Monthly Archives: October 2011

Halloween horror: ‘Walking Dead’ rocks, ‘Simpsons’ sucks

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Here we are, on the eve of Halloween, and various movie channels are having marathons, ranging from the classics on TCM to later, lesser “Halloween” movies on AMC.

Into the mix comes the latest episode of “The Walking Dead” on AMC and the latest installment of “Treehouse of Horror” on “The Simpsons” on Fox.

First, let’s make short work of “The Simpsons.”

After being a zealous fan of the show for its first 10 seasons or so — we just re-watched “Mr. Plow” on DVD the other week — I fell out of love with “The Simpsons.” A dozen years ago, the show seemed to lose most of its creative edge. Maybe you really can’t do 500 episodes of a TV series and expect it to continue to be good. Duh.

Tonight’s “Treehouse of Horror,” the show’s annual Halloween special, had a couple of funny moments but overall was pretty lame. Judging by tonight’s episode, the show has traded pointed, harsh humor and wonderful characters for cheap and crude laughs. When a joke revolves around the similarity of the words tentacles and testicles, you know the show is spinning its wheels.

On the other hand, “The Walking Dead” continues to feature some of the most gripping — as in gripping the arms of my chair — suspense on TV.

As the survivors of a zombie apocalypse take refuge on a remote farm, where their injured are treated by the kindly resident veterinarian, tensions external and internal build. Watching Shane, the conflicted deputy, make a stomach-rolling choice tonight made me wonder where the producers are going with the character.

The show is, of course, all about characters and choices. Tonight’s episode saw some discussion of a point that I’ve been expecting for a while now: What if your reaction to the end of the world was not to fight to survive, but to opt out?

If characters are considering putting themselves out of their misery on “The Walking Dead,” might it be too much to hope that Fox would consider euthanasia for “The Simpsons?”

Again, duh. After wrangling over salaries, the talented vocal actors on the show recently signed for two more seasons. There’s simply too much money to be made for Fox to consider leaving any on the table.

‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Graduation Day’

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At the close of “Graduation Day,” the final episode of the third season of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” the character Oz, the laconic werewolf, observes that their band of monster slayers had survived. No, not another epic battle with a demon. They had survived high school.

The 1999 episode — which aired months after it was originally supposed to because some panicked TV executives thought the plot was uncomfortably similar to the just-happened Columbine school massacre — marked a high-water point for the series.

In our household, we’ve made it a habit of re-watching episodes of “Buffy,” which aired for seven seasons and pre-dated the recent “Twilight”-inspired vampire craze. (And topped it in every way except for notoriety. But I digress.) Before the series was available on DVD, we watched old VHS tapes from original airings.

So, in a Halloween frame of mind, we were thinking tonight about what to watch and decided on “Graduation Day.”

If you’ve never seen “Buffy” — maybe you were put off by the deliberately ironic title, or the earlier but vastly inferior movie — you really should. As created by Joss Whedon, the series is about a typical California teenager, worried about school, friends and dating.

Buffy Summers, quite reluctantly, finds herself proclaimed as “the chosen one,” the one-girl-in-a-generation selected to battle vampires and other demons. In a tradition dating back thousands of years, as the show eventually explained, the slayer — endowed with near-superhuman power and a knack for killing vampires — is all that stands between us and the creatures lurking out there in the darkness.

Surrounding herself with a core group of friends — Xander, whose love for Buffy was unrequited, Willow, the nerd-girl pal who grew into one of the most complex characters on TV, Cordelia, the vain rich girl, and Giles, the school librarian who turned out to be a member of the Watchers Council, the group that oversees the slayers.

By the third season, Buffy (played with appealing vulnerability by Sarah Michelle Gellar) had saved the world more than a few times as she balanced the demands of school, her increasingly concerned mom and her relationship with Angel, the vampire with a soul who fought on the side of right. As played by David Boreanaz, Angel went on to star in his own spin-off series.

With graduation in the wings, Buffy’s life was complicated by the appearance of Faith (Eliza Dushku), a slayer with few of the moral complexities and doubts that plagued Buffy. By the end of the season, Faith had changed from ally to enemy and was helping the plans of the town’s mayor (the priceless Harry Groener) in his plan to transform into a huge, snake-like demon.

