Vaginacam POV

It’s hard to say whether it bodes well for an episode that it begins with an upskirt of a corpse.  I can’t even say it depends on the corpse.  But the corpse is on a gurney, and it is over quick.  Even stranger, the next shot seems to be a POV from a vaginacam showing the outstretched legs and red toenails. ^[1]

Security guards Richard and Charlie escort funeral director Ben Stein, looking more cadaverous than the corpse, to the exit of the funeral home. ^[2] He berates the two security guards and warns them there better be no funny business.  Seconds after Stein leaves, the guards spot the gurney.  A man is attempting to snatch the body, a crime which really needs a catchy name.  When they bust him, he offers them $500 to help.

They help the man, Orloff, back to his house and carry the corpse to his laboratory in the cellar.  Maybe mad scientists are mad because they work in cramped, dark, dank cellars.  Props to Dr. Frankenstein for his revolutionary open space design and unique skylight feature.  Still mad though, but at least he learned his lesson and didn’t play God a second time . . . oh yeah.

Orloff cuts open up the corpse looking for soul, but comes up empty.  He has a walk-in freezer full of empties proving that his strategy of trawling for souls at Moby concerts is quixotic at best.  There is a funny exchange where Orloff asks the guards to dispose of the bodies.  After getting $500 to help with one body, Richard shrewdly negotiates only $600 to dispose of 10 bodies.

On the way to the well where they will dump the bodies, Charlie expresses some remorse about what they are doing.  Richard — in a movie trope never once performed in real life — kisses the wad of cash and says, “I got $1,000 right here, baby!”  Wait, they got $500 for the first gig, then $600 for this one.  Where is the other hundred?  Is he not splitting the dough with Charlie?  And why is it still in his hand while he’s driving?

Charlies fears that if the bodies are buried without souls they will be “lost forever.”  Well, whatever your beliefs, doesn’t the soul leave the body at the time of death?  How is this different?

Anyhoo, they transport the bodies in the open bed of an El Camino, but did at least put them in trash bags so the corpses wouldn’t be embarrassed by being seen in an El Camino.  On the way back, after ditching the bodies, Richard is still trying to cheer Charlie up by waving the cash in his face.  Does this guy not have a wallet?

They concoct a brilliant plan to pretend to have fallen asleep at work.  Ben Stein arrives in the morning and catches them sleeping.  He yells, “Goddammit, get up you idiots!”  Well wait, why did they need the snooze ruse?  They could have just been doing normal security guard things things like walking patrols or masturbating when Ben Stein got there.

Ben Stein notices that Ms. Myers, presumably the first body we saw, is missing.  Wait, how does he know that?  He just got there.  The guards are actually in the Cadaver Storage room, so he did not look for her before he got to them.  He accuses the guards of stealing the body and leaves to call the police.  Richard brains him with a Maglite.

They take Ben Stein’s body to Orloff.  Even though he is still alive, Orloff cuts him open to look for a soul.  For the first time, he actually discovers one.  In Ben Stein.  Who knew?  And so on.

Kissing the cash

Despite my bellyaching, it is a good outing.  Things get crazier from that point in the way that TFTC is supposed to.  Hank Azaria, Ben Stein, and Austin Pendleton are all perfectly suited to this series.  They know how to work it better than the producers seem to sometimes. Travis Tritt was in there also, but as the moral center of the episode he didn’t have much opportunity to shine.

In some ways, it was a good example of what TFTC should be — over the top acting, a little gore, some laughs, and revenge.

Other Stuff:

• [1] Director Larry Wilson’s other credits are for writing 5 TFTCs, 1 AHP, The Addams Family, Beetlejuice, and The Little Vampire.  This guy just loves dead people.  He also wrote The Year Without Santa Claus . . . uh oh, where’s Santa?
• [2] Why is it called a Funeral Home?  The funeral does not happen there.  Hmm, I guess it does.  Wikipedia says it is just the ceremony connected to a burial.  I did not know that; but I bet Larry Wilson did.

