Tag Archives: Hilary Shepard

The Eric Roberts Collection: The Wrong Teacher (dir by David DeCoteau)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

When Charlotte (Jessica Morris) meets a younger man named Chris (Philip McElroy), she is both flattered and amused when he asks her out.  “You’re a little young for me,” Charlotte says.  However, Charlotte’s friend, Maddie (Akari Endo), insists that Charlotte really does need to get out more so Charlotte meets up with Chris for drinks.  One things leads to another and soon, Charlotte is having sex with Chris in her classroom!

(Charlotte is an English teacher, along with being a struggling romance novelist.)

The next day, as Charlotte teachers her class, she is shocked when Chris shows up.  “What are you doing here?” Charlotte asks.  Chris reveals that he’s a new student and Charlotte is now his English teacher!

2018’s The Wrong Teacher is one of the many “Wrong” films that David DeCoteau directed for Lifetime.  This one follows the usual pattern.  Chris isn’t ready to let go of his one night of passion with the teacher.  When he discovers that Charlotte is getting back together with her ex-boyfriend (Jason-Shane Scott), he snaps.  Soon, people are getting shot and hit with baseball bats and videos of Chris and Charlotte going at it in the classroom are showing up on the school’s twitter page.  Vivica A. Fox is alarmed that Charlotte could be so foolish.  Charlotte declares, “You messed with the wrong teacher!”  Thanks to some last minute strangeness that sees Charlotte adopting a Southern accent, The Wrong Teacher is enjoyably over the top.

As for Eric Roberts, he plays the assistant principal.  He’s a bit burned-out.  He’s easily annoyed.  He doesn’t want any scandalous behavior in his school.  He’s Eric Roberts and he makes the most of his three scenes.  Eric even stands up and walks in this movie.  He only does that when he’s particularly invested in a role.  The Wrong Teacher?  More like The Right Vice Principal.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

  1. Paul’s Case (1980)
  2. Star 80 (1983)
  3. Runaway Train (1985)
  4. To Heal A Nation (1988)
  5. Best of the Best (1989)
  6. Blood Red (1989)
  7. The Ambulance (1990)
  8. The Lost Capone (1990)
  9. Best of the Best II (1993)
  10. Love, Cheat, & Steal (1993)
  11. Voyage (1993)
  12. Love Is A Gun (1994)
  13. Sensation (1994)
  14. Dark Angel (1996)
  15. Doctor Who (1996)
  16. Most Wanted (1997)
  17. Mercy Streets (2000)
  18. Tripfall (2000)
  19. Raptor (2001)
  20. Rough Air: Danger on Flight 534 (2001)
  21. Strange Frequency (2001)
  22. Wolves of Wall Street (2002)
  23. Border Blues (2004)
  24. Mr. Brightside (2004)
  25. Six: The Mark Unleased (2004)
  26. We Belong Together (2005)
  27. Hey You (2006)
  28. Depth Charge (2008)
  29. Amazing Racer (2009)
  30. The Chaos Experiment (2009)
  31. In The Blink of an Eye (2009)
  32. Bed & Breakfast (2010)
  33. Enemies Among Us (2010)
  34. The Expendables (2010) 
  35. Sharktopus (2010)
  36. Beyond The Trophy (2012)
  37. The Dead Want Women (2012)
  38. Deadline (2012)
  39. The Mark (2012)
  40. Miss Atomic Bomb (2012)
  41. Assault on Wall Street (2013)
  42. Bonnie And Clyde: Justified (2013)
  43. Lovelace (2013)
  44. The Mark: Redemption (2013)
  45. The Perfect Summer (2013)
  46. Revelation Road: The Beginning of the End (2013)
  47. Revelation Road 2: The Sea of Glass and Fire (2013)
  48. Self-Storage (2013)
  49. Sink Hole (2013)
  50. A Talking Cat!?! (2013)
  51. This Is Our Time (2013)
  52. Bigfoot vs DB Cooper (2014)
  53. Doc Holliday’s Revenge (2014)
  54. Eternity: The Movie (2014)
  55. Inherent Vice (2014)
  56. Road to the Open (2014)
  57. Rumors of War (2014)
  58. So This Is Christmas (2014)
  59. Amityville Death House (2015)
  60. Deadly Sanctuary (2015)
  61. A Fatal Obsession (2015)
  62. Las Vegas Story (2015)
  63. Sorority Slaughterhouse (2015)
  64. Stalked By My Doctor (2015)
  65. Enemy Within (2016)
  66. Hunting Season (2016)
  67. Joker’s Poltergeist (2016)
  68. Prayer Never Fails (2016)
  69. Stalked By My Doctor: The Return (2016)
  70. The Wrong Roommate (2016)
  71. Dark Image (2017)
  72. The Demonic Dead (2017)
  73. Black Wake (2018)
  74. Frank and Ava (2018)
  75. Stalked By My Doctor: Patient’s Revenge (2018)
  76. Clinton Island (2019)
  77. Monster Island (2019)
  78. The Reliant (2019)
  79. The Savant (2019)
  80. Seven Deadly Sins (2019)
  81. Stalked By My Doctor: A Sleepwalker’s Nightmare (2019)
  82. The Wrong Mommy (2019)
  83. Exodus of a Prodigal Son (2020)
  84. Free Lunch Express (2020)
  85. Her Deadly Groom (2020)
  86. Top Gunner (2020)
  87. Deadly Nightshade (2021)
  88. The Elevator (2021)
  89. Just What The Doctor Ordered (2021)
  90. Killer Advice (2021)
  91. Megaboa (2021)
  92. Night Night (2021)
  93. The Poltergeist Diaries (2021)
  94. The Rebels of PT-218 (2021)
  95. Red Prophecies (2021)
  96. A Town Called Parable (2021)
  97. Bleach (2022)
  98. Dawn (2022)
  99. My Dinner With Eric (2022)
  100. 69 Parts (2022)
  101. The Rideshare Killer (2022)
  102. The Company We Keep (2023)
  103. D.C. Down (2023)
  104. Aftermath (2024)
  105. Bad Substitute (2024)
  106. Devil’s Knight (2024)
  107. Insane Like Me? (2024)
  108. Space Sharks (2024)
  109. The Wrong Life Coach (2024)
  110. Broken Church (2025)
  111. When It Rains In L.A. (2025)

