October 31, 1981 – Donald Pleasence / Fear (S7 E4)

Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars

COLD OPENING
host tries EDM’s suggestion & vomits for good luck; JOB cameo

  

— Why is Donald practicing saying LFNY in this of all seasons?
— I do kinda like the strange premise of Eddie vomiting for luck.
— John Belushi! And boy, does he look even heavier than usual.
— Well, that cameo sure came and went with nothing happening at all. He didn’t even get to do or say anything. I thought I remembered hearing this cold opening ended with him giving his trademark eyebrow-raise into the camera, but he doesn’t even do THAT. Even that would’ve been SOMETHING, at least.
— The only significance John’s cameo has is that it’s his final SNL appearance before his untimely death just a few months later.
STARS: **

TALENT ENTRANCE

PROFILES IN BRITISH COURAGE
(host) operates on cooperative soldier (TIK)

  

— They sure held on that “Profiles In British Courage” screen for a long time before cutting to the opening scene. I guess the performers weren’t quite ready yet.
— Why didn’t Donald finish his “I can always get another table, but you can hardly get another leg” line? He trailed off so much at the end of the sentence that it sounded like he just gave up on it.
— Is Tony doing an impression of Robin Williams’ impression of an Indian?
— Boy, is this sketch getting gory all of a sudden. A Halloween treat!
— I do like Tim’s upbeat, spirited British demeanor even as his leg is getting cut off.
— For a blood-spurting sketch, they should be going much more over the top with the fake blood. The mild way they’re spraying the blood in this sketch stopped being funny after about 15 seconds.
— British announcer: “This is Thanes Television, dedicated to upholding the British tradition of courage, honor, grace, and dignity. Stay tuned for Benny Hill.”
STARS: **½

JOGGER MOTEL
“Joggers jog in, but they don’t jog out”

   

— Heh, pretty funny Roach Motel take-off overall. Can’t find anything else to say about this.
STARS: ***

TWO FACES OF JERRY
movie about the serious (JOP) & comical (EDM) Lewises

— Joe’s demeanor as “bitter older Jerry Lewis” is great, though the voice could use some work.
— Eddie does a perfect “goofy young Jerry Lewis”. And I like how SNL was never afraid to have Eddie play some non-black celebrities, like when he played Bruce Lee in the previous season.
— Great concept to this commercial, and good execution of it.
STARS: ***½

I’M SO MISERABLE
(CHE) sings “Last Night I Killed My Husband” while cleaning up the mess

 

— Another Christine Ebersole musical sketch with a country-western theme.
— As usual, very good singing from Christine, and I do like how the premise of this sketch fits tonight’s Halloween theme.
STARS: ***

PUMPKIN
by Elbert Budin- the gory details associated with pumpkin carving

   

— I’m loving the slow, gruesome, unsettling presentation of this pumpkin-carving sequence, and the music is adding a great touch.
— Haha, oh my god at the pile of guts pulled out of the pumpkin. You could even see an eyeball in there!
STARS: ****

GUARDIAN ANGEL
a Guardian Angel (EDM) shows how jewelry can simulate snot & defeat crime

 

— A fairly dumb premise with passing your gold medallion off as snot, but Eddie’s demonstration is great and he’s really enhancing the material.
STARS: ***

MICHAEL DAVIS
Michael Davis [real] juggles apples while eating the razor-free one

    

— Michael, regarding SNL: “I think over the history of the show, they’ve proved themselves to not be just a funny show many times.”
— I like how even this act has a Halloween theme.
— Funny turn with director Dave Wilson requesting Michael juggle the razor-bladed apples.
— Nice fake-out with Michael “continuing” to juggle the two apples while getting a third apple.
— Very impressive juggling, especially him demonstrating various juggling personality types without messing up at all.
— Love how Dave Wilson is sternly demanding that Michael eat one of the apples.
— Michael, in response to Dave Wilson’s aforementioned demand: “But it could taste like Schick!” Normally, I would groan at a pun like that, but Michael Davis has a way of making even THAT funny.
— Once again, I love the daringness of doing something like this on live TV.
— LOL at the quick, slobbish chomps he’s taking of the apple.
— Overall, another great Michael Davis act.
STARS: ****½

