1938 would see the publication of "Who Goes There?" by John W. Campbell. It is a tale of an isolated Antarctic research team uncovering and unleashing a shapeshifting alien threat, that fully assimilates and then perfectly imitates any living being. Campbell seemingly invented a new type of monster, an ever-shifting and totally insidious invader that is so alien to human form and thought that it can only be called a thing. The literary thing first appears as a blue-haired, telepathic beastie with three glowing eyes before assuming a litany of other forms, via grotesque mutations of the flesh. Such a creature was beyond the special effects capabilities of the film world for many years. In 1951, Christopher Nyby and Howard Hawks would turn the amorphous thing into a seven foot tall vegetable-man in a medical jumpsuit with a Frankensteinian flat head, spikes sprouting from its knuckles, and a taste for human blood. A far looser, unofficial adaptation in 1971 made it into a psychic virus initially housed in the body of a red-eyed sasquatch.
A few years after that, Universal began to develop a new cinematic take. Tobe Hooper's idea, set on a submarine with a non-shapeshifting thing, was discarded. Other notable names briefly linked to the project were Sam Peckinpah, Walter Hill, Michael Ritchie, John Landis, Deric Washburn, Nigel Kneale, and Richard Matheson. John Carpenter was approached early on but, as a big Howard Hawks admirer, was reluctant to commit. After reading the source material and teaming with writer Bill Lancaster, Carpenter's "Thing" would begin to take shape. By then it was the early eighties and creature effects in Hollywood were about to undergo a major renaissance. Monster makers like Baker, Winston, and Bottin were redefining what could be done with rubber, latex, inflating bladders, and robotic puppets. Bottin's achievements on "The Thing" stands as a major landmark of this time, Campbell's shapeless monster finally being realized as a cinematic nightmare.
Lancester's script would maintain the general outline of Campbell's story. Most of the adaptational changes made are of a strictly practical reason: 12 men stationed at Antarctic Outpost 31, rather than the novel's thirty. The Thing is no longer telepathic and its base form is never revealed. The biggest difference is that the research crew led by R.J. MacReady no longer discovers the alien life form. Instead, the near-by Norwegian camp uncovers the thing, their excavation of the flying saucer glimpsed as a proto-found footage movie on their monitor. While 1951's “Thing from Another World” played up on atomic era fears of strange threats coming from the sky as much as any fifties sci-fi movie, this change re-contextualizes the story in a global context. America never had nuclear tensions with Norway but the barrier of another language characterizes the early eighties setting. As Mac says, “Nobody trusts each other now and we are all very tired.” Anybody possibly being the Thing speaks to Cold War paranoia about the possibility of anyone being an enemy spy or government spook. This anxiety runs so deep that those taken over by the extraterrestrial threat aren't even aware of it. Imagine that: Your neighbor or sibling or yourself being an agent and not knowing it.
Another element taken directly from the source is the understanding that, should the Thing escape the frozen continent, the consequences would be massive and immediate. This is the first film in Carpenter's informal Apocalypse Trilogy for good reason, the alien threat liable to consume all of humanity within months. As the film progresses, the characters increasingly face the possibility that none of them can survive this ordeal. For the betterment of mankind, to ensure that the Thing never escapes, they'll all have to perish. The much discussed and often referenced final scene isn't only a statement on the film's theme of distrust. In the context of the Cold War, MacReady and Childs agreeing to wait for a little while and see what happens – an admission that they'll both freeze to death before either concedes defeat – reads like a metaphorical Mutually Assured Destruction. It speaks to an international mood of apocalyptic paranoia, where it doesn't matter if you survive so long as the other guy doesn't win.
