Late Night Retro Television Reviews: Friday the 13th 1.2 “The Poison Pen”

Posted on October 13, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

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, a show which ran in syndication from 1988 to 1990. The show can be found on YouTube!

This week, Ryan, Mickey, and Jack all end up going undercover at an ancient monastery, where one of the monks is using a cursed pen to take out anyone who annoys him.

Episode 1.2 “The Poison Pen”

(Directed by Timothy Bond, originally aired on October 10th, 1987)

The second episode of Friday the 13th: The Series begins at an ancient monastery that is run by a religious order known as The Brotherhood. (It’s never explicitly stated what denomination the Brotherhood belongs too. Their practices seem to be an odd mix of Buddhism and Anglicanism.) The Abbott has gone to top the roof of the monastery. He suddenly starts to float in the air. He thinks that he’s having a religious experience but, just as suddenly, he crashes down to the ground and is killed.

At the antique store, Jack sees a story in the newspaper about the Abbott’s death and he immediately realizes that someone at the monastery purchased a cursed pen from the store. The pen can be used to kill. All one has to do is write out how they want the death to happen (preferably in as florid language as possible) and then write down the name of their victim. That’s a powerful pen and obviously, it must be retrieved!

So, of course, Ryan and Micki have to go undercover as young monks. However, since it’s The Brotherhood and not the Sisterhood, Micki will have to pretend to be male which means tying back her hair, taking a vow of silence, and allowing Ryan to bind her chest. Jack forges a letter of introduction, though you have to wonder why he didn’t just go undercover with Ryan instead of forcing Micki to go through the trouble of trying to pass for a male.

Ryan and Micki move into the monastery and try to figure out which of the monks owns the pen. Unfortunately, they don’t do a very good job of it and two more monks are tragically killed, one suffocated in his bed while the other is beheaded by a guillotine that just happens to be in a storage room for some reason. In fact, Ryan and Micki prove to be so ineffective that Jack is eventually forced to go undercover as well.

Eventually, the owner of the pen is revealed to be Brother Le Croix (Colin Fox), who makes the mistake of writing out Jack, Micki, and Ryan’s death warrant on a piece of paper that already has his name on it. This leads to Brother Le Croix getting a guillotine blade to the back, finally bringing his reign of terror to an end. Ryan and Jack return the pen to the antique store and Micki finally gets to let down her hair and wear a bra again.

I personally think this episode would have been more effective if it had aired later in the season because a good deal of the episode’s humor depended on the idea of Jack, Micki, and Ryan all knowing each other extremely well. Instead, since this is just the second episode, it seems reasonable that Jack barely knows either Micki and Ryan, which makes some of his overly familiar interactions with them feel a bit odd. Unless there was a year-long time skip between the pilot and the second episode, it just doesn’t seem like everyone should be as comfortable around Jack as they are.

As for the episode’s premise, it was all a bit silly. The main problem is that the pen was so powerful that you have to kind of wonder why Brother Le Croix didn’t just use it as soon as he became suspicious of the new monks. Instead, he waited until everyone was gathered in the same room as the guillotine and then he forced them to watch as he wrote out how he wanted them to die and then, he actually announced, “Now, I just have to write down your names!” Why didn’t he write down their names first? It seems like evil was defeated less to due to the actions of our heroes and more because our villain was a true idiot.

Oh well. The important thing is that the pen will write no more!

Next week: Jack, Micki, and Ryan go to college in an episode directed by Atom Egoyan!

Icarus File No. 13: Birdemic 2: The Resurrection (dir by James Nguyen)

Posted on October 13, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

2013’s Birdemic 2 picks up four years after the end of the first film. Society has recovered from the vicious bird attacks. Humans and bird are once again living as friends. Actually, no one seems to have learned a thing from the last movie because global warming is still out of control, blood rain is falling in California, and a woman is attacked by what she calls a “giant jumbo jellyfish.” This can only mean that nature is getting ready to fight back once again.

