One Step Beyond is an Americantelevision series created by Merwin Gerard. The original series ran for three seasons on ABC from 1959 to 1961 and remains syndicated to this day. Because the copyright has lapsed on at least some of the episodes",[1] several distribution companies have released episode packages using 16mm syndication prints rather than the 35mm originals, resulting in uneven audio and video.[citation needed] John Kenneth Muir's book An Analytical Guide to Television's One Step Beyond, 1959–1961 presents the history of this TV series including a synopsis and analysis of the episodes.[2]
Battlestar Galactica is an American science fiction television series, created by Glen A. Larson. It starred Lorne Greene, Richard Hatch and Dirk Benedict and ran for one season in 1978–79. After cancellation, its story was continued in 1980 as Galactica 1980 with Adama, Lieutenant Boomer (now a colonel) and Boxey (now called Troy) being the only continuing characters. Books have been written continuing the stories.
The series was remade in 2003, beginning with a three-hour mini-series followed by a weekly series which ran from 2004–9. A feature film remake is also planned for 2013, directed by Bryan Singer with production input from original series creator Glen A. Larson.[1][2][3]
Battlestar Galactica (also called BSG or Battlestar) is an American military science fictiontelevision series, and part of the Battlestar Galactica franchise. The show was developed by Ronald D. Moore as a re-imagining of the 1978 Battlestar Galactica television series created by Glen A. Larson. The series first aired as a three-hour miniseries (comprising four broadcast hours) in December 2003 on the Sci-Fi Channel, and ran for four seasons thereafter, ending its run on March 20, 2009. The series featured Edward James Olmos and Mary McDonnell, and garnered a wide range of critical acclaim, including a Peabody Award and the Television Critics Association's Program of the Year Award, as well as Emmy nominations for its writing, directing, costume design, visual effects, sound mixing, and sound editing, with Emmy wins for both visual effects and sound editing.
The story arc of Battlestar Galactica is set in a distant star system, where a civilization of humans live on a series of planets known as the Twelve Colonies. In the past, the Colonies had been at war with a cybernetic race of their own creation, known as the Cylons. With the unwitting help of a human named Gaius Baltar, the Cylons launch a sudden sneak attack on the Colonies, laying waste to the planets and devastating their populations. Out of a population numbering in the billions, only approximately 50,000 humans survive, most of whom were aboard civilian ships that avoided destruction. Of all the Colonial Fleet, the eponymous Battlestar Galactica appears to be the only military capital ship that survived the attack. Under the leadership of Colonial Fleet officer Commander William "Bill" Adama (Olmos) and President Laura Roslin (McDonnell), the Galactica and its crew take up the task of leading the small fugitive fleet of survivors into space in search of a fabled refuge known as Earth.
It spawned the spin off TV series Caprica, which aired for one season beginning in January 2010. A second spin-off series, Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome, is in production.
Giant spaceships appear over 29 major cities throughout the world, and Anna (Morena Baccarin), the beautiful and charismatic leader of the extraterrestrial "Visitors", declares that they come in peace. The Visitors claim to only need a small amount of Earth's resources, in exchange for which they will share their advanced technological and medical knowledge. As a small number of humans begin to doubt the sincerity of the seemingly benevolent Visitors, FBIcounter-terrorism agent Erica Evans (Elizabeth Mitchell) discovers that the aliens are actually reptilian humanoids wearing pseudo-human skin, have spent decades infiltrating human governments, businesses, and religious institutions, and are now in the final stages of their plan to take over the Earth. Erica joins the resistance movement, which includes Ryan (Morris Chestnut), a Visitor sleeper agent who over time developed human emotions and now wants to save humanity. Their rebellion is further challenged as the Visitors have won favor among the people of Earth by curing a variety of diseases, and have recruited Earth's youth—including Erica's son Tyler (Logan Huffman)—to serve them unknowingly as spies.[2]
A tabby cat travels across the city, becoming indirectly involved in three deadly incidents. Quitters, Inc.