And eat all the newly-minted graduates.

The episode was funny and poignant and, as the series always did, defied expectations. Faith and the mayor had the kind of complex, caring relationship that the villains of most series would not. Angel took advantage of Buffy — even if it was against his will — alienating her friends.

Maybe “Graduation Day” wasn’t the scariest choice for pre-Halloween viewing. Like most “Buffy” episodes, the show was less about vampires and demons and more about the everyday horrors we all face: alienation, loss and heartache.

 

iPhoneography: Last of the Halloween photos

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With only a couple of days left until Halloween, let’s wrap up our first annual look at the stuff that caught my eye in Halloween stores (and in the aisles of department and dollars stores), shall we?

I saw a lot of creepy stuff this year. Some of it intentionally so.

I’m still not a fan of the extremely gory decor and props. And the Zombie Babies are just too much.

But there’s some whimsical stuff out there. Like this Michael Jackson costume.

And some that were whimsical and creepy, like the Charlie Sheen collection.

I think my favorite piece of decor was this floating ghost/skeleton. Check out these eyes. I would have nightmares if I walked into a dark room where this was hanging.

And you want to see something really scary? Look what season is lurking right behind the Halloween stuff:

Happy Halloween and happy holidays!

Trick-or-treating, Charlie Brown style

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“I got a rock.”

Charlie Brown’s lament — from the classic 1966 TV show “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” — has, for the past 40-some years, echoed in my head every Oct. 31.

Halloween is probably my favorite holiday, although it gets short shrift some years when such grown-up concerns as work prompts my family to push jack-o-lantern carving back to the night itself.

Then there was the year of my ill-advised suggestion that the family travel to a neighborhood on the other side of town to see what was reported to be an especially elaborate Halloween yard display. Of course, everyone else in town had that same idea and the resulting traffic jam on neighborhood streets meant that we almost — almost — didn’t get back to our own neighborhood in time for trick-or-treating.

But stressful Halloween memories are, thankfully, few for me.

I’ve enjoyed two great periods of Halloween in my life. In recent years, the chance to take my son trick-or-treating marks one of the highlights of the fall for me. Him too, I hope.

And of course, there’s the good old days. Halloween classic.

Growing up on a farm in a rural area, I never got to go trick-or-treating in my own neighborhood. Houses were few and far between and neighbors were so unaccustomed to having trick-or-treaters that you’d be better off expecting to find treats in our chicken coop.

But because my cousin Mary lived in the city, my family usually went to her house on Halloween and from there the kids went trick-or-treating.

Back then, in the 1960s, we went trick-or-treating for more than one night. Some people don’t believe me when I tell them this. Some people think we were deluding ourselves and were actually “shaking down” my cousin’s neighbors for candy several days in a row.

I’m sure that’s not true. Pretty sure.

Ahem.

Anyway. My cousin and I and several friends would set out at dark, costumes on and bags in hand, and it seemed like we ranged all over the south side of Muncie. I’ve previously noted in this blog the problems with wearing a mask over glasses. The glasses tended to fog up and reduce visibility. Being out at night, roaming over city blocks illuminated only by porch lights, made it even harder to see. My costume one particular year consisted of a painted-on beard, goofy hat and paint-spattered shirt. It was pretty low-rent but at least I could see.

As gratifying as the treats were, the tricks were just as good. One year, as our group approached a front porch, the resident of the house pulled a rope and caused a dummy to fall from a tree near us. As we shrieked and ran away from the house, other people, wearing masks and lying in wait, chased us.

We ran wildly into the street, narrowly avoiding getting hit by a passing car.

Good times.

Now when I go along as my son trick-or-treats, I get to enjoy the gruesome costumes on the older kids and the awfully cute ones on the little folks. I remind my son to say “trick or treat” and “thank you.” I carry a flashlight to help motorists see us.

It all seems pretty tame compared to my youth, when it seemed as if we roamed and pillaged across a wide swath of the city for the better part of the week.

But, you know, it’s still trick or treating and there’s not much better than that.

Carrying on Robert B. Parker’s legacy

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Me and Robert B. Parker go way back.

