Retro Television Review: T and T 3.8 “The Mysterious Mauler”

Posted on May 10, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to 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 T. and T., a Canadian show which ran in syndication from 1987 to 1990. The show can be found on Tubi!

This week, Mr. T enters the wrestling ring and we all wonder what took so long. Seriously, T and T, do you not realize who is starring on your show?

Episode 3.8 “The Mysterious Mauler”

(Dir by Alan Simmonds, originally aired on February 24th, 1990)

Teri and T.S. Turner are hired to investigate a series of accidents that have afflicted the wrestlers of the Galactis Wrestling Federation. With the GWF royal championship coming up, all of the contenders are being taken out of contention before they even step into the ring! Teri and T.S. think that a wrestler known as the Masked Mauler may be involved but the head of GWF, Mr. Barnum (Elias Zarou, chewing every available piece of scenery), refuses to reveal the Mauler’s true identity. Instead, Mr. Barnum is more interested in putting a “hood” on T.S. Turner and sending him into the ring.

From the start, this episode confused me. It opened with Terri excitedly telling T.S. that their money woes were over because they had been hired by an insurance company to investigate all of the accidents that have been taking place in the GWF. Now, I could understand the company hiring Turner because he’s an established detective but this episode seems to suggest that Terri is now a private investigator as well. But, in every previous episode, Terri has been portrayed as being an attorney who is almost as prominent and as successful as her sister Amy. Terri suddenly working for an insurance company as an investigator doesn’t really make sense. Aren’t the Taler sisters supposed to be crusading attorneys who have dedicated their practice to defending the little guy from heartless corporations? But now, Terri is suddenly an enthusiastic insurance investigator. Terri sold out!

And yet, this episode actually isn’t that bad, at least not by the usual standards of T and T. From the minute I learned this episode was set in the world of professional wrestling, I knew that Mr. T would eventually end up in the ring while wearing a sparkly uniform and that’s exactly what happened. Mr. T perfectly fits into the flamboyant world of pro-wrestling and he certainly does seem to be in a good mood in this episode. From the second season on, T and T has often failed to take advantage of the fact that half of their duo was Mr. T. This episode allows Mr. T to be himself.

As for the Mauler, his identity is eventually revealed. He owns a pizzeria and wears a mask so that his wife won’t discover that he’s a wrestler. The Mauler may be fearsome in the ring but, outside of it, he’s just trying to live a peaceful life and make an appetizing pizza. Good for him!

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 2.1 “Doorway to Hell”

Posted on April 26, 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!

This week, the second season beings with the return of Uncle Lewis!

(For a dead guy, Lewis sure does return a lot.)

Episode 2.1 “Doorway to Hell”

(Dir by William Fruet, originally aired on September 26th, 1988)

The second season begins in much the same way that the first one ended, with Uncle Lewis (played, as always, be R.G. Armstrong) trying to re-enter the world of the living.

This time, he’s doing it through mirrors. According to Jack, a mirror that “witnesses” an occult ceremony becomes a doorway to the dark realms that sit between Heaven and Hell. Lewis lives in the dark realms and, since he was a big fan of mirrors, his reflection occasionally appears in the a mirror at Curious Goods. When Micki and Ryan find evidence that Lewis owned a house, they ignore Jack’s warning and go to investigate on their own.

They discover that the decrepit house is being used as a hideout by Buddy (Charle Landry) and Eddie (Louis Ferreira), two criminals who have just held up a gas station and killed an attendant. Buddy wants to go straight and was pretty much coerced into taking part in the robbery. Eddie, on the other hand, is a total psychopath who ties up both Micki and Ryan and laughs when they try to warn him about Uncle Lewis.

The house, not surprisingly, is full of mirrors and soon, Buddy gets sucked into one of them. When Buddy returns to the house, he’s possessed and shooting electricity from his fingertips. He kills Eddie and then chases Ryan and Micki around both the house and the dark realms.

Jack and his friend Rashid (Elias Zarou) watch all of this reflected in a shard of reflective glass that they found at the antique store. Whenever things start to get really exciting or scary at the mansion, we cut to Jack and Rashid staring at shard of glass and saying, “Get out of there, Ryan!”

Eventually, Jack goes to the house, enters the dark realms and distracts Lewis long enough for Ryan and Micki to destroy all of the mirrors in the house. Jack manages to escape just in time, Buddy apparently become unpossessed and the ghost of Uncle Lewis declares that he will return. Lewis’s constant shouts of “I’ll be back” are such a cliche that they can’t help but be a bit charming, especially since R.G. Armstrong always seems to be having so much fun chewing the scenery whenever he shows up as Lewis.

The second season premiere did an effective job of reminding old viewers and informing new viewers about what the show was about. The haunted house was an effectively creepy location and the dark realms were nicely atmospheric. I do wish that the premiere had not once again deployed the tired idea of Micki and Ryan ignoring Jack’s warning about impulsively investigating something on their own. I mean, that has never worked out for them. You would think that Ryan and Micki would have learned the lesson by now. Otherwise, this episode got the second season off to a good start.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 1.26 “Bottle of Dreams”

Posted on April 19, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, season one comes to a close with a trip down nightmare lane.

Episode 1.26 “Bottle of Dreams”

(Dir by Mac Bradden, originally aired on July 25th, 1988)

It’s clip show time!

To be fair, the first season finale of Friday the 13th does come up with a clever way to justify being a clip show. Micki and Ryan get trapped in the vault of Curious Goods with an ancient, Egyptian urn that causes people to confront the memories of their worst fears. Not surprisingly all of Micki and Ryan’s worst fears are connected to the cursed antiques that they’ve spent the past year seeking out and dealing with.

So, once again, we get to see the cursed doll that started the series. We see the weirdo wandering around with his cursed cupid statue. We see the vampire. Oddly enough, we don’t see the pirate ghosts or the gangster who killed Micki’s boyfriend, even though both of those events were very traumatic for Micki. We don’t see the magic pipe that killed Ryan’s father, despite the fact that episode ended with Ryan in tears. We don’t see the newscaster who killed Ryan’s girlfriend or the cursed quilt that nearly caused Ryan to get burned at the stake. In short the clips seem to be a little bit arbitrary and they also all seem to come from early in the season, which leads me to suspect that this episode was put together long before it actually aired.

The cursed urn and the flashbacks are all a part of yet another attempt by Uncle Lewis (R.G. Armstrong) to return to the world of living. Fortunately, Jack’s friend Rashid (Elias Zarou) shows up and helps to push Lewis back into the netherworld. It’s always nice when one of Jack’s associates shows up to help. It creates the feeling that there’s an entire magical underground out there, all dealing with cursed antiques and malevolent spirits. While Ryan and Micki deal with their bad memories, Jack and Rashid are the ones who save the day and it makes for a nice conclusion for the first season. Our heroes may have started out as skeptical amateurs but now they’re a strong team. Micki and Ryan know that they can count on Jack, which is good considering that almost everyone else that that they get close to ends up dead.

The first season of Friday the 13th: The Series was pretty good. The horror was effective. The cast had a lot of chemistry. With a few exceptions, the cursed antiques were all interesting and worked in genuinely clever ways. The show had a sense of humor but it never let it get in the way of mayhem. Even the fact that the show claimed to be set in America even though it was clearly filmed in Canada and filled with Canadian actors only served to increase the dream-like atmosphere.

Will the second season live up to the first? We’ll start to find out next week!