Cigarette smoker Dick Morrison (James Woods), recommended by a friend, joins Quitters, Inc. to kick his habit. Clinic counselor Dr. Vinnie Donatti (Alan King) explains the clinic's uniquely persuasive method — every time Dick smokes a cigarette, horrors of increasing magnitude will befall his wife and child.
Using the cat that Donatti's assistant Junk has caught in the street, Donatti demonstrates the first of these horrors: the cat is locked in a cage and tormented with electric shocks. Donatti explains that if his new client should be caught with a cigarette, Dick's wife will be subjected to the same shocks while he is forced to watch. Not wanting to worry them, Dick hides the looming threat from his wife and daughter.
During a stressful traffic jam, Dick ultimately cannot resist temptation and smokes, not realizing he is being watched by Donatti's agents. After watching his wife suffer in the electric cage, Dick is determined never to smoke again and tells his wife everything.
Time passes, and Dick is apparently smoke-free at last, but has put on a little weight as a result of quitting. Dr. Donatti prescribes diet pills and jokingly warns that if Dick doesn't reduce his weight, he'll cut off his wife's little finger. Later Dick and his wife have a dinner party with the friends that recommended Quitters Inc., and they toast the company for a job well done. As she raises her glass, Dick discovers the friend's wife is missing her little finger. The Ledge
Former tennis pro Johnny Norris (Robert Hays) is involved with a woman whose estranged but jealous husband is a crime boss, casino owner Cressner (Kenneth McMillan). Cressner, who will bet on anything, wins a wager that the cat will successfully cross the busy road outside his casino. He takes the cat home.
Cressner kidnaps Norris. As an amusing form of revenge, Cressner blackmails Norris into a dangerous ordeal: Norris must circumnavigate the exterior ledge of Cressner's penthouse apartment in a gothic skyscraper. If he can make it all the way around, Cressner will grant his wife a divorce. If Norris refuses, Cressner will call the police and have him arrested for possession of drugs, which have been planted in Norris' car.
Norris agrees. During the circumnavigation attempt Cressner appears on balconies and at windows to taunt and distract him. Despite Cressner's efforts Norris makes it back to the apartment, where Norris learns Mrs. Cressner has been dead the whole time. A fight ensues, leaving one of Cressner's accomplices dead and Norris in possession of a gun. Norris forces Cressner to undergo the same ordeal on the ledge, but the casino owner is less successful and falls to his death while the cat watches. The General
The cat is adopted by a little girl, Amanda (Drew Barrymore), who names him General. The cat runs afoul of the girl's mother (Candy Clark), who believes he will harm their pet parrot.
Despite Amanda's protests, the mother puts the cat out at night. As a consequence he is unable to protect Amanda from a malevolent troll that has also taken up residence in the house until he manages to find another way in. The troll kills the parrot and then tries to steal Amanda's breath but General comes in and battles the troll but the troll escapes leaving Amanda and her parents to discover the death of the parrot. The parents are convinced that General killed the parrot but the father discovers a wound on the cat (caused by the trolls dagger in the fight) and starts to have doubts on the mother's belief that the parrot caused the wound by pecking General.
General is then taken to the animal shelter by the mother and is scheduled to be euthanised the next day (by the mother's request) but General escapes when given food and makes his way back the girls house.
General again battles and successfuly defeats the troll, causing a great deal of noise. The ruckus awakens her parents, who are initially incapable of getting to her, due to the door being blocked. Once they manage to get into her room, the girl explains to them that General saved her from the troll. The parents are at first unwilling to believe the story until part of the troll's corpse is discovered as well as the dagger that caused General's wound in the first battle. Amanda uses the justification that General will keep her safe in case others like her first assailant appear and General is allowed to stay inside at night to act as a protector for Amanda.
