We Own This City, Season One (2022)

Director - Reinaldo Marcus Green

We Own This City

“Part Three”

Director: Reinaldo Marcus Green

DoP: Yaron Orbach

So, tonight a minor shocker with Face of Evil, again from 1996 - and Hallmark!! Cast: Tracey Gold - Darcy Palmer Perry King - Russell Polk Shawnee Smith - Jeanelle Polk Don Harvey - Quinn Harris Mireille Enros - Brianne Dwyer and many more Story: In Face of Evil, Darcy Palmer (Tracey Golds) is a good-looking, blonde psychopath who can charm any man (it seems) into helping her – including the cop cabdriver in the final scene who is about to let her out of her handcuffs. In the course of the story, she takes on different identities (probably many, it is hinted, before the story begins), and erases the lives of those she devours. Her whole life is a tissue of lies and a closet full of corpses – as we get in Malicious (1996) and many such variations. Much of Face of Evil has a telemovie blandness of execution, but director Mary Lambert (whose career since early Madonna videos and Siesta in 1987 is intriguing from many angles) has some good gesture/action/visual-business scenes to work with. Such as the prologue, where Darcy tempts a cat to eat a bird she is feeding (much to the moral distress of a nearby little girl!). And especially the elaborate passage where she breaks into the University’s administration offices (an anti-heroine trait: she can get in anywhere – somewhat Hitchockian, à la Marnie [1964]), replaces a woman’s eye-drop liquid with acid, and then waits around the next day outside the building to reassure herself of the success of her plan – “It probably ate straight through to her brain!”, as she chirps to her (again morally horrified) classmates back in the dorm, watching the gruesome news on TV. Note, by the way, how absolutely bland/pretty and uninteresting the character of Darby’s friend Jeanelle (Shawnee Smith) is, always moping about her somewhat sleazy Dad (Perry King: perfect casting) who has neither time nor affection for her … Smith, by the way, has subsequently shown up in many horror movies of the Saw/Grudge variety, as well as the TV series Secret Life of the American Teenager (2008-2013). While on the matter of credits, let us also note the trajectory of writer Gregory Goodell, who has directed a bunch of telemovie thillers, as well as the horror movie Human Experiments (1980), and also wrote a guide to independent production. One of the distinctive and intriguing elements of Face of Evil is the role played by art. At the start, about to marry some hick named Quinn (Don Harvey), Darcy claims to be giving up her interest in painting. He tries to persuade her not to do this. That night, when she clears out, she takes her paintings (including “his” one, a gift to him, cut right out of its frame) with her. At University, inspired by the heavenly vision of art class, she works her wiles to switch her enrolment. Eventually, Jeanelle’s Dad will help Darby get her first exhibition. And not only is her art the explicit confession in surrealist-expressionist canvases of her actual criminal deeds – like stuffing a dead girl in her suitcase! – it also furnishes her with a kind of Nietzschean life-motto (shades of Rope [1948]): the artist must be free, with no restraining limits. Indeed, whenever Darcy psychotically cracks, it is precisely because someone, in her mind, threatens to curtail her artistic freedom. One of the most basic structures bequeathed to the modern thriller by Hitchcock and (before him) Patricia Highsmith in Strangers on a Train (novel 1950, film 1951) is the plot trope of “the fortuitously encountered stranger who enacts your most secret wish”. Face of Evil, adopting the evil gal pal template of Single White Female (1992) and other contemporary 1990s thrillers, takes this in an odd and highly perverse direction, which is in some sense also a scrambled reworking of the “Mom really did it” displacement-logic of Psycho (1960). In Darcy’s romancing of Jeanelle’s Dad, she does not merely take her BFF’s place as the beloved daughter – she does what the daughter longs to do but cannot: make love to him! And then, just to top it off, Darcy more-or-less throws exactly this wish-come-true in Jeanelle’s face. This logic also works, on a lesser but more humorous level, with the character of Quinn – whom Darcy rudely jilts, but who then comes after her, until he is trapped in a rolled-up car window and (discreetly) stabbed to death by her. Back at the point of his post-jilt rage, he informs his super-religious parents that he will return to the bar to once again take up boozing – the very bar “where I met Darcy”! © Adrian Martin June 2012 (taken from here now) Thoughts: Well, a normal looking woman is trying to lure a cat to kill a bird which she feeds. She gets interrupted by a young girl - and her fiance, Quinn, who introduces she as Darcy Palmer. She plays the perfect role until she has enough and flees from him - with their wedding rings and her own pictures (and one of his). At an airport where she meets Brianne, who starts college soon, both women just talk until Brianne goes to the restrooms and Darcy kills her, taking her identity and suitcase (with the body in it). At the college, and also earlier, she meets her new roommate, Jeanelle and they befriend quickly - until she sees Jeanelle's Dad, Russell (King with a ponytail first). In Darcy seems to grow a plan and she also switches her courses from music to art, her profession. Never mind, she sugarcoats Russell more and more as he likes art as well and she slowly begins to replace Jeanelle. Yet Jeanelle sees some holes in Darcy's story which changes anytime and she begins to research and phone to get the needed information. Darcy, meanwhile, has reached her goal and Russell has opened an exhibition for her - and she sleeps with him. Jeanelle has found out that Darcy is not even Darcy and so both women fight but Russell comes to the rescue of his daughter after finally realizing what is going on. The police arrests the woman who might weasel her way out, again.

