When a mist starts bearing down on a small town, people are attacked by a sinister force inside it.
The Mist – Season 1, Episode 1: “Pilot”
Tagged Frances Conroy
American Horror Story – Coven, Episode 5: “Burn, Witch. Burn!”
FX’s American Horror Story
Season 3, Episode 5: “Burn, Witch. Burn!”
Directed by Jeremy Podeswa
Written by Jennifer Sharzer
* For a review of the previous episode, “Fearful Pranks Ensue” – click here
* For a review of the next episode, “The Axeman Cometh” – click here
This episode begins back when Madame LaLaurie (Kathy Bates) brings a possible suitor for her daughter through a nasty little chamber of horrors, featuring real eyeballs, bloody entrails and such. While the big party rages on, her own flesh and blood are plotting to get out from underneath the wretched reign of their mother. Borquita LaLaurie (Jennifer Lynn Warren) and her sisters are brought to the place where the slaves are caged up and tortured. Mama LaLaurie promises to let them out: next year.
Cut back to current day. LaLaurie is seeing her own daughters, risen from the grave, banging at the door. Inside, Nan (Jamie Brewer), Queenie (Gabourey Sidibe), Luke (Alexander Dreymon), and Zoe (Taissa Farmiga) try to keep them out.
We can’t forget, poor Cordelia (Sarah Paulson) was attacked with acid, right in the face, while she and Fiona (Jessica Lange) were out having drinks. I feel as if Cordelia’s whole acid burned clouded eye look is Lucio Fulci-esque; anyone agree?
At the hospital, the doctor tells Fiona her daughter is blind, her face is scarred. Nothing we couldn’t have already anticipated.
But the main problem is back at the school, where the zombies shamble more and more towards everyone inside. Marie Laveau (Angela Bassett), meanwhile, is levitating and doing some crazy shit to conjure up the undead hordes. Furthermore, a couple young dudes wander onto the lawn of the witches school, and Luke is out trying to reason with the zombies. SO much happening. Brave Nan tries her best to help Luke, too.
At the same time, Fiona is wandering around in the hospital on an especially dismal, grim floor. A patient wanders by and mumbles: “You didn‘t throw the acid but you might as well have.” Then Fiona finds her way into a room where a woman had a stillborn child. All the guilt of her life tumbles down, right on top of her. She makes the woman hold her baby, and conjures up the life inside it again. It’s a strange yet touching moment. While Fiona’s daughter is blinded, scarred for life, this woman has a fresh start, her daughter allowed new life. Fiona’s done too much damage to her own daughter, at the very least she can give another woman a new one.
Zoe helps lure the zombies away from Nan and Luke, cowering in a smashed up car, but backs herself into a corner. In the house, Spalding (Denis O’Hare) helps get Queenie settled away. Downstairs, LaLaurie confronts her dead daughter Borquita face-to-face, or rotted face to living face. It’s a sad scene, even as terrible as Delphine was before immortality and all that followed. Borquita, the walking dead, doesn’t care either way. She attacks and chokes her mother. Upstairs, zombies keep pressing towards Spalding, then Queenie. Though in the end, LaLaurie saves the day somehow, fire poker-ing the corpse to (its second) death.Managing to get her hands on a chainsaw, Zoe cuts through a ton of the zombies, saving Nan and Luke. Too much zombie guts and juice in the chain, so the thing goes dead at the worst time. But all of a sudden Zoe hauls out a strange sort of spell, a strong one, knocking Marie Laveau out of whack and stopping the march of the corpses.
When Cordelia finally wakes up, she has a further sight, despite losing that of her eyes. Husband Hank (Josh Hamilton) touches her hand, and Cordelia sees all his indiscretions.
All the corpses are burned, things are being put back together at the witch house. Worst of all, the Council has arrived once more. Quentin Fleming (Leslie Jordan), Cecily Pembroke (Robin Bartlett) and Myrtle Snow (Frances Conroy) show up to unseat Fiona from her title of Supreme. Clearly things have unraveled, to the furthest degree. However, Fiona has things to say. She believes the one who blinded Cordelia was Myrtle. What? Seriously, Fiona? I’m more inclined to believe she’s off her rocker right now, than to see Myrtle as a murderer. Especially once Fiona starts dropping information about Myrtle being in town before anyone else knew, about Myrtle hiding in a motel under a false name. Fiona reveals Myrtle’s hand: burned, presumably from the acid used on Cordelia.