The moderate success of George A. Romero's horror anthology film Creepshow led to initial inquiries about the possibilities of a Creepshow series. Because Warner Brothers owned certain aspects of Creepshow, Laurel Entertainment (which produced the film) opted to take their potential series into a similar, yet separate, direction, including changing the name to Tales from the Darkside. The new name reflected Creepshow's focus, that of a live-action EC-based horror comic book of the 1950s like Tales from the Crypt or The Vault of Horror, though the series would not carry the trappings of a comic as Creepshow did.
Some episodes of the series were written by or adapted from the works of famous authors. Stephen King's short stories "Word Processor of the Gods" and "Sorry, Right Number" were amongst them. Works by Frederik Pohl, Harlan Ellison, Clive Barker, Michael Bishop, Robert Bloch, John Cheever, and Fredric Brown were also featured.
After wrapping, Tales from the Darkside was succeeded by Monsters in 1988, a similarly-styled syndicated weekly horror anthology also produced by Laurel and longtime Romero associate Richard P. Rubinstein.
The series was followed by Tales from the Darkside: The Movie in 1990. Stephen King also contributed a short story to this film, "The Cat From Hell". The film starred Deborah Harry, Christian Slater, William Hickey, Steve Buscemi, and Julianne Moore (the first three previously appeared in episodes of the TV series). Tom Savini has called this film "The real Creepshow 3".
The series was originally syndicated weekly by Tribune Broadcasting, with most stations airing it after midnight. After ending production, it was picked up by LBS Communications for barter-based syndication (with the exception of the episode The Apprentice, and a few reruns of earlier episodes) which were distributed by Lorimar-Telepictures. Worldvision Enterprises later became the series' distributor, and the rights currently are held by Worldvision successor CBS Television Distribution. (All three syndicators' logos appear following the closing credits.)
The series currently airs on Syfy as well as Chiller.
On November 17, 2008, CBS Home Entertainment (distributed by Paramount) announced the first season of Tales from the Darkside would be released on DVD February 10, 2009 complete with audio commentary by producer George Romero on the episode "Trick or Treat".
Creepshow is a 1982 American horroranthology film directed by George A. Romero and written by Stephen King. The film's ensemble cast included Ted Danson, Leslie Nielsen, Hal Holbrook, E.G. Marshall, Gaylen Ross, Adrienne Barbeau and Ed Harris.
It was considered a sleeper hit at the box office when released in November 1982, earning $21,028,755 domestically,[1] and remains a popular film to this day among horror genre fans. The film was shot on location in Pittsburgh and the suburb areas. It consists of five short stories referred to as "Jolting Tales of Horror": "Father's Day", "The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill", "Something to Tide You Over", "The Crate" and "They're Creeping Up on You!". Two of these stories, "The Crate" and "The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill" (originally titled "Weeds"), were adapted from previously published Stephen King's short horror tales.
The segments are tied together with brief animated sequences. The film is bookended by scenes, featuring a young boy named Billy (played by Stephen King's own son, Joe King), who is punished by his father for reading horrorcomics. The film is an homage to the E.C. horror comic books of the 1950s such as Tales from the Crypt, The Vault of Horror and The Haunt of Fear.
In later years, the international rights of the film would be acquired by Republic Pictures, which today is a subsidiary of the Paramount Motion Pictures Group, itself owned by Viacom. The film's UK DVD rights are owned by Universal Studios under license from Paramount/Republic.
Plot
Prologue
A young boy named Billy (Joe King) gets yelled at and slapped by his father, Stan (Tom Atkins), for reading a horror comic titled Creepshow. His father tosses the comic in the garbage to teach Billy a lesson, but not before threatening to spank him should Billy ever get caught reading Creepshow comic books again. Later after he tosses the comic book away, Stan reminds his wife (Iva Jean Saraceni) that he had to be hard on Billy because he does not want their son to be reading such "crap" as he gives examples of what Billy should not be reading (which incidentally are the basic plotlines for some of the stories in the movie). He then closes out the discussion with the reason why God made fathers: to protect their children from harmful influences. As Billy sits upstairs cursing his father with hopes of him rotting in Hell, he hears a sound at the window, which turns out to be a ghostly apparition in the form of The Creep from the comic book, beckoning him to come closer; this segues into the opening titles.