Rod (Alan Bagh) was one of the few people to survive the previous Birdemic. He is still rich and he is still dating Nathalie (Whitney Moore). They adopted Tony (Colton Osborne), the little boy who they rescued during the first film. At one point, Tony mentions that his sister Susan is now dead, having died as a result of eating the fish that Rod caught in the first film. (Apparently, this was an ad lib from actor Colton Osborne and, since director James Nguyen doesn’t believe in multiple takes, it made it into the film.) Rod invests in a movie being directed by Bill (Thomas Favaloro) and starring Bill’s new girlfriend, Gloria (Chelsea Turnbo). In fact, Bill and Gloria pretty much act exactly the same way that Rod and Nathalie acted in the first film, which feels a bit redundant since Birdemic 2 already features Rod and Nathalie.

Anyway, there’s a lot of scenes in the film that are meant to act as a commentary on Hollywood, with craven studio people showing that they are not capable of understanding Bill’s artistic vision. At one point, Bill talks about how he directed a movie called Replica. He and Gloria also pay a visit to Tippi Hedren’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame because it wouldn’t be a James Nguyen film without a Tippi Hedren reference.

Unfortunately, a blood rain causes the resurrection of several birds and two cavemen from the La Brea tar pit and soon, filming on Bill’s movie is delayed by the cast and crew running for their lives. It’s pretty much the same as the first movie, except that the birds are now bad CGI as opposed to clip art and, for some reason, there are also zombies involved. Why are the zombies there? Who knows?

Birdemic 2 was made to capitalize on the camp success of Birdemic and several scenes from the original film are recreated for the sequel, right down to several pointless walking scenes, another boardroom celebration scene and another scene in which the female lead strips down to her underwear and asking her boyfriend if he likes what he sees. Damien Carter also makes another appearance, singing a different song and leading a new dance party. (Nathalie is still the best dancer in the Birdemic films.)

Birdemic 2 is a bit more self-aware than the first film, which means that some of the attempted humor is presumably intentional. Unfortunately, the charm of the first Birdemic was to be found in just how cluelessly earnest it was. James Nguyen sincerely believed he was making a good film with the first one. With the second one, he seems to be trying to re-capture something that he didn’t really realize that he had captured in the first place. That said, even with all of the deliberate camp, there’s enough lectures about climate change to leave little doubt that, at heart, Nguyen was still taking this film far more seriously than anyone else on the planet.

He certainly takes his films more seriously than the people who appear in them. Much as in the first film, Whitney Moore struggles to keep a straight face and it’s obvious that many of her co-stars were specifically hamming it up to see what they could get away with. Alan Bagh, for his part, remains as unexpressive but strangely likable as ever.

Birdemic 2 tries but, in the end, there’s no beating the original!

Previous Icarus Files:

Horror AMV Of The Day: Sweet But Psycho (High School of the Dead)

Posted on October 13, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

How about a High School of the Dead AMV?

Song: Sweet But Psycho by Ava Max

Anime: High School of the Dead

Creator: Hey Dante (as always, please follow this creator’s channel)

Past AMVs of the Day

The Eric Roberts Horror Collection: Clinton Road (dir by Richard Grieco and Steve Stanulis)

Posted on October 13, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

2019’s Clinton Road features what might be my favorite Eric Roberts cameo appearance.

Roberts appears standing outside a club in New Jersey. He’s speaking to the woman who is working the door and trying to convince her that he should be allowed into the club, even though she doesn’t think that he’s on the list. He explains that he’s Eric Roberts. The woman replies that he’s not the Eric Roberts that she knows but then, suddenly, she realizes that he is Eric Roberts the movie star! She apologizes profusely. Eric says its okay and gives her a fist bump. Everyone waiting to get into the club applauds.

Seriously, that is the extent of Eric Roberts’s role in Clinton Road. It comes out of nowhere and it has nothing to do with the actual plot of the film. Why is Eric Roberts waiting outside of some club in New Jersey? Who knows? He’s just there and he’s a cool dude and everyone loves him. As with so many of his cameos, one gets the feeling that Roberts just happened to see some people shooting a movie and he decided to be a part of it.