So the witch shall be burned! “Right Place, Wrong Time” by Dr. John plays as Myrtle is lead to the stake, the entire coven along to watch. Then Fiona tosses the last of her cigarette, igniting her old rival into a flaming pillar. Nasty, brutal way to go. Did she really disfigure Cordelia? Or is it more Supreme magic on Fiona’s part?
We find out quickly it was Queenie who helped Fiona – some voodoo doll type stuff. Queenie keeps seeing Myrtle burning, smelling it on the air. She obviously is traumatised by Fiona’s violent ruling of their coven. The older witch convinces Queenie that she could possibly be the next Supreme, putting ideas in her head. I can venture to say this is more of her fiendishness. She needs others along for the ride in order to get the mean deeds done.
In other news around the weird house, Spalding sprays down his room a good deal. In the treasure chest still sits Madison Montgomery (Emma Roberts), long dead, rotting away. In fact, trying to pull her out Spalding tears an arm clean off.
Speaking of corpses, Misty Day (Lily Rabe) finds the charred remains of Myrtle at the stake. She lays hands on her, and the eyes come alive.
Myrtle’s back!
Next episode is titled “The Axeman Cometh”.
American Horror Story – Asylum, Episode 7: “Dark Cousin”
FX’s American Horror Story
Season 2, Episode 7: “Dark Cousin”
Directed by Michael Rymer (Hannibal, Queen of the Damned)
Written by Tim Minear
* For a review of the next episode, “Unholy Night” – click here
* For a review of the previous episode, “The Origins of Monstrosity” – click here
In the opening to this episode, as Grace Bertrand (Lizzie Brocheré) is seemingly about to die in a bed, two nuns discovering her bleeding everywhere all over herself, we get the WONDERFUL FRANCES CONROY returning to American Horror Story. She is the Angel of Death; that’s right, the Angel of fucking Death. in she swoops to kiss Grace, however, one of the nurses pounds her in the chest to spring her back to life. Sadly, it’s apparent Grace would’ve rather died.
Dr. Arthur Arden (James Cromwell) and his sassy partner Sister Mary Eunice (Lily Rabe) have a little chat. She chastises him for botching the sterilization on Grace. However, he claims not to have performed any such operation. She says “all of her lady parts have been scooped out.”
What’s most wild about this scene is how Arden gets physical with Mary. She warns he’ll die next time, throwing him across the room and into the wall.
An inmate named Miles (Tongayi Chirisa) sits in the bakery listening to the voices in his head spit vitriol through his brain. He’s had enough, as they egg him on. All of a sudden, he asks to try and fix the meat slicer, as it looks to be slicing too thin, he says. The voices scream at him until he lays his wrists down into the slicer’s blade.
The shocker comes when Sister Mary Eunice comes down to see an ancient Aramaic word scrawled across the white tiled wall of the bakery. Mary asks Miles sternly: “Did you summon her?” Hmmm. Would that be Satan ad the Angel of Death having a little interfamilial trouble? Perhaps. We will most definitely see.
Certainly, as Miles gets locked away by the guards and finds himself alone in a tiny cell, the Angel of Death comes to him, offering her kiss: that of Death. Love the BIG WINGS which protrude out of Frances Conroy’s back; the imagery is incredible, as well as the entire costuming she has going on, all of the black, very 1950s-ish.
Plus, fashion aside, there’s an excellent meeting between the cousins: Satan and the Angel of Death. Two amazing actors going back and forth, all sorts of good stuff especially once the real Sister Mary breaks through a moment before SATAN HIMHERSELF rises up to stuff her back down into the dark recesses of her own soul. Just can’t get enough of this whole bit.
Dr. Arden goes to visit Grace, mostly in order to not have to take a fall for her botched hysterectomy. All the while, Kit Walker (Evan Peters) is fighting to try and get his case heard; he’s now told about Grace, that she may not make it through the night with her injuries and infection. A lawyer lays out Kit’s case pretty plainly, not doing much to help other than progressing forward trying to say it’s best to go for an insanity plea, to say he doesn’t know right from wrong. Ironically, Kit jumps up and cracks him over the head, knocking him out behind his desk then runs off.
