Main cast: Todd Allen Durkin (Dino), Veronika Schmidt (Melissa), Michael Pantone (Charlatan), Carole Shoemaker (Ida Belson), and Rip Torn (Narrator)
Director: TS O’Kelly
Cat lady and spinster Ida Belson has been living in her home for 33 years, but technically, she shares the place with her landlord. Her old landlord had passed on, leaving the property to his son Dino. Unfortunately for our dear, Dino is the brat that makes You’ll Wake the Dead a kind of spiritual sequel to Consumers: he’s written like what some out-of-touch old codger would assume the youth of today is like—uncouth, directionless, lazy, and malicious. He and his girlfriend Melissa blast rock music at full volume, forcing Ida to constantly try to tell them to turn down the volume.
Dino’s lifelong dream is to own a dance club, but he needs a collateral to persuade the bank to give him a loan. He would love to sell this house, but his father had given Ida a permanent lease at a fixed rate. The only way he can sell the house, therefore, is if Ida would willingly move out…
Alas, even getting Ida’s cats hauled away (she’s keeping way more of them than is legally permitted, heh) isn’t going to stop Chloe Shoemaker from leaving this episode or uttering her lines like a normal person. Ms Shoemaker slowly enunciates every syllable of every word she has to say, in a way that is completely devoid of any emotion other than malfunctioning android realness. Why does Ghost Stories keep hiring actresses that do this? Did they blow all their budget on lead actors that can actually act halfway decently, and had to round up their female cast members from the local watering hole or something?
Anyway, since Ida won’t move, clearly causing her weak heart to fail is the better option…
You’ll Wake the Dead is a terrible episode. Aesthetically, it seems to be aiming for the 1980s kind of horror-comedy vibes, but the script is awful, the cast performance is awful, and the special effects are especially awful. While Dino and Melissa are written to be embarrassingly one-dimensional, stereotypical morons, Ida isn’t any better as the dumb old lady that is apparently so hapless that she just has to let herself be subjected to the indignities inflicted on her by the two brats.
The stupidest thing here is how, when the two main characters could have driven off in triumph, they decided to basically commit suicide by doing something so indescribably moronic that I can’t bear to even mention it here. Yes, unlike Consumers, the brats here get what is coming to them, but that comeuppance is triggered by such stupidity that I can’t find any satisfaction in it at all.
The entire episode feels like a badly done advertisement for whatever rock music they showcase throughout, but given how absurd and pointless the whole thing is, I’m not sure if people would be rushing to get such music.
