Tales From the Crypt – Seance (S4E4)

Posted on April 10, 2015 by don

Really lackluster outing.

Cathy Moriarty and Ben Cross are practicing a ruse to bilk a widow out of $300,000. Cross wonders to himself how he got into this mess — hiding in a closet to pretend to be a ghost. Great, a dreaded flashback.

Two weeks earlier, lawyer Cross gets a visit from Dean Wormer. Moriarty is there to pretend that she is a long lost cousin of Wormer’s. Cross tells Wormer that his dead uncle Albert Peters has left them $3 million.

Wormer says, “The only man I know by that name is my mother’s brother.” Isn’t that kind of the definition of dead uncle? Cross tells Wormer that his uncle was not killed by a train as his mother told him — he spent 20 years in jail for a bank robbery. $200,000 from the heist turned into $3M.

Moriarty invites Wormer to her hotel room that night. He shows up with a bottle and a rose. Moriarty explains that they should just buy Cross out for 10% They start making out — so not only does Wormer not know the meaning of “uncle”, he is a little fuzzy on the concept of “cousin” as well — and are photographed by Cross from the closet.

They go to to Cross’s office and Wormer figures out that he and Moriarty are in cahoots. They show him the photos which only make him laugh, and says his wife will never see them (a pretty good gag that will pay off later). Moriarty goes to shoot Wormer, but he pulls a Rosalind Shays (i.e. falls down the elevator shaft). Just to be safe, they send the elevator to the bottom floor to crush him.

At they police station, the decide to try to get the cash from Wormer’s wife who they see is blind. She wants to discuss it with her late husband via her spiritual adviser — she’s blind, not stupid. No wait, she’s blind and stupid.

Since Mrs. Wormer is blind, they tie up the “real” psychic and Moriarty imitates her. Also present is Mrs. Wormer’s chauffeur who apparently has never seen “her spiritual adviser” before.

The spirit of Wormer is summoned and a hooded figure shows up. He throws back the hood to reveal it is Wormer. The chauffeur says, “Mr. Wormer is looking a bit peaked.” Does he not understand why they are at the psychic? They gave this guy a license?

Wormer reveals Cross’s head in a brief case, then rips out Moriarty’s heart like Mola Ram in Temple of Doom. He tells Moriarty, “You ain’t got no heart.”

I literally fell asleep about 5 times over the course of three days trying to finish this one. Not sure whether it is the actors or the direction or both, but Moriarty and Cross are two of the dullest actors I have ever seen.

Moriarty is a classic case of peaking early. She was nominated for Best Supporting Actress in her first role, then disappeared for six years. Her IMDb bio cites a serious car accident, bad luck, and man trouble. Maybe, but part of the problem had to be an absolute lack of screen presence.

Post-Post:

Title Analysis: A little too on-the-nose.
Written by Harry Anderson.
Ben Cross was just in The Concrete Mixer. Just as lackluster as Moriarty, he finally got the role he was perfectly suited to play in 2009 — Spock’s emotionless Vulcan father Sarek.

The Intruders (2015)

Posted on April 9, 2015 by don

iCutie

On a snowy day, college student (i.e.over 18) Rose moves into a new house with her father Jerry Halshford. She immediately bitches about the house and furniture. She at least has the initiative to explore the house to find more to complain about.

She walks across the street and meets her neighbor Leila who asks her how she can live in that house. Rose asks her father what that means and he plays dumb.

That night she hears screams and gets out of the bed to close her bedroom door. In the next scene, it is morning, but she is wearing different clothes. The shortie shorts and wife-beater have been replaced by a little spaghetti strap number that we don’t get to see the bottom of. This movie is turning me into quite the fashion maven.

While taking a PG-13 shower, she hears creaks and crashes and goes to investigate (wearing a white towel). Turns out to just be a cute young construction guy, Noah.

That night she sees a neighbor throw a large garbage bag and a shovel in the back of his pickup. So the first thing you would think is that he’s going to bury a body. She does go out (in her red Stanford hoodie) and finds Leila’s necklace in the snow. Or is it?

That night,in a striped t-shirt and tight jeans, she goes to the basement for the first time. She is trapped in a room but only for a few moments as if the house is playing with her. Running back upstairs, she sees a creepy doll head on the stairs that she had found earlier in a drawer.

Via a Google-doppelganger called Glide Quest, Rose discovers that her neighbor was a suspect in the disappearance of a girl named Rachel who had lived in the house.

