Toulouse La Crap

Last nite TNT launched its new anthology series: Nightmares and Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King. The first episode - Battleground - starred William Hurt. Hurt plays a hitman hired to murder a toymaker. Upon completion of his job, he returns home, and is delivered a box of toy soldiers. The soldiers come alive and try to kill him...



I don't know if it was the hackneyed Tell-Tale Heart plot or the incredible supidity of the Hurt character, but this was a total waste of time. Now, think about it. You're under attack by little, green, PLASTIC Army men - what are you gonna do? Shoot up your couch with a machine gun? Try to pick them off one by one with a handgun? Try to escape out on the ledge of your highrise apartment (they have helicopters...).

Heck NO! Anybody who has ever played with plastic army men knows what they do best - they burn in a really cool way. It took the Hurt character an hour to finally get the aerosol can of bug spray, a lighter, and go after the little buggers with an improvised flame thrower.



The gore quotient was fairly high - with Hurt getting sliced up by helicopter blades, wrists slashed by little commando guys - and being forced to stitch himself up a couple times. The special effects were pretty good but you really didn't see the soldiers moving around that much. Frankly, the Canadian Film Board did it so much better with GI Joes in their 1966 short film: Toys.

But I will give the producers of Battleground some props for shooting the entire episode without a word of dialog. While the lack of speaking didn't hinder the enterprise - it also couldn't overcome the real shortcomings of the show.

We'll probably watch another episode or two just in case it gets any better, but this thing has Amazing Stories written all over it...



What it is...

Sidebar: while looking for pics for this post, I stumbled upon some taken at Disney World. This is some sort of parade - I'm guessing at about the time of one of the Toy Story movies. Those are actors in fully functional "plastic, green Army men" costumes and you gotta admit, they look pretty cool...