Ghosts of Fear Street (1998)

 

Director: Ken Kwapis

Screenplay: Karl Schaefer

Based on the book series by R.L. Stein

Cast: Christopher Rich as PJ Murphy; Talia Balsam as Anne Murphy; Vincent Berry as Joe Murphy; Alexandra Breckenridge as Kit Murphy; Azura Skye as Cricket; Cameron Finley as Mickey; Red Buttons   as Grandpa; Alan Wilder as Safety Czar; Rick Overton as Fred the Bugman

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Shows)

 

Metamorphosis must be a rush!

Whilst Fear Street is a book series for young teens I had never heard of, I am fully aware of R.L. Stein, whose Goosebumps series was one I grew up on. Arguably, the first tastes of horror I got into as a small boy, and meaningful for all that means, I have nothing but admiration for him, alongside the vague recollections of the Goosebumps television series, screened in the United Kingdom, and the Goosebumps board game which, whilst with so many mechanical parts to it, I wished I still had and would have been something someone would have relicensed as a niche product for my age group. Prolific, Stein's book series Fear Street returned in 2021, when director/co-writer Leigh Janiak was able to put together a trilogy shot side-by-side and set in three different time periods, made over a period of multiple years beforehand. The films - Fear Street Part One: 1994, Fear Street Part Two: 1978 and Fear Street Part Three: 1666 - ended up being a Netflix streaming exclusive in 2021. This review is not those films, but a fragment which, as a twenty minute television pilot, barely shows what it would have been, which does present a potential challenge in reviewing, but is worth talking of.

It also presents the most mid-nineties thing from the get-go, for the opening credits, imagining the famous Dancing Baby meme, a piece of early animation from that era, re-imagined by very crude CGI dancing skeletons over the opening credits. I found it amusing, but it is definitely an acquired taste. More likely to interest is that, not wasting time, a young boy discovers his friend has turned into a spider creature due to a science project going wrong. With web shooters now under his arm pits, as he has already petrified his family and others, even a group in the middle of a game of Twister, threatening to suck out his friend's juices with a bendy drinking straw.

This is of course the story being written by PJ Murphy (Christopher Rich), a horror author for teens, an R.L. Stein stand-in, who has a family. This is where there not being any other pieces to this version of Fear Street, or a longer pilot, does become an issue, as you are left with questions to where this would this have gone. This sets up a wacky horror sit-com where Fear Street, which exists in this world, is a real place the family intends to go to so the wife's father can be moved, closing down the ghoulish bed and breakfast he was running with his late wife. The place is clearly haunted, where PJ was clearly basing his tales with some exaggeration on real things there, the snippets here offering a silly but potential rewarding work. Sadly as mentioned, you barely scrape the surface of the premise due to the quick pace of this short pilot.

There is the legacy of an uncle who just one day, out of curiosity as grandpa tells the kids, stuck a lightning bolt into his heart one day. In the background, someone has clearly antagonised the God of Crows for a one scene joke. There are the moments of seriousness too. Of the wife coming here initially wishing to close the bed and breakfast out of fear her children will be bullied as she was for living in Fear Street, the show that never was one which could have ran with her coming to terms with this place when she changes her mind, or that one of the sons, able to see ghosts, not only finds them an invisible ghost dog named Spooky, but can see her recently passed mother. There are also the characters I wished would have had a sitcom. They are namely Kristina, who prefers "Cricket" (Azura Skye), the cool Goth girl who names her spiders after Gigantor and Rodan who the older daughter of the family immediately finds is the best friend forever, even a possible sudden crush, in her cobweb and insect collection filled bedroom. Or there is her father Fred (Rick Overton), the bug man who PJ grew up with whose panic attacks cause him to turn into a bug.

