Tonight’s horror on TV comes to us from The Twilight Zone. At first glance, Number 12 Looks Just Like You may not seem like a horror story but, by the end of it, it clearly is. Number 12 deals with the horror of being an individual living in a society of conformists.
This episode was originally broadcast on January 24th, 1964.
Little Shop…Little Shop of Horrors…Little Shop…Little Shop of Terrors…
Watching the original 1960 Little Shop of Horrors is another Halloween tradition here at the Shattered Lens. And why not? It’s a lot of fun! Everyone always mentions the fact that Jack Nicholson pops up in an early role but, for me, the entire film is stolen by the great Dick Miller.
Incidentally, when I was 19, I was a dancer in a community theater production of Little Shop of Horrors. I really should have been cast as Audrey.
Just saying.
Hey, everyone!
Remember how, earlier this year, a whole lot of people (like me) figured that The Judge would be a surefire Oscar contender and that Robert Duvall would probably receive an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor?
At the time, it made perfect sense. After all, in the past, courtroom dramas have occasionally been popular with the Academy and, while we all knew that The Judge probably wouldn’t be a modern-day Anatomy of a Murder, there was still reason to hope that the film would turn out to be a watchable melodrama. Add to that, the movie starred Robert Downey, Jr, an actor who is eventually going to win an Academy Award. Perhaps most importantly, the title character was played by Robert Duvall, one of the best American actors of all time and an actor who, having recently turned 83, might not get many more opportunities to win one final career-honoring Oscar.
It only made sense to assume that The Judge would be a contender.
And then the trailer came out and those of us who know our film history were left a little bit confused. It wasn’t that the trailer was necessarily bad. It was just that it made the film seem rather old-fashioned. It didn’t feel like a trailer for a film that was set to be released in 2014. If anything, it almost felt like a parody, as if it was one of those fake, overly Hollywood trailers that appeared at the beginning of Tropic Thunder. (The fact that the trailer featured Robert Downey, Jr. looking haunted only contributed to this feeling.)
And then the film opened and received reviews that were, at best, respectful and, at worst, scathing. And I quickly revised my Oscar predictions.
Despite the bad reviews and my own suspicion that the film would not be very good, I still wanted to see The Judge. I love melodrama. I love courtroom dramas. Even more importantly, the Roberts are two of my favorite actors. Robert Downey, Jr. is always a lot of fun to watch. Robert Duvall began his career playing Boo Radley in To Kill A Mockingbird and, 52 years later, he’s still a great and uniquely American actor.
So, I saw The Judge this weekend and … well, it’s just a weird movie and not in a good way. Instead, it’s one of those movies where almost everything seems to be so strangely miscalculated that you really can’t imagine how it could have possibly happened. The film runs for nearly two and a half hours, despite only having enough plot for maybe an hour-long pilot for a potential mid-season replacement. The script is amazingly overwritten, full of portentous speeches and clichéd characters. It’s not enough that Robert Downey, Jr. has two brothers that he has to reconnect with while defending their father on a murder charge. Instead, one of the brothers also has to be vaguely developmentally challenged so that he can deliver cute lines that are full of “accidental wisdom.” It’s not enough that Downey reunites with his ex-high school girlfriend (Vera Farmiga, who deserves a better role) but she also has to have a daughter who might be his but could be someone else’s. It’s not enough that Billy Bob Thornton’s prosecuting attorney is slick and cunning but he also has to be a self-righteous crusader who has rather silly personal reasons for wanting to defeat Downey in court. It’s not enough that Downey and Duvall eventually end up yelling their personal grievances each other. Instead, they have to do it while a tornado literally tears through the front yard, the type of directorial choice that is so obvious and heavy-handed that it indicates that director David Dobkin (best known for directing comedies like Wedding Crashers) was desperate to prove that he could be dramatic.
Much like the similarly bad Love and Other Drugs, The Judge is one of those films that tries so hard to be all things to all viewers that it’s ultimately just a huge mess. Is it a murder mystery? If so, you have to wonder why we learn so little about the case against Duvall’s judge. Is it a romantic comedy about Robert Downey, Jr. returning to his small hometown and rediscovering what’s important in life? If so, you have to wish that the town had a little bit more character beyond just being a standard Hollywood version of what middle America is like. Is it a family drama? Well, then it would be nice to know more about the family dynamic beyond the fact that Duvall was stern, Downey was rebellious, and Vincent D’Onofrio is stuck playing the brother who never got to leave home. It’s a comedy with few laughs and a drama with few tears and ultimately, The Judge just does not work.
However, both of the Roberts give pretty good performances. That’s what makes The Judge truly frustrating. Duvall and Downey both do such good work but the material ultimately not only lets them down but lets the audiences down as well.
Oh well.
Tonight’s horror on TV is an episode of Night Gallery that was originally broadcast on October 29th, 1972. It’s a ghost story that features dancing so, of course, I like it!
Enjoy Spectre in Tap Shoes!
For today’s horror on the lens, we present a film from the legendary Roger Corman. First released in 1956, It Conquered The World tells the tragic story of what happens when it … well, conquers the world. It, by the way, is one of the most iconic of the 1950 sci-fi monsters. It is kind of a crab-like thing but … well, just watch the film. It’s kind of hard to describe.
