Late Night Retro Television Review: Freddy’s Nightmares 1.2 “It’s A Miserable Life”

Posted on August 1, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

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 Plex!

Let’s see what’s happening in Springwood!

Episode 1.2 “It’s A Miserable Life”

(Dir by Tom McLoughlin, originally aired on October 16th, 1988)

Bryan Ross (a young John Cameron Mitchell, giving a performance that really can’t be described as being anything less than lousy) is the son of the owner of the Beefy Boy hamburger joint in Springwood, Ohio. Bryan wants to go to college. His dad (Peter Iacangelo) and his mom (Annie O’Donnell) want him to take over the family business and join them in singing “Chew me, eat me, you can’t beat me.”

Bryan is working the overnight shift alone when a scruffy man (Michael Melvin) pulls up to the drive-through on his motorcycle and threatens to kill him. Bryan passes out but, when he wakes up, he’s got a throbbing headache and he keeps seeing blood dripping on the floor. Bryan’s girlfriend, Karyn (Lar Park Lincoln, giving a good performance), takes Bryan home. At his house, Bryan discovers his mom and dad are acting weird. Bryan tries to convince his parents to let him leave home. Dad tries to stick his head in the oven. Mom tries to seduce her son and then climbs into the refrigerator. On the radio, there’s a news story about “another” drive-by shooting. What could it all mean!?

Oh, you know what it all means. Even if you haven’t watched the episode, you know that the motorcycle man obviously shot Bryan in the head and everything that happens after Bryan leaves Beefy Boy is just his dying vision. It’s not a bad idea but it’s ineffectively executed. We don’t really know enough about Bryan or his parents for Bryan’s hallucination to carry any impact and, from what we do see, they all appear to be broadly-drawn caricatures. This episode also commits the sin of introducing a memorable character — the man on the motorcycle — and then not exploring just who or what he was meant to be.

Bryan’s story was wrapped up in 20 minutes. The second half of the episode dealt with Karyn. Shot in the same drive-by attack that killed Bryan, Karyn ended up at the hospital and …. well, I guess her story was another collection of hallucinations that really didn’t add up to much. The story was effective because hospitals are scary and Lar Park Lincoln gave a better performance than John Cameron Mitchell did in his story. That said, the entire story was basically Karyn getting upset because everyone kept saying that her parents were on their way. Finally, Karyn finally revealed that — you guessed it! — her parents were dead and that they died at the same hospital where she was taken after getting shot. As the episode ended, Karyn saw her parents standing in the doorway and screamed and thrashed around in bed while the doctor and nurse tried to calm her. And …. that was it. I mean, is Karyn dead? Is that why her parents showed up? Is Karyn hallucinating again? Much like a drunk frat boy, this story didn’t reach a climax as much as it just stopped.

As for Freddy, he showed up to introduce each story. There was a cool moment where he emerged from the restaurant’s fry cooker. For the hospital scene, he put on scrubs. He didn’t actually interact with either Bryan or Karyn but he still took credit for their suffering. I think Freddy was just bragging on himself.

This episode was pretty uneven. For the most part, I’m just glad I don’t live in Springwood.

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special Friday The 13th Edition

Posted on June 13, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films is all about letting the visuals do the talking.

Admittedly, the Friday the 13th films aren’t exactly known for being the most visually impressive horror films ever made. That’s especially true of the first 8 films, which were all shot on a low budget and in a hurry. That said, today is Friday the 13th and there’s no way that I, as a lover of the horror genre, couldn’t use the 4 Shots format to pay a little bit of tribute to one of the most successful and influential horror franchises of all time.

So, with that in mind, here are….

4 Shots From 4 Friday the 13th Films

Friday the 13th (1980, dir by Sean S. Cunningham)

Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984, dir by Joseph Zito)

Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986, dir by Tom McLoughlin)

Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989, dir by Rob Hedden)

Back in 2012, I reviewed every single film in the Friday the 13th film franchise! It was a lot of fun!

My Friday the 13th reviews:

Happy Friday the 13th everyone!

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 3.1 and 3.2 “The Prophecies”

Posted on February 7, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

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 Friday the 13th: The Series, a show which ran in syndication from 1987 to 1990. The entire series can be found on YouTube!

This week, we start season 3!

Episode 3.1 and 3.2 “The Prophecies”

(Dir by Tom McLoughlin, originally aired on October 7th, 1989)

The third season starts with a 90-minute episode, one that was split into two parts when the show was later re-aired. It’s a rather strange episode, one that takes the Curious Goods crew far from Canada and one that also see Ryan transformed into a…. well, we’ll get to that.

When the episode starts, Ryan is in a state of shock because he recently ran into his mother (Jill Frappier) while visiting the grave of his brother. His mother walked out on Ryan and his father after the death of Ryan’s brother and the reunion between the two leaves Ryan feeling conflicted. As he blames himself for both the death of his brother and his father, he can’t help but wonder what he would do if he had the opportunity to do everything over again.

