Nerding Day: Mr. Stitch 🌭

Although it has long been known that the swirl of individual galaxies is the product of black holes at their centers, it was only recently that physicists came to the consensus that there exists a similar and inconceivably powerful hole-like structure at the center of the universe itself which dictates the motion of all creation. By the mid-60’s, this idea had been explored but ultimately butchered in both Langenbotham’s On the Motion of Gravimetric Entities Orbiting in Fixed Spacetime (1948) and the last scene of Men In Black (original 1959 version). Definitive proof of what scientists have since dubbed “the goatse model” wouldn’t come until 1978, in the form of a small-scale simulation later packaged for resale to the public. The device used sophisticated laser technology to represent the complex rotational motion of the universe as a flat plane spinning around such a hole. The only drawback was that the discs required flipping in the middle if you wanted to simulate a full universe.

Then about thirty years later my Dad made me watch a bunch, then I landed this column – you know, the one they call…LaserDiscs in the Rain.

To really understand Mr. Stitch, you first have to understand what the Sci-Fi Channel was like in 1995. What the world was like, really. This was before Battlestar, before SyFy – the cloning of Dolly the sheep was a year away (at this point they were still just fucking sheep while wearing lab coats and holding clipboards). In ‘95, things were going from bad to worse for our nation: first there was the O.J. Simpson trial, then the Oklahoma City bombing, then the Internet became widely available to the public. Then, just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, a Sci-Fi original movie would come on TV, making all those things seem paltry by comparison. You’d forget about all of them in an instant.

This particular Sci-Fi Original is a modern retelling of Frankenstein starring Rutger Hauer as the mysterious Dr. Wakeman. Get it? He WAKES a dead MAN! Hey, fuck you, you write a movie. Naturally, the monster’s names are equally clever – he’s alternately called Mr. Stitch, Subject Three, and Lazarus. Get it? The third “subject” or book of the Bible (in which Lazarus famously appears) is Leviticus, which details how sacrifices are to be made to God, much as our Frankenstein analog is forced to sacrifice his own connection to the divine in order to to bring life back to dead flesh and thereby ironically become godlike himself. “Mr Stitch” is because he’s got stitches.

When it came time to cast the monster, the bigwigs went traditional, landing on an actor that some would argue is almost too on-the-nose for the part: Wil Wheaton of Star Trek: the Next Generation. In fact, Wheaton got so yoked for this role that it’s said his dedication was the inspiration for Christian Bale going into Batman Begins.

Yep, that’s him! I guess you’re probably wondering how he ended up in this situation. Let’s edit in a record scratch and a rewind effect, then start with the basics. This is Subject Three:

He’s in a bit of a pickle, and by “pickle” I mean a white void where John Hodgman and Justin Long have been replaced by Rutger Hauer and his floating eyeball friend.

Mr. Stitch awakens with no memory, yet a part of him instinctively knows that something isn’t right. A floating eyeball, sure, okay, but if Rutger Hauer is smiling, something is very wrong. Our bandaged hero springs into inaction.

What follows is a painful and laborious rehabilitation process. Subject Three probes Dr. Wakeman for information about the world and himself as he slowly learns to walk, talk, and feel humiliation again.

He shows remarkable healing potential though, and it’s only a matter of weeks before he’s mastered even complex combat and infiltration skills, like disappearing at will and karate kicks.

His body now a finely-tuned instrument, Mr. Stitch turns his attention to matters of the mind. Soon he has assembled no less than twenty-eight stacks of books, which vastly expands his knowledge of both stacks and piles. Perhaps one day, he muses, he shall even crack open a book, and feast on its tender insides.

For now, there is a more urgent task at hand – securing freedom. The pitiable monster hurls a weight at the security eyeball and it proves to be filled with nacho cheese, a fortuitous turn.

Starving, he falls to his knees and scoops the semisolid food product up with both hands, slurping it down ice cold and not caring in the least. By the time Dr. Wakeman bursts in through the vagina-door on his science segue, it’s too late. Mr. Stitch is mad with dairy.

He quickly dispatches both guards and demands his bandages removed. At long last, we’re able to put a face to this thing of dark beauty, this life from death, this Prometheus.

