Cutting Cards (2.03)

“I got a tip for you Reno. You take on everyone who laughs at you, you’re gonna have a lifetime of work.”

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

Two professional gamblers take their personal grudge against one another to absurd heights.

WHO’S RESPONSIBLE?

It’s series producer Walter Hill’s second Crypt episode as a writer/director. It stars genre legend Lance Henrikson and Locke’s dad Kevin Tighe as its nutball heroes. And that’d be it.

HOW IS IT?

Lance Henrikson is an icon, of sorts. He’s part of a fraternity of tough guy character actors that movie geeks in my age bracket love because he appeared in a huge number of our formative scifi/action/horror flicks. There were more guys like him back in the day, such as Clancy Brown, Michael Ironside, Miguel Ferrer, and Brad Dourif. They always brought huge game, and it could elevate minor supporting roles into indelible parts of the whole (as Henrikson does in Terminator) or take run of the mill bad guys and make them tragic antiheroes, sometimes more sympathetic then the leads (Henrikson in Near Dark). The secret was that beneath the strength and sleaze they could draw from like it was on tap, they were excellent actors that treated the craft like professionals, quite possibly more so than actors with a lot more awards and critical regard. Seriously, watch an interview with Jack Nicholson or Anthony Hopkins.

Crypt would prove to be gainful employment for most of this crew (several of them appeared twice), most likely because Crypt’s leads tended to be less than lovely people, but also because genre directors knew how great they were. Henrikson is awesome in “Cutting Cards,” playing a role similar to the hilarious dandy he played in Sam Raimi’s The Quick and the Dead, a preening loudmouth cowboy, although he displays a lot more sand here. Opposite him is an actor with a special knack for playing unbelievable assholes, Kevin Tighe, who’s probably best known now as Locke’s unbelievable asshole father on Lost. It’s pretty much a two hander between them, although you could say the third man is director Walter Hill, who directed my favorite episode up to this point, The Man Who Was Death, which starred another actor you could easily add to that list, William Sadler.

It’s a simple, spare episode, boiling down to about three scenes, but the tension, the comedy, and the fun are all top shelf.

Henrikson plays Reno Crevice, a hotshot gambler that absolutely loathes another hotshot gambler, Tighe’s Sam Forney. Forney hates him right back, so much so that they dare each other into a loser-gets-out-of-town battle of wills that starts with Russian Roulette and escalates into a ludicrous dick measuring contest called ‘Chop Poker’, which has no bluffs, no raises, and no skill, just pure luck of the draw. You get a hand of cards, you compare them, and the winner chops off the finger of the loser until someone backs down or…well, until no one has any appendages left. Which is just what happens, as the episode ends with Crevice and Forney, both limbless, playing aggressive angry checkers across from one another in a lunatic asylum. 

There’s nothing remotely scary in this, but that just goes to show how little Crypt needed to be beholden to ‘horror’. It’s a giddy high wire exercise in tension, and the Russian roulette sequence, where Tighe and Henrikson take turns risking blowing their own heads off, exemplifies this best. Both actors play the stakes with the exact right mix of braggadocio and nerves, and each click of the pistol is more charged than the one before. I mentioned awhile back that my issue with this episode was that I find Henrikson, especially in flashy cowboy mode, to be way more likable than Tighe, which unbalances my rooting interest in whether one of these pricks ultimately triumphs. But rewatching for this article cured me of that. Tighe is excellent here, and even though the surface level moral is very clear (being ruled by your hate leads to insanity), what I ultimately got out of this was that these two characters only think they hate each other. In the end, this level of crazy high stakes competition is what they both want most out of life, and finally, they’re the best friends either one could ever ask for. Hell, the episode ends with a freeze frame of the two of them forehead to forehead, staring into each other’s eyes, inches, and possibly seconds, away from a kiss.

HOW EVIL ARE THE WOMEN?

There are no women at all, which means that nine episodes in, this is the first Crypt that isn’t remotely misogynist.

ALSO WORTH NOTING:

*Roy Brocksmith, who was in the last episode “The Switch” has a walk on role here as well. The way TV was shot back then, he probably banged out both episodes in the same week.

*Speaking of “The Switch”, I wonder what Hollywood would look like today if Henrikson had played a role originally written for him, the title character in an early James Cameron film that made Arnold Schwarzenegger’s career.

