Supernatural Episode 822
“Clip Show”
Written By: Andrew Dabb
Directed By: Thomas J. Wright
Original Airdate: 8 May 2013

In This Episode...

Sam and Dean are going through the Men of Letters files on demon possession. They discover an old film reel and sit down to watch it. On it, a young priest and an old priest are performing an exorcism, the likes of which they have never seen. The older priest, Max Thompson, uses different language and forces the possessed to ingest some of his blood. The demon explodes out of the old woman’s chest, killing her instantly and disappearing. Sam discovers that Father Thompson died a few months after that film, but the younger priest, Simon, is still alive. The boys travel to St. Louis to speak to him. Father Thompson believed that a demon was merely a corrupted human soul, and that with the proper exorcism he could wash the taint away. Father Thompson believed demons could be cured. Simon turns over all of Father Thompson’s files to the boys.

The Winchesters take the files back to their bunker and sift through the contents. Father Thompson would have the demon chained up, and every hour inject him with his own, purified blood (apparently all that takes is some time in a confessional). By the eighth hour, the demon was begging for mercy. Father Thompson slit open his hand and force-fed the demon his blood directly from the source. The demon’s eyes glow and flash, and the humanity returns to the man’s eyes. He has been cured. So now all the boys need to do is set a demon trap, get some sanctified blood, and lure a demon in to be cured. But why lure one when they have one in pieces? The boys dig up Abaddon and sew her head back onto her body. They think they are hot shit because they cut off her hands and she has the pentagram bullet in her head, so there isn’t much she can do. A phone call interrupts the exorcism before it even begins - it is Crowley, and Abaddon is visibly scared. Dean and Sam take the phone call outside. Crowley has decided that the only way to hurt the Winchesters is to make their work for naught - he is killing those that the boys had previously saved. Tommy Collins, who the Winchesters saved from a wendigo; Jenny Klein, who was saved from hexed baked goods. He will kill someone every 12 hours until they turn over the tablet. The guys return to Abaddon - and discover she has gone. While they were outside, Abaddon telepathically called for her hand from a box on the table, had it crawl up and dig the magic bullet from her head.

Sam and Dean don’t have time to worry about Abaddon right now; they have to go rescue Crowley’s next victim, Sarah Blake. And where Crowley is causing trouble, there is bound to be a demon or two. They arrive at Sarah’s house, explain the situation, and cover the place with symbols and demon traps. Crowley calls and counts down the seconds to midnight, at which point Sarah begins to choke and collapses. He has decided to keep his demons away from the Winchesters until the trial nonsense was done. So what is killing Sarah is a spell. Sam and Dean rip the place apart looking for the hex bag, but they can’t find it. Sarah dies. In frustration, Dean throws the phone across the room. Turns out, the hex bag was hidden in the phone. Sam, overwhelmed with guilt, wants to accept Crowley’s deal; Dean is determined to kick ass.

Meanwhile, Metatron (who actually goes by Marv in public) has found Castiel and wants him to help close the gates of heaven. Marv’s thinking is that if you lock all the angels together in a room, they will be forced to work out their differences - or at least not let those differences leak out to earth. Like with hell, there are heaven trials, too. Marv is just a pencil pusher; he needs Castiel to be the muscle. But when the first trial involves killing an “abomination” (a human/angel hybrid), Castiel balks. The abomination is a sweet waitress who sees the men coming, knows what they are, and insists she just wants to live a normal life. They don’t leave, so she defends herself by choking Marv. Castiel stabs her.

Dig It or Bury It?

I do not trust Marv/Metatron. He seems to think locking his “family” in a room together is the way to solve all their problems. In my experience, it usually ends with at least half of the room injured physically, and everyone bearing emotional scars.

Prophecies?

Season finale time. Turns out, Crowley is the final trial - he is the demon that needs to be cured. And Sam suddenly thinks that they can win.

Fox has announced their new show pickups for next season, and of the four dramas, two are genre shows. Score!

First up is Sleepy Hollow, from Fringe co-creators Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci. The supernatural-procedural sounds very similar to NBC's Grimm, in that it incorporates classic folklore in a modern day police drama. Ichabod Crane (Tom Mison) is resurrected and pulled two and a half centuries through time to find that the world is on the brink of destruction and that he is humanity’s last hope, forcing him to team up with a contemporary police officer (Nicole Beharie) to unravel a mystery that dates all the way back to the founding fathers. Len Wiseman (Underworld) directed the pilot.

