WEBVTT

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Dark Destinations may be end times Night's
creature. Why would a few more casualties

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struggle me because of their blood?
Will join yours a radio drama anthology.

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You are wrong how you figure every
mark on longos hunting you down? Not

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you, your partner, he said, I didn't have a ray gun.

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Full cast performances set in the haunted
corners of the globe. Darkness is coming

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for you. That's the fear that
taunts me. Dark Destinations by fatherm Alone

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at weirdingwaymedia dot com. Greetings midnight
viewers, fall them alone here and I'd

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like to welcome you to a special
bonus series. We've been slugging it out

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in the horror anthology trenches for years
now and felt as though the chaff sometimes

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overwhelms the bloody wheat. In our
discussions. To that end, we've decided

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to throw a spotlight on some of
the more superlative segments from the various and

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disparate series. These aren't arranged in
any kind of merit based system nor chronological

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That would be way too organized.
Instead, I'm starting the series with my

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personal favorite episode of The Twilight Zone
nineteen eighty five, that was the first

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remake or reboot of Ron Serling's classic
from the Golden Age of Television. From

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that iteration, a veritable dream team
of creatives was assembled Wes Craven, Harlan

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Ellison, William Friedkin, Peter Meadack, George R. R. Martin Ray,

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Bradberry, and on and on.
They managed to pay fealty to the

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original while carving out a new corner
of the zone for themselves. The most

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junior member of the writing staff was
a fellow by the name of Rockney S

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O'Bannon. I was writing, as
all you know beginning writers do. I

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was writing back everything. I was
writing back features. I've spent writing back

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episodes of other TV shows that were
on at the time. And there was

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a show that was on the ABTT
a couple of years before the new twilets

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On Kimbalong called dark Room, and
it was like it was like night Gallery

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story but with more twilight, so
like stories, and so I wrote a

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word play and then another like short
half hour pizza for that. It actually

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managed to get the scripts into the
producers of the show and they very complimentary,

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but they said, you know,
we were The show has already been

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canceled. Oak and they like to
tell writing classes. The great thing about

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spec material is it it never dissolved, you know it, you know though,

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it survives on your on your on
your hard drive. So I just

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held out of these little half hour
scripts that really would have no value otherwise,

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and then lo and behold, along
came. A couple years later,

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along came both Twilight Zone and Amazing
Stories, which was the Spielberg version of

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kind of a twilight Zone. And
was able to submit submit the scripts to

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both of them and got very good
response to the scripts We're playing particular from

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both shows. But then Twilet Zone
had me in uh right away and put

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Men's staff, which was donning to
me because I would have been thrilled to

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work on any any crappy universal hour. So so word Player was the first

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day I went in. And yeah, I was a huge fan of Harlan

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Ellison before learning, and he was
going to work on the show. And

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he wrote to which I have brained
a little paragraph before he ever met me,

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a little paragraph review of Wordplay.
He was commenting on all the material

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that was coming in, incredibly generous
and and and Harland was with nothing if

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not incredibly opinionated and a vocative,
it fighting. So when he liked something,

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he really liked them. He really
hates something, he really hates them.

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So it was like I was I
betefit it. I was on the

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on the on the positive side of
that ledger. The fact that I had

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Parland being as kindly praiseworthy as he
was was stunning to me. And Harland

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was great. He was was everybody
on this staff. It was a very

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righter centric staff, and and I
was the new kid, and you could

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not be greener than I would.
So I think everything a lot of we're

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very patient with me and generous with
me, and and Harland very much among

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them. To the fabulous introduction to
the business and the Harlem alog with Phil

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Deegher and Al Bretta. To Jim
Crocker, who had the other made up

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the rest of the staff that first
season perch half of the first eave them.

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It was a fabulous entree in the
into the bid. Debuting in September

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of nineteen eighty five, this new
Twilight Zone broke from its predecessor in presentation.

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Unlike the originals half hour, this
was an hour long show and afforded

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its creators the freedom to battle those
dread commercial breaks that have always been the

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bane of dramatic television, one could
conceivably tell an entire tale between the commercials,

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and, like Ron Serling's other foray
into televised anthology, Night Gallery,

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this format allowed several tales to be
told in one sitting, which required an

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inordinate amount of material. Not only
that it had to be good worthy of

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the original. That script that Harlan
Ellison had praised so effusively and ultimately landed

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mister Oben in the job at Twilight
Zone wordplay and is as every bit as

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incredible as advertised, and as such
it will form the basis of a future

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episode of this series. Obannon would
contribute half a dozen outstanding stories for this

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new twilight Zone, and in my
humble opinion, was the one writer on

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the show who not only understood that
this was a new twilight Zone, but

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in script after astounding and precient script, he managed to actually deliver a show

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that felt both contemporary and out of
time. Any one of those stories could

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top a Best of twilight Zone eighty
five list or horror anthology list in general,

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But the one that I tout above
all the others, the one that

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hit me where I lived, and
made me understand the shock and power of

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the Twilight Zone in a way I
imagine a teen in nineteen sixty two had

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felt. When to Serve Man turned
out to be the title of a cookbook.

