Daily Archives: November 10, 2023

Late Night Retro Television Reviews: Friday the 13th 1.6 “The Great Montarro”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a new feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Fridays, I will be reviewing Friday the 13th, a show which ran in syndication from 1987 to 1990. The show can be found on YouTube!

This week’s episode of Friday the 13th is all about magic, blood, and costumes!

Episode 1.6 “The Great Montarro”

(Dir by Richard Friedman, originally aired on November 2nd, 1987)

This week’s episode opens with a magician named Fahteem (August Schellenberg) performing his signature trick.  He steps into the Cabinet of Doom and, once he’s sealed inside, several sword blades are driven through the cabinet.  Somehow, Fahteem always survives without a scratch and the audience is always amazed.  What the audience doesn’t know is that the Cabinet is a cursed antique.  Before each performance, Fahteem drugs a woman and locks her in another cabinet.  The blades kills whoever is in that cabinet while leaving Fahteem untouched.  Of course, if no one is in the other cabinet than the blades will kill whoever is in the Cabinet of Doom.  That is something that Fahteem discovers when an unknown perpetrator decides to take the cabinet away from him.

After Fahteem is murdered, Jack, a former musician who was an unfriendly acquaintance of Fahteem, discovers that the Cabinet of Doom was actually purchased from the antique store.  Jack decides to return to the world of magic and magicians so that he can track down the cabinet.  Helping him, and getting to wear a cute assistant’s uniform, is Micki.  Ryan also helps but he doesn’t get anything cute to wear.

It turns out that the cabinet is now in the possession of the Great Montarro (Graeme Campbell) and his wife, Lylah (Lesleh Donaldson).  Realizing that Jack is trying to take away the cabinet, Montarro and Lylah are soon targeting him and trying to make his signature trick into a fatal one.  Seeing as how that trick involves Jack being tied up in a sack that is then set on fire, that might be an easier task than it sounds.

This is the bloodiest episode of the show yet, with the camera focusing on the gory results of every failed trick.  Blood drips from cabinets.  Blood spreads across stages.  Watching the show, you really do find yourself watching why there’s so many spikes and blades just lying around.  Apparently, audiences for magic shows are not satisfied unless there’s a chance that they might see someone die in a terrible fashion.  In the role of Jack, Chris Wiggins appears to be having a ball performing magic tricks and, as a result, both Micki and Ryan spend most of the show standing off to the side.  Fortunately, Wiggins is a lot of fun to watch in this episode.  The joy that he takes from pulling off the perfect trick is contagious.  The overall episode is a bit too slowly paced but at least almost everyone gets to wear a nice costume.

Next week, Jack, Ryan, and Micki try to recover a cursed scalpel!

Retro Television Reviews: T and T 2.1 through 2.4 “Straight Line”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a new feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Fridays, I will be reviewing T. and T., a Canadian show which ran in syndication from 1987 to 1990.  The show can be found on Tubi!

This week, season 2 begins with a supesized episode.

Episodes 2.1 through 2.4 “Straight Line”

(Dir by George Mihalka, originally aired on October 24, 1988)

Straight Line, the second season premiere of T & T, is one story that is told over the course of four, 30-minute episodes.  According to both Wikipedia and the IMDb, all four of those episodes aired on October 24th, 1988.  To me, that would seem to suggest that Straight Line originally aired as a made-for-TV movie and that it was later split up into four episodes for syndication.  It’s something that happens with a lot of shows, especially when it comes to season premieres.  Straight Line was also apparently released, direct to video, as a stand-alone film in 1990 and you have to wonder how many people ended up renting it without realizing that they were spending their money on a super-sized episode of T & T.

The second season begins with some changes to the opening credits.  Most of the supporting cast — including Decker, Aunt Martha, Sophie, and Detective Jones — no longer appear in the opening credits.  (Decker and Aunt Martha do appear in the episodes but both David Nerman and Jackie Richardson are credited as being “guest stars.”)  Instead, it appears that there are now only three regular members of the cast — Mr. T, Alex Amini, and Sean Roberge as a new character named Joe Casper.  (Roberge previously appeared during the first season, playing a character named Fabian.)

