Tag Archives: Phil Proctor

Late Night Retro Television Reviews: Freddy’s Nightmares 2.13 “What You Don’t Know Can Kill You”

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, Freddy is just as confused as the rest of us.

Episode 2.13 “What You Don’t Know Can Kill You”

(Dir by Ken Wiederhorn, originally aired on January 7th, 1990)

Psychiatrist Dr. Rothman (David Hern) has been hypnotizing his female patients and then molesting them.   (This was something that apparently used to happen quite often with Victorian-era hypnotists.)  When a colleague (Phil Proctor) discovers what Rothman is doing, Rothman hypnotizes and programs one of his patients, Derby Brown (Fran Montano), to become an assassin.  However, Rothman screws up the programming and ends up getting shot by a hypnotized Derby.  Derby’s girlfriend suggests that Derby should have plastic surgery to disguise his appearance.  They see a handsome man’s photograph in a newspaper and they decide that’s the face they want.  As a result of the surgery, Derby now looks exactly like Vinnie (Paul Regina, playing both roles).  Unfortunately, Vinnie is a mob informant and there’s a hitman after him.

Got all that?

This episode was pretty dumb.  Paul Regina did a good job as Vinnie and his new doppelganger but, for the most part, I’m not really sure why this was even an episode of Freddy’s Nightmares.  There was nothing supernatural about either story and neither story was particularly scary.  Freddy only appeared in his host segments and he seemed to be fairly bored with the whole thing.

Usually, I love it when a show embraces the melodrama but this episode wasn’t subversive enough to work as a satire.  Despite the over the top plot, it still felt oddly generic.

Retro Television Review: St. Elsewhere 3.20 “Amazing Face”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to 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 St. Elsewhere, a medical show which ran on NBC from 1982 to 1988.  The show can be found on Daily Motion.

The drama continues in Boston.

Episode 3.20 “Amazing Face”

(Dir by Janet Greek, originally aired on February 20th, 1985)

This week, at St. Eligius:

  • Nurse Rosenthal thinks that she’s pregnant.  That sound you hear is me sighing.  Seriously, I liked Nurse Rosenthal during the first season but now I’m kind of sick of her and her sanctimonious attitude, her homewrecking affair with Richard, and her annoying children.  Obviously, the show’s writers really liked Nurse Rosenthal but I’m tired of her.  A pregnant Nurse Rosenthal?  I don’t think I could handle that.  Fortunately, it turns out that Nurse Rosenthal is actually starting menopause.
  • When is Rosenthal going to dump Richard?  We all know it’s going to happen.
  • Dr. Westphall has put his house on the market and boy, is he glum about it.  Westphall continues to be the most depressing human being on the planet.
  • Mrs. Hufnagle has heart surgery.  Before that, however, she steals some scrubs and wanders in on an operation.
  • Fiscus wants to hook back up with Cathy Martin.  When a macho patient makes a misogynistic comment about Cathy, Fiscus throws a punch and gets his ass kicked.  Luckily, Cathy has learned kung fu.
  • The bandages are removed and Andrea Fordham (Ann Hearn) sees her new face.  She now looks like an average teenager.  She tells Dr. Caldwell that she’s still not ready to face the world.
  • Shirley Daniels is a patient at St. Eligius.  She tells everyone who she meets that she killed Peter White and that she can’t wait to go to jail for it.  She promises Doctors Wade and Morrison that she’ll never shoot anyone else.  She also reveals that she’s the one who sent the baby ski mask to Peter’s widow.  She’s knitting a new ski mask for Morrison’s son.  Oh, Shirley!
  • The episode ends with Shirley going to the morgue and flashing back to the time she shot Peter in the testicles.
  • Considering all the hospitals in Boston, was it really a good idea for her to stay at the same one where she happened to kill a doctor, albeit one who deserved exactly what he got?

This episode felt like filler.  Ehrlich acted like a jackass.  Morrison acted like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders.  Dr. Craig was arrogant.  Dr. Westphall was depressed.  It wasn’t a bad episode but there wasn’t anything terribly memorable about it either.

It was just another day at St. Eligius.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Highway to Heaven 1.9 “Catch A Falling Star”

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 Thursdays, I will be reviewing Highway to Heaven, which aired on NBC from 1984 to 1989.  The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi and several other services!

This week, the highway leads to Hollywood!

Episode 1.9 “Catch a Falling Star”

(Dir by Michael Landon, originally aired on Nov. 14, 1984)

In this rather slight episode, Daniel Davis plays movie star Lance Gaylord.  Lance is both producing and starring in a western and he’s so dedicated to the film that he rarely sees his two children, Brock (Bobby Jacoby) and Karen (Emily Moultrie).  His son has been acting out and Lance thinks that it’s just because the kid is a brat and he’s upset about his parents getting divorced.  The truth, of course, is that Brock just wants his father’s attention.

Jonathan and Mark show up on the set of Lance’s movie and explain that they’ve been sent over by the Darwin Agency.  (An angel who works for the Darwin Agency?  Take that, secular humanism!)  Lance tells Jonathan and Mark to keep an eye on his kids while he’s shooting his movie.

The problem is an obvious one.  How can Jonathan get Lance to spend more time with his children, especially his angry son?  Well, maybe the child star who is appearing in the movie could come down with the chicken pox.  And then, maybe with Jonathan’s encouragement, Brock could try out for the role.  At first, Lance angrily says that he will not even allow his son to audition but when Brock runs away from home and Jonathan yells at him for not being there for his son, Lance realizes the errors of his ways.  When Brock returns home, he gets his audition and he gets the role.  He also finally gets to go fishing with his dad.

Probably the most interesting thing about this episode is how little actually happens.  It really doesn’t take much for Lance to see the errors of his ways.  He just needs Jonathan to yell at him for a minute or two.  The whole thing epitomizes the feel-good blandness that the show was known for.  In the end, Lance isn’t a bad father.  He just needed to be reminded to do what was right.  Myself, I’m more concerned with the fact that Lance’s film looks way too old-fashioned to be a hit, even in the 80s.  As soon as I saw Lance dressed up like a cowboy, I thought to myself, “Oh, this movie is going to be such a flop that careers are going to end.”  Hopefully, Lance is keeping productions costs down or he might never work in Hollywood again.

This episode’s big scene actually doesn’t have anything to do with Lance or his children.  Instead, it comes when Jonathan and Mark go to a grocery store and end up getting confronted by a junkie (Dennis A. Pratt) with a gun.  With the junkie attempts to shoot Jonathan, Jonathan snatches the bullet out of the air.  At the police drag him away, the junkie shouts that he’s never going to drugs again.  Obviously, Jonathan and Mark were changing lives everywhere!

Next week, Jonathan and Mark help out on another film set!