Next is Almost Human, which may lean more towards the sci-fi/action genre than horror. J.J. Abrams and J.H. Wyman (also two of the brains behind Fringe) created the series, and have brought in a number of their Fringe co-workers to work on the production side. Almost Human (working title) is an action-packed police drama set 35 years in the future, when police officers are partnered with highly evolved human-like androids. An unlikely connection is forged when a cop with an aversion to robots and a robot with unexpected emotional responses investigate cases in a brave new world. Karl Urban (Dredd 3D) and Michael Ealy (Underworld: Awakening) star.

When I was a kid, there was a trio of books called Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz. The books were filled with ghost stories, folklore, and other... well, scary stories. It was in these books that I first learned of such classic tales as the babysitter who discovers the ominous phone calls are coming from inside the house, and the hook-handed killer who stalks kids making out on country roads. These books were among my favorites, but not just for the stories; it was for the art.

Stephen Gammell is the madman behind the drawings in Scary Stories. But he’s not a madman, nor does he specialize in terrifying art. He’s a children’s book illustrator who happens to have created some of the most iconic literary art of my lifetime. It has a ghostly, frantic quality about it, and that is what drew me to the Scary Stories books. 

I don’t remember how old I was when I first got the Scary Stories books; I wasn’t yet in double-digits, that’s for sure. I was already growing out of my childhood fears and found very little to scare me anymore - except the art on Scary Stories. Once the sun went down, those books went into the closet or beneath a pile of clothes, purely for those illustrations. Those images stayed with me my whole life, to the point where, as a grown-up in my mid-20s, I bought the entire set again, and those drawing still give me a chill. I pulled them out the other night for this article, and was worried that the drawings would give me nightmares (they didn’t). 

I am so glad I bought that set because “in honor of” the 30th anniversary of Scary Stories, Harper Collins decided to reissue the books - with different artwork. The artwork belongs to Brett Helquist, and while it is lovely, you don’t want “lovely” illustrations for a book like Scary Stories. You want something visceral, something phantasmagorical, something that will leave an indelible mark on its reader 25+ years later. I doubt that I would ever grab the Helquist Scary Stories off the bookshelf; it just looks like every other volume of “scary stories” that rarely ever scared.

The interesting thing is that Scary Stories has been one of the most frequently challenged children’s books since its publication in 1981, in no small part due to the images; yet the publisher has steadfastly kept the books unedited - until this 30th anniversary edition. What’s worse is that the Helquist editions aren’t just a tamer option for someone looking to buy the books; they are the only option. Harper Collins stopped printing the Gammell editions altogether.   Individual volumes of the Gammell-illustrated books are selling for up to $40 apiece - and good luck trying to find a complete box set.

Below are a few examples of Gammell’s original, blood-curdling illustrations - and Helquist’s fine-but-average replacement illustrations. You tell me which you would be more likely to buy!

As a gamer, I’ve pretty much given up hope that a truly great game-to-film adaptation will ever happen.  We’ve had winks of cult greatness (Mortal Kombat), franchise-unfaithful lunacy (Resident Evil), and hollow renditions that got the look but missed the point (Silent Hill), but never the sort of software-to-cinema translations that we all truly long for. 

There’s a tiny glimmer of hope, however, as a recent interview with Game Informer (and handily cited by Videogamer) revealed that master of horror John Carpenter would love to tackle adapting EA’s Dead Space to celluloid.  Here’s what Carpenter had to say:

"I maintain that Dead Space would just make a great movie because you have these people coming onto an abandoned, shut-down space ship and they have to start it up and something's on board. It's just great stuff.

"I would love to make Dead Space [into a film], I'll tell you that right now. That one is ready-made."

A Dead Space movie wouldn’t be Carpenter’s first foray into gaming: he had a directorial hand in F.E.A.R. 3, helping to give the game an extra dose of horror in spite of its multiplayer-oriented gameplay.

As exciting as the prospect of a seasoned horror vet like Carpenter directing Dead Space could be, I would sign him on with one major stipulation: that he also handles the soundtrack.  Carpenter returning to The Thing-style bio-horror with his trademark synth score?  That’s the stuff dreams are made of, folks.