The show, including some very crude CGI, could have been something I watched on Fox Kids or Nickelodeon, the potential Sabrina the Teenage Witch substitute, another show I openly was binging as a kid, in combining the supernatural with comedy. This was shown on television unlike pilots which never did, but never got to be successful however. Instead, it feels like an obscure marker for people involved who would progress in long careers before and after. Fear Street itself would resurface through Leigh Janiak's project as a director, and a co-writer, in the three films, but the director Ken Kwapis would be prolific in television and film, a man you may know for License to Wed (2007) with Robin Williams, one of the divisive Williams film, or The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (2005), or Follow That Bird (1985), a Sesame Street film, a journeyman if in the type of programming I openly I do not pay attention to. Everyone here was already in careers, and so ahead, in television, and if you were among the teenager/kid cast here, you could have been Alexandra Breckenridge as the eldest daughter who started here, who would go on in the lives of The Walking Dead and American Horror Story. The one exception, but showing how footnotes like this weave a variety of different media together, is that the grandfather is Red Buttons, a comedian/television and film star, and Oscar winner, who would still be working close to his 2006 passing, connecting this to classic Hollywood and the early forties/fifties era of American television in his presence.

Even the writer Karl Schaefer, who created the cult favourite Eerie, Indiana (1991-2), and was probably looking for an equivalent horror show for kids here, was producing and writing shows decades later, leaving this the alternative time line piece where, if it had been picked up, it would have been interesting what the show had become but also what it would have done for people beyond a potential audience with nostalgia for it decades later. All these figures' lives would have had this be prominent in their careers, and you could speculate how many other people we could tie to its legacy even if it had gotten only a single series. Sadly, it never got that series, and the content onscreen is not enough to really judge the virtues, only offer a tempting taste, a fun and breezy comedy horror production that would have likely been a sitcom in tone. The better world would have had at least one season or a feature length TV pilot, if anything, come to be, but that sadly was not meant to be.  

Father of the Pride (2004-5)

 

Creators: Jeffrey Katzenberg and Jonathan Groff

Directors: Klay Hall, John Stevenson, Mark Risley, Bret Haaland, John Holmquist, John Puglisi, Steve Hickner, Mark Baldo and Mike de Seve

Screenplay: Jonathan Groff, Ben Kull, David R. Goodman, Glasgow Phillips, Jon Ross, Jean Yu, Vanessa McCarthy, Jon Pollack, Ron Weiner, Mike Barker, Robert Cohen, Peter Mehlman, Matt Weitzman, Josh Bycel and Jonathan Fener

Voice Cast: John Goodman as Larry, Cheryl Hines as Kate, Orlando Jones as Snack, Carl Reiner as Sarmoti, Danielle Harris as Sierra, David Herman as  Roy, Julian Holloway as Siegfried, Daryl Sabara as Hunter

Ephemeral Waves

 

Hello, security camera! Here is one crime you cannot stop! [lifts shirt] I stole a six pack.

Out of the cancelled shows I have covered, I vividly remember the time this was released, as it was on Sky One in the United Kingdom, but it is interesting to see the show beyond mere memories in its entirety. What the show is in context, a sitcom done in digital animation about a family of white lions, is a lot more deceptive then that merely suggests as a premise. For starters, that this is a DreamWorks Animation production is of note, as where this show's story really begins is arguably 1994, when Steven Spielberg, former Disney executive Jeffrey Katzenberg, and music executive David Geffen founded the company. Only a few years prior, DreamWorks would have a cultural hit in Shrek (2001), followed by Shrek 2 (2004), so this would have been a time of the company riding high. Also working in television, they decided here to take a sitcom with the same logic, only with a more adult sense of humour, in that you have some big names in the voice cast, and all based on the lives of Siegfried Fischbacher and Roy Horn, two German emigrants to the United States who, combining magic with trained wild animals onstage, became staples in Las Vegas. With Siegfried and Roy on as executive producers, Father of the Pride is an irrelevant toned sitcom which follows a pride of lions, as a stereotypical nuclear family, living in the magicians' private zoo "The Secret Garden".

