Ten Unholy Things We Learned From The American Horror Story Asylum Christmas Episode, “Unholy Night”! (Episode 8 – Spoilers)

11 December 2012

She had this… light in her. The light’s gone out.

2. Speaking of attention, Sister Mary Eunice was on FIRE in this episode. Almost every time she opened her mouth I got a big grin on my face or laughed. Click here to read “Ten Of The Best Lines in the Christmas Episode, ‘Unholy Night‘ ” In an entertaining interview I posted few weeks back (you can find it here) Lily Rabe was right. Sister Mary does have a lot of Christmas Spirit…

You don’t know what Christmas means to me…

3. Ian McShane’s character, Leigh Emerson, was also pretty entertaining (and frightening; I wouldn’t want him coming at me in that Santa suit with his rotten teeth, matted beard and greasy hair, even if he wasn’t carrying a sharp object). We learned his back story from Sister Mary Eunice (remember, she knows all). As a young man, he was thrown in jail for trying to steal a loaf of stale bread (the ultimate crime!) Unfortunately for him, it was close to Christmas, and when the guards went Christmas caroling (I actually don’t blame this guy for having… issues… with Christmas after we got his back story) five men held him down and raped him. Merry Christmas! They took his virginity (well, Sister Mary points out, the first guy took his virginity), the rest stole his dignity, self-esteem, but worst of all, his Christmas spirit …and that’s only the first part of the back-story.

“There is no God… but there is a Santa Claus!” – Leigh to Sister Jude

4. THEN, we learned that Leigh Emerson escaped in 1963 (or was released from prison, either way it was a very bad idea for him to get out of there six days before Christmas). He approached a Salvation Army Santa outside a supermarket, hit him with his Salvation Army bell, then shot him in the face, plus four more times. THEN, he put on a blood-stained Santa suit from the guy, and killed 18 people from five different families. In the murder we saw n the cold open, a little girl named Susie, buys him as Santa even without the beard, bloodstains, and the fact he came in through a smashed window instead of the chimney. He was nice to her (that we saw, anyway, she never seemed scared of him) tied up the husband and wife with (lit) Christmas lights, yells at them for overdoing it with the decorations, and after a really raunchy comment also in the piece with quotes, shoots them. He ends up in Briarcliff by Christmas 1963 (more on that Christmas at Briarcliff in the Stray Thoughts section)*

5. We learned some facts that would make anyone–well, anyone with a soul– turn down a lavish Christmas gift of real ruby earrings (big stones, set chandelier style). We learned in the same scene that Dr. Arden is still (of course) a sadistic, evil Nazi asshole with a Madonna/Whore complex, but that he had hoped for some response from Sister Mary Eunice other than delight and preening when he told her how he got the earrings. Would YOU want to try on, let alone keep, earrings that had been swallowed and shit out every day for weeks by a woman in a Nazi concentration camp, not to mention they ended they ended up killing that someone due to internal injuries (the jewels tore up her intestines, Dr. Arden/Gruper explains) who died in the wretched camp, then were given to you by the Nazi that “retrieved them”? And regardless of hygiene, I’d be more than a little worried about a vengeful female spirit haunting you if kept and/or sold them. That’s an onyro’s secret back story reveal from a J-Horror, K-Horror, or Thai ghost movie right there. Talk about bad karma. We at Horror Boom saw through the ruse with Sister Jude (360 degree turnaround all of a sudden from THAT shitty guy? Just didn’t buy it, though he sold it to Sister Jude skillfully) but we think he actually was kind of down–or feeling sorry for himself, at the very least– that there’s nothing left of the Sister Mary he, er, had a …crush on.

6. Dr. Nazi is probably more scared of Sister Mary Eunice now; he didn’t seem to take any satisfaction in setting up Sister Jude’s (botched) murder. He didn’t want to stick around as he and Sister Mary Demon listened (below the French spiral “Staircase to Heaven”) to Jude’s terrified cries and desperate calls for help and all the crashing around. After he told Sister Mary (who practically looked like she was just about to discover her G-spot) that he hoped his loyalty was proven, he said–not entirely convincingly–he found it all rather tedious and that he had work to do.

