Drew Barrymore is in bed screaming. Unfortunately, this is 1986, not 1996; and she is reading a copy of Tales from the Crypt.
Unlike her real childhood, she apparently has parents in this episode. Her mother sends 11 year old Drew to get some ice cream. To avoid a DUI, she takes her bike. She rides through the standard ET / Poltergeist neighborhood of the type that you won’t be seeing much more of on RBT (i.e. American).
We see her buying ice cream at Baskin-Robbins, which is probably product placement by Dairy Queen. She is next reading her TFTC inside a construction pipe. This is another shot of the type that you will not be seeing much more of on RBT — well composed and executed. But what happened to the ice cream? Oh, the humanity!
She faintly hears a woman screaming and goes into the woods to investigate. The sound seems to be coming from underground. Drew is spooked and rushes home. She runs into the kitchen screaming, “There’s a woman screaming! A screaming woman!” Her mother blames it on the pulps she is reading, and the cocaine. Her father says if she cleans her plate, he will go back with her to check it out. So either a) he doesn’t believe her, or 2) he does believe her, but is leaving the woman in peril until Drew finishes her supper and has a smoke.
Drew and her father go back to the woods after dinner, but there is no sign or sound of the woman. Undeterred, she finds a couple of shovels and recruits her dippy friend Chubby, no her chubby friend Dippy, to help. They go back to the woods. They start digging, but before they get far, the owner of the land, Mr. Kelly, chases them off.
Drew decides it is probably Mrs. Nesbitt screaming. Her parents had talked about how much the Nesbitts fight. They also said it had been quiet lately. She goes to the Nesbitt’s house and Mr. Nesbitt answers the door. She nervously makes up a story about Mrs. Nesbitt offering to give her the recipe for peach pie.
Mr. Nesbitt asks her to come inside and wait. Drew not only goes into house of the murder suspect who is swilling scotch, she tells him about the titular screaming woman on Mr. Kelly’s land. He chuckles nervously and says, “You certainly have a weird imagination. How about a drink?” When he goes to the kitchen to get the vodka, she gets scared and runs back to the woods.
Yada yada, Drew goes back home, hums a song Mrs. Nesbitt wrote, and returns to the woods. That night, her father remembers where he heard that song, then finds her bed is empty. Mr. Nesbitt attacks her in the woods. Her father heroically shows up and brains him. The cops start digging.
Sure enough, they find a large wooden crate, larger than a casket. They open it up, and after a few seconds, fingers appear grasping the side. Yea! Drew has saved the day!
Not to nitpick, but that must not have been the first scotch Mr. Nesbitt drank that week:
- So he kills his wife; let’s even give him the benefit of the doubt and say it was premeditated. He built or bought this big-ass crate in preparation. Didn’t his wife question what it was for? Maybe that was the trigger — “You spent $300 on a big-ass crate, you idiot?”
- After killing her, he hauled this giant crate out to the woods by himself with no one seeing him? Or when he bought it, did he tell Home Depot [1] to deliver it to the woods?
- Why not just wrap her in a carpet or blanket? That big box would store way too much oxygen. Scorpio didn’t leave his victim that much air.
Which wouldn’t have been a problem if, ya know, he had not done such a half-assed job of killing her.- Why dump her body on Mr. Kelly’s land? Seeing how he quickly caught Drew and Dippy, he clearly keeps an eye on it.
- And, as I am tired of pointing out every few episodes: A dumpy middle-aged guy is not going bury a 3 x 3 x 6 box a few feet down without a backhoe.
- Most nit-picky of all, there was no sign of fresh digging, or a 3 x 3 x 6 pile of displaced earth. Maybe he had a second 3 x 3 x 6 crate that he put the dirt into and carried it away on his f***n’ back.
But none of this matters in a good episode; and this was a good episode. It really doesn’t take much to satisfy me. Drew Barrymore was not a natural young actress, but she really does light up and energize a scene. I got the sense that the director knew exactly what to do with her, too.
Further kudos to the director for some good locations and imaginative shots. Much of this was probably due to higher budgets in RBT’s first season. Still, I think he transcended what he was given. Good stuff.
