1999’s Totem opens with a young woman named Alma Groves (Marissa Tait) running through the wilderness.
She runs until she reaches an isolated cabin. Entering the cabin, she finds five other people have already arrived. She doesn’t know who they are and they don’t know her. In fact, she doesn’t even know why she suddenly felt the need to stop eating lunch and to run until she found the cabin. She’s not even sure how she found herself in the wilderness to begin with. Everyone else at the cabin has a similar story. They were all going about their day until, suddenly, an image of the cabin entered their mind and they felt compelled to run until they found it.
At first, Paul (Jason Faunt) comes across as being a chivalrous and friendly jock type. Leonard McKinney (Eric W. Edwards) is a cocky womanizer who is upset that he was compelled to leave in the middle of having sex (or so he claims). Robert Cole (Tyler Anderson) is the angry rebel who is reluctant to talk about his past. As for the other women, Roz (Sacha Spencer) is sarcastic while Tina (Alicia Lagano) is a seemingly innocent high school student. Along with Alma, the six of them are trapped in the area by an invisible force field.
While trying to determine where the invisible barriers have been placed, the six of them come across a cemetery and three sinister-looking statues. As the night continues, it becomes clear that, whenever someone dies, one of the statues comes to life. But why are there six people and only three statues? “Three to be killed and three to kill!” Robert says.
Directed by David DeCoteau and produced by Charles Band’s Full Moon Pictures, Totem is about as incoherent as you would probably expect from this production team. However, it’s a cheerful sort of incoherence, one where the confusing story is at least told with some energy and the entire thing has a “make it up as you go along” sort of feel to it. It’s remarkable how the people in the cabin keep figuring out all of the extra rules that determine how the three killer statues work. Myself, I sat through all 68 minutes of this film and I’m still not quite exactly sure what was going on. That said, the confusing nature of the story works to the film’s advantage. At its best, Totem manages to achieve a sort of dream-like intensity. Who hasn’t had that dream about finding yourself in the middle of nowhere with absolutely zero clue how you got there or how to get home?
You know what else works to this film’s advantage? That 68 minute running time. The film essentially feels like an extended episode of an old horror anthology show. Think of it as being a bloody episode of something like Night Gallery or Tales From The Crypt. It’s a piece of gory fun that doesn’t really require too much of the audience. It’s cinematic junk food and that is definitely meant as a compliment.
Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Mondays, I will be reviewing Hang Time, which ran on NBC from 1995 to 2000. The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!
This week, many important lessons are learend.
Episode 5.9 “Tolerance”
(Directed by Miguel Higuera, originally aired on November 13th, 1999)
Even though none of them have ever been seen or mentioned over the course of the previous 87 episodes, the episode reveals that Deering High is home to several students who dress in black, wear black eye-liner, and who hang out at a coffeehouse called The Morgue.
I know what you’re thinking. They’re Goths, right?
No, according to Hang Time, they’re called Grotes, which is short for Grotesques. Uhmmm …. okay. Was Grote actually a term that was used in 1999? Maybe it’s an Indiana thing. Who knows?
Anyway, everyone at school is scared of the Grotes, which makes it awkward when Kristy is assigned to work with one of them for her science class. At first, Syd (Alicia Lagano) dismisses Kristy as just being a typical popular cheerleader but she’s impressed with Kristy actually shows up at the Morgue. Kristy learns that the Grotes are human underneath all of their dark makeup and she also realizes that her two best friends are incredibly shallow when they start making fun of the Grotes. While it’s in character for Mary Beth to be judgmental of someone else’s fashion choices, I was a little bit surprised to see that the show portrayed Julie as being equally close-minded. Usually, Julie is portrayed as being a near-saint. You would think that, with all trouble Julie has supposedly had getting people to accept her as a basketball player, she would be a bit less …, well, mean. Mary Beth makes fun of the Grotes for wearing too much makeup. Julie goes as far as to say that the Grotes should expect to be picked on if they’re going to insist on being so different.
Kristy decides to teach her friends a lesson by dressing up like a Grote. At first, Julie and Mary Beth are shocked to see Kristy dressed in black and wearing too much eyeliner. Later, they’re stunned to learn that Kristy has been beaten up by two non-Grote bullies. At the homecoming dance, Mary Beth is elected Homecoming Queen and she spends her acceptance speech apologizing for judging the Grotes. She gives her crown to Kritsy as way to thank Kristy “for teaching me about tolerance.” The audience goes, “Awwwww!” but it’s hard not to notice that none of the Grotes are at the dance.
Meanwhile, Eugene is dating a woman who has graduated from college! It turns out that he lied to her about his age. Despite the fact that everything about Eugene screams “High School Sophomore!,” Eugene convinces her that he’s a college student. But then Eugene’s girlfriend (Veronica Lauren) is hired to teach at the school! Uh-oh! Is Deering about to become a crime scene? Fear not. It turns out that Eugene’s girlfriend is a genius who graduated from high school when she was 12 and is only 16 years old. Uhmm, okay.
This episode aired a year after “A Guy and a Goth,” the episode of City Guys where Chris dated a goth girl and briefly dressed up like a goth himself. This is actually a rare example of City Guys handling a topic better than Hang Time. First off, City Guys actually used the term “goth” as opposed to “grote.” As well, there’s something painfully self-congratulatory about the Hang Time version of this story. Mary Beth apologizes to the Grotes but there aren’t any Grotes at the dance so it’s not really going to do them a lot of good. In the end, the audience said “awwwww,” not because Mary Beth was being tolerant but because Kristy, Mary Beth, and Julie agreed to still be friends.
How much you want to bet that we’ll never see Eugene’s girlfriend or the Grotes again?
Episode 5.10 “Big Brother Blues”
(Directed by Miguel Higuera, originally aired on November 20th, 1999)
The Tornadoes are one victory away from making the playoffs!
Yes, apparently, the Tornadoes have been having another successful season. Up until this episode, we really haven’t heard much about Deering’s latest season. I imagine this is because Season 5 and 6 were originally meant to be one season before NBC decided to not only split the show’s final 26 episodes into two seasons but also to show the episodes out of order. Just judging from the episode descriptions that are available on Wikipedia, it appears that most of the basketball episodes were moved to the sixth season.
Anyway, as I said, the Tornadoes are once again one game away from making the playoffs. However, they have to defeat the Mustangs, a team that Deering hasn’t defeated in over 11 years. The team is convinced that they’re jinxed. Coach K. brings in a “jinx exorcist” who works with the NBA. He dramatically banishes the jinx from the locker room. With their confidence intact, the Tornadoes dominate the first half. However, at halftime, they discover that the jinx exorcist was just some random guy that Coach K paid to fool them. The Tornadoes lose their confidence and nearly lose the game. In the end, thanks to Silk’s final shot, the Tornadoes win by …. you guessed it …. one point!
Meanwhile, Michael and Silk sign up for the Big Brother program and are assigned to spend time with a kid named Daniel. Daniel loves hanging out with Michael and Silk but it turns out that Daniel’s mom is a racist who doesn’t want her son to hang out with anyone black. Daniel still comes to the game but, after the Tornadoes win, he’s dragged away by his mom. Daniel runs back into the locker room to give Silk a hug but it’s pretty clear that the two of them will never see each other again,
What a sad ending!
This episode featured both Mary Beth and Julie talking about how much they hate it when people are judged by how they look. Interestingly enough, no one says, “You mean like how you judged the Grotes?” That said, it was a heartfelt episode with a good message and Danso Gordon does a good job of portraying Silk’s anger and sadness. The final scene was far more moving that what one would typically expect of a Peter Engel-produced sitcom.
Through the Shattered Lens 