Requiem for A Video Store

Last week, over at Dr. Gangrene's terrific blog (which I discovered through Horrorblips...) the author wrote a heartfelt post regarding video stores, and how these rental outlets are rapidly becoming a thing of the past in the age of Redbox, Netflix and streaming video.

I know this to be true from my own personal experience: I haven't stepped inside a video store since 2005, if memory serves.

The good doctor's post got me reflecting long and hard on the golden age of the video store (say, roughly 1983 - 1999). So this is my eulogy for them. And like most eulogies, it's probably not terribly original, just...personal.

Simply stated, I came of age with video stores in the early 1980s.

Growing up in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, the video store that my family frequented was near Brookdale Park and the Shop Rite in Essex County. The store was named Currys.

Currys was your proverbial Mom & Pop operation, but with an unusually expansive and impressive collection. Of all the video stores that I have enjoyed over the years, this is the one I remember most vividly, and recall with the greatest affection.
It was...my first time.

The small shop boasted a vast back-room library filled with videotapes, which was accessible only to employees (in most cases, the proprietor's lovely daughters.) When you bought a full membership to Currys, as my family did, you became the recipient of the establishment's huge membership notebook, a heavy brick that was bound between blue covers. Inside was a single-spaced listing of all the available films at Currys by collection number. The catalog was your key to unlocking the video library.

The Currys catalog seemed to consist of all the titles known to man and God, and went on for what seemed like hundreds of pages. I remember the first time I began reading the document in earnest, marker in hand, gazing at what seemed an entire universe of titles. Ahead of me was the great pleasure of discovering decades of great --- and not-so-great -- movies. I surely must have spent hours with that catalog.

What the hell was Boxcar Bertha?

And what was that movie with a row of disembodied arms on a wall? Oh yeah, The Frozen Dead...

Picking out a movie to rent from Curry's was a case, often, of preparation and research. As the weekend neared, I would leaf through the huge catalog and look up the titles and code-numbers of the movies I hoped to rent. Periodically, the catalog would also be updated with new release flyers you could put in the back of the catalog.

Every weekend, my Dad and I would make our pilgrimage to Currys, armed with a list of about ten-to-fifteen titles and their corresponding code-numbers. The lists were always that long in the likely event that the first or second choice was already checked out and therefore unavailable. Seeing a second choice, or a sixth choice -- as the case might be -- meant that I began to see a huge number of older, lesser-known films rather than just the new, trendy release of the week.

The Currys experience was how I first encountered This is Spinal Tap. It is how I first saw Evil Dead. This is the way I first saw Yor, Hunter from the Future and the Lou Ferrigno Hercules. It was from Curry's that I first rented The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Pawnbroker, Bonnie & Clyde, Rosemary's Baby, Dawn of the Dead and other classics.

And, I remember something else distinctly too about this experience: the movies you rented at Currys arrived in your hands not in their specially-designed VHS sleeves, but rather in these large, anonymous, clunky brown, textured clam-shell boxes.

Today, I readily admit, this whole process sounds absolutely byzantine. But I loved it. Picking out movies from Curry's was a serious, exciting endeavor, and I'll always remember the thrill of carrying home six of those brown or black boxes under one arm. It was an amazing feeling to know that right there you had a weekend's worth of entertainment and discovery.

Twenty-two years since I was last there, Curry's still looms large in my imagination. In part this is because I know that even after renting hundreds, maybe thousands of movies there, I still only scratched the surface of the collection. I don't even know if the store is still in business, but I sorta, kinda doubt it...

When I moved to Richmond to go to college, there were other video stores that I dated, but most of them didn't carry the selection that Curry's did. Instead, new releases dominated these stores, and that took some of the fun out of the "rental" experience. These gals were shallow compared to Currys.

There was just something magical about going to Curry's, plucking an odd title out of the catalog (like Sorority Babes at the Slime Ball Bowl-a-rama) and then watching a movie that, heretofore, you never imagined could exist.

I'm not complaining about the way things are now. I love Netflix, I love the easy availability of most titles in the DVD (er, Blu-Ray) age. This is good; this is the way it should be: with the majority of film history at your finger tips, just ready to be discovered.

But sometimes, I miss the anticipatory act of compiling my Curry's list, of transcribing numbers, and waiting -- with some anxiety -- for the clerk to return with my clutch of selected movies, to see which titles would be in stock.

And some days, I still miss going to Curry's with my Dad, just for the fellowship of the journey and the experience. I wonder if my son, Joel, will gaze back at his youth and remember his dad picking up red envelopes from the mailbox and ripping them open to remove the small, square DVD sleeves.

I don't know that it's the same thing at all.

Every Town Has An Elm Street: The Tao of Freddy K.

In William Schoell and James Spencer's superlative companion, The Nightmare Never Ends: The Official History of Freddy Krueger and the Nightmare on Elm Street Films (Citadel, 1992), director and horror icon Wes Craven briefly recounts the youthful experience that led him to create cinematic dream-killer Freddy Krueger.

Specifically, Craven reported that -- as an eleven year-old -- he awoke one night from slumber to the sound of strange, scuffling sounds outside his bedroom window.

Young Craven got up out of his bed, went to the window, and gazed down to the avenue below. There, a mysterious stranger stood. The man looked up at the window and met young Craven's stare. A terrified Craven hid for several minutes.

When Craven returned to the window, the stranger was still standing there; still looking up at the window...in the exact same position. He hadn't moved.

Then, the man entered Wes Craven's building, slowly climbed the stairs to the family apartment -- his footsteps audible -- and neared the front door...

"As an adult, I can look back and say that that was one of the most profoundly frightening experiences I have ever had," Craven told the authors of The Nightmare Never Ends. "That guy has never left my mind, nor has the feeling of how frightening an adult stranger can be. He was not only frightening, but he was amused by the fact that he was frightening and able to anticipate my inner thoughts..." (page 179).

Meet Freddy Krueger, the villain of Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), and unarguably the most popular movie boogeyman of a generation.

This Friday the legend of Freddy K. is re-born with a big budget remake of the seminal Nightmare on Elm Street but -- disappointingly -- without Craven's input, advice or participation.

Considering the imminent silver-screen re-birth of Krueger, this seemed like the ideal time to go back and remember those qualities that made Robert Englund's Freddy such a powerful cultural influence in the mid-to-late 1980s.

1. When the Parents Are Away, Freddy Plays:

In Craven's original film, Freddy's teenage victims have literally no place to turn.

Tina's Mom is more interested in shacking up with her boyfriend than in helping Tina (Amanda Wyss) deal with her night terrors. Nancy's Mom (Ronee Blakeley) is a (mostly) useless drunk. Nancy's Dad (John Saxon) is a police detective, and always "on the job." Instead of listening to Nancy and helping her fight Freddy Krueger, he uses Nancy as bait to catch the wrong person (Rod). Glenn's Dad, Mr. Lantz (Ed Call) hangs-up on Nancy when she calls to check up on Glenn (Johnny Depp). "You've got to be firm with these kids!" he barks. The price of that self-righteous telephone hang-up: Glenn gets torn up by Freddy in the blood-flood to end all blood floods.

The adult world depicted in A Nightmare on Elm Street is not one friendly to children. In fact, local children sing the famous jump rope song ("one, two, Freddy's coming for you...") from one generation to the next, to warn one another about Krueger and his monstrous actions. The parents themselves are too busy burying the past; too busy burying the "truth" in the hope that what they repress and deny will simply stay buried. Of course, it doesn't.

Freddy visits the sins of the parents (murder) on the children, and because their parents aren't honest with them, the children of Elm Street don't even know why this is happening to them.

Writing for People in May of 1985, critic Ralph Novak wrote that "Craven is something of a generational turncoat. While he is 35, all of his adult characters have the intelligence and courage of cantaloupes."

That's exactly right...by design. Nightmare on Elm Street is about the younger generation learning to make it on its own; about recognizing the terrors of adulthood. And yes, there are some things worse than lying or obfuscating parents.