Just as in Mr. Jones, there is a suggestion that meds might have something to do with the bizarre scenes witnesses. Also as in that movie, this subplot goes nowhere.

The Intruders throws out a few other red herrings (or less charitably, distractions) like that. From his introduction, there is a distance in Noah that suggests that he might only exist only in Rose’s mind. He does seem to come and go like the wind, and for sometimes dubious reasons. He also references a construction crew which never seems to materialize. He does seem to be real in at least one scene with Leila, though. If he is not real, like the meds, there would really be no point.

intruders28 The movie would also like you to believe there are supernatural explanations for some events. Sometimes the movie does not play fair — does that door latch move by itself? For the most part, it places the blame on a reg’lar old killer. But then the final scene again suggests a supernatural element. Or is it those darn meds again?

Misdirection and twists are fine, even desirable; they just weren’t handled well here. Also not handled well — Miranda Cosgrove. She is hot and wears the hell out of her skimpy clothes (and the sweatshirts, too, for that matter), she’s just not effective as an actress.

Ultimately it is just a PG-13 movie with some cute 20 year old girls that could have aired on Lifetime or starred Ashley Judd 20 years ago. It really is more drama than horror. The mystery for me is how it ended up in my queue.

Post-Post:

Title Analysis: Intruderzz — the crazy dude was one, but who was the other?
Miranda Cosgrove was the star of iCarly. Being a grown man, I have never seen the show; or bought the box set.

Outer Limits – Vanishing Act (S2E21)

Posted on April 8, 2015 by don

Trevor McPhee (John Cryer) shuts off the radio after the DJ says farewell to the old year. Trevor also says good riddance to 1949 despite have a decent home, a cute wife, and a radio the size of a refrigerator.

He feels they are in a rut, going nowhere and can’t even afford a bottle of New Year’s champagne despite Trevor drinking from a bottle of hooch at the time. Full of rot-gut and self-loathing, he says the hell with it and goes out to get a bottle of bubbly anyway.

On the way to the store, he encounters a bright light and runs off the road. When he regains consciousness, he stumbles to the road and hitches a ride from Ray Carter. Ray is a fan of comics like Zantarg, Master of Time and Space.

1960: Ray drops Trevor off at his house, but he finds the locks have been changed. When his wife Theresa (Jessica Lundy) answers the door she damns him for having disappeared for 10 years. He swears to remember nothing of the last decade. They go to a doctor who is no help. His wife finally accepts that he didn’t run out on her and they go to bed, but he disappears again. Trevor wakes up in a swampy cave, then reappears 10 years later

1970: The furniture has been rearranged so he reappears on the bedroom floor. Technically, he should have reappeared in mid-air and dropped to the floor. He finds his clothes vacuum-packed in the closet and changes into them. Downstairs, he finds that Theresa has given up waiting. Ray, the guy who gave Trevor a ride in 1950 is now giving Trevor’s wife a ride — they are married. This time, Theresa finally realizes that Trevor hasn’t aged at all; because, really, would he have kept that mustache for 20 years? He also finds out he has a son, which should have aged him 10 years on the spot.

He storms out and sees the devolution of the country in 1969. There are drugs, hippies, war protests with inanely repetitive chants — can you really hear All We Are Saying is Give Peace a Chance go around more than twice without actually wanting to start a war? He goes to a bar and is soon joined by Ray. Trevor starts feeling sick and goes into the bathroom for 10 years [insert lame Mexican food gag here]. Again, he awakens in the swampy cave.

1980: He reappears on the floor of the bathroom stall, luckily unoccupied. The bar is now a disco (but not for Lola) complete with cokeheads, glittering disco balls, and The Hustle. His son and Theresa are waiting for him. This time Ray sets up a camera to catch him disappearing on Super-8. Which he does.

1990: Trevor reappears on VHS, skipping right over the Betamax years. Ray is dead, but Theresa hypnotizes Trevor, and is able to talk to the alien who has possessed him. It says that his species explores the universe by possessing people and periodically bringing them back to their planet to share their knowledge.

Despite using wormhole technology, Theresa learns they have no concept of the passage of time. She explains how the aliens have wrecked their lives and talks the parasite (who prefers to be called a Symbiote-American) into releasing Trevor’s body. He disappears from 1990, sadly, having never reached the distant decade where his mustache would be accepted by society.

On the other hand, the aliens are pretty hoopy froods and plop Trevor back in 1950; where he was miserable. Once again, lottery-number-free.