Eric Roberts is not the only well-known actor to make a brief appearance in Clinton Road. The film itself was directed by actor Richard Grieco and it’s obvious that he asked some of his well-known friends to help out. The manager of the club is played Ice-T and he shows up long enough to tell the urban legend of the vanishing hitchhiker. The owner of the club is Vincent Pastore, who played Pussy on The Sopranos. Private investigator-turned-character actor Bo Dietl shows up, playing the mayor of the town and barking orders at people. Everyone gets a chance to be, at least briefly, the center of attention but none of them play characters who actually have anything to do with the film’s main story.

That story is about Michael (played by former American Idol contestant, Ace Young), a fireman whose wife disappeared while walking down Clinton Road, a haunted rural road in New Jersey. (For the record, Clinton Road is real and, as this film states, it’s the center of many urban legends.) Michael is ready to move on and marry his new girlfriend, Kayla (Lauren LaVera). However, Michael’s former sister-in-law, Isabella (Katie Morrison), convinces Michael to go out to Clinton Road with her and make one last effort to contact his wife’s spirit. Accompanying them is a medium named Begory (James DeBello), Begory’s girlfriend, Gianna (Erin O’Brien), and Michael’s brother, Tyler (former Big Brother houseguest Cody Calafiore). Tyler is loudly skeptical of Begory’s claims to be able to speak to the dead but it soon becomes clear that the group is not alone on Clinton Road.

To my surprise, I ended up liking Clinton Road. It’s a very low-budget film and the plot doesn’t always make sense but it was obviously made by people who both loved New Jersey and who loved the legends that have sprung up around Clinton Road. The atmosphere was ominous, the imagery was often surreal, and, when they did appear, the spirits were effectively creepy. The fact that the characters all had an attitude that was more appropriate to The Sopranos than to a standard lost-in-the-woods horror film only served to make the film all the more entertaining. If you’re going to set your horror film in New Jersey, you might as well go all out and make the most New Jersey horror film imaginable.

I enjoyed this film. I just hope Eric Roberts didn’t make the mistake of turning down Clinton Road on his way home.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

Horror On TV: The Hitchhiker 5.6 “Renaissance” (dir by Bruno Gantillon)

Posted on October 13, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

On tonight’s episode of The Hitchhiker, David Soul plays a greedy developer who runs afoul the Parisian underground. It turns out that thinking big is not always the fool-proof strategy that the developer thinks that it is. The cocky developer finds himself forced to confront his own dark side. Myself, I’m curious why the opening credits always feature The Hitchhiker walking through the desert but, since the 5th season began, he’s pretty much just exclusively been hanging out in France. Seriously, who is this guy?

The episode originally aired on July 14th, 1989!

October Hacks: The Last Slumber Party (dir by Stephen Tyler)

Posted on October 13, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Woo hoo! School’s out for summer and that means that it’s time to have a slumber party! It’s time to gather at the home of whoever has the biggest house and dance around in your sleepwear before falling on the couch, watching a really bad TV show, and talking about how all the boys in town suck. What fun! Seriously, I used to love slumber parties! Of course, the parties I went to were a lot more fun than the one featured in the film that I am about to review.

The 1988 film, The Last Slumber Party, is called The Last Slumber Party because it features an escaped homicidal lunatic who wears surgical scrubs and mask and who carries around scalpel. The lunatic shows up at the party and makes sure that, for the majority of the cast, it is their last slumber party. But, to be honest, I think this would have been the last slumber party even if the killer didn’t show up just because the party sucks so much that I don’t think anyone would ever want to run the risk of throwing another one.

