Jill Andre | Through the Shattered Lens

Welcome to 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 St. Elsewhere, a medical show which ran on NBC from 1982 to 1988. The show can be found on Hulu and, for purchase, on Prime!

Another day, another death in Boston.

Episode 1.17 “Brothers”

(Dir by Mark Tinker, originally aired on March 15th, 1983)

I swear, St. Eligius must have the worst security guards in Boston.

In this episode, Walter Schaefer (Pat Hingle), a blue collar fisherman, manages to smuggle a freaking hunting rifle into the hospital so that he can use it to kill his brother, Arthur (Richard Hamilton). Arthur was dying of cancer and didn’t have much time left. Walter had previously begged Dr. Westphall to cease giving Arthur chemotherapy and to just let his misery come to an end. Westphall declined to do so so Walter killed his brother. The episode was designed to make the viewer feel that Walter had no choice but …. eh, I don’t know. I’m not a fan of euthanasia and I find the enthusiasm for it in television and film to be a bit icky. This episode’s treatment of the issue was about as heavy-handed as they come. And seriously, couldn’t Walter have just smothered Arthur with a pillow or something? Shooting a man is dramatic but now I’m wondering about who had to clean up the room afterwards. Plus. Arthur was hooked up to a bunch of medical equipment that was probably ruined as well.

(I don’t know, it’s hard for me to judge this storyline. My Dad died in hospice care and I had to sign a DNR order before he could start it. The aggressiveness that those people showed in demanding that I sign the order still haunts me.)

On a lighter note, Ehrlich managed to get another date with Shirley, despite the fact that their previous date ended with Ehrlich drunk and making a fool of himself. Fiscus recommended a nice romantic restaurant. Of course, when Ehrlich couldn’t make the date due to his work as a doctor, Fiscus took Shirley to the restaurant. The end result is that Shirley has a crush on Fiscus and Fiscus needs to find a new place to stay because Ehrlich responded by kicking him out of the apartment.

Speaking of relationships, Dr. White is such a sleaze! He’s separated from his wife so he’s now involved with a nurse. While talking to that nurse on the phone, White was flirting with another nurse. But then, Dr. White happened to see his wife out with another man and decided he had the right to get all jealous. Ugh! What a jerk!

Finally, the episode ended with Nurse Rosenthal on the operating table, about to undergo a mastectomy. This was the subplot that actually got to me, not all of the stuff about Walter murdering his brother. Christina Pickles, who has been such a steady presence during the first season, gave a wonderful performance as Rosenthal tried to keep it together as the day of her surgery approached. This storyline brought tears to my eyes and that’s really all I have to say about it.

This was an uneven episode. The stuff with the brothers didn’t do much for me but, when the episode just focused on the doctors and the nurses, it shined.

In 1993 horror fans were greeted with the release of Return of the Living Dead 3. This third film in the Return of the Living Dead series produced by John Russo ends up being a very good zombie movie and actually has genuine horror that the second film lacked. What ROTLDIII, its writers and directors seem to have left behind was the comedy side of the series which made them cult-classics to begin with.

Taking up directing duty this time around was genre-veteran Brian Yuzna (Beyond Re-Animator) who films this third entry purely on a horror standpoint. This film is serious horror from start to finish. This time around the military is still trying to find a way to use 2-4-5 Trioxin as a way to create zombie soldiers, but ones that could be easily controlled by them. To say that this project hasn’t met with success is an understatement. But it’s the story of the son of the military project director and his girlfriend who dominate the film’s plot. As portrayed by J. Trevor Edmond and Melinda Clarke, these two star-crossed lovers find themselves enmeshed with the dark secret of the project being held in secret. Son soon uses the Trioxin gas to try and ressurect his girlfriend who gets killed early on during an accident. What he gets instead is an undead girlfriend whose hunger for live brains (for some reason the zombies in this ROTLD sequel also feed on other bodily parts) can only be controlled when she causes herself bodily pain through extreme forms of piercing. The rest of the film deals with the father trying to save his son not just from himself and his undead girlfriend but from the hordes of escaped zombies in the facility.

The horror in the film was actually pretty good and this was helped a lot by the gore effects work which surpasses anything the first two films in the series had. The acting was decent enough with Melinda Clarke as the zombified girlfriend putting on a sexy, albeit creepy performance. If it wasn’t for the brain and flesh-eating she sure would’ve made for quite a poster girl for teenage boys.

In the end, Return of the Living Dead 3 continues the series admirably. Despite not having much humor and comedy in the film, this third film in the series more than makes up for it with high levels of gore and a definite sense of horror the first two didn’t much have not to mention a bit of romance which seemed to work.