Scenes That I Love: Betsy Palmer in Friday the 13th

Posted on December 11, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today would have been the 99th birthday of actress Betsy Palmer.

Though Palmer started her acting career in 1951 and was a regular on television, she will always be best known for playing Mrs. Voorhees in 1980’s Friday the 13th. It’s a role that she took, in her own words, because she needed $10,000 to buy a new car. At the time that the film was first released, Palmer did not particularly care for the film but she also definitely also gave the best performance. It’s impossible to imagine that the film would have been as much of a success without her. The scene where she speaks in the voice of Jason inspired Harry Manfredini’s iconic score. Palmer eventually came to embrace her status of being a horror icon.

Today’s scene of the day comes from Friday the 13th. Here is Betsy Palmer as Mrs. Voorhees, an old friend of the Christys.

4 Shots From 4 Horror Films: The 1980s Part One

Posted on October 21, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This October, I’m going to be doing something a little bit different with my contribution to 4 Shots From 4 Films. I’m going to be taking a little chronological tour of the history of horror cinema, moving from decade to decade.

Today, we begin the 80s!

4 Shots From 4 Horror Films

Friday the 13th (1980, dir by Sean S. Cunningham)

The Shining (1980, dir by Stanley Kubrick)

The Beyond (1981, dir by Lucio Fulci)

The Howling (1981, dir by Joe Dante)

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 3.20 “The Charnel Pit”

Posted on July 18, 2025 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, we say goodbye to Friday the 13th.

Episode 3.20 “The Charnel Pit”

(Dir by Armand Mastroianni, originally aired on May 14th, 1990)

All things come to an end and that includes the adventures of Micki, Jack, and Johnny.

Friday the 13th: The Series ends with an episode about a professor (Vlasta Vrana) who owns a two-sided painting that he can use to send people into the past. He sends female victims back to the time of the Marquis de Sade (Neil Munro) and the Marquis sends the professor his unpublished works. If you’ve ever seen an episode of this show, you will not be surprised to learn that eventually Micki is sent back to the Marquis and briefly finds herself fascinated by the man for whom sadism is named. Micki gets to dress up in a cleavage-baring costume and Neil Munro plays another villain. All the bad guys end up dead and the painting is tossed in the Curious Goods vault. It’s Friday the 13th!

It might not seem like much of a finale. Unfortunately, the cast and crew were not informed that the series wouldn’t be returning for a fourth season until they were almost finished filming this episode. As a result, Friday the 13th did not get a proper send-off. The series ended with many of the cursed antiques still out there and Jack, Micki, and Johnny apparently destined to spend the rest of their lives searching for them.

On the one hand, I enjoyed this series and I regret that it didn’t get a proper ending. Micki, Jack, and even Johnny suffered so much that it seemed like they deserved to end things with some sort of triumph. At the same time, it does feel appropriate that — after a season that featured some ill-thought experimentation with the show’s format — Friday the 13th went out with a traditional episode. This show was always at its best when it focused on antiques and creepy villains. That’s certainly the way that I’ll remember the show.

I enjoyed watching and reviewing Friday the 13th. Was it uneven? Sure. It was a low-budget, syndicated show. A certain uneveness is a part of the package. At its best, though, it was a genuinely creepy show that was blessed with some wonderful chemistry between Chris Wiggins, Robey, and John D. LeMay. (The show never really recovered from LeMay’s exit.) On the whole, the good definitely outweighed the bad, even during the final season. And who knows? Perhaps, if there had been a fourth season, the writers would have finally figured out a way to make Johnny into a compelling character.

I’ll miss reviewing this series.

Next week, something new will premiere in this time slot. What will it be? You’ll find out next week!

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th 3.19 “The Tree of Life”

Posted on July 11, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, it’s Johnny vs the Druids.

Episode 3.19 “The Tree of Life”

(Dir by William Fruet, originally aired on May 7th, 1990)

Johnny randomly runs into a distraught woman who claims that, years ago, her daughter was abducted and her husband murdered by obstetrician Dr. Sybil Oakwood (Gale Garnett). When Jack and Micki doubt the woman’s story, Johnny investigates on his own and discovers that Dr. Oakwood is kidnapping newborn girls and raising them in her fertility clinic. It turns out that Dr. Oakwood is a druid and she’s trying to breed future Druidic priestesses.

(Don’t yell at me, this is the show’s interpretation of druidism.)

