DVD

THE CRITIC: A Little Deb Will Do You -S01E05- (1994)

November 27, 2023

There are a number of jokes that have been stuck in my head for years, but this one joke from the animated show THE CRITIC — a show created by some of the best writers and producers involved with the heyday of THE SIMPSONS — is one of my absolute favorites.

This is all you need to know going in: A young woman is being fitted for her debutante reveal. She is Margo, a liberally-minded teen who eschews this blue-blood practice she was born into but feels pressured to participate in. While being fitted for her reveal dress, the following exchange occurs between the dressmaker and herself.

“We dressmakers have a very strict code, so I need to know: Do you deserve to wear virginal white? Because if you don’t, you’ll have to wear an off-white, what we call a ‘hussy white’.

“So, which will it be? White-white?”

“…yes. Um, except for the gloves.”

I watched this episode when it first aired and was old enough to realize just how smutty the joke was and could not believe it slipped through broadcast standards & practices. I will not spell the joke out for you, as I give you enough credit to have a prurient imagination.

This joke has everything I could ever want: it’s far filthier than it initially sounds, it has a rare sense of specificity, it is loaded with cultural and sexual commentary, and the voice reading cleverly underplays all of the above. It is a brilliant twenty seconds of animated network television.

(If you don’t believe me, check out the YouTube comments on the link at the bottom, as I’m not the only one who fondly remembers this joke!)

I am in the thick of National Novel Writing Month and my novel this year is specifically focused on a bridal dressmaker and her clients. While this is a debutante reveal dress, it works in very much the same way as a bridal dress in that it is often meant to visually exemplify the best of you, as well as make the person wearing it feel imbued with the best of themselves.

I previously only thought about this joke once a month. Now I think about it every fucking day. (Don’t worry, I don’t even come close to involving any ‘hussy’ notions in said novel.)

(Eventually I’ll write a more involved post about THE CRITIC. For now? This will do.)

Unfortunately there’s no single clip available of it, but you can see it via tubi or on YouTube before a DCMA claim takes it down:

PIECES OF APRIL (2003)

November 20, 2023

Thanksgiving is one of the few holidays where the experience is radically different if you live in a rural area or suburban area versus an urban area, especially if you are a shitheel 20-something and away from home.

In rural and suburban areas it’s a communal, often familial affair; almost routine.

In urban areas and far from family, you have a tiny kitchen that is absolutely not equipped for preparing the amount of food folks expect for Thanksgiving and, if you are in your 20s, you have absolutely no fucking clue what you’re doing, but no one else is doing the work so it’s up to, and you have no one to guide you.

There aren’t a lot of great Thanksgiving films out there, perhaps because the stress of a Thanksgiving dinner is equally mirrored and amplified by preparing a Christmas dinner. (A CHRISTMAS STORY is probably the best example of this, even though it’s solely about making a meal for immediate family as opposed to an extended family.)

PIECES OF APRIL is one of the few great Thanksgiving films. It focuses on the dichotomy between rural and suburban and urban expectations, of young adults trying to live up to the expectations of being fully-functional adults, even if they have been or currently are fuckups, while attempting to prepare an adult meal for everyone to enjoy, while also being not at all capable of doing so.

I know, because I’ve certainly been there, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

“I’m the first pancake.”

“What?”

“It’s the one you’re supposed to throw out.”

PIECES OF APRIL is a very succinct depiction of a garbage person — April — trying to get better and attempting to mend the mistakes of their past by using food to apologize for her familial transgressions by inviting her suburban family — including her recalcitrant cancer-stricken mother, bitter about her sickness and April’s actions — to a Thanksgiving day trip to her NYC apartment.

“[We’re making] a good memory!”

“What if it’s not?”

“I promise it will be beautiful.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I told her it had to be.”

“And if it’s not?”

“Then I’ll kill her.”

April quickly realizes that her oven doesn’t work and scrambles through her building, looking for someone, anyone, to lend her some oven time to cook her turkey, often only to find doors slammed shut in her face while her boyfriend warmly traipses around the city in order to find an affordable suit to impress April’s parents. Matters escalate.

Katie Holmes is nakedly honest as April, a troubled youth, the black sheep of her family, the eldest of three children. As a youngster she had a penchant for fire and rebellion and when she had the chance, she ran off to New York City and spiraled into a world of drug dealers and even worse behavior.

