Tag Archives: Chas Lawther

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 3.5 “Stick It In Your Ear”

Posted on 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 Fridays, I will be reviewing Friday the 13th: The Series, a show which ran in syndication from 1987 to 1990. The entire series can be found on YouTube!

This week, a hearing aide turns into a snake and heads explode all over wherever this show is supposed to be taking place.  I always assumed this show took place in Canada but some people insist it was set in Chicago.  I just know it’s taking place somewhere cold.

Episode 3.5 “Stick In Your Ear”

(Dir by Douglas Jackson, originally aired on October 16th, 1989)

Hack stage mentalist Adam Cole (Wayne Best) has come into possession of a cursed hearing aid that allows him to hear the thoughts of other people.  This is great for act!  However, the hearing aid also sometimes becomes so full of other people’s thoughts that Adam has to commit murder to keep his head from exploding.  Yikes!

This is yet another episode where more time is spent with the person using the cursed object than with Jack, Micki, and Ryan Johnny.  There’s not necessarily anything wrong with that and Wayne Best does fine  in the role of the not-particularly sympathetic Adam Cole.  But, watching this episode, I still found myself missing the old days — let’s call them the Ryan days — when the chemistry between the three leads was often just as important as the gore and the horror.  As a character, Johnny still often feels a bit half-baked, as if the show’s writers still weren’t quite sure who he was.  When he was first introduced, he was cocky and streetwise.  Then he went to prison for a murder he didn’t commit!  Then, he was revealed to be a baseball fan who liked to build ships in bottles.  And now, in this episode, he’s suddenly an aspiring writer who enjoys reading the tabloids.  Steven Monarque does what he can but the character is so inconsistent that Johnny still feels a bit out-of-place in the show’s world.  At the very least, Ryan had a reason for sticking with the often grisly hunt for the antiques.  He wanted to do it with his cousin.  (I know, I know …. ewwww!  But it was also Ryan’s most defining motivation.)  Johnny’s motivations are a bit more opaque.

This episode did feature some Cronenbergian body horror, a nice reminder of Friday the 13th‘s Canadian origins.  Not clearing out the hearing aid leads to some exploding head action which is quite graphic even for this show.  That said, it bothers me that one person’s head more or less implodes in front of an entire studio audience and you really do have to wonder how exactly that’s going to be explained to the press.  I would think an exploding head and a snake-like hearing aid would lead to a lot of people saying, “Hey, maybe there is something out there.”

This was a gory episode, nicely acted and featuring an intriguing antique.  That said, I still miss Ryan.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Check It Out! 3.4 “I’m Okay, You’re A Spy”

Posted on 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 the Canadian sitcom, Check it Out, which ran in syndication from 1985 to 1988.  The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi!

This week, Howard’s paranoid and with good reason!  They are all out to get him….

Episode 3.4 “I’m Okay, You’re A Spy”

(Dir by Alan Erlich, originally aired on October 17th, 1987)

After the new stockboy, 12 year-old Brad (played by T and T‘s Sean Roberge), shows Howard a newspaper article about how the company that purchased Cobb’s has been sending corporate spies into its stores to evaluate management, Howard gets extremely paranoid.  He becomes convinced that there must be a spy in the store.  He gathers Brad, Leslie, Christian, Viker, and Marlene into the stockroom and asks them if they’ve noticed anyone strange in the store.  He also suggests that any one of them could possibly be the spy.

Or maybe — just maybe — the spy is the new butcher who keeps asking Howard all sorts of questions about the other employees.  He would seem to be the most likely suspect and we know it’s him because the episode opens with him getting his assignment and talking about how he can’t wait to get Howard Bannister fired.  Howard, of course, is so paranoid about the possibility of there being a spy in the store that he expresses all of his fears and frustrations to the spy.  In other words, this is yet another episode episode where Howard is a complete moron.  The previous season was split evenly between episodes where Howard was competent and episodes where Howard was an idiot.  The episodes featuring stupid Howard were always funnier than the episodes featuring smart Howard so I think the showrunners made the right decision to focus o Howard’s stupidity in the third season.  No one wants to watch a show about a good boss.  What fun is that?

