My first exposure to The Naked Gun came by way of a billboard with Leslie Nielsen shooting a hole through his foot and the words "From the files of Police Squad!" I recalled enough of Police Squad! to know that I wanted to see The Naked Gun. The only specific memories that I had of the show were of Nielsen’s serious face while he was saying or doing something ridiculous and of an assassin’s shoes walking on air. I did not recall the fact that the shoes were worn by Bonnie Britton as Lana Cassalis (Nicole wore the same brand of shoes as the man who killed her). I did not recall the fact that Lana also wore black and dark brown leather gloves (Nicole bought the same style of leather gloves in black and brown). Lana, a murderously jealous woman, plants a bomb in a courtroom to frame her former husband for murder.

The Frank Drebin that I saw in The Naked Gun was close enough to the Police Squad! original that no one could mistake the fact that it was the same guy. But the old Drebin was more like the super-competent doctor that Leslie Nielsen plays in Airplane! than the walking disaster he is in The Naked Gun. The new Frank Drebin was more like the trigger-happy Mark Fuhrman who shot Joseph Britton. This was the Fuhrman we heard on the Laura Hart McKinney tapes with a large dose of serendipitous stupidity thrown in. When I was working on Iago I found so many similarities between that Fuhrman and that Drebin that I missed the similarities between McKinney’s Fuhrman and Police Squad’s! Drebin.

To be sure, there is more to the original Drebin than Leslie Nielsen’s doctor in Airplane! The narration style is Jack Webb’s Joe Friday in Dragnet. There is a little bit of Dick Powell’s Philip Marlowe in Murder My Sweet (’44) and a bit of Humphrey Bogart’s Marlowe in The Big Sleep (’46). There is some of Efrem Zimbalist Jr.’s Lewis Erskine in The F.B.I. (’65-’74) and a whole lot of Ralph Meeker’s Mike Hammer in Kiss Me Deadly (’55). Five of the six Police Squad! episodes contain major elements of Kiss Me Deadly. Some aspects of The Naked Gun may also have their origin in that film noir classic including little things like the dark, knit cap worn by Hammer’s mechanic friend Nick.

"Nick," is not only short for "Nicole," it’s also the character O.J. plays in his last serious movie C.I.A.: Code Name Alexa (’94). It was possible for the Bundy killer to know that and to be influence by it. But from the standpoint of Jim Abrams and the Zucker Brothers there had to be influences predating the time when they were inventing Frank Drebin (before ’82) and when they were reinventing Norberg (before ’88).

One of those influences seems to have come from Kiss Me Deadly with Mike Hammer and a dead woman in his Jaguar being pushed through a rail over a cliff (Nordberg falling over the rail of a ship) and Hammer waking up in a hospital bed. We see his girlfriend Velda (Nordberg’s wife Wilma) and Wesley Addy as a white-haired cop named Pat Chambers (white-haired Frank Drebin) standing over him. In The Verdict (’81) Addy is a doctor (dock). When Hammer leaves the hospital men are watching him covertly (Nordberg watching the ship). Mike sees his friend Nick (knit cap) then sneaks into his own apartment (Drebin sneaks into his own apartment). He gets a message from Velda who comes to his apartment (Jane Spencer was already in Drebin’s apartment). Then Pat drops by and says, "I’m revoking your private investigator’s license. Also your gun permit. If I catch you snooping around with a gun I’ll throw you in jail."

In The Naked Gun Nordberg, wearing a knit cap, gets caught "sneaking around with a gun" before he ends up in the hospital. The reversal of the order in which these things happen to Mike Hammer as well as the reversal of certain attributes of Pat and Mike in Nordberg and Drebin is in keeping with the opening credits of Kiss Me Deadly. The credits scroll into view from the top down so you read ‘"Kiss Me’ before you see ‘Deadly,’" and "Ralph" before you see "Meeker." The result is that you get one message when you read what’s there as it appears in motion and the opposite message once it’s all there – a uniquely clever way of hinting at what’s coming without spilling the beans.

It also gives you two ways to read anything in takeoffs on the movie like you see in the Police Squad! TV series and The Naked Gun movie series. In The Naked Gun 33 1/3’s parody of The Untouchables’ (’88) scene in the train station, you get a dash of Kiss Me Deadly and the scrabble-play quality of dyslexia with the headline of Frank Drebin’s paper: "DYSLEXIA FOR CURE FOUND."

