Sunday, October 16, 2016

Must See Terror TV: A Countdown to Halloween (Day 15)

Out of the orange of the October autumn, the Fall season has brought us two potentially superb horror television shows.

First up is FOX’s THE EXORCIST which takes it’s name and theme from the original film and book by William Peter Blatty.

It begins with a troubled woman who has been having nightmares,  and whose younger daughter has been hearing strange noises in her home and whose older daughter has been acting strangely.
She asks Father Tomas Ortega, a new, progressive priest who has recently been given jurisdiction over their suburban Chicago parish.  He struggles to find cause for her worries beyond the normal, but eventually begins to understand the true nature of the problem.  But when he takes his concerns to his leader in the church, he is rebuffed.


Meanwhile, the older, more battle-hardened Father Marcus Keane is sought due to his experience with possession, only he is at a place known as a home for recovering or broken priests.


Taught and well acted, the show has a pace that slowly turns up the tension.  Meanwhile the other, larger plot seems to add a more apocalyptic scope to the darkness that is encircling this family and the city.

This month, it is my favorite show on television--for full episodes, check out this link:

or, if you want a little sample first, here's a peek:



Meanwhile, over at SyFy it appears that they’ve truly chosen to go for a higher quality of programming.  With interesting shows like FALLING WATER, they seem to be heading in the right direction.  But the show that really grabbed me was CHANNEL ZERO.

Granted, I’ve only seen the first episode of this six episode self-contained season, but if the rest of the episodes prove as strange and interesting as the first one, then we’ve really got something interesting.

The show is about a man named Mike Painter, a child psychologist, who returns to his hometown to research the series of murders that took place there when he was a kid in the late 1980s.  His twin brother was one of the victims.
As the mystery is revealed, the memories of his childhood come forth, bringing with them nightmarish visions and events that  shaped his childhood.  His memory is jogged about a children’s puppet show which nobody seems to remember called “Candle Cove”.

All I know is I’m hooked and if you want to be, you should tune in to channel zero for the weirdness.  You can watch the entire first episode through the link below or tune in for one of the multiple replays SyFy will be doing this week:


Or, if you just want a peek,
check it out:

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