So far, my deep dive into the strange and enthralling world of murine horror has taken me to some curious places. We've encountered giant rats on the moon in vintage sci-fi anthologies, uncanny monsters in 1990s children's entertainment, and off-screen menaces in minimalist 1970s horror. Something I have not yet gone into as an example, however, is the nature documentary. "Uninvited Guests" aired as part of the BBC's flagship wildlife program, Wildlife on One, which ran from 1977 to 2005 and was narrated by David Attenborough (who is a fantastic person in virtually every regard, and we as a society did not deserve him; it's just unfortunate that he hates rats). The twenty-eight minute documentary was devoted to the subject of house pests - more specifically, pests in the process of taking over a vacant building, located in some unspecified part of the UK, after its human occupants have mysteriously packed up and fled. Much like Mouse Hunt, this is another story about the battle between man and mouse (and various other tiny specimens of the animal kingdom) for the dominance of a creaky old property, only here the battle is far more subtle in nature. As the miniature squatters go about exploiting the house's nooks and crannies to their own ends, their domestic bliss is intermittently disturbed by the intrusions of an estate agent, who has his work cut out in attempting to make the crumbling abode seem attractive to an assortment of prospective buyers - a task made no easier by the occasional intersecting of the parallel stories.
I was watching during the documentary's initial broadcast on 21st April 1998. I thought it was riveting stuff, and yet I must have been exhausted on the day in question, because for the life of me I could not keep my eyes open. In a moment of extreme weakness, I closed them for just long enough to be completely insensible for the final third of the documentary, only to awaken just a handful of seconds before the fade-out. It closed on a distinctive image, with a couple huddled together in bed in a state of evident unease, as if terrified at the thought of what might be stirring just beneath them. Attenborough's narration had previously emphasised that the house's prospects of being sold were becoming increasingly bleak, so it came as a surprise to see that, by the end, humans had apparently succeeded in making the property halfway livable again. Or had they? That couple seemed pretty worried about something, and I desperately longed to know the context. Alas, this was in the days before catch-up TV, and unless you'd set your VCR, once something had aired it was gone, potentially forever. If you wanted to see it again, then you were at the mercy of the scheduling bigwigs seeing fit to grant it a second run, which tended to happen far more frequently with sitcoms than with natural history documentaries. So for all I knew I had squandered my one opportunity to see this properly forever, and all because I had momentarily given in to that infernal carnal impulse of mine. Still, I never forgot the anxiety of that couple at the end, and the image continued to haunt me for just shy of twenty-two years. According to the BBC's online TV guide, "Uninvited Guests" was repeated only once, on 26th August 2004 on BBC2, but I did not happen to catch it. Wildlife on One also never saw any kind of DVD or Blu-Ray release, and while I would intermittently search YouTube for the program, just on the off-chance that anyone else had uploaded it, I always came up short. My prospects of ever seeing the elusive documentary in full were bleak...until January this year, when I discovered that someone had very courteously uploaded the episode, along with many other Wildlife on One episodes, to The Internet Archive. Obviously, I wasn't about to let this get away.
"Uninvited Guests" did not disappoint. I can see exactly why this
made such a great impression on me back in 1998, and why I'd remained so
driven to find what had passed me by in the aftermath. "Uninvited
Guests" must be one of the quirkiest installments of Wildlife on One (I would hesitate to call it the quirkiest, because I have memories of another episode done in the style of CSI,
with all these forensic tests being carried out to determine which
rainforest-dwelling carnivore had whacked and devoured an innocent sloth
- sadly, that episode, "Amazon Assassin", is not on The Internet
Archive). Nature documentaries aren't, of course, traditionally thought
of as potential horror fodder - even at their most carnage and Amazon
assassin packed, they are generally perceived as safe, non-threatening
viewing. And yet they have the potential to depict the world from an entirely
different, more alien perspective, and this is something that "Uninvited Guests" certainly excels at. It
celebrates the strange beauty of decay, and the process of something
familiar and domestic being transmuted into an inhospitable wilderness,
as nature comes creeping in in a variety of small but powerful forms and
reclaims the terrain as its own. But what makes the documentary
especially memorable is the manner in which it wittily intersects this
process with the fictional human drama running alongside it. (Unfortunately,
the information given in the end-credits is fairly
limited - we are told that the human cast consisted of Jeremy Balfour,
Lindsey Harvey, Peter Nicholas, Louis Dougherty and Katie Holder, but I
am unable to say who played what role. Also not revealed is anything of
the filming locations; I would at least have liked to have known where
the house used for the exterior shots was based.) Footage of
mice, slugs and silverfish is juxtaposed with an array of hauntingly
atmospheric shots showing the various abandoned material artifacts left
to stagnate around the property. Some of this imagery - moth-eaten
taxidermy, a baby doll with hollowed out eyes - seems a little too
knowingly on the nose, as if the documentary intends both to unnerve us and slip in a few tongue-in-cheek gags at the expense of horror cliche. The episode is filled with playful visual gags - at one point, we see the pages of a book blowing in the wind, revealed to be a copy of Bleak House by Charles Dickens, and elsewhere we see a snow globe topple in an obvious nod to Citizen Kane. But none of this detracts from the genuine eeriness of the story being told - or, more accurately, the implicit narrative that's only vaguely alluded to. We get a handful of
scenes in which the estate agent is nervously attempting to talk up the
building to apathetic house hunters, but far more telling is the drama
communicated by the absent humans - the untold stories of those lives
suddenly vacated. We get only a very distant, fleeting glimpse of the
house's original owners during the establishing sequence, as they pack their bags and abandon the property
in the dead of night. The estate agent
later informs us, somewhat cryptically, that they left in "something of
a hurry." Eloping? Fleeing a possible forensic investigation? We can
only speculate. Early shots, also from the well of horror convention,
show children sneaking a cautious glimpse at the building grounds,
suggesting that the abandoned house has become the subject of local lore
and curiosity. Is the house haunted? It might as well be, for the
previous owners pack up and exit in such a hurry that they
leave behind their cat, who continues to stalk the halls of the property
as a sort of avatar for its absent owners. The cat, it seems, was never
really there, in the sense that Attenborough's narration never sees fit
to acknowledge it. It is less a member of the house's ever-increasing
fauna population than a ghost, a silent reminder of a fading past that
Man and Nature alike regard with equal indifference.
What
is unsettling about "Uninvited Guests" has less to do with its emphasis
on the assortment of floorboard-dwelling creepy-crawlies with which we
could be sharing a home and wouldn't know it, than with its depiction of
what would become of the world we'd leave behind if we were to suddenly
up and disappear - the evidence that we were ever here, and of the lives we
once led, and how rapidly this is picked apart, modified and eradicated
by the opportunists who arrive to take our place. At the same time, a
great deal of admiration is evoked for the sheer resourcefulness with
which the various guests adapt and make use of the decaying property -
the mice who, having worked their way through the jars of biscuits and
Marmite in the larder, are able to survive on the tallow in candles and
soap, the slugs who feast on the yeast-flavoured delights growing on the
outside of botttles, and the lice who live off the mold inside old
books. There isn't a corner of the house that goes exploited, with every
crack becoming a potential entrance point, if not for wildlife then for
garden fungi, seen mushrooming here through delightful use of time-lapse
photography. Much like one of the more wonderfully grotesque of these
residents, the slime mold, described by Attenborough as "an alliance of
hundreds of thousands of amoeba-like creatures" assuming the form of a
slug-like creature and exuding slime in its quest for sustenance, one
gets the distinct impression that all of these guests are coming
together to represent the collective character of the house - which, far
from declining, is finally realising its full potential. Only ever
ostensibly a place of safe domesticity, it appears that the wilderness
was never actually banished around here, merely lurking out of sight
beneath the floorboards, waiting for the moment when it could finally crawl to the surface and assume complete control. This is reinforced by the
fact that, for the most part, the human interlopers seem blissfully oblivious as to the myriad of animal dramas unfolding all
around them. There are only two points in the narrative in which the
human and wildlife narratives directly intersect - a moment where the
estate agent, in the midst of a house showing, stumbles upon the mice
raiding the food supplies and comically redirects his clients to a different
part of the building, and another in which a couple of prospective buyers
encounter a "tegenaria", or cardinal spider, lurking in the bath tub,
and naively assume that they've vanquished the eight-legged menace by washing it down
the plughole, when it's merely been lying in wait for the deluge to
subside. (Due to the obviously staged nature of these encounters, it
seems a safe bet that the animals we see are not actually wild home
invaders but captive specimens, which is probably the case for a number
of other scenes too). There comes a point where it seems difficult to
say who are the real inferred "uninvited guests" of the title, as it is
the human house hunters who appear out of place amid the increasingly murky domain
(not that the animals have total mastery - that cardinal spider is
apparently unable to climb its way out of the bath tub, foiled by the slippery enamel surface).
