2014’s Only One Way tells the story of Paul (Josiah David Warren), who is 20 years old and who lives with his parents in Texas. Paul was home-schooled and now he’s a college student. He goes to church every Sunday and he and his parents have regular Bible study.
Paul is a bit easily led. We discover this when he starts dating Melanie (Erika Alaspa), who is still in high school and who insists that Paul tell her that she’s beautiful whenever he picks her up from her dance class. Melanie’s father has a devilish beard and a condescending attitude and, when he hears that Paul still lives at home, he says that’s fine except that Paul won’t be a real man until he moves out. Later Paul gets a text from Melanie telling him that her parents loved meeting him but that they all agree that he needs to become “A REAL MAN” and find a new place to live.
Paul gets his own apartment and soon, he’s struggling in both school and life. Melanie and her wild friends are always coming over to party. They introduce Paul to smoking weed. Paul goes from hacking up a lung to making an apple pipe in record time. Uh-oh! His parents stop by the apartment to drop off some groceries and they catch Paul with an apple.
No longer welcome at his parents’s house, Paul tries to make it in the world on his own. He gets a job delivering fried chicken but he’s not good at it. You may wonder how any twenty year-old could manage to screw up something as simple a delivering fried chicken. Well, Paul drops a bucket of KFC on somebody’s lawn and his response it just to brush the grass off the chicken. Then he drops the bucket for a second time when trying to hand it off to the people who ordered it.
“That’ll be fifteen,” Paul says.
No, Paul, that’ll be free!
To be honest, what Paul is going through is not that unusual. I think everyone struggles a bit making the transition from being a teenager to being an adult. The job of a parent is to help the kid prepare for that transition but still, it’s not easy going from living a life with no consequences to living a life where everything has a consequence. Everyone probably parties too much when they first leave home. It’s just human nature.
The thing that sets Paul apart is that he really does just seem to be a complete idiot. Even before he starts dating Melanie, he’s talking about how he’s struggling in college. The film puts most of the blame on Melanie but Melanie isn’t the one who told Paul to put the chicken back in that bucket. Melanie may smoke weed but Paul is the one who decides to smoke with her. Believe me, most people will not be offended if you don’t smoke their weed. That just means more for them.
Anyway, this film was shot on video with a largely amateur class and it shows. This is one of those films where you really have to strain to make out the dialogue because the sound recording is so bad. On the plus side, Paul does own a really cute dog and, by the end of the film he’s found a girlfriend who isn’t trying to destroy his soul. Good for him!
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 SLEDGE HAMMER!, a cop comedy which ran on ABC from 1986 to 1988. The entire series can be found on Prime!
Sledge Hammer says to trust him. Does that mean he’ll be able to find a bunch of missing babies?
Episode 1.10 “If I Had A Little Hammer”
(Dir by Kim Manners, originally aired on November 29th, 1986)
Someone has abducted all of the newborn babies from the local hospital. Captain Trunk suspects that the babies are going to be sold to couples looking to adopt. “You mean like a mom and pop operation?” Hammer asks. Doreau asks to be assigned to the case and Trunk reluctantly agrees. He has full faith in Doreau. It’s her partner that worries him.
Most of the humor in this episode comes from the fact that Hammer doesn’t like babies. The reason why the humor works is because Hammer never changes his mind. Hammer dislikes babies just as much at the end of the episode as he did at the start. It provided a nice contrast to not only every other character on the show but also to what we usually expect from television shows.
(Personally, I love babies but I get tired of seeing them in commercials where the whole joke is that they need their diapers changed.)
The babynappers are a brother/sister team. Brion James plays the brother and it was nice to see that he could handle comedy just as well as drama. He fit right in with the Sledge Hammer universe. The big confrontation between him and Sledge Hammer took place inside the warehouse of baby products supplier. Hey, it made laugh!
This was perhaps the most wholesome show about kidnapping and illegal adoption that I’ve ever seen.
One of the more intriguing mysteries of history is investigated in this episode of In Search Of…. Leonard Nimoy narrates!