On a dark and stormy night Ray Wells pulls into a run-down hotel.  He tells the owner his late father owned the ol’ Wells Place farm outside of town.  She says, “Some folks out there gonna be surprised to see you.”  He replies, “The place burned down 20 years ago. How could there be anyone in it?”  She whispers words of wisdom, “Let it be.”  She has seen lights and heard sounds, but never went near the place, fearing she might also smell smells.

Inexplicably, he decides to go to the property that night.  Or maybe he ate room service and watched an Ancient Aliens marathon all day like no one I know, and went the next night.  Anyhoo, it is the same or second consecutive dark and stormy night.  As he drives, he flashes back to the last time he saw his father.  Dangerously, the flashback is shown in a heads-up display on the windshield where visibility is already limited by rain and wipers.

A hot nurse tells his old father his son is there to see him.  The old man tells him he is leaving the farm to charity.  He says he is doing Ray a favor because the land is cursed.  So, f*** whatever charity he gave it to, I guess.^[3]  Ray is not happy to hear that.  He gets angry, but incredibly, it is not even clear whether he kills his father or gets him so riled up that he has a heart attack.  It is clear that he burns the will, though, so will inherit the farm bought by his father before his father bought the farm.

All this is projected on the windshield through the wipers and rain.  To be fair, it is a very nice composition, but it goes on for almost 4 freakin’ minutes.

Ray arrives at the farm and the house is intact.  He goes inside and finds the world’s dullest party.  There are balloons, but it is very dark.  The people are festively dressed, but morose.  This is the first party I have ever witnessed where I didn’t think the music was too loud.  Ray tells them all to get out.  He says his name is Ray Wells and this seems to wake them up.  The lights come on, the music starts, and people begin dancing.

A hot blonde, who chose not to go into nursing, offers Ray a drink.  While Josie is flirting with with him, Jake Busey asks her to dance.  He is sporting a blonde Rachel hairdo ^[1], which on the Busey family scale of weirdness, barely registers.  They duck away into a dark room and begin making out.  She says she has been waiting a long time for him to inherit this house.  They go upstairs, and we finally see she is dressed as a cheerleader.

They start stripping down.  Rachel Busey gets so worked up thinking about Ray and Josie that he runs upstairs and bursts into the room.  They start fighting, and Ray shoots him.  Josie won’t stop screaming so he suffocates her with a pillow.  He says, “You should have stopped screaming!” which I think even she would agree with if she weren’t dead.

Ray pours kerosyrup kerosene from a lantern over their bodies and down the stairs.  As he pulls out a lighter, Josie and Rachel reappear looking pre-burned.  They tell him about a party his father threw.  He had a similar fight with Rachel Busey and did burn the house down, killing 15 people.  The other guests parade by him, showing their scarred faces.

The crowd begins moaning.  As their volume increases, they menacingly advance on Ray. ^[2]  Finally they set him on fire.  Fine, but it was his father that killed them.  What did Ray do to deserve this?  Kill his father?  Inconclusive, plus they should love that.  Burned the will?  Hardly a hellable offense.  Anyway, they have been waiting for him, so the fire set by his father had to be the reason.  I like a good vengeance tale, but I can’t recall another episode where the sins of the father are avenged on the son.

Despite this glitch, the episode had some fun flourishes that kept it interesting.

Other Stuff:

• [1] BTW, there are worse ways to spend 5 minutes than Googling women’s hairstyles.  Ha-cha-cha!
• [2] This exact same moaning motif was used effectively in the 1960’s Twilight Zone episode The Obsolete Man.  Holy crap, by the same director 33 years earlier!
• [3] I’m kinda hoping it was 1-877-Kars4Kids because that jingle is eating my brain.
• This is the rare episode of any series covered here to have not a single Critic or User review posted on IMDb.
• This is the 3rd consecutive episode by the same writer.  C’mon, give someone else a chance!