As pertinent to 1981 as the film's ideas were, “The Thing” endures because its themes are also timeless. The Berlin Wall fell a long time ago but the American Century of Global Anxiety is never ending, meaning an inability to distrust your fellow countrymen is as relevant as ever. Other signifiers root the film to the eighties decade. The way the guys are constantly drinking alcohol or smoking weed hearkens to a post-Vietnam era of national burnout. Blair is left alone in a cabin with just a flask of booze, a quiet agreement among the men that there's nothing left to believe in but the next high or bender. The year of “The Thing's” release also saw the first documented case of HIV, meaning it definitely wasn't on anyone's mind during production. Nevertheless, a sequence of protracted suspense around the purity of blood inevitably brings it to mind. Like that other great eighties remake of a fifties monster movie, Carpenter was speaking to a more generalized fear of bodily uncertainty that unknowingly spoke to the pandemic of the day. All of us are at the mercy of bodies and minds that will fail, will decay, and will turn on us. The explosive eruption of the Thing from its humanoid disguises are like out-of-control tumorous growths for a reason.
But let's go down the “Thing as AIDS metaphor” trail a little further. Because it gives me an excuse to talk about one of my favorite things: Homoerotic subtext in eighties hyper-masculine media! Like the second thing everybody notices about this movie is that there are no women in it. That trivia usually accompanies a mention of the sole female performer in the entire film, Adrienne Barbeau as the voice of MacReady's chess playing computer in his introductory scene. Which he then calls a "cheating bitch" and murders by pouring whiskey into its processors. So right away, this environment is hostile to any feminine essence. A repeated indicator of the Thing's presence is torn-up long johns, stained with bodily fluid. The discovery of which precedes further paranoia and infighting among the men. In the finale, the assimilated Blair murders Gary by shoving his fingers into his mouth and fusing with his face. Death via oral fisting. The blood test scene is a long build-up of men in a cramped room, groaning and ejecting more genetic material, that ends in an orgasmic frenzy of bodily expulsion. Including the Thing unfurling a tongue and pulling its reluctant victim towards its mouth. While the alien's motives are totally inscrutable, the repeated mention of assimilation suggests an abandonment of rugged individuality and an embracing of togetherness. The Thing just wants to bring these boys together but they are too closeted, even the kind of swishy roller skating Nauls, to allow it. It's certainly a reach to read "The Thing" as a story of a bunch of guys so afraid of being vulnerable, open, penetrable, that the last two men standing would rather freeze to death than cuddle. But I think something like these ideas are definitely buried in the twisted flesh, under the permafrost.
Ultimately, I think that's what “The Thing” is truly getting at: A sense of isolation, from the rest of the world, from other people, from our own bodies. This is cooked into every element of the film. The opening effects shot, of the flying saucer careening towards Earth, takes place in the desolation of outer space. Not that the endless white of ice and snow on this planet is anymore hospitable. The soundtrack of pulsating, distant synth emphasizes this chilly, empty landscape. Carpenter's direction is tight and quiet. He often fades to black at the end of some scenes, furthering the impression that all of this is being watched by a dispassionate God. This is combined with those trademark Dean Cundy tracking shots, smoothly sailing through the hallways as people rush around in panics. The two techniques combine to accurately reflect what the characters must be feeling. A mixture of unending and freezing boredom that is broken up by sudden, raw panic.
Notoriously, upon its original release, many critics were dismissive of “The Thing.” A common criticism was that the film was overly reliant upon its gory special effects, that these were somehow poor excuses for shock and scares. That truly undersells the power of the film's effects work. Rob Bottin was overworked, leading a bigger team than he had before, and apparently sleeping sporadically. When he would dream, it was often of creature designs, which he then incorporated into the film. This is evident, as the sheer visceral intensity of “The Thing's” effects pushes into the nightmarish immediately. It's sinew and flesh, bone and meat of unidentifiable origin but clearly pulsating and alive, twisted up in itself and coming right at the viewer. The film is edited so tightly that these sudden intrusions of hellish mutation function better than any well engineered jump scare could. The defibrillator scene is a great example, the circumstances shifting suddenly, violently from the sane and rational to the inexplicable. Even when the seams do show, a hand puppet here, a stiff movement there, it only adds to the surreal feeling of what is captured on-screen.
