Fear Itself: Eater
NBC’s website says that writer Richard Chizmar’s first big project with his writing partner Jonathan Schaech is an adaptation of Stephen King’s From A Buick 8. Then, they say that Jonathan Schaech’s first big project with his writing partner Richard Chizmar is an adaptation of Stephen King’s Black House. I’m not horribly familiar with either of them, though they’ve written for Masters of Horror and Heroes, nor the director Stuard Gordon (Re-Animator). Yes, that means I’ve never seen Re-Animator.
I am familiar with Elisabeth Moss who played the female rookie officer, though more for her work on Mad Men than The West Wing. She’s one of those girls who isn’t classically beautiful and because of that can play both the pretty girl when done up and the mousy girl when needed. For this installment she is cast in the latter role and put opposite the towering Stephen R. Hart as a serial killer named “The Eater.” He doesn’t even have to be anything more than his 6’11″ in height and he’s scary as all hell, but with the teeth and make-up added here, he’s downright terrifying.
Right from the beginning, this episode won me over with the ultra-realistic banter between the cops. The ribbing of the girl and the sexist reluctance to have her on the force at all. Boy, thank goodness they aren’t resorting to lame-ass stereotypes. [The preceding was brought to you by Sarcasm, Inc. “Sarcasm, Inc. When speaking plainly just isn’t good enough anymore there’s always Sarcasm. Where we respect all consumers as intelligent and thoughtful people.”]
By the time the set-up staff meeting ended and “the girl” asked “Hey Sarge, he really ate all those people?” I settled down to really hate this episode. But at least they acknowledged that they ripped some of the characteristics of their cannibalistic serial killer from The Silence of the Lambs. Surprisingly, after a terrible set-up the show got a lot better. They did a great job of establishing the mood and of making the empty police station a pretty damned spooky place to be.
Why does Bannerman have two full sleeves of tattoos? I get that she’s established as a horror buff, but I’m not seeing where the tattoos fit in with her personality. I guess I just don’t see someone so skittish as she portrays this character to be going out and getting sleeves like that.
I did like Stephen Lee as fellow officer Marty Steinwitz. He was crass, crude and a bit creepy all at the same time. There was a lot of strength in the acting on the parts of both Moss and Lee, which served to ratchet up the tension perfectly as the hour progressed. That and the minimalistic usage of Hart’s towering persona only exacerbated the psychological terror. Even Pablo Schreiber, who showed up later as an almost exact replica of the personality Lee had established, maintained the creepy level.
Pablo Schreiber and Stephen Lee were both sweating profusely throughout the episode, to establish that they were a little “off.” I don’t like that they used this trick and the odd swooping camera angles for Lee so early in the episode as it gave too much to the audience too soon. Let us be as uncertain as Bannerman at least for a little while.
Stupid Horror Movie Moves & Other Thoughts
- Hey, I’m a young girl alone in a room with a 6’11″ serial killing cannibal. Why don’t I open the locked jail door that is the only thing standing between me and him to make sure he’s all right?
- I want to know how long Officer Marti Bannerman has been on the force, as there were times when the captain talked about her as if she’s put in some time making arrests, and other instances where they almost act like this is her first week.
- Like anyone believed the captain wasn’t “The Eater” when he showed up. But where the hell did his body come from to suddenly be in the holding area. And why the bag over its head? Plot holes? Let me just fill those up with flashing lights.
- The bad guy moves like a lumbering zombie, even when possessing other bodies, such that the girl can easily escape him, and has to take dramatic pauses to laugh maniacally.
- A hide-and-go-seek scene in a locker room. That’s never been done before.
- The scene where he bit her hand couldn’t have been done more awkwardly if it had been staged and filmed by those morons who do backyard wrestling videos on the ’net.
- So who chained the doors from the outside anyway? And how come nothing came of the rippling waves of reality?
- And then the ending. Rat poison? Really? Just like that? That was your ending? Guess you kind of wrote yourself into a corner there, huh? Yeah, horror is hard.
Wow, I am really losing all kinds of faith in the folks at Fear Itself to craft a clever and intelligent horror story. Is it truly a lost art anymore? How about we have an episode about a television reviewer being forced to watch crappy horror anthologies and how it drives him mad and he starts writing to TV (because that’s television you know) and begging them to take the show off the air. Next week looks to be the best episode of the run so far … because there isn’t a new Fear Itself. It’s skipping next week to give us all a chance to recover from all the fear we’ve amassed over the past five weeks.
