Tag Archives: Horror

Scenes That I Love: Ari Lehman Emerges From The Lake In Friday the 13th

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today, the Shattered Lens wishes a happy 59th birthday to actor and musician Ari Lehman!  Lehman made his debut in 1978’s Manny Orphans and so impressed director Sean S. Cunningham that Cunningham offered him a role in his next film.  When Cunningham offered Lehman the role, he asked only one question. “Can you swim?”

At the age of 14, Ari appeared in Friday the 13th.  He didn’t get much screen time but his performance and appearance as the young Jason Voorhees created a moment of fright that lives on today.

Happy birthday, Ari Lehman!

Late Night Retro Television Review: Monsters 2.6 “The Farmer’s Daughter”

Posted on 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 Wednesdays, I will be reviewing Monsters, which aired in syndication from 1988 to 1991. The entire series is streaming on YouTube.

Say, have you heard the joke about the traveling Bible salesman and the farmer’s daughter?  How about the one about the Man from Nantucket….

Episode 2.6 “The Farmer’s Daughter”

(Dir by Michael Warren Powell, originally aired on November 5th, 1989)

On a rainy night, traveling salesman Howard Filby (Soupy Sales) has an accident in front of the farmhouse owned by …. well, the show just calls them Ma (Bobo Lewis) and Pa (George Hall).  Ma and Pa seem like good country folks.  (That said, just their names brought to mind the owners of the Ma & Pa General Store on King of the Hill.  “I guess your Pa because you’re PA-thetic!”  “And you’re Ma because you’re always ridin’ mah ass!”)  Ma and Pa are willing to let Howard spend the night at the farmhouse, out of the rain.  He can just sleep up in the attic.  They’ll have to put up a privacy sheet, of course.  Their daughter Lucy (Stephanie Phillips) also stays up in the attic.

That privacy sheet doesn’t stay up for long.  Howard becomes intrigued by Lucy’s silhouette and her sultry voice.  When the sheet comes down, Howard is relieved to discover that Lucy is just as attractive as she sounded.  Lucy asks Howard for his undying love and Howard’s willing to give it.  Lucy talks about heading downstairs to let Ma and Pa know that they’ll be getting married.  Howard’s a little bit surprised to hear that….

Howard’s even more surprised when he accidentally pulls off a chunk of Lucy’s skin.  It turns out that Lucy is not quite who Howard thought she was and that Howard is hardly the first salesman to be brought to the farmhouse and sent up to the attic.  Even as Howard struggles in the attic, Ma and Pa sit in their living room and smile at the sound of another fender bender outside….

This was a nicely atmospheric episode.  Having heard all the various stories and jokes about traveling salesman and farmer’s daughters, I can’t say that I was particularly surprised by the direction that the story took but the episode still works as an example of American folk horror.  Soupy Sales was a comedian and a children’s show host and, according to Wikipedia, his trademark was getting a pie slammed in his face.  (Ouch!)  With that in mind, I guess it’s not a surprise that Sales’s performance occasionally leans a bit too much towards the goofy side.  (There’s a difference between playing the role with humor and just mugging for the camera.)  However, Stephanie Phillips, George Hall, and Bobo Lewis are all effectively creepy as the faux friendly farmhouse inhabitants.

Interestingly enough, this episode was co-written by character actor Bob Balaban.  As a director, Balaban was responsible for Parents, another film about a seemingly perfect married couple with a secret.

Scenes That I Love: Dan O’Herlihy Explains The Meaning of Halloween in Halloween III: Season of The Witch

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

105 years ago, on this date, the great character actor Dan O’Herlihy was born in Wexford, Wexford County, Ireland.

O’Herlihy would have a long career as an actor, making his feature debut in 1947’s Odd Man Out and working steadily in film and television for the next 50 years.  For modern viewers, he is perhaps best remembered for his role as The Old Man in the first two Robocop films and his performance as the sinister trickster, Conal Cochran, in 1982’s Halloween III: Season of the Witch.

Today’s scene that I love from from the latter film.  O’Herlihy explains the mean of Halloween to a trapped Tom Atkins.  O’Herlihy truly turned Conal Cochran into one of the great horror villains of the 80s and his performance is one of the main reasons that the rather oddball Halloween III retains a loyal audience to this day.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Baywatch Nights 2.2 “The Creature”

Posted on 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 Tuesdays, I will be reviewing Baywatch Nights, a detective show that ran in Syndication from 1995 to 1997.  The entire show is currently streaming on You tube!

Mitch, Griff, and Ryan search for an amphibian hybrid.

Episode 2.2 “The Creature”

(Dir by David W. Hagar, originally aired on October 6th, 1996)

The Creature of the title is a young blonde woman (played by Shelli Lether) who has spent her entire life locked away in a secret lab.  One night, a security guard decides that he wants to get to know The Creature better.  The Creature responds by killing both him and his co-worker.  She escapes from the lab, running into the California night.