In other words, if “The Thing” had nothing else going for it but Bottin and his team's make-up effects, it would still be a landmark motion picture of incredible power. Luckily, the film around it is also excellent. The cast, filled with many beloved character actors, some of whom where only beginning their career, manages to overcome what is the film's only real failing. We rarely get a sense of who any of these guys are, beyond stray characteristics here and there. I guess that's why you cast Keith David and Wilford Brimley, performers whose mere appearance and voice bring with it a world of experience. Ya know, I don't know if “The Thing” is the greatest horror movie ever made, as some have trumpeted. It's probably not even my favorite Carpenter film, as I find myself returning to the wacky looseness of “Big Trouble in Little China” or the meta-fictional brain teasing of “In the Mouth of Madness” more often. But there's no doubt that this movie truly is pretty damn great. [9/10]
A few years after that, Universal began to develop a new cinematic take. Tobe Hooper's idea, set on a submarine with a non-shapeshifting thing, was discarded. Other notable names briefly linked to the project were Sam Peckinpah, Walter Hill, Michael Ritchie, John Landis, Deric Washburn, Nigel Kneale, and Richard Matheson. John Carpenter was approached early on but, as a big Howard Hawks admirer, was reluctant to commit. After reading the source material and teaming with writer Bill Lancaster, Carpenter's "Thing" would begin to take shape. By then it was the early eighties and creature effects in Hollywood were about to undergo a major renaissance. Monster makers like Baker, Winston, and Bottin were redefining what could be done with rubber, latex, inflating bladders, and robotic puppets. Bottin's achievements on "The Thing" stands as a major landmark of this time, Campbell's shapeless monster finally being realized as a cinematic nightmare.
Another element taken directly from the source is the understanding that, should the Thing escape the frozen continent, the consequences would be massive and immediate. This is the first film in Carpenter's informal Apocalypse Trilogy for good reason, the alien threat liable to consume all of humanity within months. As the film progresses, the characters increasingly face the possibility that none of them can survive this ordeal. For the betterment of mankind, to ensure that the Thing never escapes, they'll all have to perish. The much discussed and often referenced final scene isn't only a statement on the film's theme of distrust. In the context of the Cold War, MacReady and Childs agreeing to wait for a little while and see what happens – an admission that they'll both freeze to death before either concedes defeat – reads like a metaphorical Mutually Assured Destruction. It speaks to an international mood of apocalyptic paranoia, where it doesn't matter if you survive so long as the other guy doesn't win.
But let's go down the “Thing as AIDS metaphor” trail a little further. Because it gives me an excuse to talk about one of my favorite things: Homoerotic subtext in eighties hyper-masculine media! Like the second thing everybody notices about this movie is that there are no women in it. That trivia usually accompanies a mention of the sole female performer in the entire film, Adrienne Barbeau as the voice of MacReady's chess playing computer in his introductory scene. Which he then calls a "cheating bitch" and murders by pouring whiskey into its processors. So right away, this environment is hostile to any feminine essence. A repeated indicator of the Thing's presence is torn-up long johns, stained with bodily fluid. The discovery of which precedes further paranoia and infighting among the men. In the finale, the assimilated Blair murders Gary by shoving his fingers into his mouth and fusing with his face. Death via oral fisting. The blood test scene is a long build-up of men in a cramped room, groaning and ejecting more genetic material, that ends in an orgasmic frenzy of bodily expulsion. Including the Thing unfurling a tongue and pulling its reluctant victim towards its mouth. While the alien's motives are totally inscrutable, the repeated mention of assimilation suggests an abandonment of rugged individuality and an embracing of togetherness. The Thing just wants to bring these boys together but they are too closeted, even the kind of swishy roller skating Nauls, to allow it. It's certainly a reach to read "The Thing" as a story of a bunch of guys so afraid of being vulnerable, open, penetrable, that the last two men standing would rather freeze to death than cuddle. But I think something like these ideas are definitely buried in the twisted flesh, under the permafrost.
