Another Halloween has come and gone and another Horrorthon has come to a close. We hope you have had a wonderful October and that the Thanksgiving month brings you much to be grateful for!
And remember, just because you didn’t see the Great Pumpkin this year, doesn’t mean that he won’t be there for you next October. As always, Linus puts it best:
To all of our readers and from all of your friends at the Shattered Lens, thank you.
The 2021 film, 2025 — The World Enslaved By A Virus, opens with a series of title cards.
We learn that the Coronavirus has raged out of control.
We learn that fear of the virus led to the creation of a one world government.
We learn that “communism is everywhere.”
We also learn that English is now the official language of the world. (Yay! Take that, French!)
Finally, we learn that Christianity has been outlawed.
It’s a scary world, one in which everyone is enslaved by the fear of the virus. It’s a world where free thought is no longer allowed. It’s a world where everyone is expected to pledge allegiance to the “new Constitution.” It’s a world where former friends rat each other out to the authorities and privacy is a thing of the past.
As you can probably guess from screenshot above, 2025 is not a particularly expensive-looking film. This is the end of the world on a budget and one gets the feeling that the majority of that budget went to filming a fairly decent shoot out and car chase that occurs towards the end of the film. As a result, this is one of those films where our characters spend a lot of time sitting in their apartment and talking about what’s going on in the world and how they feel about it. We hear about what happens but we rarely get to see it. Watching the film, one gets the feeling that many of the conversations were improvised, which means that there’s a lot of awkward pauses and meandering sentences. On the one hand, that doesn’t make for a particularly compelling narrative. On the other hand, it does capture the feelings of isolation and ennui that haunted many people during the Coronavirus lockdowns.
The film follows a group of Christians as they try to fight back against the one world government. It starts with them spray painting Jesus fish onto walls and sidewalks. (One of the sidewalks that they use as a canvas is covered by leaves so you can’t help but feel that one strong gust wind is going to totally destroy all of their work.) Eventually, a hacker shows up at their apartment and helps them get their message out. Christians start to meet in secret and our main character (played by one of the film’s two directors, Joshua Wesley) gives a variation of Mel Gibson’s Braveheart speech.
While the Christians are doing that, the government is plotting how to get more people to swear allegiance to the “New Constitution.” Again, since this is the end of the world on a budget, the government is represented by one small office and a handful men wearing tactical vests. They’re not extremely intimidating but, just as with the film’s sense of isolation, their incompetence tends to mirror the incompetence of the actual authorities during the lockdowns.
Eventually, even the Christians’s wussy neighbor is showing up at their door and telling them that they need to stop what they’re doing before they make everyone’s life difficult. They need to accept the new world order.
2025 is indeed a bad movie. The pace is slow. The acting is terrible. The dialogue is risible. The film has been developing a reputation for being one of the worst ever made and there’s certainly a case to be made. That said, much like Plan 9 From Outer Space, 2025 has worth as a historical document. Setting aside the religious aspect of 2025,the film does definitely capture the paranoia that people were feeling during the lockdowns. Some people were paranoid about the virus and other were paranoid about the government but the important thing is that, in the end, everyone was paranoid. With all the gaslighting that’s going on from people who desperately want us to believe that the lockdowns actually weren’t as big or traumatic a thing as we all know they were, a film like 2025 serves as a useful historical document. It’s a recording of the way many people felt about the world just two years ago.
Of course, that doesn’t actually make it a good film. You can’t have everything.
Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Tuesdays, I will be reviewing Gun, an anthology series that ran on ABC for six week in 1997. The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi!
This week, the gun ends up at the bottom of a swimmin’ hole!
Episode 1.5 “The Hole”
(Dir by Ted Demme, originally aired on May 24th, 1997)
Yep, this episode of Gun centers around an old country swimming hole. Every day, teenage Sondra (Kirsten Dunst) and her younger brothers, Brendan (Drake Bell) and Tad (Joe Pichler), head down to the Hole. For Sondra, swimming in the Hole is a chance to escape from her life of living in a trailer park with her trashy mother (Carrie Fisher) and her pervy stepfather (Cliff Bemis). For Brendan and Tad, going to the Hole is a chance to look for the treasure that they are convinced is at the bottom of the water. It is true that there is something shiny in the Hole. Sondra thinks that it might be the diamonds that she could use to finance an escape from the trailer park and a one-way trip down to Florida. Actually, it’s the pearl-handled gun that’s been at the center of every episode of Gun.
(In this episode, it’s suggested that the gun has been at the bottom of the hole for over a year. So, how did it end up in that town in the first place? Is this episode taking place before or after the previous episodes? I guess the simple solution is that it’s not the same gun as the gun seen in the previous episodes but the part of me that loves continuity is having a hard time accepting that.)