Hannibal Episode 106
“Sorbet”
Written By: Jesse Alexander and Bryan Fuller
Directed By: James Foley
Original Airdate: 9 May 2013

In This Episode...

The FBI is called in on a case that could be another Chesapeake Ripper victim. If it is, it is likely the start of a new cycle; the Ripper tends to kill three people in quick succession, then lies dormant for a year or more. Will almost immediately decides that the Ripper didn’t kill this victim. He has a lot of the same hallmarks, but it wasn’t the Ripper. This annoys the lab techs who are convinced this was the work of the Ripper. This victim was found with his liver surgically removed and the wound stitched up, but then with signs of the stitches being torn out with bare hands. Trauma to the heart suggests to the techs that the suspect was interrupted; Will realizes that this was internal cardiac massage. The suspect was clearly (well, clearly to Will) harvesting the victim’s liver for sale on the black market. He didn’t mean to kill the victim; he tried to save him. The Ripper never would have tried to save his victim.

A trio of new victims are found, but how they are found are of no importance; what matters is that these are Ripper victims. Each has organs removed, but they are not exactly popular transplant organs: things like intestines and spleens. Of course, we know these to be Hannibal’s victims. While at the opera one night (ironically a concert for hunger relief), Hannibal runs into a society friend who is just devastated that he hasn’t had a dinner party in a while. We later see him picking out recipes, then associating them with business cards he has collected. His Rolodex is like the Omaha Steaks catalogue. We even see him approaching one of his victims in a menacing way - but we don’t actually see him kill.

Anyway, these new Ripper victims seem to quiet down the techs about the organ harvester being the Ripper. Security footage shows an ambulance leaving the first victim’s hotel as the cops arrive. The track it down to a private ambulance company, then use GPS to find it. The driver of the truck is a med student named Devon Sylvestri, and they find him wrist-deep in a new victim’s abdomen. Jack wants him to put his hands up, but doing so would cause the victim to bleed out. Hannibal steps in, gets control of the situation, and Devon is arrested without a fight.

Also: One of Hannibal’s patients, Franklin, sees him at the opera and introduces him to his heterosexual life partner, Tobias. Franklin has some boundary issues, but in the brief moment that they meet, there seems to be a common interest between Hannibal and Tobias. This will become important in next week’s episode (as we see in the scenes for next week). We also get to meet Hannibal’s psychiatrist: Gillian Anderson, in an all-too-brief cameo. Jack is being haunted by Miriam Lass’s disembodied arm. In a vision/dream/hallucination, Jack sees Will as a corpse, who sits up on the table and we see that it is his arm that is missing. Despite the fact that Jack is pushing Will hard to find the Ripper, clearly he is feeling guilty about it. Will informs Hannibal that Miriam’s arm showing up was meant to humiliate Jack. “Did it work?” “It worked really well,” Will says, with just a hint of smug satisfaction. Will is getting tired of Jack using him.

Dig It or Bury It?

I don’t know what it was exactly, but something about this episode struck me more than any other. This show has such a quiet refinement, it makes the brutality even deeper. Maybe it was the urban-legend-come-to-life aspect. Maybe it was Gillian Anderson’s appearance. Maybe it was because we learned more about Hannibal in tonight’s episode than we have thus far. We see him in social settings; interacting with non-patients; preparing his feasts. We almost get to see him kill someone.

I also get the sense that Will knows that Hannibal is a killer, but there is a mental block preventing himself from making that thought conscious. That look the two shared over the organ harvester’s victim was both very unknowing and blithely unaware. I am assuming that at some point (maybe not this season), Will will indeed find out that Hannibal is a killer, but Will won’t be able to turn him in (and not just because it would back the series into a corner). Maybe it will cause Will to have a psychotic break. 

Bon Appetit

Among Hannibal’s recipes this week: crispy lemon calf’s liver; chicken liver pate; braised beef lungs; and parmesan-crusted lamb brains. All of those sweetbreads are going to give Hannibal a heart attack. He also brews his own beer in wine casks. He made some just for Alana. It’s classy beer.

Prophecies?

Tobias returns. He is a killer himself and the two face-off. Each had planned to kill the other. My money is on Hannibal.

