Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 1.24 “Pipe Dreams”

Posted on April 5, 2024 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, Ryan discovers that Uncle Louis’s latest victim is his own father!

Episode 1.24 “Pipe Dreams”

(Dir by Zale Dalen, originally aired on July 11th, 1988)

Ryan has been invited to the wedding of Connie (Marion Gilsenan) and Ray Dallion (Michael Constantine). Ray is Ryan’s estranged father. As Ryan explains it to Micki, this is only the latest of Ray’s many marriages. Ray has spent his entire life trying to get rich and he often neglected his son while pursuing his dream. Ray will do anything to get rich. Ryan feels that there are more important things than money, like tracking down cursed antiques. Ryan decides to go the wedding but he brings his cousin Micki along with him for moral support. I mean, considering that Micki has just lost two potential husbands in a row, why wouldn’t she want to attend a wedding?

As the result of inventing a new type of gun, Ray has come into money. Ryan is horrified that his father would get rich off of weaponry but Ray explains that he was inspired by Uncle Louis. If Louis could get rich just by running a rinky dink antique store, why can’t Ray get rich from his inventions? Ryan explains that Uncle Louis got rich by selling cursed antiques and selling his soul to the Devil and now, Ryan and Micki spend all of their time traveling around the country (which is totally Canada, regardless of what the show occasionally claims) and trying to undo Louis’s evil. Ray doesn’t seem to be particularly surprised by any of this.

Ray has an antique of his own, a pipe that Louis gave to him. Whenever Ray smokes the pipe, it produces an orange smoke that disintegrates anyone that it surrounds. You know that gun that Ray invented? Well, it turns out that he didn’t actually invent it. Instead, he stole it after using his magic pipe to kill the original inventor. When Jack shows up for the wedding and informs Ryan of all of this, Ryan cannot believe it. He may be estranged from his father but Ryan can’t accept that he’s turned evil. But, as we all know from previous episodes, using the cursed antiques is like getting hooked on drugs. Once you use it once, you become addicted to using it again and again.

This is yet another episode of Friday the 13th that ends with a freeze frame of someone sobbing. In this case, it’s Ryan crying. As easy as it id to poke fun at how often Ryan and Micki end up either sobbing or staring at the camera with a forlorn look on their face, it’s actually a sign of the show’s intelligence that it realizes and acknowledges that dealing with cursed antiques is going to take a mental and emotional toll on someone. Both Ryan and Micki has lost a lot of people this season. In this episode, Ryan loses his father and, due to the performances of John D. LeMay and Michael Constantine, it definitely carries an emotional punch. Like so many of the “villains” on this show, Ray was not inherently evil. Instead, he was a man who lost his soul due to Louis’s evil deal with the Devil. The best episodes of Friday the 13th are tragedies and that’s certainly the case with this episode.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Monsters 2.2 “Portrait of the Artist”

Posted on April 3, 2024 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, a visit to an art gallery goes terribly wrong.

Episode 2.2 “Portrait of the Artist”

(Dir by Gerald Cotts, originally aired on October 8th, 1989)

Lucille Clay (Lucille Kennedy) visits an isolated art gallery that appears to be sitting in the middle of nowhere. The studio is full of macabre paintings of women and children who appear to be in some sort of mortal danger. Watching over the gallery is Hubert (Darren McGavin), who claims to be just an old farmer who was hired to look after things while the actual artist is in Nepal.

Accompanying Lucille is Roger Darcy (Beeson Carroll), a man who walks with a pronounced limp. Lucille claims that Roger is an art critic but, as soon becomes apparent, that’s a lie. Roger is actually the father of a missing teenage girl and he is stunned when he sees that one of the paintings looks just like her. In fact, all of the paintings appear to be of someone who has recently disappeared. Convinced that the artist is a serial killer, Roger demands to be taken to the artist’s cabin. What Roger doesn’t know is that the gallery hides an even bigger threat.

