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Tales from the Crypt: Werewolf Concerto (1992)
Red herrings abound!
I think the idea behind this episode is very clever. Its goal is to create expectations, then subvert them. I feel that this script accomplishes that better than previous Tales episodes that have tried to do the bait and switch twist ending.
But unfortunately, I don't think this script was executed properly. The episode's pacing is bizarre in how it lingers on irrelevant bantering between characters, but is rushed in the critical moments where the red herrings are established.
There's even a old review on here from 15 years ago that claimed there were no red herrings! The whole episode was a construction of red herrings. Knocking it down with a twist ending was the entire point of this episode! But I can see how a viewer could miss them. I'll list the major ones:
Red Herring #1: The episode heavily implies that Lokai is the secret vampire hunter. He's a smooth talker, towers over everyone, and is doing his own investigation. Lokai fits the image of a hero, so we expect he must be the anonymous vampire hunter.
Red Herring #2: Lokai's investigations lead to him murdering an old German man, Mr. Hertz, who for some reason says he'd rather tear Lokai apart than shoot him - making Lokai (and us!) think he must have been the werewolf. (Lokai didn't *really* think this. We'll get to that later, but notice how neither man explicitly acknowledges that Hertz is the werewolf.)
Red Herring #3: Well, that awkward statement by Mr. Hertz was a red herring for both us and Lokai. Lokai later learns that Hertz' aggressive behavior was because he was an ex-Nazi accused of war crimes. Hertz had just murdered a different guest whom had recognized and reported him. Lokai had killed a murderer, but not the werewolf.
Red Herring #4: Lokai's obvious horror at learning he had killed the wrong man leads us to believe he's upset to have missed his target: the werewolf. This time, the red herring is for us in the audience alone. Lokai knows what he's really trying to do, but we don't yet.
Red Herring #5: Lokai begins to suspect the sultry guest, Janice Baird, is the werewolf. In an earlier conversation, Lokai had made the offhand suggestion that the werewolf could be a woman. It looks like that's the case tonight!
So, I can identify five red herrings that all get shattered in the final scene when it's revealed that Lokai was the werewolf all along!
The red herring I think was most clever is #4. He wasn't upset that he had not killed the werewolf, or even that he had murdered a man. He was upset that he had not killed the real werewolf hunter, so he was still in danger!
The episode has a well-constructed set of misdirections that the writers know we will tend to interpret in a certain way, but are actually vague enough to conceal the truth. In that regard, it's like the modern mainstream media.
"Werewolf Concerto" is subtle in a way some other red herring-focused Tales From the Crypt episodes failed to be, such as the awful season 2 episode, "Three's a Crowd." But execution is critical for getting across the points. Because of the weird pacing that rushed through critical plot developments, I can understand how some viewers missed the chance to enjoy "Werewolf Concerto" as much as I did.
Tales from the Crypt: For Cryin' Out Loud (1990)
laughed out loud
I barely watch TV or cinema, but this episode really highlighted just how many actors and actresses I've seen in more recent roles as middle-aged or elderly have passed through Tales from the Crypt.
I've seen Katey Segal in Sons of Anarchy, so I recognized her name on the title credits. She's not exactly "young" here in her mid-30s and was still older than I am now, but her "younger" self was impressive. What a sight she must have been 10-15 years before this episode.
The main actor, Lee Arenberg is a man I've never seen or heard of, but he did very well. His facial expressions were funny in themselves.
Honestly, the main reason I'm writing this review is because the other reviews struggled to identify what his job was in this episode. People said he was a "music producer" a "manager" and a "promoter." All of these are wrong.
He episode made his job was very, very clear: he was the owner of a trashy club/venue. That bathroom!
This is why he complained about being a "gopher for a bunch of drooling morons just because they can play three chords on a guitar" and that artists would rebuke him for having red M&Ms in the bowl (a reference to an infamous Van Halen contract rider)
Anyways, I enjoyed the episode and laughed out loud throughout.
Timeline (2003)
A Good Adaptation
I don't think I've ever posted a review to IMDb, but a number of reviews making bad points inspired me to chime in.
After rereading Timeline about two decades after I read it as a kid, I watched this film for the first time ever and decided that it is a good adaptation. It made me very happy in some areas where the screenwriters made changes I think were improvements.
For example, in the the novel the team enters the Dordogne region in 1357 and starts remarking upon how clean the air is and how there are no sounds of vehicles or machines. This was a ridiculous reaction for the characters to have, unless they had literally never left the city in their lives. They could have had the experience of a beautiful, untouched forest in 1999 without utilizing quantum fax machines to teleport to another universe. I think the filmmakers may have thought the same thing about this bizarre reaction, because they have this version of Chris say something directly opposed to it: "This could be my grandparent's house in Oregon."
However, I think it fails to be a special movie because it cuts out so much of the world-building Crichton did that created a foreign and tense atmosphere for the characters to survive within for 2.5 days. This movie comes across as generic and forgettable medieval action that we've seen countless times before.
There are some reviewers on here that have read the novel and think that rating the film 1 star and listing the changes the film made is a legitimate way to approach a work adapted for a different medium. They point out changes without even trying to explain why they think it was a bad change - they just assume that any changes are inherently bad.
Some of these changes still leave me wondering what they were thinking (changing Kramer to a man), but most of the others I can understand what the filmmakers were going for. Changing Chris from a student of Professor Johnston to his son helped create a justification for him being part of the team to rescue Johnston in 1357, which I believe Crichton did not adequately do. Most of the plot points and sequences that were cut make sense to me, too, though some are definitely disappointing. The biggest and most central plot elements were kept in the film, and the time travel adventure plays out in the same way as the novel.
The last thing I want to do in this review is again respond to other reviews. Some claim that the ending was changed. Again, all the major points of the ending of the novel were kept for the third act of the film, though the details may differ. It ends with a big nighttime battle for La Roque castle. Johnston and Marek are in the castle, tasked with making incendiaries for Oliver. The arsenal eventually explodes Chris and Kate are trying to get to La Roque, and find a secret passage to do it. Arnaut also uses the secret passage to enter La Roque, and ends up killing Oliver. Chris, Kate and Johnston use a marker to leave, while Marek chooses to stay. Doniger is sent back to mid-14th century Dordogne, where he certainly dies soon after. The three survivors later find Marek and Lady Claire's grave. Novel / Film both end.
There are differences in details for each beat, but the only significant change is that Lady Claire's final scene in the book had happened before Marek was captured by Oliver, and she had no role in the climactic battle. This was the only structural change to the ending, and I don't think it's enough to justify the blanket statement "they changed the ending" without clarifying that the changes were mostly minor and stayed true to how they happened in the book.