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Thriller – The Purple Room (10/25/60)

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tpurpleroom01We slowly zoom in on the old — and by “old”, I mean “future” — Bates house.  Through the eerie music, an eerie girl is in bed repeating, “Jeremy, is that you?  Jeremy, why don’t you speak?  Jeremy, in God’s name, why don’t you speak?”

Through the miracle of 1960s television, and cheap DVD transfers, as we get very close, we can see that the girl is holding a pistol.  Another clue is when she starts firing it off repeatedly, now screaming, “Jeremy!”  Well, that’s no way to get him to answer.

Flash forward 100 years.

Duncan Corey is at the reading of his brother’s will where he learns he has been left his brother’s house.  Corey is only interested in flipping it, however; perhaps to that hot-ass Bates woman and her weird son.  But wait, there are terms . . . “Should you decide after one night under the roof of Black Oak that you do not choose to take up residence there, the estate will pass to our beloved cousin Rachel Judson and her husband Oliver.”

However.  “After a period of one year’s residence, you will be free to dispose of the estate in any manner you see fit.  But I believe by that time only death would part you from it.”

Duncan, Rachel and Oliver go to visit the house.  Duncan expects that Rachel and Oliver will try to scare him off that first night so they can inherit the house.  They escort him to the titular Purple Room where he will spend the night.

As Rachel and Oliver attempt to toast his first night in the house, Duncan insists on switching glasses, lest they try to poison him.  After Rachel and Oliver leave, Duncan locks the door.

He paces around the room, gun in hand, finally falling asleep until more noises downstairs awaken him.  He goes downstairs to investigate the noises, still waving the gun around.

tpurpleroom03Finally from a dark corner emerges a figure with dagger plunged into its chest.  This gives Duncan quite a hoot as he assumes it is Oliver.  The creature continues closing in on Duncan and he stops being too cocky.  Duncan finally fires several shots into the figure and collapses in fear.

Turns out it was cousin Oliver and Duncan is dead from a heart attack.  Rachel and Oliver drive out into the woods to ditch the car — literally — so it appears Duncan had a heart attack while driving.

That night, history repeats itself as Oliver hears noises downstairs and goes to investigate.  Oliver cowers at what he sees, and Rachel awaits in bed with a pistol.  As Rachel sees a figure approaching the bed, she too begins pumping lead like Bonnie Parker.

And yada yada.  Strangely, upon rewatch (since I was too tired to make any notes the first time), I wasn’t that thrilled with it (no pun intended). But on the first viewing, it was pretty thrilling (pun intended).  This is odd as there are no truly unexpected twists or scares.

tpurpleroom04Again, a good episode.  Rip Torn was again playing the cocky young jerk who thinks he has managed a real score.  Richard Anderson was good to see — he was always great as Oscar Goldman in The $6 Million Man.  I don’t know much about Joanna Berry, but she did a fine job also.  Despite my lackluster writing — more so than usual due to a tough week — this one was a winner.

Post-Post:

  • Joanna Heyes appearing in a Douglas Heyes directed episode!  What are the odds?  Well, about 83% according to IMDb.
  • Holy crap, Joanna Berry (Rachel) appeared in a TV movie called The Jerk, Too — a sequel to Steve Martin’s The Jerk.  I had no idea this even existed!

THAT should be the subject of today’s post.

Everyone remembers the original movie began “I was born a poor black child . . .”  The IMDb description for this sequel is

“A man who struggles with gender identity who is beaten up on a daily basis by his father leaves his home to join a gay frat house.”  

Does that suggest laughs to any one?  Who would have possibly green-lighted this piece of shit (admittedly, I have not seen one second of it)?

The main character even shares the same name as in the original — Navin Johnson — so it is clearly intended as a sequel.  Is it his loving father from the original that is now suddenly beating him?  It is telling that the only External Review listed on IMDb goes to an abandoned website.

In a bad sign, it stars Fridays alumnus Mark Blankfield as Navin.  Generally, you see Fridays on a resume, just avert your eyes (unless you’re talking about Larry David or the guy he saved from a future of abject poverty in show-business, Michael Richards (although he was GENIUS as Kramer)).

