Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Wednesdays, I will be reviewing Monsters, which aired in syndication from 1988 to 1991. The entire show is streaming on Tubi.
This week, the lizard are leaping!
Episode 1.8 “Sleeping Dragon”
(Dir by Mark Rezyka, originally aired on December 10th, 1988)
Outside of Reno, Nevada, a stone capsule is found. Professor Merrick (Kin Shriner) believes that the capsule is from the prehistoric era and that it might prove his theory that there was a highly-developed society on Earth before the rise of human beings. Merrick brings the capsule to a lab that is located high in the mountains.
While a snow storm rages outside, Merrick and his colleagues, Jeffrey (Russell Johnson) and Jeffrey’s daughter Lisa (Beth Toussaint), examine the capsule. Jeffrey is skeptical of Merrick’s theories while Lisa thinks that the rock could actually be some sort of time capsule that was buried centuries ago. When the three of them leave the lab to get a Geiger counter and some more tools to try to pry the capsule open, a humanoid lizard (Wayne Toth) emerges from the stone.
The Lizard is not a friendly visitor and soon, he’s attacking anyone foolish enough to get close to him. The surviving humans know that he have to find a way to stop the lizard but how do you stop something that you can’t understand? With the blizzard raging outside, no one is leaving the lab until the battle between lizard and human is resolved.
This episode of Monsters had potential but it suffered because of its short runtime. If the episode had a bit more time to emphasis the claustrophobia of the lab and to also allow a bit more suspense as the Lizard tracked down the scientists, it would have been far more effective. As it is, the whole thing felt a bit rushed.
There are two things that I did like about this episode.
First off, it’s a huge plot point that the lab’s phone is dead, which means that the scientists can’t call for help. The scientists assume that the phone is dead either because of the blizzard or because of the Lizard but, in reality, the phone isn’t dead at all. It’s just that Lisa, while stumbling around the office, accidentally unplugged the phone and no one noticed until they actually tried to make a call. That felt like a realistic mistake that one might make while under pressure and it also encouraged the viewer to question whether or not the humans were actually smart enough to survive their lizard encounter.
The second thing that worked about this episode is that lizard man really was frightening. It helped that he stayed in the shadows for most of the episode and, when he did appeared, he moved quickly enough that you really didn’t notice that he was essentially a guy in a rubber suit. He was an effective monster and, in the end, that’s what really matters when it comes to a show like this.
Next week, we’ve got another vampire story!
Through the Shattered Lens 