reVIEW (7)
DANNY THE DOG (aka UNLEASHED)

With Louis Leterrier at the helm of the Hulk sequel, I thought, hey, let’s let Danny The Dog out for a walk. After all, it’s been awhile since the little dude’s been out of his cage…

We all know Jet Li kicks serious butt.
In 2002, he worked with renowned director Zhang Yimou on Ying Xiong (Hero), arguably the thinking man’s martial arts film. In 2005, Li reunited with his Kiss of the Dragon writer/producer Luc Besson (best known for directing the high-octane actioneers, Leon and La Femme Nikita, as well as the gonzo science-fiction epic, The Fifth Element), in Louis Leterrier’s Danny The Dog (internationally known as Unleashed), another wire-fu flick with a difference.

This time out, he shares screen time with Oscar alumni Morgan Freeman (who won for Million Dollar Baby) and Bob Hoskins (nominated for Mona Lisa), to tell the tale of “Danny the Dog,” a man with the soul and spirit of a child, conditioned to have the cold beating heart of a brutal fighter when the collar he is forced to wear is taken off him.
And when fate conspires to take the ruthless Bart (Hoskins) out of Danny’s life, the man-child comes into the care of Sam (Freeman), a blind piano tuner who lives with his stepdaughter Victoria (Kerry Condon, of Ned Kelly and Angela’s Ashes). Sam and Victoria, with their kindness and warmth, begin to deconstruct Danny the Dog, teaching him how to be human, as well as the meaning of family.

Described like that, Danny The Dog sounds curiously like Lilo & Stitch; that is, if Lilo & Stitch had fight scenes choreographed by the Master himself, Yuen Wo Ping (whose Hollywood credits include The Matrix trilogy and the Kill Bill saga). So fear not, action junkies, Danny The Dog doesn’t get all Bicentennial Man on us. What it does though, is present us with a curious paradox.

Like Hero before it, Danny The Dog is a film that puts martial arts squarely at its center, but at the same time has a strong anti-violence (and, in Hero’s particular case, anti-war) stance. But, like Danny, we the audience, have been conditioned to associate Jet Li with serious butt-kicking. Thus, there are times when Danny The Dog seems to be at odds with itself. Violence is equated with dehumanization; that we would be no better than wild dogs if we resorted to guns and knives and fists. What then about the audience member who has unabashedly come into Danny The Dog relishing with anticipation the fancy moves and high-flying kicks Jet Li is sure to amaze us with?
Presumably, we are supposed to take stock of ourselves, of our own innate fascination with the cinema of violence. Yet, unlike Hero, that aspect of Danny The Dog doesn’t quite work as well. Hoskin’s Bart is a little too cartoony, and the story’s resolution a little too pat, to make the integrity of the whole as solid as it could have been.

While Leterrier’s direction is adequate (Leterrier co-directed The Transporter with Corey Yuen, and flew solo on the sequel), ultimately, it’s the script by Besson that doesn’t deliver the goods.
We are made to hear the presumably strong filial bonds shared by Sam and Victoria through lines of dialogue by Freeman, without really being allowed to feel that bond through specific plot situations. And though scenes between Li and Freeman—in which Sam teaches Danny how to shop and cook—are effective, they aren’t enough to capture the feeling of family.
On another note, though I love Massive Attack, I feel their brand of music may be a wee bit laid back, compared to the hard-driving techno cuts that have become the standard soundtrack to films of this sort. (Which was, perhaps, the point, but somehow, Massive Attack’s score just didn’t work for me.)

If, however, you’re in it simply for the butt-kicking, then Danny The Dog delivers on that score. This is, after all, Jet Li. And though some of Li’s past films have been more creative in their choreography, there is still some solid wire-fu fun to be had here.
Still, if Besson had spent a little more time teaching the proverbial old dog its new tricks, if he had worked harder to subvert the wire-fu film (and, by extension, the cinema of violence), much as Sam and Victoria deconstruct Danny, Danny The Dog could have turned out to be much more substantial than it actually is.

(The above review began life under the name, “Deconstructing Danny (Teaching An Old Dog…).”)

(Danny The Dog and Unleashed OS’s courtesy of impawards.com.)