The
documentary ends with a superficial victory for the humans. Following a
harsh winter, in which the various domestic artifacts become lifelines
for the house's resourceful wild residents, spring arrives, and brings
hope for renewal. The cat is last seen being scared away by the falling
debris caused by a family of squirrels nesting in the chimney,
foreshadowing the arrival of the modern human family who will shortly
move in and get to work on renovating the property, pulling out every
stop to reclaim it back from the jaws of Nature. But although they toil
hard in removing all traces of wilderness from within (their cleaning
efforts are interspersed with various shots the family's young children
running ruckus around the property, creating endless disturbance for the
animals and signalling that their dark and dank paradise has finally
been shattered), the task proves unending, for there is, in the best
horror fashion, a grisly twist in the tale. While many creatures may be in the process of moving out, for others the real utopia is only just beginning. All around the house, legions of blood-sucking parasites are awakening to feast on the spoils brought by their fresh human company, roused by the warmth of the carbon dioxide in their breath. The war between Man and Nature, it seems, is not over but is merely entering a whole new phase, and while Nature may have been forced back into the sidelines for now, there is the implicit suggestion that it maintains the upper hand.
The final moments of "Uninvited Guests" play like the opening of a horror story, with our proud home-owning couple attempting to sleep in their new bedroom, only to find themselves inexplicably unsettled. They are intuitively aware of the other presences stirring within the house and, despite the husband's best attempts to reassure his wife that, "There's no one here but us", can only lie there in the cool grip of insomnia, as the documentary fades out with the sounds of an off-screen calamity occurring downstairs. It's never
established what caused that, but I like to think that it was the cat, who didn't completely scarper when the squirrels sent a shower of soot raining down upon it. Obviously, the ghosts of this house's untold history won't be banished quite so easily.
The Ghostly Trio are a close-knit group, and there's not a lot that could come between them, although the seductive allures of a bewitching banshee might be enough to put them at loggerheads. It's mid-February and the world hasn't quite gotten Valentine's Day out of its system, so now seems like an appropriate time to look at our first glimpse into the Trio's universal lovesickness for the ghoul with the lungs of steel. "3 Boos and a Babe/Elusive Exclusive" was the fifth episode of The Spooktacular New Adventures of Casper - it aired on March 30th 1996 and was later released on VHS by Universal Home Video, alongside "Poil Jammed/A Picture Says A Thousand Words."
3 Boos and a Babe:
So, in the series Casper attends a school for dead children (which is grim as hell but, unlike the 1995 movie, the TV series didn't dwell too hard on the morbid implications of its premise). Here, we see the origin of one of the series' long-running arcs - the Ghostly Trio's admiration for Casper's teacher, Ms Banshee, and their ongoing efforts to impress her. Technically, this wasn't the first time they'd encountered Ms Banshee - they were in the same room as her in the very first episode, "Spooking Bee", although I guess they can't have been paying much attention then. Despite their best efforts, the Trio never get anywhere with her, for Ms Banshee is regarded as seriously hot stuff among the ghosting community, and she's not going to settle for a trio of common or garden poltergeists when she could be dating the ghosts of dead celebrities. And she certainly seems to get around. In this episode, she's seen dating the ghost of Clark Gable, and elsewhere in the series she was revealed to have also been romantically involved with the ghost of Bob Marley. In addition, it seems that she's not adverse to experimentation with fleshies, because in another episode she attempted to fuck Dr Harvey.
Ms Banshee's not very into the Trio, although one thing they do have in common is their mutual disdain for Casper's scaring prowess, or lack thereof. Ms Banshee has summoned the Trio because she's concerned about Casper's academic progress and thinks that he requires a terror tutor. The Trio see an opportunity to get into the comely banshee's good graces by putting themselves forward for the task, although immediately they run into a problem, in that there are three of them and only one Ms Banshee, and as such this is probably not going to work out (and Banshee did indicate during her aforementioned pursuit of Harvey that she doesn't do polyamorous relations). Each of them manages to commandeer Casper for long enough to attempt to showcase how their own unique styles of scaring can help the friendly ghost to become a world-class specter. In all three cases, Casper incorporates the techniques poorly, and Ms B ejects them unceremoniously from her classroom. Eventually the Trio stop their infighting and figure that Casper is really to blame for making them all look bad. Meanwhile, Ms Banshee receives a call from a familiar suitor.
At one point, the Trio end up on the set of prime time soap opera Melrose Place, one of Fox's hottest shows of the day. The cast look down their noses at the Trio for hailing from a daytime slot, so the Trio retaliate by combining their spectral powers to morph into the one thing they know will scare the bejesus from them - Rupert Murdoch screaming that they're fired. Melrose Place took place in a swanky apartment complex in West Hollywood, California, and followed the melodrama-soaked lives of the glamorous twentysomethings living therein. I recently watched a random episode, and what can I say? The dialogue was risible and the storylines utterly hokey, but then again it is a soap, so possibly it's that way on purpose? Actually, there was something I found very weirdly unsettling about it that I couldn't quite put my finger on (it had a chilling aura, and I'm inclined to say that it wasn't a coincidence that my pet rat Freak went into a spooked frenzy while it was playing). Also of note is that it had Andrew Shue, aka the man who came the closest to cracking the mystery of who shot Mr Burns.
Stretch says, "I don't mean to toot my own petard." Obviously, he's amalgamated the two idioms "to toot ones own horn/trumpet" (brag about one's own achievements and abilities) and "to be hoisted by one's own petard" (be injured by one's own offensive). The latter originates from William Shakespeare's Hamlet, and "petard" refers to a kind of bomb, although bonus points if you knew that the name was derived from the French word péter, meaning to fart. So yes, Stretch did effectively say, "I don't mean to blow my own farts." Who says that scat humour can't be highbrow?
Casper's line, "Women are from crypts, men are from mausoleums," is a reference to the controversial book, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus by relationship counselor John Grey, which was first published in 1992. Controversial because...yeah, I think the book's problem is evident enough from the title alone.
Ms Banshee has a copy of Norwegian expressionist Edvard Munch's painting "The Scream" hanging in her classroom. Munch painted the iconic image, he claimed, in an effort to represent an infinite scream he sensed surging through nature while watching a sunset in which the sky turned as red as blood. It follows that this would be right up a banshee's alley.
As noted, the ghost who shows up at the end of the episode for a date with Ms Banshee is deceased actor Clark Gable (1901 - 1960), best known for playing Rhett Butler in Victor Fleming's 1939 film Gone With The Wind. There are two allusions to Gone With The Wind here - firstly, when Gable informs the Trio, "Frankly, you fools, I don't give a hoot!", a reference to Butler's iconic line, "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn", which was considered edgy as sin back in its day. At the very end, Casper attempts, unsuccessfully, to mollify the Trio by assuring them that, "Tomorrow is another day," the conclusion that Scarlett O'Hara (Vivien Leigh) reaches at the end of Fleming's film after being on the receiving end of Butler's aforementioned condemnation.
The Whipstaff Inmates:
Something we would occasionally get earlier on in the series were these short pieces with visuals in the style of US artist Edward Gorey, which aesthetically made for nice change of pace. This skit, "The Whipstaff Inmates", takes us on a guided tour of each of the main characters, in wittily penned verses by Chris Otsuki. Again, this was the fifth episode, so by now we already knew full well who most of these characters were, but it's still fun to hear each of them receive their own poetry stanza in their honor. Presumably, calling them "inmates" is intended to make it sound as if Whipstaff is some kind of unconventional psychiatric hospital (which I suppose it is).
Actually, the title is somewhat misleading, as several of the featured "inmates" (including Spooky, Poil and Ms Banshee) do not live at Whipstaff. There is another character featured in this segment who's referred to only as "The Journalist" - he's the only one whom we hadn't already encountered in an episode proper at this stage, although his more formal introduction is coming up in the next story. His real name is Perry Piscatore, and he's basically the closest thing the series has to a recurring antagonist (unless you want to count Amber, although she's more of an antagonist for Kat specifically and tends not to get directly involved with the ghosts), albeit just barely - despite being framed as an important cast member in this particular skit, his appearances in the series are few and far between. As antagonists go, Piscatore is more of a bungling nuisance than he is a genuine threat; he's aware that Whipstaff is haunted and aspires to make a name for himself by proving the existence of ghosts to the world, but he doesn't know the half of what he's doing, so in practice he's really his own worst enemy.
Here's the poem in full:
The house called Whipstaff is the dwelling folks in Friendship fear the most. Let's go in and hear the telling of who lives there, man and ghost. The friendly ghost is never nasty. He's loyal, friendly, truthful, trusting. He never does a thing that's ghastly. That's why ghosts find him disgusting! The doctor treats ghosts by the hour to turn them from their spooky games. His patients do all in their power to thwart his therapeutic aims. The doctor's daughter finds it gaggy living here with ghost and ghoul. She says they're weird, but that's exactly How schoolmates view her here at school.
