Tag Archives: review

Late Night Retro Television Review: Check It Out! 2.15 “Tots ‘R’ Us”

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 Saturdays, I will be reviewing the Canadian sitcom, Check it Out, which ran in syndication from 1985 to 1988.  The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi!

This week, Edna has a good idea.

Episode 2.15 “Tots ‘R’ Us”

(DIr by J. Sumner, originally aired on February 1st, 1987)

I have no idea who J. Sumner was.

J. Sumner is credited as being the director of this episode.  (Up until this episode, Alan Erlich was the show’s regular director.)  I’ve never seen the name before and it struck me as being such an odd name to use that I actually looked the director up on the IMDb.  According to the IMDb, this episode of Check It Out! is the only thing that J. Sumner has ever been credited as having been involved with.  That’s quite an accomplishment, making your entertainment career debut as a director   Most people have to work up to it.

I kind of suspect that J. Sumner is a pseudonym of some sort.  Maybe the real director didn’t want to be credited for this episode, though there’s nothing about it that’s really all that different from any other episode of Check It Out.  It’s not a terrible episode but it’s also not a particularly interesting one, which is why I’m wasting so much time speculating about the identity of J. Sumner.

The episode takes place on Canadian Mother’s Day.  Edna decides to turn the back offices into a daycare so mothers can leave their children while they shop.  That actually does sound like a good idea to me.  Whenever I go grocery shopping, I always seem to get stuck in line behind people who have multiple hyperactive children.  Just last week, this little brat stepped on my foot while running around the store and his mother didn’t even apologize to me.  Seriously, I was limping for hours afterwards!  I should have called the cops and pressed charges….

Anyway, all of the moms and their kids eventually leave.  Except there’s one child (played by Benjamin Barrett) left behind.  He wears a nametag that reads “Orphan” but a call to the local orphanage reveals that no one is missing.  Edna calls the police but tells them that the store will take care of the kid and hold onto him until his parents arrive.  The police apparently say, “Okay, thanks for letting us know,” and then never bother to come out to the store.  That doesn’t sound like typical police procedure when it comes to an abandoned child but who knows?  This is a Canadian show so maybe that’s the way they do it in Manitoba.

Edna pressures Howard into using a sock puppet to talk to the kid.  The previously silent kid is happy to talk to Goober The Sock.  The kid’s name is Freddy.  He stays overnight at the store with Edna and, in a really sad scene, Edna asks Freddy if he knows anything about adoption.  Edna’s dreams of taking Feddy into her home are ruined when Freddy’s father (Walker Boone) shows up.  Howard gives Freddy and his father tickets to a baseball game.  Awww, that was nice!

This was a pretty simple episode and, to be honest, it was kind of boring.  Howard and Edna are more fun when they’re weird than when they’re nice.  As always, Gordon Clapp (as Viker, the electrician) got a few funny lines and made the most of his limited screentime.  Otherwise, this was a sweet-natured but not particularly enthralling episode.

And if J. Sumner is reading this, say hi in the comments!  We’d love to hear from you!

Lisa Marie’s Week In Television: 10/6/24 — 10/12/24

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Here’s my thoughts on what I watched this week.

Abbott Elementary (Wednesday Night, ABC)

Abbott‘s back.  Jeanine and Gregory are dating and they’re a cute couple.  That said, I can’t help but remember how The Office kind of started to become less interesting once Pam and Jim officially became a couple.  Single, neurotic people are always funnier than stable people in love.

It’ll be interesting to see how this season goes.  Last season, I got annoyed with Jeanine working for the district and the show itself occasionally got a bit heavy-handed in a way that it hadn’t during the previous seasons.  At the time, I choose to believe that season’s weaker moments were due to the season being shortened by all the strikes that were going on.  I’m hoping this new season will prove me correct.

Ava continues to be the best character on the show.

Accused (Tuesday Night, FOX)

After an incredibly uneven first season, Fox’s crime anthology show is back for a second season.  The first episode featured a psychic accused and on trial.  Felicity Huffman (who hasn’t really been seen much ever since she was implicated in the so-called Varsity Blues scandal) and William H. Macy provided some star power but the overall results were still pretty dull. I’m not a huge fan of anthology shows in general.  They always seem to be trying a bit too hard.