And that's what Freddy is: the amused stranger from Craven's childhood who enjoys terrorizing children because he can.

There's something especially upsetting about this aspect of Freddy, the fact that he preys on children, on the young. The world can be a pretty frightening place even for adults (even without Krueger) in it, but just imagine being eighteen and finding out that this guy is after you. One of my favorite lines from the original film is Nancy's (Heather Langenkamp) shocked realization that -- without sleep -- she "looks twenty." That comment is so innocent, and yet so dead-pan. She means it. Not being forty years old like me for instance, she doesn't see that it's funny...that twenty years old is just a blip on the radar. Freddy is such a monster because he destroys such innocence. And he relishes the job.

2.) Freddy is the Man of Your Dreams:
Freddy is also incredibly frightening because, much like Michael Myers, he's utterly inescapable.

The great white shark from Jaws can't kill you if you don't go into the ocean, for instance. However, everyone must sleep sooner or later. Everybody has to dream. And that's the field where Freddy stalks his prey, on the dream plateau. Freddy can afford to be patient because he knows that he always has the home-field advantage. He lives in dreams, and we just visit that often-surreal place.

The dream sequences of a Nightmare on Elm Street -- at least before some of the more outrageous rubber reality set-pieces of the sequels set-in -- all play cannily on very basic human fears. That we're being chased for instance, and that our feet get, essentially, stuck in mud. Or that there's something hiding in the bubble bath unseen...where we're vulnerable. Or that the monster chasing us can stretch beyond human proportions to grab us.

Freddy scares us because we're all vulnerable to the irrationality of dreams. But again, Freddy thrives there. He uses that irrationality, that vulnerability against us. Our nightmare landscape is his playground.

3.) To Be Or Not To Be: That is the Question Freddy Poses:
I always say that Nancy Thompson is Hamlet for the horror set.

Consider that A Nightmare on Elm Street serves as a direct thematic counterpoint to John Carpenter's Halloween (1978).

In Halloween, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) sits in high school English class while an unseen adult teacher drones on about "fate" and "destiny." In the midst of the class, Laurie sees Michael Myers' car on the street: she thus glimpses her fate. As the teacher explains on the soundtrack that "you can't escape fate," we are led (through the visuals) to understand the connection: that Laurie cannot escape her impending connection to an escaped serial killer.

By contrast, A Nightmare on Elm Street finds Nancy Thomas in another high school English class as a teacher discusses the resourcefulness of the melancholy prince in Shakespeare's Hamlet. The teacher notes that Hamlet "stamps out the lies" of his mother, something which Nancy will do in Elm Street as well, and that the prince "probes and digs" to find the truth. Again, that's the very task Nancy undertakes: seeking information about the life and death of Freddy Krueger, and her parents' role in his murder.

The Elm Street philosophy suggest that only by digging beneath the surface, by learning the truth of a thing, can one overcome the sins of one's parents and survive. The key to beating Freddy is to know and understand him: to see that he thrives on the energy of your hate, and then rob him of that energy.

4.) Freddy is the 1980s Personified: Apocalypse, Armageddon, and Deficit Spending

I realize that my conservative friends and readers get exasperated with me for pointing out some, er, unpleasant facets of the Ronald Reagan years in America.

Like the fact that Reagan repeatedly expressed a belief that we were living in the Bilbical End Times.

Like the fact that he joked about bombing Russia on an open mic, or claimed, erroneously that nuclear missiles could be recalled after launch.

Or that his tax cuts for the utra-rich turned an 80 billion dollar deficit into a 200 billion deficit in just two years.

Or that 35 million more Americans lived below the poverty line in 1983 than did before he was inaugurated.

It was in this decade, as well, that middle-class American families, by trying to keep up with the yuppie Joneses, had to become two-income households. And that meant the advent of the "latch-key kid" syndrome: the child who came home from school to find...nobody at home.

All of this context plays into the terror that is Freddy Krueger. The sins of the father -- the national debt -- is visited onto the children; just as the sins of the father (murder) was visited upon the children of Elm Street. More than that, the ascent of Freddy - a hellish demon -- in supposedly secure middle America suggested nothing less than an apocalypse in the making.

In Freddy's Dead we saw what ultimately became of Freddy's Springwood. As you may recall, the affluent community had turned into a ghost-town. And today, to continue the economic metaphor, there are hundreds of small towns in America where Main Street looks just like Springwood: places where the economic policies of the last thirty years have destroyed prosperity.

This is who Freddy was. Who Freddy has been for a quarter-century.

After Friday, I'm not sure who he will be. If the talents behind the remake are smart, they have paid adequate note to our unsettled times; to America's continuing dreads and fears.

If the new Freddy can tap into these 2010 bugaboos, then the long-lived dream demon will survive the translation to the next generation.

If Freddy becomes, instead, just a ring-master shepherding a circus of impressive special effects, this new iteration of the legend may not carry the power of his predecessor. I wish Craven had been involved in the making of the film; at least then we would know for certain that the film would carry some sub textual meaning, or genuflect to the ideas that have currency in today's America.

If you're interested in reading more about Freddy and his creator's history, don't forget to check out my 1998 book: Wes Craven: The Art of Horror.

Klaatu Barada Nikto: The Day(s) The Earth Stood Still

In 1940, as war raged across Europe, author Harry Bates' (1900-1981) short story "Farewell to the Master" was first published in Astounding Science Fiction Magazine.

"Farewell to the Master" depicted mankind's first real engagement with other-worldly life. In particular, a spherical or "ovoid" alien vessel materialized in Washington D.C. on September 16th of some future year, arriving in "the blink of an eye."

Aboard this highly-advanced craft, which showed "not the slightest break or crack" in its "perfect smoothness" were two "time-space travelers." One was a humanoid named Klaatu, described in prose as a "benign God" and possessing "great wisdom." Klaatu was accompanied by an imposing, green-hued robot called Gnut.

Unfortunately, these alien representatives were greeted with violence by the human race. A religious fanatic, fearing that Klaatu was "the Devil," shot him dead. This act is described by Bates as "the shame of the human race," and the remainder of the story involves photographer Cliff Sutherland's discovery that Gnut is attempting to resurrect Klaatu. The final twist: the robot Gnut is not Klaatu's servant, but rather...his master.

Considering this ending, Bates' tale concerned our human-centric assumptions; our arrogant belief that the human shape of life would -- even on other planets -- be blessed with a superiority over other forms. But clearly, on Gnut's world, robotic (or what we term artificial) life had flourished, rising above familiar biological forms like man. So "Farewell to the Master" served, perhaps, as an object lesson that mankind was not the center of the universe.

On another level, the tale might have been interpreted by some -- especially on the eve of the most destructive, technological war in all of human history up to that time -- as a warning not to permit our modern machinery to overwhelm and dominate us.

If you are interested in knowing more about "Farewell to the Master," Bates' original story is available online here, for your perusal (and free too, I might add).

Join us and Live in Peace, or Pursue Your Present Course and Face Obliteration: The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)

In 1951, director Robert Wise brought to the silver screen a big-budget (for the time) adaptation of "Farewell to the Master" by Edmund H. North, titled The Day The Earth Stood Still.

Once again, the context behind the film was international warfare. At the time the film was prepared and released, the Korean War was being waged. But there had also been a dramatic shift since 1940 and "Farewell to the Master." By 1951, the atom bomb was available for use (after deployment at the end of World War II in Japan), and now, it seemed, mankind truly had the means by which to obliterate himself and even his planet

In The Day The Earth Stood Still, the humanoid Klaatu (Michael Rennie) -- now the master -- and his robot servant, re-named Gort, land in Washington D.C. in a flying saucer. They are met by the U.S. military. Klaatu is again shot and injured, this time by a twitchy American soldier. He recovers, and asks to meet with world leaders. Instead, American authorities hold him in custody, and Gort escapes.

