Late Night Retro Television Reviews: Friday the 13th: The Series 1.20 “The Quilt of Hathor: The Awakening”

Posted on March 1, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a new feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Fridays, I will be reviewing Friday the 13th: The Series, a show which ran in syndication from 1987 to 1990. The show can be found on YouTube!

How many more people must die before the Quilt of Hathor is stopped!? Let’s find out.

Episode 1.20 “The Quilt of Hathor: The Awakening”

(Dir by Timothy Bond, originally aired on May 9th, 1988)

We pick up where the previous episode ended. Ryan is still living with the ultra-religious Pentites and is still viewed with suspicion by the majority of them. He is still in love with the Reverend Grange’s daughter, Laura. And Effie Stokes still has the quilt that she can use to enter the dreams of others and kill them.

However, Effie is not the main villain here. Instead, it is the Reverend Grange (Scott Paulin) who is corrupted by the quilt. When the community’s elders tell Grange that it is important that he select a wife, he finally selects Effie. Effie is overjoyed but, as soon becomes clear, she intends to use the quilt to kill Grange on their wedding night so that she can take over the community. However, in the dream, Grange gets the upper hand and kills Effie instead. Soon, Grange is using the quilt to go after anyone in the community with whom he has a grudge. And when the members of the community suspect that witchcraft is afoot, he casts the blame on Ryan.

This is the episode where Ryan nearly gets burned at the stake. Fortunately, Micki and Chris show up just as Ryan is about to be set on fire. They distract the Pentites long enough for Laura to discover Effie’s body and to reveal that Grange is the murderer. A long chase ends with Grange falling out of a barn to his death.

That, of course, also kills Laura and Ryan’s romance. Ryan realizes that he has a holy duty to help Chris and Micki track down cursed antiques. And Laura says that she has to stay behind to help the community rebuild. Personally, I think she’s just reluctant to declare her love for the man who killed her father. That’s understandable.

This was not a bad episode. I liked the way that, for once, we got to see how a formerly good and reasonable person could be corrupted by one of the cursed antiques. Laura and Ryan’s romance was a bit too obviously lifted from Witness but still, John D. LeMay and Carolyn Dunn had a likable chemistry together. Just as with the first part of the story, the surreal nightmares were well-done and genuinely frightening.

Next week, Ryan and Micki search for a haunted camera!

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 1.19 “The Quilt of Hathor”

Posted on February 23, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, Micki screws up and Ryan finds love!

Episode 1.19 “The Quilt of Hathor”

(Dir by Timothy Bond, originally aired on May 2nd, 1988)

Looking to retrieve a cursed quilt that allows its owner to enter other people’s dreams and kill them, Micki and Ryan go undercover as members of the Pentite Sect.

Who are the Pentites? Basically, they’re Mennonites except for the fact that they’re called Pentites. They are a hard-worked and religious community, one that eschews modern technology. The members of the sect dress modestly, they don’t sing or dance, and they do everything that their leader, Reverend Grange (Scott Paulin), tells them to do.

Effie Stokes (Kate Trotter) is in love with the Reverend and wants to become his wife. She also happens to own the Quilt of Hathor and soon, she is entering the dreams of her romantic rivals and killing them. While Effie is trying to win the love of Reverend Grange, Ryan is falling in love with Grange’s daughter, Laura (Carolyn Dunn). Quicker than you can say Witness, Ryan is temping Laura to dance and being forced to fight Laura’s suitor, Matthew (Diego Matamoras), while balancing above an open flame pit. I don’t think Mennonites do that, which is probably why the Pentites broke off from them in the first place.

Micki does figure out that Effie is the one with the quilt and she even manages to grab it away from her. However, when she tells Ryan that it’s time to return to the antique shop, Ryan replies that he can’t go with her. Ryan has fallen in love with Laura and is planning on living the rest of his life as a Pentite.

Micki returns to the shop and, heartbroken, she tells Jack that she lost Ryan. Jack then reveals that she also managed to grab the wrong quilt. So, basically, Micki really screwed up.

This is a two-part episode so I imagine that Micki will return to the Pentite community next week and hopefully, she’ll pay attention and grab the right quilt this time. Will Ryan return to the civilization with her? Considering that John D. LeMay didn’t leave the show until the end of the second season, I imagine he probably will.

This was a pretty good episode. The scenes where Effie entered the dreams were well-directed and definitely achieved a nightmarish intensity. Some of the Pentite stuff was a little bit silly but John D. LeMay really sold his decision to stay with the sect. With everything that we’ve seen of Ryan on this show, his decision actually makes sense. Ryan has always been the one searching for deeper meaning while Micki is the more down-to-Earth member of the team.

Next week: Part two of the Quilt of Hathor!

Horror on TV: The Hitchhiker 5.26 “Pawns” (dir by Leon Marr)

Posted on October 22, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Poor Eddie!

Eddie (David McIlwraith) used to be a rock star but now he’s a washed up alcoholic without a cent to his name. Needing to pay his bills, Eddie decides to make the ultimate sacrifice. He decides to go down to a pawnshop and sell his trademark guitar. However, a quirky woman named Elisabeth (Jill Hennessy) has another idea. Maybe …. he could just rob the pawn shop!