Dyslexics like O.J. Simpson do not reverse whole words from top to bottom or bottom to top. That, I suspect, is one reason the producers of Police Squad! decided to put the name "POLICE SQUAD" on the same line on the frosted squad room door in The Naked Gun when they replaced Peter Lupus as the white Norberg with O.J. as the black Nordberg. Note the "d" that makes the difference in the names. A "b" can look like a "p," a "q" or "d" to a dyslexic, depending on the context. Mirroring letters, upending them, transposing them, adding them and dropping them are all big problems. Words like dairy and dairy, trial and trial can give a dyslexic fits because diary can look like diary and trial can look like trail.

Now when you see the gloved hand of Bonnie Britton as Lana Cassalis, the bomber in the "Revenge and Remorse/The Guilty Alibi" episode of Police Squad!, what else do you see? Do you see the fingertip of the glove on the building directory dragging the letter "R" with it upside down to the line that says, "JUDGE J. OLIVER MAXWELL"? Do you see the glove that Mark Fuhrman found on O.J.’s Rockingham estate and the exculpatory evidence he turned upside down? Do you see Fuhrman’s finger pointing to the glove on Bundy by the knit cap – the glove that was reversed 180 degrees in another photo? Do you see O.J.? Do you think that Mark Fuhrman would have missed these things if he were obsessed with O.J. and with getting the big bust? His subconscious mind would not have allowed him to miss any of those things.

Think about the other words on that directory; the CLERKS OFFICE, the COURTROOM, the DISTRICT ATTORNEY. How do they relate to the judge, Kiss me Deadly and O.J. Simpson? I know you picked up on the white, uppercase letters on the black background that you see in the opening credits of Kiss Me Deadly and what happens to Lana when you rotate the "n" clockwise 180 degrees and insert the "r" between the last two letters. But Fuhrman’s relationship with Laura Hart is not what I was getting at. Did it cross your mind that all court cases appear on a docket? It didn’t cross my mind until the backward "R" reminded me of the Rockingham glove, the Rockingham glove reminded me of Fuhrman pointing to the Bundy glove, and the photo of him pointing to that glove reminded me of the knit cap less than an inch away. The knit cap always reminds me of O.J. as Nordberg on the dock in The Naked Gun.

This is how the subconscious mind works and these appear to be the subconscious components of the killer’s choice of items to plant and stories to tell about O.J. and Nicole to make the big bust and the DNA case. By the way, there is another link between Lana’s glove on the building directory and the opening credits of Kiss Me Deadly. When she finds the room of the judge she is going to kill with an exploding gavel (a wooden hammer), the lobby guard hears a noise. He investigates and sees a man buffing the floor. He greets the man by name. His name is Ralph – the first name you see in Kiss Me Deadly after the title. And let’s not forget the "d"(as in Dairy) added to Norberg to make Nordberg. What does the "d" added to the middle of Lana give you? LADNA.

The last time you see Nick Dennis as Mike Hammer’s friend Nick the Greek mechanic, he’s on his back under the front end of a car resting on a wooden board with wheels like the one O.J. gets caught under in The Naked Gun 2 ½. He’s wearing the knit cap. O.J. also wears a knit cap on a dock in The Naked Gun 2 ½. In Kiss Me Deadly Nick owns a repair shop that specializes in foreign cars (O.J.’s Mercedes Benz after the baseball bat incident). A man with distinctive sued shoes (Bruno Magli Lorenzos were sued) lowers the jack that drops the car on him. Nick was trying to find out who planted a bomb in Mike’s new car when Albert Dekker as the doctor in the sued shoes kills him. Albert Dekker walks with his toes pointed straight ahead.

You know who Ralph Fuhrman is so you know that Ralph equals Fuhrman. You know that Nicole purchased the same brand of shoes worn by the man in sued shoes who killed her but her feet were bare when she died. You know Fuhrman’s story about the wood getting caught under the Bronco and slung forward when the Bronco came to a sudden stop. You know that this happens to O.J. as Nordberg in The Naked Gun 2 ½ on the wooden board like Nick’s in Kiss Me Deadly. But did you know that Ralph Meeker as Mike Hammer picks up a branch under his Jaguar when he comes to a sudden stop to avoid hitting Cloris Leachman as Christina? Did you know that the pant legs and shoes of Albert Decker, the doctor in the sued shoes morph into his victim’s bare legs and feet? With Mike lying unconscious Christine is tortured to death (while Nicole lay unconscious, Ron was tortured).

