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BEM Episode Guide
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The titles are those used in the Italian airings of the series.
Again, a number of doubts arise about the translation of the original series - one can't but notice that all kids are called Terry and most place and family names are a bad translitteration of some obscure katakana original. The titles of the single episodes, too, are unlikely to be the originals - even if we must confess a certain skewed admiration for the utter cynicism displayed by whoever came up with the title for Episode 26.The Italian adaption of Bem was a hasty business.
But here they are, the 26 episodes themselves....
Bem, Bero and Bera are three good spectres (born of a primal fluid of sorts) whose self-imposed mission is to fight evil, in the hope of being able one day of attaining full human being status. They travel amongst us masking their monstruous true nature under a vaguely normal appearance. Following an introductory prologue, their first adventure begins.A poor child is about to rejoin his supposedly lost grandparents. Some criminals try and replace him with an imposter, in order to lay their hands on the wealth of the elsderly couple. The three spectres intervene and stop them.
Again a child is in danger. His evil stepmother is trying to kill him to inherit the family wealth, currently in the kid's name. Bem, Bero and Bera save the bouy, but are ultimately rejected in anger. The kid did in fact love the woman as a true mother and is still completely unaware of her homicidal intentions.
During a solitary walk, spectre-kid Bero frees a man from his prison. The man claims to have been unjustly imprisoned, and his only desire is finding his son again. In truth, the man is a demon and, as soon as he's free, rejoins his mother-spirit - an evil creature living in an underground structure recently unhearted by unwitting civil engineers. The two demons together plan to let rip their reign of terror over the world. Bem's intervention will put a stop to their intentions.
The spirit of an evil hunchback, residing in an old house, possesses the Chief of Police, setting him to kill Bem, Bero and Bera. The hunchback knows infact that the three creatures might try and prevent him from feeding off the blood of the house's denizens as he is in the habit of doing.
A criminal gang blackmails an old manequin-maker to force him to become their accomplice. The man is infact a retired ganster - his retirement caused by the love he feels for his daughter. His refusal to get back to his old activities is met with violence, forcing Bero, who has befriended the girl, to intervene together with his surrogate family.
Two petty thieves are asked by a cult leader to gather a number of persons for a satanic ritual; the ritual will take place at the thirteenth floor of a twelve-storeis building (!). According to the cult priestess, Satan will grant every wish of the acolytes, while infact she plans to devour the people gathered during the ritual. Bero - who has gatecrashed the celebration - discovers the truth, and Bem and Bera come to save the day.
A town is cursed: every month the town women must sacrifice one of their children by throwing him in a dry well in the outskirts, otherwise they'd all die. Investigating the city, Bem, Bero and Bera discover this is actually a plan devised by the town men to save the kids from the actual curse. On the sacrifice day, infact, all the women turn into cannibal monsters, teh consequence of a curse cast years before by travellers that were left out in the cold to starve. Each month, the hateful spirits of the dead travellers possess the women turning them into killer witches. A curse to which the women cannot escape, as the possession robs them of all consciousness.
The arrival of a ship with a crew of dead men causes chaos in the city. The ghostlike presence is caused by the need for revenge of a man, the only one alive on the ship, whose daughter was taken away by the city mayor. The young woman, suffering from a grave amnesia, can't remember that her current man killed her first husband and separated her from her son Terry. In his mission, the vengeful man is aided by Bero, who has befriended Terry.
Travellers stops in an old isolated house to escape a storm. The woman that greets them hides behind a mask her monstyruous features and her intentions - she is out to eat the lone, blind kid in the company. Bero, that has befriended the kid, steps in and, helped by Bem and Bera, saves him. The kid's mother and her driver, discovering Bero's true nature, reject his company, despite the kid's protests.
A criminal obtains from a brilliant scientist a copy of Bera, that he uses in a series of robberies and dirty deeds. The true Bera does not waste time, and gets her revenge on both her double and the criminal.
A number of men have been kidnapped by spectral beings that force them to dig through a pile of rubble. The zombies are trying to bring back their king, an incredibly evil creature. Bem and company intervene and save the day.
In a crypt, a monstrous old hag lives with her blind granddaugter. The girl being sad as she cannot see, the old hag goes to town to steal a child's eyes and transplant them. Bem, Bero and Bera are alert and stop her activities. the ending reveals that the girl was actually just a mental projection of the hag, that hoped to give her physical form using the stolen eyes.
Doringg one of his walks, Bero finds a bleak house indeed. A man is vexed by an evil mirror in which his daughter's rancour has taken residence. The daughter was kept segregated all her life due to her misshapen body, and is now taking her revenge. Bero and Bera try and destroy the mirror, but are actually sucked up inside of its reality. Bem will have to save the day.
Cannibal monsters force a girl, dressed up as a siren, to lure ships with her sweet singing, causing them to sink against submerged rocks and the crewmen to be eaten. Bem, Bero and Bera, that happen to be travelling on one of the ships, will have a busy night.
