I am talking about the 1972 movie, starring Joan Collins and Peter Cushing. It is a tale of five evil people gathered in a crypt, telling their tales before being cast into The Pits Of Hell. The problem I have is the fourth tale (“Wish You Were Here”), where a married couple has suddenly lost a great deal of money. The wife is touching an old figurine when she remembers what the shopkeeper told her-that it will grant three wishes, but sheshould be careful. The husband is reminded of the tale of the Monkey’s Paw and tells her not to mess around, but she wishes for a large amount of money anyway. The phone rings, and it is his lawyer telling him to come to the office quickly and that it involves a great deal of money. She smiles, he rushes off…and is killed during a horrible traffic accident. She is now rich because of his life insurance policy, but she decides to use her second wish to bring the poor man back to life in the condition he was in right before the crash. Pall bearers knock, and they bring in the coffin with him dead inside. Turns out he died of a heart attack right before the crash. One wish to go (because she hasn’t learned her lesson), and she wishes him alive in the undamaged condition he is now in
and to live forever. Imagine living forever with embalming fluid running through your system. She can’t kill him to put him out of his misery.
So tell me-What the fuck did he do to be among the five on their way to hell? He did nothing wrong, and he is already in eternal agonizing torment. If you have seen this movie please tell me what I’m missing here.
He’s like the person who didn’t even eat the salmon mousse in The Meaning of Life. Too bad, you got caught in the dragnet…
Even the wife isn’t really guilty of anything…unless stupidity is one of the 7 Deadly Sins.
Hell is the default.
“It’s all gone.”
“Everything?”
“More than everything; you have debts. I did warn you, didn’t I, not to use the money that had been entrusted to you? The risks were far too great!”
They didn’t get away with anything, they went into debt, then he was cursed to be in horrible pain for eternity. Sending him to hell was just gilding the lily.
AFAICT, he didn’t just go into debt upon risking his money; he went into debt by risking yet other money that had been entrusted to him, and that he was warned not to use.
Hmm. If he’s immortal, why would he be going to hell?
Could it be that hell for him would be a reprieve? Is this explicitly an eternal hell?
(Note, I know this is all fanwank level, not something intended. I find it fun sometimes to fish out for these technicalities.)
I’ve never seen the film and can only speak to the TV series, but it does seem like, despite the stories basically being morality plays where the sinful protagonist gets what they deserve, there are occasions where the bad guys “win” or an innocent person suffers. I recall one episode where a jealous husband thinks his wife is cheating on him and so murders her only to discover that the big secret she and her “lover” were keeping from him was that she was pregnant and he was gonna be a dad, and he walks into their surprise party carrying her decapitated head. And another occasion where a guy murders his dream girl’s husband to be with her, but then gets blackmailed over it by a third man and eventually kills himself, only for the big reveal to be that the girl and the blackmailer were in love all along and planned the whole thing to get rid of her husband and the boyfriend.
I guess I’d chalk it up to '50s comic writers pushing the envelope of what they could get away with at the time, and those quirks carrying on into their subsequent adaptations.
Also, IIRC, in the original monkey’s paw story the three wishes go something like this;
- They wish for money and their son dies and leaves them his fortune
- They wish to have him back and he resurrects as a zombie
- They wish to undo the first two wishes
Spoiler for the 120-year-old short story
The son in the original story didn’t come back as a zombie. After the mother wished him back and the knocking commenced at their door, they both realized he’d be coming back in his factory-mangled form, and the father grabbed the cursed object and made the third wish to send him back and suddenly the knocking stopped–leaving one to wonder if anything had happened at all. Either way, the bereaved old couple were left with nothing but nightmares and whatever shabby compensation Maw and Meggins paid them.
Well, I’ve never read the story itself. I was first introduced to it via the Simpsons.
I was thinking the same thing; he lives forever in misery and goes to hell? That sucks.
He lives forever in misery AND is still married to a selfish idiot…sounds like hell to me.
“Paw me!”
he was embezzling money from his firm and investing it and lost it all is what I gathered …