Are You Afraid of the Dark: The Tale of the Captured Souls

This episode to a child: A mad scientist turns a girl’s parents old to keep himself 15 forever.

This episode to an adult: A white man born in 1907 attempts to kill the upper-middle class parents of a black 13-year-old and seduce her.

While most of these episodes can still be watched as an adult for a mixture of humor and creepiness, this story goes from generically scary to absolutely horrifying when you’re old enough to realize the implications of racism and ephebophilia.

This is the first story for Kiki (Jodie Resther), the tomboy of the group.  I get the impression that the episode was reworked at some point, because the opening sequence really doesn’t fit.  While the episode contains both the use of mirrors and cameras to show the villain as an old man, it’s the mirrors that he ultimately uses to “capture souls,” but Kiki’s opening is a ramble about the power of cameras.

Danny (Maria Taylor) and her parents (Barbara Eve Harris and Don Jordan) go to a hotel out in the country for vacation.  The “Hotel” has no other guests, and the owners are away “on a cruise,” leaving their “teenaged” son Peter (Ethan Tobman) to check the guests in.

Peter is a creepy guy, but Danny’s parents seem to miss it.  From the first moment they meet, he’s clearly undressing Danny with his eyes.  He shows her his room, and seems to constantly try to isolate her.  He’s also terrified of having his picture taken.  And, we as the audience see his laboratory, from which he can spy on the family through all the mirrors of the house (there’s a running gag about the “bad wiring” in the mirrors shocking Danny, to her great confusion).

Over the course of the episode, the family begins to grow older.  Danny’s parents age decades, and approach death.  However, Danny seems to age just enough to give her acne, and (in a moment that took me a third viewing) just enough to give her bigger breasts.  Given that he clearly intends to keep her young, it seems 13 is just a bit too young for his tastes…

Danny catches on when she finds her way into his lab, and see him through the cameras installed behind the mirrors he’s scattered about the house: he’s an old man.  She then notices the numerous graves and tally marks in the back yard, indicating dozens of people he’s killed, and his own grave giving his birthday in 1907, but no death date.

The climax has the standard “it’s already too late” refrain, as Peter offers to keep Danny young and with him forever (...or, in my expectation, until he gets bored…).  Then, predictably, she shoves him in his own machine, reverses the process, and turns her parents young again, and he becomes a 90-year-old (he says that he plans to join his family in the graveyard.  With Danny’s family leaving, I’m wondering if he plans to bury himself alive, and then die.).

The acting isn’t fantastic from Danny or her parents, but Peter really steals the show as a charismatic creep who you love to hate.  I kind of wish the actor was someone I saw more, but it appears that Tobman’s career has mostly been bit-parts.  Still, he’s a scary guy.

Kiki could have used a better introduction as a story-teller, but the story itself is one I really enjoyed.  Seriously, just marathon this show, you won’t be disappointed.