It has been observed that horror fans, once they watch one installment of a film series, feel the need to watch the remaining entries, no matter how dire they may become. I am like this too, as the guy who reviewed all eleven "Children of the Corn" movies. It's an impulse I'm trying to fight, so as not to waste any more of the dwindling time I have left on this earth on excessively stupid bullshit. However, sometimes you have to complete the mission you start. "Stigmata" is not a part of a series. It is, however, the last remaining corner in a tetralogy of religious horror movies made around the turn of the millennium by major studios. M-G-M put this one out in September of 1999, Universal released "End of Days" that November, with Paramount's "Bless the Child" and New Line's "Lost Souls" following in August and October of the next year. None of these movies are good but I have written about the other three already, so it is my destiny to write about "Stigmata" – a title I must always pronounce like Peter Murphy – as well.
Frankie Paige is a hairdresser, living in Pittsburgh, with no religious convictions whatsoever. She receives some rosary beads in the mail from her mom. After which, while in the bath, Frankie has an intense hallucination and awakens with deep punctures through her wrists. While on a train, Frankie goes into a disassociated state again and seemingly has her back violently whipped by invisible forces. Her case is brought to the attention of Father Kiernan, a Jesuit priest who investigates the validity of miracles for the Catholic Church. Kiernan believes Frankie may be demonstrating the stigmata, the miraculous re-creation of the five wounds Christ suffered on the cross. Frankie's state escalates, with her speaking and writing in Aramaic and the violent wounds on her body becoming more severe. Father Kiernan is concerned that, should her condition progress, she will die. His fears are further effected by an attempt by the Catholic Church itself to stop him from uncovering what Frankie's condition seems to be pointing towards...
“Stigmata” deserves some points for being a religious horror movie about Catholicism that isn't concerned with demonic possession, the Anti-Christ, or devil worshipers. Its horror arises from an easily observed but perhaps under-reported aspect of heavenly interaction: That they would probably be horrifying for a non-religious person to experience. This undermines my belief that the Old Testament is one long folk horror story. The idea of bloody, torturous wounds appearing on the body spontaneously certainly allows for lots of gory special effects too. Unfortunately, while the idea of “Stigmata” isn't without merit, it ultimately backs away from the elements that make its premise interesting. Rather than grapple with the idea that gospel revelations border on cosmic horror, “Stigmata” settles for its religious visions being intense but good intentioned. The tension in the story ostensibly comes from the threat of, should Frankie's stigmata conclude with a spear wound to the abdomen, she'll die. The original plan was that she would die at the end, perhaps raising questions about the price of martyrdom and why must such tortures be inflicted on a random innocent woman. Is that God's plan? If so, how does that reflect on this allegedly loving creator? But the script doesn't do that, ultimately draining any suspense from the material.
“Stigmata” attempts to compensate by playing up the threat of the Catholic Church performing a cover-up of what Frankie's visions are bringing to light. The implication that the Catholic Church, as an institution, perhaps does things that do not benefit the well fair of their congregations would be a bold angle for a horror film to take. Especially a few years before certain information about the Church would become a news story. This idea is also backed away from before the end. The villains of the film are depicted as misguided but never dangerous, nor as representative of the Church's direction overall. Instead of being about how“miracles” might be more horrifying than awe inspiring, that God is kind of an asshole, or that the Catholic Church is an active participant in criminal cover-ups, “Stigmata” is one long advertisement for the Gospel of Thomas, a Biblical deleted scene that was formally denounced by the Vatican in 1945. And that's a lot less interesting, isn't it?
The timidness of the script in addressing any of the genuinely intriguing ideas it presents still isn't the main reason I dislike “Stigmata” though. The film was directed by Rupert Wainwright, who came to fame for his music videos. Though Wainwright's music video work was with artist like MC Hammer or NWA, I think he was taking inspiration from different artists for this one. “Stigmata” is another late nineties horror movie that decided the grungy visuals, frantic editing, and quote-unquote “disturbing” imagery of the heavy metal and industrial rock videos of the time was the de-facto look for the genre. Aside from the largely washed-out and overcast palette of the entire movie, “Stigmata” often features harshly edited cut-away sequences. These, for one example, depict flickering close-ups on the bloody wounds of the main character, accompanied by harsh sounds on the soundtrack. It is, at best, a played-out style and, to be much more honest, very annoying. It is also the only real attempt at scares the movie has, making “Stigmata” even more of a tedious experience.
