Late Night Retro Television Review: Saved By The Bell 3.9 “Pipe Dreams”

Posted on October 10, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Saturdays, I will be reviewing Saved By The Bell, which ran on NBC from 1989 to 1993. The entire show can be purchased on Prime!

This week, Zack loses his favorite duck.

Episode 3.9 “Pipe Dreams”

(Dir by Don Barnhart, originally aired on October 26th, 1991)

Oil’s been discovered on Bayside’s football field! Smarmy Dan Grayson (Gary Lahti) offers Bayside a lot of money for the right to drill on the field. Almost all of the students fantasize about going to rich school despite the fact that, with the exception of Kelly, it’s been established that they’re all already rich and that Bayside has been a rich school for a while. I’m not sure why the students think that they would be getting any of the money. And why is it up to the principal to decide whether or not to allow drilling. It seems like that should be up to the county supervisors.

But what about the never before mentioned pond behind the football field!? When the inevitable oil spill happens, Zack’s favorite duck Becky is killed. “She’s where the oil can’t hurt her anymore,” Screech says. It looks like it’s time for Zack to crash Mr. Grayson’s presentation and spray oil on him. “I’m covered in oil!” Mr. Grayson shouts. It’s easy to make your point when your opponent is cartoonishly evil.

You probably already guessed that this is not my favorite episode. It’s just so cartoonishly heavy-handed and the idea that Zack’s simplistic presentation was enough to convince everyone not to drill for oil was borderline insulting. If there’s oil underneath the football field and money to be made by drilling for it, someone’s going to do it. No one is going to care whether Zack approves or not.

My favorite moment is when Slater calls out Jessie for wearing clothing and accessories that aren’t environmentally-friendly. Seriously, Jessie is always a little bit too self-righteous for me. Personally, I would have agreed to let the company drill for the oil but only after they found a new pond for all of the turtles and ducks.

Poor Becky.

Lisa Marie’s Week In Television: 10/4/26 — 10/10/26

Posted on October 10, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The Amazing Race (Wednesday Night, CBS)

I wrote about the Amazing Race here.

Austin City Limits (PBS)

On Friday night, I watched a performance by Sienna Spiro. She was okay. I prefer EDM but that’s not the Austin City Limits way.

Carrie (Prime)

I started watching Mike Flanagan’s Carrie on Friday. I’ve got two more episodes to go so I’ll probably review it tomorrow. I’ll hold off on giving my thoughts until then.

Fear Itself (YouTube)

I’ve been watching and posting episodes of Fear Itself all week.

Kitchen Nightmares (Tubi)

I watched four episodes on Wednesday. Two of the episodes deal with the Main Street Bistro and its arrogant owner. One episode was about Yanni’s, a Greek restaurant owned by a loud family. The final episode was the classic episode that featured Gordon’s visit to Amy’s Baking Company in Scotsdale, Arizona. It’s hard to believe that episode is now 13 years old.

The Steve Wilkos Show (Tubi)

I watched two episodes on Tuesday. Both dealt with bad and abusive parents. Steve got mad and yelled a lot but he was totally justified in doing so. Some people really don’t deserve to be parents.

Survivor (Wednesday Night, CBS)

I wrote about Survivor here.

Bonus Horror On Television: Final Curtain (dir by Edward D. Wood, Jr.)

Posted on October 10, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

1957’s Final Curtain is a short, 22-minute film in which a mysterious man (Duke Moore) wanders around a creepy and seemingly abandoned theater. While Dudley Manlove (who played Eros the Alien in Plan Nine From Outer Space) provides narration, the man sees many strange things in the theater. What is real and what is merely a hallucination? Watch to find out!

Final Curtain was envisioned, by director Edward D. Wood, as being the pilot for a horror anthology series. Though none of the networks were interested in buying Wood’s proposed series, Wood considered Final Curtain to be his finest film and it certainly is a bit more atmospheric than the typical Wood film. The role of the mysterious man was written for Bela Lugosi but, after Lugosi passed away, Duke Moore was cast in the role instead.

From 1957, here is Final Curtain.

Horror on TV: Fear Itself 1.10 “Chance” (dir by John Dahl)

Posted on October 10, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Tonight’s episode of Fear Itself features Ethan Embry as Chance Miller, whose run of bad luck gets even worse once he finds himself having to deal with an evil doppelganger of himself. This psychological thriller was directed by noir specialist, John Dahl.