PIECES OF APRIL is a perfect depiction of urban life, where many folks just want to live anonymously and are hardened by the rough life of an unforgiving city, but also of young misfits realizing what they put their family through, while also aware that they’re leading a very different life than the one that was expected of them.

The distance between myself and my immediate family is vast enough that I’ve never been put through the pressure cooker that April goes through, but as a fucking piece of garbage youth who moved halfway across the country to one of the largest cities in the U.S., and as someone who — along with my then-girlfriend/now-wife — has hosted my fair share of Friendsgivings and has screwed up my fair share of dishes, this film hits hard.

“You’re a bad girl! A very bad girl!”

“…no. I’m not.”

This was a ramshackle labor of love for writer/director Peter Hedges, shot extraordinarily cheaply — he was paid a whopping $20 for his efforts, and most of the cast worked for under $300 a day — Hedges made the most of it. There’s a visual intimacy here, mostly medium shots or close-ups to capture the emotional fraught nature of her family’s trip, as well as the stress April is enduring. Long shots are reserved for when April’s mom — an acerbic Patricia Clarkson — pushes her family away, rejecting the current situation.

Colors are often muted, although I’ve only seen this film via terrible DVD transfers. It might be intentional, an effort to visually cast a pall over the endeavors, but I might be reading too much into that.

While this summary may make this film sound like a downer, ultimately it’s about perseverance, of folks muscling through to try to do better, to give folks second chances, to showcase the grace that others can give others.

Is Thanksgiving fundamentally a fucking terrible holiday, one celebrating colonialism and downright genocide? Yes, yes it is. Is it terrible that so much of the nation overlooks that in favor for stuffing their faces? Yes, yes it is.

(I will note that PIECES OF APRIL does hang a hat on that, albeit not extremely successfully, but narratively and from a character perspective it makes sense.)

However, hosting Thanksgiving dinners is a rite of passage for many. It showcases that you can provide for others, that you can wrangle the many, many courses and dishes in a way that satisfies everyone and everyone can commune around the table and take comfort in one and another.

You’re living in this moment — a tiny one in the long run of your life — of knowing you’ve provided for those you hold dear and, despite the strife and stress and endless planning, you have a communal bonding moment over your rustic culinary efforts, the table a truce place setting, a few hours that are hopefully conflict-free where you can live in an idyllic familial fantasy of grace.

PIECES OF APRIL ends with a montage of photographs, memorializing the day, recording the above feelings for posterity, not just for the family, but also for whatever comes next. It’s a very simple, no-fuss film, but one that resonates with truth and the hardships of willing the endeavor of bringing everyone to the table, of making the effort in service of others. In other words: the perfect Thanksgiving film.

“One April day we’ll go miles away

and I’ll turn to you and say

I’ve always loved you in my way.

I’ll always love you in my way.”

Stephen Merritt

MILLENNIUM: THE CURSE OF FRANK BLACK -S02E06- (1997)

October 31, 2023

CONTENT WARNING

Yet again, I am intentionally breaking the rules I laid out for Horrorclature 2023. This episode of MILLENNIUM involves childhood trauma and suicidal references. This is not a happy or carefree work. However, I feel it’s a singular, important work that deserves to be extolled on the day depicted in the episode: Halloween.

Happy fucking goth Christmas! I hope you’re either all slutted up and partying like there’s no tomorrow — no judgement! Been there, done that! — or cuddled up at home, all warm, surrounded by great, scary works.

If you’ve been following along with this blog, you know that I absolutely love Chris Carter’s MILLENNIUM, specifically the second season when he handed the reigns to James Wong and Glen Morgan (who would go on to help kick off the FINAL DESTINATION franchise).

“Do you ever find yourself talking with the dead?

“Since Willie’s death, I catch myself every day, involuntarily talking with him, as if he were with me.”

Abraham Lincoln — upon the death of his son

There was nothing like it on TV in the mid-to-late 90s. It was astoundingly dark, but had moments of levity. It was super smart, but wasn’t pretentious. It had motherfucking Lance Henriksen as Frank Black, an overly-emotionally sensitive ex-FBI profiler, and LOST’s Terry Quinn as a morally dubious, potentially exploitative head of a quasi-cult.

It is one of my favorite seasons of TV and this episode — The Curse of Frank Black (CURSE going forward) — is one of my favorite episodes from that season.

