Halloween 2024: September 11th

I Saw the TV Glow (2024)

Jane Schoenbrun's "We're All Going to the World's Fair" was an original and unsettling film, destined to be remembered as one of the best movies ever made about spending too much time on the internet. For their follow-up, Schoenbrun decided to tackle a related but older phenomena: Spending too much time thinking about television. If "World's Fair" was the director's break-out movie then "I Saw the TV Glow" seems to have established Schoenbrun as one of the premier cult filmmakers of the moment. The movie was rhapsodically received earlier this year by a certain breed of genre film enthusiast. It was a one I was excited to see, based on the strengths of Schoenbrun's previous work, but it took me a couple of watches to actually figure out how I feel about it. 

In 1996, socially awkward teenager Owen sees an advertisement for a youth-centric horror television series called "The Pink Opaque." He's fascinated but his parents – a mom, who's dying of cancer, and an emotionally distant father – won't let him stay up late enough to watch it. That's when he meets Maddy, an older girl who is a big fan of the TV show. He sneaks over to her house to watch an episode. After that, she begins to record episodes and clandestinely delivers the tapes to him. One night, Maddy says she's running away from home and disappears mysteriously shortly afterwards. "The Pink Opaque" is cancelled not long after that. Ten years later, Owen is living in the same dead-end town and working dead-end jobs. That's when Maddy reappears into his life, as abruptly as she vanished. She tells him that "The Pink Opaque" wasn't merely a TV show. She tells them that the two of them are actually the main characters from the show, vanquished to a hellish alternate universe – our reality – by their archenemy. And the only way to escape this nether realm and return home is to bury themselves alive. 

The indie horror scene basically runs on nostalgia. Every year, there's roughly five hundred low budget horror movies that come out, attempting to capture the look and the feel of stuff from the eighties or the seventies or the nineties. Perhaps we obsessive genre nerds are doomed to always be chasing that high, of discovering something old and weird and amazing back when we are young. Despite the cottage industry of nostalgia-tinged horror, very few of these projects are actually about nostalgia. This is where "I Saw the TV Glow" differs. This is a movie about a lot of things but one of the primary emotions that drives it is the feeling of re-watching a TV show as an adult that fascinated or terrified you as a child... And discovering its nowhere near as good or scary as you remember. Schoenbrun actually puts that scene in the movie. The episode of "The Pink Opaque" that stunned Owen as a kid featured a Mr. Softee-like melting ice cream monster, that he remembers as pulsating, grotesque entity of Cronenbergian horror. When he re-watches the same episode as an adult – on a streaming service, of course, where all the pop culture artifacts that shaped our subconscious are rendered as more slurry for the slop machine – the monster is lame. The whole episode is corny and dumb. This thing he's spent his whole life thinking about actually sucked the whole time. Such an emotion driving someone into a dissociative episode is, from a certain perspective, understandable. 

As teenagers, we don't see much of Owen and Maddy's actual lives. We get the impression that his mom is a bit too clingy or smothering. His dad – played by Fred Durst as a blurry, distant, man-in-the-moon phantom – is implied to be abusive in some way. It's suggested he had other friends but Maddy is the only one we see him interact with. Maddy, meanwhile, is an alt-rock lesbian who is socially ostracized after coming out to a female friend. Both of these kids are living in worlds where they can't be themselves. This isolation continues into adulthood, where Owen is mocked by his younger coworkers. Not even the voice on the speaker box at the fast food place understands him. Instead of connecting with other people, both of these disaffected youths connected to a TV show. "I Saw the TV Glow" uses this idea, of loving fiction so much that it starts to feel more real than reality, as a metaphor for depression, malaise, and a general disconnect from those around you. (There's a reason the Big Bad of “The Pink Opaque” is named Mr. Melancholy.) When Maddy reappears in Owen's life, in a stunning monologue focused almost entirely on Brigette Lundy-Paine's face, she describes the feeling of the years going by too quickly. Of nothing feeling like it's changing or getting better. What's she describing is a feeling all too familiar to arrested man/woman-children. People who have spent their young adulthoods memorizing all the lore around their favorite pop culture franchise, instead of going outside and having life experiences, know this emotion well. The years are going by, you're getting older, but nothing is changing in a meaningful way. Maybe because you're spending all your time looking at the past, instead of searching for a future. 

