Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Night of Terror #20: 'Tim & Eric's Bedtime Stories' - "Hole"



If you get right down to it, good horror stories are usually about taking the world we live in and accept as "normal" and distorting it by magnifying its dangers, but not so much that it's completely unrecognizable. In that context Tim & Eric have quite possibly been in the horror business from the get-go, but not until Tim & Eric's Bedtime Stories have they made the connection between their brand of comedy and the horror genre quite so explicit.

I watched four episodes of Tim & Eric's Bedtime Stories yesterday, and I'm selecting "Hole" as the one that's the most Halloween appropriate, although really any one of them would have done just as well. As far as that whole "distortion" theory goes, "Hole" takes the commonplace anxiety associated with social interaction with an overzealous stranger and takes it to first absurd then to terrifying places. The final shot might be the most disturbing thing I've seen this month, except maybe Bob Geldof shaving off his eyebrows and chest hair in The Wall.

Favorite things:

- Eric's hair. Tim & Eric are the masters of hair comedy, and this is a prime example. He's the straight man in this story, and his hair is wacky, while Tim the psycho's hair is pretty normal. Brilliant!

- Ridged chips.

- In this universe there's apparently a sports team called the "Fish." Or is there?



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