Today’s Horror on the Lens is a classic film that really needs no introduction! Released in 1922, the German silent film Nosferatu remains one of the greatest vampire films ever made. It’s a film that we share every October and I’m happy to do so again this year!
Enjoy!
Watching last night’s episode of The Amazing Race, I realized that I’ve just about had it with Riley and Ann-Marie.
Everything about them just strikes me as being fake. Yes, they’re big fans of teams working together and, every episode, we get at least one self-righteous monologue about running the race the right way and not being mean. But I can’t help but notice that, for the most part, when Riley and Ann-Marie say, “Let’s work together,” what they really mean is “Help us.” As well, the whole “Boss Lady Alliance” thing would be a lot more impressive if they weren’t constantly finishing at the back of the pack. When you look at how well Ann-Marie and Riley work together and also at how athletic the two soccer players are, you have to really wonder if maybe they’d be doing better if they concentrated on running their own race instead of worrying about an alliance that Ann-Marie and Riley decided to start because they had some time to kill in an airport. (To me, the best part of last night’s episode was Ann-Marie and Riley insisting that the back six teams should all work together at the intersection and then leading everyone to the wrong location.) It seems that every episode will feature at least one clip of Riley bragging about being a Marine, one clip of Ann-Marie bragging about how nice they are, and one clip of them briefly getting frustrated because they think they deserve more help than they’ve been given. I don’t care how much they chant “BLA,” this is a race. No one is watching this show to see people work together. We’re watching to see them compete.
On the other hand, Matt and Michelle are regularly presented as being this season’s villains, just because they’ve rejected the whole “Let’s help each other!” thing. But Matt and Michelle are consistently finishing in first place and they’re working well together, so really, it seems like they’ve found what works for them. When Matt said that he wasn’t good at working in a group, I wanted to cheer. Some people just aren’t group people. Erin and I have often joked about going on The Amazing Race. If we did, we wouldn’t help anyone.
Actually, we probably would help Doug and Dylan. They’re nice and I felt bad for them at the Intersection, when the teams actually were required to work together and no one wanted to work with Doug or Dylan. (The fact that Dylan and Erin ended up finishing the task relatively quickly was very satisfying.) Doug and Dylan were the last to arrive at the pit stop but, fortunately, this was the first non-elimination leg of the race. Yay!
Here’s how everyone finished tonight:
Matt and Michelle came in first and Daisha and Dalton came in second. They did it by running their own race and not following someone to the wrong location. Matt and Michelle also used their express pass. (For some reason, it didn’t register with me that they were lying when they earlier told Anuar and Andrea that they had already used it. So, I was genuinely surprised.)
Conner and Garrett, my favorite team, used their express pass and came in third. Conner and Garrett are a good example of how to be nice without being obnoxiously self-righteous about it.
Anuar and Andrea came in fourth. They’re proving to be a much stronger team than I expected.
Erin and Javi managed to come from behind and come in fifth. They’ve struggled with consistency but they do work well together.
Ann-Marie and Riley came in sixth and Ali and Joanna came in seventh. Again, for all the talk about being boss ladies, it’s been a while since either team has had a really strong finish.
And finally, Doug and Dylan came in last but yay! Non-elimination!
At the end of this episode, the teams flew to Sri Lanka and met Phil on a beach, where he announced that it was time for the teams to vote for who would get hit with the dreaded Double U-Turn! We ended on a cliffhanger but I would be surprised if Matt and Michelle don’t get U-turned. Hopefully, they’ll survive.
This episode was entitled “I Love Crying.” I can’t really remember for sure who said the line. It sounds like something Devin would have said in an attempt to promote his own self-image of being some sort of benign guru. But I could also imagine Kilby saying it after Dina returned from Tribal Council.
There was a lot of crying in this episode. It started at the Dina tribe, with Eric sobbing while talking about how betrayed he felt by his “best friend” Kilby. It can sometimes be easy to forget when the show only airs once a week, but each episode of Survivor only covers two or three days of gameplay. So, Eric’s breakdown was over being betrayed by someone he had really only known for four days. According to his Survivor bio, Eric is a mental health professional.
Over at Toka, Maggie was crying because the rest of the tribe wasn’t as serious and humorless as she was. They made themselves a swing. She went to catch fish. Mike spent this episode worried that he was going to get voted out, but he shouldn’t have been worried—not as long as the Savu tribe consisted of only Devin, Jelly, and Ori.