The film also features future spaghetti western star Lee Van Cleef as the human scientist who foolishly helps It conquer the world. Van Cleef’s wife is played by one of the greatest B-movie actresses of all time, Beverly Garland. Hoping to thwart It is Peter Graves who spends the majority of the film riding around on a bicycle. Also keep an eye out for Dick Miller and Jonathan Haze, who both play soldiers here and who would later co-star in tomorrow’s horror on the lens.
For tonight’s televised horror on the lens, we have another episode of the Night Gallery. In Whisper, a mentally unstable woman played by Sally Field believes that she can talk to ghosts. Her husband, played by Dean Stockwell, spends all of his time driving her to cemeteries and allowing her to commune with the dead. Is he merely humoring her or does he believe as well?
You’ll have to watch to find out!
Whisper was originally broadcast on May 13th, 1973.
To be honest, I really don’t like Burnt Offerings, a 1976 film about what happens when an odd family moves into an even odder house. I find it to be slow and predictable and, to be honest, the only part that really works are the flashback scenes that feature a skeletal Anthony James playing a sinister chauffeur.
However, I’ve discovered that there’s a lot of people online who disagree with me and who consider this to be one of the best haunted house movies ever! So, in the spirit of agreeing to disagree, here is Burnt Offerings…
(If nothing else, the film is worth it for the chance to see Oliver Reed, Karen Black, Bette Davis, Anthony James, and Burgess Meredith all in one film together.)
Last night, the Snarkalecs and I watched the latest SyFy original film, Finders Keepers!
Why Was I Watching It?
I had been watching Big Driver over on Lifetime but that film proved to be unusually disturbing and I really wasn’t in the right mood to deal with it. Sometimes, you need to just be entertained and SyFy original movies are always entertaining! So, after watching an hour of Big Driver, I turned over to SyFy and watched Finders Keepers.
What Was It About?
Recently divorced writer Alyson Smith (Jaime Pressly) moves into a nice, old house with her daughter, Claire (Kylie Rogers). At first the house seems ideal but soon, cracks start to appear on this perfect fantasy of home ownership. Claire starts to act strangely. A crazy old cat lady (Marina Sirtis) keeps coming by the house. Alyson does some research and discovers that the reason the house was empty was because, years before, it was the scene of a brutal mass murder. And, of course, Claire finds a creepy doll in her bedroom and becomes extremely attached to it.
Soon, everyone who knows Alyson and her ex-husband (Patrick Muldoon) is turning up dead. Could it be that the doll is evil or could it all be a coincidence?
Actually, there’s really no question. That is one messed up doll…
What Worked?
SyFy hasn’t been showing as many original movies this year as they did last year. Fortunately, the ones that they have shown have all been excellent and Finders Keepers keeps the streak going. Finders Keepers is an effectively creepy horror film, featuring excellent performances from Jaime Pressly and Patrick Muldoon, atmospheric direction from Alexander Yellen, and a clever script from Peter Sullivan.
Incidentally, Finders Keepers probably featured one of the bigger body counts that I’ve ever seen in a SyFy film. Nobody’s safe from that doll!
What Did Not Work?
Over the course of the film, two cats and a crazy old cat lady are killed. As most of you know, I am about 40 years away from becoming a crazy old cat lady so that was a little bit difficult for me to deal with.
“Oh my God! Just like me!” Moments
So, beyond the crazy old cat lady and her two cats, this film also featured a vivacious, 20-something redhead who ended up being murdered by the evil doll. And then, once the redhead and the cat lady had been dispatched, we were introduced to an incredibly efficient office administrator and guess what happened to her? That’s right — murdered by the crazy doll. Speaking as a vivacious and efficient redheaded office administrator and future crazy cat lady, I really have to wonder just what exactly this film had against me!
Lessons Learned
Do not let your daughter keep any creepy old voodoo dolls that she just happens to find in her bedroom. If she won’t get rid of the voodoo doll, consider giving her up for adoption because, seriously — voodoo is nothing to mess with.
You have to be careful about admitting that you think Stephen King is overrated.
For a year and a half, I’ve been meaning to write a post entitled “10 Reasons Why Stephen King Sucks” but I haven’t. Some of that is because I don’t necessarily think that he does suck. I think he’s a good writer but I also think that he’s overrated and that his novel about the Kennedy assassination got so many details about Texas wrong that I don’t even know where to begin. (However, following the rules of clickbait, “sucks” works better than “overrated.”) Mostly, though, it’s just because Stephen King fans tend to be a bit cult-like. Criticizing King is like saying you don’t care about Beyonce’s marriage or admitting that you find President Obama to be a dull speaker or telling Vermont to go fuck itself or listing 10 Reasons Why You Hated Avatar. You shouldn’t do it unless you want to run the risk of dealing with a lot of angry and irrational true believers.
