This Used To Be My Playground

I hate seeing that sad sack "Looking For Work" post hanging around at the top of the page so I'm taking the joyous occasion of William Shatner's 80th birthday to knock it down. While Shatner's long and storied career enjoyed a rebirth when he began to take a self-effacing attitude towards his much-imitated mannerisms, I've always taken Shatner seriously. What some may see as hammy, I see as passionate. What some may see as ripe for parody, I see as iconic.

Most associated (obviously) with sci-fi, Shatner's got plenty of horror credentials on his resume as well - most notably the features Incubus (1966), The Devil's Rain (1975) and Kingdom of the Spiders (1977). He also starred in two of the most memorable episodes of The Twilight Zone - "Nick of Time" and "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet."

Today, though, I'd like to give a shout-out to a 1985 episode of The Ray Bradbury Theater, titled "The Playground."

Based on a short story originally printed in the October 1953 issue of Esquire Magazine, "The Playground" was adapted by Bradbury himself, directed by William Fruet (Funeral Home) and starred Shatner as Charlie Underhill, a widower doing his best to raise his young son Steve (Keith Dutson).

Traumatized by the incidents of childhood bullying he endured, Charlie is an overprotective father, keeping Steve - who is five - away from the neighborhood playground. Chastised by his sister Carol (Kate Trotter) for not letting Charlie develop like a normal boy, Charlie is pressured to bring Steve to the playground.

In Charlie's eyes, though, the playground is everything he remembered - and feared. It's a filthy pit filled with feral children.

But is Charlie seeing reality or is he simply incapable of seeing anything but malevolence in these kids? When Charlie sees his boyhood nemesis, Ralph, frozen in time as a child, still stalking the playground, still taunting Charlie, it seems as if there really is more to this playground than just Charlie's bad memories.

Shatner's performance in "The Playground" doesn't feature much in the way of notable "Shatner-isms" (save for briefly breaking out some agonized expressions during the climax) but he has a nice chemistry with his onscreen son and the aura of middle-aged melancholy he projects is effective. At a time when Shatner was typically seen in full-on hero role - either as Kirk in the big screen continuation of the Star Trek series or as gung-ho cop T.J. Hooker on TV - the role of fearful, insecure Charlie Underhill was a well-acted change of pace.

As a study of the lengths that parents will go to keep their children safe from harm, "The Playground" is laced with poignancy. At one point, Charlie asks the question at the heart of this story: "How do you raise a boy?" It's assumed in our culture that boys shouldn't be coddled, that they should learn how to fight for themselves. But for Charlie, the idea of Steve having to endure the same abuse that he had is unacceptable. He'll do anything he can to get between Steve and a brutal world. While Charlie could've easily come off as a irritating worry wart, Shatner keeps the character sympathetic.

Charlie's tenderness towards his son and his still-vivid anguish over his own boyhood torments makes "The Playground" endure as one of Shatner's most admirably low-key efforts.

Epitaph For A Third Season: An Appreciation of Friday the 13th: The Series' Final Year

The popularity of theatrical horror was waning in the late '80s and yet on television, the genre was thriving with original syndicated programming. The syndicated horror fare of the late '80s/early '90s - which included the likes of Tales from the Darkside, Monsters, Werewolf, Freddy's Nightmares, and Forever Knight - remains fondly remembered by fans today. But of all the shows of that era, the most intriguing and creatively successful was arguably Friday the 13th: The Series. A spin-off of the movie franchise in name only, Friday the 13th: The Series created its own separate mythology.

Starting in 1987, Friday the 13th: The Series told the story of sage occult expert Jack Marshak (Chris Wiggins) who was teamed with a pair of cousins - Micki Foster (Robey) and Ryan Dallion (John D. LeMay) - in a quest to retrieve cursed antiques and store them safely in the vault of their shop, Curious Goods. With an anthology series-style concept that lent almost endless leeway to the show's writers, Friday the 13th: The Series proved to have unusually long legs for a serialized horror show (compare its three-year run to that of Kolchak: The Night Stalker, which had to limp its way through a handful of episodes before cancellation).