Speaking as someone with a blog dedicated to "Sonic the Hedgehog," all of these are familiar feelings. "I Saw the TV Glow" does indeed capture a nerve-wracking kind of generalized unease. Owen is played by a brilliant Justice Smith as an always stiff, always out-of-place, ambiguously autistic raw nerve. He's wound so tightly that you're waiting the whole movie for him to snap. That does happen but it's in a disheartening epilogue, set long after any sort of change could've happened. Maddy remains a mystery throughout. Lundy-Paine also adopts an unenthused, possibly neuro-divergent affect to their voice. It becomes hypnotic in the later scenes, when Maddy is trying to lure Owen over to her side of thinking. Schoenbrun clearly builds upon the feeling they created in "We're All Going to the World's Fair." The disturbing sense throughout that something isn't right feels like it's developing towards something. That a major reveal about what level of reality its characters occupy is forthcoming. It's not. The film instead ends in a place of ambiguity, extending that feeling of displacement as far off the screen as possible thanks to a skin-crawling finale. This, I suspect, was entirely the intended effect. Still, I was left waiting for something more to happen.

Nevertheless, "I Saw the Glow" is an astonishing technical achievement. Smith and Lundy-Paine created some genuinely fascinating weirdos with the film's protagonists. Eric Yue's cinematography captures a far-off nostalgic feeling, bathing the sets and characters in pink and blue glows that feel suitably unearthly. The indie rock soundtrack goes a long way towards providing the disaffected mood. Perhaps the movie's greatest achievement is the fake TV show within it. "The Pink Opaque" clearly blends together elements from nineties programming like "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," "The Adventures of Pete and Pete," and "Twin Peaks" with a hand-made freakiness that stands alone. I'm not quite sure how the film does it but Schoenbrun accurately captures the feeling of both an actual nineties TV and the overblown version of that TV show that exists in its fans' head. These two impulses collide in perhaps the best scene, a nightmarish recollection of "The Pink Opaque's" final episode that clearly steps all over the fourth wall. This is also the scene that most recalls the "Candle Cove" creepypasta – obviously a huge influence on this movie and Schoenbrun's career in general – but it approaches the idea in a fascinating way. Instead of suggesting a cursed TV show projected by some eldritch intelligence, it puts us in the seat of someone watching and has the forbidden broadcast assault our minds directly. It shouldn't work but somehow it does. 

Many people have pointed out that "I Saw the TV Glow" is an allegory for being trans, the gender identity of its writer/director and one of its stars. I'm observant enough to pick up on some of those themes, on the ideas of bodily disconnection and feeling apart from the roles society has assigned you. I mean, the movie puts Justice Smith in a dress and foregrounds him against a pink/blue/white flag, so it's not subtle. I'm also not that kind of queer, so a lot of "I Saw the TV Glow's" resonance might have gone over my head. I certainly relate to its theme of being an outcast and seeking comfort in fiction. As a study on our collective relationship with nostalgia, the film has a lot more to say on the subject than any other I've seen. As brilliantly crafted and effective as I found much of it, I can't get over this sense that it trips at the finish line. Still, Schoenbrun is clearly a unique talent with a visual and aural vibe all of their own. Their next film, from the sounds of it, is going to be about thinking too much about movies. Sounds about right. By the way, I would probably have been a fan of "The Pink Opaque" too but bet I'd also be one of those insufferable jack-asses who would always clarify that they liked "So Weird" or "Eerie, Indiana" better. [8/10] 

The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973)

