The Howling Man

 

 (imdb)

TWILIGHT ZONE-1960-”The Howling Man”-David Ellington (HM Wynant) relates the story of how he got lost in a storm and sought refuge at a hermitage “Brothers of Truth”, run by Brother Jerome (John Carradine in white beard). While pleading his case for shelter he hears a strange howling but another brother (Friedrich Ledebur; MOBY DICK (1956)) says it's just the wind. Jerome refuses to shelter him but Ellington collapses. Later while wandering around the place, he meets a man (Robin Hughes from THE THING THAT COULDN'T DIE (1958)) being held prisoner who claims he is being held there because Jerome was jealous of his girlfriend. When Ellington confronts Jerome about this the brother reveals that the prisoner is not a man but the devil himself!  Although Jerome relates a convincing story, Ellington still frees the man who it turns out really is the devil. Now in the present time Ellington (the worst for wear and sounding a little insane) has imprisoned Satan in a hotel room and has been relating his story to a maid. He leaves to contact Jerome and the maid begins to open the door...

Memorable episode with good performances and nice SFX. It was written by Charles Beaumont (from his short story) who penned 21 other episodes and directed by Douglas Heyes. Of course, the host was Rod Serling.

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Low Budget Trilogy

 

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ENCOUNTER WITH THE UNKNOWN-1973-Very low budget trilogy of tales involving the supernatural much of it narrated by the great Rod Serling. In the first, 3 smart ass college kids set up Johnny, a naive guy with a phony date. When he's accidentally shot and killed, his spooky mom (Fran Franklin) puts a curse on the 3. One of guys tells the story to a priest who gets upset when the curse seems to come true. In the second story, after a kid loses his dog, he and his father discover a mysterious giant hole in the ground. The father is lowered into the hole. When they bring him up, he's gone crazy. What he saw is never revealed. Annabelle Weenick (DON'T LOOK IN THE BASEMENT) is his wife and (Larry Buchanan regular) Billy Thurman is a hillbilly. The third is based on “the legend of the girl on the bridge”. After a car drives off a bridge, a dude picks up a mysterious young woman (Rosie Holotik) who says she wants to go home. In a flashback we find out that the girl Susan had a fight with her father (Gene Ross) over a guy she wanted to marry. Of course, it turns out Susan is dead and her ghost is trying to get home. Holotik and Ross had also been in DON'T LOOK IN THE BASEMENT the same year. 

 (imdb)

Another narrator sums up everything at the end with a kind of condensed version of the movie shown again. Filmed in Little Rock, Arkansas by Harry Thomason who filmed another movie SO SAD ABOUT GLORIA simultaneously with this extremely low budget anthology. Thomason (still alive at the time of this writing) was a close friend of Bill & Hilary Clinton and later worked on the TV show “Designing Woman”.

                                  Rosie Holotik on the cover of Playboy magazine in 1972!

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Dickens/Serling

 

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CAROL FOR ANOTHER CHRISTMAS-1964-An updated version of Charles Dicken's A Christmas Carol written by Rod Serling for The United Nations. 

A man, Daniel Grudge (Sterling Hayden) left bitter by the death of his son in the war is visited by 3 ghosts, Past (Steve Lawrence), present (Pat Hingle) and yet to come (Robert Shaw). In the H-bomb devastated future, Imperial Me (Peter Sellers) tries to make survivors think only of themselves while Grudge's butler (Percy Rodrigues) tries to unite humanity and is ridiculed. 

This all-star TV special also features Ben Gazzara, Eva Marie Saint and James Shigeta. Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz a year after the colossal flop CHEOPATHRA.

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