But even fans of the series routinely dismiss Friday the 13th: The Series' third and final season as a drop in quality. LeMay left the series and was replaced by Steven Monarque as the more conventionally heroic Johnny Ventura (even the character's name sounded like it belonged to an action hero) and with LeMay's departure, much of the chemistry of the show left as well. But with that third season arriving on DVD today, I'd like to cite ten exceptional episodes as evidence as to why Season Three should be reappraised for hosting the series' darkest and most mature round of stories.

10. Year of the Monkey (original air date: 1/15/90)
This episode boasted one of the most intriguing cursed objects of the series' run - a trio of small monkey statues, embodying the old adage of 'see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.' A wealthy Japanese industrialist on the brink of death uses these statues to test the honor of his three children and see who - if any - will be a fit heir to his empire. Tia Carrere plays the industrialist's only daughter and the only one of his children who may resist the temptation the monkeys offer. A climatic samurai sword fight caps this unusual entry.

9. My Wife As A Dog (original air date: 2/19/90)
A singular example of the show delving into dark comedy (with a script written by Jim Henshaw, who was the executive story consultant for most of the series' run), this episode featured the fourth and final F13 performance of the late character actor Denis Forest (who was to this show what Robert Culp was to The Outer Limits) as Aubrey Ross, a firefighter in the midst of a divorce and whose adored dog is dying. Thanks to the power of the leash, Aubrey discovers a solution to all his problems. Great woman-to-dog transformation at the end!

8. Mightier Than The Sword (original air date: 1/8/90)
This was the second of two Season 3 scripts penned by future L.A. Confidential screenwriter Brian Helgeland (who most recently scripted the upcoming film The Vampire's Assistant). Mightier Than the Sword starred Colm Feore (who had previously been seen in the Season Two episode The Maestro and who is best known to genre fans as the memorable villain of Stephen King's Storm of the Century). Here, Feore plays Alex Dent, a best-selling novelist, who has gained his success through a cursed fountain pen. This episode takes a twisted turn when Dent uses the power of the pen to write Micki as a murderess.


7. Repetition (original air date: 2/5/90)
This episode had nothing to do with the main cast (save for a brief appearance by Micki), exclusively focusing on the tale of Walter Cromwell (David Ferry), who we first see as an award-winning newspaper columnist. After Cromwell accidentally kills a young girl after falling asleep at the wheel of his car, the crime is unknown to anyone but the girl's spirit is trapped in a cameo locket and begs to be released. Although through further killing, Cromwell is able to restore the girl to life, each subsequent life he takes also begs to be brought back - driving Cromwell to insanity and ruin. This episode was written by David Lynch's daughter Jennifer and directed by F13 mainstay William Fruet (Spasms, Death Weekend, Funeral Home). Due to the absence of the main cast, many fans choose to ignore this episode but it's one of the most dramatically accomplished hours of the show's run.

6. Demon Hunter (original air date 10/2/89)
The series' only full-on creature feature, depicting the hunt for a hulking demon with the final showdown taking place inside Curious Goods itself. Using a real-time format and digital clock read-out in the lower right-hand corner of the screen (beating 24 to the punch by twelve years!), this had a much more action-orientated feel than the usual F13 episode (ably directed by He Knows You're Alone's Armand Mastroianni - the undisputed MVP of Season Three - who also directed this season's My Wife As A Dog, Mightier Than The Sword, The Charnel Pit, and Night Prey). Hardcore violence abounds in Demon Hunter, with a flashback scene of satanists getting machine-gunned to death ("You sick bastards!"). This episode also contains one of my favorite concluding Jack-isms, those wise final words delivered by Chris Wiggins which typically closed an episode: "If, of the many truths, you select one and follow it blindly - it will become a falsehood and you, a fanatic."