Gail Fisher Biography
Gail Fisher helped break several barriers as a young black actress in television during the 1960s. She was the first black performer to get dialogue in a nationally aired commercial, and as Peggy Fair on Mannix, only the second black woman (the first being Nichelle Nichols of Star Trek) cast as a regular character in a dramatic hour-long network series, a role for which she won an Emmy award in 1970. Fisher was one of five children born in Orange, NJ. She was later a beauty pageant winner and became a model, using the money she earned in the latter profession and from her regular job in a local factory in New Jersey to take acting lessons in New York. Fisher studied with Lee Strasberg and was later a member of the Repertory Theater at Lincoln Center, where she worked with Elia Kazan and Herbert Blau, among other directors. It was Blau who gave Fisher her significant stage credit, portraying a major role in a production of Danton’s Death. She had already picked up some television work, including commercials, and it was her spot for All detergent that marked a breakthrough for black performers in that field. In 1968, the producers of the series Mannix, starring Mike Connors, revamped the series from its original format, transforming him from an employee of a high-tech security firm into a more traditional private detective, with an office and a secretary. Fisher won the latter role, which allowed her to do far more than answer phones and serve coffee, frequently putting her into the action and the drama. Along with Nichelle Nichols, Greg Morris of Mission: Impossible, Robert Hooks of N.Y.P.D., Don Mitchell of Ironside, and Diahann Carroll of Julia, Fisher was one of the most visible black actors on television during this period, and her Emmy in 1970 confirmed the quality of her work. She took great pride in having helped raised the presence of black performers on television from near invisibility in the early 1960s to major prominence at the end of the decade. After the cancellation of the series in 1975, Fisher’s chaotic personal life — which included several marriages and problems with substance abuse — caused her to leave acting for a time, although she did play a major role in the 1987 feature film Mankillers and appeared in the made-for-television movie Donor in 1990. Fisher died of kidney failure late in 2000 in Los Angeles.
Bai Ling Biography
Bai Ling means “white spirit” in her Chinese dialect and she has become a rising actress on both sides of the Pacific. The delicate, almost ethereal actress was particularly memorable to USA audiences as Myca, the drug-pushing cannibal with a taste for eyeballs, in Alex Proyas’ thriller “The Crow” (1994) and as the President’s Chinese interpreter in Oliver Stone’s “Nixon” (1995). The latter role was almost ironic as Bai Ling had arrived in the USA just four years earlier not knowing one word of English.
Raised in a typical Chinese family, one accepting of the revolution, Bai Ling was a musical performer at age 14, inducted into the army and sent to Tibet to entertain the troops. In 1986, she also made her film debut in “Haitan” and subsequently appeared in films made in China. Worldwide audiences could catch a glimpse of her in Bernardo Bertolucci’s “Little Buddha” (1993), but it was her subsequent efforts in “Dead Funny” (1995) and her delightful turn as an Americanized immigrant in “Somewhere in the City” (1996) that brought her attention. Bai Ling made headlines when she landed the leading role opposite Richard Gere in the political thriller “Red Corner” (1997).
Her TV work has included “Nobody’s Girls” (PBS, 1994) a documentary with recreations in which Bai Ling was Mary Bong, a 15-year old Chinese woman who became famous as a midwife after she settled in Alaska. She made her American TV-movie debut in “Dead Weekend” (Showtime, 1995).
- Born:
on 10/10/70 in China - Job Titles:
Actor
Family
- Father: Bai Yu-xiang.
- Grandmother: Peng Zhi-jia.
- Mother: Chen Bin-bin.
- Sister: Bai Je.
Significant Others
- Companion: Chris Isaak. reportedly dating from late 1999
Education
- New York University, New York, New York
Milestones
- 1986 Entertained soldiers in Tibet (date approximate)
- 1986 Made film debut in “Haitan”
- 1990 Moved to USA (date approximate)
- 1993 Had cameo role in “Little Buddha”
- 1994 Made American TV debut in “Nobody’s Girls”
- 1994 Made American film debut with “The Crow”
- 1995 Made American TV movie debut in “Dead Weekend” (Showtime)
- 1995 Played interpreter in “Nixon”
- 1997 Snagged role of leading lady opposite Richard Gere in “Red Corner”
- 1999 Cast as Tuptim in the remake, “Anna and the King”
- 1999 Was virtually wasted in a stereotypical role of an Asian vamp in “Wild Wild West”
- 2001 Acted in “The Breed”, a vampire thriller, aired on Starz! in lieu of theatrical release
- 2001 Had featured role in the NBC miniseries “The Monkey King”
- 2003 Was one of the titular “Extreme Team” (lensed 2001), an ABC TV-movie that also served as a pilot for a potential series
- 2004 Appeared in Spike Lee’s comedy “She Hate Me”
- 2004 Featured in the comedy “My Baby’s Daddy”
- 2004 Played the Mysterious Woman in “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow” starring Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow
- Will co-star with Seann William Scott, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Cheri Oteri in Richard Kelly’s “Southland Tales” (lensed 2005)