Amy Stiller | Through the Shattered Lens

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Wednesdays, I will be reviewing Monsters, which aired in syndication from 1988 to 1991. The entire series is streaming on YouTube.

This week, Jerry Stiller is a werewolf!

Episode 2.17 “One Wolf’s Family”

(Dir by Alex Zamm, originally aired on February 11th, 1990)

In this rather heavy-handed episode of Monsters, Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara star as Victor and Greta, two immigrants who have built a successful life for themselves in America. Victor is very proud of his heritage and his success. He’s even more proud of the fact that he and Greta are pure-bred werewolves. He expects his daughter, Anya (Amy Stiller), to marry a purebred werewolf.

(Ben was apparently busy when they shot this episode.)

So, how will Victor react when he discovers that Amy’s fiancé, Stanley (Robert Clohessy), is a were-hyena!?

*sigh*

Okay, I will give some credit here. The scene where Victor meets Stanley and they all gather around the kitchen table for dinner does have some funny moments. Stanley, being a hyena in human form, cannot stop laughing, even when he’s being insulted. And when Jerry Stiller launches into a rant about how no daughter of his is going to hang out on the roadside and eat trash, I did laugh. This was largely due to Jerry Stiller’s delivery of the line. Jerry Stiller was always funny whenever he started to rant.

Otherwise, this episode was pretty disappointing. There’s a subplot about a nosey neighbor named Agnes (Karen Shallo). Agnes is upset to discover that her neighbors are werewolves that keep dead bodies in their refrigerator so that they’ll have something to snack on. “It’s bad enough that they’re immigrants!” Agnes says. And yes, I get it. Agnes is supposed to be a small-minded suburbanite who doesn’t understand that America is a country of immigrants and all the rest. The problem is that, regardless of how Agnes feels about immigrants, she has every right to be concerned about living next door to a werewolf who keeps a dead body in his refrigerator. When she sees Victor eating a foot, it totally makes sense that she would be upset about it. The show’s satire would have worked if Agnes’s sole objection to them had been that they were immigrants. (It would have been even funnier if Agnes has absolutely no problem living next door to werewolves as long as they were born in America.) But by making them werewolves and having Agnes be upset by the fact that they were werewolves, the show instead suggests that Agnes might have a point.

Not that it matters. Stanley turns into a hyena and rips off Agnes’s head and brings it to Victor and Greta as a gift. Stanley is accepted into the family while Jerry Stiller howls a the moon.

Political satire is always hit-and-miss and this episode was definitely a mess. It’s a shame because Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara were definitely funny people. (If you’ve ever seen the documentary Have A Good Trip, there’s a scene where Ben Stiller tells a story about accidentally taking several tabs of LSD in college and, in a panic, calling his father for help. “I know what you’re going through,” Jerry told him, “I once smoked an entire Pall Mall cigarette.” “My father was Jerry Stiller, not Jerry Rubin,” Ben explains.) This is one of those episodes that I was really hoping would be good but it just didn’t work.

Highway to Hell, a low-budget take on the legend of Orpheus, opens with a young couple, Charlie (Chad Lowe) and Rachel (Kristy Swanson), driving to Las Vegas so they can elope. When they stop to get gas, Sam (Richard Farnsworth) warns them not to drive on the back roads at night. Charlie ignores him and the couple continues to drive through the desert until they are suddenly pulled over by Sgt. Bedlam (C.J. Graham), a scarred and mostly silent demon who is also known as the Hellcop. The Hellcop drags Rachel out of the car and then vanishes with her. Charlie returns to the gas station, where Sam tells him that Rachel has been kidnapped to Hell and will become Satan’s latest wife. After Sam gives him a shotgun and a car, Charlie heads into Hell to rescue Rachel.

Charlie discovers that Hell is even stranger than he was expecting. The highways are full of VW bugs and motorcycle gangs. Charlie passes a road crew made up of Andy Warhol look-alikes. (In a clever touch, they also work for the Good Intentions Company.) When Charlie stop to pick up a hitchhiker (played by Lita Ford), he is suddenly attacked by a crazed ice cream man. Occasionally, a friendly mechanic (Patrick Bergin) shows up and helps Charlie out. The mechanic’s first name is Beezle. Did you already guess that his last name is Bub?

There are parts of Highway To Hell that do not work. Chad Lowe seems lost as Charlie and Highway To Hell’s abrupt ending feels like it belongs in a totally different film. But Highway to Hell has enough odd characters and weird moments to make it worth watching. For instance, I liked the scene where the Hellcop stops off at a roadside diner that is full of zombies. Anne Meara plays the counterwoman who won’t stop talking long enough to take anyone’s order. (It is Hell, after all.) Jerry Stiller shows up as another cop and, finally, Ben Stiller plays a short order cook who won’t stop yelling. Ben Stiller actually plays two roles in this movie. Later, he shows up as Atillia the Hun, eating breakfast with Hitler (Gilbert Gottfried!) and Cleopatra (Amy Stiller). Hitler tries to convince them that he is actually a teenager named Bob and that he was sent to Hell accidentally.

Despite the film’s title, AC/DC is nowhere to be heard on the Highway to Hell soundtrack, which is obviously a missed opportunity. In fact, with the exception of Lita Ford’s cameo, there is no metal to be found in Hell which seems strange considering that this movie was made in 1991. Music aside, Highway to Hell is an entertaining journey into the underworld.