Like all great artists and groundbreaking pioneers, Ray Harryhausen had many more unrealized projects than ones that came to fruition. The handful of sketches, storyboards, and brief test reels for films like "War of the Worlds," "Force of the Trojans," and "The Abominable Snowman" is likely all we'll ever see of these dreams. Among the many unmade films Harryhausen floated was a sequel to his 1958 classic, "The 7th Voyage of Sinbad." "The Eighth Voyage of Sinbad: Return to Colossa" never made it last the drawing board but Ray never abandoned the idea of returning to the legendary sailor. It wouldn't be until 1973, fifteen years after the original, that Harryhausen would get a second Sinbad movie made. It was the lack of other "Arabian Nights" themed films at the times, and a desire to rebound from the box office failure of "The Valley of Gwangi," that had Ray and producer Charles Schneer revisit the idea. Not truly a sequel to "7th Voyage," "The Golden Voyage of Sinbad" would instead bring the special effects master's visions of monsters, magic, heroes and villains into a new decade. 

While crossing the sea, Sinbad's crew spots a strange, flying creature carrying a gold object across the sky. They get the little monster to drop the amulet and Sinbad fastens it around his neck. The tablet is one third of a powerful talisman that leads the way to the legendary continent of Lemuria and the Fountain of Destiny. The evil wizard Koura desires this power for himself, having recently betrayed and deformed the Vizier of Marabia. Sinbad teams up with the Vizier and heads out on a quest to retrieve the final piece of the puzzle and find Lemuria before Koura does. The villain pursues the heroic crew, forcing a number of encounters with monsters and dangers along the way. 

The world had changed a lot between 1958 and 1973. However, Ray Harryhausen's brand of escapism remained charmingly intact. Much like "The 7th Voyage," "The Golden Voyage" operates strictly in archetypes. Sinbad is an ever-virtuous hero, who always acts selflessly and righteously. Koura is a devious villain, concerned only with gaining power, always one minute away from laughing in triumphant, wicked glee. Sinbad's crew includes the lazy son of a wealthy trader – the plucky comic relief – and the masked but stately Vizier, the wise mentor. Such simplified characters must've presented challenges to the cast. Tom Baker happily hams it up as evil wizard. John Phillip Law, on the opposite side of the moral spectrum from Diabolik, turns Sinbad into a somewhat bland figure, croaking aphorisms in an attempt to expand on the hero's personality. This world of fairy tale-like adventure reflects a child's, specifically a young boy's, imagination. Caroline Munro as Margiana, the slave girl Sinbad rescues and treats kindly, has almost nothing to do except stand around, look stunning, and get rescued from a monster at the end. An attempt to involve her in the plot results in the most half-assed of deus ex machinas. No, Munro and her heaving bosom exist as an eroticized but ultimately far-off symbol of longing in a world of daring manly men. I don't think Law's Sinbad actually knows what sex is, appearing confused when Margiana appears in his quarters on her knees. 

Such a paradigmatic cast of characters and a classical adventure storyline are almost precisely the point. Harryhausen's films operate in mythological modes, with no need for ambiguity. This allows the Dynamation special effects to truly take over the film. In "The Golden Voyage," Harryhausen seems especially fascinated by rendering movement in material that usually isn't very pliable. Koura enchants the figurehead of Sinbad's ship, the wooden siren creaking as it stretches its limbs and moves around the deck. Later, an iron statue of the Hindu goddess Kali is brought to life, resulting in a six-armed sword fight with Sinbad and his crew. It's the highlight of the movie, the statue moving all its limbs in a fluid manner and interacting almost seamlessly with the live actors. Of course, it wouldn't be a Harryhausen production without some flesh-and-blood monsters too. Koura uses a little winged homunculus as his spy, which looks a lot like the Ymir from "20 Million Miles to Earth." "Golden Voyage" attempts to top "7th Voyage's" iconic cyclops with a similarly one-eyed, neanderthal-like centaur. (A visage just gruesome enough to just qualify this flick for a Halloween Blog-A-Thon.) It's a fearsome, snarling beast that then gets into a scuffle with a griffin that randomly appears. Nobody did this stuff better than Ray. Even if there's nothing here as instantly iconic as the Skeleton Warriors or the Rhedosaurus, the creature effects remain utterly enchanting to this day. 