Oh, you really don’t want me to be around the others this time of year…

7. Sister Mary Eunice’s telekinetic powers are improving. This episode, when Sister Jude managed to sneak in the office and hold a razor to Sister Mary’s throat and says she’s figured it all out. Sister Mary Eunice looked amused and asks, “what are you gonna do, cane the devil out of me?” then laughs as the doors of the armoire containing all the canes are yanked wide open, followed by the various canes flying out, then the record playing a Christmas carol is shattered.. on the ceiling. Before any more mayhem could ensue, Dr. Arden intervened and had Sister Jude ‘escorted out’.

See? We all made a little sacrifice for the greater good. That’s the spirit of Christmas!

8. We leaned more about Bloody Face (Old Skool Bloody Face) and the good news that Lana —and Kit— finally have the upper hand (for now). We’re a little worried about Kit, because if we were Lana, we don’t know how long we could keep ourselves from beating Thredson to death. In fact, Lana wanted to kill him right then. He doesn’t seem as pissed about her injuring him to escape, but accuses him ‘tricking’ him into being “intimate” (which must be the word he uses for ‘rape’). He said he was going to just kind of humor her and let her talk, because hey, who would believe her story? Then he tells her he changed his mind, he’s going to kill her. The worst news (for Lana and Kit, anyway) was said he’d gone over every square inch of the basement and his house with a toothbrush, combed it for any evidence (remember, no DNA testing back them—plus did they even have rape kits in the early 60s?) and that the furnace got a lot of use, which he’s also really pissed about. You made me kill Bloody Face! he nearly snarls at Lana.

One day, I will bury you.
-Lana to Thredson/Bloody Face

9. We learned there was no doubt that Lana is pregnant. Many fans already suspected it (and a very recent interview confirmed it). On a TV show (even basic and pay cable), we see a woman who is capable of getting pregnant throwing up in the morning on a TV show, and she’s not a virgin, 99% of the time, that woman has discovered her pregnancy by the end of the next episode. Not sure if Lana has figured it out yet, since that is SO the least of her fucking problems at this point. There was some not-so-subtle foreshadowing in the dialogue from Thredson—“Bloody Face had to burn so he could be BORN AGAIN from the ashes” and “Your skin with will be the beginning of a second Bloody Face.” Maybe it will be this season’s version of the Violet reveal that was predicted by half of the fans ahead of time – but the sight of her when the reveal came actually gave me nightmares. Let’s hope they do something just as shocking with this season.

Heads up, asshole! CONK

10. We learned that any male staff member in Briarcliff with compassionate, human feelings towards others—not that there were a lot of them, and few females, too— might as well have an expiration date stamped on them. As we thought, Frank was completely broken up, weeping and praying over Grace’s body. He also saw the Rasper that ripped Sister Felicity’s throat out and tells Dr. Arden he thinks they should alert the authorities. “Our former Irish cop is feeling the need to confess.” Dr. Thredson tells Sister Mary Eunice soon after. “I’ve got it under control,” she replies. RIP, Frank. Sister Mary slices his throat later in the episode after Leigh (Insane Homicidal Santa) gets put back in ‘the hole’ after really snapping and losing his shit in the common room, Frank locks him in and turns around to see… slash. I assume Leigh will get blamed for cutting his throat. Oh, by the way, we have a survey. With the characters dropping like flies lately, if you want to vote on who you think will get killed off in the next episode, please do; there’s a poll here. Take a second, because we wanna know your prediction!

