Night Gallery - Episode #13 Brenda in TV Terrors Forum

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Night Gallery - Episode #13 Brenda

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Patron Zero	Night Gallery - Episode #13 Brenda	Lead	[-]
May 1 12 11:10 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Greetings all, I'm in search of some still photos, captures would do as nicely, of the creature from Night Gallery Episode 13 (?) - Brenda, also interested in who may have fabricated the original suit worn by Fred Carson. Thanks ! Last Edited By: Patron Zero May 1 12 11:16 PM. Edited 1 time.
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The Mighty Bongo		#1	[-]
May 5 12 6:57 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Here are some pics. If I had to hazard a guess, I would say the costume was most likely the work of John Chambers, and Werner Kepler. They're the guys who made Pickman's Model. It interesting to me, that this monster looks spot on to the monster from the Marvel Comics adaptation of "IT" by Theodore Sturgeon. It even has a little girl with long braids like Brenda. Chris Want to hang out with the ultimate party animals ? Come see us at; http://www.hollywoodgorillamen.com/ Last Edited By: The Mighty Bongo May 5 12 7:07 PM. Edited 3 times.
Wich2		#2	[-]
May 5 12 7:43 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Good call, Bongo. I had thought of Swamp Thing and Man-Thing - and they're both It's children!
amarok		#3	[-]
May 5 12 8:24 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I always thought of "Brenda" as a sort of unofficial sequel to "It" -- the mold and glop forming the creature in "It" was simply washed away by a stream. The mold could grow back! I remember some comic mag -- BACK ISSUES, maybe? -- that showed a page of a Man-Thing script (or the bible for the comic). There were actual reminders not to make Manny too much like "It" (which had come out in SUPERNATURAL THRILLERS #1). I recall the notes pointing out that "It"'s motivation was that it was intellectually curious, while Man-Thing was empathic but essentially mindless -- so Manny was a conscious "Like-it-but-opposite" spin on "It".
The Mighty Bongo		#4	[-]
May 5 12 8:35 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Heres the cover. The artwork within the issue looked just like the photos at the top of the post, very nondescript. Chris Want to hang out with the ultimate party animals ? Come see us at; http://www.hollywoodgorillamen.com/ Last Edited By: The Mighty Bongo May 5 12 8:39 PM. Edited 3 times.
Spoiler II		#5	[-]
May 6 12 11:27 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Always found this episode troubling as a kid. The relationship between the girl and monster is pretty nebulous (who was gaining what from whom here?) and the girl was incredibly unlikable to the point that you almost feel sorry for the monster for wanting her company!
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WalesGuy		#6	[-]
May 7 12 4:20 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Yes a %#$*! of a girl. As I recently purchased NG season 3, decided to re watch s1 and s2 first. So that's what i'm doing this holiday weekend.
Dr Acula		#7	[-]
Jul 5 12 9:32 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	This is an essay that I wrote at the Night Gallery Yahoo Group (that I may have written about somewhere here as well), but as a fan of Brenda, I thought I'd put it here: "Brenda" is one of my favorite Night Gallery segments. It's a perfect blend of mystery, fantasy, drama, and a delicate sense of wonder. Ever since the first time I saw it I was particularly engrossed in trying to work out the significance of the final section where Brenda encounters the creature still alive under the rocks. Why was the girl crying? If it was all in her imagination, what had the island dwellers fought? Why can't it escape? I've come to the conclusion that "Brenda" has been misinterpreted for many years as just a gentle coming of age fantasy. While I think that it can be read that way on the surface, and it's even possible the filmmakers understood it that way, I think there is evidence that the short story is about something else. And, considering how close the episode stays to the short story, I believe the meaning from the short story is just as evident in the television episode. The writer of the story, Margaret St. Clair, was one of the earliest American adherents to the ways of modern witchcraft, or Wicca. This aspect of her life is discussed in Chas S. Clifton's essay on Margaret's life and fiction here: http://chasclifton.com/columns/column17.html "Brenda" was written (or first published at least) in 1954 (in Weird Tales - awesome!). According to Clifton's timeline, while St. Clair & her husband only became officially initiated into the mysteries of Wicca in 1966, her writing showed she was familiar with books written by the modern purveyor of Wicca Gerald Gardner, specifically "High Magic's Aid" from 1949 and "Witchcraft Today" from 1954. She could have been influenced by those books when they came out in the late 40's and early 50's, though so far I don't have a smoking gun to say she did definitively base Brenda on those concepts, but I believe there is circumstantial evidence in the story. So, with the information about St. Clair's inclinations towards Wicca, and having a personal interest in Wicca myself, I thought back to another seminal work in the witchcraft field that I read, Margot Adler's Drawing Down The Moon. In it, Margot notes that many Wiccan followers go back and talk about how their childhood experiences with nature and to some degree their imagination (or magical reality) allowed them to touch upon divine aspects of life on earth that corresponded to and reinforced their understanding of Wicca, and that this childhood experience helped fuel their adult interest in Wicca. I've also read this in other autobiographical accounts of Wiccans and how they got into the movement. Could "Brenda" be then, not so much a typical coming of age story with a young girl experiencing growing older, but more a young girl experiencing the divine, a natural god-form/Green-Man, and not wanting to forget that connection? And at the end, the sounds she detects through the rocks of the strange creature's continued life showing that Brenda was still able to connect with the magic in nature where most people have closed that world off? And the tears that Brenda sheds being something about appreciating the connection that still exists between her and the green mossy critter, rather than taking it for granted when she was younger and more selfish? It's how I see it now, and for me it makes sense of the stranger elements of the story, with St. Clair using her own world view to enrich the narrative with an unusual subtext that helps give the story it's eerie power of something more...rather like the beast under rocks that still lives! My God, what's Bond doing?... I think he's attempting re-entry, sir. http://www.eccentric-cinema.com/ Cole's Comics: All About Jack Cole http://colescomics.blogspot.com/
Spoiler II		#8	[-]
Jul 6 12 12:48 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Interesting take on the story and one of the reasons it has stuck in my mind for so many years is that it isn't laid out for the audience to digest and walk away from the table content. I really can't say what my initial reaction to the episode was the first time i saw it,but i surely must have taken it as a more straight forward monster yarn. I do remember finding the monster unsettling and interesting and the little girl pretty unbearable. Watching it now, the title character seems incapable of making friends or even recognizing human emotions outside of her own (which now makes her seem like she is less a rotten bad seed and more the victim of some sort of mental illness/condition) and the monster,being almost completely inhuman in every way, is her only real shot at some sort of non judgmental companionship. Maybe she wants human friendship and can't attain it,so she is more than willing to become attached to something seeking the same companionship who is willing to return it blindly,like some sort of mistreated animal.
timothymayer		#9	[-]
Jul 6 12 8:01 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	The monster in the original story doesn't resemble the one in the NG adaptation. St. Clair doesn't describe him too much, but you get the idea the creature is humanoid. "It's alive!" Z7 Headquarters
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Night Gallery - Episode #13 Brenda

Night Gallery - Episode #13 Brenda