I know this episode like the back of my hand. I vividly recall my mind being blown when it was first broadcast, and I have revisited it every October for many years now.

CURSE has many of the hallmarks of the best MILLENNIUM episodes: it leans far more on showing rather than telling; there are more than a few scenes where little more than an utterance occurs. It’s extraordinarily visual for network TV at the time. Also, most importantly, it is seriously empathetic. It showcases Frank’s origin story, when he realized he felt too much, felt for people and could read people far more than others. (Hence why he was so great at being an FBI profiler.)

It’s that sense of empathy from a man — who, again, is played by a middle-aged, very craggy Lance Henrickson instead of some young emo 20-something — that is rarely seen on TV. It’s his empathy that undermines his entire life. It’s a trait he inherited from his mother — along with an ability to see the demons and angels that inhabit the world — and it fucks over his career and his marriage and his life. Folks simply do not understand the way he feels, despite the fact that he knows how they feel. Frank is haunted, not just by the demons and angels that he actually sees, but by how much he feels for others.

As noted in the content warning, CURSE takes place almost entirely on Halloweens. One from Frank’s childhood, and one current Halloween. It opens with Frank prepping for Halloween, gutting a pumpkin. Odd events start occurring around him, such as radios turning themselves on or refusing to dial in correctly, electricity going out, and his car sputtering to a stop. All of these events occur around the number ’268’. Frank exits his busted car, runs into kids egging houses, scares them off and then sees his house — the house he and his wife and daughter once were happy in — and he eggs his yellow house himself.

We flashback to when Frank was a youth. He’s dared by friends to trick-or-treat the house of a scary, chain-smoking shut-in who lives at a singular 268 number, Mr. Bob Crocell, played by Dean Winters who has great comedic chops. He is best known right now for being Mayhem in insurance commercials, but also Dennis ‘Beeper King’ Duffy in 30 ROCK, however he was also dramatically great in TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNER CHRONICLES. This is not a comedic performance; it is extremely dark.

Crocell is ruminating on his life and just wants to be left alone, but he allows young Frank Black into his abode. He forces Frank to listen to his horrible mental tribulations and his time in the army before he offers him his deserved treat, which is a lone cigarette, and it’s not even a candy cigarette.

Fast-forward a few years: Frank and his friends drive by the house. Crocell is being carted out of his house, dead on a covered stretcher. His friends make light of it, but Frank bluntly remarks about how Crocell was misunderstood.

FRANK: “He killed himself.”

FRIEND: “…yeah, because he couldn’t take being a commie traitor.”

OTHER FRIEND: “He’ll go to Hell for killing himself.”

OTHER FRIEND: “I always heard he, you know, liked men. That’s why he killed women.”

FRANK: “…it’s none of that.”

FRIEND: “How would you know?”

It’s Frank’s empathetic awakening, something that will loom over him for the rest of his life. As someone who has felt too much and felt too hard and felt haunted for so many years, this depiction hits me intensely.

“There’s no such thing as ghosts.”

“Tell that to Frank Black.”

There’s one amazingly stark, darkly back-lit scene where Frank enters his attic and sees Crocell there, chain-smoking as usual. Then the ghost-of-Halloween-past (or future, depending on how you look at it) Crocell delivers a monologue that chills Frank:

“I know you’re feeling strange right now kid but, believe me, it’s a hell of a lot creepier for me to be back.

“That night, I was so dying to know if the dead can return… if there was anything afterwards, ‘member?

“The time when you’re really asking the question and when you really need to know just goes by like — nothin’.

“But you know the answer.

“Forever.

“I’ll tell you this: all that stuff your hear about the fire and the brimstone and the rats and the excrement and the demons tormenting you for all of eternity — there’s none of that stuff.

“It’s worse. It is so much worse.

“It is for me, at least.

“Imagine having to suck on this [cigarette] for all eternity. Man, I wish someone had told me!

“Others, they uh— they ain’t got it so bad, I guess. I don’t know. But you’ll know… soon enough.

“I’ve been sent here here because you’ve become me.

“The way people look at you, what they say about you, making stuff up… pretty soon you come to believe it’s true and then it’s really all over.

“You know, I threw things at my house too. Not eggs though. I think I threw dog crap.

“Yeah. I threw dog crap from my backyard at my kitchen window.

“I never cleaned it off. Imagine that.

