Once in a while I’ll be doing “special posts” about
different things not covered under the other categories. These posts will
usually be on the Monday or Tuesday of a month that has fives weeks instead of
four. I guess I don’t need to
explain all that, but, you know…whatever.
Although there has not yet been a specific Halloween themed
short film or TV episode, there are a lot of the typical characters of
Halloween that have appeared in SFF productions.
The Devil has appeared as a character in two productions –
Twisted Tales: The Devil & Kitta Gray, and Eidolon. In The Devil & Kitta Gray he is
portrayed as the typical Devil trying to trick people into selling their souls
– he’s almost a caricature in a way.
He’s played by Tanino Minneci, a fantastic actor who plays the Devil in
a wonderfully wicked way. In
Eidolon, the Devil is a title more than a person. Lucifer (aka Luke) is the god
of Evil and has several nicknames, but at the end of the day being the Devil is
just a job. He barters for souls
to fill quotas and is very intelligent and suave. He is played by the fabulous Russell Martin and although he
is a side character, Russell portrays him as a smooth talker who gets easily
annoyed by his plans being messed up by other people’s stupidity. 
Death takes a physical form in Dream Chasers and in Eidolon
as well. The Grim Reaper, like The
Devil, is more of a title and job description. Atropos is the goddess of Death and is overworked and underpaid. Syndi Eller does a magnificent job
playing the stressed out and easily irritated Atropos. She threw in her own adlibs that gave Death
some interesting quirks, such as going bowling, shooting hoops, and having a
desperate need for chocolate to keep her sane. In Mind Games, written by Edward Stasheff, Death is
not actually on board the spaceship, but one of the characters, a psychic named
Talin DuFole, goes insane and honestly believes he is the spirit of Death
reborn. Chris Lamb played the part
to perfection, starting out as a funny, kind of sweet-yet-serious guy who has a
mental breakdown and emerges as a bad ass who kills, tortures, and maims
everyone on the ship in his new found role as the Grim Reaper.
And then, there are the ghosts - lots and lots of
ghosts. I really like ghosts. They’re my favorite of the supernatural
entities out there. So naturally
there are a LOT of productions that feature ghosts or spirits of some kind –
ten so far with an eleventh on the way.
Ghosts appear in Destiny (Tanino Minneci as Esteban) and
Pandora’s Box (Chris Stasheff as Horace), and are a major plot point in Dream
Chasers (Brittany Ann Whalen as Library Ghost and Zoey Zurrell). Then there are the productions that are
about ghosts – ghost stories, ghost points of view, etc. The Walking Stick (Margaret Olson and
Laine as the Ghost) is a short film that is a ghost story – the ghost is the
main point of conflict. In The
Vigil, written by Joel Pierson, the two main characters – Julie and Abner (Nina
Samii and Ryan Segovich) - are ghosts and we see the world of the living
through their eyes as Julie, with Abner’s help, comes to accept her death. In Scene 4D of Quatrain (Annamarie and
Jacob MacLeod), a ghost mourns the loss of a loved one. Ghosts at Play is a haunting vignette about
two ghostly children (Grace and Henry Graaf) and the mother (Gen Stasheff-Graaf)
who mourns them. In The Curse the main character – Zandra (Liz Schafer) – is
cursed (by a ghost) to see ghosts and at least one ghost
appears in almost every episode.
In Eidolon the main character – Zelda (Brittany Ann Whalen) – is cursed
(by the same ghost) to be a ghost and
spends the next nine episodes trying to return to a corporeal form, meeting
other ghosts, demons, and ghost hunters along the way. So yeah, there are lots and lots
of ghosts.
Another element of ghosts is their ability to possess people
which happens at least four times in two of the shows – once in The Curse, and
three times in Eidolon. Yay?
I will leave you now with one of my favorite scenes from
Eidolon. In the following scene
from Episode 3, Zelda (now a ghost) is extremely angry and becomes a poltergeist,
attacking Maria, her only friend, over a problem that Maria knows nothing
about. Maria cannot see Zelda, but
knows about ghosts and how to banish them if necessary.
Clips Credits:
Actors:
Zelda – Brittany Ann Whalen
Maria – Morgan Thomas
Crew:
Camera Operators –Eleanore Stasheff and James McKinley
Production Assistants – Bryan Kieft and Andy H.
Music:
Lost by Stabbing
Westward
(I don’t own the copyright but I have no money so please
don’t sue)
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