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| American Horror Story |
American Horror Story musings with tons of spoileramas for
all the seasons!
With American Horror Story: FreakShow wrapping up in two
episodes, I decided it was high time to sit down and watch the first two
seasons once and for all. Luckily I’m a Rogers subscriber and a new service they’ve
started called Showmi is offering the first three seasons. Even luckier, the
first month of Showmi is free so there’s no excuse to not do my homework.
I completed my American Horror Story: Murder House viewing
in the wee hours of the morning after watching it for about two days. I will confess, I had tried to watch it twice
before when it was on FX. Once was on the day it actually started and the other
when it was in reruns last year during Coven-time. However, both times it
failed to hold my interest past the first little while. Mostly it was the
less-than-stellar acting.
Several good horror writing pals told me that I’d like
Murder House if I’d just get into it. And they were right. I like it very much.
It was way better to watch it binge-viewing. And as a Rosemary’s Baby fan, I
loved that part of it.
My first gut instinct comment is that Evan Peters has
evolved and matured amazingly as an actor over the seasons. His work in Murder
House is acceptable, he didn’t really have to do much as hunky horny FrankenTeen in
Coven but as Jimmy the Lobster Boy in FreakShow, he deserves awards. I can’t
wait to see him in Asylum which I’m starting tonight.
It was fun to watch Murder House after seeing Coven and
FreakShow first. There are some little bits that tie the series together that
are fun to spot. It’s also fun to see all the tropes and homages to other
horror stories (hence the title of the series); some obvious, some not so much.
The first real line of dialogue in Episode One, Season One
of American Horror Story is: “Hey, Freak!” If you’ve been watching FreakShow, you know
that freak is the operative word, especially with Jimmy yelling, “We’re not
freaks,” a thousand times an episode.
Rosemary’s Baby is hugely spotlighted with Jessica Lange as
a Ruth Gordon-type character. There are way too many Rosemary’s Baby references
to get into. However, I loved the eating of the raw brains as one of my
favourite scenes in RB is when Mia Farrow as Rosemary is chomping on raw liver.
I’ve had those cravings myself when pregnant (craving raw steak, not brains) so
it’s always fun to see a pregnant lady with extreme iron-deficiency cravings.
Evan Peters as Tate is very much playing a Malcolm McDowell
in A Clockwork Orange character. I always thought Peters had a McDowell look about
him, but they just plain out shot him a la Kubrick in a couple of scenes to
drive it home! Love it.
As I mentioned, I didn’t totally buy Peters’ portrayal of
his character. Of course, it’s hard playing a ghost playing a psychopath. I
wonder too if perhaps it had something to do with the directing. The female
psychopath Hayden played by Kate Maya in Murder House was terrible. I’m sorry
to say that, I wanted to like her as we all know, I love psychopaths. She
looked like Avril Lavigne trying to act like a bad girl. (I've never bought into Avril Lavigne as a Goth Grrl either.) I didn’t buy the black
eye-liner, and she just didn’t feel real. Maybe she’s too nice in real life to
find the evil inside of herself to be a husband-stealing-baby-stealing little
bitch. I just didn’t buy her performance at all. I barely believed her as a
mistress and didn’t believe her at all as a stalker. She gets points for
trying. I’m not sure what didn’t work for me.
I guess the problem with seeing Murder House after FreakShow
is that FreakShow is high voltage bloodbath orgy-ridden roller coaster ride
while Murder House is slow slow slow. In FreakShow, Finn Wittrock expertly
plays psychopath Dandy in larger than life manner; every nuance, every finger twitch, every lip quiver, every eyebrow
lift is carefully calculated in a dance of perfection between actor, director,
and camera. The actors playing psychopaths in Murder House don’t have the same
level of intensity, perhaps direction, and so the performances feel weaker and don’t ring as true. There
isn’t that level of audience fear about what the psychopath will do next, that
anything can go horribly wrong at any minute in Murder House that you get with
Dandy’s scenes in FreakShow. Dandy is a tightly wound violin string that can snap at any minute, and it's not predictable exactly when that snap is gonna happen. Peters character just doesn't have that same intensity although as a school-shooter mom-raping psychopath, he should.
Interesting that there was a very specific chair flip camera pov shot that is
in Murder House and FreakShow and I think in Coven as well. It may well be a famous shot from some horror movie, I don't know.
There are lots of puppet and doll references in Murder
House. We all know about the puppets in FreakShow. Dandy plays with his puppet
theatre a lot and makes his own puppets out of mom and Tupperware lady. And
there was a psycho doll hoarder who made a girl into his own doll in Coven. The
ventriloquist doll/Jamie Brewer in FreakShow is going to be a big plot point
this week, I think.
Murder House has a Dr. Frankenstein, in Coven we have a
Frankenteen. In FreakShow, Elsa has wooden legs. Lobster Boy needs new hands to
name a couple of numerous Frankenstein references.
Jamie Brewer wears a mask and make-up in Murder House and
plays a ventriloquist doll in Freakshow. She sees dead people in Murder House and Coven and likely FreakShow. Chester wears the same over-exaggerated make-up in FreakShow that she does in Murder House.
There’s a character named Fiona in Murder House. Jessica Lange
plays a Fiona in Coven.
Not sure how I feel about the Freddy Krueger stuff.
There’s a scene where Constance is painting a pair of lady
legs in Murder House. Elsa has wooden legs in FreakShow.
Is the little boy in the Murder House Dandy? Yet it can’t be
since Dandy was born by his mom, a product of inbreeding with relatives. And Dandy is just like his dad. In Murder House, Tait is the dad. Or was
Dandy adopted or switched? We never saw his birth. Of course, I have to go back and look at
the timeline, it likely wouldn’t make sense.
How is Tait a dad? How does a ghost make a baby? Or is he a demon, devil? We never learn what the original source of the horror of the murder house was. Yes, it was built for Lily Rabe by a Frankennut, but what was there before THAT? What made Frankendoc the original horror? There's a whole plot point where Sara Paulson tells us there's an original evil and made it sound like it was a demon or a portal, but then it was never addressed again. Or maybe I dozed off...
In Murder House, since it's in California, there are a few characters over the eras who want to be famous movie stars. A few are satisfied that their grisley deaths make them famous. In Coven, Emma Roberts is a famous movie star. Of course, Madam LaLaurie and Marie Laveau are famous in NOLA folklore, as were Axman and several others who showed up. In FreakShow, the driving theme is fame. Elsa wants to be famous, she almost was, and then she was for grisly reasons (much like some of the people in Murder House) and then she has another chance to be famous and won't stop at anything to make it happen. Dandy wants to be an actor and if his mom had just let him do some community theatre, he wouldn't have tried to become a clown and then found his true calling: Playing God.
Major Series Theme takeaways: puppet makers, other people "working the strings," Pinnochio, Frankenstein, God Complex, being famous/movie stars, parts sewn to parts, loves lost, perversions win, and the real freaks are those who are warped/evil on the inside no matter how beautiful they are on the outside...
Overall, I enjoyed Season One and am glad I took the time to
watch it.
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