Strange Evidence features weird videos that purportedly depict uncanny and inexplicable events. Some of the video footage is pretty impressive and the images are relatively recent, generally depicting occurrences that haven't yet been flogged to death by the glut of shows featuring allegedly paranormal video. Although broadcast on the Science Network, the show has nothing to do with science -- in fact, it's method of presentation is the precise opposite of anything that could be accounted "scientific". The show is a variant on Ridiculousness, the wildly popular MTV show comprised of clips of idiots inflicting horrible injuries on themselves and others. Ridiculousness features a Vanilla Ice-style White hoodlum with a panel consisting typically of a minor-league comedian, a Black rapper, and a blonde girl who sits with her bare knees together and giggles incessantly at the quips made by the other participants -- she is rarely allowed to say anything. Ridiculousness consists of video clips strung together thematically -- the panel makes fun of the people being lit on fire or falling from great heights or suffering testicular rupture from being smashed in the groin. (It seems that about every other clip involves potentially fatal injuries that are subject of hilarity by the thug-host and his panel.) Strange Evidence involves clips that show weird things happening. A group of talking heads comments on the images, although there is no panel assembled. Rather, the model is that of a respectable documentary with pundits appointed to interpret the "strange evidence" on display. The remarkable feature of this case is that the pundits are complete morons, many of them about 20 years old -- these supposed experts bear titles such as "Researcher", "Sociology Expert", "Archaeologist", "Military Consultant," "Pyrotechnics" and "Entomology". The so-called entomologist is actually an exterminator -- he's a burly chap with sideburns and a fat face. If he were opining on the NFL, I might listen to him, but he obviously knows nothing about bugs except how to swat them. Even more curious is the fact that the so-called experts are called upon to comment on the video clips, more or less, at random -- in other words, the "entomologist" will be heard solemnly opining on images that show celestial events or hitherto-unknown beasts. It's pretty clear that this group of people have been assembled from the producer's family and friends, more or less, at random -- they are no more qualified to comment than any other randomly assembled group of schlubs and dimwits might be. In this respect, the show resembles some of the Slapped Ham videos on YouTube featuring ghosts and poltergeists -- Slapped Ham shows you something allegedly inexplicable and, then, invites you to "comment below". But, of course, the viewer is never given enough information to make any sort of even partially intelligent comment. Accordingly, the YouTube video simply invites idiots to speculate on footage that is often scarcely visible.
Strange Evidence has pretty good videos, but the commentary on them is completely nonsensical. Generally, a couple of the pundits will say something on the order of "wow!" or "I've never seen anything like that!" or "It's really strange" before venturing stray-seeming comments that often have nothing to do with what we've seen. An example is a video taken in Siem Reap, a town in Cambodia. The video shows a huge explosion that belches fire and debris onto a crowded roadway, knocking people to the ground. We are given a date and place but no provenance for the video -- it seems to be a compilation from several surveillance cameras. The "military expert" regales us with morbid tales about Pol Pot and we see images of corpses, stacked skeletons, and people being tortured -- it's all real documentary footage but it's only relationship to the explosion is that the blast and Pol Pot both were once in Cambodia. Then, an "archaeologist" and a "science investigator" speculate that the explosion may have something to do with an alleged death ray hidden in the ruins Angor Watt -- we are shown some nice drone pictures of the impressive ruins which, of course, have nothing to do with the explosion. Then, a "Social Historian" opines that the blast was probably terrorist. The narrator notes that there is a thriving black market in gasoline in Cambodia. Perhaps, the explosion involved gas. The pyrotechnics expert, then, sets up an experiment in what looks like an abandoned car salvage yard. He makes a hut of cellophane and skinny metal rods, puts a bucket of gasoline in the hut, and, then, triggers an explosion. I think the purpose for the experiment is to discover whether gasoline fumes are