SNL NEWSBREAK
MAG asks Frank Sinatra (JOP) how sale of AWACS to Saudis was arranged
after having her clothes stolen, weatherperson CHE looks like a hooker
Raheem Abdul Muhammed tells why black people like to go to horror movies

       

— Not even the audience is laughing anymore at the “falling logo letters” gag that’s opened every SNL Newsbreak so far.
— Brian’s the only anchor shown at the desk tonight. He explains that Mary is on assignment in the field. I take it that’s the show’s way of admitting that Mary’s delivery as an anchorperson hasn’t been working out.
— I got a laugh from Mary’s accidental “President Weagan” line flub.
— The look of the intimidating secret service man Joe pulls into the scene is pretty funny. Nothing else in this commentary has been making me laugh.
— Man, none of Brian’s jokes have worked AT ALL tonight so far, and the audience is very silent throughout tonight’s SNL Newsbreak.
— Christine’s reaction to her accidental reveal that her friend’s a hooker is kinda funny, but this overall segment seems to have no point to it.
— Eddie continues his streak of doing a commentary in every single SNL Newsbreak this season.
— I got a pretty good laugh from Eddie’s sarcastic “Thank you for that warm round of applause” when his entrance got no audience reaction.
— An overall decent Raheem Abdul Mohammed commentary, though no particular moments stood out, other than Eddie managing to work in yet another n-word drop.
— A mention of tonight being Brian’s birthday.
— Decent touch with Brian “blowing out” a birthday candle through the news screen.
— Overall, a pretty dreadful, dead SNL Newsbreak tonight, even worse than it’s usually been.
STARS: *½

TALES FROM THE HIP
a boogie-woogie musical version of Macbeth

     

— As I said in the last episode review, if they have to do a musical sketch on a weekly basis this season, can’t they just keep it down to one a week?
— Oh my god at Donald’s attempt at hip singing.
— Another oh my god at Tim showing up in drag as the wife. That’s somehow making this already iffy sketch even worse.
— Overall, I didn’t enjoy this at all. Not even Eddie’s appearance could save it for me. Why must I suffer through so many joke-less musical sketches this season?
STARS: *½

MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “I Don’t Care About You”

— Boy, was Donald’s intro awkward and drawn out.
— Wow, this performance was short as hell, and was fairly tame for Fear standards. I guess this is the calm before the storm of their infamous second performance later tonight…

THE CLAMS
— Rerun

MEN’S ROOM
during Annie intermission, theatergoers talk (TIK) out of bathroom stall

  

— There’s that same bathroom set once again tonight.
— Eddie’s country accent is pretty funny.
— What’s with Joe’s uncalled-for “Sorry, not interested” and “I don’t go that way” response to Tim simply saying “Hi” to him at the sink? That’s taking gay panic to extremes.
— Loved Tim’s complaint about the play Annie being “a little girl trying to sing like Ethel Merman”.
— Eddie’s the saving grace of this strange sketch for me, because otherwise, almost NOTHING has been working in it.
STARS: *½

SUGAR BREAKFAST
a sugar-loving family enjoys the most important meal of the day

     

— Speaking of recycled sets, I think this is the same kitchen set from the “Last Night I Killed My Husband” sketch.
— I wasn’t too crazy about this premise at first, but this sketch is winning me over as it’s getting more and more insane and hyper.
— LOL at the sequence with them “doing the dishes”.
— Ha, Joe’s speaking so fast that during his and Mary’s quick arguing/making-up session, I caught him accidentally saying “I’m horry, soney” when he meant to say “I’m sorry, honey”.
— Nice touch with the song the family’s listening to on the radio having a sped-up chipmunk voice.
— I like Eddie’s deadpan “Those some crazy white people” line at the end, though it was barely audible under the audience’s sketch-ending applause.
STARS: ***½

ANDY WARHOL’S T.V.
phone calls for Halloween costume suggestions

   

