I
I’ve always had a love for TV movies. From Lifetime’s
many variations on, "My Breast Just Fell Off: the Karen O’Malley
Story," to that mid-nineties slew of Teen Sitcom Star Gets
Date Raped movies, there is just something so incredibly half-assed
and ambivalent about them that appeals to my personal notion of
enjoyable fromage. Knowing this, a mini-series can them be assumed
as the same sort of enjoyable, only pleasantly spread out over several
days.
When I was in the sixth grade (which was. . . Jesus,
TWELVE years ago), Stephen King’s "The Stand" debuted
on ABC. Based on the monster 1300 page tome about a society that
is wiped out by a plague and then forced to rebuild itself in two
sects, one good and one evil, the four part series aired over a
span of five days. My friends and I were enraptured. We spent the
entire week tittering over what we’d seen the night before
and what we HOPED to see that night.
For years after originally watching it, I considered "The
Stand" to be one of my very favorite movies. And not in that goofy way that I
consider like, Center Stage to be one of my favorite films, I legitimately thought
that "The Stand" was an apex of television achievement. It was one of the first
films I bought for myself on VHS, and I was givent the DVD as a birthday gift. Despite all
this, I’ve never watched it much. I mean, who regularly watches and 8 hour film, you
know? My extended hiatus from the Progressive Boink main page, however, has given me ample
opportunity to do a lot of things I couldn’t before; spend time with my family, stare
out of windows in quiet contemplation, sneak onto the P-boi forums to see if anyone had
started any "We Miss Emily" threads (thanks for nothing guys L), and, most
importantly, waste and entire afternoon/evening watching incredibly long movies. I did
that very thing recently, and something occurred to me:
This movie is bad.
Now, don’t misunderstand. I still love the hell out of every second of it. Just. .
.not in that way where I think that it is good. Because it is not. I must reiterate that
it is quite bad. But, since we all know that it is easier and more fun to write about
things that aren’t good than things that are, I figured this movie would be a prime
candidate for the "paragraph + picture + funny caption" treatment. And in the
name of not giving everyone TLDR disease, I figured I’d split up my review into four
parts, which I’ll complete over the next few weeks, or months, or. . . Actually,
I’m pretty sure that me saying that I’ll do this as a series more or less
condemns that site to shutting down or becoming inactive before I finish, per my understanding of
how the internet works.
And so, without further ado, Part One, "The Plague."
We start out in the quiet homes outside of what appears to be a
military base/scientific testing facility. Inside the base, shit is going down. Some sort
of biological weapon (the film never comes out and says that it’s anything but
"a souped up version of the flu") has been released inside the base, and
everyone is crapping their pants. An MP in a security booth is informed that he has to
shut the gate. In a preview of the sort of ham fisted directing style we’ll come to
love over the next several hours, some extras in a security camera make exaggerated
gestures, while a bit actor who seems vaguely familiar looks dumbfounded. Get used to
this. Actors looking dumbfounded, combined with a twangy, "more cowbell"-esque
guitar will become the movie’s signatures.
Rather than do the right thing and, you know, probably save millions
of lives and prevent a biblical show down of good vs. evil, Campion (the bit actor) mouth
breathes a little more, than decides the best course of action is to throw the wife and
kid into the ol’ hatchback and get the fuck out of Dodge. Thanks a million for that
one, brother. I guess when the real end times come, we’ll know who to blame. Oh,
wait, no. Speaking of twangy guitars, we actually get a little of the real Blue
Oyster Cult over the credits, and our first montage of dead people (there will be more).
Campion and his cross-country hatchback of death finally crash land at Hap’s Service
Station in Arnette, Texas. It is June 17th, which I suppose is important for keeping track
of how long it takes for an entire country to die. But before we get to the dying,
let's meet some character actors!
Hmm. . . .two generic hayseeds, an old hayseed,
a bald hayseed, and a strange looking but still kind of hunky guy in this 30s. Let’s
try to guess which one is the lead actor!
After taking out all of Hap’s gas pumps, Campion crawls out of his car and. . .yeesh, he kind
of looks like something
out of a TooL video. The two generic hayseeds find the wife and baby already dead, and
wonder if maybe they all had food poisoning, which is logical since the car has California
plates. Old hayseed declares that it’s cholera. Campion babbles a little bit about
shit that might be more interesting if we the audience weren’t just waiting for him
to keel over so the plot can progress. He finally manages to gurgle out the tidbit that a
"dark man" was with him on his trip, and then he dies in Gary Sinise’s arms
before anyone can ask him what Arnold Vosloo was doing in the backseat of his car.
