Maria Tucci | 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 Wednesdays, I will be reviewing Monsters, which aired in syndication from 1988 to 1991. The entire series is streaming on YouTube.

This week, the first season of Monsters come to an end.

Episode 1.24 “La Strega”

(Dir by Lizzie Borden, originally aired on May 27th, 1989)

Vito (a young Rob Morrow) enters a pawn shop shortly before closing. He tells the proprietor, Lia (Linda Blair), that he’s shopping for something for his girlfriend. But, as soon as Lia turns her back, Vito draws a knife and announces that he’s actually come to kill her. Lia, however, has a gun and without flinching, she shoots at the floor. Vito, who is far less calm than Lia, drops the knife.

Lia takes Vito to her apartment above the shop. He tells her that he knows that she’s “La Strega” and that, ten years earlier, she put a curse on his mother (played by Maria Tucci) when she and Lia had a dispute over a ring that his mother brought to the shop. His mother has just died as a result of the curse and Vito wants vengeance.

Lia explains that she’s not a witch and that Vito’s mother’s dispute was actually with Lia’s mother. Lia also suggests that it was Vito’s mother who tried to steal the ring. Lia says that Vito will spend the next two weeks working for her and seeing what type of person she actually is. If, at the end of the two weeks, he still wants to kill her, she’ll accept that it is fate. Vito agrees.

For the next two weeks, Vito works in the shop and lives in Lia’s apartment. (I guess someone else is handling his mother’s funeral.) Vito is haunted by dreams in which both Lia and his mother attempt to seduce him and beg him to kill the other. Vito starts to fall in love with Lia and, as the two weeks come to a close, Lia says that she wants to enjoy what might be her last night on Earth….

Directed by feminist filmmaker Lizzie Borden, this episode ends the first season of Monsters on a rather moody note. Vito is never quite sure whether or not he can trust either Lia or the angry spirit of his mother and, in the end, no one’s motives are really that clear. The episode ends on a rather enigmatic note, which is a polite way of saying that it’s confusing as Hell. That said, Rob Morrow, Maria Tucci, and Linda Blair all give good performances and Borden does a good job of creating an appropriately dream-like atmosphere. In the end, the main impression one takes from this episode is that Vito, for all of his bluster, was essentially just a pawn in a supernatural battle between two powerful women, even if Vito himself wasn’t smart enough to realize it. This episode is not a bad note for the first season to end on.

The first season of Monsters was uneven. When it was good, it was really good. When it was weak, it was really weak. For the most part, though, it was enjoyable and most of the stories were memorably macabre.

Next week, we’ll see if that trend continue as we start the second season of Monsters!

The 1995 satire, To Die For, is a very clever film about some seriously stupid people.

Of course, you could debate whether or not Suzanne Stone-Maretto (Nicole Kidman) is actually dumb or not. Suzanne may not know much about anything that isn’t on TV but she does have a natural understanding for what makes a good story. She knows exactly the type of story that the public wants to hear and she does a good job of faking all of the right emotions. As she proves throughout the course of the film, she’s also very good at convincing people to do stuff. Whether it’s convincing the local television station to put her on the air as a weather person or convincing two teenagers to murder her husband, Suzanne always seems to get what she wants.

Of course, what Suzanne really wants is to be a celebrity. She wants to be a star. As she explains it, that’s the greatest thing about America. Anyone can become a star if they just try hard enough and find the right angle. If the film were made today, Suzanne would be a social media junkie. Since the movie was made in 1995, she has to settle for talk shows and murder.

So maybe Suzanne isn’t that dumb but her husband, Larry (Matt Dillon) …. well, if we’re going to be honest, Larry’s more naive than dumb. He’s the favored son of a big Italian family and it’s obviously never occurred to him that a woman would possibly want something more than just a husband and a lot of children. He thinks it’s cute that Suzanne’s on TV but he’s also fully convinced that she’s going to eventually settle down and focus on starting a family. It never occurs to him that his wife would be willing to sacrifice him on her way to stardom.

Of course, if you really want to talk about dumb, just check out the teenagers who Suzanne recruits to kill her husband. They’ve been appearing in a documentary that Suzanne’s been shooting. The documentary’s title is “Teens Speak Out,” which is something of an ironic title since none of the teens that Suzanne interviews really has anything to say. Lydia (Allison Folland) is just happy that the “glamorous” Suzanne is pretending to care about her. Russell (Casey Affleck) is the type of grinning perv who drops a pen just so he can try to get a peek up Suzanne’s skirt while he’s on the floor retrieving it. And then there’s Jimmy (Joaquin Phoenix), with his flat voice and his blank stare. Jimmy is briefly Suzanne’s lover before he ends up in prison for murdering her husband. It doesn’t take much to convince Jimmy to commit murder, either. Apparently, all you have to do is dance to Lynard Skynard while it’s raining outside. Media interviews with Lydia, Jimmy, Suzanne, and Larry’s sister (Ileana Douglas) are sprinkled throughout the film and Jimmy continues to insist that he will always love Suzanne.

As for Suzanne, she’s got stardom to worry about….

Though the subject matter is a bit familiar and the film, made before the age of Twitter and Instagram, is a bit dated, To Die For‘s satire still carries a powerful bite. One need only watch A&E or the Crime and Investigation network to see that Suzanne was absolutely correct when she decided that killing her husband would make her a star. If To Die For were made today, you could easily imagine Suzanne leveraging her infamy into an appearance on Dancing With The Stars and maybe Celebrity Big Brother. At the very least. she could get her own house hunting show on HGTV. Delivering her often sociopathic dialogue with a perky smile and a positive attitude, Nicole Kidman is absolutely chilling as Suzanne. Meanwhile, Joaquin Phoenix’s blank stare will continue to haunt you long after the film ends.

And speaking of endings, To Die For has a great one. You’ll never hear Season of the Witch the same way again!