Thu 21 Apr 2016
A Sci-Fi TV Review: THE RAY BRADBURY THEATER “The Crowd” (1985).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , TV Science Fiction & Fantasy[5] Comments
THE RAY BRADBURY THEATER. “The Crowd.” HBO, season 1, episode 3 (2 July 1985). Nick Mancuso, R. H. Thomson, David Hughes. Hosted and based on the story by Ray Bradbury. Director: Ralph L. Thomas.
This one’s a ghost story, and like most ghost stories, it doesn’t make a lick of sense. It’s slickly done, with high production values, and there are some appreciably spooky moments. But it didn’t work for me in any way, shape, or form, and I can’t tell you too much as to why without issuing a Spoiler Alert, so consider it done.
The idea is that a survivor of a near deadly automobile incident can’t figure out how such a loud noisy crowd of people formed around the scene of the accident so quickly. (The tires hadn’t even stopped spinning.) Probing further, he discovers that the same crowd of individuals were seen (via videotape) at many other such accidents, most of them fatal. Against the advice of a good friend, he makes the mistake of trying to find out more.
To me, with a logical mind, the question is not how these crowds of ghostly origin form so quickly, but why. I don’t remember how it’s replied to in the story, but this 27 minute cable TV episode answers with mirrors, atmosphere, glitz and special effects. It doesn’t go anywhere near a reason and relies instead on a knock-em-out finale that’s there for shock value only.
April 21st, 2016 at 3:48 pm
As I suspected, Bradbury changed the ending from the one of the original story. I did some looking around on the Internet, and found this fairly good assessment of the two:
http://home.wlv.ac.uk/~in5379/rbt/03crowd/crowd.htm
April 21st, 2016 at 4:58 pm
I don’t recall this one. The series did a good one man episode of “The Playground” with William Shatner, and I recall Patrick Macnee hamming it up in another episode. I think they did a decent version of “The Veldt” as well.
I think the problem here may be the juxtaposition of Bradbury and “logical mind.” I love Bradbury but his best work doesn’t really work on the level of logic, at least not real world logic, and it can be almost impossible to really capture the spirit of Bradbury on film because his stories are often exercises in language and storytelling magic rather than plot and mechanics.
Adapting Bradbury can be perilously close to trying to adapt poetry to film.
April 21st, 2016 at 6:02 pm
That last line of yours sums it up exactly, David. Not even when Bradbury himself is doing the adapting, or least not always. He did the screenplay for this one, and in fact he may have done all of the for this HBO run. This is the only one, though, that I’ve seen.
April 21st, 2016 at 7:48 pm
I have an observation about the difficulty of adapting a text to film from the works of P. G. Wodehouse. A quotation from Robert McCrum’s WODEHOUSE: A LIFE (2004): “Film and television producers continue to toy with adaptations of his work, generally proving the rule that the best literature makes the worst cinema.”
April 21st, 2016 at 11:29 pm
Randy,
That’s a quote to remember. Thanks!