This was one of the episodes of Fear Itself that was filmed in 2008 but wasn’t aired before the show went on hiatus. It was included when the show was released on DVD in 2009.

SOV Horror Review: Fatal Exposure (dir by Peter B. Good)

Posted on October 10, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In his mansion in Alabama, fashion photographer Jack B. Rippington (Blake Bahner) kills people in ways that are cruel and grotesque. He does it with a smile on his face and a spring in his step, and he always remembers to take pictures first because, I guess, he really does take the whole fashion photographer thing seriously. He has standards. He’s a professional. When he meets and starts dating a model named Erica (Ena Henderson), she soon finds herself unwittingly leading victims to their doom.

Why is Jack B. Rippington so obsessed with murdering anyone who comes by his house? Well, you could say that it runs in the family. He’s the great-grandson of Jack the Ripper. He informs the audience of this. Myself, I have to wonder if Rippington is a family name or if it’s just his nom de meurtre. If Jack the Ripper’s last name really was Rippington, that would be a hell of a coincidence, and it would also show that Scotland Yard really wasn’t doing a very good job of investigating the crimes at Whitechapel. I mean, why did they devote so much time to investigating poor Montague John Druitt when there was a guy named Rippington wandering around?

Of course, it’s also possible that Jack the Ripper moved to the United States, had a daughter, and then she married someone named Rippington. Still, that seems like it would be an amazing coincidence.

(For the record, the real Jack the Ripper was some guy that you’ve never heard of and who probably died without ever telling anyone the truth. The fact that he was never captured would seem to indicate that the police were investigating the wrong suspects. And don’t start in with any of that royal conspiracy nonsense either. Honestly, that’s one of the silliest theories that I’ve ever heard.)

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, Fatal Exposure. Fatal Exposure is a shot-on-video epic that has some surprisingly effective gore effects. Between burning people with acid and chopping off their heads, Jack B. Rippington really gets into his work, and the results are often difficult to look at. If I were to compare this to any other film, it would probably be William Lustig’s Maniac, which featured Joe Spinell playing an equally homicidal photographer whose crimes seemed to owe more than a little to Jack the Ripper. Of course, Jack B. Rippington is much more handsome than Joe Spinell was in Maniac. If Maniac was a plunge into darkness and a trip to the realm of absolute zero, Fatal Exposure tries to be a bit of a comedic romp. Jack B. Rippington may be a murderer, but he also enjoys talking to the audience. In its use of dark humor and its breaking of the fourth wall, the film has quite a bit in common with Lucio Fulci’s Touch of Death.

There’s not really much of a plot to Fatal Exposure. Jack B. Rippington takes pictures of women in lingerie. He kills anyone who comes to the house. Erica eventually gets suspicious. But director Peter B. Good keeps the action moving, and it looks surprisingly good for a SOV film. (Good was best-known as a cinematographer.) Blake Bahner gives a good performance as Jack B. Rippington. It’s not a film for everyone, but, at the very least, it feels like a real movie. That puts it ahead of most SOV productions.

Leprechaun 2 (1994, directed by Roman Flender)

Posted on October 10, 2026 by Jedadiah Leland

The Leprechaun (Warwick Davis) is back! He’s abandoned North Dakota for Los Angeles, and now he’s looking for Bridget Callum (Shevonne Durkin), the descendant of a woman to whom he was promised centuries ago. The Leprechaun knows how to hold a grudge. Bridget already has a boyfriend named Cody Ingalls (Charlie Heath), who gives tours of celebrity cemeteries for Morty Ingalls (Sandy Baron).

Leprechaun 2 is significantly better than the first Leprechaun, if only because dark and grim Los Angeles seems like a better location for the story than North Dakota. Leprechaun 2 doesn’t get as much attention as the first one because it doesn’t feature Jennifer Aniston, but it does feature Shevonne Durkin, and any ’90s kid can tell you that’s almost as good. The Leprechaun is even nastier in the second film than he was in the first, and Warwick Davis continues to show an admirable dedication to bringing the character to life.