The gun belonged to James Munday (Johnny Whitworth), who has only recently been released from prison. He was convicted of murdering his girlfriend and only the fact that he was a minor at the time kept him from being given a life sentence. James claims that his girlfriend died as a part of a failed suicide pact and he’s convinced that the gun in the Hole can prove his innocence.
When James and Sondra meet, it doesn’t take long for them to fall for each other. Sondra remains James of his dead girlfriend and Sondra, like of all of us, is attracted to brooding rebels. However, when the rest of the town hears that James has been going to the Hole, a lynch mob is formed. Dick Sproule (Max Gail), the father of the girl that James was convicted of killing, is soon at the Hole with a rifle in his hands. Can James prove his innocence and will the town even care?
This episode was extremely overwrought and it featured every flaw that tends to turn me off of anthology shows in general. All of the characters were broadly drawn. The dialogue was way overwritten. Director Ted Demme told the story with a heavy-hand and used slow motion as if he was under the impression that he was the first director to ever consider heightening the drama by slowing things down. The whole thing just felt like a bad creative writing assignment. Out of the cast, only Kirsten Dunst was able to really create a character who felt as if she had a life outside of the demands of the story. Everyone else seemed to be a caricature. In the end, James may have been a hot, brooding rebel but he was also kind of whiny. That got old pretty quickly.
*Sigh* Well, that’s another disappointing episode of Gun for you! Next week, I’ll be reviewing the series finale. Hopefully, this show will at least end on a worthwhile note.
I hope you’ve had a great Halloween and a great October! How about one final amv for this year’s Horrorthon?
Song: This Is Halloween by Real Chantay
Anime: Cube x Curious x Cursed, Higurashi no naku koro ni, Shiki
Creator: Nightmare Nyu
Past AMVs of the Day
This is a special episode of my favorite TV show of all, Degrassi! Originally airing on October 28th, 2008, The Curse of Degrassi features Degrassi’s main mean girl, Holy J Sinclair (Charlotte Arnold), getting possessed by the vengeful spirit of deceased school shooter, Rick Murray (Ephraim Ellis). Chaos follows! Fortunately, Spinner (Shane Kippel) is around to save the day. As any true Degrassi fan can tell you, only Spinner has a chance against the forces of the undead.
What I like about this episode is that, in the best tradition of Degrassi, it goes there. Holly J does get possessed. Just about the entire cast end up dying horribly. Spinner has to battle the undead spirit of Rick Murray and he has to do it without the help of Drake. And, as far as we know, this episode is canon. So, yes, Rick Murray’s ghost actually does haunt Degrassi Community School and yes, only Spinner can save us all.
Go Spinner!
Enjoy!
Way to go, Rangers! Even with both Adolis Garcia and Max Scherzer out due to injuries, the Rangers still came together won Game 5 of the World Series! Even though the final score was 11-7, the Diamondbacks still put up a good fight. They scared me in both the 8th and 9th innings. The Diamondbacks are a good team and if they were playing against anyone other than the Rangers, I’d probably cheer for them. This has been a great World Series, with two underdog teams showing up everyone who doubted them.
The Rangers are just one game away from winning their first World Series! I’m so excited! Tomorrow’s game is in Arizona. At first, there was a part of me that does wish that the Rangers could win the championship in Arlington so the DFW metroplex can prove that it is a baseball town, but now I realize that I’ll be happy wherever they win it.
Go Rangers!
Tonight, on the final episode of The Hitchhiker, Rae Dawn Chong plays an aspiring actress who wants to join the hottest theatrical troupe. Unfortunately, there’s a price for everything and sometimes, that price is your soul!
This episode originally aired on February 22nd, 1991.
There have been many disturbing ventriloquist’s dummies over the years but I don’t know if there’s ever been one who is quite as hateful as Fats, the dummy that is used by Corky Withers (Anthony Hopkins).
Corky and Fats are at the center of the 1978 film, Magic. When we first meet Corky, he’s an aspiring magician without a dummy. He’s a talented magician and it’s obvious that performing is one of the only things that brings Corky happiness. But, from the start, there’s something off about Corky. There’s a desperation to him and his performance. He craves the applause of the audience just a bit too much, as if he doesn’t know who he is unless people are clapping for him. (This performance, from a youngish Anthony Hopkins, is quite a contrast to the characters that Hopkins is today known for playing.) Corky is told that he needs to get a “gimmick” if he’s ever going to be a success and that gimmick turns out to be Fats, a ventriloquist dummy who is as confident as Corky is insecure. Whereas Corky often seems to be struggling to find the right thing to say, Fats always has the perfect comeback ready.
Of course, Fats is Corky. Fats is the self-absorbed and cocky “person” that Corky wishes he could be. When Fats tells Corky that he’s a useless loser, it’s actually Corky saying that to himself. When Corky argues with Fats, he’s arguing with himself. With Fats, Corky has found a way to express himself but he’s also sacrificed half of his identity as a result. Can Corky survive without Fats? He’s not sure but he does know that Fats is a hit with audiences.