(It’s always strange to me that there hasn’t been hundreds of movies made about the Tunguska event. I know that the current popular theory is that it was a comet or, at the very least, a really big asteroid. Personally, I like the theory that it was Nikolai Tesla testing out a death ray.)
On tonight’s episode of FreakyLinks, Derek and the team head down to New Mexico to investigate reports of a tentacle-bearing desert creature! If not for the tentacles, I would say it was probably a chupacabra. Seriously, if you ever see a chupacabra coming at you, run!
This episode originally aired on November 3rd, 2000!
After Nightcrawler (Alan Cumming) causes a national security crisis by teleporting into the White House, Colonel William Stryker (Brian Cox) is given the authority to invade Professor Xavier’s School and investigate its connection to the mutants. Stryker, who not only wants to investigate the mutants but also destroy them by manipulating the same technology that Xavier uses to find them, just happens to be an old enemy of Logan’s (Hugh Jackman). In fact, Stryker is responsible for Logan fusing the adamantium to his bones. That’s a hell of a coincidence.
A sequel to X-Men, X2 tells a bigger and more complex story than the first film. Professor Xavier’s students are spread out by the chaos. Rogue (Anna Paquin) sees prejudice firsthand when Bobby Drake (Shawn Ashmore) is betrayed by his own family. Pyro (Aaron Stanford) is tempted to reject the X-Men’s philosophy of coexistence. After being underused in the first film, both Scott (James Marsden) and Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) are key players here. Magneto (Ian McKellen) and Mystique (Rebecca Romijn-Stamos) return, this time temporarily allying with Professor X (Patrick Stewart) to stop Stryker. Logan has his own reasons to go after Stryker. Surprisingly, X2 is not only bigger than the first film but it’s also better. The actors are more convincing in their roles, the action is more exciting, and director Bryan Singer capably juggles all of the different parts without losing the plot. He even manages to ably set up the Dark Phoenix Saga. In the first film, the X-Men had it almost too easy when it came to battling opponents like Toad and Sabretooth. This film has not only Brian Cox’s William Stryker but also Kelly Hu’s Deathstrike.
Those of us who were shocked when X-Men turned out to be good were even more shocked when X2 turned out to be even better. For a little while, it seemed like there would never be a bad X-Men movie! Later, that’s the way a lot of us would also feel about the Marvel movies. Those were good days.
The crew of an icebound ship witnesses two men on dogsleds, apparently trying to kill each other. The sicklier of the men boards the ship and explains that his name is Victor Frankenstein (Patrick Bergin) and that he should not have tried to bring the dead back to life. As he tells the story of how he brought his Monster (Randy Quaid) to life, the film becomes a series of flashbacks.
Produced for TNT and playing up the costumes and the scenery at the expense of the story, this version of Frankenstein is the one that people forget about. This version emphasizes the psychic bond between the Monster and Victor. Whenever the Monster gets injured, Victor feels it, and that’s a problem because the Monster gets injured a lot, and Victor is already in ill health. Patrick Bergin plays Victor as a grandly romantic figure, which doesn’t make him particularly believable as a sickly and obsessed scientist. Randy Quaid is better as the Monster, especially in the scenes after the Monster is first brought to life and he’s still learning the basics. (I actually think Quaid’s performance is superior to Robert De Niro’s take on the character in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.) Finally, John Mills is memorable as the blind man who shows the Monster some kindness.
One thing that I will always remember about Frankenstein is the scene where the Monster tells Victor, “Ah wanna woman!” For months afterward, my friends and I would imitate Randy Quaid’s delivery of that line. Many actors have played the Monster in the years since, but none have topped “Ah wanna woman!”
Welcome to 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 St. Elsewhere, a medical show which ran on NBC from 1982 to 1988. The show can be found on Daily Motion.
This week, Bobby Caldwell returns.