— The return of these bizarre-as-fuck Andy Warhol films. I certainly didn’t miss his absence in the last episode.  Though at least the creepy atmosphere of these Warhol films fits the theme of tonight’s Halloween-centric episode.
— I guess the “Voice of Calvin Klein” graphic being displayed on the screen when we can’t even hear Klein’s voice over the phone is kinda funny.
— What the HELL at that special effect with Warhol’s head randomly falling off?
— Overall, while this was still a waste of time, it was slightly better than the prior Warhol films, if only because the whole “headless on the street” ending was kinda intriguing in a weird way.
STARS: *½

HOME MOVIES
MAG makes fun of a viewer-submitted home movie, asks for more entries

   

— A follow-up to the segment from the season premiere where Christine asked viewers to send in home movies.
— Mary attempts a Mr. Mike-esque “sucks rubber donkey lungs” insult, only she butchers it by accidentally saying “dunkey longs”. Was she trying to top Joe’s “I’m horry, soney” line flub from the Sugar sketch?
— Pretty funny with Mary doing an MST3K-esque snarky commentary during a clip of a fan-submitted home movie. I hope the fan who sent that movie in has a good sense of humor about himself, though.
STARS: N/A (not a rateable segment)

THE VIC SALUKIN SHOW
challenge of “Scare me!” has lethal results

     

— Ah, yes! I’ve always wanted to see this. This is one of two famous things I’ve been anticipating in this episode. (You can probably guess what the other famous thing is)
— Not sure why the sketch is in black-and-white, but I like that, because in a weird way, it’s adding to the spooky, raw feel of this sketch.
— I love the “Scare me!” call-in premise.
— Tony’s sadistic prank call was very funny.
— I’m absolutely loving the creepy call from Donald Pleasence, especially the way the camera is slowly zooming into a speaker as Donald’s overly specific details about Tony’s family members are getting more and more unsettling.
— Fantastic gruesome reveal of a bloodied, murdered Tony with a butcher knife sticking out of his head, which has become a strangely classic image among some SNL fans.
— The dead silence from the audience during the aforementioned reveal actually works for the scary atmosphere.
STARS: ****½

MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Beef Bologna”
musical guest performs “New York’s Alright If You Like Saxophones”
musical guest performs “Let’s Have A War”

 

— Another weird rambly intro from Donald.
— Here we go, the most memorable, notorious part of the whole episode.
— Holy shit, this is INSANE so far.
— This is SNL I’m watching?!?
— A lot of screams of “New York sucks” from the skinhead mosh-pitters. I’m pretty sure I also heard a “fuck” from one of them at one point.
— Aaaand there’s the sudden performance cut-off when the mosh-pitters appeared to start REALLY getting out of control.

PROSE AND CONS
— Rerun. Guess they had this waiting in the wings in case things got too out of hand during Fear’s performance.
— The audience doesn’t seem to be miked AT ALL during this (I guess because Fear’s performance is still going on in the studio). It feels so weird hearing Eddie’s classic “Cill My Landlord” poem play to TOTAL SILENCE. You could even hear the last word of his poem loud and clear (“Death”), when it usually gets drowned out by audience laughter.

GOODNIGHTS

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IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS:
— Wow, what a crazy episode, which is exactly what I came in expecting after all the stuff I had heard about it over the years. I love how most of the episode had a dark, heavy Halloween theme to it (which makes me wish SNL did live episodes on Halloween much more often; the only other two times they would go on to do one would be in 1987 and 1992), and I also love how this episode had a VERY heavy Michael O’Donoghue influence. This has to be the most Mr. Mike-feeling SNL episode ever (and from what I’ve heard about some of the disturbing, fucked-up sketches that got scrapped during the week, this episode was originally supposed to be even MORE Mr. Mike-feeling). Even some of the stuff O’Donoghue had no involvement in came off weird and crazy (e.g. Fear).
— The actual quality of the episode itself was very up-and-down. There were some things I loved and some things I hated; probably 50/50. I mostly just love this episode simply for its dark theme and for its very unique place in SNL history.

HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (George Kennedy):
— a step down

My full set of screencaps for this episode is here

TOMORROW:
Lauren Hutton