Mitch and Ryan are brought to the lab by the mysterious Diamont Teague, who explains that he’s not sure what was going on at the lab but whatever was housed in the building has escaped.  Mitch leaves to track down the Creature.  (He recruits Griff to help him out.)  Meanwhile, Ryan stays at the lab and looks through magnifying scopes and studies slides and computer read-outs and eventually, she figures out that the lab was the focus of a DNA experiment.  The creature is half-amphibian and half-human.

“Can we do that?” Mitch asks when Ryan calls him.

“Apparently so,” Ryan calmly replies.

(Seriously, Ryan’s so cool.)

It also turns out that Mitch and Griff are not the only people who are searching for the Creature.  There are also a group of soldiers that are determined to track down the Creature, destroy it, and cover up the fact that it was created in the first place.  Mitch, needless to say, is not happy about that.  Mitch is a lifeguard and, as a lifeguard, he believes in guarding every life, even the life of a humanoid amphibian who murders anyone who approaches her.

And, if this was Baywatch, Mitch probably would have saved the Creature.  But this is Baywatch Nights and the night is darker than the day.  The Creature gets blown up in a tunnel but it appears that all of the soldiers get blown up with her.  Take that, Feds!  As for Mitch, he gets out of the tunnel just in time and makes a slow motion jump as the explosion erupts behind him.  A chastened and mournful Mitch then announces that he’s going home as the sun rises over the horizon.  Hey, Mitch — don’t forget to call Ryan and let her know that she can leave the lab.

After last week’s disappointing second season premiere, The Creature is the first classic episode of Baywatch Nights‘s supernatural season.  The action moves quickly and through multiple locations.  (The Creature may not know much about the world but she’s still drawn to a club.)  The story is ludicrous enough to be entertaining.  Shelli Lether is surprisingly sympathetic as the murderous Creature.  Even Hasselhoff throws his heart into his attempts to convince the soldiers not to destroy the Creature.  This episode was fun and dumb in a very likable way.

Next week, Mitch battles another sea monster!

Live Tweet Alert: Join #ScarySocial for Maximum Overdrive!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly live tweets on twitter.  I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of #MondayActionMovie!  Every week, we get together.  We watch a movie.  We tweet our way through it.

Tonight, at 9 pm et, Tim Buntley will be hosting #ScarySocial!  The movie?  1986’s Maximum Overdrive!

If you want to join us this Friday, just hop onto twitter, start the movie at 9 pm et, and use the #ScarySocial hashtag!  I’ll be there tweeting and I imagine some other members of the TSL Crew will be there as well.  It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.

Maximum Overdrive is available on Prime!

See you there!

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 2.1 “Doorway to Hell”

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: The Series, a show which ran in syndication from 1987 to 1990. The show can be found on YouTube!

This week, the second season beings with the return of Uncle Lewis!

(For a dead guy, Lewis sure does return a lot.)

Episode 2.1 “Doorway to Hell”

(Dir by William Fruet, originally aired on September 26th, 1988)

The second season begins in much the same way that the first one ended, with Uncle Lewis (played, as always, be R.G. Armstrong) trying to re-enter the world of the living.

This time, he’s doing it through mirrors.  According to Jack, a mirror that “witnesses” an occult ceremony becomes a doorway to the dark realms that sit between Heaven and Hell.  Lewis lives in the dark realms and, since he was a big fan of mirrors, his reflection occasionally appears in the a mirror at Curious Goods.  When Micki and Ryan find evidence that Lewis owned a house, they ignore Jack’s warning and go to investigate on their own.

They discover that the decrepit house is being used as a hideout by Buddy (Charle Landry) and Eddie (Louis Ferreira), two criminals who have just held up a gas station and killed an attendant.  Buddy wants to go straight and was pretty much coerced into taking part in the robbery.  Eddie, on the other hand, is a total psychopath who ties up both Micki and Ryan and laughs when they try to warn him about Uncle Lewis.

The house, not surprisingly, is full of mirrors and soon, Buddy gets sucked into one of them.  When Buddy returns to the house, he’s possessed and shooting electricity from his fingertips.  He kills Eddie and then chases Ryan and Micki around both the house and the dark realms.

Jack and his friend Rashid (Elias Zarou) watch all of this reflected in a shard of reflective glass that they found at the antique store.  Whenever things start to get really exciting or scary at the mansion, we cut to Jack and Rashid staring at shard of glass and saying, “Get out of there, Ryan!”

