Tag Archives: Timothy Webber

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 2.11 “The Sweetest Sting”

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!

Agck!  Bees!

Episode 2.11 “The Sweetest Sting”

(Dir by David Winning, originally aired on January 16th, 1989)

I have never been stung by a bee or a wasp.

I’m extremely lucky.  All of my sisters and all of my cousins have been stung once or twice.  My mom was stung multiple times when I was little.  But I have never once been stung.  I once had a wasp fly straight into my hair and I was able to shake it out without it stinging me.  I have had bees land on my bare arm and just sit there without stinging.  I once knocked a wasp nest off of a farm doorway and the wasps, while obviously angry, made no attempt to sting me in retaliation.  For whatever reasons, the wasps and the bees have decided not to mar my beautiful skin with any of their stingers and I appreciate them for that.

Of course, I’m also very scared that they might someday change their mind.  I have no idea what it feels like to be stung but I know it’s painful.  On a more serious note, I have no idea whether or not I’m allergic to bees or wasps.  I appreciate their kindness but I’m still terrified of their capriciousness.

That’s why this somewhat silly episode of Friday the 13th freaked me out.  I say silly because it was about McCabe (Art Hindle), a psycho beekeeper who kept all of his bees in a cursed hive.  Whenever he would unleash the bees, the cheap special effects were so bad that it would have made me laugh if not for the fact that I’m already scared enough of innocent bees.  Imagine how I feel about cursed ones!

The bees produced cursed honey that can be used to restore the youth of people who allow themselves to be stung by McCabe’s bees.  (Because they’re magic bees, they don’t die after stinging someone.  I always understood that stinging someone caused a bee to be ripped in half so I’m not sure how the magic works but whatever.  I actually kind of feel bad for bees now.)  However, the people who accept McCabe’s youth treatment have to have a constant supply of honey and McCabe needs a constant supply of dead bodies so that his clients can fake their own deaths.  So, McCabe orders his clients to kill if they want to remain young.

To be honest, the whole plot kind of feels like it was made up on the spot but the great Canadian character actor Art Hindle gives an amusingly over-the-top performance as McCabe.  McCabe is the type of villain who laughs whenever he’s thinking about doing something evil.  There’s nothing subtle about Hindle’s performance but it works in the contest of the episode’s overall absurdity.  The bees are obviously fake.  Art Hindle chews up every piece of scenery he can get his hands on.  The episode’s a lot of fun.

Retro Television Reviews: T and T 2.13 “Hunted”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to 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 T. and T., a Canadian show which ran in syndication from 1987 to 1990.  The show can be found on Tubi!

This week, someone takes a contract out on T.S. Turner’s life!

Episode 2.13 “Hunted”

(Dir by Richard Oleksiak, originally aired on February 6th, 1989)

Someone has hired a hitman to take out T.S. Turner!

Fortunately, Hickson (Timothy Webber) is not a very good hitman and he somehow fails to shoot Turner despite having a high-powered rifle and, during the initial attempt on Turner’s life, the advantage of surprise.  (Technically, he misses because T.S. moved to get a parking ticket off of his car’s windshield at the exact moment that Hickson fires his rile but still, it’s not like T.S. is a small target.  The hitman just isn’t that good at his job.)

Despite the fact that someone has just tried to kill him, Turner doesn’t want to go to the police.  This actually makes sense when you consider that Turner spent years in prison for a crime that he didn’t commit.  He has every reason to distrust the police.  He has personally experienced how they can screw up a case.  That said, Amy decides to go to the police on her own.  This leads to Detective Deakin (Matt Birmin) being assigned to keep Turner from leaving Decker’s Gym.

Turner is not happy about this and actually, it turns out that Turner’s instincts are correct.  Deakin is the man who hired the hitman!  It turns out that Deakin’s younger sister was an innocent bystander who was injured during a high-speed chase involving Turner and a bunch of criminals.  Turner may have caught the criminals but Deakin’s sister slipped into a coma and died.  Deakin has spent years obsessing on Turner and he is determined to get his revenge.

