User Reviews

Most unusual and eerie tale is about six young people who rent out a store(with a dark past) in order to open an arts and crafts business of their own creations. They then discover six glass canisters with different colored liquids in an old trunk, and each takes one for themselves. It turns out that the glass canisters contain some evil entities determined to posses or absorb each of them, and indeed as their personalities change, one by one they disappear until the last one left decides to take action, but it may already be too late... Hard to know what to say about this original yet bizarre episode that ends in a surprising yet strange way. Memorable regardless.

When you have D. C. Fontana, Harlan Ellison and Richard Matheson working on a story, you know it's going to be good. This episode of Circle of Fear has a community of six artists who discover six colorful glass containers within a storefront that has rent and location that's too good to be true.

Ellen Parrish (Joan Blackman, Macon County Line, Shivers, Blue Hawaii, Pets), Sam Richards (Frank Converse), Jake Freeman (Tim McIntire, the voice of Blood in A Boy and His Dog), Tyne Daly (Cagney and Lacey), Brooke Bundy (Elaine in two Elm Street movies) and Paul Cepeda (Scott Marlowe) are the artists who soon find that the containers are starting to take their souls and destroy them.

Director Alexander Singer had a career that stretched from making an episode of Dr. Kildare in 1961 all the way to Star Trek: Voyager in 1998.

This is a strange episode that I've noticed that plenty of folks disliked. I have no idea what episode they watched, because I loved it. It's perfect for 1973 and the end of the era of artist collectives and free love. Watch it and let me know what you think.

It was early and I couldn't find anything I wanted to watch and ended up at Decades TV with something called Ghost Story. I found the eerie opening with some disembodied voices talking to one another a draw so I paused and the title went by but what made me halt were the writing credits: teleplay by D, C. Fontana, and story by Harlan Ellison, and developed by Richard Matheson. If you read science fiction as a kid, these writers were as well known to you as your own name.

The basic story revolves around some young artists who rent a building with a questionable pass to open a sort of artist commune. At first, everyone is upbeat but then they find a chest with six different colored jars. Each takes one and then their art work begins to turn odd. Soon the artists disappear one by one until there are two: Ellen Parrish (Joan Blackman) who was odd from the start and Sam Richards (Frank Converse) who tended to play Mr. Steady characters throughout his career.

It seems the jars contain the essences of some ancient "gods" who slowly take over the personalities of the various artists and absorb them "body and soul" into the individual jars. To be honest the seemingly endless commercial with Larry King pushing OmegaXL became more interesting than the story. It seems even great writers can end up writing crap. But now I was 50 minutes in so what the hell, I decided to stay until the end. Would Frank Converse escape or would he too succumb to the jar.

In the end there is Parrish's painting and some shrubbery out of an old Tom Baker Dr. Who episode moving about eating things including a dog. Converse breaks his jar but it's too late to escape, the shrubbery is coming to get him and he can't open the door to escape. Suddenly, Converse tosses a match and ignites the building and races out but too late, his art has eaten him. Watch the episode to figure that observation out. Better yet, watch something else.

Decades TV has been running what they call Forgotten TV and this series was one among others like Cowboy in Africa, The Trouble with Father, One Step Beyond, The Invisible Man, and One Happy Family to name a few.

This episode had a great premise, but the execution was indifferent, I'm afraid. Oh, I got a kick out of seeing a very young Tyne Daly, but overall the pacing was slow and lacked suspense.

In the end, I just had too many unanswered questions about this one---NOTHING was made clear at the end. I don't expect every little plot element to be tied up in a neat bow, but there's a difference between spelling everything out for the audience and not giving them any answers whatsoever. Like---what (who) precisely was in the jars to begin with? How did they get in the trunk---who put them there, and why? What was the purpose of these beings in possessing the artists? It didn't appear that the entities were able to escape once they sucked the artists' souls into the jars.

So, in the end I found the story to be rather pointless. On the plus side, well.... that metallic hands sculpture was very creepy!

A group of young people are in business together, creating artwork for the store run by Frank Converse. The discovery of a box of weird liquids seems to cast evil spells on them as eerie music is heard in the background. One by one, they become obsessed with their work and seemingly disappear into it. Yes, on the surface it sounds interesting and creepy, but slowly descends into a maddening pace that at times is increasingly frustrating to deal with.

So other than the eerie artwork, all there is to look for here is a cast of familiar faces, some still very popular while others have faded away. Joan Blackman (of Elvis "Blue Hawaii" fame), Brooke Bundy ("General Hospital" murder victim Diana Taylor), Tyne Daly, Tim McIntire and Dabbs Greer (Reverend Alden from Walnut Grove) do provide some interest, but after a while, the constant beating and screeching and wailing winds have not only my headache game but my teeth as well.