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 series is streaming on YouTube.
This week, the first season of Monsters come to an end.
Episode 1.24 “La Strega”
(Dir by Lizzie Borden, originally aired on May 27th, 1989)
Vito (a young Rob Morrow) enters a pawn shop shortly before closing. He tells the proprietor, Lia (Linda Blair), that he’s shopping for something for his girlfriend. But, as soon as Lia turns her back, Vito draws a knife and announces that he’s actually come to kill her. Lia, however, has a gun and without flinching, she shoots at the floor. Vito, who is far less calm than Lia, drops the knife.
Lia takes Vito to her apartment above the shop. He tells her that he knows that she’s “La Strega” and that, ten years earlier, she put a curse on his mother (played by Maria Tucci) when she and Lia had a dispute over a ring that his mother brought to the shop. His mother has just died as a result of the curse and Vito wants vengeance.
Lia explains that she’s not a witch and that Vito’s mother’s dispute was actually with Lia’s mother. Lia also suggests that it was Vito’s mother who tried to steal the ring. Lia says that Vito will spend the next two weeks working for her and seeing what type of person she actually is. If, at the end of the two weeks, he still wants to kill her, she’ll accept that it is fate. Vito agrees.
For the next two weeks, Vito works in the shop and lives in Lia’s apartment. (I guess someone else is handling his mother’s funeral.) Vito is haunted by dreams in which both Lia and his mother attempt to seduce him and beg him to kill the other. Vito starts to fall in love with Lia and, as the two weeks come to a close, Lia says that she wants to enjoy what might be her last night on Earth….
Directed by feminist filmmaker Lizzie Borden, this episode ends the first season of Monsters on a rather moody note. Vito is never quite sure whether or not he can trust either Lia or the angry spirit of his mother and, in the end, no one’s motives are really that clear. The episode ends on a rather enigmatic note, which is a polite way of saying that it’s confusing as Hell. That said, Rob Morrow, Maria Tucci, and Linda Blair all give good performances and Borden does a good job of creating an appropriately dream-like atmosphere. In the end, the main impression one takes from this episode is that Vito, for all of his bluster, was essentially just a pawn in a supernatural battle between two powerful women, even if Vito himself wasn’t smart enough to realize it. This episode is not a bad note for the first season to end on.
The first season of Monsters was uneven. When it was good, it was really good. When it was weak, it was really weak. For the most part, though, it was enjoyable and most of the stories were memorably macabre.
Next week, we’ll see if that trend continue as we start the second season of Monsters!
Through the Shattered Lens 