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Late Night Retro Television Review: Freddy’s Nightmares 1.12 “Deadline”

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 …. oh, who knows?

Episode 1.12 “Deadline”

(Dir by Michael Lange, originally aired on January 29th, 1989)

This week’s first story is about Peter (Aaron Harnick), whose father owns the local Springwood paper and who is given a job for the summer.  He’s assigned to write the obits so that he can hang out around the newspaper office and learn from the veteran writers.  Peter would rather be in Europe.  That’s especially true when he starts to visualize the obits that he’s writing and somehow comes to realize that he’ll die unless he meets his deadline.

This story was the epitome of a good premise that was sloppily executed.  Peter hates writing obits but if he doesn’t write the obits, he’ll die in the same way as the person that he’s writing about.  He has visions.  He has dreams.  Unfortunately, both his boss and his girlfriend tell him to stop working  on his current obit and to get some rest.  But if Peter stop writing, he’ll die!  Uhmm …. how long does it take to type up an obituary?  I mean, doesn’t he just have to type up whatever dead person’s loved ones sent to the paper?

There’s a clever moment where Peter deletes an old article about Freddy Krueger from the newspaper’s computer system.  The episode implies that maybe Peter’s visions are in some way Freddy’s revenge but, as was so often the case with this show, it doesn’t really do much to explore the idea.

The first story ends with Peter dead.  The episode’s second story deals with Emily (Page Hannah), a friend of Peter’s girlfriend.  Emily has been dating an older college student (Timothy Brantley) and she continually has dreams where her friends  — including Peter’s girlfriend — get mad at her for not spending more time with her.  In her dreams, her friends all die in a car accident.  At the end of the story, it turns out that Emily was just daydreaming.  Seriously, that’s the entire story.

What a terrible episode.  I usually try to be positive about even the lesser episodes but I have to admit that I’m kind of ticked off that I wasted 50 minutes watching this week’s episode of Freddy’s Nightmares.  It felt as the show’s writers didn’t even try this week.  Instead, they just came up with some weird scenes and then dismissed them by shrugging and saying, “Hey, it was all a dream.  Nothing means anything!”

This episode was just lazy.

Bonus Horror on TV: Baywatch Nights 2.12 “Frozen Out Of Time” (dir by Rick Jacobson)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Tonight, I’ve decided to share a bonus hour of televised horror.  Tonight, we present to you an episode of Baywatch Nights that originally aired on February 9th, 1997.  In this one, two 900 year-old Vikings are causing chaos in Los Angeles!  Who can stop them?

David Hasselhoff, of course!

(You can read my review of this beautifully odd episode here.  Valhalla!)

Horror On TV: The Halloween That Almost Wasn’t (dir by Bruce Bilson)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Oh no!  Halloween might be canceled because people just aren’t scared of the old monsters!  Dracula (Judd Hirsch) calls all of the classic creatures to a meeting in his castle (where they all happen to be freeloading) and give them an ultimatum.  Be more scary!  It turns out to be easier said than done.

This originally aired in 1979 but, for people of a certain age, it achieved a certain immortality thanks to regular airings on the Disney Channel.  It’s a cute show.  It might seem a little bit corny today but that’s a large part of its appeal.  It’s a reminder of a more innocent time.

Warren the Werewolf, by the way, was named after Warren “Werewolves of London” Zevon.

Horror Film Review: Giant From The Unknown (dir by Richard E. Cunha)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 1958’s Giant From The Unknown, something strange is happening in a California mountain town.  Animals are being killed.  Property is being destroyed.  People are being murdered.

Sheriff Parker (Bob Steele) suspects that the murderer might be Dr. Frederick Cleveland (Morris Ankrum), mostly because Dr. Cleveland spends a lot of time in the mountains looking at fossils with his daughter, Janet (Sally Fraser).  When a younger scientist named Wayne (Ed Kemmer) shows up to help Dr. Cleveland out with his research, Sheriff Parker is even more suspicious.  Meanwhile, the local citizenry suspects that it might be a member of the local Native American community.

It turns out that everyone’s wrong!

The murderer is a formerly dead conquistador (Buddy Baer), who was brought back to life by a bolt of lightning and who is now wandering around the mountains and killing people.  The conquistador walks around in his full conquistador uniform, which is in pretty good shape when you consider the fact that he’s been dead for over two hundred years, maybe longer.

