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, we have the second-to-last episode of Monsters!
Episode 3.23 “The Maker”
(Dir by William Wesley, originally aired on April 18th, 1991)
Mack (Philip Anglim), a suit-wearing vagrant, wanders into what he thinks is an abandoned hotel. Mack just wants a place to spend the night and he’s shocked to discover that the hotel is also occupied by Freddy Fredericks (Eddie Bracken), a former stage magician who is now an alcoholic. When Mack asks how an abandoned building has electricity, Freddy explains that he can create things with his mind. Mack is skeptical so Freddy creates an apple and a banana. Mack asks for money and Freddy creates that. It’s quite a power except there always seems to be some small mistake. For instance, the money has Mack’s picture on it. When Freddy tries to create gold, he creates brass instead. Mack decides that the alcohol is holding Freddy back and he demands that Freddy quit cold turkey.
Bad idea.
When someone can create things just by thinking about them, the last thing you want is for that persons to get the DTs.
This, the second-to-last installment of Monsters, was definitely an effective episode. It wasn’t perfect. It got off to a slow start and Eddie Bracken occasionally went a bit overboard as Freddy. But the idea of Freddy’s alcoholism inhibiting his powers was a good one and the episode took it in a pretty clever direction. The monster — half snake/half-woman — that was created by Freddy’s DTs was genuinely frightening and the episode’s final twist not only made sense but it also worked. All in all, it was a very good episode.
Next week, we’ll finish up Monsters with a Stephen King adaptation starring Tom Noonan.
Through the Shattered Lens 