Other Stuff:
- [1] Or maybe Crate & Barrel, heyyyooooo!
- The episode is strangely bookended with unnecessary (but not necessarily unwelcome) vignettes. In the opening, Bradbury does some acting as he leaves his “magician’s workshop” in search of a story.
- There is a scene at the end in which Drew mentions Mrs. Goodbody and some boys raising giant mushrooms in their cellars. I take this as a cryptic reference to the future RBT episode Boys! Raise Giant Mushrooms in Your Cellar! How very Lost-ian to lay the groundwork for a future episode. Maybe there was supposed to be a Ray Bradbury Expanded Universe.
- These first season episodes have ranged from OK to pretty good, so I’m not sure why I bailed on the series. I think it might have had to do with the next episode which I recall as being dreadful.
- See you in September!
The last time I watched an 
The tape finds its way to reporter Judy Warren of the TV show Hot 
The General says satellites detected an EMP two days ago when Josh healed the girl. Tonight when the cabin exploded, the EMP knocked out the satellites. The General has him strapped to a gurney. When they begin torturing him, he explodes into a light show that gives each person a different vision. When they find out he is some kind of uber-man that might have some answers as to why we are here, or the key to living in peace on earth, the government decides he has to be killed.
As she approaches her hometown, local dipshit Lance pulls out onto the highway in his red ’57 Chevy [1] to harrass her. This is right before the directing credit for foreign dipshit Roger Vadim. [2] How long was Lance waiting there for her? Was he also laying in wait last year for the 20th anniversary reunion which ya might think she would have been more likely to attend? Well, I guess she RSVP’d, but that still must have been a long day just awaitin’ for her to drive by. He recklessly pulls ahead of her taking the most absurd hairpin turn in the US, speeding toward town.
Lance spins his car to a stop and offers Claudia a drink from a flask. They find an old barn where they can have a roll in the hay, and see scrawled onto the wall “CLAUDIA SUCKS” which must be pretty encouraging to Lance. They start making out and the jealous sheriff shows up. Claudia plays the celebrity edition of do-you-know-who-I-am-now? that so endears famous, rich, privileged idiots to middle America. Nice work making the low-life sheriff sympathetic, Vadim.
Lance seems threatening at that moment, but I am confused when he produces a pink dress. Where did that come from? They are at Lance’s place. Did she wear that to the prom with his dad? If so, cheers if she can still fit in it; but jeers for Lance banging his father’s prom-date.
Courtney Masterson is making out with 21 years younger Peg, perhaps as over-compensation for having a girl’s name. They are at a Lover’s Lane overlooking the city. Rudy Stickney approaches the car, pointing a flashlight and a gun in their eyes. He forces them out of the car and nabs Courtney’s 
Courtney drives back to Peg’s apartment. He had a chance to reveal Rudy to a cop stopped beside him at a light, but did not. He sees Peg to the door, realizing he’s not going to get the kind of junk in the trunk he had anticipated tonight. He drives Rudy back up to Lover’s Lane. And by the way, this is the biggest f*ing car I’ve ever seen in my life.
The ending just doesn’t seem worthy of what preceded it.[1]
Six year old Megan McDowell comes downstairs to her parents watching TV. She says, “Daddy, I’m scared. There’s a man in my room.” Actually, I think it would have been more realistic for her to be shrieking, “Daddy, there’s a man in my room!” The scared part would have been implied. Show, don’t tell.
Jeff suddenly flashes back to a past he did not have — he is in a swamp, under fire in Viet Nam. His first instincts are to take off his helmet, throw his rifle aside, and give away their position by screaming like a maniac — so maybe he was right to go to Canada. He quickly returns to his very patient wife.
Denise died young in Jeff-2’s timeline. Ya might think that would be used to validate Jeff-1’s choice, but nothing really is done with it. Jeff-1 has a random idea that by holding hands, they can exchange memories, giving Jeff-2 some happier ones to cling to. From there it gets new agey and kumbaya in the way that caused such damage to this TZ reboot.