Oh shit, he’s just Sally from A Nightmare Before Christmas? That’s kind of a letdown. Equally upsetting, Mr. Stitch starts to have nightmares that seem to be leftover memories from the eighty-eight dead people that comprise him. The first is of a car accident – a child, having their innocence ripped away as smoothly as sliding off a seat.

Or even being stuffed inside a tumble drier, for that matter.

But enough classic trauma metaphors we’re all familiar with! The tension between Stitch and Wakeman steadily ratchets up over the next week. The doctor even installs a port in the subject’s skull that allows him to monitor his dreams, which apparently you just need a standard eighth-inch aux jack for. What’s cool is, you can plug your iPod into it and the music comes out his ear-holes.

But once again, Wil Wheaton’s sheer berzerker-like rage takes over, and with the power of a silverback gorilla he dashes the dream machine to the ground like so much eyeball. Instead of nacho cheese, it proves to be full of the yellow ganache that they use for the yolk in Cadbury eggs.

Wakeman is unable to rebuild it, since of course the eggs are only available seasonally. Desperate, the good doctor assigns his associate Dr. English to the case to see if she can develop a rapport with the creature now calling himself Johnny Lazarus the Vanishing Karate Mummy.

Laz quickly falls for the first woman he’s ever met, which isn’t creepy at all. Just when it seems like those feelings might be returned, Wakeman abruptly takes Dr. English off the project and upgrades his segue to an adult-sized razor scooter to show dominance.

But you can only push Frankenstein’s monster so far before he pushes back! Specifically, pushes back with his thumb on the spot on your forehead between your eyebrows, which is a move I must admit I’m unfamiliar with.

Oh, sorry, were you using that wrist to jerk off, jerkoff? There’s a reason they call him Wesley Crusher. As if to prove it, the rest of the movie is one long fight/chase sequence, with Wakeman and government forces trying to contain Mr. Stitch as he goes about ripping the lid off their secret program, which was designed to turn the dead into unstoppable killing machines for the military to deploy, presumably to keep those darn student protestors from cluttering up the quad.

Aw, look, he thinks he’s a Die Hard! By crawling around, Lazarus quickly learns that the complex is a secret government facility housing all kinds of experimental weapons programs. He further learns that that same fabulous facility full of deadly deadly secrets is only guarded by one guy chilling at a night desk.

One judicious headbutt later, Subject Three discovers Subjects Two and Four. His younger brother is a new kind of lab-grown supersoldier Wakeman plans to use to replace him, while Subject Two is, well…this:

To make matters worse, he unlocks some more dead people’s memories and realizes Dr. English’s old boyfriend is in there, which is highly confusing for the pubescent pariah. Mayhap it is that selfsame confusion that shuts off his ability to process peripheral vision so entirely that he’s immediately sideswiped by a car the second he steps outside.

Determined to take down Wakeman and his military masters, Lazarus steals the car and flees the facility. Wakeman’s fleet of go-karts give chase, because apparently the weapons program can afford to acquire eighty-eight corpses but not a black Escalade.

The guy with no memory and no experience operating a car easily out-maneuvers the government goons, sending their caravan’s only full-sized vehicle careening off a cliff so emphatically that the resulting cloud of smoke is skull-shaped.

He makes one brief pit-stop to tell a woman that although her son and husband died in a horrible car wreck, it’s okay because they live on both in her memory and as part of a freakish amalgam of undead corpse-flesh. She takes it pretty well.

As all heroes must, Mr. Stitch returns home, but changed. He’s got his groove back now, and it’s with a newfound sense of purpose and jaunty perk in his step that he knocks that same security guard the fuck out on his way back through the lobby.

He quickly tracks down General Hardcastle, the man that requisitioned the Frankenstein project in the first place. He only gets one scene to prove he’s the Big Bad, and so has to cram four metric tons of on-screen evil into six seconds of writhing face.

Mr. Stitch ultimately opens a canister of nerve gas, sacrificing himself to take out both the general and Subjects Two and Four, ending the project for good. Dr. English is the only one to walk away, and she does so with a new appreciation not just for the partner she mourns, but also for the stitch-faced monster that he became a small part of.

It’s a tragic love story, a cautionary tale, and the kind of film only 1995 and the Sci-Fi Channel could produce. I personally think it’s wildly underrated…and I’m not even Wil Wheaton paying Swaim to let me ghostwrite his column for the week!

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Matt Reiley, who is also filled with nacho cheese, but you don’t have to kill him to get it out.