Category Archives: Television

The Dreamer will not Awaken

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Filmmaker, Artist, and dreamer David Lynch as died. All artists are unique voices and visions, but few have the dreamlike quality that impacts generations such as was the films of David Lynch.

I first encountered Lynch’s visual language when along with a pack of friends I went to a local arthouse theater for a double feature of Roger Corman’s Little Shop of Horrors and David Lynch’s Eraserhead. I still have clear memories of sitting in that darkened theater telling myself that eventually the movie Eraserhead would start making sense. It never did, but its images stayed parked powerfully in my mind.

I next ran into Lynch with his big budget studio production of Dune, the least David Lynch film that man ever released. It is so unlike his vision that extended television versions do not credit him at his insistence.

My next encounter however transformed me into a fan when I went to the theater to see Blue Velvet. I came out of that screen struck with the beauty and the horror of his mind. The glory of a good and simple life, the depravity of a bad one and just how closely interlocked the two truly were.

When Twin Peaks hit the air, my take was that Lynch had brought Blue Velvet to television, but of course the series was both far darker and for more normal than that movie had been.

I cannot say I have seen all of his work, but what I have watched has stayed with me and haunts my thoughts more than most financial blockbusters.

Every death is the loss of a voice and every one touches the world in ways that vast and complex. Lynch touched many of us and he lives on in our dreams and nightmares.

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Folk Horror Review: Robin Redbreast

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Produced and broadcast December 1970 as part of the BBC anthology program A Play for Today is a modern set piece of folk horror. Originally broadcast in color the only surviving elements are a 16mm B&W copy due to the BBC’s notorious penny-pinching habit of recording over their master tapes.

BBC

Norah (Anna Cropper) a thoroughly modern woman, having been dumped by her boyfriend of eight years, decides to abandon the city and live for a few months in a country cottage that she and her ex-had purchased just before the dissolution of their relationship.

The isolated village and its inhabitant are quaint and strange to Norah’s modern sensibilities with the woman she hired to help clean and maintain the cottage a busybody and gossip. When Norah discovers that there is an infestation of field mice in her cottage she’s directed to seek out Robin a local man who can perform the extermination. She finds Robin (Andrew Bradford) in the forest practicing martial arts nude.

Robin, though simple-minded, attracts the lonely Norah but slowly it begins to seem that the villagers have arranged everything to induced Norah and Robin into a relationship with some dark unspecified purpose at their goal.

I first heard of Robin Redbreast on the documentary about Folk Horror but at that time aside from one massive collection of films, it what not available anywhere to view. Recently it has become available to stream in the Ad-supported service Tubi and at a brisk one hour and twenty minutes it doesn’t require a deep commitment of time.

I think that the accident of only as B&W element surviving actually works in the film’s favor, giving it the village a feel of something not quite of modern times, very fitting for folk horror which is nearly always about the collision between tradition and modernity.

Limitations of both budget and technical capability do hamper some aspects of the production. A sequence that is supposed to be from a frightened bird’s perspective is achieved solely through crash zooms and whip pans of the camera that are quite off putting. There are a few conveniences of plot but overall while not approaching becoming a favorite for me of the folk horror genre Robin Redbreast was worth at least a watch.

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Series Review: The Penguin

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2022 saw the release of Matt Reeves’ interpretation of the classic DC Comics character Batman. Taking a more film noir approach the movie emphasized Batman as a detective over the character as a martial artist. The movie also introduced us the Colin Ferrell as Oswald Cobb, The Penguin. Reimagined as a lower class criminal hungry to make a name for himself and now HBO/Max has released a limited series focusing on the character.

HBO/Max

The series opens just weeks after the events of The Batman, the underworld is in chaos following the downfall of its leading mafia bosses, the poorest areas of Gotham are devastated by disaster, and corruption remains king in the city and its administration. Oz, (Colin Farrell) doesn’t so much seize the opportunity created by the chaos as his hand is forced due to his impulsive nature and fragile pride. Scrambling to stay ahead of vicious gangsters including Sofia Falcone (Cristin Miliot) recently released from Arkham Asylum, and the consequences of his own poorly thought-out actions Oz has only on his side a naive street kid, Victor (Rhenzy Feliz), left homeless by disaster and Oz’s own mother slowly succumbing to a terrible wasting neurological disease.