American Sports Story: Aaron Herndanez (Tuesday, FX)

This week, Aaron started to find fame as a pro football player with the New England Patriots, while continuing to deal with stress by hanging out with lowlifes and criminals.  While struggling to maintain the squeaky clean image that the NFL demanded from its players, Hernandez also beat up his abusive stepfather.  Much as with last week, this episode was well-done but it still feels as if the show is dragging out the story a bit too much.  This episode was about 20 minutes worth of story stretched out over 50 minutes.  Needless to say, it did start to feel a bit repetitive after a bit.  The attempt to use Aaron Hernandez’s stupidity as a way to comment on American society continues to feel a bit half-baked.

Dr. Phil (Pluto TV)

“Shut up!” Kaye yelled, when confronted about her Nigerian boyfriend, who she has never actually met despite selling her house and sending him the money.  I know Kaye was embarrassed but yelling shut up isn’t going to get her money back.

Hell’s Kitchen (Thursday Night, FOX)

One chef left the show to go to the hospital.  Another hurt his back and voluntarily withdrew from the competition.  The Blue Team had a terrible dinner service and a Chef Ramsay sent another chef home.  The Red Team is getting pretty cocky, which I’m going to assume means that they’re going to fall apart next episode.  Getting cocky is always the worst thing that any chef can do on Hell’s Kitchen.  Hell’s Kitchen remains one of the few reality shows to remain as entertaining today as when it first aired.  The show has been smart enough to stick to its formula and not change things up just to satisfy whatever the current cultural trend may be.

Homicide: Life On The Streets (Peacock)

I wrote about Homicide here!

Law & Order (Thursday Night, NBC)

This week’s episode saw SVU‘s Mariska Hargitay making a guest appearance on Law & Order and it really does show just how much things have changed as far as this franchise is concerned.  At one time, SVU was kind of like Law & Order‘s sordid and little-acknowledged bastard cousin and it was a big deal if anyone from L&O lowered themselves to make an appearance on SVU.  Now, things are reversed.  Law & Order is still struggling to find its voice in  the 2020s and it’s SVU that’s providing some star power to its struggling cousin.

On another note, I’m surprised that there’s any tech gurus left in New York as they seem to be the number one victim of choice on Law & Order.  If they’re not getting murdered, they’re going to jail.

I continue to miss Jack McCoy.

The Love Boat (Paramount Plus)

I wrote about The Love Boat here!

Miami Vice (Amazon Prime)

I wrote about Miami Vice here!

Night Flight (Night Flight Plus)

On Friday, I watched an episode from 1988.  The first half of the episode featured music videos, including X’s Devil Doll.  The second half took a look at “upcoming” films, including one in which Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jim Belushi teamed up to fight crime.  No, it wasn’t The Principal.

One Step Beyond (YouTube)

This week, I have continued to watch and share episodes of this old anthology show.  I’ve been having a lot of fun watching this show.

Horror On TV: One Step Beyond 2.6 “The Inheritance” (dir by John Newland)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Tonight’s episode of One Step Beyond features host John Newland listening as a drunk (Sean McClory) at a bar tells the story of his former life as a gigolo and how a cursed necklace drove him mad.  This episode is interesting if just because it takes the show’s “Did this story really happen?” premise to its logical conclusion.  Apparently, John Newland couldn’t leave his house without someone telling him a story about the paranormal!

This episode originally aired on October 27th, 1959.

Retro Television Review: Welcome Back, Kotter 4.3 “Don’t Come Up And See Me Sometime”

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 Saturdays, I will be reviewing Welcome Back Kotter, which ran on ABC  from 1975 to 1979.  The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi!

This week, Vinnie tries to move on with his life.  The Sweathogs say, “No!”

Episode 4.3 “Don’t Come Up And See Me Sometime”

(Dir by Norman Abbott, originally aired on September 25th, 1978)

Vinnie Barbarino has his own apartment!

And it’s a dump!

Seriously, if you watch enough 70s sitcoms, you know that no one is going to live in a nice apartment.  For whatever reason, characters on 70s tv shows always lived in the ugliest apartments imaginable.  But, even with that in mind, Barbarino’s apartment is terrible.  The walls are stained.  The couch is worn and has visible stuffing.  Every time the train goes by, the entire apartment shakes and Vinnie’s bed falls out of its closet.  It’s an awful apartment in an awful part of Brooklyn but then again, Barbarino is a janitor who hasn’t even graduated from high school so really, the crappy apartment is probably the most realistic part of this episode.