The odd thing about the conquistador is that he’s regularly described as being a giant, even though he’s clearly not.  I mean, he’s tall.  He appears like he might be 6’5.  That makes him taller than the average person but shorter than the average professional basketball player.  The filmmakers regularly attempt to shoot him from a lower angle in order to make him look taller but there’s nothing that can be done to disguise the fact that he’s just a 6’5 guy wearing what appears to be a fake beard and mustache.  If anything, he looks like the frozen-faced Burger KIng mascot.  Maybe he would stop killing people if the sheriff would just order a cheeseburger and fries.  I mean, seriously, his whole rampage could have been avoided.

The title is also incorrect about the giant being from the unknown.  He’s very obviously from Spain.  All one has to do is look at his uniform.  I think the unknown element of this film is how the conquistador has spent centuries underground without losing any skin.  For someone who has been dead for as long as this conquistador was, his hair is very clean and well-groomed.  Watching this film, it’s hard not to feel that Dr. Cleveland should have spent some time researching conquistador embalming techniques because whoever preserved the “giant” did a very good job!  Everyone should be so lucky to look that good for being dead for that long.

Giant From The Unknown attempts to do the usual thing where the monster falls for the only woman in the entire film.  (Indeed, it was hard not to notice that town’s population seemed to be 99% male.)  Unfortunately, the giant was a pretty silly monster so it was difficult to get wrapped up in his emotional journey.  There are some monsters that you feel sorry for and there are other monsters that you just wish would go away.  The giant is a monster who probably had a lot of good haircare tips and who could have probably helped out the entire town …. if only they had been willing to listen!

Retro Television Review: St. Elsewhere 2.20 “Cramming”

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 Hulu and, for purchase, on Prime!

This week, Peter White goes on trial.

Episode 2.20 “Cramming”

(Dir by Tim Matheson, originally aired on May 2nd, 1984)

Dr. Peter White finally goes on trial, charged with raping Kathy Martin and assaulting Wendy Armstrong.  For his attorney, he hires the same lawyer (Conrad Janis) who previously made the case against him at his disciplinary hearing.  The lawyer asks Kathy Martin about her own reputation at St. Eligius.  (“How many times have you had sex in the morgue?”)  Peter himself manages to pass a lie detector test.  (Sociopaths don’t have the same physical reactions to telling a lie as normal people.)  In the end, Peter is acquitted.

Shirley Daniels blames Kathy for the acquittal, saying that she should have come forward earlier.  As for Wendy, she deals with the trauma by binging and then purging.  When one of her patients miscarries after being admitted to the hospital, it’s determined that Wendy carelessly missed a heart murmur.  When Wendy argues that she’s been under pressure due to the trial, Dr. Craig points out that Wendy missed the heart murmur before the trial even started.  Wendy breaks down into tears.

I have to admit that Wendy Armstrong has never been one of my favorite characters on this show.  She’s the type of doctor who most people would dread having to deal with.  She knows all of the technical stuff but she has absolutely no idea how to relate to patients and she gets defensive whenever anyone disagrees with her.  Even if she hadn’t been attacked by Peter White, it seems like it was inevitable that she would eventually end up overlooking something with one of her patients.  That said, my heart still broke for her in this episode.  One gets the feeling that she’s one bad day away from breaking.

This episode ends with all of the residents taking their National Board exams.  The residents know that five of them will be cut from the program.  Having been acquitted, Dr. White approaches Westphall and Auschlander and announces that he doesn’t have any hard feelings towards them and he hopes that they’ll give him a fair shot.  “I’m innocent,” he lies.

Dr. Ehrlich is also nervous about his exams, cramming everything he can into his last minute study sessions.  His Aunt Cherise (Louise Lasser) comes to visit and help him deal with the end of his marraige to Roberta but Ehrlich is able to dump her off on Dr. Westphall.  After having an awkward dinner with the eccentric Cherise, Westphall realizes that he’s not ready to start dating again.