The stinky one delights in making smell-o-grams in deadly doses. He leaves our noses sore and aching with his own brand of halitosis. The fatso ghost is always eating every moment, night or day. Since he's skinless, we must wonder Where he puts it all away. The Stretch, without a hint of error, morphs up faces terrifying. But none of these can match his terror seeing Casper friend-ifying! The journalist, with plans aggressive, seeks ghosts on film, come snow or rain. He goes to lengths somewhat obsessive. His colleagues think him quite insane. The spooky one is tough and scrappy. For scaring fleshies he's a beaut. But Poil keeps him far from happy because she finds his nose so cute. The pearl is sweet, but Spooky would rather cast this beauty before swine. He daily bears her thoughtless blather. She's driving him out of his mind! We find the teacher somewhat strident. Her screams are good at breaking things! We think you'll find the game is over, When this not-so-fat lady sings. So Whipstaff is the haunted manor where all these ghosts and ghouls abound. And we agree, with perfect candor, It's the weirdest place around!
Elusive Exclusive:
Investigative journalist Perry Piscatore crashes Whipstaff Manor with
the intention of hosting a live broadcast exposing the ghoulish
activity within. Neither Harvey or Kat appreciate the intrusion -
particularly Kat, who is concerned that publicity of this magnitude
would transform their abode into an unlivable media circus. The Ghostly
Trio, by contrast, are delighted, not only by the prospect of getting to
terrorise such willing fleshie prey, but by the possibility of becoming
TV stars in the process. Casper, meanwhile, isn't fussed, because he
understands why Piscatore's plan is doomed to fail - ghosts don't
reflect light, and as such they cannot be photographed (the Trio are
apparently unaware of this). After a failed attempt to warn the Trio, he
figures that the best thing to do is to simply stand back and let
nature take its course. Which it does - Piscatore is rendered a laughing
stock and the Trio are disappointed to learn that their first-rate
scaring went uncredited.
Airing in 1996, this predated the paranormal reality TV explosion
that really look off in the 00s, with such shows as Ghost Hunters,
Destination Truth and Most Haunted, although Fox were currently airing a
series called Sightings, hosted by Tim White, which delved into
an assortment of bizarre phenomena from an investigative news perspective. I took a brief look at one of their episodes on ghosts, and my immediate impressions were that it's no In Search of...(which I love, even if it is all hogwash). The whole premise of a live broadcast inside a haunted property had also been sent up a few years prior in the one-off BBC special Ghostwatch, which was actually a spoof, although it caused some controversy when it aired in 1992; it has since become something of a cult item.
Harvey lists a number of his personal phobias in this episode - in
addition to being areophobic and coulrophobic, he's afraid of stand-up
comedian Carrot Top. Well, that's understandable.
Harvey is voiced by Simpsons alumnus Dan Castellaneta in the
animated series. I'm not sure to what extent he was attempting to mimic
Bill Pullman, but I'd say the best way to describe his Harvey voice is
that he sounds like a more genial, less gravelly version of Krusty the
Clown (basically, how I'd imagine Krusty would sound if he wasn't such an avid chain-smoker). The voice is distinguished enough that I don't
find that distracting, although when Harvey barks at Piscatore "You have obviously no concern for other people's privacy!", I can definitely hear Krusty in there.
Among Piscatore's audience is talk show host Geraldo Rivera, who
confides to the camera that Piscatore's car wreck of a broadcast is,
"more pathetic than that time I opened Capone's vault!" Back on April 21st
1986, more than 30 million viewers tuned in for the syndicated television special, The Mystery of Al Capone's Vault. Hosted by Rivera, the two-hour special was dedicated to the live excavation and opening of crime lord Al Capone's recently-discovered secret vault at the Lexington Hotel in Chicago, Illinois, with the sensational hook that nobody could be entirely certain what they would find within. At the end of the special, the excavators ripped open the vault and America found itself staring into...a big fat nothing. Actually, that's not strictly true, for there was a small collection of empty bottles in there, but this disappointed Rivera's viewership, who were hoping for something more along the lines of dead bodies or hidden treasure. Instead, that ugly void in Capone's vault became the perfect metaphor for the emptiness of "event" television, the vacuousness of a media frenzy spun from absolutely nothing. Still, those two misspent hours weren't a total wash, as popular culture now had a wonderful new punchline in which to sink its teeth. Everywhere under the sun, creative types were savage in their mockery of Rivera's fiasco - in the field of animation alone, the special was also sent up in the Simpsons episode "Homer's Barbershop Quartet", and the Alvin & The Chipmunks episode "When The Chips are Down".
Also watching is talk show host Phil Donahue, who finds Piscatore's
efforts, "worse than when I put on a skirt!" Donahue's wife, Marlo
Thomas, then appears and challenges him as to why he doesn't take the skirt off, whereupon we see that he's still wearing it. This is a reference to Donahue's practice of wearing skirts while hosting shows dedicated to the subject of cross-dressing. Good for him, if he likes his skirts so much.
Stinkie pays homage to contemporary Jim Carrey vehicle The Mask
(1994) when he launches his attack on Piscatore. Fatso clearly has more
of an eye for the classics, for he comes at Piscatore in the style of
Gloria Swanson's character from Billy Wilder's blackly comic noir Sunset Boulevard (1950), which, incidentally, is narrated by a ghost (I would assume....?)
There are also a couple of references to Tobe Hooper's Poltergeist (1982). Piscatore remarks, "If it worked for Spielberg, it'll work for me", shortly before using a television set to lure Stretch into view, a la the titular ghost from Hooper's film. He subsequently declares that, "They're heeeeeere!", with the intonation of Heather O'Rourke's character. Note that the authorship of Poltergeist has been the subject of long-standing controversy, with several accounts suggesting that writer/producer Steven Spielberg effectively had greater on-set control during the film's production, so Piscatore is simply falling in line in crediting him over Hooper. (Spielberg, of course, also produced the Casper movie, which itself contains a nod to Poltergeist, during the sequence where Harvey examines himself in the bathroom mirror.)
This episode ends with a rare victory for Casper (it's far more
common for episodes to conclude in the style of "3 Boos and a Babe",
with the Trio chasing after Casper, something that was explicitly
acknowledged in the Season 2 episode "A Midsummer Night's Scream").
Here, Casper informs Stretch that he cannot slug him, and when Stretch
challenges him on this, Casper responds, "Because it's my turn!", (echoing an exchange between Stretch and Stinkie earlier from in the episode) and
proceeds to headbutt Stretch in a surprisingly violent manner. Still, if
you're on Casper's side then I wouldn't celebrate too raucously, as you know
he paid like hell for that stunt right after the fade out. Stretch, the
alpha ghost of Whipstaff, wouldn't stand for that kind of
insubordination from Stinkie or Fatso; he's sure as heck not going to
take it from Casper.
Warning: Contains spoilers for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and The Old Man and The Sea.
As it turns out, my coverage of the Home-Wrecker saga is still not complete. For there is another. I believe that there is a fifth, unofficial Home-Wrecker whose role in potentially capsizing Marge and Homer's ever-beleaguered union deserves consideration - albeit a very different kind of Home-Wrecker, one who was never going to show up several seasons later as part of an aptly-named bowling team in a visual call-back. (Team mascot, maybe?) I refer of course to General Sherman, the freakishly large catfish whose enigmtic wiles nearly lured Homer away from Marge in Season 2's, "The War of The Simpsons" (7F20), which first aired on May 2nd 1991. Of all the bizarre love triangles to have materialised over the course of the series, this might be the most way-out.
