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Night Visions – After Life (08/02/01)

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nvafterlife05Michael Doyle (Randy Quaid) is lying in a casket with his eyes wide open.  He can’t be laying in the casket because he is dead.

The mortician says his eyes keep popping open.  Since this is supposed to be a closed-casket service, he isn’t too worried about that.  His assistant does that thing characters always do on TV — the thing where they move their whole hand down the face of the corpse, and afterward the eyes are closed.  I’ve always been pretty dubious of that. Does the hand really get down in those eye sockets?  Wouldn’t it be much simpler to do the 2-finger method?

It seems to work, at least for a while.  As his daughter Kaitlin is saying a few dull, dull words at his service, the casket begins to rock.  A few moments later, Doyle flips open the lid, sits up in the casket, and unsteadily climbs out.

nvafterlife09His daughter is thrilled to see him and gives him a big hug.  His wife Natalie just seems stunned, or maybe she had already used his insurance for a deposit on a Beemer [1]. BTW, kudos for him getting out to reveal a backless suit jacket.  Is that how corpses are buried?  What would be the reason?  Doesn’t the family supply the suit?  By that logic, why would he have pants at all?  But it just feels right.  Ezra Thornberry would be proud.

Natalie tells him this has given them a 2nd chance, and that she regrets that they were about to separate.  He responds, “When I look at you, all I can see is the rotting flesh that is to come.”  Hey, pal — you were the one buried without the benefit of formaldehyde!

At their first post-funeral family dinner, Doyle’s daughter is thrilled that her prayers were answered.  She planned the meal with all his favorites.  Unfortunately, when he takes a bite, he gags.  Illustrating the general ineptness of this series, a point is made twice about the amount of garlic in the meal.  Any genre fan would immediately interpret his reaction to the garlicky meal as indicating he was a vampire.  Yet, there is no indication of vampirism before or after.  Doyle even says his reaction is because the food tastes like dirt.  I like that even though I could quibble that this is also off-base because he was never actually put in the ground.  Bringing garlic into the scene, however, just muddles the story.  Geez, the previous scene was an extended shot of him in a mirror.  No one is thinking vampire!

nvafterlife03Doyle just asks to left alone and goes out on the balcony to stare out at the city.  After the gals go to sleep, he cuts up pictures, magazines, and wallpaper to make a collage of himself standing in a psychedelic landscape.  When his daughter wakes up, he finally gets animated, telling her that is where he went when he died.  Much like Season Six Buffy, he doesn’t understand why he was brought back from this paradise.

Doyle finally concludes that he was brought back from the dead to take Kaitlin back with him.  To illustrate this, he adds a picture of her to the collage.  The lousy quality of the YouTube video might be to blame, but the picture he uses looks much more like Natalie than Kaitlin.  Doyle attempts to accomplish this by dragging his terrified daughter out onto the balcony.  He pulls her up on the parapet of the building and they do a little cha cha as she screams in terror.

I have no particular fear of heights, but this scene really grabbed me.  Whether it was Kaitlin’s performance, or Doyle’s bizarre actions, it truly was suspenseful.  The series seems a little afraid to commit, so not surprisingly, Kaitlin is saved by her mother and Doyle falls to his 2nd death.

nvafterlife04They tried something strange with his fall.  It is one of the worst special effects I’ve ever seen, but I’m not sure if it might not have been intentional.  It begins with him looking 2-dimensional like the picture in his collage, but it is a different pose (more of the series’ lack of focus — why use that effect and a different pose?).  Then it becomes a really unnatural green-screen.  They could have done more to tie this to the collage, but really it seemed pointless as it was.

There is a sort of twist at the end.  It is an interesting cap to the story, but lacks any sort of shock, irony or relevance to the episode’s main theme.

Despite the bitching and moaning (mine, I mean), I did enjoy it.  Seeing a young, healthy Randy Quaid was nice, and his daughter was good.  Just some poor choices hold the episode back from living up to their performances.

Post-Post:

  • [1] Technically Beemer refers to a motorcycle.  The term for a BMW automobile is Bimmer.
  • Natalie (Susan Gibney) played Leah Brahms on Star Trek TNG.
  • Susan Gibney is fine as Natalie, but her daughter is really effective in some scenes.  Strangely, even though she seems to be about 14, she dresses like a 1980’s MBA.
  • OK, this was really only true on the close-ups, but seriously, she did wear the same clothes for days.

