In my humble opinion the fifth season was when this show first really started to slide and get into the weaker and more poorly-done episodes, and we all know how bad it ended up eventually. But this one was special, and a stellar choice to open the season with. It's all about a naughty little con artist who finds a tempting new prospect in a strange hillbilly family of wackos who are nowhere near as dumb and gullible as he thinks they are, and who harbour a fortune buried in their basement, as well as a burning hatred for salesmen... Okay, let's discuss Mr.Tim Curry for a sec. As an actor I think he's at his best and most impressive when he's either doing voice-over work or wearing elaborate prosthetic makeup, and his triple-thread performance here which I could only ever seriously see Curry successfully pulling off which he does, is utterly fantastic as he plays a family that I'm pretty sure is from hell and brilliantly shows his range and versatility. He makes for a horrid, but effective-looking woman as the sweet Ma, as Pa I found him the most scary as the face and voice were very similar to Pennywise from It, and as the unbelievably monstrous daughter Winona he was a grotesque tour-de-force! All of her eye-rolling expressions and snorting just kept cracking me up. You almost feel sorry for Winona, she looked that dreadful, and the scene where this hunchbacked harpooned-whale of a girl mounts and essentially rapes the awkward man is hilariously awkward and is sure to make the bile rise in your gullet! He must've *really* wanted to live, because lovin' Winona was not easy.. I'm afraid I couldn't muster all that much surprise at the revelation at the end as my shock supply was quite used up after that experience of a scene! I did find it a bit unbelievable that the family would be capable of devising such an elaborate scheme just for the sake of entrapping the con man and beating him at his own game. Well, the last few minutes do seem a bit rushed but it all still works, and with three Tim Currys for the price of one there's just no way this tale could possibly lose! It's funny the way he looks more like himself as the two female characters than he does as the father. Like many of the episodes it's got a really smooth ending where everything seems to culminate in a pitch-perfect point...and then literally blam! It is over. Judd No!!! Oh gawd.. Well Judd is definitely dead! Eh, I don't care. Ed Begley didn't play it sympathetic enough that I would have. He could've though, Ed's a very underrated actor, and I'm a fan. His line right at the beginning to the pretty lady he's just duped into sleeping with him was when you knew that this guy was going to come to a most unpleasant demise, as if the title of the story wasn't a dead giveaway! It really wasn't going well for him from the get-go, and I was kinda wondering why he didn't hot-tail it outta there as soon as he saw the people who lived in that grimy old house. Was any amount of money really worth all that!? All in all it's a solid episode that's one of the nastiest and funniest in the series, and one that deserves its rank as a fan favourite. Oh I love it, it's just too precious!!
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