“The one thing you’ve got that I never did is that you’re getting close to understanding what’s about to happen. And He’s been watching you — uh-huh, oh, yeah — more closely and more often the closer you get.

“Here’s the deal, kid. Give up the fight. Sit it out. Forget about this Millennium Group.

“Go back to your wife and to your daughter and to your puppy and to your yellow house and just live out a nice, happy, normal life. And there’s gonna be a place for all three of you afterwards.

“A place, believe me, where a lot of souls wish they could be.

“But you pass on this… and you’re going so much farther than I have ever been.

“Hell, the way you gutted that guy who took your wife, the anger inside of you, whoo, I don’t know why you’re not being offered a sweeter deal.

“You got the heat inside of you to fight for this side so what I’m asking of you is really simple. Sit back and do nothing. Anyone can do it. Hell, most people do.

“Take this deal, kid. Secure you and your family’s future because the time is near, and He will win. There’s no way He can lose!”

Frank then responds:

“When will it happen?”

And Crocell is gone.

It’s a harrowing, sensitive piece, one about empathy and trauma and temptation and complacency and giving up, with a perspective that is rarely seen — even in contemporary prestige TV.

Happy fucking goth Christmas.

TALES FROM THE CRYPT: ON A DEADMAN’S CHEST (1992, S04E03) [RERUN]

August 12, 2023

Reposting this, as I believe it was my first exposure to the recently departed William Friedkin, but not my last. It’s not a great episode, but I will never forget it, just like I’ll never forget Friedkin’s work. The man knew what he wanted to do, and he was unwilling to compromise, and he will be missed.

TALES FROM THE CRYPT: ON A DEADMAN’S CHEST (1992, S04E03)

MANHATTAN (2014-2015) [RERUN]

July 21, 2023

I’ve been a bit burned out due some of the intensity of the drafts I’ve been working on so, since OPPENHEIMER was just released, I thought I’d call your attention to my 2020 post regarding MANHATTAN, the little-known series from WGN America who very briefly broadcast a number of critical acclaimed prestige shows, including UNDERGROUND as well as MANHATTAN.

MANHATTAN tells the tale of the nucleus of the creation of the atom bomb and the environment and folks it took to construct it. Essentially: OPPENHEIMER before OPPENHEIMER.

MANHATTAN featured an embarrassment of creative riches, including an astounding cast and writers, such as Rachel Brosnahan (THE MARVELOUS MRS. MAISEL), Harry Lloyd (DOCTOR WHO, GAME OF THRONES), Olivia Williams (RUSHMORE), as well as writer Lila Byock who has since gone on to work on amazing serialized works such as THE LEFTOVERS and WATCHMEN and CASTLE ROCK.

It’s a shame that the show never garnered the attention it deserved, but WGN America gave us two seasons, which is one more than I thought we’d ever get.

While my initial write-up is several years old, it’s still available on a number of the streaming services listed, and both seasons are available on DVD.

MANHATTAN (2014-2015)

NEEDFUL THINGS (1993)

October 18, 2022

(DVD/VOD) NEEDFUL THINGS is a Stephen King novel I can’t recall reading, but the film has stuck in my mind since I watched it many years ago, mostly because it’s extremely chaotic for King, but also exceedingly devious in more ways than one.

It’s probably not quantifiably good, but it is a lot of fun. It reminds me of FRIDAY THE 13TH: THE SERIES and features Max von Sydow as the devil; what more could you ask for?!

BOXING HELENA (1993)

October 6, 2022

(DVD) I had the following (slightly paraphrased) discussion with my wife the day after a triple feature of Sherilyn Fenn films at Chicago’s Music Box Theatre:

Me: “Oh, and I caught [Jennifer Lynch’s] BOXING HELENA, a mostly unseen NC-17 cut, which I can’t reliably compare to the original because I haven’t seen it since I was a sophomore in college.”

Her: “Really? I thought you’d seen it several times over, because you talk about it a lot.”

I repeatedly discuss and write a lot about a lot of cult films, obviously, hence this site. Didn’t think that was the case with BOXING HELENA, an extraordinarily controversial and unpopular film from Jennifer Lynch (yes, the daughter of David Lynch) that has never received any sort of resurgence of interest, but apparently pulled a pin in me some time ago.

