Author Archives: don

Night Gallery – Certain Shadows on the Wall (S1E3)

Posted on by
2

nightgallery01It is impossible to see that title without thinking of the Statler Brothers song from Pulp Fiction.

Agnes Moorehead’s brother is reading to her from Charles Dicken’s Bleak House.  He and their two sisters all live in this house under the thumb of Agnes as she alone inherited their father’s fortune.  His patience is clearly running out as he has been at her beck and call for 25 years — most of it probably spent reading the 1,000 page Bleak House.

He gives her some pain pills.  She asks him to start reading Great Expectations to her.  At this point, no jury in the world would convict him.

Agnes’ brother is a doctor who has abandoned his failing practice.  After giving her the pills he goes downstairs for some standard Rod Serling padding-out-the-run-time dialogue.  He eventually gets to the point, which is that Agnes “has only a matter of days left.”  Demonstrating the diagnostic acumen that sent his practice into a tailspin, she croaks within 5 minutes.

Hearing a noise upstairs, her brother goes up to check on her and finds her dead.  He calls to make arrangements for the funeral as his sisters, or one of them anyway, get weepy.  They are startled to find that Agnes’ shadow has suddenly appeared on the wall.

ngcertain03The doctor is troubled by the shadow, and calls it a trick of refraction, maybe due to the way the furniture is positioned.

The funeral home calls and the doctor tells then the cause of death was acute dyspepsia — that’s the ticket — and uh, no need any verification on that, no siree Bob.

Wracked with guilt, he tries painting over the shadow, but to no avail — although the paint also does not even cover up the pattern on the wallpaper, so maybe it just isn’t very good paint.  And wouldn’t the solution be to strip the wallpaper, not to paint over it?

Sister #2 believes a cover-up is impossible, and she plainly states that she means covering up the murder also.

Sister #1 puts some of Agnes’s “meds” in the doctor’s tea to calm him down.  He dies just as he killed Agnes.  This whole process is a little too cutesy as far as who knows what.

The sisters don’t seem too upset at his death.  His shadow has joined Agnes’ so he will be reading Dickens to her for eternity.  Or until they redecorate.  “It is just like having them here,” says one sister.  Yeah, if there were silent, grey and two-dimensional before they died — well, 2 out of 3 ain’t bad.

The shadow of Agnes really is very well done.  The silhouette painted on the wallpaper is great and the coloration is perfect for a shadow.  When they reveal the brother’s shadow, it is obviously a real shadow; clearly they did not want to pay the artist to come back a second day.  There was no attempt to match the colors, and as they pan to show the two shadows, the brother’s shadow is even moving for the first few frames.  Very cheesy.

Post-Post:

  • Twilight Zone Legacy:  Agnes Moorehead was in the classic The Invaders.
  • Directed by Jeff Corey who was in The Dead Man.
  • Whereas the other tale in this episode, The House, reused the interior from Roddy McDowell’s house in The Cemetery, this episode reuses the exterior of that same house.
  • And minor point, but is it too much to ask that shows be in the same order as they aired or appear on the cover?  20 Horror Movies for $5, Night Gallery and Ray Bradbury Theater all fail on this most fundamental level.
  • RBT is especially a challenge as the episodes are in somewhat random order, and not listed on the box or the disks.  When I say watching that show is a chore, I mean it literally.

Night Gallery – The House (S1E3)

Posted on by
5

Another non-original from shirkoholic Rod Serling.  Purposely ambiguous, but maybe a little too squishy for its own good.

Elaine Latimer is describing a recurring dream where she is driving, and with a sense of calm, arrives at the titular house.  She gets out of her car in slo-mo, clothes billowing dreamily behind her and knocks on the door.  She has no idea what she would say if anyone answers.  No one comes to the door, so she returns to her car and drives away.  Only then does the doorknob turn and the door open.  Which is a little strange because this is her dream, but she is not in it at this point.

