British 90s nostalgia and shite

I watched Stay Tuned the other day. I don't recommend it. It's too disturbing.

The plot is basically that a man and his wife become trapped inside their television set and they can’t get out. I don’t mean physically trapped, like their bodies have somehow been stuffed inside the television box, like two giant fish in a goldfish bowl, I mean the other kind of trapped, the kind where they have to participate in deadly game shows and dance in Salt-N-Pepa music videos.

By the way, just so you know, the poster for Stay Tuned implies that the film is a comedy. The word 'comedy' is even underlined, in bold and italicised, as though the person who made the poster really wants you to think that Stay Tuned is a comedy movie.

But Stay Tuned is not a comedy. The film is actually very, very disturbing. Here are the scenes I found the most upsetting.

Disturbing Stay Tuned scene #1: Sadistic Hidden Videos

Stay Tuned features a number of dark parodies of American TV shows. One of these parodies is a hidden camera show called Sadistic Hidden Videos.

In the clip, a man plays a prank on a woman by dressing up as a policeman, knocking on her door and telling her that her husband is dead. The woman lets out a moan of grief and pain and then breaks down in tears.

Even Roy, someone who watches hours and hours of television every day, someone who is desensitised to television, is shocked and disturbed.

Disturbing Stay Tuned scene #2: The part with the wrestling

Next, Roy and his wife Helen get sucked into the TV. They are on a wrestling show.

Their opponents tonight are a fat man and some random woman – honestly, this woman could be anyone – both dressed in dollar-store Halloween outfits.

By the way, I should tell you now that if you die on the wrestling show, you die in real life. It's like The Matrix or any other movie or book where the characters are trapped in a simulation. Why can't it be, just for once, that if you die in the simulation, all that happens is you see a Game Over screen? Just once. Just once I would like to see that.

Anyway, the fight doesn’t go well for Roy. First, the big fat bloke, the one who probably spends every night in a pub, the one I will call 'Steve', punches him in the kidneys and he doubles over in pain.

Then Steve performs a series of wrestling moves on Roy, including jumping on him, picking him up and throwing him on the ground. Finally, the short skinny woman, I'll call her Karen, knocks Roy out.

How hard would you have to hit someone to knock them unconscious with a single punch? In my very limited experience of fights, I would say very hard. Also, I genuinely worry that the blow to the head has given Roy permanent brain damage, which will affect him for the rest of his life.

And the whole time, Roy‘s wife is watching. Imagine watching your wife or husband getting beaten to death, powerless to stop it, and all the while knowing that it’s your turn next.

To add to how disturbing this is, Roy and Helen have no idea what’s going on. Helen thinks she’s in a dream and she can't wake up. That’s pretty terrifying in itself. A dream you can't wake up from, where you're getting beaten to death and all the pain feels real. That's not a nice dream. I prefer to dream that I'm fucking Rachel Riley from Countdown while I make Carol Vorderman watch.

Disturbing Stay Tuned scene #3: Roy gets stuck in a hole and almost eaten by wolves

Later, Roy and Helen are on a show called Northern Overexposure, a parody of Northern Exposure where people die of hypothermia and frostbite. But that’s not the thing that disturbs me. What disturbs me is the part where Roy is stuck in a hole and wolves are about to eat him.

On paper, this is a funny scene. I can see that. A middle-aged man stuck in a hole? Lol. It’s his own fault for eating too many doughnuts. Rofl. Wolves are about to eat him? Lol, that's... actually not that funny.

You can feel Roy’s terror as he desperately swings his axe, his only weapon, at the wolves, and you can see that it’s just a matter of time before the wolves start eating him.

Imagine you are stuck in a hole like that and then hungry wolves eat you alive. You are helpless to do anything, all you can do is wave your arms uselessly and scream.

Disturbing Stay Tuned scene #4: Duane’s Underworld

In a later part of the film, Roy finds himself on a parody of Wayne’s World called Duane’s Underworld. You would think a parody of Wayne’s World would be fun. But it’s not. In fact, it’s one of the most horrifying scenes in the film.

First of all, Roy is duct-taped to a chair and unable to move. Second, the undead versions of Wayne and Garth have a porn magazine containing x-rated photos of Roy’s wife. It’s implied that the magazine also has photos of Roy’s teenage daughter.

"Whoa, your daughter’s pom-poms, they’re delectable!" says Garth. Keep in mind that Roy's daughter is only aged around fifteen.

When Roy reacts with outrage, Wayne says, “Uh-oh, extreme close up on Mr Knable!” One of the camera guys then pushes a camera into Roy's head.

Imagine getting hit in the head with a TV camera. Getting hit over and over until your face bleeds, you vomit, you scream for help, but there’s no help, there are only Wayne, Garth and the audience laughing at you.

But that’s not all. There’s also a red-hot-poker-in-the-eye cam. That’s where a red hot poker is attached to a camera and stabs you in the eye. While an audience cheers.

Roy manages to escape at this point, but what if he hadn’t? He would have had to sit there, getting increasingly beat up and injured, missing an eye, getting hit in the head over and over with a camera, while Wayne and Garth lewd over pornographic photos of his wife and daughter, until finally, he dies. And who knows what other methods of torture there would have been during that?

I haven’t been this horrified since the time I found out my cleaner was putting all the recycling into a single bin bag and then throwing the whole bag into the general waste bin – glass, plastic, card and all.

Disturbing Stay Tuned scene #5: Set your phasers to “torture”

Later on in the film, Roy is trapped in a parody of Star Trek: The Next Generation. He is Captain Picard.

There are creepy lookalikes of other Next Generation characters, like Data and Commander Worf.

You would think this scene would be played for laughs too but it’s not. The crew are actually quite eerie. Their movements are stiff, like dummies, and they all have creepily neutral facial expressions.

The part that disturbs me is when the movie’s main villain, who is basically the devil, appears on a screen and orders the crew to set their phasers to “torture” and shoot Roy. The crewmembers all take out their phasers and point them at Roy, even though Roy is supposed to be Captain Picard, so wouldn’t he be giving the orders instead?

And all the crewmembers now have creepy smiles on their faces, as if they’re going to enjoy torturing Roy:

Roy is on his hands and knees, like a baby, crawling behind a chair (it’s as though the fear has made him regress to a child) even though it’s obvious that the chair is going to offer him no protection against the phasers. And Deanna Troi just sits there, no empathy at all.

The phasers are set to torture mode. The crewmembers are basically going to cast the Cruciatus Curse on him. This is Starfleet, people who are supposed to be the good guys. They shouldn’t even have a torture setting on their phasers. That just makes it all the scarier.