The episode was the director’s only credit.  It was co-written by a guy with only one other credit.  It starred an actress with only 4 other TV credits that did not star her boyfriend.  And it was about an occupation which never translates well to the screen — radio ^[1]

It never had a chance, did it?  Well, yes it actually did.  The cast was rounded out by Wendie Malick and Miguel Ferrer who have both done a lot of fine work.  Unfortunately, both are stuck in roles that they are completely unsuited for.

Zapruder shot of the spittle. That is one magic loogie.

The episode begins like every TV show set in a radio station — in the dark ^[1].  Gary Grover is doing his radio show which is unbelievable in every way.  He is methodically narrating himself undressing a woman.  We get a close-up profile of his lips as he describes removing her shoes, her stockings, her underwear.  We are also treated to a couple of shots of spit flying out as he talks, for no reason.

The first question is, why is it dark at 8:57 in the morning?  The second is, WTF would listen to this awful show at 8:57 in the morning?  This isn’t like Howard Stern having fun interviewing porn-stars.  This is a humorless, sexual, role-playing show airing in the drive-time slot.  Is it him doing the role-playing every day?

Gary gets mad at his guest who is 1) inexplicably in the studio rather than on the phone, and 2) is a dumpy, middle aged woman totally misrepresented in the cut-away shots from Gary’s flapping lips. ^[2]  We learn that the 9 am on-air personality gets ten times Gary’s radio ratings, which is understandable until you see that it is Slash from Guns N’ Roses.

Gary’s sister Rita is the station manager which makes the lurid sexual nature of his show even creepier.  She is unable to fire him, so puts him on the graveyard shift and makes him take on a co-host.  He is not interested in working with her even after seeing she is a prim, hot blonde.  His new intro is:

Welcome to Grover’s Graveyard.  The show that gets you up from six feet under.

What does that even mean?  Co-host Valerie was hired at the same time as the slot change to improve the ratings.  She gets no mention in the new intro?  OK, I guess Graveyard is a reference to the time-slot.  But “six feet under” is clearly a graveyard reference, and his show has nothing to do with horror or the macabre.

Gary lethargically begins his dreadful show the same way he has always begun his sexual exploits — both on the radio and, I imagine, off — solo.  He lifelessly croaks, “Oh, you are so hot.  Can I take your shoe off?”  Do all of his monologues begin with shoes?  I can’t adequately express how truly awful Grover’s Graveyard is.  As he begins on the leg, Valerie jumps in.  Just as Rita expected, she immediately breathes life into the show,  Who would have thought sexy-talk would be better from a hot, young blonde than from an angry middle-aged bald guy?  Even Gary is energized.

Inexplicably, the next scenes have Valerie doing nothing but feeding Gary a few lines via keyboard.  After her great sexy, on-air debut she says nothing.  The script is baffling.  Gary isn’t holding her back; he is excited about the show again and sponsors are flooding back.  But she is just typing.

We do see her importance when she stops feeding him lines; he is an imbecile.  She wants the show to talk about things over than sex.  As he struggles for a topic, she suggests asking people what makes them angry.  She leads him on by typing AUTHORITY FIGURES, then MOTHER.

Gary begins ranting about his dead mother’s will.  “Did she leave me her Chicago station?  No.  Her Minneapolis station?  No.”  He says his mother only left him half of the small Lancaster station because she “wanted to keep me under her thumb even from beyond the grave”.  Or, more likely, because she didn’t want this talentless boob to bankrupt a station in a major market.  And if she hated him so much, why is his sister working in the same station?  Gary tears his mother’s watchful portrait off the wall, which was long overdue given the sexual nature of his show.

After he rants at length about his dead mother and hopes she’s in hell, Rita — apparently management also works the midnight to 6 shift — approaches the window.  She gives the finger across the throat signal.  Mom also had it in her will that no one could defame her on the air.  Rita can’t fire Gary, but does take him off the air.  This leads to a twist in the last 2 minutes that is silly, but welcome.

This is a rare TFTC with no supernatural element and thus no reason for being.  Gary and his show are so repulsive that you hate them far more than dramatically necessary.  Wendie Malick is fine, but a TFTC episode should have used her comedic chops.  The whole episode is just dreary.

