FEAR ITSELF
Season 1 Episode 5
“Eater”
Written by Richard Chizmar & Jonathon Schaech
Directed by Stuart Gordon

Now, this one was also an episode I looked forward to, primarily because Richard Chizmar and Jonathon Schaech were also responsible for the script to Masters of Horrors entry, “The Washingtonians,” one of Season 2’s best episodes.
And yeah, Stuart Gordon (Re-Animator, From Beyond) ain’t too shabby neither.


Danni Bannerman (Mad Men’s Elisabeth Moss) is both a horror geek and a rookie, still-on-probation cop, neither of which endears her to her fellow police officers. Constantly ridiculed and insulted by her male co-workers, Danni (along with two other cops) winds up on the graveyard shift, on the night when Cajun Dwayne Miller (Stephen R. Hart) is being held at the station, the FBI set to take him into custody the next morning.
Miller’s the eponymous “eater,” a serial killer who’s killed 32 people over the past two years. And not only does he murder his victims, but as his designation indicates, he eats them as well.
Females get the worst of Miller’s attentions, kept alive as he gradually consumes them over a protracted period of time.
With that sordid set-up, “Eater” seemed like it could have been a crackling hour of Fear Itself.
Sadly, what it ends up being is a partial success.


In the pros column, most definitely, Gordon’s directing, which, for the most part keeps the tension palpable, utilizing a multitude of Dutch angles and successfully exploiting the single setting (the largely deserted police station). In this, Gordon succeeds where John Landis failed with “In Sickness and In Health.”
The script itself though, is passable without being distinguished. It also doesn’t come close to “The Washingtonians.”


While the narrative being pretty much transparent is hardly desirable, it’s still preferable over the two cheats that take place over the course of the episode (the first involving the Sarge—played by Lincoln Heights' Russell Hornsby—and the second taking place in the climax).
This is the kind of annoying tactic that blatantly defies logic in an attempt to keep the audience in the dark. The episode would have probably played that much better if these cheats could have somehow been avoided. (And if we could have skipped the silly remix version of Miller’s chant, things would’ve looked all the brighter…)


Ultimately, though “Eater” may hold the distinction of being the most suspenseful FI entry thus far, it’s still not as solid an episode as “Family Man.”

Parting shot: A review of the Masters of Horror episode, “The Washingtonians,” can be found in the Archive.

(Images courtesy of nbc.com.)

THE TRIPPER
(Review)

“A hippie is someone who looks like Tarzan, walks like Jane and smells like Cheetah.”
-- Ronald Reagan

After a brief prologue set in 1967, in the Northern California lumbertown of Carlisle, we flash forward to the present, where Carlisle is set to host the Free Love Festival, a weekend bacchanalia of sex, drugs, and rock and roll organized by one Frank Baker (ol’ Pee-wee Herman himself, Paul Reubens).
Throw in a bunch of modern day hippies (among them Jay himself, Jason Mewes), Carlisle’s “de facto peacekeeper,” Officer Buzz Hall (the Punisher himself, Thomas Jane), and a mad Ronald Reagan mask-wearing killer, and you’ve got The Tripper, co-written and directed by Deputy Dewey himself, David Arquette.

Given that this is a film that kicks off while the fires of the Vietnam war rage, set during a time when the war in Iraq continues to drag on with no apparent end in sight, and featuring a killer who dons the visage of a President who reigned over an America characterized by excess and conspicuous consumption, it’s obvious that Arquette is attempting to use the slasher film as a stage for some biting socio-political commentary.
Anyone who’s visited the Iguana before knows I love me a good horror film that actually says something, and though what The Tripper is saying is not necessarily anything new, my main problems with it are its ill-paced script, and the fact that a majority of the narrative’s characters are dope fiends who don’t really seem to deserve any audience sympathy.

