Tag Archives: Colin Fox

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 2.19 “The Butcher”

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, it’s all about Jack!

Episode 2.19 “The Butcher”

(Dir by Francis Delia, originally aired on April 24th, 1989)

Horst Mueller (Colin Fox), a Nazi scientist, uses a magic amulet to bring back to life the fearsome Col. Rausch (Nigel Bennett), a Nazi war criminal who was infamous for using barb wire as a garotte whenever he was carrying out executions.  Rausch was killed during the war by a squad of soldiers led by a young lieutenant named Jack Marshak.  Once Rausch is brought back to life, he not only sets himself up as a radio talk show host but he also seeks revenge on the men who killed him.  One-by-one, he kills the members of the squad until eventually, only three are left alive, Simpson (Julius Harris), Shaw (John Gilbert), and Jack.

There were many episodes of Friday the 13th in which Jack was absent and described as being out-of-town while Micki and Ryan dealt with the latest cursed antique.  This, however, is the first episode to feature Jack on his own.  He mentions that Micki and Ryan are out-of-town, presumably because they’re tracking something down.  This leads Jack to face Rausch with only the help of Simpson and Shaw.  Watching this episode, one gets the feeling that Jack wouldn’t have it any other way.  While this episode features all of the usual blood and melodrama that we’ve come to expect from this show, it also serves as a tribute to the friendship between Jack and his comrades-in-arms.  Jack relates to Simpson and Shaw in a way that he can’t relate to the much-younger Micki and Ryan.  If Jack is usually cast as a fatherly figure, this episode finds him working with equals and fighting against a monster with whom he has a personal connection.  This is the rare episode to not feature any of Lewis’s cursed antiques.  Instead, the magic amulet is one of the many artifacts for which Heinrich Himmler and the SS spent much of the war searching.

It’s a change-of-pace episode that gives Chris Wiggins a chance to show off his considerable talents an actor.  Rarely has Jack been as haunted as he is in the episode and Wiggins’s sad eyes allow us to see what a lifetime of dealing with unbelievable evil would do to a person.  In this episode, Jack is not just aware of the evil in the world but he’s also aware that he and his comrades-in-arms, the members of the so-called “Greatest Generation,” are aging and their time is passing.  Jack and his friends are at an age where they should be enjoying their retirement.  Instead. they’re still fighting against the legacy of Hitler’s evil.

This was a good and melancholy episode of Friday the 13th.  This show could be uneven but episodes like this were good enough to make one mourn that the series did not last longer than just three seasons.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 2.4 “Tails I Live, Heads You Die”

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, a flip of the coin leads to tragedy!

Episode 2.4 “Tails I Live, Heads You Die”

(Dir by Mark Sobel, originally aired on October 21st, 1988)

Finally, Jack, Micki, and Ryan have a night to relax.  Jack does some reading while Micki poses for Ryan, who is apparently a sculptor now.  Micki says that it’s unfortunate that Ryan is stuck having work at Curious Goods when he has so much artistic talent.  Micki has a point, even if this is the first time that we’ve heard about Ryan’s artistic interests.

Suddenly, the phone rings.  A reporter named Tom Hewitt (Bill MacDonald) is calling because he’s heard that Jack is an expert in the occult.  Tom says that he’s tracked down a Satanic cult that is planning on doing something big.  He tells Jack where he can find all of the evidence that Tom has gathered over the course of his investigation.  While Jack and Ryan head over to the bus depot where Tom has hidden his research, Micki stays at the store.  As for poor old Tom, he ends up dead with the image of a bloody ram’s head imprinted on his forehead.

Looking through Tom’s papers and photographs, Jack discovers that the head of the Satanic cult is a taxidermist named Sylvan Winters (Colin Fox) and that Sylvan is in possession of a coin that is imbued with Satanic energy.  When the owner of the coin flips it, it leads to the death of whoever is standing nearby.  After the coin kills someone, it can be used to bring someone back to life.

First, Jack goes to the taxidermy shop with Ryan but the two of them fail to find the coin.  Later, Jack returns with Micki and the two of them stumble on a Satanic ceremony.  When they are spotted by Sylvan and the cultists, Jack and Micki make a run for it.  Sadly, they get separated.  While Jack manages to escape from the cultists, Micki is caught by Sylvan.  Sylvan flips the coin and …. KILLS MICKI!