Vinnie is happy to have his own place because he has a serious girlfriend, Sally (Linda McCullough).  Sally works as a nurse at the hospital.  Vinnie can’t wait to spend time with her, though she has to break their first date when she’s assigned to work overnight.

Julie Kotter makes her first appearance of the season when she drops by to give VInnie a house-warming present and to show off her terrible new haircut.  The present turns out to be towels.  Vinnie is happy with the gift because he was feeling bad about stealing towels from the hospital.

Then the Sweathogs show up, including a new blonde guy with a Southern accent.  Washington says that the guy’s name is Beau (Stephen Shortridge) and he’s a new student at Buchanan High and in Mr. Kotter’s class.  What’s odd is that the previous episode ended with Vinnie once again enrolled in high school and a student in Kotter’s class.  So, why hasn’t he met Beau yet?  Did Vinnie drop out after dropping back in?

After Vinnie and Beau debate which one of them is uglier, Vinnie gives everyone a tour of the apartment.  He’s especially proud of his dining table.

Things are going fine until the Sweathogs start to talk about how they’re going to be spending all of their time at Barbarino’s new apartment.  Vinnie, realizing the he just wants some privacy, asks all of the Sweathogs to leave.  The Sweathogs get offended and say that Vinnie has let his new apartment go to his head.

The next day, at school, Gabe is shocked to see the Sweathogs shunning Vinnie.  Woodman, however, tells Vinnie that he’s lucky.  “I haven’t had a friend in 20 years,” Woodman says, “and look how happy I am!”  Fortunately, Gabe is not quite so cynical and he’s able to help the Sweathogs realize that they need to give Barbarino room to live his own life.  This episode ends with Barbarino, having nearly been driven mad by loneliness, happily allowing the Sweathogs, the Kotters, and Mr. Woodman into his apartment.  But then Sally arrives and he kicks them all out.

This episode feels like a metaphor of sorts.  Just as Barbarino was escaping the Sweathogs and starting his own life, John Travolta was escaping television for the movies.  One has to imagine that, just as the Sweathogs were offended to be kicked out of the apartment, there were some Kotter people who weren’t necessarily happy about not being included in Travolta’s new Hollywood career.

This episode works surprisingly well.  That’s largely because it’s a showcase for John Travolta.  The scenes of Barbarino talking to himself come close to going on for too long but Travolta’s charisma carries the day.  At the end of the episode, even Gabe and Julie look happy for a minute or two.

Horror on the Lens: Manos: The Hands of Fate (dir by Harold P. Warren)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

torgo

I should start things off with a confession.  This is actually not the first time that I’ve shared Manos: The Hands of Fate here on the Shattered Lens.  I previously shared it during the 2013, 2015, 2020, ad 2022 Horrorthons and, each time, I even used the exact same picture of Torgo.

However, Manos proved to be such a popular choice that I simply had to post it again. Manos has a reputation for being one of the worst films ever made.  And, honestly, who am I to disagree?  (Though disagree, I do.)  However, it’s also a film that simply has to be seen.

(As well, I love regional horror and there are a few films as regional as Manos, a film that was filmed in my home state of Texas and directed by a fertilizer salesman.)

By the way, everyone who watches Manos ends up making fun of Torgo, who was played by John Reynolds.  What they may not know is that Reynolds committed suicide shortly after filming on Manos wrapped.  So, as tempting at it may be to ridicule poor Mr. Reynolds’s performance, save your barbs for Torgo and leave John Reynolds alone.

And be sure to enjoy Manos: The Hands of Fate!

October Positivity: Before It Happened (dir by Andrew Jacob Brown)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

It’s going to be a bit of a mini-October Positivity review tonight.  I spent today helping my neighbors move then crying because my neighbors had moved, and then trying to talk my new neighbors into not getting rid of their new house’s hot tub.  I’m tired, so I’m going to try to keep things relatively short tonight.