Seriously, this is the most boring slumber party that I’ve ever seen. First off, there’s only three guests and only one of them, Chris (Jan Jensen), has a personality. Of course, that personality is not a particularly likeable one, in that it leads to Chris constantly cursing and making fun of every boy at the school for being, in her opinion, gay. Speaking of the boys at the school, four of them attempt to crash the slumber party but again, none of the really have a personality beyond not being able to open up a can of beer without spilling it on their shirt. As well, most of the guys are quickly dispatched by the scalpel-wielding killer. The girls are a bit perturbed when the guys start to mysteriously disappear but none of them are upset enough to actually look for them or to pay attention to the reports on the television about an escaped murderer. Instead, Chris just suggests that the boys got scared off because they were gay. Seriously, Chris is a bit obsessed.

Also obsessed with Dr. Sickler (David Whitley), who is the father of one of the girls and who was scheduled to give the escaped lunatic a lobotomy. Of course, Dr. Sickler isn’t obsessed with his missing patient as much as he’s obsessed with remembering to pick up some orange juice. His wife really likes orange juice and there’s way too much talk of orange juice in this film. Oddly enough, Dr. Sickler never actually picks any up.

I’m grasping at things to say about this film because there’s not really a whole lot to be said about The Last Slumber Party. Judging by the accents of the majority of the cast, The Last Slumber Party was a regional production and it was made down in my part of the world. I actually enjoyed hearing the familiar accents but I just wish the characters had been a bit less unlikable and the dialogue had more of a natural rhythm. As it is, this is just one of those slasher films that’s full of padding and feels considerably longer than just 77 minutes. For the majority of the film’s characters, this would indeed be their last slumber party. It’s a shame they couldn’t have ended things with a better get-together.

The TSL Horror Grindhouse: The Chill Factor (dir by Christopher Webster)

Posted on October 13, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1993 film, The Chill Factor, is a bit of an oddity.

The film opens with a shot of young, attractive people racing their snowmobiles across a snowy landscape. One of them, Jeannie (Dawn Laurrie), narrates. She tells us that she can still remember everything that happened as if it was yesterday. She and her friends were visiting the ski slopes of Wisconsin. She was engaged to be married to Tom (Aaron Kjenaas), who she secretly knew didn’t really love her that way that she loved him. She mentions that they were traveling with their friends and none of them had any worries because they were young and the year 2000 was right around the corner. She mentions that one of her friends was “dating a black girl.” It’s an odd line, especially when heard in 2023, when interracial couples in movies and television are so common that it’s almost become a bit of a cliché. One thing that makes the line feel all the stranger is the rather flat tone of the narrator’s voice. The narration almost sounds as if it’s being delivered by someone who is under hypnosis.

Jeannie, Tom, and their friends stop off at a rustic lodge. Karen (Connie Snyder) is Tom’s little sister and Chris (David Fields) is her boyfriend, as well as being a medical student. Ron (Jim Cagle) is a friendly football player who has just been drafted by a pro team. Ron’s girlfriend, Lissa (Eve Montgomery), is the black girl mentioned in Jeannie’s opening narration. When two local racists confront Ron and Lissa and spit out a racial slur, friendly waitress Bessie (Bekki Vallin) makes it up to the group by telling them about a great place to race their snowmobiles. It’s called Black Friar Lake and Bessie promises to tell them why it’s named that if they come back. Even though Tom has been drinking all day long, he insists on going out to Black Friar Lake.

At Black Friar Lake, Tom pulls a Kennedy and crashes his snowmobile into a tree. His friends drag the unconscious and blood-covered Tom to an abandoned Dominican summer camp. They bandage his wounds and try to keep him warm. Chris says that Tom probably has internal injuries. However, Tom suddenly opens his eyes and, other than having a headache, he acts as if nothing serious has happened. While Ron heads back to town to try to get help, Karen searches the camp and comes across a makeshift Ouija board. Even though Jeannie believes that Ouija boards can actually summon evil spirits, she still joins the others in fooling around with it. (As Jeannie explains in her narration, “It was my nature.”) Soon, Tom is waking up more often and speaking much more aggressively than usual. (When Karen — HIS SISTER — tells him that he’s a pain in the ass, Tom tells her, “I’ll give you a pain in the ass,” and then suggests that she and Chris should go have sex.) Soon, people are dying, blood is being spilled, and the Ouija board keeps trying to send out messages.