Joe Casper is a teenager who is in a bit of trouble.  He’s gotten involved with a neighborhood gang known as The Future and when the Future disrupts a campaign event for a reverend who is seeking to become Toronto’s first black mayor, it leads to a bomb going off and killing Joe’s mother.  Distraught by what’s happened, Joe attempts to jump off a bridge but T.S. Turner (who was at the rally) approaches Joe and says, “Take it easy, little brother,” and that’s all Joe needs to hear to turn himself into the police.  Joe is going to need a good lawyer so T.S. calls Amy, who rushes over the police station and….

OH MY GOD, WHAT IS AMY WEARING!?

Amy explains that she was at a banquet when T.S. called but still, I would probably put on a coat or something before heading over to Toronto’s dirtiest police station.

Anyway, Amy is able to keep Joe out of jail.  Joe is sent to a juvenile rehabilitation center that is run by Dr. Hammel (Kenneth Welsh).  Dr. Hammel is an ally of the preacher who is running for mayor and everyone thinks that Dr. Hammel is a good and devoted social activist.  Of course, the audience automatically knows that Dr. Hammel is the bad guy because he’s played by Kenneth Welsh, who I imagine is best-known in America for playing the totally evil Windom Earle in Twin Peaks.

T.S. investigates The Future and discovers that there started out as a neighborhood watch before being transformed into a bunch of Neo-Nazis.  He also discovers that Dr. Hammel is the one who is behind the organization.  T.S. and Amy have to expose Hammel and they better hurry because the preacher running for mayor has been assassinated and Hammel has just announced that he’s running for mayor of Toronto!

This all may sound pretty exciting but the second season premiere is actually a bit dull.  The main problem is that, as opposed to the first season, T.S. doesn’t get to do much in the episode.  He’s rather subdued and there’s none of the quirkiness that made the character so memorable during the first season.  He doesn’t talk about his love for cookies.  He hardly calls anyone, other than Joe, “brother.”  There’s not even a scene of him hitting a punching bag.  It’s disappointing!  As well, he and Amy were separated for the majority of the show, which kind of goes against the whole idea of them being T and T.  Instead, the majority of the episode was devoted to introducing Joe.  The episode ended with Joe, tears streaming down his face, walking away with T.S. and apparently renouncing his former affiliation with The Future.  Since Joe is in the opening credits now, I assume he’s going to become T.S.’s ward for at least the next few episodes.

Hopefully, the next episode will features T.S. acting more like T.S.  Otherwise, this is going to be a long season.

Live Tweet Alert: Join #FridayNightFlix For Hercules!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly live tweets on Twitter and Mastodon.  I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of #MondayActionMovie!  Every week, we get together.  We watch a movie.  We tweet our way through it.

Tonight, at 10 pm et, #FridayNightFlix has got 1983’s Hercules, starring Lou Ferrigno and Sybil Danning!

If you want to join us this Friday, just hop onto twitter, start the movie at 10 pm et, and use the #FridayNightFlix hashtag!  It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.

Hercules is available on Prime and Tubi!  See you there!

Music Video of the Day: My Kinda Life by Cliff Richard (1977, directed by ????)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Today’s music video of the day features 5 Cliff Richards for the price of one.

Cliff Richard may not be well-known in the United States but he was as big as Elvis in the UK and was often described as being England’s answer to Elvis Presley, or at least he was until the Beatles came along.  But even after the Beatles became a worldwide phenomenon, Cliff remained a huge star in Europe and he is the only singer in the history of music to have a #1 hit in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.  In fact, he holds the record for having more top ten hits than any other musician.

Cliff was also an artist who made music videos at a time when only a few did so.  As opposed to other band’s early videos, Cliff’s videos were usually more than just performance clips and, in many ways, they predicted the type of videos that would dominate MTV in the 80s.

Enjoy!