Night Visions – Rest Stop (08/02/01)

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nvreststop1Vicki, Sara, Tim and other guy are trucking along for a camping weekend.  Inexplicably, Sara pulls over to offer a ride to a hitchhiker.  She thinks Andy the hitchhiker is cute, so maybe other guy is her brother.  Or maybe Tim is her brother and other guy is just some other guy.  I’m really not interested enough to diagram this out.

They pull into the titular Rest Area.  While Vicki goes to see a man about a racehorse, Sara checks out a swap meet.  Andy picks up a bracelet and tells Sara it would look nice on her.  Uh, am I the only one here who thinks this thing is made of teeth?  Am I the only one here?  ECHO Echo echo . . .

When the gang comes out of the shitters, they see that the swap meet was also a swipe meet and they have made off with our heroes’ car.  Yellow-hat guy goes back in and is attacked after taking a drink directly from the faucet in the Men’s Room.  Sara and Andy find that he has been paralyzed, but really how long could he have survived after that grotesque act?  At least the scene established that he was Chuck.  So, we know the other guy is Tim, and I’m pretty sure Tim and Vicki are siblings.

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World’s worst tanning bed

Tim and Vicki try to flag down a passing car for help, but the car nearly runs them over.  Then the driver chases them through the woods.  Now there’s a guy who knows who to treat hitchhikers. Only Vicki makes it back to the Rest Stop.  She quickly disappears.  As Sara searches for her, she finds a trap door in the floor and goes exploring.

Sara finds Vicki paralyzed in the world’s worst tanning bed.  Chuck is there also and seems to have been given a full-body Brazilian.  No idea what happened to Tim.  Andy shows up, but turns out to be one of the swap meet gang.

The gang does a little surgery to come up with material for their arts & crafts.  They cut off Sara’s hair to make a scarf.  Hey, there’s Tim — they cut a loop of skin from his upper arm to make a . . . thing . . . but worth $50 because it has Tim’s tattoo on it.

I think a lot of the problem here is the bad transfer again.  It has many good elements. The cast is good, once I figured out who was who.  Who isn’t creeped out by Rest Stops?  The gang was suitable creepy with their piercings and dreadlocks.

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Real rest stop horrors

Post-Post:

  • Katherine Isabelle (Vicki) starred in Genre Snaps Ginger Snaps.
  • Jerry O’Connell (Andy) was the fat kid in Stand by Me.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents – The Crooked Road (10/26/58)

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ahpcrookedroad1Harry and Mrs. Adams are cruising down the highway when they close in a police car creeping along at 48. Hey, that doesn’t mean a MAXIMUM of 50, you idiots!  Oh, wait.  Rather than move at this glacial pace for 10 miles, Harry rockets past them at 57 MPH.

After a few seconds, the police car turns on the siren and pulls close behind them.  To be fair, Adams should have slowed and pulled over even if he didn’t think the siren tolled for thee.  The police car cuts them off, forcing the Adams family truckster onto some rocks.

I’m not sure Walter Matthau pulled off being a believable redneck southern sheriff, but he did create an awesome character.  He had the drawl, what we now call passive-aggressive language, the arrogance of power, small gestures, and an attitude guaranteed to infuriate anyone dealing with him.  Which is just playing into his hands.

ahpcrookedroad5Adams mouths off and Matthau orders him to follow the police car back to town.  Unfortunately, the Adams car is stuck on the rocks.  What luck, a tow truck shows up almost like this was planned.

Of course, the tow-truck driver doubles as a mechanic and both of them ream Adams on their services.  Then they are taken to the Justice of the Peace who doubles as the judge, and they both ream Adams on the fines and court costs.

However, in the end, justice is done.  I think the Justice of the Peace is also done; and his little sheriff too.

