Shades of Darkness
When I was a kid, I loved to watch 'Mystery'
on PBS. For approximately two and a half minutes. That's the time it would take
for Edward Gorey's sublimely creepy titles to play out and the magnificent Mr.
Price to introduce this week's (*cough*) drama. It strikes me that I never
actually watched the show itself. Why? Well, they always ran crap like this.
Now I assure you, I'm not put off by stuffy
British productions simply out of distain for the kipper sucking bastards who
starved my forefathers from their homes and into grimy textile mills. Silly you!
Rather, it's that Victorian literature (whether of era, or simply spirit) drags
worse than a $2.00 muffler, listlessly avoiding any point like a drugged pagan
shuffling 'round a maypole.
'Shades of Darkness' was a short mid-80's series of supernatural literary
adaptations. Lest you expect any scares on the horizon, know that like so many
insufferable BBC productions, 'Shades' thinks itself far smarter than it is. (We
must not employ tight, relevant storytelling. We might become commercially
viable! *Gasp, swoon*) I came across the two dvd set of this show
at my local library, and if you should do the same, please leave it there
collecting dust.
Instead, take my hand, and I will guide you through all six hour-long (and
padded more than a grade school bra to meet this time requirement) episodes.
Watch your step, it's rather soggy in here:
We start off with the bowl of Sominex -laced
gruel that is Edith Wharton's 'The Lady's Maid's Bell'. Alice Hartley is a young
maid recovering from typhoid, working for a sickly, frigid matron. (Whee.) In
keeping with Wharton's lemon-sucking misandry, the lady's husband is a
faithless, braying prat. Adding to nothing is the bell-ringing specter of the
titular deceased lady maid. The ghost vaguely tries to tell Alice something by
leading her to a friendly male neighbor. (Was he the lady's lover? Does this
affect anything? Why do I care?) Then the mistress has a fatal heart attack, the
husband leaves, and the servants return to the house. That's it. Be sure to
watch for the thrilling 15-second scene where Alice brushes her teeth!
I'm sure that somewhere in Wharton's dour, flabby prose is some semblance of
meaning (Actually I'm not, I just said that because I don't want to get snotty
email from feminist lit majors.) but I'll be damned if I can decipher what it is
by sitting through this watery pabulum.
Fast on like a one-two punch of stodgy
boredom comes a second of Wharton's works, 'Afterward'. The title is taken from
the main plot contrivance. A young couple moves into an old manor haunted by a
specter one does not recognize as such until much later. That is saying the
characters are not supposed to; the second we see a sinister man standing
backlighted in a doorway we know the score. (I swear, I kept waiting for the
twist that never came. The surprise which would make this plot something other
than childishly predictably.) Since there's been much muttering about a
scandalous lawsuit that recently, resolved (sinister organ music)
we know who the ghost is too. All that's left to do is for the protagonist to
mope and fret endlessly till someone arrives to euthanize the plot by
"clearing it up".
'Afterward' basically follows the Roger Corman formula of literary adaptation.
Film someone walking aimlessly around an old house for an hour=Terror!
Said stately manor is decidedly nicer to look at than some of the other bland
locals, but the episode still features the typical series' music to slit your
wrists by.
'The Maze' holds a sense fascination for a
young girl, and of dread for her mother. That's because a young man who was
actually the girl's father fell off a ladder and died there on the day the child
was born. Again, this is not a spoiler, we know this in the first nine minutes,
but the adapter insist that this is some huge secret, throwing crumbs of clues
at us in endless scenes of stupefyingly dull exposition. Compounding viewer pain
is an absolutely insufferable soundtrack of screeching violins, and muddy color
that makes Monty Python look modern in comparison. The mother eventually tells
her child what the rest of us knew ages ago (Mommy's a ho, and you're a bastard!
I love you honey.) before they move away at the behest of her cuckolded husband.
Um, the end.
As my mom says, "It doesn't have to have a point, it's British."
'Bewitched' is based on Edith Wharton's...
...Oh God, oh God, not again!
You sasanach hate me don't you?
Why are you doing this to me?
I don't want to die...
*Sob*
Ok, ok, I can do this.