What’s interesting that, when Turner finds all of this out, he actually feel very guilty about what happened to Deakin’s sister, to the extent that he doesn’t blame Deakin for wanting him dead.  One thing about action shows like this is that there are always innocent bystanders who witness every car chase or shoot-out but it’s rare that we ever hear about how they were effected by suddenly being exposed to so much violence.  How does the person who witnesses a bad guy being shot just a few feet away from them react?  How does it effect their lives?  Myself, I would totally be freaked out and I would probably have trouble sleeping afterwards.  Often times, shows like this concentrate so much on the action that they ignore the human aspect of it all.  T and T deserves some credit for at least acknowledging that Turner’s actions, even when he’s fighting on the side of the law, have consequences.

That said, Deakin is still technically the bad guy and, when he and Hickson corner Turner in a water treatment plant, Turner points out that, as soon as Hickson shoots Turner, Deakin is going to shoot Hickson to cover up his involvement.  This leads to Hickson turning on Deakin and the two of them end up shooting each other.  Turner survives and hopefully, he’ll be a better drive from now on.

This was a surprisingly good episode.  Matt Birmin gave a good performance as Deakin and the water treatment plant was a properly atmospheric location for a final stand-off.  The second season of T and T has been hit-and-miss but this episode definitely worked.

Late Night Retro Television Reviews: Friday the 13th 1.14 “Bedazzled”

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

This week’s episode of Friday the 13th is …. well, it’s not that good.  Let’s talk about it.

Episode 1.14 “Bedazzled”

(Dir by Alexander Singer, originally aired on February 22nd, 1988)

With Jack and Ryan out of town to attend an astrology convention, Micki has got the antique store to herself …. or, at least, she does until she agrees to babysit a bratty kid named Richie (Gavan Magrath).  Even worse than Richie are Jonah (Alan Jordan) and Tom (David Mucci), who claim to be telephone repairmen but who are actually at the store because they want to retrieve a cursed lantern that was taken from them by Jack and Ryan.

(Incidentally, they kill the real telephone repairman before showing up at the store.  The real repairman is played Timothy Webber, who played Mo in Terror Train.  Meanwhile, Dave Mucci played Wendy’s thuggish boyfriend in Prom Night.  So, if nothing else, this episode is a footnote of sorts in Canadian slasher history.)

The cursed lantern is probably the lamest antique that the show has featured up to this point.  Using the lantern, undersea divers can find hidden treasure.  But after finding treasure, the lantern then has to set someone on fire.  (Basically, after hidden treasure is found, anyone who is touched by a beam of the lantern’s light will burst into flames.)  The man problem is that the lantern is so big and bulky that Jonah just looks silly whenever he picks it up and aims the lantern’s fiery light at anyone.  It is a seriously awkward and rather impractical weapon, one that appears to not only be impossible to aim but also next to impossible to run with as well.  Add to that, it turns out that the beam of light can diverted by a mirror so it’s not only a lame item but an easily defeated one as well.

It’s a shame that this episode isn’t better.  Micki may have the best hair and the best fashion sense of anyone on the show but it’s rare that she ever really gets an episode all to herself.  But this episode saddles her down not only with forgettable villains and an impractical cursed item but it also forces her to deal with a bratty kid.  The kid survives his night at store and, by all logic, he should be traumatized for life.  Instead, he tells his mother about everything that happened and his mother laughs about what a great imagination he has.  Seriously, though, shouldn’t Micki have some magic wand that she could use to erase Richie’s memory or something?  It seems kind of dangerous to let a kid that bratty know that the store is full of magic items.

Anyway, this was a forgettable episode so I’m keeping the review short tonight!  Fortunately, next week’s episode will be much better.

Horror Film Review: Terror Train (dir by Roger Spottiswoode)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Wow.  Fraternities are mean!

