Fear Itself: Episode 4 In Sickness and In Health

It took me a while to figure out what was wrong with this episode. Don't misunderstand, it's a good episode, but it seems completely devoid of any actual fear. I considered it from all the possible angles. The twist seems good. It makes sense without being telegraphed. The episode's atmosphere manages to being uncomfortable when needed, without screaming that the audience should be afraid from the very first shot. It even has good pacing, and solid direction by John Landis.

So, I had to ask myself why I'm not afraid. Then, I realized: this episode cast the leads of Psych as the main characters. Maggie Lawson and James Roday are incredibly funny people, but by that same token they are chronically incapable of being frightening. They're just too damned likable.

On her wedding day Samantha (Lawson) is given a note by her bridesmaid Ruthie (Sonja Bennett), who received it from the priest, who received it from a mysterious woman. The note reads “The person you are marrying is a serial killer.” No one else knows the nature of the note, but the bridesmaids all assume the note reveals some horrible secret about her fiance Carlos (Roday), who becomes increasingly aggressive as the maids seem more and more hostile towards him. Samantha is determined not to let anyone know the contents, even as Carlos demands to know what it was.

The climax comes when the two are isolated in the church the night after their wedding, and Samantha retreats into a confession booth and locks herself in as Carlos stands outside, demanding for her to come out, before breaking down. The reveal is a two-fer: Carlos became aggressive because he had dinner with another woman, who began stalking him. He believed she had passed Samantha the note in an effort to ruin their wedding day by revealing his infidelity. Samantha, on the other hand, reveals that the note was actually intended for Carlos, and the priest had passed it to her due to his poor hearing.

We then cut to the apartment filled with bottled body-parts, where Samantha lives with her brother Steven (Brendan Hunter). We see that Steven was the one who passed the note, while dressed in drag. Meanwhile, Carlos says he doesn't care about the note, and makes Samantha promise to show him her secret “when you're ready.” With more intimidating actors, this would have been creepy. As the episode stands, it just isn't.

The episode still works decently as a mystery. A lot of the foreshadowing is effective because it can easily be interpreted to indicate either fear or guilt on the part of Samantha. During the wedding ceremony Samantha sees Carlos' face become a skull. She also constantly questions whether or not she's “making a mistake” by rushing into a marriage after multiple boyfriends have “disappeared.”

Towards the end both Roday and Lawson have a few moments in which they try and fail to broadcast madness, but it's just not within their acting range. These moments are brief, however, and the episode is better for it. Most of the time Lawson's performance is more subdued, and Roday acts more like an upset boyfriend than a sociopath.

Ultimately this is one of those episodes that makes me glad I don't have a rating system. It's quality can only be assessed in terms of whether or not you want to be frightened. There is nothing “bad” about the episode, it fails exclusively within the genre of horror.

Masters of Horror: Episode 15 Family

I don't usually do sitcoms, so I've never seen a single episode of Cheers. That said, however, being introduced to George Wendt by Family made me want to seek out a few episodes. I don't know his role on that show, but here's he's a great villain. It's not clear if he's evil or simply mentally ill, but either way you find yourself liking him and feeling sad for his situation.

Wendt plays a serial killer named Harold. While we don't get his full back story, it's strongly implied that he was abused as a child. As a result, he desperately wants a family, so he kills people who fit the idyllic look he imagines, removes all their skin, and dresses them up in a Norman Bates-esque manner. The influence of Psycho is clearly here, but Harold comes across as quite different from Norman, somehow more aware of his mental illness and in turn more dangerous.

Harold's family is finally complete, with a wife, daughter, and both grandparents. Then, a monkey wrench is thrown into the plans: Celia and David (Meredith Monroe and Matt Keesler), a new couple, move in next-door, and Harold becomes obsessed with Celia.

This is the point at which we run into some ambiguities regarding Harold's condition. We see that he hallucinates his skeletons as living humans who interact with him, and he also imagines Celia making sexual advances on him right in front of her husband. On the other hand, Harold clearly knows that he has to take steps to cover up his murders, with his “wife” (Frances Flanigan) even advising him that Celia is “too close to home.” So, I'm not entirely sure whether Harold is fully responsible for his own actions.

