It's Halloween!

Why aren't you watching Ghostwatch?

Tales From the Darkside 306: Black Widows

Aren't these things supposed to have twists? At least that's how they've been constructed up until this point. Either it's just a creepy thing going on, in which case the show is a little open about it, or there's a twist at the end. You've got your 'Word Processors of the Gods' and you've got your 'Anniversary Dinners'. This episode, on the other hand, seems like it's trying to be subtle about its twist, except that the title and a bizarre effect give it away.

Here's the setup - a mother and daughter share a trailer in the local park. Much to the daughter's consternation, the mother refuses to ever go out and see the world, preferring instead to let the world 'come to her'. Much like a spider living in its web. The spider thing continues with the daughter carefully taking one out of the house rather than killing it, and then the mother telling an encyclopedia salesman who drops by later not to kill one, since spiders in the house are 'good luck'. A sentiment I can't disagree with, largely because I don't like flies.

Despite this admonishment, the salesman goes ahead and kills the spider anyhow, and when the mother finds out, this happens:

So yes, we can clearly bid subtlety a fond farewell.

Do you know what that word means, Dexter?

It occurs to me that despite the fact that Dexter is a largely terrible show I haven't extensively covered it here on the site. Yes, I'm already covering enough things at once, so I'm not going to add it to the cue. That being said, something so profoundly stupid was said in a recent episode that I couldn't let it slip by.



Same "signature"? Except the 'signature' on the first victim was the Alpha/Omega sign sewn into his chest and the snakes hidden within. The 'signature' this time is a disassembled corpse. They really couldn't be less similar.

Now if you'd told me that the exact same kind of thread was used in both cases, and (forensic nonsense) had perfectly matched the fibers to the same roll, then at least you'd have some basis for this. As it is, I'm just wondering what a blood spatter analyst/CSI is doing playing around with a corpse without an ME present.

Have you even heard of the chain of custody, Dexter?

Another Question About The Simpsons

In the episode '22 Short Films About Springfield', there's a short film about Cletus, the slack-jawed yokel, which features a theme song describing the fellow. Each of the verses establishes a fact about the titular character, seemingly one selected to highlight his status as a hillbilly. Which brings me to my question:

While I fully accept that eating a skunk (or 'polecat' as they're sometimes known) is a stereotypically hillbillyish action, it's the second one that concerns me.

On what planet is 'los(ing) a toe' yokelish? When offered a panoply of possibilities to reference, everything from moonshine to incest to poor hygiene to ignorance to racism, the writers went with losing a toe? A situation that Cletus may not even have had any responsibility for?

What the hell?

Criminal Minds 520: A Thousand Words

A 911 center receives a disturbing phone call - the man on the line wants people do find a dead body in a warehouse. The body? His own! That's right, he kills himself while on the phone. Solid. When the cops get there, they discover a shrine to the man's crimes. Yes, unsurprisingly, he was a serial killer. But why did he slot himself? It wasn't to conceal his crimes-

There's a little shrine to all his victims lying in one corner, and tattoos of their faces on his torso. So the only possible explanation is that h was about to be captured, and he wanted to cut to the chase. There's got to be more to it than that, though - the last victim in the shrine hasn't been discovered yet, and she's only been missing three weeks! So it's a race against time for the team to rescue her from a hole in the ground or possibly a partner. Which will it be?

There's a silly moment where JJ hands over a comprehensive file on the case to Greg so quickly that he's able to send back word that they should 'leave the body where it is', as if it hadn't been moved yet. How on earth could they get photographers to document the entire scene, decide to send it to the FBI, get clearance to do so, and have Greg choose to look at it all in the same night? When the cops found the body it was explicitly stated to be post-dinner, but hours later when the investigation is underway the team is all still at the FBI, even though they're not visible working on a case? Kind of a stretch, that one.

Anyhoo, let's see if keeping the body around was somehow important after the opening credits!

Still more questions about the Simpsons

So it turns out there's a lot of things that don't make sense to me about Season 7.

Take, for example, the episode 'Team Homer', in which Homer joins a bowling league and winds up saddled with Mr. Burns as a teammate. Hilarity ensues.

Their main competition in this league are a team called the 'Holy Rollers', who are really, really good at bowling.

So good that god himself intervenes to ensure that Ned gets a strike (and Homer is shocked by the ball return). Naturally the two teams square off against one another in the final match of the season (although I'm not sure how - Burns causes to them to lose at least one game in what should be the elimination rounds...) and it all comes down to Mr. Burns, who, with his last two balls must knock over at least two pins to win the game.

It's the only way the story could have wound up, naturally, but it raises an important question - what kind of a game were the Holy Rollers playing? Everything we hear about them suggests that they're the best players imaginable. In one key shot-

We see them bowl four strikes in the time it takes Burns to throw a single gutterball. In this kind of a game the combined scores of both teams (the maximum is 1200) are compared to decide the winner. But with Burns being completely useless, the de facto maximum score that the 'Pin Pals' could have had at the end of the game was 902 - and that would require the rest of the team to have bowled three perfect games, which is a statistical impossibility - and surely would have been mentioned had it happened. Even if that was the case, the Holy Rollers would have had to bowled an average score of 233 - a great score by most standards, but not what we're told to expect from them.

