Best Twilight Zone gif of all time!

This is the first time I've made a gif of the 1965 Twilight Zone opening that I was truly satisfied with. No sound, of course, because it's a gif, but I think you know the drill!

“You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension: a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. You’re moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You’ve just crossed over into… the Twilight Zone.”

Over-smoked: the miracle of Marlboro

                                                                                   

The "miracle", of course, is that these ads were allowed to run at all. They have a bizarre beauty to them, a sort of otherworldliness which I HOPE reflects how much attitudes have changed.

Or not?

CAN attitudes change on a sort of mass level? If they don't, where are we headed? Will this be a slow process, or will we all too quickly plunge headlong into the abyss ?

I grew up in the '60s, when anything seemed possible. Civil rights, women's lib, enlightenment towards the disabled and mentally ill, hope for the poor and marginalized.

What has happened to all that passion and progress?

I feel a great sucking force dragging us backwards. It's not a simple matter of  being "over-smoked". The news is becoming more intolerable by the day. When I was a kid, shows like The Twilight Zone were already trying to tell us how intolerable it would be to live in a world run by technology.

There was also this recurring theme of political oppression, a leftover from the Second World War when Fascism came terrifyingly close to achieving world domination. 

Is political oppression winning now? Don't ask me, I'm not political, but I do care. I suppose it's too late for me, but I care about the sort of world my grandchildren will inherit.

So the point of all this rambling is: should I have hope? In a few short decades, these cute ads showing babies selling cigarettes became distasteful, then shocking, then completely unacceptable. Having been normalized and even considered a social necessity, cigarettes became heavily stigmatized and thrust outside the bounds of acceptability. Compared to the usual rate of social change, all this happened at light speed.

Can this happen with other things? I mean, right now? WILL it happen, and what will be our fate if it doesn't? The ruthless unravelling of all the passionate progress I've ever seen is  breaking my heart. Our chains are being buckled back on, and it looks like there's nothing we can do about it. It's over, that great experiment in social enlightenment which (supposedly) changed everything. 

Isn't it? Tell me it isn't - I will take any good news I can get.

Monsters of The Outer Limits: Best in Show

This is not the time for this, or maybe it is, with global threats everywhere: climate change, intractible human hatred, an astoundingly stupid leader of the free world, and nuclear war. Like everyone else, I have to cope with all of this every day and try to keep smiling, or at least keep my sanity and preserve and defend my joy in living. 

These aren't really new gifs - you can tell by the cheesy Gifsforum logo in the corner. I didn't want to make new ones, even though they'd be technically of better quality. But since when did The Outer Limits have high-definition picture quality?

Maybe what brought this on was noticing KVOS was running episodes, two back-to-back, on Saturday night. I have been enjoying them immensely. I find that in some ways, this series was much more disturbing than The Twilight Zone, which was more of a psychological drama. This is a good-old-fashioned creature feature thing, but never losing sight of what lurks behind the monsters. Nimoy and Shatner and a host of other soon-to-be famous actors pop up, which is always a joy. As a kid, this series scared me so much that I barely watched it at all.

 

Nimoy and Shatner: before they were icons

This is just what you think it is: a pre-Trek, pre-Captain Kirk William Shatner, he who appeared on various popular SF (or sci-fi or whatever they call it now) TV shows of the mid-'60s. I believe this one was The Outer Limits. He also did a couple of turns on The Twilight Zone, the monster-on-the-airplane-wing one and another one, much more low-key, in which he became addicted to a sort of Satanic coin bank that was foretelling his death. Jeffrey Hunter,the original Captain Kirk in the failed pilot, didn't seem to have this paranormal/space epic background, or if he did I don't remember it. He was in Biblical movies, I think, and didn't know how to do that infamous wrestling throw that bested Kirk's worst enemy, the Gorn. He was just too bland, and what they seemed to need on the show was the sort of histrionic performance that led to his deathless soliloquy: "No blah-blah-blah!"

Which see.

But wait, there's more! Leonard Nimoy also did at least one turn on The Outer Limits (that I know of - he may have done some Zone/One Step Beyond as well. He had a family to support.) It's eerie how similar this shot is: both of them looking at something disturbing on a screen, though Nimoy turns away with a mildly perplexed look on his face and Shatner looks as if he needs a Pepto-Bismol. Though these appearances weren't on the same episode, guess what! . . . 

They appeared together on The Man from U.N.C.L.E. in 1964. I probably watched this episode, since I was slavishly devoted to the show (and unlike all my friends, I liked Robert Vaughn rather than David McCallum). Like everyone else, I had no idea these two journeyman actors would become cultural icons, and neither did they. All in a day's work.

Best monsters from The Outer Limits

As a kid, the only thing that scared the shit out of me worse than The Twilight Zone was The Outer Limits.

The Outer Limits was way better, is why. It had monsters, lots of them. The Twilight Zone had Philosophy. It had Rod Serling making pronouncements on the emptiness of life in the 20th century, the blinding pace of progress, the depersonalization of society, and all those things nobody had a clue about back then.

This show had monsters in the basement with really ugly legs. It had terrified women hiding in the shadows. The way this chick is acting, that creature is probably her husband who swallowed a nuclear bomb and got a little bent out of shape. Radiation was a very big thing back then.

Sometimes we laughed at the monsters. I think we laughed at this one, or laughed at the guy holding it on to his own face to make it look really scary and dangerous while this pile of poo or whatever it is pulsates in the corner. This guy obviously had it coming, because he was a Mad Scientist cooking up some sort of goo to make himself invincible.

It just goes on and on while he holds this thing on his face and the poo pulsates.

There are always actors on these shows who look familiar. This guy was in My Big Fat Greek Wedding, wasn't he? He couldn't be, he'd be 156 years old by then. But he looks like him.

I love the reactions of people to the monsters. This is what makes the show so good. The edging away, the terror, the screams. Big tough men, construction workers and wrestlers, start to shriek like little girls.

Here we have a monster montage. The guy in the hard hat is truly terrifying.

This is some years before Nimoy got his big break. I have no idea about the headgear, if he's in space or just some sci-fi beekeeper.

And here's his best bud, who had no qualms about taking jobs for bitter rivals like Outer Limits and Twilight Zone. A job's a job, right, Bill? This also applies to the Loblaws commercials he made in Toronto between the demise of Star Trek and the rise of T. J. Hooker. Better than living out of your truck, like you did for a while, eh, Bill?

This is one of my all-time favorites. It looks sort of like a leaf-shaped cookie cutter. I've never seen anything less scary in my life, and yet, it has the power to blow papers all over the office.

I really wanted to make gifs of that classic opening: "There is nothing wrong with your television set." This REALLY scared me as a kid because my brother Arthur told me it was true: they did control the horizontal; they did control the vertical. I was paralyzed with terror and stuck to my chair, so I never could test the theory. The opening lasted about a minute and a half, so wasn't a good candidate for giffing. Just try to imagine a theramin playing the theme song.

 

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book

    It took me years to write, will you take a look

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