MASTERS OF HORROR
Season 2 Episode 10

“We All Scream For Ice Cream”
Teleplay by David J. Schow; based on “I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream For Ice Cream” by John Farris; directed by Tom Holland

Layne Bannister (Lee Tergesen, from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning and a handful of Desperate Housewives episodes) has just moved back to his old home town, in time to watch the members of his childhood gang, the “West End Bunch,” start dropping like flies (apparently getting turned into melting puddles of ice cream, as we see in the episode’s opening sequence).
Playing like an ultimately ineffective variation on Stephen King’s It, this one was a particular disappointment, given the heavy hitters behind it.

John Farris.
I may not have been able to read the original short story on which this episode is based, but I do think Farris’ All Heads Turn When The Hunt Goes By is an excellent horror novel that really should be read by any self-respecting horror hound. (I wasn’t too thrilled by his Son of the Endless Night, though.)

David J. Schow.
Not only did he write the screenplay for Alex Proyas’ The Crow, but Schow is another kick-a$$ horror writer as well. (Though he did write the scripts for Critters 3 and 4, so take that as you will. He also provided the story for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, where episode lead Tergesen appeared.)

And Tom Holland.
He may have been low-key recently, but he gave us Fright Night and Child’s Play, so he knows his horror films.

So we’ve got three proven names, and what do we get?
Another sub-par MoH hour that feels like an excruciating two.

To begin with, this feels too much like zombiefied Stephen King material: childhood friends as adults, with a secret from their youth that has returned to haunt them.
Not only have we seen this all before, but due to the story’s premise, we are treated to flashbacks, as we see the main characters in their youth, and the secret which plagues them all.
Nothing inherently wrong with that, granted, but when we are asked to endure patently bad performances by child actors (Samuel Patrick Chu, take note), then this constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. I kid you not, the flashbacks are agonizing.

And though as I pointed out above, I’m a firm believer in Schow, there are a bunch of lines of dialogue that may sound fine on paper, but rolling off the tongue, they just don’t make the grade. Or perhaps, the performances are again to blame. It gets difficult to tell in this one, particularly when you’re too busy rolling your eyes in incredulity.
All in all, this one gets chalked up as a loss, a particularly painful one, considering the talent behind it.

(We All Scream For Ice Cream DVD cover art courtesy of fangoria.com.)

THE REAPING
(Review)

Stephen Hopkins’ The Reaping has a number of elements that could have made for an effective horror film: Biblical plagues, a little girl who could be the spawn of Satan, a twist ending. It’s even got a nifty end credits sequence. Oh, and a double Oscar winner. Ultimately though, all these elements don’t really gel into one cohesive, kick-a$$ whole.

Katherine (Hilary Swank, she of the double Best Actress Oscars) is an ex-minister whose faith is shattered by the deaths of her husband and daughter during missionary work in the Sudan, and now spends her days as a professional debunker of miraculous phenomena.
She is first contacted by Father Michael Costigan (a severely underutilized Stephen Rea), who believes he is being sent warnings by God regarding Katherine’s safety. No sooner has she scoffed at and rebuffed him, that an emissary from Haven (“the best kept secret in the Bible Belt”), Science and Math teacher Doug (David Morrissey, Basic Instinct 2) arrives to ask for her help. It seems that Haven’s river has turned into blood, an event the townspeople fear is the first of ten plagues, plagues caused by the purportedly diabolical presence of Loren McConnell (AnnaSophia Robb, from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Bridge to Terabithia); the little girl allegedly killed her older brother at the river’s edge, the heinous crime that caused the water’s transfiguration.
And true enough, Katherine and her assistant Ben (Idris Elba, HBO’s The Wire and 28 Weeks Later) arrive in Haven just in time for the rest of the plagues to come a’knocking. Is Loren truly the evil presence the townsfolk of Haven claim she is, or is there some deeper, darker malevolence at work?

From a screenplay by Chad and Carey W. Hayes—off a story by Brian Rousso—director Hopkins (whose second feature film was 1989’s A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child, but has more recently given us the original Traffic mini-series, as well as being instrumental in 24’s astounding success) delivers a horror film that certainly has moments (particularly when the plagues are concerned), but ultimately fails in delivering the goods.
The script itself is an inconsistent affair, stretches of it actually well-paced, but sadly (heh) plagued by bothersome interludes—the Father Costigan sequences seem to be nothing more than the build-up to the convenient expository sequence that could tell us exactly what’s going on, and which culminates in a tragedy that displays the awesome power of the tale’s evil, thus apparently reinforcing said exposition—and revelations that are pulled out of thin air with the flourish of a Las Vegas magician (or a stricken priest who’s boned up on his religious texts offscreen).
That, coupled with a climactic effects sequence that degenerates into a morass of CGI sound and fury, and you have a film that fails in a most annoying fashion.