Notoriously, upon its original release, many critics were dismissive of “The Thing.” A common criticism was that the film was overly reliant upon its gory special effects, that these were somehow poor excuses for shock and scares. That truly undersells the power of the film's effects work. Rob Bottin was overworked, leading a bigger team than he had before, and apparently sleeping sporadically. When he would dream, it was often of creature designs, which he then incorporated into the film. This is evident, as the sheer visceral intensity of “The Thing's” effects pushes into the nightmarish immediately. It's sinew and flesh, bone and meat of unidentifiable origin but clearly pulsating and alive, twisted up in itself and coming right at the viewer. The film is edited so tightly that these sudden intrusions of hellish mutation function better than any well engineered jump scare could. The defibrillator scene is a great example, the circumstances shifting suddenly, violently from the sane and rational to the inexplicable. Even when the seams do show, a hand puppet here, a stiff movement there, it only adds to the surreal feeling of what is captured on-screen.
Habitaciones para turistas
Argentina has had an active film industry since the Lumière brothers' days but it seems the nation's first horror movie wouldn't appear until 1934. In the decades after, the genre would make sporadic appearances among the country's cinematic output. A Poe adaptation here, a gothic monster movie there, the odd grisly thriller or mad scientist flick. If IMDb's listings are correct, a low-budget horror scene began to emerge in the early 2000s. More recently, directors like Demián Rugna and Cristian Ponce have made waves internationally, really drawing horror fans' attention to the country. But the first Argentine horror director I heard of was Adrián García Bogliano. His 2004 feature debut, "Rooms for Tourists," got a positive review in Fangoria and the title has stuck in my brain ever since. Time to finally catch up with this one, for my Horror Around the World stopover in the land of the gauchos and Aconcagua.
Five young women ride a train to the Argentine countryside. They are quiet and shy Theda, high-strung Elena, blonde party girl Ruth, film student Silvia, and the pierced and punky Lydia. The otherwise unconnected cadre all miss their bus ride and become stranded in a small village. The locals are standoffish. They observe an apparent exorcism performed within a church. A friendly man named Nestor offers them rooms for the night at his family home, where him and his brothers rent out their extra rooms to tourists since the death of their mother. Theda is having religious themed visions and all the girls seem stressed by something more than merely getting delayed. That night, a masked intruder murders one of the group with a meat cleaver. The killer comes for all of them next. This leads to a night of terror amid the strange home, the discovery of what links these strangers, and why they are being targeted.
The lo-fi but moody visuals are most apparent during Theda's hallucinations. She sees nun-like figures standing backlit in dark rooms, shots right out of a goth rock music video. Throughout, there is this sense of discomfort around organized religion in "Rooms for Tourists." When watching the sermon and apparent exorcism, the girls do so from the streets outside the church. They are not part of the congregation but excluded from it. The pastor stops by for dinner and the conversation he has is not outwardly aggressive but condescending. Faith seems to be a tool to push out undesirables, not to bring people together. This is especially hard for Theda, played with sincerity by Elena Sirrito, who seems like a quiet and unassuming young woman. The motivation for the murder spree and what brings the girls together is, cleverly, slowly revealed through dialogue here and there. When the understanding all comes together – that they have been targeted from the beginning for specific reasons by malicious actors – it ties in nicely with the theme of religion used not as a beacon but as a bludgeon. The final image is bleak and sudden, a chilling statement on how some in this world feel it is their duty to discard empathy and only punish those they deem evil.
It all works well for the first hour or so. There's a specificity to the locations and faces we meet, also going a long way to distinguish the story from its familiar element. Unfortunately, you also get the impression that the director was more accustomed to making shorts than features. The script starts to meander at the end of the second act. A few subplots, such as a reoccurring blind woman glimpsed in the distance, never amount to much. The ending is well done but also feels apart from the story's main action. Simply put, I'm not sure there's enough actual plot here to fill the runtime. The characters are well realized by their actors but remain frustratingly archetypal in many ways. We get glimpses at their wider histories – Lydia snorting a line, Ruth popping a pill – but the film does not flesh out these attributes much. I guess the idea was to keep the film focused in the present but devoting a little more to each woman's interior life or past would've been a good way to beef up the more meager sides of the film.