Sinise’s character, by the way, is named Stu Redman. I’m telling you this now
because they don’t give you his whole name for a little while, there are
approximately 3,000 characters to remember in this movie, and I frankly just don’t
want to call him "Lt. Dan" the whole time.
Speaking of other characters, here are some now. On a different base in California,
what appears to be a leprechaun in a military uniform makes it’s way through an
office building on his way to find. . . Hey! Ed Harris! But wait, don’t get too
excited. There’s a weird pattern of actors who are really too good for this movie
showing up in small parts to slum but like, knowing that they’re too good for
the movie, and then acting as poorly as possible to compensate. Like, you know how Ed
Harris always has kind of a calm, stoic presence in his films that makes you like him
despite never being in anything you’d actually want to watch? Well, replace
"calm" with "drunk" and "stoic" with "Low Ki cutting a
promo." Ed Harris and the leprechaun banter back and forth about all the shit we just
saw and the only real point to this scene is to find out that the "super flu"
has a communicability rating of over 99%, and that they’re sending soldiers into
Arnette to quarantine it.
We then get a really awesome fake commercial for a product called "Flu Buddy,"
that ends with a Gumble-esque black
guy dancing with a CGI bottle of medicine. Awesome.
Quick scene in which Joe Bob Briggs makes
a cameo as "Joe Bob" to talk to Bald and Old hayseeds, with a couple of errant
sneezes thrown in just in case we’ve forgotten that a deadly virus has just been
released upon an unsuspecting public. Moving on.
At El Casa de Redman, Alf’s Dad (no, seriously) shows up with some heavily armed national guardsmen
to escort Stu and all of the hayseeds (along with the wives and spawn of hayseeds) off to
the airport. Once there, Alf’s Dad refuses to give them any information, except to
confirm that they do not, in fact, have Cholera. A load off of my mind. Bald Hayseed pulls
Stu aside and says, "I ain’t been this scared since the Mekong delta in
‘69," which is a line so hokey and awkward that you just know King wrote
it himself. After that it’s up, up, and away to a disease control center in Vermont.
New character! It is now June 19th, and a flashy car cruises
through New York City while a radio do introduces a hot little ditty called, "Baby,
Can You Dig Your Man?" The song starts to play and, okay, I guess it might have flown
in the ‘70s when King wrote the book, but it sounds WAY too Eddie Money for 1994.
Really, it just sounds like something that should be playing in an Aquavelva commercial.
The cars pulls up on a fairly mediocre looking street in Queens where it’s revealed
that the driver of the car is none other than Larry Underwood, the singer of the non-hot
non-song we just heard. Larry is played by Adam Storke. Who is Adam Storke, you ask? I
have no idea. I have never seen this guy in ANYTHING else, before or since. But if his
acting is any indication, I think I know why. It’s like he sprang fully formed from
Stephen King’s forehead, his vision of the ideal greasy cokehead New Yorker come to
life.
Anyway, Larry looks sleazy for a second, and then rings a
doorbell with the name "Alice Underwood" under it. I’ll save you the
suspense and tell you that Alice is Larry’s mom. It doesn’t matter, she’ll
be dead soon. Some, "hey ma, I’m home" doorstep antics, and we take it
inside. Cut to Alice’s kitchen table, where we get the following awesome and sort of
racist exhange:
Larry: You’ve heard the song, right?
Alice: Of course I have, you sound black.
Larry (in a voice that is half James Brown and half Butterfly McQueen):
Well, that brown soun’ sho doo get around.
Like, what? That comment, combined with the high-pitched doo wop girls saying,
"he’s a righteous man, he’s a righteous man" over and over in the
background of Larry’s song makes me think that Isaac Hayes might’ve cut Stephen
King off in traffic back in the ’70s. That fucker holds a grudge. I stole his Sunday
paper once in 1987, and he punched my grandma right in the throat. The man is particular
about his K-mart inserts.
Larry and Alice have some more tense (and very poorly acted)
conversation, the crux of which is that Larry is a scumbag that blew all of his money and
had to borrow some from the mob out in L.A. He showed up at his mom’s place to hide
out and avoid getting his legs broken. He tries to convince his mother that the single is
on the rise, and he’ll have the money he owes soon, but his obvious desperation
(along with the fact that we’ve all heard his Dirk Diggler-like song) makes
Larry’s fate pretty clear. Alice seems to know this, and resigns herself to putting
up with her shitty son until somebody shows up to off him and she can go back to watching
"The Price is Right" and hoping for a Plinko segment.