It is revealed that she is telling this to a psychiatrist.  She will be leaving the sanitarium tomorrow, having been cured, or her insurance having run out.

As she is driving away from the sanitarium, apparently aimlessly, she finds herself recognizing sights from her dream — the road, a pond, and finally the house.  The house is for sale and the realtor happens to be standing in the yard.  They go inside and shockingly do not have sex (note to self, ease up on the porn).  She does not require  a tour; she knows the layout and the contents of the house from her dream.

Turns out the house is a steal because it is haunted.  Maybe it is haunted by the ghosts of Roddy McDowell and Ozzie Davis as this is the house where they died in The Cemetery:

This is where it gets weird.  She has moved into the house, and is taking a nap during the day.  We cut to her recurring dream as she pulls up to the house in her billowy orange outfit.  In the dream, she again knocks on the door.  But the knock wakes her up and she goes downstairs only in time to hear a car pulling away.  OK, like it, very TZ.

She calls her psychiatrist.  While on the phone, she again hears a knock.  Apparently the phone is tethered to the wall with some sort of cord.  What is this the 70’s?  Oh yeah.  She tells the doc to hang on and runs downstairs.  She opens the door and gasps, but we don’t see at what.

She goes back to the doc on the phone and says she just saw the ghost.  “I am the ghost, doctor,” she says as the camera cuts to her in orange in the driveway again.  We hear the car pulling away as she says goodby to him.

nghouse06She naps again — maybe she was in the sanitarium for narcolepsy — and we see the woman in orange approach then house again.  She gets out of the car, and gives the standard single knock on the door.  Elaine awakens at the knock, laments not having a bedroom on the first floor, and runs downstairs again. She is just in time to see the car pulling away and runs after it in full billow.

This would be fine, but she was face-to-face with her doppelganger earlier during the interrupted phone call, so there is no mystery who/what is doing the knocking.  That would have been the time for confrontation.  So, are we to believe this cycle will go on forever?  There is really no torment now that she knows the identity — other than lost sleep, and this only seems to happen during daytime naps to correspond to the sunny day in the dream.  Will the ghost never allow a face-to-face meeting again?  Then why that one time?  Even ambiguity needs to be bottled to make sense.  It just felt like a piece was missing.

Or maybe there was an extra piece, as it would have made more sense if she had never seen the “ghost” (or maybe just from a window, seeing the car pull away).

There are a few other actors, but the episode is really carried by Joanna Pettet. Strangely, I didn’t find her all that attractive even though I see a lot of praise for her online.  But I will say this: she wears the hell out of those 70’s billowy clothes.  Just the scenes of her walking and running in slow-mo in those outfits are worth the price of admission.

Good stuff.

Post-Post:

  • Twilight Zone Legacy:  None.
  • Directed by Gomez Addams.
  • The episode was devoid of humor, and didn’t need it.  But I wonder if this was an intentional joke they slipped in or a faux pas:

nghouse04

 

In the Dead of Winter (1993)

Posted on by
Reply

20 horror movies for $5; what could possibly go wrong?  Part XVII of XX (ithinkicanithinkicanithinkican).

This is only the 2nd film in this collection wherein I have never seen a single actor in anything else.  This was not a good omen for Teenage Zombies, but at least that had the excuse of being 54 years old and uber-low budget (or is that unter-low budget).  And it still managed to have cover art online.

Part of the problem with this collection — admittedly a small part of the problem — is the transfers.  The quality here is just as bad as with Curtains; and in both cases, the movies had some good qualities that were suffocated by it being such a chore to even look at.  Not to say the movies would have been good if better preserved; but certainly watchable.

The unlikely named G-Jo Reed plays Tucker, a convict getting out of prison today.  He comes out with that great American 2nd chance,  clean slate, never going back, cleaning up his act attitude — dressed in camo, flipping off a prison clerk, being met by some low-life pals driving a flatbed and getting a gat in his hands within 2 minutes of leaving the facility.

inthedead02His pal knows where the first stop will be.  Under the credits, we see some great images of the snowy Utah mountains as they drive.  Not that they are well-photographed, mind you.  It’s just that in certain areas like this or the Grand Canyon, it is so amazing, that it is almost impossible to take a bad picture.  See Adams, Ansel E.

