I wrote about Korey and Cory this week. On Tuesday, I watched as they won the Silver Medal in a match with Sweden and I have to admit that I was depressed for the rest of the day. That’s nothing against the Swedish team. They did a good job and they earned the win. It’s just that I had gotten so invested in Korey and Cory that it was hard for me to accept that 1) it was over and 2) it ended with them coming in second.
I’ve watched the Olympics off-and-on since then but I have to admit none of the other athletes have really captured my attention the way that Korey and Cory did. I do like our hockey teams, because they’re all blue collar and they don’t talk badly about my country. Our skiers appear to be a bunch of spoiled rich kids.
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 Freddy’s Nightmares, a horror anthology show which ran in syndication from 1988 to 1990. The entire series can be found on Tubi!
This week, two more people fall victim to Springwood, Ohio.
Episode 2.2 “Heartbreak Hotel”
(Dir by William Malone, originally aired on October 15th, 1989)
“Learn to use the proper pronouns …. OR DIE!” Freddy shouts at us this week and he has a point.
When tabloid reporter Roger Dittano (John Stinson) is sent to Springwood to write a story about an Elvis sighting at a local hotel, he discovers that everything he writes comes true. He writes about a woman having a demon child and, a few minutes later, a pregnant maid goes into labor and gives birth to a deformed stillborn baby. Roger writes about a man being electrocuted in a bathtub and, shortly afterwards, he’s nearly electrocuted while taking a bath.
When Roger discovers that a newspaper publisher (played by Stacy Keach, Sr., father of the better-known Stacy Keach) is staying at the hotel, he comes up with the following story. “Newspaper publisher leaves empire to reporter after he drinks poison.” Hey, Roger — who drank the poison!? The reporter or the newspaper publisher? As you can guess, Roger’s vague wording leading to him drinking arsenic and dying as the publisher laughs and says, “Oh, and I’m leaving my empire to you!”
That was actually a pretty clever story. For once, the show actually did the work to set up the twist. Roger spends the entire episode being told that he’s a sloppy writer. In the end, that sloppiness kills him.
The second story also has a twist but it’s nowhere near as interesting. An amnesiac named Jerry (Richard Cox) wakes up in a hospital after a car accident. A woman (Anne Lockhart) claims to be the Jerry’s wife. A teenage girl (Tammy Ames) claims to be Jerry’s daughter. Jerry goes home with both of them and is soon haunted by nightmares in which he sees himself killing a man. You can probably guess that Jerry is not married and he does not have a daughter. This story had a lot of noir atmosphere — right down to a saxophone wailing away on the soundtrack — but it was also pretty predictable.
On Monday, I turned over to Fave TV so that I could binge Bar Rescue and I discovered that Fave TV no longer exists! It’s been replaced by Outlaw TV, a western channel. I was disappointed so I watched the Pirate Bar episode of Bar Rescue online. I hope One-Eyed Mike was able to find another job about the tavern went out of business. He was cool.
Watching the Grammy Awards on Sunday, I realized just how boring modern music has become. I can’t wait for someone new to come along and hopefully remind us of what it’s like to be surprised.
This week, I binged the second and third seasons of this classic cop show. It made for oddly calming background noise. Poor LaRue, he was always getting in trouble.
I’ve been enjoying curling! Go Korey and Corey! I also enjoyed watching the Parade of Nations. I had the volume down so I didn’t hear the booing that people have been talking about. If I had heard the booing, I would have shrugged it off. Other countries will always hate America, for the same reason that some people are still resentful towards the rich kids from high school. When you consider what certain countries are on the record as supporting, it’s almost an honor to be booed by them.
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 Freddy’s Nightmares, a horror anthology show which ran in syndication from 1988 to 1990. The entire series can be found on Tubi!
This week, we begin the second season! Welcome back to Springwood!
Season 2.1 “Dream Come True”
(Dir by George Kaczender, originally aired on October 8th, 1989)
The second season of Freddy’s Nightmares features Freddy getting involved in the action.
The first story features Freddy haunting the nightmares of teenager Randy Jennings (David Kaufman), who has only recently moved to Springwood with his mother, Cathy (Linda Miller). Randy is having nightmares about Freddy so his mother buys tickets to attend a talk show hosted by Stan Brooks (Jay Thomas). Stan’s guest is therapist Dr. Brandon Kefler (Scott Marlowe), who has written a book about nightmares. Cathy begs Brandon to see Randy and, after being pressured by Stan, Brandon agrees. Stan arranges for cameraman Garry Heath (Gerard Prendergrast) to film the session.
