Palate Cleanser – Canon Rock
Reply
Monthly Archives: November 2014
Alfred Hitchcock Presents – Martha Mason, Movie Star (S2E34)
Mabel shuts the alarm off at 7:30 am and yells for Henry to bring her coffee. When Henry asks what’s for breakfast, she instructs him to see what’s in the kitchen. Mabel is just the latest in a long line of shrewish wives on this show.
While Henry is toiling away at work, Mabel does pry her butt out of bed to go see the latest film of her idol Martha Mason.
Leaving the theater, she admires the poster of Martha Mason and imitates the actress fainting into a policeman’s arms.
She returns home, nearly running Henry down in the garage as he hoists a bag of fertilizer, and tells him to look where he’s going.
She then mocks his interest in gardening and berates his previous efforts to grow anything. When he begins building a wooden frame for his garden, she is effusive in her lack in interest. In fact, she scolds him for generally being such a dullard. But there is a hole in the ground and we know one of them is going to end up in it.
Henry seems like a good egg, so it is unfortunate that he ends up in the hole after Mabel whacks him on the head with a hammer.
The next morning, she shuts the alarm off at the crack of eleven. Henry’s boss calls looking for him, and Mabel makes up a tale story that Henry ran off with another woman — a perfectly believable scenario. Well, believable that he would leave, less so that he could persuade another woman would go with him.
His boss comes to the house to see for himself. He doesn’t believe that Henry ran off; or if he did, it is just a “fling normal for a 47 year old man.” He suggests Mabel buy a new hat to raise her spirits. Now, here’s a man that knows people.
Mabel is called to the police station to answer some questions. She sticks to her story that Henry ran off with another woman. Her story takes a hit when a woman in the station says, he didn’t run off with another woman “because I’m the other woman!”
Mabel once again assumes the fainting pose from the poster, this time for real.
It would have been nice for the ending scene to be staged exactly like the movie poster, but in 1957, who knew that such comparisons could be easily made. After 25 minutes, the 2nd pose probably seemed exactly like the poster.
Post-Post:
- AHP Deathwatch: No survivors.
- Not to be confused with Martha Marcy May Marlene.
- Or Marsh Mason.
Mine Games (2012)
Another contender for worst cover ever.
There is just something that works for me in underground movies. Not underground movies, but movies that are actually set largely underground.
There is no need to justify loving a great film like The Descent; but liking The Descent 2 goes a long way toward proving my point. It doesn’t matter why the people are underground. It could be caves like The Cave or Sanctum. Could be really deep like The Core or really shallow like Buried. Could be subways like Creep or End of the Line. Could be mines like My Bloody Valentine or today’s subject. Like putting putting people in a spaceship, putting people in danger underground is always a great premise.
That said, the actual start to this film is not great. It begins in a flash-forward with an annoying voice-over and a mine set which struck me as cheesy (although not so much when the action actually got there). There is an effective quick scene where we hear a crying woman trapped behind a barred door trying to claw her way out, then we cut to Michael who lost me with his first line of dialogue.
There is just something not comfortable about him and I don’t think it is his character. In his chat with girlfriend Briana Evigan, I sense zero relationship there. She mentions his meds which we learn are to combat schizophrenia, but that doesn’t seem to be the problem either. This is not a couple.
They are getting supplies at a convenience store. Beside the door is strange item — some sort of board that advertises the Washington Tribune’s story of “Couple Found Murdered in RV.” Has a newspaper gone to that much effort since the Titanic sank? This board should have been worn by a street-urchin hawking newspapers in 1912, I tells ya. Second — caution, time loops ahead — I can’t decide whether it makes sense that the deaths are being referenced yet.
They arrive at the woodsy cabin of the soon-to-be dead Matt and Sarah which appears to be about 10,000 square feet.
The group consists of Lex, with the mug, disposition and wit of a soccer hooligan; Guy, the very stiff grand-son of Gregory Peck and amazing doppelganger of Benedict Cumberbatch; Michael, the wispy, solid-as-Jello schizophrenic; and TJ, whose main characteristic is that he is not one of the other three guys.
With them are Rose, who has psychic flashes; Claire, the cute one; and Lyla, Michael’s unlikely girlfriend played by Briana Evigan.
The gang finds an abandoned mine near the cabin and ignores the warnings not to enter. After doing a little exploration, they go back to the cabin.
The most odious member of the group, Lex, claims he dropped his wallet, so he and TJ take a 2nd trip to the mine. There, they discover two dead corpses of themselves. They go back to the cabin and tell the group what they saw.
Guy doesn’t believe them, so they make a 3rd trip to the mine in the same day. For a change in a horror movies, the bodies are still there, and everyone agrees they are in trouble.
Naturally, the solution is to take a 4th trip to the mine. This time, behind the barred door seen in the opening, they find another body — this time alive, and more importantly, cute — Claire. As they already have a Claire in the cabin, they leave her and return to the cabin.
Michael is acting very creepy, so they decide to exile him from the cabin. But where to go? Hmmmmm . . . . so we get the 5th trip to the mine today where he is locked in a room, sadly for him not the same one as Claire.
After they return to the cabin, Rose has another psychic flash saying that Michael has escaped. So they make the 6th trip to the mine that day.
There are time-loops, are-we-already-dead conversations, psychic flashes, nice callbacks to earlier events, people meeting themselves, and the very clever use of a particular note.
There are a couple of wildcards thrown in to provide alternative explanations, at least briefly, for the strange happenings. The use of mushrooms to explain Rose’s psychic flashes is clever. There is also an aurora borealis which is never really connected to the story, but does linger mysteriously over the proceedings. However, I never got the sense that Michael’s illness was the root of his craziness, and I found it to be mostly a distraction.