The sitcom archetypes are on full display, matched by the eclectic voice cast. The overweigh, lovable but emotionally clumsy patriarch Larry is the new top lion in the stage shows, perfectly cast by John Goodman, a great actor and a really big figure to cast in a show meant to last. The loving and very patient wife Kate, played by Curb Your Enthusiasm alumni Cheryl Hines; daughter Sierra, played by Danielle Harris, originally a child actress in Halloween 4 (1988) and Halloween 5 (1989), who in a few years from this show would be cast in Rob Zombie's 2007 Halloween film and become a cult genre actress alongside her voice acting work at this period; Daryl Sabara-, of the Spy Kids franchise as Hunter, the sensitive young son more inclined to Lord of the Rings; Orlando Jones as Snack, Larry's best friend and a gopher; and to play to the sitcom trope of in-laws and not getting on with them, Carl Reiner as Sarmoti, Larry's father-in-law who originates from Africa but, with the choice of phrase Reiner uses, is played as a disapproving Jewish father-in-law who, once the top lion and still a chronic womaniser, digs at Larry constantly as a putz.

We will get to Siegfried and Roy themselves for their own paragraph, as staying with the animal cast their narratives take up most of the episodes' short narratives, fully investing in the structure of a sitcom but with the complication of these still being wild animals, even if anthropomorphized and living in houses. Some of the humour of the entire series has aged - too broad, some very politically incorrect, especially all the gay jokes, and some time capsules to the early to mid 2000s, the "Lost Episode" which is rebuilt from the recorded dialogue against sketch board images basing a large part of its narrative around Siegfried and Roy wanting to update their stage show with a giant sexy animatronic of American singer Jessica Simpson. You can even map out when the show was made because of the episode where Donkey from Shrek appears, voiced by Eddie Murphy, interpreted as an actor from the success Shrek films who does car commercials and has a stunt double to accidentally kidnap.

But when the series works, which is most of the time, what on so many levels is a show with too many factors against it being even pleasant to sit through, not even getting into the choice of CGI animation, it is hilarious and a good show. The only time the show ever misses badly, beyond an ill-advised decision to create a new pilot recycling footage from the first, is an episode about Kate, when in election part of the school education system, accidentally making a racist comment against turkeys. As a take on the complex issue of representation, yes, if you take the premise of turkeys as a metaphor, which is a murky, misbegotten tangent to make am episode from even if some jokes within it are funny.

The interesting thing is that the decision to be more mature and adult, in spite of jokes which have aged badly, alongside the voice cast is why the show works, where by the second episode what is the standard joke of the father-in-law moving in progresses to the idea of Larry and Kate picking up a stray drunk zebra in a bar to consider killing, all because she in a fit of rage destroyed her father's precious zebra skin rug and they need a replacement. Jokes throughout admit, despite being civilised, the locals in The Secret Garden could still eat each other, and Larry references having done so in the past, and one episode takes this to an extreme moral choice of whether Larry should let Snack know his new girlfriend has just dumped him or lie and say he ate her. Even without the large list of guest stars alone - Lisa Kudrow as a depressed female panda, Dom DeLuise as one of Sarmoti's poker buddies - the humour really plays off the absurdity of humanising animals, playing the sitcom tropes, but not losing the idea of them being animals, such as the unfinished level even making a plot point Hunter wanting a dog and, his own sentient figure, said dog working out a contract with Larry even if stolen from his original owner.

Sometimes it is proudly silly, such as a lobster (voiced by Danny De Devito) in a fight for his life against Barbara Streisand (not voiced by her), which is why a lot of the show manages to succeed. For everything which does not work, other moments of humour gain a lot either from the writing or the cast, such as the reoccurring gag of an Indian elephant being defensive about the turkey he is living with being just a roommate, or that the white tigers in this world are middle class and the lions are working class.

Stealing the show however is Siegfried and Roy themselves, Siegfried voiced by British actor Julian Holloway, a veteran of old British television and whose filmography includes multiple appearances within the prolific Carry On franchise of sex comedies, whilst Roy is voiced by David Herman, an actor and comedian whose also is a prolific voice actor. Even though they are played, with broad German accents, as buffoons in their own worlds, it is heartening to know the real magicians were executive producers and let this caricature exist, especially as the pair in this series was hilarious and never felt like a mean joke. A pair of pure ids, of energy and passion, who are however alien to the logic of the real world, Siegfried and Roy are always comic foils, even if they influence the narratives, but the bizarre scenarios they are involved in are however always highlights of the episodes. It is always golden, whether an entire episode of them wishing to have a Big Gulp, hijacking a convenience store at night, or Siegfried was exposing his gambling habit in a random attempt at kindness.

