Tag Archives: Kort Falkenberg III

Late Night Retro Television Review: Freddy’s Nightmares 1.14 “Black Tickets”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

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.

Music Video of the Day: St. Elmo’s Fire (Man in Motion) by John Parr (1986, directed by Kort Falkenberg III)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Though the song was specifically written for the film, St. Elmo’s Fire, Man in Motion was actually inspired by a news report that singer John Parr and composer David Foster saw about Rick Hansen, a paralyzed Canadian athlete was who going around the world in his wheelchair and rising money and awareness for spinal injury charities.

The Canadian version of this video features footage of Rick Hansen.  However, the American version is devoted to promoting the film that the song was written for.  The cast of St. Elmo’s Fire looks through the windows at the burned out set of the St. Elmo’s Bar.  Because Parr only had a limited availability before he had to return to the UK, this video was shot in one night.

Enjoy!

Music Video Of the Day: Missing You by John Waite (1984, directed by Kort Falkenberg III)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

“The biggest thing I remember about ‘Missing You’ is that the night before I went down to Let It Rock, which was a clothes store on Melrose Avenue.  I bought a Johnson suit, this black two-piece suit from London that was a beautiful suit. Tiny. I was very thin at the time. And then I went and had all my hair shaved off. I thought, ‘If I’m going to do this, I’m going to go in whole hog, you know. I’m just going to do it flat out European.’

I showed up with a black suit and a crew cut, and it worked. I do everything on instinct, basically, and half of the time it’s a bullseye.”

— John Waite on the music video for Missing You

This video was shot in downtown Los Angeles, near Pershing Square and its popularity on MTV helped to push the song to the top of the US charts.  The song was inspired by Waite’s feelings while he was working and away from his wife.  Myself, I’ll always think about it as being the song playing on the radio while I was driving a white Cadillac across the beach in Vice City.  Unfortunately, I got so into the song that I drove the car straight into the ocean.  That was when I discovered that Tommy Vercetti couldn’t swim.

Enjoy!