Daily Archives: February 23, 2024

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 1.19 “The Quilt of Hathor”

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: The Series, a show which ran in syndication from 1987 to 1990. The show can be found on YouTube!

This week, Micki screws up and Ryan finds love!

Episode 1.19 “The Quilt of Hathor”

(Dir by Timothy Bond, originally aired on May 2nd, 1988)

Looking to retrieve a cursed quilt that allows its owner to enter other people’s dreams and kill them, Micki and Ryan go undercover as members of the Pentite Sect.

Who are the Pentites?  Basically, they’re Mennonites except for the fact that they’re called Pentites.  They are a hard-worked and religious community, one that eschews modern technology.  The members of the sect dress modestly, they don’t sing or dance, and they do everything that their leader, Reverend Grange (Scott Paulin), tells them to do.

Effie Stokes (Kate Trotter) is in love with the Reverend and wants to become his wife.  She also happens to own the Quilt of Hathor and soon, she is entering the dreams of her romantic rivals and killing them.  While Effie is trying to win the love of Reverend Grange, Ryan is falling in love with Grange’s daughter, Laura (Carolyn Dunn).  Quicker than you can say Witness, Ryan is temping Laura to dance and being forced to fight Laura’s suitor, Matthew (Diego Matamoras), while balancing above an open flame pit.  I don’t think Mennonites do that, which is probably why the Pentites broke off from them in the first place.

Micki does figure out that Effie is the one with the quilt and she even manages to grab it away from her.  However, when she tells Ryan that it’s time to return to the antique shop, Ryan replies that he can’t go with her.  Ryan has fallen in love with Laura and is planning on living the rest of his life as a Pentite.

Micki returns to the shop and, heartbroken, she tells Jack that she lost Ryan.  Jack then reveals that she also managed to grab the wrong quilt.  So, basically, Micki really screwed up.

This is a two-part episode so I imagine that Micki will return to the Pentite community next week and hopefully, she’ll pay attention and grab the right quilt this time.  Will Ryan return to the civilization with her?  Considering that John D. LeMay didn’t leave the show until the end of the second season, I imagine he probably will.

This was a pretty good episode.  The scenes where Effie entered the dreams were well-directed and definitely achieved a nightmarish intensity.  Some of the Pentite stuff was a little bit silly but John D. LeMay really sold his decision to stay with the sect.  With everything that we’ve seen of Ryan on this show, his decision actually makes sense.  Ryan has always been the one searching for deeper meaning while Micki is the more down-to-Earth member of the team.

Next week: Part two of the Quilt of Hathor!

14 Days of Paranoia #8: Reality (dir by Tina Satter)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

One day in 2017, Reality Winner (Sidney Sweeney), a yoga instructor who also works as a government translator, returns home from grocery shopping to discover that the FBI is outside of her house.  Agents Garrick (Josh Hamilton) and Taylor (Marchant Davis) have a search warrant and they explain that they also have some questions to ask her.

At first, both Garrick and Taylor are very friendly.  In fact, they’re almost too friendly.  Whenever Reality asks for more details about what is going on, they ask her about her pets or about whether or not she enjoys her job.  They ask her about her background and about the last trip she went on.  The conversation is cheerful but it’s hard not to notice that, while Garrick is smiling, burly FBI agents are ransacking Reality’s house.  As Reality comes to realize, she actually is in a lot of trouble.  Because she sent classified material to the Intercept, she is about to be arrested and prosecuted under the espionage act.  It’s going to be a while before she sees her house again.

Reality was released last year and aired on HBO.  It’s a film about which I had mixed feelings.  On the one hand, it showed how the government goes about prosecuting its citizens.  From the minute that Reality started talking to the FBI agents, I started yelling at her to shut up and get a lawyer.  No matter how many times they ask about your dog or how interested they seem to be in your recent trip to South America, agents of the FBI are not your friends!  Since the film’s script was largely a transcript of the actual interrogation, Reality presented a lesson in just how exactly law enforcement agencies like the FBI lure people into a false sense of security before dropping the trap on them.

