Two Episodes of “Monsters”: “The Match Game” (1989) & “Far Below” (1990)

Because it is the season (or even the Season), I found myself drawn to revisit some episodes of an old teenhood favourite. “Monsters” was the Laurel Entertainment production anthology series that followed “Tales from the Darkside”. Even more so than the older show, this was made on the cheap. So cheap, the twenty minute episodes tend to take place in only one or two sets – sometimes locations – and seldom feature more than five actors including the guy in the monster suit. There’s always a guy in a monster suit, at least, so don’t worry. Every week’s a bottle episode, basically.

This, in combination with the short running times, does lead to rather sparse and simple stories for the show to tell, but the better episodes make clear everyone involved understood what they were doing and perfectly willing and able to work effectively in the rudimentary style needed to simple get an episode done.

“The Match Game”, directed by Michael Brandon and written by David Chaskin, Christopher Orville, and Richard P. Rubinstein himself, is the rather more costly looking of these two episodes. A quartet of young people (including Ashley Laurence and Tori Spelling) come to a supposedly haunted house to play a game of relay race style ghost story telling. Of course, they awaken something nasty that dispatches some of them gorily.

It’s a moody little tale that uses the possibilities of an actual location in addition to the house interior set nicely, with some rudimentary but effective suspense created by cutting between the ghost stories by matchstick light and the feet of the thing they awaken coming nearer and nearer. There’s decent acting, moody lighting, and even a neat gore gag. The plot is obviously nothing to write home about, but the whole thing works as the simple and straightforward tale of horror it is supposed to be.

Our second episode, “Far Below”, is an adaptation of Robert Barbour Johnson’s minor Weird Tales classic about the measures taken against Lovecraftian ghouls in the New York subway system. It was adapted by the late, great Michael McDowell – among other things the screenwriter of Beetlejuice but also a fine horror novelist – and is one of only two directing credits of the great Debra Hill, one of the major producers and sometimes writers responsible for so much that’s central to the cinema of the fantastic. The resulting episode about the guy (Barry Nelson) running the secret anti-ghoul program of the subway trying to convince a very commanding young auditor of the importance of his work is not a masterpiece, exactly. It looks even cheaper than the other episode – particularly the subway set looks like something out of late period classic Doctor Who – so much so that there’s very little camera or editing magic Hill could have done to make anything look any better. The monster suit’s pretty bad as well.

So Hill focusses mostly on Nelson’s scenery-chewing performance and the increasingly sardonic tone of McDowell’s script,  and on keeping things moving to the inevitable twist ending. Which does end up turning this into a satisfying bit of horror, if not exactly the thing one might dream up out of the combination of Hill, McDowell and a very fun classic weird tale.

Still, like with all of the better “Monsters” episodes, I can’t help leaving this one with a smile, because the show’s successes feel very much like the product of people winning out against terrible odds.

In short: Felony (1994)

A D.E.A. raid on a supposed drug house in New Orleans goes horribly wrong, and a good dozen of cops is blasted to high heaven by chewing-gum fan Cooper (David Warner) and his well-armed goons. Cooper is a rogue CIA operative who, together with his boss Taft (Lance Henriksen), has gone into the drug business to acquire enough money to free some operatives imprisoned in some unnamed South American country.

Unfortunately for Cooper and Taft, Cooper's rather impolitic slaughter has been filmed by TV reporter Bill Knight (Jeffrey Combs) and his Vietnam vet hippie buddy Robby (Patrick J. Gallagher). Bill, clearly not the brightest bulb in any chandelier, decides to not give the resulting video tape to the cops investigating the affair, Detectives Kincade (Leo Rossi) and Duke (Charles Napier).

This turns out to be something of a mistake, and soon enough the cops, Cooper and Taft and their men, as well as Cowboy spy "mediator" Donovan (Joe Don Baker) are all after Bill, some of them with rather murderous intent, others with more ambiguous ideas. Bill's only help is nurse Laura Bryant (Ashley Laurence), because we really needed at least one female character on our hero's side (otherwise, there's only Taft's evil girlfriend played by Corinna Everson to represent half of the human population), plus hey, it's Ashley Laurence.

But will that be enough for Bill to survive various shoot-outs, car-chases and double-crosses?

Ah, post Action International David A. Prior films are always something of a wonder to behold. Prior, once an utter weirdo director, had at this point in his career learned so much about the art of filmmaking he was perfectly able to just make a straightforward and cheap little action movie of the type that can never completely deny its cheapness but works so hard making the most out of what it's got it's impossible not to be at least a bit charmed by it.

That alone would be enough to recommend Prior's movies of this period (and really, most of his even cheaper Action International work too). However, it doesn't seem to have been enough for Prior himself, so Felony and its brethren not only feature the affordable amount of action but also scripts which are ever so slightly - or sometimes completely - skewed into the direction of the outré and the weird.

The script of Felony is full of Prior's typical curious mixture of just plain silliness (just try to make sense of what happened in Felony once the last act plot twists have made a mockery of sense and sensibility) and ironic self-consciousness that should really result in the sort of self-ironic winking nonsense I can't stand at all. In Prior's weirdness-experienced hands, though, what should be annoying turns charming with many a scene that is just as funny as it is fun.

Of course, given the low budget movie heaven that is Felony's cast, it's not a complete surprise that even the silliest line in the script is delivered either with scenery-chewing relish or just the right amount of self-consciousness. Everyone involved, from Combs over Laurence to Warner and Henriksen, obviously knows that much of the plot is utter nonsense and their characters aren't actually characters, yet still delves into the whole affair with a palpable sense of fun, projecting none of the bored "just cashing a cheque here, buddy" feelings you sometimes encounter in film's of Felony's price class.

As I always like to say about Prior movies: what's not to like?

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,in short,action,thriller,jeffrey combs,ashley laurence,leo rossi,charles napier,david warner,joe don baker,lance henriksen,david a. prior