5. The Long Road Home (original air date: 2/12/90)
Shows like The X-Files and Supernatural offered their own takes on the Texas Chainsaw Massacre school of backwoods terror (in Home and The Benders respectively) but Friday the 13th got there first with this episode that found Micki and Johnny at the mercy of two crazed brothers with a talent for taxidermy. If not for a bizarre climax that inexplicably had a stuffed corpse coming to life to pursue Micki and Johnny (with a shotgun!), this Ed Gein-style shout-out would've ranked higher as one of Season Three's best. Besides the mostly real-world subject matter, this also broke from the show's usual structure in that it begins with Micki and Johnny at the end of a mission, having successfully retrieved an object (a Chinese charm depicting a yin/yang symbol) and then encountering this episode's malevolent brothers en route home in a random brush with a non-occult brand of evil. This also featured the most overt move of the season towards making Micki and Johnny into a romantic couple.

4. The Charnel Pit (original air date: 5/14/90)
Time travel was a staple of Friday the 13th: The Series (as seen in The Baron's Bride, Eye of Death, and Hate On Your Dial) and this episode featured a cursed painting that - when blood was spilled on it - could send people back to 18th century France and into the chateau of the infamous Marquis de Sade (Neil Munro). In the modern day, Webster Eby (Vlasta Vrana), a college professor, is killing in order to communicate through the painting with the Marquis to gain historical insight. Rather than coming across as broadly evil, the Marquis is philosophical about his deeds - putting his heinous crimes in context. As he tells a close confidant: "Our crimes are small in this world, Latour. They're merely picaresque." The last episode of the series, The Charnel Pit saw the vault close for the last time with Jack noting that men need no cursed objects to find the evil within themselves ("Thoughts don't cause pain, it's what people do with them. If people are looking for evil, they're going to find it."). A fitting final statement for a show that was ended prematurely due to accusations from the religious right that it fed into a culture of violence. As Eby says, "A society that looks at itself honestly is healthy; one that denies its own evil breeds death and decay. You tell me which one we're living in."

3. Epitaph for a Lonely Soul (original air date: 1/22/90)
This tale of a mortician who's able to raise the dead - and who does so solely in order to have a woman that'll be his mate - ranks as arguably the most ghoulish hour of the series. But the middle-aged mortician (Neil Munro) at the center of this episode isn't portrayed as a standard villain but instread as someone tragically reaching out for a last chance at companionship. By the conclusion, several lives are destroyed and the image of two resurrected girls choosing to perish again, embracing each other as they're consumed in the midst of a blazing inferno, is one of the most chilling images of the series. Director Allan Kroeker (who also helmed this season's The Long Road Home) is a still-active TV director, who - among his many credits - directed the best episode of Supernatural's first season (the Grim Reaper-themed tale Faith).

2. Crippled Inside (original air date: 10/9/89)
Scripted by Brian Helgeland (L.A. Confidential, Mystic River), this episode put an early spotlight on Johnny and was one of the more morally complicated episodes in the series' run. A teenage girl (Stephanie Morgenstern) who was crippled during a gang rape is offered a way to escape a lifetime of confinement by means of a cursed wheelchair. As the wheelchair allows her to send herself in spirit form to murder her attackers, each death she causes brings her closer to the full use of her legs. The question Johnny must deal with is whether or not it's just to let this girl fulfill her revenge. In the end, Johnny is left with no comfort, futilely chopping at the wicker chair with an axe and not leaving a single mark on it. As a character who has benefited from the chair's satanic power knowingly tells him: "It doesn't matter, son. It'll still be here after you and I are gone."

