Should I tell you about a
Drew Barrymore movie called DOPPELGANGER? I probably should not. I know I am always giving you
"spoiler alerts" and ha ha ha, isn't that cute? But to properly tell you about DOPPELGANGER I would be obliged to use nothing but spoilers all the time, real ones that will ruin the movie for you. Okay, I am going to do it! So don't read this! So Drew Barrymore is being followed around by a
doppelganger, or as I like to call it, a doppelgänger. There is a
cat in the movie, so right away you know something bad is going to happen to the cat. That's the one thing I can't stand about movies like this! Any time there is a cat, you are like, "Oh well. Too bad for that cat." And then you have to close your eyes during the dramatic scene when they come around a corner and discover that something bad has happened to the cat. DOPPELGANGER makes it over an hour before something bad happens to the cat, long enough for you to think, "Hey! Maybe that cat is going to be okay." But your thought on the matter would be incorrect. There is a kind of Scooby Doo ending in which we find out there is a logical explanation for all the mumbo jumbo that has been going on. It's what I might also call a Brian De Palma ending, in that the "logical explanation" is like a crazy parody of logical explanations in movies, and there are lots of rubber masks involved, bringing it back to Scooby Doo. BUT THAT'S NOT REALLY THE ENDING! After the "logical explanation" ending - I am serious, DON'T READ THIS! - Drew Barrymore suddenly turns into what seems at first like a
worm! Or maybe it's the monster from the movie
THE ATOMIC SUBMARINE. May I emphasize that this comes out of nowhere? The "worm" is really a kind of cocoon, out of which pop two extremely tall skeleton-like creatures. Stay with me! One of the tall, gooey
skeletons (with whiskers or tentacles or something dangling from its chin) slaps the other one down onto the couch, and the latter
skeleton creature just lies on the couch for the remainder of the scene. Skeleton creature #1 proceeds to take care of business! She swats the bad guy through
a stained glass window. He flies through the air and is
impaled on an iron fence, of course. I had to tell somebody. There had been a lot of green light and red light and
blue light in the movie which made me think somebody was going for a
Mario Bava sort of feeling, and when the bad guy landed on the fence I took that as confirmation. There is also a
creepy music box. And to conclude, I present you with the almost touching detail that when people in this movie are afraid the doppelganger is going to get them, they most often choose to defend themselves with a baseball bat! Like a baseball bat is any match for a dopplelganger. (Pictured: Drew Barrymore's boyfriend's wisecracking sassy best friend finds a knife in a bunch of
green light in DOPPELGANGER.)
