Main cast: Jack Palance (Jake Jennings), Brendan Fletcher (Shane Watkins), Marla Sokoloff (Julia), and Henry Rollins (The Host)
Directors: Philip Sgriccia and Ernest R Dickerson
In Bitter Harvest, Old Man Jennings is said to have shot down an encyclopedia salesman and buried the body in his ranch. His mother was said to be a witch.
Young Shane Watkins, whose family ranch is next to Old Man Jennings’s, decides to prove to his friends that he’s not a coward and sneaks into the old man’s farm. He’s caught by the old man, and in the ensuing escape dash, caused an accident that results in the old man losing both his arms.
Imagine Shane’s terror when the old man later shows up at his ranch, asking his father to send Shane around to help the old man around the place.
Both of them keep mum about Shane’s role in the accident, but the lad has to wonder whether the old man is plotting some kind of revenge on him…
Oh, this is a wicked episode. It starts out like some wholesome The Twilight Zone-ish episode, with Old Man Jennings apparently holding no grudge against Shane and perhaps wanting to teach the kid some important lessons about being a better person… but yeah, the old man isn’t going to forgive and forget, leading to a very chilling ending that will surely make the lad wish that he’d never stepped foot inside the old man’s place ever.
My So-Called Life and Death is, sadly, a forgettable segment and has the misfortune to follow the much better previous segment. which makes the poor thing come off as even worse.
In this one, Julia is having what seems like the usual teen angst. Her mother is a control freak, her father drinks from early in the morning until the end of the day, and her brother is a pyromaniac in the making that is nonetheless coddled by their mother.
She hates being stuck in her home, and her only source of joy is the hot guy doing construction and repairs around the place.
It’s pretty obvious early on that something is way off here. Either the handyman is a ghost, like Julia suspects, or, given that this one comes out at a time when everyone wants to do a The Sixth Sense-ish story on small and big screen, it’s the other way around.
Ooh, I wonder what the twist can be, snort.
A young Marla Sokoloff plays the angst-filled Julia well, and honestly, I feel so sorry for her to be stuck with such an unlikable pair of parents and a spoiled psychopath brother played by one of the worst child actors I’ve come across. Is that ending supposed to be a happy one? I’m pressing F so hard to doubt.
At any rate, the first one gets four oogies, the second one two, so round that up and this episode gets the average three-oogie score. Really, though, the second segment can be skipped. Focus on the first one!
