# Holy Christ, Amazing Stories was an awful show. **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [February 3, 2004, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holy-christ-amazing-stories-was-an-awful-show/227391 "2004-02-03T23:05:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![MrSarcasticus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b487fb/32.png) [@MrSarcasticus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrSarcasticus)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2004, 8:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holy-christ-amazing-stories-was-an-awful-show/227391/21 "2004-02-05T08:09:35Z")
> [@](#): > > The undertaker, flabbergasted, goes to another room and phones a doctor he knows to ask whether it’s possible for a dead man to produce a tear. After he’s on hold for a while, they sort things out and an ambulance is on its way. The undertaker goes back to the slab – and his assistant has performed the embalming. Not an ending you ever would have seen on Spielberg’s insipid show. Genius, for the second time in this thread, this was an ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS episode. ---
**Author:** ![Leaper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/4bbf92/32.png) [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2004, 8:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holy-christ-amazing-stories-was-an-awful-show/227391/22 "2004-02-05T08:23:03Z")
> [@jayjay](#): > > [_Gather Ye Acorns_](http://www.markhamill.com/tv/gather.htm), and the thing I remember most about it was the troll who kept egging him on to keep all of that memorabilia (played by David Rappaport (i.e., [The Wizard](http://epguides.com/Wizard/guide.shtml))). Just to nitpick the previous poster’s recollection, and the synopsis on the above page (because for some reason I too remember this ep well), the “mug” that the woman sees that triggers the whole collectible realization is a Toby (M/J)ug, which is a fairly well-known collectible, and he was trying to get gas to drive off Hoover Dam, not a cliff. (I TOLD you it was nitpicky!) ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2004, 8:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holy-christ-amazing-stories-was-an-awful-show/227391/23 "2004-02-05T08:36:20Z")
> [@Santos L Halper](#): > > _Amazing Stories_ had a few marginally decent episodes and a lot of stinkers. But, as others have mentioned, the _Family Dog_ episode was wonderful. The writing and animation was great and the voice talent was perfect. I’ve seen that episode several times, and just hearing some of the lines can still get me laughing. > > They eventually spun it off into its own awful series in the rush of prime-time animated shows that followed the success of _the Simpsons_. Mercifully it only lasted a few episodes. > > The original was included on one of series video compilations (Amazing Stories: Book Two). It’s out of print, but it’s worth hunting down just for _Family Dog_. I read that the original cartoon was carefully drawn, frame by frame, by a top cartoonist. However, when it was made as a series, they did the usual “top cartoonist draws a few key frames and then it’s sent overseas for slave-labor inbetweeners to fill in the gaps” sort of thing. Apparently, this sort of thing is very common in the cartoon industry. And it didn’t work because the cartoon depended upon the expression of the dog, which the inbetweeners never managed to capture correctly, or didn’t give enough attention to. Why should they care? It wasn’t THEIR vision they were drawing, they were only trying to crank out as many frames as possible per shift. ---
**Author:** ![Neidhart](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Neidhart](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Neidhart)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2004, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holy-christ-amazing-stories-was-an-awful-show/227391/24 "2004-02-05T14:02:18Z")
Was it Amazing Stories or Twilight Zone that had the one where the language changes overnight, and this one guy is the only person who can’t understand it? (his name changes from something normal to “Hinge Thunder”, lunch is now “dinosaur”, a dog is a “Wednesday”) In the end he has to start learning the new tongue from kindergarten primers. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Blue\_Sky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d26b3c/32.png) [@Mr.Blue\_Sky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Blue_Sky)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2004, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holy-christ-amazing-stories-was-an-awful-show/227391/25 "2004-02-05T23:09:09Z")
> [@Neidhart](#): > > Was it Amazing Stories or Twilight Zone that had the one where the language changes overnight, and this one guy is the only person who can’t understand it? (his name changes from something normal to “Hinge Thunder”, lunch is now “dinosaur”, a dog is a “Wednesday”) In the end he has to start learning the new tongue from kindergarten primers. That was _The New Twilight Zone_ from the 80’s. The ep was “Wordplay” starring Robert Klein. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Rieux](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/aeb1de/32.png) [@Dr.Rieux](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Rieux)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2004, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holy-christ-amazing-stories-was-an-awful-show/227391/26 "2004-02-05T23:14:39Z")
> [@SmackFu](#): > > The one I still remember was with the bomber that had to land without one of the wheels, where the cartoonist saved the day. I liked that one. “The Mission”–directed by Spielberg and starring Kevin Costner and Kiefer Sutherland, IIRC. ---
**Author:** ![criminalcatalog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e68b1a/32.png) [@criminalcatalog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/criminalcatalog)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2004, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holy-christ-amazing-stories-was-an-awful-show/227391/27 "2004-02-06T02:00:28Z")
Amazing Stories was a good show. It’s pretty dated now in some episodes but overall it was a big inspiration for me, creatively. The New Twilight Zone was better. It wasn’t “Disney Magical” like Amazing Stories, because of the tragic endings in quite a few of them. I’m itching to compose a short list of what I remember being good, mostly in TNTZ: The guy that sees a man coming to kill him in reflective surfaces, and seeing him last in his girlfriend’s eyes before he’s thrown out a high-rise window. “I live under _someone else’s bed_”. The overstressed housewife that finds a watch that can stop time when she says “SHUT UP!”, and she does it too many times, and somebody finds out what’s going on. While wandering the street with time stopped and people are motionless, she sees a man pointing(looking?) to the sky. She looks up and sees a downward-pointed missile suspended in the air. There’s **one** episode somewhere about a young couple in the country, running from some alien menace and what happens to them when they’re caught. The boyfriend is killed(turned into an alien?) while his gf screams, and I think it ends that way… The homebound girl that can’t be around patterns that are visible or she’ll see people in them, or something… Sci-fi TV in the 80’s was good stuff. Misfits of Science, The Highwaymen, Hard Time on Planet Earth (actually that one kind of sucked.) I was pretty spooked when lizards would pull off their faces and eat people in “V”, but damnit, that’s why the stuff was good ---
**Author:** ![Baldwin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baldwin/32/7264_2.png) [@Baldwin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baldwin)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2004, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holy-christ-amazing-stories-was-an-awful-show/227391/28 "2004-02-06T04:01:25Z")
\*Posted by MrSarcasticus: > [@](#): > > The undertaker, flabbergasted, goes to another room and phones a doctor he knows to ask whether it’s possible for a dead man to produce a tear. After he’s on hold for a while, they sort things out and an ambulance is on its way. The undertaker goes back to the slab – and his assistant has performed the embalming. Not an ending you ever would have seen on Spielberg’s insipid show. > Genius, for the second time in this thread, this was an ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS episode. Hey, thanks for taking my spoiler out of its box, Genius. For the second time, the story I described was a radio drama. It was not connected to either incarnation of _Alfred Hitchcock Presents_. Out of curiosity – is your name a takeoff on the movie _Mr. Sardonicus_? I never saw the “Family Dog” episode; apparently I missed the best one. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holy-christ-amazing-stories-was-an-awful-show/227391.md?page=1)