Late Night Retro Television Review: Monsters 2.24 “The Family Man”

Posted on November 27, 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, the second season of Monsters reaches its conclusion!

Episode 2.24 “The Family Man”

(Dir by Michael Warren Powell, originally aired on June 3rd, 1990)

Neil (Calvin Armitage) is not happy. The young son of Angie (Annie Corley), Neil is upset that she is dating a condescending psychologist named Warren (Michael O’Gorman). Making things even worse is that Neil seems to be the only person who dislikes Warren. Even Neil’s older sister, Terri (Kelli Rabke), thinks that Warren is a great guy and would be a wonderful stepfather.

Adding to Neil’s problems is his terrible eyesight. He’s recently gotten new glasses, which he cannot stand. He would rather wear the glasses that once belonged to his late father. When Neil puts those old glasses on and looks at Warren, he is shocked to see that Warren is actually a lizard-like alien with sharp teeth. It doesn’t take long for Warren to figure out that Neil has seen through his human disguise but, as Warren explains it, no one is going to believe Neil. Instead, Warren is just going to drain the life forces of Angie, Neil, and Terri, killing them as he’s killed so many other humans.

At first, it looks like Warren is correct. Angie refuses to listen to Neil and she also refuses to put on the glasses. As for the glasses themselves, they are eventually shattered by Warren. What can Neil possibly do!? Luckily, the glasses were not the only thing that Neil’s father left behind….

The second season finale of Monsters owes a great deal to They Live, with the exception being that, instead of seeing how he’s being manipulated by the media, Neil uses his glasses to discovers that his potential stepfather is actually a murderous lizard person. I think that anyone who has ever watched in horror as their divorced or widowed mother dated a new weirdo will be able to relate to this episode. I remember, immediately after my parents got divorced, I tended to view almost every guy that my mom talked to as being a potential lizard person. Eventually, of course, I came to accept that not all strangers were alien beings. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever met an actual alien or an actual lizard person. That’s good luck on my part, I suppose.

As for this episode, the lizard person makeup was effective and Michael O’Gorman certain gave a good performance as the manipulative Warren. Probably the most disturbing thing about Warren was the he didn’t seem to be particularly worried about Neil discovering his true identity because he knew there was no way anyone was going to believe a word that Neil said. That said, the episode really was a bit too much of a rip-off to be totally successful. Still, if you’re going to rip someone off, you might as well rip off the best.

The second season of Monsters ends on an above average note. The season itself was, overall, uneven. There was some very good episode and, unfortunately, there were also some very bad ones. I guess that’s to be expected with anthology shows.

Next week, we’ll begin the third and final season of Monsters!

Late Night Retro Television Review: Baywatch Nights 2.20 “Hot Winds”

Posted on November 26, 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 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 YouTube!

This week, the world goes mad!

Episode 2.20 “Hot Winds”

(Dir by Parker Stevenson, originally aired on May 3rd, 1997)

A hot wind is blowing down from the hills and into Los Angeles.

People are going crazy in the streets. Strangers are attacking each other for no reason. Riots are breaking out. The world seems like it’s gone off its axis and no one knows how to react. Is the heat driving everyone mad or is it something else? Diamont Teague tells Mitch and Ryan that he suspects that something supernatural is happening. Mitch, as usual, argues that people in Los Angeles have always been crazy. Not like this! Diamont says.

Is Diamont correct? As he, Mitch, and Ryan leave the office, they run into an aggravated man who proceeds to beat on a brick wall until his hands are covered in blood. Mitch assumes that the man must be on drugs. Diamont says that they need to drive out to the desert so that they can find the source of the wind. Mitch is skeptical until he starts seeing a ghostly image of a robed man carrying a scythe.

It’s a long trip out to the desert, made even longer by the rioting and the madness all around. Mitch stops long enough to keep a woman from throwing her baby over a ledge. But, as soon as Mitch grabs away her baby, the woman jumps anyway. It’s quite a fall and somehow, the woman survives. Luckily, Mitch is there to render CPR while the crazed crowd watches. The world may going mad but Mitch is still a lifeguard, dammit.

Driving through the desert, Ryan wonders why she, Mitch, and Diamont aren’t going crazy like everyone else. It’s a good question. Seriously, last week was a lot of fun because it gave us a chance to watch the Hoff got possessed by a demon. It’s hard not to regret that he didn’t get a chance to go crazy in this episode.

In the desert, the robed man with the scythe dances. The scythe apparently is what sends down the hot air. If Mitch can get the scythe away from the man, the violence can stop. Who is the man? Apparently, he’s a devil worshipper. Ryan suspects that there might be hundreds of similar people out there. Maybe they’re the ones who are responsible for all the madness in the world! Has Ryan already forgotten that, a few episodes ago, it was established that the Knights Templar secretly controlled the world?