*I’m not sure if this or “The Man Who Was Death” is my favorite episode thus far. They’re both terrific, both off model, and both directed by Walter Hill. For as great as Hill can be, I’m kind of surprised he hasn’t made more films that are stone cold classics. Still, if you haven’t seen Trespass, I’d recommend giving it a look.

*The pacing on this episode is crazy fast. It’s a short one at just over twenty minutes, but it feels more like ten.

*The only real misstep? A synth-reggae score.

WORST CRYPTKEEPER JOKE:

“I’ve got to hand it to Crevice and Forney. They’ll do anything to elbow their way to the top.”

Rating: A

PATRICK SAYS:

I wish I could agree with John here, but I don’t think “Cutting Cards” is “A” material. It’s well-shot and has two truly great performances, but barely anything happens at all. I don’t know if there’s an episode of Crypt that has less plot than “Cutting Cards.” Henricksen arrives at a bar, they play Russian Roulette, they play Chop Poker, and they end up in a mental hospital. That’s it. I appreciate how impressively done the set-pieces are, but some kind of rising dramatic structure would have gone a long way. Definitely one of the better episodes, but not up there with episodes like “The Man Who Was Death” or “Dig That Cat, He’s Real Gone”.

                                    
 
The Switch (2.02)

“Mr. Webster, faces don’t just grow on trees, like grapefruits.”

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

A rich old man falls in love with a younger woman and goes to extreme, transformative lengths to win her.

WHO’S RESPONSIBLE?

The
big notable here is director Arnold Schwarzenegger, who cameos in the
Crypt Keeper segment. The old man protagonist is late, great old man
character actor William Hickey (Prizzi’s Honor, Nightmare Before Christmas, MY BLUE HEAVEN),
and backing him up are Travolta’s beard Kelly Preston and
Iceman’s bottom Rick Rossovich. Hickey’s butler is
the incredibly prolific Ian Abercrombie, probably most familiar as the
wizard in Army of Darkness. The mad scientist is played by Roy Brocksmith, who must have impressed Schwarzenegger as the sweaty ReKall rep in Total Recall, released the same year. A veritable fiesta for fans of early 90s character actors. All three of you.

HOW IS IT?

Oh,
man. Where to start? Schwarzenegger isn’t a horrible
director, by which I mean the episode has a clear narrative progression,
is shot semi-competently, and doesn’t explode while you watch
it. The cast is fun, and everyone is more or less game for the stupid
things they’re required to do, with Hickey in particular doing
his level best to add some depth to his character’s silly
plight. But at the end of the day, this story hinges on some of the
worst internal logic I’ve ever seen. Not just one thing
(although one thing in particular does scream for attention), but across
the boards, it’s just a staggering failure to grasp the
simplest basics of aging and relationships, which are ostensibly what
it’s all about. There are episodes of the Pirates of Dark Water with a more mature understanding of human beings.

See
if you can spot the problems. Hickey, looking about 90, plays Carlton
Webster, a wealthy old bachelor, smitten with Kelly Preston.
It’s an open question how they met; he lives in a mansion, she
in a shitty LA apartment complex. Determined to win her hand without
exposing his wealth (like Jamie Foxx, he has no use for gold digging
bitches), he tries to woo Preston with nothing but his wizened
comeliness. He even makes a point of telling her how poor he is. Preston
tells him the obvious, that she’s not really into grandfather
fucking.

Webster
takes this to mean she wants him to get expensive plastic surgery. When
regular channels prove not magical enough, he finds a mad scientist
(Brocksmith), whose evil lab resembles the Dracula’s Castle
room at a Halloween outlet store. Anyhoo, the mad scientist offers him a
deal: one million dollars, and he can switch faces with Top Gun’s
Rick Rossovich, who’s been waiting in the other room,
apparently for just such an opportunity. It’s not an elaborate
con or anything either. He’s really been waiting for a rich
old man to come by and pay him to swap faces.

