AHS 1984 - Episode Three - Slashdance
Wow, the twists just keep coming, and so well too...by the end of this season this may end up as my favorite American Horror Story season, dethroning Freakshow from the top spot after all these years. Also, we have our first death among the main cast this week, in glorious fashion too, so stay tuned...or read on as it were.
Picking up from last week, the gang’s split up in an attempt to get some car keys and get out of camp as soon as possible. Unfortunately, both groups were being threatened with ominous knocking from outside of their respective cabins.
As it turns out, the knocking from outside the cabin where Brooke, Chet, Rita and Ray are trapped in is coming from Richard “The Nightstalker” Ramirez who is here to continue his primary objective of killing Brooke.
Ray turns to run off on his own and is attacked by Ramirez while Brooke and Rita escape. But he is saved by Chet, and they run off into the woods, only to themselves fall into a Punji pit, (which is a hole in the ground with spikes at the bottom, for your fun fact of the day).
Meanwhile, Montana, Xavier, and Trevor’s tormentor throws a flaming bag through the window while continuing the threatening knocking. Then Trevor stomps out the bag with his shoe to discover that it was a flaming bag of shit. As it turns out their tormentor wasn’t Mr. Jingles at all but rather a group of pranksters in Jingles costumes leading a traditional prank war on the anniversary of the Jingles Massacre.
Those pranksters not long after encounter the real Mr. Jingles who slaughters two of them but spares the third, a nerdy man reminiscent of Shelly from Friday the 13th Part 3, who espouses how the Jingles mask makes him feel like a badass, the deadliest killer in America, which appeals to Jingles ego it seems. Loved this whole bit, reminded me of a later Friday the 13th movie.
Back with Rita and Brooke, Brooke wants to use the car to go tell the police in an attempt to save everyone but Rita doesn’t want to abandon the others, and wants to wait. She acquiesces to Brooke’s request though, seemingly, before drugging her with a tranquilizer.
We then flashback to a week earlier, as it’s revealed that Rita is actually a psychology student named Donna Chambers, who is obsessed with serial killers and what makes them do what they do. She interviews Jingles and gets him to open up to her, in a nice twist, because we never see the silent killer ever speak at all, and this is just a fantastic scene. A twist on the Dr. Loomis/Michael Myers relationship from the Halloween movies.
In the end it seems that everything about Jingles’ escape and return to camp was all set up by Ms. Chambers in order to prove her point that these men aren’t irredeemably evil in a psychotic logic kind of way. We also see how she kidnapped the real Rita and took her place at camp as well.
Meanwhile Ray and Chet are still in the pit, Chet’s impaled through the shoulder and has passed out from the pain but is still alive, and Ray confesses his dark secret, that at a frat party he was witness to a drunk freshman fall down the stairs. When he was going to get rid of the body by pushing his car over a cliff, it turned out that said freshman wasn’t actually dead yet…well until the car went over, that was pretty much it for him then.
Ray then finds a way out of the pit and leaves Chet to die. He runs into Montana and company, and Trevor gives Ray the keys to his motorcycle to ride out to a payphone to call the police. Him and Brooke go to do that, only to be attacked by Richard Ramirez, who’s caught up to them.
Ray, showing his cowardice once more, rides off only to get beheaded. Ramirez swings the knife, and Ray’s head goes flying up into the air like a baseball, while the motorcycle rides off a bit, headless body still riding it, until it collapses as the head comes crashing down. He then goes after Brooke. She punches him first, but then they start making out, and she asks Richard why, “the bitch isn’t dead yet.” Once more people aren’t who they seem to be in this show, and I love it for that.
Xavier and Trevor find Chet in the pit, and rescue him. Chet sees the final Jingles prankster and accidentally kills him, thinking it was the real one. The real one shows up after that and they run to hide in the boat locker where they encounter the real Rita, whom Donna didn’t kill, as it turns out, but Mr. Jingles does though, shoving an oar down her throat in a move that’s pure Jason Voorhees. The gang sees the name on her coat, and wonders, if she’s Nurse Rita…then who are they with?
Such a great episode, this one written by James Wong, who was a writer on The X-Files in the 90’s. Very twisty and twisted, as an AHS episode should be. Can’t wait to see where they go next week.