It’s still difficult for me to believe just how completely the Savu tribe fell apart during the final part of the immunity challenge. They had been doing pretty well up until that point. Actually, now that I think about it, Ori was the one who had been doing well. He was the one who pulled over the puzzle pieces. He was the one who threw the beanbags that knocked all of the puzzle pieces to the ground. He was the one who, briefly, gave Savu a lead in the challenge. Then Jelly and Devin, both of whom regularly brag about their genius, spent the rest of the challenge staring at the puzzle pieces and trying to figure out how to put them back together. Admittedly, some people aren’t good at puzzles. I absolutely suck at puzzles, but I’m also willing to admit that. Devin has spent this entire game bragging about his abilities, but he’s yet to really back any of it up.
Before Tribal Council, Jelly secured her safety by telling Devin and Ori that she had an immunity idol. With Ori voting for Devin and Devin voting for Ori, it came down to Jelly’s decision, and there really wasn’t any doubt that she was going to stick with Devin. I, honestly, would have stuck with Ori because Ori can actually do things, but Jelly and Devin have an unbreakable bond. Ori gave up his vote to play his Shot in the Dark, which is one of those moves that I’ve only seen succeed once in the history of Survivor. As such, Ori was voted out of the game by a vote of 2-0.
Along with everything else, this episode also featured one of those terrible summit meetings. The three tribes sent one representative each to the summit. Ori, Sharonda, and Kristen met on the beach and were told that two would be able to take food back to their tribe and one would go to Exile Island. Sharonda and Ori both waited for Kristen to volunteer to go to Exile and, of course, that’s what Kristen did. Sharonda bragged about how she manipulated Kristen into giving up food, but to me, I don’t really get that strategy. Anyone who goes to Exile is going to have a chance to get an advantage. Manipulating Kristen into doing something that could be good for her game really isn’t something to brag about.
By going to Exile, Kristen got the tether idol, which means that she can give immunity to either Sharonda or Ori (whoops) up until the top five. However, if Sharonda and Ori are both voted out, it becomes a regular immunity idol. Ori is now gone, so all Kristen has to do now is hope that Sharonda follows.
Next week—the tribes merge! Oh, this is going to be a mess. There will be 7 former Toka members and 4 former Savu members on the tribe, along with Carter, who was a member of both tribes before the shakeup. It’ll be interesting to see who stays loyal to whom.
Lisa Marie
Hi, everyone! Tonight, on Mastodon, I will be hosting the #TubiThursday watch party! Join us for The Giant Claw!
You can find the movie on Tubi and YouTube and you can join us on Mastodon at 9 pm central time! (That’s 10 pm for you folks on the East Coast.) We will be using #TubiThursday hashtag! See you then!
Mike Oldfield didn’t write Tubular Bells specifically for The Exorcist but it’s a song that works perfectly for the film. Oldfield’s song, which was rumored to have originally envisioned as being a Christmas instrumental, become an iconic horror them.
Today’s scene that I love comes from one of the best horror films of the past twenty years, 2012’s Cabin In The Woods. In this scene, the party starts just a little bit early….
4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!
4 Shots From 4 Horror Films
Die Screaming, Marianne (1971, dir by Pete Walker)
The Flesh and Blood Show (1972, dir by Pete Walker)
Frightmare (1974, dir by Pete Walker)
House of Whipcord (1975, dir by Pete Walker)
Filmed in Dallas, 1982’s Deadly Choice tells the story of a doctor and his daughter.
Dr. Bob Reasoner (Robert Ginnaven) is outraged that abortions are being performed at the hospital where he works. The film opens with a patient dying during an abortion and then cuts to Bob and a group of other doctors discussing how a premature baby was allowed to starve to death because the mother didn’t feel that she could care for it. Apparently, the policy of abortion and infanticide is an unofficial one, but it’s something that all the doctors know about. Bob and his colleagues decide to write an official statement opposing the hospital’s policy.
Meanwhile, Bob’s teenage daughter, BJ (Geraldine Leer), is pregnant. She hasn’t told her father because she’s scared of how he’ll handle it. Bob is religious while BJ is not. However, BJ has told her school’s guidance counselor, Vicky Stewart (Doris Hargrave). Vicky tells BJ that she needs to get an abortion and even drives BJ to the clinic. When BJ expresses doubts about going through with the procedure, Vicky is there to assure her that her baby isn’t even human yet. In fact, Vicky describes it as being “a cancer.”