Other Stuff:

• [1] Except NewsRadio and WKRP.
• [2] Oh, you say the sexy body in the cutaways represents the radio listeners’ imagination?  Were they also rapturously imagining Gary’s big ol’ spittle-flicking lips?
• Title Analysis:  In the Groove would only make sense if they played music on the station; and were 60 years old.

Clyde, like all guys named Clyde, is a criminal.  Being chased by guys with dogs, he runs to the door of an old gothic mansion deep down in Louisiana close to New Orleans. Although, to be fair, he started in Louisiana, so that part is no big deal.

An old woman lets him in.  He says the sheriff is after him for fooling around with his young daughter.  In no time, the sheriff is at the door with a different story.  He says Clyde “is a killer.  He preys on old people like yourself!”  Strange things were afoot at the Circle-K and a man died after a fight with Clyde.

This one hinges completely on the twist, so I hate to give it away.  The gothic setting is entirely irrelevant — the episode could have taken place anywhere.  I’m no judge of accents, but Rachel Ticotin seem to pull it off much better than D.B. Sweeney.  There really is no plot, but more of a device.  And it is a good one, but a little obscured by the trappings.

A few minutes into the episode, it seemed obvious where it was going.  I was baffled why Teller (of Penn & Teller) would have been involved in such a mundane story.  But it became perfectly clear as the episode went on.  There is a trick, a gag, a prop — there is probably a magic term for it — a McGuffin?  used that sits right in the middle of those titular stairs.  It put an unexpected twist on what seemed to be an old story.  That is Penn & Teller in a nutshell.  Then that narrative is completely subverted by a surprise ending.

Sadly, although Rachel Ticotin and R. Lee Ermey in a cameo are very good, the setting and accents just didn’t land for me.  Also, making Clyde a killer was pointless.  The off-screen murder was not emphasized enough to make me want to see Clyde killed for it.  The ending didn’t have the irony that would have existed if he was just fooling around with the sheriff’s young daughter.  But maybe death would have been too harsh a comeuppance for that crime.  Depends on how young, I guess.

However, the twist employed is so interesting that I am still thinking about it.  Rachel’s explanation of it accompanied by illustrations along the stairway in oil and other viscous liquids is also clever.  It’s too bad the opening TFTC Magazine cover gives away part of the surprise.

Footnotes:

• Rachel Ticotin had the funniest line in Total Recall.  The original, not the remake which was ruined, like every movie with Colin Farrell’s presence, by Colin Farrell’s presence.

After a first viewing, this seemed pretty good, but not quite great.  Watching it again, I am baffled by my reservation.  It is simply one of the best episodes of the series.  Before I watched the episode, my expectations were high:

IMDb description:  A happy housewife is pitted against three CIA agents, who have come to kill her husband, a supposed rogue agent.

Wow, Die Hard in the home!  Great premise.  Maybe not technically “from the Crypt”, but enough over the top gore could have qualified it.  I envisioned a Home Alone series of Rube Goldberg devices, brutal accidental kills, and domestic mayhem by a kill-at-home mom like Ma Peltzer in Gremlins.

Shelley Hack

Briefly a beautiful Charlie’s Angel, sexy in classic Charlie Perfume ads, and stunning in countless other productions with the word Charlie ^[1] in them.  I have remembered her for 25 years as an evil submarine commander in the pilot of SeaQuest DSV.  The show quickly became unwatchable for many reasons; killing her off in the pilot was one of them.  She was also in The King of Comedy where she was beautiful and classy, although that might have been because every other character was repulsive. ^[3]  So I was prepared to love this.

Jonathan Banks

Mike Ehrmantraut has become such an iconic grizzled character on Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul that it’s hard to believe he was ever young (or, at 46 here, younger).  I looked forward to seeing him in something from 25 years ago.

William Sadler

Always solid.  He has been in a ton of great movies and TV shows — a fine Outer Limits, Shawshank Redemption, etc.  He was no Hans Gruber, but was a memorable villain as what’s-his-name in the underrated Die Hard 2.  He was even in the very first TFTC episode, The Man Who Was Death; and he was the actor who was Death in Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey.