Which is too bad, really.
As I said, it had some of the makings of a good horror movie. And cinematographer Peter Levy (a frequent Hopkins collaborator since the director’s debut, Dangerous Game) knows how to get the shot without crossing the line into that MTV-slick territory a lot of Hollywood horror loses itself in these days.
No matter how great the film looks though, the story itself gets a bit clunky, and the heavy-handed attempt at misdirection plays more like a stall to rack up the film’s running time than an actual significant twist in the plot.
The script is also not entirely successful in exploring the theme of faith lost and how that can change a person. Yes, we see how it affected Katherine, but we don’t really feel its effect on certain other characters in the story in any potent sense. There’s some talk to that end, but no honest emotion to back it up and give it any weight.
Parallels between characters and situations also aren’t delineated well enough for a proper appreciation of the tale’s layers, leaving the film in an embarrassing lurch; it’s the kind of movie that gives the impression of a flimsy façade when there’s actually something going on within its structure, mostly left unseen by muddled storytelling.

Ultimately, this one is a sad disappointment, as I’d hoped this could be a solid exercise in horror that had nothing to do with either gorno or the Asian horror scene (two predominant trends in Hollywood horror du jour).
Instead, it’s a hit-and-miss affair (largely a miss) that ends up a right bloody mess, like a locust on the sturdy windshield of a horror fan’s fervent expectation.

(The Reaping OS’s courtesy of wildaboutmovies.com; note the original 2006 release date on the first OS.)

ON THE LOT
Episode 9
Horror Night

As seemed pretty evident from last week’s batch of films, David ended up getting the least number of votes, and was sent home.
Personally, I always found a certain lack in David’s films. They weren’t awful like most of Hilary’s efforts, but they didn’t quite have that “Ooomph” that the work of the more talented and creative contestants display.

Now, a quick word before I run down this week’s shorts.
I found this batch sadly underwhelming, and this is quite possibly because it was Horror Night, and anyone who knows me or has read the reviews here at the Iguana, know I’m a certified horror geek.
As such, I was looking forward to tonight, but at the end of it all, there just wasn’t a single conceit that was particularly inventive. The shorts towards the top of my list are there on the strength of a particular scene or because of the film’s execution, and not because there was anything new in them.
I hope you all understand…

MY FAVORITE: Sam Friedlander’s “Anklebiters”
It’s got a simple premise: a new vicious species attacks a boy in the dead of night.
The strength of “Anklebiters” lies in the attack sequence, which is shot and edited well, ratcheting up the tension and suspense as any good creature feature should. And the child actor was effective as well.
I’m just not sure about the opening voice-over, which is borderline hokey-jokey, when I feel it should have been more Twilight Zoney. And the short’s punchline (or “tag,” as guest judge Eli Roth calls it) did lack some, er, bite.
But we still love ‘ya, Sam! (And try and smile a little more, dude; that should get you some more votes…)

Shira-Lee Shalit’s “Open House”
A young, expecting couple view an apparently haunted house.
This one is near the top of this week’s list because that scene in the nursery with the pregnant woman and the ghost was disturbing and very effective. But as Garry Marshall pointed out, there really wasn’t any conflict. The short is pretty much, set-up, killer scene, then bam, the couple is safe by their car.
But, as Eli Roth said, that tag was nice…

Mateen Kemet’s “Profile”
Okay, this one had balls. Mateen takes an everyday horror (the fear an individual of colour has of the police) and presents us with some of the most graphic scenes to emerge from On The Lot thus far.
I get what Mateen was saying, and like I said, I commend him for his cojones, but the fact that it was all a personal dread of the main character (though part of “Profile”’s point) just smacks of those horror movies that don’t quite pull off the whole “Oh, it was all just a dream” thing.
And the final pull-away till we see the entire planet doesn’t quite drive the idea—that this is horror happening everywhere—home in a particularly effective manner.

