Wednesday, November 27, 2019

Garfield's Thanksgiving (1989)

If there's one holiday that was destined to get the Garfield treatment, it was Thanksgiving. While he also fit well with both Halloween and Christmas, a celebration that revolves almost entirely around a big meal just fits him like a glove. Oddly, though, this was one of the later Garfield primetime specials and the last one to be centered around a holiday (I guess Valentine's Day and Easter works with the Peanuts but not with Garfield). And, like all of them aside from A Garfield Christmas Special and Garfield's Halloween Adventure, I never saw it until late 2018, early 2019, when I felt inspired to check them all out after reviewing the two I was most familiar with. If you've seen the reviews of the Halloween and Christmas specials, you'd know that I really liked both of them, so the question is, "Does Garfield's Thanksgiving measure up to their standards?" Well, it's certainly funny and charming, as Garfield should be, and it boasts some of the best animation you'll ever see in any of the classic 2-D cartoons, but on the whole, it's not quite on the level of the other holiday specials. It's still very enjoyable but it doesn't really embrace or encapsulate the essence and meaning of Thanksgiving like the Halloween and Christmas ones did with their respective holidays. It mainly serves as an excuse to see Garfield struggling with a diet, Jon finally getting a date with Dr. Liz Wilson, and the return of Jon's grandmother, who was such an awesome character in the Christmas special.

After getting Jon out of bed to make him breakfast, Garfield is horrified to learn that he has an appointment at the veterinarian later that day. Tearing the page off the calendar to make Jon forget, he then discovers that the next day is Thanksgiving. Looking forward to all of the food that comes with it, Garfield has Jon go to the grocery store and stock up on all the necessary supplies. Unfortunately for him, Jon remembers his appointment with the vet and takes Garfield there on their way home. Dr. Liz Wilson examines Garfield and comments that, while he's healthy, he's also far too fat and needs to be put on a diet, much to his chagrin. At the same time, Jon, as usual, tries to ask Liz out on a date and she only gives in when he decides to hold his breath until she says yes and nearly asphyxiates himself in the process. Ecstatic, Jon invites her over to the house for Thanksgiving dinner the next day. Jon may be happy about the prospect of Liz coming over but Garfield is cranky and miserable due to his diet, and his mood doesn't get any better when he learns that Jon has Odie watching his every move to make sure he sticks to it. Now, Garfield has to deal with having to mind his food intake on Thanksgiving, of all days, while Jon has no clue how to cook a big dinner for himself and Liz.

Gerard Baldwin
By this point in the history of the specials, Phil Roman was no longer directing them by himself, relying on several co-directors to pick up the workload. In the case of this special, he had three. Gerard Baldwin had directed over 160 episodes of The Bullwinkle Show, episodes of George of the Jungle, had worked as a co-director on Yogi's First Christmas, had done a handful of Smurfs specials, and would go on to do several episodes of Tiny Toon Adventures. While this was the only time he ever worked on Garfield, that wasn't the case for Bob Nesler and John Sparey. Nesler had directed a couple of the segments of Garfield: His 9 Lives and had also acted as co-director with Roman on Garfield's Babes and Bullets, which was released earlier in 1989. He went on to co-direct Garfield's Feline Fantasies the following year and some episodes of Garfield and Friends. Sparey also co-directed His 9 Lives and Babes and Bullets and, besides going on to co-direct Feline Fantasies with Roman and Nesler and some episodes of Garfield and Friends, he would also be the sole director of Garfield Gets a Life, the last of the specials and the only that Roman had no hand in directing.

Garfield (voiced by Lorenzo Music) is up to his usual mischief to here: he wakes Jon up early in the morning to make him breakfast and, once he's finished, decides to substitute his "early mid-morning nap" for kicking Odie off the table. But then, he spots the calendar and discovers that Jon is taking him to the vet later that day. This horrifies him, as he explains, "The vet thinks she knows what's good for me. Good for her, but that's bad for me, because what's bad is good for me, but if I go to the vet and that's bad, she'll prescribe what's good for me and that's not good!", and tears off the page of the calendar, making Odie eat it. But then, his horror turns to elation when he discovers that the next day is Thanksgiving, meaning he'll get to partake in the "tradition" of stuffing himself with food. He reminds Jon about it and they drive to the supermarket to stock up on the necessary ingredients for the feast. Garfield's ecstasy doesn't last long, though, as Jon didn't forget about the appointment and takes him to the vet on the way home. There, while Jon tries desperately to get a date with Dr. Liz Wilson, Garfield has to endure her physical examination of him. When she's done, she proclaims him to be healthy, which has him singing her praises, but when she then says that he's going to have to go on a diet, he starts yelling that she's a quack. While Jon is happy when Liz finally breaks down and agrees to come to Thanksgiving dinner with them, Garfield is absolutely miserable when they get home, as all he gets is half a leaf of lettuce for dinner and then finds that Jon has Odie monitoring him, ready to blow a whistle whenever he attempts to cheat on his diet. After enduring an evening of the scale calling him Orson Welles due to his weight and Odie stopping him from chowing down on some cookies, Garfield is especially cranky the next day, and decides that if he can't enjoy Thanksgiving, no one can, and puts garlic powder on the vegetables Jon prepares for the meal.


After "helping" Jon pick out something to wear to dinner, Garfield is, once again, inspected by Liz when she arrives, as she doesn't want him to become anemic. When he acts out every single symptom of vitamin deficiency that she lists off, Garfield's misery turns to relief and joy when Liz decides to forget the diet and have him do some minor exercise for the time being. He kisses Liz and celebrates that he's free to eat, only to then remember that this meal is shaping up to be a disaster, as Jon has proven not to know the first thing about making a Thanksgiving dinner. Going into the kitchen and finding that the turkey is still frozen, Garfield gets Jon to call his grandmother, who promptly arrives and takes control of things. While Jon "entertains" Liz out in the living room (i.e., bores her to tears), Garfield watches as Grandma works her magic and soon, she has his mouth watering. Once she finishes the dinner and discreetly leaves, they all enjoy the meal she left for them, with even Garfield getting into the tradition and spirit of joining hands with everyone. After it's over and Liz has gone home, Jon tries to get Garfield and Odie to join him in a walk to work off some of the food, only for the latter to be revealed to now be as fat and listless as Garfield usually is. Jon puts him on a diet and Garfield gets a little payback by blowing the whistle and making him do pushups.