The Chill Factor is an odd film. On the surface, it seems like a typical mash-up of slasher mayhem and Evil Dead-style supernatural activity. But there’s an intriguingly off-center quality to the film. The film moves at its own dream-like pace, with certain scenes going on longer than one might expect while other scenes end rather abruptly. When the group first arrives at the summer camp, their conversations are a bizarre mix of the mundane and the philosophical. Random shadows can be spied moving along the walls and the main characters never seem to notice that fresh blood is flowing from the eyes of a statue of Jesus. Towards the end of the film, there’s a Rosemary’s Baby-style sex scene between Tom and Jeannie, except occasionally it’s not Jeannie that Tom is making lover to but instead Karen. The falling snow gives the entire film a chilly and rather bleak atmosphere. (This may be the only film to feature a demon chasing his prey on a snowmobile.) The cast was obviously made up of amateurs and the majority of the performances are extremely stiff. However, even that contributes to the film’s otherworldly atmosphere. Indeed, watching the performers, I was reminded of Werner Herzog’s Heart of Glass, in which Herzog had his actors perform under the influence of hypnosis.

Finally, there’s an interesting subtext to this film. Jeannie, who fears that Tom will never love her the way that she loves him, has a night of passionate sex with him, just to wake up the next morning and discover that he had suddenly changed. He’s not the man who she thought he was. Now, in Tom’s case, this is because he’s been possessed by a demon. However, this scene captures a fear that every woman has felt. Will your lover still be the same man when you wake up in the morning? Or, having gotten what he wanted, will he then reveal his true self? As much as Jeannie feared the Ouija board, she still used it because, deep down, she wanted to know who Tom really was. And the board revealed the truth. In her final piece of narration, Jeannie speaks of still dreaming about that night with Tom and her flat tone leaves it up to the audience to decide if she dreams of who Tom become or who she thought Tom was before.

I suspect that The Chill Factor may have been a happy accident, a case of a low budget and an amateur cast actually coming together something that turned out to be far better than anyone was expecting. Accidentally or not, The Chill Factor is an intriguing work of existential horror.

A Blast From The Past: Stoned (dir by John Herzfeld)

Posted on October 13, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 1980’s Stoned, Scott Baio plays Jack Melon, a teenager with a problem.

Jack is shy, awkward, and can’t escape the shadow of his older brother, Mike (Vincent Bufano). Mike is champion swimmer. Jack is someone who can barely walk down a hallway without walking into a wall. But then Teddy (Jack Finch) gets Teddy hooked on marijuana, the so-called weed with roots in Hell! Soon, Jack is acting weird, making strange jokes, and getting all of the attention in the world. Unfortunately, Jack is also alienating those closest to him and his newfound habit leads to a near-tragedy.

Stoned was aired as an ABC Afterschool Special and, while it’s not quite Reefer Madness, it does adhere to the general anti-drug formula. In record time, Jack goes from being shy and dorky to being goofy and potentially dangerous. We get all the expected scenes of Jack devouring ice cream, Jack wandering around in a daze, Jack realizing that the girl he likes what’s nothing to do with the new Jack, Jack’s well-meaning teacher (played by the show’s writer and director, John Herzfeld) confronting his students about their drug use, and Jack accidentally hitting his brother with an oar. Jack thinks that marijuana is opening his brain because, while stoned, he suddenly realizes that a tree looks like “Old Man Eber.” Stoned goes on to show Jack ruining his life but I have to admit that I spent most of the running time wondering who Old Man Eber was. (Seriously, Old Man Eber sounds like some sort of Lovecraftian ghoul, waiting in the shadows to drag one to an Arkham cemetery.) Of course, someone nearly dies as a result of Jack’s marijuana use. What’s interesting is Jack is able to save the person’s life, even though he’s stoned. Would non-stoned Jack have been able to do it?