This episode ends with a twist. It’s not a bad twist and it actually took me by surprise. Unfortunately, the rest of the episode is not as good as the twist ending. I had high hopes when I saw that this episode was going to take place in a gallery and that it was going to star Darren McGavin. But, and it pains me to say this, McGavin just isn’t very good in this episode. McGavin was an actor who always had a tendency to go a little bit over the top. That wasn’t a problem when he was playing Kolchak or the father in A Christmas Story. But, in this episode, he’s so blustery that it’s obvious that he’s hiding something from the start and it makes Roger and Lucille seem all the dumber for trusting him.

Indeed, the other big problem with this episode is that Roger and Lucille continually do the stupidest things possible. None of their actions make sense. Why, if they believed a serial killer was lurking around the gallery, would they split up? Why would they be so quick to trust Hubert? Why, after escaping, would one of them then return without any backup? Why does neither one of them seem to be particularly upset about the possibility that either Hubert or the artist murdered Roger’s daughter and then used her for his painting? They both behave so stupidly that it’s hard to really care what happens to them.

This story had some potential but, unfortunately, the execution just didn’t live up to it.

Live Tweet Alert: Watch The Wasp Woman with #ScarySocial

Posted on March 30, 2024 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, Deanna Dawn will be hosting Roger Corman’s The Wasp Woman!

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, Tubi, and YouTube. It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th 1.23 “Badge of Honor”

Posted on March 29, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week …. OH MY GOD, IT’S JOHN STOCKWELL!

Episode 1.23 “Badge of Honor”

(Dir by Michelle Manning, originally aired on July 5th, 1988)

Victor Haas (David Proval) is a club owner and also the head of Canada’s most violent ring of counterfeiters. Detective Russ Sharko (Val Avery) is obsessed with taking Victor down. Victor attempts to dissuade Sharko by using a car bomb to take out Sharko’s wife. That just makes Sharko more determined. However, when Sharko’s obsession leads to a bust-gone-wrong and a dead cop, Sharko is kicked off the force. Sharko now has to take Victor and his man down on his own. Fortunately, he happens to own an antique sheriff’s badge. When he pins the badge on someone, that person suffers a violent death.

This sounds like a job for Micki and Ryan. (Jack, again, is out of town.) However, Micki and Ryan are distracted by the arrival of Tim (played by one of my favorite 80s leading men, the superhot John Stockwell). Tim is Micki’s ex-boyfriend and soon, he and Micki are picking up where they left off. (When the season began, Micki was engaged so I guess Tim must have been the boyfriend before the fiancé.) Ryan gets jealous because — surprise! — he’s kind of in love with Micki. Of course, just a few episodes ago, Ryan was in love with a preacher’s daughter. And then, after that, he was in love with Catherine, who was murdered by an evil journalist. Ryan seems to fall in love easily so….

Actually, wait a minute. RYAN AND MICKI ARE COUSINS! WHAT ARE YOU DOING, RYAN!? Of course, they’re not first cousins but still …. it just doesn’t seem right!

Anyway, at first, it seems like Ryan might be correct to be suspicious of Tim because Tim approaches Victor and offers to help him with his counterfeiting ring. But then we learn that Tim is with the FBI! Why is the FBI working in Canada? I guess maybe the show’s producers were still trying to convince viewers that Friday the 13th took place in America, despite the fact that all of the directors and most of the actors were Canadian and the show itself was clearly filmed in wintry Canada. (This episode is a bit of an oddity in that all three of the main guest stars — David Proval, John Stockwell, and Val Avery — were born in the Lower 48.) The important thing is that Tim’s a good guy but — uh oh! — Tim also gets shot and dies at the end of the episode. Micki is a little bit sad but Ryan is kind of relieved because it means he’ll have a chance to hook up with his cousin….

SERIOUSLY, WHAT THE HELL!?

This episode got a little bogged down with all of the counterfeiting stuff. It felt more like an episode of Miami Vice than Friday the 13th. The badge was also a bit of a boring antique because it didn’t really do anything other than kill people. Other antiques changed the personality of the people who owned them and demanded a quid pro quo for their powers. This antique is far more simple and kind of dull.

