Tales from the Crypt – Cutting Cards (S2E3)

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tftccountingcards04After watching the archaic, completely artless Teenage Zombies, the opening to Tales from the Crypt — simple as it is — is nothing short of electrifying.  And, by “opening”, I mean skipping the odious Crypt-Keeper and diving right into the story.

Sure, it has the advantage of color, but it also uses music and just a few establishing shots to set the tone.  A big-ass Cadillac driven by a dude in a big-ass cowboy hat, boots hitting the ground, a spin of the roulette wheel, the wheels on a slot machine.  None of these are budget-busters or require editing genius, but put the right music — even carefully chosen stock music — underneath them, and it makes the difference between film-making and pointing a camera.

tftccountingcards02It also helps when the cowboy, Reno Crevice, is played by Lance Henricksen, but then the budget starts taking a hit; although from some of the crap I’ve seen him in, maybe not a big one.  He has a drink in the casino, and is warned that Sam Forney (Kevin Tighe) is a guy to look out for.  They have tangled before, so Crevice goes directly to challenge him.

Crevice is a little short on funds, so the stakes for the wager are loser must leave town.  Crevice rolls a 12, but Forney matches him.

Increasingly agitated, Crevice suggests Russian Roulette.  Forney provides a revolver and Crevice loads a single bullet, pronouncing it to be “5 to 1 odds.”  They take turns clicking off shots until the final chamber, which misfires.

tftccountingcards03Determined to see this through, they next try cards, using their fingers as the stakes.

Henricksen and Tighe are both excellent, playing up the campy roles while retaining the danger.  The episode is also very well directed by Walter Hill.  And the ending . . . er,  it’s very well done.  It’s the kind of thing you’ll like if you like that kind of thing.  It was too much of a downer for me, but I appreciate its quality.

Lost me at the end, but I still rate this one Aces.

Post-Post:

  • At 20:12, this has got to be one of the shortest episodes.  But God bless them for not padding it out .
  • Roy Brocksmith plays a bartender.  Following the AHP policy of recycling actors, he was just in the previous episode.
  • Seems like Kevin Tighe went from a go-to good guy in his younger years to a go-to bad guy.  He is great playing the asshole, though, most recently seen as Anthony Cooper in Lost.
  • Not sure what is going on with writer Mae Woods.  She only has 3 writing credits on IMDb.  All 3 are on Tales from the Crypt, and 2 of the 3 were directed by Walter Hill.  She is also list as Hill’s assistant on several of his movies.
  • Not to be a spoil-sport, but when you’re playing Russian Roulette with a revolver, can’t you see which chamber the bullet is in, or at least rule out a few of them?

Teenage Zombies (1960)

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teenagezombies0220 Movies for $5; What could possibly go wrong?  Part XI.

This was a huge letdown almost immediately.  The title had me anticipating something very different.  Well, at least it was only 73 minutes.

The gang is hanging out at the ‘ol Campus House malt shop.  One of them suggests a picnic lunch on an island that no one has ever realized was just off the coast.  In the next shot, they are lounging on the beach.  Their small boat is anchored 25 yards off of the beach, yet none of the group seems to be wet.  And that is a shame as the girls are pretty hot.

teenagezombies04

Lilly of the Field, not toiling.

They follow a path and see zombies — more like lumbering workers — toiling in the field overseen by a women who looks like Lilly Munster.

I have to hand it to this film, White Zombie and King of the Zombies — they have at least harnessed the zombies to do something productive.  Walking Dead could learn a lesson here.

The youts bolt, but discover their boat is gone.  They go to a nearby house where Lilly meets them at the door.  While talking, they hear the girls screaming.  Soon they are locked in a cage with the girls.

A couple of Men in Black go to the island.  They inquire about the production of  5,000 capsules which will be used to subdue the US population.  If they are not ready, they must rely on hydrogen bombs to complete their mission.  Really seems like there would have been an alternative somewhere in the middle.  Luckily Lilly has the 4 teenagers to use as guinea pigs — presumably for the drugs, not the H-bombs.

teenagezombies0

Is this the Sheriff or a picture of the Sheriff?