According to the show's logic, had Otto been on the team instead of Burns, the Pin Pals would have won the championship by a margin of at least 200 points - if the Holy Rollers could be thumped that badly, what threat were they supposed to have posed in the first place?

Also, where is this lane's ball return?

TheAvod's not doing a Halloween show!

That's right, since every single day in the horror blogger's world is Halloween, we figured why bother doing a special Halloween episode? Especially when we've already covered nearly every movie with Halloween in the title. Instead, we did the standard thing - Batman, nostalgia, and terrible DTV fare!

Download it by right-clicking here!

Also, if you're psyched for some Halloween fun, just click the following link and screen the ultimate Halloween movie: Ghostwatch!

The Seventy-Fifth-Greatest Panel in the History of Comics!

There's just something so charming about a comic cover that so massively exaggerates the size of the main character, isn't there? Also, it's great to see the suit a guy wears getting far larger billing than the guy inside.

This Month: 'Iron Man! (With Tony Stark)

Tales From the Darkside 305: The Geezenstacks

Terrible Moments in Taglining: Pandorum

“Fear what happens next.”


Next? I can't even tell what's happening now. And I've seen the movie.

Saturday Night Live RapeWatch: Anna Faris Edition

Another largely clean night of SNL, and a funnier one than usual at that - did having Anna Faris as the host somehow loosen them up? Is she less worried about her image than most celebrities?

Anyhoo, let's talk about the sketches. In addition to the standard political sketches, including both a jab at a largely unattacked (in network comedy, anyhow) target - western kids who mistake Anime for the sum totality of Japanese culture, and a fresh take on a a well-covered subject, hyper-melodramatic Lifetime movies. Both sketches got huge laughs from the audience and actual chuckles from me, which has become something of a rarity. So great work, SNL!

The only bits of objectionable content were in a Mexican talk show sketch that went homophobic to no great effect right at the end, and the Lifetime sketch, which brought up child molestation, and then, in order to make it more shocking, they made both the victim and abuser male, to add that hilarious frisson of taboo to the joke.

So, the totals:

Homophobia: 2
Rape: 1

I don't like to see any positive totals, but at least they're shrinking!

Criminal Minds 519: Rite of Passage

 It's the wilderness, and a guy on an ATV is chasing a man across it. But why? Oh, the man speaks Spanish and is Hispanic, so this has to be a border thing. A crazy minuteman is cutting people up with a machete for sneaking into America? Timely! He would have gotten away with it, too, if he hadn't made one fatal flaw: leaving three severed heads in a box outside of the police station!

The team is stunned by the news - could it be drug-related, or the minutemen (hey, they mentioned the thing I mentioned! Thanks, Criminal Minds!)? They doubt it, because this show doesn't really do political. More likely it's a local who loves murder, and found the perfect victims in the illegals crossing the border. Which is great and all, but why draw all this attention to yourself? I suppose we'll find out... after the opening credits!

Okay, a couple of brief things about Predators.

1 - Why is Topher Grace here?

The premise of the film is that the Predators have collected some of Earth's most dangerous humans to hunt on a gaming preserve that they've set up, possible on one of Saturn's moons (it's never entirely clear). The prey includes a mercenary, a mob hitman, a yakuza hitman, a vicious rapist/murderer sprung from death row, and Topher Grace. Who turns out, unsurprisingly, to be a serial killer.

This raises two important questions. 1: How did the Predators know that Topher Grace was a serial killer? It's not like they got him out of prison like the other guy - the predators seem to have been the ones to capture Topher Grace. Everything we know about the Predator culture suggests a total lack of interest on their part in human life. If they find a human who looks strong and has a gun, they'll shoot him. If he's got a knife, they'll fight him. That's about the end of their interest, it seems.

2: Even if they somehow knew that Topher Grace was a serial killer, why would they bring him to the hunting planet? While he's certainly threatening to the other members of the team, he's of no threat to the Predators, and as such, wouldn't make much of a trophy.

Let's say you wanted to hunt nature's most dangerous killer, the King Cobra. You gather a bunch of them together and place them in a concrete maze where you plan to track them down. Then, before starting the chase, you toss a mongoose into the maze as well. The mongoose isn't a threat to you, he's just a threat to the snakes. So why did you toss him into the mix?

Why did the Predators add Topher?

TheAvod Steps Back a Little...

After a themed show that went more than a little overboard (in both time and enthusiasm), DM and myself elected to dial things down this week and take a chill gander at three utterly unrelated films. One was awful, one was great, and one was just kind of there. Want to find out which was which? The only way to discover that is by right-clicking here to download!

The Seventy-Fourth-Greatest Panel in the History of Comics!

Two weeks in a row of these! But seriously, how could I not when presented with this awful caricature?