Directed by Michael Schultz who went on to have an impressive resume.  One of his early hits was Carwash.  So who knows.

Holy crap, it’s on You Tube — I might have to check it out.

Adrift (1993)

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adrift00620 Horror Movies for $7.50 — Part XI of XX.

The action starts immediately on The Raven in a storm of the kind that caused us to lose the Minnow.  A man yells, “They’re going to kill us,” and another man helpfully lends him credibility by breaking a 2 x 4 across his back.

His wife scrambles across the slick bow trying to escape, but she gets into a girl-fight of her own. Eventually one of of the men gets thrown over the side and we flash . . . well it’s not clear whether it is a FlashForward, flashback, or flashsideways.

At a fancy 20th anniversary party on a yacht (and, really, what other kind of party would there be on a yacht than fancy?), Katie is assuring her friends she will not miss the depositions and legal work during during the month it will take to sail first to Somoa with her husband the judge during their 3-month cruise.  3-month cruise.

The “gruff” judge looks much older than Katie, but only has 6 years on her according to IMDb.  Katie is played by the sexiest of the original Charlie’s Angels . . . no, not her . . . no, adrift003the other one . . . no. seriously, Kate Jackson.  She was pretty cute, plus I subscribed to the smart-is-sexy school of thought.  Until Cheryl Ladd came along — then I transferred to  the smoking-hot-blonde-in-a-bikini school of thought.[1]

At the party, she awkwardly runs into an old affair who is still won’t accept that she is devoted to her 20-year marriage and family.  Hmmm, I wonder if that 20 second scene will come up later.

Once out on the sea, Katie doesn’t seem to be having fun.  That night, during an elegant dinner in a dining room that seems far larger than the outside of the boat, Guy suggests some hanky and/or panky under the stars.  Their plans (or, at least his) for eating al fresco is interrupted by a radar signal from a ship which seems to be abandoned.  They find The Raven messier than my condo and it seems to have been abandoned in a hurry. Down below, they find Nick and Eliza alive, but in bad mental, physical and smelling condition.

They were 2 weeks out of Bali when they ran into something that tore off their propeller. Eventually, the crew went crazy from the sun (apparently not realizing there was a nice below-deck area), turned on them, and they threw the scalawags overboard.  Guy calls the Coast Guard to come pick up the derelict ship.

Katie spills the beans about an affair she had with a lawyer she works with.  It doesn’t help that that night they can hear Nick (Bruce Greenwood) and Eliza going at it.  Guy can’t help but notice that Katie and Nick have some close moments on deck as she teaches him how to sail.

Nick asks about the death penalty and Guy says it is too serious too discuss.  Eliza is worried about what they did.  Justice being blind, Guy can’t seem to make the connection.

The set-up has a lot of potential.  The strained relationship between Katie and Guy, psychological problems Nick has due to an abusive childhood, Eliza’s manipulation of Nick, Katie’s competing manipulation of Nick’s weakness, Eliza being a psychopath, the claustrophobia of being alone at sea, and a medical vulnerability of Eliza that Kate takes delicious advantage of.

adrift005Just like Hush, there is a lot of cat and mouse over the next hour, a battle of wits in a confined area.  It starts out being strictly a Lifetime TV melodrama, but it does consistently pick up steam.  It never reaches the level of Dead Calm, but who expects it to?  The director just did not make enough of a mark, leaving it mostly point-and-shoot with a score that I don’t recall a note of.

The leads all do a fine job.  Oddly, it is the bit parts that seem awkward.  The man she had the affair with doesn’t exactly exude alpha-maleness in his 20 seconds of screen time.  And their daughter is pretty much a non-entity who got her looks from her father.

Not great, but everyone gets their job done.

Post-Post:

  • [1] Truthfully, the hottest of the Angels was Shelly Hack.  Sadly, by then the show had run it’s course and no one cared.  She should have had a much greater career.
  • This was 2 years before Bruce Greenwood was in the excellent, but ironically, given the plot, forgotten Nowhere Man.

Ray Bradbury Theater – The Dead Man (09/26/92)

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bradbury02As Michael Corleone said, “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!”