This episode was actually not bad. The scenes of people suddenly going mad were effective and the man in the desert was actually a pretty ominous image. Even the show’s overreliance on Dutch angles felt effective for once, drawing the audience into a world that was permanently off-balance. I enjoyed this episode and I’ll remember it the next time I see a stranger yelling on a street corner.

Monday Live Tweet Alert: Join Us For Raiders of the Living Dead!

Posted on November 25, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

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

Tonight, for #MondayActionMovie, the film will be 1986’s Raiders of the Living Dead! I picked it so you know it’ll be good.

It should make for a night of fun viewing and I invite all of you to join in. If you want to join the live tweets, just hop onto Mastodon, find the movie on YouTube, hit play at 8 pm et, and use the #MondayActionMovie hashtag! The live tweet community is a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.

Live Tweet Alert: Join #ScarySocial for Black Friday!

Posted on November 23, 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, at 9 pm et, Tim Buntley will be hosting #ScarySocial! The movie? Black Friday!

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.

Black Friday is available on Prime!

See you there

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 2.19 “The Butcher”

Posted on November 22, 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, it’s all about Jack!

Episode 2.19 “The Butcher”

(Dir by Francis Delia, originally aired on April 24th, 1989)

Horst Mueller (Colin Fox), a Nazi scientist, uses a magic amulet to bring back to life the fearsome Col. Rausch (Nigel Bennett), a Nazi war criminal who was infamous for using barb wire as a garotte whenever he was carrying out executions. Rausch was killed during the war by a squad of soldiers led by a young lieutenant named Jack Marshak. Once Rausch is brought back to life, he not only sets himself up as a radio talk show host but he also seeks revenge on the men who killed him. One-by-one, he kills the members of the squad until eventually, only three are left alive, Simpson (Julius Harris), Shaw (John Gilbert), and Jack.

There were many episodes of Friday the 13th in which Jack was absent and described as being out-of-town while Micki and Ryan dealt with the latest cursed antique. This, however, is the first episode to feature Jack on his own. He mentions that Micki and Ryan are out-of-town, presumably because they’re tracking something down. This leads Jack to face Rausch with only the help of Simpson and Shaw. Watching this episode, one gets the feeling that Jack wouldn’t have it any other way. While this episode features all of the usual blood and melodrama that we’ve come to expect from this show, it also serves as a tribute to the friendship between Jack and his comrades-in-arms. Jack relates to Simpson and Shaw in a way that he can’t relate to the much-younger Micki and Ryan. If Jack is usually cast as a fatherly figure, this episode finds him working with equals and fighting against a monster with whom he has a personal connection. This is the rare episode to not feature any of Lewis’s cursed antiques. Instead, the magic amulet is one of the many artifacts for which Heinrich Himmler and the SS spent much of the war searching.

It’s a change-of-pace episode that gives Chris Wiggins a chance to show off his considerable talents an actor. Rarely has Jack been as haunted as he is in the episode and Wiggins’s sad eyes allow us to see what a lifetime of dealing with unbelievable evil would do to a person. In this episode, Jack is not just aware of the evil in the world but he’s also aware that he and his comrades-in-arms, the members of the so-called “Greatest Generation,” are aging and their time is passing. Jack and his friends are at an age where they should be enjoying their retirement. Instead. they’re still fighting against the legacy of Hitler’s evil.

This was a good and melancholy episode of Friday the 13th. This show could be uneven but episodes like this were good enough to make one mourn that the series did not last longer than just three seasons.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Monsters 2.23 “The Bargain”

Posted on November 20, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, a woman gets more than she bargained for when she gives it all up for love.

Episode 2.23 “The Bargain”

(Dir by Tom Noonan, originally aired on May 27th, 1990)

Sarah (Kim Greist) is a lonely woman who owns a used bookstore and who is in love with the man who appears to be her only customer, Joe (Kevin Geer). Joe is a TV repairman and he presents himself as being a typical blue collar guy, except for the fact that he’s always buying books of romantic poetry. He claims that they’re for a friend. Sarah recites a French poem for him. “I don’t speak French,” Joe replies.

Sarah feels that she’s too shy and plain to ever catch Joe’s eye. But then, while looking through an old magazine, she comes across an advertisement for a mask that will make all of her dreams come true. On a lark, Sarah calls the number. Soon, a horribly scarred woman named Carmen (Sharon Sharth) comes to the store. Carmen gives Sarah a mask but she says that there’s a price. First off, by putting on the mask, Sarah will be agreeing to give up all of her books to Carmen. Secondly, Sarah must never remove the mask. Sarah agrees.