1. Night Prey (original air date 11/13/89)
Opening with a morose Jack sitting alone on a park bench at dawn, musing about the hopelessly blurred lines between good and evil, Night Prey was as dark as Friday the 13th: The Series got. In the search for a cursed cross, Jack, Micki and Johnny find their hunt entangled with that of a man who's spent decades pursuing the vampire who snatched his true love from him years ago. Michael Burgess is perfectly cast as the obsessed lover, bringing a palatable sense of grief to the role. And with a brief bout of vampire slaying, Jack proves to look the part of a natural-born Van Helsing - although in an act of mercy he also shows that he has no appetite for that sort of blood-thirsty brutality. With its moody atmospherics and envelope-pushing (for its time) depictions of sex and violence, Night Prey was the crown jewel of director Armand Mastroianni's Season Three episodes and it also boasts one of the best scores from series composer Fred Mollin.

It's true that Friday the 13th: The Series lacks the kind of sophistication we've come to expect from television today but for its time, it was an earnest, often times thoughtful, attempt to make a scary, dramatic program. It's willingness to stretch and experiment in this third year proves that the show was not ready creatively to call it a day. It's a shame that pressure from religious groups (and Paramount's craven concession to that pressure) closed the door too soon on Curious Goods. Just as the store itself specialized in one of a kind items, so too was this show one of a kind. And, like many a precious antique, its value becomes more apparent as time goes on.

A House Is Not A Funeral Home

In the late '70s and early '80s, the Great White North exported a number of home-grown horror films that went on to become fan favorites. Besides the early work of David Cronenberg, films such as Prom Night (1980), Terror Train (1980), Happy Birthday to Me (1981), My Bloody Valentine (1981), and Curtains (1983) all hailed from Canada. But despite those impressive titles, not everything from Canada in those days was so golden. Consider the case of 1980's long-forgotten Funeral Home.

Written by Ida Nelson and produced and directed by William Fruet (who also directed 1976's Death Weekend and went on to be prolific in genre TV, with credits including episodes of Ray Bradbury Theater, Friday the 13th: The Series, Goosebumps, and Poltergeist: The Legacy), Funeral Home is what some might call a slow burner. Others might call it uneventful to the point of absurdity. As Funeral Home begins, 16-year-old Heather (Lesleh Donaldson) is arriving at her grandmother's rural home to spend the summer. Heather's grandfather passed away some time ago and to make ends meet, her grandmother Maude (played by veteran character actress Kay Hawtrey) has had to covert her house to a 'tourist home'. 'Tourist Home' isn't a term I'm familiar with but it clearly must be Canadian for 'bed and breakfast' because that's what Heather's grandmother has. This tourist home has a grisly past, however, as it previously was a funeral home. And although it looks as though the town this home occupies is as nothing as a town can get, Maude practically has to turn away business. If Norman Bates had as much luck attracting guests he could've afforded to buy his mother something nice!

Before long, we know that Heather is going to have a mystery to solve while she's on her summer vacation. There's strange noises coming from the cellar and as she investigates, she hears her grandmother talking to someone else - in a room that Maude keeps padlocked. And from her new townie boyfriend Rick (Dean Garbett, in his one and only film appearance), Heather learns that her grandfather was not a kindly figure. In fact, he was something of a hair trigger psycho. And Heather isn't the only one with a mystery to solve. You see, Rick's brother Joe (Alf Humphreys, who played the incorrigible practical joker 'Howard' in My Bloody Valentine) is the newest deputy in the town of Northampton and he thinks there's something to the string of missing person cases that are tied to the town - the latest of which is a real estate developer whose Porsche has been found stashed under a haystack. The sheriff insists that nothing criminal is going on in these cases - people run off to start new lives all the time! - and he instructs Joe to turn a blind eye to them. But Joe cares about being a good cop, even if no one else on the Northampton PD does.