He eventually “kills” his wife, smashing her skeleton. It's implied that this is a repeated occurrence, with Harold destroying old family members when he becomes obsessed with new people. While he only references one previous wife, we see two new victims and an attempt before he goes after Celia, so either he's been through dozens, or his killing is really starting to take off.

Celia and David, meanwhile, are having a fight over whether or not to have a second child after the loss of their daughter. Eventually, David leaves, and Harold lures Celia over for dinner. Just before he can finish her, though, David ambushes him. As it turns out David and Celia were the real parents of his daughter, who tracked him down so they can torture and kill him. David, being a doctor, intends to keep him alive for as long as possible.

The thing that's amazing in the relationship between these three people is that all are fundamentally evil, and yet still friendly and likable. Even if we excuse the vigilante justice, David and Celia seem to treat Harold's murder as a sick sexual turn-on, planning to have a second child once they've eliminated the man who killed their first.

I don't think anything in this episode really scared me, except perhaps the ending. The idea of being tortured by someone with such an extensive knowledge of human biology is pretty sickening to me. Otherwise, I viewed the episode more as a black comedy, but a very good one. I imagine that someone within the demographics Harold targeted might be more frightened by it (I'm too old to be his child, too young to be his grandpa, and he shows no interest in a same-sex marriage). Even then, George Wendt is just hard to not like.

Masters of Horror: Episode 7 Deer Woman

Credit where credit is due: I was able to figure out how to talk about this episode only after I had a chat with GoingRampant about it. The episode just seems so weird that it's kind of hard to know what I should be saying. Rampant, however, pointed out the comparison to the werewolf legend. Obviously, the legend of the werewolf is now so widespread that signs of a werewolf attack could potentially be recognized as such by law-enforcement officials who found a body under circumstances that fully fit neither an animal nor human attack. Yeah, they wouldn't believe it, but the concept would at least be familiar to them, and a detective desperate enough to consider supernatural explanations would at least let his brain drift in that direction.

This episode, however, deals with a Native American legend far more obscure, and thus more baffling to police. The Deer Woman, a woman with hooves for feet, who has sex with men, and then tramples them to death. The results are both horrifying, and hilarious. Furthermore, even after ruling out the mundane, police are still confused as hell since they don't know the legend.

Personally I suspect the main character, Detective Dwight Faraday (Brian Benben), is intended to be autistic. He's considered a burn-out, and it's implied the department keeps him on working “animal attacks” mainly as a reward for previous service. Where the other detectives overlook evidence that doesn't fit their personal theories, he obsesses over details, even when they lead to downright bizarre conclusions. A redneck appeared to have been killed while highly aroused, by an unusually large deer (or one that put all it's weight on two legs) that somehow got into his van, then kicked it's way out. The other detectives write the hoof-marks off as a sledge-hammer, despite the shape, while Faraday continues to think of scenarios.

While Faraday is trying to sleep we get several mental reenactment of the event, and by his own admission the most probably is that an attractive woman beat the man to death using a deer's leg as a murder weapon, and even that he writes off as “stupid.” The others are even more bizarre, and by far the most entertaining part of the episode.

I don't really consider this episode scary, mainly just because the Deer Woman would be such an easy threat to avoid to anyone who isn't a complete moron. Don't go to a secluded place to have sex with a mysterious woman who won't talk moments after meeting her. Literally, asking “how are you?” would have prevented every death in this story.

Racially, this episode is kind of a mixed bag. On the one hand, Faraday's partner, the only black character, bites it. Furthermore, director John Landis and his son Max are credited as the only writers, indicating there was little input from any actual Native Americans. Even the actress who plays the Deer Woman herself is Brazilian (Cinthia Moura). I will, however, give them a tiny point for a fairly non-stereotypical bit-part. They learn the legend of the Deer Woman from a bartender at a Native American casino. Rather than play him as a Noble Savage, or some kind of Mystic, he's portrayed purely an adorable mythology geek. He doesn't believe a word of the legend, but thinks the story is hilarious.