This was the next-to-the-last episode of Friday the 13th and it just feels like the writers were tired and uninspired. Suddenly, for the first time in three years, Jack and Micki are skeptical about reports of the paranormal. Johnny is back to being impulsive and, if we’re to be honest, kind of stupid. He tells the distraught mother that her daughter is being held prisoner at the fertility clinic and then is shocked when the mother runs off to the clinic without waiting for Johnny to accompany her. Once again, it all leads to a cult and an underground cavern. This entire episode feels like it was recycled from previous episodes.

I’m not an expert on paganism so I’m not going to get into whether or not this episode accurately portrayed druidic beliefs. I will say that the druids in this episode acted like every other cult that’s ever appeared on this show. They’re just like the Satanic cult that showed up at the end of season 2. Making them druids is probably one of those things that sounded good when the episode was pitched. The word “druid” brings to mind Stonehenge and all the rest of that good stuff. But, narratively, there was nothing gained nor lost by making them druids. The show treated them like any other self-destructive cult.

This episode was a bit dull. It felt like the show was taking one last shot at getting audiences to replace Johnny as Ryan’s replacement. The whole thing just felt uninspired. It certainly left your brave reviewer bereft of inspiration.

Next week, we come to the conclusion of Friday the 13th: The Series.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 3.18 “Spirit of Television”

Posted on July 4, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, people are dying and somehow television is to blame.

Episode 3.18 “Spirit of Television”

(Dir by Jorge Montesi, originally aired on April 30, 1990)

Ilsa (Marj Dusay) claims to be a medium. She uses a television set to summon the spirits of the dead for her rich clients and then, later on, the spirits kill her customers and Ilsa, who has a degenerative disease, gets another ten days added to her life. If she doesn’t continually kill, her skin starts to look like rubber and her fingernails fall off. Agck!

This was largely a Jack episode. Jack is the one who, with his years of experience as a magician, assumes that Ilsa is a fake. He’s also the one who recruits an old friend named Robert Jandini (Paul Bettis) to go undercover and check Ilsa out. And when Robert is inevitably killed as a result, Jack is the one who has to live with the guilt. One thing that I’ve always appreciated about Friday the 13th is that it doesn’t shy away from showing what a lifetime of battling the supernatural would do to someone’s psyche. At the end of this episode, Jack is about as depressed as I’ve ever seen him. The great Chris Wiggins was always Friday the 13th’s not-so secret weapon and he gives another stand-out performance here.

In fact, this episode is so focused on Jack, Jandini, and Ilsa that Micki and Johnny largely feel like bystanders. There’s nothing wrong with that, to be honest. Micki and Johnny just don’t have the same sort of enjoyable chemistry that Micki and Ryan had. Still, watching Johnny in the background, it’s hard not to consider that the third season’s writers never really figured out who the character was meant to be or what they really wanted to do with him. I have sympathy for Steve Monarque because he doesn’t come across as being a bad actor. Instead, he comes across as being an actor who was saddled with an extremely inconsistent character.

As for this episode, it was nice to finally get an episode that was just about a cursed antique and that didn’t feel the need to try to reinvent the show’s format. That said, the television seems likes a really bulky object to curse. How did Ilsa even figure the curse out? What if the television had been purchased by someone who wasn’t terminally ill? Can Ilsa watch regular programming on the television or is it always a portal to Hell? These questions go unanswered.

Still, it’s an atmospheric episode and Chris Wiggins gives a strong performance. For a season 3 episode, this wasn’t bad. It’s also the the third-to-late episode of Friday the 13th. Only two more left to go.

I’m going to miss this show.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 3.17 “Jack-In-The-Box”

Posted on June 27, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week’s episode is a sad one.

Episode 3.17 “Jack-In-The-Box”

(Dir by David Winning, originally aired on April 23rd, 1990)

After her lifeguard father drowns, a young girl named Megan (Marsha Moreau) uses a cursed jack-in-the-box to get revenge of those who she blames for his death. Seeing the jack in the box when it opens leads to people drowning. A janitor drowns in a pool. One guy drowns in a car wash. The deaths are grisly but it brings back the spirit of Megan’s death father. Or, at least, that’s what Megan thinks. Personally, I think the spirt was a demon in disguise because some of the things he suggested were really out there.

This was a really sad episode. In an amazing coincidence, Micki knew the lifeguard’s family and she spent most of this episode on the verge of tears. Meanwhile, Megan’s mother dealt with her sadness by becoming an alcoholic and Megan killed a number of people just so she could spend some time with her “father.” This episode was well-acted and well-written and really not the right sort of thing for me to watch at a time when the one-year anniversary of my Dad’s passing is quickly approaching. This was an episode that not only left Micki in tears but it left me in tears as well.