At the Jennings home, Brandon talks to Randy about his nightmares. Brandon’s therapy seems to work as, afterwards, Randy is able to sleep peacefully and without having any nightmares. However, it turns out that Freddy just jumped from Randy’s mind to Brandon’s! (Hey, didn’t almost the same thing happen in a movie, something about an exorcism….) Soon, Brandon is the one who is having nightmares and being driven mad by visions….
As for the second story, it deals with Garry the cameraman and his belief that Freddy Kruger is real. One reason why Garry believes that Freddy is real is because Freddy keeps showing up in footage that he’s filmed. Unfortunately, no one else can see Freddy, certainly not Garry’s boss (Charles Cyphers). Even more unfortunately, the body of Garry’s girlfriend is found in a dumpster and the police aren’t buying Garry’s story that Freddy did it….
This episode actually wasn’t that bad, especially compared to some of the episodes that aired during the show’s first season. Perhaps it’s because this episode was the first of the season and the production budget hadn’t gone dry yet but Dream Come True actually features some adequate production values. The house looks like a real house. The television studio looks like a place where something would actually be filmed. The abandoned warehouse with Garry tries to confront Freddy is actually an atmospheric location and the episode even manages to generate a little suspense, even if neither plot is particularly original. Both Scott Marlowe and Gerard Pendergrast give decent performances in their stories and, as always, Robert Englund is a properly evil Freddy.
(That said, the show did manage to misspell Charles Cyphers’s name in the opening credits, despite the fact that he was this episode’s big guest star. I did a double take when I saw “Charles Syphers,” on my screen. Seriously, the man was Sherriff Brackett!)
Despite getting Charles Cypher’s name wrong, this was still a good start to the final season. It’ll be interesting to see if the remaining episodes live up to it.
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 Freddy’s Nightmares, a horror anthology show which ran in syndication from 1988 to 1990. The entire series can be found on Tubi!
This week’s episode is actually decent.
Episode 1.18 “The Art of Death”
(Dir by Ken Wiederhorn, originally aired on March 12th, 1989)
Jack (Carey Scott) is a talented artist and college student who has a crush on Joan (Laura Schaefer). When Joan’s jock boyfriend humiliates Jack, Jack suddenly finds himself approached by The Phantom (Judd Omen), a masked figure who claims that he can kill Jack’s enemies if Jack draws a picture of him doing it. After the jock is killed in a treadmill accident, Joan sees the picture that Jack drew and decides she doesn’t want anything to do with Jack. The Phantom suggests drawing a picture of him surprising Joan in the shower. Jack refuses, just to discover that the picture has already been drawn and the Phantom is now holding Joan prisoner in a boiler room. Jack draws a picture of the Phantom being sucked down a hole. The Phantom vanishes but …. oh no, now Jack’s wearing the mask! Jack was the Phantom all along!
As for the second story, Joan struggles to recover from the trauma. In typical Freddy’s Nightmares fashion, she has a series of hallucinations that lead to her killing her psychiatrist.
This episode actually worked! The first story was genuinely creepy. The second story was predictable but it featured a good performance from Laura Schaefer and the action moved at a decent pace. I’m going to give the majority of the credit to director Ken Wiederhorn, who previously directed one of my favorite zombie films, 1977’s Shock Waves.
This is my final Freddy’s Nightmares review for 2025. Retro Television Review is taking a break for the holidays, so I can focus on Awards Season and Christmas movies! Freddy’s Nightmares will return on January 9th.
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 Freddy’s Nightmares, a horror anthology show which ran in syndication from 1988 to 1990. The entire series can be found on Tubi!
This week, dreams continue to come true in Springwood, Ohio. Freddy continues to show up in very short host segments because I guess he doesn’t have anything better to do. And I continue to find ways to pad out my reviews for a show that there’s really not much to be said about. It happens. Some shows are interesting and take chances and other shows just recycle the same thing over and over again. Anyway, let’s get to it….