This was awesome, kind of a greatest hits package on both sides of the screen.  Although not directed by Hitchcock, it contains two of his recurring themes: fear of the police, and a man falsely accused.  Mixed with my own respect for the police but general disgust and distrust of the government, this created a science project Mt. Vesuvius for me.

ahpcrookedroad6At first I thought the beginning had been a cheat, but in reviewing it they were pretty slick on the dialogue. Kudos for not blatantly trying to trick the audience in the pre-VOD days. Also, at 39 episodes a year, how were there ever any reruns?

I rate this one 100 MPH.

 

Post-Post:

  • AHP Deathwatch:  The tow-truck driver is still with us.
  • Title Analysis: AHP doesn’t usually go in for the clever titles.  Well played on this one, however.
  • The IMDb Plot Summary refers to Matthau and also the entire town as corrupt rednecks.  Guess that’s still OK.
  • Hulu sucks.

Twilight Zone S4 – Printer’s Devil (02/28/63)

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tzprintersdevil06Even though Rod Serling is revered as a master writer in TV’s alleged golden age, and certainly was the creative force behind The Twilight Zone, some of the other contributors really could write circles around him.  Maybe it was just the volume of scripts he was committed to cranking out.  In just the first few seconds here I was amazed at how real these characters were, and at the little pieces of throwaway business.  The papers on the desk, searching for a cigarette, a broken chair, a “circulation” pun, and use of the word gloomcookie.[1]  Just great at establishing a world and two likable characters.

Owner Douglas Winter is struggling to make ends meet at The Dansburg Courier.  He is interrupted by his supportive girlfriend Jackie.  They are interrupted by Andy the linotype man.  Unfortunately, Andy has not been paid in 8 weeks and the greedy bastard is quitting to take a paying gig.  Winter reaches in his desk and pulls out a bottle of scotch to calm him down.  This is in the era when a reporter kept scotch and cigarettes in their desk, not pictures of the president with little hearts all over them.

tzprintersdevil20Andy knows the paper is unlikely to survive now that the big, bad Gazette has moved into town.  Even worse, Andy is going to work for them.  Jackie really chews him out, but Winter understands.  After they leave, Winter compares that day’s Courier to the Gazette. Both have as their main story the mayor’s daughter winning a beauty contest. Only The Gazette suggests there might have been fraud involved.  Frankly I would subscribe to The Gazette over The Courier too.  The Gazette is also tarted up with more pictures and larger headlines like USA Today.  Meanwhile The Courier’s front page looks as interesting and as doomed as a phonebook.

Winter drives out to a country bridge, scotch still in hand.  As he prepares to throw himself off the bridge, he is approached by Mr. Smith (TZ 4-timer and Rocky 3-timer Burgess Meredith).  He requests a ride back to town.  As Smith lights his awesomely twisted cigar with tzprintersdevil10his flaming finger, we get the idea he might not be just another angel on the bridge.

Smith finally succeeds in getting Winter to put down the bottle by joining him at a bar.  Winter has run up a tab of Normian proportions, but Smith happily picks up the tab. As the waitress walks away he awesomely comments, “She moves fast for a big one.” Smith claims to be a newspaperman and offers to work for free as a linotype operator and reporter.

Winter and Smith go back to The Courier where Jackie has apparently returned to do some important midnight filing.  Smith not only plays the linotype machine like a piano, he has a nose for news and $5,000 in his pocket to keep the paper afloat.

tzprintersdevil13Smith has a knack for having stories reported, written and typeset immediately after they happen or even sooner — a feat similar to current reporters who also use pre-written stories, although theirs are handed to them by politicians, lobbyists, activists, and corporate PR departments.

His scoops bring attention to The Courier.  Smith even starts hawking papers on the street in his spare time.  Circulation triples!  The Gazette even offers to buy The Courier.  Eyebrows are raised when Smith reports a fire at The Gazette even as the firetrucks are heading to the scene.

Finally, halfway through the episode Smith reveals what was obvious all along — that he is the devil.  Writer Charles Beaumont was wise not saving this until the end since the audience was already hip.  He is also very deft in how the devil maneuvers Winter into signing away his soul.  In just a few sentences, Beaumont deflects two tropes which are too common in The Twilight Zone: The blatant last-second twist, and people not reacting as a real person would.  It is also pleasant to hear conversations rather than speeches.

tzprintersdevil16Smith goes on reporting tragic story after story, always minutes after they occur.  He has rigged the linotype machine so that now any story it prints will come true in the future.  He uses this to coerce Winter into giving his soul up earlier than planned. Winter outsmarts him with his own device, however, resulting in a happy ending for him and the newspaper; at least until the internet is invented.