This film is also gorier than the first Leprechaun. The first Leprechaun was made with a younger audience in mind, even if it was an R-rated movie. Leprechaun 2 was clearly made to appeal to the type of teenagers who have always wondered what would happen if someone mistook a lawn mower for a Shevonne Durkin. For me, the most memorable scene is Morty making the mistake of wishing for a pot of gold and then discovering that it’s in his stomach. The Leprechaun offers to dig it out. That scene really stuck with me when I was a kid.

The Leprechaun would have more adventures, but this one was the best.

Brad reviews DEATH WEEKEND (1976)!

Posted on October 10, 2026 by Bradley Crain

With October being a fun month for horror, I’ve been searching for some scary movies that I’ve never seen before. As I was browsing the horror genre on Tubi the other day, I came across this little Canadian movie called DEATH WEEKEND. Also known as “The House by the Lake,” I noticed it has a simple story, a solid cast and a short running time. I decided to give it a shot.

The movie opens with a playboy dentist named Harry (Chuck Shamata from DEATH WISH 5) and his fashion model girlfriend Diane (Brenda Vaccaro) driving out to his countryside home for a weekend getaway. While on the way, they cross paths with a group of crazy, drunk guys in a fast car, led by Lep (Don Stroud), and end up engaging in a dangerous game of road rage. They’re finally able to give them the slip, but they’ve made some enemies who are determined to find them and get even. When they track the couple to the home, the weekend is now set for death!

I have to admit I was very uncomfortable with this one from the very beginning. The guys are truly awful. Lep and the drunken thugs terrorize the couple on the road for no other reason than they can. And when the couple gets away, with a woman behind the wheel, no less, they use this as an excuse to track them to the home, and this is where things get really disturbing. They are cruel, vicious people, and the movie doesn’t give us any more information about them. They just seem to enjoy rape and murder. This nihilistic behavior seemed to go on and on and was hard for me to watch.

There’s no hope for Harry, either. He had lied to Diane about the entire weekend. They were supposed to be there with other couples, but Harry had set the whole thing up for them to be alone just so he could get laid. What a jerk! And when the thugs take over, he’s a perfect coward much more worried about his safety and his property than he is about Diane. I can understand being scared and wanting to survive, but he’s revealed as a completely selfish person and about as unlikable as it gets.

The only person who has a shred of humanity in this film is Diane. Of course, this being a 70’s movie, she’s terrorized, abused, and raped. I know I may be coming off as a hypocrite, because I love Charles Bronson and his DEATH WISH franchise notoriously features brutal scenes of rape. Well, those scenes are sickening to me, and I don’t like to watch them. And I didn’t like watching this one either. This movie seemed to revel in cruelty for the sake of cruelty and nothing else. I won’t say that I didn’t enjoy it when she finally gets a chance to get some revenge, but I wish the movie had given us more time to enjoy it. After everything she goes through, I wanted a little more satisfaction out of seeing her fight back. I will give the movie props for one impressive throat slash death, though.

I did think that the actors were fine in their various roles. Don Stroud was effectively crazy as the lead murderer / rapist, Chuck Shamata made me really dislike his lecherous liar, and you can’t help but pull for Brenda Vaccaro after what she goes through. But at the end of the day, I can’t say that I enjoyed the movie that surrounded them very much. This movie presented relentless cruelty for most of its run time before finally giving Diane a few minutes to try to get some payback. Not only did the movie make me uncomfortable, it also left me feeling unsatisfied.

Retro Television Review: Baywatch 3.0 “Summerfest Special”

Posted on October 10, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Saturdays, I will be reviewing Baywatch, which ran on NBC and then in syndication from 1989 to 2001. The entire show can be viewed on Tubi.

This week, the third of Baywatch begins with a special!

Episode 3.0: “Summerfest Special”

(Originally aired September 13, 1992)

“Hi, I’m David Hasselhoff, here to welcome you to the Summerfest special.”

The third season of Baywatch starts not with a story about Mitch Buchannon and his fellow lifeguards, but with a breezy special about the California lifestyle and what viewers can expect from the upcoming season. David Hasselhoff stands on the beach in his Baywatch uniform and earnestly talks about how important lifeguards are and how the show is all about celebrating their heroism.

“Life’s a beach,” Hasselhoff says, “and everyone’s life is at the beach.”

