“Okay,” the pimply assassin said, panting for breath. “I’ll tell you whatever you want.” 

The Revenging Manta pressed the knife into the assassin’s throat. 

“Do you work for the Goose Lord and His gang?” the Revenging Manta said while he gently pulled the knife away. 

“I don’t know anything,” the assassin said and the Revenging Manta cut the zoomer’s cheek with his blade. The assassin started to cry like a toddler whose ice cream scoop had fallen to the floor. 

“Last chance,” the Revenging Manta said, pressing the knife into the assassin’s jugular. “I’m not in the mood today.”

No movie this week. I will instead venture into the murky world of modern television. Back in the 1970s,  Leonard Nimoy of Star Trek fame gave us In Search Of…, a documentary series about the paranormal, the mysterious, and the just plain unnatural. Now we have William Shatner of Star Trek and TJ Hooker fame with his own show in the same vein, The UnXplained. Yes, each episode features William Shatner asking questions the modern Intelligentsia is too afraid to answer. 

Take for example the premiere episode titled Evil Places. Shatner posits the question that some places may just be “born bad.” Shatner and other experts then go into details about horrorific areas such as Japan’s Suicide Forest, a mountain in Russia caled “Don’t Go There,” and, worst of all, the abandoned Lake Shawnee Amusement Park in West Virginia. The swings move on their own at that amusement park! Sometimes visitors see the ghost of a kid at that park. The place is cursed!

In an episode titled Strange Creatures, William Shatner details the findings of the world’s Cryptozoologists. Leading scientists state that there are thousands of species we have yet to discover so why not a goatsucker.  We get the accounts of people who’ve seen the Mothman, Bigfoot, and the Dog Man. We meet a Rancher who not only found a dead chupacabra, but had it taxidermied and put on display in her house. Scientists concluded that her chupacabra was some kind of crossbreed between a Mexican wolf and a coyote, but this doesn’t add up. Wolves and coyotes don’t suck blood.

Speaking of bloodsuckers, in an episode titled Vampires and Werewolves, a troubled teen named Rod Farrel. After getting mixed up with a vampire coven and tripping on LSD, he and the vampire coven start drinking each other’s blood and then Rod eventually goes on a killing spree. Still, there’s a man named Balthazar who lives in New Orleans who drinks human blood and he doesn’t go on killing sprees. In fact, strangers let him suck their blood, usually from a few puncture wounds on the shoulder. He can even give them health advice based on the consistency of the blood. 

By far, the most interesting episode is The Oak Island Curse. Treasure hunters have been trying for decades to uncover treasure buried on this small island in Nova Scotia. Pirate curses, phantoms, and a lost legacy of the Knights Templar. In fact, rumor has it that the Templars hid the Ark of the Covenant somewhere on Oak Island. Chew on that. You can catch The Unexplained streaming on HULU. 

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, episode 284, episode 441, episode 442, episode 443, episode 444, episode 450, episode 477, episode 491, episode 492, episode 493, episode 495, episode 496, episode 545, episode 546, episode 547, episode 548, episode 549, episode 575, episode 596, episode 597, episode 598, episode 599, episode 642, episode 643, episode 644, episode 645, and episode 670) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.