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The Alfred Hitchcock Hour: You'll Be the Death of Me (1963)
The dark side of love and protection
I just finished watching this episode and would rate it in my top five Hitchcock Hour favorites. The plot is tight and the acting by everyone (including Rags) is superb. The character of Driver embodies a man beginning anew whose past intrudes to put a roadblock between him and happiness. Rational at first, his fear and rage grow and eventually blind him as to how great is his strength and how vulnerable his victims. I could feel his anguish after each killing. I could also feel the uneasy feeling in the pit of Mickie's stomach when certain facts came to light and her eventual terror when she realizes what has happened. Granted, there were times in the play when I could accurately predict what was going to happen next, but the pacing and interesting characters (particularly that of Ruby) kept me glued to the tube to the very sad end. Excellent piece.
Bug (2006)
Folie a deux
I saw this film today at the AFI Film Festival in Los Angeles. I had seen some previews of it once and thought it looked interesting. I wasn't sure what to expect -- a horror flick, a spy/government secret thriller, science fiction. My basic contention is the movie was a study of folie a deux, a disorder in which two (or sometimes more, but generally just two) people with a close relationship share a psychotic delusion. While only one person in the pairing is psychotic, the other develops psychosis -- including delusions, paranoia, even hallucinations -- by virtue of their closeness to the psychotic person. Often, such couple will be isolated and avoid contact with others. I came across this phenomena years ago while researching some other subject, and thought about it tonight while viewing the film. Aggie's final speech about how incidents in her life have tied together with Peter's arrival was an over-the-top example of how she now shared his paranoia. Generally, folie a deux develops between an extremely close couple (such as a married couple), but Aggie's loneliness, misery and fear (due to the recent release of her con ex-husband), along with her drinking, smoking crack, and doing blow, accelerated their feelings of and dependence on each other.
That said, the movie started out spookily (you're paranoid from the word go) and it held my interest for about two-thirds of the time. The acting was good all around. Unfortunately, it really lagged towards the end. I kept waiting for someone from the motel to come in (probably curious about all the noise) and have them both hauled off to an institution. Or for RC to call someone. (Surely she must have realized that her friend Aggie was now certifiably nuts.) And when I saw how far gone the situation had gotten, I predicted the ending of the movie about twenty minutes before it happened. Frankly, I had lost interest in the characters at the end, but I'd still rate it a 7 for an interesting concept, energetic directing, good performances.