From Funeral Home's poster - which depicts a group of zombie-like figures standing in a cemetery outside the funeral home (looking similar to the poster used ten years later for the remake of Night of the Living Dead), along with the tagline "some thing never rest in peace" - the expectation is that this is going to be a zombie movie. But that is not the case. I guess whoever marketed Funeral Home thought they'd be better off trying to entice people with a zombie movie than a movie about a girl hearing voices in her grandmother's cellar. And I'll admit - they made the right call. Something sinister, though, is going on and Heather needs to find out what it is. And with the latest guests to her grandmother's home being the latest names on Joe Yates' missing persons files, it seems like whoever - or whatever - is in Maude Chalmers' cellar is finding its way out at night. Is Heather's grandfather still alive? Or is Maude's handyman Sam (Les Rubie, in a full retard performance that makes Robert Silverman in Prom Night look like the Will Hunting of Hamilton High) acting on his own disturbed impulses?

Whatever the case, someone driving a pick-up truck pushed an obnoxious travelling salesman and his mistress in their car over a quarry cliff. And someone disposed of an old man asking too many questions about his missing wife. And if Heather keeps venturing into the cellar, she might be the next one to disappear.

When Fruet finally does put all his cards on the table, the resolution to Funeral Home's mystery will likely be a shock to no one. No one except me, that is. I have to admit that I got totally sandbagged by the end of this movie, which is hilarious because even the least genre-savvy viewer will see the conclusion coming from a mile away! But having been eleven when I first saw this on HBO, I'm willing to cut myself some slack. And I think the reveal is actually well done, regardless of whether one anticipates it or not. As the curious Heather, Donaldson isn't much of a scream queen (even though she went on to a mini-run of horror film roles in Happy Birthday to Me, Deadly Eyes, and Curtains) but she's likable enough - and what's especially appealing about her from the vantage point of 2009 is how much like a regular person Donaldson looks like. This is the kind of normal teenage girl that you'd never see in today's Megan Fox world. When she strips down at one point to a one-piece bathing suit, it's amazing what a completely untitillating moment it is. Even though she's a cute girl and she's supposed to be seen as a regular bathing beauty - her boyfriend is so impressed by her bod, in fact, that he snaps a picture of her to put up in his school locker! - from our current standards of what hot is, Donaldson might as well be Mindy Cohn from The Facts of Life. But I think that's something in Funeral Home's favor - I like that everyone that we see in this movie, down to the last extra, looks ordinary in a way that you never see in contemporary movies. Even for 1980, though, it has to be said that Fruet and co. really went the extra mile to get some unglamourous faces. Even the one character that's supposed to be an all-out sex pot - Peggy Mahon as 'Florie', the salesman's mistress - would need to put a bag over her head before seducing a fat guy with a taco.

The standout character in Funeral Home - and the character that makes the movie for me - is Joe Yates. Alf Humphreys does a nice job with this character - and, as written by Nelson, Joe is a surprisingly complex figure. This is what usually would be a role like David Arquette's Deputy Dewey in the Scream films - a step away from Barney Fife, basically. Or else he'd be the cop who keeps poking into something suspicious and pays for it - like Richard Farnsworth in Misery (1990), a character set up to be an obvious victim. But Joe is neither of those things - he's something of an anomaly among horror movie cops. He's ambitious and inquisitive but not in an obnoxious, blatantly career-minded way. He just wants to do his job as well as his big city counterparts. Even though he's set-up early on as someone who can't get any respect in town because the adults of Northampton have known him all his life (like a kid, he even gets told to keep his hat off the counter of the local diner), Joe slowly emerges as an assertive, capable cop - and nobody's fool.

Even though he falls ass-backwards into the solution to his missing persons cases, Joe's in the right place to claim that win because he doesn't give up on his investigation. Some viewers might not make it to the end themselves as Funeral Home's old-fashioned approach can be a challenge to endure. But for patient fans, Funeral Home isn't such a dead place to visit. Even though it's easy to see why this movie didn't set the world on fire, with his nicely atmospheric handling of the material, it's also easy to see why this wasn't the last nail in William Fruet's directorial coffin.