I have mentioned the animation only briefly, and at the time, this would have once been good quality 3D animation for television, but this has aged even more than some of the humour has. It does not detract from the show, but you wish in hindsight 2D animation was used. This became prominent with the aforementioned "Lost Episode", included on the DVD release, told in just drawings but showing how dynamic the characters would have been, even the potential for more elaborate onscreen jokes likely to have been possible as one sees, a shady bar for depressed alcoholic magicians which would have not been as inventive in CGI. More than any show, this is a case despite being animated where the non-visual content is the more rewarding part.

So much worked that you could have salvaged the production with another season, with enough virtues found that it would have progressed and improved. The show itself as a production tragically has to live in the shadow of when, in 2003 before the show would premiere a year later, Roy Horn was mauled onstage by one of their tiger, a really gruesome moment of coincidence to have. Father of the Pride however kept going, still given a chance in spite of this incident where thankfully Roy, who also suffered a stroke at the same time, would recover. Ultimately though, even with a real life tragedy that could have led to the show being shelved if it had been worse, this was a case of a show which premiered on a huge hype train which dwindled in interest for viewers.

Out of fourteen episodes made, two were not even shown in the United States, one of them the original version of the pilot, and there was the "Lost Episode" on the DVD. There is a sense of a show which never kept momentum, and in some cases was not well presented. Sadly, the episode never shown in the States, The Siegfried and Roy Fantasy Experience Movie, was one of the funniest Siegfried and Roy subplots, whilst the re-making of the pilot was a waste of resources.  Whilst it is funny in the new footage that, wishing to get Larry a psychiatrist, Siegfried and Roy go to Kelsey Grammer, playing himself, who just played a psychiatrist in a famous show, it is a waste of time in terms of putting it together Frankenstein-like from the original pilot. Altogether, there is a sense of a show that, whilst everything with it works, was just fated not to succeed, which is sad in hindsight to have. Baring one horrible real life incident, there are cases where shows even if they were flawed gems like this one never caught on, and television has a lot of casualties over the decades which merely did not attracted enough attention.

Cougar Town Season 1 (2009-2010)

 

Created by Kevin Biegel and Bill Lawrence

Cast: Courteney Cox as Jules Cobb; Christa Miller as Ellie Torres; Busy Philipps as Laurie; Dan Byrd as Travis Cobb; Josh Hopkins as Grayson Ellis; Ian Gomez as Andy Torres; Brian Van Holt as Bobby Cobb

Ephemeral Waves

 

What led to me even watching this show? Pure chance, and since I had the first season at hand, I felt a curiosity to delve into this, the least expected review as this a very mainstream non-abstract production, a sitcom co-created by Bill Lawrence, the creator of Scrubs, starring Friends alumni Courteney Cox as a single mother in her forties struggling with single romantic life. This is, again, alien to what I usually watch even as someone who grew up with Bill Lawrence, but this is a fascinating thing to attempt to review, forcing me into different pastures in terms of entertainment. This show also has, in its main cast, alumni from John from Cincinnati(2007) and Clone High (2002), very unconventional one season shows which emphases how for many stars of strange and abstract work, they are merely part of their regular day jobs alongside shows like this. Think of this review as the mirror reflecting back at their regular day jobs.

Sold, for the British DVD, on the double meaning of "Cougar" - set in Florida, where cougars are found, and the euphemism for very sexually open older women who date younger men - that title did eventually become a joke, to the point it was considered to be changed¹ and was even mocked. After the initial story of Jules, a recently divorced mother of one who decides to throw herself into the life of a bachelorette hard, including to date a man half her age, the show becomes more openly about a group of friends around her, setting up a template of normalcy being kept baring a season long set of character plots.  

Covering a show like this is perversely idiosyncratic for someone who covers unconventional cinema, especially as this is a modern sitcom, structurally where, rather than the live audience (or canned) laughter, this is a regular comedic show set in the fictional town of Gulfhaven, with a few sets focused on². It is still felt to have some budget for more elaborate events, and at least one real alligator wrangled in one scene for a gag of one wandering into Jules' back garden by the pool, but is still restricted in a limited world baring that of the cast themselves. This cast is Jules and those in her orbit.