With a script afraid to confront its own layers and its idea of scariness molded by Marilyn Manson videos, what does the film leave us to latch onto? Not much. Patricia Arquette makes for a decent enough lead. She's always been good at balancing physical intensity and a certain tenacity, that is both vulnerable and sexy. That makes her a good choice for a role like this. The scenes that largely revolve around her interaction with Gabriel Byrne as Father Kiernan are the film's best. The two have decent chemistry together, with a certain lightness in their interactions and the smiles they give each that I like. It made me wonder if screenwriter Tom Lazarus – fitting name for this project – hadn't conceive of the film as a romantic drama that he then converted into a horror movie. The relationship between the leads is the sole hint of heart in a otherwise trite motion picture.
This still makes “Stigmata” the best of the religious thrillers released around the same time. It doesn't pile on the shitty CGI like “End of Days.” It's not as hilariously misconceived in its theatrics as “Bless the Child” nor as utterly lifeless as “Lost Souls.” It was also the most successful of the four films and, outside of Arnold Schwarzenegger sound boards, the only one people seem to remember any. I would not call it good though. Considering Wainwright's other horror credits include a lame remake and a mediocre TV episode, I suspect his heart was not truly in the game. But all these movies focus heavily on the most irritating visual cliches of horror at the time, without finding anything new of their own to say. [5/10]
Frankie Paige is a hairdresser, living in Pittsburgh, with no religious convictions whatsoever. She receives some rosary beads in the mail from her mom. After which, while in the bath, Frankie has an intense hallucination and awakens with deep punctures through her wrists. While on a train, Frankie goes into a disassociated state again and seemingly has her back violently whipped by invisible forces. Her case is brought to the attention of Father Kiernan, a Jesuit priest who investigates the validity of miracles for the Catholic Church. Kiernan believes Frankie may be demonstrating the stigmata, the miraculous re-creation of the five wounds Christ suffered on the cross. Frankie's state escalates, with her speaking and writing in Aramaic and the violent wounds on her body becoming more severe. Father Kiernan is concerned that, should her condition progress, she will die. His fears are further effected by an attempt by the Catholic Church itself to stop him from uncovering what Frankie's condition seems to be pointing towards...
“Stigmata” attempts to compensate by playing up the threat of the Catholic Church performing a cover-up of what Frankie's visions are bringing to light. The implication that the Catholic Church, as an institution, perhaps does things that do not benefit the well fair of their congregations would be a bold angle for a horror film to take. Especially a few years before certain information about the Church would become a news story. This idea is also backed away from before the end. The villains of the film are depicted as misguided but never dangerous, nor as representative of the Church's direction overall. Instead of being about how“miracles” might be more horrifying than awe inspiring, that God is kind of an asshole, or that the Catholic Church is an active participant in criminal cover-ups, “Stigmata” is one long advertisement for the Gospel of Thomas, a Biblical deleted scene that was formally denounced by the Vatican in 1945. And that's a lot less interesting, isn't it?
With a script afraid to confront its own layers and its idea of scariness molded by Marilyn Manson videos, what does the film leave us to latch onto? Not much. Patricia Arquette makes for a decent enough lead. She's always been good at balancing physical intensity and a certain tenacity, that is both vulnerable and sexy. That makes her a good choice for a role like this. The scenes that largely revolve around her interaction with Gabriel Byrne as Father Kiernan are the film's best. The two have decent chemistry together, with a certain lightness in their interactions and the smiles they give each that I like. It made me wonder if screenwriter Tom Lazarus – fitting name for this project – hadn't conceive of the film as a romantic drama that he then converted into a horror movie. The relationship between the leads is the sole hint of heart in a otherwise trite motion picture.