There is a lot of walking, boating, and a gorilla.  And that makes it sound more interesting than it actually was.

Definitely one of the worst movies in the collection, not worthy of further discussion. Clearly, it is in the collection due to its public domain status, and in this blog due a slavish obsession with completeness.

Post-Post:

  • Available for download at You Tube and Internet Archive, but why would ya?
  • One of the boys says he is from Compton.  I got nuthin’.
teenagezombies03

C’mon, a payphone mounted on a louvered panel? I guess Mom didn’t want her big-shot director putting holes in the wall.

Outer Limits – Corner of the Eye (S1E9)

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olcorner01Father Jonascu is on Skid Row handing out blankets to the bums. The police roll in and starting roughing up the crowd.  Jonascu is knocked to the ground in the chaos.  A cop asks if he is alright, but when he turns to the cop, he sees a demon in a police uniform.  Looking a second later, he sees a human cop.

He tells his assistant he thinks he is losing his mind.  Understandable, because whoever heard of a priest believing in something supernatural.  One of the bums knows that Jonascu saw the demon and begs him to tell others.  Father Jonascu will not offer this slight comfort.

Father Jonascu says that he is considering a reassignment, and this is a man who knows what he wants:

Jonascu, when is life is on the line, opts for a scientific reason for his vision.  He is diagnosed as having a brain tumor.  He takes this as a cause rather than effect.  He was fine until he saw the demon, he reasons.

During his next sermon, he sees a woman in the back of the church who is a demon. Seconds later she appears human again, then a demon again.  Knowing she has been busted, she runs out.  Jonascu gives chase, but collapses.

He begins telling his doctor about the hallucinations, then the doctor plunges a syringe into his neck.  The doctor wants to introduce some friends — he opens the door and the demon cop and demon woman are waiting.  He turns back to the doctor, who reveals himself to also be a demon, although he says he does not like that label — perhaps the D-word.

The woman says they are “the way,” and that all our religious teachings have descended from them.  They have come to deliver the power to heal to humanity.  They want Jonascu to be the human face to deliver this gift; understandably.

olcorner06The lady D-word grabs Jonascu’s head.  She cures his tumor, but the transference kills her.  Apparently there are no young boys in the hospital, so he lays hands on a young girl injured in an auto accident, and instantly heals her. Once the press is notified, his life becomes very busy as he heals hundreds.

Jonascu’s assistant overhears the D-words discussing their real mission — to siphon off earth’s atmosphere.  He is dealt with appropriately.  For some reason, it takes Jonascu a long time to figure out he might be able to resurrect his assistant.

Turns out, he was only “mostly dead” and Jonascu  brings him back.  Ironic since the doctor is played by Prince Humperdinck.  The two priests confront the D-words.

At this point, I got completely lost.  Jonascu grabs the D-cop’s head, but the “healing” action somehow kills the alien.  Does that mean the aliens can’t heal each other?  Does that mean the aliens aren’t “normal”?  That after removing the bad parts, there was nothing left?  Seems a little racist.  Then the D-doctor grabs the priest’s head; and the priest grabs the D-doctor’s head at the same time.  As they struggle, the assistant priest jumps into the mix and grabs the D-doctor’s head.  After a lot of sound and fury, Jonascu and the D-doctor are dead, and the assistant has the healing power.  It took slow-motioning this a couple of times for me to get it.

In a long shot of the carnage on the altar of the church, we see the D-woman observing from the back of the church.  But wasn’t she killed after transferring her power?  Does that mean the D-doctor and Jonascu are going to come back to life?  It’s one thing to leave the story open-ended, but you have to establish some rules.

Once it was clear this was going to be another religion / sci-fi hybrid, I feared another White Light Fever caliber fiasco.  Luckily it was handled better this time, and turned out to be a good episode.

