CARL STAY IN THE DAMNED HOUSE! WHOOPS, NEVER MIND, YOU CAN COME OUT NOW... 

Mercy (2014) 

Okay, Stephen King is just about everybody's favorite horror author, right? Even when he scams H.P. Lovecraft stuff? Even when it's a short story that's from a book in the '80's (Skeleton Crew) and already appearing (with Harlan Ellison's help) in an episode of The Twilight Zone? Do we really want to see a repeat of a story they told within 20 minutes?

The answer is... dammit I thought I knew that one but I forgot. Here's the original (Twilight Zone version) story in a nutshell: Little George is left alone with his ancient and infirm Grandmother. George hears a monstrous growl from the bedroom. It is his Grandmother asking George for her tea. George recalls conversations in which his mother and her siblings discussed how dangerous Gramma is now that she's senile (a hilarious memory is when he hears them talk about all the graves in the cemetery exploding - I would have loved to see that). 

George returns to his grandmother's room and tries without success to rouse her. But Gramma opens one glowing red eye and glares at him. She draws him to her and embraces him, and tells him that he is her favorite, and they seem to merge into one being. George's mother returns and finds George sitting at the kitchen table with his grandmother's books. He explains that Gramma died and he didn't know what to do. She tries to comfort him, but does not see that he now has glowing red eyes like Gramma.

So. We get a quote to start: "Love Made Me" (Inscription Over Gates Of Hell, Dante's Inferno)

Then we're in W. Virginia in 1967. A woman coos over her newborn triplets. The father chops his own head with an ax. Uh huh, it's going to be that kind of movie.

George (Chandler Riggs) starts us off by telling us that he and his Grandmother were always best friends. Umm, what? Okay, we're off on a whole 'nother story now...

On one outing his Grandmother has him 'charm' a snake with violin music. It's pretty stupid - not the music charming part, the part where they obviously used three different snakes for one scene. Duh. And I don't even know anything about snakes.

So during a family dinner Grandma has a seizure and is now out of her head - except she knows George (the others she attacks). The doctors are coming but she knows her time is short. She warns him that "He's coming." but doesn't say who "he" is. She's taken away.

It's one year later. Grandma is so bad that the nursing home won't have her anymore. George talks to a girl who tells him she's watching over him - but no one else can see her (great, he sees dead people too although she is just billed as 'the girl next door' for whatever reason).

He, his brother and mother move back into Grandma's house and George tells his brother to be careful, he's getting the 'haints' angry (that's a Southern word for ghosts by the way). George is looking forward to being with his grandmother again.

Their neighbor Jim (Dylan McDermott) gives George a book and his brother a gift card for the grocery store so he can 'Bobby Flay himself to death'. Had to look that up - guess the older brother wants to be a chef and Flay is known for his Southwestern cuisine. 'Kay.

They pick up 'Grandma' who's looking just one step from a vegetable. George's dead blonde friend sits with him as they take her home. They find she's like an infant, rarely lucid, and needs regular thorazine shots to 'keep her friendly'. They quickly find that giving her the shots is NOT easy. And that drug will lay the most manic person out flat, so something is up.

The other two kids, Jinny and Len are worthless. Jinny tried to leave town with her boyfriend - he was found torn to pieces and Jinny has lived her life in an asylum. Len turned to drinking. So George's mom is the only kid that has it together enough to take care of Grandmother. 

One day they get a scrawled note that Jinny somehow, although in isolation, managed to mail to George warning him to get out, Hastur is now there (one of Cthulu's many monikers). Jinny supposedly was most like her Grandmother and saw... things. So Grandma was desperate for kids, did something bad, got three of them, and only one is normal. With one Grandson to love her. Nice. Totally worth the death of her husband and the ones to come...

George finds that Grandma now only responds to him if he uses the name Hastur. She also speaks (perfectly without slurring) a strange dialect (since this is an H.P. Lovecraft rip-off... umm, I mean adaptation I'm assuming it's something supposedly in the Necronomicon). 

He tells his brother, but his brother is mainly waiting for Grandma to die so he can get back to his life and doesn't really care - he tells George not to meddle with anything. But does our 'Carl' ever listen to anybody? Hell no! After hearing pleads from Grandma, he takes the thorazine out and replaces it with saline.

They leave Len with Grandma and go shopping. George finds out from the town priest how his Grandmother, after finding herself barren, used 'other things' to get what she wanted. His Grandfather figured things out and that's why he killed himself. She threw her Bible at the priest and swore she'd never come back. She always prospered, even when the whole town had bad luck. The family goes back to find Len and Grandma locked together. Len is dead, his blood all over her.