Where The Batman lived with the constraints of an MPAA PG-13 rating, The Penguin thrives as a gritty R-rating equivalent, awash with language and violence that is only tolerated by the rarest of comic book movies. The series is part organized crime thriller with only a single shot to drive home that this is the home of Batman and deep character study of a people trapped and formed by their tragic histories.

The past weekend Colin Farrel took home a Golden Globe for his performance in The Penguin. Farrell is utterly transformed not only by the magical make-up effects that hold up even under insanely tight close-ups but by Farrell’s own fantastic performance. His voice, his accent, his physicality all belong to a man named Oswald Cobb (yest that changed it from Cobbelpot.) and it’s a powerful and moving depiction of a man that can charm and lie and always has his own best interests at heart.

Cristin Milioti, a performed I was unfamiliar with before this series, is another stand out talent in a cast packed with talent. With the subtlest facial expressions she informs the audience that this character’s mental health is always in question and the danger she presents is never far from the surface.

The Penguin is an outstanding series that twists and turns as it walks the viewer into the hell that is Gotham’s underworld where hope has long since died.

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Series Review: Dune Prophesy

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Set ten thousand years before the coming of the Kwisatz Haderach Paul Atreides the series Dune Prophesy concerns itself with the early Imperium following the Machine Wars when humanity freed itself from sentient computers and the founding of the Bene Gesserit.

HBO

Thirty years earlier the sisterhood, before becoming the Bene Gesserit, suffers a crisis with their found Mother Superior dies and power struggle erupts between factions, a struggle won by the fanatically dedicated and deeply emotionally scarred Vayla Harkkonnen and her sister Tula. With careful mechanizations over the following thirty years, they are now close to bring the emperor’s daughter into the sisterhood and through her placing one of their own onto the throne. Their plans are disrupted when a mysterious solider who apparently survived a sandworm attack appears in the court with a deep burning hatred of the sisterhood and strange inexplicable powers.

Dune Prophesy is the next cinematic adaptation of the novels and stories created by Frank Herbert and successfully brought to the movie screen by French Canadian filmmaker Denis Villeneuve. With an ample production budget and a cast of veteran and new actors the series is a wonder of dramatic science-fiction television, a worthy follow-on to the pair of films from Villeneuve.

As has become typical of television of late the season is rather shot with just six episode none of which are bloated with any filler. Also, as it has become the practice in the industry the series doesn’t answer all the questions raised leaving some for further seasons.

I thoroughly enjoyed Dune Prophesy and anticipate further interesting and unsettling seasons.

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Season’s View: A Christmas Carol (2019)

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Charles Dickens’ novella A Christmas Carol has been endlessly adapted to stage, screen, and television often attracting some of each generations greatest actors to the role of Scrooge. The adaptations have run from dramatic to the farcical, but few are as unique as the one aired on the BBC and adapted by Steven Knight.

BBC

Produced by Knight and Ridley Scot this television adaptation retain the core plot, a miserly and mean businessman, Ebenezer Scrooge (Guy Pearce) is visited by spirits on Christmas Eve that by showing him the truth of his life and life in general effect a change to transform the man into a person of altruism and compassion. What Steven Knight however makes serious alterations to the nature of Scrooge’s cruelty and the deep emotional psychological wounds the man carries, while presenting the events in the truly terrifying nature implied by their mere existence.

This adaptation is a piece of horror fiction with the supernatural as something beyond comprehension and therefore something frightening to the soul. The series, for it was presented in 3 parts originally, is also visually fantastic. I can think of no other adaptation that wows with such amazing shots as this one. Instead of trying to make the three spirits the focus of inventive make-up or special effects director Nick Murphy works on the dream logic and unreal aspect of Scrooge’s vision and travels.