What makes Sherman such an an atypical Home-Wrecker (besides the obvious) is that his own unique relationship with Homer is founded, ostensibly, on enmity. He and Homer wind up on opposing sides of a life or death struggle - Homer aspires to catch the fabled catfish and prove his worthiness in a judgemental world, while Sherman presumably just wants to live another day (although actually, the fish may have a slightly more complex agenda, which we'll get to in due course). And yet at one point Homer explicitly professes love for for his catfish nemesis,when he informs it that, "I love you, but I must kill you!" This particular line was lifted directly from Ernest Hemingway's novella The Old Man and The Sea, the quintessential Man vs. Fish story, which was also referenced earlier on in the season in the opening of "Bart Gets an F". The protagonist, Santiago, makes a similar declaration of love for the giant marlin he has been battling in an acknowledgement of their kinship; recognition that, although ostensibly on opposite sides, they are really participants in the same eternal cycle, with no choice but either to kill or be killed. Hemingway's story is less about the supposed conflict between Man and Nature than it is about Man submitting to Nature's will and rising to its challenges like any other being. Although Santiago overcomes the marlin, he recognises that this cycle of consumption will eventually get the better of him too, and so it does when a school of sharks appears and devours the marlin's carcass, leaving Santiago believing that he has failed them both. The war being waged between Homer and Sherman is likewise the age-old war between predator and prey. Homer is a self-professed predator, at one point attempting to assert his supremacy over Sherman with the taunt that, "I've got a skillet and a stick of butter with your name on it!". Yet the struggle opens with a disturbing subversion on conventional fishing dynamics, in which Sherman is actually the one who hooks and draws Homer into the conflict. Although Homer had set out with the intention of catching Sherman, he has a change of heart and ends up battling the fish anyway purely by happenstance - he picks up a discarded fishing rod, intending to return it to his owner, only to find that Sherman is already waiting for him on the other end. As with Mindy Simmons, it's almost as if Homer has had this date with Sherman from the beginning. Homer's pursuit of the fish, and his declaration of love for it, suggest a reverence similar to Santiago's for his worthy adversary, although it also implicitly reinforces the idea that Homer's interest in the fish constitutes an infidelity to Marge, who has explicitly forbidden him to go after it. For Homer and Marge have come to Catfish Lake to attend a couples' retreat being hosted by Timothy and Helen Lovejoy, and the outcome of the weekend has the potential to either make or break their imperiled marriage. To Marge, Homer's aspirations to devote a significant portion of the trip to catching Sherman are a signal that he perhaps isn't taking the marital crisis as seriously as her. When Homer attempts to sneak out while Marge is sleeping and Marge catches him in the act, you don't have to squint too hard to see shades of Homer attempting to sneak out for a romantic rendezvous.
The title of the episode is a reference to The War of The Roses (1989), a black comedy directed by Homer's own half-brother, Danny DeVito, which details the increasingly bitter marital breakdown between characters played by Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner (not the same characters they portrayed in Romancing The Stone and The Jewel of The Nile, thank gravy). By contrast, Homer and Marge's relationship woes are more genteel (for one thing, the family pets are still alive by the end of "The War of The Simpsons"), although of a markedly more overtly bitter nature than those in "Life on The Fast Lane", when we last saw Homer and Marge come dangerously close to estrangement. There, Homer and Marge only quarrel once, early on, and after Marge meets Jacques it becomes less a matter of Marge being mad at Homer than of her interests shifting silently elsewhere. Here, Marge has blatantly reached the end of her tether with Homer, to the point that she's seriously considering liquidating their union, regardless of whether or not she has anyone else to turn to in the aftermath. The suggestion that their marriage has been slowly but steadily eroding since its genesis is implicit in their opening exchange, when Marge contends that they have never thrown a party for their friends and neighbours, to which Homer responds, "What about that big bash we had with all the champagne and musicians and holy men and everything?", and has to be indignantly reminded that, "That was our wedding!"* In between, it seems, there has been little else to talk about. Their initial conflict, concerning Homer's lack of restraint over Marge's meticulously arranged party snacks, likewise establishes just how much potential there is for the evening to go disastrously wrong. To Marge, the party represents a vital opportunity to improve her social standing, whereas to Homer it is little more than an excuse to indulge his carnal appetites. Which he does when Ned prepares a moreish cocktail that has Homer swiftly plastered, and before they know it his unfortunate guests are being subjected to a non-stop shower of social embarrassments.
The sequence detailing Homer's increasingly inebriated antics is a masterpiece in terms of just how unsparingly gruesome it is. Whereas most depictions of drunken behaviour in the series were invariably played for laughs, here we have Homer take us through quite a broad and overwhelmingly unlovely spectrum of emotions, and the results are not for the squeamish. There are some humourous moments, such as when he chews out a gentleman he's only known for a couple of hours but has apparently wanted to tell off for years, but you can practically feel the awkwardness dripping off the walls throughout, and you never lose sight of just how demeaned, at best, their entire company is to be there. The low point of the evening arrives when Homer encounters Maude Flanders by the peanut bowl and starts drooling over her cleavage, but even before we get that far we have a genuinely unsettling bit where Homer tenderly encourages Bart to perform some unspecified party trick before his guests, only to suddenly flip moods and curtly order Bart to bed. So strong is Marge's indignation that she's willing to endure the humiliation of the Lovejoys' couples retreat in an effort to teach Homer a lesson about his marital responsibilities, although much to her chagrin, Homer, while sorry for his behaviour at the party, ends up getting sidetracked by a fish.
Somewhat predictably, I have seen viewers criticise Marge for the stance she takes in "War of The Simpsons", which does, unfortunately, seem to be a running pattern for any episode in which Marge seriously loses her cool with Homer. Some wonder why Marge wouldn't allow Homer a little time out to go fishing, particularly since they weren't required to be with the Lovejoys 24/7, but then I think that's to ignore Marge's implied motive for signing up for the retreat in the first place, which is that she wants Homer to get the message that, as far as she's concerned, their marriage is on the rocks and he urgently needs to get his shit together. When Marge commits herself and Homer to attendance, she does so visibly out of anger, not regret or desperation. Perhaps there is also an element of vengeance in her eagerness to sign up, in that she wants to punish Homer by putting him through much the same degradation as he did her. She certainly can't be acting out of any sincere belief that the Lovejoys are going to have all of the answers to their problems. The thing about the Lovejoys' retreat is that, basically, it's a sham. I think the futility of the affair is underlined when Homer asks Lovejoy if he'll have any time to go fishing during the retreat, and is informed that, "A marriage can't be reconciled in a few hours, Homer. It takes a whole weekend to do that!" Just one weekend, huh? Lovejoy's incompetence is further underscored when he advises Homer to "bait our hooks with honesty", a metaphor that's almost mind-boggling in terms of how flagrantly oxymoronic it is. Homer does not appreciate the condescension, snarkily retorting that, "I also understand bowling expressions." Our reaction to the situation is double-edged - we recognise that Marge's marital troubles are entirely genuine, more so than the Lovejoys blatantly have the time or capacity to remedy, while at the same time the particulars of the retreat are so ridiculous that it's difficult not to see eye-to-eye with Homer's sardonic asides. At the conclusion to the retreat, the best Lovejoy is able to do is to offer to give Marge a certificate she can frame declaring that, in his opinion, the failings are entirely Homer's, an outcome that Marge's dejected frown suggests has brought her no satisfaction.
At the retreat, Homer and Marge find themselves seated between two other couples who clearly represent different polar extremes of marital interplay. On the one side are the unbearably blissful Flanders, who are attending the retreat on account of Maude's audacious tendency to underline passages in Ned's Bible when she can't find her own. The frivolousness of their grievance serves to further show up the sheer magnitude of Homer and Marge's problems, although Ned and Maude's presence at the disastrous party also represents a continuation of the lingering fall-out and unspoken judgements that have been seething since Act One - at one point, Homer mortifies Maude by explicitly citing their unsavoury interaction over the peanut bowl. The third couple are ostensibly strangers and identify by the pseudonyms of "John" and "Gloria", but should be entirely familiar to those with an interest in the cinema of Mike Nichols. For they are actually George and Martha, the characters portrayed by Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in Nichols' 1966 adaptation of Edward Albee's play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. Even if you're unfamiliar with Nichols' film, I think you'll pick up quickly that there is something distinctly off about these two characters, for they speak suspiciously eloquently for Springfieldians. (They weren't even the first characters in the series to have been lifted more-or-less directly from another source, for Cesar and Ugolin, the two unscrupulous winemakers with whom Bart stayed in "The Crepes of Wrath", were basically transplanted from Claude Berri's films Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources, monikers and all.) George and Martha are at one another's throats here, which is entirely appropriate, as Nichols' film is a dark comedy-melodrama about marital warfare at its very reddest in tooth and claw. It takes place in the aftermath of a party where much drinking has already occurred, with George, a college professor, and Martha, the daughter of the university's president, constantly striving to viciously one-up each other within the company of a younger couple, Nick (George Segal) and Honey (Sandy Dennis), who have joined our protagonists for post-party top-up. A portion of the talk revolves around George and Martha's absent son, who is supposedly turning sixteen tomorrow, but there is a disturbing revelation toward the end of the film when, in a final act of retaliation, George reveals to Martha that he has just received a telegram containing the bad news that their son was killed in a road accident while serving to avoid a porcupine. A distraught Martha challenges George on this, but he insists that, "I can kill him if I want to", while Nick nervously imparts that, "I think I understand this." The implication is, of course, that George and Martha's relationship was stunted by their inability to reproduce and so they invented an imaginary child in order to compensate, only on this particular night George has finally tired of the charade and decided to end it. (It's for this reason that some contemporary commentators accused Albee of writing a play in which the main characters are intended to be stand-ins for a homosexual couple, although this allegation is obviously myopic, in that it ignores that a great many heterosexual couples are also unable to conceive.) The film ends on a note of uncertainty as to what lies ahead for our unhappy couple, with George and Martha once again alone and watching the dawn emerging on the horizon. George asks Martha the titular question, recalling one of her taunts from earlier in the film, to which she responds, "I am, George. I am." Compare this to the ludicrous ease with which Lovejoy here apparently solves their marital problems - he asks them to "remember my saving your lives and bringing you happiness when we pass the collection plate next week", although we are left with some doubt as to whether George and Martha's newfound euphoria will even last that long.