This is in the same vein (ha, mining humor!) as Triangle and Timecrimes, an enjoyable time — and mind — bender. The only weakness for me was the actor playing Michael, and unfortunately he is in far more scenes than the other actors.
Post-Post:
- It took 4 writers and 12 producers to make this.
- “You brought a rolling suitcase on a camping trip”
Night Gallery – Class of ’99 (S2E2)
We pan across harsh concrete architecture which suggests correctly that it is a future college campus. The few students present and the shadows forming little cages suggest a totalitarian future (or perhaps the totalitarian mind-think of current college faculty).
Inside, students assemble in a classroom made of Krameresque levels, humanity having evolved out of the need for chairs. Vincent Price enters and reminds the students that this is the day of their final oral exams.
He begins randomly selecting students and quizzing them on propulsion and behavioral sciences — what freakin’ class is this? In his questions, be pits white against black, hottie against nottie, Caucasian against Chinese.
It plays out almost completely in that one classroom, and there is a lot of talking. Never the less, this is one of the best so far. The story is compelling, and Vincent Price is excellent as the professor.
Of course there is a twist and the standard Serling hectoring about how awful humanity is; but really it is the story and the performances that make the episode — which is preferable to dumping all the weight on a twist ending.
Post-Post:
- Twilight Zone Legacy: None.
- Strangely, this is the second segment in this episode which requires live actors to play corpses / frozen people. It is similarly off-putting here (in a good way).
- Skipped Segment 1: The Merciful is a twist on The Cask of the Amontillado. For a change, it is one of the short sketches that actually works. The title is a mystery as it would have made more sense to somehow reference the original story title. Once you see the bricks being laid in the first shot, either it’s spoiled or it’s not, anyway.
- Skipped Segment 2: Satisfaction Guaranteed also works better than most. The payoff is a little strange, even pornographic if you’re of the mind. But Victor Buono’s performance and a few cute 70’s babes save the day. Due to a switcheroo by NBC, IMDb has this segment replaced with Witch’s Feast,
- Hulu sucks.
Night Gallery – A Death in the Family (S2E2)
First off, out of the pilot + 8 episodes, this same house exterior is used in at least 3 episodes — not the same stock shot, but new filming at the same house. Maybe four, but life is too short to go back and look for it. It’s too trivial a point to detract from the story; it’s just curious. This time it is used as Soames Funeral Home.
A hearse pulls up in front of the funeral home and two men haul a casket inside. E.G. Marshall (Creepshow) is doing an atrocious hand-job of playing the organ. OK, it’s a TV episode, no one expects you to learn to play, but generally the notes change when the hands move.
He takes possession of a dead body from the county for $100. The corpse is a pauper who will be put in the ground with a simple wooden marker. No flowers, no mourners. As the gravediggers lower the box into the hole, they comment how light it is. Hmmmmm, I wonder . . . .
On his way back to the funeral parlor, he is stopped by police to warn him of an escaped convict in the area. Hmmmmm, I wonder . . . .
Sure enough, that night, a bleeding Desi Arnaz Jr. breaks into the funeral home (there must be synonym). He has broken a window and climbed in despite hearing Marshall singing For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow, suggesting multiple people would be inside.
Arnaz peeks into the party room and sees that Marshall was singing to a corpse sitting straight up in a chair at the table. Marshall is strangely accommodating, allowing Arnaz to lay on the couch and rest up. Maybe he is confused and thinks he can get Arnaz to sing Babalu at the party.
Arnaz tells Marshall that he is facing jail for murder, and suddenly lapses into 1940’s film noir mode, “The only hand I ever got was the back of it, a kick in the pants, a taste of the sidewalk.” Good stuff, but seems out of left field especially coming out of Arnaz’s baby face. He finds it ironic that first warm, living person who cared in his life is in a funeral home.
Arnaz awakens to Marshall singing Jolly Good Fellow again. He finds Marshall in the basement, in the middle of a party with his wife, mother, daughters, brother — all corpses propped up at the table, although looking very life-like. He introduces the first corpse we saw as being his father. This is the family he has constructed away from the competitive cruel world outside.
I think Arnaz can see the writing on the wall. When the doorbell rings, he is ready to bail, even if it is police. Marshall stops him on the stairs. The police bust in when they hear gunshots. They see blood on the floor, despite the fact Arnaz did not make it that far, and follow it to the basement — where Marshall has managed, within seconds, to drag the literal dead weight of Arnaz back to the celebration and prop him up in the role of his son.
The cops arrive at the party just in time to see Marshall join the guests by plopping down dead in his chair from a gunshot wound. So Marshall did that dragging and propping up all after being shot? Presumably Arnaz died of his previous wound, but the timing is pretty unlikely. The policemen slowly back out of the room.
Arnaz is the weak point here, just not selling his character as a convicted murderer. That isn’t enough to ruin the episode, though. Marshall’s performance, the scenes of the corpses sitting around the table, and the episode direction in general make this a good one.
Post-Post:
- Twilight Zone Legacy: None.
- I’m sure E.G. Marshall — from 12 Angry Men, The Caine Mutiny, The Defenders, and other classics — would have enjoyed having his legacy reduced to “the bug guy from Creepshow.”
- Desi Arnaz Sr. was a very smart guy by all accounts, but he and wife Lucille Ball didn’t have much imagination, naming their kids Desi and Lucie.
- The corpses sitting around the table are live actors — uncredited, so I wonder what they got paid. Being so lifelike makes the scene even creepier. I’m not sure I noticed them barely moving, or was anticipating it because I had read that they were real people — either way, that just added to the creepiness.
- Hulu sucks