Robert McKenna | Through the Shattered Lens

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, it’s all about Jack!

Episode 2.19 “The Butcher”

(Dir by Francis Delia, originally aired on April 24th, 1989)

Horst Mueller (Colin Fox), a Nazi scientist, uses a magic amulet to bring back to life the fearsome Col. Rausch (Nigel Bennett), a Nazi war criminal who was infamous for using barb wire as a garotte whenever he was carrying out executions. Rausch was killed during the war by a squad of soldiers led by a young lieutenant named Jack Marshak. Once Rausch is brought back to life, he not only sets himself up as a radio talk show host but he also seeks revenge on the men who killed him. One-by-one, he kills the members of the squad until eventually, only three are left alive, Simpson (Julius Harris), Shaw (John Gilbert), and Jack.

There were many episodes of Friday the 13th in which Jack was absent and described as being out-of-town while Micki and Ryan dealt with the latest cursed antique. This, however, is the first episode to feature Jack on his own. He mentions that Micki and Ryan are out-of-town, presumably because they’re tracking something down. This leads Jack to face Rausch with only the help of Simpson and Shaw. Watching this episode, one gets the feeling that Jack wouldn’t have it any other way. While this episode features all of the usual blood and melodrama that we’ve come to expect from this show, it also serves as a tribute to the friendship between Jack and his comrades-in-arms. Jack relates to Simpson and Shaw in a way that he can’t relate to the much-younger Micki and Ryan. If Jack is usually cast as a fatherly figure, this episode finds him working with equals and fighting against a monster with whom he has a personal connection. This is the rare episode to not feature any of Lewis’s cursed antiques. Instead, the magic amulet is one of the many artifacts for which Heinrich Himmler and the SS spent much of the war searching.

It’s a change-of-pace episode that gives Chris Wiggins a chance to show off his considerable talents an actor. Rarely has Jack been as haunted as he is in the episode and Wiggins’s sad eyes allow us to see what a lifetime of dealing with unbelievable evil would do to a person. In this episode, Jack is not just aware of the evil in the world but he’s also aware that he and his comrades-in-arms, the members of the so-called “Greatest Generation,” are aging and their time is passing. Jack and his friends are at an age where they should be enjoying their retirement. Instead. they’re still fighting against the legacy of Hitler’s evil.

This was a good and melancholy episode of Friday the 13th. This show could be uneven but episodes like this were good enough to make one mourn that the series did not last longer than just three seasons.

This week, Oscar will haunt your nightmares….

Episode 2.8 “Read My Lips”

(Dir by Francis Delia, originally aired on November 21st, 1988)

When you watch as much horror as I do, you automatically assume that anyone who is a ventriloquist is going to have an unhealthy relationship with their dummy. Sometimes, the dummy is alive. Sometimes, the dummy is possessed. Sometimes, the dummy is just a dummy but the ventriloquist has decided that it’s alive and urging him to kill. (For some reason, evil ventriloquists are always male.) I’ve seen a lot of creepy ventriloquist dummies but nothing quite compared me for Oscar….

AGCK! I mean …. LOOK AT THAT THING!

Oscar is at the center of this week’s episode of Friday the 13th. Oscar is wearing a boutonniere that once belonged to the noted ventriloquist, Adolf Hitler. The boutonniere not only brings Oscar to foul-mouthed life but it also inspires whoever owns Oscar to commit countless murders. When we first see Oscar, he is owned by Edgar Van Horne (played by a youngish Billy Drago). After Edgar attempts to break his bond with Oscar, Oscar drives Edgar crazy and then invites another ventriloquist, Travis Plunkett (John Byner), to be his owner. Things don’t turn out well for Travis either.

Sadly, Jack is not in this episode. With its emphasis on desperate nightclub performers and Oscar’s corny sense of humor, it’s hard not to feel that this storyline would have been right up Jack’s alley. Instead, it’s left to Micki and Ryan to deal with Oscar and the ventriloquists. Micki’s best friend from high school, Gabriella Montrose (Linda Griffiths), is planning on marrying Edgar but, needless to say, that all goes out the window once Edgar loses his mind and end up in a mental hospital. For the most part, Micki and Ryan are largely bystanders in this episode. All of the action revolves around Oscar and his unfortunate owners.

Billy Drago gives a wonderful performance as Edgar, making him both frightening and, in the end, surprisingly sympathetic. Edgar is desperate to escape the clutches of Oscar but, in the end, it turns out that he’s grown addicted to performing with Oscar and the attempt to quit cold turkey leads to him losing his mind. (Many episodes of Friday the 13th feature storylines that felt as if they were meant to be a metaphor for drug addiction and that’s certainly the case here.) John Byner plays his role a bit more broadly than Drago but still, it’s hard not to feel bad for Travis as he comes to realize that he’s in over his head with Oscar.

This was an effectively creepy episode, even if it did owe an obvious debt to the 1978 film Magic. Oscar makes for a memorable monster. Hopefully, he’ll never be seen again.