In the "Revenge and Remorse/The Guilty Alibi" episode of Police Squad! all you see of Bonnie Britton as the bomber till the end are her men’s pant legs, shoes, coat sleeves and gloves. She walks with her toes pointed straight ahead. When she blows up a man in his car, a toe truck – as opposed to a towtruck pushes the wrecked car straight ahead. Just as Fuhrman did with Joseph Britton, Drebin catches Lana in the act by anticipating where she will strike and staking out the location. When he gets the drop on her we learn that she killed two innocent people to frame her ex-husband Eddie for dumping her.

An explosion is a perfect metaphor for sudden rage. That is what Fuhrman argued was the immediate cause of Ron and Nicole’s death. The motive? O.J.’s obsession with Nicole and the fact that Paula Barbiari had just dumped him. Fuhrman wrote about O.J. spying on Nicole at her home and in coffee shops. He wrote about a friend of his who told him that Ron said he was driving O.J.’s Ferrari and having sex with Nicole. You get all of this in two consecutive pages of Fuhrman’s Murder in Brentwood. You also get Fuhrman’s speculation that O.J. might have been using illegal drugs and his statement that "a love triangle" fit the profile of a multiple murderer like the man who killed Ron and Nicole much better than "Marcia Clark’s" domestic abuse motive.

Perhaps you noticed how well these observations merge into the 911 tape of Nicole and O.J. arguing about a "blowjob" that O.J. saw her giving. You may be reminded of that when you hear Lana tell Drebin, "Don’t come any closer or I’ll blow this whole neighborhood sky high." The clincher is when she sinks the plunger of the detonator to kill her ex-husband’s girlfriend. She says, "If I can’t have Eddie back I’ll make sure that Mimi doesn’t have him, either!"

Mimi de Jour, a.k.a. Mimi Coffee, is the girlfriend of Eddie, the man Lana tries to frame for murder. This is where the Fuhrman collection runs into a traffic jam of links to Mark Fuhrman, the Mercedes Benz, Fuhrman’s first interview taped by Laura Hart and his earliest ambitions as a cop (1975) to make the big bust. Like many of the best bits in The Naked Gun series, one of the best bits in The Naked Gun 2 ½ (’91) was borrowed from Police Squad! The scene where O.J. gets caught under the truck grows out of the scene where Frank and Ed go into a porno shop looking for a bomber (Anthony James) and a clerk tells Drebin that the "suck machine" he ordered is in. When a well-proportioned woman puts her hands on her hips and says, "Is this some kind of bust?" Frank replies, "Yes, very impressive…." In Police Squad! that line goes to K.T. O’Sullivan as Mimi de Jour in Club Flamingo.

Mimi first tells Drebin that Eddie was with her at a movie. He was actually violating his parole by crossing the state lines into Wisconsin (the Dairy State) to see the Milwaukee Brewers play baseball (MB = Mercedes Benz. Baseball = baseball bat). When Mimi recants her story about the movie, Drebin tells Lana that "Mimi blew Eddie’s alibi."

Scratch out the "’s alibi" and what do you get? You get the same thing that you get when you scratch the "sky high" out of Lana’s threat to "blow the whole neighborhood."

Four of the six Police Squad! episodes have allusions to a woman performing oral sex on a man. One episode that doesn’t is "Ring of Fear/A Dangerous Assignment." It has Tessa Richarde as Mary the boxer’s wife giving a speech from the movie On the Waterfront (the knit cap). That movie was the alibi Mimi blew when she told Drebin that she and Eddie were at the movies. Mimi sitting before her dressing room mirror in her yellow outfit is close enough to Tessa Richarde sitting before here dressing room mirror as Mitzi Fritz (MF) in Bronco Billy to make the "French" connection to Tessa’s role as Billie in Cat People.

The other episode of Police Squad! that doesn’t have the kind of "French" connection that one, four, five and six have is episode three, "Rendezvous at Big Gulch/Terror in the Neighborhood." Then again, maybe it does. Consider the Eiffel Tower (French) that you see through the window as Frank Drebin questions a ballet teacher who has been beaten up by thugs and you hear him rail against "scum-sucking vermin."

That sequence was redone for The Naked Gun 2 ½ with Jane Spencer as a bombing victim. She did the finger-sucking scene at the dinner table with Drebin in the first Naked Gun.