Andrew Hunt’s “Midnight Snack”
Even monsters get the midnight munchies…
Honestly, I’m surprised Andrew ended up in the lower half of this week’s list, but this one just didn’t do it for me.
Yeah, there were some creepy shots, particularly of the female ghost, but they were plainly influenced by Asian horror, complete with contortions and ghost revealed in ordinary, innocuous location (this time, it’s a coat rack).
And ultimately, it wasn’t particularly horrifying.

Kenny Luby’s “The Malibu Myth”
A couple set out to see whether there is any truth to “The Malibu Myth,” of people who disappear along a stretch of road; people who were purportedly irradiated, turning them into flesh-eaters.
This one just reeked too much of those current Hollywood horror films that are ransacking the feel and atmosphere of extreme 70’s horror classics like Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes, and not taking any significant steps beyond that.
Having said that, this is, though, Kenny’s best effort to date, and is a good step towards some clarity and a traditional narrative. (Like the saying goes, you need to know the rules first, before you can break them, and I’d like to know that Kenny can first tell a story well, before he gets all whacked out and experimental cinema on me.)

MY LEAST FAVORITE: Jason Epperson’s “Eternal Waters”
A mother grieving for her drowned son is about to face a real-life horror, and a supernatural truth.
Though the shot of the kid in the water-filled coffin was effective, this one is ultimately predictable and not particularly scary. (At least, it wasn’t an Un-Favorite.)

So there you have it. My reactions to Horror Night.
And though Jason’s effort was my least favorite this week, I think he’s got a voting following.
Meanwhile, Kenny might have been in trouble if he’d stayed in his usual mode, but he delivered what is one of the current understandings of cinematic horror in this day and age, so he should be safe.
Which could mean Mateen may be done for, if the viewing audience finds his provocative and in-your-face definition of horror a little too much for their sensibilities. On the other hand, he could have a voting following too, in which case, everything’s all up in the air, and the next director to leave The Lot is anyone’s guess.

As I mentioned above, this week’s guest judge was Eli Roth, whose Cabin Fever I really, really, really love, a film which definitely proclaimed there was a new voice in cinematic horror that demanded to be listened to.
And though my love for Hostel is not as all-encompassing and complete as the one I feel for Cabin Fever, it is still nonetheless a smart, sly, savage, and well-directed piece of gorno and I’m so looking forward to seeing Hostel II, hoping that Roth can somehow pull it all off without the film being an exercise in misogyny (and with three female protagonists being tortured in some perverse commercial enterprise, that seems to be a very real possibility).

Next week: shorts based on the key phrase: When Two Worlds Collide.

(Contestant image courtesy of thelot.com; Eli Roth image on the set of Hostel II, courtesy of twitchfilm.net.)

reVIEW (6)
CURSED

Spurred by Wes Craven’s recent turn as a guest judge on On The Lot, I thought to resurrect this review of Cursed (a review which began life answering to the name, “Bad Moon Rising”; go ahead, you can call it that. I’m sure it won’t mind).

Saddled with such a sadly appropriate title, it’s a small wonder that Cursed actually got completed and managed to lope its way into theatres. Of course, once you get to see it, you may just wish it had been shot in the head with a silver bullet while it was still unfinished.
Brought to you by the Scream team, director Wes Craven and writer Kevin Williamson, Cursed has had a tortured existence, laboring under its own version of the Mark of the Beast: delays, rewrites, and re-shoots.
Apparently, much like Exorcist: The Beginning, Cursed was practically re-shot in its entirety, much of the original cast (who were no longer available due to other film commitments) replaced, for the version unleashed upon us hapless movie-goers. Reportedly, one of the major changes was shifting it from an R-rating to a PG-13, effectively neutering whatever bite it may have initially had.

