They were apparently as determined to use a naughty word as Marvel was to have the tortured acronym SHIELD. Or congress the USA PATRIOT Act.
Bad Language – Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
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Tales From the Crypt – Came the Dawn (11/17/93)
The episode begins with a prolonged close-up of a nameless smoking hot blonde (interrupted by a pan to her rack). Blonde, sophisticated, well-dressed and well-coiffed with a mischievous wink. Then we see her in the shitter.
But that’s OK too, as she is using the alone-time to practice her “o-sounds” for later that night. Someone enters the restroom and cuts off the light. When the blonde complains, the stall door flies open and she is attacked with an axe.
Roger is driving home and stops to help a woman whose pickup has broken down. Because a) it is raining, b) the buses have stopped running for the night, c) Roger owns a nearby cabin, d) his marriage is on the rocks, and e) the stranded motorist is Brooke Shields, he offers his cabin to her. But mostly “e”.
Tipping his hand a little, Roger stops off at a small store in the mountains to buy some oysters. This doesn’t strike me as a place that would have fresh seafood, so maybe he is going for mountain oysters. Maybe they do stock oysters, because this log cabin of a store also carries Cristal Champagne. The clerk — the always fun Michael J. Pollard — catches Roger up on the local news — a stolen truck and a woman hacked to bits in a restaurant.
At the cabin, Brooke puts on some fancy clothes. Downstairs, Roger says he wants to put something on her that belonged the Catherine the Great. I was thinking a saddle, but the kinky stuff comes later. It is a necklace.
Over dinner, he asks her why she stole the truck. She says she stole the truck to come looking for her cheating husband and that she “took care of” the bimbo. Seconds later, Brooke is tying Roger’s wrists to the bedposts. Darn the luck, his wife shows up before he can do any rogering, so he hustles Brook out onto the balcony.
The ending is a nice couple of twists and backed by soaring opera that gets crazier and the story gets crazier. It is all over-the-top good fun as TFTC should be. There is a minor quibble with some logistics involving the door, but why dwell on that?
Michael J. Pollard really has nothing to do, but just showing up makes the episode more fun. Perry King starts off solid and ends up great. And Brooke Shields has always been misunderestimated — she’s just great here as the flannel-wearing thief.
This is a good one.
Post-Post:
- Title Analysis: Good episode, but another pathetic title — unless the girl practicing her orgasms in the restaurant bathroom was named Dawn.
Tales of Tomorrow – World of Water (05/23/52)
Last week we began at the Bureau of Scientific Investigation; this week we begin at the similarly generic Department of Agricultural Research. As they both seem to be located in the Capitol, we can assume they are up to no good.
Lane is studying a map of the 48 United States. He calls Les Nelson in to have a chat about the search for Dr. Kramer. They flash back to their last encounter. In his boarding room, Kramer is ladling sand into a beaker testing his discovery to turn to sand to water, or else making the world’s driest martini.
His much younger neighbor Nicki stops by to pick up tickets he promised her. She complains about how hard waitressing is on her feet. Kramer suggests “someday you will not have to be a waitress. Maybe someday it will be somebody who will be serving you. Somebody who will be happy to do things for you.” Yeah, that’s the vibe I get at Arby’s. They’re f***ing thrilled to serve me. [1]
Nicki thinks that is unlikely and complains about the seats Kramer got — not near enough to the front for her. She is clearly using the old fool for the gifts, but is at least honest enough to say this to his face.
Nelson knocks, breaking up the loveless-fest. He is trying to recruit Kramer to make “murder weapons.” To be fair, in his old country, the government took his work, used it kill thousands and threw him in a concentration camp. So I can understand him being leery of getting involved in a criminal enterprise like the US Government.
Nelson looks over Kramer’s bucket of sand and tub of water. He asks if this is related to Kramer’s theory on diatomic water even though Occam’s Razor would have suggested sand castles. Nelson has heard that the diatomic water could dissolve any substance on earth, so maybe inventing something to store it in should have been the first step.
