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 is a creepy one! Read on!
Episode 1.8 “Shadow Boxer”
(Dir by Timothy Bond, originally aired on November 21st, 1987)
Tommy Dunn (David Ferry) is a punch drunk boxer who barely makes a living working at a local gym. No one takes him seriously. The other boxers taunt him. The owner of the gym treats him like a slave and continually tells him that he’ll never be a champion. However, Tommy has a secret weapon. He’s found an old pair of boxer gloves. The gloves used to belong to a savage boxer known as the Killer. When Tommy puts the gloves on and touches his shadow, his shadow comes to life. While Tommy is throwing punches either in the gym or in the ring, his shadow is beating someone else to death. As long as his shadow is beating someone up, Tommy is unstoppable.
After Tommy’s shadow murders the owner of the gym, Micki, Ryan, and Jack show up to investigate. (The gloves were, of course, bought from Curious Goods.) Micki brings her camera and takes pictures of all of the boxers so that Ryan and Jack can later look to see if any of them are wearing the “Killer” gloves. It doesn’t take them long to discover that Tommy is currently in possession of the gloves. When Micki flirts with Tommy at a diner, Ryan and Jack break into his apartment and search for the gloves. This leads to three things happening. First off, Micki has a really awkward date with a murderer. Secondly, Ryan and Jack fail to find the gloves before Tommy returns. Third, Tommy now knows that Ryan, Jack, and Micki are onto him.
During his next fight, Tommy sends his shadow after Jack but fortunately, Micki is waiting with a flashlight. Shining light on the shadow causes it to disappear and it also causes Tommy to get beaten unconscious in the boxing ring. With Tommy temporarily out of commission, Ryan steals the gloves. Tommy can no longer use the gloves to kill but, as Micki bitterly points out, Tommy will also never be prosecuted for all the people that he killed.
Of course, Tommy then shows up at Curious Goods and tries to force Micki to tell him where the gloves are. Ryan puts on the gloves and proceeds to beat up Jack, which leads to Ryan’s shadow beating Tommy to death. Jack isn’t particularly happy about getting beaten up but it does save Micki’s life.
This was a well-done episode. There weren’t many twists to the story but the sight of Tommy’s shadow following people around was undeniably creepy. The shadow was probably the scariest of all of the threats that have appeared on the show so far. Even when the shadow was saving Micki’s life by beating Tommy to death, it was still scary to watch. When Ryan hit Jack, it was left ambiguous as to whether or not he was trying to save Micki’s life or if the evil of the cursed gloves had briefly possessed him.
The only unfortunate thing about this episode is that it led to me going down the Wikipedia rabbit hole of researching boxers who have died in the ring. Boxing is a brutal sport, whether you’re fighting with cursed gloves or not!
Through the Shattered Lens 