Actually, I kid. This one isn't nearly as
bad as the others, but that doesn't mean it's good by any means. 'Bewitched'
does have some better actors than the first few tales, and the darker visuals
are somewhat more atmospheric, if nonetheless dreary. A small group of townsfolk
are called together by a local harridan. It seems her husband has been enchanted
by the ghost of his long dead fiancée, who is slowly sucking the life from him.
There's one quick solution for this; a speedy exhumation followed by a stake
through the heart. Good enough setup, unfortunately the execution kills this
thing more effectively than any ashen bolt ever could. When we are locked into
the same black room for the first half of the story, atmosphere gives way to
lethargy. Likewise, the confrontation between living dead is beyond limp, it's
impotent. Since this is supposed to be so bloody educational and uplifting for
us, we are spared the sight of anything distasteful, frightening, or
interesting. Instead, a seagull screaming implies the girl's dissolution. (Maybe
it's just me, but birds that eat garbage in McDonalds parking lots don't exactly
chill.)
This should logically be the climax of the tale, but it still staggers on for a
quarter-hour more worth of misery, illness, misery, petulant spite, misery and
death.
Like Wharton's other work, it is open-ended. Which in this production means that
we are supposed to be filled with shocked horror that a woman with hands buys
soap.
'The Intercessor' starts off in familiar
territory, traipsing around the dim interior of someplace that looks for all the
world like Craggy Island sans the charm. Seeking a place of lodging, he is
welcomed by the grim, omnipresent catcher's mitt faces of more joyless limey
dirt-barglers. (These people make me want to go out in my yard and fire off a
flare gun, just to remember what color looks like.)
The young man has a dislike for children (though this will promptly disappear
from the story and never figure in again.) and especially does not want to be
disturbed by their noisy ways. Gee, let's guess where this is headed, shall we?
Despite starting off typical bad foot, this is actually the best of the lot. (Oh
glowing praise.) Granted, my enjoyment hinged on one of my personal phobias;
ghostly children have always freaked me out.
The dark, eerie scenes in which the silent figure appears to and approaches the
young man had me gasping audibly. Of course, this small bit of joy is soon
snatched away as the second half of the tale unfurls dismally like a muddy
possum lying down in the sun to die. We certainly can't tell a tale which is in
any way frightening, our grammie Mildred might get a start! Instead, we get a
mawkish, dismal denouement masquerading as of a story of tragedy cum redemption.
' The Demon Lover' is a WWI pilot who makes
a vow to return from the grave to his betrothed, whether she wants him to or
not. Since stickbugs already know how this story is going to end, there's not
much for our heroine to do, but to fill us in on all the little details of her
irrelevant life. Joy. (The scene where the protagonist describes her
psychological reaction the blitz is something of a perfect encapsulation of this
hugely wrongheaded style of writing; never say something once with pith and
brevity, when you say 4-7 times in painfully roundabout obscurity.)
There is absolutely no honest denial that this story could have, and should have
been cut to half an hour. All of these tales share a propensity for replacing
narrative with languid scenes of people just puttering around, but 'Demon' takes
it to ludicrous new levels. It's no exaggeration to say that the story actually
takes breaks from time to time, to visit with an old friend of the protagonist,
or to have a nice meal. During these protracted set pieces, there is not one
scrap of plot developed, nor once of tension built. It is the script equivalent
of masturbation, or sitting on your ass and tossing playing cards into a hat.
If you're odd or unlucky enough to ever watch this show, look for young Miranda
Richardson as a surly maid with horrid poodle haircut. Yes, the fact that one of
the foremost living British actresses is thoroughly wasted in this episode
better illuminates the palpable air of bourgeoisie apathy that infuses this
production than any of my silly little words ever could.
And since I'm so stuck on perfect encapsulations, let me just say that it's series like these that send young people screaming from art and literature. It thinks that being well mannered is superior to telling a gripping tale. Worse, in order to retain its artsy little laurels, any excitement must be bludgeoned like a hedgehog in a gunnysack. It mistakes the dour for the dramatic, and mere tedium for suspense. A 2.0 is all I can throw this threadbare beggar, and even that stems from one isolated, 30-second scene.
2.0