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!

Guess who is making trouble …. again.

Episode 2.12 “It’s My Party And You’ll Die If I Want You To”

(Dir by Tom DeSimone, originally aired on December 24th, 1989)

This aired when?

Wow!  Happy Christmas Eve!

Freddy takes center stage in this week’s episode.  First, he possesses a phony psychic (Gwen Banta) and uses her to kill a bunch of people because …. well, why not?  He’s Freddy.  It’s kind of what he does.  The second story features Freddy seeking revenge on the woman who stood him up for prom and it features an occasionally clever subplot about a man attempting to write a film about Freddy’s life.  Freddy complains that the script doesn’t have a heart.  That’s because Freddy ripped it out of the screenwriter.

This was not a bad episode.  Director Tom DeSimone does a good job of keeping the action moving and he allows Freddy to be genuinely menacing.  This entire season has pretty much been a reminder of the fact that Freddy isn’t just an undead spirit who makes joke  He’s also very scary.  If the first season treated Freddy like a quip machine, the second season has gone out of its way to show that Freddy is pure evil and you’re better off not being in his presence.

This week’s stories were tied together by the presence of Oliver Michaels (Richard Speight), a spacey young man who previously appeared in Photo Finish.  Oliver does his best to warn people in this episode but no one’s willing to listen until it’s too late.

That’s life in Springwood.