Episode 4.15 “Family Feud”
(Dir by Mark Tinker, originally aired on January 29th, 1986)
After being gone for the last few episodes, Bobby Caldwell (Mark Harmon) returns to St. Eligius. As he explains it, he’s spent the last month or so with his family in Baltimore. He worked on his family’s farm and got in touch with what actually matters in life. Westphall is so happy to hear this that he immediately starts talking about the time he spent volunteering in Ethiopia.
Caldwell is ready to get his facial scar taken care of. He meets with an old colleague from medical school, Dr. Duncan Harper (Kip Gilman). Harper says that the operation should be simple and quick and then Caldwell will be ready to hit the bars again. As a precaution, Caldwell gives blood, just in case it’s needed during the surgery.
Later, a shaken Harper comes to St. Eligius and meets privately with Caldwell. Harper says that the lab did some standard tests on Caldwell’s blood and that it appears that Caldwell might have AIDS. Caldwell says there has to be some sort of mistake, but Harper shakes his head. Harper retested the blood himself. He asks if Caldwell has any lesions. Caldwell looks down at a spot on his hand and says, “I thought it was just an infection.”
Caldwell tells Westphall about his diagnosis. Westphall tells Caldwell not to give up hope, that a cure might be right around the corner. Caldwell replies that he’s probably got 15 months to live and he’s not going to stop working. After Caldwell leaves, Westphall meets with Auschlander and they both agree that they have no idea what to do.
Meanwhile, it’s Jack Morrison’s birthday! Clancy arranges for him to have a birthday party in the doctor’s lounge. She also continues to flirt with Fiscus. You might expect Morrison to be upset about that, but Morrison is too busy flirting with Mona, Fiscus’s ex! Yeah, we’ll see how that works out….
Finally, Augusta Endicott previously told Dr. Craig that she didn’t want to have a bypass, even if it meant that she would die otherwise. However, when the entire Endicott family comes to visit her, she changes her mind. (During the operation, Dr. Wade comments that Dr. Craig must really be looking forward to the next Endicott presidential campaign. Craig snorts and says that the Endicotts are a bunch of bleeding-heart liberals and he wouldn’t vote for them in a million years. I love Dr. Craig.) Sen. Gordon Endicott (Charles Cioffi) goes to the chapel to pray and ends up getting shot by a lone gunman.
Gee, who saw that coming?
The Endicotts continue to bore me. They’re just not that interesting as either characters or as thinly-veiled stand-ins for the Kennedy family. On the other hand, Bobby Caldwell’s storyline was powerful and Mark Harmon gave an especially good performance. (I just wish the show had made it clear that AIDS wasn’t meant to be some sort of narrative punishment for Caldwell’s previous bad behavior.) It will be interesting to see how the hospital deals with Caldwell’s diagnosis. Will he actually be allowed to continue to do his job? We’ll find out next week.
DEAD TONE (2007), also known as 7EVENTY 5IVE, opens with a group of kids playing a prank-calling game called “Seventy-Five,” where the goal is to place a random phone call and tell such a believable story that the person who answers will stay on the line at least 75 seconds. One guy seems upset when they call him. Later that night, while everyone is sleeping, a psycho with an axe comes in and brutally murders all the parents while the kids hide and watch in terror. Jump forward ten years and most of the kids who survived the night of terror are now college students. Invited to a weekend party at a wealthy classmate’s mansion, the group resumes their prank-calling game. Needless to say, when the maniac from ten years earlier answers the phone, the members of the group find themselves being stalked and murdered again. Hopefully Detective John Criton (Rutger Hauer), who worked the original murders 10 years earlier, will figure out who the killer is and stop him before everyone dies!
