Stephen King’s NIGHTMARES & DREAMSCAPES, Pt. 3 (2006)

Autopsy Room Four August 2. 9/8 pm

Howard Cottrell (Richard Thomas) is truly living a nightmare when he is bitten by a viper and paralyzed. Unable to speak, his pulse is so low that the elderly doctor who checks him over declares that he is dead. Howard and a colleague had come South on a business deal and were taking a golfing break. Howard had hit his ball into an overgrown area in which the snake lay in wait. Taken to the small town hospital, he can hear the doctor in charge Dr. Katie Arden (Greta Scacchi) banter with her two assistants, but he cannot communicate with them. He raves at them, especially when they cut off his clothes and examine his body. They fail to detect the fang bites on his leg because of all the scratches and mosquito bites on them. He expresses his terror each time one of them picks up a knife to cut him open. What finally brings his plight to light would have earned this an R rating if a film, and would never have been allowed a few years ago in network television. A real cliffhanger filled with some macabre humor.

You Know They Got One Hell of a Band August 2, 10/9 pm

This is another tale of the man not listening to his wife during a trip so that the two become lost, although he will not admit it. How Mary Willingham (Kim Delaney) puts up with her jerk of a husband Clark (Steven Weber) is beyond me. Numerous times on their journey in the north woods she asks him to turn back as the road becomes less and less navigable, but he presses on. Finally they arrive at a small town that bills itself as Rock and Roll Heaven. Looking like, as one of them comments, something out of Norman Rockwell, the town seems creepy to Mary, who does not want to stop. Clark insists, so they go into the diner where one of the waitresses looks and sings like Janis Joplin. The younger waitress passes Mary a note warning them to leave at once, but Clark ignores it. Soon Elvis Presley, in his more obese stage walks in. Before the night is out many more dead rockers appear—Ricky Nelson, Buddy Holly, Roy Orbison, Otis Reading, and more (including Jimi Hendrix playing a few bars of his famous rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner.” Question is, will Mary and Clark join their state of being?

Print Friendly, PDF & Email