Meanwhile, Micki is running the antique store with none other than Johnny Ventura. Last season, Micki disliked Johnny and she had ever right to as Johnny tended to be a little bit stalker-ish in his behavior towards her. But, with the start of this season, it appears that all has been forgiven.

As for Jack, he’s in a small town in France. He received a letter from Sister Adele (Marie-France Lambert) telling him about some apocalyptic visions that she’s been having. Those visions are largely the result of fallen angel Asteroth (Fritz Weaver), who is determined to bring the AntiChrist into the world by following the step laid out in the Books of Lucifer. He has to kill a nun and he’s decided that Adele is that nun. However, Asteroth cannot get to her.

But then Jack gets shoved down a flight of stairs and ends up in the hospital. Ryan, Micki, and Johnny fly over to France. Ryan is promptly possessed by the Devil and he murders Sister Adele! But now, for some reason, Asteroth also needs to murder a young girl who seems to know Ryan and whose presence in the episode is never really explained. In order to free Ryan from being possessed, it’s necessary to transform him back into a small child. Eventually, God gets tired of all this and Asteroth bursts into flame.

The ending is a bit ambiguous about what this all means but I do know that this was John D. LeMay’s last episode and that Johnny Ventura will become a series regular as well. (Steven Monarque, who played Johnny, is still listed as a guest star in this episode.) So, I guess Ryan, who no longer has any memory of Micki or any of his Curious Goods adventures, is going to go live with his mother and grow up again and I’d love to know how Jack and Micki are going to explain that to his mom.

This was a weird way to write Ryan out of the show. (If anything, Ryan sacrificing himself to save Micki and/or Jack would have made much more sense and been just as powerful an ending.) But, with all that mind, this was still a good episode. While the episode did not film in France, it does feature some location work in Quebec and those scenes are full of ominous atmosphere. Fritz Weaver was an appropriately creepy Asteroth. Speaking of being creepy, John D. LeMay did a great job playing possessed Ryan. This episode was not always easy to follow but it was scary and atmospheric and it worked surprisingly well.

Bye, Ryan! I’ll miss you.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 2.12 “The Playhouse”

Posted on October 4, 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!

Agck! Stranger danger!

Episode 2.12 “The Playhouse”

(Dir by Tom McLoughlin, originally aired on January 28th, 1989)

Mike and Janine Carlson (played by Robert Oliveri and Lisa Jakub) are two young siblings living in the suburbs. They don’t have much of a life. Their mother (Belinda Metz) is neglectful and continually complains that her children are the reason why she can’t find a rich boyfriend. Mike and Janine don’t appear to have any close friends. Children are vanishing all over town and parents are telling their kids, “Don’t go off with strangers!” but no one seems to care enough about Mike and Janine to even check to make sure that they haven’t been kidnapped.

Mike and Janine have a playhouse, a gift that was given to them by one of their mother’s former boyfriends. The playhouse is the only place where they feel happy. It’s a place where they literally get anything that they wish for. But sometimes, the door to the playhouse is locked. When that happens, Mike and Janine have to convince someone else to go into the playhouse. Once someone enters the playhouse, they find themselves trapped in a nightmarish world that is full of evil clowns and other circus figures. Mike and Janine have to chant, “I hate you! I hate you!” while the playhouse claims its victims.

Agck! Seriously, this is a disturbing episode! Not only are Mike and Janine terribly abused but almost all of their victims are children. Perhaps because of the age of the people involved, this is the only episode of Friday the 13th: The Series in which no one dies. They’re held prisoner in the playhouse and probably traumatized for life but they don’t die. Fortunately, that means that they can be freed once Jack convinces Mike to chant, “I love you!” instead of “I hate you!”

Yep, this episode is all about the power of love but you really have to wonder if all of Mike and Janine’s problems can be solved by chanting, “I love you!” I mean, aren’t the other kids going to remember that Mike and Janine held them prisoner in a nightmare universe? The episode may end with the playhouse defeated by Mike and Janine are still living in that terrible suburb and their mother is still a resentful alcoholic. Even though this episode has what would most would consider to be a happy ending — the kids are free! — it’s still incredibly dark.

This episode definitely left me feeling a bit shaken. I hate seeing children in danger and that’s what this episode was all about. Even things that sound kind of silly — like Mike chanting “I hate you!” while the playhouse does its thing — are actually rather disturbing when viewed. The child actors are almost too convincing in this episode. In the end, Jack says that all you need is love but this episode leaves you wondering if he’s correct.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 2.6 “Master of Disguise”

Posted on June 28, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The search for cursed antiques continues!

