Tales From the Darkside 118: If the Shoes Fit

The episode begins with a maid cleaning a hotel room, then stealing a bite from an apple before the guests arrive. Will this episode contain a message about putting trust in the wrong people, or is this just a funny bit of business before we get to the plot? Only time will tell!

The room's inhabitant arrives, and proves to be 'Gumbs', a contemptible caricature of a corrupt southern politician - so loathesome that he 'tips' the hotel staff by giving them campaign buttons! Who knows what kind of damage he'll do if actually elected governor of this generic South-Eastern state!

The bellhop, Peter, puts up one of Gumbs' pointedly satirical posters:

As the man himself makes a call to Louie, his campaign manager. Gumbs' main complaint? The hotel is creepy an uninhabited. Louie brushes this off, telling Gumbs that he needs to start announcing his stance on prominent issues of the day, like the equal rights amendment! Hey, remember when that was a thing? I don't, but the Doonesbury collections I read growing up assure me that people used to care pretty profoundly about it. Gumbs speaks for the modern politician when he announces that people don't care about issues, they just want to feel like they're voting for a good guy.

Man, I wish this random episode of Tales From the Darkside from the mid-80s wasn't so dead-on about politics almost 30 years later.

Saturday Night Live Rapewatch: Anne Hathaway Ediiton

I missed reviewing this episode the first time around, but since SNL is re-airing it to coincide with Anne Hathaway hosting the Oscars, this seems like a perfect time to go ahead and check it for rape and homophobia-themed humour, as is my wont.

The episode opened with another Rachel Maddow show sketch in the current events slot - it's not a great impression, but at least they've given up on making gay jokes about her. So that's something. Things moved briskly from there, through another Miley Cyrus sketch to a visit from Penelope (possibly my least-favorite Kristen Wiig character! Ah, who am I kidding. They're all my least favorite Kristen Wiig character. Especially the lady who expects people to be happier about winning a sweepstakes. Ugh.), and then a joke about the TSA groping people over Thanksgiving.

Smuggy Smuggerson brought the one rape joke of the night, devaluing the term by hyperbolicly using it to describe what the dictionary people are doing to the English language by including Sarah Palin's 'refudiate' in a list of the year's best new words. I mean, he's not wrong, but he could have looked for a less horrible choice.

The show's back 30 went by without incident, sketches included a scene about a dropped character from 'The Wizard of Oz' that served only to remind me of a superior sketch from the Dana Carvey Show, and (possibly) the first appearance of Hader's 'old reporter' character. You know, I talk a lot of crap about the Stephan character, but that's mostly because Hader can't get through a sketch without laughing. At least his incredibly varied list of activities keep that one from being the exact same sketch every week, the way Gilly, Target Lady, Old Reporter, Vinnie Vedici and so forth are.

Anyhoo, let's go to the totals!

Homophobia: 0

Rape: 1

This season's trend of being the kinder, gentler SNL has gone on nearly uncontested. We're now halfway through the year without a single visit from the Scared Straight sketch - and there's even a new black guy in the cast, so the producers could theoretically mix it up a little for Kenan if they were so inclined. They've restrained themselves from doing so, and I thank them for it.

Criminal Minds: Suspect Behaviour 102: Lonely Heart

This week's episode opens with the same title card as last week's, restating the premise that the show is about rogue profilers who answer only to the Director of the FBI (Richard Schiff). Of course, the only thing rogue about them last week was that they dressed so unprofessionally they made Reid look like Joe Friday, so my continuing bafflement at the premise of this show has led me to add an additional category at the bottom of the reviews. Find out what it is soon!

The episode itself begins with a woman recounting her experience luring a man to a hotel room, having sex with him, and then murdering him. She's talking to a man about this, and it's clear that she was operating entirely under his instructions. So this means she's under the thrall of a serial killer who can't do the murdering himself, so he's using her as a tool. I'm going to lock in a guess now, and say the killer is dead, and exists only in her head. Although that was the basic plot of 'The Angel Maker', so they might not want to go back to that well so quickly.

We also learn that the woman is wearing a blonde wig:

Because no one's real hair is that pale.

Then it's over to the team, who we know are led by a rebel because Forest Whitaker (whose name I misspelled both parts of last week - Yikes!) rides to work on a motorcycle while the Rolling Stones play on his iPod. What does this scene teach us? That 'Street Fighting Man' is no longer a prohibitively expensive song to license.

