Retro Television Review: St. Elsewhere 3.14 “Whistle, Wyler Works”

Posted on April 3, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

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 Daily Motion.

This week, we learn why almost all of Morrison’s patients seem to die.

Episode 3.14 “Whistle, Wyler Works”

(Dir by David Anspaugh, originally aired on January 2nd, 1985)

It’s another busy day at St. Eligius.

Having finally found a kidney donor, Dr. Westphall performs the transplant. Tshalla (Larry B. Scott) gets a new kidney but Dr. Wyler is shaken to discover that, while he’s been working in Africa, surgical techniques in America have progressed to the point that Wyler now feels undertrained.
Having managed to alienate even the super patient Dr. Morrison, Mrs. Hufnagle is now working her “charm” on Bobby Caldwell. Caldwell tells Hufnagle that she doesn’t really need plastic surgery but Hufnagle seems to really want it.
Victor freaks out when he’s not included to assist in Dr. Craig’s latest big surgery. A chance meeting with Ellen Craig leads to Victor confessing that his father died when he was young and that he’s always been looking for a new father figure.
Ellen snaps at Mark for not understand how much Victor looks up at him. Yay! I always like it when Ellen stands up to Mark. That Bonnie Bartlett and William Daniels were (and are) married in real life always adds an extra snap to these scenes.
Elliott appears to have a crush on one of Nurse Rosenthal’s daughters. There’s no way that’s going to end well.
Dr. Chandler returns from vacation (in reality, Denzel Washington was probably busy filming a movie) and deals with a patient (Jay Tarses) who is also a bigamist.
When the representative of a fly-by night medical school approaches Luther and tries to get him to enroll, Auschlander kicks the smarmy representative out of the hospital. Before the rep leaves, he mentions that St. Eligius already has at least one of his school’s graduates on staff.
Yep, it’s Jack Morrison.

It’s already been established that Jack got his medical degree from a Mexican medical school. In this episode, it’s further established that, whereas most doctors spends years in medical school, Jack graduated after six months. Jack explains that he still passed all of the tests that he was required to take but that he was also given credit for his life experience of working as a pharmaceutical rep.

Dr. Westphall is not amused. If someone could learn how to be a doctor that quickly, Westphall says, wouldn’t we all being doing it? Westphall points out that he put his reputation on the line to keep Jack around as a second-year resident. Westphall also says that this explains why Jack always seems to be misdiagnosing his patients and …. well, I think Westphall has a point!

This was not a bad episode, though I’m a bit weary of this Dr. Wyler storyline. Wyler doesn’t do much other than feel sorry for himself. I’m far more interested to see where things will be going with both Victor and Jack.

Retro Television Review: St. Elsewhere 3.13 “Dr. Wyler, I Presume”

Posted on March 27, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, a famous doctor comes to St. Eligius.

Episode 3.13 “Dr. Wyler, I Presume”

(Dir by Mark Tinker, originally aired on December 19th, 1984)

This week’s episode opens in the hospital gift shop. Dr. Craig is excited because a Nobel Prize-winning surgeon, Dr. George Wyler (David Wayne), is traveling from Africa to St. Eligius. Wyler is bring along a man who needs a kidney transplant. They are hoping to find a donor in Boston.

Dr. Auschlander, who is an old friend of Wyler’s, is a bit more nervous. Craig tells him not to worry so much and then grabs a carnation that he puts on Auschlander’s lapel.
As Auschlander starts to leave the gift shop, Craig says, “Don’t forget to pay for that.”

