Page 10
Daily Nebraskan
Monday, November 29, 1982
Aits Is Emteiiisimmeiiit
Couch potatoes turn on, space off all night long
By David Wood
In today's laid-back circles, the in slang
for TV junkie is couch potato, if you
didn't know.
Get in touch.
That's what it's all about - television,
the mass pabulum our generation cuts its
teeth on. It's our folklore, the stuff
pedestrian dreams are made of. Turn on
if Television
rj Review
and space off to shared "misreality."
That's what it's about - tuning in or out,
depending on how you look at it, getting
in touch with getting out of touch.
This review of "The Attack of the
50-Foot Woman" (last Friday at 11:30 on
KSHB) , is addressed to the budding
potatoes in the audience.
You know who you are. Odds are you
mainline your pabulum. You tap straight
into the national psyche with cable, pos
sibly the greatest invention since the
toaster.
It's easy to be innocently hooked. Take
it from a hard-core, card-carrying, die-hard
couch potato - it's simpler than falling
asleep.
You 'hardly know it, but soon, every
weekday night, you're watching "The Twi
light Zone" on channel two or "The
Zone' " as it's known in the vernacular.
And once you're into "The 'Zone," you
can, as they say on "The Love Boat,"
"wave goodbye to sanity," For the serious
.couch potato, the night's just starting.
"Danger: 'All Night Live' may be
addicting" - there's that warning every
night, but true potatoing is never having
to say you care. If you've any promise
at all, you'll promptly learn the backhand
salute and creed of Ed Muscare and his
limp cat Caffeina, the hosts of "All Night
Live" - or "Uncle Ed," as it's called in
the vernacular.
(Ed, 1 hope I'm spelling your cat's name
right. And if you're reading this, Ed,
I've got an idea I want to bounce off
you - "All Weekend Live.")
Keeping in the vernacular, "The
Stooges'' is next, then comes the movie.
This is what separates the genuine 'taters
from the heap - to stare down a feature
flick after an episode with Rod Serling and
a numbing half-hour of the Three Stooges.
Ed's always got a theme for his weekly
lineup of movies, and his discriminating
eye for mindless cinema is part of what
makes Ed the object of insomniacal praise.
Last week, in keeping with Thanksgiving
spirit, the theme was turkeys.
A turkey, of course, is a bird we
annually eat to commemorate the first
Englishmen to bring their wives and kids
to America, and Ed had two spokesbirds
for the species on Monday. It was the live
liest I've ever seen Caffeina, clawing Ed's
neck.
But in "potatoese," turkey means
something else - it's a movie so con
summately bad that it's classic.
.To summon the inertia to sit through a
whole turkey is a feat for even the most
lumpish potato. I admit I endured "The
Attack of the 50-Foot Woman" only after
dulling myself with two days of holiday
gluttony.
A white orb lands on the horizon.
Two cops hop from a station wagon with
shotguns. Inside the orb are diamond
necklaces suspended in fish bowlsr, and the
cops ooh and ah until things start rumbling
and smoking. There's a sHot of hills poorly
superimposed with a shot of a bald guy in
studded overalls making mean faces. We
see the cops shoot. We see the guy growl.
A cop heaves a rock that apparently
explodes on impact. The bald guy, looking
demented, picks up a model car. Then we
see an upside-down station wagon, then
fleeing cops, then a pulled-over convertible
and a woman with diamond necklace
screaming. An inflated hand with tufty
knuckles bounces into the scene. The title
swoops across the screen:
That's the last real action we see until
the final 15 minutes. That's too bad, as it's
the awful special effects, not the awful
acting and lack of continuity, that makes
"The Attack of the 50-Foot Woman" the
turkey it is.
i
The terrorized woman, one Nancy
Archer, somehow escaped the hand and
returns to the town square to hysterically
tell a small crowd her story. Everyone
thinks she's a raving kook anyway and pro
ceeds to mention she's got the biggest dia
mond in these parts. The townfolk take the
cops more seriously.
A f
-TH J'"-,: ill
- . J'
"OK, folks. There's a flying satellite
and a 30-foot giant up the road."
"A 30-foot giant - oh boy."
Next we meet Nancy's husband, Harry'
Archer. He's in the saloon philandering a
floosy, one Honey Parker. When he's told
Nancy's having a fit, he tosses back a whis
key and says, "You know everyone's seeing
flying satellites these days," and Honey
and he dance.
There's no mention of UFOs and
aliens - it's always a flying satellite and a
30-foot giant. It's a good touch for a bad
movie.