Back in Vermont, Alf’s Dad has met up with another doctor, this one played either by
Bill Maher’s even smarmier cousin, or the guy who played Ziggy on
"Roseanne." They’re observing Old Hayseed, who has contracted a mean case
of TooL-face. He flails around a little, then dies. The doctors marvel at how quickly the
flu is killing people, then Basil Exposition that there are only two men left from the
Arnette group: one of the generic hayseeds, who is in critical condition, and Stu, who
isn’t sick at all. Cut to Stu sitting in a confined hospital room, reading an Elmore
Leonard novel for no reason I can fathom other than to establish that Stu must be pretty
smart if he’s red, "Get Shorty."
New Characters! We’re now in Ogunquit, Main, which
immediately makes me worry that we’re about to meet 7 or 8 people who all sound like
Dolores Claiborne. Luckily, that isn’t the case. It is June 20th. As we pan down to a
man working in his garden, Random Radio Voice tells us that Ed Harris and the leprechaun
out in California are still keeping things a secret.
The man in the garden is interrupted by a nerd in a jogging
suit, who it turns out is played by Parker Lewis Can’t Lose! And okay, I’ll
admit it: this character has greasy hair, bad skin, and a gait that resembles Vince
McMahon power walking in the mall. But my monster little girl crush on Corin Nemec still
has enough holdover that, despite all of this, I kinds still want to do him. Harold Lauder
(Can’t Lose) asks garden man if "Fran" is home, and garden man points to a
screen door on the side of the house where Molly Ringwald, with her creepy teeth and a
dark brown rinse, were trying desperately to avoid Harold.
Harold has come to give Frank a copy of the literary magazine
he was published in, which he does while clearly mooning over Creepy Teeth. Frank flips
through the magazine disinterestedly, promising to look at his poem "as soon as she
can" and basically giving him the "I’m flattered, go away" treatment.
She then slides the knife in a little deeper by suggesting he try to date girls his own
age. Harold gets the hint and takes off, leaving Fran and her father to talk about her
recent breakup with her boyfriend Jess, and then make fun of Harold some more. Oh hey,
I’m glad this shitty girl is who we’re being asked to emotionally invest in for
the next several hours. Neat.
Back in Redman’s Room of D00M and F34R, a nurse in a really awesome gumby suit comes
in to take Stu’s blood pressure, but he’s having none of it. He knows a little
hiss fit and insists that he wants to speak to a doctor. Ziggy tells Alf’s Dad to get
his ass into a gumby suit and go talk to him. He does, and the conversation goes something
like this:
AD: ’Sup?
Stu: I want information!
AD: No.
Stu: Gimme!
AD: Nope.
Stu: I’m gonna rip a hole in your suit!
AD: Yyyyyyyoink!
So. . . Good scene guys.
New character! Rob Lowe (who we will later find out is named Nick Andros) walks down the
middle of a dark road in Shoyo, Arkansas. We hear some voices off camera whispering about
him, and then out of the bushes come three thugs. Or, rather, one thug and his
non-threatening hillbilly sidekicks. It is important to know that Nick doesn’t notice
the men until they’re right on top of him. They tussle a bit, and Nick does as well
as you expect against three guy, managing at least to get in the world’s
wussiest crotch kick. The three finally give up when they see a car
coming, and they toss Nick’s unconscious body into the road in front of it.
Since this is the first time we’ve seen a character asleep (sort of), this is the
first time we get what will later become the incredibly ubiquitous dream sequence. We see
Nick wake up in a corn field that does not at all look like a sound stage. He stands,
wanders a bit, then makes some choking gestures before yelling, "I can hear! I can
talk!" Now, I’m not Truffaut or anything, but if you have a character who is a
deaf mute, that you’ve not yet officially established IS a deaf mute, is it a good
idea to immediately have him blabbering about how capable of talking and hearing he is?
That’s like watching Philadelphia and, five minutes in having Tom Hanks’
character shout, "I so totally do not have AIDS!!!"
Nick wanders around a little more before stumbling upon a little house. On the porch is an
old old black woman playing a guitar. She kind of looks like Yubaba from Spirited Away
brought to life. Nick again recounts the fact the he can hear and he can talk despite
being a deaf mute, and the woman tells him that she knows, ‘cause she’s a sage
old black person in a dream, and they know some shit. "Folks ‘round here just
call me Mother Abigail," she tells him. "I’m 106 years old, and I stil bake
my own bread." And really, when you consider that I’m 23 years old and my bread
maker is out in the garage collecting dust, that is pretty impressive. Mother Abigail
tells Nick to come see her in Nebraska, and then the sky goes black and she says that a
"storm" is coming. I’m telling you man, Arnold Vosloo. You don’t fuck
with the Mummy.