Jon Arbuckle (voiced by Thom Huge) is his usual dorky self, desperate for a date self here. After being woken up early in the morning by Garfield and Odie in a military fashion in order to make them breakfast, he and Garfield head to the grocery store in order to stock up on the necessary foods for Thanksgiving. On the way home, he takes Garfield to the vet, partly because he has an appointment but also so Jon can have an excuse to ask Dr. Liz Wilson out on a date. She turns down his repeated requests for a date and makes it abundantly clear that going out with him would be the last thing she'd ever do, but then, he gets desperate and threatens to hold his breath until she says yes. He comes close to suffocating and actually faints, which is when Liz, more out of annoyance than pity, agrees to date him and Jon promptly invites her to Thanksgiving the next day. So happy is he that he almost leaves without Garfield, and despite the cat's hostile attitude about being forced to go on a diet, Jon tells him that nothing is going to spoil his good mood. That's when he gets started on the big dinner and it becomes apparent that he doesn't know the first thing about cooking such a meal: he didn't thaw out the turkey the day before he was to prepare it, he didn't prepare the stuffing ahead of time, he rubs his own skin with a stick of butter rather than the turkey's, and roasts it at 500 degrees instead of at 325 for five hours, given that Liz is due over in three hours. As for the vegetables, he simply puts them all in a pot and pours water over them, thinking he's done. Determined to impress Liz and win her over, Jon shaves (cutting himself while doing so) and goes through a menagerie of different outfits to wear, before deciding on just a typical suit and tie... unfortunately, he forgets to put pants on and, when Liz arrives, answers the door in his boxers. Once he's got his pants on and lets Liz in, he checks on the dinner and finds that it's a complete disaster, meaning that Liz will likely never talk to him again. Garfield, after a lot of hints that Jon doesn't pick up on, finally gets him to call his grandmother, who shows up and throws him out of the kitchen while she whips up the meal. Jon attempts to entertain Liz by waxing philosophically about the meaning of Thanksgiving, which only proceeds to call her to doze off several times, and it's only salvaged when Garfield informs them that dinner is ready. After the nice meal, Jon gets a kiss from Liz, who promises to show up there next year. Jon is content with this and is thankful for, above everything else, Grandma.

Dr. Liz Wilson (voiced by Julie Payne) can't make it clear enough to Jon that she doesn't want anything to do with him. In her office, she repeatedly tells him to call her "Dr. Wilson" rather than just Liz,  refuses to call him anything other than "Mr. Arbuckle," refers to his asking about the weather as a personal question, and the first time he asks her for a date, she bluntly responds, "I'd sooner die." After several more rebuffs, he decides to hold his breath until she says yes, though she's not the least bit impressed, instead diagnosing Garfield as being too fat and prescribing a diet. It's only when Jon faints that Liz breaks down and agrees to a date, saying, "I can't stand to see a dumb animal suffer." When he invites her to Thanksgiving dinner at his house, Liz figures that, if nothing else, they won't be seen in public together... and then, Jon mentions the upcoming weekend but she immediately shoots that down, telling him not to push his luck, and she also has to remind him to take Garfield with him when he leaves. Arriving at his house the next day, Liz is initially greeted by Jon in his boxers, and when she's finally let in, she smells something that turns out to be the dinner he's cooking (which doesn't encourage her). Examining Garfield again, she decides to take him off the diet and suggests light exercise instead, which gets her a kiss right on the mouth from the cat. Next, she has to endure Jon's thudding, boring philosophy and history lesson on the meaning of Thanksgiving, which causes her to nearly doze off several times, but once dinner is ready, she's quite impressed by it, unaware that it was Grandma's doing. Once they're done eating, Liz thanks Jon for inviting her and agrees to return next year, adding, "I'll be here before the meal, but after the history lesson." She gives him a kiss on the cheek before leaving.

Jon's grandmother (voiced by Pat Carroll) obviously proved to be so well-received when she appeared in A Garfield Christmas Special that they just had to bring her back in another special, even if it was only for a few minutes. When it's obvious that Jon's Thanksgiving dinner will be a bust, Garfield gives him the idea to call Grandma, who shows up on a motorcycle immediately after he hangs up the phone. She immediately takes charge, shooing Jon out of the kitchen so she can do what she does best. Once she's alone with Garfield, she comments that he's looking a little thin, before taking a freaking chainsaw to the turkey, slicing them up into what she calls her famous turkey croquettes, before adding some white sauce to them and put them into the deep fat fryer, which Garfield totally loves the sound of. Though Garfield isn't too fond of sweet potatoes, Grandma manages to win him over by pouring a cup of butter on them, followed by brown sugar and a ton of marshmallows. She then makes her "split-second" cranberry sauce before whipping out some pumpkin pie to finish things off. Upon setting the table, she tells Garfield she's going to slip out quietly, telling him that, if Liz blows things with Jon, she'll answer to her. She also tells Garfield to eat a piece of pie for her before heading out the door and driving off on her motorcycle.

Odie's (voiced by Gregg Berger) role in this special is very minimal. After helping Garfield to wake Jon up early in the morning and then getting fed the calendar page with Garfield's vet appointment on it, Odie mainly acts as a way for Jon to ensure Garfield doesn't cheat on his diet. When he first tries to get at the refrigerator, Odie blows a whistle on him, and when Garfield learns what's up, he attempts to beat on him but gets whistled on again. Later, when Garfield tries to get at some cookies, Odie pops out of the jar and blows his whistle, proceeding to do the same when Garfield looks in some progressively smaller jars of flour, salt, and sugar (his whistle gets higher each time pops out to match the shrinking size of the jars). After that, Odie doesn't do much other than act as a lapdog when Liz shows up the next day and take part in the Thanksgiving dinner with everyone else. At the end of the special, Garfield manages to get a little bit of payback when Odie is revealed to have stuffed himself to where he can barely move and Jon decides to put him on a diet as well. Garfield takes the whistle he was using earlier and starts blowing it, making Odie do pushups.




Though it's not much to write home about in terms of its look, as the story is set almost entirely within Garfield's home, so you don't see anything at all exotic or really lovely, like you do in other specials like Garfield in the Rough and Garfield in Paradise, or in the character conceptualizations, as by this point, they'd firmly established their signature look (this special is one that really feels like a longer than average episode of Garfield and Friends), one thing that makes Garfield's Thanksgiving stand out among most of its peers is how surprisingly good the animation is. Sometimes, it's the same, simple animation you usually get with these Garfield specials but, in many instances, it transitions into a very fluid and often energetic style. It's not Disney-level but it's still very above average for Garfield. I don't know if it was due to Phil Roman having three other people assisting him in the directing or if he had more animators working on it than he normally did, but the quality of the animation is one thing that really makes this short distinctive.




