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, a husband and a wife live in a loft and obsess on sex and death.

Episode 2.16 “Interior Loft”

(Dir by Ken Wiederhorn, originally aired on January 28th, 1990)

Kim Lewis (Elizabeth Keifer) has quit her job so that she can work on her novel.  Her husband, David (Kip Gilman), is a lazy grad student who doesn’t bring in much money to the household.  David suggests that Kim could record a message for a sex line.  Kim agrees but, when a serial killer becomes obsessed with the message, she finds herself being stalked.  Fortunately, the killer dies before he can harm Kim.  But Kim is so traumatized and mentally shaken by her stalker’s bloody death that David comes to worry that she might be plotting to become a killer herself.  And, of course, she is.

There was nothing supernatural about this episode, other than Freddy popping up for the host segments.  Apparently, even in his Hellish afterlife, Freddy tries to keep up with all the latest novels.  This episode was instead an attempt at neo-noir and director Ken Weiderhorn manages to create an appropriately ominous atmosphere.  Elizabeth Keifer gives a strong performance as Kim so it’s unfortunate that the rest of the cast isn’t as memorable.  This was not a bad episode but it was hard not to feel that it could have been even better.

In the end, I appreciated the fact that this episode actually did have something on its mind.  David fears that Kim is a potential killer because of the book that she writes.  That’s something to which any creative person in the horror field can relate.  Audiences often seem to assume that a morbid imagination is linked to a morbid personality whereas the opposite is often the case.  I’ve been lucky enough to meet a few horror people.  They’re nice!