Linda Griffiths | Through the Shattered Lens

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a new feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Fridays, I will be reviewing Friday the 13th: The Series, a show which ran in syndication from 1987 to 1990. The show can be found on YouTube!

This week, Oscar will haunt your nightmares….

Episode 2.8 “Read My Lips”

(Dir by Francis Delia, originally aired on November 21st, 1988)

When you watch as much horror as I do, you automatically assume that anyone who is a ventriloquist is going to have an unhealthy relationship with their dummy. Sometimes, the dummy is alive. Sometimes, the dummy is possessed. Sometimes, the dummy is just a dummy but the ventriloquist has decided that it’s alive and urging him to kill. (For some reason, evil ventriloquists are always male.) I’ve seen a lot of creepy ventriloquist dummies but nothing quite compared me for Oscar….

AGCK! I mean …. LOOK AT THAT THING!

Oscar is at the center of this week’s episode of Friday the 13th. Oscar is wearing a boutonniere that once belonged to the noted ventriloquist, Adolf Hitler. The boutonniere not only brings Oscar to foul-mouthed life but it also inspires whoever owns Oscar to commit countless murders. When we first see Oscar, he is owned by Edgar Van Horne (played by a youngish Billy Drago). After Edgar attempts to break his bond with Oscar, Oscar drives Edgar crazy and then invites another ventriloquist, Travis Plunkett (John Byner), to be his owner. Things don’t turn out well for Travis either.

Sadly, Jack is not in this episode. With its emphasis on desperate nightclub performers and Oscar’s corny sense of humor, it’s hard not to feel that this storyline would have been right up Jack’s alley. Instead, it’s left to Micki and Ryan to deal with Oscar and the ventriloquists. Micki’s best friend from high school, Gabriella Montrose (Linda Griffiths), is planning on marrying Edgar but, needless to say, that all goes out the window once Edgar loses his mind and end up in a mental hospital. For the most part, Micki and Ryan are largely bystanders in this episode. All of the action revolves around Oscar and his unfortunate owners.

Billy Drago gives a wonderful performance as Edgar, making him both frightening and, in the end, surprisingly sympathetic. Edgar is desperate to escape the clutches of Oscar but, in the end, it turns out that he’s grown addicted to performing with Oscar and the attempt to quit cold turkey leads to him losing his mind. (Many episodes of Friday the 13th feature storylines that felt as if they were meant to be a metaphor for drug addiction and that’s certainly the case here.) John Byner plays his role a bit more broadly than Drago but still, it’s hard not to feel bad for Travis as he comes to realize that he’s in over his head with Oscar.

This was an effectively creepy episode, even if it did owe an obvious debt to the 1978 film Magic. Oscar makes for a memorable monster. Hopefully, he’ll never be seen again.

Aram Fingal (Raul Julia) is a computer technician in the future who is caught watching Casablanca at work. The CEO of Novicorp (Donald Moore) is the only person allowed to watch old movies so he decrees that Aram be “droppled,” which is supposed to give Aram a new outlook on life. Aram’s mind is taken out his body and transferred into the body of a baboon. At first, Fingal enjoys being a baboon but then he nearly gets killed by an elephant and he decides that it’s time to return to his body. Unfortunately, his body has been misplaced.

Instead of just leaving Aram’s mind inside of the baboon, Novicorp decides to save his mind in a computer mainframe where Aram discovers how to create his own world, which he patterns after Casablanca. (Raul Julia even takes on a second role, playing the virtual world’s version of Humphrey Bogart.) Watching all of this is a computer technician named Apollonia (Linda Griffiths), who has been assigned to keep an eye on Aram until his body is found. Apollonia falls in a love with Aram but unfortunately, his mind will cease to exist unless it is quickly reunited with his corporeal form.

Originally produced for PBS, Overdrawn At The Memory Bank is best-known for being featured on an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. You can watch it in its original form on YouTube but I don’t recommend it. When I first saw it MST 3K, I assumed that the film seemed incoherent because Mike and the Bots were talking over most of the action. When I watched the movie without their commentary, I discovered that it was even more confusing without them talking over the action. The movie seems to take place in the future and it’s insinuated that Novicorp is in charge of the government but then Novicorp’s share prices start to crash when it’s revealed that Aram’s body has been lost and that seems like that’s something that an all-powerful corporation could have avoided. Aram is punished by being put in the body of a baboon but I’m not sure why spending a few hours as a baboon would make Aram no longer want to watch Casablanca. At the same time that Novicorp is trying to find Aram’s body, their agents are invading Aram’s virtual world and trying to destroy his mind which seems counterproductive. Along with featuring a plot that’s impossible to follow, the other problem with Overdrawn at the Memory Bank is that it’s just so damn disillusioning. Raul Julia was a great actor but, judging from this film, he just wasn’t very skilled when it came to imitating Humphrey Bogart. Overdrawn At The Memory Bank is a mix of 1984, The Matrix, and Casablanca and that sounds like it should be cool but somehow, it’s just not.

Only watch this one with Mike and the Bots.