Matou a Família e Foi ao Cinema
The point of watching fifty horror movies made in countries other than my own, shoved into a two month period, is to broaden my cinematic taste and discover new faces, names, and styles than what my narrow American palette has been previously exposed to. Okay, so who is this Júlio Bressane guy then? He's an acclaimed Brazilian filmmaker, an active force in the country's underground cinema scene in the late sixties and early seventies. His work is experimental and anti-establishment. Okay, okay, that's cool. Every capsule biography of the guy I read mentions how he made six feature films in six months with his loose, improvisational, provocative style. Hmmm, you're starting to lose me, man. Do these movies have points or are they just art-school kids fuckin' around? Alright, alright, I'm gonna give this stuff a fair shot. Bressane kicked off his most productive period with 1969's "Killed the Family and Went to the Movies," which is considered a horror movie by multiple lists of highly regarded world cinema. I'll try it.
"Killed the Family and Went to the Movies" concerns a young man who... Kills his family and goes to the movies. Specifically, it's a young man living in Rio de Janeiro who slices his abusive father and obnoxious mother's throats with a straight razor before leaving the apartment and visiting the cinema. Actually, the movie is about two young women, Márcia and Regina, who batter one of their own mothers before shacking up in a desolate apartment over an unspoken amount of time, during which they shoot guns or drop a chicken in a bathtub while contemplating life and their feelings for each other. Actually, "Killed the Family and Went to the Movies" is a series of disconnected vignettes, contrasting conversations both philosophical and mundane with music and senseless acts of violence performed in a country experiencing turbulent times.
"Killed the Family and Went to the Movies" is a title that places a shocking, life-changing act alongside an ephemeral leisure activity. Clearly, anyone who would murder their parents/spouse/children and then casually stroll down the street to watch a motion picture is disconnected from the consequences of their own actions. It brings to mind tabloid headlines about cold, emotionless psychopaths who leave an apartment full of dead bodies behind and later is caught yucking it up at the latest Jerry Lewis joint. By juxtaposing familicide next to the act of viewing a film, the title also brings to mind our own relationship to cinematic violence. Are people, possibly bored or distracted, watching a fictional depiction of murder on a movie screen any different than the sociopath imagined in the above scenario? Does putting a screen between us and horrible events make us dispassionate towards them? We are not prompt to act but merely to watch. Is this commentary on how the media is a tool of a brutal government, making us numb to the daily horrors occurring around us? Or does it speak to an overall sense of disaffection among the populace, so ground down by the hardships of modern life that they are rendered unable to feel anything, even when presented with deeply personal tragedy? Does society make all of us unfeeling killers, more likely to massacre the people closest to us and then shrug it off with a bag of popcorn and an extra large Sprite Zero?
Well, it certainly means something. Most of the people at the center of "Killed the Family and Went to the Movies'" scenes are on the younger side. They strike the viewer as teenagers or college students. They don't seem to be working and have time to lay around and gaze into each other's eyes or silently listen to the radio while regarding a straight razor. The principal victims of the early scenes are their immediate authority figures, their parents, who seem disinterested or even hostile to their own offspring. Mom and dad senselessly argue with each other, watch the TV, make dinner, or nitpick their kids' lives. Does that make their eventual violent acts retaliation against the stifling conformity of the previous generation? The presentation of the film is rough, shot on grainy and monochromatic 16mm that was then blown up to 32mm for cinematic presentation. The dialogue strikes one as largely improvised, as do the multiple scenes of its characters singing along to music, mindlessly humming, or just hanging out. The acts depicted are destructive, senseless ones. Slashing dad's throat, beating your mom to a bloody pulp, or taking a bath with some plants and a chicken represent a breakdown of established order. The two girls also seem to be romantically inclined towards each other, making them outcasts in a conformist environment that criminalizes homosexuality. In that case, is the film's violence a rebellious activity? Is Bressane's film a punk rock rejection of the society created by the older generation? Unsurprisingly, also given the context of the title, the activities on-screen eventually move towards acts of self-destruction. When the world is this fucked-up, designed to constrain and consume you, why not burn it all down? This isn't senseless violence and unprovoked suicide, it's a bloody insurrection against the everyday forces meant to control us.