Eventually, Jack goes to the house, enters the dark realms and distracts Lewis long enough for Ryan and Micki to destroy all of the mirrors in the house.  Jack manages to escape just in time, Buddy apparently become unpossessed and the ghost of Uncle Lewis declares that he will return.  Lewis’s constant shouts of “I’ll be back” are such a cliche that they can’t help but be a bit charming, especially since R.G. Armstrong always seems to be having so much fun chewing the scenery whenever he shows up as Lewis.

The second season premiere did an effective job of reminding old viewers and informing new viewers about what the show was about.  The haunted house was an effectively creepy location and the dark realms were nicely atmospheric.  I do wish that the premiere had not once again deployed the tired idea of Micki and Ryan ignoring Jack’s warning about impulsively investigating something on their own.  I mean, that has never worked out for them.  You would think that Ryan and Micki would have learned the lesson by now.  Otherwise, this episode got the second season off to a good start.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Monsters 2.5 “Love Hurts”

Posted on 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 Wednesdays, I will be reviewing Monsters, which aired in syndication from 1988 to 1991. The entire series is streaming on YouTube.

This week, horror comes to the DMV!  Seriously, there’s nothing scarier than renewing your license….

Episode 2.5 “Love Hurts”

(Dir by Manny Coto, originally aired on October 29th, 1989)

Smooth-talking Vance (Henry Brown) is a ne’er-do-well who has a job working at the DMV in New Orleans.  He works with his disapproving father-in-law, Mr. Brownell (Fred Pinkard), who was responsible for getting Vance the job and who is always quick to make sure that Vance knows that he can cause Vance to lose his job as well.  Oddly enough, it appears that Vance and Mr. Brownell are the only employees at the DMV and the DMV itself is housed in a rather small building.  On the plus side, there’s never a line.  Do people just not drive in New Orleans?  I’ve been to the city and I saw a lot of cars while I was there.

Anyway, Mr. Brownell knows that Vance regularly cheats on his wife, Cora (Renn Woods).  In fact, Vance is currently cheating with Jewel (Olivia Brown, who also played Trudy on Miami Vice).  Mr. Brownell watches in silent disapproval whenever Jewel comes down to the DMV and hangs out at the front desk.  Jewel wants Vance to herself so she turns to her friend, Angie (Valentina Quinn).  Angie just happens to be a voodoo priestess.

The first spell that Jewel and Angie cast simply causes Cora and her father to fall ill with a terrible skin condition.  While Cora and her father are at the doctor’s office, Jewel and Vance get to spend some alone time behind the desk at the DMV.  When Mr. Brownell unexpectedly shows up at the office, he snaps at Vance not to have sex behind the desk at the DMV.  Apparently, the DMV is a sacred space.

The next spell that Jewel and Angie cast causes Mr. Brownell to die.  Without Mr. Bronwell constantly threatening to fire Vance for cheating on Cora, Jewel assumes that Vance will now leave his wife.  Except …. Cora’s pregnant!

The next spell that Jewel casts is designed to join her soul to Vance’s.  Unfortunately, this spell has some unintended consequences as the episode ends as a horribly mutilated and zombified Vance approaches Jewel.  Agck!

The gore at the end was very much appreciated, at least by this viewer.  Vance and Jewel were such unlikable characters that it was definitely a pleasure to see them get what was coming to them, the gorier the better.  The ending was effectively macabre but the rest of the episode was far too mild for its own good.  The script was weak, the actors were all a bit too theatrical in their performances, and the story itself played out at a surprisingly slow pace.  Ending aside, this was one of the more forgettable episodes of Monsters.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Baywatch Nights 2.1 “Terror of the Deep”

Posted on 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 Tuesdays, I will be reviewing Baywatch Nights, a detective show that ran in Syndication from 1995 to 1997.  The entire show is currently streaming on You tube!

Tonight, we start the second season of Baywatch Nights!  It’s like an entirely new show!

Episode 2.1 “Terror Of The Deep”

(Dir by Gregory J. Bonnan, originally aired on September 29th, 1996)

The second season begins with a few changes.

The open titles are now dark and atmospheric, featuring David Hasselhoff walking through the fog.  Lou Rawls’s theme song has been replaced by a creepy but very danceable instrumental track.

Mitch, Ryan, Eddie, and Donna are all back but Garner is no longer listed in the opening credit.  Nor is he mentioned in tonight’s episode.  Instead, Mitch’s new best friend is a world traveler named Diamont Teague (Dorian Gregory).  Diamont is an expert on the paranormal.  He believes that the truth is out there.  Donna spots Diamont walking along the pier and immediately mentions how mysterious is.

No mention of Mitch being a private detective is made during the second season premiere.  Instead, this episode open with Mitch doing lifeguard things.  He rescues a woman who is discovered floating in the ocean.  The woman screams in terror after she’s resuscitated.  Diamont thinks that the woman might be a survivor of a freighter that sunk a few days previously.  Diamont also thinks that the freighter was taken down by a tentacled monster that lives in the ocean.

