Summary
“The Golden Arm (Michigan) Part 1” introduces the characters, gives us the traumatic event that will shape the story and leaves us on a good enough hook to get us to return, making for a solid opener.
This recap of 50 States of Fright Episode 1, “The Golden Arm (Michigan) Part 1”, contains spoilers. You can check out our spoiler-free season review by clicking these words.
So this is an anthology series on Quibi that follows in the footsteps of Tales from the Crypt and similar outings. This is a good idea from Quibi, as the short form narrative lends itself really well to those sorts of horror stories; many of you will remember those comics of old that would have 3 or 4 stories per issue, all pretty much following a pattern made incredibly popular by EC Comics, before they were banned. I know, hard to imagine. The series has some pedigree to it, with Sam Raimi writing and directing the first three episodes.
Anyway, 50 States Of Fright, as each story starts in a different State, begins in Michigan and the tale of The Golden Arm.
50 States of Fright introduces us to Heather and Dave, a local power couple, deeply in love and living the good life. Dave is a lumberjack and Heather only wants to be beautiful. However, on the night of a local fundraiser, Dave is left on his own with a tree to fell and asks Heather to go into the woods to help him chop down the offending tree. Of course, things go horribly wrong, the tree falls on Heather, trapping her underneath, her arm pinned and crushed into the ground, and Dave realizes that with Heather losing so much blood, the only way to free her is to, well, chop her arm off. Now before you go looking for a million different things that Dave could have done, this has to happen for the story to work, so if you can’t run with the tone of this, perhaps this series isn’t for you.
Now fans of this genre will know only too well that this event will be what propels the rest of the story moving forward.
For a season opener, 50 States of Fright episode 1, “The Golden Arm (Michigan) Part 1”, does exactly what it has to do. It introduces the characters, gives us the traumatic event that will shape the story and leaves us on a good enough hook to get us to return, so a solid start with plenty for horror fans to get their teeth into.
