Season: 2
Episode: 2
Original Airdate: October 8, 2011
Director: Peter Deluise
Last time on The Haunting Hour! What's this? The Haunting Hour took the plot of Last Action Hero and actually made something good out of it?! Yes! Yeah! Finally! Someone made this plot live up to its full potential! Woo hoo!!!
Nathan and Lisa get sucked inside the B-movie to rescue John and stop the evil mad scientist Dr. Mangle from releasing his creation on the real world. In the end, John decides to stay in the movie. Lisa and Nathan decide to leave him and go back to the real world as John wanted it this way. As the Tick Monster appears, John just quotes "fade to black" and the episode ends.
Like the first part of the episode, the special effects are still really good. There's a brief arc where John starts to turn into the tick monster. During this arc, there's a scene where John watches his friends roam around his room looking for him. When we see John in this scene, we see another part of his transformation that's extremely disgusting to look at. They basically take the tick costume and cover it in slime, add a bit of a roughed up looked to it, and basically make it as grotesque as possible. This part, while not vomit inducingly gross, made me cringe and feel a bit sick.
The other thing I enjoyed about the episode was Dr. Mangle. Yeah I know I should've brought him up in the previous review but better late than never I guess. Anyway, the actor who plays Mangle seems to really be hamming it up. I mean, there's barely a hint of subtlety with the character! Given the setting that he is in though, the performance doesn't feel out of place. This may also enhance what was already a pretty good episode.
Overall, Creature Feature (Part 2) was a great follow up to an already awesome episode! Not only that, but it makes for one hell of a season opener! It had just the right amount of camp value but not too much to where it becomes unenjoyably overwhelming.
Overall Grade: A
I hadn't thought about Last Action Hero, but you made a good point. Your description of the transformation scene reminded me of an article I read about old movie special effects. For instance, to show someone turning into a werewolf, they'd stop filming, add some yak hair to the actor's face, start filming again, and repeat the process. It would be a scary thing to realize that not only were you transforming, but you were transforming in the style of an old movie. On the plus side, I read that in old black and white movies they used chocolate syrup as fake blood. Yum!
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