The appearance of George and Martha at the Lovejoys' retreat makes for a hilarious in-joke, but their presence also calls attention to the nature of the personal crises facing Marge and Homer. In his 1978 book, Mike Nichols, H. Wayne Schuth identifies the perpetual drinking going on throughout Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? as indicative of the extent to which the characters are stifling, or "drowning" one another with their bitterness and self-delusion. Martha even makes explicit reference to this allusion when she observes that, "a drowning man takes down those nearest". Schuth writes that, "George and Martha and Nick and Honey are symbolically drowning, not just in liquor, but in the way that they relate to each other. In order to save himself from this symbolic drowning, George symbolically kills the fantasy child that binds him and Martha together. Now they will have to swim in reality, not drown in fantasy." Schuth acknowledges that, "there is some question whether they can do this", but nevertheless sees the final image of the new day dawning as "hope for the future." (p.34-36) Kyle Stevens, in Mike Nichols: Sex, Language and The Reinvention of Psychological Realism, has a different interpretation, arguing that it's never made explicit if the child George and Martha fabricated had been a long-running coping mechanism of theirs, or if this was part of a game they were simply playing for just one evening (which would call to question the authenticity of Martha's display of grief at the end). As for the new day dawning, he notes that, "This is implicitly juxtaposed with the shot of the moon that opens the film, although in black-and-white the two do not seem so different." (p.67) Stevens, then, is more pessimistic as to whether George and Martha have really escaped their entrapment, or if they are merely setting the stage for their daily cycle of marital warfare to begin all over again.
An important motif throughout "The War of The Simpsons" is that Homer, too, is drowning, both in liquor - hence his excessive drinking (like a fish) at the party - and in his overpowering sense of personal failure, which is merely accentuated by his disastrous display. The sequence in which Homer is tasked with remembering his drunken behaviour and initially envisions himself as the toast of a genteel soiree in the style of a New Yorker cartoon, only for the ugly reality to come clawing back in in a dizzying flurry, is a disturbing one, culminating in Homer coming up against a wall of accusing eyes, as his friends and neighbours gawk in horror at his numerous indiscretions. It illustrates the discrepancy between the person Homer wishes he could be and the contemptible screw-up the world blatantly sees whenever it looks his way. Meanwhile, Marge is also drowning in her stagnant and unequal marriage, something that is made painfully evident when she is called on by Lovejoy to list her troubles with Homer, and ends up reciting a lengthy list of grievances that takes her audience and even herself by surprise. Homer recognises that he is failing as a husband, and that pains him. Still, rather than putting his focus and energy in attempting to salvage his marriage, it seems his personal dissatisfaction is prompting him to seek validation elsewhere - hence why he leaps at the opportunity to prove himself to a group of complete strangers at a bait store when he learns about the fabled General Sherman. Homer repeatedly insists that hooking the legendary catfish will bring him his fortune and fame, although the hollowness of this proclamation is twice made plain, firstly when he informs Sherman that catching him will put him up there with all of the fishing greats, of whom he is unable to name any, and secondly when Marge challenges him as to who out there considers his conquest of the catfish to be of that much importance, and Homer responds, "those weirdos in the worm store!" Clearly, Homer does not go after Sherman because he seriously believes that doing so would transform him into an overnight sensation. Rather, Homer seems to be fighting a much more personal battle, one that's less about catching a giant fish per se than it is recovering his broken pride. Homer wants to catch Sherman to prove to himself, above anyone, his own worthiness. Sherman is more than just an abnormally large catfish - to Homer, he is self-respect, self-belief, self-worth and so many other rare and elusive qualities that have been slipping away with each day that he has failed to be a pillar of his community. Homer feels shamed by his fellow human, so it's not surprising that he would seek out the company of a fish; their primal enmity offers him the chance to transcend the constraints and judgements of his prosaic existence, and to simply be a man battling a fellow participant in the broader cycle of life and consumption. As such, the fish becomes his ideal mate, which is made clear in a particularly grotesque moment where Marge is berating Homer, and he sees her face morph into that of a catfish. Well, Troy McClure would surely understand.
The drowning allusion is further emphasised when Homer ends up battling the freakish catfish on a water terrain, and is at one point knocked overboard by Sherman; it is now literally a battle to keep himself from sinking into a watery abyss, which he manages more effectively than the metaphorical battles at the party and the retreat. Like Santiago, Homer rises to the challenge and eventually overpowers Sherman. He basks in his moment of immense triumph, but the cycle of consumption is unending, and we know that Homer will not keep his place atop the ladder for long - sure enough, Marge then appears and assumes the role of the mako sharks of Hemingway's story, in undercutting the epic battle that has just unfolded between man and fish, and suggesting that their confrontation was ultimately futile. Homer believes that by reeling the fish he has proven his worth, but this is all meaningless to Marge, who only sees the fish as a further emblem of Homer's recklessness and self-interest. Upon hearing this, Homer reflexively pushes the fish back, negating his victory over Sherman and surrendering the trophy he fought so tirelessly to claim; only after doing so does Homer contemplate the significance of his actions, in demonstrating that his devotions to Marge were always his top priority. Homer reflects on this confoundedly, as if he himself is surprised by this outcome. He and Marge embrace and, then Sherman reappears to share a private moment with the viewer.
If you've listened to the DVD commentary for this episode, then you'll know that creator Matt Groening hates, with a vengeance, the moment where General Sherman resurfaces and winks at the camera. This isn't at all surprising - it combines fourth wall breaking AND anthropomorphism, two common cartoon conventions that Groening was determined to steer away from in an effort to keep the series grounded in some semblance of reality (besides which, catfish don't have eyelids, so winking would be a physical impossibility for them - what are you teaching our children?). Sherman's conspiratorial wink to the audience is a jarring moment for sure, but if we're concerned with realism, then is it any stranger than the sequence in "Old Money" where Abe finds himself sharing his big dipper carriage with the ghost of the recently-deceased Bea Simmons? Seeing the fish wink conspiratorially at the camera completely changes our perception of Sherman, and of the conflict that has just taken place between himself and Homer, for it implies that this outcome was part of Sherman's plan all along - rather than lure Homer away from Marge, it was his intention to give Homer the opportunity to prove himself to Marge. Maybe he's not such a Home-Wrecker after all; in fact, that fish is assuredly a better marriage counselor than the Lovejoys. The absurdity of a fish taking an active interest in the state of Marge and Homer's marriage seems less perplexing when you consider that, as we observed previously in "Life on The Fast Lane", the Simpsons universe does seem to have an in-built mechanism for preserving itself whenever the very centre of its being is at risk of unraveling. In that sense, Sherman serves much the same purpose as that ironic street. But the fact that Sherman was last seen sinking inertly into the water, only to spring dramatically to life when Homer and Marge embrace, would alternatively suggest that Sherman has been reinvigorated by their reconciliation. He is revived, because so is the mutual bond between Marge and Homer. This hints that there may be some deeper symbolism still to Sherman. I would argue that the elusive fish actually represents a part of Homer's self with which he desperately yearns to be reconciled - he still embodies Homer's pride and self-respect, only in attempting to land Sherman, Homer came dangerously close to suffocating those qualities altogether (in that sense, Sherman too was momentarily "drowning", only being a fish he does so out of water). Only when he relinquishes Sherman, and with him, his self-interest, does Homer finally find release from his drowning and truly recover his self-respect. Sherman represents the qualities that Homer has been seeking but, paradoxically, could only obtain through his willingness to let go and demonstrate regard for others. Sherman's abrupt springing to life and his knowing wink at the camera are a signal that all is right with the universe, and that Homer, for the time being anyway, is once again assured about his place within it. The idea that the fish represents a part of Homer that he considered lost but has now been reconciled with is reinforced in the episode's final scene, which takes place, unusually, well away from the family and in the company of extras. The bait store owner is telling the story of the legendary Sherman to another customer, although the legend has now been expanded to include mention of the man who almost caught him - "Went by the name of Homer. Seven feet tall he was, with arms like tree trunks. And his eyes were like steel, cold and hard. Had a shock of hair, red like he fires of Hell..." Thus, Homer and Sherman have been permanently unified in the bait store owner's colourful myth-making; they are now partners for all eternity, in a legend that continues to be recycled and re-modified with each new passer-by who drops into the bait store. In that regard, Homer got his wish.
