Ghostmaker (2011)

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ghostmaker01“Last year this footage started to appear on the internet.  As of today the identity of these people remains unknown.  The following film is inspired by their story.”

Well, this is new: A film that only claims to be inspired by the events rather than being based on them. I’m not sure that is better.  In this genre, based on is always an obvious lie; but inspired by flat out tells you this is show-biz.  No matter — this is a fun ride.

College student Kyle needs money for college necessities like textbooks and crystal meth so he is working for a cleaning service.  While clearing out an old woman’s basement, he finds a coffin with a window in the lid.  The film immediately becomes terrifying as it reminds me of having to sit through that episode of Ray Bradbury Theater which also featured a coffin with a view.

The old woman makes him promise to destroy it, but he thinks he night be able to sell it on eBay.  He opens it up to clean it out and discovers the cushions lift out.  Inside he finds a clockwork device with more wheels and gears than the Antikythera Mechanism.

ghostmaker04With his friend Pratt, Kyle finds an antique book with a drawing of the coffin which is called a Ghost Machine.  It was created to simulate the sensation of a near death experience.

They test it out first on a goldfish.  Seriously.  I appreciate that they are scientifically weighing the risks, but a goldfish?  Couldn’t they find an ant?  The fish appears to die, but does wake up, leading the brain-trust to proclaim the device safe for humans.  Fairly ludicrous, but more-so as we learn about the device.  It uses sound waves as part of the process — do goldfish have ears?  And plunges a needle into the back of the subject’s head — did the bowl mysteriously spring a leak?

Kyle tries it first and discovers that it transforms him into a ghost.  He is able to move about unseen, even through walls, while his corporeal body still lies in the coffin.  His buddy Platt tries it with similar results.  Kyle’s wheelchair bound roomie Sutton tries it, and naturally is able to walk.

ghostmaker06Kyle compounds his meth addiction with an addiction to the device.  One feeds the other as he uses the device to plan robberies in order to score more meth.  Eventually he sees the destruction that his actions are causing and realizes he must break the cycles of both the meth and the coffin.

Sutton is seduced by the device’s ability to let him walk again.  The more he uses it, the further more enslaved to it he becomes.  He uses the device far more than anyone else and experiences the most changes.  He uses the device to spy on Kyle’s girlfriend Julie, eventually stealing it to protect it from Kyle.  He rats out Kyle as a meth user and abducts Julie.

Platt falls down some stairs and dies.  OK, his story is a little thin.

The film looks great, and has great pacing and score.  The acting is a little spotty, but not distracting.  There is a strange flatness to the movie though, which I am at a loss to describe.  Maybe because there are no extreme highs or lows, no big jump scares, no big twists.  It even has an ending that ties things up maybe a little too neatly.  Maybe all that works in its favor — it succeeds by not doing anything wrong.

But the important thing is that it succeeds.  Highly recommended.

Post-Post:

  • Originally titled Box of Shadows.
  • The name on Julie’s medicine bottle is Julie Strain.
  • Not crazy about that cover.  While death is personified in the film, it looks nothing like that and does not carry a scythe.  The cover is actually far less interesting than the reality for a change — the old switch and bait.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents – Number Twenty-Two (S2E21)

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ah2204

Wipe that smirk off your face, punk!

Coppers are chasing a ne’er-do-well through an alley.  The young man, with a big smile on his face, seems to be taking this as a real hoot, daddio.  Ultimately cornered on a fire escape by the police, he gives up.  The punk with the smirk is Rip Torn, although so young here that he is unrecognizable.

He is pretty proud of himself over his crime-spree of a single robbery.  Of an old man.  In a candy store.  With a toy gun. Lest you underestimate him, he did slug the geezer with the toy gun.

He has a big smile the whole time he walks down the cell-block to his new home.  These are just temporary holding cells, but these are some of the best dressed criminals I’ve ever seen — suit jackets, ties, a nice fedora.  This is the anti-Oz.

He gets to his cell and meets his new roomie, an old man named Skinner, who has clearly been here before.  When Torn finds out he will be photographed for the mug shots, he gets excited.  Will reporters be there?  Will he get his picture in the paper?  Having his priorities straight, he is hoping to impress the “big shots” back at the pool hall.  However, he does worry that the papers will spill the beans that his gun was only a toy swiped from a 5 & 10 (The Dollar Store before inflation).  Wow, guess that really was a spree!

ah2207

Forced perspective trick now used by Tom Cruise.

Torn and Skinner are taken to a line-up where they are questioned from the back of the room by a man with a microphone.  Skinner and Torn are kept for additional questioning.  During the bonus round, Skinner claims not to remember anything in answer to all their questions.  Doesn’t remember last time he worked, or anything about the crime.

Torn continues to take it all as a joke until the detective tells him the old man he slugged in the candy store sustained a cracked skull and died.  That’s murder, baby!  Although, that must have been some toy gun to fracture his skull.

This is a pretty slim story.  The big final twist here is the standard plot point we would expect at the end of the first act in a contemporary crime show.  Maybe it was shocking 60 years ago, but I expect better from Evan Hunter.  Credited with the story, he also wrote the screenplay for The Birds and the 200 87th Precinct novels.

I rate it 8 out of 22.

