Since the scifi channel started showing episodes of the Twilight Zone at midnight on week nights a while back, I have been watching it when I can and occasionally taping a particularly good episode here and there when I didn't feel like staying up.
Last night I happened to be up at 11:45 and not sleepy. Furthermore, when I checked the program guide on the dish I saw that the episode, The New Exhibit, that would broadcast in mere moments was about a wax museum and more specifically wax figures of historical mass murderers.
I don't know exactly what it is about wax museums, but they really creep me out. There are plenty of scary-type movies about them, though, so I suppose I'm not the only one. Ruth was finishing folding some laundry as the show began and watched the first few minutes with me, though she went to bed when the first commercial came on.
"I have every intention" I told her "of never going to a wax museum in my life. Those places give me the willies."
Of course never having actually been to one, these impressions are based totally on my experience of watching movies and TV shows about wax museums and this admittedly has probably skewed the sampling population since I don't think there has ever been a movie or show made about a wax museum that didn't portray these places as scary for some intangible reason. On the other hand, if there isn't something about them that many other people find at the very least uncanny in some way, why is it that the only depictions we find are creepy?
I have found that several of the hour-long season 4 episodes just don't have the tight pacing and suspense that made the Twilight Zone so powerful. It seems that the constraint of a mere half an hour forces the stories to be refined down to the purest essence of the idea being presented. The masterful impact of many of the best TZ shows is due to the fact that there is zero fluff and no mistakes- they are as Einstein said things should be: "as simple as possible, but not simpler". A few of the hour-long stories, freed from these constraints feel diluted and weakened from the vast expanse of time that must be filled. Some, though, have more story to tell than would fit in half an hour and therefore instead of weak dilution, we are treated to a double-dose of the good stuff.
"The New Exhibit" is a member of the last category. Pre-infused with a cachet of that paradoxical fascination that makes subjects that terrify us the most appealing and fully filled with story enough to consume a whole hour, this episode is excellent.
The story opens with Martin, the guy who takes care of the wax figures in the museum owned by Mr. Ferguson, leading a tour (which he does not realize will be the last ever in the museum) through the hall of murderers. Martin speaks of the simulacra of the five human monsters on display as if they were their prototypes themselves and lovingly describes them as poor tormented souls driven to their ghastly deeds by inner demons. His love for the figures is obvious.
When he is told by Mr. Ferguson mere moments later that the museum is to be closed and the building torn down to build a supermarket, Martin is lost. Until, that is, he hits upon an idea. He will have an air-conditioner installed and he'll get a heater for the winter and he'll keep the figures he loves so much in his own basement!
Unfortunately, Martin's wife is not as fond of the figures as he is. This I can understand. The empathy Martin has for the figures is palpable and I can appreciate it, but every time (which becomes more and more often as the show progresses) the scene is set in the basement with those five dark shapes looming in the shadows I think to myself something along the lines of "Dude, how can you stand that? I'd go insane". As the story develops, we find such sentiments to be a foreshadowing.
I don't want to give anything away, because this is a tremendous episode with at least two incidents (maybe more for a watcher of a viewing mindset with less jaded and steely resolve in the face of such things) of the notorious Twilight Zone ZAP- which is that tingling rush of emotion that runs through someone at the most climactic moments of the good episodes.
No, I don't want to give anything away, but I will say that near the end of the show when Mr. Ferguson comes to visit Martin and asks about Martin's wife, Emma, Martin is compelled tell his good friend and ex-employer that the figures "haven't been behaving themselves..."
When the show was over I turned off the TV and began turning out the lights in the living room. I spent about ten extra steps to turn on the dining room light before turning off the last light in the living room instead of walking those steps in the dark as I usually do. And though I did pour my bedside glass of water in the darkened kitchen, lit dimly by the spilled glow from the dining room, when I was ready to head upstairs my fingers hesitated on the switch of the one burning light in the house. I shut it off and as darkness enveloped me, relished in suppressing the shot of desire to hurry up the steps.
Posted by Roger at January 28, 2005 10:00 AM