Elsewhere in the episode, there is a subplot concerning the younger family members and how they handle their parents' absence, when Abe is left in charge and Bart and Lisa exploit his naivety in order to do all of the things that they ordinarily couldn't under Homer and Marge's watch. Once again, Bart and Lisa are fully aware of the crisis facing their domestic security, despite Marge's conscientious efforts to pull the wool over their eyes - there is a great scene where Marge takes Homer into the car and plays "Jarabe Tapatio" in an effort to shield their dispute from the children, only for us to cut to Bart and Lisa, who comprehend exactly what's happening (and it's implied that this is such a regular occurrence that "Jarabe Tapatio" - which, incidentally, was used for very similar purposes earlier in the season in "Simpson and Delilah" - now has a Pavlovian effect on Lisa). We then have that equally great scene where Homer has to explain to Bart why he behaved so strangely at the party last night, only to discover that Bart's already several steps ahead of him. The kids know that things are awry - compared to "Life on The Fast Lane", though, it doesn't seem to be eating too big a hole in them here, possibly because they've got the excitement of having no rules and boundaries in place to keep them occupied. Lisa has doubts about the ethics of taking advantage of Abe in this manner, but she remains complicit in the deception until Bart elects to throw a house party of their own, whereupon Lisa declares that, "We've gone too far, and set the children's rights movements back for decades!" Abe, meanwhile, is so distraught (or so it seems) at his failure to be a good babysitter that Bart and Lisa are shamed into cleaning the house and removing all traces of the children's party before Homer and Marge's return - at this point, Abe gets the last laugh, in revealing that his tears were feigned and that he was merely playing the children at their own manipulation game. Perhaps it is Abe, and not Homer, who truly embodies the spirit of Santiago. Like Santiago, Abe is reaching the end of his time, and Bart and Lisa assume control of the household because they figure that he's past it, and that all that's left now is for their generation to inevitably displace him. But Abe, in the face of such overwhelming adversity, proves that there's life and resourcefulness left in him yet. Far from allowing his youngers to render him irrelevant, he ends up nurturing them with worldly wisdom, much as Santiago does for his own young protege, Manolin - in this case, it's the wisdom that Bart discerns when he reflects that, "I'll never trust another old person again." The cycle of life makes chum and champions of us all.
* This, though, is contradicted by flashbacks in "I Married Marge" of Season 3 and "A Milhouse Divided" of Season 8, which suggest that Homer and Marge never had such a glamorous ceremony in the first place.
A poodle-guzzling gator wasn't the only curious critter to feature in the "Southerners Have Their Own Rules" campaign developed by Court Burkitt and Company for Southern Comfort whiskey in the mid-1990s. At least two of the spots also involved horses. In one, we see the aftermath of a marital tiff where the wife, having slapped her husband with the ultimatum that it's either "her or the horse", is left to begrudgingly trudge her way back to civilisation while a pony assumes the passenger seat in his automobile. Another features a young woman who confides in us her dreams of a white wedding while sprawled out across the back of an unsaddled horse; we then cut to a shot of her screaming in full bridal get-up, before she adds, "What a nightmare." In both cases, the punchlines are entirely self-explanatory; with the first ad, we have a humorous subversion of marital dynamics, made all the more comically grotesque by the fact that the horse, an animal traditionally used for transportation, is riding upfront; a beast of burden and mechanical vehicle uniting and making the unfortunate castaway eat their dust. Again, those southerners and their atypical pet-keeping practices. At least this one isn't roaming around devouring the rest of the neighhourhood fauna. A white wedding, meanwhile, traditionally symbolises purity and virginity, the implication therefore being that the protagonist of the second ad is promiscuous, but also too much of a free spirit to aspire to the lures of tradition. What does intrigue me is that very striking image at the start of the ad in which our heroine is implied to be having her horrifying visions from the back of a horse. Is there any significance to this being the resting place from which she concocts her twisted fantasies of ceremonial convention?
In considering this ad, I'm put in mind of Carl G. Jung's writings on the archetype of the horse in Modern Man in Search of a Soul, in which he identifies the horse as "the non-human psyche, the sub-human, animal side, and therefore the unconscious....it represents the lower part of the body and the animal drives that take their rise from there." Therefore, we might interpret our heroine's reclining atop the horse's back as an indication that she is well-connected with her animal psyche. Jung wrote that, "The horse is dynamic power and a means of locomotion; it carries one away like a surge of instinct." Not only does the heroine's connection with her equine carrier imply that she is an untamed spirit, but the composure with which she embraces the horse's body and lies unguardedly atop it suggests a total trust and willingness to let these inner forces transport her where they will. The horse represents the unbridled passion, yet there is a blissful stillness to this set-up, which is abruptly shattered by the succeeding scene with the heroine is seen screaming in her bridal gear, suggesting the inner despair of the animal psyche that is forced to tether itself to societal norms.
If the horse, as per Jung's analysis, is the embodiment of man's animal instinct, then I wonder what we should really make of the final image of that first ad, in which the horse has effectively taken charge of the automobile, ie: a dead machine, and a mode of transportation of which man does assume full control? The horse is not, of course, actually in the driver's seat, although that might not matter; the driver's presence is obscured and the emphasis is very much on the horse supplanting the human. Again, there is a distrust of marital convention, depicted here as being in opposition to the untamed passions and desires of the animal psyche, and the visual punchline of the ad celebrates the liberation of the animal instinct from its human oppressor, who is left to plough along feebly by the roadside as the horse accelerates toward a wilder future. Perhaps the real nightmare image arises not from the possibility of our internal horses assuming control, but of them abandoning us altogether, leaving us to carry ourselves drearily on our own two feet.
Note: this review was written as part of the James Garner blogathon being hosted by Realweegiemidget Reviews from 3rd to 5th February.
My all-time favourite account of an alleged extra-terrestrial encounter is described in John Rimmer's 1984 book The Evidence For Alien Abductions (p.128-129): Carlos Peccinetti and Fernando Jose Villegas, two casino employees who lived in the Argentinian city of Mendoza were driving home in the early hours of August 31st 1968, when their vehicle suddenly stopped and they were confronted by a small band of humanoid creatures with large heads and overall-type clothing, who presented them with a message using telepathic means. The message, as reproduced in Rimmer's book, went thus: "Do not fear...we have just made three journeys around your sun, studying customs and languages of the inhabitants of the system. The sun benignly nurtures the system; were it not so then the solar system would not exist." Gee, thanks, E.T.. You came from god knows how far and went to all that trouble just to tell humankind something it already knew. Maybe there was a more implicit message to be gleaned from their observation, with its emphasis on benignity and interconnectivity. Peccinetti and Villegas claimed that the mysterious visitors also showed them images of an atomic explosion devastating an oasis, suggesting that they did have a more pressing agenda in mind, and then, somewhat conversely, took their hands and pricked their subjects' fingers three times (Peccinetti and Villegas did indeed have the corresponding puncture marks in their fingers when they later recounted their story to the authorities). But really, you've got to love the ingenuousness of an alien race who would appear to a couple of nondescript travelers to deliver such a charmingly banal message, even one with potentially serious undertones, and then disappear into thin air. No crazier than a number of "real-life" alien narratives, Rimmer observes: "An alien race that travels thousands of light years just to tell us, by means of simple illustrated allegory, that we are in danger of destroying ourselves in a planetary holocaust may have its heart in the right place (wherever that may be for an alien race) but it is hardly telling us anything that is not being said more directly and more forcibly by newspaper and television bulletins every day." He ads that it is "possibly significant that these warnings are invariably given to people who are probably least able to do anything concrete about them." (p.131) Compare this to Michael Rennie's character in The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951), who at least had the foresight to take his portentous warnings to an assembly of prominent scientists and government officials. Truth is stranger than fiction, you might say. Maybe, but then, just as Peccinetti and Villegas's rather quaint story does not conform to the conventions of Hollywood storytelling, it also violated the rules of the real-life alien encounter narrative in the most cardinal of ways - Peccinetti and Villegas subsequently admitted that the incident was a hoax, a twist ending that Rimmer is inclined to attribute to a warning issued by the Mendoza police "that the spreading of stories about UFOs was likely to be penalized by law." The most compelling claims of alien encounters are those which can probably be brushed away but leave just enough wriggle room for ambiguity. But few of them have the gentle charm of Peccinetti and Villageas' concoction.