Largely to prove his friend wrong, Mitch recruits Eddie and Ryan to help him track down and explore the freighter.  While Ryan remains on their boat and stays in communication via radio, Eddie and Mitch dive into the ocean and explore the freighter.  Guess what? Diamont was right!  There is a tentacled monster living inside the freighter and now, it’s after Eddie and Mitch!

With this episode, Baywatch Nights totally changed directions, going from being a detective show to a somewhat goofy rip-off of The X-Files.  For the most part, the second season of Baywatch Nights was a lot of fun but you wouldn’t necessarily know it from this episode.  Terror of the Deep takes place almost entirely underwater, with Mitch and Eddie spending most of their time in wet suits that make it very difficult to figure out which one is which.  The underwater scenes are also rather darkly lit, which I assume was done to both create atmosphere and also disguise the fact that the tentacled monster wasn’t really that impressive.  However, the scenes are often so dark that it becomes difficult to tell what is actually happening on screen.  This was an episode with a simple plot that often felt incoherent because I was never quite sure where Mitch and Eddie were in the freighter or if they were even still together.

This episode also overlooks the fact that one of the best things about the first season was the playful chemistry between David Hasselhoff and Angie Harmon.  Instead, we get Mitch swimming with Eddie while Ryan stays on board the boat and is reduced to saying, “Copy that,” over and over again.  This episode really did end up feeling like a lost opportunity.

But no worries!  The rest of the second season is going to be a lot of fun.  For instance, next week, Mitch faces off against a killer mermaid!  It should be entertaining.

Live Tweet Alert: Watch Prom Night With #ScarySocial!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly live tweets on twitter.  I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of #MondayActionMovie!  Every week, we get together.  We watch a movie.  We tweet our way through it.

Tonight, for #ScarySocial, I will be hosting 1980’s Prom Night!

If you want to join us on Saturday night, just hop onto twitter, start the film at 9 pm et, and use the #ScarySocial hashtag!  The film is available on Prime!  I’ll be there co-hosting and I imagine some other members of the TSL Crew will be there as well.  It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 1.26 “Bottle of Dreams”

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: The Series, a show which ran in syndication from 1987 to 1990. The show can be found on YouTube!

This week, season one comes to a close with a trip down nightmare lane.

Episode 1.26 “Bottle of Dreams”

(Dir by Mac Bradden, originally aired on July 25th, 1988)

It’s clip show time!

To be fair, the first season finale of Friday the 13th does come up with a clever way to justify being a clip show.  Micki and Ryan get trapped in the vault of Curious Goods with an ancient, Egyptian urn that causes people to confront the memories of their worst fears.  Not surprisingly all of Micki and Ryan’s worst fears are connected to the cursed antiques that they’ve spent the past year seeking out and dealing with.

So, once again, we get to see the cursed doll that started the series.  We see the weirdo wandering around with his cursed cupid statue.  We see the vampire.  Oddly enough, we don’t see the pirate ghosts or the gangster who killed Micki’s boyfriend, even though both of those events were very traumatic for Micki.  We don’t see the magic pipe that killed Ryan’s father, despite the fact that episode ended with Ryan in tears.  We don’t see the newscaster who killed Ryan’s girlfriend or the cursed quilt that nearly caused Ryan to get burned at the stake.  In short the clips seem to be a little bit arbitrary and they also all seem to come from early in the season, which leads me to suspect that this episode was put together long before it actually aired.

The cursed urn and the flashbacks are all a part of yet another attempt by Uncle Lewis (R.G. Armstrong) to return to the world of living.  Fortunately, Jack’s friend Rashid (Elias Zarou) shows up and helps to push Lewis back into the netherworld.  It’s always nice when one of Jack’s associates shows up to help.  It creates the feeling that there’s an entire magical underground out there, all dealing with cursed antiques and malevolent spirits.  While Ryan and Micki deal with their bad memories, Jack and Rashid are the ones who save the day and it makes for a nice conclusion for the first season.  Our heroes may have started out as skeptical amateurs but now they’re a strong team.  Micki and Ryan know that they can count on Jack, which is good considering that almost everyone else that that they get close to ends up dead.

The first season of Friday the 13th: The Series was pretty good.  The horror was effective.  The cast had a lot of chemistry.  With a few exceptions, the cursed antiques were all interesting and worked in genuinely clever ways.  The show had a sense of humor but it never let it get in the way of mayhem.  Even the fact that the show claimed to be set in America even though it was clearly filmed in Canada and filled with Canadian actors only served to increase the dream-like atmosphere.

Will the second season live up to the first?  We’ll start to find out next week!