Ostensibly, the film is a horror thriller which purports to show us the travails of brother and sister Jimmy (Jesse Eisenberg) and Ellie (Christina Ricci), who’ve both been infected by a werewolf. In actuality, it’s a flat and tiresome experience that is a definite low point for both Craven and Williamson.
Not that either is a stranger to low points, mind you. Since making an impact with the infamous The Last House on the Left in 1972, Craven‘s career has been checkered with soaring highs (A Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream/Scream 2) and abysmal lows (Deadly Friend). Williamson, meanwhile, exploded onto the scene with Scream, and delivered a brilliant sequel in Scream 2, but spiraled ever downwards, passing on the way to the bottom such disappointing sights as The Faculty, Dawson’s Creek, the again appropriately-titled Wasteland, and the horrific (in the worst sense of the word) Teaching Mrs. Tingle.
So… low points? These gentlemen both know low points. I suppose I was just holding out the hope that whatever elusive spark, whatever strange alchemy they managed to tap into with Scream and Scream 2, they would find a third time.
No such luck.
It’s almost as if both suddenly developed creative amnesia, and whatever they seemed to know about suspense and horror, on display so elegantly in the first two Scream installments, evaporated into thin air.

Nowhere in the entire running time of Cursed do we find even a smidgen of the taut suspense Craven and Williamson managed to pack into Scream’s now-familiar opening sequence involving Drew Barrymore, a phone, and some popcorn. What we have here is 96 minutes of ho-hum that isn’t even remotely entertaining.
And since Ellie and Jimmy need to kill the werewolf who is the source of the infection in order to return to normality, it actually gets to a point where you start praying for a RAW Smackdown with Real Actual Werewolves just slapping each other around in some mindless popcorn horror fashion, just to ease the tedium. Tragically, even that doesn’t come to pass.
Like I said. Ho-hum.

And anyone who’s seen Scream will tag Cursed’s opening for what it is: a sequence which introduces us to cannon fodder, in this case, American Pie’s Shannon Elizabeth and singer Mya, the former delivering a particularly hilarious performance as Becky, the werewolf’s first on-screen victim.
Hijacked for the miserable ride are Dawson’s Creek’s Pacey, Joshua Jackson, Smallville’s Lex, Michael Rosenbaum, Gilmore Girls’ Jess, Milo Ventimiglia, Judy Greer (Jawbreaker, The Village), and Scott Baio—playing himself (!) in an ultimately pointless subplot—presumably to pad the suspect list with a gaggle of red herrings, in a vain attempt to confuse the issue, never once fooling us as to the identity of the mystery master werewolf.
It should be noted at this point that in the process of the unmasking, there is a rupture in the film’s logic (or perhaps it was just me slipping into semi-catatonia for a few seconds, thus missing a vital plot point—though I doubt it), not that that’s such a big deal, considering logic is seemingly just as much of a rarity in Cursed as actual thrills.

The thing is, the field was wide open with werewolf films. I certainly wasn’t expecting another An American Werewolf in London, John Landis’ ultimate word in werewolf cinema, but they could have tried. They could have made some kind of positive mark. As it is, Cursed could have fallen smack dab in the middle of Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf and the seventh installment of this sad and sorry franchise, Howling: New Moon Rising, and I wouldn’t have blinked an eye.

The saddest part, I suppose, is that this terrible miscarriage masquerading as a movie was the result of the collaboration of two individuals who know the game: these aren’t neophytes here, not even sophomores. These are individuals with Masters at horror*, and yet managed to produce not a sleek, sly, and cunning beast, but a whining, mangy cur with its legs all wobbly, its tail between its legs, and its teeth all fallen out.

* Well, maybe in Williamson’s case, a Magna Cum Laude.

Parting shot: Ventimiglia has, of course, gone on to the phenomenal Heroes. (You can tell this is an old review, as I didn’t describe him as “Heroes’ Peter.”)

(Cursed OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

ENTOURAGE
Season 4 Episode 1
“Welcome to the Jungle”

The making of Medellin unfolds before our eyes in the form of a behind-the-scenes doc, as the boys (Five Towns is on hiatus, so Drama's on for the ride) tromp through Bogota to shoot their dream movie, with neurotic enfant terrible Billy Walsh at the helm.
Tension between E and Billy spikes and fluctuates throughout the process, sparked as early as pre-production by a discussion over the number of extras in a scene. Billy then just keeps on going, ranting about sex and cell phones and obsessing over a local actress playing “the Village girl.”
Meanwhile, we see Ari’s reactions from Stateside, as he deals with the Tinseltown perception that Medellin is a “troubled shoot.” Things come to a volatile head when Billy insists the script’s ending is crap, but can’t focus enough to actually do the re-write. So he wants Steven Gaghan, but Gaghan’s an Oscar boy, and he costs, a bill which Nicky Rubenstein can no longer foot, as he apparently got arrested on the way to the airport with a cocaine baggy in his car.
But in a great scene, Billy asks for E’s help, and E pulls it all together, FedExing Gaghan the script and a check. But even as Gaghan is flying to Bogota, Billy is at his typewriter readying his notes for the Oscar-winning screenwriter. He ends up doing a brilliant re-write, and Gaghan ends up getting paid to read Billy’s re-write, and give it his thumbs-up.
Having reached an understanding with Billy, E steers the shoot to a triumphant close, even as Billy makes a comment which foreshadows the turbulent waters ahead.