(It’s kind of like how we loved The Office when it was all about Michael screwing up but, when it became about new boss Andy proving himself, we all tuned out.)

It turns out that not everyone at the new corporation is supportive of the whole spy thing.  T.C. Collingwood comes to the store and informs Howard that his butcher is the spy.  Howard replies by giving the spy a lot of work to do.  I guess that’s one way to handle it but it doesn’t change the fact that Howard told the spy that everyone at the store was incompetent and should be fired.  This episode makes less and less sense the more that I think about it.  Can’t corporate just look at whether or not the store had made any money and use that to determine whether or not Howard’s doing a good enough job?  This episode didn’t make much sense.

Incidentally, Edna was on vacation during this episode.  How many vacation does Edna get in the year?  It seems like she’s never at the store.  I have a feeling that Howard is going to run off with T.C. Collingwood at some point in the new future.  Maybe that’s for the best.  At least then Edna wouln’t have to flee to Florida every month.

Next week ….  Howard wants to be a TV star!  We’ll see what happens.

 

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th 2.8 “Read My Lips”

Posted on 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!

This week, Oscar will haunt your nightmares….

Episode 2.8 “Read My Lips”

(Dir by Francis Delia, originally aired on November 21st, 1988)

When you watch as much horror as I do, you automatically assume that anyone who is a ventriloquist is going to have an unhealthy relationship with their dummy.  Sometimes, the dummy is alive.  Sometimes, the dummy is possessed.  Sometimes, the dummy is just a dummy but the ventriloquist has decided that it’s alive and urging him to kill.  (For some reason, evil ventriloquists are always male.)  I’ve seen a lot of creepy ventriloquist dummies but nothing quite compared me for Oscar….

AGCK!  I mean …. LOOK AT THAT THING!

Oscar is at the center of this week’s episode of Friday the 13th.  Oscar is wearing a boutonniere that once belonged to the noted ventriloquist, Adolf Hitler.   The boutonniere not only brings Oscar to foul-mouthed life but it also inspires whoever owns Oscar to commit countless murders.  When we first see Oscar, he is owned by Edgar Van Horne (played by a youngish Billy Drago).  After Edgar attempts to break his bond with Oscar, Oscar drives Edgar crazy and then invites another ventriloquist, Travis Plunkett (John Byner), to be his owner.  Things don’t turn out well for Travis either.

Sadly, Jack is not in this episode.  With its emphasis on desperate nightclub performers and Oscar’s corny sense of humor, it’s hard not to feel that this storyline would have been right up Jack’s alley.  Instead, it’s left to Micki and Ryan to deal with Oscar and the ventriloquists.  Micki’s best friend from high school, Gabriella Montrose (Linda Griffiths), is planning on marrying Edgar but, needless to say, that all goes out the window once Edgar loses his mind and end up in a mental hospital.  For the most part, Micki and Ryan are largely bystanders in this episode.  All of the action revolves around Oscar and his unfortunate owners.

Billy Drago gives a wonderful performance as Edgar, making him both frightening and, in the end, surprisingly sympathetic.  Edgar is desperate to escape the clutches of Oscar but, in the end, it turns out that he’s grown addicted to performing with Oscar and the attempt to quit cold turkey leads to him losing his mind.  (Many episodes of Friday the 13th feature storylines that felt as if they were meant to be a metaphor for drug addiction and that’s certainly the case here.)  John Byner plays his role a bit more broadly than Drago but still, it’s hard not to feel bad for Travis as he comes to realize that he’s in over his head with Oscar.

This was an effectively creepy episode, even if it did owe an obvious debt to the 1978 film Magic.  Oscar makes for a memorable monster.  Hopefully, he’ll never be seen again.