Nicki returns and tells Kramer he was crazy not to go to work with Nelson. After all, she says to his face, it would enable him to buy her more gifts. He asks Nicki to travel with him, maybe even get married. She warns him that anyone marrying her would have to have a lot of money as she has expensive tastes. She continues to taunt Kramer about his age, his lack of employment, his experiments — at this point, I was wishing this was an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
He gets angry with her, telling that a “counter-girl” should be thrilled to marry Dr. Franz Kramer. He is giving this cocktease a little too much credit as she hasn’t worked her way up from waitress to counter-girl yet. He shows her his miracle solvent that could make him financially solvent if he just sold it. He tosses in lab equipment — which in the 1950’s naturally included an ashtray — which she watches dissolve in the liquid. To be fair, he does mention that the giant beaker is made of the only substance immune to diatomic water, and only he knows the secret.
Lane and Nelson learn that Boston, New Haven, Baltimore and now Philadelphia are now underwater, and not just from corruption and lavish government pensions. They can’t quite figure out what connects them. I wonder . . .
When Kramer learns his niece has been killed in an atomic blast, he cracks up. He promises “they are going to pay!” Then he vanished. Like Nicki. I wonder . . .
Lane and Nelson get an update that new pools have formed in Atlantic City, Wilmington and Scranton. This leads Lane to proclaim that the floods are moving inland! Well, I’ll give you Scranton, but Wilmington is pretty close to the ocean and Atlantic City has a bloody boardwalk on the ocean. Christ, did no one on this show own an atlas? Or finish 6th grade?
They find Dr. Kramer sitting outside Lane’s office. Inexplicably Lane just goes on his merry way; well, as merry as possible, given the destruction of 5 great cities and Baltimore. Kramer takes responsibility for the disasters, but has a demand, which he doesn’t ever actually demand.
The police interview anyone who knew him. Sadly, they begin with Nicki who I hoped had been liquefied. His landlady correctly speculates that the death of his niece set him off. Lane rants that Kramer must be found or we risk the entire earth being submerged. “This is a manhunt that must be successful! Our world is drowning!” The episode closes with stock footage from various floods.
So, like a Batman villain, Kramer is creating floods all along the east coast. However, even by the end of the episode, he never reveals what his demand is. Some men just want to watch the world flood.
Another lackluster episode. A little more science-fictiony than last week, but that’s not saying much.
Post-Post:
- [1] In fact, my last two visits there were so disgusting I will never go back. But I digress.
- Kramer’s discovery was the anti-Ice-Nine.
- Capital vs Capitol.
- How can anyone not like Waterworld?
Night Visions – Quiet Please (07/19/01)
Before watching: Airing as the 2nd half of the episode that began with A View Through the Window, there is just no way this can’t suffer by comparison.
After watching: They pulled off a truly great hour.
Cary Elwes is being tormented in bed by noises from the street below. There is music, but strangely no thumping rap. And vehicle sounds, but strangely not the worst noise offender on earth besides rap — Harley Davidsons.
He tries to watch a little TV, but it is all stories about crime, murders and explosions. He chances upon a documentary set in fictional that Archer State Park, and sets out that weekend for a little peaceful rest & relaxation.
He hikes up the side of a mountain. Well prepared, he pitches a tent (heh, heh) and cooks up some grub. That night, his sleep is once again disturbed. He finds another camper (Brian Dennehy) close by, hammering tent pegs into the ground, although it sounds more like he is forging a sword on an anvil.
They have a fairly cordial exchange, but it is a testimony to Dennehy that there is feeling of menace even though nothing overt I can point to.
The next morning, Elwes is awakened by a police scanner. He again goes to visit his noisy neighbor. Dennehy warns him that he “stumbled over a pile of bear crap the size of a Honda.” When Elwes confronts Dennehy about the scanner, he nicely offers to turn the scanner off. But when Elwes suggests that he was here first and that Dennehy should more on, he is not so friendly.
Later Elwes is fishing, Dennehy interrupts him to offer some tips on fishing. He also offers several ideas on what is wrong with the country. Again, there is nothing explicitly threatening, but Dennehy is just so intrusive and overly friendly. He tells Elwes about the serial killer that has been terrorizing the town. He also mentioned that he found tracks of the bear. Inexplicably, he also says that a bear has the exact same skeleton as a man, which is just absurd. When Dennehy pulls out a Rambo-esque knife, Elwes decides to take off.
