Something Streaming This Way Comes: "PIN"

Way back yonder in 2011, I did a Random Roles interview with Jonathan Banks. Maybe you remember it, maybe you don’t, although it certainly gained a little bit of extra attention (if only amongst my regular readers) for the excised moment involving my daughter, to whom he offered the opportunity to ask him any question she wanted.

[If you don’t remember that moment, you can enjoy it by clicking right here.]

A different bit from the interview was brought back to the forefront of my memory yesterday when I was checking my “On This Day” memories on Facebook and this popped up:

My favorite short-answer response from Jonathan Banks' Random Roles came when I asked him about the voice-over work he did as the title character for the movie PIN. He said, “Uh, yeah, I don’t really remember that. I mean, I kind of remember. In the sense that it makes me think, 'Where’s my residual check? Because I haven’t seen one ever.'“

Well, as it happens, I realized upon reading this memory that I hadn’t ever seen PIN, which led me to head straight to the invaluable site JustWatch.com and try to find somewhere to watch it.

As it turns out, however, the film isn’t currently streaming in any official capacity, which means one thing: it’s time to venture forth to YouTube and see if anyone’s taken the time to upload it for viewing in a not-entirely-official capacity. Lo and behold, a couple of different kindhearted, well-intentioned souls have done just that, so if for some reason the version I’m embedding is no longer available by the time you read this, then definitely take a moment to search “PIN” and “1988,” because I suspect there’ll still be at least one version of it out there…

First of all, since I led off this piece by mentioning Jonathan Banks, I should perhaps mention as quickly as possible that the most likely reason that Banks didn’t immediately remember his time on the film is that he doesn’t actually appear in the film. This is not to say that the credit for him on IMDb is inaccurate, it’s just that his work was off-camera, providing the voice of the titular character.

And who is PIN, you ask?

PIN is a life-sized, anatomically-correct medical dummy owned by Dr. Frank Linden, played by another former Random Roles interviewee, Terry O’Quinn. Dr. Linden has two kids - Leon and Ursula - and by way of ventriloquism, he uses PIN to teach his kids about their bodies. Yeah, maybe it sounds a little creepy when put like that, and given that PIN’s design is one that’s without skin, i.e. with his musculature on full display, but… Okay, you got me: it comes across pretty damned creepy on the screen, too. But the one thing worth taking into consideration that might change your perception of the situation a little bit is that this ventriloquism act is arguably the most heartwarming aspect of Dr. Linden, who’s a pretty cold fish the rest of the time.

There’s one little problem with Dr. Linden’s act, and that’s that Leon believes that PIN is real, and it’s a delusion that he maintains through his childhood and into his teen years, and because Leon already has trouble making friends, he gradually comes to see PIN as his only friend. It isn’t until Leon is 18 years old (at which point he’s played by David Hewlett, who maintains the role for the remainder of the film) that Dr. Linden realizes just how bad things have gotten.

After catching Leon having a conversation with PIN - because, yes, Leon has now learned ventriloquism himself - Dr. Linden realizes that his son isn’t just suffering from mental illness, he has effectively adopted PIN as an alternate personality. Taking PIN away from Leon, Dr. Linden puts the medical dummy in his car, with plans to utilize him during a speech that night and then just leaving him at the medical school for good, but while he and his wife are driving, they’re in an accident. I will not reveal the specifics of the crash, but you will likely not be surprised to learn that Leon manages to retrieve PIN from the vehicle and bring him back home.

From there, the relationship between Leon and his sister Ursula (played as an adult by Cynthia Preston) grows increasingly strained as Leon’s bond with PIN somehow manages to get even more disconcerting when he mistakenly believes that dressing up the medical dummy and putting a “proper” face on him will make PIN easier to accept when he’s trotted out. It…doesn’t. Not even a little bit.

Rather than spoil the film for you, since it’s a relatively underseen horror flick (and is likely to maintain that status as long as it isn’t officially available for streaming), I’ll just say that it’s an extremely creepy flick, one that’s worth seeing if you like psychological thrillers that successfully achieve a lot of skin-crawling moments without a great deal of blood and gore.

That reminds me: I wonder if Banks ever did get any residuals for this thing…