It’s a brilliant opening for a pretty good episode of St. Elsewhere. It’s always interesting to see the usually arrogant Dr. Craig in fanboy mode and one gets the feeling that, if he’s impressed by Dr. Wyler, than Wyler really must be as brilliant as everyone says.
And maybe he is! It’s hard to say for sure. When Wyler arrives at the hospital, he’s avuncular and obviously intelligent but we really don’t learn much about him, beyond the fact that he’s an old friend of Auschlander’s. The rest of Wyler’s scenes feature him and Auschlander sitting around and talking about how they’re both getting older. It’s not boring, largely due to the performances of Norman Lloyd and David Wayne. But, after all of the build-up, it’s a bit anti-climatic. That said, according to the imdb, Dr. Wyler appeared in a total of three episodes so I imagine things will develop.

While this is going on, Nurse Rosenthal is having a mid-life crisis. Her 45th birthday is coming up and she doesn’t want to celebrate it. She’s not amused when the nurses get her a stripper. Usually, I would have sympathy for a character who hates the idea of getting older but I’m a little bit tired of Nurse Rosenthal and her poor-me attitude. I get that she’s upset that her adulterous affair hasn’t been going well but maybe she should take that as a sign to stop sleeping with married men.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Hufnagle, the patient that no one likes, continues to get on everyone’s nerves. She’s even managed to alienate Elliott! I actually feel bad for Mrs. Hufnagle. Yes, she complains a lot but being in a hospital is a scary thing. I get the feeling that the doctors and nurses getting annoyed with her is probably the most realistic part of the series. Dr. Morrison is now Hufnagle’s doctor and that worries me. Morrison’s stories always end in the most depressing way possible.

At the tv station, Victor is told that his medical segments are not popular with viewers and that he needs to make being sick sound more pleasant than it is. Victor records an upbeat segment about how wonderful it is to go the hospital.

At the hospital, Victor assists Dr. Craig in removing an live exploding bullet from a woman who was shot in a robbery. Victor worries that the bullet could explode as he removes it and end his medical career. Fortunately, the operation is successful but Craig still tells Ehrlich that he’s a disgrace.

Ouch!

Hey, this was a really good episode. It was well-acted. It wasn’t too depressing. Dr. Craig got to snap at a lot of people. The best episodes always feature Dr. Craig going off on someone. St. Eligius may not be the best hospital but, this week, it was the most entertaining.

Home Invasion: Twice Dead (1988, directed by Bert Dragin)

Posted on October 14, 2019 by Jedadiah Leland

Twice Dead is twice dumb but also twice the fun.

The fine and upstanding Cates family have recently inherited a mansion and are eager to move in. The only problem is that the mansion is already inhabited! Not only has a gang of street punks declared that the mansion belongs to them but the house is also home to the ghost of Tyler Walker (Jonathan Chapin). A great actor, Tyler committed suicide after being swindled out of his possessions by the love of his life, Myrna. After the Cates family plays an elaborate practical joke on the street gang (and the joke simply has to be seen to believed), the gang declares that they will take revenge. Because the Cates’s daughter, Robin (Jill Whitlow), is dead ringer for Myrna, Tyler’s ghost decides to help take out the street punks. Death by shotgun, dirt bike, and dumb waiter follows.

The two Cates children are played by Jill Whitlow and Tom Bresnahan. Whitlow and Bresnahan ended up dating after they finished shooting the film and their obvious chemistry brings an apparently unintended subtext to all of their sibling interactions in Twice Dead. Jill Whitlow also appeared in Night of the Creeps and, with her ability to be both sexy and wholesome at the same time, was one of the first crushes of many an 80s and 90s child.

A mix between The Amityville Horror and Death Wish 3, Twice Dead was one of the many horror films to come out of Roger Corman’s Concorde Pictures in the 80s. It’s dumb but it has both Jill Whitlow and enough of a sense of humor to be entertaining. The street punks, who all have names like Crip, Silk, Stony, and Candy, are all annoying so you don’t mind seeing them get killed in various ways. Todd Bridges proves that the world don’t move to the beat of just one drum by playing a Petie, a friendly guy who likes to hang out at the library, while the amazing Charlie Spradling, who appeared in several films like this back in the day, plays a member of the gang. Sadly, neither one of them comes to a good end.