Sometime 20 years ago or more I bought a paperback copy of Parker’s “Taming a Seahorse” at a used book store and discovered his tough and smart Boston private eye Spenser. As written in spare — increasingly so, as the years went by — style by Parker, Spenser was a former boxer, former cop and intellectual “thug” who, like classic private eye heroes before him, took on hopeless cases and lost causes.

Spenser wasn’t a highly deductive detective. He was more likely to start pressuring peripheral players in a crime until they crumbled and pointed fingers at the Big Bad behind the scenes. Part of what was appealing, besides Spenser’s moral code, was his unwillingness to give up.

Spenser and another character created by Parker, Jesse Stone, have a lot in common. Sure there’s the series of CBS TV movies about Stone, a small town New England police chief (played on TV by Tom Selleck, who’s too old for the part but plays it to perfection). They share some of the same supporting characters but most importantly they share the same stick-to-it-iveness. Once Stone takes up a cause, be it an abused teen or victims of a sinister goon, he never gives up.

Parker, unfortunately, was mortal, unlike his best heroes, and died in January 2010. I was afraid his books and characters would die with him.

So far we haven’t heard about any other authors continuing Parker’s Sunny Randall books, or his series about stoic cowboys. But Parker’s estate and publishers have announced that a good mystery writer, Ace Atkins, will continue the Spenser novels with a new one to be published next year.

And Michael Brandman, one of the men behind the Jesse Stone TV movies, was chosen to continue the Stone books.

I wasn’t certain I would enjoy Brandman’s take, which is called “Robert B. Parker’s Killing the Blues.” But I read it this week and believe Brandman is the perfect guy to continue Stone’s advantures.

Right off the bat, Brandman makes some choices that vary from those Parker would make. He gives us a few sparing glimpses inside Stone’s mind, something Parker would pretty much only do when Stone, an alcoholic and troubled man, talked to his therapist.

Brandman also takes us — even more sparingly, thank goodness — into the head of one of Stone’s antagonists, a felon who comes seeking revenge because Stone, drunk and angry at his then-wife, had pistol-whipped the man years before. Stone’s past comes back with a vengeance in this book.

“Killing the Blues” has a lot going on, from the revenge-seeking felon to mobsters operating a murderous car theft ring to a molesting teacher to mean girls at the local high school in Stone’s picture-postcard town, Paradise.

Brandman balances it all quite well. Maybe as good as Parker at the top of his form. Maybe even better.

I’m looking forward to seeing what Ace Atkins will do with Spenser, but I’m sold on Brandman’s continuation of the Jesse Stone books. I can’t help but think Parker would approve too.

‘The Walking Dead’ rides a zombie wave

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The zombies are among us.

Actually, they are us.

Zombies — a mainstay of published fiction and movies, both gripping and cheesy, for decades — are pretty hot for a bunch of moldering, shambling flesh-eaters.

I talked to the owner of a local costume shop the other week who said that zombies appear to be the hottest Halloween costumes this year. (There’s that “they are us” thing.)

Max Brooks’ clever and gripping “World War Z” is being made into a film starring Brad Pitt, the latest in a long string of movies dating back to Bela Lugosi in “White Zombie.” One of my personal favorites, “The Serpent and the Rainbow,” gave a macabre “real life” feel to the walking dead.

Oh yeah, the walking dead. Or more precisely, “The Walking Dead.”

You may not be inclined to sit down and watch the AMC series version of Robert Kirkman’s comic book “The Walking Dead.” I wasn’t sure if the series, the first season of which debuted about a year ago, was going to work.

But it has. The second-season premiere last week drew more than 7 million viewers — a record for AMC, the channel that has given us “Mad Men” and “Breaking Bad.”

If all those viewers come back tonight, despite last week’s grisly and impromptu zombie autopsy and rumors of troubles among the behind-the-scenes writers and producers, it’s a testimony to our love of zombies.

Now “The Walking Dead” isn’t in the same league, for me at least, as the FX rural crime drama “Justified” or the aforementioned “Mad Men.” It’s no “Lost,” although we can all hope “The Walking Dead” avoids that show’s pitfalls.

But there’s something compelling about “The Walking Dead.”

Clear back to George Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead” and its great sequel, “Dawn of the Dead,” it was pretty obvious that the heart of any good zombie tale was the people — the living, breathing, non-shambling people — it focused on.

