The Mortuary Collection (2019)

Director: Ryan Spindell
Writer: Spindell
Starring: Clancy Brown, Caitlin Custer, Christine Kilmer, and Jacob Elordi

Anthologies are one of those things that tend to get a bad rap, but are no worse than any other horror subgenre. Maybe that’s an old-fashioned thought, because there have been quite a few lately that have released to strong acclaim, but overall, they still seem like the red-headed stepchild of the horror world.

As seems to be the case with the “modern” anthology, all of the four story threads are interlinked by one underlying segment about an undertaker whose normal day is interrupted by a young female looking for a job. Or is she? Or is he? Unsurprisingly, nothing is what it seems…but then again, this is a horror movie, so between that fact and the brief synopsis, we pretty much know that going in.

In the “warm up” segment, a sea monster lives in someone’s medicine cabinet. While this one is ultimately very pointless (it’s less than ten minutes in length and has no narrative set up whatsoever), it does end up being the best story of the bunch. Make of that what you will.

The second one concerns a handsome fraternity brother who gets his kicks by sleeping with women. One day he meets a mysterious one who seems to be his match, but it’s obvious that things aren’t right with her. Before you know it, they meet at a party where they hit it off; before you know it they’re getting down and dirty in an upstairs bedroom. She gives him a condom to put on, but in true douchebag fashion, he fakes it—only to discover that was the worst mistake of his life.

So, what happens to our poor lad? Does he get some kind of deadly STD? Turn into some kind of monster, so that his physical appearance matches his inner persona? No, no, you’re still way off; the reality is much, much stupider than anything you could probably come up with, which certainly does set a fitting tone for the remaining stories. I’m sure this story is getting praised for reversing gender stereotypes, and having a womanizing man put in his place, but a bad story is still a bad story, no matter who the perpetrator is.

In the third one, a man who loves his wife is devastated by the mounting debt and frustrations of caring for her after she suffers head trauma in an accident. Looking for an easy way out, he is given some pills by her caring physician, capable of putting her out of her misery. But things don’t quite go as planned for the man, who is trapped with her body in a malfunctioning elevator…

The fourth and final story is different in that it is told not by the mortician, but by the woman visitor; if you didn’t suspect something was up with her by now, the fact she’s telling a story of her own is…well…telling. In it, she recounts the story of a child’s corpse (which, for the squeamish out there, is never shown) and the role she played in it: she was the babysitter the night the child was murdered. Her over-the-top battle with the serial killer is the focus of this one, which ends with a twist that’s as tired as it is rather impractical and uninteresting.

The last one has to deal with our mortician, as we learn his true identity. What? He’s not what he seems to be? What? Neither is she? Wow, could not see either of those things coming from the opening setup. Oh, wait…that was it? That’s the reason we sat through the whole thing? Christ.

The stories are high in production quality but rather low in entertainment value: the focus on laughs rather than chills gives it all a more “lighthearted” feel that mostly just feels like a copout to the material. There’s some rather dark subject matter at play here, such as child murders and assisted suicides, but it’s all handled so sheepishly so that none of it has any impact whatsoever. Seriously, if you have a story in which a child is killed, and my wife is not the slightest bit affected, you have done something completely wrong.

It's not that tackling these issues or obliterating taboos is wrong; in fact, I quite support it (within reason). However, why make them the focus when you’re too soft-hearted to go for the gut? These stories could be just as impactful (which is to say, not at all) without the directors trying to pretend that they’re edgier and more hardcore than they have any interest in actually being; it’s like the schoolyard bully, who can talk a good game, but then gets his ass kicked whenever someone steps up to face him.

I must say though, even as the stories failed to hold my interest, the visuals stepped up; it’s not really flashy in its visual approach, but it just…looks like a legitimate movie. That might sound like a knock to the genre, but let’s be real here, many horror movies are produced as kind of an afterthought; an easy attempt to cash in on the teenaged audiences looking to cuddle up with their boyfriends or girlfriends and have a good scare in the process. For being a movie that went straight to video (or rather, straight to Shudder), this one has all the quality of a big-budget studio movie. It looks like it belongs in a theater; maybe that was the plan before the world took a turn to shit, but regardless, this is a movie that looks like no expense was spared.

The acting is also a strong suit: I didn’t really find myself caring for any of the characters, but that has nothing to do with the actors themselves, who no doubt do as they were told to do. Again, it’s nice to see that the horror genre seems to be gaining momentum with audiences. It used to be that actors would take the roles for easy cash, knowing they could just phone it in, and no one would really care.

Now, though, actors seem to be taking horror movie roles because they want to; that might also have to do with horror’s recent trend of giving female characters more to do than just bare their tits, or scream as loud and high-pitched as they possibly can. Good for them. It’s a change that’s long overdue, and one that should lead to even more positive attention shed on a genre that’s certainly deserving of it.

Now if only the brunt of that attention could be focused on movies that aren’t this one, that would be even better.

OVERALL: 3.5/10

TRAILER

Trick 'r Treat (2007)

Director: Michael Dougherty
Writer(s): Dougherty
Starring: Anna Paquin, Brian Cox, and Dylan Baker

Horror movie enthusiasts are a depressing bunch—this is something I can both say, and verify, because I am one of them. Many of us seem to want to like things so bad, that we heap praise on things that aren’t deserving of it. I mean, let’s be real here: There are movies in every genre that are terrible, but horror movies seem to be an afterthought to most studios, who merely churn them out to gain a few bucks, without putting any thought into the final product.

We are certainly entitled to better, but in general we must settle for the dozen or so movies every year that defy the low expectations of the genre, and deliver us something worth getting excited about; that rare movie that is filled with terror, that doesn’t assume its audience is comprised completely of idiots, and that actually provides some thoughts and originality of its own.