Horror Film Review: Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (dir by Dominique Othenin-Girard)

Posted on October 27, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Oh … dammit.

Hi everyone! We are currently in the process of our annual horrorthon here at the Shattered Lens so I thought it would be a good idea if me and some of my fellow writers reviewed all of the Halloween films! Arleigh already reviewed the original Halloween back in 2010 and I took a look at the first sequel in 2012. So, it just made perfect sense to me that we go ahead and take a look at the rest of the films in the series!

Yesterday, Case reviewed Halloween 4 and, later, he’ll be taking a look at Resurrection and H20. Jedadiah Leland is taking look at Halloween 6 tomorrow. So, that leaves me with … *sigh* Halloween 5.

BLEH!

Before we dive into the crapfest that was Halloween 5, let’s take a look at the trailer! It’ll be fun!

The trailer’s actually fairly effective. I have to wonder how many people, way back in 1989, were fooled into seeing this film as a result of this trailer? I imagine probably more than who are willing to admit it. Paying money to see Halloween 5 doesn’t seem like something anyone would want to brag about.

Halloween 5 is the one that has the dumb cops. Now, I know that every Halloween film seems to feature at least a few dumb cops but the ones in Halloween 5 are really dumb. And they get their own theme music! That’s right — whenever these two dumb cops show up on screen, comedic circus music plays. Needless to say, it’s woefully out of place in a horror movie. I read that this was apparently meant to be an homage to the dumb cops from the original Last House On the Left. This despite the fact that … EVERYONE HATED THE DUMB COPS IN LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT!!! Even Wes Craven later said that the dumb cops were a mistake! If you’re going to rip off (or pay homage) to another movie, don’t pay homage to the part that sucked!

Anyway, you may remember that Halloween 4 ended with Jamie (Danielle Harris) attacking her mother and holding a knife. Uh-oh, looks like Jamie’s going to be a murderer! Well, no — that would have been too interesting. Halloween 5 finds Jamie being committed to a mental hospital for a year while Michael Myers (Don Shanks) is in a coma. Michael eventually comes out of his coma and starts stalking Jamie all over again.

Once again, Dr. Loomis (a depressingly frail Donald Pleasence) is one of the few people who realizes that Michael is still alive and once again, nobody is willing to listen to him. Here’s the thing: Dr. Loomis may be kinda crazy and yes, all the scars are kinda disturbing but he’s been right every single freaking time in the past. I understand that the people of Haddonfield are kind of in denial about Michael but this is just getting ridiculous.

Rachel Carrathurs (Ellie Cornell) returns for this movie but she gets killed early on. Apparently, she was killed so that the audience would know that anyone could be killed and that nobody was safe but Rachel was such a strong character and Ellie Cornell did such a good job playing her in the previous film that you really feel her absence in Halloween 5. Her death leaves a void that the film fails to adequately fill. Add to that, if you insist on killing a kickass character like Rachel, at least give her a memorable death scene. Don’t just have her blithely wandering around the house half-naked until she suddenly gets stabbed, as if she was just some generic slasher victim and not the lead of the previous movie.

With Rachel dead, it now falls to her amazingly annoying best friend, Tina (Wendy Kaplan), to serve as Jamie’s protector. Tina is hyperactive and talkative and quirky and blah blah blah. Basically, she’s like that person who is really annoying but since you’ve known her since the third grade, you feel obligated to hang out with her.

It all leads to another big Halloween party and few rather bloodless deaths. It’s all pretty boring, to be honest. There is one good scene where Michael chases Jamie in a car (the headlights cutting through the darkness create a wonderfully eerie effect) but, otherwise, it’s depressingly generic.

In the end, Michael is captured and put in a jail cell. Fortunately, a mysterious man in black shows up and breaks him out. Gee, I wonder what that’s about?

Halloween 5 is undoubtedly the worst of the Halloween films.

Bleh!