Author Archives: don

Night Gallery – They’re Tearing Down Tim Riley’s Bar (S1E6)

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nightgallery01This was considered by most to be the high point for Night Gallery.

It is after 3 pm and Sales Director Randy Lane is not back from lunch.  His ambitious worm of an assistant Harvey Doane suggests that he might be out drinking.  When the owner Mr. Pritkin needs some info, Doane jumps in and throws Lane under the bus.

Lane’s secretary Lynn tries to cover for him.  She mentions today is Lane’s 25th anniversary with the firm, so he might be at lunch celebrating.  At 3:05, he finally rolls in, drunk and disheveled.  He spent the last hour standing on the sidewalk looking at the shuttered Tim Riley’s Bar.  How he got drunk standing on the sidewalk is not mentioned.

He gets very nostalgic about the bar which will soon be gone with no one to remember it with flowery speeches about the war and rumple seats.  After work, he goes back to the closed bar and reminisces with a beat cop about the old days after the war when they were young.  After the cop leaves, Lane has his first hallucination, of a celebration in the bar when he returned from the war.

ngriley01The speechifying goes on a little long as Serling has always done, but the performances make the show.  There is really no horror or shock to be found in the episode.  I’d have to call it good for what it is.  It just isn’t what I’m looking for in Night Gallery.

William Windom is great as Randy Lane.  Diane Baker was also great as Lane’s secretary.  She was completely convincing in her support for Lane; also pretty hot, reminding me of a young sexier Kate Mulgrew.

Post-Post:

  • This episode also contained a short called The Last Laurel starring Jack Cassidy.
  • This episode was nominated for an Emmy as Outstanding Single Program of the Year.  It was beaten by The Andersonville Trial, also starring Jack Cassidy.
  • Twilight Zone Legacy:  William Windom and Henry Beckman were each in two episodes.
  • Mr. Pritkin played George Costanza’s father in one episode of Seinfeld before being replaced by Jerry Stiller.
  • Don Taylor also directed Escape From the Planet of the Apes, and The Final Countdown.

Nothing going on here. I just liked the shot.

Hell’s Highway (2002)

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hellshighway0220 horror movies for $5; what could possibly go wrong?  Part XX of XX. Free at last, free at least, thank God almighty, I’m free at last.

Not a good sign that the only actor I’ve ever seen before is Ron Jeremy — not a good sign for me or the film.

We start off with a man driving through Death Valley.  Ahead, he spots a hitchhiker, and even at this distance, she is a hottie.  He discreetly covers a large knife with a newspaper.  I appreciate that the paper had a headline with the word “Killings” in it.  The director doesn’t jam it down our throat, but it is visible, giving me hope that this movie might actually have some nuance and thought behind it.

Lucinda, in denim shorts and a t-shirt, jumps in the car saying she and her boyfriend walked in different directions for help.  This stranger who has picked her up offers her some water which she gulps down.  Not blaming the victim here, but that’s 2 stupid moves by Lucinda.  She begins gagging.  The man pulls over and she runs into the hills.  She stumbles and he pulls out his knife and jams it into a really fake looking stomach.  But that’s OK — we’re obviously in micro-budget mode here, it was just a few frames, and the movie has already built up some goodwill with me.

hellshighway03The man gets his shovel from the car and puts on a preacher collar.  There is a nice bit of camera trickery as we cut from him giving her a final blow with the shovel to tapping the mound of dirt where she has been buried.  He sprinkles holy water on her grave from the same bottle she drank from.

As he is leaving, he hears her voice taunting him.  He looks around and sees nothing.  Once again, however, the director goes the extra mile and there is a nice reveal of Lucinda standing behind him as he turns, sporting some devilish painting on half her face.  Not that this is groundbreaking work, but after much of the crap in this collection, it is refreshing.  That’s the end of the Preacher.

This is mostly prologue to get us to the main story (and to keep the movie from being 60 minutes instead of 70).  Next we meet the group that we will follow for the rest of the movie.  More goodwill is accrued as Monique flashes the camera . . . then 30 seconds later does it again; sadly, we must wait another whole minute before she turns them loose again.

Chris is driving while Sarah and Eric occupy the backseat.  We see Lucinda hitchhiking ahead.  The group notices the huge number of crosses along the road and Lucinda tells them the story of The Devil’s Highway, which would have been a better title.  Lucinda claims she had earlier hitched a ride with Chris’ brother and killed everyone in the car.  Chris pulls over and demands that she get out of the car, then she points gun at Sarah.  After a struggle, they manage to pull a C. Thomas Howell on Lucinda and roll her ass out of the moving car.  Well, actually they rolled her ass out of the stopped car and cut to the car moving, but kudos to the director for making it work.

Clearly, she is supposed to be the devil.  She had the El Diablo face paint, her name is almost Lucifer, and she is evil.  But what’s with the gun?  The Devil needs a gun like God needs a starship.