Seriously, Micki’s death took me totally by surprise and it actually left me feeling really upset.  I’ve got red hair.  Micki has red hair.  Micki tends to be a skeptic.  I tend to be a skeptic.  Micki was pretty much me on this show!  And now she’s dead?  Agck!

Arriving at the taxidermy place, Ryan sobs over Micki’s body and then tells Jack that, after he gets the coin and destroys Sylvan, he is done with the cursed antiques business.  Ryan says that he’s ready to live his life and he can’t handle losing anyone else close to him.  (Remember that Ryan’s father was killed by a cursed pipe last season.)  

Returning to the taxidermy studio, Ryan and Jack discover that Sylvan is planning on using the coin to raise two powerful warlocks and a witch so that they can combine their power to bring Satan into the world.  However, Ryan and Jack steal Micki’s body from the morgue, put a mask on her to make her look like the witch that Sylvan wants to raise from the dead, and then the replace the witch’s body with Micki’s body.  As a result, Sylvan brings Micki back to life.  (Ryan and Jack’s plan is incredibly complicated and I’m kind of surprised that they were able to pull it off.  But who cares as long as Micki is no longer dead.)  Satan gets angry, the taxidermist studio collapses. and Ryan grabs the coin and flips it in front of Sylvan.  Sylvan dies but the coin is still out there.

But no matter!  The important thing is that Micki comes back to life!  Yay!  And Ryan decides not to leave Curious Goods, mostly because he’s in love with his cousin, though that’s something that the show rarely acknowledges.

By the time this episode came around, Robey, Chris Wiggins, and John D. LeMay had developed into a tight enough ensemble that Ryan’s tears and Jack’s anger over the death of Micki felt very powerful and very real.  As well, Colin Fox was a wonderfully hissable villain.  He was so smug that I couldn’t wait to see him get his comeuppance.  This was an excellent episode.

Next week, Ryan falls in love with a cursed violinist because Ryan is never allowed to be happy for long.

Late Night Retro Television Reviews: Friday the 13th 1.2 “The Poison Pen”

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, a show which ran in syndication from 1988 to 1990.  The show can be found on YouTube!

This week, Ryan, Mickey, and Jack all end up going undercover at an ancient monastery, where one of the monks is using a cursed pen to take out anyone who annoys him.

Episode 1.2 “The Poison Pen”

(Directed by Timothy Bond, originally aired on October 10th, 1987)

The second episode of Friday the 13th: The Series begins at an ancient monastery that is run by a religious order known as The Brotherhood.  (It’s never explicitly stated what denomination the Brotherhood belongs too.  Their practices seem to be an odd mix of Buddhism and Anglicanism.)  The Abbott has gone to top the roof of the monastery.  He suddenly starts to float in the air.  He thinks that he’s having a religious experience but, just as suddenly, he crashes down to the ground and is killed.

At the antique store, Jack sees a story in the newspaper about the Abbott’s death and he immediately realizes that someone at the monastery purchased a cursed pen from the store.  The pen can be used to kill.  All one has to do is write out how they want the death to happen (preferably in as florid language as possible) and then write down the name of their victim.  That’s a powerful pen and obviously, it must be retrieved!

So, of course, Ryan and Micki have to go undercover as young monks.  However, since it’s The Brotherhood and not the Sisterhood, Micki will have to pretend to be male which means tying back her hair, taking a vow of silence, and allowing Ryan to bind her chest.  Jack forges a letter of introduction, though you have to wonder why he didn’t just go undercover with Ryan instead of forcing Micki to go through the trouble of trying to pass for a male.

Ryan and Micki move into the monastery and try to figure out which of the monks owns the pen.  Unfortunately, they don’t do a very good job of it and two more monks are tragically killed, one suffocated in his bed while the other is beheaded by a guillotine that just happens to be in a storage room for some reason.  In fact, Ryan and Micki prove to be so ineffective that Jack is eventually forced to go undercover as well.

Eventually, the owner of the pen is revealed to be Brother Le Croix (Colin Fox), who makes the mistake of writing out Jack, Micki, and Ryan’s death warrant on a piece of paper that already has his name on it.  This leads to Brother Le Croix getting a guillotine blade to the back, finally bringing his reign of terror to an end.  Ryan and Jack return the pen to the antique store and Micki finally gets to let down her hair and wear a bra again.

I personally think this episode would have been more effective if it had aired later in the season because a good deal of the episode’s humor depended on the idea of Jack, Micki, and Ryan all knowing each other extremely well.  Instead, since this is just the second episode, it seems reasonable that Jack barely knows either Micki and Ryan, which makes some of his overly familiar interactions with them feel a bit odd.  Unless there was a year-long time skip between the pilot and the second episode, it just doesn’t seem like everyone should be as comfortable around Jack as they are.