I tend to give Harryhausen most of the credit for these movies. It's hard not to, when his creations always steal the show and his sketches drove the design of the screenplay. Credit where it's due, director Gordon Hessler – an AIP veteran previously of "The Oblong Box" and "Murders in the Rue Morgue" – and cinematographer Ted Moore – an Academy Award winner who designed the look for the early Bond movies – made a good looking film. "The Golden Voyage of Sinbad" starts rather slow, as the first half-hour is devoted to assembling Sinbad's crew and getting all the MacGuffins in order. However, it gets delightfully trippier as it goes on. Much of the last third is set in enormous underground caverns, psychedelic colors rebounding off the cave walls. Robert Shaw briefly appears as the Oracle of All Knowledge, who takes the form of a shimmering, horned demon floating above a well. The finale features a horde of spear wielding Lemurians with green skin, fish-eye lens POV shots of the Centaur leering at Caroline Munro, and a waterfall turning into blood. This shows the film's commitment towards transporting the viewer to a fantastical, far away land while also acknowledging the head-trip hippy era was still going on. 

"The Golden Voyage of Sinbad" has less to do with the original "Arabian Nights" stories than the previous Sinbad film. You might've noticed that all the monsters are taken from Greek or Indian lore, while the Lemurian culture seems based on Southeast Asia. Nevertheless, the largely Anglo cast put on brownface, speak with shaky accents, and mention Allah as much as possible. Who can be offended, considering this film clearly takes place in a fantasy realm so totally divorced from our own reality? "The Golden Voyage of Sinbad" is lesser Harryhausen, which means it's still an effortlessly entertaining motion picture, full of the kind of special effects wizardry that simply doesn't exist anymore and a tone of old-school magical charm. Essential viewing for monster kids. [7/10]

The Twilight Zone: Eye of the Beholder

In past years, when looking at the original "Twilight Zone," I've usually picked slightly lesser-known episodes, in order to get full enjoyment out of whatever twists or messages they may contain. This year, I'm taking a different approach and covering one of the most well-known installments of the entire series. In "Eye of the Beholder," Janet Tyler sits in a darkened hospital room, her face entirely wrapped in bandages. It seems she has some sort of medical condition that renders her face hideously ugly. This is her eleventh attempt at a treatment and, if it is unsuccessful, Janet will be shipped off to a commune for such undesirables. As her mental state grows more unsettled, her doctor begins to wonder if such an approach is the right one. Such thoughts are considered treasonous in this society, that values normality over everything else. Janet convinces the staff to remove the bandage early, bringing the horrifying truth to light. 

Like much of the original "Zone," "Eye of the Beholder's" twist ending has penetrated the pop culture zeitgeist to the point that it's practically common knowledge. You might not have seen the whole episode to know what the final reveal is: That Janet is a beautiful blonde woman, worthy of being a model in our world. That the hospital staff all have warped faces, with lumpy flesh, pig snouts, and upturned, asymmetrical lips. The point is not the least bit subtle. The standards of beauty in any culture are decided by that culture. What is beautiful to us may be grotesque to someone else and vice versa. If you somehow missed this, the episode reiterates it several times, in both dialogue and Rod Serling's meritorious bookends. (And the title, of course.) 

This is quickly spun into a larger theme about conformity, how society demands anyone who is "different" become like everybody else. Function but don't disrupt. Move ahead but be the same. Those that reject this message are shipped off to obscure villages or destroyed. Those that decry the idea are declared political enemies. Serling's script goes so far as to include Orwellian telescreens, that show a dictatorial Leader praising the virtues of conformity and how it's good for all of society. In 1960, when the Red Scare was still a very recent memory, this moral was much more potent, perhaps daring. Through modern eyes, "Eye of the Beholder" is a bit preachy, making its point over and over again to ensure there's no misunderstanding or ambiguity about Serling's message. We don't have pig faces here in America – at least not literally – but the pressures to conform, to mold anyone different into the homogeneity, is much the same. 

