Saturday, October 6, 2012

Episode 6: Collection Completed


Episode 6: Collection Completed
Original Airdate: June 28, 1989
Written By: A. Whitney Brown, Battle Davis, Randolph Davis
Directed By: Mary Lambert
Starring: M. Emmet Walsh, Audra Lindley, Martin Garner

Wake up, go to work, come home, kiss the wife, go to bed. Everyday for as long as he can remember, Jonas has had the same routine in life. Day after day, month after month, year after year. 47 years going strong, in fact. But Jonas (M. Emmet Walsh) is about to hang up his boots in and go on life's next great adventure: retirement. Forced into an early settlement where his mind is free to roam instead of focus, Jonas simply doesn't feel fit enough for the departure of the hustle and bustle, and he's certainly not looking forward to every waking moment with his wife, Anita.

Anita (Audra Lindley) isn't some kind of consolation present, either. She's caring, loyal, and loving to Jonas, as well as her dozens and dozens of stray pets she welcomes into their home. In fact, the pets that give Anita the most joy have created the most agony in Jonas' mind. Every time he tries to relax or find solace in a nice place, one or more of those animals finds a way to interrupt the proceedings. Jonas may not be friendly, or kind, or even respectful of Anita's pet adoption (he snubs her "surprise party" with her several cats and dogs), but he is staunchly behind starting anew within the confines of his own home. 

"You can get rid of him now, because as of tomorrow, you won't be lonely anymore. You won't be needing any animals. I'm gonna be home all day. Right here in the god damn house I worked for all my god damn life." -Jonas

Jonas' grumpy, unkempt demeanor towards the various pets only gets worse during the infancy of his own golden years. Despite his best efforts to adopt a new way of living, Jonas becomes increasingly irritable with Anita's lifestyle, and the easy life in general. With a subtle sort of position, Anita suggests many of Jonas' mannerisms resemble that of her various pets. Advertisements of such instinctual expressions only stand to further depress Jonas, who pushes himself further and further away from his love with each passing hour. 

The examples, unfortunately, don't stop popping up as Jonas goes further into the dark. Anita fries a fantastic steak breakfast...for one of her dogs, while Jonas chokes down drivel with a sanctimonious spoon. Even his neighbor Roy (Martin Garner) pushes his buttons, suggesting daftly that Jonas take up a hobby in an effort to cure his terminal case of boredom...and possible manic depression. With the addition of model planes, Jonas would seem to have something to keep himself busy, except he reneges any efforts from all around him. Jonas simply stifles all creativity with an unwillingness to change, or to accommodate Anita's pet hoarding. 

"They keep me company. They're all I've got." -Anita

"Collection Completed" is as unorthodox as can be, and that's just the way fans of Tales from the Crypt like it. The story of a lifelong husband and wife attempting and failing to find compromise in their otherwise dismal affairs isn't new ground. But incorporating the additional plot line of animal adoption, poor judgment, and extreme, tedious boredom helps to make fools of us all. 

Lifelong horror director Mary Lambert jumped on-board this slow moving vehicle in an effort to keep the peace between to obviously inept characters. Jonas exemplifies all the poor qualities of a crotchety old man with a chip on his shoulder, where as Anita is just the kind of "crazy cat lady" middle-aged women continue to worry about being. Putting the two together is a natural fit for excruciating madness and unfortunate, somewhat timely demise for the characters around them. Too bad most of those characters are considered household strays and disregarded just as quickly. 

"I'm sorry. He reminded me of you." -Anita

The issues continue to pile up for Jonas and Anita as the days pass by. Anita likens Jonas' whooping cough to a hair ball, feeds him cat food tuna by mistake, and attempts to give him his aspirin by disguising it as food. Though Anita is completely harmless and innocent in her actions, her failure to recognize Jonas' increasing wrath and aggression becomes her own downfall. She even goes as far as to name her favorite bulldog Jonas, which exacerbates the situation to a boiling point. 

