Karen Hensel | 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, a future Oscar winner shows up in Springwood.

Episode 1.14 “Black Tickets”

(Dir by George Kaczender, originally aired on February 5th, 1989)

Brad Pitt appears in this week’s episode, playing Rick. Rick is a rebellious teenager who elopes with his girlfriend, Miranda (Kerry Wall). Even on a low-budget show like this, Pitt’s screen presence was undeniable. From the minute he shows up onscreen, it’s impossible to look away from him. He had that movie star charisma from the start. It’s a shame that the episode itself isn’t that good.

It’s a typical Freddy’s Nightmares scenario. The first 20 minutes feature Rick having an extended dream sequence after he gets hit by a car. Rick apparently dreams about staying at a creepy hotel with Miranda and then being forced to kill two cops that show up and attempt to arrest him. But, at the end of the story, he sees himself lying in the middle of the road and realizes that everything that has happened since he got hit by the car has only been happening in his head.

The second 20 minutes features Miranda married to Rick. Rick has no settled down but Miranda is worried that she might be pregnant. While she waits for the results of her pregnancy test, she sees herself trapped in the house as a mother while Rick goes from being a rebel to being a police officer. Finally, Miranda snaps out of her dream and discovers that she’s not pregnant. She jumps for joy on her bed but then she slips, hits her head, and ends up with the mind of a child.

This was a pretty bland episode, even with Brad Pitt in the cast. The main problem was that it was all so predictable. The dreams were obviously dreams so there wasn’t really any suspense or tension while they were playing out. Freddy’s Nightmares used the “Its all just a dream” format so often that, by this point in the first season, it had gotten fairly boring. That was certainly the case here.

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, Monsters gives us the story of several Arthurs. Unfortunately, it’s not a very good story.

Episode 2.8 “The Demons”

(Dir by Scott Alexander, originally aired on November 19th, 1989)

On an alien planet, an alchemist named Arturus (Richard Moll) is desperate to get more of something that he calls “Drast.” He decides that the best way to do this would be to summon a demon and demand that the demon give the Drast to him. However, when Arturus tries to cast the spell, he makes a mistake and he ends up summoning a human insurance agent named Arthur (Jeff Silverman). It takes a while but Arthur eventually figures out that he is Arturus’s human equivalent and that “Drast” is actually gold. Arthur lies and tells Arturus that he has to go back to Earth to get the Drast.

Once he returns to Earth, Arthur decides to cast his own spell and summon a demon to help him break free from Arturus. Since Arthur uses the same spell the Arturus used, he makes the same mistake and he ends up summoning Arturo (Eddie Deezen), a nerdy, red-skinned, dog-faced creature from another dimension who, it turns out, is just as obsessed with insurance as Arthur is. Arthur sends Arturo to take care of Arturus, which Arturo does. For some reason, Arturo taking care of Arturus largely takes place off-screen. Having the main villain thwarted off-screen really does leave one wondering just what exactly the point of the story was in the first place.

Most of the previous episodes of Monsters had elements of humor to them. This is the first episode to actually be a straight-out comedy and it doesn’t work at all. Richard Moll and especially Eddie Deezen do manage to be amusing but the majority of the episode is centered around Jeff Silverman’s Arthur. Silverman spends a lot of time frantically running around his house and yelling. It gets to be a bit annoying. The episode is so determined to convince you that it’s hysterically funny that it ends up beating the audience over the head with every punchline and basically begging the viewer to laugh. There’s a desperation to the show’s humor and it quickly wears out its welcome. Even potentially interesting ideas — like both Arturus and Arthur screwing up the same spell in the same way — ultimately fall flat. Watching this episode, I was very much aware of the feeling of wanting to like what I was seeing considerably more than I actually did.

As I mentioned earlier, Eddie Deezen is really the only consistently funny thing about this episode. The combination of his nerdiness and his fearsome appearance made me laugh more than I was expecting. Sadly, I know Eddie Deezen has recently had to deal with some pretty serious health issues. I’m hoping the best for him.

Next week’s episode will hopefully be a bit better.