The special is also not hard up for comedy, either. The idea of Garfield being put on a diet is ripe for laughs in and of itself but when you have it occur the day before Thanksgiving and combine it with Jon trying to fix a big meal in order to impress Liz, it's absolute gold. The two funniest scenes occur in Liz's examination room and in the bathroom when Garfield decides to weigh himself. In the former, while Jon, after his upfront requests for a date have been shot down, holds his breath to try to make Liz break down out of pity, Garfield freaks out when Liz proclaims that he's going to have to go on a diet. Both of them talk over each other, Liz describing the details of the diet and Garfield ranting and protesting everything that she suggests he cut out, all while Jon's face has turned red and bloated and his head looks like it's about to explode. It ends with Garfield letting out an anguished yell while Jon lets his breath out with a groan and the two of them both faint at exactly the same time. It's absolutely hilarious. Later, at home, Garfield decides to weigh himself and steps up on a scale that's robotic and talking. Their exchange is priceless: "I'm RX2, your talking scale. I can tell you your weight, your fortune, or just about anything else you would like to know." "Okay, smarty pants, what's my name?" "Judging by your weight, you are Orson Welles." "Great, her voice chip with a cruel streak." "May I have your autograph, please?" "Oh, shut up. Why is everybody picking on me?! And what's wrong with being large-boned, anyway?" "I've seen all your movies." "Hey, how would you like to have your battery removed?" "I wouldn't like that, Mr. Welles." "It's not like I'm all that overweight! I... can still see my feet." "I've seen Citizen Kane eight times." With that, Garfield decides he's had enough and repeatedly stomps on the scale until it's crushed. As he storms off, the scale groans, "Rosebud," before giving up the ghost. This kind of reminds me of an episode of Garfield and Friends where Garfield pulls the plug on a sentient TV set that's been tormenting him and the way it "dies" is similar to how HAL 9000 goes out in 2001: A Space Odyssey. I find that gag to be a bit funnier but this is still good stuff all-around. There are other funny moments in the special and I'll get to them shortly, but these two scenes are the comedy highlights, for sure.


Like I said in the introduction, the one major flaw with Garfield's Thanksgiving that keeps it from being on par with the other Garfield holiday specials is how it doesn't really capture the essence and point of Thanksgiving itself. It certainly has more of the feel of the holiday and the season than something like A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, which looked and felt more like it was taking place in the springtime but, when it comes to what Thanksgiving is all about, it only has the one scene where we see them sharing their dinner, which is accompanied by Desiree Goyette singing a lovely song pertaining to it. Nice moment, but other than that, it's all about how Garfield is initially denied one of the things he loves most (food) on a day whose celebration is centered around a big meal and how Jon uses Thanksgiving as an excuse to get a date out of Liz. You could say that, by the end of it, both of them are thankful for finally managing to get what matters to them but that feels like grasping at straws to me.While Garfield's Halloween Adventure perfectly captured the spooky fun of Halloween, and A Garfield Christmas Special managed to get to the spirit and meaning of the season without being too saccharine about it, as well as touched on the more melancholy aspects of it, Garfield's Thanksgiving mainly just uses the holiday as window dressing and little else. It honestly comes off like they felt obligated to do Thanksgiving since they'd already done Halloween and Christmas, which is why I can't put it on the same level as its brethren.




The special starts off with Garfield attempting to wake Jon up to make him breakfast, asking him politely and saying that he'll allow him to go back to bed when he's finished. But, when he gets rebuffed and thrown off the bed when Jon rolls over, Garfield takes more drastic measures and sends him flying out of bed by playing loud martial music over a boombox. Garfield and Odie, the latter holding a pair of cymbals, march across his bed and Garfield, acting like a drill sergeant, demands that he get to it, declaring, "Rise and shine, Jon Arbuckle! Time to serve your nation as you serve your fellow man! Yes, it's time to serve him pancakes. Pancakes the size of Australia, and coffee. Yes, Jon, coffee. We wouldn't be the great nation we are today if it weren't for coffee. So do your patriotic duty, Jon Arbuckle, and fix... me... breakfast!" The two pets march out of the bedroom, Odie smashing the cymbals together before doing so, leaving Jon to ponder, "I wonder if people with goldfish have this problem." Later, after gorging himself on breakfast, Garfield decides it's time for his early mid-morning nap, but when Odie walks by, he decides it's time to abuse him instead and prepares to kick him off the counter. But, just as he's about to do it, he spies the calendar on the wall and sees that it reads, "Take Garfield to Vets today." Horrified at this, describing it as inhumane, he tears the page off the calendar, crumples it up, and shoves it into Odie's mouth. That's when he sees the page for the following day, which is marked as Thanksgiving. His horror turns to elation and he tells Odie, who's still chewing on the Wednesday calendar page, "Do you see that, Odie? Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. That's the day people celebrate having food by eating as much of it as possible... That's the day people try to eat every turkey, pumpkin, and cranberry on the face of the Earth. It's a tradition, and you know how I LOVE tradition!" Excitedly, he grabs the calendar and runs over to Jon, showing it to him. Jon says that they'd best go to the grocery store and stock up on the necessary foodstuffs for the meal. As the credits play, you see Jon pushing around a cart with Garfield, the two of them exiting the store with it stacked to the hilt with bags of food.



While on the way home, with the car filled up with the groceries, Garfield excitedly chatters about what he feels Thanksgiving is all about, namely a bunch of food, which he names off while stretching it in front of Jon's face, nearly causing him to lose control of the car. That's when Jon, to Garfield's surprise, takes a right, which isn't the way home. Jon tells him that they're going to the vet and Garfield screams in anguish, as the car swerves wildly down the street. The next scene is in the vet's waiting room (one of the people there has a pig on her lap who looks suspiciously like Orson from U.S. Acres, aka Orson's Farm), where Garfield is clamped on the top of Jon's head, shaking nervously. Liz calls Jon in and he carries Garfield into the examination room as if he were a piece of baggage, placing him on the table. As Liz checks Garfield over, Jon attempts to make small-talk with her, only to be rebuffed, with Garfield commenting, "I can see this relationship is off to a roaring stop." Jon then attempts to ask Liz out and is promptly rejected, while Liz takes Garfield's blood pressure and, in her distraction, pumps it until his paw is swollen to a massive size. As Jon continues his ill-fated flirting, Liz then does something that causes it to reverse, causing Garfield's body to swell up like a balloon while his paw shrinks down. He deflates completely when Liz puts her foot down and tells Jon she will never go out with him, which leads him to take drastic measures and hold his breath until she agrees. His face quickly becomes bloated and red and his eyes seem to be on the verge of popping out, which Liz ignores and, after checking Garfield's pulse, delivers her diagnosis and suggestion of a diet that sends Garfield into a fit. Once both he and Jon have passed out, Liz decides to throw Jon a bone and agree to go out with him. Jon is so ecstatic at this that he runs out the door, inviting Liz to Thanksgiving dinner, and almost forgets to take Garfield with him.