Late Night Retro Television Reviews: Friday the 13th: The Series 1.4 “A Cup In Time”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a new feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Fridays, I will be reviewing Friday the 13th, a show which ran in syndication from 1988 to 1990.  The show can be found on YouTube!

This week, a cursed teacup wreck havoc and destroys lives!

Episode 1.4 “A Cup In Time”

(Dir by Harvey Frost, originally aired on October 19th, 1987)

Someone is killing the homeless.  Every morning, young homeless people are being found dead on the street, apparently strangled.  The police don’t really care about the victims and therefore, they aren’t really all that concerned with solving the case.  In fact, only a social worker named Birdie (Maxine Miller) really seems to care.

Of course, that’s not all that Birdie cares about.  Because she has a crush on Jack, she often drops by the Antique Shop in an attempt to visit with him.  Since Jack doesn’t know how to deal with her, Mickey and and Ryan end up talking to her instead.  Birdie tells them about the murders and she also mentions that her friend, the elderly Sarah Berrell, is missing.

When Jack hears about the homeless being murdered, he says that it might have something to do with one of the shop’s cursed antiques.  Searching through the ledger, he comes across a teacup that was sold to Sarah Berrell’s brother!

Indeed, it does turn out that Sarah is involved with the murders.  She approaches homeless people at night and offers them a warm drink in a tea cup that is illustrated with a picture of a vine.  Whenever anyone drinks from the cup, the vine comes to life and strangles them.  Their youth is then transferred over to the owner of the cup.  Sarah has committed so many murders that she now appears to be in her 20s.  Using the name Lady Di (and played by Hilary Shepard), she is now the hottest rock star in America!  Ryan loves her music and, in fact, Lady Di is planning on throwing a free benefit concert for the homeless!

What a mess!

This is actually a pretty good episode, one that is reasonably well-acted and scripted, though I do have to wonder just how long Sarah had been missing for her to have time to create an entirely new life for herself as Lady Di.  The episode’s true star was Maxine Miller, who gave a sweet and rather poignant performance as Birdie.  Eventually, she discovers what the cup is capable of doing and, in the episode’s best scene, she is tempted to do the same thing that Sarah has been doing.  And really, you can’t blame her.  I mean, who wouldn’t want to stay forever young?  As well, there’s a neat auditory moment, towards the end of the episode, when a crowd of concertgoers start to chant “We Want Di” and it sounds like they’re all saying, “We Want To Die!”  It’s an effective effect, whether it was deliberate or not.

All in all, this was a good episode of Friday the 13th.  That said, I have to wonder about Birdie.  I mean, she knows the teacup was cursed.  Is she curious about any of the other stuff in the shop?  Will her character ever appear again?  I guess I’ll have to keep watching to find out.