The next night, Dennehy is again pounding his peg (heh, heh) within earshot of Elwes’ new campsite. When Elwes accuses him of stalking, Dennehy is a little nasty this time. The next morning, Dennehy brings his dead dog, killed by a grizzly, to Elwes and together they bury him.
Elwes and Dennehy both pull off their characters perfectly, providing just the right amount of misdirection to make the episode work. I could bitch about that pile of bear crap, but I don’t think we’re supposed to think too much about that.
Post-Post:
- Brian Dennehy hassled another outdoorsman and got what was coming to him.
- His daughter hassled the Borg.
Night Visions – A View Through the Window (07/19/01)
This is the one.
Major Ben Darnell is summoned to the middle of the desert. This might be the best thing for him as his son has been killed in a car accident and his wife blames him. She flatly tells him she doesn’t care where he is going.
He arrives in the desert and is shown the phenomena that prompted his trip. And it is kind of trippy — as he walks over a ridge, in the middle of the desert he sees another reality intruding. The titular window, if you will, into another time and another place. In a landscape of sand and dull earth-tones sits a brilliant oasis of Middle-Earth-tones [1]. Darnell sees a farmhouse in a lush, wooded area and a boy playing with his dog. By the boy’s knickers and suspenders we can infer that this is a window into long ago; or that the kid is a bit of a dandy.
As with all windows, this one gets more interesting when there is an unsuspecting hot babe seen through it. A woman in a 19th century dress only slightly less conservative than a burka strolls into the yard. Darnell is transfixed by this hottie who can neither see nor hear him, just like his wife. He continues watching as a young daughter shows up and the family is frolicking in this pastoral paradise. With his binoculars, he is able to see that she has no ring — so possibly a young widow living with her father.
I can see why these images stuck with me for so many years. They are haunting in both technique and emotion. Just the voyeuristic act introduces a basic tension because we know it is wrong. But there is also the fascination with watching someone who doesn’t know they are being watched. For Darnell, watching this happy — except for, you know, the dead father — family just compounds his pain at the literal loss of his son and the figurative loss of his wife.
On a technical, level, I appreciated that the camera mostly kept its distance. The family was usually observed from afar as Darnell watched from outside the barrier. If there were close-ups, it was because a family member approached the barrier, or was observed through binoculars.[2] This maintained the other-worldliness of the situation and also illustrated Darnell’s detachment. He was clearly grafting himself into this happy scenario. Not being able to interact or hear them, the fantasy was perfect, but impossible.
Using an ice-Cube Goldberg device to launch an ice cube at the barrier every 3 seconds, Darnell is able to determine that the barrier drops every day for 15 seconds. Naturally, since Darnell is making progress and intelligently investigating this amazing phenomena, the Army decides he must be stopped.
While he hanging out in the canvas prison, he hears a commotion at the barrier — it has dropped again. He belts the guard and makes a fast break for the barrier, leaping through the wall. Now he can’t see the desert or the Army, but the woman can see him.
And then it ends. Awesomely. An ending so excellent that I hope I can forget it and be thrilled by it again some day. They could have gone a few different ways, but they NAILED IT!
This Night Visions is 20/20, baby!
Post-Post:
- [1] Referring to the Shire or New Zealand in general. Mordor, not so much.
- [2] My only minuscule criticism is that I wish the binocular POV shots had used the hokey black matting.
- Title Analysis: Although the window metaphor is also used within the episode, it isn’t accurate — the phenomena is actually 3-dimensional rather than a 2-d window. Possibly, however, it was also meant as reference to a window into the soul.
- I saw that Karen Austin was in this, and remembered her from Night Court. Turns out it is a different Karen Austin. I thought the Union had rules against that. There are actually 6 Karen Austins listed on IMDb. WTH?
- Only the 2nd (and last) directing gig for Bill Pullman, who starred as Darnell. Too bad — there was nothing flashy, but damn if it wasn’t just about perfect.