When they arrive back home, Jon walks through the door, happily singing to himself about having a date with Liz, while Garfield comes plodding in behind him, moaning, "Oh, woe is me. I've been put on a diet and I'm gonna die." Jon serves him dinner, which is just one leaf of lettuce in his food bowl. Garfield protests this and Jon, indeed, says that he made a mistake... he gets half a piece of lettuce. Irked, Garfield reluctantly eats the lettuce and stumbles over to a mirror, commenting, "Gee, I've been on this diet only ten minutes and I can tell I've already lost something: a sense of humor." Garfield sneaks into the kitchen and tip-toes over to the refrigerator, only to be surprised by the sudden sound of a whistle. Jon shows up and tells Garfield, who thinks he booby-trapped the fridge, that the one who blew the whistle was Odie, who's going to blow the whistle every time he tries to cheat on the diet. Grumbling, "That is the dumbest thing I've ever heard of in my life. I'm going to put an end to this charade right now," Garfield charges up a punch but Odie hits him with the whistle again, sending him twirling in the air and landing back on the floor in a heap. Jon tells Garfield he'll thank him for this some day but all Garfield cares about is telling Odie, who snickers at his predicament, that he's in for it. Later that night, following his bout with the scale that mistakes him for Orson Welles, Garfield heads back into the kitchen. Seeing no sign of Odie, he tries to go for some cookies, only for Odie to pop out of the jar and blow his whistle. Garfield quickly puts the lid back on the jar, but when he lifts the lids on some other jars of flour, salt, and sugar, Odie pops out of each of them and blows the whistle. After a few moments of battling with Odie here, including one instance where Odie pops out of three jars at once, Garfield groans, "The lack of food must be making me hallucinate." He tries one more time, and when Odie pops up and blows the whistle yet again, he gives up and runs out.



The next morning, Jon is greeted by a very cranky Garfield, who hisses and threatens him with his claws when he asks him if he slept well. Jon, however, isn't going to let his cat's foul mood ruin his day for him and heads over to begin preparing the meal. While he remains optimistic throughout it, as he goes through the cookbook, it becomes clear that Jon doesn't know anything about cooking a big meal. When he reads that he should have removed the turkey from the freezer at least 24 hours before cooking it, Jon writes that off as a "minor technicality" and dumps the frozen bird onto the counter. He then reads, "Remove giblets from cavity and stuff with one cup of prepared stuffing," and laughs, saying, "You can't believe everything you read." He manages to correctly follow the direction of placing the turkey in the roasting pan breast-side up but, when he gets to, "Rub skin with butter," he rubs the butter on his own arms and cheeks, leaving Garfield dumbfounded at his stupidity and causing him to facepalm. That done, Jon puts a piece of foil on the turkey, his idea of wrapping it in foil, and places it in the oven, deciding to cook it at 500 degrees rather than the recommended 325 given how Liz will be there soon. Getting to the vegetables, Jon simply tosses a bunch of random ones in a pot and pours some water over them, thinking that's all there is to it, commenting, "To hear Mom and Grandma talk, I always thought preparing a Thanksgiving meal was tough!" He leaves to go freshen himself up, while Garfield decides that, since he can't enjoy Thanksgiving because of his holiday, no one else will either, and covers the vegetables with garlic powder.



In the bathroom, Jon has his face lathered up and, as he prepares to shave, proclaims his manhood and that he's going to see to it that his relationship with Liz works out, saying that he's in control of his own destiny. He then cuts himself and Garfield comments, "Ever considered putting someone else in charge of your destiny?" In the next scene, Jon and Garfield are in the bedroom, as Jon tries to find something to wear to dinner. He asks Garfield for his opinion and tries on a large set of outfits: formal (top hat and tails, with a cane), semi-formal (a pink shirt and bowtie, with checkered pants and a winged cap), informal (a T-shirt and jeans, complete with a slumped posture similar to a lazy teenager), high-roller (a suit with cowboy boots and a hat), sporting (a tanktop, shorts, and tennis shoes), disco (goes without saying), hippie-style (he even holds up two fingers and says, "Peace,"), rugged individualist (a thick sweater with jeans), Popeye (literally, he comes out dressed as Popeye, with the enormous forearms to match), a ballerina, and a gorilla suit. Garfield blows a raspberry at all of these and, running out of clothes, Jon decides, as does Garfield, to just be himself. He puts on a suit and tie and Garfield gives him a thumbs up, only for him to then see that Jon that forget to put on pants. The doorbell then rings and Jon excitedly answers it, only for Liz to point out that he's in his boxers. Jon quickly shuts the door, runs back to the bedroom, and puts on pants, admonishing Garfield for not telling him about his little faux pas ahead of time. He also tells him to be nice to Liz and Garfield grumbles, "First, I have to be a fashion consultant, now I have to be an actor."



Now fully dressed, Jon lets Liz in and when she does, she comments on a smell. Jon tells her it's the Thanksgiving dinner he's cooking up, which she feared was the case. He sees her to the couch while he heads into the kitchen to see to their meal. Meanwhile, Odie climbs up into Liz's lap and Garfield sits across from her on the couch. She decides to see how his diet's going, saying she doesn't want him to become anemic. She then lists off the various effects of vitamin deficiency due to dieting and Garfield plays up each one: listlessness (he acts like he has no energy), irritability (he swipes his claws and growls), nervousness (he shivers and looks around), twitching (he shakes his leg and arm), dementia (he makes one of the funniest expressions I've ever seen him make, with a witless "duh" sound to accompany it), and breathlessness (he holds his breath until his face turns red and lets it out loudly). Seeing all of this, Liz decides to take him off the diet and instead prescribe some mild exercise for the time being. Thrilled by this, Garfield gives her a kiss right on the lips and celebrates his ability to eat again, only to then remember the disaster that Jon has brewing in the kitchen. Speaking of which, Jon dumps the still frozen turkey onto the counter with a loud thud and laments to Garfield that Liz will never speak to him again because of this. Thinking for a bit, Garfield hits upon something and brings Jon the telephone. However, he doesn't get it, telling Garfield, "I can't feed Liz this." He then grabs a record entitled Biker Blues, Grandma's favorite record, but Jon thinks he means he should play it for Liz. Garfield grabs a heart-shaped pillow Grandma crocheted but Jon still doesn't get it, nor does he when Garfield hands him the sweater Grandma made for him the previous Christmas. Running out of patience, Garfield grabs a picture of Grandma and shows it to Jon. Finally, he gets the idea to call her, with Garfield commenting, "If he had a brain, he'd be dangerous."