12/19 Poll Update- SPOILERS if you have not seen episode Nine, The Coat Hanger, yet: This is going up soon on the poll page, too, but it’s ironic that of the eleven responses (with a free account with Polldaddy we can only have ten) we Kit out of the running–it was him or Sister Mary Demon, and we take HIM out as an option? Naaahhhh, no way, there’s way too much unresolved business, if they do it, they’ll wait till the last or second-to-last episode. We didn’t consider the fact he might only be dead for a minute or two at the end of the episode, and that would be one of the mid-winter finale cliff-hangers promised by Murphy (though I doubt anyone called things going down like THAT before it aired). Either way, WRONG! He died. Episode ended. He might (probably…I hope) have Dr. Nazi make it back in time to re-start his heart in Episode Ten. But other than that, it was just the hapless therapist whose penny-saver coupon brought in the last patient she would ever have a session with – Johnny Thredson (she got the most votes, BTW-good call). Remember, the Angel of Death didn’t kiss the Monsignor yet–if you’ve read the episode description for next week, or seen the nice spoilerish preview for the January 2nd episode, “The Name Game,” we know what happens there. I’m still pissed at him for what he knowingly did to Sister Jude. You can read the FULL weekly piece, Ten Shamelessly Twisted Things We Learned In American Horror Story Asylum Episode Nine, The Coat Hanger (Spoilers) right here.

Stray Thoughts:

We actually thought that when Sister Jude drove something pointy into Leigh “Psycho Santa” Emerson’s neck in self-defense, it was a candy cane. Before you laugh, have you seen how sharp and pointy the ends of those get after you’ve been sucking on one end for a while? It’s like a hard-candy ice pick, or something. We know somewhere out there that HAS happened in a holiday-themed horror movie, probably one we’ve seen and just can’t place. We actually wish it had been a candy cane, but I guess that was a little too campy even for Murphy and Falchuck. We can see where they’re coming from… but still, that would have been a great, sick touch.
During the cold open teaser that introduces Leigh Emerson’s holiday season mayhem, was anyone else reminded of “And All Through The House…” that awesome, AWESOME Tales From The Crypt (an anthology movie used the story from the comic first) episode where the mother –SPOILER ALERT, THE EPISODE OR AT LEAST A CLIP IS COMING UP AS A POST FOR THE HOLIDAYS, HIGHLIGHT TO READ: kills her husband in the middle of a snowstorm on Christmas Eve, hears that a maniac dressed as Santa escaped from the local mental asylum, and it’s a very tense game of cat and mouse up until the chilling ending as she can’t really call the cops when her husband’s body is there with an axe buried in his head, blood everywhere, and her plans to drag him outside and drop him down a well become even more screwed up when she locks herself out of the house. Here’s the kicker, though, and you’ll remember it if you saw it: her little girl (who believes in Santa Claus) is awake in her bedroom upstairs because hey, what child can calmly sleep Christmas Eve? The murderous mother finally makes it in the house throw a window on the second door –wow, what a relief! However, the little girl isn’t in bed. She walks, filled with dread and shaking, to the landing of the stairs and looks down to see her little girl, smiling. Oh, Thank God she’s OK! We’re going to look it up soon, since I wouldn’t be surprised if the little girl’s name was Suzy in the comic, then sees she’s holding hands with someone. “Look, Mommy! Santa really came! He came and I let him in!” Next to her stands a grinning, large maniac dressed in a Santa suit… happy to finally be indoors. The comic ended on that last frame –Good Lord (choke)! The HBO episode ended on the evil maniac Santa asking, “Naughty… or nice?” in a gravelly voice just as scary as Ian MacShane’s, and then faded out on the woman’s hysterical screams. Robert Zemeckis directed it, which sounds like a red flag for a Tales From The Crypt episode, but I still was on the edge of my seat even though I knew the ending… which gave me goosebumps.
So, fellow E.C. Comic and Vault of Horror fans, did little Suzy not being scared of Santa (even though it was six days early, he clearly entered through a broken living room window, and had a few little bloodstains on his Santa suit) and then going to wake her parents up to tell them ecstatically Santa was downstairs, which of course ends horribly, remind you of that story? The “Unholy Night” version was way darker, obviously, but I think the parallels were there. It was even published is roughly the same time period (mid-century).
Who else got a big grin on their face when poor Frank grabbed a huge ladder to put the glass (or maybe tin) tree-topper up, the elaborately red-and-silver, star-shaped ornament (only with at least 20 pointy ends), and started climbing? We didn’t want Frank to get hurt (too late, sigh), so much as we saw total chaos about to break loose and thought there’s no way that star isn’t going to end up embedded in someone’s face or neck. Didn’t expect him to fucking RUSH the ladder, knock it and the entire giant strangely-decorated Christmas tree over, and leap on top of Frank like a wild animal, trying to smash it into Frank’s face (and actually succeeding) as not one, but two large orderlies had to sprint over to pull Leigh, in full-on homicidal maniac frenzy-mode, off of poor Frank. We’re putting up a featurette on the stunt soon, but until then, you can get a fix watching a behind-the-scenes look from FX at how they performed the old “face-off” bite right here. Sister Mary Demon’s casually amused reaction to the entire tree debacle, after she calmly watches: “Two steps forward, one step back.”
If we had been in Sister Jude’s shoes, the second we opened the double doors to her quarters/office and saw mangy, creepy, blood-thirsty Leigh lounging in her chair behind the desk, we would have turned around then and gone right out. She tried to get out fast, but she hasn’t seen as many horror movies as we have. If she’d been as big a horror fan as us, it would have gone like this: open door, see homicidal patient let out of ‘the hole’ sitting there in a Santa suit opposite you behind the desk, immediately swivel around and step back out into the hall and close the double doors, all in one large motion.
There’s too many great quotes to count, but we made a list of ten OF the best (not THE ten best) quotes from “Unholy Night”, along with screencaps, and you can check that piece out here.

