“Aren’t you glad you didn’t turn on the light?” – Hook Man
“Hook Man” cold opens out of the cliched (but fun) scary campfire story that everyone has heard a million times. A dude takes his gal out into the middle of the woods to “neck” (if we’re talking super old school parlance) or their car breaks down or some such. Then, one of a few things happens. Either the couple here’s on the car radio that a bunch of psychopaths have broken out of the local mental hospital (this might be one of my favorites and may well have been used in the classic film, Stand By Me). Then, wouldn’t you know it, surprise surprise, the couple gets attacked by one of said dudes.
Oh, and here’s something the story always includes: the attacker always uses some kind of sharp object to attack the couple, an ax most typically. And in the supernatural/horror versions of the story, the ax or hook or sharp object is <em>part</em> of the attacking psycho’s hand. Weird story to stick around for so long and so widely when you think about it, isn’t it?
In “Hook Man,” it’s things start off pretty straight forwardly: dude and gal are in the car in the woods (on 9 Mile Road to be more specific, which is a pretty creepily named road to be attacked on, I’d thing), and a hook handed monster comes along and goes freaky beasty on the dude.
Queue Sam and Dean Winchester coming along to the heartland to investigate, Theta Sorority at Eastern Iowa University. Which means we also get some fun college antics in this edition of Supernatural, including the boys pretending to be frat boys as part of the investigation.
Laurie, the gal in the story, survives and doesn’t quite trust her memory of the story (maybe as the memory is so cliched, but we’ll leave that alone for the time being).
The first truly scary moment of the episode comes when Laurie wakes up and see her sassy roommate hacked up, with “Aren’t you glad you didn’t turn on the light?” scratched into the wall with roomie’s blood. This Hook Man sure is the great wit, ain’t he?
Turns out doing this is right out of “the legend,” so you know this only gives the Winchester boys the ammunition – not to mention the motivational acumen and such – to catch this nasty creature of hook and evil lore.
Sorority gal Laurie and Sam make a connection as they both “seem to have people keep dying around them,” but it the still heartbroken Sam is just not ready. And wouldn’t you know it, right at that moment, Laurie’s preacher dad (turns out he’s carrying on an affair with a married woman while being all preachy and such, by the way) gets hacked on by old Hook Man himself.
Much like the overarching mission in The Lord of the Rings, the key to victory is to melt the hook itself. That’s the key to stopping old Hooky, and the boys get their guy just in the hook, er, nick of time.
Queue the rock music, and time to hit that long and dusty road.
Notes of fun, interest, intrigue:
- The university library where the Winchesters do some investigating has that classic old school college library vibe. It also has enough creepy literature and archival materials in it to make it a rival only to the Sunnydale High School Library out of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
- “I told you. You don’t have to be a college graduate to be a genius.” – Dean. True enough, but it also doesn’t preclude you from being a genius, either.
- Then, a few scenes later, from Dean: “Man, you’ve been holding out on me. This college thing is awesome.”
Hook Man, for all his lethal-looking hook-handedness, is pretty awful at finishing off the job when trying to kill someone trying to fend him off, know what I mean?
Some stats and info about Supernatural, “Hook Man”
TV SHOW – Supernatural
SEASON/EPISODE – Season 1, Episode 7
AIRED ON – October 25th, 2005
NETWORK/STREAMING SERVICE – CW/Netflix
GENRE – Drama, Teen Dramas, Horror, Fantasy
CREATED BY – Eric Kripke
CAST – Jared Padalecki, Jensen Ackles, Misha Collins, Mark Sheppard, Jim Beaver, Alexander Calvert, Mark Pellegrino, Samantha Smith, Ruth Connell
This review originally appeared on TV Geek Army.