Friday the 13th: The Series, Episode 1.12, "Faith Healer"

astral |ˈastrəl|
adjective [ attrib. ]
• of or relating to a supposed nonphysical realm of existence to which various psychic and paranormal phenomena are ascribed, and in which the physical human body is said to have a counterpart.

If you remember, my last encounter with Friday the 13th: The Series, Episode 3.3, Crippled Inside was about a high school girl who possessed a magical and cursed wicker wheelchair that allowed her to astral project and commit physical acts of revenge on a villainous gang of high school boys.

Well this one, Episode 1.12, Faith Healer, was directed by David Cronenberg, and is about an evangelist who claims to heal the diseased and dying. Despite common sense I initially hoped it was going to be the same Crippled Inside story, told again. I hoped the whole series was just variations on that concept. It wasn't, of course, though the first scene features a young blind man in a wheelchair. He's in a church and the evangelist circles him as he explains to the gathered crowd how the ethereal hand of god will heal the boy, using the evangelist as a vessel of course, and but then just as he's about to demonstrate a party-pooper intervenes and accuses the evangelist of being a fraud. He pops a contact out of the boy's eye and asks the audience: why would a blind man wear contacts? As the crowd gasps, the evangelist dashes out of the church...

CUT TO:

In the alley an old man in a wheelchair, angry from betrayal, verbally lashes out at the evangelist. Old dude's pissed because he wanted to be healed. The lying piece of shit evangelist simply runs past the wheelchair bound old man; but despite the geriatric condition of his aggressors, he's frantic, and he falls into some trash ditch at the end of the alley. Among the garbage is a Roger Rabbit kind of cartoony oversized white glove, which for some mystical reason the evangelist immediately wants to stick his hand inside.

BIG MOMENT:

A diseased woman approaches him - her disease is a melting face of sores. Very Cronenbergian. She's pissed like the previous wheelchair man and accosts the evangelist regarding his deception and amorality and wickedness, etc., false advertising etc., and but do I have to tell you that the goddamn glove really fucking heals? Swear to God it does. He touches the woman and she turns middle-aged and red-headed and cured. The evangelist is stoked - his luck really turned around in short order.

CUT TO:

SHIT, the woman's affliction is in the glove! You can tell because it's full of sores now, too, and when the evangelist goes to pull the glove off parts of his skin rise up with the glove, exposing a bloody fleshless interior in his forearm, very Cronenbergian. The guy understandably freaks out, which attracts the attention of a policeman who is serendipitously across the street.

NO SHIT:

The fucking glove can pass on the disease to other people! And not only that, but through the science of this process, the disease is magnified and worsened and the gloved victim dies of horribleness in complete agony and terrible, ultimate suffering. Adios officer.

DUDE'S REALLY EXCITED:

Because his shtick just went legitimate. You don't see him fist pumping the air though (because this is fucking Cronenberg), you see him on a television commercial, advertising his real-deal healing powers. Those kids with their bullshit whatever recurring plot line which ties together the series see him on tv. And in this season the uncle is around with the bullshit kids and anyway for some reason I forget they need to get the glove, which is this episode's cursed object!

SOME DULL SHIT ABOUT THIS OR THAT:

Anyway the uncle, Jack, is old friends with the skeptical party-pooper from the first sequence, whose name is Jerry. And anyway Jack and Jerry

GO UP THE PLOT HILL, UNTIL:

Jerry confronts the evangelist for a second time. The evangelist is mortified at first, because of their history, but the glove has bolstered his confidence so he accepts Jerry's challenge: he'll heal whomever Jerry selects to be healed, in order to prove to Jerry that now he's authentic.

Jerry reveals to Jack, whom he's tied up, that HE suffers from a fatal disease; Jerry himself has some melted chocolate colored puss sores on his stomach. That disease is called Very Cronenbergian. HE's going to be the one to be healed.

DRAMATIC CULMINATION:

The evangelist tricks Jerry and doesn't heal him! Dead serious. Well, Jerry's pissed, and he starts firing his Marine pistol, which I forgot to mention. A security guard gets shot, and the evangelist does too. He escapes after Jerry shoots him twice.

HE (THE EVANGELIST) HEALS HIS OWN BULLET WOUNDS USING THE GLOVE:

But while running away crashes his car. Stuck in his car, he has no one to pass the disease (the disease of being shot) onto this time. This passing on of the ailment was demonstrated again before, besides the lady, which I forgot to mention. It was another lady, in an alley, and it involved a poodle in flight.

Also, Jack is tied up because Jerry double-crossed him because using cursed objects for personal gain is very morally reprehensible, and although Jack and Jerry are best friends, there's still no reason for Jack to allow Jerry to fucking use the devil's powers for personal gain, for Christ's sake. Forget about that for a moment though, because the evangelist is in the car and can't move, and Jerry is on the hunt.

CAN YOU FUCKING BELIEVE:

Jerry makes it to the car in time to see the evangelist die from internal gun fires, and the evangelist expires in front of Jerry's eyes.