Okay. Maybe it is. Or maybe I simply lack the cultural context to truly understand what Bressane's film is getting at. One of the more chilling sequences of violence in the film is devoted to a man being restrained and tortured by several other guys in an apartment. They make vague references to some sort of information being uncovered, so presumably they are government secret police. Does this point towards “Killed the Family and Went to the Movies” being a reaction to the paranoia of living under a military junta? When your friends and family can disappear at any point, un-person-ed overnight, the threat of random violence has a different meaning. The film is at its most upsetting when centering its carnage against common-place settings. Many long scenes are scored to pop songs on the radio, another contrast between fluffy pop culture and bloody death. One scene has an assassin with a pistol sitting quietly before a corpse and what looks like some kids at a birthday party. At the same time, the film also escalates in its provocations until a sequence at the end that is predictable in its transgressions. Alright, so is this simply a primal scream, an explosion of anguish and horror at what was happening in Brazil at this time?
These are but three interpretations and more surely exists within Bressane's film. I imagine the queer content lends itself to further readings. The finale adds another meta loop to the material, the two girls discussing a film they just saw that seems to depict a version of what they are about to or just did. Assuming any of the reoccurring faces – which includes the screen debut of Renata Sorrah, who would go on to star in the Confused Math Lady meme – are meant to be the same characters from scene-to-scene. I've seen some reviews of the film that describe it as featuring the same actors playing different characters. “Killed the Family and Went to the Movies” is so detached from the people it's depicting that I didn't pick up on this. That's, ultimately, my big problem with the film. All the events are watched from a chilly, impersonal perspective. There's no emotional in to this story to me, making me wonder why I should care about these events. Perhaps that is my indifference to on-screen violence at work. Either way, the film's reputation among Brazilian cinephiles as an underground classic, so beloved and established it got an in-name-only remake in the nineties, is clearly secured. However, this one might be a step too removed for me to truly engage with it. I do think it qualifies as horror though, but maybe I prefer my Brazilian horror to feature Coffin Joe jabbing people's eyes out than this. [5/10]
"Killed the Family and Went to the Movies" concerns a young man who... Kills his family and goes to the movies. Specifically, it's a young man living in Rio de Janeiro who slices his abusive father and obnoxious mother's throats with a straight razor before leaving the apartment and visiting the cinema. Actually, the movie is about two young women, Márcia and Regina, who batter one of their own mothers before shacking up in a desolate apartment over an unspoken amount of time, during which they shoot guns or drop a chicken in a bathtub while contemplating life and their feelings for each other. Actually, "Killed the Family and Went to the Movies" is a series of disconnected vignettes, contrasting conversations both philosophical and mundane with music and senseless acts of violence performed in a country experiencing turbulent times.
Well, it certainly means something. Most of the people at the center of "Killed the Family and Went to the Movies'" scenes are on the younger side. They strike the viewer as teenagers or college students. They don't seem to be working and have time to lay around and gaze into each other's eyes or silently listen to the radio while regarding a straight razor. The principal victims of the early scenes are their immediate authority figures, their parents, who seem disinterested or even hostile to their own offspring. Mom and dad senselessly argue with each other, watch the TV, make dinner, or nitpick their kids' lives. Does that make their eventual violent acts retaliation against the stifling conformity of the previous generation? The presentation of the film is rough, shot on grainy and monochromatic 16mm that was then blown up to 32mm for cinematic presentation. The dialogue strikes one as largely improvised, as do the multiple scenes of its characters singing along to music, mindlessly humming, or just hanging out. The acts depicted are destructive, senseless ones. Slashing dad's throat, beating your mom to a bloody pulp, or taking a bath with some plants and a chicken represent a breakdown of established order. The two girls also seem to be romantically inclined towards each other, making them outcasts in a conformist environment that criminalizes homosexuality. In that case, is the film's violence a rebellious activity? Is Bressane's film a punk rock rejection of the society created by the older generation? Unsurprisingly, also given the context of the title, the activities on-screen eventually move towards acts of self-destruction. When the world is this fucked-up, designed to constrain and consume you, why not burn it all down? This isn't senseless violence and unprovoked suicide, it's a bloody insurrection against the everyday forces meant to control us.