Once again, Season 4 exceeds expectations.  Maybe that is because Charles Beaumont wrote 4 of the 9 episodes I’ve watched so far.  He has tended toward happy endings even if not by conventional standards of happiness.  The main characters, all men so far, are able to escape from an isolated life or to get a second chance.  Whether this escapism was a conscious choice related to Beaumont’s own troubled life, who knows.

Post-Post:

  • [1] No idea if this is the first use of the word.  All the Google entries I’m willing to scan at 3 am refer to a more recent comic book.
  • Of course, The TZ theme is iconic.  But to get the full effect, wake up and listen to it through a good pair of speakers at 3 am.  Black & Decker wishes they could make a drill that good.

Harbinger Down (2015)

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In June 1982, a Russki spacecraft is burning up on re-entry and makes a 3-point swish shot, never touching the Arctic Rim.

Then to current-day Alaska.  One of the reasons I clicked on this movie was the cover which had a nice, clean design and an attractive bluish tint.  Holy crap did they go overboard with the blue tint.  Think of the green tint in The Matrix — it was only subtly noticeable and you got used to it.  This opening of this movie looks like it was shot through a bottle of Windex.

Stephen, Sadie and Ronnell hook up with the titular Harbinger captained by Lance Henriksen.  The trio is tracking a pod of whales that have been tagged.  One of the crew tells them that research grants are nothing but white people’s government cheese.  This is from a guy nicknamed “Dock” because he used to live under one.  Seriously. Whatever it is that is going to do the killing in this joint, please start with this idiot.

While Ronnell is sleeping and Stephen is yopping, Sadie bundles up and goes up on the deck of the crab boat.  They spot something shaped like a Russki spacecraft which is attracting the whales.  So naturally, they haul it on-board.

harbinger04Ronnell is the first to notice that they are getting no cellphone service.  Being a thousand miles from a cell tower might to be blame.  Maybe they should have sprung for a satellite phone.  Sadly, she is not the least respectable of the group.  Stephen is a douche-bag determined to steal credit for the find.

Sadie nabs a Russki member of the crew and inspects the spacecraft while Stephen is distracted by a crew-member playing him like a harp.  They find the crewman still remarkably well-preserved for having spent 30 years in the ocean.  Short time later, however, it is discovered that the body is missing and a giant raw oystery-looking snot-ball kills a crewman.  Thus bringing us to the Alien portion of our program, where the crew must pursue the monster and get picked off one by one.  But that’s not a bad thing.

Shockingly, the first to go is not Dock, but is the even more unlikable Stephen.  He does not get a chestburster scene, but does get a pretty awesome backburster scene.  Unfortunately, the actor looks too much like Andy Bernard from The Office and it makes it a little hard to take the scene totally seriously.  To be fair, I’m not sure it is intended to be totally serious.

harbinger07And so the picking-off begins.  But it is not as dreary and mechanical as one might fear.  there are surprises and tentacles, teeth, and slime.

It ain’t no Alien, but then neither was Prometheus.  It floats in that middle ground, better than SyFy and Asylum, but not worth seeing in a theater.  The casting is better than the acting — I really enjoyed everyone except for the miscast Nard-Dawg.  Dock was annoying, but at least he was a character.  Even the order of deaths is not what I expected.

The plot and score are entirely adequate, and the creature is nicely unconventional and not CGI.  I doubt it was intended even on a satirical level, but the biggest horror was that it frequently reminded me of pink slime.

I feel like this was 90 minutes well-spent.

Post-Post:

  • On Rotten Tomatoes, this film has a rating of 50% from critics and 25% from normal people.  I suspect this is due to the film’s heavy endorsement of global warming.  The quality of the film doesn’t matter as much as sticking to the state-sanctioned narrative.
  • It is also noted that the Russki chick says she “can see Alaska from my house.” It’s a pretty funny twist on the misquoted line, but clearly also pandering to the left.

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