Unable to find any redeeming qualities to his retirement wasteland (including pruning after Jonas dismantles the entirety of his shrubs), Jonas reconciles that his uncomfortable conformity is due to Anita pressuring him to feel like one of the pets rather than a human being. Though he attempts to approach her with this concern, he discovers her speaking to a cat in the same manner as you would a human, finally pushing him over the edge. If he can't handle retirement without a hobby and he can't handle Anita, Jonas has to find a way to kill two birds with one stone. And the saying couldn't be much more accurate that it is about to be.

"When you start letting life pass you by, that's the day you start to die." -Jonas

Quietly and yet altogether happily, Jonas begins tinkering in the basement with what he claims is his new "hobby." Days and weeks go by while Jonas spends his days down beneath the surface, and while Anita is completely unaware as to what his new mission is, she's pleased to hear that Jonas is making such progress in life. It could have been a happy conclusion to an otherwise difficult story, but Anita's curiosity soon gets the better of her as her pets disappear one by one. 

When Anita goes looking for the same bulldog she named after her husband, Jonas reveals that he's taken up taxidermy and made her collection his first several test subjects. Jonas' psychotic claims that his adjustment to the life he'll spend with Anita includes this sort of masochistic justification makes Anita utterly sick. She scrambles frantically for the last few pets she knows have survived, only to discover the remaining victims in the basement. If a homicidal Jonas was enough to drive one mad, then Anita's revenge was equally as disturbing. She recovers her one remaining stray and, without remorse and reason, gives Jonas the same treatment he's been asking for since he took up taxidermy. 

"Oh, he's really slowed down and learned how to enjoy life." -Anita



Parallels to the EC Source Material:
"Collection Completed" was originally published in the EC release The Vault of Horror #25 (though it was the 14th issue overall, and originally a tale from The Witch's Cauldron). In this version, Anita and Jonas had only been married for 16 years, and were nowhere near retirement. Anita describes her collecting of animals as her hobby, which Jonas rebukes as the days go by. 

He takes up taxidermy and admits it to Anita from the get-go, which, while offensive, is a practice she allows until he turns her favorite cat into a stuffed ornament. And thus, the prophecy is fulfilled in the final few panels of the comic, shown below. 



Horror Alumni Roll Call: 
 -M. Emmet Walsh (Jonas) made his first science fiction/horror appearance in 1971's Escape from the Planet of the Apes. He would also appear in an 80's episode of The Twilight Zone, The Hitchhiker, and the film Blade Runner. He even did episodes of The Outer Limits, The X-Files, and most recently, Night Visions. 

-Audra Lindley (Anita) was primarily a television actress, having appeared rarely in any horror production. Just months before her death she was in 1997's Relic, as well as the Jean-Claude Van Damme cult classic from 1995, Sudden Death.

-Martin Garner (Roy) appeared in the television show Alien Nation as well as various other programs as recurring characters. From the horror genre, he had a bit part in black-balled picture The Twilight Zone: The Movie.

-Mary Lambert (Director) made a career out of directing various horror pictures over the past 30 years. Notably, Lambert was at the helm for Pet Semetary and Pet Semetary II, as well as various episodes of the television program The Dark Path Chronicles. She was also behind more recent b-movie films The Attic and the incredibly tacky and low-budgeted Mega Python vs. Gatoroid.

Number of puns delivered by the Cryptkeeper: 3 (including an awful dead dog joke)

In Summation: It would be easy to simply slow down and talk about the emotional discord and disconnect a couple experiences over 40 years of separation created by the Rat Race. But that would also be boring and wouldn't make for a very good episode of Tales from the Crypt. Sometimes, we need a fulfillment of our deepest, darkest desires to overcome such a standstill. Life doesn't have to pass you by if you just start acting out your desires to take as much life as is possible. Jonas may not have killed a single person during his tyrannic post-retirement run, but that doesn't mean he wasn't worthy of the same "eye for an eye" death penalty that his loving wife bestowed. Anita felt she was truly blessed to have a man to take care of, especially one who didn't move, talk, or breathe. He could be simpler than her animals and required less tender loving care. A crazed, trophy husband can in fact be achieved with the right balance of painstaking heartache and insane triumph.

-Benjamin M. Benya

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