These are but three interpretations and more surely exists within Bressane's film. I imagine the queer content lends itself to further readings. The finale adds another meta loop to the material, the two girls discussing a film they just saw that seems to depict a version of what they are about to or just did. Assuming any of the reoccurring faces – which includes the screen debut of Renata Sorrah, who would go on to star in the Confused Math Lady meme – are meant to be the same characters from scene-to-scene. I've seen some reviews of the film that describe it as featuring the same actors playing different characters. “Killed the Family and Went to the Movies” is so detached from the people it's depicting that I didn't pick up on this. That's, ultimately, my big problem with the film. All the events are watched from a chilly, impersonal perspective. There's no emotional in to this story to me, making me wonder why I should care about these events. Perhaps that is my indifference to on-screen violence at work. Either way, the film's reputation among Brazilian cinephiles as an underground classic, so beloved and established it got an in-name-only remake in the nineties, is clearly secured. However, this one might be a step too removed for me to truly engage with it. I do think it qualifies as horror though, but maybe I prefer my Brazilian horror to feature Coffin Joe jabbing people's eyes out than this. [5/10]
Usually, anthology shows pull from multiple literary source materials for their ideas. It's a lot easier to pick and choose the best, or most easily adapted, short stories from a selection of writers if you hope to build a compelling program. However, single author anthologies have cropped up over the years. Writers in this exclusive club include Zane Grey, ol' Ray of course, Stephen King, and Patricia Highsmith. You'd be forgiven for missing that the mother of Tom Ripley had her own TV show though. A French/English co-production, “Chillers” only ran for twelve episodes in 1990. I'm not sure it ever aired on U.S. television. It's rarely mentioned when the topic of Highsmith adaptations come up. A separate anthology series with a nearly identical title would air five years later. “Chillers” owes whatever little infamy it has to the Highsmith connection and Anthony Perkins serving as host, during the last few years of his life. That has been enough to get it a DVD release and, if I'm going to sample the show, the same year as watching all the “Psycho” movies seems like a good time to do it.
“Something You Have to Live With” revolves around married couple Jessica and Stanley, who have recently moved into a new home in the country side. After Stanley installs new locks on the door, he's called away to France to attend to his sickly mother. Jessica's only company is Cassie, the house cat. That changes when a man in a mask breaks into the house. He's strangely conversational, if vulgar, and repeatedly ignores Jessica's pleas for him to leave. After he cruelly snaps Cassie's neck, Jessica has had enough. She bludgeons him over the head with the oar she bought Stanley as a gift. She's quite surprised to find that the man is now dead. The police clear her actions as self-defense. Despite that, Jessica can't stop thinking about it. She begins to mention in passing, often at dinner parties and almost compulsively, that she has recently killed a man.
There's an interesting undercurrent to “Something You Have to Live With.” Stanley is presented as largely incompetent in the first scene. He struggles to install a simple lock and, as the home intrusion makes clear, doesn't do it correctly. The burglar dismisses Jessica's husband as nu-masculine simply from looking at a photo. He also threatens to tie her up, commenting on the sexual connotations of the act at the same time. Tuesday Weld plays Jessica as clearly unsettled by the intrusion yet the sexual chemistry between them remains. Her obsession with the man after she kills him could suggest a few things. Is it merely guilt or trauma over killing someone? Or a lingering fascination over a more interesting man than her husband literally barging into her life? Her husband's reaction to her sudden impulse to continuously mention the homicide could be concern over his wife's well-being... Or it could be akin to a wife constantly mentioning an ex-boyfriend, to repeatedly remind of her partner's inadequacies as a man. No wonder he gets fed up of hearing about it.