DEAD TONE is directed by Brian Hooks and Deon Taylor, who also star in the film. They’ve created a gory, low-budget slasher that blends elements of ‘80s and ‘90s horror films with an urban twist. For a guy who did his share of prank calls as a kid, I think the “psycho on the receiving end of a prank call” storyline is pretty cool. And the opening scene where the kids watch as their parents are killed because of their phone calls is horrific and pulls you right into the story. Unfortunately, once we get past the interesting open, there’s nothing that special about the rest of the movie. The characters aren’t particularly memorable or likable, and they sure as hell aren’t very smart. Call me crazy, but I’m thinking that I would never make another prank call again if I survived a mass murder event that was brought on by prank phone calls. These folks have no such qualms, which may not make any sense in the real world, but I guess is necessary if you need more axe murders for your plot. I will admit that there are a few awesome kills in the film, especially if you enjoy a good beheading. I won’t spoil the scenes, but the ones I’m specifically thinking of are both surprising and jarring at the same time. I’m also the kind of guy who will watch anything featuring Rutger Hauer. DEAD TONE’s Detective John Criton isn’t a character highlight of his career, but I still enjoy watching him go through the motions of investigating the crimes both in the present and in the past. It’s a part that he could have completed in his sleep, but this movie would have benefited from more “Hauer time.”
Overall, DEAD TONE is the kind of movie to watch with little to no expectations. It’s not great, but if you’re in the mood for a slasher movie with jump scares, silly characters, some decent gore, and even an acting legend thrown in for good measure, you could do a lot worse than DEAD TONE!
The Babysitter is, above all else, Samara Weaving’s coming-out party—a wildly entertaining showcase that proves she can carry a horror movie with charm, menace, and complete comedic fearlessness. McG’s 2017 Netflix film, written by Brian Duffield, is built around a simple, absurd premise: a lonely kid discovers his beautiful babysitter is part of a Satanic cult. The movie lives and dies on Weaving’s performance as Bee, and she delivers enough star power, humor, and danger to turn a thin genre premise into a fast, colorful, gleefully violent horror comedy.
The story follows Cole, played by Judah Lewis, a nervous twelve-year-old who is still young enough to need a babysitter but old enough to hate that fact. His parents leave for the weekend, leaving him in the care of Bee. Cole has a massive crush on her, which makes the movie’s central betrayal sting even more. After staying up past bedtime to spy on the adults, he sees Bee and her friends murder someone as part of an occult ritual. Suddenly, the cozy suburban house becomes a battlefield, and Cole has to survive a night of Satanic murder, increasingly absurd violence, and the horrifying realization that the person he trusted most is trying to kill him.
Without Weaving, this premise could easily collapse into forgettable direct-to-streaming filler. Bee could have been nothing more than a one-dimensional “hot evil babysitter,” but Weaving gives her real charisma. She is funny, flirtatious, warm, and completely unhinged, often within the same scene. The film understands that Bee works best when she is both genuinely likable and genuinely dangerous. Cole trusts her because she treats him kindly, and that makes the reveal hurt. Weaving also gets most of the movie’s best lines and biggest moments, and she plays them with the kind of gleeful theatricality the material demands. This is the performance that announced her as a major modern horror presence, and it is easy to see why filmmakers and audiences took notice.
What makes The Babysitter work beyond Weaving is its total commitment to the bit. The film is essentially Home Alone filtered through a Satanic slasher and a teenage sex comedy. Cole fights back with household objects, improvisation, and pure panic, while Bee and her friends keep getting killed in ways that are gruesome, creative, and often funny. The movie never takes its mythology seriously enough for the ritual stuff to become dull. The cult’s plan is mostly an excuse for carnage, but the carnage is lively enough that the thin plot barely matters. This is a movie where a kitchen can become a weapon, a pool can become a crime scene, and a teenage cultist can be defeated by the kind of slapstick logic usually reserved for cartoons.
The supporting cult members are broad, ridiculous characters, but they fit the movie’s tone. Robbie Amell plays Max, a jock who clearly believes he is the coolest person in any room. Bella Thorne’s Allison is glamorous, vain, and increasingly undone as the night falls apart. Hana Mae Lee’s Sonya is the quiet, strange one, while Andrew Bachelor’s John is the guy who thinks he is more essential to the group than anyone else believes. None of them are deeply developed, but they do not need to be. They are archetypes, and the actors lean into that. Their banter is often juvenile, sometimes forced, but it matches the movie’s hyperactive, self-aware energy.