While Liz is still waiting out in the living room with Odie, Jon calls Grandma, and as soon as he hangs up, he hears the sound of a motorcycle outside. Grandma comes through the door, wearing a leather jacket, ascot, and helmet, which she removes and declares, "Have cooking utensils, will travel!" She promptly shoos Jon out of the kitchen and gets to work making the meal edible. Out in the living room, Jon keeps Liz preoccupied by pondering the meaning of Thanksgiving, much to her bewilderment, while Grandma takes a chainsaw to the frozen turkey. Liz nearly nods off as Jon drones on about the pilgrims, when they both hear the sound of the chainsaw but Jon tells her it's just the dishwasher. Grandma finishes making turkey croquettes with the saw before slathering them in white sauce and preparing them for the deep fat fryer, which Garfield declares to be music to his ears. While Liz is still struggling to stay awake, as Jon talks about Abraham Lincoln officially proclaiming Thanksgiving to take place on the fourth Thursday of November and how they celebrate it in Canada, Grandma fixes her sweet potatoes, which manage to win over Garfield, who makes it clear he's not typically a fan of them. Jon starts talking about "Labor Thanksgiving Day" in Japan, while Grandma fixes her "split-second" cranberry sauce, covering Garfield's eyes with her hand and pouring the sauce in a bowl, telling him, "Too late; you blinked." She then gets to the piece de resistance, which is pumpkin pie, and puts it all together in an elaborate display that involves juggling before taking it over to the table and serving it up, prompting Garfield to make his trademark comment, "Nice touch." Grandma prepares to leave, telling Garfield to make sure that Liz knows she couldn't ask for a better man than Jon and that she'll have to answer to her if she messes things up. Garfield salutes Grandma as she walks out the door and rides off, commenting, "They just don't make 'em like that anymore."



By this point, Liz has now fallen asleep as Jon talks about what Thanksgiving is like in England, when Garfield comes in and tugs on his pants leg. He then smells the food and announces that it's all ready. Liz snaps awake, wondering where she is, and Jon leads her into the dining room, where she gasps at the sight of the lovely, well-set table. She tells him that she's impressed and he says that he is too. We then get a montage set to the song, It's a Quiet Celebration, by Desiree Goyette, as the four of them say grace before digging in. Jon, after pushing his hand away when he reaches over the table, slips Garfield a roll, while Liz gives Odie the corncob that he just licked. Garfield then slips Jon's plate out from under him when he isn't looking and polishes off all the food. After they've finished eating, they all join hands, including Garfield, who returns the gesture when Jon takes his. Following dinner, Liz heads out, telling Jon she'll join him again next year, and gives him a kiss on his cheek. Jon walks back into the living room and sees Garfield and Odie sitting on the couch, completely stuffed. After they all agree that they're thankful for Grandma, Jon tries to get his pets to join him in a walk to work off some of the food. It takes him a little bit, but Garfield is able to scooch himself off the couch, while Odie finds himself unable to budge an inch or even stand up on his legs. Jon is disappointed to see how Odie has become as lethargic as Garfield usually is and says that they'll have to put him on a diet as well. Odie groans at the sound of this, only to snap to attention when a whistle blows. Garfield jumps on the couch, wearing the whistle and a cap on his head, and orders Odie to give him ten pushups. Odie does so, as Garfield yells out the count, but looks more like a dog-shaped seesaw in how he's moving rather than someone doing pushups. Garfield asks, "Are we having fun yet?", before continuing the count, as the special ends.

Music-wise, Ed Bogas and Goyette don't do much that you haven't heard before in other specials, like a saxophone instrumental of Here Comes Garfield from the first special that you hear a couple of times and the electric guitar and light-hearted tinkling sounds that you often heard in the other specials, as well as in Garfield and Friends. That said, there are a few memorable themes, like the military piece that plays when Garfield and Odie wake Jon up early in the morning, this sincerely suspenseful piece for when Jon is holding his breath to make Liz agree to a date, a theme during some of Jon's dopey moments (notably when he starts cooking the meal and when he's boring Liz) that perfectly captures how clueless and dumb he can be, and an energetic, horn theme for Grandma that accentuates how much of an energetic, lively, motorcycle-riding old soul she is. There are only two songs: Make Thanksgiving One Whole Meal, by Lou Rawls, which is just a lively tune about how great a holiday Thanksgiving can be, and the aforementioned It's a Quiet Celebration by Goyette, which is more soulful and lovely and goes into the true meaning of the holiday. Like I said before, it sounds beautiful, but it's the only instance where this special acknowledges that idea and it feels like they put it in there because they felt like they had to.

Garfield's Thanksgiving makes for an enjoyable half-hour but, as you've seen, there's a reason why it doesn't get talked about as much as the other two holiday specials: it's just not as memorable or classic as Garfield's Halloween Adventure and A Garfield Christmas Special and doesn't embody its particular holiday the way those do, using it as little more than a backdrop for a couple of stories they could have done for any old special or episode of the TV show. But, despite that, as well as the very traditional art-style and character portrayals and the mostly so-so music and songs, the special still manages to be quite funny, the animation is really good and fluid, and it has the same old charm that makes all of these cartoons a joy to watch. In the end, I would advise you to check it out if you like Garfield, but not to hold it up to the standards of the more superior holiday specials.

Monday, November 18, 2019

Die Sister, Die! (The Companion) (1978)

If you couldn't tell by the number of times I mentioned that Blood Feast DVD during "Schlocktober," I was trying to go through all of the movies in that set so I could get rid of it. However, this item threw a bit of a monkey wrench in my plans because, when I re-watched it while preparing my list of reviews for Schlocktober, I realized that, rather than a horror film, it's more of a mystery/suspense thriller and, therefore, didn't fit the criteria for movies that I review during October. So, I decided to wait until now to do it, not that it's anything worth waiting for, as this is as mediocre and uninvolving a film as you can get without being completely awful. While it's competently made and the acting is fair enough, the story is not interesting in the slightest and it gets pretty boring quite quickly, even if it is only 84 minutes long. (Think of it as a movie Alfred Hitchcock would have made during his most blasé of moods.) And its inclusion in that Blood Feast set is baffling, as it's not gory in the slightest, save for a couple of brief scenes. Then again, the only truly gory movies in that set were The Undertaker and His Pals and Pieces, but still, talk about false advertising. (Speaking of false advertising, that poster is a massive lie and doesn't represent the movie at all.)