The third episode of “Wednesday” delves more into the back story of its setting, the town of Jericho. She puts the torn out page seemingly depicting her in a painting from decades before into its source book, seeing the other half features Joseph Crackstone. That was the town's puritan founder. That dovetails with the school's Outreach Day, with Nevermore students working for a day at the pilgrim-themed tourist attraction. While searching for the genuine structures from the colonel days, she has a vision. It turns out that the sanitized version of Jericho's history covers up a legacy of indigenous bloodshed. Crackstone burned 'witches” and massacred the local native population. Which included Wednesday's identical ancestor, Goody Addams, whose mother was indigenous. Meanwhile, the bug-eyed monster continues to lurk in the woods. Potential love interest Xavier becomes aware there's a cover-up involving his roommate's disappearance, among yet more intrigue in and around the town and school.
There's a moment in “Friend or Woe” that genuinely caused an annoyed sound to escape my lips. When Xavier is talking about psychic visions – apparently his dad is a famous clairvoyant – Wednesday glares at him and asks if he's “man-splaining” to her. This follows an earlier moment while, in perfect German, she explains to some tourist in a fudge shop the historical inaccuracy around the sweets and the chocolate industry's history of child slave labor. I would hope my years of writing have revealed my personal politics as insufferably left-wing. Which left me wondering why these moments made me clinch my jaw so hard. It's probably because this is the sort of corporate approved “woke” language that feels utterly inauthentic in any off-line discourse. Has anyone unironically used the word “mansplaining” since 2013? Furthermore, “Wednesday” was a multi-million dollar product produced by a billion dollar company. This episode includes blatant product placement for Taco Bell. (Disguised as a joke but that's what it is.) It is difficult to take any anti-exploitation message it may espouse very seriously at all.
More than that, the series seems completely incapable of specifying what type of outcast Wednesday Addams is supposed to be. Is she a member of a family famously devoted to each other or an angsty teenager mad at her mom? The residents of Jericho are derisively referred to as “normies,” a slang term with a complicated history, by members of Nevermore. As much as the school is a supposed bastion for supernatural oddities, it maintains its own strict social hierarchies and cliques. This means Wednesday is an outsider both in regular society and at the school for outsiders. Later, she defends stereotypical dweeb Eugene from some bullying jocks, via her sweet martial arts moves. Afterwards, she clarifies to the boy that she defends him because he reminds her of Pugsley, her little brother... The same little brother that she has a history of torturing and attempting to murder. Later, she blows up a statue of Joseph Crackstone as a clear political statement. The Addams Family are always at-odds with the society around them but rarely through openly antagonistic means. They exist simply as their off-beat selves and that's enough to freak out the squares, who often enter into the Addams' spaces uninvited anyway. Trying to make Wednesday a darker, fairly leftist agitator like this seems at odds with that attitude. Revealing that the family has Native American roots, and where victims of Puritan persecution, is another idea motivated more by a conscious effort to make the program appear progressive than a genuine expression of a personal belief.
And about that flashback. The word Joseph Crackstone uses to refer to the indigenous people he massacres is “outcasts.” That feels anachronistic at best but points towards this show's own uncertainty around that term. Tim Burton's movies have always been about societal outcasts striking back at conformist culture, rooted in the extremely privileged world of adolescent suburban alienation. That's what the scene of some white-bread guys picking on a glasses-wearing dweeb, and him vomiting directly in their face, is an expression of. This is the same Tim Burton who was making lisping Asians jokes in 2012. Moreover, conflating the plight of indigenous peoples to jocks pushing you around because you're a nerdy, gothy teenager feels miscalculated. Wednesday is a hyper-confident bad-ass, a freaky freak into murder and bondage, cooler than anyone else, an outsider at odds with the social structures around her, a young hero at the behest of superpowers she can't control, a typical teenager dealing with typical teenager feelings, and the apparent heir of some sort of ancient prophecy. Maybe pick an outsider lane and stick with it, guys.