McG’s direction is both part of the film’s appeal and one of its biggest problems. He directs it like an extended music video: saturated colors, quick cuts, pop songs, pop-culture references, and a camera that rarely wants to sit still. When the style clicks, The Babysitter feels punchy and alive, with the energy of a comic book come to life. But McG leans so heavily into the comedy side that the movie often loses its horror footing. The jokes, quips, and broad performances are constantly pushed to the front, and when the film tries to shift into an actual horror beat, the moment frequently lands flat. The cult members are too goofy, the kills too cartoonish, and the tone too jokey for the movie to build much dread. Some jokes land with a thud, some references feel dated already, and the constant visual busy-ness can overwhelm the simpler pleasures of the premise. The film succeeds despite McG’s excesses, not entirely because of them.
The horror is more splattery than scary. Anyone expecting real dread, slow-building tension, or a genuinely unsettling villain will likely be disappointed. The movie’s comedy comes from the collision of childhood anxieties with extreme genre nonsense. Cole is afraid of bullies, girls, being alone, and growing up; the film literalizes those fears by putting him in a house full of murderous adults who want to sacrifice him. Beneath the blood and jokes, there is a surprisingly sincere coming-of-age story. But because the comedy is so relentless, the horror rarely gets room to breathe, and the movie’s scarier moments feel more like brief interruptions than genuine escalations.
Cole’s arc gives the chaos a little heart. At the beginning, he is passive, scared, and constantly humiliated. By the end, he has been forced to confront every fear he has, usually while covered in gore and running for his life. Judah Lewis is not giving a nuanced performance, but he is likable and believable as a terrified kid pushed past his limits. His friendship with Melanie, played by Emily Alyn Lind, adds another layer of warmth. Melanie encourages him to stand up for himself, and their awkward middle-school dynamic gives the movie a sweet emotional center beneath all the occult murder.
The film’s biggest weakness is its willingness to sacrifice logic for a joke. Characters make choices that only make sense because the plot needs them to. The cult’s plan is not especially well thought out. Adults and neighbors are conveniently unaware of gunfire, explosions, and general mayhem. The movie also sometimes views its female characters through Cole’s adolescent gaze, especially early on, which can make Bee and Allison feel more like fantasy objects than full people. The film gives them more agency as it goes, but the perspective remains very much that of a horny, terrified twelve-year-old boy. Whether that works for you depends on how much patience you have for that kind of teenage-male fantasy.
Still, The Babysitter has personality to spare. It is bright, brash, mean in a playful way, and unapologetically silly. It does not have the atmosphere of a prestige horror film or the emotional weight of the genre’s best work. It is not trying to be The Babadook or Hereditary. Instead, it is trying to be a bloody, funny, high-energy midnight movie, and it mostly succeeds. It is the kind of film best watched late at night, with low expectations and a high tolerance for cartoonish violence.
By the time the credits roll, The Babysitter has done exactly what it set out to do: deliver a loud, bloody, ridiculous good time while making Samara Weaving impossible to ignore. McG’s direction can be excessive, the comedy often crowds out the horror, and the scares are mild, but the film has enough energy, humor, and personality to make up for its flaws. Weaving turns Bee into one of the most entertaining horror villains of the Netflix era and uses the role as a true coming-out party for her career. Cole’s survival story gives the mayhem a surprisingly sweet coming-of-age core, but Weaving is the true engine of the film. It may not be a horror classic, but it is a very enjoyable piece of genre junk food: loud, colorful, violent, ridiculous, and much more fun than it has any right to be.
Crystal Lake is a thousand times better than Carrie.
Whoops. Did I say a thousand? I meant to say a million.