WHICH IS FINE WITH JERRY, WHO TAKES THE GLOVE FROM NEXT TO THE DEAD EVANGELIST:



And then Jerry plans on healing himself and passing the disease onto Jack. Thankfully the cousins show up in time though.

OH FUCK:

Earlier, in that second demonstration of the glove's powers I forgot to mention but then mentioned, there's fucking pulsing face sores on a woman in an alleyway. Very Cronenbergian.

Thanks again Vendredi Antiques for the image.

Friday the 13th: The Series, Episode 3.3, "Crippled Inside"

Image borrowed from Vendredi Antiques, a website devoted to cataloging and discussing the episodes of Friday the 13th: The Series, a show I had little knowledge of until last night, but now today could totally understand why there is this website and probably other websites constructed as memorials. Again, the image is:



I don't know enough about myself to be able to explain why this stands out over all the other movies I've consumed since Police, Adjective. Last month, in the 28-day February, I saw 68 movies theatrically, and for some reason I've already ordered more movies from Amazon at this point in 2010 than I did in the whole year of 2009. So I've been plenty busy, seen a lot of great movies, and been enjoying movies at an insatiable rate, but it's Crippled Inside that brings me to the computer. I read this Mel Books quote recently, a variation on a popular definition of comedy, that said "A man cuts his finger, that's tragedy. He falls down a manhole, that's comedy." This episode, to me, is about a woman falling down a glorious manhole.



Now, the girl on the left is a quadriplegic. The wheelchair remote control attached to her chin is a fantastic indicator. She enters this physical state at the beginning of the episode: attempting to escape a gang of teenage rapists (one wielding a nasty no-bullshit switchblade) she runs into the road and is struck by a car.

Then this old man, on the right, offers her a wicker wheelchair, telling her that it cured his post-stroke paralysis and is definitely the wicker wheelchair for her. It doesn't have a classy chin control, but the girl, being either a great admirer of old men or of antique wicker, convinces her mom, who is opposed immediately to the wicker wheelchair (being a middle-aged suburban housewife I assumed she was a dabbler of spiritualism and read the wheelchair's negative aura, but this isn't stated, nor is it stated if the old man embarked on his own personal journey of vendetta, as the girl will, but both these assumptions strengthen the dark currents of this episode), and so the wheelchair is brought home.

Before I continue, the premise of Friday the 13th: The Series is (roughly - I'm not an expert, yet) that an uncle who sold cursed antique goods died and went to a hell described as an endless fall. The inheritors of the antique store, a pair of cousins, want to save the uncle and also feel a tremendous weight of personal guilt, so they begin to collect the cursed objects from the unwitting purchasers. The cursed antique in this episode is the wicker wheelchair.




When the girl sits on the wheelchair, she "astro-projects." My friend Dennis tells me that what she does is called astro-projection. Maybe one word? Astropojects. Astro projects. Regardless, the term is entering my permanent and conversational vocabulary. This is what happens: a ghostlike double of herself stands up from the wheelchair.

She kills the would-be rapists one by one. The killings restore her body. The first boy is so surprised to see her, walking around, that be backs into a cabinet in the chemistry classroom (he's there to steal a test - these guys are no fucking good) and acid falls over him. His body dissolves. Being the first, everyone assumes he "dissolved himself." Well, almost everyone, because the other would-be rapists enter the room just as the boy's face is disappearing, and they hear his last word: the girl's name!

The second boy throws himself off a building.

The third boy, thinking he's going to get some fuck action from the suddenly mobile girl, lays down on the ground with her. While seducing him she ties his arms so that he cannot move, pulls out her own switchblade, asks "How does it feel??" and drops an electric chandelier on him.

The fourth boy, the worst of the worst, the wielder of switchblade, first attempts to shank one of the central characters of the show, one of the cousins collecting the antiques. This is when the cousin has come for the wheelchair, and he finds the suspicious and rapist boy (driver of red convertibles) in the girl's bedroom. He, being nearly shanked, becomes royally pissed and makes the rapist boy promise to stay away. He runs out of the house, past the old man (window peeping?). The old man has been acting as a kind of spiritual mentor for the girl, and he convinces the cousin that the girl should have a little more killing fun, and the cousin agrees. The old man says, "This is the type of boy who will always come back".

So the final rapist boy does indeed soon return. The girl (who can now move her top-half and has feeling in her legs, owing to her successful killing spree) astro-projects and strangles the boy. Just then the cousin arrives, sees the boy, and wants to take the wheelchair back. Sure, I've killed enough, says the girl, who stands up, assuming her body fully restored. But wait, she can't walk....the boy isn't dead! He rises from the floor and lunges at the girl, knocking her down a flight of stairs. They fall together, both dying by the bottom. Fucking cursed antique wicker chair, noooooo!

The cousin returns the antique wicker wheelchair to the shop. The old man comes and asks for it, saying more people need its healing powers. The cousin disagrees and takes an axe to the chair. Only the cousin never realized: wicker is forever, and the chair will never be destroyed!