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This story aired on November twenty ninth, nineteen eighty five, titled simply

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The Shadow Man. When you're thirteen
years old, you're supposed to be beyond

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those childhood fears of things that go
bump in the night. Supposed to be.

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But for Danny Hayes, those fears
are about to rear up before him

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from the shadows of the twilight'son.
Danny Hayes is scared not only of the

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casual perils of daily life, but
taking a stab at any of the awkward

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steps through adolescents. But it's worse
than that. Danny's fears still dwell in

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the shadowed corners of childhood, where
the closets hired monsters, And that tamping

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at the window isn't a brand.
Your father and I could understand this behavior

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when you were younger, but you
are thirteen years old. Now you're a

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young man, and you should not
have to sleep with all of these lights

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and the TV and the radio ant, but mom no butt. Danny Hayes

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is scared and everyone knows it,
which does nothing to help the social standing

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of the class brain that regularly blows
the bell curve through his adherence to extra

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credit. Not the best position to
attract the attention of Leanna, the girl

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he pines for, though it does
set him in the sights of her boyfriend

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Eric. That was great day.
You know. There was some question for

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a while, but you man,
but not anymore. Your reputation is still

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intact. You are still the biggest
chicken in Willow Creek. I'm not chicken.

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I just not chicken. What do
you call running like that? Leaving

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poor Leanna the woman you love?
Good chicken, Bye bye bye. But

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Danny won't be scared for much longer. That night, a figure clad all

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in black emerges from beneath his bed, the shack old man, and I

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will never harm the person news why
True to its otherworldly word, Danny remains

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unharmed that evening. The same can't
be said for a young couple that were

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attacked, landing them in the hospital. While the New Twilight Zone would be

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a playground for emerging artists, it
also employed some cinema veterans, and in

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the case of the Shadow Man,
a Twilight Zone veteran. Joe Dante in

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nineteen eighty five was white hot from
the success of Gremlin's That was his third

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solo feature. He had co directed
Hollywood Boulevard with Alan Arkish back in seventy

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six for Roger Corman's New World Pictures, but it was his collaboration in nineteen

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eighty three that showcased his wildly inventive
visual style and humor. Dante remade It's

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a Good Life for Twilight Zone,
the movie. In an interview, he

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discussed his time on twilight Zone eighty
five. I'd already done an episode of

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Amazing Stories too, which made the
new Twilight Zone look like Poverty Road.

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The eighty Zone revamp was a different
animal entirely from the Serling original, which

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was economically produced but benefited from the
availability of the MGM backlot and studio gloss.

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The new series was shot very quickly
at the former Republic Studios lot in

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Studio City, which only had a
tiny backlot. Producer Phil de Guerre was

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notorious for post production tampering, and
this was one of the first TV series

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edited on videotape. This allowed for
much editorial mischief, as evidenced by director

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Gil Kate's complained that his Paladin of
the Last Hour episode was botched by de

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guerre in cocaine fueled editing, and
when televised, was officially credited to the

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fictitious DGA non de plume Alan Smithy. As I recall, Rockley's existing script

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was pretty much a take it or
leave it proposition. I don't recall much

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effort to enlist the directors in choosing
material, although I can't believe that Freed

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can just happen to end up with
Nightcrawlers, which may be the best episode

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the series. Once you hand in
a TV episode, your involvement is pretty

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much over. I never met any
of the music guys who are hired long

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before I was The music guys he
mentioned or guy in this case was Merle

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Saunders. Fans of The Grateful Dead
will recognize him as a frequent Jerry Garcia

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collaborator. Together they'd form Saunder's Garcia
Band, which would become Legion of Mary,

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then reconstruction on his own. He
released the world music classic Blues from

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the Rainforest in nineteen ninety as such
his work. Here is all dark menace,

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with tribal percussion closing in the corners
of the frame while the haunted warble

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of a theremin plays. Do you
believe Eddie Meyer said he's seen it personally?