Oh well. It’s a less-than-memorable episode but John Stockwell was hot and I’m a bit disappointed that he apparently won’t be making a return appearance.

Next week, we meet Ryan’s father and discover that he’s not a good man at all!

Late Night Retro Television Review: Monsters 2.1 “The Face”

Posted on March 27, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, we start the second season of Monsters!

Episode 2.1 “The Face”

(Dir by Allen Coulter, originally aired on October 1st, 1989)

The second season of Monsters opens with two redneck brother, Ray (Gregory Grove) and Clifford (Gary Roberts), breaking into a house that is owned by an old widow (Imogene Coca). Because the woman is known for paying for everything in cash and doesn’t even have a bank account, the brothers suspect that she has a fortune stashed away somewhere in the house. (I’m not really sure how the brothers know that she doesn’t have a bank account and, for that matter, neither one of them really come across like they could open a bank account either. Maybe just don’t judge people on whether or not they have a bank account, you know?) When the dumbass brothers stumble across the woman in her bedroom, a struggle leads to Ray suffocating her but not before she bites a chunk out of his hand.

The wound on Ray’s hand refuses to heal. Instead, it starts to resemble the face of the old woman and soon, Ray is hearing her voice and the wound itself appears to be talking. Yikes! Is Ray being driven mad by his own guilt and paranoia or is the woman’s spirit truly haunting him? And will Ray ever be able to get the voice to stop or will he end up doing something unthinkable to his hand?

Either way, that talking hand wound is not particularly pleasant to look at. The second season premiere of Monsters takes it cue from both the body horror of David Cronenberg and the comedic grotesquerie of Sam Raimi and that means that we get a lot of closeups of Ray’s bloody hand and we also see every detail of the lengths that Ray goes to try to silence the wound. I started this episode cringing and, by the end of it, I had my own hands over my eyes because some of the imagery was just way too …. icky.

While the imagery was undeniably effective in its nauseating way, the overall story really didn’t carry much of an impact. Ray and Clifford were both such idiots that it was difficult to really care about any story involving them. In the end, they weren’t even interesting enough to make their downfall fun to watch. This episode worked best as an example of gross-out horror and, if I had to guess, I think the episode’s main aim was to let viewers know that season 2 was going to be even more graphic than season one. The episode makes for a fine highlight real for the show’s VFX and makeup teams but, as a story, it just falls flat.

Live Tweet Alert: Watch Coherence with #ScarySocial

Posted on March 23, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Tonight, for #ScarySocial, Deanna Dawn will be hosting 2014’s Coherence!

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 probably be there 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 1.22 “The Pirate’s Promise”

Posted on March 22, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, there’s something in the fog! Can Micki and Ryan stop the horror of the thing in the fog? FOG!

Episode 1.22 “The Pirate’s Promise”

(Dir by Bill Corcoran, originally aired on June 27th, 1988)

In the 18th century, a group of pirates killed their captain, Angus McBride, and stole his treasure. They used the money to start a seaside village in New England and to become respectable citizens. Over two hundred years later, the spirit of Captain McBride is hanging out in the fog and desiring vengeance on the descendants of his crew.

Hmmm …. this sounds familiar.

This episode has more than a little in common with John Carpenter’s The Fog. This time, as opposed to it being the result of an anniversary curse, it’s a crazed lighthouse keeper named Joe Fenton (Cedric Smith) who summons the ghost of Captain McBride with a cursed foghorn but otherwise, much of the plot and the show’s imagery feels as if it was lifted directly from Carpenter’s classic horror film. Captain McBride emerges from the fog several times during the episode. He kills his victim’s with a hook and then tosses a few coins at Joe.

Micki and Ryan show up in town to retrieve the foghorn. (This is another episode in which Jack is not present.) It’s interesting how these cursed antiques often tend to end up in small towns, like the one in this episode or The Quilt of Hathor. The previous few episodes featured Ryan having to say goodbye to someone as a result of a cursed item. This time, it’s Micki whose heart is broken when the sweet proprietor of the local history museum is stabbed with a saber while trying to protect her. The episode ends with Micki sobbing while Ryan tries to comfort her, which is quite a change from how these things usually go. For once, Micki is the one who gets to show emotion while Ryan is the one who takes a more pragmatic approach to dealing with the horrors of the cured antiques.