Thus, not only does the film meander badly (I’d love to have used the adverb “trippily,” if the experience had been entertaining, which it ultimately wasn’t), but the gorehound in me found himself blasted back to the bad old days of the slasher film, when all I ended up doing was wait impatiently for the next victim to wind up dead. These are characters who are in a perpetually fraked-up state, and sympathy for these sorts is pretty hard to come by.
It’s always a challenge to get an audience to take a ride with characters like this, and when the film is a Trainspotting, or a Spun, or a Requiem for a Dream, you know all involved did their jobs splendidly. In films like these, you end up caring for and sympathizing with individuals you probably wouldn’t want to be seen in the same room with in real life.
Now, the average slasher film does have sex, drugs, alcohol, and wayward youth as some of its conventions. Not only does The Tripper up those particular antes exponentially, but Arquette asks us to spend most of our time with this host of druggies who seem to display no redeeming qualities at all. In the end, I don’t see why I should care for these people in the slightest.
And yes, we do have Samantha (Jaime King; from Sin City and TV’s Kitchen Confidential and The Class), who is currently abstaining from drugs because of a recent Bad Experience, and who is clearly the Last Girl-in-waiting, but she’s one out of six, and not a particularly compelling, charismatic screen presence. (Hey, if you’re gonna be the Last Girl, you better have some chops to deserve that honour.)

It’s also sad that some interesting actors (Balthazar Getty and Lukas Haas) are in this but aren’t really afforded anything meaty to chew on. Jane’s is perhaps the most noteworthy performance as the sane voice of authority, but of course, it’s a voice that’s drowned out by all the chemical hi-jinx going on.

One of the things The Tripper seems to be saying—an idea reinforced by the film’s end credits roll—is that while the American Powers-That-Be are evil, ineffectual passive resistance to that towering monolith is not really any better either.
Where The Tripper fails, I feel, is in not really presenting us with an alternative; in what is perhaps a gross oversimplification, the narrative doesn’t really put forward a stance between the ultra-left and the ultra-right which would make any sort of sense in this day and age.
I realize this may not really have been Arquette’s ultimate intent in the first place (this is, after all, a slasher film and not a Michael Moore documentary), but if you’re gonna get into this particular sandbox, you should at least play the game, right?

I wanted to have fun with this one, but in the end, it just didn’t float my boat.
Maybe if it had been funnier, or gorier, or more thrilling, or if it had had something more substantial to say, then The Tripper might have been worth the time and the price of admission.
As it is, re-watching a double feature of the Masters of Horror episodes, “Homecoming” and “The Washingtonians” (review in Archive: September 2007)—both effective exercises in horror as socio-political commentary—would be a far better prospect.

Parting shot: For those interested, Arquette also appears in the film as the redneck Muff, while the missus produces and has a teeny cameo.
Another name of note on The Tripper is comic book writer Steve Niles, whose 30 Days of Night has been adapted for the big screen and is just about to be unleashed on all of horror geekdom.

(The Tripper OS courtesy of wildaboutmovies.com; DVD cover art courtesy of shocktillyoudrop.com.)

MASTERS OF HORROR
Season 2 Episode 12
“The Washingtonians”
Teleplay by Johnathon Schaech and Richard Chizmar; based on the short story by Bentley Little; directed by Peter Medak

Horror is at its best when it is used as a platform from which to say something, to make some statement regarding society or culture or the human condition; when it is more than just some stalking slasher chasing after nubile, photogenic co-eds, or some long-haired, contortionist ghost.
Based on the short story by Bentley Little, “The Washingtonians” posits that America’s founding father was in truth, a cannibal, and that there is a fringe society of fanatics who not only strive to keep that truth a secret, but also have a taste for human flesh.
As outrageous as its central premise sounds, “The Washingtonians” is nonetheless one of the most effective and telling tales of MoH’s second season.

Directed by Peter Medak (best known to horror geeks as the man who gave us The Changeling), from a teleplay co-written by Johnathon Schaech (The Doom Generation, The Forsaken; Schaech also plays the lead role of Mike Franks), “The Washingtonians” is a savage portrait of history-as-perpetrated myth and America-as-eater of its young, with a sly, comedic wink at its very end.
Despite the slight awkwardness of the protracted exposition during the climactic Washingtonian feast, this, alongside Joe Dante’s “The Screwfly Solution,” is the best of season 2.

(The Washingtonians DVD cover art courtesy of amazon.com.)