Under the alias "Mr. Carpenter," Klaatu soon intermingles with the citizens of Earth. He befriends lovely Helen Benson (Patricia Neal) and her son, Bobby Benson (Billy Gray). He talks to a leading Earth scientist (Sam Jaffe), visits Arlington National Cemetery and the Lincoln Monument, and is ultimately sold-out by Helen's boyfriend, Tom Stephens (Hugh Marlowe). When Klaatu is shot dead by U.S. authorities, the hulking robot Gort resurrects him and permits the visitor to deliver a final, staggering message to the people of Earth. In part, it goes like this:

"The universe grows smaller every day, and the threat of aggression by any group, anywhere, can no longer be tolerated. There must be security for all, or no one is secure.

Now, this does not mean giving up any freedom, except the freedom to act irresponsibly. Your ancestors knew this when they made laws to govern themselves and hired policemen to enforce them.

We, of the other planets, have long accepted this principle. We have an organization for the mutual protection of all planets and for the complete elimination of aggression. The test of any such higher authority is, of course, the police force that supports it. For our policemen, we created a race of robots. Their function is to patrol the planets in spaceships like this one and preserve the peace. In matters of aggression, we have given them absolute power over us. This power cannot be revoked. At the first sign of violence, they act automatically against the aggressor. The penalty for provoking their action is too terrible to risk.

The result is, we live in peace, without arms or armies, secure in the knowledge that we are free from aggression and war. Free to pursue more... profitable enterprises. Now, we do not pretend to have achieved perfection, but we do have a system, and it works. I came here to give you these facts. It is no concern of ours how you run your own planet, but if you threaten to extend your violence, this Earth of yours will be reduced to a burned-out cinder."

In a time of war, when the "Red Scare" (fear of Communism) was in full swing, it was downright shocking for an American studio film to suggest that America and the world, literally, disarm. Though there's still the possibility of capitalism encoded in Klaatu's speech (he mentions the pursuit of "profitable enterprises," specifically), this lecture calls for not just an end to war here on Earth, but an end to gun ownership all together. I can't imagine that message playing particularly well in the American south. In 1951 or now.

Some people have suggested that Klaatu's solution to world war in The Day The Earth Stood Still is fascist in nature (since everyone is under the thumb of robot police force...), but in some ways the fictional solution of Wise's film actually mirrors the eventual Cold War accommodation over nuclear Armageddon. The threat of mutually assured destruction served as a deterrent to their use. We lived under this fear for decades, and neither The Soviet Union nor the United States ever launched missiles against one other. We didn't have omnipotent robots watching over us, but we knew that the first sign of aggression on our part would merit an equally grievous response on the part of our enemy.

Other scholars have interpreted The Day The Earth Stood Still as as an overt Christ metaphor. A man of peace, Klaatu, descends from the Heavens and is killed by ignorant men representing conventional authority (not Rome, but America). Klaatu is then resurrected, and walks among his fellow man with a message of peace, and yes, cosmic brotherhood. Afterwards, Klaatu returns to the Heavens above, rejoining his kind.

Even Klaatu's alias on Earth -- "Mr. Carpenter" -- suggests Jesus of Nazareth's one-time occupation. And, further inclined to analyze the film's details, one even might suggest that Tom Stephens is Klaatu's "Judas," betraying the alien for the promise of riches (alien jewels, in particular). Authors Kenneth Von Gunden and Stuart H. Stock excavated this Christ metaphor in detail in their text, The Twenty All-Time Greatest Science Fiction Films (General Publishing Company, Lt., Canada, 1982), noting that screenwriter North "admitted" that the parallels "were intentional."(page 44).

Today, there's little doubt that The Day The Earth Stood Still powerful message of peace and brotherhood would be greeted by some audiences as a socialist treatise, one that impedes personal liberty, and threatens the Second Amendment. On the other hand, look where our continued violence has brought us in 2010. Six decades after The Day The Earth Stood Still, the world is still at war, and mankind is still divided. No doubt this is why the film is still revered today. Humanity seems on stuck on a dark path unless there is an intervention, divine or alien, in our future.

Your Problem is Not Technology. Your Problem is You: The Day The Earth Stood Still (2008).

If the Robert Wise Day The Earth Stood Still posited a kindly, mankind-loving Jesus-styled alien in the person hood of Michael Rennie's Klaatu, then the remake directed by Scott Derrickson in 2008 lays down God's law, Old Testament-style. This movie returns to "Farewell to the Master's" vision of the alien craft as a featureless, smooth ovoid, but sticks to the Klaatu-Gort relationship of the 1951 film.

Klaatu himself, however, has changed dramatically from his previous incarnation. Here (as played by Keanu Reeves), he is a wrathful God who adopts human form (as God often adopted human form in the Old Testament stories).

After Klaatu/God's "angel" -- a man who has toiled on Earth in human form for seventy years -- reports that mankind will never change his destructive ways, Klaatu makes plans to wipe the slate clean; to erase human sin from the surface of the Earth. "If you die, the Earth survives," he tells one human.

The first thing Klaatu does, however, is preserve all the other animal species of the planet in small spheres explicitly termed "arks" by the screenplay. This development also harks back to the Old Testament, Book of Genesis tale of Noah and the Great Flood. The Earth is to be destroyed because of "man's wickedness."

Then, Klaatu lets loose a swarm of all-devouring metal insects to destroy man's technology and even mankind himself. This severe punishment serves as the technological equivalent of the Book of Exodus's Plague of Locusts, visited upon Egypt at a time of corruption (and a belief in "false" gods). The destruction caused by these technological bugs in Derrickson's film echoes the warning from Exodus. "They will cover the face of the ground so that it cannot be seen. They will devour what little you have left after the hail, including every tree that is growing in your fields."

Finally, when Klaatu experiences a change of heart and decides to save mankind, this God-figure visits the last Plague of the Book of Exodus upon our planet: "The Plague of Darkness." Specifically, Klaatu's ship emits an electro-magnetic pulse that destroys all technology on Earth, plunging the species both metaphorically and literally into "night." In the Old Testament, the darkness lasted but three days. On Earth, our technological"night" is to be the new normal, with no end. Ever.

In Wise's atom-age film, the Jesus-like Klaatu issued Earth the verbal warning I reproduced above, but he also revealed his "miraculous" powers. For a half-hour, he interrupted all electrical power on Earth before restoring it (hence the title of the film).

By contrast, in the 2008 version, Klaatu adopts no such half-measures. He punishes us for our mistreatment of the planet and each other, thus acting as a wrathful judge, and cold, emotionless lawgiver. No warnings this time.

The message is clear: in 2008 the human race is past ultimatums and warnings from space. The only thing that will change the human race is a wiping of the slate, pushing us to "the precipice" of extinction. This is the course God in the form of Klaatu ultimately chooses for us, and his change of heart (opting not to destroy us), also fits with Old Testament theology. In the Old Testament, God could not predict would agents of free moral choices would do; and here, Klaatu is unexpectedly swayed by the humanity of Helen Benson (Jennifer Connelly) and her son. He alters his trajectory, but the punishment he selects is hardly mild.

The remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still was not warmly received. In part, this is because it is a remake of a remarkable and landmark film; one that has been lauded as one of the greatest in the history of the medium. Longtime fans of the 1950s version feel nostalgia about it, and will clearly accept no substitutes. Or remakes.

Yet this is a clever, careful and knowing remake in so many ways. It cannily re-contextualizes the original film's Christ analogy as an Old Testament metaphor, down to its concepts of apocalypse (orchestrated by locusts) and Klaatu's aloof, cold-hearted demeanor.

And, in keeping with the post-911 world, this Day The Earth Stood Still also plays dramatically for keeps. It acknowledges that we have reached a "tipping point" in terms of our mistreatment of the environment and notes that things "can't be the same" if the Earth is to survive; that our current lifestyle is unsustainable.

