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.
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!
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.
Graham Marshall (Michael Caine) has spent years toiling away as an executive at an advertising firm and being nagged by his wife (Swoosie Kurtz), who claims that Graham doesn’t have enough of a killer instinct to get ahead. When Graham is passed over for a promotion that he felt was promised to him, Graham starts to reconsider everything that he once believed. While Graham is waiting for the train to take him home, he is approached by an obnoxious panhandler who always asks him for money. That night, instead of ignoring the panhandler, Graham shoves him in front of the train. When no one notices that Graham has murdered the panhandler, Graham decides to get revenge on everyone who he blames for the sorry state of his life.
With each murder, Graham rises higher in the company and he feels better about his life. But each murder brings to Graham a new set of complications that he has to clean up. Lt. Laker (Will Patton) thinks that Graham is responsible for all of the deaths that have recently occurred but he doesn’t have the evidence to charge him. His murder spree brings him a chance of romantic redemption with Stella (Elizabeth McGovern) but soon, even she suspects that Graham might actually be a killer. Luckily for him, Graham learns that he can get away with his crimes because the system is set up to protect men like him.
A Shock To The System is a pitch-black comedy that benefits from the casting of Michael Caine in the lead role. Caine is one of the few actors who can make a resentful and bitter sociopath likable and he does that in A Shock To The System. Graham starts out beaten down by the world and being passed over for younger executives like Bob Benham (Peter Reigert) but, by the end of the film, he’s become as ruthless a killer as Jack Carter. Just as in Get Carter, A Shock To The System features Michael Caine making evil very compelling.
Welcome to 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 the original Fantasy Island, which ran on ABC from 1977 to 1986. Almost entire show is currently streaming is on Youtube!
This week, Fantasy Island is invaded by jungle men and ventriloquists!
Episode 3.21 “Jungle Man/Mary Ann and Miss Sophisticate”
(Dir by Michael Vejar, originally aired on March 8th, 1980)
For years, David Farley (Dennis Cole) starred as Jungle Man on television. When the show was canceled, David made a living by doing public appearances as Jungle Man but then the producers of the show filed a lawsuit. As a result, David is no longer allowed to ever dress up in a loin cloth. David comes to Fantasy Island, hoping for one last chance to be Jungle Man.
(This fantasy, by the way, had its roots in what happened to the original Lone Ranger, Clayton Moore. Moore was told that he could no longer wear the mask in public because a new Lone Ranger movie was coming out. The producers also took Moore to court. Moore reacts by ditching the mask and wearing wrap-around sunglasses instead.)
Mr. Roarke explains to David that his fantasy will make Jungle Man a reality. There will be no stunt doubles and the bad guys might not be as easy to defeat as on television. David says he doesn’t care. He finds himself again in the jungle, transformed into Jungle Man! He also discovers that all of his friends are upset with him because they haven’t seen him for two years. They think that Jungle Man just abandoned them and, of course, Jungle Man can’t explain that the show was canceled.
In Jungle Man’s absence, Queen Mara (France Nuyen) has agreed to surrender the jungle to the evil hunter, Derrick Haskell (Dick Butkus, who between Half-Nelson, Hang Time, and this show, is becoming a bit of a regular on this site). Can Jungle Man prevent Mara from signing over her land? And can he save Rima (Barbara Luna), the woman he loves? And, even more importantly, can he convince Roarke to to let him live forever in the jungle?
Of course, he can. This was a bit of silly fantasy but it still worked because of how earnest Dennis Cole was in the role of Jungle Man. Plus, I enjoyed that life in the jungle had continued even after the Jungle Man television show was canceled. It captured the way that a lot of us feel when our favorite TV show is cancelled and we wonder what happened to all the characters after the finale.
The other fantasy was …. well, it was weird and creepy and surprisingly dark. Annette Funicello played Mary Ann Carlin (Annette Funicello), a world famous ventriloquist. Mary Ann is worried that she can no longer tell where her personality ends and where the personality of her dummy, Valerie, begins. Is there anything creepier than a ventriloquist with a personality conflict?
Mary Ann’s fantasy is to separate her personality from Valerie’s for a weekend so that she can decide what to do with her career. (This sounds like something that would be better handled by a therapist than a resort owner but whatever.) Mr. Roarke’s solution is to turn Valerie into a living human being. Unfortunately, it turns out that Valerie has a man streak and she not only seduces Mary Ann’s boyfriend (Don Galloway) but she also gives a surreal performance in which, somehow, Mary Ann is transformed into the dummy.
Fortunately for Mary Ann. everything works out. She finally snaps out of whatever spell she was under and she tossed Valerie, who is now suddenly a doll once again, in a fire. Mary Ann and her boyfriend leave the Island, planning on getting married and settling down. Apparently, Mary Ann doesn’t have a problem with the fact that her boyfriend had sex with a ventriloquist’s dummy but I still imagine that it’s something she’ll bring up whenever they have a disagreement about something. “You think I’m spending too much money!? Remember that time you screwed a block of wood?”
It really doesn’t make much sense at all but it’s so surreal and weird that it’s fun to watch. This fantasy was the Island at its most nightmarish and certainly, that makes it an appropriate fantasy to close out October with!
For our final Horror Scene that I Love for our 2023’s horrorthon, we honor the great actor Tony Todd with this scene from 1992’s Candyman.
Through the Shattered Lens 