Post-Post:

  • Stuart Gillard also directed Sandkings.
  • The little girl healed by Jonascu also played Samantha Mulder.
  • Etymology of Skid Row.  The tree-dragging scenario sounds a little too neat, but who knows.

The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008)

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dayearth011928, India.  Keanu Reeves, sporting a beard of Almost Human density, is sharpening his crampons when he sees a bright light over the horizon.  He climbs a vertical face to find a glowing sphere.  He brushes away some surface ice with his pick, causing the sphere to go mini-nova and knock him out.  He awakens to find the sphere gone and a scar on his hand.

In the present day, super scientist Jennifer Connelly is recruited along with a group of other experts in the sciences and engineering.  Her specialty is astro-biology which would seem to be pretty simple given that no biology has been discovered out in the astro.  Her friend Don Draper spots her in the crowd and fast-tracks her inside.

An object has been spotted speeding toward earth, Manhattan specifically.  And, oh yeah, it will be here in 78 minutes.  The group boards a helicopter and flies over New York City.  If this brain-trust is supposed to save humanity, I am unclear about how it makes sense to airlift them to ground zero where an object traveling 18,600 miles a second is going to impact.

dayearth07Luckily, the object slows down before impact and lands in Central Park.  When the dust settles, it is revealed to be sphere like the one in 1928, only much larger.  A being emerges, and approaches Jennifer.  So the army shoots him.  The giant robot AL GORT then follows, knocking out all the electrical equipment and weapons.

The injured alien is revealed to be Keanu Reeves again, or at least a pile of his DNA swiped in 1928, and is take to a hospital.  Why the 80 year gap?  Why choose a guy in India when, even in 1928, New York would be the likely location to address the world (or maybe London or Paris — definitely not the Karakoram Mountains.),  And they just happened to pick the only guy in India who was not Indian or British?

In the hospital, much like Neo, Keanu is reborn slimy, fully formed and hairless, emerging from a gelatinous goo.  Within minutes he is back to his movie-star self, with a full head of hair but no beard.

Kathy Bates shows up as the Secretary of Defense and begins grilling him.  She is particularly repulsive in this role.  I’m not sure what I’ve seen her in since Misery, so maybe it is her, or maybe it is her resemblance to an actual vaguely feminine, arrogant, feckless shrew of a Secretary of State — referring, of course to John Kerry.

Keanu, or Klaatu — his freakishly similar alien name — is having none of this, so escapes.  Proving that he truly is not of his earth and does not understand our strange ways, he eats a tuna salad sandwich from a vending machine.  Predictably, he passes out in the mens room of the train station.

After being revived, he calls Jennifer to help him, and she shows up with her obnoxious step-son.  Klaatu Reeves applies an ointment to his wound which heals it and conveniently even dissolves the stitches.  He directs Jennifer to drive out into the country where he retrieves another sphere from a pond.  Other spheres around the world begin collecting the earth’s flora and fauna like an ark.

Klaatu Reeves finally spills the beans.  He is not here to save humanity, he and robot AL GORT are here to save the earth from humanity.  Trying to make the case for our species, Jennifer takes him to see her mentor John Cleese.  Unfortunately her obnoxious son rats them out to the government.

When the government tries to use a diamond drill on AL GORT, he breaks down into billions of metallic insect-like nanites.  The nanite swarm spreads, devouring soldiers, stadiums, trucks.  After seeing Jennifer crying with her obnoxious son, Klaatu Reeves has a Terminatoresque “I know now why you cry” moment.

He stops the nanites, sparing humanity, but the sphere lets out another blast.  This one, an EMP, shuts down everything electric.  IMDb and Wiki both indicate that the earth is left forever without electrical capability, but I don’t see where that is indicated.  Klaatu Reeves does say that there will be a cost to humanity, but that could have just meant we had to rebuild, giving earth a breather.  And how exactly would we be prohibited from using electricity forever?  Did they suspend the laws of physics?