As for the episode, it wasn’t bad. Director Bill Corcoran did a good job of creating a properly ominous atmosphere and Cedric Smith was perfectly creepy as the evil lighthouse owner. The low-budget was evident by the fact that the time itself seemed to be nearly deserted. Even though the town was described as being small, it still seems like it should have been home to more than just a handful of people and I found myself wondering if maybe the show decided to save money by not hiring extras. That minor quibble aside, this was an effective episode as long as you were willing to overlook the plot’s similarity to Carpenter’s film.

Next week, hopefully, Jack will come back and maybe Micki will have cheered up. Someone likeable dies in every episode so you would think they would be used to it by now.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Monsters 1.24 “La Strega”

Posted on March 20, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, the first season of Monsters come to an end.

Episode 1.24 “La Strega”

(Dir by Lizzie Borden, originally aired on May 27th, 1989)

Vito (a young Rob Morrow) enters a pawn shop shortly before closing. He tells the proprietor, Lia (Linda Blair), that he’s shopping for something for his girlfriend. But, as soon as Lia turns her back, Vito draws a knife and announces that he’s actually come to kill her. Lia, however, has a gun and without flinching, she shoots at the floor. Vito, who is far less calm than Lia, drops the knife.

Lia takes Vito to her apartment above the shop. He tells her that he knows that she’s “La Strega” and that, ten years earlier, she put a curse on his mother (played by Maria Tucci) when she and Lia had a dispute over a ring that his mother brought to the shop. His mother has just died as a result of the curse and Vito wants vengeance.

Lia explains that she’s not a witch and that Vito’s mother’s dispute was actually with Lia’s mother. Lia also suggests that it was Vito’s mother who tried to steal the ring. Lia says that Vito will spend the next two weeks working for her and seeing what type of person she actually is. If, at the end of the two weeks, he still wants to kill her, she’ll accept that it is fate. Vito agrees.

For the next two weeks, Vito works in the shop and lives in Lia’s apartment. (I guess someone else is handling his mother’s funeral.) Vito is haunted by dreams in which both Lia and his mother attempt to seduce him and beg him to kill the other. Vito starts to fall in love with Lia and, as the two weeks come to a close, Lia says that she wants to enjoy what might be her last night on Earth….

Directed by feminist filmmaker Lizzie Borden, this episode ends the first season of Monsters on a rather moody note. Vito is never quite sure whether or not he can trust either Lia or the angry spirit of his mother and, in the end, no one’s motives are really that clear. The episode ends on a rather enigmatic note, which is a polite way of saying that it’s confusing as Hell. That said, Rob Morrow, Maria Tucci, and Linda Blair all give good performances and Borden does a good job of creating an appropriately dream-like atmosphere. In the end, the main impression one takes from this episode is that Vito, for all of his bluster, was essentially just a pawn in a supernatural battle between two powerful women, even if Vito himself wasn’t smart enough to realize it. This episode is not a bad note for the first season to end on.

The first season of Monsters was uneven. When it was good, it was really good. When it was weak, it was really weak. For the most part, though, it was enjoyable and most of the stories were memorably macabre.

Next week, we’ll see if that trend continue as we start the second season of Monsters!

Here’s The Teaser For Alien: Romulus

Posted on March 20, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Here’s the teaser for Alien: Romulus, which is being sold as a return to the Alien franchise’s roots as being a haunted house film in space.

I doubt this film will raise quite as many questions as some of the previous Alien films. However, director Fede Alvarez previously did good work with Don’t Breathe and his reboot of Evil Dead has its fans as well.

Live Tweet Alert: Join #ScarySocial for The Overnight!

Posted on March 16, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Tonight, at 9 pm et, Tim Buntley will be hosting #ScarySocial! The movie? 2022’s The Overnight!

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.

The Overnight is available on Prime!

See you there!