I was so happy to be through several episodes on the final fifth disc, and now the Bradbury Industrial Complex has randomly pushed me back to disc 4 for this episode. Sorry.

Miss Weldon (Louise Fletcher) is taking a bus to her new hometown when it almost hits one of the local bumpkins, nearly turning him into a speedbumpkin.  Some time later, the haggard man, Odd Martin, takes off his hat, places it on his chest and slowly lays flat in the gutter in front of the grocery store.

The police try to rouse him.  The sheriff and barber nudge him with their shoes, but he doesn’t move. They get some of the other rubes to lay him out on the sidewalk so, at least, he doesn’t take up a revenue producing metered space.

That night, Miss Weldon sees Odd Martin aimlessly shuffling down the street.  When she encounters him the next day, she tries to engage him in conversation about the kitten he is carrying to be drowned.  He claims to have been drowned once himself.  Yeeeeah, she offers to adopt the kitten.

The next day, the barber tells Miss Weldon the story of how a flood destroyed Martin’s farm 20 years ago.  He was missing for a while too.  Then he came walking out of the waters, claiming to have drowned, insisting that he was dead.  Again that night, she sees him shuffling like the living dead.

The routine continues with the townspeople lifting him out of the gutter the next morning, apparently a daily routine.  Miss Weldon wakes him up to give him some cologne “It helps keep you cool.”  I thought it was to take the stink off.

That night Miss Weldon asks Martin to walk her home.  Along the way she admires a dress in a store window.  Martin asks why she has taken an interest in him.  She says, “Because you are quiet.  And not loud and mean like the men at the barber shop.  I’ve had to fight for a scrap of respect there, but still they look right through me.  I’m like a window with no glass, not even a reflection.  I’m lonely.”rbtdeadman17

She tells Martin he should stop telling everyone he’s dead.  She says he’s “just half dead from the absence of a good woman.  What else could it be?”  You know, I’m not feeling so good myself.

He buys her the dress she admired in the window and brings it to her apartment.  He asks her to marry him.  The next day he strolls into the barbershop for a haircut and a shave.  Says he bought a small place for them just outside of town.

A neighbor boy sees them walking away that night, Odd in his suit and Miss Weldon in her new dress.  They go through a gate, and walk through a graveyard, and into a small mausoleum.  They enter and the crypt door slides shut.

rbtdeadman08Miss Weldon has spent a sheltered life taking care of an old mother who finally died, but casting Louise Fletcher was a mistake.  She plays it well, but she is too attractive to believe she would really have to lower her standards to a guy who sleeps in the gutter.

And even if she was half dead, as Odd was, due to loneliness — didn’t they have each other now?  Why the trip to the crypt which surely signified them both dying.  Were they both giving up just when they had found someone?  And where did he get the money to buy the dress?

Too many things just make no sense- — I rate this DOA.  It is well-performed, and well-directed, it just makes no sense.

Post-Post:

  • What small town barber has a woman manicuring all of the men getting haircuts?
  • And isn’t Korean?
  • In the short story, the men all give Odd Martin a bath in the back of the barber shop.  I think this was wisely trimmed from the screenplay.  Although it might explain why Miss Weldon couldn’t find a man in this town — they’re all getting manicures and bathing other men.
  • And why was he going to drown the kitten?  That wasn’t in the short story.
  • Otherwise, it is a pretty faithful adaptation except that Miss Weldon in the short story is not new in town — making it all the more unbelievable one of these dandies hadn’t ever hit on her; even if it were only for a beard — in a barber shop — oh the irony!

Terminator Genisys (2015)

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Image 001Where to start?  Where to stop?  That’s kind of the film’s problem too.

I couldn’t take notes in the theater or rewind to catch anything I missed, so this pretty bare bones.

Arnold – Great!  They were smart not to try to make him look 30 years younger.  I was disappointed, though, that they didn’t find some way to have Bill Paxton play one of the punks again.  Or Brian Thompson.  They probably could have picked up the 3rd guy pretty cheap.

