Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 1.26 “Bottle of Dreams”

Posted on April 19, 2024 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!

This week, season one comes to a close with a trip down nightmare lane.

Episode 1.26 “Bottle of Dreams”

(Dir by Mac Bradden, originally aired on July 25th, 1988)

It’s clip show time!

To be fair, the first season finale of Friday the 13th does come up with a clever way to justify being a clip show. Micki and Ryan get trapped in the vault of Curious Goods with an ancient, Egyptian urn that causes people to confront the memories of their worst fears. Not surprisingly all of Micki and Ryan’s worst fears are connected to the cursed antiques that they’ve spent the past year seeking out and dealing with.

So, once again, we get to see the cursed doll that started the series. We see the weirdo wandering around with his cursed cupid statue. We see the vampire. Oddly enough, we don’t see the pirate ghosts or the gangster who killed Micki’s boyfriend, even though both of those events were very traumatic for Micki. We don’t see the magic pipe that killed Ryan’s father, despite the fact that episode ended with Ryan in tears. We don’t see the newscaster who killed Ryan’s girlfriend or the cursed quilt that nearly caused Ryan to get burned at the stake. In short the clips seem to be a little bit arbitrary and they also all seem to come from early in the season, which leads me to suspect that this episode was put together long before it actually aired.

The cursed urn and the flashbacks are all a part of yet another attempt by Uncle Lewis (R.G. Armstrong) to return to the world of living. Fortunately, Jack’s friend Rashid (Elias Zarou) shows up and helps to push Lewis back into the netherworld. It’s always nice when one of Jack’s associates shows up to help. It creates the feeling that there’s an entire magical underground out there, all dealing with cursed antiques and malevolent spirits. While Ryan and Micki deal with their bad memories, Jack and Rashid are the ones who save the day and it makes for a nice conclusion for the first season. Our heroes may have started out as skeptical amateurs but now they’re a strong team. Micki and Ryan know that they can count on Jack, which is good considering that almost everyone else that that they get close to ends up dead.

The first season of Friday the 13th: The Series was pretty good. The horror was effective. The cast had a lot of chemistry. With a few exceptions, the cursed antiques were all interesting and worked in genuinely clever ways. The show had a sense of humor but it never let it get in the way of mayhem. Even the fact that the show claimed to be set in America even though it was clearly filmed in Canada and filled with Canadian actors only served to increase the dream-like atmosphere.

Will the second season live up to the first? We’ll start to find out next week!

Late Night Retro Television Reviews: Friday the 13th 1.13 “The Baron’s Bride”

Posted on January 5, 2024 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, Micki and Ryan go to 1870s London!

Episode 1.13 “The Baron’s Bride”

(Dir by Bradford May, originally aired on February 15th, 1988)

The latest cursed antique that Jack has decided to retrieve is a cursed cape. As Jack explains it, any man who wears the cape will automatically become irresistible to women. So, with that in mind, why does Jack take Ryan and Micki with him? Wouldn’t it make more sense to leave Micki at home and just bring Ryan who, as a guy, would be immune to the cape’s powers?

Seriously, Jack did not think this through!

As well, Jack also doesn’t know the full extent of the cape’s power. It not only makes the wearer irresistible to women but it also turns him into a vampire. And if blood gets on the cape’s brooch, the vampire and anyone near him will be transported into the past.

Jack, Ryan, and Micki arrives the home of Marie Simmons (Diana Barrington), just in time to see her giving the cape to her new boarder, Frank Edwards (Tom McCamus). Of course, as soon as Micki sees Frank, she falls under her spell. When Marie attacks Micki, she cuts Micki’s cheek. Micki’s blood hits Frank’s brooch and they (along with Ryan) are transported into the past.

All three of them end up in London in 1870. While Frank stalks victims on the streets of London, Micki and Ryan team up with a young writer named — *ahem* — Abraham (Kevin Bundy) and his wife, Caitlin (Susannah Hoffman). Frank is determined to find Micki and, because Frank is still wearing the cape, Micki once again finds herself falling under Frank’s spell.

This is an excellent and atmospheric episode. As soon as Ryan, Micki, and Frank are transported to London, the show switches from color to black-and-white and the story plays out like a macabre Universal horror film. The episode is full of scenes of Frank running in slow motion towards his victims and revealing his fangs as he snarls at his enemies and Tom McCamus gives a wonderfully sinister performance as the innocent boarder turned vampire. This episode packs a lot action into just 45 minutes of screen time and Micki and Ryan (and Robey and John D. LeMay) again prove themselves to be a good team.