The mask does make Sarah beautiful. Now going by the name of Mandy, she turns her empty bookstore into a video store. When Joe comes in, Mandy flirts with him but it turns out that Joe is angry about the bookstore going away and also, he was in love with Sarah. Mandy protests that she is Sarah, just for Carmen to show up with Sarah’s old face. Carmen has assumed Sarah’s identity and Joe is now in love with her. Desperate to prove her actual identity, the real Sarah rips off her mask, leaving her face just as disfigured as Carmen’s used to be.

As Sarah cries, Carmen tells her that the only she can ever fix her face is by selling the mask to someone else….

Featuring three strong performances and a storyline that’s a bit more nuanced than usual for this show, this is a pretty good episode of Monsters. Interestingly enough, it was directed by actor Tom Noonan, who has played a number of villains over the course of his career, including the memorable killer from Manhunter, in which he co-starred with Kim Greist. (Kevin Geer actually looks enough like Noonan that, at first, I thought Tom Noonan was pulling double duty as both director and star.) Noonan directs the episode like a particularly fast-paced play, emphasizing character and location over easy shocks. Not only do the characters seem real but so does Sarah’s beloved bookstore. The twist at the end is effective, even if it is a bit predictable.

Next week, we finish up season 2 of Monsters!

Late Night Retro Television Review: Baywatch Nights 2.19 “The Eighth Seal”

Posted on November 19, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, Mitch gets possessed!

Episode 2.19 “The Eighth Seal”

(Dir by Jon Cassar, originally aired on April 26th, 1997)

Twice, Mitch saves a young girl named Jenny (Esme Ganz) from jumping off a bridge. When Mitch discovers the Jenny’s adoptive parents don’t seem to care whether she lives or dies, he brings her back to his house and lets her stay the night while he tries to figure out what to do about her.

What Mitch doesn’t know is that Jenny is possessed by a demon named Teddy. When Mitch does discover that Jenny is housing a denizen of the damned, he does the worst possible thing that one can do in that situation. He pulls a Karras and allows the demon to enter him. Now, Mitch is possessed. Can Daimont and Ryan get the demon out of Mitch or will Mitch have to run in front of truck in order to knock Teddy out of him?

Believe it or not, Mitch does the latter. He runs in front of a truck! The truck hits him and sends Mitch falling backwards. Mitch is out cold. While Ryan and Daimont try to revive him, Mitch’s spirit is visited by Stephanie Holden (Alexandra Paul). Though this was Stephanie’s first (and only) appearance on Baywatch Nights, she was a prominent member of the Baywatch ensemble for several seasons. Her character, who was always implied to have feelings for Mitch, was eventually killed off. Stephanie’s spirit appears and yes, she is wearing the red Baywatch swimsuit. And while it’s actually a pretty sweet scene as Stephanie tells Mitch that it’s not his time to die, it’s hard not to smile at the fact that Stephanie is apparently still a lifeguard in the afterlife. It’s like she went to Heaven and said, “Give me the reddest and tightest one-piece that you have.”

Things end happily. Mitch is no longer possessed. Jenny is no longer possessed. Jenny’s adoptive parents are consumed in Hellfire but that’s okay because they sucked. And, for once, the viewer is happy as well because this is actually a pretty good episode of Baywatch Nights. Seriously, you have not lived until you’ve seen David Hasselhoff pretend to be possessed by a demon. Beyond that, though, his reunion with Stephanie was actually pretty poignant, red swimsuit and all. If nothing else, it gave Mitch a chance to say goodbye to Stephanie, which was something he never really got to do in Baywatch.

Speaking of Baywatch, do you think Mitch went to his day job and told all the lifeguards, “Hey, you won’t believe what happened to me this weekend!” Probably not. I don’t know if I’d want to work with someone who had a history of getting possessed by demons. That may just be me, though.

Live Tweet Alert: Watch Bay of Blood With #ScarySocial!

Posted on November 16, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Bay of Blood (1971, dir by Mario Bava, DP: Mario Bava)

Tonight, for #ScarySocial, I will be hosting Mario Bava’s Bay of Blood!

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 and Tubi! 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 2.18 “A Friend To The End”

Posted on November 15, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, it’s two stories for the price of one!

Episode 2.18 “A Friend To The End”

(Dir by David Morse, originally aired on April 17th, 1989)

Before I say anything else about this episode, I should make clear that I’ve been watching Friday the 13th on YouTube. Every episode has been uploaded and 99% of the uploads are clean and clear and easy to follow. Unfortunately, this episode was the exception. The sound quality was terrible. The image was often blurry. I’m not sure why this episode — and none of the other uploaded episodes — was so bad but it was bad enough that I occasionally struggled to follow the plot. That’s not the fault of the show. It’s just that the video that was uploaded to YouTube was really bad. While I think I got the gist of the episode, I should still make clear that I watched it under less than ideal conditions.