John Connor – Played by Jason Clarke.  Didn’t like him in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, don’t like him here.  He is this year’s (and this Terminator’s) Sam Worthington.  He was tolerable in the future, but when he got to present day, he was awful.  I’m willing to say part of that is because his character arc was so ludicrous (nay, blasphemous!), and the action scenes were tedious.  The metal shavings bit could have been fun, but was derivative of T3, and just not well staged.

Sarah Connor – Played by Emelia Clarke who is on my shit list.  Game of Thrones made her a famous millionaire star and now she’s too good to do the nude scenes? Ironically, it is her hesitation to “mate” that provides some of the film’s few laughs. She is adequate here, although she is no Linda Hamilton or Lena Headey.  I can see her as an alternate timeline version of the waitress in T1, but she didn’t have the benefit of 20 years to prepare in that universe.  In this timeline, she had 20 years to prepare, and with a real Terminator, but she lacks the attitude and gravitas of T2 Sarah.  This is the woman who has been training 20 years for this day?

Kyle Reese – Played by Jai Courtney.  I can’t blame him for the shitfest that was Die Hard 5, but I can say he was such a non-entity that I can’t remember a single scene or line from him in that fiasco.  Hell, I saw Terminator Genisys yesterday and can say the same thing about him in that.  He and Aaron Taylor-Johnson from Godzilla must be from some new charisma-free school of acting.  Tobias Fünke honed his craft better at the Method One clinic.

J.K. Simmons – Great, basically playing the Dr. Silberman role.  Except this time he is trying to be part of the solution.  Or maybe just because they’re both bald.

Sadly, the only things that resonate in this movie are callbacks to the first two.  Even throwaway shots like the garbage man chomping on his cigar before the first time transport, Kyle’s feet slowly touching the ground in his new Nikes, the T-1000 incorporating a stray piece of his liquid metal into his body — they will be remembered long after the cartwheeling bus.

But mostly it is Arnold that saves the movie.  He is older for a legitimate reason, he has made slight progress in his humanity, and they gamely try to go for a “not obsolete just because you’re old” theme but don’t quite make it.  His T-800 is blatantly, yet improbably, set up for a sequel here, but where can they possibly go now that they have screwed things up so badly in this one? By the time we get to the third act, the nostalgia has been milked, the timeline is a mess, we are uninterested in the god-awful characters, and the action is just boring.

Reading a few other reviews, what strikes me is the lack of respect many have for T3. That was a fun, solid movie, even in spite of Nick Stahl and Claire Danes being grossly miscast.  Kristanna Loken as the Terminatrix, however, was every bit as good as Robert Patrick in T2.

Even better, and unmentioned in most reviews was The Sarah Connor Chronicles with Lena Headey in the titular role, and Summer Glau as another Terminatrix.  Say what you will about those hunter-killers . . . they can turn out some smokin’ product.

Headey made for a perfectly believable extension of Sarah Connor, despite lacking the natural resemblance that Emelia Clarke has.  Glau was great as the Terminatix, but sadly, they once again missed the boat on casting John Connor.  He was just too whiny and had a horrible haircut (seriously, it was awful enough to affect the quality of the show).  The writing seemed to go downhill in season 2, so maybe it was best to end it there.

Terminator Salvation — don’t remember a single frame.  I think a motorcycle came out of a robot leg or something.

I’ll probably give Terminator Genisys another chance on Netflix someday.  However, I own T1, T2, T3 and just bought Blu-Ray of The Sarah Connor Chronicles.  I don’t see me ever purchasing T4 or T5, even in the $5 bin.  You are Die Hard 5 to me.

Post-Post:

  • Robert Patrick and Michael Biehn were missed.
  • This might be the first incarnation of Terminator where Danny Dyson isn’t sent to his bedroom.  And WTF is Joe Morgan as Miles?
  • Arnold’s “upgrade” in T5 immediately reminded be of the nanite-driven upgrade of Jason Voorhees in Jason X (Jasonnnn innnn Spaaaaaaaace!).  I’m not a fan of the series, but Jason X is a vastly underrated hoot.
  • C’mon Spellcheck, I type nanite, and you want me to change it to Canaanite?  Well, they were also waiting for J.C. so maybe it fits.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents – The Foghorn (03/16/58)

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ahpfoghorn001Lucia Clay (Barbara Bel Geddes) is tossing and turning in bed, drenched in sweat, dreaming.  A foghorn blows and she turns in bed, saying, “Why did I do that?” leading the audience to believe she just farted. Well, any viewer in the Kevin Smith dick & fart joke generation.