It's an interesting promise, able to be played for dark humor or a slow sense of suspense. “Something You Have to Live With” attempts to go for both, not entirely successfully. It's a little better as comedy, if only because laughter is the natural reaction to someone busting out the “Remember when I killed a guy?” chestnut at every social gathering, no matter how inappropriate. However, the episode is not able to derive any tension from the slow build-up of resentment in the married couple's relationship. With Stanley being away for a big chunk of the episode, we never get a real sense of what this couple is like. The direction is fairly flat throughout. Tuesday Weld is a likable presence in the lead but her stunned quality becomes increasingly harder to take seriously as the episode goes on, leading to a shrug of an ending. Perkins is a decent choice to be a host but he isn't able to give “Chillers'” wrap-around segments any sense of identity, which an anthology series really needs. [6/10]
“Something You Have to Live With” revolves around married couple Jessica and Stanley, who have recently moved into a new home in the country side. After Stanley installs new locks on the door, he's called away to France to attend to his sickly mother. Jessica's only company is Cassie, the house cat. That changes when a man in a mask breaks into the house. He's strangely conversational, if vulgar, and repeatedly ignores Jessica's pleas for him to leave. After he cruelly snaps Cassie's neck, Jessica has had enough. She bludgeons him over the head with the oar she bought Stanley as a gift. She's quite surprised to find that the man is now dead. The police clear her actions as self-defense. Despite that, Jessica can't stop thinking about it. She begins to mention in passing, often at dinner parties and almost compulsively, that she has recently killed a man.
It's an interesting promise, able to be played for dark humor or a slow sense of suspense. “Something You Have to Live With” attempts to go for both, not entirely successfully. It's a little better as comedy, if only because laughter is the natural reaction to someone busting out the “Remember when I killed a guy?” chestnut at every social gathering, no matter how inappropriate. However, the episode is not able to derive any tension from the slow build-up of resentment in the married couple's relationship. With Stanley being away for a big chunk of the episode, we never get a real sense of what this couple is like. The direction is fairly flat throughout. Tuesday Weld is a likable presence in the lead but her stunned quality becomes increasingly harder to take seriously as the episode goes on, leading to a shrug of an ending. Perkins is a decent choice to be a host but he isn't able to give “Chillers'” wrap-around segments any sense of identity, which an anthology series really needs. [6/10]
A rotund police detective, Russ Sharko, botches a sting operation, out of his thirst for vengeance against mobster Victor Haas. His actions get a fellow cop killed and Sharko thrown off the forces. That is when he randomly comes into the possession of the expected “Friday the 13th: The Series” cursed antique. It's an old west sheriff star, which causes the guilty to die upon contact. Meanwhile, an ex-boyfriend of Micki's named Tim shows up at Curious Goods. It turns out that Tim is an undercover cop, working to bring Haas down through official channels. Ryan is suspicious of the guy and, upon finding a gun in his bag, suspect he's up to no good.
“Friday the 13th: The Series” obviously isn't an anthology series but the elasticity of its premise allows the show to jump into different genres fairly easily. Which makes me wonder if some of these episodes didn't begin life as spec scripts for other shows, retro-fitted to this program because someone had it laying around. “Badge of Honor” feels more like it would belong to an eighties cop show than “Friday the 13th.” Call it “Kill Street Blues” or “Toronto Vice.” The outfits Ryan and Micki wear through most of this one – a white sports jacket over a high-collared polo shirt? A red halter top with mint green jacket and micro-skirt? – certainly made me think of Crocket and Tubbs' questionable fashion choices. All of which is to say that the many scenes here of an undercover cop making terse negotiations with a mob boss, while coke is being sliced into rails or strippers who pointedly do not take their clothes off, feel out-of-place in this show. Director Michelle Manning would actually make two episodes of “Miami Vice” a year after this, so I'm guessing she was basically auditioning for the show. Her use of slow-motion or a sax-heavy score feel very mawkish and out-of-place here.