Right about that time Nick wakes up, lying in and unlocked jail
cell while these two
cholos, both of whom look like they should be standing in the
background on "Evening Shade," play a friendly game o’cards.
Fat Cholo is already starting to cough, so Thin Cholo pulls out
a stethoscope to establish that he’s a doctor. When Fat shrugs
him off, Thin oddly replies, "oh, come on. You know how hot
it makes me when you take your shirt off." The two men then
notice Nick, and Fat gives him some long-winded cornfed story that
basically equals to "you look bad." Thin, getting gayer
by the second, then insists that Nick take his shirt off, since
Fat won’t. Before that can happen, however, Nick uses some
hand
gestures that leads Thin to deem him, "deaf and dumb."
Which makes NO sense since we’ve already heard several times
that he can HEAR and TALK. This crap goes on a little longer, but
basically all you need to know is that Fat’s brother-in-law
Ray and his buddies beat up Nick, and Fat has to go pick ‘em
up.
 
And we’re back to Vermont. It’s now June 21st. But first, we get a quick shot of
Ed Harris at a press conference, still denying the existence of a "super flu."
Ziggy (whose real name is Deets) enters Stu’s room in a gumby suit, holding a guinea
pig. Deets explains that the guinea pig is alive and healthy because it has been breathing
Stu’s air, and Stu is also quite healthy. I think we’ve gotten that, so I’m
skipping past the rest of this until something interesting happens in Vermont.
New York City. Larry is sitting in an arcade talking on a payphone to a bland brunette in
a slinky dress. She tells him that his shitty song is doing really well on the charts, and
that it is #1 on VH1. Keep in mind that this was several years ago, before VH1 was nothing
but extended shots of Michael Ian Black looking like he wants to die. Larry is excited by
the news, and makes plans to fly to fly back, but Bland Brunette thinks it’s a bad
idea, saying that with all the soldiers and sick people, L.A. is "a really creepy
place to be." Larry agrees to hang out for a few more days in NYC. He gets up to
leave and runs into a favorite character in the whole movie, this guy. Larry apologizes and the guy turns and says,
"the Rat Man forgive you, this time." Sadly I believe that actor died of AIDS
not long after making this, which makes me feel kind of bad about my Philadelphia joke.
Though clearly not bad enough to erase it. Back on the street, Larry has a run-in with the
second best character, Kareem Abdul-Jabar: Ominous Bell Ringer of the Apocolypse.
Kareem gets right in Larry’s face and says, "He’s coming for you Larry. The
man with no face." Oh shit I was wrong. The bad guy is apparently Mel Gibson.
Listenin’ to ZZ Top and
robbin’ convenience stores with yer best buds!
New character! It is now June 23rd, and we’re in Burrack, Arizona. Two men, Lloyd
(Miguel Ferrer) and Poke (will be dead in a few minutes) are driving down the highway
while drinking, smoking and waving guns around. Poke suggests that they head to the
nearest convenience store and make a "cash withdrawl," stating that if he gets
any trouble, he’ll start shooting. Once they get inside, Poke, rather than wait for
trouble, just goes ahead and shots some lady for good measure. When the old man behind the
counter pulls a shotgun, Lloyd (I shit you not) mows him down with his gigantic machine gun. Before he can take out a second armed
patron (this is a fucked up quickie mart) the guy manages to plant a bullet right in
Poke’s chest. Lloyd, out of bullets and knowing that he‘s pretty much effed in
the A, hilariously throws his gun at the guy and runs outside, only to find some cops
waiting for him. As he’s on the ground getting cuffed, he (and we) get our first
glimpse of the notorious (dark man). He is sitting on top of a telephone pole, but when
the cops look back, they see nothing but the big black crow that has been glimpsed
throughout the film (I’ve failed to point it out before now because it wasn’t
really important up to this point, and it would’ve just resulted in a lot more screen
caps).
Holy crap dude, it really IS
Mel Gibson.
Back in California, a very drunk and stubbly Ed discusses with the leprechaun a news crew that got some
damaging footage, while he stares at a security camera screen showing what appears to be a
person dead in a pile of their own vomit. Nice.
In Wyoming, said news crew learns
the hard way what happens when you screw around with the U.S. military. That is to say,
they all get shot.
Ed stares at the dead person a little more, and quotes Yeats a bit. Isn’t anyone
gonna clean that poor person up?