Grandma isn't blamed though - they say Len died of an aneurysm - too much drinking. And George talks more with his dead friend.

The two brothers find a 'book of weeping' - apparently the book that let Grandma get pregnant. Before George can learn what to do to cure his Grandmother, his brother throws the book in the woodchipper. A piece whips out and impales him. George is now alone with his Grandma while his mother takes his brother to the hospital.

A plant is delivered, at night, by regular mail (wrong wrong wrong). It is Verbena, also known as 'Devil's Bane'. Uh huh. He then looks up (finally) Hastur. Grandma goes nuts but George left one bottle of Thorazine just in case and drugs her. 

He then gets a call from Jinny - she's 'hurt people to escape' the hospital and wants to meet with him because he's 'the one' whatever the hell that means. She tells him to meet her on Dead Tree Hill. Hanging up he hears a thump - Grandma has died. He must have been a bit heavy handed when he closed her eyes like everybody does in movies - she definitely and very visibly flinches when he does. Whoops.

He calls 911 and the power (and phone) goes out. The doors won't open and the windows won't break. THAT'S what they needed in TWD!!! He HAS to stay in the house now!!!

Just kidding. His dead friend (who can't come in) tells him to use the ax in the cellar but somebody's already got it. Running back upstairs he finds himself in a drawn circle with lots of candles. Wow, somebody was quick!

A door is now open - he runs to it and the weeping book is on the floor. Since he wished for a cure for his Grandmother, it appears - a picture of her eating his heart (which is why his brother destroyed it). He runs outside, she grabs him, throwing him back into the circle. She starts to chant in another voice. Luckily (Miss Murder says, rolling her eyes) he reaches the mysteriously delivered plant, grabbing some of the flowers and burning his Grandmother's face with it before bolting.

He gets to the neighbors and Jim promises to take him to his mother. But Jim made a pact with Grandma - she was going to make sure he could be with George's mother (What is it with Dylan playing douchebags these days? He used to play the nicest characters...). George figures out though that Jim needs him alive and so dives out of the truck. Jim follows and is run down by one of those cars that likes to run people down, beep their horn but never stop.

He finds Ginny dead and knows his mom is back home and about to die. His dead girl friend tells him it would be suicide to go back but he does. Sure enough, whatever's in Grandma's body is gonna eat him up. And because the rest of this movie is total nonsense, why not have the dead Grandpa show up with the ax, let George's chains loose, and also let him go pick up the ax? Meh, let's having dancing ponies and pooping unicorns too while we're at it.

Aaaaand to bring this overblown story to an end, the boy cries, the Grandma dies, and the dead girl turns out to be the 'good parts' that his Grandma had been giving up to get what she wanted... awww, isn't that sweet?

Here's the kicker: George's summary of the whole mess? If Grandma hadn't been evil, he wouldn't have been born so wasn't it worth it? I mean geez, people died, but he gets to be on a top-rated TV show so hey, let's all get one of those freaking books... Oh and don't think we didn't notice all those different hair styles of yours Mr. Riggs - having to fit the filming of this movie with the TWD filming and all... just sayin'...

                        

WELCOME TO TERMINUS... WAIT, WHAT? THEY'RE ALL GOING TO A PLACE THAT MEANS 'A FINAL POINT IN SPACE OR TIME - AN END OR EXTREMITY? AND THEY THOUGHT THEY'D BE SAFE THERE? WOULDN'T A BETTER PLACE BE NAMED 'HAPPY HAPPY JOY JOY SAFE HAVEN Y'ALL' OR SOMETHING?

The Walking Dead Returns

And so it's here, the long-awaited premiere of the fifth season of The Walking Dead. Relax kids, this is not going to be a comprehensive (and boring) recounting of the first four seasons (but if you haven't seen them and plan to today before season 5 starts, stop reading here). This is just my opinion of them.... HEY COME BACK HERE!!!!



When the series first started, I was an instant fan, as tons of people were. It was different, gritty, no happy endings, lots of zombie bashing, and unapologetic violence and gore. Hey, AMC got on the map with this program (No I don't want to hear of all the others before it - this is a TWD review, 'kay?).

Yup, I was all in - liked/disliked Rick, thought Shane was cool but evil, Lori was a slut, Carl needed a serious time out, Andrea was what I thought I'd be if in that situation - looking quickly to be as ruthless and as good a shot as anyone - no wilting flower for her or me. We swore we'd never be like Carol. And of course we all listened to Dale, got mad at Merle (but enjoyed him anyway) and crushed on Daryl. And the rest... we sort of remember.