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I wouldn't believe Eddie Myers if he
said they're Sandy Dabat. I just

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wish they could. I admire me
an escape rental patient here was one who

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escaped from Peterson's built six months ago. You figure he's been living in the

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woods, eat squirrels and birds.
Every night the shadow Man rises, and

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every night he assures Danny that he'll
never harm the person under whose bed he

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lives. And every night the attacks
continue. But things begin to change for

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Danny. The once petrified boy becomes
the only one seemingly brave enough to break

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curfew and stroll alone along the empty
streets of Willow Creek, a bit of

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status he lets immediately go to his
head, and one that sets him on

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a collision course with rival for Leanna's
hand. Eric care come, okay,

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sure, yeah, I'll fight you, but not now. Tonight at nine

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o'clock, the guy for cart That's
where the Maniacs has seen the most author

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Rockney s O'Bannon, a cab the
Libray, remember where the idea came from.

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But again, we're trying as hard
as we could generally to do to

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a bending because that was what obviously
til It's done with famous for. And

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it's a really tough thing to do
because when the original twilet Zoon aired again,

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it's with that England short story were
pretty commonplace, but certainly on television

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that kind of light wasn't expecting that
it was wasn't that common. And to

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me, the general not even just
twist endings, but a general good example

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of that is I have the Beholder
in the original series, the one which

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is entirely the entire other other than
the one minute. The entire thing is

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predicated on us not seeing any of
the characters, and the fact that you

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could do that and it wouldn't givoil
the ending, I think to me,

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was a tribute to the fact that
audiences were far more experience in terms of

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being set up for a surprise.
But here we come whatever twenty plus years

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later, and people watched the old
Twilight Zones and they were obviously steeped in

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that kind of twist ending. So
the much harder to hide it, et

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cetera. We were always trying to
come up with when we could ending it

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shows with the twist ending and Shuttleman
with my like boxing my version into the

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ring of it. And Joe was
like, the perfect is the absolutely perfect

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choice for him. Obviously he'd done
Gremlin shortly before the very high director really

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dug the script, and yeah,
the intent was just to make it as

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absolutely scary as possible, and then
to the degree that we speeded, have

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it, have it a twist at
the end. It's in the silence on

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world parlance, it's called a bit
bit story, meaning a biter throughout most

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of the story. Dugley, he
gets a bit at the end points is

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on his own guitard if he will. But yeah, it was that.

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And but again, Joe so such
a such a really good filmmaker and so

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totally understood what it what it needed
that he was able to create. It

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was all on camera, obviously,
the Shadowman, who looks two dimensional a

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lot of the time, very very
oddly. Yeah, yeah, which is

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wonderful because it just makes you go, Okay, that's not he's not entirely

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human somehow, you know, all
that sort of thing, and that's all

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cold filmmaking, and Joe was a
huge, huge, important contributor to that.

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Yeah, obviously when you talk about
the twist, because we all got

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used to it from the original time
I done. It's what I particularly liked

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about this episode is it didn't feel
like there was going to be a twit,

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and I think that's rare well ordinarily, when you see an episode that's

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going to be predicated on which you
feel it from the opening frame, and

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that's what I admired about this episode
rewatching it. It doesn't feel like we're

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going there at all. Dude.
That was one thing that I learned from

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the show, and it was innate, I guess and what I was doing

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up until then because wordplay does the
same thing but it but working on the

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show, it crystalized it for me, which is that you can have a

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I have the world's shortest attention span. Would but that's the back of the

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middle and trained directed, but I
do. I really have a critically short

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attention span. So things that are
all set up just waiting for the twitt

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ending are very prostrating to me.
I just okay, okay again and I

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get to set up just what's going
to be the twitt. What I learned

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from the TWI that's an experience was
try to make the story itself, with

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the situation as with it as compelling, and give it escalation as much as

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possible so that the story itself is
compelling. Don't just rest on the laurel

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that you know you could have a
twist ending in shadow Man, for example,

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it's exactly what you're talking about it. So I think there's there's a

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real escalation to his discovery of the
shadow Man and how he starts to use

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him. Then how is standing with
the other kid changes, and the inflation

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with the community's reaction to the fact
that is going on. All that sort

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of thing is all taked into it, so that you know, you make

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00:16:37.879 --> 00:16:41.799
a very good point which I never
realized. It also helps to disguise the

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00:16:42.279 --> 00:16:48.399
twist as well. Yeah, that
to me is why shadow Man with interesting,

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00:16:48.480 --> 00:16:52.639
compelling whatever leading up to the twist. As you since you've said that's

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why, the reason why who look, who's here? Oh my god,

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00:17:03.559 --> 00:17:17.319
Jenny run any come on? Is
something the matter? Hey it's me.

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00:17:18.400 --> 00:17:25.559
Don't you recognize me? Hey?
You said you never heard me the shadow

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Man, and I will never hardle
a person under news bed and I live

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well well, but I am a
shadow man from under someone else's bed.

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