Can be found on Youtube if I remember correctly. Enjoy!

Films Watched in 2023: 58. Creepshow 2 (1987) - Dir. Michael Gornick

This man can NOT be trusted with the aux chord

Bonus Textless:

You were to get these guys in a room...I think I'd be scared...but I also do not wanna know what would happen...but at the same time...???

So my buddy @trashbunnysblog sent me this message yesterday:

And just... AHHHHH MY HEART!

THAT IS SO PRECIOUS! PLEAAAASEEEE! I WANT TO SEE THIS! Just SO lovely and considerate! 😭 I want this to be canon. But for now, it can just be canon in my heart. 💗

I like them :)

(Part 4/4)

A Lie For The Ages: Grant loses his memory after an accident and goes to live with Slade while he recovers.

a seat at the highchair: A time-traveling trickster snatches a six-year-old Bruce Wayne from the past and leaves him with Jason Todd.

Heels Over Head: Young Don tries to impress Meloni with some help from his sister, Dawn.

Foster in the First: Lawyer Harvey Dent takes an interest in the son of a man he put away for life.

orange like me: Guy Gardner becomes a foster parent.

Bells and Whistles: AU where the Allens find out about Malcolm when he was a toddler.

Catch a Chill: Greta Hayes moves into Bart's house, but her unintentional haunts frighten his unsuspecting friends.

Dancing Without Music: Koriand'r enjoys dinner with a stranger. (One-shot)

It’s like 1:30am and I’m spiralling so have an obligatory “songs that make me think of Echo characters” post. Enjoy! Flynn Moore - Otter by Don Harvey is such a Chase and Flynn song (specifically TJ’s route. Desperately need an AMV of Chase and Flynn having fun in the lake to this song, interspersed with how TJ’s route actually ended) - Cruising by Don Harvey is a Flynn and Ryan song - (Honestly Flynn just has such strong Don Harvey energy but no one knows this cause Don Harvey has like 16 monthly listeners its insane) Jenna Begay - Blow My Brains Out by Tikkle Me is just so Jenna (especially Jenna and Heather omg) Carl Hendricks - Prologue by Chase Petra - Bugbear by Chloe Moriondo - Sweet Hibiscus Tea by Penelope Scott - (he’s just so sadgirl) Chase Hunter - Labyrinth by Miracle Musical is just so fucking ‘echo protagonist’. Like Chase, Samuel, Mr Font, and Cameron - Stupid Intruder by The Vincent Black Shadow is strong Chase and “””Samuel””” - Umami by Go Child! Leo Alvarez - Two Birds by Regina Spector (I forget who but I saw someone on here say this and they were so right) - Don’t Ever Leave Me by Sharon Prabhakar - (Of fucking course Blurry by Lilybug and Scars by Splingus but I don’t think that a song on the OST nor a fan song count here) TJ Hess - If I Killed Someone for You by Alec Benjamin (I found it on a TJ Chase playlist and they were correct) Sydney Brosnon - Poor Isaac by The Airborne Toxic Event - (wasn’t gonna do Sydney but this song came on while I was making this and holy fguck)

It is now like ten past 2 I need to sleep, thank you for reading my Echo music thoughts I guess.

Men I’ve Always Meant to Write for Masterlist

A little collection of the blorbos that have often been on my mind, but rarely been in my WIPs. Better - Don Draper x Reader

The Starlight Room - Don Draper

Multitudes - Don Eppes x Reader

The Other Half - Bale!Bruce Wayne x Reader

More Than Enough - Harvey Specter x Reader

Wicked Game - Daniel Le Domas x Reader