Tag Archives: Francis Delia

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 3.9 “Femme Fatale”

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, Micki finds herself trapped in a movie!

Episode 3.9 “Femme Fatale”

(Dir by Francis Delia, originally aired on November 20th, 1989)

In an isolated mansion, former film director Desmond Williams (Gordon Pinsent) lives with retired actress Lili Lita (Kate Reid).  Lili is sick and bed-ridden now but, when she was younger, she starred in all of Desmond’s noir melodramas.  Desmond still enjoys watching their old films, particularly one in which Lili played a doomed femme fatale named Glenda.

Unfortunately, Desmond’s copy of the film is cursed.  Whenever he watches it, he has to watch with a young woman who will suddenly find herself switching places with Glenda.  Glenda is allowed to live in the real world until her unfortunate replacement is killed in the film.  Desmond is overjoyed to have Glenda come into his world.  Glenda, however, is more than little frustrated by the fact that she always has to return to the movie.

When Micki shows up to try to retrieve the cursed film, she ends up trapped in the movie.  Micki, however, is a bit more creative than Desmond’s other victims and continually tries to change the script, just to discover that the black-and-white characters around her are always going to do the same thing no matter what.

Meanwhile, Jack and Johnny show up and try to rescue Micki.  While Glena explores the real world and even drops in on a showing of one of her old movies, Lili ends up shooting Desmond and then willfully taking Micki’s place in the movie.  Micki returns to the real world.  Lili dies in the film.  Gloria burns up into nothingness.  With Desmond dead, Gloria is now forever trapped in the film.

This was a good episode.  When it started, I thought Desmond was going to turn out to be one of the quasi-sympathetic villains who was using a cursed object in an effort to help someone else.  But, as the episode progressed, it becomes obvious that Desmond didn’t really love Lili.  Instead, he loved the character that he created for her to be.  He loved the imaginary femme fatale but not the real-life woman who played her.  As well, the scenes inside the film were handled with a lot of wit and style.  I enjoyed watching Micki trying to disrupt the film’s story.  As much as I miss John D. LeMay’s Ryan, his absence really allowed Robey to come into her own during the third season.

Friday the 13th could be an uneven show but this episode was definitely a triumph.

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.

Music Video of the Day: Time Has Come Today by The Ramones (1983, dir by Francis Delia)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In today’s music video of the day, we visit the Church of the Ramones, where the band is energizing the congregation with a cover of The Chambers Brothers’s Time Has Come Today.

And indeed the time has come.  It’s the last day of September.  That means that tomorrow is the start of my favorite time of the year.  It’s time for our annual …. HORRORTHON!  Things are about to get a little bit busy around here….

Until then …. ENJOY!

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.

Horror on TV: Friday the 13th: The Series 2.19 “The Butcher” (dir by Francis Delia)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

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

In tonight’s episode, Jack takes center stage as he finds himself forced to battle and repeatedly kill an evil from his own past. Nigel Bennett plays quite a frightening villain.

This episode originally aired on April 29th, 1989.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3GCmWtgJQc

Music Video of the Day: I Lost On Jeopardy by Weird Al Yankovic (1984, directed by Frances Delia)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvUZijEuNDQ

Based on Greg Kihn Band’s Jeopardy, I Lost On Jeopardy was an early song parody from the master of the form, Weird Al Yankovic.

Today, Jeopardy is an American institution but, at the time this video was filmed, it was considered to be a nostalgic memory.  The original Jeopardy ran from 1964 to 1975, with Art Fleming as the host and Don Pardo as the announcer.  (Famously, Pardo went from announcing for Jeopardy to announcing for Saturday Night Live.)  This video was shot on the original Jeopardy set, with Fleming and Pardo playing themselves.  As you can tell, Jeopardy has changed considerably from what it once was.  The version of Jeopardy that we all know and revere, with Alex Trebek at the helm, would not start until three months after the release of this video.

After Weird Al is kicked out of the studio, the man in the convertible is played by Greg Kihn, in a parody of the ending of the original video for Jeopardy.  At the time, Kihn told The Washington Post that he didn’t mind the parody and that it was his idea to appear at the end of the video.  As Kihn put it, “It was a vote of confidence.  If you’re not well-enough known to be parodied, well, you’re just not well-enough known.”

This attitude seems to be true of most musicians whose songs have been parodied by Weird Al over the years.  It helps that Weird Al rarely pokes fun at the original artist or the subject matter of the original song.  It seems like one of the easiest ways to get a bad reputation is to complain about Weird Al parodying one of your songs.  For instance, just take a look at Coolio (if you can find him).

This video was directed by Francis Delia, who also directed videos for Wall of Voodoo, The Bangles, and Timothy B. Schmit.

Music Video of the Day: Mexican Radio by Wall Of Voodoo (1983, dir. Francis Delia)

Posted on by Valerie Troutman

I’d like to commemorate suddenly finding my TV on a Spanish-language station a few days ago that I didn’t know existed where a guy was cutting an apple in his mouth using a chainsaw. That’s a thing that happened when I was simply trying to switch between movies on my DVR.

Ah, good old Mexican Radio by Wall of Voodoo. This is right up there with songs like Safety Dance and Come On Eileen as the stereotypical 80s one-hit wonder. It’s fun, catchy, and a genuinely good song. There’s one problem though. Just like many SNL sketches, I don’t see how this was supposed to translate into a career. Of course I thought of that, and then I had to look into what happened to them.