This program is not for family viewing. It deals with hard subjects of not only cruelty but also of abuse, exploring abuse in Scrooge’s childhood that he revisits in a manner on the world as an adult. Knight is clearly aware that victims of abuse often through their unhealed wounds become abusers themselves. As such Scrooge’s eventual transformation is not one created but ignorance of the world being removed but of a man facing the horrors of his past and understanding how they made him the monster he had become.

Dark, gothic, and a true piece of horror the 2019 A Christmas Carol is a wonder that terrifies and transforms. It is available for purchase on Amazon prime for a mere $2.00.

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Victory!

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Okay, it’s not a major victory like Midway, getting an agent, or a contract from a big 5 publisher but it is still a check in the ‘win’ column.

For a couple of weeks I have been thinking about a foreign tv series that my sweetie-wife and I watched on SHUDDER. We like it and there was a second season but before we could get around to starting that it expired from the service.

Years, many years, pass and here I am thinking it would be nice to locate and watch the second season except I can’t remember the title of the series. I couldn’t even be certain of the nation that produced it.

I remembered it was a Nordic nation, or maybe Germany. The title was a single word but not only was it a word in language I do not speak but it may have been a word from deep mythology as the series dealt with ancient mythological horrors in the deep deep forest. So, there was no way in hell that word was going to come forward for me.

A few cursory google searches for horror series in the possible nations of origin yielded nothing that sparked any memories.

Then, inspiration. While I did not remember the lead actress by name, I think this was the only project of note of her’s that I had seen, I suddenly recalled one of the supporting actors was the lead in the Finnish series Boarder Town. A quick look through his credits yielded the answer I had quested for; Jordskott.

Yup, that’s the series and there is no way in hell that title would have ever come to mind more than seven years after watching season one. (It was a SHUDDER exclusive in 2017.)

Sadly, it is not streaming anywhere.

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Return to Twin Peaks, not Twin Peaks: The Return

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During spooky season I posted that my sweetie-wife and I were doing a rewatch of the 90’s television series Twin Peaks.

I had some exposure to the uniqueness of David Lynch prior to the series. As part of a double feature at a rep theater I had seen Eraserhead, and it never made sense to me. Then I saw his adaptation of Dune, a flawed but visually stunning film that to me is the least David Lynch he ever made. However, I fell in love with Blue Velvet a surreal neo-noir that was both crime melodrama and an exploration of the twisted darkness that hides in all of us.

When Twin Peaks hit the air my very first thought was ‘Oh, this is Blue Velvet for television.’ I had no conception of just how strange, cosmic, and beyond rational the series would delve.

ABC Television

Our rewatch has reached the second of half of season two and it has been quite a ride. At times the series is a less than middling nighttime soap opera, with poorly executed noir styled plots that quickly fizzle out, at other times it’s a bizarre comedy with such questionable material as a middle-aged woman delusionally going to high school and using her inhuman muscular strength to sexually hares teenage boys. And yet it always retains those elements that are pure horror, of worlds beyond our own intruding with sadistic demons and entrapping human souls not only in depravity but with elements of furniture.

As we swing into the final episodes air back in the 90’s and the terrifying nature of the Black Lodge, the possessing demons, and a cliff hanger that went unresolved for 25 years I can’t help, despite all its flaws, to salute the inventions of the series.

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Spooky Season Conclusion: Agatha All Along

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Disney+ released the final two episodes of Agatha All Along Wednesday night completing the series just one day before Halloween.

Agatha All Along continues the story of Agatha Harkness, a witch from colonial times, that attempted to steal the powers of the Scarlet Witch and when best by that former Avenger found herself enchanted to never remember herself and live out her life in the small New Jersey Town of Westview.

Marvel Studios

Agatha opens with Agatha believing herself to be Agnes an overworked homicide detective when a chance encounter with an unnamed teenage boy breaks the spell. Together the Teen and Agatha assemble a coven in order to walk the witch’s road a mystical quest that, if the witch survives, grants the witch what is missing most from their lives. However, there are secrets, betrayals, and unimaginable dangers along the road and before the end truths and unspoken identities will change everything and everyone who treads that dangerous trail.

