Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Wednesdays, I will be reviewing Monsters, which aired in syndication from 1988 to 1991. The entire series is streaming on YouTube.
Say, have you heard the joke about the traveling Bible salesman and the farmer’s daughter? How about the one about the Man from Nantucket….
Episode 2.6 “The Farmer’s Daughter”
(Dir by Michael Warren Powell, originally aired on November 5th, 1989)
On a rainy night, traveling salesman Howard Filby (Soupy Sales) has an accident in front of the farmhouse owned by …. well, the show just calls them Ma (Bobo Lewis) and Pa (George Hall). Ma and Pa seem like good country folks. (That said, just their names brought to mind the owners of the Ma & Pa General Store on King of the Hill. “I guess your Pa because you’re PA-thetic!” “And you’re Ma because you’re always ridin’ mah ass!”) Ma and Pa are willing to let Howard spend the night at the farmhouse, out of the rain. He can just sleep up in the attic. They’ll have to put up a privacy sheet, of course. Their daughter Lucy (Stephanie Phillips) also stays up in the attic.
That privacy sheet doesn’t stay up for long. Howard becomes intrigued by Lucy’s silhouette and her sultry voice. When the sheet comes down, Howard is relieved to discover that Lucy is just as attractive as she sounded. Lucy asks Howard for his undying love and Howard’s willing to give it. Lucy talks about heading downstairs to let Ma and Pa know that they’ll be getting married. Howard’s a little bit surprised to hear that….
Howard’s even more surprised when he accidentally pulls off a chunk of Lucy’s skin. It turns out that Lucy is not quite who Howard thought she was and that Howard is hardly the first salesman to be brought to the farmhouse and sent up to the attic. Even as Howard struggles in the attic, Ma and Pa sit in their living room and smile at the sound of another fender bender outside….
This was a nicely atmospheric episode. Having heard all the various stories and jokes about traveling salesman and farmer’s daughters, I can’t say that I was particularly surprised by the direction that the story took but the episode still works as an example of American folk horror. Soupy Sales was a comedian and a children’s show host and, according to Wikipedia, his trademark was getting a pie slammed in his face. (Ouch!) With that in mind, I guess it’s not a surprise that Sales’s performance occasionally leans a bit too much towards the goofy side. (There’s a difference between playing the role with humor and just mugging for the camera.) However, Stephanie Phillips, George Hall, and Bobo Lewis are all effectively creepy as the faux friendly farmhouse inhabitants.
Interestingly enough, this episode was co-written by character actor Bob Balaban. As a director, Balaban was responsible for Parents, another film about a seemingly perfect married couple with a secret.
Through the Shattered Lens 