Parting shot: Yay! Mrs. Ari’s finally in the opening credits.
But now, Shauna’s gone! Shaunaaaaaa!!!

(Image courtesy of hbo.com.)

ON THE LOT
Episode 8
Comedy Night

So either Spielberg and Burnett are merciful, or they just wanted to maximize that one hour for the week’s short films, ‘cause this time out, they apparently visited the contestants Wednesday last week and delivered the message that Jessica had the least number of votes.
Too bad, considering I thought there was something to the execution of “The Orchard.” And I do think Jess is a better director than some of the others left…
And on that note…

6 comedy shorts written, shot, and edited in 5 days.
Roll ‘em.

MY FAVORITE: Zach Lipovsky’s “Die Hardly Working”
That title alone takes the cake.
Bored office drones wage all-out war with each other, and Zach proves that with a winning concept, great camera angles, excellent sound effects, and effectively humourous performances, you don’t really need special effects (or the hefty budget those effects entail).

Will Bigham’s “Nerve Endings”
My favorite from Will so far, this one shakes up his image of the “charming” and “whimsical” filmmaker with a black comedy about a doctor, brain surgery, and an intern.
Yes, it’s got the kind of laughs that scream, “Oh, that is so wrong,” but this one’s a whole lot funnier than some TV hospital comedies out there.
And that is a killer punchline.

Shalini Kantayya’s “Dr. In-Law”
Funny little story about antagonistic in-laws at a doctor’s check-up.
For someone who thinks comedy’s out of her comfort zone, Shalini does a bang-up job here. I think this one’s my favorite from her too.

Hilary Graham’s “Under The Gun”
This one surprised me, considering I thought it was more effective than this week’s short from Adam (one of my favorites in the competition, while Hilary has had two of her previous shorts on my Un-Favorites shortlist).
A mother and her desperate daughter hold up a sperm bank: quirky concept that could actually sell in Hollywood as a feature film, and though I did have some problems with the pacing and editing, this one’s definitely Hilary’s best too.

Adam Stein’s “Discovering The Wheels”
High concept: a car alarm remote somehow sends a car back into the past, where some cavemen give ‘er a spin. Car then gets ‘ported back to the present, cavemen in tow.
Maybe this was a little too ambitious for a short, but this was definitely Adam’s weakest work in the competition so far.
Not that it was bad, mind you. It just wasn’t funny enough.

MY LEAST FAVORITE: David May’s “How To Have A Girl”
A couple want to have a child, but are at odds about the preferred gender.
The central conceit isn’t enough to sustain this short, which devolves into a wrestling match that seems longer than it actually is.
Ultimately, not very funny. (But at least, not an Un-Favorite.)

Pretty interesting batch of shorts tonight, with that Hilary surprise somewhere in there. I may not be as enamored and effusive as the judges were about “Under The Gun,” but it does prove Hilary can direct something that I’d actually be okay with seeing a second time.

Tonight’s guest judge, Mark Waters, who debuted with The House of Yes, and has since moved steadily towards the Hollywood mainstream with the Freaky Friday remake, Mean Girls, and Just Like Heaven. (It’s interesting to note that The House of Yes was the film Adrianna didn’t mention in her intro.)
Next up for Waters: enter the wonderfully lucrative world of kidlit adaptations, with The Spiderwick Chronicles. (With an interesting cast that includes: David Strathairn, Joan Plowright, Mary-Louise Parker, and Freddie Highmore.)

Next week: Horror Night.
Yeah!

(Contestant image courtesy of thelot.com; Mark Waters image courtesy of notesfromhollywood.com.)