My appreciation of the 2008 remake may not sit well with some -- especially with fans of the original film, I suppose -- but in all the right ways, this Day The Earth Stood Still speaks to us with the same urgency that Wise's film spoke to the men and women of the early atomic age. Some viewers complained of the remake that it was too personal, too intimate; that Klaatu should have -- in the tradition of the original film -- issued a speech and a warning to the world. But in keeping with the Old Testament contextualization of this story, it's clear that God has no responsibility to okay his actions with us. He moves in mysterious ways, and owes us no explanations. And as I stated before, the time for warnings and brief demonstrations is long past.

In 1940, 1951 and 2008, the story of The Day The Earth Stood Still has carried a didactic purpose. The written words of Bates alerted us to the reality that technological warfare could overwhelm us and make us slaves to the machine. The 1950s movie from the great Robert Wise obsessed about our drift towards self-annihilation. And in 2008, the classic tale was angrily, vehemently re-parsed to comment on our mistreatment of the planet.

In all versions, however there exists hope. The steadfast belief that, as Helen Benson puts it -- "we can change" before it is too late.

We should all hope she's right.

An Homage to a Vanished Loved One: The Vanishing (1988) vs. The Vanishing (1993)

Almost two decades ago, Dutch film director George Sluizer was afforded a rare opportunity.

In short, he directed the same cinematic thriller twice: first the original Spoorloos or The Vanishing (released in America in 1991), and then the Americanized 1993 remake, also titled The Vanishing and starring Kiefer Sutherland, Sandra Bullock and Jeff Bridges.

Sluizer's first version of the material was met with widespread hosannas, the second with hostility and brickbats.

Yet both of Sluizer's films depict, in broad strokes, the same tale. The Vanishing is the chilling story of a beautiful young woman who disappears without a trace at a gas station, and the obsessed boyfriend desperate to learn what became of her. In fact, this boyfriend spends three years in search of the missing woman.

Another prominent character in both films is the perpetrator of the crime, a self-professed "sociopath," at least in the Dutch version. He is a strange bird too: both a perfectionist and, paradoxically, a bit hapless. In the third act of both motion pictures, this madman offers the hero a tantalizing " chance to find out everything." To retrace, literally, the steps of the missing woman. But it's a trap...

Both movie versions of The Vanishing are also based on the 1984 Tim Krabbe novel, The Golden Egg, but the importance of that strange and poetic title is evident only in the superior Dutch film.

There, early in the proceedings, the not-yet-missing woman, Saskia (Johannah Ter Steege) explains to her boyfriend, Rex (Gene Bervoets) that she has recently experienced "another nightmare."

In that nightmare, Saskia dreamed that she was trapped in a golden egg flying through space for all eternity. And worse, she envisioned Rex in a golden egg of his own, but separated from her. If you've seen the Dutch version of the film, you understand the import of this imagery; and what the "golden egg" actually represents. To say that it symbolizes something horrific is to underestimate wildly.

The original Spoorloos, a film liberated entirely from American commercial concerns, treads deeply into symbolism, and utilizes film grammar to visually buttress the narrative's main points. The opening shot of the original, for instance, is of great import. It's a long, lingering look at a stick bug clinging to a tree. The bug is camouflaged, and is the same brown color as the tree branch. On first, cursory glance, it could be mistaken for being an outcropping of the tree itself.

What this image represents is that the stick bug is like something else (the tree), and can pass as something else (again, the tree), but, significantly, it is not something else. It is unique. After watching the film, the viewer comes to understand that this image pertains to the most important quality of Saskia's heartless abductor, Lemorne (Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu). He is a sociopath -- a man without feelings of empathy for other humans beings -- yet he functions in French society both as a teacher and a family man. It is that last descriptor, "family man," that enables Saskia to trust Lemorne on the eve of her kidnapping. She "sees" Lemorne, but does not sense or understand what he truly is. And what is he? In more ways than one, he's a reflection of the stick-bug. His "hiding"-in-plain-sight status mirror's the bug's similar status. Lemorne lives among men, but he is a monster, a breed apart.

Another finely-crafted composition early in the Dutch gilm also highlights a sense of ominous foreboding. Rex and Saskia's car has run out of gas in a long, dark tunnel. Rex leaves Saskia in the pitch-black tunnel and walks for more gas. When he returns, she is not at the car, but at the far lip of the tunnel instead.

In other words, Saskia is in the white (day)light at the end of the tunnel, a figure half-discerned. We understand visually then, that the movie is foreshadowing her approach death. She is literally in the light at the end of the tunnel, a common descriptor for "death" in many circles, and sure enough, at film's climax, we see this evocative framing recur. Rex travels the same terrifying miles as Saskia and upon his final disposition detects Saskia in the light at the end of the tunnel again. This time, he is joining her in death.

The Dutch version of The Vanishing also charts the similarities and differences between Rex and Lemorne's personalities. Both men are obsessive to the point of dysfunction, and both are determined to battle -- to the death -- the hand that they presume Destiny has dealt them.

Lemorne has learned from childhood that to feel special, he must push limits. This means he is willing to make dangerous leaps, literally, and test his very nature. If he is capable of heroism (and "capable of rash gestures"), he wonders, is he also capable of great evil? His abduction and handling of Saskia is his answer to that question. In the film, we see him rehearse his planned abduction repeatedly, even testing his own pulse rate to see if it spikes during the personal violence and tense confrontation of the kidnapping.

Similarly, Rex is overtly obsessed with Saskia and her fate. In part, this may be because in the moments before they separated, he promised he would never abandon her. That seems to be the very thing Rex can't let go of; his vow never to leave Saskia. If he slips into a new life with his girlfriend, Lieneke (Gwen Eckhaus), he is not a man of his word, and he understands that.

Like Lemorne, Rex seems to rehearse his own personal (imagined) moment of truth; in this case the decision whether to "not know" and perhaps let Saskia to live, or to "know" and, in the process, let Saskia die. Rex's need to know the truth ultimately drives him to act heroically (again, rashly, per the vocabulary of the movie), and he sets himself up to learn his beloved's fate. But the act is rash: it is not her life at stake this time, it is his.

The original The Vanishing ends with one of the most harrowing, panic-inducing scenes ever put to celluloid, an end to "uncertainty" for Rex, no doubt, but also a reflection of the Golden Egg nightmare introduced by Saskia. In a truly horrifying moment, Rex -- with his last breath on this Earth -- defiantly shouts out his own name for the Heavens to hear; a desperate, last attempt to assert his identity before going under, to the Hades constructed for him by the unfeeling Lemorne.

Featuring very little by way of traditional music, the Dutch The Vanishing is icy, precise, gripping and surprising. Rex's final destination is shocking and grotesque. One facet of the film that remains so fascinating is the fact that Sluizer doesn't attempt to cloak the identity of Saskia's abductor from the audience. On the contrary, he exposes Lemorne early -- and fully -- so that the audience can balance hero against villain; sanity against insanity; empathy against emptiness. The Vanishing also concerns the way people make assumptions about other people, and whether emotion colors those assumptions, for better or worse. Shorn of emotions, Lemorne pursues his ruthless game. Confused by emotions, Rex plunges headlong into his grim destiny, all while believing he is going against the grain.

Is it Predestined that a Man Should Die? The Vanishing, American-style

While crafting his remake of The Vanishing for American audiences, there must have been a point at which director Sluizer was asked -- in the style of his dramatis personae -- if it was predestined that this movie should tell the exact same story as the original film.

Having told his story once one way, was it necessary to tell it the same way again? Commercial interests would demand, for instance, that the hero survive and the villain face punishment (and even death).

This time around, the characters involved in the action are the boyfriend, Jeff (Sutherland), the abducted girlfriend, Diane (Bullock) and the perverse abductor, Barney (Bridges).

But more importantly, the American version of The Vanishing adds a great deal of weight to the character of Jeff's new girlfriend, Rita (Travis). A kind of sullen, bump-on-a-log in the Dutch version, this upgraded girlfriend character of the remake is far more assertive and domineering. In fact, she's downright egotistical. While spying on Jeff, Rita tries to crack his computer password and, for some reason, she thinks it could be her own name. Now here's a man obsessed with the disappearance of his previous girlfriend -- to the point that he's been asked to write a book about the experience of losing her -- and this woman thinks she's password-worthy material?

