Ralph Seymour | Through the Shattered Lens

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 Hulu and, for purchase, on Prime!

This week, the first season comes to a close.

Episode 1.22 “Addiction”

(Dir by Mark Tinker, originally aired on May 3rd, 1983)

“To life,” Dr. Auschlander toasts towards the end of the finale of St. Elsewhere’s first season and the sentiment could not be more called for.

While Auschlander has spent the episode hanging out with a friend of his and getting into fights with disrespectful street punks, Dr. Morrison’s wife has been giving birth to their son. While someone breaks into the supply room and takes off with a huge supply of drugs, Dr. White is sobbing and telling his estranged wife that he knows he has to get help for his addictions. While one drug addict (Ralph Seymour) commits suicide by injecting an air bubble into his veins, Dr. Craig’s cocky son, Stephen (Scott Paulin), visits from medical school and turns out to be quite a weed-smoking, pill-popping drug user himself. Ehrlich, assigned to show Stephen around the hospital and teach him what it’s like being a resident, considers telling Dr. Craig that his son has a drug problem but apparently decides not to. Dr. Craig is very proud that his son is going to follow the family tradition of becoming a surgeon. Meanwhile, Dr. Fiscus cheats on Shirley Daniels with Kathy Martin. Fiscus, you idiot.

Life goes on at St. Eligius. That’s was the theme of the finale and it’s also been the theme of the first season. For all the bad things that happen, there are also good things. Some patients die. Some doctors are incompetent. But babies are born and doctors like Morrison and Ehrlich and Chandler haven’t given up and are still trying to make the world a better place. Dr. Auschlander may be terminally ill with cancer but he embraces life and we should all do the same.

It’s a good ending for an overall good first season. There were a few weak episodes. Dr. Samuels was a pretty annoying character and I’m a bit relieved to see that David Birney left the show after this season. Ed Flanders can be a bit overly somber as Dr. Westphall and Howie Mandel is still one of the least convincing doctors that I’ve ever seen. That said, Morrison, Ehrlich, Chandler, Nurse Daniels, and even Dr. White are interesting characters and I look forward to seeing what happens with them during season 2. The season’s stand-out was definitely William Daniels as the pompous yet still likable Dr. Craig. Other than the terrible storyline where he cheated on his wife (and I still claim that was a dream episode, like almost all of the stuff with Dr. Samuels), Dr. Craig was this season’s standout character.

Next week, we start season 2!

The 1986 film Killer Party is one of those late 80s slasher films that somehow has developed a cult following. Up until recently, there was a fairly active fansite devoted to the history of Killer Party and Killer Party still regularly shows up on TCM Underground.

So, apparently, Killer Party has fans.

I’m just not sure why.

Some of it, I suppose, could have to do with the first ten minutes of the film, which are genuinely clever. It starts out with a young woman being menaced at a drive-in theater and, just when you’ve gotten invested in her story and have started to wonder whether or not she’ll survive the entire movie, it is suddenly revealed that we’ve actually been watching a movie-within-a-movie. And that movie-within-a-movie then turns out to be part of an incredibly silly music video, featuring a band that is so 80s that you find yourself expecting them to stop performing so they can do a line of coke and play the stock market. At one point, the band even performs while standing on the drive-in’s concession stand.

It’s all marvelously silly and kind of clever. The problem is that the rest of the film never lives up to those ten minutes. In fact, you spend the rest of the movie wishing you were still watching that movie about the girl trapped at the drive-in.

I also suppose that some of the film’s cult reputation has to do with the fact that Paul Bartel has a small supporting role. Bartel plays the same basic role that he played in almost every horror film in which he appeared. He’s a pompous professor who says a few dismissive lines and is then promptly killed off. Maybe it’s the Bartel factor that has led to this film developing a cult following.

Who knows?

Killer Party is essentially four movies in one. The first movie is that part that I’ve already talked about. The opening is clever but it only lasts for ten minutes.

After the opening, the film turns into a rather standard college comedy. Three girls want to join the wildest sorority on campus but it won’t be easy! Everyone on this campus is obsessed with playing pranks. And by pranks, I mean stuff like locking a bunch of people outside while they’re naked in a hot tub and then dumping a bunch of bees on them. Of course, that prank gets filmed and the footage is later shown at a meeting of stuffy old people. That’ll teach those uptight members of the World War II generation! You may have made the world safe for democracy but that was like a really, really long time ago! So there! It’s time for a new generation, one that will make the world safe for pranks!

During this part of the film, there are only a few hints that we’re watching a horror movie. For instance, the sorority wants to have a party in an abandoned frat house. Their housemother goes by the frat house and kneels in front of a grave. She speaks to someone named Alan and tells him that it’s time to move on. Then she promptly gets killed and no one ever seems to notice.

The comedy part of the movie segues into a remarkably bloodless slasher movie. The cast assembles at the forbidden house. They have a party. Someone in a diving mask shows up and kills off the majority of the cast in 20 minutes. Almost everyone dies off-screen so there’s really not even any suspense as far as that goes.

Then, during the last few minutes of the film, the slasher film suddenly turns into a demonic possession film and that seems like that should be brilliant turn of events but it just doesn’t work in Killer Party. Usually, I love movies that are kind of messy but Killer Party is a rather bland and listless affair. If you’re going to combine a campus comedy with a slasher film and a demonic possession film, you owe it to your audience to really go totally over the top and embrace the ludicrousness of it all. Instead, Killer Party rolls out at a languid and rather dull pace.

I would not accept an invitation to Killer Party.