Corey Feldman

Er, maybe not so much now, but this was 25 years ago.  I was expecting the Stand by Me era, but this was 8 years later.

Chelsea Field

I think I confused her with someone else, so this one’s on me.

Janet McKay is the ideal, adoring 1950s housewife.  Even better, this is 1994.    She cooks a nice breakfast for her husband and gets him off; to work, I mean.  She returns home from the grocery store wearing an adorable little dress and finds a less adorable woman in her kitchen.  She says she is a CIA agent and tells Janet her husband was a contract killer.  Qu’est-ce que c’est.

After Agent Simone knocks Shelley out, they are joined by clean-up crew Todd (the formerly adorable Corey Feldman) and William (the futurely adorable Jonathan Banks).  They tell Shelley her husband was a notorious hitman and that they are here to kill him so he doesn’t embarrass the president (back when that was possible). ^[4]

When they give his name and show her a picture, though, Shelley assures them they have the wrong man.  Simone roughly shakes her in a nice POV shot and shouts, “He’s changed his appearance you stupid cow!  He’s changed his face, he’s changed his hair!  He’s a Hollywood actor! a new man!”  Unfortunately, the hitman went for the Hollywood trifecta ^[5] and also got his teeth fixed so was tracked through his dental records.

Todd takes Shelley downstairs to kill her.  After a seduction scene with equal amounts of creepiness and humor (your wokeness may vary), Todd ends up dead thanks to Shelley’s quick thinking and a treadmill.  That exercise equipment is dangerous, I tells ya.

When Todd doesn’t return, Simone goes to the basement stairs.  It is a little muddled what happens next.  Shelley has Todd’s gun, and the ladies fire at each other.  They both miss because one of them breaks a heel.  It is poorly edited, but I believe Simone was wearing the grey this evening; plus, she tumbles down the stairs.  However, Shelley falls also, but maybe she was dodging a bullet.  After a brief, leggy tussle, Simone grabs Todd’s gun which Shelley had dropped 1) into an open can of paint, 2) in this otherwise immaculate basement, and 3) which had been left open just long enough to congeal just enough to prop up the gun.  When Shelley runs away, Simone fires with the paint can still on the muzzle.  The director cuts away quickly, but we are led to believe she was killed in an explosive backfire; deadly, albeit in lovely Sherwin-Williams Rhapsody Lilac.

Shelley runs upstairs and dispatches William quickly and viciously.  Just when you think she is safe, Simone reappears less dead and less lilacky than I expected.

The twist that follows is Ludacris, and maybe that’s what bothered me on the first viewing.  However, in the TFTC style (the ideal, not what it sometimes lapses into), it makes complete sense.  The still goofier, winking epilog even comes across as reasonable and charming (thanks to Ms. Hack).

Of course, Shelley Hack was great.  I never understood why she wasn’t a bigger star.  The others were also very good in their roles.  That includes, to my surprise, Corey Feldman.  I’m convinced he could still come back big given the chance.  Unfortunately, William Sadler appeared only in the Cryptkeeper segment.

So I guess it took a second viewing to get into the spirit of the episode.  Final rating: Excellent.  Maybe I should Give Ray Bradbury Theater another chance.

Footnotes:

• [1] Charlie?  Why does a perfume have a man’s name? ^[2]  OK, could be short for Charlene, but how many sexy Charlene’s have you ever known?  Plus, in 1973, the Viet Nam War was still fresh in everyone’s mind — why name your product after the enemy.  Just lucky it wasn’t released after VJ Day, I guess.
• [2] I see on Wiki that it was named after the founder of Revlon.  What kind of controlling, egomaniacal dude names a woman’s product after himself?  What a douche — oh, sorry Dr. Masengill.
• [3] I forgot the nice woman Rupert dragged to Jerry’s house.
• [4] The president when this episode aired was Bill Clinton, so this comment is really a perennial.
• [5] Boob jobs lead to a Superfecta for women.  Could be even more, but who wants to deal with the bleach?