At another juncture, Rita dresses up as the missing Diane to make a point to Jeff, which is not merely insensitive, but downright cruel. Thus in this version of the material, we have a third important personality to balance out the emotional (Jeff) and the emotionless (Barney). And importantly, this character, Rita, also battles the memory of Diane as strongly as she comes to battle Barney.

Consider, in weighing the success of the remake, that in the original film, we have no idea how Rex and Lieneke get together. In fact, it's impossible to imagine the sullen, internally-driven character, Rex, actually initiating a romantic relationship with another woman. It never seems remotely plausible. Here, the remake goes to great lengths to show audience how and why Rita enters Jeff's life. This is a new and critical element, at least in terms of narrative and theme.

And ultimately, it is this human connection that saves Jeff. Rita weaves for him the fate he can't weave for himself. She resorts to kidnapping, violence, lies and more to do so. He seems incapable of all these things. The upshot: we get is a meditation on the fact that in life there are hedgehogs and foxes. Jeff is a hedgehog; Rita is a fox. And that's why she beats Barney at his own game. Looking at this along class lines is illuminating too: Jeff is a well-to-do white collar man. Rita is a blue-collar woman: a waitress at a small diner. But goddammit, she's going to stand by her man (sorry, Tammy Wynette...) and keep him safe. Even from his own worst, self-destructive instincts.

What critics complained about in regards to the American The Vanishing is the fact that the remake subtracted the "perfect ending" from its equation. That's not all it subtracted, to put it bluntly. Also gone is the golden egg dream, and the light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel sequence. The reason for these deletions is simple: Jeff survives, and is reunited with Rita. He does not rejoin Diane in death and therefore the tunnel shot and the golden egg reference carry no currency. Instead, Sluizer finds a different thematic angle in his remake. This Vanishing is more specifically about ego than its predecessor.

Consider, the assertive Rita is so driven by ego that she won't let Jeff go, even though he is obsessed with Diane. She mocks, cajoles, and eventually goes all out to win Jeff back -- rescuing him from the brink of death in the process.

Similarly, the malevolent Barney is driven wholly by ego. Unlike in the original film, this sociopath does not attempt to contact Jeff until Jeff has already stopped searching for Diane (at Rita's demand, no less). Barney cannot live with the fact that the one person connected with his "act of evil" may let it go and his genius might go unexplained, unacknowledged. Barney feels he is powerful and worthwhile only so long as he can control and dominate Jeff's mind. "Your obsession is my weapon," he tells Jeff, "I provided the material; you built the cage." Without that obsession, Barney is just another loser, and that's something his ego cannot tolerate.

Finally, look at Jeff. He too is driven by ego. Barney recognizes this fact, and that's how, in this version, he gets Jeff to drink the drugged coffee. "Who is Jeff Harriman if he's not the guy looking for Diane?" He asks. And yes, that's a question of ego. Jeff has defined himself by his obsession, and without it he has "no job, no money, no love, no peace of mind."

There's a sweep of the inevitable in the Dutch The Vanishing. We don't know how it's going to end, but we know that Rex is bound for trouble. The American The Vanishing features more overt violence, a more conventional conclusion, and it forsakes that aura of inevitability for an ending that is, well, determinedly not...pre-destined. But there's no reason why this ending is not valid, given Rita's tenacious character/ego in the remake. Here, Jeff gets to "know" (discovering the fate of Diane) and he gets to live. In retrospect, that isn't so horrible, is it?

Especially since we already have one version of the film in which this isn't the case. If we consider the remake as a film about ego, then it is Rita, not Barney (and certainly not Jeff) who comes out on top. She gets everything she wants: namely a devoted man, (of a higher station, so-to-speak) and one no longer distracted by the ghost of Diane.

I suppose this argument comes back to an important question about the nature of remakes. Are they supposed to be literal translations of previous films, or are they permitted to play around in the terrain of the originals, and draw different conclusions from them?

It's entirely possible that Sluizer could not have made a remake that critics approved of, even if he had slavishly re-shot, angle for angle, his original film. In that case, perhaps the critics would have noted that the remake offered nothing new.

In the final analysis, Sluizer has given us two distinct, parallel versions of the same terrifying story. The Dutch film is undeniably a work of art, a masterpiece in every sense, about human nature. The American version is a solid thriller, and probably about as good as the studio system and process of committee filmmaking would permit in 1993. There's a difference in quality, yes, between versions of The Vanishing, but perhaps it is not one so wide as many would have you believe.

CULT TV FLASHBACK # 104: Star Trek: Voyager - The Early Seasons (1995-1996)

So...I've been wanting to post an article here to celebrate 2010 as the fifteenth anniversary of Star Trek Voyager's premiere on the (now-defunct) UPN Network.

Actually, I can't really believe it's already been fifteen years since Voyager debuted. I vividly recall watching the series for the first time in 1995. I was 25-years old...and met Voyager with great enthusiasm and hope as a continuation of the Star Trek mythos.

The series premise - a solitary Starfleet vessel lost in another quadrant of deep space -- promised an important quality in 1995: accessibility.

At last, general viewers could experience an untangling of the intricate, overlapping, dense mythologies that had transformed Gene Roddenberry's once clear-cut, moral universe into Space Politics 101. Voyager's Delta Quadrant format was thus a restoration of the formula vetted in the Kennedy-1960s: going where no man has gone before on a weekly basis. Voyager also promised the uncertainty of an effort like Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's Space:1999 by sending Starfleet officers on an unplanned galactic sojourn without back-up, without infinite resources, and without allies.

Starting out the journey, I was impressed. Voyager was indeed more accessible than the other latter-day Treks (DS9 and Next Gen). It's also the only Star Trek besides the original series that my wife, a novice fan, can stomach. In addition -- strikingly -- Voyager seems far stronger in terms of ensemble acting. In fact, no Star Trek TV cast before or after Voyager gelled quite so quickly or so ably.

Kate Mulgrew's Captain Kathryn Janeway promptly became my favorite Star Trek Captain after James Kirk, and I loved the way that Mulgrew's distinctive voice, -- her command "purr" -- would transform into a sort of guttural tiger's "growl" as her ship faced off against the menace of the week.

I also appreciated Mulgrew's seemingly boundless energy level. Janeway was a captain who hardly ever sat down in her center seat. She was constantly in motion on her command bridge; as though to sit down was to slow down the mind; to miss a vital fact or necessary information.

Mulgrew was, in my opinion, a great anchor. She brought a larger-than-lfe dimension to Janeway on Day One (like Shatner's Kirk) and I appreciated that mythic approach after the more work-a-day performances of Stewart and Brooks in the other programs.

Over the years, my enthusiasm for Star Trek: Voyager waned significantly. Looking back at the first two seasons today, you can see how the writers relied too heavily on fictional Star Trek techno-babble to save the day. Optronic relays, ODN circuits, EPS systems, baryon sweeps, Heisenberg compensators and so forth...it all just makes your eyes glaze over. There's no connection between this imaginary tech and the human experience. It's all just jargon.

Simply put, there was no crisis that a good deus ex machina couldn't get the crew out of. Next Gen and DS9 suffer equally from the same affliction, so this malady was hardly unique to Voyager...but it was still disappointing to see it replicated and re-transmitted. In the humanist realm of Star Trek, reshuffling the tech-of-the-week shouldn't have been the solution to so many important crises. Not when you had a woman as strong as Janeway as our moral, emotional guide.

Another problem was that the series never seemed to authentically cope with the very important idea of limited resources. I was deeply disappointed to see Voyager resort to familiar holodeck stories (only here based on Victorian literature rather than 1940s film noir). I mean, in a universe of limitations, was it really prudent to use the holodeck (especially since use of the replicator was rationed)? The series attempted to explain that that holodeck worked on a different kind of energy matrix than the rest of Voyager, and therefore its energy couldn't be harnessed in other realms.

