Gary Bond (the lead from ‘Wake in Fright’ (1971)) is a borderline mad scientist, busy creating artificial food stuffs to ease world hunger and testing them out on super-cute giant rabbits in his home laboratory. His wife (Barbara Kellerman from Norman J. Warren’s ‘Satan's Slave’ (1975)) is some kind of philanthropist raising funds for assorted charities.
Pre-credits, the couple’s young son wanders into his Dad’s lab, eats some random stuff from a jar, freaks out, dies. So, the grieving parents replace him by adopting a weird, affectless kid with a bad attitude from the nearest children’s home.
Their new son either has telekinetic powers, is possessed by the ghost of their dead son, or some combination of the two. (Simple though the plot is, I didn't quite get what was supposed to be going on here.)
The rather mean-spirited message here seems to be that, whilst these rich, do-gooding parents are off solving the world’s ills, they've forgotten to give either of their children the love and attention they need, so thus they must suffer (as if their first son dying wasn't punishment enough).
It’s all a rather glum business, leavened with dead rabbits and poisoned dogs (all fake, of course, but still not exactly my idea of top flight entertainment), which leaves a somewhat unpleasant taste in the mouth.
I fell asleep a bit towards the end, so I think I might have missed the gist of the surprise ending. I should go back and check before posting this really, but… is there really much to be gained?
Probably better just to move on to potentially more rewarding future episodes with exciting names like ‘The Carpathian Eagle’ and ‘The House that Bled to Death’...
1 comment:
A random viewing of this episode at first broadcast pretty much put me off the entire series. As you say, glum and mean spirited, a bit reminiscent of one of the more perfunctory pieces from the Pan books of horror. I should probably give the series another go.
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