Post-Post:

  • AHP Deathwatch:  Rip Torn and Martin Wilkins are still with us.  Although with a 1905 birth year, I suspect Wilkin’s bio might need updating.
  • AHP Proximity Alert:  Ray Teal was just in an episode 4 weeks earlier.
  • Would it have killed them to delay this one week and make it the 22nd episode of the season?
  • Alfred Hitchcock directed movies titled Number 13 and Number 17.  I like to think that if he had directed this episode, he would have renamed it Number 23 just to keep the prime number theme going.  And would have delayed it two weeks.
  • Hmmm, just noticed that there is already a movie named The Number 23.
  • And then there is this strange piece of business.  The man below does not seem to be drunk or stoned.  He does, however, have a snappy haircut and a stylish blazer-over-t-shirt that Miami Vice would not popularize for another 25 years.  The only thing I can think of is that they are hinting at some gay-related crime, but that would be pretty bold to put on TV in the 50’s.

ah2206

The Den (2013)

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theden01This movie was a complete surprise.

The only thing I knew about it was that I saw a 2-star review at another site this morning (which I did not read).  It was already in my NetFlix queue, though, so I gave it a chance — and it’s pretty great!  I get that out of the way up front, because there are some caveats.

Caveat # 1:  A couple of times it crossed the line for me into Megan is Missing territory where it became a little too real to be fun.  But your mileage may vary.

Melanie Papalia as Liz Benton has copped the greatest gig in the world.  She has actually gotten a university grant to surf the web all day.  I don’t get offers that good in my spam.  She is using a Chatroulette type program called The Den to talk to people all over the world who want to see her boobs.

theden03Pretty quickly her computer is hacked.  It turns itself on, and The Den feed gives her some disturbing audio.  After a non-nonsensical scene where her boyfriend throws a scare into her, the hacker turns on her webcam and records them making out.  This results in the board pulling her grant, even although I suspect the vote was not unanimous.

After a few random chats with pervs, an Aussie, a Nigerian Prince scammer, etc, she sees a woman bound and gagged, who is thrown against a table and has her neck sliced open.  From there, things go badly for Liz in ways that I will not detail.  As always, the less known, the better.  This film actually got 3 or 4 verbal oh-shits from me, which is extremely rare.

Caveat #2:  You’re going to be reminded of a lot of other movies.  My theory is that originality is over-rated, so it didn’t really bother me.  Yes, what they have created here uses some familiar building blocks, but how they put them to together is better than 90% of the crap in this genre.  I’m sure there are many more examples, but off the top of my head, all of these are represented here: Megan is Missing, Hostel, Saw, V/H/S, Devils Due, The Strangers.

My well-reasoned argument is, “so what”.  I came to be entertained and they delivered.

theden05

Watching cable news when I was younger and more stupider prepared me for this.

 

Night Gallery – Escape Route (S1P3)

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nightgallery01OK, Rod.  We gets it — Nazis is bad.  In Twilight Zone, we got it in Death’s Head Revisited and He’s Alive.  Six years later, we’re still getting it.  Not to diminish the Holocaust, but we’re just trying to have some fun here.  After episodes in the pilot about a haunted painting and a crabby old woman, this is what we get?  Just a little too real.

Richard Kiley is a former Nazi living in South America.  At a museum, an Auschwitz survivor is looking at a painting of a crucifixion.  He had a friend who died that way in one of the camps.  He believes he recognizes Kiley as a guard from the camp.  Kiley denies it to the old man — ironic because he had only ducked into the museum to evade Israeli agents.  While there, he becomes entranced by a idyllic painting of a man in a rowboat.  As he gazes at the painting, he imagines himself in that serene place.  He is so captivated that at closing time, a guard must ask him to leave.

The next morning, even before the museum is open, he rushes back to see the painting.  Again he gazes longingly at the painting.

That night, through the thin walls of his apartment, he talks to neighbor Gretchen.  He tells her of the painting and his imaging being the man in the boat.  That must have gotten her attention.

ngescapeclause01

“Yeah, yeah but let’s get back to that man in the boat.”

She knows his true identity.  He tells her he believes he could have willed himself into the picture.  She tells him he has neither soul nor conscience.  Worst hooker ever.

He returns to the museum and sees the old man again.  This time the old man accuses him of being a guard in the camp, and calls him by his true name.  Kiley continues his denials, but after the old man leaves, he tries again to insert himself into the painting.  For a few moments he actually succeeds, seeing himself in the picture, the surface rippling.  The he is in the picture, feeling the water, able to look the other way, out of the picture and into the museum.  .

After the museum closes, he goes to a bar where they are singing the Frito Bandito song.  He coolly maintains his cover by drunkenly breaking into Deutshland uber Alles.  Again, he crosses paths with the old man.  He kills the old man then goes on the run.

The agents find him at a bus station and he takes off.  After an escape sequence which features a few ill-advised freeze-frames, he sneaks back into the museum.

He kneels before the painting and begs God to put him into picture.  In the dark gallery, he does not see that the painting of the lake is gone, having been replaced by the painting of the crucifixion.  He gets his wish.  D’oh!

The pilot had three solid episodes.  An effort was even made to have the stories involve the paintings in the gallery, although the relevance in the 2nd story was a little thin.  Whether the pilot sold the series, or if it was a done deal, it was a high point that Night Gallery would not achieve very often in its run.

Post-Post:

  • Not to be confused with Escape Clause.
  • Rod Serling was a paratrooper in WWII.
  • Richard Kiley was the park narrator in Jurassic Park.  They spared no expense.