What's to Watch? - Oct. 21 - Plug 'n Play and Various Horrors - Mike N.

 

     Arriving today on Amazon Prime (hey, at least one thing this week that's not on Netflix!) is the first season of an adaptation of a 2014 William Gibson novel. Primarily hinging on telepresence, where one's mind and senses are projected into an android body at some other location -- or is it a completely immersive virtual reality? The trailer makes it uncertain how widely it may diverge from the novel, and don't want to tip their hand by inadvertently revealing a plot turn. It's The Peripheral

     This will be an eight-episode season, released weekly, so new episodes will appear every Friday through December 9th.

     Arrived on Netflix back on the 13th a new "true-crime" series arrived. "Based on a true story" The Watcher stars Naomi Watts and Bobby Cannavale. It's based on events that happened to a wealthy family who moved into the suburban community of Westfield, NJ, and quickly began receiving letters from someone who claimed to be a protective "Watcher" of the property. Quirky neighbors, creepy histories, and a mystery spanning years - a mix of fact and fiction - are all part of this seven-episode series. It's The Watcher (2022)

    Over last weekend overtook the previous Netflix champ there, Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story - something I've so far ignored. My wife likely would have been all over it, but that sort of thing rarely attracts me. The mix of weird, almost fetishistic attention, along with the almost inevitable variance from fact, doesn't sit well with me. As ever, YMMV.
     It's worth noting that tv writer, director, producer Ryan Murphy is having a highly successful run via his big deal with Netflix. This new series, the Dahmer one which it just dethroned among binge-watchers, and the Stephen King adaptation, Mr. Harrington's Phone (which I talked about last week)  are all ones Murphy was behind.

     This past Wednesday, Netflix (they've been very busy adding movies and series) added the Australian crime-thriller The Stranger (2022 117m). It had a showing back in May at Cannes, and opened in Australia back on October 6th, but it's global debut was here on Netflix.

     This is another of those ones with the "based on a true story" taglines that's generally a repellant to me, but obviously entices others. For the most part, I'd prefer to see something first, enjoy it such as I can for what it is, and then perhaps find out if it was based on real world events, which I might look into for the compare and contrast. What I know of this is pretty much just the sparse information in that trailer.
     Aside from that, I'll just note that it's not to be confused with some other Netflix fare, a mystery drama series of the same name that landed on Netflix two years earlier. That one is part of a large, international deal with novelist Harlan Coben, which I'd thought I'd covered back around the time it landed. That has to do with someone bringing information which completely upends family and friends' notions of someone near and dear -- and they'd thought well-known to them.

     Something I mentioned back when it first landed on Netflix back in early September, but only got around to starting to watch this past weekend, was a sci-fi adventure drama focused on a group of teens who rudely discover that they'd been the subject of genetic experiments seven years earlier. When the supply of daily meds they'd been taking all that time stopped, odd things started to happen. One of the promotional taglines goes "A Chupacabra, a Banshee and a Succubus meet in a park…" It's the ten-episode series The Imperfects (2022).

     I decided on it this past Sunday, when I was looking for something new to me to disappear into on a decidedly down day. While I certainly should have chosen a different course of action with respect to

getting myself out of an emotional ditch (it was a cat-like day of napping without the requisite cat-like attitude that would have allowed it to feel pleasant rather than wasteful - I dig my emotional trench deeper and deeper), it had a varied enough cast and a good enough pace to pull me in. It's enjoyable, but I wasn't in the right emotional state of mind for what became a bull-headed binge of the first six episodes. This would be much better if spread out over a few sessions, though I doubt I'd have wanted to take it in single-episode views.

    Unlike when I'd first seen the trailer in early September, in the interim I'd seen the red-pompadoured Australian comedian Rhys Nicholson elsewhere, so there was one face and voice that popped for me. Nicholson plays Dr. Alex Sarkov, the central scientist behind all of the chimerical gene-tinkering,  unencumbered by most ethical restrains of any shred of guilt.
     I've not gotten a strong sense that it's generated a big enough audience to merit a second season order, at least no quickly, so as of last check its fate is floating out there. The first season gives us a reasonably complete story arc, while laying everything out for a second; showing us the beginnings of next phases of life for the characters, not leaving us with cliffhangers. So if there ends up being no season two it'll be no worse than any story where the characters are still alive in the end, allowing the audience to speculate on their futures.

