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DVD Tuesday: Check into spooky hospital The Kingdom!
DVD Tuesday: Twin Peaks meets ER in The Kingdom -- check your preconceptions with the triage nurse!
So, I'm still getting over the horror that was Pathology, Heroes star Milo Ventimiglia's ill-advised foray into hospital horror. But I realized the perfect antidote was on my DVD shelf: Lars Von Trier's The Kingdom (1994).
Set in a vast, crumbling medical center built on a noxious swamp, Von Trier's haunted soap opera inspired Stephen King's short-lived Kingdom Hospital. But don't hold that against it: Everything Kingdom Hospital did wrong, The Kingdom does exactly right.
The huge cast of characters includes arrogant Swedish neurosurgeon Dr. Stig Helmer, newly arrived at the Kingdom with a stained professional reputation and a seethining hatred for all things Danish; would-be psychic Mrs. Drusse, who makes real contact for the first time in the hospital's elevator; junior Dr. Krogen, the go-to guy who secretly lives in the hospital's basement and supplies everything from medical equipment to pharmaceutical cocaine; staff chief Dr. Moesgaard, who tries to combat the Kingdom's bad karma with a cheery feel-good campaign; and Judith, whose unnatural pregnancy is intimately connected with the ghostly manifestations oozing out of the hospital's shadows.
The Kingdom glides effortlessly between black humor and bleak horror: The slowly emerging stories of Mrs. Drusse's little-girl ghost and the living child permanently damaged by Helmer's carelessness are equally haunting in entirely different ways. Moesgaard's clueless morale-building efforts wouldn't be out of place in The Office, and yes, there are hijinks involving body parts from the pathology lab.
I hope I've piqued your curiosity sufficiently that you won't be put off by the fact that it's in Danish and is more than four hours long (it was originally broadcast as a TV miniseries). Trust me: The 93-minute Pathology felt much, much longer. I couldn't wait for it to be over, and I was sorry to see The Kingdom end.
Things to Consider:
Dark Shadows pioneered the mix of soap opera/horror, and for a long time it was the only game in town.
Then Twin Peaks, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Supernatual, New Amsterdam and others picked up the mentle. Do you like the mix of human drama and spooky stuff, or would you rather keep them apart?
How about humor and horror -- not spoofs, but movies like An American Werewolf in London that are both genuinely funny and genuinely horrifying?
Send your movie questions to FlickChick.
See Maitland McDonagh and Ken Fox review this week's new flicks on the Movie Talk vodcast.
Previously in DVD Tuesday:
2008:
M
Touch of Evil
Bonnie and Clyde
Atonement
When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth
Rififi
Michael Clayton
Network
The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T
Shoot 'Em Up
Freeway
A Mighty Wind
2007:
It's a Wonderful Life
Waitress
Laura
Cop
All About Eve
Severance
Sweet Smell of Success
Daughters of Darkness
The Crazies
Blade Runner
Zodiac
Manhunter
A Simple Plan
Taxi Driver
Renaissance
Blowup
Hot Fuzz
300
Ace in the Hole
Eyes Without a Face
Apocalypto
Citizen Kane
La Jetée
Gone in 60 Seconds (1974)
Bob le Flambeur
Near Dark
Perfect Blue
Pan's Labyrinth
Les Girls
The Girl Who Knew Too Much
The Queen
Expresso Bongo
I'm Not Scared
Shocking Grindhouse Double Bill! — Scanners and The Candy Snatchers
Don't Look Now
Re-Animator
Casino Royale
Pi
The Prestige
13 Tzameti
The Departed
Suspiria
Kiss and Make Up
Kiss Me Deadly
The Long Good Friday
What Alice Found
The Devil's Backbone
The Descent
The Devil Wears Prada
Pandora's Box
The Thief and the Cobbler
Nashville
Panic in the Streets/Jack Palance Interview
The Pusher Trilogy
Scarface
Slither
Sunset Blvd.
In Cold Blood
Brick
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Apr 28, 2008 6:11 PM
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The Kingdom is absolutely legendary here in Scandinavia. It's almost like it's general knowledge to know the Kingdom, like it's Hamlet or Apocalypse Now.
The actor that played Stig Helmer, Ernst-Hugo Järegård, was one of the most famous Swedish actors of the 20th century, you could say that he was the Peter O'Toole of Sweden.
There's a famous line in The Kingdom, when Stig Helmer, supremely annoyed with all things Danish, says "Danskjävlar!" (which approximately translated becomes "Danish bastards!", or "Danish f***ers!", or something along those lines) which has become incredibly famous in Sweden. Any time we say something even slightly negative about or dear neighbor, you can count on someone exclaiming (in Ernst-Hugo Järegårds deep southern dialect) "Danish bastards!".
Really, it's an utterly fantastic miniseries, everyone should go and see it. I haven't seen Stephen King's remake (or whatever it is), and I frankly have no desire to either, there is absolutely no way in hell that it comes close to the original.
BTW, there's a sequel, The Kingdom II, which takes up just where the first one left off. It's the same cast and it's still Lars von Trier.
Now, as for supernatural elements in TV-series, I'm going to give a really lame, cop-out answer: I think that, just as with every other kind of series, it completely depends on the creative talent. Buffy and Angel are as good as they are because of Joss Whedon. The fact that they are supernatural are incidental to the fact that they are great; he could direct a kitchen-sink drama and it would be spectacular. He just likes Sci-Fi/Fantasy, so that's what he does.
Theodore Sturgeons adage comes to mind: when asked at a science fiction convention by a journalist if "90% of science fiction is pure garbage", the curmudgeonly old writer said:
"Sure, 90% of science fiction is crap. But then again, 90% of everything is crap!"
That's kinda my opinion. If you make a great show, I don't care whether it's Paul Greengrass-style hand-camera realism, or whether animated goblins run around on screen. I'm fine with either one 
(I said it was a really cop-out of an answer, didn't I  )
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Apr 29, 2008 1:35 AM
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Many writers in tv and other areas use science fiction, horror and such as a way to deal with social issues. Rod Serling did when he created The Twilight Zone. The show gave him an the opportunity to communicate social messages in a more veiled context so that the issues would escape censorship.
Joss Whedon's shows were about issues with life in general. Trust, betrayal, growing up, relationships between sexes and races were in all of his stories. Whedon's Buffy The Vampire Slayer series has been used as a basis for many discussions about issues between male/female, parents/children, and good/evil. Good writing with moral questions hidden beneath demons and heros are Whedon's best work.
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Apr 29, 2008 9:20 AM
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This Kingdom thing sounds terrifically creepy - I'll have to check it out.
As for me, give me humor mixed with drama mixed with horror - I loved it in Buffy, and The X-Files, and just personally I think it's been perfected in Supernatural, albeit in a more naturalistic sense than something like Buffy or Angel. Very few programs have me screaming in terror and then crying over the characters in the space of an hour the way Supernatural does.
In terms of movies, I love a great horror comedy, like Shaun of the Dead, or Slither. Something that makes me shriek with laughter and then with terror is definitely on my top 100 list.
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Apr 29, 2008 12:26 PM
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Oskar -- Thanks for backing me up! I hope that between us we can turn some non-Scandinavians onto The Kingdom. Before writing this column I popped it into my DVD, thinking I'd watch a few minutes as a refresher. It hooked me all over again and I wound up watching more than half before I had to turn it off and write.
kudagirl -- I totally agree and never miss a chance to plug Wheedon's Serenity and Firefly. Thanks for providing one.
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Apr 30, 2008 12:01 PM
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