“We’ll be back with the latest in barely legal swimwear!” announcer Sean “Hollywood” Hamilton says as the special goes to commercial. Yes, that is the actual line.

In between shots of beachgoers in bikinis, the Summerfest Special features interviews with the cast members joining Baywatch in season 3. Susan Anton talks about being dramatically taller than her on-screen daughter, Nicole Eggert. David Charvet is introduced as “Baywatch’s newest bad boy.” Alexandra Paul says that maybe her character and Mitch will hook up, then laughs. Kelly Slater says that he’s not really an actor, but he joined the cast to show the world what “surfing is all about.” Pamela Anderson says that she’s looking forward to playing a “metaphysical character” because she’s very metaphysical herself. Gregory Alan Williams, who is being promoted to regular status in season 3, talks about saving a bystander during a riot because “I don’t like mobs.”

In between even more shots of beachgoers in bikinis, Hasselhoff talks about his music career and says that Baywatch is a show the entire family can watch. He adds, “Skimpy apparel is a part of the appeal.” This is followed by a montage of women in bikinis.

The Summerfest Special isn’t streaming on Tubi or Prime, but it is available on YouTube. The version I watched included all of the commercials that aired with the show. There weren’t any pharma commercials, which I appreciated. In America, we don’t really realize how bombarded we are with commercials for medicine with potentially deadly side effects until we get a chance to watch a complete broadcast from a time when no one in their right mind would think of advertising prescription medication on television.

Instead, I got a lot of commercials for local businesses and special musical compilation albums. There was a commercial for a Dodge dealership that bragged about how their vehicles came with airbags. In the middle of a commercial for a gospel album, a preacher said, “Who the hell left the gate open?” and everyone in the church cheered. A woman quit her job with confidence because of her Secret deodorant. “I’ll borrow my mother’s scarf,” a young woman who reminded me of myself declared, “but my mother’s tampons? No way!” A bunch of teen soccer players announced they’d rather drink “Sunny D” than “soda” or “purple stuff.” I’m from the South, so it always sounds weird to hear people refer to Coke as soda. It’s even weirder to see people preferring an orange drink to it.

If I seem to be spending a lot of time on the commercials, that’s because they felt like little mini time machines. Watching them was like taking a 30-second trip back to the early ’90s. As for the rest of the special, it was essentially a lengthy commercial for Baywatch and bikinis, but everyone interviewed seemed to be in a really good mood. They were having fun, and that’s the important thing.

We Watched Twilight (2007, Dir. by Catherine Hardwicke)

Posted on October 10, 2026 by Dazzling Erin

Oh, Twilight! How we missed you, with your blue-tinted view of the world and your romantic bloodsuckers!

After her mother remarries a minor-league baseball player, 17-year-old Bella (Kristen Stewart) moves from sunny Arizona to gray, wet Washington State. She lives with her father, the police chief (Billy Burke), and starts at a new school. Her friend is played by Anna Kendrick! How cool is that? She has a crush on Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), and Edward has a crush on her, but Edward’s also a vampire, and he’s been seventeen since the Spanish flu epidemic. Bella discovers that she loves Edward, Edward loves Bella, and Edward’s family loves Bella, but there’s a group of vampires who want to feast on Bella. Also, Bella’s friend Jacob (Taylor Lautner) doesn’t like Edward, but we won’t find out the full details about all that until the next movie!

Lisa and I watched Twilight on Netflix earlier today, and yeah, it’s bad, but it’s just so addictive that you can’t look away. Even today, it’s hard to know whether to laugh or swoon. I usually end up doing both because the longing and smoldering way that Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson look at each other makes up for the fact that it’s a long movie where not much really happens. I was so excited waiting for the baseball scene, but I had forgotten how long it takes before Edward’s adopted family plays vampire baseball in the middle of a storm. Sign them all up for the Rangers, I don’t care if they glow. A sensitive ball player? Go ahead and bite my neck! Edward might seem mopey but when Bella needs to be protected from the other vampires, he and his father (Peter Facinelli) are right there and showing they know what to do. He’s a fighter, that Edward Cullen! And he’s a dream of a prom date too.

Twilight is what it is, and everyone who makes fun of it has a point, but I don’t care. I’ll be watching the second movie tomorrow.