Disgustingly we’re treated to a scene of Oliver Thredson (Zachary Quinto) thrashing on top of his surrogate mommy, Lana Winters (Sarah Paulson), who fades off and sees the Angel of Death off at the peripherals of her vision. She seeks THE KISS slightly, feeling as if “death might be better” and that she used to be scared of it, but not any longer. Though right on the verge, Lana stops short of the kiss saying “not yet”. This is probably the biggest testament to her power as of yet, over anything else which came before. She willingly heads back into the situation.
Following quickly, Oliver descends upon her very angry. He feels as if the’ve reached an impasse, there’s nowhere to go except MURDER for Lana. But he claims to wish to make it as painless as possible for her; y’know, painless death.
This begins a savage fight for survival. Great fight and chase sequence here, as Lana manages somehow to escape the lair of Dr. Bloody Face. She runs out into the road where a car eventually stops to pick her up. The driver (William Mapother) is immediately quite an edgy man, accusing her of probably doing something to her boyfriend. He’s obviously got his own mommy issues, women issues in general, raging on about his own personal life, his wife cheating on him, et cetera. Then in the back of the car, the Angel of Death appears. Lana watches as the driver blows his own brains out and the car goes smashing down.
What might be one of the most cruel twists so far sees Lana back at Briarcliff, Sister Mary Eunice standing over her, stuck in a head brace and the whole getup. She’s back in a bed, right at home once more within those hideous walls.
Back to Sister Jude (Jessica Lange) who has discovered Sam Goodman (Mark Margolis) bleeding out on the floor with a piece of glass in his neck. Knocks at the door come, she sees blood on the television saying MURDERER with newspaper articles about the girl she killed in a hit and run; are they there, or simply images in her own mind?
She has a major flashback to her old days in 1949, as a singer, a serious alcoholic. Intense, desperate, sad scene for Jude whose further flashes to the night she killed the girl keep coming back, over and over. There’s some excellent little black-and-white bits here that I found incredibly effective. There’s this bit where we get an almost Oliver Stone-like feel to certain shots, of which I’m a big fan.
Now Jude is being framed for the death of Goodman. Sister Mary Eunice finally reveals herself to Jude, who remembers Jed Potter and the exorcism, what happened to the young nun as the presence left that boy. This all puts Jude in a terrible way, an awful state, back on the booze and yet knowing all the TRUTH but feeling powerless to do anything about it.
What does she do? Tries to commit suicide by opening her veins in the bathroom at a diner.
OR NOT. Tricked us. “Nothing but a passing thought,” Jude tells the Angel of Death out in a booth at the diner. Luckily the angel says she doesn’t judge, she merely comes and takes; never judging, only doing the job. Even more of Jude’s character comes out here and it’s so crushing to hear parts of her former life, how bad it was for her, what led her down a path of alcoholism and doubt. Solid scene, though, seeing Jessica Lange and Frances Conroy back together again, quite unlike Season 1 yet still impressive.
Jude goes to see the parents of the girl she killed in the hit and run years ago. It’s quite a tense, almost awkward yet touching scene. Until we figure out there’s been more going on with Jude’s memories.
Apparently little Missy Stone – all grown up now – (Kristin Slaysman) with the blue coat all those years ago, the one she’d run down, is still alive. Part of this makes her thankful, at the same time she still ran the girl down. It still happened, just didn’t kill her. So… relief, but never relieved.
Lana reveals to Sister Mary Eunice that Dr. Thredson is in fact Bloody Face. Of course, this is in no way a good thing. Certainly, Satan already knew that Bloody Face was Oliver.
It’s more terrible when Mary reassures a frantic Lana: “No one knows that you‘re here.” Not exactly what Lana wanted to hear in the sense which Mary tells her; Satan surely wants to keep her closed up and out of sight.
Kit Walker comes into Briarcliff through the tunnels of death, finding Grace to try and escape. As they attempt to break free, Arden’s latest monstrosity shows up and tears apart a nun. In the whole fiasco, Grace takes a bullet in the chest when Frank McCann (Fredrich Lehne) is aiming for Kit. The Angel of Death shows up for her, and finally, as she says: “I‘m free.”
What a whopper of a finale to this episode!
Next is “Unholy Night” – directed by Michael Lehmann (Dexter, Californication, Tyrant). One of my ALL-TIME FAVOURITE American Horror Story episodes.
Stay tuned, friends and horror hounds alike!