It’s easy to say that “The Walking Dead” is a metaphor for modern life, the same way “Dawn of the Dead” was a commentary on our culture and a chance to see some poor schmuck’s guts get torn out.

But it’s not just the commentary on friendship and family and the willingness to fight the futility of life that makes “The Walking Dead” worthwhile. The characters are compelling. You want them to live. You want them to escape with their limbs and minds intact.

Even as you wonder how they possibly can.

As I watched last week’s season opener, I wondered how the kid characters in the show could possibly avoid post traumatic stress disorder or any number of waking nightmares after what they’ve experienced at a very young age. How can any of the adults, for that matter?

So while followers of Kirkman’s comic books know there are a lot of miles and a lot of twisted and twisty plot developments to come, most of us can just enjoy the show’s unfolding story.

One moldering, shambling moment at a time.

‘The Help’ strikes a chord

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At some point while we were watching “The Help,” my wife nudged me and pointed out a restaurant in Jackson, Mississippi, in the background in one scene of the movie, where’s she eaten. Her old high-school got name-checked, and so did a familiar grocery store chain, Jitney Jungle.

Yes, you might say the movie — and the book on which it’s based — is familiar territory for her. Literally.

And those who know my family know that its topic — relations between the races in the broadest terms — is one that’s dear to us.

I haven’t read the book, by Kathryn Stockett, but my wife liked it pretty well, although she was boggled by the idea that its events — the struggle of black maids in pre-civil-rights-era Mississippi — took place only a few years before she grew up there.

The movie — which showcases some wonderful actresses, from Viola Davis to Octavia Spencer to Emma Stone to Bryce Dallas Howard, who plays a reprehensible and pathetic racist — is good and manages to avoid the pitfalls of movies like “Mississippi Burning,” which relegated its black characters to the background in favor of the adventures of heroic white FBI agents.

There’s some comfort in watching the movie and not only feeling smug about the foolishness of racism but thinking about how much attitudes have changed. Even in Mississippi.

As someone with an abiding interest in tolerance, I think I was struck most by sympathy for the people who suffered, many mightily, through the depths of segregation and racism in the south as well as awe at how different our lives might have been if attitudes hadn’t changed.

“The Help” is a moment, frozen in time. Thankfully, that time has passed.

Falls of the Ohio

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One of the best things about a trip to the Louisville area is on the Indiana side of the Ohio River: The Falls of the Ohio State Park.

If you’ve never been, it’s more than worth a visit. Remember learning about trilobites in science class? Well, thousands of the fossilized marine creatures are embedded in the rocky floor of the falls area. The nearly-400-million-year-old fossil beds are the main attraction of the park.

Depending on the time of year and level of the river — which is usually held back by a 30-foot dam — visitors can walk far out onto the floor of the falls.

When I was there for a visit last fall, the river level was low and you could very nearly walk out to the dam. This week, the water level was quite high and the water was rolling violently.

The effects of the variable water level are obvious in the photo below. High above the water level we found this week were piles and piles of driftwood that had washed up onto the banks.

While the fossil beds are cool and the raging waters were impressive, one of the best reasons to go to the Falls of the Ohio is the peace and beauty of being close to nature — but still close to civilization, with New Albany on the Indiana side and Louisville on the Kentucky side.

Here’s the website for the DNR park if you want to explore further.

(Photos with this blog were taken by me in October 2011.)

It’s Sammy Terry time

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Two weeks from tonight is Halloween. It’s a night for tricks and treats, as they said on the old “Peanuts” special, and it’s Sammy Terry’s night.

With just two weeks to go, I was afraid time would get away from me and I wouldn’t write about the Indianapolis TV horror movie host before it was too late. So here are my Sammy memories, a little early.

I’ve talked to Sammy in phone interviews a few times and met him once. It was the mid-1980s and I did a story about Sammy for the newspaper. I spoke with Bob Carter, Sammy’s mild-mannered, music-store-owning alter ego, over the phone in advance of an appearance at Muncie Mall and then met him when he was putting on his makeup at the mall before going on stage.