Did you know that, as a name, Lisa started out as a shortened version of Elisabeth?

This episode originally aired on December 16th, 1989.

Late Night Retro Television Reviews: Friday the 13th 1.3 “Cupid’s Quiver”

Posted on October 20, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a new feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Fridays, I will be reviewing Friday the 13th, a show which ran in syndication from 1988 to 1990. The show can be found on YouTube!

Tonight’s episode is directed by a future Oscar nominee and a multiple Genie winner!

Episode 1.3 “Cupid’s Quiver”

(Dir by Atom Egoyan, originally aired on October 12th, 1987)

This week’s cursed antique is a statue of Cupid that shoots neon arrows at women and causes those targeted to fall madly in love with the statue’s owner. Unfortunately, the curse kicks in when the owner of the statue is then forced to murder the woman who is now in love with him. Yikes! What a mean statue.

When we first see the statue, it belongs to a frat boy who uses the statue at a club. After the frat boy is arrested for murder, possession of the statue falls to a total loser named Eddie Monroe (Denis Forest). Eddie is a janitor and groundskeeper at a local college. He’s the type of guy who hardly anyone ever notices and even those who do notice him think that he is a complete creep. Eddie is obsessed with a student named Laurie Warren (Carolyn Dunn), following her around campus and taking pictures of her. He’s even built an elaborate shrine to her in his apartment, one where he’s cut the heads off of the people that Carolyn was with and replaced them with his own head. (Double yikes!) Laurie, of course, wants nothing to do with Eddie.

Could Eddie’s new statue help him out? He hopes so and he even takes it to the club to test it on someone else beforehand. Eddie is determined to force Carolyn to love him, even if he’ll be required to kill her almost immediately afterwards. Fortunately, Ryan, Jack, and Micki are on campus, searching for the statue.

This episode is often cited as one of the best of the show’s run, largely because it was directed by a future Oscar nominee, Atom Egoyan. (Amongst Egoyan’s films: Exotica, The Sweet Hereafter, Felicia’s Journey and Where The Truth Lies.) It’s certainly not a bad episode, as Egoyan approaches the storyline with a sense of humor. The scenes of the frat boy and then Eddie wandering around with their cupid statue are more than a little silly and Egoyan seems to understand that. He does a good job contrasting the ludicrousness of the statue with the seriousness of the consequences of using it. The ultimate message is that both the statue and the men who carry it with them are more dangerous than they look.

I also enjoyed the scenes in which Ryan and a far more reluctant Micki went to a frat house to search for the statue. The frat house is a stereotypical den of debauchery, full of empty beers can and a black bra hanging from a ceiling fan. Ryan, not surprisingly, is right at home. Micki cannot wait to escape and I have to say that, as often happens when I watched episodes of this show, I definitely related to Micki. Watching Ryan and Micki wander through various frat parties in search of Eddie and his statue, I had to ask myself which is worse, a cursed antique or a fraternity?

A Movie A Day #65: Hitler’s Daughter (1990, directed by James A. Contner)

Posted on March 6, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

Ted Scott (Patrick Cassidy), a White House press aide, is contacted by his former professor, Dr. Bauman (Donald Davis). Bauman gives Ted a file that he claims will prove that not only did Adolf Hitler have a daughter but she was subsequently smuggled into America and is now on the verge of occupying the White House. Ted thinks that Bauman’s crazy but then Bauman is murdered and Ted is framed for the crime. With both the police and the bad guys after him and with time running out, Ted must now figure out who is Hitler’s daughter. Is it Sharon Franklin (Melody Anderson), the famous TV anchorwoman who is having an affair with a Senator? Is it Patricia Benedict (Veronica Cartwright), the wife of the Vice President? Or is it Senator Leona Crawford Gordon (Kay Lenz), who has just been put on the opposition party’s presidential ticket?

Hitler’s Daughter was originally made for the USA Network and, throughout the 1990s, it would frequently air late at night. As far as the film’s quality is concerned, Kay Lenz was beautiful as ever but otherwise, Hitler’s Daughter was a typically forgettable low-budget made-for-tv thriller, complete with bad guys who can shoot everyone but the main character, exploding cars, and villains who carefully explain their plans before trying to kill the heroes. It does end on a down note, with almost everyone dead. This probably seemed edgy in 1990 but it seems predictable today. Exactly ten years after this otherwise forgotten movie aired, Hitler’s Daughter was briefly again in the public spotlight a group of online conspiracy nuts claimed that Hillary Clinton was trying to suppress the movie’s release on video would harm her chances of getting elected to the Senate.

Far better than the movie is the novel on which it was based. Written by Timothy B. Benford, the literary Hitler’s Daughter is an entertaining and enjoyably pulpy page turner. Benford was the former police commissioner of Mountainside, New Jersey when he wrote Hitler’s Daughter in 1983 and the book touched with an nerve with at least a few readers. According to a story in The New York Times, shortly after the novel was published, Benford woke up to discover a wooden swastika burning on his front lawn. The movie stick closely to the book’s plot but never translates what worked on the page to the screen.