This episode left me reeling, to be honest.  The acquittal of Peter White was a gut punch.  I know he’s guilty.  Everyone in the hospital knows that he’s guilty.  But he’s acquitted.  Kathy Martin’s name is drugged through the mud.  Wendy Armstrong has gone from being determined to self-destructive.  But Peter White has not only gotten away with his crimes but he’s now apparently convinced that he can go back to being a doctor at St. Eligius.  And who knows?  He probably can.  It’s a messed up world.  It was messed up in 1984 and it’s messed up today.

Next week, we’ll find out which residents made the cut!

October True Crime: The Hunt For The BTK Killer (dir by Stephen Kay)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Dennis Rader is pure evil.

I feel confident saying that, though I’ve never met him.  He’s currently eighty years old and in prison, serving several life sentences for a series of murders he committed in the 1970s, the 80s, and the 90s.  Because he committed the murders at a time when Kansas did not have the death penalty, he escaped being executed.  That said, he won’t be eligible for parole until the next century so we can rest assured that Dennis Rader will die in prison.

Dennis Rader was a serial killer who decided to give himself a nickname.  He wrote letter to the local media in Wichita, Kansas and demanded to be known as The BTK Killer — for Bind Them, Torture Them, and Kill Them.  It was a dumbass nickname but it stuck.  Everything about the BTK case is disturbing but one that always gets me is that nearly got away with it.  His last known victim was an elderly woman who he killed in 1991.  By the time the current century rolled around, The BTK Case had gone cold and was being forgotten about.  Rader couldn’t handle that so he started writing the local media and eventually the police again in 2004.  Rader, being a moron, didn’t consider that he was mailing a DNA sample with every letter.  Eventually, he sent the cops as floppy disk of his “writings.”  What he didn’t realize is that the metadata from a deleted Word Document was still stored on the disk.

Dennis Rader was a deacon in his local church.  He was also an dog catcher and compliance officer for Park City, Kansas.  You know the self-important jerks who send you a letter threatening to fine you if you don’t mow your grass?  Dennis Rader was one of those guys.  When Rader was finally arrested, he was described as being a trusted member of his local community but let’s be honest.  Everyone hates their local compliance officers.  Most serial killers are driven by a need to control and dominate.  Perhaps one reason why Rader had stopped killing was because he was able to channel his sadism into his job.

After he was arrested in 2005, he was on television constantly and he was such a continual presence that he even worked his way into a few of my nightmares.  Rader confessed to his crimes in court, giving a monologue in which he dryly discussed each murder.  Later, one of the primetime news shows interviewed Rader in prison and again, Rader discussed each murder in a flat tone and only showed emotion when he talked about the prospect of never leaving prison.  It was disturbing to watch and listen to and sadly, the media made sure that we heard and listened to it a lot.

The Hunt For The BTK Killer was a made-for-television movie about Dennis Rader (played by Gregg Henry) and the detective (Robert Forster) who eventually arrested him.  It aired in 2005, the same year that Rader was captured and eventually sentenced for his crimes.  It’s a movie that was obviously shot very quickly to capitalize on the media attention that the case was receiving.  As is often the case with the movies like this, it was filmed up in Canada.  (Canadian film mainstay Maury Chaykin appears as a true crime writer.)  All that said, it’s still an effective film.  Gregg Henry, under a ton of makeup, plays Dennis Rader as being the type of busybody who gets off on telling people what to do and who believes that being a deacon at his church will absolve him from the murders that he committed.  It’s a good performance and Henry is well-matched with Robert Forster.  Forster’s naturally world-weary vibe made him the ideal choice for playing detectives who have seen the worst that humanity had to offer.  Most importantly, the film shows how fear can change a community.  When BTK is on the loose and sending taunting letters to the newspapers and the local television station, the people of Wichita soon start to suspect their neighbors and what was one a friendly town becomes a place where even Forster is at risk of getting accidentally stabbed by his terrified wife.

Dennis Rader was someone who obviously enjoyed the fear that he generated.  He cried when he went to prison and hopefully, he’s still crying now.

October Positivity: The Moment After 2: The Awakening

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

2006’s The Moment After 2 picks up where The Moment After ended.