But by the second season something happened that reduced my personal enjoyment to almost nothing - social media. I was DVR'ing all the episodes, cause for one I didn't want to wade through the commercials, second I wanted to be able to replay scenes I didn't quite get the sense of or just plain enjoyed watching. But I was a heavy Facebooker and even belonged to a couple of TWD groups. And I quickly found out the folly of that. 

These people all had smartphones and sat in front of their TV's, watching and texting furiously at the same time. Which meant that if you were on Facebook, even if you tried to ignore everybody (this included all news and entertainment sites), chances were you got the whole program shoved down your throat before you even got a chance to watch it. Many, many times. I think after the 'Sophia' episode I decided that enough was enough and just stopped watching.

But... although I was free of the addiction of seeing who would live and who died each season, I did miss it. I do admit that even though it was getting apparent this was turning into a soap opera with some zombie bashing mixed in, and the CGI work was getting more and more obvious that there was still some pretty neat stuff to be found in this series which is like but not completely true to the comic book series it began from.



And so I thought okay, I'll catch up - but the DVD sets were astronomical in price and I like to get good sets of what I'm collecting - but hey, you've gotta admit that it was just too much. Fortunately, I found a dealer who had brand new still-sealed-in-plastic sets of seasons 1-4 (just the discs, not the 'collectibles') for about half of what I could find them for elsewhere. Boom. Aaaaand then of course Netflix decides to have all four seasons streaming on their service (dammit).

So. Season one saw the introduction of a central group of characters and a lot of peripheral characters that died with regularity during the season. It was a lot of backstory, establishment of character places in a sort of democracy, lots of neat (and still pretty human looking) zombies and, of course, lots of violence bashing, shooting, and spearing said zombies. 



For those of us pretty well familiar with the zombie movie genre this was pretty quality stuff - for those who hadn't seen many, it was shocking but strangely compelling. And poor Norman Reedus, playing a character who wasn't even IN the comic series (Daryl Dixon) found himself to be an instant beefcake poster boy for the show. It was tense, it was fun, and it was original. We couldn't wait for the next season...

So. Season two came with changes, as all good series have. But then we were introduced (at least I hadn't heard of it before) to something called a mid-season finale. Say what? We have a hiatus in the MIDDLE of a season? And everrrrrrrybody was talking about the episodes as they happened. I knew the whole damned thing weeks before I was able to sit and get caught up. So, again, weeks after everyone sobbed and discussed and complained, I finally got to see this:

We sat through HALF A SEASON looking for Sophia (and some other stuff happened too) just for this. And by the time I actually got to WATCH it, I could practically quote line by line what happened before it did. It sucked. I quit watching.



So I didn't see (then) that Shane went batshit nuts, Rick got hard and nasty, Carl wouldn't stay in the damned house, Lori played Shane and Rick off of each other, Dale got killed, a kid is captured, Rick wants him released but Shane kills the kid and then tries to kill Rick. I did watch the EPIC episode though - how could I miss this? Shane gets killed, not once but TWICE. The first time by Rick, the second by an impossible act even for a sharpshooter: Never-stays-in-the-house Carl sees his dad and a dead Shane. He also sees Shane get back up. Now IN THE DARK he draws and somehow over his dad's shoulder manages with ONE SHOT to get zombie-Shane smack in the forehead. C'mon people, really?

The farm is overrun by walkers, lots of extras get killed so that you have a small and familiar group to see and they wonder what the hell they're gonna do now. Sorry people, but season two could have been cut in half and been a whole lot better.

So. Season three starts with a very pregnant Lori struggling to keep up with the group when they finally find the prison they've apparently been circling for months waiting for the season to start, and begin cleaning out the 'walkers' inside, mostly guards and prisoners (and some visitors). They find several live prisoners but they are all killed before any attachments are made so we still have our basic group left over from season 2, with wise veterinarian Herschel taking the 'place' of the lamented Dale. Lori has the baby during a walker attack and dies at Carl's hand.




And we get to meet the Governor (wonderfully played by David Morrissey), a psycho who runs the 'safe' town of Woodbury, where Andrea and Michonne (who finally shows up) end up. He seems to be a benevolent man until it is revealed that not only does he kill for fun, but he keeps his zombified daughter chained up, pressuring a scientist to find a 'cure' for her, he has a collection of heads in fish tanks, and also has found Merle and made him his right hand... uh no, wait, he lost that - his henchman.

This was a great season, almost as great as season one. There was lots of action, lots of conflict, lots of twists. And some weird, weird stuff. But I honestly think that season three was the best of the four and worth a look even if you're not a TWD fan.