We also learn that the code to get into the office is 3699#. There's an insert of Forest punching in the code that's impossible to miss, which raises the question of that number's importance. Could something traumatic have happened to Forest on March 6th, 1999? Or June 3rd, if the character turns out to be Canadian? If so, that's a terrible number to pick for your secret code, since the serial killer who's taunting you about the fact that he killed your family 12 years ago will undoubtedly know the day on which he did it.

The team lays out the new case - 3 victims, all killed in hotel rooms over the past two weeks. Because every killer in the world of Criminal Minds is a spree killer. The show then cuts to the white-wigged killer alone in her apartment, hearing the svengali's voice in her head, thereby offering more evidence to my 'dead serial killer' theory. Will I be right? Let's find out together, after the opening credits!

Criminal Minds 412: Soul Mates

The episode begins in the suburbs of Sarasota, Florida, since we all know that crime is scarier when it happens to upper-middle class white people. Case in point (not the white thing, but the upper middle class), the first characters we meet are Michael Boatman and his daughter - he's a neglectful dad begging off teaching her to drive, so he tries to bribe her with a car! Things take a turn for the considerably less happy a teen wanders over with a flyer - there's a high school girl missing, another victim of a serial killer working the area! Just then the cops roll up and arrest Michael Boatman as his daughter and friends look on, shocked - could he really be the killer they're looking for?

Well, obviously, he's a guest star. So yes. But he's also not the only one - he's got a white partner! How do we know this just seconds into the show? Well, this is one of the problems of watching a show on DVD after its initial airing. I can't un-know the title. More to the point, though, there's also been a tip-off from a psychological standpoint - the serial killer the cops are hunting alternated between killing black and white girls. Since serial killers generally murder within their own race, it's a safe bet that Boatman's partner is white.

The team is on the scene moments after the arrest, ready to scold the sheriff - they were hoping Boatman would lead them to the girl, and now that chance is blown! How did they find Boatman so quickly you ask, since we're starting so far into the plot? A witness saw him at the place the last girl was kidnapped, and he has a criminal history of kidnapping and raping teenagers. So it wasn't much of a challenge, really. Although they do toss in a line about him 'fitting the profile' to make it sound like the team contributed.

Making things even worse, the team is working against a timeline - the killer generally keeps his victims alive for a couple of days, so she's probably out there somewhere, possibly running out of air! (Although that's just my supposition.) More importantly, though, Boatman might get bail in as little as twelve hours - will they be able to break him within that amount of time?

Probably not, since the team has never, ever, broken a suspect or talked a confession out of someone. The only thing they've ever done (and they've done this a few times) is tricked someone into thinking that their plan had succeeded, and then waited until the killer started gloating before announcing that it was all a scam. Will they be able to do that this time? Join me after the opening credits to find out!

Porn Shoot Massacre Is As Badly-Written As You'd Think

I think I'm going to call the phenomenon 'Frightmare Syndrome'. It's when people making an ultra low-budget movie decide that a certain scene or sequence of events needs to be especially gripping or well-written, and they attempt to punch far above their weight class. Normally when penning scripts for these sorts of movies (if they indeed have scripts, rather than just sketchy outlines), the filmmakers tend to stick to simple, declarative sentences - either ignorant of what makes dialogue well-written, or just uninterested in putting in the effort, most scenes tend to have an ad-libbed feel to them.

Whether this is because the actors can't remember their lines, or because they weren't given any, and instead of 'acting' they're basically just saying what they would in those situations is up for interpretation - either way, while these heavily improvised scenes are never particularly good, they at least have a degree of consistency. While there's plenty of fumbling and late cues, it kind of all blends together, because everyone's doing it-

Isn't it nice when they leave in the moment before 'action' was called?

It's only later in the movie, when the filmmakers decide to pretend that there's actually a plot, that things get really bad. Groaningly bad attempts at clever action lines, characters spouting long strings of exposition - a plot to continues to make no sense of any kind... and my favorite, an exchange that proves the writer didn't even understand the concept of a double negative.

The crazy part is that this film wasn't made by a writer/director. Which means a second person had to take a look at this script and say 'yes - absolutely - let's make this!' I'm uncomfortable with the idea that there's one person in the world who thought that making Porn Shoot Massacre as 'written' was a good idea. The idea that there were at least two makes me worry for the future of humanity.

If it's Wednesday, it must be TheAvod!