An earlier interview with Sammy remains one of my most nightmarish newspaper experiences. I wasn’t working full-time at the paper yet so I went to the office to make the long-distance call — remember those? — and took along a tape recorder and suction-cup-type recording device to attach to the phone.

I had used it before but this time something — the way I connected it to the phone, the florescent lights — fouled up the recording. I didn’t know until after I ended the conversation, of course, and was panicked when I couldn’t hear anything but a low hum on the tape when I tried to listen to it.

I wondered for a moment about calling Sammy back, but I decided not to. Instead, I sat down and furiously scribbled notes of everything I could remember from the interview. The resulting article was pretty lackluster and had virtually no quotes.

The later interview, before his Muncie appearance, went much more smoothly. Nothing notable, really, but Carter — who spoke in normal tones but whose voice was instantly recognizable as the TV ghoul who had presented classic monster movies and scared a couple of generations of  Central Indiana kids to death — was friendly and modest.

By the 1980s, Carter had a lot of great stories. He claimed to have invented the Kentucky Fried Chicken slogan “finger lickin’ good” during a live commercial, and who’s to say he did not? He talked about how the company that donated the casket from which he rose at the start of each show IN NO WAY wanted to be identified or credited because of potential complaints from the families of customers.

Carter was a pro long before this point, having done the show on WTTV Channel 4 since the early 1960s. He was gracious to a young journalist who was also a fan.

When my friends Jim and Derek and I went to meet him at Muncie Mall, he let us come into a back room while he applied his makeup and even posed for a picture right before going on stage at center court, where he delighted a lot of parents and kids — and probably scared a few too.

These days, Carter’s son is appearing as Sammy Terry. The younger version was in Muncie back in September and is probably making a few bucks — and making a lot of people smile.

More power to him. And more power to the original.

Pleasant nightmares, Sammy.

My worst Halloween memory

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More than 40 years later, I remember the trauma if not the details: When we were elementary school kids at Cowan in the 1960s, we were allowed to wear our Halloween costume to school for that most wonderful of kid holidays.

Most of my memories of Halloween are happy ones: Trick-or-treating with my cousin Mary and friends in her neighborhood, showing off our costumes and collecting great treats.

One year  at Cowan, we got to put on a Halloween costume parade for the entire school.

What a treat … or so it seemed at first.

The teachers lined us all up, in our costumes, and led us through the school. Since all 12 grades were in two big buildings, we got to show off for everybody, even kids as old as high schoolers.

The damn, damn high schoolers.

I don’t remember what my costume was this particular year. But it was  a typical 1960s-era costume like those made by Ben Cooper or Collegeville: A hard plastic mask, secured to my head with an elastic band, and a cheap plastic tunic. If it was an Aquaman or Spock or any number of other similar costumes, the tunic, as you can see from the photos here, was anything but subtle. Instead of being an accurate recreation of the character’s costume from comic books or TV, it was emblazoned with the character’s name in big, dorky letters.

I loved it.

Well, the mask left something to be desired, but I ran into the same problems with every Halloween mask. I was a kid who had worn glasses since the middle of first grade, and masks didn’t work out very well. The masks got warm and my glasses fogged up and I tended to walk into things.

But that year, the parade was going pretty well. I could still see through my glasses as well as the narrow eye slits of whatever the heck costume I was wearing.

I could see well enough, in fact, to notice — too late to do anything about it — one of the high schoolers reach out and pull my mask off my face as I walked past his classroom desk.

He pulled the mask out far enough, of course, that the crappy elastic band broke and my mask came off.

I’m pretty sure I completed the rest of the Halloween parade with my now-useless mask in my hand. I say I’m pretty sure that was the case because I don’t really remember it. The final part of the parade was a blur of tears and frustration.

There’s no final twist, ala Rod Serling, to the story. It didn’t turn out that the offending high schooler was my big brother or anything. I never knew his name. I can still kind of see his laughing face as he pulled my mask off.

I wish I could say that when I became a teenager I found the now-grownup miscreant and soaped his windows. That didn’t happen, though.

If anybody reading this was a high-schooler at Cowan in the 1960s and remembers ripping the mask off a little dork with glasses, I have just just two things to say to you:

Do you remember what my costume was? Because I can’t for the life of me.

And what nursing home do you live in now? Because I just might come by and put a kink in your IV drip.