OK, say the all-knowing, beneficent Klaatu Reeves and AL GORT have thrust us back into the stone age for the good of the earth.  Welcome back TB, plague, polio, smallpox, dysentery.  Anywhere people are clustered, look forward to horse shit up to your knees. Hooked up to a dialysis machine?  Don’t start any long novels.  I just hope these brainiacs remembered to provide for the the cooling towers in 400+ nuclear power plants around the world.  And it is a certainty that as civilization breaks down, the biggest growth industries will be tribalism, slavery and war.

Maybe some other do-gooder aliens will show up in a thousand years and save humanity again — this time by giving us the miracle of electricity.

It didn’t move the earth for me, and I’ve had my fill of sanctimonious aliens, but it was much better than I had been lead to expect.

Post-Post:

  • This is the role Klaatu Reeves was born to play — a blank-faced, emotionless “other”.  And he pulls it off very well.  Would have been nice to have one “whoa” though.
  • How is nanites not in spellcheck?
  • Supposedly Klaatu Barada Nikto is in here somewhere, but I missed it.  Many points in the original movie are revisited — names are re-used, and scenes re-played, sometimes in a different context.  But why bury something so iconic? Were they afraid kiddies would only know it from Army of Darkness?
  • Based on Farewell to the Master by Harry Bates.
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Al Gort

Ray Bradbury Theater – The Coffin (S2E9)

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cover02I’d like to think we are moving out of the European phase of this series since we have an American prominent in the cast.  But confidence is not high — next week’s director has an accent grave in his name.

At least the Brit du jour is Denholm Elliott, most famous in this country for fun performances in Trading Places and the prime-numbered Indiana Jones films.  Elliott had the good sense to fake his own death — speculating here — in order to avoid Indie & the Crystal Skull.

Dan O’Herlihy is inventor Charles Braling.  He has taken all his valuables out of the bank and is storing them in his home over his lawyer’s objections.  His brother Elliott has stopped by to borrow a few pounds as he apparently does on a regular basis.  Braling tells him he is dying, and is building his own coffin.  For some reason it is 9 feet long and has a window and a tape player.

They bicker continuously with Elliott being oddly belligerent for  guy who depends on his brother for support.  Elliott finally goes too far and brings up Braling’s dead wife.  Braling throws him out, but the excitement was too much for him.  Elliott hears him collapse.

Elliott makes funeral arrangements for his brother, choosing the cheapest coffin and opting for no service.  Well, one service is permitted — the reading of the will.  His brother has left him the house, but taxes will eat up most of it.  However, he also willed him the contents, including all his valuables, hidden somewhere in the house.

Elliott deduces that the fortune is hidden in the coffin.  As he climbs in to retrieve the goodies, the lid snaps shut.  Braling’s robot servants serve as pallbearers, in a well-directed scene.  You don’t see much, but you do see enough to accept that these robots actually are moving the coffin, negotiating the stairs, heading into the woods, and lowering the box.  The sequence is especially credible, paying off a previous scene where we saw Braling pacing off distances and noting directions — now we know it was for the ‘bots to follow to the grave-site.

En route, and as he is being lowered, and covered with dirt, Elliott is of course screaming.  He is better portraying panic than outright terror, but it works OK.

Not a bad episode, even though murdering the brother seems a tad excessive.  Plus, what of the loot that was buried with him?  Surely that could have been put to better use.  But then, people are buried with diamonds and gold all the time.  Or so the funeral directors would have us believe.

Post-Post:

  • This is the 6th highest rated RBT episode on IMDb which does not bode well for the future viewing.
  • From the director of The Small Assassin episode
  • Anyone who thinks Last Crusade was better than Temple of Doom can go to hell.
  • Denholm Elliott was in the RAF in WWII, was shot down and spent time in a German Stalag.  He earned his way into the Indy films.  How about you, Shia?