This week's very special Avod comes with a very special guest: Brad McHargue, whose name doesn't sound like it's spelled, and who also has a big problem with Adam Green, director of such films as whose names you can look up by checking him out on IMDB.com!

Want to know the nature of Brad's problem with Adam, or what the Divemistress and myself thought of two preposterously-titled movies? Then just right-click here to download TheAvod 106: "I'm not comfortable saying Hatchet 2."

Also you can swing by theAvod's blog to stream it, if that's how you choose to live your life.

The Thirty-Ninth-Greatest Panel in the History of Comics!

As opposed to counterfeit Oriental Chinamen.

Tales From the Darkside 117: Madness Room

The episode opens, as more of them ought to, on a dark and stormy night. A beautiful woman is reading on a couch when her older husband sneaks up on her. Not in a sinister way, although his self-pitying when dealing with his far-too-young wife could be called emotional assault, I suppose. They kiss for a moment before a doorbell calls the young wife away, leaving her husband to clutch the left side of his chest, signaling the heart condition that will claim his life before the half-hour is done.

The man at the door is Michael, who lets us know with a reciprocal leer-

That he's the wife's secret lover. Michael and husband sign some business papers while wife takes out the ouija board, planning, no doubt, to begin a game that will wind up scaring husband to death. I'm not psychic, but I have seen Deathtrap, so there's really only one way this can be going. Add to the situation the fact that Michael is talking about how terrified he is to be playing with the ouija board at all, and you've got a recipe for terror!

The wife explains that the board is used to communicate with 'Ben', the spirit of the house's original resident. Husband suggests they test the theory by asking the ghost where he lives, and the board responds by spelling out 'THEMADNESSROOM' of the title. Wife naturally knows exactly to what the board returns - a room in the house that drives anyone who sleeps in it irrevocably mad!

Just where is this room? It's sealed away somewhere in the house, walled over after Ben's wife 'Ophelia' shot him and then drowned herself and her child in the property's well. Michael suggests they stop the game, but husband insists they continue until they've found the location of the room. A clue from the board leads them to the fireplace, and a loose contained therein. Behind the wall they discover a weathered map of the house and an old key - the madness room is within their grasp! But should they enter it?

Suspect Behavior 101: I don't know what this episode is called, because I don't have a DVD, and the episodes aren't titled.

I've been asked - not by many people, this is largely not something that the public cares about - but I have been asked just when my reviews of Criminal Minds are going to catch up with the show's newly-airing episodes. The answer, of course, is in 2013. I'm halfway through the fourth season now, while the show is halfway through its sixth. This means that, should I continue at this pace, I'll arrive at the end of the sixth season around the same time that Criminal Minds is completing its (inevitable) seventh - the, over the spring and summer I'll largely catch up on the seventh season, merging with (hopeful) eighth towards the end of 2012 (depending on how long seasons 6 and 7 are), definitely in the new year.

So, with the prospect of reviewing current episodes of Criminal Minds some two years off, I'm left with a dilemma. Do I attempt to get in on the ground floor of hot new show 'Criminal Minds: Suspect Behaviour', risking the possibility that it's going to spoil plot twists from coming seasons of the original show - twists about whose content I'm wholly unaware? Well, not wholly, I've seen enough glimpses of commercials on mute to know everyone's alive. Well, Greg and Joe and Emily, anyhow.

Obviously I'm going to at least watch the first episode, given the title of this post, but be forewarned: if the show looks like it's going to be spoiling things from the other show, or like it won't fit neatly into my 'critiquing profiling in fiction' format for the reviews, I reserve the right to call this review, and any further coverage of the show, off at any time. So, without any further ado, because, let's be honest, that was a lot of ado, on to the show!

Adventures in Fake Journalism: Chain Letter

Regular visitors to the Castle will be familiar with my love of the fake books, newspapers, and websites that the crew has to throw together - often on short notice - to add a sense of verisimilitude to a film. Generally it's a morbid kind of love, where I gleefully chronicle the various misspellings and terrible sentence structure that are the hallmarks of hastily-written filler text. Every now and then, though, I encounter legitimately well-written sections of text, where someone has gone out of their way to make an article look and read like something that might appear in the real world - even though they know full well the results of that work will only ever appear onscreen for a maximum of 2.5 seconds, tops.

Which I guess is the real reason I write these things - for those rare occasions where I get to shower some appreciation on the people whose work is almost never recognized by the filmgoing public.

Although mocking typos is fun, too.

