Gramma/Personal Demons/Cold Reading

There is no greater fan of H. P. Lovecraft than I am, having read all his stories numerous times. This first offering gives us a bit of pause. Most immediately, who is grandma and why is she there, and why is mom leaving her son there. Lovecraft created the Chthulu mythos and countless authors have written stories based on it, including Stephen King. We know right away that Gramma is a monster and the poor kid is in grave danger. He starts to read the Necronimicon and saying words that generate horrors. It's pretty good, but the conclusion is the same old same old. "Personal Demons" has hack writer Martin Balsam with a huge case of non-creativity. Then a bunch of guys in black robs and with destructive tendencies show up. You can guess the rest. "Cold Reading" is much more imaginative. It is full of nice touches based on the idea that since we cannot see the radio personalities, we don't know what goes on in the studio. This is somewhat original.

Barrett Oliver, the cutie pie from THE NEVERENDING STORY, plays a boy left in charge of his dying grandmother. He makes her a cup of tea but spills it. When he goes to clean it up, he realizes granny's terrible moans and weird mutterings have ceased. He has been reading from a book of hers called The Necromicon, which should give you an idea where the plot is headed. When he goes to check on her, she appears quite dead. Little does he know. We never get a good look at grandma, and the only other performer in this taut little tale is Darlane Fluegel as Oliver's mother, who appears for a minute at the beginning and end. So young Oliver is forced to carry the episode, and he does an admirable job of it, aided and abetted by spooky lighting, unearthly howls and suspenseful music. A nice tip of the hat to Lovecraft.

The segment of "Gramma" scarred me for life. I saw it as a very young child (6-7 yrs old when it originally aired) and had nightmares like you wouldn't believe! The being alone, the dark room she is in, the hand, the eyes! Up to the mysterious ending. I could not sleep for almost a week because of this segment. I'll need to rewatch as an adult to see if the terror I endured still holds up. Here's to hoping!

Update: rewatched the segment. My fears as a child were completely justified. This is a scary segment (for a young viewer). I would've been better of watching TCSM, FT13th, or ANOES. I can watch this now and laugh. But rewatching it thinking back on how I felt on first viewing still sticks with me.

Watch "Gramma" and have a laugh or a scare. A great segment!

Episode 18 of "The New Twilight Zone" from the 1985-86 CBS series featured three segments "Gramma", "Personal Demons", and "Cold Reading".

"Gramma" based on a short story from legendary horror novelist Stephen King features a young boy who's left at home to care for his ill and old grandmother. Oddly and strangely she stays at the end of a shuttered room at the end of the hall. Soon strange sounds, voices, wind, and spooks start to occur to the little boy. Finally he finds out a big surprise about grandma, and when mom returns though the boy has made it you can tell by his eyes an old family tradition has been passed on.

"Personal Demons" has Rockne O' Bannon(Martin Balsam) as a washed up and struggling old TV show writer who's searching for new ideas and stories to get over this latest case of writer's block. Ideas and haunted memories soon appear thru little men that look demon like, has the imagination gotten the best of him? Yet it appears these little guys have put a spark in his imagination for new writing ideas.

"Cold Reading" takes place in an age before the golden age of TV, when radio was king as people depended on it for their entertainment. As great plays are read over the airwaves like "Dick Noble", "African Explorer" it starts to invoke powers over the air as in the studio it's a special effects delight as the radio got a glimpse into the future of the TV age and it's way of entertainment.

Overall one of the better episodes of "The New Twilight Zone".

The first segment of episode 18 of series 1 of THE NEW TWILIGHT ZONE is entitled GRAMMA and based on one of Stephen King's more frightening short stories. The question is whether this low budget show could actually do justice to the power of the King story.

The answer? A resounding yes! This is the best story of the series I've yet seen, and it's a story that actually manages to be frightening. The horror in the tale is present from the very beginning and the fast pace really adds to the energetic feel of the production. Even better, the titular menace is actually scary, and the way they film her without actually showing much of her makes her presence all the more sinister. The Lovecraftian nods are also more than welcome.

The second story, PERSONAL DEMONS, sees Martin Balsam playing a washed-up writer suffering from writer's block who's desperate for one last original idea. To that end, a gang of black-clad gremlins appear in his home and proceed to wreak havoc; they're there to help him of course. There isn't really much to this story (other than a typically assured performance from Balsam); lasting only 15 minutes, it has scant time to introduce the premise and develop it, let alone providing much in the way of a twist.

The final segment of the episode is by far the weakest. COLD READING is about radio sound effects which by the power of magic come to life. So we have scenes like the one in which a team of sound recorders find themselves menaced by real-life jungle animals which suddenly show up in the room. It's a comedy, a waste of time and best forgotten in favour of the previous segments.