Random Creepy Scene # 338: The After Hours

Mannequins have frequently been used to supremely creepy effect in horror cinema. From Mario Bava’s early giallo Blood & Black Lace, with its lavish fashion house peppered with dress makers dummies, to 1979’s eerie Tourist Trap with its bizarre roadside museum chock-full of the uncanny things, it is fair to say that mannequins are officially creepy.

An early episode of the Twilight Zone called The After Hours also utilises the spooky plastic people to shuddering effect, and then it manages to do something genuinely original with them too…

Anne Francis stars as Marsha White, who enjoys shopping and browsing in expensive boutique shops. Mooching around a colossal department store looking for a gold thimble for her mother, Marsha is taken to the 9th floor by the elevator operator: a floor that does not appear on the elevator panel. When she reaches the 9th floor, Marsha is greeted by a slightly awkward saleswomen, who shows her the only item on the floor: a gold thimble! Thinking about how strange all this is, Marsha purchases the thimble and decides to get the flock out of there. Noticing the thimble is damaged, Marsha tries to return to the 9th floor to exchange it but is told by all she encounters, including the manager, that the store does not have a 9th floor. Thinking she sees the saleswoman, Marsha marches up to her to demand an explanation only to realise that the saleswoman is in fact a mannequin. Marsha begins to question herself, and while waiting in the manager’s office and attempting to calm down, she becomes locked in the now deserted store. Panicking, she flees from floor to floor, bodiless voices calling out to her as she catches fleeting movements amongst the stores many mannequins. Unnerving stuff, to be sure.

*spoilers alert*

Ending up back on the 9th floor, Marsha is gradually surrounded by mannequins who come slowly to life and greet her, reminding her that she is also a mannequin and that she has just returned from her annual 30 day vacation to the world of the living…

I came across this creepy, bittersweet story when I purchased Volume 2 of The Twilight Zone on VHS in a charity shop. Of the other episodes (including Time Enough at Last, The Changing of the Guards and The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street), this was by far the most atmospheric and unsettling. The scenes featuring Marsha cautiously wandering around the deserted store are incredibly eerie. The host of initially menacing mannequins and whispering voices are chilling in their simplicity and Marsha’s transition from simply concerned to absolutely petrified, is a convincing one.


‘Miss Marsha White on the ninth floor, specialties department, looking for a gold thimble. The odds are she'll find it, but there are even better odds that she'll find something else, because this isn't just a department store. This happens to be… the Twilight Zone.’

Popular posts from this blog

Whistle and I’ll Come to You (2010)

Image
Dir. Andy de Emmony After placing his senile wife in a care home, retired astronomer James Parkin (John Hurt) heads for the coast to revisit their ‘old haunts’, including the now out-of-season hotel they honeymooned in. By day he is stalked along the windswept beaches by a spectral figure dressed in white, and by night he is terrorised by strange sounds and someone, or something, attempting to enter his room… In the 2000s BBC4 attempted to reignite the old Ghost Story at Christmas tradition by adapting MR James’s A View from a Hill (2005) and Number 13 (2006). This series was seemingly short lived though, as their next outing wasn’t until 2010, and an unusual reinterpretation of James’s classic chiller Oh Whistle and I’ll Come to You, My Lad . While de Emmony’s direction captures the atmosphere and tone of James very well, this film differs significantly from other adaptations, including Jonathan Miller’s supremely unsettling 1968 take . Neil Cross’s screenplay only incorpo
Read more

Caveat (2020)

Image
Isaac, a brooding drifter suffering from memory loss, agrees to look after Olga, the niece of his acquaintance Moe. A troubled woman prone to bouts of catatonia, Olga lives in an old, ramshackle house on an isolated island in the middle of a dark lake. Isaac agrees to wear a chained harness that prevents him from going into certain rooms. He gradually comes to learn of the unsettling history of the house and the unquiet dead it harbours within its walls... Written and directed by Damian McCarthy,  Caveat  is steeped in the Gothic tradition. With distinct echoes of the work of Edgar Allan Poe, it is ripe with a lingering atmosphere of morbidity and decay. McCarthy's screenplay toys with themes such as psychological rot, dark family secrets, and the aftermath of unspeakable violence and cruelty. The story unfolds within the creepy confines of the lonely, mouldy house, with myriad forbidden rooms, hidden passageways and concealed bloody secrets. The house itself is cut off from civili
Read more

Otherworldly Encounters on Halloween

Image
Oíche Shamhna shona duit. To celebrate All Hallow’s Eve, my dear friend Marie – a writer and folklorist based in Missouri - has put together a podcast exploring first-hand paranormal experiences that took place on Halloween. The stories and accounts are shared from r/Paranormal , The Fairy Census , and the Dúchas Schools Collection (part of the National Folklore Collection UCD Digitization Project).  Between the stories, one of which is read by yours truly, Marie explores some of the history and folklore surrounding the traditions of Halloween, or Samhein, as it was known in Ireland where it originates from. An important festival in the ancient Celtic calendar to mark the end of summer, Samhein (Irish for November), is the night when the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead becomes thinnest, allowing souls of the deceased to pass through into our world and roam freely. The night we call Halloween in English, is Oíche Shamhna: literally Samhain (November) Eve. To listen t
Read more