From the fashion choices to the cast to the message that marijuana is the most dangerous thing on the planet, Stoned is one of those TV specials that epitomizes its time. This was a film that was made at a time when it was inconceivable that there would some day be commercials for edible gummies and it shows. Watching Stoned is like stepping into a time machine.

Today, of course, Scott Baio is better known for his politics than his acting. Whenever I see a headline that reads, “This veteran Hollywood star is calling out his industry for not understanding America,” I know the story is inevitably going to be about Scott Baio complaining about his taxes. That said, Scott Baio is convincing when he’s playing Jack as being awkward and insecure but he definitely goes a bit overboard once Jack starts smoking. While that probably dilutes the effectiveness of the film’s message (because, let’s be honest, real stoners are going to watch this and easily recognize the fact that Jack is trying way too hard to convince everyone that he’s stoned), it does give this film a certain entertainment value.

Here is Stoned, complete with the commercials that aired when the show was original broadcast on November 12th, 1980:

Retro Television Reviews: T and T 1.19 “Special Delivery” and 1.20 “Pros and Cons”

Posted on October 13, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to 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 T. and T., a Canadian show which ran in syndication from 1987 to 1990. The show can be found on Tubi!

This week, T.S. and Amy continue to keep Canada safe.

Episode 1.19 “Special Delivery”

(Dir by Vic Sarin, originally aired on May 15th, 1988)

“In this episode,” Mr. T tells us during the pre-credits preview, “a young boy’s on the run with only his fears and a mysterious package for company.”

Bruce Johnson (Robert McClure) is an old friend of T.S. Turner’s who is now working as an executive for the Canadian space program. He records a tape in which he tells T.S. that he suspects that someone is trying to sabotage Canada’s latest space rocket and that his life in danger. “If anything happens to me,” Bruce asks, “take care of David and Brenda.” Bruce leaves his office with a package of evidence. He finds his 12 year-old son, David (Jamie Dick) skateboarding in front of a school. He gives the package to David and tells him to deliver it to Decker’s gym. David wears his baseball cap backwards so we all know he’s a rebel. Bruce is nabbed by the police as soon as he gives David the package but, fortunately, David is able to roll away on his skateboard.

With her husband and son both missing, Brenda Johnson (Karen Woolridge) calls T.S. Turner at Amy’s law office. Turner is out but the spacey administrative assistant, Sophie (Catherine Disher), takes the message and then runs down to the courthouse to give it to Amy. As someone who has worked as an administrative assistant, Sophie’s unprofessionalism made me cringe. How can Amy run her law office if the office is so disorganized? I’m surprised T.S. puts up with it.

Amy heads down to the police station, where she discovers that Brenda is being held as a witness in a federal investigation that’s being headed up by Detective Williams (William Finlay), who is a part of the Canadian Bureau of Investigation. Williams asks Amy where Bruce and David are and Amy tells him that Brenda has “civil rights.”

“Civil rights are superseded in matters of treason,” William replies.

Amy threatens to call a press conference so Williams agrees to let Brenda go free. Wow, that was easy!

10 minutes into this episode, T.S. finally shows up. He and Amy get a hot dog on a city street. “Thanks, brother,” T.S. tells the hot dog vendor. Amy fills T.S. in on what’s happening. T.S. suggests that Amy head to the gym while T.S. searches the city. Meanwhile, mysterious men in gray suits watch their every move.

Meanwhile, David continue to ride his skateboard through the city. He gets chased by the cops at one point and has to run through an office building to escape. Seriously, how big is this city? The kid just had to go to the gym!

Finally, 15 minutes into this 23-minute episode, David reaches the gym. However, he can’t go into the gym because the feds are staking it out! So, he just stands around outside with his hands in his pockets. T.S. shows up at the gym and announces, “The Kid’s not going to show up here with federal agents outside!”