You see the link in the fourth episode of Police Squad! "Revenge and Remorse/The Guilty Alibi" with Spence Milligan as Eddie Cassalis, the bomber’s ex-husband. You see it with Mimi "blowing Eddie’s alibi" in the bar/restaurant and his ex-wife threatening to blow the whole neighborhood sky high. You also get a Cat People link and a Kiss Me Deadly link in Eddie’s Penn State varsity jacket. Penn State’s football team is called the Nitny Lions. When Eddie turns around, complaining of how his conviction for illegal use of explosives has branded him, you see that the name on the back of his jacket is "STATE PENN."

Reading Eddie’s jacket the way you would read the opening credits of Kiss Me Deadly you see Penn State again. The point is, half of a message is in knowing how to read it. The Rockingham blood drops prove O.J.’s alibi. Fuhrman’s characterization of them as going into the gate makes him look guilty. O.J.’s angry, excited voice on Nicole’s 911 call proves that the voice of the killer that Sydney Simpson and Robert Heidstra heard in an angry, excited state was not O.J.’s. Fuhrman’s stories of personal knowledge about O.J.-the-spouse-abuser turns the significance of the argument on its head so that all most people can hear in O.J.’s voice is a violently jealous man’s motive for murder.

We’re talking about a tape recording of O.J. yelling at Nicole about a particular sex act he saw her performing on a bar and restaurant manager a year earlier. We’re talking about O.J. looking through her living room window and seeing them on her couch. In the Fuhrman movie collection, that particular form of sex is always associated with O.J., Nicole, Peggy York, Monica Lewinsky or Laura Hart McKinny. Consider Fuhrman’s version of the incident with the baseball bat and the Mercedes Benz side-by-side with his version of the killing, O.J.’s alibi and his own alibi….

On January 18, 1989 Fuhrman wrote that he went to Rockingham in 1985 in response to "a 415 family dispute" call. He wrote action and dialog for O.J. and Nicole that made O.J. sound like a walking time bomb and Nicole sound like his practice dummy for a big explosion to come. In his O.J. book, Fuhrman, writes that he believed Ron and Nicole were victims of "a love triangle." He makes even more of the broken windshield incident when he introduces his letter to the city attorney as his response to a "domestic violence call." He tells of "sensing her fear and anguish," of asking her if she wanted to fill out a crime report against O.J. and of trying "to make her realize her desperate situation." According to the report itself Nicole told Fuhrman that O.J. had shattered the windshield of the Mercedes Benz with a baseball bat.

The fourth and the sixth episode of Police Squad!, "Revenge and Remorse/The Guilty Alibi" and "Dead Men Don’t Laugh/Testimony of Evil" combine Fuhrman’s alibi with his "domestic violence" report. Fuhrman claimed that he was out of town during the murders just as Lana said she was going to be out of town when she set the bomb to blow up Mimi de Jour’s apartment. "Dead Men Don’t Laugh/Testimony of Evil" includes a "415" and a smashed windshield. This 415 is what the coroner calls a car wreck in which a nightclub comic’s body gets thrown 415 feet from his wrecked car.

A wrecked car is the common denominator in "Dead Men Don’t Laugh/ Testimony of Evil" and "Revenge and Remorse/The Guilty Alibi." When you put the two episodes together you get so much of Fuhrman’s stories about the baseball bat incident and the killing of Ron and Nicole that a real connection between them is the only rational explanation. Even the differences, including the male/female, killer/victim role reversals have a strong link to Fuhrman.

For instance, Fuhrman speculates that Nicole was in her room upstairs when she was frightened by seeing O.J. on the ground below through her window "dressed oddly." In "Revenge and Remorse/The Guilty Alibi" Mimi de Jour is upstairs in her room pacing back and fourth nervously in front of her window when Lana dressed oddly (in the men’s pants, shoes, coat sleeves, leather gloves and her print dress) comes to kill her. The baseball bat in Fuhrman’s "415" report is replaced in "Revenge and Remorse/The Guilty Alibi." with sledgehammers. Nicole was hit in the head with the hammer-like heel of a German Stiletto.

In "Dead Men Don’t Laugh/Testimony of Evil" the police (the law) are the ones with the hammers. After they demolish a car in search of illegal drugs they find the drugs in the car’s glove compartment (police found cocaine in their search of a car with Keith Zlomsowitch). Drebin is working undercover at the time as a Las Vegas-style entertainer in the club where the 415 victim worked before he was killed by the owner Veronica (Ronnie) Rivers. The club is called. Mr. V’s. Veronica Rivers is Mr. V.

