KAY LUYBEN

Written by Turok Andar and directed by Darin Scott, this episode Femme Fatales stars Kay Luyben as Mary Mason, who is currently committed to an insane asylum for murdering her husband Steve (Geoffrey M. Reeves). Mary swears she didn’t do it, but no one believes her. We see in flashback the night Steve proposed to her, and then they had sex. Mary certainly seems happy (and it’s a hot scene).

Later we see another flashback of them having sex, where Steve is on top, but in the middle of it, a big scary man runs into the run and sticks a knife in Steve’s throat, and Mary screams and runs out of the room and the house. We learn that when the police later arrive, they found Steve dead, but there was no sign or evidence of anyone else having been in there, which is why Mary was arrested for Steve’s murder. It’s unclear when she was sent to the psych ward instead of jail, though.

The asylum isn’t easy for Mary. Janelle Marra plays Gloria, another patient at the asylum who constantly harasses and bullies Mary and always gets away with it, making Mary look like the aggressor. And Paul Rae plays an unnamed guard who always acts like a dick to Mary for no reason. Steve Railsback plays Dr. Duryea, they psychiatrist at the asylum. He also refuses to believe Mary, thinking that her story of the big man who killed Steve is just an alternate personality that her subconscious mind created because she doesn’t want to face what she really did. Because Mary won’t admit “the truth,” he informs her that he intends to give her electroshock therapy.

This prospect frightens Mary, and that night, the guard taunts her as he puts her in a straight jacket and takes her to a padded room to spend the night, saying that she’s going to be a vegetable when the doctor gets through with the electroshocks. As she takes her, she sees an orderly escorting a new patient down the hallway from the opposite direction, and she’s shocked to see it’s the man whom she remembers killing Steven. Played by Nick Principe, the man, credited only as “The Killer,” is tall and covered in tattoos. As they pass each other, he makes a scary smile at Mary, who screams to be taken back to the doctor but the guard ignores her.

That night, while in the padded room, she sees The Killer look into her room through a small window in the door, and she screams for help, but when the guard shows up, The Killer is gone. Ignoring her pleas for help, the guard propositions her, claiming that if she has sex with him (or plays a game called “Hide The Nightstick” as he puts it), he’ll convince the doctor not to do the electroshock therapy on her. He stands her up and unlocks her straight jacket, revealing that all she has on is a tight sleeveless button-down shirt and some panties, and he opens the shirt to start fondling her breasts. Just then, The Killer bursts into the room, grabs the nightstick from the guard’s hand, and starts beating him to death with it as Mary runs out of the room.

Mary runs to Gloria’s room, finding her sitting in a chair naked as another naked patient, Clarissa (Simona Morales) is kneeling in front of her and going down on her. Mary screams that The Killer is after her, but they disbelieve her and kick her out of the room, back out into the hallway. That’s when The Killer shows up, quickly knocks out Clarissa with the nightstick, and then beats Gloria to death.

Mary continues running through the halls, looking for help, as The Killer stalks her. Anelia Dyoulgerova plays an unnamed nurse whom The Killer catches and strangles to death right in front of Mary.

In the finale, we see Dr. Duryea in a lab room; he’s got another unnamed nurse, played by an unnamed actress, strapped to an operating table naked, and he fondles her body. It’s creepy but appears to be consensual. That’s when The Killer comes into the room and beats Dr. Duryea to death.

And that’s when we get our big PLOT TWIST :

It turns out that the doctor was correct; The Killer was just Mary’s alternate personality. After beating Doctor Durya to death, the camera pans up to reveal that it’s Mary standing there with the nightstick in her hand. Then, quick flashbacks show her killing everyone else in the episode, including her husband.

It’s a decent plot twist, although I’ll admit I was already starting to suspect that as the episode wore on. It was getting a little too coincidental how quiet the asylum was, as no one was around to hear Mary screaming, and then every time she did find someone, suddenly, The Killer was there to strike.

But still, I liked it! It felt like a classic slasher horror movie, specifically it reminded me of the original Halloween 2, the way Michael Meyers was stalking Laurie Strode through the hospital late at night. Except The Killer wasn’t wearing a mask. But he was silent and scary. In addition to being tall, every time he killed someone, he’d rub some of their blood on his own face. He still had shackles on his ankles and wrists, although the chains were broken, so you’d hear them rattling as he walked. Plus he’d keep banging the nightstick against the hallway walls.

In the end, when Mary realizes who she is, she decides to leave that nurse strapped to the table alive, but steals her nurse’s uniform and walks out of the asylum, imagining that she’s holding hands with The Killer.

It’s a complete but also forbidding ending. It’s a shame that this series didn’t get a 3rd season, as this is one character I could see returning for a follow-up episode.

Chacebook rating: FIVE STARS

Jason Majercik is selling this UNRATED 4-disc DVD set of Femme Fatale season 2 for $29.99. Email him at quinn_nash@hotmail.com for his softcore inventory list.