I suspect the concept is not original, but that never bothers me; I really liked the idea. It didn’t hook me for some reason though. Maybe it was seeing Jon Cryer in a drama (although I’ve never seen him in a comedy, either).

I still rate it 8 out of 10 years.

Post-Post:

Jessica Lundy was the girl with the funny laugh on Seinfeld.
Of course, Jon Cryer was 40% of Two and a Half Men.

It Follows (2014)

Posted on April 7, 2015 by don

20 minutes of previews?

First, we are treated to the wholly unnecessary remake of Poltergeist, a movie that was almost perfect in its original incarnation. We see several of the same exact same beats — the houses built over the cemetery, the clown, the ghostbuster, the hands on the TV, the killer tree. I can’t see this through the eyes of an 18 year old, but to anyone who saw the original back in the day, this preview pales on almost every point; and pales literally, since it is so dark.

Much of the success of the original was that it was constructed on sunny days, a new neighborhood, clean streets,and with a happy family with 2.5 kids — it was the Stephen King / Richard Matheson horror-in-our-own-neighborhood concept. Everything in this trailer goes for the cliched dark motif. The “harmless” toy clown is now sports an evil smirk, the new home is described as a fixer-upper, even the absolutely radiant blonde original Carol Anne is now a brunette.

And JoBeth Williams might have been the first MILF, even before there was an acronym for the phenomena. No one who enjoyed the original can be looking forward to this.

Insidious was fun. Insidious 2 was fun, but got a little too busy in the final act. Insidious 3 does not look like fun. Like the Poltergeist remake, all of the scares in the trailer are cheap jump-scares. And, for the love of God, can we have one movie that Lin Shaye is not in? OK, she’s not in Poltergeist, but she has 10 movies in 2015 so far in IMDb. Give someone else a chance.

On the other hand, Unfriended is not a sequel, looks like a low-budget joint and I didn’t recognize a single person in it. Yet, miraculously, I actually got several real chills from its preview, and not a single goose-bump from the other two. Maybe it will be crap, but it is the only one I could care less about seeing.

Each of these trailers was not 6+ minutes long, so there must have been others, but they were so uninteresting that I have forgotten them a few hours later.

And, hey Regal Cinema — no one cares about your nagging, product-placement-loaded roller coaster. Yes, texters should be killed — I think we can all agree on that — but you’re just delaying the movie another minute.

And now our feature presentation . . .

After seeing the film, I read many interpretations of It Follows. I don’t know that I really subscribe to any of them. Is it a metaphor for adolescence? For a budding young love affair? For an STD? Does the water represent innocence? Don’t know, don’t care.

We are thrust into the narrative immediately as we see a girl run from her house in a snappy lingerie set and spiked heels. How this ensemble was put put together is not explained, but is worthy of later reflection by the viewer. Her father comes after her, but she runs back into the house, presumably to get car keys as Victoria’s Secret still refuses to put pockets in their panties. She ends up at the beach, dead with a leg bent at the knee — the wrong way.

After having the sex with Jay in the backseat of a car, Hugh chloroforms her and ties her to a chair. He explains to her and to us that he has passed along a curse (although that word is never used, so thank God no one is trotting out the menstruation metaphor again). A thing is now going to follow her, but must never be allowed to catch her. Only she and previous owners of the curse can see this thing which can take the form of anyone. It is not clear why he ties her to a chair to make his point, as he does untie her and take her home (i.e. dumps her in the street) when the thing arrives.

The bulk of the movie is the very slow Michael Myers / Walking Dead speed pursuit of Jay (who is a teenage girl, BTW), sometimes across many miles of country. The relentlessness of the pursuit provides an over-arching suspense, and periodic battles with the thing provide some good scares and action. Like the Terminator, it absolutely will not stop until Jay is dead; or passes the curse to someone else via sex. And once Jay is dead, it will go back up the food-chain and kill Hugh.

The thing always shows up in the form of a person and only visible to Jay. On the first sighting, it is a completely naked woman. Other times, the thing takes the form of other women and men, some of which Jay recognizes. Kind of like er . . . The Thing. So the suspense is heightened — as in Paranormal Activity — by the viewer constantly being on the lookout for anyone in the background who could become a threat.

The viewer is also subtly kept off-balance by the indeterminate time of the film. Like the hatch in Lost which had an eclectic mixture of new appliances and 1970s stereo, there are conflicting signals. The cars all seen to be old family trucksters, but one girl seems to be reading from a clam-shell Kindle. Or maybe it is a cell-phone — if it is, it is the only cell-phone in the movie and is never used as one.

