We All Have a Bad Side

Readers, I have a very important question to ask, and I expect honest, relationship-killing answers:

Did you know about Doppelganger?

If you responded "no,", then have I got a treat for you!

If you said "yes, yes Emily, I've always known about this 1993 mashup of dissociative identity order tropes, mannequins in face/off masks reveals, gooey unexplained demon exoskeleton attacks, and nuns running phone sex businesses, but I guess I forgot to tell you", then you are dead to me.

Unless you added "oh! I didn't tell you because there's a dead cat." Then I'd say, well golly, you truly do understand.

Quick Plot: Holly Gooding is a poor little rich girl with a 5'4 problem: her titular doppelganger is making life VERY difficult.

After maybe stabbing her mother to death in the wealthy family's New York City penthouse, Holly flees to LA to sort out her trust fund and visit her institutionalized brother (who just might have murdered their missing father). Despite being, you know, NYC penthouse/trust fund wealthy, Holly decides to rent a spare room from struggling screenwriter Patrick Highsmith and his ill-fated cat Nathan.

Patrick is your typical nerdy earnest good guy writer type hero, meaning he's blander than the grape jelly toast he dresses up with mustard. Thankfully, he has a far sassier writing partner named Elizabeth who lends some fast-talking pop when needed.

As you can expect from any movie about a heterosexual man and woman suddenly living in close quarters, Patrick and Holly become intimate...or do they? After a wild night of dirty kitchen floor sex, Holly is apalled by Patrick's memory of the act and is forced to explain that her double sometimes slips into her life.

As Elizabeth cannily points out, men will put up with a lot of insanity if the sex is good. Maybe it's that Drew Barrymore's doe-eyed innocence is naturally irresistible, but Patrick accepts A LOT: her wild mood swings, a fast-talking FBI agent hiding out in a laser-lit empty apartment next door, and Holly's arrest for the murder of her brother.

I know I've gone into what seems like a lot of detail about the plot of Doppelganger, but it's necessary to explain just how insane this story becomes. Things start getting weird when Sally Kellerman (who I have to assume owed writer/director Avi Nesher a large, "I know where the bodies are buried" favor) shows up in a cameo as, I kid you not, a former nun now running a phone sex operation but still the preeminent LA expert on the subject of doppelgangers. For whatever reason, she keeps a Raggedy Anne doll on her work desk.

What. Is. Happening.

I'm going to spoil the ending(s) of Doppelganger, because I'm terrified I haven't sold it hard enough for anyone to sit through a few commercials on Tubi and stream it free of charge, and that would be a true shame. It's not every day that you stumble on a '90s thriller that whiplashes from soap operatic multiple personality disorder saga to latex face/off disguise reveal and ends with Drew Barrymore being ripped into two gooey monster halves that resemble what the spinal structures of the creatures from Mac & Me would look like in that famous Bodies touring display.

Didja get all that?

Doppelganger's poster looks like it's selling a sleazy pre-Lifetime-but-totally-Lifetime sexy thriller. The fact that Greg Nicotero and Robert Kurtzman's names show up in the opening credits should alert you that some practical FX are going to ooze onscreen, but when you're 80 minutes into a 90 minute non-supernatural film, IT'S A LITTLE BIT SHOCKING. Especially when you're still trying to come to terms with the fact that a half dozen characters (including The People Under the Stairs' Sean Whalen) have actually been Dennis Christopher's abusive psychiatrist in face puddy. THAT'S NOT HOW IT WORKS.

Avi Nesher showed up once before here: for the Cryptkeeper-less Tales From the Crypt movie Ritual, another film that had a lot of ambition in its style. Like Ritual, Doppelganger doesn't fully work as a film, nor does its gender politics age well in any way. There's a lot to squirm about in how the barely 18-year-old Barrymore is ogled by both the camera and every man she encounters, particularly her very own psychiatrist. The film considers him a monster because he dresses up in latex faces and murders at will, but you never get the sense that his lust is actually on trial.

Still, it's pretty hard to discover such bonkers and not walk away elated by its grand strokes.

Why has this movie been forgotten?

High Points
I'm a sucker for a grand, ridiculous reveal, and it doesn't get much wackier than a mannequin club...followed up by...

...whatever the hell this is supposed to be

Low Points
Seriously. This poor teenager has been sexually abused and exploited by her therapist, but it seems to only be considered a crime because he also went on a very bloody killing spree. Eff you, the '90s

Lessons Learned
The best prosthetics can do wonders with altering your facial structure, height, and voice

Common writers' afflictions include weak eyesight and being bad with names

The key to identifying which Drew Barrymore is nice and which Drew Barrymore is here evil doppelganger/rapist-murderer psychiatrist can best be identified by measuring the darkness of her lipstick

Your Moment of Zen
I was a teenager in the '90s, which meant I attended my share of awkward school dances where I, like so many of my peers, attempted to move my body to mediocre music in a way that made me look attractive. It's incredibly refreshing to watch actual hot people do the same and realize, in a true moment of enlightenment, that yes, I did indeed look stupid, but so does Poison Ivy-era Drew Barrymore because you know what? THERE'S NO WAY TO DANCE SEXY TO '90s PARTY MUSIC

The Winning Line
"You don't own me. You're not my father!"
Um?

Look! It's -
A fresh-faced (well, as fresh a face as I've ever seen) Danny Trejo as the sexually harassing construction worker whose catcalls are ickily subtitled "foreign language" as if no one in California has ever heard of this thing called "Spanish"

Rent/Bury/Buy
In case you couldn't tell, I realllllllllly enjoyed Doppelganger. It's terrible, dated, offensive, and possibly not that good a movie, but it's also WILD. You can survive a few ads for stock apps on Tubi. Give it a go.

