Category Archives: TV Review

Bonus Horror on TV: The Curse of Degrassi (dir by Stefan Brogren)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

How about a bonus installment of Horror on TV?

This is a special episode of my favorite TV show of all, Degrassi!  Originally airing on October 28th, 2008, The Curse of Degrassi features Degrassi’s main mean girl, Holy J Sinclair (Charlotte Arnold), getting possessed by the vengeful spirit of deceased school shooter, Rick Murray (Ephraim Ellis).  Chaos follows!  Fortunately, Spinner (Shane Kippel) is around to save the day.  As any true Degrassi fan can tell you, only Spinner has a chance against the forces of the undead.

What I like about this episode is that, in the best tradition of Degrassi, it goes there.  Holly J does get possessed.  Just about the entire cast end up dying horribly.  Spinner has to battle the undead spirit of Rick Murray and he has to do it without the help of Drake.  And, as far as we know, this episode is canon.  So, yes, Rick Murray’s ghost actually does haunt Degrassi Community School and yes, only Spinner can save us all.

Go Spinner!

Enjoy!

Horror on TV: Friday the 13th: The Series 2.23 “The Maestro” (dir by Timothy Bond)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Tonight, for our horror on the lens, we have the twenty-third episode of the 2nd season of Friday the 13th: The Series!

Yes, I did pick tonight’s episode specifically because it was about dancer and an insane choreographer. Sometimes, you just seen an episode of a show and you immediately relate. Colm Feore gives a great and menacing performance as this week’s villain.

This episode originally aired on May 27th, 1989.

The Martian Chronicles: Episode 3: The Martians (1980, directed by Michael Anderson)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Episode 2 of The Martian Chronicles ended with Sam Parkhill (Darren McGavin) helplessly watching as Earth was consumed by nuclear fire.  Episode 3 opens with Col. John Wilder (Rock Hudson) returning to Earth in 2006 and discovered that the entire planet is dead.  He had hoped to find his brother and rescue him but instead, all Wilder finds is a video of his brother being vaporized by an atomic blast.

Back on Mars, the planet is nearly deserted.  Most of the human colonizers were ordered to return to Earth before the war broke out and, as a result, they died in the atomic inferno.  Only a few humans remain on Mars.  One of them, Ben Driscoll (Christopher Connelly), is excited to discover another survivor named Genevieve (Bernadette Peters) but he abandons her when he discovers that she’s too high-maintenance for him.  He decides he’d rather live alone.  (Too mean-spirited to really be funny, this was the weakest short story in Rad Bradbury’s collection and it’s also the weakest segment of the miniseries.)  Wilder and Father Stone (Roddy McDowall) visit another survivor, a scientist named Peter Hathaway (Barry Morse).  Peter lives with his devoted wife and daughter but when he dies of heart attack, they barely notice because they’re robots.

The first hour of the final episode of The Martian Chronicles is considerably weaker than the two episodes that proceeded it.  After the effective scenes of Wilder exploring Earth, the series is suddenly taken over by Christopher Connelly, playing a character that we’ve never seen before and who isn’t very likable.  The Ben and Genevieve sequence is weak and never that funny, despite Peters’s skill with comedy.  The sequence with Dr. Hathaway and the robots feels like a dry run for something Ray Bradbury would have written for The Twilight Zone.

Fortunately, the final segment of The Martian Chronicles swoops in to save the series.  Col. Wilder and his family spend the day camping at the same ancient Martian city where, during the first episode, Spender tried to convince Wilder not to allow Mars to be colonized.  While walking around the ruins of the city, Wilder meets what is either the ghost or the future projection of a Martian.  They have a friendly and philosophical conversation.  They talk about how The Martian doesn’t know if he’s from the past or if he’s from the future but it doesn’t matter.  Returning to his family, Wilder looks at their reflection in Briggs Canal and he say that, with Earth gone, they are now the Martians.  With Earth in ruins and only a few humans left, it’s up to the survivors to combine the ways of Earth with the ways of Mars and create a new world.  Though Hudson is usually held up as being the epitome of a stuff actor, when he made The Martian Chronicles, he had the right amount of gravitas to make the final scenes work.