As for the episode’s premise, it was all a bit silly.  The main problem is that the pen was so powerful that you have to kind of wonder why Brother Le Croix didn’t just use it as soon as he became suspicious of the new monks.  Instead, he waited until everyone was gathered in the same room as the guillotine and then he forced them to watch as he wrote out how he wanted them to die and then, he actually announced, “Now, I just have to write down your names!”  Why didn’t he write down their names first?  It seems like evil was defeated less to due to the actions of our heroes and more because our villain was a true idiot.

Oh well.  The important thing is that the pen will write no more!

Next week: Jack, Micki, and Ryan go to college in an episode directed by Atom Egoyan!

Horror on TV: Friday the 13th: The Series 2.4 “Tails I Live, Heads You Die” (dir by Mark Sobel)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Tonight, for our horror on the lens, we have the fourth episode of the 2nd season of Friday the 13th: The Series!

Colin Fox plays a Satanist who plans to use a magic coin to summon the dead and take over the world! Can Micki and Ryan stop him and his cult?

This episode originally aired on October 21st, 1988! It was apparently as close as the 2nd season of Friday the 13th got to doing a Halloween show as the next episode wouldn’t air until November 4th.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfnS-ndG900

Film Review: Left Behind 2: Tribulation Force (dir by Bill Corcoran)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 2002 film, Left Behind II: Tribulation Force, begins a week after the Rapture.  I have to admit that it took me by surprise when they mentioned that only a week had passed since the events that kicked off the first Left Behind film because the action in the original film seemed to go on for a lot longer than week.  I guess, if nothing else, that’s a lesson in the importance of keeping your film moving at a steady pace.

Speaking of pacing, Tribulation Force has a bit of quicker pace than the first film.  Now that everyone knows what happened, Rayford Steele (Brad Johnson) and Buck Williams (Kirk Cameron) can jump into action and start working to try to thwart the evil plans of Nicolae Carpathia (Gordon Currie).  Of course, at the start of the film, they’re told that it’s impossible to thwart the evil plans of Carpathia because the Bible has already predicted that he can’t be thwarted.  However, the Bible has also predicated that people will still try so I guess Rayford and Buck really don’t have that much of a choice.

Both Buck and Rayford get minor subplots that are designed to bring some humanity to all of the apocalyptic melodrama.  Rayford is still coming to terms with being left behind and struggling to forgive himself for not going to church with his wife and son.  To give some credit where credit is due, Brad Johnson is this film’s secret weapon.  He doesn’t really get to do much but Johnson brings just enough emotional reality to the role that his scenes have some depth that the rest of the film is missing.

As for Buck, he’s pursuing a tentative relationship with Rayford’s daughter, Chloe (Janaya Stephens).  Unfortunately, he’s also letting his assistant Ivy crash at his apartment and when Chloe stops by and discovers Ivy wearing a towel and an engagement ring, she assumes the worst.  Luckily, Buck’s able to say, “She’s my assistant” and that takes care of that.

Kirk Cameron is pretty much at the center of Tribulation Force, which is a problem because he’s totally miscast as a tough and respect journalist.  Carpathia, who really should have known better seeing as how he’s the son of Satan and everything, decides to turn Buck into the public face of his global news channel.  Unfortunately, there’s nothing about Kirk Cameron that suggests that any character he would play would ever have the gravitas or the charisma necessary to be the public face of any government.  As in the first film, Cameron comes across as being extremely earnest and a little bit dull.  He’s like the intern who accidentally screws up everyone’s lunch order.

Anyway, in Tribulation Force, everyone in the world loves Carpathia, even though he’s the most obviously evil dictator ever.  (The Rapture left behind not just the nonbelievers but also the extremely stupid.)  Carpathia announces the birth of a new world without borders and without religion.  Buck and Rayford plan to televise an interview with the Two Witnesses, who are waiting at the Wailing Wall.  But, to do that, they’re going to have to figure out a way to work around the fact that Carpathia controls all of the news channels….