After this song, they basically broke up the band. I say basically because some of the members continued under that name even though lead singer Stan Ridgway had left the band and went solo. They would even go on to do at least one other music video for a song called Far Side of Crazy. It’s pretty good. I’ll have to do that one someday. I also found out that Westerns were a theme with them beyond just this one song and the video for it that they shot in Tijuana. You can find them doing a cover of Ring of Fire. However, at the end of the day, it’s not really something I see as sustainable. It’s more of a novelty than anything else. Ridgway on the other hand, is sustainable. I hope the video is still up. Here is Ridgway performing his song Camouflage in 2015.

This stuff works for a solo artist. I get why it flopped for an entire group. I could probably go into more detail about what happened to the group, but I don’t need to do that because there is an interview with Ridgway over on Songfacts where he explains it.

The music video is timeless. Why wouldn’t it be? It’s another one made by Francis Delia. I have done two other music videos of his so far. He has brought us a dead shark in Shooting Shark, a cooked pig for Somebody’s Watching Me, and now an iguana being barbecued. I can’t wait to see more of his music videos to see if this is a recurring thing like rocking chairs are in Anton Corbijn videos.

Oh, and that is Carel Struycken near the end as the director.

Enjoy!

Music Video of the Day: Somebody’s Watching Me by Rockwell (1984, dir. Francis Delia)

Posted on by Valerie Troutman

A few years ago when the Snowden stuff happened, it was priceless to come and look at this music video. You’d see comments along the lines that if Rockwell had only knew it was really the NSA that was watching him, or simply that Rockwell was right that somebody was watching him. Of course you also got the usual comments of people coming many decades later wondering if that is Michael Jackson singing the chorus. Yes, it is.

As is par for the course, this is the first time I have actually paid close attention to the music video I’m spotlighting. It is loaded with a lot of interesting stuff to tie-in with the theme of paranoia.

Why is Rockwell reading the Chinese characters at the beginning? Is that some sort of ghostly reference. Is that supposed to be a second Rockwell? We follow that one while it cuts back and forth to Rockwell in the shower. Is that supposed to mean he has a split personality? It’s probably just the music video’s requisite reference to Psycho (1960), but then we also get the scene with him watching himself on TV. I love it.

I think my favorite part is when someone dressed like a grieving widow is right outside his shower, but he doesn’t see them. They do the same thing while he is standing in the cemetery that apparently is in his backyard.

It comes as no surprise to me that this music video was directed by Francis Delia. He’s the director who brought us the music video for Blue Öyster Cult’s Shooting Shark, which is one of the best of the 1980s. That one was also surreal.

We know quite a few of the people who worked on this music video beyond the director.

The blonde coming out from under the bed is Francis Delia’s daughter Amy.

Nancy Leiviska wrote and produced the music video. You might know her as being the mother of RedFoo whom she had with Barry Gordy. She has apparently gone on to work as an executive assistant on numerous films for Ice Cube. She worked on several other music videos including appearing as one of the people in the music video for Rick James’ Super Freak.

Dominic Sena shot the music video. He directed around 40 music videos and shot around 10 of them. He also went on to direct movies like Gone in Sixty Seconds (2000) and Swordfish (2001).

Jason Braunstein was the production manager. The only other credit I can find for him is having worked as an associate in charge of production on Ms. 45 (1981).

Jon Leonoudakis was the production coordinator. He is in the music video as the guy who is looking in through the porthole of the front door. I can find a few credits on him like directing some sports documentaries in recent years. However, it’s clearly his work as an electrician on The Last American Virgin (1982), a production coordinator on Dead Women in Lingerie (1991), and a second unit location manager on Maniac Cop 2 (1990) that jump out at you on his IMDb profile page.

You could do a step-by-step review of this music video, but it’s only about three and a half minutes, so if you haven’t seen it yet, then watch it. It is one of the greatest music videos ever made, and still relevant today. In particular when you are trying to find a music video to help bookend the month of October.

Music Video of the Day: Shooting Shark by Blue Öyster Cult (1983, dir. Francis Delia)

Posted on by Valerie Troutman

Lisa has subjected herself to many shark movies during the past week. I thought it was only appropriate to end July with a music video featuring a shark. It also happens to be one of the most bizarre music videos I have ever sat through. I guess it makes sense. Director Francis Delia also did Mexican Radio for Wall of Voodoo and Somebody’s Watching Me for Rockwell. No, this music video is weirder. It’s appropriate that this music video was released the year I was born. I do love the weird, and I am an odd duck.

How many music videos do you know that open with a human wearing a pterodactyl head while riding on a unicorn? It then cuts to the titular shark. What follows seems to be a modern day tortured noir-ish character who also goes through a last temptation of Christ situation, which includes the creepy head of an Asian girl coming out of a pot. This scene also comes complete with women who I’m pretty sure were borrowed from the set of She (1982).

However, that’s not all that happens. What is with the scene where he chases after the woman in the field, catches her, and she turns into a goat? That’s immediately followed by him seeing the ghost of a woman in his motel bed with his gun pointed at her.

In the end, he releases a dove. Why? Does it mean he has made peace with himself? That’s my best guess.

I can at least say this. I’m quite sure that the “Shooting Shark” refers to a comet. I’m also pretty sure The Man Who Laughs (1928) makes a cameo appearance.

One could dissect this music video scene by scene, but I won’t. Just watch it. It will only cost you about five minutes, and is well worth the odyssey it provides. Then come back to get a prescription for that nasty cowbell fever you are having right now.