"Father's Day"
(First story, written by King specifically for the film) Nathan Grantham (Jon Lormer), the miserly old patriarch of a family whose fortune was made through bootlegging and fraud, is killed on Father's Day by his long-suffering spinster daughter Bedelia (Viveca Lindfors). Bedelia was already unstable as the result of a lifetime spent putting up with her father's incessant demands and emotional abuse, which culminated in his orchestrating the murder of her sweetheart. When she could no longer endure Nathan's screams for her to bring him his Father's Day cake, Bedelia picked up a heavy marble ashtray, yelled "Happy Father's Day!" and smashed his skull with it. NOTE: This prop appears in every one of the five stories in different ways. (SEE STORIES FOR THE USE OF THIS PROP)
The sequence begins seven years later, when the remainder of Nathan's descendants—including Nathan's granddaughter Sylvia (Carrie Nye), his great-grandchildren Richard (Warner Shook) and Cass (Elizabeth Regan), and Cass' husband Hank (Ed Harris)—get together for their annual dinner on the third Sunday in June.
Bedelia, who typically arrives later than the others, stops in the cemetery outside the family house to lay a flower at the grave site and drunkenly reminisce about how she murdered her insufferable, overbearing father. When she accidentally spills her whiskey bottle in front of the headstone, it seems to have a reanimating effect on the mortal remains interred below. All of the sudden, Nathan's putrefied, maggot-infested corpse (John Amplas) emerges from the burial plot in the form of a revenant who has come back to claim the Father's Day cake he never got. Before obtaining his long-desired pastry, the revenant avenges himself on Bedelia and the rest of his idle, scheming, money-grubbing heirs—randomly killing them off one by one.
The final freeze-frame shows the undead Nathan in the kitchen triumphantly carrying a platter that is crowned with Sylvia's freshly severed head and covered with cake frosting. The corpse gurgles hoarsely at a terrified Richard and Cass, "It's Father's Day, and I got my cake! Happy Father's Day!"
"The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill"
(Second story, originally titled "Weeds", adapted from a previously published short story written by King) Jordy Verrill (Stephen King), a dimwitted backwoods yokel, thinks that a newly discovered meteorite will provide enough money from the local college to pay off his $200 bank loan. Instead, he finds himself being overcome by a rapidly spreading plant-like organism that begins growing on his body after he touches a glowing green substance within the meteorite. Jordy is eventually cautioned by the ghost of his father (Bingo O'Malley) not to take a bath. But when the itching from the growth on his skin becomes unbearable, Jordy succumbs to temptation and collapses into the bathwater. By the next morning, Jordy and his farm have been completely covered with dense layers of the hideous alienvegetation. In despair, he reaches for a shotgun and literally blows the top of his head off. A radio weather forecast announces that heavy rains are predicted and the audience is left with the dire expectation that this will accelerate the spread of the extraterrestrial plant growth to surrounding areas.
NOTE: The green marble ashtray from "Father's Day" that Aunt Bedelia used to kill her father, is now a soapdish on the kitchen sink back-splash wall.