The Martian Chronicles is an uneven miniseries.  The first episode is so good that the two that follow struggle to keep up.  But just, as in Bradbury’s book, the ending is perfectly realized and it still work, ever after all these years later.

Here’s The Trailer For True Story

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The Wesley Snipes comeback continues in the upcoming series True Story. This series will also feature Kevin Hart in a serious role. To be honest, I think Kevin Hart can handle a serious role. It’ll be interesting to see if I’m right.

True Story drops on November 24th, on Netflix. Here’s the trailer:

Horror on TV: Friday the 13th: The Series 2.21 “Wedding Bell Blues” (dir by Jorge Montesi)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Tonight, for our horror on the lens, we have the twenty-first episode of the 2nd season of Friday the 13th: The Series!

In tonight’s episode, Jack and Ryan are out of town so Micki takes it upon herself to recover a cursed pool cue. Helping her out is Johnny (played by Steven Monarque), who would eventually become a regular in the third season after John D. LeMay left the show. I like this episode because Micki is at the center of the action. I relate to Micki, though I don’t believe in cursed antiques. That’s a good thing because we’ve got a lot of antiques around here.

This episode originally aired on May 15th, 1989.

The Martian Chronicles: Episode 2: The Settlers (1980, directed by Michael Anderson)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

The first episode of The Martian Chronicles ended with a dying Jeff Spender (Bernie Casey) warning John Wilder (Rock Hudson) that humans settling on Mars would be the worst thing that could ever happen to the once powerful red planet.

The second episode, called The Settlers, sets about to prove Spender right.  By 2004, humans are desperately leaving the war-torn Earth for a new home on Mars.  They rename all of the Martian landmarks, honoring the men who died exploring the planet.  In one of the few deliberately funny moments of this entire miniseries, it’s revealed that the canal that Briggs threw his beer cans in was eventually named Briggs Canal.  There’s one unfortunate shot of a line of miniature space ships that are supposed to be orbiting Mars and waiting for their chance to land.  The episode then gets down to showing what the settlers do to Mars.

It’s nothing good.  The main town looks like a traveling carnival, full of bars and crime.  Many of the people who come to Mars are people who are fleeing something on Earth and Col. Wilder has his hands full trying to keep the peace.  All of the Martians are believed to be dead but it turns out that there are still a few out there.  Using their mental powers, they disguise themselves as humans.  A large part of the second episode deals with a Martian who approached an elderly couple, disguised as their dead son.  Even though they know that he’s not really their son, they allow him to live in their home.  But, when the Martian goes to the city, he becomes overwhelmed by all the thoughts that bombard his mind.  Everyone sees him as being someone that they care about.  Even the local priest, Father Peregrine (Fritz Weaver), sees the Martian as being Jesus.  (That’s no big deal today but that had to have been controversial in 1980.)  Eventually, the Martian becomes so overwhelmed that he dies while a group of humans gawk at him.

As for Father Peregrine and Father Stone (Roddy McDowall, who spent most of his later years appearing in miniseries like this one), they explore the Martian mountains, searching for three lights that have been reported as hovering in the sky.  When they find the lights, the lights explain that they are ancient Martians who long ago abandoned their corporeal bodies.  They also somewhat implausibly say that they worship the same God as the two priests.  In a departure from Bradbury’s original short stories (in which Bradbury was skeptical about the idea of bringing religion to the Mars), Father Peregrine commits to building a church so that, even on the Red Planet, people can worship.

Finally, Sam Parkhill (Darren McGavin) has achieved his dream of building a restaurant on Mars.  He says that, as soon as more Earthlings arrive, he’ll be rich because every trucker will stop off at his place for a bite to eat.  When a Martian suddenly shows up in the diner, Parkhill panics and shoots him.  When more Martians show up, Parkhill flees.  It’s only when the Martians catch up to him does he learn that they’re giving him a grant for half the land on Mars.  “Tonight’s the night,” they tell him, “Prepare.”  Old Sam Parkhill’s pretty excited until he looks through a space telescope and sees that Earth, the home of his future customers, is now glowing with the sure sign of nuclear fire.  I can’t remember how old I was when I first saw this episode on late night Baltimore TV but I do remember being thoroughly freaked out by the scene where Sam watches as a fiery glow encircles the Earth and the planet’s green surface turns brown.  It’s the most powerful moment in the miniseries and a fitting visualization of Bradbury’s concerns about the nuclear age.