That said, it’s always a little bit safer to criticize the movies that have been made from Stephen King’s books and short stories. Even King’s most slavish followers will admit that Stephen King films tend to be uneven as far as quality is concerned. Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining is one of the best horror films of all time but it’s interesting to note that Stephen King himself rarely has a good word to say about Kubrick’s adaptation of his novel. For reasons that I’ve never quite understood, a lot of people love The Shawshank Redemption. Then there are the adaptations that nobody likes, like Bag of Bones and Dreamcatcher.
And then there’s Big Driver, an adaptation of a Stephen King novella that aired on Lifetime last night. For the past two months, Lifetime has been advertising this film with short but effective commercials that featured a bloodied Maria Bello running down a dark road while a gigantic truck ominously followed behind her. I saw the commercials and, seeing as how Maria Bello is a favorite actress of mine and how much I love Lifetime movies in general, I was excited to see Big Driver. Then, I saw another commercial in which Stephen King was quoted as saying, “This is the film that Stephen King fans have been waiting for,” and I have to admit that it left me a little bit less enthused because, quite frankly, I’ve always been under the impression that Stephen King will endorse anything as long as he gets paid and his ass gets kissed. (Someday, we’ll have to do a survey to discover just how many crappy books come with a Stephen King pull quote on the cover describing the book’s author as being “the future of horror!”) And I have to admit that I resented the fact that Lifetime seemed to be assuming that I would ever allow Stephen King to tell me what was good and what was bad. I can decide that for myself without having someone else tell me what I’ve been “waiting for.”
(I have issues with authority. Can you tell?)
Big Driver, incidentally, is Stephen King’s take on I Spit On Your Grave. Mystery writer Tess Thorne (Maria Bello) is raped and left for dead by a serial killer who is known as Big Driver (Will Harris). Feeling that the police would simply say that she was “asking for it”, Tess does not report the attack but instead uses the same techniques that she writes about in her books to track down both Big Driver and his mother (Ann Dowd) and sets out to get both revenge for herself and justice for all of Big Driver’s other victims. (Those detective techniques, by the way, largely seem to consist of knowing how to use Google.) Along the way, Tess hallucinates conversations with both her car’s GPS and with one of the fictional detectives from her books (played by Olympia Dukakis).
When I watched Big Driver last night, I actually had to stop watching after an hour. The film was just too intense and disturbing for me to handle in one sitting. The scene where Tess was raped was too painful to watch and Maria Bello’s performance was so raw and real that I had to change the channel. It wasn’t the film’s fault. It’s just that I wasn’t in the right emotional state to watch the movie. It was a lot more intense than anything that I would have ever expected to see on Lifetime. (Lifetime, after all, is the television equivalent of comfort food.) So, I stopped watching after an hour and I turned over to SyFy so I could watch a much more light-hearted horror film, Finders Keepers. Fortunately, I had the DVR recording Big Driver and I finished watching the film early this morning.
What I discovered, when I watched the rest of the film, is that Big Driver is a frustratingly uneven film. The first half is difficult to watch and that’s the way it should have been. But, as I watched the rest of the film, I found myself growing annoyed with Tess’s imaginary friends. The talking GPS and the spectral presence of the fictional detective all served to make Tess look less like a woman demanding justice and more like the proverbial unstable person who shouldn’t have been messed with. One reason why the original I Spit On Your Grave has recently been reevaluated by several feminist film critics is because the victim in that film is never portrayed as being crazy or unbalanced. Her actions are purely the result of what has been done to her and, as such, that film is ultimately far more empowering than most critics will ever be willing to admit. By calling into question Tess’s grip on reality, Big Driver fails to empower and, if a film like this isn’t going to be empowering, than what is the point?
Big Driver is, however, redeemed by Maria Bello’s fierce performance as Tess. Maria Bello is one of my favorite actresses. When you see that a character is played by Maria Bello, you know that character is not going to put up with any bullshit and she’s not going to be afraid to kick someone’s ass if she has to. Even when the film’s script lets the character down, Maria Bello keeps Tess strong. It’s a great and, I would say, even an important performance.
As for Big Driver‘s place in the pantheon of Stephen King film adaptations, it’s about in the middle. It’s neither as good or as bad as it could have been but it is undeniably effective.
Up until Friday, I had either never heard of a show called Freakylinks. According to Wikipedia, it aired on the Fox Network back in the year 2000 and it deal with a guy named Derek (Ethan Embry) who took over an occult-themed web site after the death of his twin brother Adam. The name of that website: Freakylinks.com. (Incidentally, the real Freakylinks.com is currently for sale if anyone wants to buy the domain name. To be honest, Freakylinks.com sounds like it should be a cheap porn site instead of a paranormal site.) With the help of his friends, Derek would spend each week investigating paranormal stuff and then I guess posting it to his site. I’m assuming that there was no YouTube back in 2000. (And according to Wikipedia, I am correct! YouTube did not start until 2005.)
Anyway, Friday night, I watched an episode of Freakylinks with my friends Janeen, Holly, Ven, Tammy, Elway, Kurt, Amber, Myrna, and Bec over at SyFyDesigns.com. As you might guess from that list, Freakylinks appears to be one of those shows that works better if you watch it as a part of a group. The episode we watched was called Still I Rise and it had a zombie theme to it. Towards the end of the episode, Ethan Embry goes a little crazy.
And you can watch it below!