Her best friend and neighbour Ellie, played by , the wife of co-creator Bill Lawrence and the voice of Cleopatra in Clone High, playing a misanthropic stay-at-home mother who delights in gossip and teasing people, her husband Andy (Ian Gomez)  a lovable and doting figure is the complete opposite to her but means, whilst eccentric, their relationship is clearly with love. Laurie (Busy Philipps), Jules' assistant at her real estate business who is her other friend, a younger woman brazen in her habit of flirting with men, drinking and terrible choices in boyfriends. Jules' ex-husband Bobby, played by Brian Van Holt of John from Cincinnati, a lovable boob of a man who spends the series living in a boat in a parking lot, and their adult son Travis (Dan Byrd), always awkwardly stepping in when his mother or someone is having a frank sex conversation or if she says something weird. And Jules' neighbour Grayson (Josh Hopkins), seemingly the chad as he has women half his age always at his place at night just for sex, but with chemistry with Jules that becomes a huge plot point over the first season.

Taking Season One by itself, over twenty four episodes around twenty minutes each, you see a show (produced for ABC originally) trying to be naughtier knowing they cannot have any real nudity or even cursing as a broadcast show. It stumbles into a few jokes which has not aged well, actually tasteless nowadays, and sometimes you realise when this show was made as they make pop culture references like about the band Vampire Weekend. It does, in spite of its frankness about sex, reach a glass ceiling, and it is oddly naive and awkward when occasionally bringing up certain topics, such as anyone being gay, which is a shame considering this also has, in Andy and Bobby, a pure bromance despite them both being heterosexual, with celebration dances and butt slapping completely comfortable for both.

But for all those times which can be an issue, or how it became conventional or syrupy, as a show set in a well off middle class white community, it suddenly could make me laugh quite a few times per episode. It is not a show set in reality, a broad and exaggerated world when the behaviour is at times random and strange, succeeding and bolstered not because of its huge star Courteney Cox in truth but by the rest of the cast. Whilst she is central, as an executive producer and the star the main narratives hang around, Cox is merely the tent pole for her own show, and the only time it ever refers back to Friends is a one episode guest star in Lisa Kudrow, playing completely against her Friends character as a ball busting older dermatologist. In contrast, more is probably made of musician Sheryl Crow, in more than one episode, as a possible love interest for Grayson, adding another connection to my usual unconventional reviews as she had a very early role, before she was famous, in Cop Rock(1990).

The entirety of Cougar Town for me, in terms of entertainment, was whenever the scripts were openly silly and due to the rest of the main cast. This helps as some of the Jules main stories actually do paint the cast in a negative light. Jules being told to dump her significantly younger boyfriend in the first few episodes, just because, is actually unlikable, and everyone trying to get her back to drinking later on in the season is as bad when you take a step back from that episode too. Better instead is keeping her an absurd character, in the affluence middle class world that can afford a swimming pool in the back garden, which is still likable but also odd, in one episode loving her new bathroom, with a couch, so much she refuses to leave the room. Instead, it is that Ellie is such a misanthropic you strangely like, or Laurie is a bubbly and bright figure, which won me over, or that eventually the group of Andy, Bobby and Grayson become a fun trio of older men. The show to its credit is a case where the female cast are allowed to be diverse and interesting, but the men are also interesting; it is something far more positive, than crass machismo, about a bunch of middle age guys who do stupid things but also have a lot more responsibility on their shoulders, their type of bro behaviour more staying up all night in their boxers and cowboy hats, drinking or dancing to Enya, than anything remotely dubious. Particularly as well as, with that example leading them into Ellie's bedroom, when she is trying to sleep only for her to join in the drinking, no one in the stick in the mud or a butt of jokes, just willing to all hang out, abruptly appear in each others' home or drinking a lot of wine.