Drebin got the job when his boss Ed Hoken arrested an entertainer named Nickie who was supposed to take the murder victim’s place. He showed up too late for the manager to get another entertainer. Drebin was there to offer his services as Tony D’Wonderful when Ed charged Nickie with recording a baseball game without the express written permission of the commissioner and led him away in handcuffs. Nickie arrived late for his date because he missed his bus (bust). The license plate on Nicole’s Jeep was L84AD8 (late for a date). Veronica’s club was a front for illegal drug trafficking. Her supplier was a cocktail waitress called The Frenchman.

The bar and restaurant where Ron Goldman worked as a waiter, was under police surveillance at the time of Ron and Nicole’s death as a front for drug trafficking. The manager (Keith Zlomsowitch) that O.J. saw Nicole "Frenching" on her couch was under investigation as a drug trafficker. In Drebin’s act as an entertainer at Mr. V’s he tells the punch line of a joke that probably wouldn’t have gotten past the censors if they knew the joke. It contains an explicit reference to oral sex.

Don’t forget that Drebin’s Las Vegas-style act was directly related to the search of the car. Don’t forget the pounding with the hammers. Don’t forget that the law was involved in the search, that Drebin’s rank was Sergeant and Lieutenant or that Drebin’s nightclub act referred to oral sex. Don’t forget that Fuhrman put Sgt. Rossi’s name on his notes or the many things Fuhrman had in common with Peter Falk as Sgt. Rossi in Castle Keep or Lt. Frank Colombo in Colombo. Now check this out….

In Murder in Brentwood, Fuhrman wrote about his involvement in the murder investigation of a retired Army sergeant from Las Vegas. His body was was driven in the trunk of his car to West LA and left in an alley. He tells of wrapping his arm around Connie Law, the victim’s black niece, in a spontaneous gesture of compassion. The sergeant was beaten to death with a hammer. Fuhrman and Roberts assisted the Las Vegas police in a search of the dead man’s home.

Mark Fuhrman left the Marine Corps as Sgt. Fuhrman, a military policeman (the law). He told police psychiatrists that he enjoyed killing and beating people. Ralph Meeker is Sgt. Steve Dekker, an Army MP in the 1959 TV series Not for Hire. In the opening credits you see him in his uniform swinging his nightstick. As Mike Hammer in Kiss Me Deadly he has a scam going with his assistant Velda (Maxine Cooper) in which they blackmail married couples seeking a divorce and get them to say compromising things on tape. Mike takes the women. Velda takes the men. She is working on a man she calls "Mr. Friendly" (MF) when you see him reclining on a couch in front of a window. Velda bends over to pick up her gloves and purse and warns him to stay away from windows "…or somebody might blow you a kiss." That’s another one that got past the censors.

You see, Velda is a very oral woman. Any doubt about that evaporates when you see her and Mike in her apartment. Her living room is set up like a ballet studio with a wall mirror and a rail like the dance instructor’s studio in "Rendezvous at Big Gulch/Terror in the Neighborhood." At one point in that scene Velda puts her mouth next to Mike’s ear, tells him what Nick told her his name was in Greek and before she kisses him on the neck she asks, "But under any other name would you be as sweet?" Need we examine the Freudian implications of that statement with a guy named Hammer? I think not. You won’t, either, when you see Velda dampen a towel on her finger with her tongue and dab off the lipstick.

Students of Hollywood history know that the "oral" tradition onscreen and off goes back farther than Velda in Kiss me Deadly. The classic onscreen example is Lauren Bacall as Marie Browning in the Jules Furthman screenplay To Have and Have Not. Humphrey Bogart as a fishing boat captain named Harry Morgan in the French Caribbean calls her Slim. She calls him Steve. You think you’ve seen something special (and you have) when you see her kiss Bogie twice and the second time when he kisses her back she says, "It’s better when you help." Then, as she is about to leave she gives him a look with sex written all over it and says in a cadence and tone of voice to match, "You know Steve, you don’t have to act with me. You don’t have to do anything at all. Well, maybe just whistle. You know how to whistle, Steve. You just put your lips together and blow.