Criminal Minds 411: Normal

This week's episode is going to be about a desperately pathetic middle-aged man. How do I know this? Check out the first image visible after the establishing shots:

In the world of fiction, only middle-aged men crushed by the ennuis of their emasculating family lives wear classic sports car ties. Insider tip, that. The middle-aged man (Mitch Pileggi!) is immediately criticized by his wife (Faith Ford! Two weeks in a row with Murphy Brown alums!), who tells him to lose the tie, since they're going to a party for her, and she doesn't want to be embarrassed. Mitch retreats to his hobby room, which is dominated by models of the classic cars he loves so well-

See, the cars are the one part of his life that he feels are part of his identity, so attack them is like attacking his manhood! Normally I don't like the Six Feet Under/Dr House 'bet you think that guy's the victim: Hah! Gotcha!' Wouldn't it be nice, though, if just once we started an episode once with a hen-pecked man who hates women - and then have him surprisingly be the victim? Well, not 'nice', obviously...

Mitch then loads a long giftwrapped package into his car and heads off to the wife's party - on the way there he's harassed by an aggressive female driver who's exactly as blond as his wife. Naturally, there's only one thing Mitch can do in this situation. Pull a shotgun out of the gift box and shoot the woman in the face!

Hold on, there was a shotgun in that box? Mitch was going to shoot up his wife's party? Not cool, Mitch!

Funny note before we move on? The swerving stunt car had its window blown out, but the stunt drivers forgot to roll down the window on the one that was called to do the big stunt:

Oh well, can't win 'em all, guys. Great stunt, though.

Mitch arrives at the party, suddenly feeling confident and full of vigour - shmoozing with all the people he'd planned to kill, then returning home to have sex with his wife! Mitch can't sleep afterwards, though, so he heads out to the garage to improve his shotgun, but only after looking at his children's rooms - letting us know that in addition to his scolding wife, Mitch also has three daughters. Well no wonder he's emasculated, am I right, fellas? So, how many victims before he tries to murder his family, and they get rescued by the team? I'm guessing one more - let's find out together, after the credits!

Chain Letter Doesn't Make Even a Little Sense

Hey, remember when I was complaining about the terrible anticlimacism of Chain Letter, well, while I was typing that up I noticed everything else was wrong with the movie as well, so let's take a look at some of it, shall we?

1 - There's parental negligence, and then there's just bad writing.

As mentioned the last time around, the film opens with its ending, as the main character is murdered by her parents. On first viewing this sequence works as a heavy-handed message about the lack of interpersonal connection in all these people's lives. The unknown victim's parents are so out of touch with their child's life that they can watch a news story about murdered teens and not even see a connection to their own daughter.

When taken in its proper context, however, this scene makes absolutely no sense.

These are not the parents of some random teenager in town. Over the past week every single one of their daughter's friends has been brutally murdered by a madman, and all signs point to her being the next on the killer's list. At this point in the movie they shouldn't be headed to work in their sports cars, they should be putting their daughter on a plane to the farthest location they can afford to send her. Which, given their house and cars, might well be the moon.

Hell, they don't even check in with her before leaving for work. Because that's plausible in this situation.

Wednesday is TheAvod Day!

That's right folks, it's time for a brand-spanking new episode of theAvod! This week's is more thrilling than most, involving spirited debate about movies as diverse as Chain Letter, Time After Time, and All-Star Superman! If you'd like to hear which of those was the best (Time After Time) and the worst (Chain Letter), just click here and listen away! As a shameless self-promoter, I also tease three upcoming articles!

Also featured in this week's episode? TheAvod team reveals what seemingly-innocuous current event is a harbinger of our bleak future as slaves to the robot masters!

The Thirty-Eight-Greatest Panel in the History of Comics!

For the record, this was from a one-page gag strip. About that main character causing a flood that killed hundreds.

Tales From the Darkside 116: Tear Collector

This is one of those episodes where I miss Rod Serling. Now, to be fair, I haven't seen an episode of Twilight Zone in so long that I could be remembering this all backwards, but I'm pretty sure that somewhere in his introduction he mentioned the title of the episode. Or maybe I'm thinking about Alfred Hitchcock. Either way, the point is that if this title was read aloud by someone I'd know for certain if this episode concerned a collector of tears (as in crying), or tears (as in ripped clothing).

Although the fact that the show opens on a crying woman certainly makes a persuasive argument in one direction.