John Lafia | 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 Freddy’s Nightmares, a horror anthology show which ran in syndication from 1988 to 1990. The entire series can be found on Tubi!

This week, dreams continue to come true in Springwood, Ohio. Freddy continues to show up in very short host segments because I guess he doesn’t have anything better to do. And I continue to find ways to pad out my reviews for a show that there’s really not much to be said about. It happens. Some shows are interesting and take chances and other shows just recycle the same thing over and over again. Anyway, let’s get to it….

Episode 1.17 “Love Stinks”

(Dir by John Lafia, originally aired on February 26th, 1989)

Adam (John Washington) is a high school jock who has a chance to join the White Sox and who has a girlfriend named Laura (Tamara Glyn). When his parents go out of town, Adam throws a house party. The party goes wrong when he finds himself unable to say the words “I love you,” to Laura. Laura leaves him and Adam has a one-night stand with Loni (Susanna Savee). Soon, Adam finds himself drifting in-and-out of a dream state. He sees Laura chopping him up with meat cleaver. He sees his parents come home and he notices that his father is missing a finger. Loni ruins his interview with the baseball scout. It’s all because Adam can’t say “I love you,” but suddenly, Adam wakes up in bed and hears the party still going on downstairs and realizes it was all a dream. He runs downstairs and grabs Laura and says, “I love you!” Except, Laura now looks like Loni. And when his parents show up and say they brought someone to meet him, it turns out to be Loni except Loni now looks like Laura.

Meanwhile, Adam’s slacker friend Max (Georg Olden) gets a job at Mr. Cheesy Pizza. He’s working for his hated uncle, Ralph (Jeffery Combs). When Max’s girlfriend disappears, Max is horrified to discover that she’s become a part of the special sauce that Ralph uses to make the pizza’s so memorable. Don’t worry, it’s all just a dream. Except, in the waking world, the pizza oven explodes and kills Ralph. Max apparently decides to take a lesson from his dream and makes tasty use of Ralph’s remains.

By the admittedly low standards of Freddy’s Nightmares, this episode wasn’t that bad. Though the first story was incoherent, it still captured the feeling of being scared of commitment. The second story was predictable but at least it featured Jeffrey Combs doing his sociopathic nerd thing. This episode held my interest. That said, almost every episode pretty much has the exact same “It was just a dream” plot twist. At this point, it’s no longer a shock when someone suddenly opens their eyes and breathes a sigh of relief. Even Freddy seems kind of bored with it all.

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, on Monsters, an elderly man tries to make a deal with Death. Because if there’s anyone you can trust to honor a verbal agreement, it’s the Grim Reaper.

Episode 2.9 “Reaper”

(Dir by John Lafia, originally aired on November 26th, 1989)

Robert Ross (George D. Wallace) is a bitter old man who is living out his final days in a retirement home. Not even the sight of one of his neighbors celebrating her 103rd birthday can cheer up the angry Robert. However, things look up for Robert when he meets a new nurse, an incurable optimist named Sheila (Barbara Billingsley). Robert falls in love with her and Sheila seems to be falling in love with Robert as well.

What a terrible time for Dr. Morton (Curt Lowens) to show up in the middle of the night! Now, it should be understood that Dr. Morton is not actually a doctor nor is he human. Instead, he’s the Grim Reaper and he’s come to collect Robert’s life. Robert begs for a few more years and offers to do anything to live. The Grim Reaper makes a deal with Robert. If Robert kills three people, the Reaper will allow him to live. The requirement is that Robert has to personally kill each person and that he has to kill when the Reaper tells him to. At the same time, Robert can pick his victims. The Reaper is not particular about who he takes away with him.

Robert agrees and soon discovers that murder isn’t as difficult as he thought. After the first two murders, Robert is able to rise from his wheelchair and he starts to move around with a spring in his step. He’s ready to ask Sheila to marry him but then he spots Dr. Morton in the nursing home. Dr. Morton explains that it is Sheila’s time, unless Robert can send him a third life. Robert agrees but it turns out that he’s not the only one at the nursing home who has made a deal with the Grim Reaper. Afterall, how else do you think that woman has lived to be a 103?

Especially when compared to last week’s disappointing episode, Reaper is superior episode of Monsters. Along with telling an interesting story (and, for once, this is an episode that feels neither rushed nor padded for length), this episode featured strong performances from Wallace, Billingsley, and Lowens and a memorable villain in the form of the skull-faced Grim Reaper. Director John Lafia does a good job of creating and maintaining a properly ominous and creepy atmosphere. The image of the Grim Reaper standing in the dark hallway of the nursing home is genuinely unsettling. This was a good and effective episode that ended with a properly macabre twist.