The French Caribbean? A sailor? His "slim" love interest? Bogie and Bacall as the cartoon characters Popeye and Olive Oyl? "Well, blow me down!" Puts a new spin on a lot of things, doesn’t it? Who would have thought that Bogie and Bacall characters could be associated with them or the 1980 movie Popeye with Robin Williams as Popeye and Shelly Duvall as Olive Oly? That’s Fuhrman’s "French connection" Popeye, not Gene Hackman’s Popeye Doyle.

Fuhrman and Doyle don’t have enough in common to call Doyle a role model. But using the "French" connection that Fuhrman used in the first tape to ask Laura Hart about the "R-rated" language he spoke as a cop and a marine gives Fuhrman and O.J. something in common with Velda’s "Mr. Friendly." Both of them were recorded using different language to describe the same sex act. The difference is, Fuhrman expected to profit from the tapes he made with Laura Hart the way Mike Hammer expected to profit from the tapes he made with Velda.

When Harry Morgan (a.k.a. Steve) calls Marian "Slim," she tells him that she is "too skinny" to take that name lightly (Olive Oyl). That doesn't stop him from calling her Slim, but the next time he says it, you can see that he doesn't mind her thinness one bit (Popeye). You can see that she sees it, too. Although Jules Furthman is credited with writing the screenplay for To Have and Have Not from a novel by Ernest Hemingway some experts claim that the director, Howard Hawks, was the real writer. Hawks and Bogie were rivals for Bacall's affections. If you knew about the love triangle before you saw the movie, you can see how the camera makes love to Lauren Bacall in every frame (Hawks) and that the "chemistry" you see between Bogie and Bacall is the real thing. If you learned about the love triangle after you saw the movie those things won't surprise you.

That love triangle never ended in violence. The Popeye-Olive Oyl-Bluto love triangle always did. When Fuhrman trots out the love triangle motive for O.J. to kill Ron and Nicole you can see yet another source for his "hypothesis" that has more to do with Fuhrman and the movies that it does with O.J. It was Fuhrman who told police doctors that he would have killed his former wife and her lover if he had caught them together. As a marine who spent his entire tour of duty in Vietnam aboard a ship, the word dock (doc) has to mean more to him than in does to most of us. That’s another reason the scene in The Naked Gun with O.J. on the dock in a knit cap means so much. That’s the reason you have to pay attention when Robin Williams as Popeye makes his appearance on the Sweet Haven dock in his dark blue knit cap then finds a pipe identical to his own laying in the street. In the cartoon, Popeye the sailor man whistles through his pipe.

The "real French connection" in the Fuhrman collection is a play on words. Look at Popeye and Doyle. Knock the "D" and the "e" off the ends of Doyle and what to you have? You have Olive’s last name below a heart on a mailbox (Laura Hart’s love letters) that Popeye passes as he sings the words "blow me down." Popeye the cartoon character uses that expression as a frequent exclamation. In the movie, you hear it only six times and only once as an exclamation. The other five times are in a song as he dances from the dock to the Oyl’s rooming house commenting under his breath on the things he sees along the way. The last thing he sees before he sees the Oyl’s mailbox is the town constable. Popeye calls him the "short arm of the law." In the military, a "short arm" inspection is a doctor’s examination of a serviceman’s penis.

You can’t take the "D" out of Doyle without being aware of it or how it relates to Jodie Foster’s Dairy High jacket in The Hotel New Hampshire and to Dan Blue and his white cheerleader girlfriend. Some of that will come back to you along with Fuhrman’s story of Nicole with the butcher knife when you see Shelly Duvall as Windy and Jack Nicholson as her husband Jack in The Shining. Scatman Cruthers is Mr. Haloren, a psychic cook at a hotel in Colorado where Wendy and her young son Danny go with her husband to take care of the place over the winter. In Bronco Billy Cruthers is Doc. In The Shining he calls Danny "Doc." The Hotel is full of ghosts that only Danny and Jack can see until the night Jack is taken over completely by an evil spirit that kills Haloren and tries to kill Windy and Danny. You will notice the knit cap and the gloves on Haloren’s bloody body, the left glove palm up in front of the cap.

One of two ghosts that Windy sees is on its knees dressed like a bear with its head between the other ghost’s bare legs. With Shelly Duvall doing the observing, you can’t think only of Nastassia Kinski as the bear in The Hotel New Hampshire. You have to think of her "one eye" and Popeye’s one eye and all of the other one-eyed characters in the Fuhrman collection. You have to think of the eye in a different way…maybe a lot of different ways. A black eye. The public eye. A private eye.

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