The episode ends with a neat, if predictable twist. Back in the present day, Jack asks Micki and Ryan if they happened to learn Abraham’s last name. When they reply that they only knew him by his first name, Jack reveals that they spent their time in London working with Bram Stoker. So, in their way, Micki and Ryan are responsible for Dracula! Woo hoo! Way to go, guys!

This was a great and fun episode. Episodes like this make me glad that I decided to review this show.

One final note: Keep an eye out for Friday the 13th — A New Beginning‘s John Shepherd as a police constable.

Playing Catch-Up: Room (dir by Lenny Abrahamson)

Posted on January 11, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Have you seen Room yet?

I ask because I’m debating how much information I should share in this review. Room came out a few months ago and I’ve been late in reviewing it because watching the film was such an emotionally overwhelmingly experience that I wasn’t sure where to begin. Now, all of this time has passed and I’m in a hurry to review this film because it’s obviously going to be nominated for some Oscars on Thursday morning and I’m wondering how much I can reveal without spoiling the movie.

It’s always tempting to say “Spoilers be damned!” but I’m not going to do that this time. Room is a great film and it’s one that deserves to be discovered with a fresh mind. I imagine that many people who missed the film the first time will see it once Brie Larson has been nominated for Best Actress. Out of respect for those people, I am going to hold off from going into too much detail about the film’s plot.

Of course, this means that, if you haven’t seen the film, you’re going to have to have a little bit of faith in me. You’re going to have to trust me. When I tell you that this is an amazing film that will take you by surprise, you’re just going to believe me. Because if I ruin those surprises … well, then they won’t be surprises anymore, will they?

When I first heard all the Oscar talk swirling around Room, my initial instinct was to make a joke about Tommy Wiseau finally getting the credit he deserves. But then I saw Room and, within a few minutes of the film, I was in tears. It’s hard for me to think of any other film this year that made me cry as much as Room.

Room is narrated by Jack (Jacob Tremblay), a 5 year-old boy whose hair is so long that he is frequently mistaken for being a girl. Jack lives in a filthy room with Ma (Brie Larson). The tiny room has only a toilet, a sink, a bed, a small kitchen area, and a cheap television. There’s also the small closet where Jack sleeps and a skylight in the ceiling. As quickly becomes apparent from his narration, Jack has never been outside of the room. All he knows about the outside world comes from TV and the stories told to him by Ma.

Occasionally, a nervous man named Old Nick (Sean Bridgers) enters the room. Whenever Old Nick shows up, Ma orders Jack to hide in the closet. However, even in the closet, Jack listens to Ma and Nick talking in the room. Ma talks about how Nick kidnapped her when she was 17. Nick talks about how he has recently lost his job and may not be able to continue to take care of his two prisoners. Fearful for her life, Ma humors the self-pitying Nick. Nick, meanwhile, plays the victim and complains about how difficult it is to keep her and Jack prisoner. It quickly becomes apparent that Jack is Nick’s child.

Now that Jack is five, Ma knows that he’s old enough that she can tell him about her plan to escape from Nick. However, escaping means exposing Jack to a world that he’s never experienced and that Ma fears she no longer remembers.

Meanwhile, Ma’s parents wonder what has happened to their missing daughter. (It’s from her parents that we learn that, much like a character played by fellow Oscar contender Jennifer Lawrence, Ma’s name is Joy.) Ma’s mother, Nancy (Joan Allen), is now divorced from Joy’s emotionally repressed father (William H. Macy). Nancy is now married to the kind and appealingly disheveled Leo (Tom McCamus). However, still hoping that her daughter will someday return, Nancy hasn’t even touched Joy’s old bedroom.

Finally, the opportunity comes for Ma and Jack to escape and…

…and that’s all I can tell you without spoiling the film. Room is an emotionally exhausting film, one that will make you cry but which will also leave feeling strangely hopeful for the future. Brie Larson gives a courageously vulnerable and emotionally raw performance as Joy while Jacob Tremblay is perfectly cast as Jack. Since Larson and Tremblay are both getting a lot of attention as possible Oscar nominees, I want to take a few minute to single out one member of the cast who, so far, has been overshadowed. Tom McCamus doesn’t have a lot of screen time but he makes the most of every second he gets, turning Leo into the ideal father figure.

Room made me cry and cry and I can’t wait to see it again.