Trick ‘r Treat is such a movie that has been garnering a lot of attention from both critics and audiences alike. It is an anthology movie, in which all of the stories are cleverly connected, a la Pulp Fiction, and take place within the span of a single Halloween night. Reviewers have largely been quick to lavish praise on it, with many declaring it to be a new Halloween classic.

But all of this is ignoring the simple fact that Trick ‘r Treat is a terrible film. It’s every bit as boring, poorly written, and suspenseless as any number of the horror films released annually are. Just like Tarantino, writer/director Michael Dougherty borrows, steals, and rips off numerous tropes and ideas from any number of other horror efforts, and slaps them all together in the hopes that something will stick. But where Tarantino can mask his plagiarism with an excess of style, Dougherty’s end vision is stunningly bland, instead blending in with the very movies he was hoping to distance himself from.

The first tale concerns a nerdy high school principal’s nasty extracurricular activities. This one is supposed to be infused with a steady streak of black comedy throughout, but like much of the script, the “humor” is lifeless and unfunny while even the basic premise has been done to death. In the second, Anna Paquin (yes, THAT Anna Paquin) plays a virgin who’s basically looking for anyone to take her virginity. Or is she? This one features a painfully typical twist that admittedly gives way to a slightly less typical one; even that is ruined with an over-reliance on computer effects that look tacky.

In the third, we have a group of high school-ish kids playing a prank on a nerdy girl, the most thoroughly original horror movie idea of all time. Then, in an equally inspired twist, their pranks end up actually coming true! In the finale, an old man is attacked by a small person wearing a burlap sack over his head, a recurring character who appears in all of the stories.

Ironically, the best thing this whole mess has going for it is the whole Pulp Fiction rip-off thingy I mentioned earlier. While it’s true Dougherty doesn’t quite have the flashy style of his influencer down, the way he commands the chronological events is the one area where he is worthy of Tarantino; minor events in one story become major parts of their own story later on, and characters seamlessly fluctuate in and out of multiple plots. He really makes the time jumps look and feel effortless, and certainly deserves credit in that regard.

Unfortunately, he manages to ruin just about every other potential positive the movie has going for it—he even decides to unmask its creepy main character toward the end (the kid with the burlap sack) to unintentionally hilarious results (think Pumpkinhead meets ET and you’re about spot-on). Even the humor, which he tries to inject throughout, falls flat way more often than not; I cringed way more often than I actually laughed, with the total ratio (of times cringed:actual laughs) somewhere around 10:1.

By the end, all I could think about was how sorry I felt for Anna Paquin; if her career has fallen this far, she should really think about immediate retirement.

RECAP: The chronological time jumps (i.e. Pulp Fiction) are really well done, the only category where I can honestly say Trick ‘r Treat succeeds (actually, come to think of it, the acting is also pretty well above-average for this type of film). The writing is terrible, there are no scares and very little suspense to speak of, and the comedy falls embarrassingly flat close to 100 percent of the time. Mercifully, it’s rather short, but still feels about 82 minutes too long.

RATING: 2/10

TRAILER

Series Outro: Perversions of Science

Well, it was every bit as bad as I remember it being, and probably then some, as the effects that were bad in the late '90s are even worse nowadays. It's a rather mind-boggling proposition figuring out just how the main production team of “Tales from the Crypt” bombed so terribly translating their stories from horror to sci-fi, but lo and behold, they did it. Also curious is how toned down the show is: Whereas “Tales from the Crypt” wasn't afraid to let the blood flow, “Perversions” seems too cowardly a show to want to push the envelope in any direction. And that, more than anything else, is probably what led to its early demise.

Granted, it would make sense if the creators wanted to get away from the “Tales from the Crypt” formula, and that's why they let up on the violence. But the problem is that no time seems to have been put into any of the episodes on either side of the camera: the production values are nonexistent, featuring obviously-cheap sets and terrible computer effects; the writing feels very forced and rushed, with plotlines that are never given any time to develop; and even the network didn't seem to know what to do with it, barely spending a penny on promotion or awareness. Take any one of those things and you've got a problem; add together all three and it's pretty much guaranteed that your show is going to fail.

The only legitimate area where “Perversions of Science” is consistently excellent is in the casting department, and that acclaim should fall right on the hands of Lisa Beach, who served as casting director for all ten episodes (and who would go on to do her thing in some big name Hollywood productions, including Wedding Crashers, Horrible Bosses, The Wolverine, and the forthcoming Bad Santa 2). Just like “Tales from the Crypt” (which she surprisingly was not a part of), many of the installments feature a mix of established talent and up-and-comers, and just about all of them give solid performances. Or maybe they give average performances that just seem way better than they should be given the underwhelming nature of everything else...either way, I liked the acting.

The opening episode, “Dream of Doom”, tricks you into thinking that you might be watching a legitimately-good show. And as I stated in earlier reviews, it's no coincidence that it's the most effective of the entire series: it has a simple idea that can be easily executed within a 20-25 minute time frame, has no elaborate special effect requirements, and features the standard good performances (in this one the lead is the always reliable Keith Carradine). Why couldn't grown men, all of whom are experienced giants within the industry, realize this was the winning formula, and stick to it?

They do again a few episodes later with “Snap Ending”, and again create a good episode with practical effects and a simple story that doesn't require a whole lot of time to unfold. It also has quite an intense (for this show) intro that really sucks you in from the get-go, another solid plus that is missing from most of the installments. As mentioned in that review, it does lose its grip slightly with one final effects shot that is clearly computer-generated, but you know what? They waited until the end, and it's a rather brief shot, so I'll give them a pass on that one.

