Gulliver's Travails

“Battleground” episode of the Nightmares and Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King

Directed by Brian Henson
Written by Richard Christian Matheson
Starring William Hurt

Please forgive the title of this essay. With the last name of "Swift," I just couldn't pass it by.

Why doesn't William Hurt get more leading roles? His performance in the “Battleground” episode of the Nightmares and Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King miniseries which premiered last night ( 7/12/2006 ) gives testament to his abilities as one of the subtlest yet most emotive actors working today. Hurt was a very hot property in the 80's, starring in major studio films like Altered States, The Big Chill, Children of a Lesser God , and Kiss of the Spider Woman , which earned him an Oscar after several nominations. By the 90's his career had cooled – I have no idea why – and he stopped getting leads. But unlike many in this position, he chose to take smaller roles in strong films rather than lead roles in poorer ones. This has finally brought him some deserved recognition with his Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for A History of Violence .

The lead in a TNT Nightmares may not be a career saver, but Hurt certainly makes what could otherwise be a dull program rather thrilling to watch. The first 15 minutes, which are plot set-up before getting into the main action, are actually the best. The plot itself is simple: Hurt plays an assassin who kills the head of a toy company. The next day a box of toy soldiers is sent to him, and they come to life and try to kill him in his apartment. The motif of dolls coming to malevolent life is so old (see my essay in BOFFM #2 on Puppet Master vs Demonic Toys for a brief history of the genre) that there can be little of excitement in the story itself, and it is the execution that counts.

Hurt, along with director Brian Henson and writer Richard Christian Matheson (son of horror master Richard Matheson), makes the assassin John Renshaw a man of meticulous control who is compelling to watch. Renshaw attends to smallest detail in crippling the security system and the guards at the toy factory. He coldly dispatches the company head, pausing in his efficiency only to examine a photo, signed by the company owner's mother, and to take a ballerina figurine as a souvenir of the hit. He then takes a flight home to a top-floor, luxury apartment that is coldly, if stylishly furnished. He shuts out the world and the possibility of conversation with his iPod. This last touch reminds me of Charles Bronson's assassin in The Mechanic who listened to classical music as he brainstormed the complicated details of his killings.

Hurt's Renshaw is so controlled, in fact, that he speaks to no one, and the entire episode is without dialogue. Renshaw's lack of language makes him a toy soldier himself, an automaton without full human characteristics. But as an actor, Hurt carries the story with facial expressions alone. When a woman next to him on the plane taps his shoulder and motions to ask for a stick of his gum, he looks at her with what could either be a blank expression or predatory menace. He manages to convey both at once, and it is quite stunning. A wave of nausea passes like a cloud over his face when he hears the musak version of Mozart on an elevator. The viewers can see that the handwriting on the address of the box of soldiers is the same as on the photo signed by the company owner's mother. We watch Hurt run through a gamut of emotions as he recognizes it. And when he finally confronts the toy soldiers that have come to life to exact revenge for the toymaker's murder, Hurt manages to delay his astonishment as a man of action. It is as the soldiers gain the upper hand that Hurt gradually communicates signs of Renshaw's crumbling sanity.

A little touch that must be mentioned is the glass case of souvenirs that Renshaw keeps in his apartment. As he places the ballerina inside, we see a money clip, eyeglasses, a harmonica, the kind of doodads rich men keep on their desks – all souvenirs of previous hits. On top of the glass case is a vicious looking doll. It is a visual reference to Trilogy of Terror , the 1975 made for TV movie that had a sequence featuring this very African fetish doll, which came to life to terrorize a woman played by Karen Black. That movie was written by Richard Matheson the elder. It's a nice tribute to a great writer by a son who in this episode has done work that would have made his father proud. The show is lean and well-paced, and it makes no heavy-handed moralist statements. The actions do all the speaking. This is the same quality that made Matheson the elder's many Twilight Zone scripts so much superior to Rod Serling's own very preachy episodes. I hope it is also indicative of where Nightmares and Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King is going as a miniseries. As it continues to air over the next 3 weeks, I will keep an eye on it.

by Nemo Swift
web-only review