A woman living in a lonely valley accuses Bem and Bera of being the killers or her brother. In fact the real murderer is the woman herself, a werewolf feeding her cubs on human flesh. It's Bero's turn for saving his companions and solving teh riddle.
A young girl suffers from a mysterious fever. To help her, Bero enters the forest that, according to the girl, is the cause of her illness. With Bem's help he learns the place is haunted: an evil spirit, trapped inside a tree, dominates the area. The three human spectres fight and defeat the spirit tree and inside it they find the bell that according to the girl is the key to the mystery. Inside the bell, a carp is found - the girl read about the prisoner fish in a fairy book and its destiny so saddened her that this caused not only her malady, but the whole forest itself. As the carp is set free, the dark wood vanishes.
Bero stops a kid that stole an ancient mask from a museum. Trying to bring back the object, Bero, the kid and a night watchman are trapped inside the haunted building. The place is haunted by the ghost of an evil queen, driven by hate for all the human genre after she was beheaded. The stolen mask turns out to be the key to send her back to the grave.Curiously enough, Bem and Bera, that are no part of the action, refuse in teh finale to believe Bero's adventure when he tells them the events of the night.
A sculptotr obsessed by perfection creates his statues by covering dead bodies in plaster. Trying to create his masterpice, he wants to kill and use an orphan girl that has become friends with Bero. Bera stops him.
The Gascon family is haunted by the ghost of a woman, drowned in the mountain pool by their house. Young Terry, last of the family line, is the target of choice of the ghost. Unfortunately, the head of the family thinks Bem and company are to be blamed, as the incidents started with the arrival of the three in the area. The evil ghost is actually masquerading as one of the family. The episode is almost completely built as a sequence of flash-backs.
The workers on Tokyo's steel tower are being murdered. The tower was built over an old cemetery and the souls of the buried are taking their revenge. Bem and his companions will have to placate the spirits' bloodthirst.
A purple wig was made using the hair of a slave killed by the constant brutalities she suffered. Fueled by the ghost's ill feelings, the wig strangles whoever tries and wear it. Bem, Bero and BEra, currently staying with the girl that last bought the thing, will have to face a dangerous enemy. It's Bero that in the end saves the day, while his companions seem to have been overwhelmed.
An old gate in a ghost town leads directly to the Netehrworld and thanks to it, a dead woman can meet again her son. The ghost is blackmailed by the evil spirit of an old woman, who intends to use the kid as a sacrifice. When the woman refuses to cohoperate, the evil hag steals the spirits of two surviving relatives. Afterwards, she persists in trying to force the living kid to cross the gate. Fortunately, Bem, Bera and Bero learn of the going ons and take action. To defeat the evil spirit, Bem lets himself die as he crosses the gate, in order to be able to fight the monster in the land of the dead. Bera will afterwards bring him back to life.
During a theatrical rehersal, the actor playing the Devil is a a complete failure. He offers his soul to the Dark Lord in exchange for the acting abilities he lacks. The Devil swaps places with him, in order to kill the rest of the cast and steal their souls too. Bero learns of the trade and Bem has to take on the Devil in one of his hardest duels.
Bero saves a man caught up in a fight. The man, Fuga, tells a woeful tale: he is being persecuted by evil monks that kidnapped his father. In the meantime, Bem and Bera meet the monks and get a different version: Fuga is a demon trying to free his father, an equally evil creature, trapped in the monastery's dungeons. Bero, trusting his new friend, is faced with a fight against Bem and Bera. Fuga turns out to be a real demon in the end.
A voice calls Bero to an old abandoned streetcar, piled on the inside with dead bodies. Bem and Bera try and figure out the cause behind all this and find out the dead are the victims of the city crows, acting on the orders of an evil being and killing whoever gets near to the streetcar. Next in the line is a kid, trying to locate his mother's body. To help the kid Bem has to take on the monster, pursuing it into another dimension.
Bem, Bero and Bera come to a town where terror reigns as two monsters, masking themselves as women, are kidnapping people, sucking their souls out and casting off the bodies in a common grave. The climate is fiery and Bero, identified as a spectre, is pursued by a vengeful rabble. Escaping the crowd he is caught by the two monsters. Bem, in the meantime, has observed the comings and goings and found out that, casting off the spectre body and channeling the soul into a human body, he and his companions could finally achieve human status and fulfill their dream. After fighting the monsters, Bem also understands that his duty, and that of his companions, is to protect the humans, and therefore they can't simply renounce their spectral powers.As the episode closes, the three heroes are trapped inside the house of the two monsters, besieged by Police forces that set fire to it in order to placate the crowd's requests. Nothing remains of the three human spectres but some scraps of burned clothing.
Thanks to DAVIDE "Z" Di Giorgio for the original text.
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