If a Tale From the Crypt Doesn't Have a Cryptkeeper, THEN WHAT IS IT?

PEOPLE! Are you aware that in 2001, Jennifer Grey, Craig Sheffer, and Tim 'Best Actor of All Things Ever' Curry starred in a Tales From the Crypt movie? A TALES FROM THE CRYPT MOVIE?

Now before you go a'swoonin, I have some bad, bad news.

This is not really a Tales From the Crypt movie.

But words don't lie! you shout with fervor, jabbing your pointing finger to the dreadklocked Cryptkeeper looking over the cover art's action. See? The movie is called Ritual and it's clearly Jamaican based and hence, THE CRYPTKEEPER HAS DREADLOCKS! Surely he'll open the film wearing a happy face t-shirt while making some inappropriate jokes about ganja and adding t's to all his words. I mean, THAT'S WHAT TALES FROM THE CRYPT MEANS.

Unless the year is 2001 and Miramax was scared off by Bordello of Blood's poor box office performance, thusly removing all references to the Cryptkeeper from  A TALES FROM THE CRYPT MOVIE.

Not that I'm bitter about that or anything...

Quick Plot: A gooey opening scene in Jamaica gives us an incredible melting character actor investigating the mysterious illness that befell his patient, rich land owner Wesley Claybourne. But then he melts.

And we still haven't had a Cryptkeeper pun.

Back in the U.S., Dr. Alice Dodgson (aka Nobody Puts Baby In the Corner With a New Nose) attempts to save a dying young patient with experimental medication, losing the kid's life and her medical license in the process. Jobless, she accepts the now vacant role of personal physical to the aforementioned Wesley on a sprawling Jamaican plantation as ratlike older brother Julian (Nightbreed's Craig Sheffer) looks on suspiciously.

Helping out is Caro, the Claybourne's sexy childhood friend, and Jennifer Grey's Left and Right Nipple, which should have at the very least earned their SAG card for the amount of work they have to do under a tight white camisole. You know what else works hard? Dream sequences. All 972 of them.

See, there's an art and craft to using the 'shock! scare! dead main character! oh, it's all a dream!' trick. When handled correctly, it's an outstanding little device that almost every basic horror movie requires. On the other hand, when about 40% of your film's running time is composed of said 'shock! scare! dead main character! oh, it's all a dream!' sequences, they lose their power rather quickly. This is especially evident when Nobody Puts Baby's Prominent Nipples In the Corner With a New Nose recaps her most recent nightmare with the line "I just had the most horrifyingly real dream of my life!" Just try to watch that scene and not respond "as opposed to the 12 other horrifyingly real dreams we've witnessed?"

That being said, Ritual isn't a terrible movie. Filmed on location in Jamaica, it looks gorgeous, and the actors are all more than adequate. Does it feel like a Tales From the Crypt episode? Somewhat. Greedy characters get their karmic slap, bodies get melted or zombified, breasts get displayed and jungles get trod upon.

But the puns? Ah, what I wouldn't do for a pun...

High Points
If nothing else, this movie includes copious doses of Tim Curry petting cats and making lecherous smiles at women. That in itself sort of puts this into the 10 range

Low Points
Aside from the obvious--THIS IS A TALES FROM THE CRYPT MOVIE WITH NO CRYPT--Ritual ends on the sourest, meanest, most unnecessarily misogynist note that in no way was warranted by its otherwise fine 100 minutes. I was absolutely disgusted by the final shot of this film. Now one could argue that it's the usual comeuppance doled out by any Crypt morality tale, but it's not really the case. Let's get into SPOILERY specifics:

So the villain is, in a worthy twist, revealed to be Caro. It's fine for her fate to be zombiehood, since she was planning on doing the same to her friends, but then Ritual decides to get playful by showing her as a zombie bride being lain on a bed by the film's OTHER still-living villain, a corrupt and cruel policeman whom she had previously insulted for being fat. So as punishment, she'll get to spend the rest of his life being raped. He, keep in mind, was as much of, if not MORE of a villain (WHO KILLED TIM CURRY DAMNIT) but you know, he's fine. I understand the idea of throwing in a final punch, but this one is so miscalculated that it almost ruined the otherwise unoffensive and slightly entertaining film on the whole.

Lessons Learned
Everyone in Jamaica carries machetes for work and protection

Voodoo is like disco, but with less poom poom

It is customary for hospitals to fire surgeons via snail mail

If naming a character Wesley, consider how the line "As you wish" might sound and whether you're looking for a Princess Bride reference in your voodoo zombie horror movie

Bonus Material

As I watched this on Netflix Instant, I was denied the apparently extra of the Cryptkeeper segment tagged onto the DVD. HOWEVER, IMDB has kindly provided the dialogue spoken by everyone's favorite ghoul on the quotations page for Ritual. Do yourself a favor and take a look. It's oozing with mons and is written phonetically. 

The Internet is a wonderful place.

Look! It's...

Everyone's favorite Pennsylvanian insurance salesman/Glee sex offender Stephen Tobolowsky in a small role as Alice's boss

Rent/Bury/Buy

If you're looking for some throwback Tales From the Crypt action, then Ritual really isn't it. That being said, those in the mood for some voodoo horror along the lines of The Serpent and the Rainbow or, as the credits claim as a basis, I Walked With a Zombie will find plenty to enjoy. The story and characters are better thought-out than a lot of other straight-past-your-cineplex offerings, and there's an added bonus of pretty people and pretty kickass practical effects. Plus, Tim Curry petting a cat while being smarmy. 

That's all this gal needs.