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 show is streaming on Youtube.
For this week’s episode, the dead rise and …. hey, wait a minute. Horrorthon’s over! And yet, here I am reviewing another show about zombies. Oh well, let’s get to it!
Episode 1.5 “My Zombie Lover”
(Dir by David Misch, originally aired on November 19th, 1988)
It’s the night of the dead!
In a small town, the dead rise once a year and feast on the flesh of the living. No one is sure why this happens. As one person explains it, some people think that it’s a gypsy curse and some people think that it’s due to radiation and others think that it’s just the result of poor embalming techniques. But every year, for one night, families in the town head out with their guns and they spend a few hours killing zombies.
Dottie (Tempestt Bledsoe) is home, visiting from college. She doesn’t want to go out and hunt zombies. Nor does she want to go see her old high school acquaintances. She just wants to stay on the couch while Dad (Ed Wheeler), Mom (Marcella Lowery, the terrible principal from City Guys), and her younger brother, Brad (Eugene Byrd), head outside. Dad can’t wait to kill some zombies. Brad, meanwhile, thinks that the zombies should be left alone and is carrying a protest sign.
After her family boards up the house and then leaves, Dottie is surprised to hear a knock at the door. She answers the door and finds Paul Nichols (Steve Harper) standing outside with some flowers. Paul was in Dottie’s French class but he died before he could graduate from high school. Now, he’s back in zombie form and he just wants Dottie to know that he always had a crush on her. Soon, Paul and Dottie are talking about old times. Unfortunately, Paul cannot resist the temptation to bite Dottie’s hand but Dottie forgives him.
Suddenly, Dad, Mom, and Brad return. Dad takes one look at Paul and aims his rifle. Shouting that she loves Paul, Dottie jumps in front of her zombie boyfriend and is killed by the bullet that was meant for him. However, since this is the night of the dead, Dottie immediately returns in zombie form. She and Paul are both hungry and they ask if there’s any meat in the house. Dad and Mom think for a moment and then they both look down at Brad and share a smile.
In other words, Brad was the only person in town who cared about the zombies and now, he’s going to be eaten.
I appreciated this episode’s rather macabre sense of humor and I especially liked the way Dad ran through all the possible reasons for the zombies returning. (They are all reasons that have been suggested in various Romero zombie films.) Unfortunately, a few too many of the jokes fell flat for this episode to really be considered a total success. Tempestt Bledsoe, in particular, seemed to be confused by the episode’s grotesque humor, giving a performance that never quite found the right balance between sincerity and humor. That said, I did like Steve Harper’s performance as the saddest zombie in the world. He only gets to eat once a year but, rather than do that, he just wants to let Dottie know that he liked her. Awwwwww!
Despite some tonal inconsistences, this was an entertaining episode, one that I appreciated as a fan of zombie films.
Through the Shattered Lens 