Episode 1.17 “Love Stinks”
(Dir by John Lafia, originally aired on February 26th, 1989)
Adam (John Washington) is a high school jock who has a chance to join the White Sox and who has a girlfriend named Laura (Tamara Glyn). When his parents go out of town, Adam throws a house party. The party goes wrong when he finds himself unable to say the words “I love you,” to Laura. Laura leaves him and Adam has a one-night stand with Loni (Susanna Savee). Soon, Adam finds himself drifting in-and-out of a dream state. He sees Laura chopping him up with meat cleaver. He sees his parents come home and he notices that his father is missing a finger. Loni ruins his interview with the baseball scout. It’s all because Adam can’t say “I love you,” but suddenly, Adam wakes up in bed and hears the party still going on downstairs and realizes it was all a dream. He runs downstairs and grabs Laura and says, “I love you!” Except, Laura now looks like Loni. And when his parents show up and say they brought someone to meet him, it turns out to be Loni except Loni now looks like Laura.
Meanwhile, Adam’s slacker friend Max (Georg Olden) gets a job at Mr. Cheesy Pizza. He’s working for his hated uncle, Ralph (Jeffery Combs). When Max’s girlfriend disappears, Max is horrified to discover that she’s become a part of the special sauce that Ralph uses to make the pizza’s so memorable. Don’t worry, it’s all just a dream. Except, in the waking world, the pizza oven explodes and kills Ralph. Max apparently decides to take a lesson from his dream and makes tasty use of Ralph’s remains.
By the admittedly low standards of Freddy’s Nightmares, this episode wasn’t that bad. Though the first story was incoherent, it still captured the feeling of being scared of commitment. The second story was predictable but at least it featured Jeffrey Combs doing his sociopathic nerd thing. This episode held my interest. That said, almost every episode pretty much has the exact same “It was just a dream” plot twist. At this point, it’s no longer a shock when someone suddenly opens their eyes and breathes a sigh of relief. Even Freddy seems kind of bored with it all.
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 Freddy’s Nightmares, a horror anthology show which ran in syndication from 1988 to 1990. The entire series can be found on Tubi!
Earlier today, Robert Englund received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame! Let’s get this episode of Freddy’s Nightmares out of the way so that we can celebrate!
Episode 1.15 “School Daze”
(Dir by Michael Klein, originally aired on February 12th, 1989)
Stupid episode this week.
Two high school friends worry about their future. One of them hallucinates all of the adult authority figures in his life trying to brainwash him. The other keeps having visions of how much his life is going to suck if he doesn’t get a good score on his SATs. The premise really isn’t that bad but, as so often with Freddy’s Nightmares, it appears that the writers didn’t really dig into it. Instead, they just wrote a very shallow episode in which both stories relied on the same overused twist that seems to show up in every episode. Hey, it was all just a dream! The biggest compliment that I can give this episode is that the second story did manage to capture some of the anxiety that comes along with college testing. Some teachers really do overboard with that whole “This will determine the rest of your life” spiel. Seriously, blow off the tests, go to a party school, and make friends with someone has money. That’s really all you have to do.
Instead of fixating on a bad episode of Freddy’s Nightmares, let’s watch Robert Englund get his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. This happened earlier today and, by most accounts, it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. Robert Englund is living proof that you don’t have to a bad guy to play a monster. Congratulations, Mr. Englund!
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 Freddy’s Nightmares, a horror anthology show which ran in syndication from 1988 to 1990. The entire series can be found on Tubi!
This week, a future Oscar winner shows up in Springwood.
Episode 1.14 “Black Tickets”
(Dir by George Kaczender, originally aired on February 5th, 1989)
Brad Pitt appears in this week’s episode, playing Rick. Rick is a rebellious teenager who elopes with his girlfriend, Miranda (Kerry Wall). Even on a low-budget show like this, Pitt’s screen presence was undeniable. From the minute he shows up onscreen, it’s impossible to look away from him. He had that movie star charisma from the start. It’s a shame that the episode itself isn’t that good.
It’s a typical Freddy’s Nightmares scenario. The first 20 minutes feature Rick having an extended dream sequence after he gets hit by a car. Rick apparently dreams about staying at a creepy hotel with Miranda and then being forced to kill two cops that show up and attempt to arrest him. But, at the end of the story, he sees himself lying in the middle of the road and realizes that everything that has happened since he got hit by the car has only been happening in his head.
