She is the wife of wealthy Dave Rainey, who is confined to an iron lung.Īs Dave suspected, Cindy was having an affair with a man named Arnold Barrett, and she had planned to kill him-assumingly to continue the affair and live off her husband's millions. I kind of want a Riabouchinska-like ventriloquist dummy, especially because her eyes open and close.Cindy Rainey The evil Cindy Rainey Cindy Rainey (Joanna Moore 1934-1997) was the main villainess from "No Pain," episode 5.05 of Alfred Hitchcock Presents (airdate October 25, 1959). With less caricatured and more realistic features and movements, she has the beautiful but uncanny stylization of a BJD. But Riabouchinska, who recalls more of a figurehead or even the arch, aerodynamic features of a first-edition Barbie, successfully differentiates herself from punching bag dummies. I don't think I've ever conceived of a ventriloquist dummy that was anything but a comic punching bag. I've gone my entire life hating all ventriloquist dummies because of their huge lower jaws and spinning, scrawny necks. In passing, I must say that the prop masters outdid themselves with Riabouchinska. Rains' naturalistic style makes his character's mind transparent enough for the viewers to feel sympathy toward him, even if we don't understand why he is so attached to Riabouchinska. Rains' performance really sells this one it's clear that the ventriloquist obviously has SERIOUS problems, but Rains plays his passion for Riabouchinska and his alarm at Riabouchinska's truth-telling in a rather understated way, as if the ventriloquist is reacting to another person. In the end, when Riabouchinska dies, her silence becomes the tragic marker of a man who, in dividing himself in two, ended up breaking himself. Riabouchinska represents the best qualities in the ventriloquist - his honesty, devotion and creativity - but, by externalizing them in an idol-like figure, the ventriloquist divorces himself from his strengths, as if he has cut out his moral compass. I actually find the Alfred Hitchcock Presents treatment of out-of-control dolls much more horrifying and heartbreaking. In a Twilight Zone ep, the doll would be some magical spirit of righteous truth-telling, but, in Alfred Hitchcock Presents, it's very obvious that the ventriloquist is talking for her you can see his lips moving slightly when he's especially perturbed. Matters are complicated by his obsessive love for his dummy Riabouchinska and Riabouchinska's irrepressible honesty as evidence mounts against her owner. It stars Claude Rains as a ventriloquist suspected of murdering a juggler who used to perform with him. Since I love TV treatments of dolls, I especially like And So Died Riabouchinska. This suggestive study of creeping delusions is made all the more disturbing by Vera Myles' profoundly monotone, numb performance as a woman who has overdosed on pain. After he brains the guy with a wrench, the man and his wife are driving along in the car when his wife identifies another man as her assailant, leaving her husband with the OH SHIT!!! realization that his wife's attacker lives inside her head, rather than outside. For example, the pilot, Revenge, features a man performing a vigilante beat-down on the man in the grey suit who supposedly assaulted his mentally disturbed wife.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |