3 Disturbing Gems on YouTube: Reviews of ‘A Wonderful Love’, ‘The Playground’, and ‘The Card’!

01. Quand on est amoureux, c’est merveilleux (A Wonderful Love) Review

Quand on est amoureux, c’est merveilleux (A Wonderful Love) from 1999 is an engrossing short film filled with wonderful camera work, interesting smoke, and lighting, and is well directed by Fabrice du Welz. The film is both professional and dynamic.

An old lady trudges home with her bag. Lara (Édith Le Merdy) is her name. Wide-eyed as if on heavy medication she returns to her modest apartment to eat a fully uneaten birthday cake from her mini fridge.

This depressed lady plays a record. She is dressed conservatively to the point of oppression. The song plays “Without love we’re nothing at all. It’s God deep inside of us.” She hangs balloons on her wall and the music continues: “Without love it’d be the end of the world.”

The door rings. She grabs her tit repeatedly before answering.

A man in a track suit has been hired for her birthday.

In a preposterous lampshade cowboy hat and giant-sized eagle head belt and Texas tie, and outfit, he dances for this repressed woman. He turns around wearing assless chaps. She’s loving it! Sheriff badge on his cock she begins to salivate. She retreats to the kitchen.

He demands his money for dancing. She goes on about how romantic Italy is. “It’s my birthday.” she says. “I don’t give a fuck about your birthday.” he responds. She then stabs him with a fork. She drags his body down the hall. She then takes off her panties in the washroom, in lingerie. With pouting titties, she traverses down the dimly lit hallway. The man is still dying slowly and painfully. She strips nude and jumps on top of him insisting he makes love to her. (I love how YouTube hasn’t censored this in any way).

The next day Lara goes to the butcher and a milquetoast sob with two giant lumps on his head is commanded to get her two ox tongues (One lump? No two.) He looks at her and she fleetingly looks alluringly back at him. They are two total misfits. Is destiny calling? But first we return to Lara’s apartment for a reality check. She is propping up the dead stripper as her boyfriend, for dinner at the table. He’s not doing so well. I guess the other tongue was for his dinner. Rotting further still they watch a movie as she stares with a deranged expression on her face.

Meanwhile, Lumphead, an old school metaphor for dumb, due to being hit too many times (again for usually being dumb to begin with) rides his scooter around town happy a girl noticed his goofy ass.

Lara washes her dead stripper in the tub now. Getting no further to the truth of his situation. Lumpy sings outside her window of wanting impossible love.

Lara gets less amused as the dead stripper is less and less attentive to her, um, needs. She gets especially upset he won’t take her to Italy… naturally. The dead male stripper as a metaphor for an uninterested relationship I think is safe to draw from this. Think Catherine Breillat’s Romance X meets Weekend at Bernie’s.

She rushes to the butcher for more tongue. He’s about to close. She confesses her new ‘relationship’ isn’t going too well. Lumpy appears from the back counter and chimes in with “He doesn’t know what he’s missing.” Coming in for the deadman rebound!

Lara tries again with sex workers. This time hiring a sexy blond hooker and a much shorter skinny pimp who are both at her apartment (which realistically must be stinking like Damher’s apartment by now). But the skinny pimp does remark on the smell. On point, lil fink that he is.The super sexy blond hooker disrobes — full tits on YouTube. She gets closer to the dead stripper in the dark corner… “No! He just likes to watch.” Lara grabs the hooker’s tits. They kiss. Skinny pimp beats the hooker for being a slut? Okay Belgium! Lara goes for a walk and Lumpy appears and offers to deliver meat to her place wherever she wants. Freud would be proud. She agrees they’ll do what they must and wants tongues delivered promptly tomorrow (I bet she does!).

She vacuums up blood for his visit. (Can you do that?!)

Neighbors bark complaints about the stink. Releasing their dog ‘Adolphe’ to investigate to no avail.

Lumphead with bowtie comes to deliver tongue. She accepts him.

Fin.

02. ‘The Playground’ The Ray Bradbury Theater (1985) | Season 1 | Episode 2

During covid I was watching a lot of subpar TV like an absolute zombie, from a particular era which included Alienation (mind-numbing), Mash (sub-mental), Highway to Heaven (consistent teary swells) and of course, The Twilight Zone (‘80s version), and somehow The Ray Bradbury Theatre.

