Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Fridays, I will be reviewing Freddy’s Nightmares, a horror anthology show which ran in syndication from 1988 to 1990. The entire series can be found on Tubi!

This week’s episode is actually decent.

Episode 1.18 “The Art of Death”

(Dir by Ken Wiederhorn, originally aired on March 12th, 1989)

Jack (Carey Scott) is a talented artist and college student who has a crush on Joan (Laura Schaefer).  When Joan’s jock boyfriend humiliates Jack, Jack suddenly finds himself approached by The Phantom (Judd Omen), a masked figure who claims that he can kill Jack’s enemies if Jack draws a picture of him doing it.  After the jock is killed in a treadmill accident, Joan sees the picture that Jack drew and decides she doesn’t want anything to do with Jack.  The Phantom suggests drawing a picture of him surprising Joan in the shower.  Jack refuses, just to discover that the picture has already been drawn and the Phantom is now holding Joan prisoner in a boiler room.  Jack draws a picture of the Phantom being sucked down a hole.  The Phantom vanishes but …. oh no, now Jack’s wearing the mask!  Jack was the Phantom all along!

As for the second story, Joan struggles to recover from the trauma.  In typical Freddy’s Nightmares fashion, she has a series of hallucinations that lead to her killing her psychiatrist.

This episode actually worked!  The first story was genuinely creepy.  The second story was predictable but it featured a good performance from Laura Schaefer and the action moved at a decent pace.  I’m going to give the majority of the credit to director Ken Wiederhorn, who previously directed one of my favorite zombie films, 1977’s Shock Waves.

This is my final Freddy’s Nightmares review for 2025.  Retro Television Review is taking a break for the holidays, so I can focus on Awards Season and Christmas movies!  Freddy’s Nightmares will return on January 9th.