Monday, October 3, 2016

31 TV Shows for 31 Days of Halloween Season: Day 3


Series: Ray Bradbury Theater

Episode: “Gotcha!”, in which Saul Rubinek takes his girlfriend up on her offer to play a game called “Gotcha!” and really, really ends up wishing he hadn’t. Bradbury was the king of purple prose, but in the short story that inspired this episode of his anthology series, he really worked his tendency to over-describe to his advantage, crafting an utterly terrifying sequence devoid of any concrete action. A shadow flits here. A shape appears in the corner there. That sort of thing. My love for that story (featured in another post that I posted today...now thats love), which is essentially about how finding out something unsavory about your significant other can really ruin the giddy joy of new love, is probably why I’m fond of this episode even though its full wallow in eighties cheese is awful. The music! The hair! The interior decorating! Ghastly! And don’t expect me to explain the weird Laurel and Hardy theme that runs through the episode. Brad Turner doesn’t come close to recapturing the blood-chilling terror of Bradbury’s game of Gotcha!, but the director hardly embarrasses himself. And just look at that scary face in the photo above. It’s scary!
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