I first saw it on VHS, on a tiny TV in my college dorm room, and was blown away. I hadn’t paid any attention to the production issues of Kim Basinger taking herself out of the picture (https://ew.com/article/1993/04/09/boxing-helenas-controversies/), but I vaguely recall folks protesting the film because of the depiction of men’s violence against women.

Ah, yes, the 90s, when folks got upset about women telling meaningful tales about women being abused. The New York Times review explicitly said: “If Jennifer Lynch wants a real challenge in life, she should try to make a movie with a positive, feminist theme. Now, there’s an unconventional movie.”

If you aren’t familiar with the storied film: Helena (Sherilyn Finn) a willful, brusque, extraordinarily independent model, has a one-night stand with rich, celebrated genius doctor Nick (Julian Sands). He remains infatuated with her, ignoring his current girlfriend, and Helena continues leading a pleasantly sexually autonomous life.

Nick orchestrates a major party, invites Helena, who has already decided to ditch her current dirtbag (a very shaggy, shitheel, rock-and-roller Bill Paxton) and take a solo trip to Mexico — booking the trip in Spanish — but decides to swing by Nick’s party the night prior.

At said party, she consistently shrugs off Nick’s advances, shoving all sorts of personal items — including her purse — into his hands for him to babysit, then Helena knowingly takes one of Nick’s younger fellow doctors, strips to a slip, and enthralls herself in Nick’s opulent water fountain. After toweling off, she then takes Nick’s co-worker by his arm and leads him out the front door, looking over her shoulder as he meekly stares at her; it’s a very obvious ‘fuck you’ to Nick, practically shouting: “This is what happens when you endlessly pursue what I will no longer allow you to have.”

Unfortunately, Helena finds herself at the airport sans her purse. She rings Nick and demands that he drive to the airport and return it, which he does, but is severely late in doing so. She checks the contents and finds her address book missing. Nick convinces her to head back to his house so he can find it, and she has no choice but to comply. Upon arrival, Nick has laid out an elaborate lunch, pours her a drink, then after Helena’s increased anger, he unveils the address book as one would unveil a prized meal. She grabs the book, storms out of the house and, while backing away from him while berating him, she’s brutally struck down by a reckless driver, who then subsequently drives over her legs.

Next we see Helena in a guest bed of Nick’s, legless. It all goes downhill from there.

As I’m an able male, I don’t have the background to discuss many of the particulars. However, it is a striking and singular work about want and forced complicity at any cost.

The end, unfortunately, is a bit of a dodge, but given where the film goes, how far it dives, I can’t blame Jennifer Lynch for taking that approach.

COLUMBO – Lovely but Lethal (1973, S03E01)

November 4, 2021

This was initially penned for a collection of fan essays meant to cover the entire COLUMBO series, but the collection was never realized.

Viveca Scott is not like other murderesses in Columbo. She’s not an actress. She’s not married, she’s not a scorned lover, she’s not even insecure. She’s the head of Beauty Mark, a cosmetics company so popular that even our dear detective is familiar with her face.

Despite its popularity, Beauty Mark’s stock has been fading. Viveca (Vera Miles) needs a hit, as her gloating competitor David Lang (Vincent Price) reminds her. However, Viveca has an ace up her sleeve with the brilliant-but-boozy Dr. Murcheson, a chemist skilled enough to manufacture the cosmetics holy grail: a cream that eradicates the appearance of age, aptly named Miracle.

Sadly, Murcheson’s alcoholism is a roadblock in getting Miracle to market. In the nightmarish opening, we see his sweaty, porous face splashed with red light, looking the very sight of a mad doctor as he runs some final tests on a female subject. Murcheson’s assistant chemist, Karl Lessing (Martin Sheen), simply observes until Murcheson’s tremors nick the woman’s face. Karl takes over, leaving Murcheson to find comfort in a whiskey bottle.

Murcheson evaluates the test results and tells Viveca that Miracle is a failure, the prior, very successful results a fluke, but she hears quite different news from her spy at Lang’s: mousy, loose-lipped assistant Shirley Blaine. Shirley informs Viveca that Lang just received the most ingenious cream and, in one of the more far-fetched Columbo scenes, Shirley applies the cream to a nearby maid’s face and her crow’s feet disappear!