Created and show run by Jac Shaeffer, who was a principal creative behind WandaVision the preceding series in this storyline, Agatha All Along is a creative, inspired, and entertaining journey. Eschewing, for the most part, massive CGI fueled combat, the battles in Agatha are ones of the soul and of character which the series presents in spades.

Harkness remains a selfish and bitter villain with a flair for the sarcastic cutting remark so ably deployed by actor Kathryn Hahn. Joe Locke as the unnamed Teen pulls off a performance that late in the series shows surprising depth as his secrets are revealed. Rounding out the cast of the series is Aubrey Plaza as Rio a former lover and enemy of Agatha’s, Patti Lupone as an ancient witch possessing a unique relationship with time, Ali Ahn as Alice a witch that specializes in protection magics but suffering under a familial curse, Sasheer Zamata as Jen a potions witch who magic has been taken by an unknown enemy, and Debra Jo Rupp reprising her role from WandaVision.

Agatha All Along is a series that revels in its femininity, its queerness, and its celebration of a ‘superhero’ story that isn’t fixated on masculine muscles. It is well worth the watch.

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Spooky Season: Twin Peaks

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A few months ago, the host of the podcast The Evolution of Horror launched a new one The Detective and the Log Lady where he, a Twin Peaks super fan and a woman who had never seen the series watch and discuss each episode of the strange and influential program. My sweetie-wife and I have been rewatching the series as I listen to the podcast.

ABC Television

There’s no doubt that Twin Peaks has serious horror vibes with the nighttime soap format. Amid the financial crimes, drug dealing highschoolers, and the unfaithful marriage there is also a story of extradimensional beings & possession reveling in cruelty for its own sake. A story of deep dark woods and the terrors hidden in the impenetrable shadows. A secret known only to the owls who are not what they seem. A story of barriers between worlds stretched thin and permeable.

In short Twin Peaks is horror, at least some of the time. Perhaps the more mundane stories of unwanted pregnancies, small town scheming for local petty businesses and the trials and tribulation of teenage love enhance the horror by contrasting it with such prosaic troubles. Amid the strange and quirky nature of the town and its residents is an existential horror that rivals that of Lovecraft elder gods and the vast uncaring universe is the greatest horror of all.

 

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Retro Review: The Lieutenant “To Set it Right”

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Before Gene Roddenberry transformed his life and our world with the series Star Trek he produced and ran a series about a green Marine second lieutenant commanding a platoon at Camp Pendleton California called The Lieutenant.

Staring Gary Lockwood, who Gene would employ to play Mitchell in Trek’s second pilot, 2nd Lieutenant William Tiberius Rice is an educated and idealistic young officer learning the rope of command from his superior Captain Rambridge, (Robert Vaughn.)

NBC Publicity Photo

I watched episode 21 of the show’s only season, to Set it Right, dealing with racial conflicts with the platoon. When a new private, Cameron (Don Marshall) arrives at the base he instantly attacks Corporal Devlin (Dennis Hopper) recognizing Devlin as part of a gang that beat him in a racially motivated attack years earlier. Rice requests permission from Rambridge to keep both men in his platoon as Rice wants to learn how to solve this sort of issue.

While keeping an eye on language that would be acceptable to Standards and Practices the episode, written by Lee Erwin, is fairly honest and direct in its approach to racism. Both characters are presented as flawed and twisted by racism, Devlin for it practice and Cameron by the anger flamed through years of injustice. Cameron’s anger rarely lets him have a moment’s peace even poisoning his relationship with his fiancé Norma (Nichelle Nichols.)

To Set it Right ends on a hopeful and optimistic note that, following the intensity of the preceding pages, struck me a forced and unrealistic. The characters of Devlin and Cameron had transformed too much for such a brief time.

The episode also guest starred the classic western actor Woody Strode as a sergeant of the platoon who attempts to calm Cameron’s hostile nature.

This episode has several ties to Roddenberry’s next series Star Trek. In addition to Lockwood and Nichols, Don Marshal would return for an episode as Boma in The Galileo Seven and the episode’s director Vincent McEveety would helm six episodes of Trek including Balance of Terror.

Episodes of The Lieutenant can be found on YouTube.

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