On the other hand, this film also left me wondering just how much of a dumbass one has to be to throw away their career and their freedom for a trash organization like The Intercept.  Reality says that she was 1) upset over the election of Donald Trump (understandable) and 2) she resented being forced to watch Fox News at work when she would have rather watched Al Jazeera.  One needn’t be a fan of Fox to realize how ludicrous it is to suggest that Al Jazeera would somehow be less propagandistic.

There’s a moment, at the start of the film, where Reality — while standing outside of her house — stares at a toy truck on the other side of the street.  The toy has a big Confederate flag decal on it and the symbolism is so heavy-handed that it almost made me laugh out loud.  It leaves the viewer with no doubt that the film is very much on Reality Winner’s side and the film does her a great favor by casting the instantly likable Sydney Sweeney in the title role.  (Oddly, we occasionally see pictures of the actual Reality Winner over the course of the film, all of which invertedly serve to remind us that the real person is not as appealing as the actress playing her.)  Josh Hamilton and Marchant Davis are both appropriately menacing as the passive aggressive FBI agent and the scene where Hamilton goes from being friendly to being serious is truly jolting.

Since the film’s script is based on the actual transcripts of the interrogation, director Tina Satter inserts a film glitch whenever the characters mention anything that has been redacted.  The film’s best moment comes when a particularly big redaction causes the FBI agents to vanish all together and, for a few moments, Reality can actually catch her breath and is free from their questions.  The film did not make me any more sympathetic to Reality Winner (and, for all of its claims to historic veracity, it leaves out the moment she told her father that she wouldn’t be prosecuted because she was pretty and blonde) but it did make me feel empathy for anyone who has ever been targeted by the government.  When the film’s epilogue suggests that Reality Winner was prosecuted and imprisoned for a relatively minor offense solely to scare off other whistleblowers, it’s hard not to disagree.

14 Days of Paranoia:

  1. Fast Money (1996)
  2. Deep Throat II (1974)
  3. The Passover Plot (1976)
  4. The Believers (1987)
  5. Payback (1999)
  6. Lockdown 2025 (2021)
  7. No Way Out (1987)

Retro Television Review: T and T 2.18 “Thicker Than Water”

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!

If you’ve ever watched T and T and thought, “I wish there was a lot less T in this show,” this week’s episode is for you!

Episode 2.18 “Thicker than Water”

(Dir by Harvey Frost, originally aired on May 8th, 1989)

This is a weird episode.

Ronnie (David Hewlett) and Steve (Gordon Michael Woolvett) are two brothers who have opened up a punk music venue in whatever part of Canada that T and T was filmed in.  From the start, everyone is trying to shut them down.  The other neighborhood business people claim that the club is bringing in a bad element.  The police are unsympathetic whenever a fight breaks out.  The fire department is always showing up with a list of regulations.  The sinister person who loaned them the money to start the club wants the brothers to burn it down for the insurance money.  Seriously, it’s not easy run a venue devoted to angry music that is best appreciated by people who like to fight.  But, in the end, the brothers stick together and refuse to let Canada beat them down.

Yay!  Take that, Trudeau!

(Yes, I know that Justin Trudeau was not in charge of Canada when this show was filmed but I’m too lazy to look up who was.  Actually, T and T always pretended that it was set in the U.S. so I guess I should blame the first Bush.  But seriously, everything about T and T screams Canada.)

So, why is this an episode of T and T?  Well, Amy is their lawyer.  (Sometimes, Amy practices criminal law and sometimes, she practices business law and sometimes, she just acts like a lobbyist.  There’s nothing Amy can’t do!)  Amy shows up at the club a few times.  T.S. Turner also shows up once or twice and says, “Little brother, when you believe in something …. YOU FIGHT FOR IT!”

