Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Mondays, I will be reviewing Nightmare Café, which ran on NBC from January to April of 1992.  The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!

This week, a dying detective is allowed a chance to solve one last case.

Episode 1.4 “The Heart of Mystery”

(Dir by John Harrison, originally aired on March 20th, 1992)

This week’s episode of Nightmare Café is the first to largely focus on a guest star.  While Jack Coleman and Lindsay Frost do play roles in this week’s episode and Robert Englund’s Blackie actually gets to do more than usual, the majority of the episode is still dominated by Timothy Carhart as Detective Stan Gates.

One dark night, Stan chases a young thief (played by Alfonso Quijada) into a dark alley.  When the thief pulls a gun on him, Stan explains that he’s a police officer and he’s not trying to take the thief to jail.  He explains that he knows the young man is on drugs and is not in full control of his actions.  He asks the young man to give him the gun.

Meanwhile, in the nearby Nightmare Café, a bored Frank and Fay are playing a game of Clue.  (Colonel Mustard did it.)  Stan walks into the café and asks for a cup of coffee.  Robert Englund’s Blackie suddenly appears sitting in a booth and eating from a bag of popcorn.  He introduce himself to Stan and then leads Stan over to a window.  Looking through the window, Stan can see himself and the thief in the alley.  The thief has fired the gun and the bullet appears to be suspended in the air.  Blackie explains that the café has slowed down time to give Stan the chance to solve one last case before the bullet hits and kills him.

The case involves the death of Charlotte Bening (Laura Mae Tate), a wealthy woman with whom Stan was in love.  One night, when Stan was investigating a break-in at her mansion, Stan fired his weapon at what he believed to be the burglar.  Someone hit him from behind, knocking him out.  When Stan woke up, he discovered that the person who was actually shot was Charlotte!  While the police ruled it an accidental shooting, Stan was convinced that someone specifically set him up.  Could it have been Charlotte’s brother, a frustrated artist named Philip (Denis Forest, who also appeared in last week’s episode of Friday the 13th)?  Or could it have been …. well, there is no one else, actually.  The great Lochlyn Munro does make a brief appearance as one of Charlotte’s more aggressive suitors but he’s only onscreen for a few minutes.  There’s not much suspense to this mystery.

That said, I did enjoy this episode of Nightmare Café, which not only pays homage to film noir but which also features Robert Englund at his quippy best as he passive-aggressively pushes Stan into solving the case.  Fay does briefly leave the café so that she can pretend to be the producer of a true crime series and interview some of the people who knew Charlotte and Stan but, for the most part, this episode is centered around Timothy Carhart and Robert Englund and both of them carry things nicely.  Though the episode’s format probably confused those who, on the basis of the previous three episode, didn’t realize that Nightmare Café was originally envisioned as being an anthology series, The Heart of Mystery holds up very well.