But the rest have the feeling of amateurs trying to make often bad ideas work. Even when they stumble on a good idea, such as in “Planely Possible”, the series' sixth episode, it's completely ruined by shoddy effects work, and a story that seems so hellbent on throwing us something we're not expecting, that it does so—at the expense of giving us something that is impossible to take seriously. Which is the other problem I've cited more than once in individual reviews: there is no “off switch.”

Everything has to be as in-your-face as possible, but that's to the show's detriment. With a little bit of subtlety, some of these episodes could have been stronger. But instead, there's always a build-up to something completely ridiculous, so as to ruin the entire build-up. In some cases, there wasn't much to ruin, but others, like “Panic”, are done in by stupid endings that immediately released the grip they had on me. And this series is sadly rife with such over-the-top examples...there's virtually one in every single one.

If you're a fan of “Tales from the Crypt”, I'd love to be able to recommend this to you, but I honestly can't do that. In fact, I'm hesitant to recommend it to anyone. Even sci-fi buffs will probably be turned off by the hackneyed premises and low production values—the show just never gives you a valid reason to really focus your attention on it, and rarely rewards you even if you do. In this day and age, it's kind of a curiosity that HBO refuses to release this to DVD, or at least a digital format, which wouldn't require much of an investment on their part. But that's also quite telling, as it tells us that not only does no one seem to care about it, but the cable giant seems to be flat-out embarrassed by it.

And they should be.

SERIES RATING: 5/10

Perversions of Science, S1, E10: People's Choice

Starring:

Patrick Cassidy as Todd Sorenson

Maxine Bahns as Betty Sorenson

Barry Williams as Neighbor

Richard Riehle as Gorn

Debbie Lee Carrington as Alien #1
Gary Friedkin as Alien #2
Katherine Gaskin as Glenda 6
Olivia Hack as Jenna Sorenson
Roger W. Morrissey as Liberty 1
Betty Murphy as Nana

Maureen Teefy as Chrome

Written by: Scott Nimerfro, based on the "Weird Science" comic books, by William M. Gaines

Directed by: Russell Mulcahy

Well here it is at last: the final episode of “Perversions of Science”, and the most surprising thing about it is, even in the face of a surefire cancellation, just how much of a whimper it goes out with. I have mentioned before how it never really pushed any boundaries, despite being on a channel known for doing it; when I mentioned it the first time, it was more of a stray observation. Suddenly, it has become a point of contempt: this was a chance for the show to pull out all the stops and deliver one final “fuck you” to its audience, and instead it delivers us its typical droll, restrained sci-fi “goods”. This is a textbook example of how to go out with your tail between your legs.

Not surprisingly, it is the future in “The People's Choice”, and this vision is made up of long-haired women robots, called “domestics”, that perform chores for well-off families in suburbia. Todd Sorenson is the “leader” of one such family, the ultimate douchebag who respects no one and, in return, is respected by no one. In the beginning of the episode, he is verbally harassing “Nana”, the family's long-serving domestic, exploding on her for having “medical” issues that are costing him a lot of money. But his wife and child seem to love “Nana” more than they love him, and as much as he apparently dislikes the robot, he's such a penny-pinching miser that he refuses to upgrade to another model.

The deep depths he will go to keep his family “intact” are made obvious when “Nana” sneaks out of the house one night, and by morning ends up swimming in oil after an unspecified accident amputates her arm. Rather than pony up the cash to buy a new one, he has the local robot sales/repairman Gorn (Richard Riehle, who is probably the king of “I know I've seen that guy somewhere before!”) fix her up to be as good as new. Wondering what lead Nana to receive such a horrible injury, he feigns sleep the following evening, catching her slipping outside in the middle of the night, where all the robots gather in the middle of the street to fight to the death. (No one else has ever noticed this before?) This means Nana is going up against much more current models, which explains why she is always in failing health. Facing a “Glenda 6”, one of the top consumer-grade robots available, she is about to be dealt a death blow when Todd comes to her rescue, allowing her to turn the tables and “win”.

All it does it postpone the inevitable: the very next day, a group of robots come by and attack her, cutting her into unrepairable pieces. Todd demands answers from Gorn, who reveals that the fighting is all a tactic from manufacturer Ultrabot to eventually force people to upgrade their domestics to a more current model. The stress of losing “Nana”, along with a rivalry with his neighbor, leads him to purchase the “Liberty 1”, a new patriotic model that everyone has to have. But in typical “Perversions” overkill, it turns out each robot in the “Liberty” line is controlled by a miniature alien, and all of them are combining to take over the world! And that's not only the end of the episode, but the entire series. Ho-hum.

The acting is pretty good, but it's clear that everyone was told to “ham it up” in this one; it seems to be striving for more of a lighthearted approach than some earlier eps, and also frequently aims for comedy (often failing miserably). The special effects are mainly kept “physical”, but the final shot is yet another example of piss-poor '90s CGI, the type of which this show has sadly excelled at. I hope I haven't made this sound like a horrible episode, because parts of it were enjoyable, but given this was its last chance to make an impression on its dwindling viewer base, it's sad to see “Perversions” stick to its code of restraint all the way through to the bitter end; a code that is what helped to send it to an early grave in the first place.

EPISODE RATING: 5/10

FULL EPISODE

Perversions of Science, S1 E9: Ultimate Weapon

Starring:

Heather Lagenkamp as Lou Ann Solomon

Mitchell Whitfield as Matt Solomon

Paolo Seganti as Mike Calderone

Kim Myers as Selena

Jennifer Darling as Lou's Mother
Maria Cina as Tess
Steve Kahan as Lou's Father

Maureen Teefy as Chrome

Written by: Gilbert Adler and Jeannette Lewis, based on the "Weird Science" comic books, by William M. Gaines

Directed by: Dean Lopata

Well after one of the best episodes of the series, it seems we're back to the muddled, uneven mess of a show that has plagued a majority of the episodes up through this point. But, at the very least, “Ultimate Weapon” is an entertaining, sometimes-clever failure, so much so that not even a cringe-inducing finale can cancel out all of what it has to offer.

