Fred Pinkard | 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 series is streaming on YouTube.

This week, horror comes to the DMV! Seriously, there’s nothing scarier than renewing your license….

Episode 2.5 “Love Hurts”

(Dir by Manny Coto, originally aired on October 29th, 1989)

Smooth-talking Vance (Henry Brown) is a ne’er-do-well who has a job working at the DMV in New Orleans. He works with his disapproving father-in-law, Mr. Brownell (Fred Pinkard), who was responsible for getting Vance the job and who is always quick to make sure that Vance knows that he can cause Vance to lose his job as well. Oddly enough, it appears that Vance and Mr. Brownell are the only employees at the DMV and the DMV itself is housed in a rather small building. On the plus side, there’s never a line. Do people just not drive in New Orleans? I’ve been to the city and I saw a lot of cars while I was there.

Anyway, Mr. Brownell knows that Vance regularly cheats on his wife, Cora (Renn Woods). In fact, Vance is currently cheating with Jewel (Olivia Brown, who also played Trudy on Miami Vice). Mr. Brownell watches in silent disapproval whenever Jewel comes down to the DMV and hangs out at the front desk. Jewel wants Vance to herself so she turns to her friend, Angie (Valentina Quinn). Angie just happens to be a voodoo priestess.

The first spell that Jewel and Angie cast simply causes Cora and her father to fall ill with a terrible skin condition. While Cora and her father are at the doctor’s office, Jewel and Vance get to spend some alone time behind the desk at the DMV. When Mr. Brownell unexpectedly shows up at the office, he snaps at Vance not to have sex behind the desk at the DMV. Apparently, the DMV is a sacred space.

The next spell that Jewel and Angie cast causes Mr. Brownell to die. Without Mr. Bronwell constantly threatening to fire Vance for cheating on Cora, Jewel assumes that Vance will now leave his wife. Except …. Cora’s pregnant!

The next spell that Jewel casts is designed to join her soul to Vance’s. Unfortunately, this spell has some unintended consequences as the episode ends as a horribly mutilated and zombified Vance approaches Jewel. Agck!

The gore at the end was very much appreciated, at least by this viewer. Vance and Jewel were such unlikable characters that it was definitely a pleasure to see them get what was coming to them, the gorier the better. The ending was effectively macabre but the rest of the episode was far too mild for its own good. The script was weak, the actors were all a bit too theatrical in their performances, and the story itself played out at a surprisingly slow pace. Ending aside, this was one of the more forgettable episodes of Monsters.

Ike (Glynn Turman) is a nice guy. He’s a law student living in New Orleans. When not studying, he makes money driving a taxi cab. He has a beautiful and loving wife named Christella (Joan Pringle). He has a nice but modest apartment. When we first see Ike, he is calmly and rationally breaking up a fight. Perhaps the only real complain that can be made about Ike is that he’s actually too nice. There’s nothing dangerous about Ike. He works hard. He studies. That’s about it.

When Christella and their friends tell him that he needs to take a night off from studying, Ike is reluctant. However, he finally agrees to go out with them. They start out at a strip club in the French Quarter and eventually, they end up watching a hypnotist. Ike is one of the men randomly selected to go up on stage. Amazingly, rational and mild Ike is easily hypnotized. The audience loves watching as Ike and the other men all reacts to hypnotic suggestion. What they don’t know is that, while in his trance, Ike has been … possessed!

That’s right! The ghost of J.D. Walker has entered Ike. Who is J.D. Walker? As we learn from a series of gauzy flashbacks, J.D. Walker was a gangster in the 1940s. He wore a fedora. He wore nice suits. He was every bit as flamboyant as Ike is mild. But then, one day, J.D. was killed, gunned down by his former business partner, Theotis Bliss (Fred Pinkard).

Soon, Ike starts to act … well, not like himself. Suddenly, Ike is using 1940s slang. He’s wearing 1940s clothes. He’s gambling. He mugs an old lady who gets in his cab and then abandons her on the wharf. When his wife asks him why he’s acting like a 1940s gangster, he gets violent. Soon, Ike is speaking in a different voice and dancing.

What does J.D. want? He wants revenge against not only the man who shot him but also Theotis’s younger brother, a popular preacher named Elijah (Lou Gossett, Jr.). As wild as the possessed Ike may be, he’s got nothing on Elijah. Elijah was a boxer before he became a man of God and he’s still liable to throw a punch or two during his sermons. Elijah, however, is also rather naive and has no hesitation about inviting J.D. to become a member of his congregation. Theotis, who is now Elijah’s manager, is a bit more suspicious…

An oddly paced film that never quite escapes the lengthy shadows of all of the horror films that inspired it, J.D.’s Revenge is worth seeing for the performances Glynn Thurman and Lou Gossett, Jr. Gossett is all energetic charisma in the role of the reverend, giving a performance that features just enough ambiguity that you’re never sure whether you should trust Elijah or not. Meanwhile, Thurman is very good as the mild-mannered Ike but he seems to be having an absolute blast whenever he gets to play the psychotic J.D. During the final confrontation between Ike/J.D. and the Bliss Brothers, Thurman’s performance is so bizarre and over the top that you simply cannot stop watching him.

J.D.’s Revenge was filmed in New Orleans, which add a little bit of gothic atmosphere to the film. As I write this, a lot of our readers may currently be in New Orleans for Mardi Gras. I wish them all well but I hope they’ll remember the lesson of J.D.’s Revenge. Just say no to hypnosis!