It dawns on Viveca that Karl, Murcheson’s assistant, falsified Miracle’s latest tests and brought the cream to Lang. Instead of informing Murcheson or buying the cream from Shirley, Viveca opts to unsuccessfully bargain with Karl for Miracle’s formula. When he laughs at her escalating offers, Viveca does what few Columbo murderers do: in the heat of the moment she impetuously kills Karl, bludgeoning him with a nearby microscope. She takes Karl’s single jar of Miracle and leaves before his body cools.

Early the next morning, Columbo investigates the scene of the crime (showing more interest in finding salt for his hard-boiled egg than clues), then makes a beeline for Viveca, following her from Karl’s dartboard to Beauty Mark’s offices, then to Viveca’s ‘Fat Farm’, peppering her with questions the entire way. Upon inquiring about her history with Karl, she responds: “I like young men, Lieutenant, lots of them. And if that shocks your ancient masculine double standard, I’m sorry.” In retaliation, Viveca drags Columbo to a nude exercise group, leaving the Lieutenant flustered and eager to exit and question Murcheson.

With one irritant out of her way, Viveca goes to dispatch another. Shirley has realized that Viveca was behind Karl’s murder, and the poor girl (who just wants to be like Viveca) tries to leverage that knowledge for a Beauty Mark executive position. Instead of granting her wish, Viveca opts to murder again (another Columbo abnormality) by gifting her poisoned cigarettes. Shirley dies while smoking and driving, looking to the world as if she lost control of her car.

Unfortunately, Shirley’s death does little to prevent Columbo from piecing together the murder. He confronts Viveca and she’s taken away, an unceremonious end for a most unusual Columbo woman. Viveca was a wily, successful, independent, occasionally shortsighted woman, sadly all too capable of murder. She was an anomalous antagonist when compared to Columbo’s other killer women, co-dependents who murdered out of jealousy, revenge, or ‘easy’ money. Viveca Scott was a murderess the likes of which Columbo had never seen before, and would never see again.

Halloween 2021 Programming: CULT

October 30, 2021

As previously noted, my wife and I have a tradition where I draft up a selection of horror films for Halloween viewing, and she picks one from each group: Contemporary, Classic, and Cult, and I thought I’d share my suggestions this year. Today features cult horror films, and mostly features the exact text I sent her. And yes, I know, defining what is horror and what is considered ‘cult’ horror is like splitting hairs, but rule of three, folks!

Again, apologies for leaning on prior works. Again, Halloween weekend! I have other terrors to read, watch, and write!

HELLO MARY LOU: PROM NIGHT II (1987, AMC+/hoopla/peacock/Shudder/tubi/VOD/Vudu) or PROM NIGHT III: THE LAST KISS (1990, YouTube)

Previously suggested. “The first PROM NIGHT is fine, but mostly remembered because of how bare Jamie Lee Curtis gets, and for riffing on CARRIE. PROM NIGHT II twists the first film’s premise and goes for broke — also, a rare woman supernatural slasher, and they were clearly hoping some of NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET would rub off on the film — and PROM NIGHT III turns the franchise into an amazing, albeit often puerile, horror-comedy. They’re both very entertaining and smart in their own ways.”

PROM NIGHT II trailer:

PROM NIGHT III trailer:

Shh, don’t tell anyone but, as it’s practically impossible to stream a legal version, here you are:

MATINEE (1993, Starz/VOD)

A Joe Dante (GREMLINS, INNERSPACE) work, which means warm-hearted love for misfit youths and being scared by B-movies, while still having a subversive political voice and viewpoint. It was one of the first post-lockdown films I saw at the Music Box, but it’s endlessly re-watchable.

READY OR NOT (2019, VOD)

(Editor’s note: I cheated a bit here, as I normally would consider this contemporary and not cult, although I fully believe it’s destined to become a cult film. I also lifted most of it for my write-up.)

This one really surprised me: it’s a darkly comic fusion of THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME with Christie’s AND THEN THERE WERE NONE, with an amazing cast that includes Andie MacDowell, Samara Weaving (Thea, from BILL AND TED FACE THE MUSIC), Adam Brody (probably don’t need to write this but: from THE OC, JENNIFER’S BODY, GILMORE GIRLS), Melanie Scrofano (Wynonna in WYNONNA EARP), and Kristian Bruun (Donnie from ORPHAN BLACK). It’s a surprisingly well-executed film. I recently happened upon a promotional READY OR NOT shirt I received for the film when I left a 24-hour film fest early last year, and opted to keep it as a nostalgia shirt, sitting alongside my BLAIR WITCH PROJECT shirt.