Ten Reasons We’re REALLY Psyched Up For The American Horror Story Asylum Christmas Episode Airing This Week!

4 December 2012

Ten Really Dark Things We Learned From American Horror Story Episode Seven, “Dark Cousins” (Spoilers!)

29 November 2012

4 Comments

She likes it here. We like it.

1. Sister Mary Eunice— the meek one who begged Sister Jude to use a bigger cane on her as she cried hysterically— is still in there somewhere. When Conroy’s Angel of Death confronted her, she said she knew what Sister Mary Demon was (“cousin… like me, but fallen”) and that someone inside her had been calling her, singing to her, for help, Old School Sister Mary Eunice broke free for a moment and weeping, begged the Angel to release her. “O Heavenly Host… will you release me? Can you release me?” When the demon came back to take over (“Shut up, you stupid SOW!”) that Dark Angel backed off, but told her, “We’ll meet again”. [Side note: every time Frances Conroy‘s Dark Angel unfurled her expansive, beautiful black wings (FWOOOOP) I actually gasped, the sight was so cool and breathtaking. ]

2. In one of many clever twists and reveals of the night, we discover Sister Jude did not, in fact, kill the little girl fifteen years ago in the hit-and-run. We did NOT see that coming (even though in the minutes leading up to the reveal, Missy’s mother seemed pretty cheerful for someone who’d lost a child, especially to an unsolved homicide). Mary Eunice knew Sister Jude didn’t kill her, but she knew Sister Jude thought she did, which was enough to start torturing her (more on that later) and playing on her guilt. Notice that in Jude’s memories, and even in the newspaper headlines, no-one ever said the girl had been killed; just the victim of a hit-and-run, but it NEVER occurred to us that she might have survived. Missy having survived was a relief, since Sister Jude was clearly planning to confess to her parents and then take her own life (probably with that straight razor). “We get to live with our daughter. The monster who left her there, has to live with himself,” Missy’s mother told her at the end of the scene. Sister Jude seemed a little more freaked out than relieved, but that’s understandable.