Ostensibly, the much-publicised case of Travis Walton would appear to offer a more ideal template from which to dramatise the story of a "true-life" alien abduction. The young logger went missing on November 5th 1975, while working in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Park near his hometown of Snowflake, Arizona, and reappeared five days later with vague memories of having been whisked away and experimented on by alien lifeforms. Walton's improbable account was corroborated by his co-workers, who claimed that they had last seen Walton being struck down by a beam of light emitted from a luminous saucer-like object in the sky, after which they had opted to beat a hasty retreat (the group had been driving down a road at night when they encountered the craft, which is the standard opening to many an extra-terrestrial encounter narrative). The facts of the case have never been truly established (what did happen to Walton within his five days of oblivion? Did he conceal himself out in the wilderness until he figured that the time was right to bring his little prank into fruition? Did he suffer some form of neurological malfunction which caused his fantasies of alien abduction to seem entirely genuine? Or was he, as he claimed, really plucked from the ground and temporarily trussed up in a laboratory operated by a race of intrepid space explorers?), and as far back as 1984, Rimmer expressed pessimism that they ever would be: "The chances of ever arriving at the truth behind the Travis Walton case, as each year passes...become increasingly remote." Rimmer does, however, supply a possible motive for why the entire group might have colluded on such an outlandish hoax, noting that they were behind schedule on their forest-clearing duties: "they might have thought that a frightening experience like an abduction would furnish a good excuse for welshing on a contract, without financial penalty." (p.65) Whatever the reality, the resulting media attention ensured that Walton's story shortly became one of the most well-known accounts of alleged alien abduction worldwide, and he was able to profit from the incident by writing a book, The Walton Experience, in 1978. On the surface, his story would appear to have it all - mystery, intrigue, suspense, even a suggestion of back-stabbing betrayal, given that his co-workers were suspected of murdering him within his five-day absence. And yet, when Hollywood finally brought the story to the big screen in 1993, directed by Robert Lieberman under the title of Fire in The Sky, Walton's account was deemed too lacklustre for Paramount's liking, and the alien sequences were spiced up to provide, in the words of Entertainment Weekly's Ryan Murphy, "a flashier, more provocative rendering" of Walton's too-close-for-comfort encounter.
The confrontation between Walton (portrayed here with a disarming sincerity by D.B. Sweeney) and his extra-terrestrial captors departs considerably from Walton's description in The Walton Experience, which Paramount felt was too vague and, by 1993, too familiar to sci-fi savvy audiences. This would be a good point to confess that I have never read Walton's book, which is long out of print, so excuse my inability to compare just how much of a departure theses moments are. Nor, for the purposes of this review, am I massively interested in assessing the credibility of Walton's account, although I think it's important to note that there is an all-round lack of evidence to corroborate it, other than that Walton and his associates all passed polygraph tests, which isn't exactly the most impressive of evidence from a scientific standpoint (and besides which, they also failed a number of other tests). Important, because Lieberman's film frequently has to contend with the challenge that Walton's story is really just a whole lot of void. Technically, there's not a great deal that really happened. Walton went missing, his friends faced a barrage of dirty looks from the townspeople and questioning by authorities, until he eventually showed up with a crazy story, but generally none the worse for wear. There are very few solid answers in this tale, and consequently, Fire in The Sky finds itself straddling a narrative emptiness for its duration; despite Hollywood's attempts to inject some extra alien juice into the affair, the story feels purposely constructed to play into the idea that "real-life" does not conform to a tidy narrative structure.
Fire in The Sky arrived four years after Philppe Mora's 1989 film Communion, which depicted the alleged alien abduction experiences of horror writer Whitley Strieber, and which was most notable for Christopher Walken's weirdly engaging performance as Strieber, a man who is intensely afraid and whose fear always seems to be teetering on the brink of morphing into something altogether more dangerous. Fire in The Sky eschews the consciously loopy overtones of Communion in favour of a more down-to-earth approach, one that is less interested in probing the objectivity of the abductee's claims (skeptics should note that Lieberman's film takes a generally uncritical view of Walton, and is largely inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt) than in recreating a more authentic, lower-key drama about the knock-on effects on the surrounding community. Fire also arrived a few months ahead of Chris Carter's zeitgeist-defining TV series The X-Files, which debuted in the fall of 1993, and as such was part of a cultural shift in which humankind found itself gazing up with renewed interest at the stars, our thoughts turning from the genial to the conspiratorial. The success of Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of The Third Kind in 1977 had previously seen Hollywood adopt a more optimistic outlook on extra-terrestrial life, or at least the intelligent ones who chose to visit us on Earth (elsewhere, there were still ample animalistic terrors to be discovered in the far corners of space, such as the titular creature of Ridley Scott's 1979 film Alien, but you generally had to go looking for them), one that seemed light years away from the hostile invaders (manifestations of Cold War paranoia) that had dominated much of 1950s science-fiction cinema. There were some exceptions, such as the voracious shape-shifting entity from John Carpenter's The Thing (1982), but benevolent visitors were a mainstay for 1980s Hollywood, from Spielberg's E.T. : The Extra-Terrestrial (1982), to Ron Howard's Cocoon (1985 - those of us with a slightly sicker outlook like
to speculate that the aliens there were really harvesting elderly Earthlings for consumption
in the manner of the "To Serve Man" episode of The Twilight Zone,
although alas, this is not supported by the 1988 sequel Cocoon: The Return), to the frisky little Fix-Its of Matthew Robbins' *batteries not included (1987). Come the 1990s, though, and the world was ready to get suspicious about our possible cosmic company all over again, hence the explosion of the "The Truth is Out There" movement, which cast aliens as, if not necessarily villains, then elusive forces operating above our heads and beyond our control. In 1995, the Fox network, drunk on the success of The X-Files, broadcast the infamous (and totally fake) Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction. With Independence Day (1996) we were back to the all-out hostility of the B-pictures of the 1950s, whereby aliens were openly intent on replacing us as the planet's dominant species, an ambition they were all-too happy to demonstrate by blowing up a few world landmarks - although even here this was implied to be the outcome of decades' worth of conspiratorial dealings (Area 51 comes up, and we have one character who was apparently dragged aboard a spacecraft in a similar manner to Walton and subjected to an extremely unpleasant rectal probing). Men in Black (1997), meanwhile, had it both ways - some aliens were a threat and others were benign; in both cases, they had an established presence among us that was to be shielded from the public at all costs.
The aliens of Fire in The Sky are far-removed from the amenable visitors who carried Richard Dreyfuss to the great beyond, in that they are clearly not benevolent, but neither to they exhibit the open hostility of the explosion-hungry space locusts who lay waste to the White House in Independence Day. These particular visitors are more elusive and mysterious. It's clear that Walton is not the first human they have abducted and victimised in such a manner (during his encounter, Walton stumbles across the decaying remains of a fellow abductee who wasn't quite so fortunate), although the film has surprisingly little to say about the aliens themselves and their interest in the denizens of Earth. Are the horrifying experiments they conduct on Walton (which involve smothering him in something resembling egg membrane and inserting a phallic-looking instrument into his eye socket) signs of some coming catastrophe for the human race, or have the aliens already exhausted their inclination for conducting highly unpleasant probing procedures with Walton and moved on? We never do find out. And while the film's extra-terrestrial sequence is its most striking, visually and emotionally, it feels like the most superfluous from a strictly narrative perspective.
Fire in The Sky was marketed as a picture about a Walton's abduction experiences, with the film's theatrical trailer putting more emphasis on the aliens' eye-view of their subject than does the film itself and suggesting, more explicitly than anything in Tracey Torme's script, that their motivation for taking Walton was rooted in simple scientific curiosity. ("How does it think? What makes it move? Why does it breathe? Questions anyone would ask about a man, if they'd never seen one before.") The overall lack of focus on the extra-terrestrial element within the actual film frustrated some viewers, including Roger Ebert, who stated that, "The scenes inside the craft are really good...for once I did believe that I was seeing something truly alien, and not just a set decorator's daydreams," but added that, "the movie's flaw is that there's not enough detail about the aliens". Despite the deceptive marketing, Fire in The Sky is not actually that interested in the aliens - nor, for that matter, is it really Walton's story at all, but that of his close companion, Mike Rogers (Robert Patrick), who endures a considerably less spectacular but every bit as life-altering experience (if not more so) across those five days of uncertainty.
Fire opens by setting itself up in the style not of a traditional sci-fi, but of a whodunnit, introducing us to the five key players who claim to have witnessed Walton's ill-fated close encounter, and who may or may not know more than they are letting on - in addition to Rogers, the group's leader, there's local church boy David Whitlock (Peter Berg), the youngest of the group, Greg Hayes (Henry Thomas - I see what you did there), Robert Cogdill (Bradley Gregg) and Allan Dallis (Craig Sheffer), a drifter with a tendency toward confrontation. Lt Frank Watters (James Garner) is our sleuth, having traveled all the way down from Montana to investigate the outlandish case, and bringing with him a reputation for never yet having to close a case unsolved, which Watters declares as, "Nothing but a myth, but a damn fine one," warning us not to allow the temptations of an attractive story to obstruct our comprehension of reality. Our relationship with Watters as a character is two-fold - his down-to-earth approach and determination to get to the facts of the matter appeals to our own desire to uncover the truth and inject some much-needed rationality into this baffling situation. On the other hand, our allegiances are clearly aligned with the group and not the outsider. For all of his hard-nosed affability, we identify Watters as another kind of outside invader who threatens the unity of the group, not so much by exposing a few well-concealed truths as by bringing to the surface the uncomfortable realities that are basically always evident. Suspicion falls on Rogers and his men, particularly Dallis, who has a history of aggressive behaviour and had taken a visible dislike to Walton, and the loggers swiftly become personae non gratae among the residents of Snowflake. The band's account of Walton's disappearance is presented in flashback, giving an air of subjectivity to their story, although the film's earnest tone does not engender suspicion, and the whodunnit elements give way into a more modest kind of small-town drama, in which the malaise eating away at the group has less to do with whatever details have not been disclosed than with the unpalatable implications of the story they have already shared.