Even though I don’t believe in spoilers, I would stop the trailer after the first minute. There are a ton of fun surprises in the film that work great with the trailer, but even better if you experience them in the film itself.

Tomorrow: CLASSICS!

TALES FROM THE CRYPT: ON A DEADMAN’S CHEST (1992, S04E03)

October 27, 2021

(DVD/VOD) It doesn’t get more 90s than this. Look, this isn’t a great slice of horror, despite it being directed by William Friedkin, but it was vividly seared into my brain. In 1992, I didn’t have access to HBO, but my uncle — who my father and I traveled to Albany, New York to attend his second wedding — did, and my father and I were staying at his place. I spent most of my time that weekend binging HBO, including the 70s KING KONG. However, it’s this episode of TALES FROM THE CRYPT that really sticks out in my mind because, at that point in time in my life, I’d never seen anything quite like it.

I’ll summarize this as quickly as possible, but there’s a hell of a lot of plot in this thirty-minute ep: Danny Darwin (Yul Vazquez) is the lead singer in the band EXORCIST (get it?), and he absolutely hates Nick Bosch’s — EXORCIST’s songwriter and guitarist — wife, Scarlett (Tia Carrere) and the feeling is mutual. As typical for EC Comics protagonists, Danny is a complete and utter shitheel and he treats most folks around him like garbage, but that doesn’t seem to keep groupies from wanting a piece of Danny.

After an EXORCIST show, one particular groupie not-at-all-subtly named Vendetta (Sherrie Rose) catches Danny backstage. She unlatches her top to reveal a snake tattoo that weaves across her chest. She begs him to look closer, and the camera leerily leans in as we see the snake take a life of its own, slithering out of her skin to snap at Danny. Danny demands to know who the tattoo artist is, and she says she’ll tell him for a price. (As this is HBO’s TALES FROM THE CRYPT, the price is obviously sex.)

Danny visits the tattoo artist, requests a tiger, but the artist says he’ll find the right tattoo for him. Consequently, he’s left with a giant tattoo of Scarlett across his chest. Danny goes ballistic and storms back to the home he’s sharing with Nick and Scarlett. Scarlett promptly tears into him, and Danny retorts that she’s trying to break up the band.

Fast forward a bit: Danny sees Vendetta at a club, then starts blaming her for setting him up, for giving the tattoo artist the idea to permanently pen Scarlett onto his chest. She recommends a plastic surgeon, and Danny follows through, but is left with a red and raw vague silhouette of the original tattoo that the surgeon notes is “bizarre”. Vendetta then tells Danny that, if he can’t get rid of the tattoo, he can at least get rid of her.

(Obviously, I’m about to spoil the end of the episode, but frankly, you’ve certainly figured out what is about to happen. Also, it’s probably taken me longer to write this summary than it would to watch it.)

Danny then pretends to make amends with Nick, but is intentionally late for their next show to make time to murder Scarlett. Danny then meets up with Vendetta, confesses to killing Scarlett — which she finds “so fucking hot”. Danny removes the bandage from his healing chest, looks at himself in the mirror and sees that the tattoo has fully returned, but instead of Scarlett’s pristine face, he sees it as bloodied and lifeless. He turns to Vendetta, who sees it as the original tattoo — Scarlett’s face clean of blood.

Danny finally appears at the show, goes on-stage to perform and, right as he’s about to let loose, he looks down and sees something visibly moving under his shirt. He runs to the dressing room and a serpent/demon dog creature bursts from his chest. Vendetta relays to Nick that Danny killed Scarlett and, when Nick goes to get revenge, he sees Danny with a gaping torso wound, holding his skinned tattoo in his hand.

Yes, basic EC material, but mostly new to me. While I’d read plenty of horror — I read practically everything that our local library stocked — I’d absolutely never seen anything as graphic as it. The closing shot is what did me in; I barely slept a wink before the wedding, and it’s a bit of horror that I will never fully forget.

(That said, oddly I remember the tattoo being on his back, not his chest, but uh, that’d make it quite difficult to skin off. Not like anything else in the episode fully hangs together, though.)

Please, don’t take this as a full recommendation. It’s rather by-the-numbers and wildly insensitive — even for its time — but that’s par for the series. However, it is stylish, and has some great practical effects work.

https://tftc.fandom.com/wiki/On_a_Deadman%27s_Chest