James B. Douglas | Through the Shattered Lens

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a 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 entire series can be found on YouTube!

This week, Micki is faced with a moral dilemma.

Episode 2.24 “The Shaman’s Apprentice”

(Dir by William Fruet, originally aired on May 29th, 1989)

Micki’s friend, Blair (Isabelle Mejias) is in the hospital. She’s been having serious chest pains and, as Micki puts it, she’s too young to be suffering from them. Blair finds out that she has a sarcoma and the doctors are not giving her much chance to live. Dr. Lamar (James B. Douglas), the arrogant head of surgery at the local hospital, doesn’t seem to really care whether Blair lives or dies. All he cares about is taking care of the wealthy patients who might be moved to donate some of their money to the hospital.

However, Blair has found a reason for hope. There is a Native American doctor named John Whitecloud (Paul Sanchez). He has his own clinic, one that is funded by a rich man who Dr. Lamar said couldn’t be saved. Dr. Lamar hates Whitecloud, largely because Lamar is a racist who views Whitecloud’s “shamanistic” techniques with scorn. However, Whitecloud appears to be capable of saving anyone. Of course, the doctors and the nurses who have failed to treat Whitecloud with respect have a habit of mysteriously dying, usually right before Whitecloud manages to save a terminal patient.

Whitecloud does indeed have an objects that Jack and Ryan are interested in retrieving. It’s not a cursed antique. Instead, it’s a rattle that Whitecloud stole from his grandfather, Spotted Owl (Gordon Tootoosis). Whitecloud is using the rattle to cure his patients but, for every cure, he also has to use it to kill someone else. Whitecloud even uses it to kill Spotted Owl, though Whitecloud seems to feel bad about doing it. When Jack realizes that Whitecloud’s next target is going to be Dr. Lamar, he and Ryan are determined to stop him….

….except, as Micki points out, stopping Whitecloud will mean that her friend Blair will die. Why, Micki wonders, should Lamar get to live while Blair dies? Micki argues that they should at least let Whitecloud cure Blair but Jack gently explains that it doesn’t work that way. Jack says that their job is not to play God.

Long story short: The spirit of Spotted Owl shows up to drag Whitecloud into the afterlife. Jack gives the rattle back to the tribe, despite Ryan feeling that it should be in the vault. (“It’s not ours to take,” Jack explains in that reasonable and reassuring way of his.) Micki is angry and depressed that Blair is probably going to die. Blair stands on a street corner and stares at Whitecloud’s now empty clinic. Roll the end credits!

Wow, that was depressing! But it was really the only way the episode could end and I respect the fact that the show had the courage and the integrity to stay true to itself and end on such a down note. Not many shows would have had the courage to resist coming up with some sudden, miracle solution. This episode had some really cheap looking special effects and some not-so-great acting from some of the guest stars but Chris Wiggins, Robey, and John D. LeMay were as strong as always. This episode was especially an effective showcase for Chris Wiggins, who played Jack with just the right amount of weary gravitas. This was a depressing episode but it was a good one.

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 1987 to 1990. The show can be found on YouTube!

This week, Micki and Ryan visit the country and battle a killer scarecrow! Yikes!

Episode 1.11 “Scarecrow”

(Dir by William Fruet, originally aired on February 1st, 1988)

While Jack is off in Europe searching for a cursed antique, Micki and Ryan head into the country. They’ve recently received a letter from someone requesting that they come to a small rural town and collect the scarecrow that was bought from their shop years ago.

Seriously, do people usually buy scarecrows from antique shops? I mean, I always thought that half the fun of having a scarecrow was getting to build it yourself. And even if you didn’t want to build your own scarecrow, I imagine that you would probably go to a country store to buy one as opposed to heading into the city and going to an antique store.

No matter, though. Even if it doesn’t make much sense to buy a scarecrow from an antique store, the scarecrow is undeniably scary. Of course, when Micki and Ryan arrive in the town, the farmer who bought the scarecrow lies and says that someone set it on fire three years ago. However, the viewer knows that the scarecrow not only still exists but that it comes to life at night and kills people with a scythe! Every harvest, the scarecrow beheads three people and, as a result, the owner of the scarecrow has a good crop while everyone else in the town is struggling to make ends meet.

The viewer also knows that the villain of the story is Marge Lonacre (Patricia Phillips), the rather severe-looking owner of the town’s only inn. Even if the episode didn’t show us Marge activating the scarecrow early on, it would be easy to guess that she is the villain because everything about Marge — from the way she dresses to the way she glares at people to the abrupt way that she speaks — screams villainy. Oddly enough, it takes Micki and Ryan forever to figure out that Marge is the villain, even though they’re staying in Marge’s inn and Micki witnesses the scarecrow depositing a dead body on Marge’s front porch. In fact, for some reason, Micki gets into her head that the helpful sheriff (Steve Pernie) is the killer and she even locks him in a closet so that he can’t keep her from running back to the inn. Ryan and Micki are both likable and Micki’s fashion sense is to die for but, without Jack around to guide them, neither of them is a particularly effective investigator.

While searching for the scarecrow, Ryan bonds with the son of one of the scarecrow’s victims, which leads to some nicely-acted moments from John D. LeMay. I mention this because Friday the 13th, much like Nightmare Café, was always at its best when it explored the humanity of its lead characters. For all of the violence that Micki and Ryan have witnessed, they’re still trying to make the world a better and nicer place and it’s hard not to admire that.

This was an effective episode, one of that was full of creepy atmosphere and which featured one truly scary scarecrow. I think even Jason Voorhees would have avoided this country town!