I say this despite the fact that Crystal Lake pretty much falls apart during its final two episodes. If the first six episodes constitute an enjoyable and, at times, even loving homage to the Friday the 13th films, the final two episodes go off the rails by giving Jason Voorhees, the epitome of an old-school slasher villain and the symbol of unelevated horror, a very 21st-century, American Horror Story-style origin story. It’s a thoroughly unnecessary addition to the Jason saga, one that exists to plug the plot holes that most Friday the 13th fans have always been happy to ignore. It’s just as bad as Jason Goes to Hell’s insistence that Jason was actually a space slug who could possess people. Personally, I think that we should do what true Friday the 13th fans always do whenever we come across something that doesn’t work and just ignore it.
Even taking that into account, Crystal Lake is still infinitely better than Carrie.
The difference between Crystal Lake and Carrie is that Crystal Lake isn’t trying to be something that it isn’t. Crystal Lake isn’t ashamed of being a pulpy, sordid, and rather bloody horror miniseries. Carrie was made to win Emmys and critical plaudits. Crystal Lake was made to make you put your hands over your eyes whenever Pamela Voorhees (Linda Cardellini) hacks someone’s face off. Crystal Lake fully embraces the horror. Crystal Lake obviously loves the Friday the 13th films, with all of their flaws. Carrie is a series made by and for people who think that they’re better than the horror genre. Crystal Lake is not.
Crystal Lake serves as a prequel to the first Friday the 13th film. Pamela Voorhees is the cook at Camp Crystal Lake and, in the first episode, her son, Jason, disappears while swimming. The camp counselors who were supposed to be watching him were making love. Pamela snaps. She refuses to accept that her son has drowned. She watches angrily as the town moves on. When she hears that the Christys are going to reopen the camp, she is not pleased. That said, she’s snapped long before that. Unlike Carrie, which went out of its way to absolve the character of any sort of responsibility, Crystal Lake does not shy away from presenting Pamela as an unhinged killer. She kills two mysterious men who show up at her house. She kills the abusive mother of Grace (Gwendolyn Sundstrom), who was Jason’s only friend at camp. When a group of Marxist hippies show up and try to convince the now-orphaned Grace to run away with them, Pamela goes after them as well. Pamela kills a lot of people in this miniseries, but she remains a compelling character because of Linda Cardellini’s wonderful performance in the lead role. Her love for Jason is real, and it’s easy to understand why she would feel such rage at a town that is pretending he didn’t exist or why she would have no sympathy for a mother who abuses her child. Cardellini gives such a strong performance that it’s disappointing that the final two episodes let the series down.
As someone who has seen all of the Friday the 13th films, I appreciated how carefully and exactly Crystal Lake recreated the feel and the visuals of the first two entries. Its version of Crystal Lake looks identical to the one that poor Annie discovered during the first film. Even the minor characters are made up to almost exactly resemble the actors who played them in the first film. I immediately knew who was supposed to be Enos. I knew who was supposed to be the waitress with whom Steve Christy would eventually share one of his final conversations. (Steve Christy is seen a few times in Crystal Lake, as a very ’70s teenager.) A wonderful actor named Nick Cordileone played the role of “Crazy” Ralph and, whenever he was on screen, I could immediately see him becoming the character that Walt Gorney played in the first two films. A lot of love and care went into recreating the town of Crystal Lake and the camp. The series does, admittedly, move things up chronologically. In the first film, Jason disappeared in the ’50s. In the series, it happens in the ’70s. That’s no big deal, though. The show has a lot of fun both recreating the ’70s and poking fun at the decade’s unique culture. One need only watch the scene where Pam is dragged to a seminar given by a self-consciously hip self-help guru to understand why the decade gave rise to the unapologetically cynical slasher boom of the ’80s.
Now again, the Jason origin story that is presented in the seventh episode is a problem. And if Crystal Lake returns for a second season, I sincerely hope that it will be ignored in much the same way that the franchise has traditionally ignored its mistakes. If it doesn’t, it’s not going to bode will for the future of this series. Still, flaws and all, Crystal Lake is an enjoyably sordid and bloody show. It makes no apologies for being what it is. Other horror shows could stand to learn from it.