It produces a dichotomy, which is for the better in enjoying the show, that in the midst of many conventional stereotypes, there are thankfully many lovably eccentric characters that get to indulge in scenes silly for the sake of it. A man-on-man stare down where the loser, listening to a song meant to make men cry, weeps. A game of "penny can", a game invented by Bobby I am aware is going to be a running gag over seasons, which includes guessing trivia on him to lead the loser to telling him Jules is dating Grayson, including the fact he would flirt with an Ewok if one was put in a dress. A running gag over two episodes over a red balloon, not one from a French children's short film but from a car dealership promotion day which leads to prize money if caught, or the ultimate taboo being if you acquire your cooking meat from a petting zoo. The fact that everyone, even Ellie and Laurie, really like each other even if, in one case between Ellie and Grayson, you put up an entire set of Christmas decorations out of season just to torment the other.

Production wise, I have found television can significantly be restricted in pushing its visual and technical side, due to their schedules and their formats, here an example. This is bright and colourful, with many rooms looking like they are from the world of glamorous furniture catalogues, but the one real moment of artistry I can think of in the whole season, when Jules wishes to have a night out boozing, is when the episode stage all the events that transpire in photographs, which is beautifully executed and beautifully mirrored by the men's night out, done the same way, set to Thin Lizzy's The Boys Are Back In Town. This production style, to be honest, is one I except even if I am the type of person who prefers more creative productions regardless of budget. The one exception, since I have brought up music, which I wish would removed in future seasons is the musical choices, as there are a lot of montages of characters pondering their regrets set to post-post-grunge rock I could have lived without.

There is after this the question of where Cougar Town will go. Season One is light-hearted and each episode breezes past quickly with only Jules and Grayson's relationship the main dynamic. One of the factors which has scared me off shows with many seasons is that it is a long commitment to make (Cougar Town having six) and that there is a danger, mid-way through, you could have both a gradual decline, or even a rot set it, when the premise is lost, or you find yourself not really interested in the series at all, where people would sensibly quit after that point. Many series, unless they are cancelled only after one, tend to change and find their personality more onwards, so I could see Cougar Town evolve over the next season. One additional factor, which is inexplicable, is that we never got the fifth and final seasons in the United Kingdom, which is a curious hurdle, but that is for another time. Whilst it may be weird to cover this show when I should be covering avant-garde and psychotronic productions, there is a perverse glee to see this through and at least see what would happen over said seasons.

 

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1) As mentioned in the article HERE

2) The pub Grayson owns and works at is perfect for pondering the reoccurring sets in sitcoms, watching the solitary female extra in their red and white bar staff uniforms walking behind the leads in the background in every scene. Contemplating the staging, even contemplating whether they could afford more elaborate background extras or whether, even with Friends a decade before this, they have to work under a budget.

The Ghost Writer (1990)

 

Director: Alan Rafkin

Screenplay: Alan Spencer

Cast: Anthony Perkins as Anthony Strack; Leigh Taylor-Young as Elizabeth Strack; Joshua John Miller as Edgar Strack (as Josh Miller); Juliet Sorci as Cindy Strack; Pam Matteson as Miss Blasko

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Shows) #33

 

Let me have a bit of man to hanged man talk.

Looking for some horror television ephemera, I spotted an unaired Anthony Perkins project, a pilot for a horror tinged sitcom two years before his death shot in front of a live audience and written by Alan Spencer, who worked on the Dirty Harry/Action film cop comedy parody Sledge Hammer! (1986-88). It is intriguing on paper and, with Anthony Perkins in the limelight as Anthony Strack, a successful horror author with his newly married second wife attempting to adapt to his macabre lifestyle, it offers a lot to a talented actor who was sadly type casted by Norman Bates in Psycho (1960). The irony is that Bates was an incredible performance from him if you return to it, so the typecasting was tragic entirely because people did not consider his acting talents could be stretched beyond such characters. So if anything, the show even if what reminded was an unfinished and un-premiered television pilot could still show Perkins doing comedy, which was enticing.

It definitely gives him a great entrance, for this pilot which is only available even with a clock on the left, from its surviving video source,  when he walks in to his new wife Elizabeth (Leigh Taylor-Young) carrying a medieval axe nonchalantly. Strack is an author who, living up to his reputation, lives in a gothic mansion where he earnings have helped acquire the spookiest atmosphere, full of occult objects, books, and even torture and execution devices as ornaments like an Iron Maiden. After the tragic death of his first wife, falling down the stairs, his new wife is trying her hardest to deal with her new surroundings whilst his new step-daughter, a child, is immediately creped out by the new location. It does not help his biological son Edger (Joshua John Miller) is a strange and morbid new sibling, and the housekeeper is a buxom witchy woman with striking red/orange hair able to squeeze an orange into juice directly in a glass without tools. That and her weird relationship with Edger which gets into sexual innuendo that would be far more inappropriate in the modern day; that and the one weirdly incestuous joke where Perkins' Strack comments his son is one of the only people happy to be spanked for bad behaviour.