Uh-huh. This was really just a crutch for the writers, and seemed to negate the very premise of the series. I see this failure of creativity as an example of Voyager refusal take real chances, and play it safe instead. I once asked Johnny Byrne, story editor of Space:1999 what he thought of Voyager, since it boasted a similar premise. He said, famously, "Look, when I start to see people with big ridges on their heads, I tune out...Voyager is the antithesis of Space:1999. I think it's dull and formulaic. It's lost any sense of urgency. My problem is that the characters have so much, but accomplish so fucking little."

Then, when Voyager unceremoniously sacked one of the most interesting characters ever created in the Star Trek universe, Kes (Jennifer Lien) -- an alien nymph (Ocampa) who had the limited lifespan of nine years -- for a 7-foot tall Amazon in a cat-suit, Borg babe Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan), I knew the series was really and truly on creative life support.

For the character of Kes offered talented writers everything a Star Trek series could possibly require in terms of story lines.

Here, embodied in one package, was a person who could go from childhood to puberty, to adulthood, to old age, to death. Every aspect and stage of "humanity" and the mortal existence could have been examined through Kes alone over a seven-to-nine year series span. Youthful exuberance, teenage rebellion, adult drive, middle-age regret, wise old age...acceptance of death. Just imagine the stories that could have been told.

Finally, here was a character as rich in potential as the logical Mr. Spock had been in the 1960s, but one not in a Spock-imitation mode (like Data or Seven, or T-Pol). Watching Kes age across a seven year span, our crew would have been forced to consider their own human mortality too. And the best part was Kes wasn't suffering from a "disease," and her impending death wasn't reversible...it was natural. Kes and her friends on the crew just had to "accept" her life-span as a fact of life.

But Kes -- and all her potential -- was dumped for overt sexuality. Ryan was fine as Seven of Nine, but the commercial crassness of her appearance and her sudden prominence in the story lines (to the detriment of the other characters) was hard to forgive in a show supposedly about "human" values. Imagine just for a moment how unforgettable it would have been had Kes stayed with Voyager throughout the series and actually died of natural causes as the ship neared home in the Alpha Quadrant. This character-based story would have granted the final episode, "Endgame," a kind of melancholy, emotional, character-based lift that it clearly lacked. The joyous (a return to Earth) would have been mixed with the sad (Kes's demise), and the episode would have reflected more accurately the essence of our human existence; the way that the good goes hand-in-hand with the bad.

But okay okay, this post isn't supposed to about cursing the darkness, but rather praising the things that were indeed good and memorable about Star Trek Voyager. I can say this with some degree of certainty: the early Voyager years, produced by Jeri Taylor and Michael Piller and featuring Kes, are a great deal stronger than some of the later episodes. Here's a brief survey of some high points from Season 1 and 2.

The first story after the pilot "Caretaker," titled "Parallax" is a techno-babble story in terms of the scientific threat-of-the-week, but the installment nonetheless boasts authentic character fireworks as Chakotay (Robert Beltran) lobbies Captain Janeway on behalf of the volatile half-Klingon, B'Elanna Torres. Chakotay thinks she should be chief engineer; Janeway thinks she's not Starfleet material. This story is written with real passion, and is one of the few Voyager episodes that pays more than lip service to the concept of two unlike crews (Starfleet and Maquis) attempting to blend. Over the course of the episode, Janeway comes to realize that Torres boasts a thirst for knowledge similar to her own, and the rapid-fire theoretical dialogue comes across at warp speed. This show is alive with the possibilities of new discoveries, and since the characters are engaged, so is the audience.

"Prime Factors" is another great episode, primarily because it involves Voyager running afoul of an advanced, peaceful civilization that refuses to share its superior technology (and send Voyager home...)...simply on principle. This is exactly what Starfleet officers do every day with General Order One, or the Prime Directive. They deny those planets more primitive the benefit of their know-how and help. I'll never forget smug Captain Picard condemning a drug-addicted race to a horrible, painful fate in the Next Gen episode "Symbiosis," for instance. In Voyager's "Prime Factors," the shoe is finally on the other foot as Janeway must contend with somebody else's self-righteous sense of morality. Some Voyager crew members ultimately attempt to steal the alien technology in this episode, in a surprisingly real (rather than idealistic) portrayal of human beings.

"Phage," "Faces" and "Deadlock" are three episodes that feature Voyager's best villain: the Vidiians, an alien race dying of a terrible plague. The Vidiians aren't interested in diplomatic relationships or treaties. They show up in space, lock onto your ship, and harvest your organs...in seconds (thanks to a weapon/medical device based on transporter-style technology). All the Vidiians care about is their continued survival, and that single-mindedness makes them Star Trek's scariest and most effective villain after the Borg. It also makes them, perhaps, the most tragic. We learn in their introductory episode ("Phage") that the Vidiians were once a race of artists and musicians, for instance, but now their entire economy and culture is geared towards fighting the plague, the phage. In one downright vicious episode ("Deadlock"), we witness the Vidiians overtaking Voyager, and cutting crew members down in the corridors for organ harvest. It's all incredibly nightmarish.

One of my favorite of all Voyager episodes is "Alliances," during which Chakotay urges a "new" way for Janeway, suggesting she makes alliances with races (like the evil Kazon) she finds reprehensible. It's a good episode that could have been the basis for a multi-episode arc in the vein of Coppola's Godfather, since it involves betrayal on an epic scale, and even a mob-like "hit" at episode's end. Alas, the segment ends with utter retrenchment: Janeway would rather have a philosophical ally in Starfleet rules and regulations than an alliance in real life, with flawed partners. If her kind of thinking ruled in the Alpha Quadrant, the Feds would have never made peace with the Klingons...

One of the best episodes of Voyager -- one so good it takes your breath away -- is "The Thaw." It concerns a conceit I hate: holodecks, but manages to do something interesting and new with the concept. In this case, Voyager runs across a group of scientists on an alien world who are wired into their own holodeck/virtual reality environment. To everyone's terror, this computer-generated realm is dominated by a surreal carnivalesque atmosphere and a gruesome clown (Michael McKean), Fear Itself. And the trick of this world is familiar to fans of the Nightmare on Elm Street film series: if you die in the holodeck, you die in real life. And that clown has a nasty habit of putting those who disobey him under the guillotine...

What I admire about this episode is that it deploys all these surreal, bizarre visual compositions to assert the clown's total dominance over the dream scape and ends without bells and whistles, but rather with a one-on-one, intimate battle of the wits between Janeway and Fear. Like I said above, it's just stunningly good and superbly written and orchestrated.

In "Resolutions," Voyager is forced to strand Captain Janeway and Chakotay together on an idyllic forest planet, and -- without regard for the cliches of the genre (evil aliens, etc.) -- the story observes simply how the two characters cope with their sudden marooning. Chakotay finds acceptance quickly, and settles into his new life without looking back or asking questions. Janeway, on the other hand, never stops fighting, and never relaxes. If she's occupied, she believes, she won't feel alone...or left behind. Again, it's just a simple story of two alternate worldviews, but it is handled in a compelling, character-based fashion.

Star Trek: Voyager is clearly not the paradigm shifting sci-fi outer space series that Farscape or Firefly or Battlestar Galactica proved to be. It was just the latest in a familiar concept, tweaked and twisted to seem "new enough." I do believe that if the makers of the series had truly been bold in their choices -- turning off holodecks, featuring arguments between the two crews, and asking the characters to make moral compromises in a world of limited resources -- the series would be remembered today in much more positive terms.

The early seasons of Voyager are strangely inconsistent: one week the series daringly breaks formula and the next week it offers a storyline you've seen on Star Trek a dozen times. A prime example of the latter is Brannon Braga's "Threshold," which involves a galactic breakthrough and an unwelcome twist in human evolution. In other words, it's "Where No Man Has Gone Before," only dumber.

