Richard Eden | 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 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, a lottery ticket leads to misery.

Episode 2.6 “Lucky Stiff”

(Dir by William Malone, originally aired on November 12th, 1989)

After the lottery-obsessed Lenny Nordhoff (David L. Lander) has a heart attack and dies, his widow, Greta (Mary Crosby), marries her brutish boyfriend, Hank (Richard Eden). Haunted by nightmares of Lenny holding out his bloody heart and accusing her of having broken it, Greta is not happy with her new marriage. When she and Hank realize that Lenny was buried with a winning lottery ticket, they break into the mausoleum, open his coffin, and retrieve the ticket. Then, Greta pushes Hank into the coffin and seals him up.

Months later, Greta is wealthy but now she’s haunted by visions of Hank and threatening phone calls. Eventually, she is confronted by a gravedigger (Tracey Walter), who blackmails her into marrying him.

This episode’s only memorable moment was an outdoor scene that was apparently filmed on a windy day, resulting in Mary Crosby having to awkwardly reach down to keep her dress from blowing up. (I supposed it says something about the show’s budget and production schedule that, rather than reshoot this scene, they just went with it.) Crosby didn’t do a bad job in this episode. She had the right neurotic femme fatale look.

Otherwise, this episode was pretty forgettable. The first story featured Greta having nightmares about a dead man and marrying a loser. The second story featured Great having nightmares about a dead man and marrying a loser. Even Freddy, in his reduced host role, looked pretty bored with the whole thing.

Liberty (Miles “How much Keeffe is in this film?” O’Keeffe) and Bash (Lou Ferrigno) served together in Nam and then came back to Los Angeles to clean up the streets. Liberty is a parole officer who doesn’t take no for an answer. Bash owns a gym and runs a Guardian Angels type of operation. Their friend and fellow vet, Jesse (Richard Eden), has a mullet and wears acid-washed mom jeans. Jesse lives with his sister, Melissa (Cheryl Paris), who never wears pants. When Jesse is murdered by a drug lord who spends almost all of his time soaking in the tub, Liberty and Bash eventually get around to seeking revenge.

The movie is called Liberty & Bash but Bash is actually only in a few minutes of the movie and Lou Ferrigno’s voice is dubbed by another actor. This was probably done because Ferrigno is partially deaf and, as a hard-of-hearing person who happens to be a big Lou Ferrigno fan, that really bothered me. Of the many storylines that floated through Liberty & Bash, Lou Ferrigno leading a Guardian Angels chapter was probably the one with the most potential but Liberty & Bash doesn’t do much with that. When Bash wasn’t around, the other characters should have been saying, “Hey, where’s Bash?”

Instead, the movie is all about Liberty. Even though Liberty is trying to bring the drug lord to justice and prove that Jesse didn’t commit suicide, the majority of the film is taken up with scenes of Liberty arguing with his girlfriend, a social worker named Sarah (Mitzi Kapture). Sarah is pregnant but she’s considering getting an abortion. Liberty spends almost the entire movie trying to talk her out of getting an abortion. Sarah and Liberty even argue about it during the film’s climatic action scene. I’m not kidding. This is the first action film that I’ve ever seen where the action was regularly interrupted by the abortion debate. The movie is obviously on Liberty’s side but Liberty is so obnoxious about it that the audience will be on Sarah’s side. Sarah can’t make up her mind until one of the bad guys points a gun at her belly and she says, “My baby!”

It’s a weird movie and doesn’t add up to the much. If not for a little profanity and some brief nudity, Liberty & Bash could have passed as the pilot for syndicated, Stephen J. Cannell cop show. Mr. B (Charles Dierkop) is Los Angeles’s least intimidating drug lord. Mitzi Kapture is sexy, elegant, and displays the patience of a saint as Sarah. Miles O’Keeffe is usually the coolest cat this side of Michael Pare but in this movie, he’s surly and won’t stop yelling at his girlfriend. Cheryl Paris spends almost the entire movie in her underwear, showing that the filmmakers at least knew who their target audience was. Those who like to keep an eye out for mullets and off-the-shoulder t-shirts will find the film to be a feast. The movie had miles of Keeffe but it needed more Bash.