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!

The search for cursed antiques continues!

Episode 2.6 “Master of Disguise”

(Dir by Tom McLoughlin, originally aired on November 11th, 1988)

A side job delivering antiques for use in a horror film leads to Micki meeting her favorite actor, the amazingly handsome and charming William Pratt (John Bolger).  And when the film’s leading lady refuses to shoot a scene because of Pratt’s method obsessiveness, Micki finds herself cast as her replacement.  Soon, Pratt and Micki are having a torrid romance.  Ryan feels that there’s something wrong with Pratt but then again, we all know that Ryan has unrequited romantic feelings for his cousin (ewwww!).

That said, Ryan is right.  Pratt is actually Jeff Amory, an actor who was so disfigured that he was previously typecast in horror films.  Amory disappeared after the murder of one of his co-stars, an actress who looked a lot like Micki.  Using a cursed makeup box that once belonged to John Wilkes Booth (“the actor who shot Lincoln,” Ryan helpfully explains), Amory has transformed himself into the handsome Pratt.  Unfortunately, the box needs to constantly absorb blood to work and Pratt has become a one-man murder spree.  (One of his victims is played by Aaron Schwartz, of Check It Out! fame.)  Will Micki become his next victim?

(An interesting piece of trivia: Booth is often described as just being “the actor who shot Lincoln,” but he was actually a legitimate star and a celebrity in both the North and the South in the years leading up to the Civil War.  The youngest and best-looking of the Booth brothers, he was an acclaimed and popular Shakespearean actor who was so handsome that women would flock to the theater whenever one of his show’s came to town.  He was the 19th century stage’s version of Ryan Reynolds.  Everyone who was into theater knew his name, even before he shot Lincoln.  America has seen many assassins who wanted to be celebrities.  Booth was a celebrity who wanted to be an assassin.)

This was an okay episode.  I liked the fact that Pratt was a bit more tormented by his actions than some of the other villains who have appeared on this show and I was also happy that Micki got to be at the center of the action, even if the episode’s script did make her a bit more flighty than she’s ever been previously portrayed.  Ryan’s romantic feelings for Micki are a little bit awkward, seeing as how they’re related but, again, they were necessary to establish why Micki was originally dismissive of Ryan’s concerns.

This episode ended with a bit of trivia, with Jack mentioning that William Pratt was also the real name of one of the gentlest men in show business …. Boris Karloff.  Again, you have to wonder why no one else noticed that is before Jack and why it took Jack so long to mention it.  Still, it’s nice that Karloff got a shout out.