Anyway, the next hour or more are
stunningly dull, but finally, Nancy starts
to grow. She's, in a hospital. Two bearded
doctors with lame Viennese accents are dis
cussing her case.
"It's these supersonic times we live in,"
one says.
"I don't know how long the morphine
will last considering her body weight,"
the other comments.
Suddenly, a huge inflated hand with
polished nailes bursts through the door.
There's the noise of things breaking and
nurses screaming.
'"More morphine! More morphine!" the
doctors yell.
A woman sits up through a cardbpard
and balsa-wood roof. It's apparently
Nancy, but now she's blond, instead of
brunet, and wearing shorts, and a bikini
top, instead of a low-cut gown. Details
don't matter - in fact, the opening scene
with the cops and the exploding rock is
repeated verbatim later in the flick. But.
potatoes don't care. Stupor is its own
reward.
We see some more of the pathetic
double-exposure technique - a semi
transparent woman superimposed against a
semi-transparent backgound. Harry's still in
the saloon romancing. When he's told his
wife's a giant and after him, he flips the
messenger a bribe and says "Tell her you
couldn't find me." Honey and he wassail
drunkenly off for another dance.
A blimp hand cruises in from the
window. (In scenes as these, you only
ever see a hand, but this erstwhile potato
could envision Nancy as a. dirigible in
Macy's parade, Ed Muscare commentating.)
Nancy shakes a limp doll then is shot, and
the flick ends with the obligatory moral -"Well,
she finally got Harry back." It's a
grim lesson about infidelity that only a
serious couch potato would understand.
V
A backhand salute to you, Ed.
6
Creepshow': Ste
By Jeff Goodwin
Stephen King has made a fortune by writing scary
novels - and rightfully so. He is the acknowledged king
of horror, a genre that doesn't lack for pretenders to the
throne.
King's latest venture is a film. He wrote the screenplay
phenK
ing should know better
oQ Movie
Review
for "Creepshow" and makes his acting debut in one of its
episodes.
"Creepshow" lacks the outright scare-your-pants-off
suspense of King's novels, but it does get you out of your
seat a time or two. When you know something is going to
happen and you're still scared, you have the makings of
some pretty good suspense.
George Romero (of the 1968 cult classic "Night of the
Living Dead") directed "Creepshow." The combination of
King and Romero works well. They're not Moses Malone
and Dr. J, but they do OK.
The film is made up of five different episodes, each
having its own particular ghoulish qualities.
The worst episode is the one in which King stars. He
plays a hick idiot who discovers a meteor in his backyard.
Like an idiot, he gets some alien stuff on his hands and
turns into the world's largest plant. Anybody who's ever
seen "The Twilight Zone ought to know better than to
play with meteors. And King ought to know better than
to write something this bad."
The rest ofthe episodes arc fair to good. My personal
favorite was the one in which Hal Holbrook and Fritz
Weaver portray college professors who discover a box
from an Arctic expedition containing a nasty little crea
ture, tnougn said, but be prepared tor blood.
This brings us to special effects. Hollywood keeps
getting better and better in this area. How much further
in grossncss and bad taste can filmmakers go? But, com
pared to some of the films going around these days,
"Creepshow" isn't that bad.
This film doesn't go out of its way to gross you out,
with the possible exception of the last episode.
E.G. Marshall plays a rich, Howard Hughes-like million
aire who has a clean apartment and a phobia about eerms.
Not surprisingly, he soon finds himself with a roach pro
blem - a very bad roach problem at that. Roaches are
pretty bad in themselves but when you get tons of them
together. . .bring lots of Raid.
Most of King's books are virtually impossible to put
down. "Creepshow" doesn't have that kind of tension to
it, in spite of the fact that film is probably a better
medium for suspense than literature.
The trouble with "Creepshow" is that most of 'he
suspense is telegraphed. Even a person with glasses can sec
through It.
One reason for this is that several scenes are just blat
antly stolen from other movies. And if you've seen very
many horror shows at all, you'll be able to figure out
what's coming next.
All of the actors and actresses perform reasonably well,
even King. His episode is the weakest because of his
script, not his acting.
Perhaps the best acting job is turned in by Adrianne
Barbcau who plays Hal Holbrook's wife. She turns in the
consummate portrayal of the nagging wife. In years to
come, people will look on her performance as the ultimate
in bitches.
This episode also provides most of the show's humor,
most notably when Holbrook fantasized about killing
his wife. The method he comes up with shows little ori
ginality. If you're a Stephen King fan or just a horror fan
in general, you'll like "Creepshow." But be advised that
some scenes are not for the squeamish.
"Creepshow" is currently showing at the East Park
Three Theater.