This is on paper what happens when a suburbia yuppie remarried into the Addams Family, with more for an adult audience or at least jokes meant to get a reaction from the live audience whilst not going too far. As a sitcom, it is shot with fixed cameras on sets, though there is some creativity on display, showing Strack trying to come up with new ideas in one scene by having actors play out a plan for one in the background, the background entirely in darkness until a light illuminates a brother at the funeral of the other sibling in a creative touch. For the most part though, it is mostly the production design which is elaborate, even in the VHS fuzz, appropriately atmospheric and fur for a show playing to ghoulish laughs, like Edgar playing with a guillotine in the background with magic show effects transpiring. They even created a cooked pig puppet for one scene, spitting out an apple at Perkins, all for a single gag of why you need to cook your meat thoroughly, or an entire graveyard set for father-son reconciliation involving a gravedigger too fond of wanting to show Strack around at all the graves of people who died in interesting ways.

Tragically, The Ghost Writer is also full of cringe worthy material. Under thirty minutes, you get some truly creaky and corny moments, where one pun was so bad you can audibly hear an audience member groan. I speak as someone who really cut himself off from television as a constant stream, so there is an inherent interest in these genres now I do not have them as a continuous form. There is however with this a lot that is contrived and is terrible. The actual plot is that the first wife still looms over Strack, like a comedic version of Rebecca (1940) with a painting also involved, but large parts of this show is just a lot of unfunny puns which drag on relentlessly. It is a shame, as the one virtue is that Perkins is good.

He is an older man here and, sadly, it does not seem a surprise he would pass soon after this production in a couple of years, but he is dynamic in this role. It is one of the funnier aspects of the show that Strack is a really charming figure, actually a sweet person despite his morbid household, which Perkins taps into fully, barely batting an eye when his son plays the old trick of a pair of false legs hanging off the ceiling to scare his new sister into believing he has hung himself, or when his first wife reappears as a skeleton. And the premise could have still worked, only with the writing drastically improved upon. This did not get a release however. Instead of exterior shots, you get "Exterior house shot to follow", and there are not even end credits. The internet has thankfully made this available, even if as a preservation archive it and digital hard drives are not as wise to use as people may presume. Hence that, even if I thought this was a terrible piece of cheese at times, a perfect world would have had this as a restored DVD extra, and a better world would have made this even just last one season series with significantly better writing because the premise could have worked immensely.

Heil Honey I'm Home! (1990)

 

Director: Juliet May

Screenplay: Geoff Atkinson and Paul Wayne

Cast: Neil McCaul as Adolf Hitler, Denica Fairman as  Eva Braun, Gareth Marks as  Arny Goldenstein, Caroline Gruber as  Rosa Goldenstein; Patrick Cargill as  Neville Chamberlain; Laura Brattan as  Ruth

Obscurities, Oddities and One-Offs

 

I'm a very, very bad Hitler!

Just after Dad's Army (1968-77), a famous British television series in which an aging home guard in the middle of World War II train to protect Britain under the leadership of Lindsay Anderson regular Arthur Lowe, the satellite television station Galaxy followed up with a pilot which that announcer states "And unless Arthur Lowe defeats him, it's the man himself in a few moments in Heil Honey, I'm Home!, as the Galaxy Comedy Weekend continues.". Thus, almost haphazardly, the male voice over narrator for the station perfectly set up the last words for what was to be one of the most infamous TV pilots ever to be created and broadcasted. What never really is documented, at least in materials I learnt of this show as I grew up, was that the show was meant to be subversive, not merely a misguided idea to image Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun as stars of a sitcom, with a canned laughter track and Jewish neighbours the Goldensteins, without meaning to intentionally play this as the dark joke. It was also designed as a found footage project - that, in a fictional content, a producer named Brendan Thalbury had created at least eight episodes, only for it to disappear and be rediscovered on the Burbank back lot. With its all bright and cheery sitcom theme tune, the premise clearly was designed with a purpose.