She reflects back to the first time she met Allen Bliss (Michael Rennie). She was dancing with her fiancee John at a high society party.  John was angling for an entry into Allen’s business.  After meeting Lucia, Allen was angling to get into hers.  During a dance, both Allen and Lucia learn their preconceptions were wrong — she was not a money hungry shrew, and he was interested in things more varied and finer than the almighty dollar (remember, this was 1958).

ahpfoghorn003Out on a foggy balcony they discuss the excitement of not knowing the path ahead.  He suggests that she should board a ship on her honeymoon and sail and sail until they hit the Fortunate Isles.  He wishes he had the strength to tell off all the bankers and do the same. They are having quite the moment until the butler announces a call for him from Mrs. Bliss in Boston.  D’oh!

Their paths cross again on another foggy night.  It is very thick and people are squinting trying to see — oh no, wait, they’re in Chinatown.

Apparently it is the the Chinese New Year given all the fireworks and paper mache dragon heads.  Allen suggests they get their bearings somewhere warm like one of the 200 Chinese Restaurants on the block.  Allen is happy to hear that Lucia has called off her engagement to John.

They pursue things their common interests that she could never share with John, ahpfoghorn005browsing a bookstore, a favorite poem, sailing, eating Chinese food, constantly getting lost in fog.

Eight weeks later, Lucia says she must stop seeing Allen.  She doesn’t care what people say, but everyone from her parents to the housekeeper is talking about her running around in the fog with a married man.  She wants to end it before she really falls in love with him — so apparently she does care.  Seeing just the opportunity he has been waiting for — i.e. his last chance — he tells her he is getting a divorce regardless of her answer to his proposal.

Still tossing in bed, she screams out Allen’s name, fearing something awful has happened.  Her screams have brought — what? — a nun into her room.  She tells Lucia she is not at home, and that there has been an accident.  Lucia still screams for Allen, but the nun says she will get a doctor.

ahpfoghorn006Lucia remembers being back in the Chinese restaurant, waiting for Allen. Finally she leaves and finds Allen outside, once again in the fog.  His wife won’t give him a divorce.  Screw that, he tells Lucia the next day as they are sailing that he has bought two tickets to Canton — the man loves his Chinese food.  He’ll leave his wife enough money so that she won’t miss him.

Unfortunately, the fog starts rolling in on them.  There is a calm and Allen loses his bearings, not having a compass or sextant or radio or brain.  They could row, but have no idea which direction.  They are not sure which foghorn they are hearing, but it turns out to be coming from a ship which plows over Allen’s boat like Al Czervik’s over Judge Smails’.

ahpfoghorn008

Terrible old age make-up and looking not nearly as good as Barbara Bel Geddes did on Dallas almost 50 years later.

Sadly, Allen was killed.  She looks at the Chinese Wishing Ring Allen had just given her the day before and sees her hands are not young and beautiful.  They’re pruny, and it ain’t from the water.  She looks into a mirror and realizes she has been in a sanitarium for 50 years. And drops dead.

Everyone is entirely adequate. And I must admit I was completely suckered in by her face never being seen except in the flashbacks.  It was almost an Eye of the Beholder moment.

But it just didn’t do much for me.  I don’t like flashbacks in general, and the rest was a little too melodramatic for my tastes.  I can imagine it being the bee’s knees back in 1958, though (two years before the classic TZ episode).

Post-Post:

  • AHP Deathwatch:  No survivors.
  • The doctor mentioned she had had no visitors for 50 years.  What a family of assholes.
  • The passage Allen has her read in the bookstore is from Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese.
  • Not related to Ray Bradbury’s short story of the same name — one of his more famous short stories, even made into a movie, yet not included in his 100 Most Celebrated Tales Collection that I foolishly bought.