After putting on camouflage gear, T.S. grabs Decker and heads back to the office. (Amy stays at the gym.) While Sophie flirts with Decker, T.S. calls the gym and tells Amy that David is at the office. T.S. knows the lines are bugged so this is his clever plan to throw off the feds. And it works! As Amy and Agent Williams head to the law office, Decker and T.S. head back to the gym.

And yes! David is now in the gym. He gives T.S. the package.

“Hey, little brother,” T.S. says, “everything’s going to be alright.”

Suddenly, a random bad guy shows up in the gym, holding a gun. He demands the package and promises no one will get hurt.

“Someone sticks a gun in my face, that don’t exactly inspire confidence!” T.S. explains.

T.S. then punches the guy out. One scene later, a news reporter informs us that Bruce Johnson has been found alive so I guess that’s the end of that.

This was a weird episode. For all the talk of international intrigue and Canada’s space program, the majority of it was just filler footage of the kid rolling around on his skateboard. T.S. was barely in it, leading me to suspect that maybe Mr. T had some vacation time and wanted to leave early. Either way, at least Canada’s space program was saved.

Episode 1.20 “Pros and Cons”

(Dir by Don McCutcheon, originally aired on May 23rd, 1988)

“In this episode,” Mr. T says, “some high-rolling crooks make a very big mistake when they pick on my Aunt Martha.”

Two con artists — Harry (Booth Savage) and Louise (Janet-Laine Green) — pretend to be members of law enforcement and trick T.S.’s Aunt Martha into withdrawing a good deal of money from the bank. Martha thinks that she’s helping them catch a criminal but actually, she’s just given up her hard-earned money. T.S. isn’t going to stand for that! However, Martha doesn’t want to tell T.S., even though T.S.’s nice, Renee (Rachael Crawford) thinks that she should.

So, Renee decides to investigate on her own. After rather easily stealing a book of mugshots from the police station, Renee shows it to Aunt Martha, who immediately identifies Harry and Louise. By running a fake credit check on Louise, Renee and Aunt Martha are able to track them down to a ritzy hotel. Renee dresses up like a maid and Aunt Martha dresses up like a rich guest and they infiltrate the hotel.

Meanwhile, T.S. is shocked to discover that a check that he wrote to fix his car has bounced.

“Why would it do that!?” T.S. demands.

T.S. and Amy go to Aunt Martha’s and find all of Renee and Martha’s notes. Realizing that the two of them are confronting the con artists at the hotel, T.S. and Amy arrive just in time to see Harry and Louise trying to run from the hotel. T.S. blocks Harry’s escape. Harry grabs a mop and points it at T.S.

“Ain’t no way, brother,” T.S. replies.

T.S. subdues Harry by tossing him over a railing (don’t worry, Harry lands on a table) and Aunt Jackie punches out Louise.

The problem here is pretty obvious. The name of the show is T and T, not Renee and Jackie. The fun thing about this show is listening to T.S. growl at the criminals. This episode pushed both Amy and T.S. to the side and, as such, it just wasn’t that much fun. Sorry, Aunt Jackie!

Horror Scenes I Love: Kane Hodder in Friday the 13th Part VII: A New Blood

Posted on October 13, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Kane Hodder was a veteran stuntman when he first played Jason Voorhees in 1988’s Friday the 13th Part 7: The New Blood. He would go on to play Jason three more times. He also played Leatherface in Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III and, when Freddy Krueger’s gloved hand appeared at the end of Jason Goes To Hell, that was Kane Hodder’s hand grabbing the famous Jason mask and taking it to Hell.

Sadly, when Freddy vs. Jason went into production, Hodder was replaced by another stuntman. (Ironically, Hodder had been considered for the role of Freddy in the original Nightmare on Elm Street.) Still, for Friday the 13th fans, Kane Hodder will always be Jason Voorhees.

In the scene from Friday the 13th Part 7, Hodder shows off the physicality that made him the ideal zombie Jason.