Gerry Salsberg | 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 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, it’s just Jack and Micki!

Episode 3.12 “Epitaph For A Lonely Heart”

(Dir by Allan Kroeker, originally aired on January 22nd, 1990)

Eli Leonard (Neil Munro) is a mortician who uses a cursed embalming needle to bring the dead back to life. Of course, he has to kill someone for the needle to work. Eli has fallen in love with the corpse of a young woman and …. EEK!

The dead woman’s fiancé is Steve Wells (Barclay Hope), a friend of Micki’s who let’s her know that he thinks something strange is happening at the funeral home before he himself is killed by Eli. Micki and Jack investigate! It all ends with a big and convenient fire, which not only kills Eli but also the two women who he has recently brought back to life.

Johnny Ventura was not in this episode and, as much as I’ve complained about the character, he actually is missed. Having Micki just working solely with Jack threw off the show’s balance a little. Jack is so much older than Micki that, in this episode, it felt as if Micki was Jack’s apprentice as opposed to being an equal partner in the search for the cursed items. As a character, Micki works best when she has an impulsive guy like Ryan or Johnny to play off of. Both she and Jack tend be cautious so this episode just felt a bit off.

(That said, there was an enjoyable scene of Jack and Micki having to host a gathering of all the other local antique dealers, none of whom knew that Jack and Micki spend all of their time fighting the Devil.)

The mortician was one of the least sympathetic villains that this show has ever featured. He was lonely but he also an obsessive creeper with no people skills. Friday the 13th has often featured villains who were tragically misguided or seduced by the cursed antique. The mortician was just a creep. Neil Munro did a good job playing him, making him into a villain who you couldn’t wait to see meet his fate.

In the end, though, this episode just felt off. I guess this show really does need Johnny screwing up and accidentally giving away the cursed antiques. Who would have guessed?

Billy “Badass” Buddusky (Jack Nicholson) and Richard Mulhall (Otis Young) are two Navy lifers stationed in Virginia. On shore patrol, they’ve been assigned to transport a 18 year-old seaman to a Naval prison in Maine. The kid has been dishonorably discharged and sentenced to eight years in the brig for trying to steal $40 from a charity box. (The charity was a favorite of the wife of his commanding officer.) Buddusky and Mulhall are expecting to find a hardened punk but instead, they end up escorting Larry Meadows (Randy Quaid), a timid teenager who suffers from kleptomania and who doesn’t seem to understand just how bad things are going to be for him for the rest of his life. Not only is he going to do eight years in the brig, surrounded by hardened criminals, but his dishonorable discharge is going to follow him for the rest of his life.

Resenting having to take Meadows to prison and also feeling that he’s getting a raw deal, Buddusky and Mulhall decide to make a few stops on their way to Maine, so that Larry can enjoy what little time he has left and hopefully lose his virginity before being locked up. In between brawling with Marines, visiting a brothel (where a young Carol Kane plays one of the prostitutes), and hanging out with a group of hippies (one of whom is played by Gilda Radner), Meadows comes to think of Buddusky and Mulhall as being his best friends. Unfortunately, for Meadows, both Buddusky and Mulhall have their job to do.

Hal Ashby’s road picture is a character study of three men who are all lifers, even if they don’t realize that. Both Buddusky and Mulhall hate the Navy but they also can’t relate to anyone who isn’t a member of the service. Meadows’s entire future has been pre-determined because he tried to steal $40 but he doesn’t realize it until its too late. When the film came out, it was controversial due to its “colorful” language. In an interview, screenwriter Robert Towne defended the frequent profanity because, as he put it, when you’re in a situation you hate, “that’s what you do. You bitch.” Hal Ashby’s loose direction captures the road trip feel as the three leads reluctantly head to their ultimate destination.

The Last Detail features one of Jack Nicholson’s best performances. Buddusky is cynical and doesn’t trust anyone other than Mulhall but even he knows that Larry Meadows deserves better than to spend eight years in the brig. Along with lending his star power to the film and standing by director Hal Ashby when Ashby was arrested for marijuana possession, Nicholson also played a big role in the casting of Randy Quaid as Larry Meadows. (The other final contender for the role was John Travolta but Nicholson insisted on Quaid). The 6’5 Quaid towers of Nicholson and Young, making him look as if he could escape any time that he wants. But Larry is so naive that he doesn’t want to make any trouble for his “friends.” Though this wasn’t his first film, The Last Detail is the film that made Quaid one of the busiest character actors of the 70s and 80s and it also, at least temporarily, made him a part of the Jack Nicholson stock company.

Both sad and funny, The Last Detail is one of the best films of the 70s and features Jack Nicholson at his most unforgettable.