In 2023’s Before It Happened, Eli Jenkins (played by the film’s director, Andrew Jacob Brown) is such a hard-boiled cop and detective that, when he realizes that the Mayor of his town has been kidnapping children and holding them prisoner in his home, he literally forces his way into the house and puts that perverted public official in his place.  Now, you would think that the Mayor of reasonably-sized town being arrested for kidnapping a child would be big news and Detective Jenkins would be on all of the Fox or Newsmax shows.  Instead, Jenkins gets yelled at for not following procedure.

Uhhmm, guys — your mayor was abducting children and holding them prisoner in his home!  His wife was helping him!  Why does no one in this movie seem to think this is as strange as I do?  I mean, seriously, I know that we’re no longer shocked when a public official is arrested but this still seems like a pretty big deal.

Anyway, Jenkins is given a new assignment.  He needs to find his ex-partner, Bobby (Jason Haines), and bring him to meet with his brother, the chief of police (Brian Eberly) who happens to be dying.  Jenkins tracks down Bobby but it turns out that Bobby, who was once a good and ambitious cop, is now totally irresponsible and in debt because he sold some valuable basketball cards to a comic book store.  Jenkins has to get the cards back before he can even think of taking Bobby to see his brother.  Since the original owner of the cards is holding Jenkins’s current partner (Christopher Shane Lowry) as a hostage, it is literally a matter of life-and-death.  Bobby and Jenkins work together to try to make things right and, along the way, they confront their own demons.  This leads to an increasingly complicated series of events.   Meanwhile, almost everyone that Jenkins talks to tells him that the Biblical prophecies are coming true and that the world will soon end….

There were some good things about this film.  I did smile a bit at just how complicated Eli’s relatively simple assignment became.  He just couldn’t catch a break and no one was willing to help out until Eli did something for them first.  That part of the film had a lot of potential.  But, like so many faith-based film, Before It Happened suffers from amateurish acting and a script that often seems to be trying too hard to imitate the big budget blockbusters that inspired the film.  Sometimes, you just have to be willing to admit that you don’t have the budget or the experience necessary to make a Hollywood-style crime drama.  Before It Happened‘s story had potential but the execution failed to realize it.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 2.13 “Eye of Death”

Posted on 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: The Series, a show which ran in syndication from 1987 to 1990. The show can be found on YouTube!

This week, Ryan goes into the past.

Episode 2.13 “Eye of the Death”

(Dir by Timothy Bond, originally aired on January 30th, 1989)

Atticus Rook (Tom McCamus) is an antiques dealer, one who is well-known to Jack.  No one seems to really like or trust Atticus Rook.  Everything about him seems to scream sleaze.  But Atticus has somehow managed to get artifacts from the American Civil War that no one else has ever been able to find.  His latest claim is that he will soon be selling Robert E. Lee’s sword.

How is Atticus accomplishing this?  He has a cursed magic lantern that he uses to project old pictures onto his wall.  He’s then able to step into the picture and enter the time period in which it was taken.  (Hey, that sounds like a fun cursed object to own!)  Atticus has been going into the past and telling Gen. Lee (Bernard Behrens) that he’s a spy.  However, the information that he gives Lee is just stuff that he remembers from history class.  Atticus thinks that he’s got a pretty good operation going but there are two catches.  To go to the past, he has to kill someone in the present.  To return to the present, he has to kill someone in the past.

Naturally, Ryan ends up in the past while trying to retrieve the magic lantern.  Ryan meets General Lee and tries to present himself as also being a spy but it turns out that Ryan paid even less attention in history class than Atticus did.  Ryan being Ryan, he also falls in love with a widow named Abigail (Brooke Johnson).  As we all know, having Ryan fall in love with you is pretty much a death sentence on Friday the 13th.  Abigail’s death does allow Ryan, Jack, and Micki to return to the present.  Moving the lantern allows Atticus to get trapped in his own wall, where he suffocates while trying to return to the present.

This was a surprisingly good episode.  I say “surprisingly” because you wouldn’t necessarily think that a low-budget Canadian show would do a great job of recreating the American Civil War but this episode pulls it off.  The costumes, the sets, the words used by the people encountered by Ryan and Atticus, all of them work to make the episode’s Civil War setting feel very realistic.  Tom McCamus is a great villain and Bernard Behrens is well-cast as Robert E. Lee.  Even the obviously doomed romance between Ryan and Abigail works remarkably well.