Shall I kiss you, and make this all go away?

3. However, we also learned that there’s still plenty of tragedy left in Sister Jude’s past. For instance, we find that she tried to kill herself before. Her awful shitbird of a fiancée… well, let’s hear it in Sister Judy Martin’s own words:

When Casey left me the night before the wedding, when I told him he’d given me syphilis and I’d never be able to have children… I forgave him …and he called me a liar and a whore. All I ever wanted was my own family, my own children to teach and love…

Yes, THE NIGHT BEFORE THEIR WEDDING, just to put the icing on the goddamn cake. If I’d been in her shoes at that moment, I might have looked into alcoholism too, if not a suicide attempt.

Poor thing. Maybe we should call Briarcliff. At least they could give her a bed for the night.

4. Sister Mary Eunice is still going out of her way to mind-fuck Sister Jude at every opportunity. Not only does she send fatal shards of the broken mirror into Mr. Goodman’s neck (though it doesn’t kill him right away, and looks very painful), she writes “Murderer” in blood on the TV and tapes up the Search for Missing Girl Continues headline to the TV over it for Jude to discover. Then (after a flashback) she calls Sister Jude. “This is your conscience speaking… That man dead on the floor, he was investigating you. ” She then tells sister Jude she left her a bottle of Kentucky Bourbon and “something else” for her, which turns out to be a straight razor. For a minute we see her slicing or wrists open (vertically) with the razor, then lying on the floor in a vast pool of her own blood …then we see Sister Jude was (phew) just picturing herself going through with it.

“I hope this clarifies the chain of command, Arthur.” Most satisfying line of the night!

5. I love your work… Bloody Face, the Jeb-demon told Dr. Thredson during the exorcism. Since that same demon then jumped into Sister Mary Eunice, she knows Dr. Thredson is Bloody Face, just to make sure Lana is really screwed. OK, let’s back up a bit.

I’m going to crawl out of my own skin if I have to lay on that bed again.

6. When we first saw Lana this episode (SIGH), Dr. Thredson had gone from crying with happiness and curling up to ‘breast-feed’ with his new Mommy surrogate and moved on to raping her. Lana had gone limp and it was clear her mind was floating away; she already looked dead behind the eyes. It was no surprise the Angel of Death showed up, since they’d established she had to be summoned by someone ready to die. We still don’t know (or I don’t) who wrote the ancient Aramaic symbol (her spoken name was given in the closed captions as “Shachath”) on the wall in blood to summon her in the first place —Miles said he didn’t. Dr. Thredson said it was time to end it.

Peace is so close, Sister…

7. Lana realized she wasn’t ready to die yet, and attacked Dr. T with all she had—the hypodermic, the chain around her ankle, fists, feet, gravity, and miraculously made it own of his basement alive. But we horror fans know that the first time you escape from a maniac’s captivity and run like hell, the car that you flag down or stops for you is not going to contain a friend. Rather than have the man whose car she leaps into be working with Bloody Face and take her right back to him (as we at Horror Boom were expecting), he blew his brains out, the car crashed, and Lana ended up in Briarcliff, seriously banged up …under Sister Mary Eunice’s care. Absolutely did not see that coming – any of it.

8. We learned that Dr. Arden has it in him to actually cure a sick patient (the traditional way, too, not his own fucked-up version of what he sees as a cure). I thought Grace was going to bleed out and die, since the infirmary at Briarcliff seems rudimentary at best, (not to mention any visit from the Dark Angel is a big hint), but even though it was for his own selfish reasons (he didn’t sterilize her, but no-one’s going to believe that, and he says she’s going to live, “if only to set the record straight”), he actually treats her (in a tradition way) and it works. The last thing I expected was to see her sitting in the kitchen, looking and sounding healthy and like her regular self again. The surprises kept coming, though…

I’m here to help… if that’s what you want.