As for the rest of The Settlers, it’s good but it’s not as strong or as cohesive as the first episode.  The Martin shapeshifter story is good but the two priests in the mountains felt like they were included to keep religious viewers happy and their segment takes too many liberties with Bradbury’s original material.  Then, Darren McGavin returns to the story. dressed like a cowboy and getting chased by a Martian sandship and The Martian Chronicles goes back to being one of the coolest miniseries to ever be broadcast.

With Earth dead, would Mars follow?  That was the theme of the next episode of The Martian Chronicles, which we’ll look at tomorrow.

Horror TV Review: Fear the Walking Dead 7.2 “Six Hours” (dir by Michael E. Satrazemis)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Earlier today, I finally got around to watching the most recent episode of Fear The Walking Dead.  Before I write this review, I should probably take a minute to remind everyone that this show is somewhat new to me.  Here’s what I know, after watching two episodes.  Strand and Morgan dislike each other.  Someone bombed Texas with nuclear warheads.  Strand is hiding out in an office building.  Morgan is living on a submarine with Grace.  They are caring for an adopted baby named Mo.

This week’s episode focused on Grace and Morgan.  Apparently, due to the fallout, they can only leave the submarine for six hours at a time.  This episode followed them over the course of one such trip, so we got a lot of yellowish fall-out cinematography and all of the usual abandoned stores that always show up in The Walking Dead and its spin-offs.  It all moved fairly slowly, though Grace and Morgan did eventually run into two survivors, Fred and Bea.  Fred and Bea were dying of radiation sickness.  They’re baby was already dead and had turned into one of the undead, which was pretty depressing.  In fact, it was so depressing that it reminded me of why I stopped watching the original Walking Dead in the first place.

That said, as much as I complain about the grim tone of these shows, a real-life zombie apocalypse would be pretty damn grim so, even if I don’t always enjoy the scenes of misery, I do have to respect the shows for saying true to their theme.  The end of civilization is not something that’s going to be fun, especially when you’re having to shoot your loved ones in the head to keep them from reanimating a zombies.

In the end, the most important thing is that Grace and baby Mo finally bonded.  Yay!  Having a baby is already stressful.  Imagine having to take care of one while facing both a zombie and a nuclear apocalypse!

Bea did mention that there is a place called “Padre,” which, since the show is set in Texas, I’m going to assume that she’s referring to South Padre Island, which is a great place to go for Spring Break.  Before Strand tossed him over the side of the wall last week, it was revealed that Will was also somehow connected to Padre.  At the time, I assumed that was just a joking reference to South Padre but apparently, it’s going to be the season’s big destination.  (Spring Break of the Walking Dead!)  I guess the other big revelation of the episode is that Morgan’s got a stalker who is obsessed with trying to kill him.  I’m not ashamed to say that I had to use Wikipedia to find out that the stalker is apparently the brother of someone who Morgan killed previously.  Morgan kills a lot of people, apparently.

It was an okay episode.  A little slow.  A little depressing.  But the fact that Grace and Mo finally bonded made up for a lot of it.  Even at the worst of times, there is still hope.

What Lisa Marie Watched Last Night #217: Degrassi: The Next Generation 3.16 “Take on Me” (dir by Phil Earnshaw)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Last night, I watched a classic episode from the 3rd season of Degrassi: The Next Generation, Take On Me!

Why Was I Watching It, eh?

A few days ago, when I wrote my review of R.L. Stine’s Trapped, I started thinking about how much I love Degrassi‘s take on The Breakfast Club.  That led to me getting out my Season 3 DVD and watching Take On Me!

What Was It Aboot?