This episode actually tells two stories. With Jack out of town, Micki and Ryan are trying to retrieve the Shard of Medusa, a crystal that turns people into statues. DeJager (Donna Goodhand) is the artist who currently owns the shard and who is using it to turn her models into stone. What’s interesting about this story is that, when the episode begins, we join in medias res. Micki and Ryan already know that DeJager has the shard and they’re already making a plan for Micki to go undercover as a model.

Unfortunately, they’re so busy trying to get back the shard that they don’t really have time to look after J.B. (Zachary Bennett), Micki’s young nephew who keeps getting left at the antique store while his newly-divorced mother runs off with her latest boyfriend. (Interestingly, Ryan scornfully asks Micki about “your sister,” but since Micki is Ryan’s cousin, wouldn’t Micki’s sister also be his cousin?) While Micki and Ryan are busy trying to get back the shard, J.B. is breaking into a nearby haunted house and befriending a troubled boy named Ricky (Keram Malicki-Sanchez). What J.B. does not know is that Ricky is actually a living dead boy who is kept alive by a cursed coffin. In order to continue to live, Ricky has to sacrifice people to the coffin. Ricky isn’t happy about this. He just wants a friend. J.B. is willing to be that friend but what will happen when Ricky, desperately in need of a new sacrifice, turns his gaze towards Micki?

One of the strange things about this episode is that, when J.B. tells Micki and Ryan about Ricky, they both assume that he’s just making something up. After everything Micki and Ryan have seen, would they really be so skeptical about J.B. claiming to have met a ghost in a long-abandoned house? The other interesting thing about this episode is that the two storylines didn’t really intersect, beyond the fact that J.B. felt neglected because Micki and Ryan were spending so much time trying to get the shard. At one point, DeJager breaks into the store and briefly grabs J.B. but that’s something that probably would have happened regardless of whether or not J.B. had ever met Ricky.

Did this episode work? I’m hesitant to give a final verdict because of the poor quality of the upload. That said, Keram Malicki-Sanchez gave a good performance as the tragic Ricky and I appreciated how all of the stuff with DeJager almost played out like a good-natured parody of a typical Friday the 13th episode. Bad upload and all, this episode worked for me.

Finally, seeing as how I reviewed St. Elsewhere earlier today, I simply have to note that this episode was directed by Dr. Jack Morrison himself, David Morse.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Monsters 2.22 “The Gift”

Posted on November 13, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, Abe Vigoda and Brad Greenquist star as two criminals who discover that they have an unexpected visitor in the basement of their cabin.

Episode 2.22 “The Gift”

(Dir by Jeffrey Wolf, originally aired on May 20th, 1990)

Two low-life criminals, Sid (Abe Vigoda) and his protege, Kirby (Brad Greenquist), show up at a cabin in the mountains. They have a rich kid named Jeffrey (Zach Overton) with them. They’ve kidnapped Jeffrey from his exclusive private school and they are planning to hold him until they get paid several million dollars.

Wanting to keep the kid comfortable, Sid tells Kirby to look in the basement for blankets. Kirby doesn’t find any blankets but he does a find a mysterious wolfman. Kirby shoots the wolfman twice but the wolfman survives. Kirby then chains up both Jeffrey and the Wolfman in the basement. Kirby thinks that it might be a good idea to forget about the whole kidnapping scheme but Sid is determined to get the money.

In the basement, Jeffrey discovers that the Wolfman can communicate with him through telepathy. The Wolfman introduces himself as being William (physically played by Carlos Lauchu, with a voice provided by John Michael Bolger). William explains that he’s not a monster. Instead, he’s just a man who, centuries ago, was granted magical abilities by an old traveler. Now, William is over 200 years old. He’s nearly immortal but he’s also lonely. Jeffrey is the first person who has been willing to listen to William in a long time.

Jeffrey and William bonding in the basement is undeniably sweet but Sid and Kirby are still holding Jeffrey hostage and, as time passes, it becomes obvious that they’re planning on killing both Jeffrey and his new friend. William explains that there is a way that he can ensure that Jeffrey will survive and that he’ll be able to defeat both Sid and Kirby. But it will involve Jeffrey making a huge sacrifice of his own….

This episode was fairly dull. When it started, I was hoping that the show would at least do a Ransom of Red Chief sort of thing and have Jeffrey turn out to be such a brat that absolutely no one would be willing to pay a cent to get him back. I think that would have been more interesting than what we ended up with, an episode in which Jeffrey awkwardly bonded with a werewolf who could only communicate through telepathy because moving his mouth probably would have made the actor’s mask look even cheaper than it already did. Abe Vigoda and Brad Greenquist were well-cast as the two criminals. Vigoda, in particular, did a good job of portraying Sid’s outwardly calm but still ruthless demeanor. Otherwise, this was a fairly dull episode that didn’t really do much with its potentially intriguing premise.