The truth, as far as Fire in The Sky is concerned, is not out there. There are a tremendous number of unknowns, but the film is happy to leave them as such. They are simply narrative voids, empty spaces, a point underscored in one sequence in which we see Rogers watching TV in the shadows, gazing into it as though he expects it to reveal some deeper meaning and seeing only static. The darkest and most disturbing truths, the film suggests, lie within. Rogers spends most of the story grappling not with the mysterious particulars of Walton's disappearance, but with what is all too plain to him - the knowledge that he, as the driver of the vehicle, was the one who ultimately made the decision to abandon Walton to his fate. An unforgivable act of betrayal or an understandable response to extraordinary circumstances? That's up to the viewer to decide. The question as to whether Rogers is more to blame for his impulsiveness, or Walton for his recklessness, is another where the film ultimately takes no firm stance. And, to be fair to Rogers, he did have four other passengers he potentially managed to get out of harm's way in choosing to move when he did. Nevertheless, the fear visibly weighing on Rogers in the aftermath is that, even if neither he or his men murdered Walton, he must bear responsibility for his presumed death. For all of the glossy production that goes into re-imagining Walton's experience (when he finally reappears), Fire is more interested in Rogers' journey, and in that sense it plays as a sort of anti-Close Encounters of The Third Kind. There are obvious parallels in Rogers' arc with that of Richard Dreyfuss's character, Roy Neary, in that their respective brushes with extra-terrestrial activity each result in the total disintegration of their domestic stability, except in Rogers' case there is no final validation or catharsis. In Spielberg's film, the breakdown of Roy's family is seemingly presented as a necessary sacrifice in pursuit of a wider truth, and by the end Roy's convictions are affirmed when the extra-terrestrials invite him to accompany them on the next phase of their journey. Having come this far, Roy's willingness to take the final step into the unknown is the ultimate form of vindication. There is, however, a darker subtext, given that Roy has burned so many bridges along the way that the depths of space may now be the only avenue available to him. Paula J. Massood, writing in American Cinema of The 1970s: Themes and Variations (ed. Lester D. Friedman), observes that, "In the end, it appears that Roy's place is with the aliens on the mothership because he has nothing to which to return." (p.191). In Rogers' case, the domestic breakdown is more subdued. An early sequence establishes Rogers as an enthusiastic father to his two young daughters, but introduces a clear element of strain to the family dynamics when he and his wife Katie (Kathleen Wilhoite) quarrel about their financial situation. Following Walton's disappearance, we see these tensions heighten as Rogers and Katie argue about the practical ramifications of the incident - the increased financial pressures caused by Rogers losing his job, and the family having to face the judgement of the community - but for the most part the disintegration occurs off-screen, and is woven into the mundane detail of the general reaction within those five days of cold uncertainty. We end up (spoilers) in the exact same place as Spielberg's film, with Rogers exiled from the family home, and with no going back, but compared to Roy's ceremonious departure into the stars, Rogers endures a far more ignoble expulsion, opting to quietly retreat to the solitude of a shack out in the wilderness, rather than linger in the town in which he feels that his standing has been so irrecoverably uprooted.
When Rogers brings the recovered Walton up to speed on his marital crisis, he acknowledges that the breakdown of his relationship with Katie might always have been inevitable, with or without the added trauma of Walton's disappearance. But this too is uncertain - the overwhelming sensation that dominates Fire in The Sky has to do with just how dramatically an unexpected occurrence can alter the course of one's existence. The film opens with a quote from Roman philosopher Seneca The Younger: "Chance makes a plaything of a man's life." The implications of this statement, in this context, are two-fold. The idea of men as playthings alludes, on one level, to the implied extra-terrestrial perspective, in which humans are little more than specimens to be collected and manipulated to their own ends. But it also alludes to the notion that humankind is ultimately always at the mercy of a higher power, even if that power is nothing more than simple circumstance. The critical implication is that things are never going to be the same again, either for Rogers or for Walton. The Walton who returns from his alien encounter is clearly not the same Walton who approached that fire in the sky; a point hinted during his flashback aboard the mothership when, shortly before being seized and vivisected by his extra-terrestrial company, he emerges from the membrane in which his captors had him contained and dangles, suspended, by a long white thread reminiscent of an umbilical cord. You don't have to squint too hard to see the re-birthing metaphors implicit in this sequence; indeed, the imagery is evocative of Alvin Lawson and William McCall's "Birth Trauma Hypothesis", in which the abduction experience is interpreted as an unconscious expression of the horrors of being extracted from the womb. The sequences focusing on Walton's trauma suggest a lessening distinction between the creatures that toyed with him and the people to whom he has returned - a hospital corridor merges with the tunnels of the alien dwellings, while a social gathering of friends and neighbours coaxes out his most overpowering flashback - raising questions as to the extent of his alienation. Here, the film implies that Walton is unable to return to what once seemed entirely familiar to him, the insinuation of human and extra-terrestrial practices not being so different suggesting a newfound distrust of the community with whom he formerly identified - which is perhaps nothing more than a manifestation of the resentment he feels toward the buddies who left him to his fate.
It comes as a surprise, then, when the epilogue reveals that, two years on, Walton has successfully readjusted to life in Snowflake and settled down with his partner Dana (Georgia Emelin), with whom he now as a child, and a second on the way. The most startling aspect of the film's conclusion, though, comes not from Walton overcoming the odds, but from the implication that he has supplanted Rogers, who has traded in his life of domesticity for one of total seclusion. Walton is not the same man he was at the start of the film, but in his case the changes are more subtle - the reckless abandon with which he once biked down the streets of Snowflake has been neutered out in favour of the quiet restraint with which he drives his automobile to Rogers' isolated shack. Rogers, who didn't endure anything half as extraordinary as Walton, has also been altered by the experience, and his case he has been left considerably more maladjusted. By the end of the film, Rogers and Walton have effectively switched the established places of their opening dynamic, in which the tensions between the two characters are presented a matter of wildness versus domesticity. In an early scene, Rogers warns the carefree Walton against proposing to Dana on the grounds that he is, "too much of a dreamer for marriage." (That Rogers accuses Walton of being a "dreamer" is one of the few moments in which the script leans unambiguously on the on the side of skepticism with regards to his far-fetched yarn of alien abduction.) Two years later and it is Rogers who has sought out the refuge of the wilderness, albeit a very different wilderness to the one Walton once inhabited, marked not by carefree abandon but by furtive secrecy. Unlike Roy's predicament at the climax of Close Encounters of The Third Kind, however, it would be inaccurate to suggest that there is nothing left behind for Rogers to return to. Walton informs him that everybody back in Snowflake misses him and of the life carrying on his absence. Rogers' exile, it seems, is entirely self-willed, his single act of disloyalty having convinced him that he no longer belongs with the society he knew. Meanwhile, we might question if Walton's apparent assimilation into domestic family life is indicative either of a newfound maturity or a broken spirit, now that his dreams been supplanted by the harshest of nightmares. (It is probably not a coincidence that it's Walton's attachment to his motorcycle key - the symbol of his formerly untamed heart - that botches his attempt to elude the aliens while on board the craft and leads to his being seized and experimented on.)
Toward the end of the film, Watters once again acts as a surrogate to the viewer's skepticism, and speaks to our desire for conclusive answers, when he reminds us that the story is technically not over, and that there could be further developments yet to come in the tale of Travis Walton. In his final scene, Watters proposes that the story was concocted as a bid for attention, and insists that one day the participants will slip up, whereupon he will return for them, although paradoxically he points to yet another narrative void - the uncertainty of what lies ahead - and his insistence that the truth will inevitably out is undermined by the fact that his own story thread simply fades into nothing. Truth, after all, is not what the picture is seeking. The closest the film offers to closure on the alien front takes the form of its flippant closing punchline, when Walton, having reached something resembling reconciliation with Rogers, assures him that his abductors are unlikely to bother them again. Why is that? "I don't think they liked me." The implication being that all future prospects of establishing closer relations with our cosmic neighbours have been cancelled, for better or for worse, based on who they happened to abduct and take a disliking to on a particular night. No more arbitrary than anything else in this chaotic universe.