Further alienating this episode from the show it is a part of is that Ryan and Micki, once again, feel tangential to the actual story being told. Here's another installment where events would have played out more-or-less the same without their involvement at all. The duo don't actually participate in the action until the last act, where they spend several scenes comically sneaking around behind the cops. Micki's past relationship with Tim is the only element actually dragging them into this plot. That subplot also feels weird. John Stockwell is a handsome enough guy, sure. It still feels weird for her to immediately start sucking face with an ex the minute he walks into the shop. Did I miss when she officially broke up with her lawyer fiance or have the show writers forgotten about that? Either way, the presence of another man still causes Ryan to be jealous. He is referred to as Micki's cousin, as if to remind us of how weird it is that he's so territorial around another man.
Attempting to shoe-horn some typical cop show thrills into this episode is an odd fit for another reason. The horror elements here are two-fold: The curse sheriff's badge at the center of the plot causes its victims to contort and jerk around violently before expiring. The mechanics of “Friday the 13th's” MacGuffins usually require some sort of exchange, the wielder getting something in exchange for the murders. I guess Sharko already wanting revenge on these men is payment enough. Either way, the induced seizures look very silly. Sharko keeping his wife's corpse under a shower curtain in his bedroom is kind of fun though. Val Avery – also played a cop in “The Amityville Horror” and “Cobra” and a dozen other things – makes the guy such a pathetic, hard-drinking, sweaty old dweeb that it's hard to take him seriously as a vigilante. You would expect this premise to bend in an A.C.A.B. direction. A cop extra-judicially executing criminals is obviously treated like a bad thing. While the rogue detective suffers for his actions, he still gets the bad guy before the end so I don't think the script disagrees with what he does that much. Also, if you think Sharko is a funny name for a character, be prepared for how many times somebody named “Cooder” is brought up in this hour. [5/10]
“Friday the 13th: The Series” obviously isn't an anthology series but the elasticity of its premise allows the show to jump into different genres fairly easily. Which makes me wonder if some of these episodes didn't begin life as spec scripts for other shows, retro-fitted to this program because someone had it laying around. “Badge of Honor” feels more like it would belong to an eighties cop show than “Friday the 13th.” Call it “Kill Street Blues” or “Toronto Vice.” The outfits Ryan and Micki wear through most of this one – a white sports jacket over a high-collared polo shirt? A red halter top with mint green jacket and micro-skirt? – certainly made me think of Crocket and Tubbs' questionable fashion choices. All of which is to say that the many scenes here of an undercover cop making terse negotiations with a mob boss, while coke is being sliced into rails or strippers who pointedly do not take their clothes off, feel out-of-place in this show. Director Michelle Manning would actually make two episodes of “Miami Vice” a year after this, so I'm guessing she was basically auditioning for the show. Her use of slow-motion or a sax-heavy score feel very mawkish and out-of-place here.
Attempting to shoe-horn some typical cop show thrills into this episode is an odd fit for another reason. The horror elements here are two-fold: The curse sheriff's badge at the center of the plot causes its victims to contort and jerk around violently before expiring. The mechanics of “Friday the 13th's” MacGuffins usually require some sort of exchange, the wielder getting something in exchange for the murders. I guess Sharko already wanting revenge on these men is payment enough. Either way, the induced seizures look very silly. Sharko keeping his wife's corpse under a shower curtain in his bedroom is kind of fun though. Val Avery – also played a cop in “The Amityville Horror” and “Cobra” and a dozen other things – makes the guy such a pathetic, hard-drinking, sweaty old dweeb that it's hard to take him seriously as a vigilante. You would expect this premise to bend in an A.C.A.B. direction. A cop extra-judicially executing criminals is obviously treated like a bad thing. While the rogue detective suffers for his actions, he still gets the bad guy before the end so I don't think the script disagrees with what he does that much. Also, if you think Sharko is a funny name for a character, be prepared for how many times somebody named “Cooder” is brought up in this hour. [5/10]
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