Lou Ann Solomon believes she is under attack by aliens. Apparently, this is nothing new; after having an episode in the middle of the night, her husband claims he's had enough of her nonsense, wishes they had never married, and leaves the house. Apparently, still during the same night (I think?), she goes out with friends at a local bar. Why does it seem like every television show lead has two friends, of the same sex, who are willing to drop whatever it is they're doing to hang out with their best friend at any given time? And why is it that all “girl's nights” have to end up with the women all getting drunk and gossiping about hot guys? It's one thing if we're talking about singles, but here we have a married gal, whose friends are ready to hook her up with someone for the night, simply because she and her husband got into a little fight. Okay...

Well now two powder-white aliens show up to the bar, with specific instructions to basically knock her up in order to create a combined species. Now, there's no way the ugly, sexless creatures are going to get laid like this, so of course they have the ability to morph into anyone within a moment's notice. This causes some potential marital problems for Lou Ann, when her and her friends wish her old flame Mike Calderone was there...and lo and behold, there “he” is. Only, it's not him...it's the alien that morphed into him. Then, the real Lou Ann invites the alien Mike Calderone home, while the second alien mimics Lou Ann, waiting for her friends to return from the bar with a drink. Alien Lou Ann ends up getting so hammered, her friends have no other choice but to cut her off and take her home. Am I making any sense whatsoever so far? Bare with me, because this does get a little tricky...

Once home, real Lou Ann tries resisting the robotic urges of Mike Calderone (she can't hear his neck creak like metal everytime he turns his head?), who we learn she broke up with after hearing rumors of his homosexuality, and then walking in on him in a dorm room hugging another man. Alien Mike swears that he is straight, and the two are about to embark on a passionate journey of love and sexuality...until Lou Ann's parents decide to make an unannounced visit.

Why is it that parents in television shows always think it's okay to just enter a house without knocking? No one ever acts this way in real life, yet it's a staple of every sitcom ever made. And of course, the two of them are bringing luggage...they're going to be spending the night for an unspecified reason. Panicking, Lou Ann begs Mike to hide, but alien Mike just turns into alien Matt (her husband), confusing her and her parents. Meanwhile, Lou Ann's friends bring alien Lou Ann home, and when they see her parents are over, decide to sneak her upstairs because she is so drunk. They do this by making her parent's car alarm go off, using the ensuing confusion to get her up into her own bed.

From here we can kind of gather what's going on, at least in its most basic form: Real Matt will come home with alien Matt, and Lou Ann will have to figure out which one is which. But there is one awkward, unbelievable twist that I'm going to have to reveal, so if you don't want the episode ruined, then please stop reading right here: The two aliens have sex with each other. That's right, alien Matt ends up going upstairs to find drunk and sleeping alien Lou Ann, at which point they proceed to have loud, frivolous sex that alerts everyone in the house to their location—and eventually, their real identities. Come on now...shouldn't two aliens with an ability to morph into anything somehow be able to differentiate their alien bodies with that of those they are impersonating? Maybe we can give a pass to alien Lou Ann because she was technically drunk (we'll assume that alcohol has the same effect on aliens as it does on us), but alien Matt should have certainly been able to tell.  Still, it's at least slightly humorous if not entirely believable, even within the confines of this particular episode.

For the final “twist”, the one alien ends up impregnating the other one, and the episode ends with the two of them getting married on their own planet. What a crock of shit.

But like I said, despite its common setup and terrible ending, this one at least had some imagination behind it. Yes, the parents and friends showing up is textbook plot device, but by adding in clones of a couple of characters, it gives it an added layer of complexity—and occasional humor—to the proceedings (i.e. having a character walk right behind the person they are cloning, with neither of them noticing). It all adds up to one of the more straight-up entertaining episodes of the entire series, despite a significant number of flaws. Like the way characters clearly start coming and going simply to further the plot, with no logic behind their actions. For example, Lou Ann's parents say they're spending the night initially right when they show up unannounced, then claim they're “leaving for a show” not five minutes later, then come back because they've forgotten something just in time to catch real Matt in a lewd, and misconstrued, situation. In another bit, one of Lou Ann's friends demands Lou Ann give her a ride home out of nowhere, not at all caught off guard by the fact they drove (alien) Lou Ann home themselves because she was so plastered. I get there's some creative licensing involved with just about all science fiction stories, but within the confines of a twenty-minute show, you would think it could have been a little tighter.

Any way you add it up, though, this is an above-average episode, at least as far as this series is concerned. It has a couple moments that made me chuckle, and manages to keep viewer's on their toes by tossing a constant barrage of increasingly unbelievable moments at them with rapid-fire imprecision. And what is a television show if it's not entertaining?

EPISODE RATING: 5.5/10

FULL EPISODE

Perversions of Science, S1, E8: Snap Ending

Starring:

Jennifer Hetrick as The Captain

Kathleen Wilhoite as Paula

Sean Astin as Taylor

Wil Wheaton as Bryan

Deborah Carlisle as The Computer (voice)

Maureen Teefy as Chrome

Written by: Kevin Rock, based on the "Weird Science" comic books, by William M. Gaines

Directed by: Sean Astin

It has been roughly three months since I last viewed an episode of “Perversions of Science”, and much like the series I reviewed before this one (“Cop Rock”) part of the delay is simply because it's a terrible show. With “Perversions”, I at least knew that beforehand, having watched a few episodes when I was a youngster, but I didn't remember just how bad it was...the writing lacks subtlety, while each episode's budget appears to be the same price it'll cost you to get a candy bar out of a shopping mall vending machine. These are the main reasons it was a deserving failure back in its day; today it's probably gotten even worse.