Amanda Price, an old spinster woman who lives alone in her family's large Californian house, attempts suicide one night by slashing her wrists, her second such attempt that year. However, she's saved when her brother, Edward, and the family doctor, Thorne, arrive just in time. Amanda is not at all happy about still being alive and clearly has no love for her brother. After seeing to Amanda's wounds and sedating her, Thorne talks with Edward, who suggests hiring a registered nurse to keep an eye on Amanda. While at a bar, Edward meets Esther Harper, a waitress who was once a nurse and who Edward has learned married a 90-year old man she was caring for, only to not receive the money he promised her following his death due to the intervention of the family. Edward offers her the promise of a job, which he says will net her $25,000, and while Esther initially turns him down, she later meets him at his office in town to learn more about it. Edward tells her about Amanda, that her job would be to keep him up on everything that goes on inside the house, as there are certain family secrets he doesn't want exposed, and also tells her that, should Amanda attempt suicide again, she is to let it happen. Despite Amanda's disapproval, Esther moves into the house with her and, even though she's suspicious and shrewish, the two begin to develop something of a bond, as Esther learns of the sad history involving the Price children and their relationship with their late father, James Price. Slowly but surely, Esther begins to learn that the siblings are hiding something, a morbid secret which has a connection to their other sister, Nell, who is supposed to be away. Meanwhile, Edward, wanting their family's fortune, grows tired of waiting for Amanda to commit suicide again and decides to help her along, forcing Esther to go along with him.

Randall Hood was a director who started out in the early 60's as a writer and a producer, writing the story for Final Escape, a 1964 episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (the title Alfred Hitchcock Presents carried during its final three years), and directing The Two Little Bears, a 1961 comedic fantasy, and an obscure, 1965 war film called The Touching and the Not Touching. Before he directed Die Sister, Die!, he did an episode of The Courtship of Eddie's Father and, after this film, he directed a documentary short in 1975 called A Walk in the Forest. Die Sister, Die! ended up being Hood's last film, as he died from cancer in 1976, at the age of 48, while he was in post-production on it. According to the IMDB trivia page, Clint Eastwood is rumored to have been brought in to help finish the film up, as he was friends with actor Jack Ging, who stars in the film.

Speaking of Jack Ging, he plays Edward Price, Amanda Price's brother who, despite seeming concerned for his sister's well-being at the beginning of the movie when he and Dr. Thorne thwart her suicide attempt, would like nothing better than for her to be gone so he can inherit his family's fortune, rather than the allowance he receives from Amanda. Rather than putting Amanda in an asylum, as Thorne suggests, Edward decides to hire a professional nurse to stay with her at the house... or, at least, that's what he tells the doctor. In reality, he finds Esther Harper, a former nurse who he figures is desperate enough for money to do what he tells her to. Offering her $25,000 for the job, he tells her that she's merely to live at the house, keep an eye on Amanda, and to let him know about what goes on there. Most significantly, he tells Esther that if Amanda attempts suicide again, she's to let her do it. During the time Esther stays with Amanda, Edward puts the moves on her, taking her out to dinner and seducing her, and while he insists to her at one point that he has no intention of murdering Amanda, it's soon apparent that he would do it if he needed to. While visiting with Amanda, he turns down an offer to take the house and an increase in the allowance, telling her that he wants everything and, when she brings up the idea of her being murdered, he doesn't deny that he would do it. He adds that he helped Thorne stop her suicide attempt simply to keep up the facade of him being a loving sibling and that she would be the perfect murder victim, given her history of attempted suicide. To that end, he picks up a prescription for Amanda and fills the capsules with a deadly poison. When Esther begins to have doubts about going through with letting Amanda kill herself, Edward uses his slick tongue to keep her from backing out, telling her that it's the best thing they can do, and he also becomes angry when Esther questions him about what's down in the cellar, which is where Amanda appears to want to go when she's sleepwalking. He gives Esther the pills to give to Amanda, but when Amanda ends up not taking them and disappears the next day, Edward arouses Esther's suspicions when he becomes irked at her for not giving Amanda the pills. Tailing Amanda to a church, Edward hides in a confessional and listens to her as she confesses her sins in an attempt to find out how much she knows. Unbeknownst to him, Amanda figures out who he is and ends the confession.


When they drive back to the house that night, Edward all but orders Esther to give Amanda the poisoned pills, telling her that he can't wait any longer. He goes home and, much later, gets a call from Esther telling him that Amanda is now dead. Arriving at the house, he, again, puts on the mask of being a caring brother and acts all distraught about Amanda's death, saying that he and Esther did everything they could to help her. Thinking he now has the family fortune, he's shocked when Dr. Thorne tells him that Amanda wrote a will bequeathing the bulk of it to Esther, and he tries to incriminate her as the murderer, bringing up her history in having married a rich old man and accusing her of forcing Amanda to take the poisoned pills up in her room. But then, Esther tells Edward that Amanda died by jumping off the house's roof, and Thorne also tells him that the previously locked cellar door is now open. Rushing down there, Edward finds that the decaying corpse of Nell, his and Amanda's other sibling, whom they murdered when their father gave all of his wealth over to her, has been uncovered behind the wall they hid it within and is promptly arrested. Thorne then adds that Amanda also left a full confession along with her will, while Esther tells him before he's taken away that she simply couldn't go through with their plan.

Though she's the one who inherited their father's fortune, Amanda Price (Edith Atwater) is far from happy. She's a depressed, miserly recluse who takes no joy in life whatsoever, completely despises her brother, and is so intent upon killing herself that, when she realizes she's still alive at the beginning of the film, she goes, "I'm alive... ohh, damn!" When Edward arranges for Esther Harper to stay with her, Amanda is not at all thrilled with the arrangement, as she suspects that Edward has hired her to spy on her and makes her feelings about it clear to Esther right off the bat, telling her that she's not to move anything out of place and to respect any locked cupboards that she finds about the house. Her suspicions about Esther only grow when she suspects that she and Edward are involved with each other and, when Edward blatantly admits that he will arrange for her to die rather than attempt suicide again, she believes that Esther has been hired to murder her. She feels that's a shame, as she starts to become very fond of Esther the longer she's around, and she also warns her to escape before she gets caught up in the same, unenviable existence that has taken over her and Edward. In addition to her depression and reclusive nature, Amanda also suffers from nightmares that often lead to her sleepwalking, making her way downstairs and to the cellar door. It's revealed in a dream sequence that her nightmares revolve around the guilt she feels of having contributed to her father's death. Amanda basically worshiped her father and took care of his every need when he became ill, but when her younger sister, Nell, came home, all of his affection and attention went to her. In a fit of rage over this, Amanda took a pair of shears to some roses in the house's garden that she and her father had planted together. When he learned of this, her father angrily made up a new will that gave everything to Nell and left Amanda and Edward with nothing. The two of them murdered Nell and seeing this caused their father to die, which led to the breakdown that left Amanda in the state she's now in. The day after having this nightmare where she relives her crimes, Amanda drives to a nearby church, hoping to find divine forgiveness, and goes into a confessional to attempt to purge herself of the guilt that's eating her up. But, she realizes that the "priest" she's talking to is Edward and she promptly leaves. That night, Amanda, who's now broken and resigned to killing herself, kills her pet bird before giving Esther two pieces of paper to mail in the morning and then learning about the poisoned pills Edward gave her. Having now lost all trust in Esther, Amanda attempts to take the pills and end her life, only for Esther to try to stop her. After a struggle, Amanda runs up to the house's roof and jumps off. It's later revealed that the two papers she gave to Esther were a will bequeathing everything to her and a confession pertaining to what she and Edward did to Nell.