When Corky’s agent (Burgess Meredith) announces that he has gotten Corky a network television special, Corky panics. Corky doesn’t want to take the medical or mental exams that the network would probably require before giving him a contract. He flees to the Catskills, where he grew up. (Corky’s obsession with performing makes sense when one realizes that he grew up in the Catskills, a region that played home to many aspiring comedians.)
Corky visits Peggy Ann Snow (Ann-Margaret), with whom Corky went to high school and who he had a huge crush on. (Imagining Anthony Hopkins in high school — especially an American high school — is not particularly easy.) Peggy is unhappily married to Duke (Ed Lauter) and she soon finds herself falling in love with Corky. Corky appears to finally have a chance for happiness but Fats has other plans. Murder follows and it says something about how well this film is done that we think of Fats as being the mastermind behind the murders even though we know that Fats is really just Corky talking to himself.
Magic is the definitive evil ventriloquist’s dummy film, one that is beautifully shot by Richard Attenborough and which features a great performance from Anthony Hopkins. It’s a sign of the strength of his performance that we still feel sorry for Corky, even though he ends up killing one of the most likable characters in the film. Of course, it’s a dual performance for Hopkins because he’s playing both Corky and Fats. He is excellent and frightening in both roles.
Earlier today, I featured Christopher Lee reading The Fall of the House of Usher.
Here to continue to spread the Halloween spirit is Vincent Price, performing The Tell-Tale Heart. This is from 1970 and was a part of a PBS special called An Evening With Edgar Allan Poe.
Poor Maria (India Eisley)!
Maria is a 17 year-old high school student in Canada. She goes to a school where everyone wears a uniform, everyone plays hockey, and everyone is looking forward to a prom that is going to be held on an ice skating rink! (Personal injury attorneys love this school!) Everyone is obsessed with living on the ice but Maria can’t even skate. Popular hockey player Mark (John C. MacDonald) taunts Maria for not being able to maintain her balance. Her best friend, Lily (Penelope Mitchell) offers to teach Maria how to skate but Lily turns out to be a cruel and taunting teacher, probably because she knows that Maria has a crush on her boyfriend, Sean (Harrison Gilbertson).
Maria’s life at home isn’t any better. Her mother, Amy (Mira Sorvino), is suffering from crippling depression and often can’t even be bothered to get out of bed or off the couch. Her father, Dan (Jason Isaacs), is a plastic surgeon who is obsessed with the idea that he can fix any flaw through surgery. He’s the type who cruelly critiques his daughter’s looks, despite the fact that Maria is actually a very pretty girl whenever she can find the courage to actually look up from the floor. Dan is also cheating on his wife. Perhaps the only good thing that Dan does is that he encourages Maria to stay home from school, though his reasoning is that she doesn’t look good on that particular day and she needs to get her “beauty sleep.”
Seriously, watching this movie, your heart truly breaks for Maria. It’s as if the whole world has been against her since the day she was born. Everyone gives Maria a hard time for not having more confidence but how can someone be confident when all they hear is about how much of a disappointment they are? Maria’s only friend is her reflection in the mirror.
At first, Maria freaks out when her reflection starts talking back to her. Airam, as Maria’s reflection calls herself, may look like Maria but she initially seems to have a totally different personality. Airam is confident in both her appearance and her sexuality. Airam is willing to strike back at the people that have hurt her. Airam is confident where Maria is insecure. When Maria talks to Airam, she ends up laughing so loudly that Amy actually comes into the bathroom and asks if Maria is smoking weed. After Maria is cruelly humiliated at prom, Maria agrees to switch places with Airam by kissing the mirror. Suddenly, Maria is the one in the mirror and Airam is the one who is in the real world, looking for revenge against everyone who has hurt Maria.
Or is she? Watching the film, I found myself wondering if Maria was just imagining talking to her reflection and perhaps “the switch” was all in Maria’s mind. Perhaps Airam isn’t some malevolent force that’s brought into the world as much as she’s just Maria having been pushed too far by the cruel taunts of her classmates and her father’s refusal to show her the consideration that he shows to his mistress. Airam is soon doing everything that Maria wishes she could do but when people start dying, Maria begs Airam to stop. Is Maria really trapped in the mirror and begging Airam to stop or is she just imagining a conversation with her own conscience? India Eisley’s performance keeps you guessing.
This is an intriguing film, even if is sometimes a bit too ambiguous for its own good. (The final shot is artfully done but it still made me want to throw something at the TV.) The film’s greatest asset is India Eisley, who is convincing whether she’s the mousy Maria or the bold Airam. Jason Isaacs, as well, gives a strong performance, turning his plastic surgeon into one of the all-time bad fathers. Watching Isaacs’s performance as Dan, it’s hard not to understand why Dan’s daughter would want to hide in a mirror.
Through the Shattered Lens 