have them with us indefinitely now. We can even dl them onto our own computers!

Austan said...

Lawless- me too!

Austan said...

Arleen- I think you'll like One Step Beyond.

Austan said...

Susan- Same here! I saw a Dark Shadows the other day and was laughing at how hokey and cheesy, but I loved it back then. But somehow, these old shows did inspire and still do.

Thanks for the tip on space, I'm going to replace the vids with links now that they aren't on top!

Austan said...

Hi Gary-
Yep, I remember that one, the little machine at the table with the devil head on it. And he did the Gremlin on the Plane" TZ, too. Even Robert Redford did a TZ episode!

Oh, the Outer Limits...that intro spooked me. ;)
Stay warm,
Laura
x