“Snap Ending”, however, bucks that trend. This is completely unexpected, considering it is also the shortest episode yet (subtracting the long credits sequence, and “Chrome” introduction and wrap-ups, it clocks in around a mere twenty minutes), giving it even less time for plot and character development. But it makes wise use of that time by thrusting us into a situation where such things aren't necessary—an emergency situation aboard a spaceship.

Taylor (Sean Astin, who also directed the episode) is an astronaut stuck, quite literally, in a malfunctioning airlock door; it's opening and shutting on his “umbilical cord”, the long cable that delivers his oxygen to him. Each time the heavy, metallic door shuts, it shreds the cord even more, meaning it's only a matter of time until it is destroyed, and he will not be able to breathe. To make matters worse, the arm of his spacesuit is also caught on a random hook inside the ship—if that gets ripped, he also faces a sure death.

The other crew respond to the emergency: They consist of a woman known only as The Captain (Jennifer Hetrick), Paula (Kathleen Wilhoite; the second time I've seen her in something in just as many days (she was also in "Cop Rock")), and Bryan (Wil Wheaton). After a bit of panic, Bryan makes the rash decision to try to override the airlock chamber with oxygen, which would give Taylor a way to breathe. But time is limited, and when the override system fails, that spells the end for poor Taylor, whose head explodes inside his mask (always a favorite way for filmmakers to kill off astronauts).

After a bit of bickering (Paula wants to know why Bryan was unable to override the system, while Bryan sees this as an accusation), the trio faces an even more alarming problem: the ship's warning system kicks in, informing them there is a virus on board. If the virus is not contained within twenty minutes, the spaceship will self-destruct. The Captain tries putting the whole ship on lockdown, which would essentially quarantine the remaining crew in the flight deck until the ship can land, but that request is overridden by the on-board software...which means the threat is right in there with them.

More accusations spread. Didn't Taylor have a virus, and wasn't Paula sleeping with him? Paula insists all he had was the flu, but no medical report was filled out for it. Bryan has a gun, ready to deal with any situation so that he can get out alive. Paula does that stupid thing people do only in movies, and tells him he doesn't have the guts to kill her. From there, tension spreads until he has killed both of his fellow crewmembers, sending their bodies out of the airlock, which now seems to work all of a sudden. But when that fails to fix the problem, he's faced with the idea that he's the one containing the virus...

As with all the episodes in this series, there is a final “twist” to the ending, something that we've pretty much come to expect, but it's one of the better ones in the series, and fairly believable within the context of the story. After the big reveal, there are a couple of terrible computer-generated space effects at the end, but not even they are bad enough to dismantle what the rest of the show is able to accomplish. The introduction is legitimately intense, with the crewmembers racing against time to save a nervous Taylor, while the effects (until the end, anyway) are better than usual, and wisely kept to a bare minimum. This is exactly what the show needed more of to succeed: a solid story that could be told quickly and as cheaply as possible.

Unfortunately, that was a concept lost on everyone at the time.

EPISODE RATING: 7/10

FULL EPISODE

Perversions of Science, S1, E7: Panic

Starring:

Jason Lee as Spaceman Bob

Jamie Kennedy as Spaceman John

Laraine Newman as Becky

Edie McClurg as The Farmer's Wife

Harvey Korman as The Farmer

Chris Sarandon as Carson Walls

Bryce Ingman as Bed Sheet Ghost
Tracy Middendorf as Cheerleader
Steve Monroe as Gorilla
Kira Reed Lorsch as Vampiress
Maureen Teefy as Chrome

Written by: Andrew Kevin Walker, based on the "Weird Science" comic books, by William M. Gaines

Directed by: Tobe Hooper

“Panic”, directed by Tobe Hooper, starts off as one of the better episodes in the series: for the first few minutes, I was completely enthralled. It even had me thinking, at least for a little while, that this one would be restrained enough to actually deliver on all that it had promised. But I forgot that it wouldn’t be an episode of “Perversions of Science” if we weren’t constantly blasted in the head with an ever-increasing barrage of ridiculous ideas. It has the feeling of writers who were planning on an hour-long show, then learned they had to truncate their idea down to just thirty minutes at the last minute; no twist has time to settle before we’re hit with another one, until what was actually a very solid idea ends up essentially committing suicide.

Carson Walls (a rather lame take-off on Orson Welles) is a radio broadcaster who is furiously working on his new dramatic masterpiece. Entitled “Invasion of the Martians”, he is certain that this radio play is really going to resonate with listeners, and history tells us that he is right. This, of course, is a take-off on Welles’ own real-life adaptation of “War of the Worlds”, which was based off of the 1898 novel by H.G. Wells. Reports of the time have mentioned that the radio broadcast, which was mostly made up of a series of simulated news bulletins, caused real-life panic the day it aired; since then, this notion has been largely refuted, simply because the show had such a small listenership.

We are now introduced to John (Jamie Kennedy…yes, THAT Jamie Kennedy), and Bob (Jason Lee…yes, THAT Jason Lee), two roommates who are throwing a Halloween party later that night. Bob is excited because he found the perfect costume for the both of them: they will be going as aliens. I’ll admit, I thought at this point that I had everything figured out: the newscast would convince everyone, including their fellow partygoers, that aliens were among them, and they’d freak out on John and Bob, thinking they were actually aliens. But you can put that idea to rest, because it's not even close to how it pans out.