This episode originally aired on February 16th, 2004.  It’s the weekend in Canada but instead of watching a hockey game and studying the dual languages of their native country, five Degrassi high school students are serving detention.  Ellie Nash (Stacey Farber) skipped school.  Hazel Aden (Andrea Lewis) used the school computers to look up porn.  Jimmy Brooks (DRAKE! — back when he was still known as Aubrey Graham) and Toby Isaacs (Jake Goldsbie) hacked into the school’s computers in an attempt to change Jimmy’s grades.  And rebel Sean Cameron (Daniel Clark) is in detention because he’s suspected of being a part of a gang of thieves who are terrorizing the entire school!

Together, the five students talk about their different cliques, play truth or dare, and sneak up to the roof.  Ellie and Sean start to fall for each other but how will Sean react when he discovers that Ellie has a secret motive for being in detention?

What Worked:

This is one of those episodes of Degrassi that you either love or you hate. You either can’t believe how blatantly the show ripped off The Breakfast Club or else you watch it and go, “Oh cool, they’re ripping off The Breakfast Club!”

Myself, I love this episode!  Not only does it center on two of my favorite characters, Ellie and Sean, but it’s also the start of the Ellie/Sean romance!  Unfortunately, the Ellie/Sean romance would only last a few episodes but they were a great couple.  Stacey Farber and Daniel Clark had a really great chemistry in their scenes together, as can be seen in this episode when they go up to the roof and they talk about thievery and self-harm.  The scene where Ellie shows Sean the scars on her arm is one of the best in the history of Degrassi.

This episode also features one of my favorite Degrassi exchanges.  When Ellie says she’s in detention for skipping school, Jimmy deadpans, “Wow, that’s a great story, Ellie.”  It’s just the way the line is delivered.

What Did Not Work:

There’s this really weird subplot involving the principal, Mr. Radish (Dan Woods).  Radish is at the school to supervise detention.  He brags about how it’s all a part of his new “no tolerance” policy for misbehavior.  However, Archie “Snake” Simpson (Stefan Brogren), the media arts teacher, stops by the school and tells Mr. Radish that there’s more to life than just following rules.  Sometimes, tolerance is a good thing.

At the end of the episode, a chastised Mr. Radish tells the detention kids that he’s just trying to do the right thing.  He suddenly decides to show some tolerance and he lets everyone go home early.  The thing is, though — Sean was stealing things from the school.  And Jimmy did bully Toby into trying to change his grades and Toby did hack into the school’s computer.  Hazel and Ellie were both in detention for minor reasons but the three guys actually did some serious things wrong.  Their behavior was exactly the sort of thing that would get most students in a lot more trouble than just weekend detention.  If anything, Mr. Radish was being nice by just having them give up a few weekends as opposed to calling the cops.

Finally, the end of the episode reveals that Ellie was actually working undercover for the local news station, for a story they were planning on doing about the thefts at the school.  But why would a big city news station care about such a minor crime and whose bright idea was it to get the story by putting an emotionally vulnerable teenage girl in potential danger by sending her in with a tape recorder?  And couldn’t they have at least given Ellie a less bulky tape recorder?  It’s almost like they wanted her to get caught.

“Oh my God!  Just Like Me!” Moments

Honestly, every single minute of every single episode of Degrassi is pretty much an “Oh my God!  Just like me!” moment, as far as I’m concerned.  That said, I always related the most to Ellie.  We both have red hair.  We both spent a good deal of high school dressed in black.  We both went through a cutting phase and a rubber band on the wrist phase and I’ve always appreciated the sensitive way that Degrassi handled that subject matter.  (Whatever flaws it may have had, Degrassi was way ahead of its time when it came to dealing with anxiety.)

I especially related to Ellie in this episode, both because I always ended up crushing on the sensitive rebels like Sean Cameron and I also got assigned detention a few times.  Of course, I always skipped detention because I was really into the whole “No one’s going to tell me what to do” thing.  Strangely, I never got in any trouble for not showing up to detention and I always wondered if everyone regularly skipped or if it was just me.

Lessons Learned

There’s nothing more fun and emotionally rewarding than weekend detention!