So. Season four. I'm sorry to say this TWD fans but I was very VERY glad for my fast forward button. Since they took in all the people left from Woodbury, that was apparently too many people to keep track of, so there's a bad infection that kills a lot of them. At the start, two who had it badly (you cough up blood and die) were mysteriously dragged outside and set on fire. Rick somehow finds out it was Carol and banishes her out of the prison.


Aaaand then we have endless exposition of characters we don't give a crap about. What happened to the Governor and what he does next was interesting but all the rest? Geez, they're just filler, right? Almost a WHOLE SEASON of filler.

After the Governor kills Herschel and tries to take over the prison, everybody scatters and we get individual stories that we. just. don't. care. about. Really.

Even though they are all scattered, they all manage to find a sign to a place called 'Terminus' which apparently means that they scatters to a small area yet never manage to run into each other, as the signs are all by a railroad track. Duh. 



There are two disturbing events in this season, the first worthy of a horror movie by itself. Carol had tried to teach the children to defend themselves, determined to make sure no one was a victim their whole lives like she was. One of the children, about ten or so, is a developing psychopath but she didn't know that. One of the new characters saves the girl and her sister, along with Judith (which Rick and Carl did not see and presume she is dead). He finds Carol and she resumes her teaching, noticing the older child a bit strange but what comes next is pretty shocking.

Lizzie (the ten-year-old) is left to take care of her younger sister Mika and baby Judith while the two adults look for water. When they return they're shocked to find that Lizzie has killed her sister and is about to do the same to Judith. Lizzie explains that her sister will be fine because she did not 'hurt her brain'. A grieving Carol takes Lizzie into the forest and puts a bullet in her head. Ouch. Carol and Tyreese take Judith and go on the road.

The other event is when a group of toughs led by 'Joe' (the very talented face-you-know-instantly-but-not-his-name Jeff Kober) find Daryl, make him part of their group, but show their true colors when catching up with Rick who had been forced to kill one of them. As they prepare to rape BOTH Carl and Michonne and then kill Rick, Daryl helps the three wipe out the gang and escape - on to Terminus.



One thing I found interesting: Some time has passed since this 'apocalypse' happened, right? Well the writers have also kept up with that. The zombies are 'aging', in that they are no longer as human looking as they were in the first season, and many of them are only partially there, such as this one who is actually mostly slime melded with the ground. The 'fresh' zombies are the ones who were recently killed (or died of whatever) and so most of the 'walkers' smushed by our heroes were mostly smushed in the first place.

So the end of season four finds most reuniting at Terminus, the 'safe haven'. But when Rick notices that several 'citizens' are in possession of things that had belonged to his group, he attempts an escape and all are shoved into a railroad car and that is where the season leaves us. Rick, who by now is a very hardened man, says "They're going to feel pretty stupid when they find out they're screwing with the wrong people." We can expect a lot of bloodshed beginning the next season.

And I'm done 'cause I badly need a nap and want to see how this is going to start. Since the whole season is called 'Terminus', I expect their escape and revenge to take quite a while.



                        

A TV SERIES YOU CAN SINK YOUR TEETH INTO, EVEN IF YOU'RE DEAD

THE WALKING DEAD

I would be very remiss if I didn't give immediate props to one of the most entertaining and best zombie based series on television. Not that there's been ANY zombie based series on television, but if there were, this would be the best.

Now my spouse says it's just a soap opera with a couple of flesh eaters thrown in. A point taken but that is also the main topic of the series: How does mankind go on when there are a very large amount of crazed undead trying to eat them? Do they just run screaming or do they try to deal with it? 

This won't be the only mention of this show, it is my favorite and there are already many sites dedicated to the fans that have both absorbed the comic book series on which it was based and every episode shown. They know character traits, backgrounds, explain points that may seem a little murky to some, and basically are the most loyal fans of a current television program as far as I'm concerned. WE ROCK! Ummm sorry about that, slipped out.


If you haven't tried this show, I highly recommend buying or renting the DVD's (the first four seasons are also available for streaming on Netflix) and checking it out. Yes, it can be brutal. Yes, it can be tedious (human relationships often are). Yes, it can be frustrating. But it is also exciting, new, creative and definitely a huge step above current television program offerings.

In other words, this is excellence in broadcasting. Yeah I know that's radio, but it sounded cool.


And now, as of this update of 11/18/14 we are in our fifth season of watching Rick Grimes try to keep his extended family together and alive and the series is still fresh (even if the zombies are getting a little worse for wear), we still have Daryl but not Merle (awww), and now a lot of the living account for the danger and not just the 'walkers'.

And it's still cool.