When it comes to blu-rays, in my mind there are two reasons to purchase: one, because it comes in a cool package with lots of extras; or two, because the picture and audio have been cleaned up and restored beyond anything previously available.

So Dexter season seven will be out on DVD and blu-ray next week - perfect timing in case you need to catch up before the eighth and final season starts on June 30th. I got a peek at the set before the release and frankly, it doesn't fit in with my two above conditions.

For starters, Dexter is new. There is nothing to be enhanced or cleaned up. Sure, it looks just a touch more crisp than the Showtime HD channel, but not much. So it looks great... it just doesn't really look noticeably better than the HD broadcast.

Then there are the extras. There aren't any. None. No deleted scenes; no commentary; no behind-the-scenes footage. They didn't even include the Dexter: Early Cuts that aired on the web before the season started. The only "bonus" is a code to download the pilot episode of Showtime's new series Ray Donovan. Even that is kind of half-assed: it is only available on UltraViolet, which I personally don't like because it requires an internet connection to watch anything on UltraViolet.

So if you are just interested in catching up or re-watching last season of Dexter, you may want to consider buying the season from iTunes or Amazon Instant. The season, in HD, is only about $35 and you get it instantly. If you prefer a hard copy, the blu-ray will run you $45 on Amazon.

We just got in a huge crop of stills from the upcoming season of True Blood. While you wait for the premiere (June 16th on HBO), enjoy these stills and daydream about what kind of wonderful, bloody drama they represent.

To some people, the love between and mother and her son is a special, precious thing. But when you are Norman and Norma Bates, that love is a creepy, terrifying thing. Everyone knows about Norman Bates and his twisted obsession with his mother that lasts beyond the grave. But Bates Motel attempts to go beyond that and show mother and son’s relationship before all of that. What you end up with is a veritable checklist on how to raise a psychopath.

In honor of Mother’s Day this weekend, we have pulled some of Norma’s “best” parenting tips. And by “best,” I of course mean the scariest.

Be Careful When Naming Your Child

“Boys take their fathers’s names all the time” is Norma’s response when questioned about mother and son having virtually the same name. Sure, and daughters take their mother’s name. Very rarely does it ever cross gender lines.

Make Sure to Lay on the Guilt

When your son gives you attitude about not calling the police because you are trying to start a new business and don’t want it to be known as the “murder hotel,” be sure to apologize as many times as possible for being raped. 

Treat Your Son Like Your Best Friend

When Norma is dressing for her first “date” with Zach Shelby, she asks Norman for his opinion on her outfit. She then changes her mind and takes it off, revealing a lacy bodysuit underneath. Norman is nervous and looks away, something which Norma ridicules him about. “This shouldn’t embarrass you; I’m your mother.” That is exactly why he is embarrassed!

Go on a Date With Your Son

Especially when the “date” is a body dump. After Norma kills Keith, she and Norman dump his body in the ocean. Naturally they do it under the cover of night, and of course they have to take a boat out. And a rowboat makes sense because there is no motor to draw attention. Then you can look lovingly into each others eyes. And if you taught him well, your son will recite this little portion of Jane Eyre: “Mom, you're everything. Everything to me. And I don't ever want to live in a world without you. You're my family... my whole family, my whole... my whole life, my own self. You always have been. It's like there's a cord between our hearts.”

Treat Your Son Like Your Husband

Norma is briefly imprisoned for Keith Summers’ death. When she is released on bail, Norman is waiting for her with a taxi and a bouquet of flowers. Norma doesn’t want his cheap apologies; she knows he was “getting laid” while she was getting arrested. That sounds like a wife with an accusation and a husband with a weak apology; not a mother talking to her son. Like a husband, don’t be accusatory - it helps no one in the situation.

Have Sexual Fantasies About Your Son

This is the kind of thing that really shouldn’t require an explanation. And yet, here we are. When Norma sees Bradley doing yoga, she can’t help but have visions of Bradley seducing Norman. I am no parent, but I have to imagine that for most parents, that would be the last thing they want to imagine. Less explicit, but just as creepy, when Norma and Norman first move into their house, Norma has saved the room right next to hers so he can be close to her. Norman thought/hoped his room was on the third floor, in the attic - but what teenager can be trusted to be a whole 20 feet away from his mother?