As for whether or not I'd recommend the episode, I lean yes. It certainly doesn't stack up to...really anything else Landis has ever done. It also falls short of pretty much every previous episode, except Incident On and Off a Mountain Road, and maybe Homecoming. However, it does have a level of charm to it just through sheer goofiness, and Detective Faraday is an excellent character, who an entire series could easily be built around. It's a shame he didn't have a better episode.

100 Scariest Movie Moments: #42 An American Werewolf in London

An American Werewolf in London is the definitive werewolf movie. All werewolf movies from before it were merely precursors, and all later werewolf movies are merely successors. It has everything a horror movie needs; good characters, a mythology that’s interesting and original, but which doesn’t overload the story, and a plot that unfolds at just the right pace.

The movie opens with two American students, Jack and David (Griffin Dunne and David Naughton), who are backpacking through England and who stop at an out-of-the way pub. After an unpleasant exchange, the nervous locals send them on their way, despite knowing that there’s a werewolf on the loose and that they’re putting the young men in danger. However, the locals’ conscience eventually gets the better of their spite, and they come out, guns blazing, and shoot the werewolf just in time for Jack to die and David to be bitten. (Although, if the werewolf could be shot and killed so easily, I’m actually surprised they hadn’t already dealt with him).

There’s one major element that was added to the werewolf mythology in this movie, the fact that a werewolf sees the ghosts of people killed by him or members of his werewolf bloodline. So during his recovery from the attack, David sees his friend Jack, whose ghost decays as the month passes as if he still had a physical body. Jack tells him that he’s now a werewolf, and that he must kill himself to save others and free Jack’s spirit. This element is a little confusing if you think about it. For it to be true, it would mean in all the time since the first werewolf to ever roam the Earth, not one single member of David’s bloodline had ever taken a life before Jack? Why aren’t their armies of ghouls? Or perhaps the others decided to just let the ones who’d be especially meaningful to David appear to him as a voluntary act (his friend who was killed by the werewolf who turned him, and then later, his own victims).

Obviously, David questions his own sanity. During his recovery he also hooks up with a nurse named Alex (Jenny Agutter) who reassures him that he’s just hallucinating due to his survivor’s guilt. She’s not the best female lead I’ve seen, but I see nothing particularly objectionable about her performance. She’s there to be a nurturing figure to David when he’s in emotional turmoil, and she does her job admirably.

The movie is probably best remembered for its transformation sequence. Director John Landis and makeup artist Rick Baker both felt that the kind of physical changes a werewolf would undergo would be agony, and it shows in this sequence. David is twisted and contorted in every way imaginable. It’s actually surprising that more modern werewolf films don’t try to copy this formula. The only one I can think of that did so was Underworld, and that movie included a throwaway line saying that it was only the first transformation that was painful. I suppose most modern films satisfy themselves with the psychological horror of becoming an animal, not that this movie is lacking in that element.

The movie benefits from the fact that it mixes humor with the horror, rather than being so dark that we find ourselves detached. Jack is always friendly and happy to joke with David, even as he begs David to end his life. After his first rampage, David wakes up in a zoo, naked, and has to steal a bunch of balloons from a little boy to cover his genitals as he runs home. The scene could have been taken right out of a comedy! (And a better one than most.) There’s also a later conversation between David, Jack and the victims of his first rampage in which they helpfully list ways in which he could kill himself, trying to think of the most convenient method, that leaves me laughing out loud.

Of course, an actual suicide would be an anti-climax. So instead, the film ends with David in werewolf form being gunned down by the police. (No, they don’t use silver bullets.) Alex cries over his body, credits roll and happy music play. And you sit there, happy that at least David’s suffering is over.

I can’t recommend this movie enough. Even if you’re not interested in it as a horror film, it’s an excellent movie all around. The emotional whiplash is used to great effect. It’s a fine film from beginning to end.

On a final note though, why the Hell do this movie’s credits include a congratulations to Princess Diana and Prince Charles on their then-recent wedding? I mean, I know the movie was filmed in the UK, but did every film made there congratulate them for a period of time? Were they really going to feel a great deal of love being thanked by a werewolf movie? Just, whose idea was that?