The Ray Bradbury Theater

[dcj2112]

Between the low budget and Bradbury trying to pull off being Rod Serling in some episodes this reminds me of Tales From the Dark Side. Like that show some episodes come off as mini bad movies. And also like that episode some episodes are just plain weird.

Like one I just watched called "There Was an Old Woman". More interesting than it sounds anyway. It's kind of like that one episode of The Twilight Zone where an old woman is hiding from death. However that TZ has a clear and easy to follow storyline with rhyme and reason to it. Not so here.

An old woman gives a long monologue about how she will not let death take her. Then a bunch of folks from the funeral parlor take her body. But not her spirit. Her spirit then has her adoptive
daughter drive her to the funeral parlor where they are slicing and dicing her. The spirit says if they don't give her, her body back she will make a big stink about it and linger around the parlor. So the funeral parlor staff relent. The woman goes back in her freshly sewed up body and goes back home. The episode ends with her continuing on that monologue and saying the stitching of her body was sewed pretty good, for a man's stitching.

[pacman000]

It's almost a good show. Some episodes, like the one you mentioned, are too artsy. Others too plain. Still others didn't have quite the budget needed to pull off what they were going for.

[ER]

I agree, I was disappointed in this entire series, but then I've noticed that Bradbury is a challenging writer to put on the screen, so I don't know if a bigger budget or an updating would make his stories more presentable. Just read the source, you know?

[pacman000]

Their adaption on The Veldt could've used a bigger budget/better technology. It was shot on videotape, so it looked like a soap opera, & the nursery was represented by a blue screen room with stock footage of Africa as the background. Compositing wasn't that great; lots of blue frill, limited camera angles, no camera movements, etc.

I liked their adaption of The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl tho.