I don't know if you've given Voyager a try in the last fifteen years, but the good episodes are so good ("The Thaw," "Parallax," "Deadlock," "Resolutions") that you really mourn what amounts to a lost opportunity to update and modernize the increasingly-familiar and trite Star Trek universe.

I guess my ultimate statement on Voyager is this: a lifelong Star Trek fan, I stopped watching the series regularly by season six (about the time "The Rock" was guest-starring as an alien gladiator...). I didn't stick around to see the lost crew get home (though eventually I did watch that episode...), because I'd lost faith in the writers to wrap up the show in a novel, exciting and legitimately dramatic fashion.

You can only take so much disappointment before you become a lapsed Trekker...

The Horror Mythology of Space:1999

"We're a long way from home, and we're going to have to start thinking differently if we're going to come to terms with space."

-Professor Victor Bergman, Space: 1999; "Matter of Life and Death."

One important quality that differentiates Space: 1999 (1975-1977) from virtually any other outer space adventure ever created, even after thirty-five years, is its heavy accent on horror. Unlike Star Trek, wherein planets are joined peacefully across the ocean of space as part of a cosmic, political United Nations, Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's Space: 1999 presents the universe as a realm of incomprehensible and total, abject terror.

Because the heroes of Space: 1999 (1975 -1977) -- the 311 astronauts and scientists stationed on Moonbase Alpha -- are psychologically and technologically unprepared for their unexpected journey into deepest space (it's the result of an accident on the moon's surface...) even the most wonderful or harmless mechanisms of the cosmos appear frightening, foreboding and unknown to these inexperienced, contemporary travelers. It's a metaphor, perhaps, for the way our cave-men ancestors may have regarded thunder, fire, the sun or the moon -- as inexplicable, fearsome elements of existence.

Given this revolutionary and fascinating aspect of Space: 1999, I thought it might prove interesting today to make note of many of the horror myths, legends and concepts that Space: 1999 re-purposed during its two year, 48-episode run. Virtually all of these conceits, you will note, were given a technological sheen or update for the series, a polish well in keeping with an overarching theme that Science Digest's editor, Arielle Emmett termed "the downfall of 20th century technological man."

1. The Premature Burial: "Earthbound"

In the nineteenth century, one of the great human dreads involved being buried alive. This fear was so widespread, in fact, that some people saw to it that they had emergency signalling devices installed in their coffins upon internment. Gothic author Edgar Allen Poe exploited this societal fear of being buried alive in The Fall of The House of Usher and his 1844 short story, The Premature Burial.

The horror trope of being buried alive has come to be associated with such concepts as claustrophobia (fear being trapped in a coffin, a confined space) and body paralysis, the inability to move or function within that confined space. The primary setting of premature burial fears, of course, is the casket: the small, final resting place of the human form. Modern films have also obsessed on the premature burial, namely Wes Craven's The Serpent and The Rainbow (1989) and The Vanishing (1988)

In Space: 1999, an episode entitled "Earthbound" by Anthony Terpiloff culminated with a high-tech, futuristic variation on the premature burial conceit. Earth's Commissioner Simmonds (Roy Dotrice) becomes entombed in a suspended animation device aboard an alien spaceship for a 75-year journey to Earth. A bully and an opportunist, Simmonds has resorted to extortion and black mail to get this coveted "slot" on Captain Zantor's (Christopher Lee) ship. He pays for his moral infraction, however, when, -- just hours into the trip -- he awakens inside the transparent suspended animation chamber, the high-tech equivalent of a coffin.

Simmonds even has an emergency signalling device on his person, an Alphan communicator called a "commlock." He alerts Moonbase Alpha to his mortal plight, but the wandering moon is too far distant to come to his assistance. Simmonds is thus left behind -- alive and conscious -- in the claustrophobic container, without the possibility of help or rescue, a perfect metaphor for the terror inherent in the convention of the premature burial.

2. The Siren: "The Guardian of Piri"

Ancient Greek mythology gave the world the concept of Sirens: seductresses of the not-quite human variety who lured sailors to their isolated island with a tempting song, and then kept them trapped there for all eternity. The Sirens, uniquely, were temptresses of the mind or spirit, not the flesh, and boasted knowledge beyond the confines of linear time. Always depicted as females, the Sirens bore knowledge of both the past and future.

In Homer's epic poem, The Odyssey, sea captain and warrior Odysseus -- on his long journey home -- had himself physically strapped to the mast of his vessel so he could experience the Siren song for himself. Let's just say it drove him to distraction.

In Space: 1999's "The Guardian of Piri," written by Christopher Penfold, the wandering moon (also searching for "home,"much like Odysseus) falls under the tantalizing spell of "The Guardian" on an alien world.

The Guardian, like the mythical sirens of the Greeks, extends its purview beyond the linear progression of time. In fostering "perfection" in its captive wards it can actually freeze time, holding living life-forms in a permanent stasis. Space:1999's Odysseus surrogate, Commander Koenig (Martin Landau), doesn't tie himself to the mast of Moonbase Alpha to resist the lure, but he is the only man on the installation able to resist the beguiling, female face of the Guardian, played by lovely Catherine Schell. Even Moonbase Alpha's oracle, Victor Bergman falls under the spell, describing, briefly, an "old man's fantasies." Finally, Computer itself is tempted by the Siren song and is "removed" to Piri.

3. The Midas Touch: "Force of Life"

In Greek mythology, there was also a man named King Midas of Phyrgia, a man who was gifted with the power to turn everything he touched to gold. This frightful power soon became a curse, however, when his food and water turned to gold, and even his beloved daughter was transformed into a gold statue. In the end, King Midas returned his power to the Earth, by spreading into a running river. After doing so, Midas left behind his love of the material world and material wealth. He came to despise the gold he had once coveted.

Johnny Byrne's outstanding Space: 1999 episode "Force of Life" involves an Alphan technician, Anton Zoref (Ian McShane), who, because of an alien "gift," develops the terrifying ability to freeze objects and people on contact. The name Zoref is an anagram for FROZE, and Phyrgia even sounds a bit like Frigid. Likewise, when the tale climaxes, Zoref casts off his earthly life, becoming a power of pure energy. In his new form, Zoref, like Midas in a sense, leaves human concerns behind.

The Midas connection in "Force of Life" is perhaps more obscure than some of the other mythology in Space:1999 and story editor Johnny Byrne once described the episode as one in which a life-form "rises above human form." He told me. "The majesty of the creature (though unfortunate for Zoref) was that it was one step closer to attaining the next stage of existence."

4. The Midwich Cuckoos: "Alpha Child"

Our literary, cinematic and TV tradition is filled with examples of sinister, even demonic "changeling" children. John Wyndham's 1957 novel The Midwich Cuckoos (made as the 1960 film Village of the Damned) featured otherworldy but human-appearing children who pursued an evil alien agenda against mankind. The 1950s also gave the world sociopath Rhoda Penmark, The Bad Seed of novelist William March: a child without the empathy and innocence we associate with children. By the disco-decade of the 1970s, we were introduced to the demonically possessed Regan in The Exorcist (1973) and little Damien, The Anti-Christ, in The Omen (1976).

Christopher Penfold's "Alpha Child" presents the tale of the first Alphan born in space, little Jackie Crawford, and the alien changeling (Jarak) who steals his place, possesses his body and accelerates his growth. This terrifying episode is dominated by unforgettable horrific imagery, including that of a child psychically torturing his mother, and a grown child trapped within the too-small confines of a baby incubator. That last visual is a sign of "horror" overcoming technology, an important idea in Space:1999.

5. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: "The Full Circle"

The dual, split-personality nature of the human being was observed and charted in Robert Louis Stevenson's 1886 novel, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. There, the crux of the story involved the separation of the "sinful" from "the moral" into two distinct beings, the savage Mr. Hyde and the civilized Dr. Jekyll.

