Author Archives: don

Tales from the Crypt – Television Terror (S2E16)

Posted on by
1

tftctvterror01This is the point where I think I can safely say the IMDb ratings are a crock — this episode is rated 3rd best in the series.

What I imagine happened was that Morton Downey Jr. maybe had a kid that was a fan of the show and he offered his services to HBO during the 2 weeks in his career where he was a hot commodity.

HBO seized the opportunity, however only had a half-written script available for production — only 21 minutes long and no twist.  “What the hell,” they decided.  “This guy’s career is on fire!  His personality can carry the show!”

And here we are.

Morton Downey Jr. hosts a Ghosthunters-esque reality show.  He goes into a haunted house, some things happen, his production crew looks on with bug-eyes, he dies.  That’s really all there is to it.

Post-Post:

  • I got nuthin’, they got nuthin’.

Static (2012)

Posted on by
Reply

static08This is a strange case where I actually enjoyed the film overall, but can’t figure out why, and would never recommend it to anyone.

Jonathan Dade (Milo Ventimiglia) is just finishing up his latest book (writing, not reading).  He celebrates with a walk in the woods to see the grave-marker of his 3 year old son Thomas who recently drowned.   Afterward, the festivities continue over a mostly silent dinner with his wife Addie (Sarah Shahi).

The might be the most low-key movie I’ve ever seen.  After every take, the director must have said, “That’s was great, now let’s take it down a notch.”  After a Kubrickian 700 takes, we would reach the sullenness of this movie.  But somehow it worked for me.

That night, as they are in bed, there is a knocking at the door.  Rachel (Sara Paxton) says she had car trouble and was chased by men wearing gas masks.  They invite her in.  While Jonathan inexplicably goes out to look for the men in gas masks, the gals have a chance to talk.

When they regroup at the house, we finally get a spark of life as Rachel is abducted by one of the masked men.  Luckily, Jonathan has a gun.  In a safe.  In his office.  Which is in another building in the compound.  He apparently is a pretty successful writer though the movie makes nothing of this.

static11As with all home invasion movies, there is a great sense of creepiness and violation as the strangers enter.  Much of the movie is cat and mouse as the couple variously flees and attacks the men.  An oddity that is explained later is that the men, while menacing, never seem to take the opportunity to hurt the couple when they have a chance.

These guys make Michael Myers look like a sprinter.  Several times all that stands between them and the homeowners is a rickety front door, or a louvered interior doot that your finer serial killers would cut through like butter.  The masked men seem content to just scare the bejeebus out of them.

I appreciated that all of this made sense eventually, and also that it was something different than the standard slasher film.

The actors were fine.  Certainly Sarah Paxton was better her than in Cheap Thrills.  The denouement was good.  The costumes were intriguing.  But it was just so leaden — the colors, the voices, the mood.  The positives carried it for me, but I couldn’t suggest anyone else sit through it.

static16Post-Post:

  • A commentor at IMDb noted that both Ventimiglia and Shahi have played roles as Sylvester Stallone’s kids
  • In looking for this film on IMDb, I see The Ring was originally called Static.  How could that be since it was based on Japanese film called Ringu, not Staticu.

The Outer Limits – A Stitch in Time (S2E1)

Posted on by
5

olstitchintime01In 1966, an old man stumbles into a hotel room.  He crumples up some voyeuristic photos he has taken of young women on the street, jogging, etc.  In a dark corner is a woman with a gun.  As she is played by the frequently crazy Amanda Plummer, I don’t like his odds.

She clicks a lamp on and tells him — in a scathing indictment of our judicial system — that in 1994 he was executed for the willful murder of 8 women.  Then she does the right thing.  After shooting him in the melon, she opens up a portal and returns to the future.

Back in the present, FBI Agent Pratt (Michelle Forbes) is baffled by 17 deaths, all caused by the same gun since 1956.  Strangely, they have just found a set of 30-year old prints on a lamp that match Dr. Theresa Givens (Plummer), however, she was in kindergarten at the time of the murder.

olstitchintime10

If there is trouble on the set of American Horror Story, they’ve got it covered.

Pratt is at home when she gets the news.  We get a complete role reversal where, instead of the standard nagging TV wife, her boyfriend does not see how solving a murder might be more important than necking on the couch.

Pratt attends a lecture by Givens and interviews her afterwards in her office.  This tips off Givens so she goes back in time, cleans her prints of the lamp, and returns to the future.

Even with the fingerprint evidence erased from this timeline, there is further evidence implicating Givens.  A gun that was issued to Givens by the NSA in 1988 was used in the 17 murders which date to 32 years before the gun was manufactured.