flammable. (They turn out to be.) The narrator then suggests that "possibly" the blast occurred when someone illegally selling gasoline imprudently lit a match. Then, we're off to the next oddity. Featured on the show that I watched (a new series beginning on June 11, 2020) were the following: a wiggly snake-shaped UFO, a man getting blown up in truck delivering packaging material in China, an alleged demon from a town near Leningrad (the Sosnovy Bor monster), strange aerial phenomena over Costa Rica, the explosion at Siem Reap, a odd-looking vertical beam of light seen over Edmonston (it looks like a star-gate about to open), poltergeists in an antique shop in Barnsley, England, a pygmy native threatening a Vespa rider somewhere in Sumatra, scarlet fog also filmed by a motor-biker in Sumatra (lots of strange events on that island), a disturbance in a river near a Chinese city, and most disturbingly, surveillance video showing a naked man who runs at top speed to hurl himself through the window of a van, falling back out in a spray of glass, and, then, hopping up to jump on the top of moving car, all of this mayhem occurring in a subterranean garage, then, flung from the top of the car, sliding across about forty feet of pavement, then, getting up again and sprinting out of the view of the camera. This is genuinely scary footage because the frenzied naked man seems both incredibly deranged and oblivious to pain. The various "experts" speculate that he's possibly a time-traveler like the Terminator robot in the movie or, maybe, a zombie under the control of a sinister Master, or, perhaps, the victim of a "body hack" (a computer has seized control of him) or, even, maybe a "super soldier" created as a cyborg by the U.S. government who has run amok. Most alarmingly, the show doesn't solve this riddle -- it just leaves us with the scary footage and a note that the young man, "under the influence" of drugs, was captured by the police. This is useless information. The show is beyond lurid. When discussing the hostile "pygmy" on Sumatra, the pundits speculate that he is either an evil cannibal spirit (these creatures eat infants), an member of an uncontacted tribe of Homo Florensiensis (the extinct hobbit hominids), or possibly a man-ape hybrid citing efforts by the Soviet Scientist "Ivanov" to create a chimp-human super soldier by inseminating pygmy women with chimpanzee semen. (It's hard to figure out why an uncontacted tribe member would be hanging around a dirt-bike trail in Sumatra but who knows -- to me, the video looks doctored.) Another good example of this show's amusing idiocy is the Sosnovy Bor demon -- this is a desiccated two-inch long relic that seems to be comprised of small turtle's head super-glued to a small snake's body that terminates in a rodent claw. Is this the product of radiation dumped in the Russian river? That is, some kind of mutant? Or is it a hitherto unknown Russian animal or could we be looking at a chimera? Of course, a chimera is a sort of hoax, something like P. T. Barnum's Fiji mermaid (a chimp's head on tuna body) or the so-called Jackalope (jack rabbit with antelope horns). "Yes, it is a chimera" a zoologist declares, "but instead of citing taxidermy as a source for the creature, the expert launches into an illustrated lecture about Ligers (tiger-lions), mules, and the like. Of course, the obvious explanation is never discussed, namely, that some warped taxidermist put this mess together with a few stitches and some glue. "To date, the mystery of the demon has not been solved," the narrator solemnly tells us..
The reason this show is maddening is that some of the footage is very interesting. I certainly want to know what is behind the celestial light show (a huge cloud full of rainbow colors) in Costa Rica or the weird maelstrom in the river in China or the naked man hurling himself through windows in a grim-looking basement garage. But we're never given any plausible explanation for these things. I find myself watching episode after episode of this show and the whole time cursing the TV with such vehemence that my gentle, old Labrador retriever slinks away and hides in hallway upstairs.
Post-script: The naked man is Garrett Smith (21) a resident of Anaheim living at the El Mirador Apartments 3700 W. Mungal Drive. The incident occurred on Saturday either March 10 or March 11, 2015. Smith was apprehended one mile from the underground garage where this event took place. He was seriously injured and treated at the U. S. Irvine Hospital in Orange County and, of course, charged with vandalism and other crimes. Reports don't tell us what drugs were in this guy's system.
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