How else do you explain the prank that begins the 1980 slasher film, Terror Train?  At a party, awkward pledge Kenny (Derek MacKinnon) is told that Alana Maxwell (Jamie Lee Curtis) is waiting for him in an upstairs bedroom and she totally wants to have sex with him!  Poor Kenny.  Really, he should have been able to figure that this was a prank but I guess he’s just naive.  Anyway, he goes upstairs, strips down to his underwear, and listens as Alana says, “Don’t be shy …. kiss me!”

Kenny thinks that Alana is waiting for him in the bed but actually, she’s hiding behind a curtain.  So, what’s in the bed?  Well, as Kenny soon discovers, it’s a limbless corpse!  Oh, those wacky pre-med students!  Under the direction of Doc (Hart Bochner), they’ve stolen a cadaver from the medical school and they’ve used it to play the joke of the century!  Everyone bursts into the room, laughing.

Ha ha!  Funny joke, right?

Well, not to Kenny.  Kenny totally freaks out and starts spinning around and gets all wrapped up in the sheets.  Needless to say, Kenny does not get laid that night.

In fact, Kenny ends up losing his mind.  And that’s unfortunate but, as they say, life goes on.  Three years later, the pranksters are all due to graduate so they’re going to throw a costume party on a train!  The conductor (Ben Johnson) watches as these rich, costumed college kids get on his train and you can just tell that he’s thinking, “There better not be no funny business.”  He need not worry!  Alana is on the train and she still feels so bad over what happened to Kenny that you can be sure that there won’t be any pranks during this graduation party!

Unfortunately for everyone else, Kenny’s decided to get on the train as well.  While his former classmates are smoking weed, getting drunk, dancing to the best disco music of 1980, and taunting a magician (David Copperfield), Kenny is killing people and stealing their costumes.

Kenny’s first victim actually dies before the train leaves.  When he comes staggering up to everyone with a sword sticking out of him, everyone assumes that it’s just another joke.  Nope!  Turns out the sword is real but everyone’s too busy boarding to notice as the guy collapses to the ground and is promptly dragged underneath the train.  In a scene that always makes me cringe, the train slowly crushes him as it starts to move forward.  I mean, seriously …. Agck!

So, now Kenny is wandering around the train, dressed like Grouch Marx and killing people.  It takes people a while to notice because we’re not exactly dealing with the smartest group of college graduates.  And, once they do realize …. well, what are they going to do?  They’re stuck on a train in the middle of nowhere!  Even if they do get off the train, it’s snowing and below freezing outside!  I mean, it’s almost as bad as Minnesota in January out there….

Of the many slasher films that Jamie Lee Curtis appeared in after Halloween, Terror Train is definitely the best.  After making his directorial debut here, Roger Spottiswoode went on to become one of the busiest directors in Hollywood and you can tell why when you watch this movie.  Spottiswoode’s makes great and atmospheric use of the train and Kenny’s habit of constantly changing his costume keeps you guessing just where he might be at any given time.  Even more importantly, Spottiswoode takes the time to develop the characters so that they become more than just cardboard victims.  Jamie Lee Curtis, Hart Bochner, Sandee Curris, and Timothy Webber all give excellent performance as the objects of Kenny’s wrath while old veteran Ben Johnson brings some gravitas to the film as the wise conductor.

(My only objection is that the worst of the pranksters is named Doc, which happens to be the name of our cat.  And let me just say that Doc the cat would never pull as cruel a prank as Doc the medical student.)

As we all know, Jamie Lee Curtis will be returning to the horror genre later this month.  She’ll be playing Laurie Strode in David Gordon Green’s Halloween remake or reboot or sequel or whatever it is.  Famously, Curtis refused to appear in horror films for several years, saying that she didn’t want to be typecast.  That was understandable on her part and, as much as I love horror movies, it was probably a smart career move.  That said, the slasher films that Curtis appeared are some of the best of the genre.  Halloween, Terror Train, and even Prom Night are all classics of their kind.  Terror Train is a suspense masterpiece, perfect for any cold and snowy night when you want to scream a little.