The town of Jericho is obviously inspired by Salem, Massachusetts. That's a city that functions as both a historical site teaching an important lesson about moral panic and a kitschy Halloween tourist attraction. Exploring those inconsistencies is a good template for a TV show. “Wednesday” isn't interested in that, not really, of course. However, the scenes of the title character snarking at her supervisor at the historical reenactment park, usually in a faux-16th century accent, are still one of the better moments here. Once again, Jenna Ortega is actually a fairly amusing Wednesday when cracking cheesy jokes. However, Ortega and the rest of the young cast's energy clearly flag anytime they have to deliver the utterly route exposition. This points towards how completely cookie-cutter and lifeless the actual plot of “Wednesday” is. I don't care about the backstory of Jericho or Nevermore Academy or the conflicts between the various forces at play. A scene where Enid and the guy she likes have to clean weird taxidermy animals at a shop are by far more entertaining. Suggesting once again that this show built around a sitcom character probably should have just been a sitcom, instead of a half-assed fusion of “Harry Potter,” “Stranger Things,” and a supernatural detective show. I liked the orchestral cover of “Nothing Else Matters” that plays over the obligatory end-of-the-episode montage. [5/10]
There's a moment in “Friend or Woe” that genuinely caused an annoyed sound to escape my lips. When Xavier is talking about psychic visions – apparently his dad is a famous clairvoyant – Wednesday glares at him and asks if he's “man-splaining” to her. This follows an earlier moment while, in perfect German, she explains to some tourist in a fudge shop the historical inaccuracy around the sweets and the chocolate industry's history of child slave labor. I would hope my years of writing have revealed my personal politics as insufferably left-wing. Which left me wondering why these moments made me clinch my jaw so hard. It's probably because this is the sort of corporate approved “woke” language that feels utterly inauthentic in any off-line discourse. Has anyone unironically used the word “mansplaining” since 2013? Furthermore, “Wednesday” was a multi-million dollar product produced by a billion dollar company. This episode includes blatant product placement for Taco Bell. (Disguised as a joke but that's what it is.) It is difficult to take any anti-exploitation message it may espouse very seriously at all.
And about that flashback. The word Joseph Crackstone uses to refer to the indigenous people he massacres is “outcasts.” That feels anachronistic at best but points towards this show's own uncertainty around that term. Tim Burton's movies have always been about societal outcasts striking back at conformist culture, rooted in the extremely privileged world of adolescent suburban alienation. That's what the scene of some white-bread guys picking on a glasses-wearing dweeb, and him vomiting directly in their face, is an expression of. This is the same Tim Burton who was making lisping Asians jokes in 2012. Moreover, conflating the plight of indigenous peoples to jocks pushing you around because you're a nerdy, gothy teenager feels miscalculated. Wednesday is a hyper-confident bad-ass, a freaky freak into murder and bondage, cooler than anyone else, an outsider at odds with the social structures around her, a young hero at the behest of superpowers she can't control, a typical teenager dealing with typical teenager feelings, and the apparent heir of some sort of ancient prophecy. Maybe pick an outsider lane and stick with it, guys.
John Newland greets us from within a storage shop for unclaimed items following the bombing of Britain in World War II. He presents a ghost story within a ghost story: American boxer "Yank" Dawson is preparing for a bout along London's waterfront. His manager is concerned about his fighter's health while Dawson ignores these questions, only interested in winning one more fight so he can take the money and retire. That is when his opponent's promoter enters and mentions the story of Patty Teron, another aging American fighter who once grace these halls. It seems Patty died following a match, when a knock-out punch from the other guy dislodged a blood clot. The same boxer later claimed to see Patty's ghost before another match, seemingly warning of his own death. He ignored the omen and died on the mat that night. Since then, the spectre of Patty Teron has become a foreboding visitor warning of impending doom for anyone who sees him. Naturally, Yank encounters the ghost shortly afterwards. He sees him in the crowd during the match too. While this is dismissed as an attempt at psychological warfare by the other fighter's team, might something more mysterious be going on here?