You know… Ray Bradbury? Antique elevator in the historic downtown Los Angeles, Pan American building, The Bradbury Building, South Broadway; site of original Blade Runner, and countless other films and television? There’s a documentary somewhere about all the movies that this apartment has been in. There is Ray Bradbury with his room full of oddities.

“The Ray Bradbury Theatre” is ribbon typed on a crisp white sheet of paper. “Exactly one-half exhilaration, one half terror.” We shall see Mr. Bradbury!

Sepia distorted swirling footage of a playground with painfully melancholic synth music and the sounds of a playground grinding my will to live and piquing my curiosity at reliving childhood nightmares all at once. As a victim of bullying as a child I am already squirming. This episode is titled “The Playground.” Great. Why am I doing this to myself?

Starring William Shatner. Good.

Young Shatner is trapped in a schoolyard playground in a jungle gym that resembles more Mad Max’s Thunderdome than a place of play. Kids are hitting the bars like inmates during a riot. The kids tear and strike at young Shat.

Melting into old Shatner he’s still traumatized as a middle-aged man. He wakes from his living nightmare to play lizards with his son, Stephen. The mother is dead, and the aunt is helping raise Stephen. She says, “He needs friends his own age to adapt to get along.” “I’ll take him places,” Shatner affirms.

“How many times can you take him to the zoo when there’s a playground just down the street?” she retorts. “You know I don’t want him going to that place.” Shatner claps back. It’s total PTSD. Anniversaries and scene of the crime are no-nos.

“He’ll never learn to fit in and adapt just like you haven’t.” the aunt says to Shatner. Damn. Cold X. Little Stephen asks cutely “Please Dad could we go to the Playground down the street?” “Tonight? Alright.” He reluctantly concedes.

Knickknack paddy wack is sung menacingly by children. And he’s the “this old man came rolling home…” back to HELL!

Shatner investigates the old playground from his haunted childhood and it’s old, spooky, and dangerous looking. All metal bars. Creaking steel. No plastic. It’s lit like a danger beware commercial from the ‘80s. Back when kids would play together after dark. Man, that was a very long time ago now.

The frantic motions of the kids start to increase to injuries and into intentional malice and finally and suddenly transforms them into hideous monsters that with the poor quality of the un-remastered YouTube kind of scarred me. This legit caught me off guard for a moment late at night. Cool!

Shatner begs the kids to stop as they are about to attack one kid who is being assaulted en masse. The kids all eerily run away. The bullied victim remains, dirty, humiliated, and bruised. He reaches out his hand to him. The victim just stares at him hopelessly and leaves. The swing and merry-go-round just perpetuate a haunted second from the kid’s momentum.

The bully of Shatner’s youth watches him from the shadows of the playground.

Back at home, “I don’t like that playground. It’s a menagerie full of animals.” Shatner says. The aunt is nonplussed at his pussy-ass demeanor. She reminds him he promised to take lil Stephen there tonight. He looks at her hatefully for reminding him.

He takes Stephen to the playground. The merry-go-round creaks as kids slowly rotate and stare darkly at Stephen and Shatner “Charlie.”

“Dad, now?” Stephen asks. “No, shh!” He waves Stephen to wait until the coast is clear by his petrified analysis. All the kids just continue to move slowly all the while staring expectedly at Charlie and Stephen like they were dinner or something. I’m sorry but the reflection off one kid’s glasses on the merry-go-round as she stares blankly at them absolutely terrifies me.

This scene. It’s the scene! “Dad, I want to play.” Stephen insists. Shatner just scopes it out waiting for the demon kids to kill him first. The lighting on and selection of these kids in this playground is 100% perfect and frightening in my subjective opinion.

Shatner’s young bully ghost still resides in the playground beckoning him as “Charlie” and descends the three-swirl slide, disappearing on the third swirl altogether.

“Let’s play tag Charlie. You’re it!” The kids are now monstrous demons, animals, and they approach Charlie. It is scary. Maybe I’m just of that era. You tell me how it hits you! The wolf girl? C’mon don’t lie! The faces. The laughter. No thank you!

“Come back soon Charlie!” The ghost bully goads.