I’ve seen a lot of movies about abortion. I’ve seen Pro-Life movies and I’ve seen Pro-Choice movies, and almost all of them have one thing in common: somebody has to die. In Pro-Choice movies, the death usually happens due to a back-alley abortion. In most Pro-Life movies, the death happens because the trained doctors who performed the abortion were dangerously incompetent and just didn’t care about the health of the woman getting the abortion. Deadly Choice changes things up a bit. BJ doesn’t die during the abortion. Instead, suffering from a huge amount of guilt, she takes an overdose of pills after the abortion.
Bob rushes BJ to the hospital, where he frantically tries to save her life. He desperately tries to get her heart beating again, just to be told that she’s dead. Dr. Leventhal (Hal Bennett), who earlier defended the hospital’s abortion policy, is the one who tells Bob that she’s dead, and he sort of smiles when he does it. (I imagine that has more to do with the actor than the character. This is Hal Bennett’s only credited performance and, watching this movie, I could see why.) Bob finally steps away from BJ. As soon as he does, her heart starts to beat and BJ comes back to life.
So, yes, BJ dies, but then she’s revived. Of course, even though she’s alive, she’ll always have to live with the guilt of her actions.
There’s nothing subtle about this Pro-Life film. It’s only 55 minutes long and it has the look of a television medical drama. Robert Ginnaven gives a good performance as Bob. For that matter, both Geraldine Leer and Doris Hargrave give good performances as well. That said, it’s definitely a film that was made to preach to the converted, and how you react to it will largely depend on whether or not you agree with the film’s message. It’s not a film that makes a case for its beliefs as much as it’s a film that says, “We’re right and they’re wrong.”
Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Wednesdays, I will be reviewing 1st and Ten, which aired in syndication from 1984 to 1991. The entire series is streaming on Tubi.
This week, everyone’s trying to get laid.
Episode 5.9 “Gunn and Bullette”
(Dir by Stan Lathan, originally aired on December 13th, 1989)
Johnny Gunn tracks down Sunset West (Rebecca Ferratti), the daughter of one of Gunn’s friends in prison. Sunset is now working as a stripper. Her boss is an evil gangster guy named Achmed (Aharon Ipale). Achmed tells Johnny that, as a quarterback, he can have anyone at the strip club except for Sunset. Johnny wants Sunset. I wonder how Johnny’s prison friend would feel about Johnny becoming obsessed with his daughter.
In the end, it doesn’t add up to much. Sunset decides to go to the police about Achmed’s criminal activities. Achmed is arrested. Sunset goes into the Witness Protection Program. Johnny remains single. Who cares? It’s always funny to me how 1st & Ten will devote a show to some character we’ve never even met before and we’re suddenly supposed to have some sort of emotional stake in their story.
This episode’s second storyline featured Jenny (Shari Shattuck), a cheerleader who finds herself in trouble when Playpen Magazine publishes nude pictures that were taken years earlier by her boyfriend. Westwood offers to protect Jenny’s job if Jenny sleeps with him. Jenny gets revenge by inviting Michael to her apartment, dressing him up in a corset and stockings, and then having Bubba and Jethro snap some pictures. Westwood flees. It later turns out that Kristy is actually the one who came up with the idea of setting Westwood up. Kristy arranges for Jenny to get a new job in New York and Jenny gives Kristy the pictures.
The third and final storyline featured Kristy wanting to trade Dr. Death. Denardo convinces her to give Dr. Death another chance. Dr. Death has to have a good game to save his job. Dr. Death has a good game and he saves his job. Hey, that was easy!
The main thing that stood out about this episode was just how badly acted it was. I mean, I’m not surprised to see OJ Simpson and Shannon Tweed giving less than great performances. But even the usually reliable Christopher Meloni seemed to sleepwalk through this episode. The worst performance came from Aharon Ipale, who turned Achmed into the least intimidating gangster that I’ve ever seen.
This episode didn’t add up too much. Are the Bulls even trying to make the playoffs this year?
Tonight, on In Search Of…., Leonard Nimoy guides us through an investigation into UFOs cover-ups!