     Back more firmly in the season, starting next Tuesday (Oct 25th) on (everyone say it...) Netflix, is a horror anthology series curated by writer/director Guillermo del Toro. Tellingly enough, it's Guillermo Del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities.

     This anthology is spread out over four, consecutive days - the 25th through the 28th - in two-story installments. A star-studded cast seems to offer pops of recognition at every turn. In the mix are F. Murray Abraham, Peter Weller, Rupert Grint, Kate Micucci, Crispin Glover, Nia Vardolos, and Andrew Lincoln. Two of the stories are ones written by del Toro himself - "Lot 36", which will be the first

offering, and "The Murmuring", which will be the penultimate one. The only story I'm really familiar with is one of the two H.P. Lovecraft choices, "Pickman's Model", which here will have Crispin Glover and Ben Barnes - the latter a face I know primarily from HBO's Westworld and the Marvel Netflix Punisher series.
     For good or ill, Guillermo plays host for the show, too. It's a nice enough thought, and I hope it will come off well, but the trailer has me questioning how effective that part is. Such a minor element, though, it will likely seem silly in hindsight for me to have even mentioned it. I think it's mostly that it reminds me of the intros to the syndicated '80s/early '90s anthology series Ray Bradbury Theater, which never seemed to really enhance anything at the time, though I suppose with the passage of years they add little extra historical touch.
     Anyway, since most of these will be in place before next Friday, I thought I'd give you the heads-up now.

     As the new/upcoming items ended with an anthology series, I thought I'd end with a free-to-all "horror" anthology that's guaranteed to be dubious at best, but is both a sort of last gasp effort and something I have only begun to look at myself. The Monster Club (1980/81  97m). Here's the trailer:

     There is a full version sitting on YouTube, but even with the commercials it seems the one on Tubi is of better picture and sound quality, despite the occasional commercial break. Proceed by your own lights.
     While not an Amicus film, it's essentially from the same kitchen (kitschen, perhaps?) between being

a horror anthology, several of the stars, and the director, Roy Ward Baker, who had directed Amicus horror anthologies Asylum (1972) and The Vault of Horror (1973). It had arguably been a decided arc of descent for Baker, from a likely career high in 1958, when he directed the acclaimed film of the Titanic's final night in A Night To Remember, through a great deal of primarily television work in the '60s and '70s, to 1981 and what would be his final theatrical release turn as director, before going back to television.
     Thematically it's a mess. It's one of those efforts where it seems individual decisions were made to appeal to different groups - including whatever one they thought would be drawn in by someone's idea of club music of the era - ending with a mixture that likely pleased very few. I have to wonder what each of the pitch meetings - be it to potential backers, cast, etc. - was like, and how far afield each ran. Many of them obviously decided it was to be a goof, leaning heavily at points into the tongue-in-cheek, which ultimately was a considerable disappointment to British horror author R. Chetwynd-Hayes; his stories were source material for the film's tales, and he was even a named character in the film with John Carradine playing the film version of the writer. Chetwynd-Hayes was

disappointed with seemingly everything, from a silly script, to the changes made to two of the three tales told within the anthology bracket. He even objected to being portrayed by the 75 year-old Carradine based on his age -- though that final complaint seems petty; the author himself was already in his early 60s, and was perhaps a little too vainly self-conscious about it. Hey, I don't know... maybe he had thoughts they'd ask him to play himself?
     The film received a modest theatrical release in the U.K., but essentially went straight to video in the U.S.
    If you want to watch better, earlier examples of the horror anthology format this represents (sticking to Tubi fare), I'd offhand recommend Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (1965), or Asylum (1972). The earlier film has some wink at the audience sensibilities, while the latter is more straight-up horror.

       Personally, another draining week down, this is all I have the time for today. When we next get together it'll be for the final weekend of October! Yeesh! Take care, keep sane or comfortably delusional, or medicated -- you likely know what's best. --Mike