I have to admit that I’ve always assumed this show took place in Canada, largely because of all of the Canadian accents and the Canadian scenery.  This episode reveals that Friday the 13th is supposed to be taking place in the United States, despite the way that people pronounce the word “sorry.”  When Ryan ends up in the Civil War, he says that he’s from Chicago.  (It’s not necessarily a good idea to go back to the Civil War era and immediatly tell everyone that you’re a Yankee.)

Well, this show can pretend that the antique store is in Chicago if it wants to, but it’ll always be Toronto to me.

Horror on TV: One Step Beyond 2.5 “Night of the Kill” (dir by John Newland)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

When young Davey Morris tells his parents that he’s been hanging out with a friendly Bigfoot-type creature, all of the adults in town react in the worst way possible.

This episode, from the second season of One Step Beyond, was one of the first to deal with the legend of Bigfoot.  Needless to say, it’s the adults who turn out to be the true monsters in this scenario.

This episode originally aired on October 20th, 1959.

The TSL Horror Grindhouse: The Wizard of Gore (dir by Herschell Gordon Lewis)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

First released in 1970, Herschell Gordon’s Lewis’s The Wizard of Gore tells the story of Montag The Magnificent (Ray Sager), a magician who has a rather macabre stage show.

After lecturing his audience about how everyone secretly wants to see blood and violence, he selects a female volunteer from the audience.  Both the woman and the rest of the audience are hypnotized.  Montag’s tricks all involve mutilating his volunteers.  One volunteer is chainsawed.  Another gets a metal spike driven into her brain.  Another is drilled by a giant punch press.  (Like seriously, how does one store a giant punch press?)  The hypnotized audience only sees Montag using his various instruments of torture but they don’t see the wounds or the blood or the intestines.  (The movie audience is a bit less lucky.)  The victim is hypnotized into not realizing that she has essentially been murdered but, when the hypnosis wears off after the show, they promptly drop dead, mysteriously mutilated in the same way that everyone saw Montag miming on stage.

Naturally, the police arrest Montag and the movie ends.

No, actually, it doesn’t.  Even though it’s obvious that Montag is the murderer and that he’s hypnotizing people, the police don’t arrest him because his hypnotized audience swears that Montag didn’t really hurt anyone during his stage act.  However, television host Sherry (Judy Cler) and her lunkhead boyfriend, Jack (Wayne Ratay), both come to believe that Montag is the killer and they try set up a plot to expose him on national television,  Montag can’t hypnotize people through the television …. can he!?  And if he can do that, who is to say that he hasn’t hypnotized the people in the theater who would have been watching The Wizard of Gore when it was first released?

The Wizard of Gore appears to have been Herschell Gordon Lewis’s attempt to comment on his own status as a director who was notorious for making gory films.  (His 1963 film, Blood Feast, is often referred to as being the first gore film.)  Montag is a monster who appeals to his audience’s desire to see something extreme and forbidden.  For all of Montag’s evil, he can only exist and get more victims because people are willing to watch him torture strangers.  Lewis was not exactly known for being a particularly artful director but the shots of Montag’s victims screaming in terror while Montag’s audience silently and unemotionally watches are about as close to a genuinely powerful moment as you’re likely to find in a Herschell Gordon Lewis film.  The Wizard of Gore, with its commentary on the gore genre that Lewis himself largely invented, is one of Lewis’s more self-referential films.  And with it’s trick ending and shots of people suddenly collapsing with their intestines literally spilling out of them, it’s also one of Lewis’s stranger films and that’s saying something when you consider just how many odd films Lewis made over the course of the 60s and 70s.  (There’s a reason why one of his better films was called Something Weird.)  The Wizard of Gore is definitely a Lewis film, with his trademark stiff actors and non sequitur dialogue giving the whole thing a dream-like feel.

There’s a scene in Juno where Jason Bateman tells the film’s title character that Herschell Gordon Lewis is a superior filmmaker to Dario Argento and that The Wizard of Gore is scarier than Suspiria.  As soon as I heard that, I knew his character was going to turn out to be a sleaze and I was right.  The Wizard of Gore is a historically interesting film, especially for those who love the old grindhouse films.  But it’s no Suspiria.