While she certainly has more of a life than Amanda, Esther Harper (Antoinette Bower) is akin to her in that she has an unenviable past that's left her with a lot of grief. First seen working as a waitress in a bar that Edward visits, it's revealed that she was once a nurse and married a 90-year old man she was caring for, though she insists it was his doing, as she was the only person he had in his life and she wanted to give her some money as a gift. But, the family intervened after his death to ensure that didn't happen and the publicity of it wrecked her career. While she initially turns down Edward's offer of a job that will net her $25,000, she does eventually take it and meet up with Edward at his office, where she learns the details, specifically that she's not to prevent Amanda from committing suicide a third time. She may not be crazy about that part but she initially decides to go through with it, and she also starts seeing Edward romantically on the side, despite her suspicions that he may turn to murder in order to get what he wants. However, as time goes on and she gets to know Amanda, as well as learn of her family's sad history, she starts to lose her nerve about going through with it, and also starts to dislike the idea of seeing Edward, as that's not what he hired her for. Esther grows to suspect that there's some kind of taboo secret down in the house's cellar, given how Amanda often sleepwalks down to the door while having her nightmares, and realizes that Edward is now trying to murder her when he becomes so angry about her having not given Amanda the pills he'd brought to the house the night before. After the two of them track her down to the church, Edward insists that Esther give Amanda the pills that night, but instead, she stops her from taking them, telling her that she's sure they're poisoned. Amanda is so far gone that she attempts to take them anyway but, while Esther stops her, she's unable to keep her from jumping off the roof of the house to her death. When Edward shows up, acting all distraught, Dr. Thorne reveals Amanda's new will, bequeathing nearly everything to Esther, and when Edward then tries to incriminate Esther in having murdered Amanda, using her past as a motive, she tells him that Amanda jumped rather than taking the pills he rants about. He's then arrested, Esther telling him that she simply couldn't go through with it, and despite getting much of the fortune, Esther leaves the house and tells Mrs. Gonzalez, the old housekeeper, that she's never coming back.

Kent Smith, an actor from old Hollywood who was the male lead in both Cat People and The Curse of the Cat People, makes his final professional curtain call here as Dr. Thorne, the Price family's doctor. He appears at the beginning of the movie when he and Edward prevent Amanda from successfully killing herself and witnesses the hostility between the two siblings. Concerned about this, and unable to get any insight as to why Amanda would want to end her life, Thorne, fearing she'll try it again, first suggests placing her in a mental hospital but then settles for Edward's idea of hiring a professional nurse to stay with her. He appears sporadically throughout the film afterward, first becoming suspicious of Edward when he suggests doubling Amanda's sleeping pill dosage. He later makes a house-call to Amanda, where he learns of her nightmares and sleepwalking from Esther, whom he tells to keep Amanda's prescription in her possession. Thorne also tries to talk Amanda into leaving the house and going on a trip, perhaps visiting her sister Nell abroad, a suggestion she laughs at and says she just might do. Later on, as he's treating Mrs. Gonzalez, the family's housekeeper, he learns that Nell left rather suddenly after her father died and didn't stay for the funeral. Suspicious, he looks up James Price's file, checking his death certificate, and also phones a friend of his at a travel agency to see if Nell left either the day of his death or the following day. That night, he learns that there's no record of her having done so. Heading to a small cafe, Thorne meets a police lieutenant and tells him that he has a hunch Amanda may be in mortal danger due to her knowledge of a possible murder and asks him to accompany him to the Price home. They get there in time to see Esther try to stop Amanda from throwing herself off the roof of the house but to no avail. Later, when Edward shows up and acts all distraught, Thorne tells him of Amanda's will bequeathing nearly all of the fortune to Esther, which leads to Edward incriminating himself in a plot to commit murder when he rants about the poisoned pills he gave her. Once he's arrested, Thorne also informs him of the full confession Amanda wrote him up in addition to the will.

Mrs. Gonzalez (Rita Conde), the Price family's Hispanic housekeeper, is a minor character but has a fairly significant role, in that she's been with the family since all of James Price's children were kids and is the first to inform Esther of the family's troubled dynamic, mentioning the complex relationship between Price and his children and how he favored Nell over the others. She tells both Esther and Dr. Thorne of how Nell left suddenly when their father died, not staying around to attend his funeral, which prompts Thorne to look into. At the end of the movie, when Amanda is dead and Edward has been taken away for murder and attempted murder, Mrs. Gonzalez is devastated, stating that they're all gone, except for James Price, motioning towards his portrait in the house's main hallway. She says her goodbyes to Esther and says that she hopes she will come back at some point but, before she leaves, Esther flat out tells her that she never will return.


Since they're both dead, you only see James Price (Robert Emhardt) and Nell Price (Peg Shirley) during some scenes where Amanda has nightmares about what became of them but you learn enough to know that they were far from good people. James Price is said to have favored Nell over his other children, despite how fond Amanda was of him, and absolutely doted on her, giving her anything she wanted. Nell then ran off and got married, leaving Amanda to nurse and care for her father when he became ill, but then, Nell returned and Price, once again, only had eyes for her. When Amanda confessed to her that she destroyed the roses the two of them planted in the house's garden in a fit of rage, he punishes her by amending his will to where she and Edward receive nothing, while Nell gets everything. In the flashback, Nell is revealed to have been as completely vain and selfish as she was hinted at being, having no pity for Amanda for their father cutting her out of the money and not at all caring about the years Amanda spent tending to their father, only to render it all completely useless when she returned after her husband left her. Moreover, she rubbed it in Amanda's face, commenting on how their father is able to make his feelings very clear, despite how ill he is, and offers to throw her and Edward some money if they act like "good children." This led to a struggle between the two of them when Amanda attempted to take the will from Nell, culminating in her and Edward attacking her together, with Edward strangling her while Amanda bludgeoned her across the head. Their father witnessed this and the shock and horror of it led to him dying of a massive coronary, leaving Edward and Amanda behind to hide Nell's body behind a wall in the cellar and to fight amongst themselves for the family fortune.