In the days after the Rapture, the Global Alliance has taken over the world.  The government seeks to control everything.  Paper money is becoming a thing of the past and instead, everyone is expected to pay via a chip that’s been implanted in their hand.  Not having a chip means going to prison and probably being executed for being a subversive.  The Global forces, led by the sadistic Commander Fredericks (Monte Rex Perlin), are hunting down dissidents.  People are being reeducated.  It’s the type of world that, in reality, a lot of people want, even if they hide it behind a bunch of class struggle rhetoric.

Former FBI agent Adam Riley (David A.R. White) is on Death Row but he gets a chance for freedom when the prison transport is attacked by a rebel group.  When the other prisoners ask Adam to come with them, Adam takes one look at all the bodies of the people killed during the attack and refuses.  He’s not a follower of Global but he doesn’t want any part of the rebel militia’s demand of “an eye for an eye.”  Instead, Adam wanders through the desert until he finds a community of Christians.  He’s reunited with the Rev. Jacob Krause (Brad Heller), from the first film.  He also meets Carissa (Andrea Logan White), a woman with whom he is in love.  However, she’s married to Richard (Mark Atteberry) and we all know what the Bible says about adultery.  Of course, the world is now a dangerous place and, with Fredericks executing every Christian he finds, maybe Adam will still get his chance.  Adultery may be a sin but moving in on a new widow is not.

Meanwhile, Adam’s former partner and friend, Charles Baker (Kevin Downes), is recruited to track Adam down.  If Charles captures Adam, maybe Charles’s wife Rebecca (Deanne Morre) will be releases from prison.  Or maybe not.  You really can’t trust the Global Alliance.

One thing that I appreciated about this film is that Adam, despite plenty of opportunities to give into temptation, stayed true to the commandment that “Thou Shalt Not Kill.”  A lot of faith-based, apocalypse films tend to use the end times setting as an excuse to turn its characters into quip-ready action heroes, gunning down the forces of the world government and blowing up buildings without a second thought.  This film, though, is smart enough to say, “Hold on, the whole anti-killing thing still applies, regardless of how bad things get.”

As for the rest of the film, it’s well-made and the cast is decent.  That may sound like faint praise but, after you’ve watched enough low-budget faith-based productions, you come to appreciate the ones that at least feature a steady camera, a clean soundtrack, and actors who can at least show a modicum of emotion.  As tempting as it may be to laugh at the heavy-handedness of the Global Alliance, those of us who remember the COVID lockdowns will never forget some of the suggestions that were made for dealing with people who were judged to be noncompliant because they didn’t want to observe curfew or close their businesses.  Much like the first film, The Moment After 2 is a decent thriller, one that works nicely for our paranoid times.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Highway to Heaven 4.18 “We Have Forever: Part Two”

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’s episode is massively confusing.

Episode 4.18 “We Have Forever: Part Two”

(Dir by Michael Landon, originally aired on February 17th, 1988)

Picking up from last week, an embittered Jonathan is no longer an angel.  Instead, he’s a mortal man who can’t get a job because he doesn’t have any references.  (The idea is that Jonathan can’t explain that he’s spent the last 40 years working for God.  But, over the past four and a half seasons, he’s had numerous jobs where he helped people out.  Couldn’t he have listed some of those people are references?)  However, Jonathan is happy because he’s fallen in love with Jennifer (Leann Hunley), the woman that he saved from drowning last week.

Meanwhile, Mark is actually making an effort to help people by working at the camp for the blind where he and Jonathan worked earlier in the season.  (Actually, why couldn’t Jonathan ask for a job at the camp?  The more I think about it, Jonathan not being able to get a job makes less and less sense.)

Jennifer, however, has a secret of her own.  At the end of the episode, she leaves Jonathan a note, in which she explains that she’s actually Joan, Jonathan’s late wife.  Jonathan was upset because he felt God was keeping him from seeing Joan in Heaven.  Instead, it turns out that Joan — like Jonathan — has been assigned to work on Earth as an angel.  So, the two months that Jonathan spent with Jennifer was actually God giving Jonathan a chance to spend time with Joan but, for some reason, no one told Jonathan that was what was happening so Jonathan got mad and walked out on God.  But then, Jonathan changes his mind after learning that Joan is Jennifer but instead of asking to work with Joan/Jennifer, Jonathan goes back to working with Mark.

Seriously, I’m having a hard time following some of the logic here.