Once again, "One Step Beyond" is one of the more melodramatic and heavy handed of the classic genre anthology shows. "The Last Round" continuously points towards its own conclusion. Dawson is introduced as getting long in the tooth for a boxer. A tense exchange with the rival promoter reveals him as suffering a bad hit in a previous fight, following the repeated discussion of his ailing health. The appearance of Patty's ghost – who wears a sweater with his name stitched on the front in big letters, just in case you didn't understand who he was – is so heavily foreshadowed that any surprise or shock is gone. The twist that pushes this story into the realm of the supernatural is belabored during an exchange with a police officer. Newland's post-war introduction essentially spoils the episode's ending and what the ominous spirit's multiple appearances in this stadium foretells. I guess you could miss that this story takes place during a brief moment of All Clear during the Blitz but you would have to be really distracted not to figure out where this is going.
While "The Last Round's" ending is never much in doubt, there are still some interesting elements to be found. Two of Charles Bronson's earliest television credits had him playing boxers, a role he was clearly still typecast in as the sixties started to roll around. While sans mustache and displaying a beefy physique, Bronson's sun-beaten facial features are still immediately recognizable. (Making it funny when his manager repeatedly calls him "boy." Chuck was about to turn forty at the time.) Something Charles Bronson was not well known for was his range. The steely gaze and monosyllabic delivery of the "Death Wish" films have not quite presented themselves. Bronson is clearly trying to be vulnerable and uncertain in this role and can't quite sell it. He's also given a fair bit of dialogue, shakily delivered in that famously clipped quasi-Lithuanian accent of his. Despite these shortcomings, Bronson always had magnetism. Simply as a hunk of chiseled meat, delivering punches in the ring, he is a compelling figure. He's surrounded by a collection of extremely British character actors, who do far better delivering the foreboding exposition.
Most of "The Last Round" is fairly flat in its visuals composition, not atypical for this series. However, there are a couple cool looking shots within the boxing ring, the fists flying ahead and under the camera. I also do like Patty's second appearance, spotlighted in the back row of the crowd and smiling impishly. This episode probably needed more of that playful energy to truly work but, as an on-the-record fan of the future Paul Kersey, "The Last Round" is an interesting dispatch from the early years of his career. [6/10]
Once again, "One Step Beyond" is one of the more melodramatic and heavy handed of the classic genre anthology shows. "The Last Round" continuously points towards its own conclusion. Dawson is introduced as getting long in the tooth for a boxer. A tense exchange with the rival promoter reveals him as suffering a bad hit in a previous fight, following the repeated discussion of his ailing health. The appearance of Patty's ghost – who wears a sweater with his name stitched on the front in big letters, just in case you didn't understand who he was – is so heavily foreshadowed that any surprise or shock is gone. The twist that pushes this story into the realm of the supernatural is belabored during an exchange with a police officer. Newland's post-war introduction essentially spoils the episode's ending and what the ominous spirit's multiple appearances in this stadium foretells. I guess you could miss that this story takes place during a brief moment of All Clear during the Blitz but you would have to be really distracted not to figure out where this is going.
Most of "The Last Round" is fairly flat in its visuals composition, not atypical for this series. However, there are a couple cool looking shots within the boxing ring, the fists flying ahead and under the camera. I also do like Patty's second appearance, spotlighted in the back row of the crowd and smiling impishly. This episode probably needed more of that playful energy to truly work but, as an on-the-record fan of the future Paul Kersey, "The Last Round" is an interesting dispatch from the early years of his career. [6/10]