This is going to be a very short review because Die Sister, Die! has virtually nothing to it. Like I said in the introduction, while the direction by Randall Hood is certainly competent and there is some good acting to be found here (Edith Atwater gives the best performance as Amanda and Jack Ging and Kent Smith are pretty good too), the movie is ultimately an uninteresting snorefest. The story is so slow, with the significant plot points being presented in such a ho-hum fashion, that it isn't engaging enough to get you interested in the mystery of why Amanda is so depressed and what exactly it is they're hiding in the cellar, and despite the quality of the actors, the characters, regardless of their fairly fleshed out, complex backstories, aren't good enough to make you care where the story is going. Obviously, there's a motif involving financial greed and the effects of one-sided affection, which can be easily cast aside, but the whole thing just sits there and dies. By the end of the movie, after Amanda has succeeded in killing herself, Edward has been arrested, and the full extent of the siblings' crimes has been revealed, you aren't likely to find yourself able to care in the slightest. More than likely, you'll just be glad that this ho-hum mystery thriller has finally ended.









On the technical side of things, while the direction and composition are certainly adequate, they're not enough to offset the rest of the movie's shortcomings. Other than a cliched, rippling effect for the screen during the nightmares/flashbacks that Amanda has, and a few Hitchcockian shots and touchwa here and there, particularly in the scene between Amanda and Edward in the confessional and the moment afterward where she hides from him as he leaves, Hood does little to make the movie stand out visually, with the cinematography being very ho-hum. As you can see from the screenshots, the film doesn't look all that good and I doubt there will ever be a really good-looking print of it, given how obscure and unremarkable it is. I've read so many reviews that comment on this having been intended as a TV movie, given how the frame is in that old-fashioned, square-shape meant for the television, and how there are a lot of close-ups that you would expect to see in a TV film from the 70's, but I don't know if that's really true, given some occasions of graphic violence and a few fairly strong curse words, including "bitch," "shit," and "goddamn." A lot of TV movies made around this time did get theatrical releases in foreign countries, which prompted some filmmakers to shoot such adverse content, but, on its IMDB page, Die Sister, Die! is said to have gone straight to TV in countries like Sweden, while in America, it's listed as having had a theatrical release in December of 1978. Maybe it was shot in a TV-friendly format because of a low budget or something (incidentally, when it was shown on American television, it was given the alternate title, The Companion). In any case, nothing about its look is anything to write home about and the same goes for its setting, which is dominated by the large, mansion-like house that Amanda lives in. You'd expect that place to be somewhat memorable, as it's both Amanda's own personal prison and a personification of the awful existence she and Edward were born into and can never escape, but instead, it's a typical, dime-a-dozen, old house in that "Californian gothic" style, with little to make it stand out apart from some locked cupboards here and there that Amanda tells Esther to leave alone (they're later revealed to be where Nell's personal effects are kept), an enclosed rose garden in one section, the dank cellar where Nell's body is kept (which is only featured at the end and is nothing special in the slightest), and a large painting of James Price in the main hall that seems to be constantly watching over everything. It has very little atmosphere to it, despite how much the characters insist that it does, and doesn't exude an air of claustrophobia and isolation that you would expect, given the circumstances. And the other locations in and around this small, rural community near Los Angeles where the rest of the action takes place is nothing special either.


There are a few instances of bloody violence in the film, like Amanda's slashed wrists at the beginning when she attempts suicide (the idea of slashed wrists, in general, makes me wince), the blood from which is shown to be dripping on the floor, and a fairly disturbing moment where the crazed Amanda takes a knife to her pet bird (you don't see the actual act, though, and the only piece of the aftermath you get is a little bit of blood on Esther's hand in the next scene), but the most notable and grisliest one occurs during the first nightmare Amanda has. She dreams of coming up behind Nell, ripping her head off, twirling the head around, and throwing it against the wall, where it shatters as if it were made plaster. You also see a vision of Amanda's bird walking among some severed hands on the floor, before Esther awakens her. Although they murdered Nell in a bloodless manner, you do get a look of her badly decomposed corpse when it's revealed down in the cellar at the end of the movie.





There no sequences or setpieces in the film that are all that exciting or memorable, either, and those that should, by all accounts, stick out will likely have left your brain a day or two after you've watched it. Those include the opening, where Edward and Dr. Thorne manage to break into Amanda's house and save her after she's attempted suicide, much to her dismay; the dream sequences where Amanda sees herself ripping Nell's head off and shattering it and, later, relives the night where she and Edward both killed Nell and caused their father's death as well, both of which involve Amanda sleepwalking towards the cellar door; the scene in the church where Amanda thinks she's making a confession but realizes that she's been talking to Edward when she sees his hand through the booth and spots one of his distinctive rings; the climax, where Amanda kills her pet bird and struggles with Esther when she reveals that Edward poisoned her pills, leading to a chase up to the house's rooftop, where Amanda jumps to her death; and the ending, where Edward incriminates himself in front of Thorne and discovers that they've already uncovered Nell's corpse down in the cellar. Like I said above, while some of these sequences do have aspects to them that can be rather grisly and startlingly unsettling, they're not the kind of stuff you'll remember. Even though I had watched this movie once before I revisited this year, I didn't remember any of this going back into it. I'm telling you, this movie is the definition of forgettable.

I suppose it's become almost expected and predictable of me to often write off a film's music score as being nothing special at all but, sad to say, Die Sister, Die! can't even claim to have a memorable score to pick up some of the slack of everything else, as I don't remember a single note from it. It's a shame, too, because the composer, Hugo Friedhofer, was someone who'd been scoring movies since the 30's, had won an Oscar for his work on the 1946 film, The Best Years of Our Lives, was nominated many other times, and worked with directors like Alfred Hitchcock and William Castle. In fact, this ended up being his last score, as he was so devastated by the death of Randall Hood that he decided to retire (he died only a few years after the movie was released). Shame he couldn't have gone out with something that was at least a little memorable.

I apologize if this review wasn't all that interesting but that's what happens when you try to talk about a throwaway movie like Die Sister, Die!. It may have some okay direction, pretty good performances, and some surprisingly grisly moments, but it's a blase, by-the-numbers, and ultimately forgettable mystery thriller with just a few horror touches. The story and mystery are not interesting, the characters themselves are not engaging enough to make you care about them or the plot they're caught up in, little about the movie sticks out on a technical or visual level, including the crucial setting of Amanda's large house, none of the major scenes or sequences are likely to stick with you, and the music score is in one ear and out the other. Despite some favorable IMDB user reviews, it's not surprising that the movie currently only has a 4.7 rating, as that perfectly encapsulates it: not horrible, but certainly not good or memorable at all.