Space:1999 also dramatizes a variation of this story, in Jesse Lasky Jr., and Pat Silver's "The Full Circle." Here, the Alphans explore a planet called Retha and soon encounter a tribe of primitive stone-age cavemen. Later, it is learned that the Alphans themselves were the cave-men, having passed through a strange, misty time-warp and regressed to a less-advanced state. This time-warp is beautifully realized as a kind of waterfall of mist in a primeval jungle.

Uniquely, this premise is explored in didactic terms: the Alphans have been separated not into sinful and moral versions of themselves like Jekyll/Hyde, but "primitive" and "technological" versions. And, ironically, it is the technological, modern model (personified by Alan Carter and Sandra Benes) who resort to physical violence.

At the end of the story, a bewildered Koenig notes that there no aliens on the planet to contend with...just flawed human nature. "Because we couldn't speak to each other, couldn't communicate, we misunderstood," Koenig notes. "Yet it was only us there..."

6. Faust: "End of Eternity"

As early as the 1500s, Germany presented the legend of a learned mortal, Johann Fausten, or Dr. Faust, who was willing to trade his immortal soul for knowledge beyond human ken. His partner-in -trade was no one less than Satan, the Devil. A dissatisfied intellectual, Faust had an unquenchable thirst for knowledge and understanding, and went into the devil's bargain with his eyes wide open. Again, it's important: he was a man of science, a doctor.

In Space: 1999's chilling "End of Eternity" by Johnny Byrne, the Alphans free a man called Balor (think Baal), from his own personal Hell: an inescapable asteroid prison cell. Balor,like Faust, is a scientist who has discovered the secret to eternal life; the spontaneous regeneration of human tissue. But, this alien devil with the secret of immortality demands a high price of the Alphans if they are to share in his information wealth: eternal submission to his sadistic, violent, Devilish ways. At least one Alphan, a grounded pilot named Baxter, makes a Faustian deal with this alien Lucifer. Koenig, however, refuses to cooperate and in a David & Goliath-like conclusion (that pre-dates Ridley Scott's Alien [1979]) sends Balor hurtling out an airlock.

7. The Ghost: "The Troubled Spirit"

Space: 1999's "The Troubled Spirit" is an out-and-out, up-front horror story, one involving a ghost that haunts the spirit of a living man, technician Dan Mateo. In fact, the ghost is Dan Mateo himself...a spirit from the future haunting his present, mortal self. Johnny Byrne here sought to "mix two things," and was stimulated by the idea of "combining horror and science fiction." The Alphans, led by their oracle, Victor, must "exorcise" the murderous ghost, but in doing so, end up killing Dan Mateo and scarring him in the exact same fashion as his ghostly specter.

"The Troubled Spirit" also showcases one of the most lyrical, brilliantly-staged opening sequences in all of television history, as a supernatural "wind" blows through the high-tech, white-on-white halls of Moonbase Alpha. Another example of the supernatural or horrific over-powering the auspices of technology and science.

8. St. George vs. The Dragon: "Dragon's Domain"

Saint George was a Christian martyr who saved a king's daughter from being killed by a plague-bearing, giant dragon. George committed this act, however, only after a guarantee that the king's land would soon be converted to Christianity.

Christopher Penfold's outstanding Space: 1999 "Dragon's Domain" actually references the tale of St. George vs. The Dragon in its text. Here, the paradigm has been updated: it's astronaut Tony Cellini (Gianno Giarko) versus a tentacled cyclops which haunts a spaceship graveyard. Tony is not able to slay this dragon (that act is left to Koenig, armed with a hatchet), and Tony never forces a conversion to Christianity. However, Tony does aggressively push the Alphans, especially Helena Russell, to embrace, let's say, the philosophy of "extreme possibilities" and not cling to earthbound belief systems. "I want you all to throw out the criteria by which you judge what's real....You must believe!" He insists, when faced with disbelievers.

At the end of the story, Koenig, Victor and Helena flee the spaceship graveyard (and the dead monster), essentially converted to Cellini's way of thinking. They have witnessed the impossible with their own eyes: a mesmeric alien creature which does not register on their instruments, and which devours human life forms. Helena brings up the example of Saint George and the Dragon, and suggests that Tony and the Monster will be a part of the new Alphan society's long-term mythology.

9. The Picture of Dorian Gray: "The Exiles"

Oscar Wilde's 1890 novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray involved a handsome young man, Dorian Gray, who was beautiful, immoral and also a criminal. While he undertook his reign of terror, Gray's portrait -- in secret -- became aged and horrible, reflecting his morality, his vanity, and his sins. As for Gray, he himself showed no physical or biological signs of his perversions and presented the appearance of remaining forever young.

In the second season Space: 1999 episode, "The Exiles," Moonbase Alpha encounters two apparently benign alien teenagers, Cantar (Peter Duncan) and Zova (Stacy Dorning). In fact, these innocent-seeming (and physically beautiful) youngsters are alien insurrectionists. They are centuries-old, but protected by a physical membrane that prevent physical degeneration and aging. At story's end, Helena scratches Cantar's protective membrane, and, like Dorian Gray in Wilde's novel, the weight of the decades lands upon the vain villain in seconds: he super-ages and dies in horrible, gruesome fashion.

10. The Zombie: "All That Glisters "

Before George Romero's stellar re-interpretation of the Zombie mythology in Night of the Living Dead (1968), zombies were often simply mindless human beings; laborers working at the behest of an evil master. They were, in essence, unthinking henchmen in the White Zombie (1932) sense.

Space:1999's episode "All That Glisters" resurrects this older interpretation of the zombie on a distant planet inhabited by sentient, silicon life-forms. These alien rocks murder Security Chief (Tony Verdeschi) and then re-animate him as a zombie, essentially, to serve as their arms and legs. The horror-overtones of this episode are also quite dramatic. Director Ray Austin deploys some tight-framing, dark-lighting and claustrophobic settings to express the horror of the situation.

Other episodes of Space: 1999 also dealt explicitly in horror tropes. "Mission of the Darians" concerned the taboo of cannibalism (a concept we see in literature such as 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea). "Brian the Brain" was a Frankenstein story, with a renegade, technological monster (a murderous robot) murdering his creator/father, Captain Michael (Bernard Cribbins).

"Seed of Destruction" was a variation of H.P. Lovecraft's "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward" only with Koenig confronting an alien doppelganger, rather than a wizardly ancestor of identical physical characteristics. "Death's Other Dominion also involved scientific hubris and super-aging in its unforgettable climax, and "The Testament of Arkadia" highlighted a valley of death - a necropolis of sorts -- on an alien world, as well as ghostly force influencing the Alphans.

Of course, a relevant question is this: why create a technology-based, outer space series utilizing so many instances of horror in mythology, literature and even the movies. The answer lies in Penfold's and Byrne's unique concept of the series.

Specifically, Johnny Byrne once informed me that Space: 1999 "is a modern day (near future) origin story of a people. The Celts, the Aztecs and the Hebrews all have origin stories. But Space: 1999 took place in real time, not pre-history. It was a futuristic rendering of that old story: of people cast out from their home with no plan, no direction, and no control. There are elements of faith, magic and religion in the series, and nobody seems to understand and accept that. In Space: 1999, we are witnessing the foundation of a culture."

Now imagine that culture established, some two hundred years after the events of Space: 1999. The stories those "future" citizens might tell would involve terrifying tales of their founding: of the premature burial, of the encounter with sirens, of St. George and the Dragon, and so forth.

It is this mythic (and horrific) perspective, truly, which makes Space:1999 so unique a science fiction drama. The series repeatedly pinpoints high-tech corollaries for the ideas that have scared us throughout human history and then takes its characters on a mythic journey through that macabre realm of the unknown. Thrillingly, the series also includes amazing guest performances by horror icons including Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, and Richard Johnson

If you're interested in learning more about Space:1999's futuristic "origin myth," don't forget to check out my critically-acclaimed book, Exploring Space:1999, now available on Kindle.