Pratt hears on the news that Jerome Horowitz, a man she had sent away for 17 murders, including her best friend Allison, was just executed.  Givens hears the same report and uses the Wayback Machine to go back to 1980 and kill him.  It is interesting that she points out that she waited for the “just and legal” sentence to be carried out in the future before she kills him in the past.  She also gives him an awesome triple-tap.

olstitchintime05Back in the future, Pratt goes to see Givens again, but for the first time as far as she knows in this timeline.  Also, with Horowitz killed before he committed the murders, her friend Allison is still alive.  Givens slips up and admits her connection to the murders. She proudly shows her time machine to Pratt.  Sadly the time travel is giving her brain damage.

Givens travels back to when she was kidnapped and raped as a child 15 years earlier, the event that motivates her vengeance.  The man holds young Givens as a human shield and tells old Givens to drop her gun.  Unfortunately for him, Pratt followed Givens through the portal and uses her practice at killing two-headed freaks to drop him. Sadly, not before he got off a shot and killed older Givens.

Young Givens witnesses Pratt going back through the portal.  Once back in the present, all the equipment begins to disappear as Givens no longer had the motive to pursue her vengeance.

Back in the FBI office, she realizes the impact of that last execution — since it took away Given’s motivation for vengeance, it has undone all the other pre-murders so all the 80+ victims are dead again including her friend Allison.

Pratt finds present day, clearly less crazy Givens, who recognizes her as the one who saved her 15 years ago.  This Givens also created a time machine, but simply put it in storage after her funding was cut.  Pratt goes back to re-kill Horowitz (his 3rd death in the episode).

This was the one kill that would return Allison to the timeline, but I suspect we are meant to viscerally feel that Pratt will continue as a bad-ass killing all the others.  That is unlikely, though, as she saw the brain damage suffered by Givens for her repeated trips.

A great episode.

Post-Post:

  • Guns don’t kill people; crazy physicists kill people.
  • Pointless Duplication: The 17 murders by the gun and the 17 murders by Horowitz seems to be a coincidence, but it is just bizarre the writer would use that confusing stat for two separate investigations.
  • Amanda Plummer won an Emmy for her role, which doesn’t seem right.  She’s a great character, but not much of an actress.
  • Hulu sucks.
olstitchintime02

Optical Illusion: Is this a Soda machine or a KY machine?

Phase IV (1974)

Posted on by
Reply

phaseiv01Phase I — An event in space prompts predictions of doom.  The effect is most profound on the insects.  Dr. Hubbs, a biologist, notices that ants of different species are meeting, communicating, cooperating, making decisions, which is unheard of.

Then we get a couple of minutes of nothing but ants crawling around.  And ya know what — it’s pretty good. Different species, drones, queens, babies, all coming together like a subterranean Diversity Fair.

Dr. Hubbs also notices the disappearance of natural ant predators such as the mantises, millipedes, beetles and spiders.  We understand why when we witness a take-down of a spider by a swarm of ants.  Obviously, Hubbs predicts a huge increase in the number of ants.  He proposes a government program to study the problem.  For once, I agree.

Hubbs recruits another scientist — James Lesko — to examine an area in Arizona where strange monoliths have arisen.  Then they go to a grassy field where sheep have been killed by insects. They talk to the last farmer in the area who is creating a gasoline moat which he will set on fire if the ants get too close.

phaseiv06Phase II — A facility has been constructed.  After a couple of weeks of no activity from the ants, Hubbs blows up a few monoliths.  This gets the ants moving and they attack the farmer’s horse and then the house.  The farmer lights his gas moat, shoots the horse, then they flee the farm, ending up at the facility.  Sadly, they are killed by a deluge of yellow insecticide the scientists disburse after the ants disrupt their power.  Except for the daughter Kendra who managed to find shelter through a cellar door — to the cellar of this pre-fab metal shack in the desert, I guess.  The ants also manage to blow up the scientist’s truck.

phaseiv09The next day, after the ants adapt to the yellow poison, they build some sort of reflective surface to reflect the sun’s rays at the facility to raise the temperature.  Lesko tries to call for help, but ants in the radio have shorted it out.

Hubbs turns up the air conditioner, and Lesko creates a high-pitched noise which crumbles the mounts.  Unfortunately, the ants are way ahead of them and chew through the wiring in the air conditioning unit.

