One of the biggest draws of Tales Of The Crypt is that it frequently drew in directors not familiar with the horror genre who were game to get their feet wet in a relatively low-risk scenario. While some famous actors such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael J. Fox and Tom Hanks got to cut their directorial teeth under the beady watch of the Crypt Keeper, some rather surprising filmmakers got to play in the Crypt sandbox too. No one would expect Howard Deutch, the director of Pretty In Pink, or the likes of John Frankenheimer to sign up to deliver twenty-plus minutes of enjoyably twisted TV.
However, not everyone made the transition as smoothly as others and in the shadow of Richard Donner’s magnificent “The Ventriloquist’s Dummy” we find Randa Haines’ rather irritating “Judy, You’re Not Yourself Today”. Was tapping the helmer of Children Of A Lesser God a rare mistake for a show that seemed to be fully hitting its stride?
Affluent couple Donald and Judy are a vain and eccentric pair who each have their own, exaggerated interests. But while Donald is incredibly obsessed about his gun collection to the point where he waves his loaded firearms around the house at a moment’s notice, what floats Judy’s boat is various forms of jewellery and beauty regimes. This means that when a mysterious old lady calls at her door one day, selling various products that will ensure Judy will keep her looks, she’s welcomed into the house with open arms.
Noticing that Judy is eyeing the large, ornate necklace that sits around her neck, the elderly woman invites the wealthy young woman to try it on. However, the old saleswoman is actually a witch who is on the lookout for a pretty face to steal and the necklace has magical properties which allows the crone to switch bodies with her target and run off with Judy’s far younger form.
This leaves the rather dimwitted Donald with something of a conundrum as there’s now a panicked old lady in his house claiming to be his wife, but after subduing her at gunpoint, her wild claims are confirmed when one of his buddies calls to report his “wife” living it up around town. After confronting the witch and managing to get the correct mind in the correct body by claiming that Judy has cancer, the crone swaps back only to find herself locked in a closet where Donald ends up shooting her in a panic.
But after burying the witch, Judy finds herself still drawn to the necklace that she’s insisted they keep and as the months pass, the urge to put it on becomes too great and she reasons that nothing should happen because the old woman is dead an buried. However, upon putting the offending jewellery back on, she finds that it still has the mojo to pull the old switcheroo – with the dead, moldering body hidden in their basement. Donald tries to put things back once again, but his shoot first, as questions never attitude comes back to bite the couple in the worst way imaginable.
With a whole bunch of Oscar nominations flying about for her film, Children Of A Lesser God, there’s a case to be made that Randa Haines may be the classiest director that Tales ever had in its stable, however, reality ends up being somewhat different as “Judy, You’re Not Yourself Today” ends up being a contender for the worst season two has to offer. It’s a shame, because the episode features the formidable comedy talents of Carol Kane (Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt) and the prolific Frances Bay, but Haines has opted to venture into the world of unsubtle satire in order to give us an irritating episode about some irritating people doing some really irritating things. While the director also has an eye on roping in some broad commentary about gun ownership and the shallow lives of the rich and the young, it’s all chewed up and spat out by an episode that’s horribly misjudged it’s comedic tone.
It’s a major disappointment for two reasons – the first is that female directors weren’t exactly ten a penny back in 1990, and with only Pet Sematary’s Mary Lambert being the other example by this point, more women filmmakers would have been welcome. However, Haines seems unwilling to fully go full tilt boogie into the genre and instead weaves a farcical tale that contains witchcraft, murder and even a zombie by the end of things that just proves to be unsatisfactory no matter what angle you approach it from. The other disappointment is that at this juncture of it’s run, Tales From The Crypt’s second season was going running at full power with three exemplary episodes on the trot and Judy, You’re Not Yourself Today just slams the handbrake on to a painful degree.
The issue is that Haines goes way too comic booky, urging every performance to project to the rafters and exaggerate wildly which immediately cancels out any tension and certainly rules out any scares. Worse yet, the cartoonish mugging of Kane and Brian Kerwin (of King Kong Lives fame) means that rather than the central couple simply being enjoyably odious, they’re borderline unwatchable. Thankfully, pulling the episode out of the shallow grave of total failure is Frances Bay’s bad tempered witch, which allows the veteran actress to deliver a fiendish villain that deserves more attention than she gets. Tales has gone down the stolen beauty route before with Howard Deutch’s “Only Sin Deep”, but while that episode gave a rather rudimentary explanation to why the antagonist wanted to thieve Lea Thompson’s good looks, this episode could have reversed things, giving us more of an entertaining focus on the witch herself, rather than fully locking in on a pair of upper class twits.
While I welcome changes of tone from episode to episode (surely the entire point of an anthology show), Randa Haines misjudges her episode spectacularly and plumps for broad, spoofish comedy when maybe a darker hand would have been far more welcome. Furthermore, the brand of laughs everyone is shooting for ends up being more aggravating than amusing with its anti-gun message and clumsy plot failing to hit a single target the director is aiming for. Even a nifty zombie design can’t pull the episode out of it’s shrill, nails-down-a-blackboard brand of chuckle free satire.
Presented on its own, Judy, You’re Not Yourself Today ends up being an unfunny hodgepodge of parody, satire and vaudeville style excess, but delivered in the wake of episodes as fun as For Cryin’ Out Loud, Four-Sided Triangle and the superlative The Ventriloquist’s Dummy, it proves to an incredibly weak offering from the director of an Oscar nominated movie. Judy, you’re not that funny today…
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