A fine, deft episode, based on Peter Crowther's short story of the same name, and adapted by Richard Chizmar and Jonathan Schaech (who also recently wrote the screenplay for the feature-length adapation of Ed Gorman's novel The Poker Club). Cult favorite Stuart Gordon, probably still best known for Re-Animator, directed a fine, small cast headlined by Elisabeth Moss, most visible of late, inside greater or lesser degrees of padding, in Mad Men.A rather simple storyline: A particularly vile and prolific mass muderer, known for quickly killing his male victims and slowly cutting parts from his female victims and essentially eating them alive over the course of days or weeks, is delivered to a rundown Louisiana police precinct to be held overnight in their lockup. The sergeant in charge details two veteran patrolmen and a "boot," a rookie still in her probationary period, as the graveyard shift to stay with the "Eater." One of the veteran cops is openly contemptuous of young Officer ...
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By day she toils at Sterling Cooper as mild-mannered Peggy By night at least on this Thursday night at 10 pmET on NBCs Fear Itself shes a rookie cop working a most undesirable shift TVGuidecom invited Emmy semifinalist Elisabeth Moss to preview whats ahead for both her and the Mad Men and a people-eating madmanTVGuidecom The last time you and I spoke Peggy was just weeks away from popping out the super-secret kid and you didnt let slip even the tiniest hintElisabeth Moss [Laughs] Pretty good of me huhTVGuidecom The most you said was Whats ahead is not typicalMoss Well it was true It was true It was a very hard secret to keepTVGuidecom How far into Season 1 did you find outMoss I knew before we started I had to because there were wardrobe issues Id have to deal with with the padding and everythingTVGuidecom What can you reveal about Mad Mens Season 2Moss Well it picks up a couple of years later which is very i
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The first suspense (as opposed to supernatural horror) episode of Fear Itself proves to be a disappointment, and I suspect most of the blame this time lies with the direction, rather than with the script. Not that the very guessable "twist" ending scriptwriter Victor Salva (Jeepers Creepers) offers helps matters, but the uneven tone, utter lack of subtlety, and clumsy pacing of the episode, directed by John Landis, killed it much more efficiently than our drama's serial killers could hope to snuff any victim.A bride (Maggie Lawson, most visible of late in Psych) is joking with her maids of honor as they prepare for the ceremony. As one bridesmaid goes to check on the groom, she remembers to pass along an envelope the officiating priest had given her, which he'd received from an unidentified woman. The typewritten note in the sealed envelope says only "The person you are about to marry is a serial killer." This disturbs the bride, but only slightly; she goes to the groom (James Rod...
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Question: Thanks for your comments on Fear Itself. I, too, was turned off by the complete lack of hope. I loved Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, Night Visions and even Masters of Horror anthologies because they sometimes allowed that hope prevailed. I bookend this with last summer's TNT horror anthology that also seemed to go for the darker endings. I watched this last episode for Colin Ferguson, and I'll watch this week's for Psych's James Roday and Maggie Wheeler, and then I'm skipping the rest of the run.
Answer: It's not that I have anything against unhappy endings per se, but when I was given the first three episodes of Fear Itself to screen, they all began to seem predictably bleak, and the lack of surprise when things turn out badly for even the occasionally sympathetic character is a cardinal sin with an anthology like this. I'll try to keep an eye on the show for as long as it lasts because I would like to believe in the anthology format, and if the subject matter, director an ...
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Finally a good episode of Fear Itself, one written by Daniel Knauf, he most recently of Carnivale (the HBO dark fantasy historical drama), and one as well shot and acted as the previous two, this one directed by Ronny Yu. Rather a simple story: a doting husband and father of two children is asked by his wife to run an errand, and is so wrapped up in his cell phone conversation with her he doesn't see the pickup truck that charges into the intersection and centerpunches his sedan, apparently killing the pickup's occupants and, it turns out, very nearly killing him. Indeed, he has an out-of-body experience at the hospital where he's being treated, and meets another disembodied spirit; this other spirit tells him that they're both dead. As it turns out, the second spirit is jumping the gun, and both men survive, but when they awaken, they discover that they have swapped bodies. And family man Dennis Mahoney is now occupying the stronger, more pain-resistant body of a prolific serial k...
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