So
they swap faces, Castor Troy style, grafting Rossovich’s
swarthy mug onto Webster’s decrepit body, creating the
horrific freakshow image of William Hickey wearing a Rick Rossovich
makeup face (this episode apparently predates cost effective effects,
and so all the split body shots are accomplished with rinky-dink
practical effects and editing). Again, Preston rejects him. She says
it’s because of his decrepit old body, leaving off how
terrifying his makeup face looks. So Webster goes back to the doctor,
and for two million, he and Rossovich swap upper bodies. Now Rossovich
takes over the role fully, doing shirtless pull ups and impressing the
fickle Preston. However, his voice remains Hickey’s froggy old
man squeak. All his plans are going well, until she sees his gross old
man legs. So it’s back to the docs, where he trades his
remaining fortune for Rossovich’s remaining lower half. Why
didn’t he do this last time? Shut up.

Webster
rushes over to Preston’s shitty apartment to share the good
news, only to find she’s moved into a luxury condo. He shows
her how much he’s changed and now-they-can-get-married, but
she stops him, explaining that what she really wanted was someone rich,
and now she’s met that person. Cue William Hickey’s
entrance, speaking with Rick Rossovich’s voice. It turns out
all Preston wanted was exactly what Hickey had to start with! How
fucking ironic!

If
Preston is only interested in money, wouldn’t that mean
Hickey wouldn’t be interested in her? Didn’t he say
specifically that at the beginning? How come being loved for his looks
is so much better than being loved for his wealth? If Hickey really did
add at least fifty years to his life, and every indication is that he
did, isn’t that way preferable to having this shallow gold
digger? It’s worth his millions too, isn’t it? He
even got Rossovich’s dick! And speaking of Rossovich, how the
hell is he the big winner here? If I told you that you could have six
million dollars and marry Kelly Preston, but you’ll age fifty
years instantly and be unable to consummate it anyway, you’d
tell me to fuck off, right? And though he cackles like a Disney villain
at Webster, you’d have to be a space alien not to see who
clearly came out on top here.

Everything
here is fucked. The ending  is fucked, the decisions
characters make are fucked, the central conceit is fucked, and you
better believe the science is fucked. And while most aspects of this
production aren’t very good, it’s the central
premise that just flat out doesn’t work, cataclysmically so.
It’s a story about lust and aging, and it feels like it was
written by someone who’s never experienced either. A preteen,
maybe.

HOW EVIL ARE THE WOMEN?

It’s
a hugely misogynist episode, although not in the usual sense.
Preston’s a materialistic whore, but she’s not to
blame, really. Hickey is, because he forgot that all women care about is
money. It’s just one of those facts of life. Birds gotta fly,
fish gotta swim, women gotta covet wealth.

ALSO WORTH NOTING:

*Mark Pellegrino (Jacob from Lost)
plays a street thug that hassles Rossovich and gets his ass kicked.
It’s a pointless scene, other than to show that Webster is now
strong and vital, which plays directly against the theme of the
episode.

*Schwarzenegger
cameos as himself in the opening Crypt Keeper bit, spoofing his job in
the President’s Council on Physical Fitness. In the post show,
Schwarzenegger is gone, but the Crypt Keeper is in the process of
embalming a corpse. I take this to mean in the show’s
universe, the Crypt Keeper murdered Schwarzenegger.

*William Hickey played a crazy old rich man trying to cheat death in a couple other horror anthologies, the Tales From the Darkside movie (The Cat From Hell) and the Outer Limits (White Light Fever).
Neither is great, but they’re both pretty fun, and way better
than this. Weirdly, he actually does cheat death in the Switch.

WORST CRYPTKEEPER JOKE:

“I like a party that’s nice…and strong!” (it’s a visual joke, and it’s the best we get here)

Rating:

D

PATRICK SAYS:

Watching
William Hickey’s voice coming out of Rick Rossovich’s mouth is one of the
more unforgettable moments I’ve seen on this series. It’s clear that
William Hickey was hired specifically for his voice, so this gag could work,
because he doesn’t do much else of interest. Apparently the Academy of
Television Arts and Sciences disagrees with me, though, because Hickey’s
performance was nominated for an Emmy, the first of seven the show
would eventually be nominated for (though never winning any). I wish at
least that Schwarzenegger revealed himself in some auteurial fashion
here, but the realities of television production prevent most directors
from leaving a personal stamp of any kind. The only thing you could
point out as specifically Arnold would be a slightly fetishistic pan of
various hardbodies pumping iron, but even that only lasts about 4
seconds. A weak episode all around.