I’m going to guess that this was a backdoor pilot for a series that would have followed the brothers and their club.  I have no idea if the pilot led to a series.  It’s really hard for me to imagine what a potential series would have been like but I would say that I thought the club looked cool.  I liked the rebellious attitude of the bands that performed there.

Like most backdoor pilots, this is a bit of a wasted episode.  This is also the third episode in a row that hasn’t really featured Turner and Amy doing anything new.  The previous two episodes were both clip shows and this episode isn’t even about them.  These episodes are easy to review (yay!) but you do have to wonder what was going on behind the scenes during the latter half of the second season.

Live Tweet Alert: Join #FridayNightFlix For Sinbad of the Seven Seas!

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, we’ve got an action classic, 1989’s Sinbad Of The Seven Seas!

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.

Sinbad of the Seven Seas is available on Prime!  See you there!

Scenes That I Love: Paul Morrissey’s Mixed Blood

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today, the Shattered Lens wishes a happy 86th birthday to the one and only Paul Morrissey!

Though he may not be as well known as some of his contemporaries, Paul Morrissey is one of the godfathers of independent film.  He first came to notice as a collaborator of Andy Warhol’s.  Morrisey’s first films were shot at the Factory and starred the members of Warhol’s entourage.  At a time when the indie film scene barely even existed, Morrissey was making boldly transgressive films and distributing them largely on his own.  In fact, it could probably be argued that, if not for Paul Morrissey, the American independent film scene would never have grown into the impressive artistic and financial force that it is today.

There’s always been some debate over how much influence Warhol had over Morrissey’s films.  Morrissey has always said that Warhol had next to nothing to do with the films, beyond occasionally taking a producer’s or a co-director’s credit.  Others have disagreed.  What can be said for sure is that, even after Warhol retreated from directly involving himself in the cinematic arts, Morrissey continued to make fiercely independent films.

Paul Morrissey made films about outsiders.  While other directors were telling stories about the middle and upper classes, Morrissey was making movies about junkies, prostitutes, and people simply trying to make it from one day to another.  His films also frequently satirized classic Hollywood genres.  In fact, his two best-known films, Flesh for Frankenstein and Blood for Dracula, not only satirized the old Universal horror films but also the Marxist-themed films being made in Europe.  A devout Catholic and a political conservative, Morrissey took a particular delight in tweaking the left-wing assumptions of the counterculture.  Who can forget Joe Dallesandro’s gloriously shallow revolutionary in Blood for Dracula?

Today’s scene of the day comes from Paul Morrissey’s 1985 Mixed Blood, a film about a war between a Brazilian gang and a Puerto Rican gang that is fought almost entirely by underage soldiers.  (The film compares the street soldiers to the members of the boy band Menudo, in that they are rotated out once they reached the age at which they could be tired as adults.)  In this scene, a police officer visits a drug operation that is almost entirely staffed by children.

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special Terence Fisher Edition

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!

Today, we celebrate the 120th anniversary of the birth of the great British film director, Terence Fisher.  Though Fisher worked in all genres, he is best remembered for the horror films that he directed for Hammer Studios.  Along with proving that there was still an audience for horror, he also helped to make stars out of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee.

It’s time for….

4 Shots From 4 Terence Fisher Films

The Curse of Frankenstein (1957, dir by Terence Fisher, DP: Jack Asher)

Horror of Dracula (1958, dir by Terence Fisher, DP: Jack Asher)

The Mummy (1959, dir by Terence Fisher, DP: Jack Asher)

The Devil Rides Out (1968, dir by Terence Fisher, DP: Arthur Grant)

Music Video of the Day: With Love K…. by Kedr Livanskiy (2013, dir by Kedr Livanskiy)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today’s music video of the day is a recent one from Kedr Livanskiy.  I always assume that all of Kedr Livanskiy’s videos either deal with vampires or takes place in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.  This one seems to definitely take place in a world where, much as in Argento’s Tenebrae and Rollin’s Night of the Hunted, there are now far fewer people.

Enjoy!