"Something to Tide You Over"
(Third story, written by King expressly for the film) Richard Vickers (Leslie Nielsen), a wealthy psychopath whose spry, devil-may-care jocularity belies his cold-blooded vindictiveness, stages a terrible fate for his unfaithful wife, Becky (Gaylen Ross), and her lover, Harry Wentworth (Ted Danson), by burying them up to their necks on the beach below the high tide line. He explains that they have a chance of survival - if they can hold their breath long enough for the sand to loosen once the seawater covers them they could break free and escape. He also sets up several closed-circuit TV cameras so he can watch them die from the comfort of his well-appointed beach house. However, Richard is in for one hell of a surprise of his own when the two lovers he murdered return as a pair of waterlogged, seaweed-covered revenants intent on giving him a dose of his own deadly punishment. The final scene reveals that Richard has been buried in the beach at low tide, facing the approaching tide (and the sight of two sets of footprints disappearing in the surf). While the tide is rising, he laughs hysterically and screams "I can hold my breath for a long time!" The frame then freezes into animation and the pages start flipping again. They come to a stop on the title of the next story, which is one of the longer entries at nearly 30 minutes.
NOTE: In this story, the green marble ashtray is used as the jewelry dish on Richard Vickers' night stand.
"The Crate"
(Fourth story, adapted from a previously published short story) A college custodian Mike (Don Keefer) drops a quarter and finds a wooden storage crate, hidden under some basement stairs for over 100 years. He notifies a college professor, Dexter Stanley (Fritz Weaver) of the find. The two decide to open the crate and it is found to contain an extremely lethal creature[2] resembling a Yeti, or Abominable Snowman, which despite its diminutive size promptly kills and entirely devours Mike, leaving behind only his boot. Escaping, Stanley runs into a graduate student, Charlie Gereson (Robert Harper) who is skeptical and investigates. Gereson and Stanley find that the crate has been moved back under the stairs and Gereson is killed by the creature as he examines the crate. Stanley then flees and informs his friend and colleague at the university, the mild-mannered Professor Henry Northrup (Hal Holbrook), of his recent experience.
Professor Stanley, now traumatized and hysterical, babbles to Northrup that the deadly monster must be disposed of somehow. Northrup sees the creature as a way to rid himself of his perpetually drunk, obnoxious, and emotionally abusive wife, Wilma (Adrienne Barbeau), whom he often daydreams of killing. He contrives a scheme to lure her near the crate where the beast does indeed maul and eat her. Northrup later secures the beast back inside its crate, and drops it into a nearby lake, where it sinks to the bottom, and he returns to assure Professor Stanley that the creature is no more. However, it is subsequently right at the end revealed to the audience that the beast has escaped from its crate, and is in fact still alive and well. Also, watchful eyes will notice the staircase in Northrup's home is the same staircase from "Something To Tide You Over", the previous story, it even has some of the same camera angles.)
The little green marble prop that started out in "Father's Day" is now on the dresser in Henry Northrup's bedroom.
"They're Creeping Up on You!"
(Fifth and final story, written by King expressly for the film) Upson Pratt (E.G. Marshall) is a cruel, ruthless businessman whose mysophobia has him living in a hermetically sealed apartment controlled completely with electric locks and surveillance cameras. During a particularly severe lightning storm he finds himself looking out over the steel canyons of New York City as a rolling blackout travels his way. When it hits his apartment tower, the fun begins for the audience, and the terror begins for Mr. Pratt. The ruthless tycoon now finds himself helpless when his flat becomes overrun by countless hordes of aggressive multi-sized cockroaches—perhaps symbolizing the revenge of all the "little people" he has spent his entire life stepping on.
NOTE: In this final story, the green marble ashtray is again a soapdish. This time, it is on the sink backsplash in Upson Pratt's bathroom.
Epilogue
The following morning, two garbage collectors (Tom Savini and Marty Schiff) find the Creepshow comic book in the trash. They look at the ads in the book for X-ray specs and a Charles Atlas bodybuilding course. They also see an advertisement for a voodoo doll, but lament that the order form has already been redeemed (Attentive viewers can see the order form had been already cut out in the segues between "The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill", "Something To Tide You Over", and "The Crate"). Inside the house, Stan complains of neck pain, which escalates and becomes deadly as Billy repeatedly and gleefully jabs the voodoo doll while his accursed father screams in agony.