Okay, enough sadness! This was a good episode. The third season has been uneven and I still miss Ryan’s character but this episode showed that Friday the 13th was still capable of being effective even as the show came to a close.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 3.16 “My Wife As A Dog”

Posted on June 20, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, it’s all about a man and his dog.

Episode 3.16 “My Wife As A Dog”

(Dir by Armando Mastroianni, originally aired on February 19th, 1990)

I knew I was going to dislike this episode as soon as I saw the title.

While Johnny and Micki spend their time trying to get the store up to code so that it can pass a fire inspection (and good luck doing that when there’s a literal portal to Hell located in the basement), Jack searches for a cursed leash. Jack has no idea what the leash does. He just knows that it’s cursed. However, the leash’s owner — fireman Aubry Ross (Denis Forest, making his fourth appearance on the show) — has figured out that, by using the leash to strangle people, he can transport the mind of his dying dog into the body of his estranged (but not dying) wife.

Or something like that. To be honest, I had a hard time following the particulars of this curse. Fortunately, so did Jack. This is the first episode that I can think of where Jack admits that he has no idea how a cursed objects works. Even when he retrieves the leash at the end of the episode, he admits that he’s still not sure what Aubry actually did with it. Jack being confused made me feel a little bit less dumb so I was happy with that. The episode ends with Aubry in jail, being visited his panting wife. She brings him his slippers because she’s now a dog in a human body.

Ugh. This was an attempt to do a light-hearted episode and I respect the show for trying to do something different. At the same time, it also featured four murders and a woman, who simply wanted to get a divorce from her creepy husband, being transformed into a dog. Our regulars were barely in this episode and, when they did appear, we had to suffer through some awkward flirting between Johnny and Micki. Denis Forest did a good job as Aubry but otherwise, this was an episode that I could just as soon forget.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 3.15 “The Long Road Home”

Posted on June 13, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week …. ugh.

Episode 3.15 “The Long Road Home”

(Dir by Allan Kroeker, originally aired on February 12th, 1990)

This week’s episode starts where most episodes end. Micki and Johnny retrieve the cursed antique. In this case, it’s a yin-yang charm that allows the owner to swap minds with a recently deceased person. That sounds like a really cool antique and I have to admit that I’m kind of annoyed that this is one of those shows where the antique is recovered early. I would have enjoyed seeing the entire search.

I certainly would have enjoyed it more than having to spend the next 40-something minutes listening to Micki and Johnny discuss whether or not to start a relationship while, at the same time, being pursued by an inbred redneck and his brother. This episode goes off the rails as soon as Micki and Johnny step into a roadside diner that is owned by a family of homicidal hillbillies. In order to save their lives, Johnny had to use the cursed antique himself so that he could enter the body of one of the brothers. That went against everything that the show previously established about the cursed antiques. You’re not supposed to use a cursed antique, not even once. Johnny uses it and everything works out fine for him. It feels like cheating and it was something that Ryan would never have done. God, I miss Ryan.

But I want to get back to this relationship nonsense. Since when is Micki attracted to Johnny? Johnny’s been hitting on Micki since his first appearance and she’s never been interested in the past. Now, suddenly, they’re having a relationship talk? It comes out of nowhere. In the end, Micki and Johnny agree not to have a relationship as long as there are still cursed antiques that need to be found and that’s a good idea. Still, the whole thing just felt tacked on.

This episode was dull. Chris Wiggins wasn’t in it and that’s a shame because this episode needed his steady, no-nonsense presence.

Oh well. Not every Friday can be a great one!

10 Films For The Weekend (6/13/25)

Posted on June 13, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Here are just a few recommendations from a girl who is currently packing for her vacation!

Happy Friday the 13th

Friday the 13th kind of snuck up on me this year, which is a shame because this is the only Friday the 13th that we’re going to get in 2025. I have a feeling that I’m not alone in being taken by surprise, though. Usually the streaming services make a bigger deal about Friday the 13th. This year, only Pluto TV has the complete series available to stream.

That said, you can watch the first Friday the 13th (1980) on Tubi. Though the films were never critical favorites and I doubt they’ll ever have a Halloween-style resurgence (and really, that’s the way I like it because the last thing that horror fans need or deserve is for David Gordon Green to screw up Jason like he did Michael), the first Friday the 13th is still entertaining to watch. It’s interesting to see how much the first few films drew from the Italian giallo movies. The first Friday the 13th is even a whodunit, featuring a killer wearing gloves! It also features a young Kevin Bacon in a speedo so what’s your excuse for not watching? Personally, I always relate to Marcie in this film. I imagine I’d share the same fate if I ever found myself working at a summer camp, wandering around in my underwear and saying, “C’mon, guys….” until someone got annoyed and hit me with an axe. You can watch the film on Tubi.