That said, despite all the lapses in logic, this episode still made me cry.  Admittedly, I’ve been feeling under the weather today so maybe that’s why I was so emotionally susceptible to this episode.  Or maybe it’s just the fact that Highway to Heaven is such an overwhelmingly earnest and sincere show that even the episodes that shouldn’t work somehow do.  All I know is that I was sobbing by the end of this episode.

The important thing is that, at the end of the episode, Jonathan and Mark have a new assignment  and drive off.  Wait, I thought Mark had a job.  Way to abandon all those blind children, Mark!

Perhaps it’s best not to think too hard about this episode and just accept it for being the tear jerker that it was.

THE TWILIGHT ZONE (TV Series) – S3, E1: “Two,” starring Charles Bronson and Elizabeth Montgomery!

Posted on by Bradley Crain

You know producer Buck Houghton had high hopes for the opening episode of Season 3 of THE TWILIGHT ZONE when it aired on September 15, 1961. It stars up and coming actors of the time, Charles Bronson and Elizabeth Montgomery, who were all over TV screens in the 50’s and early 60’s, with Bronson emerging as a strong character actor in movies as well. The two would be major stars within a few years, but they weren’t quite there yet. 

This episode, titled “Two,” opens with “The Woman” (Elizabeth Montgomery), who is wearing a tattered dark military uniform, wandering into a bombed out, deserted city, and spotting the remains of a restaurant. Tired and hungry, she goes in and digs around until she finds an old can of chicken. As she’s opening the can, “The Man” (Charles Bronson), who’s wearing a tattered, light-colored uniform, walks in on her. Immediately attacking him with a combination of meat cleavers, bottles, pots and pans, The Man tries to hold her off until if becomes clear that he’s going to have to subdue her, which he does with one vicious punch that knocks her out cold. At this point it’s clear that these are the last two remaining survivors of a devastating war, on opposing sides no less, that completely destroyed the world. When The Man wakes The Woman up by dumping a pot of cold water on her face, he gives her back her chicken and tells her that there is no reason to fight anymore, as everyone else is dead. She doesn’t understand what he is saying so he walks off in frustration. The Woman doesn’t trust The Man, but she begrudgingly starts to follow him around to keep an eye on him. Will they kill each other? Will they join forces to survive? Could they even fall in love? Writer-Director Montgomery Pittman answers all of these questions over the course of the episode’s brisk 25 minutes. 

The allegorical “Two” was a bold choice to open the popular TV show’s third season with its minimalist production set in a few sections of a single bombed-out town and featuring only two characters who barely even speak, especially Montgomery, who says two words throughout the entire episode. Not that much really happens either, so it’s the type of episode that lives or dies based on the performances of the lead actors, and Bronson and Montgomery both deliver outstanding work. Bronson, a dependable character actor at this point in his career, is especially good as The Man. His square-jawed stoicism unravels enough to reveal a weary vulnerability and desire for a connection with another person, even when they’re supposed to be mortal enemies. It’s ultimately a romantic part and Bronson kills it. For those who mostly know Bronson from his post DEATH WISH action star roles, parts like this are a revelation. Montgomery, still a few years away from beginning her iconic portrayal of Samantha in BEWITCHED, is quite beautiful even when she’s this grimy. Her performance as The Woman is even more challenging as it’s almost completely a physical performance, and she shines as her character transforms over the course of the episode.

Ultimately, “Two” may resolve its setup a little too quickly to be realistic, but I still enjoyed it immensely. The performances are outstanding and its hopeful denouement left me with a smile on my face. 

Horror On TV: The Cloning of Clifford Swimmer (dir by Lela Swift)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Tonight’s televised horror is The Cloning of Clifford Swimmer.  Peter Haskell stars as Clifford Swimmer, an angry jerk who is unhappy with his marriage.  He’s come up with a plan, though.  He’s going to have himself cloned and then, after leaving his clone with his family, he’ll be free to live his life.  However, Swimmer discovers that things never work that simply when it comes to creating a clone.  This is a clever story with a great twist at the end.

It originally aired on November 1st, 1974 as a part of ABC’s The Wide World of Mystery.  Unfortunately, whoever uploaded this film to YouTube has disabled playback so you’ll have to click on the link to watch it!