Opening story "Still Life" served as the last of three scripts contributed to this 80s version of Rod Serling's brainchild by the team of Gerrit Graham and Chris Hubbell, better known for performing in front of the camera, director Peter Medak an interesting talent who never escaped the confines of the small screen. In the lead as Daniel Arnold is Robert Carradine, a nice change from his emerging persona from the "Revenge of the Nerds" feature series, a dedicated photographer who purchases a trunk with old equipment housing a hidden bottom where an intact Kodak camera offers an irresistible opportunity to develop film of a completely unknown nature (exteriors filmed in Monrovia, California). Evidence of an Amazonian expedition to the village of the Curucai in January 1913 leads Martin to the doorstep of Prof. Alex Stottel (John Carradine), who reveals his own presence on the hazardous trek as a working lad of 13, relating the ways of the Curucai and how they would stalk by night imitating the wind, the photographer's life endangered by their superstitions: "to make an image of them such as a drawing was to steal their souls, their very selves." This knowledge is enough for Martin to return home in a panic, his wife Becky (Marilyn Jones) suddenly missing, the place now transformed into a death trap with one false step. The Curucai may have been inspired by the incredibly uninspired Universal turkey of 1956, "Curucu, Beast of the Amazon," which at least boasted on location shooting in Brazil but little else. John Carradine was of course a veteran of the memorable 1960 episode "The Howling Man," a frightening depiction of The Devil in his many guises, and had previously worked with Peter Medak on George Hamilton's "Zorro, the Gay Blade," a part sadly deleted prior to release. Not only was this his final appearance on network television but his last opposite son Robert, a well acted sequence together lasting 2 1/2 minutes.
