"What's a zoo?"
Updated 2002-08-31 17:00:00
Demian: As I remember, SunMoon, it was upon this fashion bequeathed me by blah blah Shakespeare.
SunMoonStar: Whatever, dude. Yonder comes my videocassette.
Demian: Go apart, SunMoon, and thou shalt hear how it will shake me up.
We fade up on some establishing footage stolen from the Demi Moore version of The Scarlet Letter. The helpful caption identifies this place as Salem, Massachusetts, in the Year of Our Lord 1692. The camera cuts to take in the scrawny calves of a jailer and his visitor, picking their buckle-shoed way across colonial filth to a locked cell door. The scrawny calves of the jailer never get a face, which makes me think they squeezed a luckless, starving production assistant into hose and clunky shoes for the establishing shot, the better to avoid paying an extra. The malnourished production assistant masquerading as a jailer opens the cell door to allow a dark-haired Fabio wannabe entry. Get a haircut, you ass. The ass crosses the threshold to confront the woman therein. She spins about on her heel and breathlessly whispers, "Matthew!" He addresses her as "Melinda," and then the two bicker about some love affair gone wrong. Seems he's denounced her as a witch, and the good people of Salem intend to burn her at the stake -- which, by the way, never happened during the witch trials. The accused were sentenced to death by hanging, but you all knew that already, right? So, anyway, we're gifted with a bit more backstory. To wit, this Matthew cretin stole Melinda's powers somehow, and he intends to move on to seduce innumerable witches in the future after she's gone. Not so fast, girly-man. Melinda rips a locket from her throat and flings it into his chest. Matthew unlatches it and removes a piece of paper that bursts into flame. According to Melinda, the burning paper strips Matthew of the powers he stole from her. She then chants the following as a magical whirlwind whips around Fabio:
Outside of time,
Outside of gain.
Know only sorrow --
Know only pain.
Fabio howls and moans and disappears into the locket, which flares and snaps shut.