All of this keeps the viewer constantly on edge, and makes for a great experience. There is some wailing and moaning about a couple of scenes or unanswered questioned, but are you going to obsess over details, or have a good time?

Highly recommended.

Post-Post:

Despite all the references to other titles above, I never once felt like this was unoriginal.
For some reason I can’t figure out, the thing frequently shows up totally or partially naked. This is not as good as it sounds as it rarely takes the form of anyone you want to see naked. Especially the naked guy standing on the roof — to be fair, he does thankfully appear to be wearing a Speedo, or is maybe is in desperate need of some manscaping.
I took an immediate dislike to the score other than in the set-pieces. It seems to be praised everywhere else, though, so I am willing to chalk that up to a tin ear.

Ray Bradbury Theater – The Utterly Perfect Murder (S5E6)

Posted on April 6, 2015 by don

You put a moniker like that on an episode, and you better have some special in store.

Young piano prodigy Doug Spaulding is being chased through the woods by bullies. This is intercut with telephone calls he made to his chief tormentor over the years since. On his 21st birthday, he calls Ralph and says, “Hello Ralph. Is this Ralph Underhill?” Ralph says, “Yes,” and Doug hangs up the phone. He does it again on his 40th birthday, or maybe we are supposed to believe this is an annual occurrence.

On his 60th birthday, Doug, now a famous composer has something bigger in mind. Doug does not make the usual call that day, but the next morning goes to a locked cabinet in his garage where he keep momentos of the times that Ralph bullied him.

He goes downstairs and sees the mess from the party and says, “When was the armistice signed?” His nameless, uncredited wife replies in a complete non-sequitur, “The world will little note, nor long remember” from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Is this how smart people talk in the morning? I’m more used to, “You owe me an extra $50 for that last thing.”

She hands him a bottle of Worcestershire sauce and he pours about 1 molecule into a Bloody Mary before taking a sip.

When he says, “I must arise and go now,” she replies from the same Yeats poem, “but not to a bee-loud Glade.” Christ, these people make Frasier & Niles look like the Clampetts. He tells no-name that he is going to Chicago, but he actually packs a small bag with the toys — and a non-toy gun — and goes to pay a visit to Ralph. At this point, after 40 years of calls, Ralph must be mystified why this year, it was one day late.

On the way, he recalls other humiliations from his youth, having a big marble thrown in the creek, being afraid to throw rocks at a house, being roughed up, being tied to a tree. Ralph tells him, “You will never belong anywhere! Just look me up when you’re old and gray and I’ll remind you!” So he has held on to that for 40 years despite having a nice home home, a thriving career and a wife with no name.

He stops by his childhood home for a few more bad memories. The boys thought he was weird for practicing the piano so much and winning competitions. The slicked back hair and shirt buttoned to the top probably didn’t help either. Not quite sad enough, he marches into the woods to the tree where Ralph had tied him up once.

That night he goes to Ralph’s house and sets up the toys — the non-lethal ones — on his porch. He rings the bell and Ralph answers the door. Doug seems shocked as he looks Ralph up and down. Of course he has gotten older, just like Doug. Is there some point to him not wearing shoes? He was just at home watching TV. Maybe it is just seeing him that takes Doug back. He reaches into his pocket for the gun, but hesitates when Ralph sees the toys.

Ralph kneels to see the toys, and Doug points his finger at him, “Bang, you’re dead.” As Doug walks away, Ralph just calls after him, “Doug, is that you?”

Doug goes back to the tree where he was tied up and inexplicably sleeps there for the night. The next morning he goes back to his old house and summons “young Doug” to stop practicing and go out and play. In his mind, he sees black & white young Doug head off to the woods across the street.

Thus potentially sabotaging his professional success, and proving Ralph right in an alternate timeline.

Post-Post:

Title Analysis: What murder? In the words of Sidney Wang, “Killed good weekend.”
Two women have speaking roles but are not credited on screen or on IMDb.
Young Doug (David Turri) has no other IMDb credits. I’m assuming that is Young Doug, IMDb doesn’t even name his character. There is an author by that name at Amazon, who has a New Zealand connection, but the age doesn’t seem to work out.

Genre Snaps

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Monthly Archives: April 2015

Tales From the Crypt – Seance (S4E4)

The Intruders (2015)

Outer Limits – Vanishing Act (S2E21)

It Follows (2014)

Ray Bradbury Theater – The Utterly Perfect Murder (S5E6)