Main cast: Kris Batnager (Dr Tim Goodman), Greg O’Donovan (Dr Alan Rourke), Dwight Wigfall (Tim’s Friend), Ruth Ann Schultz (Amy Caustin), Charlie Terry, Ginger Zillges, Tim Wright, and Rip Torn (Narrator)
Director: Jeffrey Fine
Sometimes I wonder what kind of series Ghost Stories is meant to be. On the surface, it clearly wants to be an eclectic anthology series like, say, The Twilight Zone, but so far the episodes had suffered from either poorly cobbled-together scripts or hammy execution hobbled by bad acting from cast members that, judging from IMDB, had only this show in their CV. This series is like a graveyard to where people that want to be actors but aren’t cut out for that career go to see their dreams die.
Anyway, Wake in Fear. Intern Tim Goodman finds himself at odds with the mean-spirited Dr Alan Rourke, who also happens to be popping happy stuff on the sly. He is soon plagued by dreams of people being wheeled to the morgue… and it turns out that the people he dreamed of the night before will show up the next day really being wheeled to the morgue. Ooh, is he psychic? Trouble arises when he becomes close to patient Amy Caustin and, you guessed it, she soon shows up in those dreams of his.
This episode is not too bad, really, mostly because Kris Batnager is a pretty decent actor and is easy on the eyes too. However, the episode has a one-track plot with the villain being pretty obvious from the very first scene of this episode. If I tell you that the villain is Dr Alan Rourke, and you think I have dropped a spoiler, oh dear, you really should watch more genre shows more often. Greg O’Donovan is really giving Daffy Duck a big run for that duck’s money here, so much so that I half expect Elmer Fudd to show up thinking that it’s hunting season. Still, such scenery chewing kind of works in a way to liven up an otherwise predictable episode that holds very few surprises.
Is this episode good? Well, it’s okay. As an episode in Ghost Stories, though, this is easily the best one to date and, sadly, that’s not saying much.