Soon it’s nighttime, and all of the partiers have arrived; there are around ten of them total. As expected, the radio broadcast kicks in, and specifically mentions that a bizarre spacecraft has crash-landed in a field in Newark, New Jersey, which of course happens to be just a few short miles from John and Bob’s house. A few more interruptions take place, and the college kids get more and more frightened. These scenes were actually very well done, and while it’s almost impossible to imagine any form of media having the same effect on people today, it shows just how truly believable it could have been back then.

But then at the height of the tension, John disappears into the kitchen, and when he returns….the entire episode starts a baffling, quick descent downhill. Even if I told you what happened next, that John and Bob were actually aliens, and they off everyone at their own party, believing that their own race had landed on Earth and started their takeover, I wouldn’t even be revealing anything about the ending. I’ll admit, as dumb as this idea was to me at first, it slowly started to make sense to me, and I kind of grew to like it: we know what kind of effect this radio drama had on real-life people, so I figured this was just a twist, showing us how real aliens might have reacted to the same radio play.

Then we get yet another twist. This one I will not reveal, but it just once again proves why “Perversions of Science” was such a bad, undercooked show, and it‘s a reason I mentioned earlier: it never believed in words like “subtle”, or “restraint”. Many of the episodes were born of interesting ideas, and thus, actually had solid foundations on which to build fascinating, effective shows. But they seemed to be more interested in blowing an effects budget that wasn’t even there, instead of developing their ideas into something more practical and interesting. This is exactly the case here: it blows two legitimately fresh, solid ideas in favor of an in-your-face finish that insists on being as pointless and “out there” as possible. Trust me, I typically enjoy things that are way outside of the norm, but not when it feels so forced or contrived; here, like with a lot of previous episodes, it just feels like an aimless shitshow.

Another big problem I’m starting to have is that, although it seems like this series wants to push the envelope, every episode is almost unbearably tame. For example, there is a body count of somewhere around ten in this episode, which is by far the highest of any episode to date, yet none of the deaths are even remotely graphic; the only blood that I recall is mouth-blood from a corpse. Even the sex that has appeared in previous episodes is bland; aside from some rather strong language, there’s not much that would have prevented these from airing on network television, even back in 1997. That’s probably another big reason that this show failed to connect with audiences, who were paying a premium to see it.

Ultimately, this was one of the more promising installments of this series, but it’s almost completely squandered by a needlessly over-the-top finale that wallows in stupidity--I went from being completely enthralled to disengaged and depressed over the span of a mere ten minutes. It just feels like it’s trying to bite off way more than it can chew, and that is no doubt a big reason as to why it was canceled in such a short amount of time. That, and Chrome’s double-entendres get really old after a short amount of time to anyone that’s not twelve or sexually-repressed; in other words, she’s no Cryptkeeper, and this is coming from someone who hasn’t really seen any episodes of “Tales from the Crypt”.

EPISODE RATING: 4.5/10

FULL EPISODE

Perversions of Science S1, E5: Given the Heir

Starring:
Yancy Butler as Lisa Gerou
William McNamara as Nick Boyer
David Leisure as William Tilbrook
Paul Williams as Dr. Mueller
Joey Buttafuoco as Frankie Carelli (yes, THAT Joey Buttafuoco)
Mark Folger as Scientist #2
Doug Llewelyn as Calvin Patterson
Dennison Samaroo as Scientist #1
Marc Segal as Bank Guard
Maureen Teefy as Chrome

Written by: Mark Verheiden, based on the "Weird Science" comic books, by William M. Gaines

Directed by: Ramon Menendez

Well, I praised the show’s first episode, “Dream of Doom”, for managing to be effective despite the show’s obviously low budget. I have also berated a couple additional episodes for trying to be too ambitious--the effects work in this entire show is shoddy, at best, and there are very few things that can ruin anything quite like bad special effects. Especially given the fact this show takes place in the future, at a time when technology runs rampant and has progressed beyond our wildest dreams. I thought the episodes that focused more on story and writing would be the better ones.

“Given the Heir” has ruined that idea for me. Here we have an episode that, aside from a couple of quick time travel sequences, have very little in the way of special effects; and yet, it’s an absolutely terrible, interminable bore. I kept sitting back, waiting for some kind of twist ending, only to be left hanging--this just may be the worst episode yet.

Yancy Butler plays Lisa Gerou, a woman who has a thing for a man named Nick Boyer (William McNamara). It is unspecified exactly what Boyer does, but judging from the women that are constantly vying for his attention, he must be famous for something. In order to appease him, she researches his likes and interests, then uses technology to mold herself into the perfect being for him. There’s just one little problem: All this is happening in 2006...as we learn, Nick died ten years ago, way back in 1996. So how can she meet up with him after he’s been dead for so long? Easy: Time travel. It’s still not common technology at this point, but after exchanging some sexual favors with a Nobel Prize-winning scientist, he agrees to build a time machine for her. I guess even distinguished prize winning men are as shallow as the rest of us!

We think there might be some sort of attachment that the two shared at some point, but unless I’m missing something, Lisa is actually just an obsessed fan from the future. In fact, Lisa Gerou isn’t even her real name: she got it from blending his mother’s first name, with his favorite “French-Canadian Scotch Whiskey”. Well that’s kind of creepy. But her attention-to-detail does pay off--armed with her future knowledge, she is able to withdraw $50,000 from his secretive second account, even going so far as to have her fingerprint altered to perfectly match the one that he used to safeguard that bank account.

Needless to say, everything goes terribly wrong for her. Her schemes to get his attention--taking a large sum of money out of someone’s account will do that--work fine for a short while, but after finding her to be inadequate in the sack, he quickly grows tired of her. He thinks she’s scheming with the account manager at his bank, so he has his bodyguard kidnap him. The bank manager, Mr. Tillgood, swears up and down that he had nothing to do with it, but poor Nick doesn’t believe him. So Tillgood steals the bodyguard’s gun and shoots him, the bullet going through the bodyguard and hitting Nick in the neck. Bingo, just like in “real life“, Nick ends up dying in 1996, and not even Lisa’s time travel can stop that. The end.