Despite the somewhat didactic screenplay, Serling's metaphor is broad enough to mean many things to many different people. "Eye of the Beholder" was surely speaking to philosophical, cultural, and political ideas. It's not difficult to see a racial message here as well, in the prosecution of those that look different. The ever-present appearance of bandages, coldly gleaming syringes and scalpels, and sterile hospital environments brings insane asylums to mind. Making this a possible story about living with a mental illness in a world that demands everyone act "normal." The way Janet's face is referred to as a disability seems to specifically speak to the prevalence of ableism across all cultures. Janet, locked in her world of shadows and bandages, constantly bemoaning her appearance makes "Eye of the Beholder" a statement on the impossibilities of modern beauty standards. When people inflict painful and extensive plastic surgery on themselves to be "beautiful," when isolated young men deform themselves in pursuit of "looksmaxxing," the idea of someone being shipped off because they dare to look "imperfect" is a potent one. Maxine Stuart's performance, as the woman under the bandages, makes the pain she feels all too evident and heartbreaking. I'm pretty sure, in modern parlance, we'd say Janet has body dysmorphia. That makes me curious to see a trans or queer reading of this episode. 

All subtextual concerns aside, "Eye of the Beholder" remains a deeply eerie half-hour of television even sixty years after it first aired. The hospital set is almost expressionistic, with seemingly endless hallways made of sloping rectangles. The glimpses we get of the city outside look like cardboard set dressing, further creating an ambiance of unreality. Bernard Hermann's sparse score is full of tingling pings and discordant brass, furthering this surreal feeling. In order to disguise the twist ending, director Douglas Heyes carefully hides all the actor's faces. The camera twirls around to always obscure any facial features, focusing instead on mundane objects like a pack of cigarettes or an intercom. When combined with the frequent shadows, this creates a world without warmth or love, reflecting Janet's isolation. We've all felt unaccepted or cast out at some point in our lives, making "Eye of the Beholder" an easily related to nightmare. The result is an episode that feels unmoored and disoriented. It is in such an unsettled dreamspace like this – a twilight zone, you might call it – that Serling's ideas, no matter how blunt, resonate. That's the sign of true art, whose ideas and images, themes and meanings, vibrate in the subconscious and speak to universal truths still. [9/10]

The Addams Family: Morticia and the Psychiatrist

“Morticia and the Psychiatrist” begins with the Addams parents making an upsetting discovery: Their son, Pugsley, is dressed up in a boy scout uniform. Soon, they find their boy playing with a white little poodle puppy. Terrified that their child may be turning into a normal person, they consult a child psychiatrist. The doctor informs the family of the best strategy: To cater to his whims and support his new interest, in hopes that this is a phase that will soon pass. When Pugsley continues to grow more conventional, the doctor is asked to make a house call. Typically, he is unprepared for what he finds at the Addams home.

If one of the central jokes of “The Addams Family” is outsiders being horrified by the family’s antics, “Morticia and the Psychiatrist” centers this joke plenty of times. Dr. Black, played by a nicely straight-laced George Petrie, reacts in confusion to Morticia’s spidery dress. The last third features multiple scenes of him horrified by the family décor and the homicidal games Pugsley plays. (Though I think that’s normal for a ten year kid, regardless of their background.) The episode goes the other way though. Morticia and Gomez’ confused, startled reactions to Pugsley’s new habits subverts wholesome Americana in clever ways. 

You can’t really undersell how much Astin and Jones’ particular delivery make the goofy dialogue sing. Astin’s reaction to a suggestion that he give away the family’s statue of a two-headed turtle or Morticia’s shock that Puglsey is playing with a baseball bat are fantastic. It’s also notable how openly horny these two are for each other. A scene of Morticia in a new night gown drives Gomez into a lusty frenzy and his wife has to ask him to calm down. I didn’t expect that for 1964 television! Jackie Coogan gets a funny moment too, when spying on Pugsley and the doctor and nodding in agreement at what he sees. [7/10]