9. Escape from police custody seemed pretty easy for Kit once he set his mind to it, but of course, it didn’t work out for long. He made the (well-meaning) mistake to return to Briarcliff for Grace. Unfortunately for everyone, he went in through the death chute, where a very ravenous, energetic Rasper (remember, as the winter gets colder, they’ve been getting hungrier and less shy about staying back in the woods, keeping to themselves) slipped (or lunged) in behind him, unnoticed. It looked like the really aggressive, fast one that sent Lana, Kit, and Grace sprinting back into Briarcliff the evening of their very brief escape in Episode Three, “Nor’Easter”.

10. Speaking of brief, Grace and Kit were re-united. Grace happened to be in the kitchen when Kit snuck in, and told her he was taking her out of there. Their faces light up —nice to see any likeable (human) characters look truly happy this episode– and they embrace. “I couldn’t let you die here, Grace,” he tells her, and hand in hand, the happy couple head for the exit. Well, this is great news!Finally, what a relief, to know there’s hope for escape, and for Grace to back up his story that Alma is alive! Glad something is working out for someone on this show! What happens next, happens fast. The returning nun working the kitchen promptly runs into them on the way out, and immediately screams for help …a split second before the rasper jumps her, tears her throat out with his teeth and hurls her across the room. Kit thinks fast, grabs some deadly weapon I couldn’t make out, stabs it into the rasper hard enough that its weird innards spill to the floor, Frank bursts in and sees this (including Kit with a weapon and a dead nun) then raises his gun to shoot—a split second before Grace leaps in front and catches the bullet meant for him. As Grace lies on the floor gasping, the Angel of Death comes for her, and this time, gives her that kiss to escape from Briarcliff for good.

Dark Angel: Are you ready for me?
Grace: Yes… I’m free.

When the Angel of Death said she’d see Sister Mary Eunice again, she wasn’t kidding. Ryan Murphy confirmed Frances Conroy will return (yay!) Read more in his EW.com exclusive interview, which went live right after the episode aired, here (with lots of other juicy information).
So they let people who are unmedicated enough to hear voices in their head (“they get real loud sometimes,” Miles says) work in the kitchen with every single sharp object imaginable, including a meat-slicing saw with no safety mechanism? I’m still on the lookout for the name of the actor who played poor Miles, by the way.
After Dr. Thredson raped her Lana for God knows how long, he has the nerve to ask, “You decent?” before coming down later to talk to her. Yeah, sure wouldn’t to intrude and, you know, invade her privacy or anything.
Frank the guard? Still decent. He did his best to comfort the miserable Miles. As far as the sad ending (I actually got a little choked up) the order on Kit, according to Frank, was “to shoot on sight.” He had to move fast, and there was a dead nun and a dead rasper there, what was he supposed to think? He didn’t have time. I’m sure he’s not going to be able to easily brush off killing an innocent –OK, relatively innocent bystander, who had just made a miraculous recovery from the brink of death, either.
When the nuns in the infirmary find Grace on her cot with what looks like more blood outside her body than in, one nun/nurse asks the other, “Should we call Dr. Arden?” She responds, “That butcher? He’s the one that did this to her!” in an alarmed hush. Looks like despite that miracle cure, Dr. Arden isn’t fooling many of the nuns on staff. They don’t know the half of the “butcher” part, but they know he’s the last doctor to trust a life to… especially a woman’s life.
In the guest star department, that was Bob from That “70s Show” (minus his 70s ‘fro and leisure suits, of course) as Kit’s wrong place, wrong time court-appointed defense lawyer. Handsome Sean Patrick Flannery, who only looked to us about 5 years older than he did in Cruel Intentions (1999) played Terry, Judy Martin’s band-mate who came to tell her regretfully they’d finally had to replace her. Insane woman-hating driver who picked up Lana? William Mapother, who most viewers probably recognized from Lost, but we obsessive Ju-On fans remember him as Matthew from the 2004 Ghost House-produced version of The Grudge (he was scary in that, too).