Despite the fact that Tribulation Force is not as slow as the first film, the bulk of the film is still made up of people having long conversations about Biblical prophecy.  Like a lot of early faith-based films, Tribulation Force gets bogged down in explaining its message as opposed to showing the audience what that message means.  When Buck does finally reach the Wailing Wall, we do get to see some people get set on fire but, other than that, this is a very talky film.  As well, Tribulation Force can’t ever seem to decide just how powerful and all-knowing Carpathia is supposed to be.  At times, he has nearly supernatural powers and yet, at the same time, he’s totally incapable of seeing that Buck and Rayford are both plotting against him.  Is Carpathia a victim of his own hubris or is it just bad plotting on the part of the film?  I’ll leave it up to you decide.

Tribulation Force was followed by one more Left Behind film, World At War.  I’ll review that one in about 15 minutes!  Hope to see you then.

 

 

 

Film Review: Left Behind: The Movie (dir by Vic Sarin)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

As I watched the 2000 film Left Behind: The Movie (not to be confused with the remake starring Nicolas Cage), I found myself thinking about names.

For instance, if your name is Rayford Steele, you really probably don’t have any choice but to become a pilot and maybe star in a low-budget action movie.  I mean, let’s just be honest.  People with names like Rayford Steele don’t end up working the night shift at 7-11.  In Left Behind, Rayford Steele is played by Bad Johnson and Johnson has just the right look to play a character named Rayford Steele.  He’s handsome in a somewhat old-fashioned, Gary Cooperish sort of way.

And yes, Rayford is a pilot.  He had a wife who resents the fact that Rayford is always flying off and abandoning his family.  She goes to church and she worries that he’s not a believer.  Rayford, meanwhile, is having an affair with flight attendant Hattie Dunham (Chelsea Noble).  That affair, however, may have to soon come to an end because Hattie has a new job with the UN.  Poor Hattie.  Nothing good ever comes from working at the UN!

Just as anyone named Rayford Steele would have to become a pilot, I imagine that anyone named Buck Williams would have to become a globe-trotting journalist.  We’re told that Buck is one of the most famous and successful journalists in the world.  Someone even mentions that Buck is so brave that he would have reported from Hiroshima while the first atomic bomb was being dropped.  (I assume that would have been a fairly short broadcast.)  Unfortunately, it’s a bit of a struggle to buy Buck Williams as a crusading journalist because he’s played by Kirk Cameron.  Buck is described as being tough and cynical.  There’s absolutely nothing tough about Kirk Cameron.  At his best, he projects an earnest blandness.  At his worst, he reminds you that he’s the guy who, years after starring in this film, would claim that a conspiracy of atheists was responsible for Saving Christmas receiving bad reviews.

Finally, if your name is Nicolae Carpathia, you’re pretty much destined to grow up to be very wealthy and also very evil.  You’re not going to end up living in the suburbs, mowing your own lawn and complaining about property taxes.  No, with a name like Nicolae Carpathia, you’re destined to end up using your position at the UN to take over the world.  When you declare that your goal is to lead the world into “seven years of peace,” everyone knows that you’re planning on doing the exact opposite.

Or, at the very least, everyone should know.  As played by Gordon Currie, Nicolae Carpathia is obviously evil from the minute he first appears.  (Even if you didn’t know his name, you would think he was evil just from the way he smirks.)  However, in the world of Left Behind, almost everyone loves Nicolae Carpathia.  When thousands of people mysteriously vanish, all at the same time, Carpathia is the person to whom humanity turns their tear-brimmed eyes.  The viewers know that it’s the Rapture and Rayford Steele and Buck Williams come to realize that it was the Rapture but Carpathia sees it as an opportunity to lead humanity into a …. dare I say it? …. new world order.

Left Behind is an odd film.  For the most part, it’s a fairly ludicrous film, a low-budget and excessively preachy attempt to create a religious epic on a Wal-Mart budget.  Kirk Cameron is miscast as a journalist and the film’s special effects are so obviously cheap that one can’t help but feel the filmmakers got a bit too ambitious for their own good.  (Just check out the scene at the start of the film when Buck Williams reports while “bombs” explode all around him.)  With a running time of one hour and 40 minutes, the film drags a bit and the characters are often frustratingly dense.  (Even non-evangelicals have, at the very least, heard that there’s a thing called the Rapture.)  And yet, occasionally, there will be moments when the film actually comes close to working.  Brad Johnson, for instance, gives about as good a performance as anyone could as Rayford Steele.  The scene where Carpathia manipulates a subordinate into committing suicide may not be terrible original but it’s still surprisingly effective.

Despite the fact that the film itself barely made a profit, Left Behind would go on to spawn two sequels.  We’ll look at the first, Tribulation Force, in 15 minutes.  Hope to see you then!