They arrive at the home of Sheriff Steve — seriously, that’s how he credited — just as he is leaving for work.  Tucker puts 2 in the sheriff, causing blood to gush from his mouth.  He straddles the downed sheriff and puts 2 more in him at close range.  This is not going to look good at his parole hearing, especially with Sheriff’s Wife — seriously, that’s how she is credited — standing 2 feet away from him as a witness.

Just an aside — I don’t know if the ol’ “black stuff on the binoculars / telescope gag” has ever been once been pulled in real life, but it will always get a laugh out of me on-screen.

Next they encounter a couple in the classic wrong place at the wrong time whose truck has broken down on the highway.  This has a couple of fun shots of them driving off with the couple’s snowmobiles and leaving them tied up.  Not great, but there is a spark.

A yuppie couple’s ATV breaks down, and they trek to a cabin.  As in all movies, no one answers the door, so they just walk right in.  As in Axed, it turns out that the man has planned the whole thing and has a bottle of wine waiting for them.  Unlike Axed, he does not kill his wife.  However, like Axed, he does use an axe — but to chop wood.

inthedead03

Seriously, Utah in Winter? Wouldn’t this have required a backhoe?

Unfortunately, this was to be the gang’s hide-out.  They barge in and begin roughing up the couple until the man drives a knife through the foot of one of them.  They don’t see the humor and bury him up to his neck in the ground.

The wife manages to grab Tucker’s gun.  In a random act of violence equivalent to Vince Vega’s shooting of Marvin, she causes a snowmobile to run over her husband’s head.  Although, to Vince’s credit, he did not waste 4 bullets doing it.  The wife is distraught and points the pistol in her mouth.  It is admittedly funny when one of them ways, “Honey, don’t make a mortar of yourself.”  She pulls the trigger but those had been the last 4 bullets.  As they wrestle her to the ground, she accidentally falls on her own knife.

The gang takes off on the snowmobiles and quickly get lost.  If only snowmobiles left some sort of track that could be followed back.  As the brain-trust stops to assess the situation, a sniper begins firing at them.  The rest of the movie is the unknown sniper tracking the men across the Utah landscape.  Just as in First Blood or Southern Comfort, the men get picked off one by one.

Turns out the sniper — SPOILER– is the Sheriff who had been wearing a bullet-proof vest in the first scene.  Although I would have thought the blood gushing from his mouth indicated otherwise.  And I guess the off-screen 3rd and 4th shots were not head-shots.

I’m all for these vermin being exterminated, but it seems a little extreme.  He ain’t Josey Wales — they did not kill Sheriff’s Wife or Sheriff’s Son (as he is credited).  But it’s hard for me to care — good riddance. Plus, it was revealed that this guy was in jail for killing a dog.  Is that really motivation to murder the sheriff who busted you?

The ending is basically Sideshow Bob stepping on rakes.  Well, the logical end, not the actual end.  This movie is like Return of the King — it just won’t stop.  It goes on for about 7 minutes after it should have gone dark.

Definitely a low-budget joint, but probably watchable with a clean print.  I’m not going to be rewatching or recommending it to anyone, but it had it’s moments and the acting was not uniformly horrible.

Post-Post:

  • Who is the girl snowboarding behind the car during the interminable ending?  It looks like the  yuppie girl, but her jacket is slightly different and that couple was on an ATV not a car.  Plus she is dead, and it is a different guy.  At first I thought it was an outtake, or behind-the-scenes footage, but then the movie continues.  Baffled.

Tales from the Crypt – The Sacrifice (S2E7)

Posted on by
Reply

This episode immediately struck fear in my heart as I got a Three’s a Crowd vibe from the music.