The next day Shatner complains to the aunt: “Mean little faces, green jelly from their noses.” “He’ll be starting school soon. He needs to join the real world.” The aunt claims. “If that’s the real world he’ll never survive it. I wish there was a way to stand in for him. Take the shots for him.” replies Shatner. “You can’t protect him forever.” “I can try.” You get it.

Walking home from work his aunt has Stephen at the playground. Charlie is panicked. She assures him Stephen is fine. And he does seem to be adapting well. It’s Shatner’s fear at issue, not Stephen’s. Ralph was/is Shatner’s bully’s name. Depressing synth just buries me alive as Charlie recalls his bully Ralph tearing his young innocent world apart. He chases him home all the way to his front door. (Old school bully styles!)

“The more they punished me, the deeper inside I went. I can’t just stand there and do nothing.”

Again he returns to the freaky, dead leaf covered playground AT NIGHT. He makes a plea with his bully’s ghost… please leave my son alone! “Tomorrow I’m going to bring Stephen here. I want you to leave him alone.” This is so sad and haunted. This is literally me raising a son now who’s closing in on kindergarten soon.

Ralph appears and throws a stick into a lightbulb. Charlie/Shatner runs away.

He finally does take Stephen who just repeats “I’m the daddy, I’m the papa,” thus inhabiting his father’s mind and protecting his father from reliving his nightmarish past. The kids at the playground pause and stare at Stephen. Charlie/Shatner is scared to let go. Little Stephen says to Shatner “You are me. You are Steve.” Shatner repeats the mantra, and it is so. Psychological transference is complete.

Charlie/Shatner confronts Ralph by insisting he is Stephen and visa versa with Stephen insisting he is his daddy and papa. This is enough to fool the bully and the evil kids over whom he holds sway.

Charlie/Shatner blurs into becoming his son Stephen after swirling down the slide. “Welcome back to the playground Charlie!” says Ralph.

All the evil kids chase Little Stephen now (who is psychologically Shatner) and Shatner wanders off to play unaffected because he is his son… it makes perfect sense the way they filmed it.

Little Stephen is torn at by the evil kids in the playground. Stephen says “Go on” to his dad, who, child-like now, just walks away nonchalantly. Stephen has tears in his eyes and the kids again turn to demons as Shatner waves goodbye metaphorically to his son. Ralph laughs. The kids tear little Stephen apart.

In-tense.

03. ‘The Card’ The Twilight Zone (1987) | Season 2 | Episode 32a

Listening to that opening of the 1980’s The Twilight Zone repeatedly during the 3+ weeks I was “dying” from covid was a very fitting theme song for the period. With nothing better to do I listened to all the ‘80s Twilight Zones. They were better than I remembered overall. There I was, lying on my back, “dying.” I couldn’t even watch most of the time as it required too much energy to hold the phone up and literally watch it. But I was able to make a few exceptions when my energy was built up at times and this was one of those occasions.

Amongst these episodes a gem was exhumed from an untoward memory that haunted me from years ago. There was a show I remembered in my childhood that I hadn’t seen in 30 years! But I couldn’t find it, but I recalled it was about a woman whose family members kept disappearing. First the cat. Then the dog. Then the children one at a time. Then her husband. I just had this vague memory and it disturbed me greatly as a child. What if my family just started disappearing mysteriously? Abandoning me?!

Under this vagueness I wrongly conflated with it Salem’s Lot because I imagined some vampire hiding behind lamp poles from a hidden dimension, waving at me thru the screen, and snatching victims in broad daylight and feeding off them in a hidden, darker place, out of sight.

This all was a filler for some show that I barely recalled except for the Ten Little Indian premise of disappearing familial tribe members one at a time.

So low and behold I found it in the 1980s The Twilight Zone in an episode called “The Card.” With an innocuous title like that no wonder I didn’t remember it right away. It’s not exactly iconic like Terror at 20,000 Feet or The Monsters are Due on Maple Street.

It’s about a woman named Linda. My mother’s name. Kinda looked like her too back in the day. And she obtains a credit card but fails to review the fine print. She fails to make payments and this evil company steals her cat and next the dog. Not with an animal catcher but magically disappears them altogether from history. And her whole family gets amnesia like the cat and dog never existed. She goes outside looking for the dog and that neighborhood and that empty street burned into my mind. As soon as I saw that street, I knew I had found my memory holed show.

