I just love that buzzard, he was such a crafty one, always staying on Diggs' tail. It was almost like he knew how it was all gonna turn out... For a bird it was actually a pretty good actor! This is one of my absolute alltime favourite episodes, because in its own way it was a distinctive and different kind of story for the series, and an excellent episode for several reasons. Anyone who truly loves this episode and considers it one of the best will know just what I mean when I say it's amazing! There's something about the subtly grim tone and atmosphere of the desert backdrop, something about the vulture, the eerily playful score, the spare but horrifically icky gore that is used - something about the whole tale is to me just so sweet! And unlike some of the others that are just a mite less fun when you watch them again as an adult, Carrion Death was always a smooth ride all the way. It's simple, but highly effective. To me, apart from the more obvious macabre elements such as someone having the literally dead weight of a corpse handcuffed to their wrist, the real horror of this episode is the desert, slowly wearing him down with the heat and the dehydration causing him to lose his sense and make the fatal mistake with the makeshift axe. The atmosphere is wonderfully immersive. Kyle Maclachlan was great, thanks to what is heard on the radio at the opening we know he's a very bad dangerous guy, but I couldn't hate him or like him, but I still feel that at the end that he deserves everything he gets, but it's still a hell of a nasty and twisted way to go! What he inadvertently does to his hand, and then of course what the vulture gleefully does is a very intense and crazy closing sequence, which is disgusting, horrific and extremely awesome all at the same time! The eyeball tearing looks fantastic, but I don't like the way the body moves for a moment as the vulture pecks at it, it makes it glaringly obvious what it really is, and that mars the effect of the scene for me a little, I bet that someone was mighty p****d about how it turned out as it looked to me like the kind of shot that they could have only gotten once. I Love this episode quite dearly though, it's one of the best, and it makes me wanna get on a bike and head on out for Death Valley! It's exemplary. So check it out me fellow fright fans, check it out.
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