Back at the jail in Arkansas, Nick has, for some reason, been put in charge of guarding
the three men who beat and robbed him. The two hillbilly sidekicks are both sick and Ray
continues to just be batshit insane. Thin cholo shows up to explain that Fat and
his wife are both dead from the flu, and tells Nick that he should release the prisoners
and come with him to his cabin in the mountains (GAYYYY). Nick obliges and lets them go,
but decides to stay with hillbilly sidekick #2, who is too sick to leave his cell.
 
Larry drives through the chaotic streets of Queens, surrounded by fires and the sounds of
gunshots. He finds Alice passed out in front of her front door. Alice, who looked like she
was two seconds from turning to dust the FIRST time
we saw her, is now pretty disgusting. Larry gives her some Flu Buddy
(continuity!) and tries to comfort her while she deliriously babbles about how
Larry’s father is "in the bar with that photographer."
Back in Manhattan, Kareem keeps ringing his bell while all of the non-sick New Yorkers
loot, riot, and burn.
At the military base. . . Uh oh, it looks like Ed has decided to off himself. The
leprechaun finds him dead with the word "guilty" pinned to his
jacket. As folks crowd around to see the body, one of the soldiers begins to cough, which
is probably why Ed decided on a quick exit. That damn dead person is still lying in puke
on the security camera.
It is June 25th, and hillbilly sidekick is dead, so Nick is hitting the road. He find Dr.
Thin cholo dead in his car, but not from the flu. It’s actually not clear what has
killed him (bad makeup job), but I think he was shot. Nick tries to cover up the body, but
before he can do this, a TooL-faced Ray shows up weilding a gun and looking to finish what
he started. They fight a bit and, in the end, Ray takes a bullet to the stomach. Having
just killed a man Nick, to reiterate that he’s one of the good guys, lets out a sad
deaf man’s grunt.
Manhattan. Kareem. Bell. Nothing to see here, move along.
In Maine, Fran brings chicken soup to her sick father, who sadly thinks he may be beating
the flu. They turn on the radio, and it’s time for another unaccredited cameo!
Speaking of Dolores Claiborne, Kathy Bates is playing talk radio personality Rae Flowers,
and she apparently got Ed’s memo about the bad acting, ’cause she has her
unsinkable Molly Brown knob cranked to 11. She takes some calls and, after a few minutes,
soldiers in gas masks burst into the studio. Fran and her father listen in horror as Rae
is gunned down on the air. So long, Kathy! Thanks for not sticking around long enough to
really irritate us!
While NYC burns, Kareem is still ringing the god damn bell.
In Arizona, a pair of cowboy boots strut with a purpose down the road. We then pan up to
see all of Evil Mel Gibson except for his face. Then, just to make sure we know he’s
evil, the dark man randomly kills a deer with his mind. However, canceling that action out
and making us kind of like him, he manages to give Kareem a heart attack from all the way
across the country, and the bell ringing finally stops.
Corn field! Dream sequence! Stu walks through
the corn in his sweats, coming upon Mother Abigail’s house just as Nick did. She
tells him that Deets and Alf’s Dad aren’t going to allow him to live much
longer, and makes a vague reference to rats being in the corn. Before he can learn more,
the dream turns sour, and Stu awakes in a cold sweat.
Into his room comes Deets, sans Gumby suit, and not looking too
hot. In the observation area, Alf’s Dad and the little guinea pig are already dead.
Deets rants that they couldn’t find a single immunity factor in Stu, and asks if
he’s been touched by God. He then pulls a gun, saying that a piece of "chicken
friend crap" like Stu doesn’t deserve to live when everyone else is dead.
Stu’s response to this is to distract Deets by turning on his TV, then hurling the
remote at his head. Hey, I’ve used that trick on my sister. She wasn’t trying to
kill me, though, she was just blocking my view of "Yes, Dear." Deets and Stu
beat on each other a little bit, before Stu hits him with a sweet leg sweep and
knocks him out. Stu grabs the gun and makes a break for it. Oh, but Deets? Still totally
alive and watns to fight some more before Stu is forced to kill him in a manner eerily
similar to the way we just saw Nick kill someone moments before. Poor freaked out Stu runs
frantically through the hospital full of dead people, stopping occasionally to make
disgusted/frightened noises at corpses. He runs and runs, and everyone is dead and dead
and dead, until finally he finds his way outside and onto the front grass. As he lies
there, he again hears Mother Abigail telling him to come see her. So Stu, in bare feet and
just a little fucked in the head, wanders off to do just that.
And that’s the end of Part One! I promise you that Part Two
has twice the dead bodies, three times the corn, and only ¼ as many
religious zealot NBA greats.
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