That night, they pull over to zelten um Geld zu sparen (finally able to use that phrase from the high school German text).  Finally after 20 minutes, we get another look at Monique’s boobs.

The next day, they see Lucinda again hitchhiking.  She runs at the car, hurling a knife and swinging a shovel, but is no match for 2 tons of D-troit steel which mows her down, decapitating her.  Our heroes move her to the side of the road, and take off. No one notices that her entrails are still hooked to the car, so as they leave, they pull out 50 yards of intestines before dragging half her body behind the car.  Well played, Mr. Director!

hellshighway04Lucinda later shows up again with the El Diablo face paint.  And a chainsaw.  She does some damage before the gang can drive off.  Oh, for crying out loud, Lucinda shows up yet again the next day.  In fact, multiples of her show up.

Eventually all — or at least some — is explained.  It’s not a great movie, but there are enough signs that the makers actually cared that I am willing to go along for the ride.

Post-Post:

  • Among director Jeff Leroy’s other joints: Dracula’s Sorority Sisters, Werewolf in a Women’s Prison.
  • Among Monique’s other credits: Stacked Racks from Mars, Busty Housewives of Beverly Hills.

Tales from the Crypt – The Ventriloquist’s Dummy (S2E10)

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Image 006Don Rickles is the titular ventriloquist, onstage and getting big laughs.  After the show, he signs a photo for an admiring youngster who will grow up to be Bobcat Goldthwait.

That night, the hotel where he was performing burns down, and Rickles becomes a recluse for the next 15 years.

Bobcat tracks him down in his remote cabin.  He spots a newspaper clipping that says Rickles was injured in the fire; he shows the covered stump of his hand to Bobcat.  Bobcat asks him to come see his act that night and see if he’s got what it takes; other than a left hand.

Bobcat goes on during amateur night and is awful.  Rickles walks out.  Later, Bobcat finds him at the bar.  Rickles, being Rickles, tells him he was terrible.

tftcvent02Outside, Bobcat sees a woman who has just been murdered and realizes that Rickles killed her and also a showgirl 15 years ago, and also started the fire.  He confronts Rickles, but he blames Morty, his dummy.

Bobcat tells him it is just a dummy. Despite Rickles protests, he pulls Morty’s case off the shelf to show Rickles that it is just an object.  But he discovers it is an object without a head.

In the normal universe, Rickles would just tell Bobcat the head was out for cleaning or stored in another case, or destroyed in the fire.  Turns out Morty is Rickles twin brother conjoined at the wrist.  Morty’s head was really Rickle’s mutant brother.

Rickles / Morty attacks Bobcat, and Rickles chops his brother off at the wrist.  Morty rips Rickles throat out, killing him.

tftcvent04Bobcat goes after Morty with a baseball bat.  He launches him with a loose floor board, swats him with the bat, he lands in a meat grinder and Bobcat starts grinding.  Then stops.

Bobcat goes on stage using Morty in a mask.  They argue and Morty painfully grafts himself onto Bobcat’s wrist.

A good episode with great performances and a great twist.

Post-Post:

  • Written by Frank Darabont of Shawshank, The Mist, and that season of The Walking Dead — you know, the good one.
  • Don Rickles’ daughter is in the episode billed as “Girl at Bar.”  Her next TV role was in Herman’s Head as “Woman at Bar.”  I eagerly await her future turns as “Middle-Aged woman at Bar” and “Old Woman at Bar.”

Outer Limits – Caught in the Act (S1E16)

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olcaught02aAlyssa Milano, majoring in Virgin Studies at college, is fooling around with her boyfriend Jay.  Naturally, he wants to go further, but she is committed to remaining chaste until marriage.  She should dump him when he says, “I think this whole abstinence thing could be a good thing,” because he is clearly psychotic.

After he leaves, a space dildo bursts through the roof of her apartment and embeds itself in the floor.  As Alyssa takes a closer look, an entity bursts from the space dildo and gives her an alien facial.

Jay’s friend Karl approaches him in the library and grills him about Hannah’s virginity. She has tracked Jay down in the library and begins climbing all over him.  He is still trying to be supportive of her crazy ideas, so she abandons him, finds Karl in the stacks, and starts making out with him.

That night, Alyssa goes to his room and strips for him.  Soon he is inside her.  I mean, really inside — like his entire body is absorbed into her.  Well, that actually is a football player, but the death of Karl and intro of the Quarterback are so blurred, they might as well have been the same character.  In fact, the QB does not even rate a name in the credits.

olcaughte01Jay rides to Alyssa’s apartment on his scooter, possibly explaining why she never put out for him.  He sees the QB’s car outside and demands to know where he is.  The part of Alyssa that is still human fears for his safety tells Jay to beat it.  Well, she actually tells him, “go away,” but I think there is a lot of “beating it” in his future.

