Nightmare on a Gurney - S1E6 Spider-Man Noir

Hello everyone and welcome to the Cinema Slime Podcast, my name is Harrison and today we are going to be going over Season 1 Episode 6 of Spider-Man Noir entitled, Nightmare on a Gurney In this episode Ben Reilly is held against his will, experimented on, and while a cure is found for these super powered beings, it might be too late.

This episode is all about forcing Ben to dig up the past. He is doing all he can to leave town with Cat for his happily ever after, but Dr. Faber has other plans. As Ben is leaving money behind for Janet, the photo and Ruby and contemplating on the Spider Mask, Ogden shows up begging him to contribute towards Dr. Faber’s research in finding a cure for those war prisoners who were imbued with super-powers against there will. When Ben refuses, even after learning that Ogden was one of them, a quick stick of the needle leads this episode to completely shift gears into a true nightmare.

This is the moment where you must always remember, that if any doctor tells you that you are in their private laboratory, freaky stuff is going to happen. Dr. Faber plans to test his blood, organic tissues, and anything else she can think in order to create a cure. She truly believes she is the hero in this scenario and it’s a difficult position to be in. Are her intentions good? Yes. These super powered being were experimented on unwillingly, there powers are not a blessing but a curse, and if the patterns continue it could lead to their death. Her methods? Horrifying. Her manipulation of Ben doesn’t even convince him to help, she continues to forcibly operate on Ben, take bits of his body, and restraining him from escape.

During all of this we see a flashback to Ben in the early stages of his mutation and I have to say they continue to display how horrifying this experience was for him. It’s not a discovery of these incredible powers and him deciding to do good with them. He’s uncomfortably transforming, he doesn’t know what is going on with his body and that is completely terrifying. It’s calling back to those classic werewolf movies, not being able to choose to transform, but something is forced upon you by an outside source. It gets even worse once he is under the knife of Dr, Faber and it is a complete nightmare of a scene. Forcibly being operated on, episodes pouring out of every opening, being consumed by the literal manifestation of this persona you have created, it is a horrible things to witness

Turns out that Ogden, Dr. Faber’s assistant, is actually her son, whose mutation has caused him to age rapidly. Dr. Faber believes she has discovered the cure and I will admit, I completely thought that Ogden was going to turn into some evil classic Spider-Man villain when she injected him. Turns out though, all is well actually. He de-ages rapidly and everything seems to work out. Then the contention begins. Ogdin believes they should let Ben go, fulfilling the promise they made. Dr. Faber justifies her choices, saying that she spent her life trying to give Ogden a fresh start on his, and the last thing she will allow is for him to spend his days behind bars. Think of all the terrible things they have done to Ben, there life is now over.

To wrap things up, Silvermane shows up at the laboratory to get the names of all the Super Powered beings that came out of that little French town. He wants to build an army and become the most unstoppable force in all of New York. Unfortunately, they are in Dr. Fabers private lab and well know that it is freaky down there. It turns out that all of the soldiers she found and experimented on are still there, but dead, and shoved into display cases as examples of what happened to those who didn’t live past her experimenting and the rapid progression of their mutation. The Lab is destroyed, Dr. Faber and Ogden are presumed dead, and Ben Reily escapes in the nick of time, holding that little bottle of antidote.

This episode is a HUGE shift in the series, dicing into a completely different genre then what we are used to. While they teased it out with the scene of Ben being bitten by a mutated spider/human crossover, it still felt like such a shock when we were witnessing a true nightmare in the surgical room. I have to give props to Nicolas Cage for his body acting throughout this. It felt like they really let him loose when he was showing us the progression of his mutation. Overall I am going to give this episode a 7 out of 10 for those that care about the rating. I think they took a big swing with this episode and I think it landed very well. It tied up some loose ends, progressed the story along, and gave a stronger foundation in regards to some of the character motives. Really looking forward to the next episode, so far I haven’t really been disappointed with this show and I don’t think it will.