The issue, and why it misfired so badly, is tone. This, if anything is the perfect example I can now point to for a pet theory of mine - that, with possible exceptions, no idea is too offensive or dumb or weird to work but execution is such an important factor. Premise wise, this is subversive - it is perverse to imagine Hitler having the pet name of "Mr. Sausage" by his wife Eva, the disgruntled housewife continually annoyed he is late to dinner constantly, all whilst the Goldensteins are even more fractured in terms of their married relationship. The men in this world do not come off well - lazy, drunk, ego driven - whilst the housewives, Eva and Rosa Goldenstein bond over Eva letting Rosa know Neville Chamberlain, the current Prime Minister of Britain, is coming over for dinner in a mischievous and improvised game of charades. Again, one of these people is Eva Braun, the other Jewish, which leaves an uncomfortable edge, but in among the wholesome but trite sitcom clichés. Hitler and Eva even have New York accents, despite being a British production, adding that sense, in a perverse alternative world, that this is not that different from when The Flinstones were created as a nuclear family sitcom depicted with animated cavemen. We in this actual world realise this is not the case, and it is uncomfortable, and there is meant to be a point to this.

And Hitler is still a putz here. Also the main plot is that Chamberlain is coming over, hoping over dinner to reprimand Adolf for being a naughty man for invading Czechoslovakia, thus adding a political edge that this pilot is a scathing take on Chamberlain's 1938-9 attempts at peace talks with Nazi Germany which backfired. Neville Chamberlain since his death has had the man whose peace talks were useless, leading to Hitler signing a treaty but still invading countries, and WWII still transpiring. This is still what he is known for nowadays and this pilot buries him and kicks him whilst down for good measure. Chamberlain, as old foolish man Rosa Goldenstein wants to push her dull niece Ruth onto, immediately shows how out of place he is when, asked about tea, he starts singing "I'm a little tea pot..." with the gestures like a child. It is broad, but it is subversive that, using this strange genre choice, the entire "Peace for Our Times" aspect of his career which doomed Chamberlain's reputation after his death is perfectly depicted by Hitler first trying to hide the treat in the fridge and, when Chamberlain finds out, just coxing him with nice words and signing it, as Adolf Hitler effectively did in real life whilst still invading countries.

The problem with Heil Honey is that most of it is not funny. It is a broad, deeply silly piece of characters being too deliberately comical when, for a darker turn, staying fully in the confines of the sitcom with significantly better jokes, whilst still tasteless, would have worked. The writing is not great for most parts of it, which is why so much of it instead comes off as awful on multiple levels. The tinges of darkness, even if depicted as light humoured, are still here like Hitler having to dismiss his own Aryan Nazi soldiers as being a gag by Joseph Goebbels for when Chamberlain first came to the airport, Goebbels off-screen even more incompetent for one of the funnier jokes, hand written sign for Chamberlain and all. I doubt the show could have lasted long, because just showing this pilot after Dad's Army, in a time slot where one is not warned of a subversive piece, was as much an ill advised decision, but as much of the issue, with knowledge that only a few titbits of the rest of the series made available online, that the production missed the delicate target completely.

There was discomfort shooting the production from those involved, and even after that Galaxy screening, which is the version that was recorded on tape and allowed people to see the pilot, you hear the announcer being caught off guard about how political it got, just expressing perfectly how one reacts to the show. It was uncomfortable to watch, even if aspects were difficult not to admit were amusing, but the result is a testament to the fact that, when handling delicate subject, taking risks but also tact is necessary. As much of my experience, only being twenty or so minutes long, was with grimacing as it was bemusement. In fact, I would have not been surprised if a tasteless take on the material, in a different time slot and era, might have been more successful and politically stronger in making the point it had, rather than arguably a more problematic work here that lost many immediately. This pilot, as a result, is never known as a failed experiment as political satire, but the misguided decision in, well, creating a light hearted sitcom about Adolf's home life that rightly offended many.