Insurance salesman James Reed boards an elevator with a hot babe.  He makes an effort at small talk but doesn’t get far, thus by TV rules guaranteeing she is married to the man he is going to see.  He is meeting client Sebastian Fleming in his penthouse.  Reed figures a $9 million policy will cover his home and contents which include about half a flock of parrots.

Fielding is an boorish, obnoxious dick, and expects a kickback of 30% of Reed’s commission on the policy.  Reed agrees rather than lose it all to a competitor.  As they are shaking hands, the woman walks in.  She turns out to be Gloria Fielding, clearly in it for the money or a lost bet.

The next day, she comes to visit Reed on his houseboat.  He and Gloria end up in the sack and he suggests they might get rid of Mr. Fielding to be together.

tftcsacrifice02That night at Fleming’s penthouse, he suggests they have a glass of champagne to celebrate.  Never has an insurance policy been treated with such festivity — well, the payout, maybe.  Reed throws the obnoxious Fleming off the balcony, which does make me feel a little more festive.

Mrs. Fleming learns that her husband had planned to take out a $10 million life insurance policy, but had not signed the papers.  She and Reed are actually happy about this as it takes away an obvious motive for the murder — because the penthouse which was just established to be worth $9M and his other holdings would certainly not have been a motive.

Then Michael Ironside comes calling, which is never a good sign.  Gloria is not happy to see him and tells him to get the hell out.  He has been obsessed with her and bought a condo right across the street to keep an eye on her.  He also happens to be Reed’s boss who gave him the lead on Fleming, and has pictures of Reed throwing Fleming over the balcony.

He doesn’t want money, he wants to time-share Gloria, taking her from dusk to dawn.  Reed, being a poor negotiator, gets the 12 hours a day she runs her yap.  Ironside moves in immediately, taking her that night.  In the mornings, she stumbles back to Reed.  This goes on for three months.

Soon, she finds Reed on his houseboat where he has overdosed. He wrote a confession letter clearing Gloria.  She burns the letter, strolls down the dock, and gets into a car with Ironside.  They are clearly a happy couple who planned this whole thing.  She tells Ironside she burned Jim’s confession and he says, “Now no one will ever know he was murdered.”  Well yes, with the letter the authorities would have known Fielding was murdered . . . but it would have implicated Reed — wouldn’t that have been beneficial?

tftcsacrifice03Cut to one of Fielding’s parrots squawking, “Hello, Jim.  Help me, Gloria.”  If this is supposed to indicate they will not get away with the murder, it fails.  1) The squawk implicates Reed, and sounds like Fleming was calling to Gloria for help — whether he fell or was pushed off the balcony can’t be determined, 2) The parrot could have picked up this phrase any time in the past 3 months.  It could have been Reed saying, “Gloria, help me open this can of tuna, 3) Birds can’t testify in court — see landmark People v. Toucan-Sam.

This is a strange episode for Tales from the Crypt.  It really would have worked better as an Alfred Hitchcock Presents.  There is no supernatural element.  No one comes back from the dead.  The performances are good, and even the bit with the birds works if you don’t think about it —  although it would have really helped the entire episode if this 5-second bit had been shot and scripted better.  The directing was a little leaden, though, and the score was just deadly.  The melodramatic wailing saxophone does not have a good track record in this series.  What this really needed was a non-director’s cut.

Post-Post:

  • This is Richard Greenberg’s only TV directing credit.  It wasn’t bad, but it didn’t really fit the tone of the series.
  • Not a lot of star-power here except for Michael Ironside.  The star of the episode is the poor-man’s Puddy, David Kilner from Inside.  Despite a couple of mediocre showcases, I can imagine him being great in the right role.
  • Reed overdoses on Pentobarbital, a drug used in executions.  When the manufacturer heard of this, they were shocked, shocked!  They decided not to sell the drug for use in executions.  Boy, those pharmaceutical companies are just swell!