David Misch | 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 show is streaming on Tubi.

I was pretty hard on Monsters last week. In retrospect, I think some of that was due to the fact that I was feeling anxious about getting my new laptop. I stand by what I said about the episode because it wasn’t a good one but I do regret the slight tone of outrage that I took in my review. Seriously, this is not a show to take seriously.

Take tonight’s episode for example….

Episode 1.17 “Taps”

(Dir by David Misch, originally aired on March 4th, 1989)

Suzy St. Claire (Mary Jo Keenan) is a professional dancer who is appearing, on Broadway, in a show that stars and is directed by an egomaniacal tap dancer, Gary Gregory (Neal Jones). Suzy wants freedom from both the show and her romantic relationship with Gary so that she can go to Hollywood and try to become a star. Gary tells her that there’s no way he’ll ever let her go. So, Suzy contacts a lawyer and he helps her got out of the contract, along with suing Gary for sexual harassment. Nah, just kidding. That’s what I would do but Suzy just decides to poison him. When Gary doesn’t die quickly enough and proves to be too big to fit in a suitcase, Suzy dismembers him.

A few years later, Suzy is in Hollywood with her agent, Sam (Dan Frazer). She demands to know why Meryl Streep is getting Oscar nominations but she’s not. Sam points out that starring in Graveyard Slasher III is not the path to getting Academy recognition. After Sam leaves, Suzy realizes that she’s not alone in her apartment. She looks over at the window and, behind the curtains, she sees a familiar red shoe. She opens the curtains and is confronted by….

…. A DISEMBODIED LEG!

Apparently, she forgot to destroy Gary’s leg and now, it has tracked her down. In a scene that has to be seen to be believed, she is chased around the apartment by the leg. When she tries to leave the apartment, the leg trips her. The leg hops up and down until she says, “You want to dance with me?” It’s a scene that is so ludicrous that it nearly works. The only problem is that a hopping leg, on its own, doesn’t really have the type of forward momentum necessary to be a real threat. If you can’t outrun one hopping leg, maybe you deserve whatever you get.

In Suzy’s case, that means using a meat carver to chop off her own leg and then somehow — it’s never shown how — attaching Gary’s leg to the stump. When we next see Suzy, she is back in New York and Sam is wondering why she’s abandoned her film career to return to dancing.

Good Lord, this was silly. To its credit, it was meant to be silly. None of the dialogue was meant to be taken seriously and the actors were all clearly in on the joke. But, ultimately, that disembodied leg was just too utterly ridiculous for the story to work. I applaud this episode for laughing at itself but I just wish it had been a little better executed. Add to that, for an episode about dancers, we didn’t get to see nearly enough dancing. Sorry, the hopping leg doesn’t count.

Next week …. Tori Spelling guest stars! We’ll see how that goes.

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 show is streaming on Youtube.

For this week’s episode, the dead rise and …. hey, wait a minute. Horrorthon’s over! And yet, here I am reviewing another show about zombies. Oh well, let’s get to it!

Episode 1.5 “My Zombie Lover”

(Dir by David Misch, originally aired on November 19th, 1988)

It’s the night of the dead!

In a small town, the dead rise once a year and feast on the flesh of the living. No one is sure why this happens. As one person explains it, some people think that it’s a gypsy curse and some people think that it’s due to radiation and others think that it’s just the result of poor embalming techniques. But every year, for one night, families in the town head out with their guns and they spend a few hours killing zombies.

Dottie (Tempestt Bledsoe) is home, visiting from college. She doesn’t want to go out and hunt zombies. Nor does she want to go see her old high school acquaintances. She just wants to stay on the couch while Dad (Ed Wheeler), Mom (Marcella Lowery, the terrible principal from City Guys), and her younger brother, Brad (Eugene Byrd), head outside. Dad can’t wait to kill some zombies. Brad, meanwhile, thinks that the zombies should be left alone and is carrying a protest sign.

After her family boards up the house and then leaves, Dottie is surprised to hear a knock at the door. She answers the door and finds Paul Nichols (Steve Harper) standing outside with some flowers. Paul was in Dottie’s French class but he died before he could graduate from high school. Now, he’s back in zombie form and he just wants Dottie to know that he always had a crush on her. Soon, Paul and Dottie are talking about old times. Unfortunately, Paul cannot resist the temptation to bite Dottie’s hand but Dottie forgives him.

Suddenly, Dad, Mom, and Brad return. Dad takes one look at Paul and aims his rifle. Shouting that she loves Paul, Dottie jumps in front of her zombie boyfriend and is killed by the bullet that was meant for him. However, since this is the night of the dead, Dottie immediately returns in zombie form. She and Paul are both hungry and they ask if there’s any meat in the house. Dad and Mom think for a moment and then they both look down at Brad and share a smile.

In other words, Brad was the only person in town who cared about the zombies and now, he’s going to be eaten.

I appreciated this episode’s rather macabre sense of humor and I especially liked the way Dad ran through all the possible reasons for the zombies returning. (They are all reasons that have been suggested in various Romero zombie films.) Unfortunately, a few too many of the jokes fell flat for this episode to really be considered a total success. Tempestt Bledsoe, in particular, seemed to be confused by the episode’s grotesque humor, giving a performance that never quite found the right balance between sincerity and humor. That said, I did like Steve Harper’s performance as the saddest zombie in the world. He only gets to eat once a year but, rather than do that, he just wants to let Dottie know that he liked her. Awwwwww!

Despite some tonal inconsistences, this was an entertaining episode, one that I appreciated as a fan of zombie films.