She doesn’t learn her lesson and misuses the credit card again to buy an appliance and a repair to her car. She doesn’t make the stringent 7-day term payment. And for this they take her baby, empty crib, and now she starts to freak out to her husband. Her husband has never heard of the children, all of them. Her husband is played by dickless “Yes this man has no dick,” “Tell me you got that,” William Atherton (Ghostbusters, Die Hard). His name is Brian. Spelled like my name. Jesus, this is creeping me out, like it was meant for me!

She complains to the card company, and it was at this point a repressed memory came back to me of my mother and father arguing about credit card bills she would rack up in the ‘80s, shopaholic style and literally I told my mom she was just like the woman in the show. Not amused! This was an eerie experience to recall all this. A personal experience. Pardon my indulgence down memory shame lane.

So Linda goes to the card company and begs for mercy. They explain it’s all in the fine print and there’s nothing they can do. She fails again and this time her child disappears while shopping at the mall in the clothes department with those old rotating circular merry-go-round, clothes racks. Think Crazy Heart with Jeff Bridges. I think I conflated this scene with real memories and this show. It never happened. I know this article is turning into a personal goddamn Captain Ahab/Momento type thing, or something, and I guess that’s how these personal searches go, hunting for memories like the White Whale. Or like Alice chasing the White Rabbit even more aptly.

She asks neighbors where her kids are. It’s A Wonderful Life in reverse. It’s a terrible life. Your kids never existed you crazy lady.

They give her one last chance to make a payment and her kids are alive in a hallway behind a glass wall. She offers them a cheque to buy back her children. But if the cheque doesn’t clear she’ll really be sorry!

She gets home, and her husband cancelled the cheque on the joint account. (Man, the days before cell phones really could fuck a couple up). And like that. Poof. Car is gone. Furniture gone. Back to the Future style. Her husband vapes from the photograph. And finally, they disappear her car, husband, and then her house vanishes like something out of The Amityville Horror.

If you’re searching for that fear or dread of abandonment and disappearance of loved ones, I think this is an under-utilized story device that is very well done here.

Precursor to child abduction is dizzy parents who take their eyes off their children. And while this isn’t that kind of a story it evokes the terror of “Where did my family disappear to?” Very well.

Financial irresponsibility is a serious issue, back then, and now. Financial literacy can be the key to a stable marriage. Trust and knowledge are crucial. I recommend this disturbing little find, and I hope even without my personal story with this episode it brings you a little terror of potentially losing a loved one. (I really do.)

Quand on est amoureux, c’est merveilleux
AKA: A Wonderful Love

Directed by: Fabrice du Welz
Written by: Romain Protat, Fabrice du Welz
Produced by: Vincent Tavier
Cinematography by: Benoît Debie
Editing by: Fabrice du Welz
Music by: Philippe Malempré
Special Effects by: Esther Wauters
Cast: Édith Le Merdy, Philippe Résimont, Jean-Luc Couchard, Michel Crémadès, Noël Godin
Year: 1999
Country: Belgium
Language: French (English Subtitles)
Colour: Colour
Runtime: 23min

Studio: Canal + Belgique, Todo Films

‘The Playground’ The Ray Bradbury Theater

Directed by: William Fruet
Written by: Ray Bradbury, Ray Bradbury, Mark Massari
Produced by: Seaton McLean
Cinematography by: Mark Irwin
Editing by: Ralph Brunjes
Music by: Domenic Troiano
Special Effects by: Marlene Aarons
Cast: Ray Bradbury, William Shatner, Keith Dutson, Kate Trotter, Mirko Malish, Steven Andrade, Barry Flatman
Year: 1985
Country: USA
Language: English
Colour: Colour
Runtime: 28min

Studio: Atlantis Films

‘The Card’ The Twilight Zone

Directed by: Bradford May
Written by: Rod Sterling, Michael Cassutt
Produced by: Harvey Frand
Cinematography by: Bradford May
Editing by: Noel Rogers
Music by: William Goldstein
Cast: Susan Blakely, Virginia Kiser, William Atherton, Ken Lerner, Beverly Eilbacher, Coleby Lombardo, Zachary Bostrom
Year: 1987
Country: USA
Language: English
Colour: Colour
Runtime: 22min

Studio: Persistence of Vision Films, CBS Entertainment