Based on a little research, the episode of “Weird Comics” that this was based off of had the same title, but focused on a man who had to put off marrying his wife because he’s so poor. After meeting a time traveling relative, he’s convinced that he can come into wealth by having her kill an ancestor, thus passing the money onto him. Even that idea is stupid, so I’m not surprised that, even with the major alterations to the story, this one falls quite flat, as well. There’s nothing really exciting that happens, nor any twist at the end that brings everything around full circle, so “Given the Heir” ends up being irreversibly dull.

EPISODE RATING: 3/10

FULL EPISODE

Perversions of Science S1, E2: Anatomy Lesson

Starring:
Jeremy London as Billy Rabe
Jeff Fahey as Bearded Man
Joanna Gleason as Mrs. Rabe
Jim Metzler as Stan Rabe
Devon Odessa as Linda
Justin Chapman as Little Billy Rabe
Gary Grossman as Sheriff
Ace Mask as Science Teacher
Maureen Teefy as Chrome

Written by: Kevin Rock, based on the "Weird Science" comic books, by William M. Gaines

Directed by: Gilbert Adler

Whereas the first episode, “Dream of Doom”, played to the strengths of its low budget, it is episodes like “Anatomy Lesson” that helped to kill this series before it ever had a chance to shine. The focus on special effects, which somehow manage to be every bit as terrible now as they were back when they first aired, takes the viewer right out of the story, while the twisty finale twisted itself right out of my interest level, lingering on an implausible finish that makes very little sense. Part of its failure stems from its short run-time: this feels like a 50- or 60-minute episode cut in half, which doesn’t allow much time to build up the required amount of character development to make any of this work.

“Anatomy Lesson” focuses on little Billy Rabe. He’s the son of the town’s coroner, and looks forward to sneaking into the basement while his father performs autopsies. He seems to be getting to do that more and more frequently lately, because there’s a serial killer loose in the town, dispatching child molesters and other unwanted scourges of society. (Maybe an inspiration for "Dexter"? Haha, just kidding...that would have required author Jeff Lindsay to watch a series that no one even knows ever existed.) But there’s something much more sinister within Billy than just morbid curiosity--he frequently gets the urge to kill. Our first clue to this behavior is after his father (Jim Metzler, in a great performance) catches Billy snooping in the basement; he is banished to his room, where we discover he stole one of his dad’s scalpels. Then, a nearby cat “meows”. A grinning Billy closes in, scalpel extended and ready to cut. He comes down on the window sill--only to have the cat jump into the arms of a bearded man, who tells him to go to bed. Terrified, Billy obliges.

Flash-forward to the present. Little Billy Rabe is growing up so fast--he’s a teenager already, and is now played by Jeremy London. But his urges haven’t subsided…in fact, if anything they seem to have gotten stronger. So when a hot, stereotypical high school slut named Linda (Devon Odessa) comes on to him, his first thoughts aren’t of making out with her, or taking things even further--no, he just wants to kill her.

That night, as things are getting hot and heavy in her car, he pulls her hair back. She thinks he’s just getting into it, so she leans her head back, going along with his aggression.  But Billy grabs a knife instead, and goes to plunge it into her unprotected neck--but a hand gets in the way, absorbing the weapon. That hand belongs to the same bearded man that appeared to him when he was a younger child! Linda is terrified, unaware of just how close to death she was; Billy is only angry that he didn’t get to finish the job. He tosses the keys to Linda, and tells her to leave, while he exits the car to track down the bearded man (Jeff Fahey), who ran away after saving her life.

After catching up to him, the bearded man informs him that he’s intervened because a killer needs a good reason to kill, like offing sex offenders and other murderers. Billy, in the heat of the moment, goes to kill the bearded man…only to discover that he’s not all that he appears to be. Then a bunch of even more stupid shit happens, and what starts off as a fascinating episode goes from 60 to zero in record time.

I don’t want to reveal the ending, but that is where all the cheesy effects come in, and they range from just plain bad, to astonishingly embarrassing. I will say that the acting is pretty solid here--I can’t remember if that’s the case with all of them, but they seem to get some pretty talented people for such a low budget. I guess that’s probably the main plus to having a production crew consisting of Robert Zemeckis and Walter Hill and Joel Silver (to name just three of many), which probably helped with landing them some solid B-list stars.

In the end, there’s just very little here to recommend. The buildup is rather intriguing, and it’s pretty neat to see some small shards of “Dexter” in here, what with the serial killer offing murderers and other lowlifes and all (though such plot points have probably been around for years, so I’m in no way insinuating this was an influence). But for an installment that relies pretty heavily on its ending, to have such a terrible finish pretty much blows any air out of the momentum balloon, making it all come crashing down.

EPISODE RATING: 4/10

FULL EPISODE

Perversions of Science S1, E1: Dream of Doom

Starring:
Keith Carradine as Arthur Bristol
Lolita Davidovich as Doctor/Arthur's Wife/Arthur's Daughter/Hooker
Gretchen Palmer as Receptionist/Arthur's Wife/Student/Stripper
Adam Arkin as Paul Danko
Peter Jason as Priest
Lin Shaye as Nurse
Maureen Teefy as Chrome

Written by: David S. Goyer, based on the comic book "Weird Science" by William M. Gaines

Directed by: Walter Hill

Keith Carradine plays Arthur Bristol, a man who has quite the problem: he cannot wake up from his dreams. Any time he “wakes up”, he is caught inside another one, and so on and so forth, indefinitely. We are immediately thrust in to his situation, as he sits in a doctor’s waiting room, desperate to get help. A little while later, a black woman enters, and informs him that the doctor is ready to see him. He goes into the doctor’s office, and is met by a red-haired doctor (Lolita Davidovich), who runs through his life’s milestones before asking him what is wrong. He is a 40 year old professor, married with no children, and once divorced.

