Kendall Carly Browne | 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!

Mimes are evil!

Episode 2.7 “Silence Is Golden”

(Dir by Charles Braverman, originally aired on November 19th, 1989)

“Here’s what on my mind tonight!” Freddy Krueger tells us as this episode starts.

Our first story is about radio DJ Rick Rake (Jeff Yagher), who has a mullet, a leather jacket, and a bad attitude. “I say what I think and I think what I say,” Rick says. When he’s visiting the park with his wife, Sheila (Sherry Hursey), a listener attempts to pick a fight with Rick. Rick throws a punch and accidentally hits a mime (Abie Selznick).

Eh, who cares? We all hate mimes, right?

Unfortunately, The mime carries a silent grudge and soon, Rick is haunted by visions of the mime everywhere. When Sheila is sucked into the ground and buried alive, the police say it was a sinkhole but Rick knows that it was the mime. Rick goes on the radio and announces that all mimes should be hunted down and killed. Rick sees the mime in the studio and, going after him, ends up taking a literal rake to the throat. Rick survives but he can no longer speak …. JUST LIKE A MIME!

In the second story, we discover that the mime is named Kip and he’s also a professional burglar. He steals to keep his girlfriend (Kim Morgan Greene) happy but he’s haunted by nightmares involving mistakes and death. When he learns that the last two people he robbed have turned up dead, Kip worries that he’s being set up. And, of course, he is.

At the end of the episode, Freddy reminds us that he’s dead so he can never be a mime or a DJ. Sorry, Freddy. You kind of brought it on yourself, though.

The first story actually worked fairly well, just because mimes are creepy. The second story was basically a noir with nightmares. I think it might have worked a bit better if Kip had just been an ordinary guy as opposed to a mime. The show never really explained if he was the same mime who killed Sheila and silenced Rick or was he just another mime in Springwood.

How many mimes are there in that town? No wonder Freddy went crazy.

1980’s Alligator begins in 1968. While on vacation in Florida, a teenage girl named Marisa Kendall purchases a baby alligator named Ramon. When she returns home to Chicago, her jerk of a father flushes Ramon down the toilet.

12 years pass. Marisa (Robin Riker) becomes a herpetologist. As for Ramon, he actually survives being flushed down the toilet and thrives in the sewer. He eats the carcasses of animals that had been a part of an experiment involving a growth serum. The serum had the desired effect of making the animals bigger but it also increased their metabolism to the extent that they became aggressive and had to eat constantly. Evil industrialist Slade (Dean Jagger) is convinced that, by tossing the carcasses in the sewer, he’s ensured that no one will ever find out about the experiments. Instead, he’s turned Ramon into a giant alligator who is always hungry. Soon, the super-intelligent alligator is ambushing and eating sewer workers.

Burned-out Detective Dave Madison (Robert Forster) teams up with Marisa to solve the mystery of why so many body parts are turning up in the sewers. It’s not easy. No one wants to admit that there might be a giant alligator living under the city. Everyone wants to believe that’s just an urban legend. But, after a tabloid reporter (Bart Braverman) manages to snap a few photographs of Ramon before being devoured, the police are forced to deal with the fact that they’ve got an alligator on their hands. As Slade continues to try to cover up his involvement, big game hunter Colonel Brock (Henry Silva) comes to town and announces that he will be capturing the alligator.

Directed by Lewis Teague and written by John Sayles, Alligator is a dark comedy disguised as a horror film. While numerous people get eaten and the film ends on a properly ominous note, Alligator is obviously not meant to be taken seriously. The cast is full of good actors who send up their own images. That’s especially true in the case of Henry Silva, who appears to be having a blast as the hyper macho Colonel Brock. Robert Forster, meanwhile, delivers his lines with a self-aware weariness that seems a bit more appropriate for a noir hero than a film about a detective investigating a giant alligator. One reason why the film works is because Forster, Silva, and the rest of the cast understood exactly what type of film they were appearing in and they delivered their overheated lines with just enough wit to let the viewer know that the film was in on the joke. The big and somewhat stiff-looking alligator may not look entirely real and it may move somewhat awkwardly but ultimately, it’s the most likable character in the movie. It just wants to relax in the sewers but, every few minutes, someone else is bugging him.

When first released, Alligator struggled at the box office but it has since gone on to become a cult favorite. Quentin Tarantino is a self-described fan and he had said he was inspired to cast Robert Forster as Max Cherry in Jackie Brown after seeing him as Dave Madison in this film. That’s not bad for a movie about a giant alligator!