Jay waits for Alyssa to leave and goes into her apartment.  He finds the space dildo still embedded in the floor and takes it to his professor, the frequently annoying Saul Rubinek.  Despite the sexual theme of the episode, Rubinek is thankfully not involved in those shenanigans, sparing us the squirm-inducing awkwardness in Gotcha!.

olcaught04Meanwhile, Alyssa is now picking up dudes on the street and banging them to death. She even finds the time to seduce Karl’s girlfriend.  Sadly, that does not get past the kiss because Karl’s girlfriend is not much interested; at least, not as much as me.

Rubinek miraculously finds other instances of space dildos crashing to earth.  Their appearances seem to always be linked to the disappearances of horny young men.  So apparently the previous space dildos were homophobic haters.

Alyssa continues absorbing dudes until she is shot by a cop in an alley in absorption interruptus.  As the shots ventilate her, light streams out and the dude being absorbed is cut off at the waist and left in agonizing pain before dying.  Thank God, as she is absorbing all these guys, it is not effecting her hot size 2 body.

She is taken to the hospital where her wounds spontaneously heal before the operation.  The surgical team flees the room, and Alyssa tries to seduce the surgeon, but he is more scared than turned on.  Possibly because they have managed to outfit Alyssa in the only hospital gown ever made that actually closes in the back.

Jay cracks the code of why Alyssa did not kill him, Karl’s girlfriend or the surgeon — the alien possessing her requires pheromones only given off during arousal to absorb the victim’s energy.  He enters the Operating Room and locks the door.

Somehow, the purity of the two virgins having the sex drives the alien from her body rather than energizing it like a double shot of espresso.  With the alien gone, she is free to bask in the after-glow of world-saving sex, and dream about her life with Jay.  At least until police charge her with multiple homicides.

That encounter with Karl’s girlfriend might have been good preparation for her next 20 years to life.

Post:

  • Mark Sobel also directed The Choice.
  • Alyssa’s character’s name Hannah Valesic left me craving pickles.
  • Hulu sucks.

Ray Bradbury Theater – The Wind (S3E4)

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bradbury02The wind is a perfect subject for this series.  Many of the episodes just have some movement, some rustling around, but there is nothing solid at the heart of them.

For some reason Michael Sarrazin just makes me think of the 70’s.  Not sure if it is his face, or just because that was really his heyday (1969-1975), and he never really seemed to live up to his promising start.

Here he is playing a weather nerd, which in the days before the internet or even the Weather Channel must have been a pretty frustrating hobby.  He is flipping through a book of maps with page headings like Cloudiness, Visibility, Gale Persistence when suddenly a persistent mini-gale blows through his living room and flips the pages.

Image 001He recognizes the wind as a presence immediately and greets it.  I’m trying to outline the episode, but it gives me nothing.  What can I say?  He calls his friend Herb, but Herb is busy.  He opens his front door.  He lights a cigarette which the wind blows out the first try. The wind blows his door shut.  He looks for batteries for his flashlight.

He says to himself, “My God, it’s like a great big shuffling hound, it’s trying to smell me out.”  He begins making a tape for Herb.  He describes climbing a mountain in Tibet to see what he should never have seen — hundreds of winds.  OK, so the wind has come after him.  I can totally buy into that — we’ve seen all kinds of voodoo follow people back to “civilization” for revenge.  Crikey, TZ even put a lion in a dude’s Park Avenue bedroom.  I can imagine this story being the basis for a great episode, but this ain’t it.

Image 002

“Note to self: I’ll do one more episode in 3 years, but that’s it!”

In the limited “killer wind” genre, this makes The Happening look like Citizen Hurrikane.

I give it an F1 on the Fujita Scale (F5, of course, being Finger of God).  And that’s being generous, because the Fujita Scale actually starts at F0.

The short story is actually pretty good and if I had read it before seeing the episode, I would have looked forward to an adaptation — on Outer Limits or TZ, maybe.

Strangely, the short story centers on his friend Herb.  Sarrazin’s character Allin (renamed the manlier John Colt for TV) literally phones it in, never physically appearing in the scenes.   I’m not sure what is the benefit of this choice, but it worked for me.

Naturally, the short story form has the advantage of being able to deliver more pure exposition.  We are given a lot more information about the wind, how it has absorbed the souls of those killed in hurricanes, cyclones and typhoons; how it has pursued Allin across the globe.

Another wasted opportunity.

Post-Post:

  • Sarrazin’s character mentions that they are in New Zealand, so my hunch about The Lake was correct.  This episode was all shot indoors, so the NZ location was not exploited at all.
  • Like everything filmed in New Zealand in the last 50 years, The Wind has an actor that appeared in one of the Lord of The Ring movies.  OK, The Lake didn’t; well, that theory didn’t last long.