He tells her his problem, only to “awaken” again, inside the same waiting room. The same black woman notifies him that the doctor is ready to see him. He enters into the doctor’s office again, and this time goes into a little more detail: he entered a government-funded sleep study out of pure boredom. The government was attempting to create a drug that could put its subjects into an immediate state of lucid dreaming. The doctor informs Arthur that studies have proven long-term states of dreaming can induce psychosis, and then proceeds to stand up, and put a gun to her head, squeezing the trigger.

Arthur wakes up again, this time next to his wife, who is also played by Lolita Davidovich. He informs her that he had a bad dream, and she tries to soothe him, falling asleep in the process. Arthur goes to check the time, only to discover his clock is running backwards, one of the traits of a dream his doctor described to him. When he “wakes” up again, he comes home to his wife in the shower. But now, his wife isn‘t Lolita Davidovich, but the same black woman (Gretchen Palmer) from his doctor‘s office! And so the story goes on, with the same characters cutting in and out of his dreams, playing different parts.

Somewhere in all of this, Arthur has a heart attack. Could this have something to do with his constant state of dreaming…perhaps he is in a coma, and all of his dreams are merely his brain fighting to stay alive? Interestingly, none of this is explored; everything is kept as mysterious and as ambiguous as possible, until a final reveal that simultaneously sent chills down my spine, while ultimately revealing nothing.

This is actually the perfect start to the series, one that avoids all the pitfalls that later episodes would fall into; namely that this series has literally zero budget, and many future episodes seemed to rely on ideas and effects that the budget simply couldn’t match. “Dream of Doom” features no outlandish special effects, yet makes up for it with a very simple, yet intriguing, premise. Keith Carradine, as Arthur, is solid in the role, as a man who’s legitimately confused about his situation, and desperately trying to come to grips with it, before it's too late.  The "what's-real-what's-not?" atmosphere makes for an engrossing experience that sucks you in, while also providing a real dose of legitimate unpredictability.

“Perversions of Science” was always wildly uneven, but the most frustrating thing about all of it was that it occasionally (read: very rarely) showed flashes of brilliance. This episode is one of them, and, in a bit of unfortunate foreshadowing, the closest example of near-perfection it was ever able to obtain.

EPISODE RATING: 8/10.

FULL EPISODE

TV Tuesdays: Perversions of Science (1997)

In our sporadic feature, known as TV Tuesdays, we take a long look at short-lived television shows. Some may have been forgotten for good reason, while others just might have been prematurely killed by impatient networks. Every week, we will review an episode of said show, in chronological order, from beginning to end.  At the end of the series, we'll summarize our thoughts on the show as a whole, giving it a final score.  Without further adieu, let's get started with the intro for our next televised failure.

I stumbled across “Perversions of Science” as a horny, teenaged boy way back when the series first aired. As a kid, I never had access to cable at home, because my mom never wanted to pay for it (looking back, she probably couldn't afford to).  But then I got a babysitting job watching two neighbors down the street, who happened to have HBO. Thankfully, by the time these episodes aired, in the wee hours of the morning, the kids would always be asleep--unfortunately, in most cases, so would I. Nevertheless, I always tried to stay up to watch it every night that I knew it was on.

To put it bluntly, “Perversions of Science” was a pretty bad show, at least, from what I remember. Even my fifteen-year-old self remembers the general cheesiness of the costumes and prosthetic effects, not to mention the ‘90s era CGI which looks awful when compared to the computer effects of today (which still look completely unconvincing, though in a much different way). I almost always ended up disappointed at the utter lack of violence and/or nudity across most episodes, which always struck me as kind of odd; it's a show, made for a network known for pushing the boundaries, that absolutely refused to push any of its own. I wasn't shocked when it came to an end after only one ten-episode season, and, like most everyone else who had seen it (a number that could probably fit into one city bus), had blocked out its very existence from my mind by the time I hit my twenties.

Despite my personal, teenaged memories that I have of the show, I must confess that I'm still rather shocked that this series has never had an official DVD release. In the age of the Internet, where everything is available at the push of a button, I'm also kind of surprised that “Perversions of Science” has still been relegated to cable television obscurity. Could a show that was produced by the likes of Walter Hill, Robert Zemeckis, Joel Silver, and Richard Donner really be all that bad? Tobe Hooper and Walter Hill even direct episodes, for goodness sakes!  What about a show with the acting talents of Ron Perlman, Jeffrey Combs, Keith Carradine, and Jason Lee? (Seriously, this show will probably set a record for the number of times you'll exclaim, “Where have I seen that guy/girl before?”)  I would think HBO could make some money selling units (and rentals) just by putting all the famous people involved with it on the front cover; it really reads as a who's-who of horror and cult films.

I guess I'm about to find out the answers to all of these questions, and more.  I must admit that this little journey will be my second attempt: I burnt them to a few DVDs a while back after downloading them online (remember, this has still never been officially released to DVD), and after watching two of the episodes, I was disinterested and my wife was bored out of her mind, so we just kind of let them fall by the wayside. This time, I've learned my lesson and am going through the entire series by myself, to prevent problems like that from cropping up again.

Almost twenty years after it originally aired, is the world finally ready for “Perversions of Science”? Or is the series' lack of an official release merely HBO's attempt at covering up a catastrophic failure? Let's dive in and see for ourselves...