Friday the 13th: Part 2 (1981) is actually a really good horror movie, featuring interesting victims and, for the first time, Jason Voorhees as the killer. Jason dresses like a hillbilly in this one. Amy Steel is a badass heroine. Russell Todd’s an incredibly handsome man. The film itself actually has some wonderfully creepy shots, from the POV tracking shot that creeps up on Lauren-Marie Taylor to the shadowy shot of the cars driving into town. It can be viewed on Pluto.

Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984) was quite obviously not the final chapter but it was, in my opinion, the best of the films. Everyone remembers this one for Corey Feldman as Tommy Jarvis and Crispin Glover as one of the victims but really, the entire cast does a great job of bringing their characters to life and actually making them interesting for once. My heart always breaks a little for Peter Barton and Barbara Howard. They were such a cute couple. It can be viewed on Pluto.

Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1987) is hardly the best of the Friday films but I have to admit that I’ve always kind of liked it. Not only does it feature the first appearance of Zombie Jason but it also features enough strange plot twists to keep things watchable. The recently passed Lar Park Lincoln plays Tina, the girl with psychic powers and she gives a far better performance than the material probably deserved. Terry Kiser plays “Bad News” Crews. It can be viewed on Pluto.

Mario Bava’s Bay of Blood (1971) is a classic giallo and it features a rare (and successful) stab at social satire on the part of Mario Bava. It’s also interesting to see the scenes that were lifted, almost shot-for-short, for Friday the 13th Part 2. It can be viewed on Tubi.

Happy Father’s Day

This s going to be a bittersweet Father’s Day for me and my sisters. Our Dad passed away last August. Indeed, one of the reasons why I’m going on vacation next week is so I can get away from the sad memories for a bit. If I had to think of any film that captured my Dad’s independent spirit, I’d probably go with Convoy (1978). When I was growing up, my Dad sometimes worked as an independent trucker. He liked this movie and he liked Rubber Duck and you know what? Rubber Duck would have liked him as well. Convy was notorious for the cost overruns and the amount of drugs done on set but I’ll tell you right now — if you don’t cheer when Kris Kristofferson, Burt Young, and other truckers defy the law, you have no heart. Convoy can be viewed on Tubi.

My Dad was also a Godzilla fan, which is one reason why I’m a Godzilla fan! I can still remember being little and watching Godzilla films with him. They used to air every Saturday afternoon. One of our favorites was Godzilla vs Megalon (1973), in which Godzilla teams up with the giant robot, Jet Jaguar. I know that Godzilla purists tend to be dismissive of this film but I don’t care. I loved it! It can be viewed on Max.

I guess it says something about my job here that I can get sentimental about a violent and bloody film like 10 to Midnight (1983) but I have to admit that I’m always touched by the father-daughter relationship of Leo (Charles Bronson) and Laurie Kessler (Lisa Eilbacher). It reminds me a lot of my relationship with my Dad. Of course, those of you just looking for a good Cannon-era Bronson flick won’t be disappointed either. Gene Davis turns Warren Stacy into a truly loathsome villain and Bronson’s final line is a classic. Plus, this film has got Andrew Stevens in the role of the liberal rookie detective who no one can believe is a cop. The film can be viewed on Tubi.

Happy Odds and Ends

If you want to watch a Bava film that’s a little less gory than Bay of Blood, Planet of the Vampires (1965) is an atmospheric delight. Just as Bay of Blood inspired Friday the 13th, Planet of the Vampires inspired Alien. Keep an eye out for Ivan Rassimov, who had the best head of hair in Italian horror. The film is on Pluto.

Jim Belushi celebrated a birthday this week and you can celebrate as well by watching one of my favorite guilty pleasures, The Principal (1987). This film is heartfelt, violent, occasionally funny, thoroughly ludicrous, and actually kind of touching in its determination to actually say something. Jim Belushi vs Michael Wright is one of the ages. Lou Gossett, Jr. appears to be amused by the whole thing. “He’s the Principal, man!” The film is on Tubi.

Have a great week!

(Check out last week’s films here!)

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special Friday The 13th Edition

Posted on June 13, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films is all about letting the visuals do the talking.

Admittedly, the Friday the 13th films aren’t exactly known for being the most visually impressive horror films ever made. That’s especially true of the first 8 films, which were all shot on a low budget and in a hurry. That said, today is Friday the 13th and there’s no way that I, as a lover of the horror genre, couldn’t use the 4 Shots format to pay a little bit of tribute to one of the most successful and influential horror franchises of all time.

So, with that in mind, here are….

4 Shots From 4 Friday the 13th Films