Phase III — On a monitor, they see a mouse get swarmed by ants and stripped to the bone.  They begin searching for the queen.  For some reason, Kendra goes outside with no shoes and is bitten.  Then Hubbs goes out with no shoes to kill the queen, but falls into a pit and is swarmed by the ants.  That leaves Lesko to go smoke out the queen.

phaseiv11He goes out to a giant anthill and throws in a canister.  He then slides down into the hole himself, sliding down to the bottom.  Strangely, the bottom of the anthill has a perfectly square entrance into another chamber.  There he sees Kendra rise from the dirt, alive but changed by the ants in ways we do not know.

phaseiv12This is a slowly paced film, but never boring.  There are interesting ideas and a lot of fascinating shots of ants going about their ant business.  I give it 3.5 out of 4 phases.

There is a lost ending posted on YouTube which adds a psychedelic coda to the film.  It combines the the incoherence of the 2001 light show with the dream-like imagery of Spellbound (not the one about the spelling bee).

Post-Post:

  • Ironically this was the only movie directed by Saul Bass, who made his name creating distinctive movie credits — and it has no opening credits.
  • There is bit-part royalty in this film:  The farmer is played by Alan Gifford who was Gary Lockwood’s father in 2001.  His wife is played by Helen Horton who was the voice of Mother in Alien.
  • There was an unrelated movie titled Phase IV released in 2002.  Really, out of all the Phases, you had to pick IV?
  • “If ants weighed 40 lbs, we’d all be in chains” — Ron Bennington
  • MST3K offered insect repellent advice during their episode of this film: “When you’re out in the woods, you can’t beat Off.”

Ray Bradbury Theater – Hail and Farewell (S3E10)

Posted on by
6

rbthailfarewell01Young Willie is chased down the street by some older boys.  Turns out it was a race, but they are mad when Willie beats them, just like he always beats them, just like he gets all A’s in school.

He walks away from the bully when he sees a little girl walking home from school.  The actor playing Willie was 13, and this girl looks pretty 10-ish, so it seems a little creepy. But the creepiness ain’t even started yet.

When they arrive at the girl’s house, he sees her mother and their eyes are locked on each other in breathless recognition.  Willie sees her as the grown up little girl Charlotte he loved 25 years ago, and she recognizes him as the same boy she loved back then. So clearly she is a lot sharper than Lorraine McFly.

rbthailfarewell02Cut to Willie writing a letter to his adopted parents.  He periodically tracks down parents who have lost a child and allows himself to be informally adopted as a replacement.

It is time for him to move on to another family because Willie never gets any older.  After 2-3 years, people start noticing he never ages, and he must disappear before the government kidnaps him and dissects him to make super-soldiers in a richly funded program run by some senator’s brother-in-law.  That last part is not in the episode, just speculation on my part.

When Willie first realized that he was not aging, he ran away from the orphanage where he was picked on as a runt.  He ran away to the circus to be a freak as “The World’s Oldest Kid.”  But it doesn’t really work out as he just looks like a normal kid.  The rubes would have to wait around for 3 years to really get the effect, which makes me wonder how the Hunger Artist got away with his shtick.

He recalls meeting an old woman in the park who lost her young son 30 years ago, and her husband just recently.  He stays with the old woman for 2 years until she croaks.

As he is leaving town, he has one last confrontation with a bully, but he seems to have grown a little — he is able to throw a baseball faster to the bully’s surprise, and to more adeptly handle a bare-handed catch.  This scene makes no sense as he is still not aging, yet he seemed stronger.  Hearing the train whistle in the distance, Willie heads out leaving the bully even more baffled than me.

rbthailfarewell03He passes by Charlotte’s house and she is outside trimming the hedges.  Again, their eyes meet in recognition.  We hear her thoughts, “I was in love with you.”

We hear his thoughts, “Was?”

“Willie,” the 40 year old woman says.

“Charlotte,” the 12 year old boy says.

We immediately cut to a whistling train barreling down the track.  Bradbury seemed like too much of a good egg to have the train go into a tunnel.  Can’t say it was just a simpler time because Hitchcock used that same gag 30 years earlier.

Willie has found another obituary and heads to the house to use his old “I think I’m lost” spiel to insinuate himself into their home.  He has been a kid for 40 years now and thinks to himself that this is his “job” as he heads up the new family’s steps with his suitcase in his hand like Willie Loman.

This is a good episode after one iffy and one god-awful episode.  Maybe it helps that they are back in the USA and are using directors that actually have other credits.  Josh Saviano (The Wonder Years) doesn’t have as much of the trademark Bradbury flowery writing to sell, but he has been one of the better actors in pulling it off.

rbthailfarewell06Post-Post:

  • This is the 3rd highest rated episode on IMDb’s always-suspect user rating list.
  • Saviano has done virtually nothing in the last 20 years.  I hope he’s enjoying his Wonder Years loot.  Or doing something productive that wouldn’t show up on IMDb.
  • Wearing the same hat for 40 years might not have helped him keep a low profile,