The second 20 minutes features Miranda married to Rick. Rick has no settled down but Miranda is worried that she might be pregnant. While she waits for the results of her pregnancy test, she sees herself trapped in the house as a mother while Rick goes from being a rebel to being a police officer. Finally, Miranda snaps out of her dream and discovers that she’s not pregnant. She jumps for joy on her bed but then she slips, hits her head, and ends up with the mind of a child.
This was a pretty bland episode, even with Brad Pitt in the cast. The main problem was that it was all so predictable. The dreams were obviously dreams so there wasn’t really any suspense or tension while they were playing out. Freddy’s Nightmares used the “Its all just a dream” format so often that, by this point in the first season, it had gotten fairly boring. That was certainly the case here.
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 Freddy’s Nightmares, a horror anthology show which ran in syndication from 1988 to 1990. The entire series can be found on Tubi!
This week …. oh, who knows?
Episode 1.12 “Deadline”
(Dir by Michael Lange, originally aired on January 29th, 1989)
This week’s first story is about Peter (Aaron Harnick), whose father owns the local Springwood paper and who is given a job for the summer. He’s assigned to write the obits so that he can hang out around the newspaper office and learn from the veteran writers. Peter would rather be in Europe. That’s especially true when he starts to visualize the obits that he’s writing and somehow comes to realize that he’ll die unless he meets his deadline.
This story was the epitome of a good premise that was sloppily executed. Peter hates writing obits but if he doesn’t write the obits, he’ll die in the same way as the person that he’s writing about. He has visions. He has dreams. Unfortunately, both his boss and his girlfriend tell him to stop working on his current obit and to get some rest. But if Peter stop writing, he’ll die! Uhmm …. how long does it take to type up an obituary? I mean, doesn’t he just have to type up whatever dead person’s loved ones sent to the paper?
There’s a clever moment where Peter deletes an old article about Freddy Krueger from the newspaper’s computer system. The episode implies that maybe Peter’s visions are in some way Freddy’s revenge but, as was so often the case with this show, it doesn’t really do much to explore the idea.
The first story ends with Peter dead. The episode’s second story deals with Emily (Page Hannah), a friend of Peter’s girlfriend. Emily has been dating an older college student (Timothy Brantley) and she continually has dreams where her friends — including Peter’s girlfriend — get mad at her for not spending more time with her. In her dreams, her friends all die in a car accident. At the end of the story, it turns out that Emily was just daydreaming. Seriously, that’s the entire story.
What a terrible episode. I usually try to be positive about even the lesser episodes but I have to admit that I’m kind of ticked off that I wasted 50 minutes watching this week’s episode of Freddy’s Nightmares. It felt as the show’s writers didn’t even try this week. Instead, they just came up with some weird scenes and then dismissed them by shrugging and saying, “Hey, it was all a dream. Nothing means anything!”
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 Freddy’s Nightmares, a horror anthology show which ran in syndication from 1988 to 1990. The entire series can be found on Plex!
This week, dreaming saves the world.
Episode 1.12 “The End of the World”
(Dir by Jonathan R. Betuel, originally aired on January 15th, 1989)
Weird episode.
The first half of the episode featured Mary Kohnert as Amy Collins, a young woman who starts to have dreams about the past and discovers that she can change reality depending on what she does in her dream. Most of the dreams center around the accidental death of her mother. Amy sets about to save her mother’s life but she discovers that changing the past will always lead to unforeseen consequences.
Unfortunately, her psychiatrist (George Lazenby) rats her out to the CIA and Amy is soon being forced to work for the U.S. military. When she senses that a soldier is planning on launching a nuclear attack and plunging the world into war, Amy is forced to do a mind-meld of sorts with him. She watches as the army manages to break into his bunker and gun him down right before he launches the nukes.
I can’t complain about a show trying something different and I actually found it interesting how the two stories were totally different in style and tone. The second story featured a dream about a nuclear war that was pretty disturbing. On TV, Gumby and his horse melted from the atomic heat. That said, this episode suffered from the same flaw as many of the episode of Freddy’s Nightmares, in that it really didn’t have the budget necessary to achieve what it was hoping to accomplish.
Still, who can forget the image of Freddy Krueger riding a nuclear missile in the style of Slim Pickens at the end of Dr. Strangelove?
Along with having an interesting premise, this one also had some interesting guest stars. Along with George Lazenby and Gumby, Walter Gotell, Andrew Prine, and Albert Hall all made appearances. I guess when Freddy Krueger invites you, you don’t say no.
Through the Shattered Lens 