Episode 2.6 “Master of Disguise”

(Dir by Tom McLoughlin, originally aired on November 11th, 1988)

A side job delivering antiques for use in a horror film leads to Micki meeting her favorite actor, the amazingly handsome and charming William Pratt (John Bolger). And when the film’s leading lady refuses to shoot a scene because of Pratt’s method obsessiveness, Micki finds herself cast as her replacement. Soon, Pratt and Micki are having a torrid romance. Ryan feels that there’s something wrong with Pratt but then again, we all know that Ryan has unrequited romantic feelings for his cousin (ewwww!).

That said, Ryan is right. Pratt is actually Jeff Amory, an actor who was so disfigured that he was previously typecast in horror films. Amory disappeared after the murder of one of his co-stars, an actress who looked a lot like Micki. Using a cursed makeup box that once belonged to John Wilkes Booth (“the actor who shot Lincoln,” Ryan helpfully explains), Amory has transformed himself into the handsome Pratt. Unfortunately, the box needs to constantly absorb blood to work and Pratt has become a one-man murder spree. (One of his victims is played by Aaron Schwartz, of Check It Out! fame.) Will Micki become his next victim?

(An interesting piece of trivia: Booth is often described as just being “the actor who shot Lincoln,” but he was actually a legitimate star and a celebrity in both the North and the South in the years leading up to the Civil War. The youngest and best-looking of the Booth brothers, he was an acclaimed and popular Shakespearean actor who was so handsome that women would flock to the theater whenever one of his show’s came to town. He was the 19th century stage’s version of Ryan Reynolds. Everyone who was into theater knew his name, even before he shot Lincoln. America has seen many assassins who wanted to be celebrities. Booth was a celebrity who wanted to be an assassin.)

This was an okay episode. I liked the fact that Pratt was a bit more tormented by his actions than some of the other villains who have appeared on this show and I was also happy that Micki got to be at the center of the action, even if the episode’s script did make her a bit more flighty than she’s ever been previously portrayed. Ryan’s romantic feelings for Micki are a little bit awkward, seeing as how they’re related but, again, they were necessary to establish why Micki was originally dismissive of Ryan’s concerns.

This episode ended with a bit of trivia, with Jack mentioning that William Pratt was also the real name of one of the gentlest men in show business …. Boris Karloff. Again, you have to wonder why no one else noticed that is before Jack and why it took Jack so long to mention it. Still, it’s nice that Karloff got a shout out.

Insomnia File #58: The Haunting of Helen Walker (dir by Tom McLoughlin)

Posted on October 30, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable or Netflix? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!

If you were having trouble getting to sleep last night, you could have gotten on YouTube and watched 1995’s The Haunting of Helen Walker!

What’s it about? Read on but stop me if this sounds familiar.

In Victorian-era England, a somewhat neurotic young woman is hired to serve as the governess for two children who live in a foreboding estate. Once the governess arrives, she discovers that the children — especially little Miles — can be a handful. She also discovers that there was a governess hired before her, a governess who died under mysterious circumstances. At night, the new governess hears strange noises and soon, she becomes convinced that she’s seen the ghosts of both her predecessor and the old governess’s lover, Peter Quint. Everyone else may think that the new governess has allowed the isolation of the estate to get to her but she’s convinced that the ghosts have possessed the children! She becomes determined to save the children, even at the risk of their own lives….

If that sounds familiar, then you’ve either read Henry James’ Turn of the Screw or you’ve seen one of the several movies that were based on his novella. The Haunting of Helen Walker, which was made-for-television and initially broadcast in 1995, reimagines James’s unnamed governess as Helen Walker, an American woman played by Valerie Bertinelli. The Haunting of Helen Walker also differs from its source material in that it leaves little doubt about the fact that the ghosts are real and the children have been possessed. While the novella is deliberately unclear about whether the governess is correct or if she’s just hallucinating, The Haunting of Helen Walker has little use for such ambiguity.

Still, if you can accept the changes to the source material, The Haunting of Helen Walker is an entertaining and atmospheric ghost story. Director Tom McLoughlin doesn’t waste any time getting to the action and Christopher Guard makes for an appropriately brooding and dangerous Peter Quint. At first, it’s a bit jarring to hear Valerie Bertenelli’s American accent in what is essentially the epitome of a British ghost story but she gets better as the film progresses and she does an especially good job during the film’s dramatic climax. Finally, Diana Rigg does a great job playing the estate’s intimidating housekeeper, Mrs. Grose. She’s skeptical of Helen from the minute she arrives and the fact that Helen says she can see ghosts doesn’t do much to improve Mrs. Grose’s opinion.

In the end, this is an entertaining, if hardly definitive, take on Henry James’s novella. Having been made for 90s television, it actually has to be rather restrained in its shocks but that actually works to the film’s advantage, forcing the movie to rely on atmosphere over jump scares. The Haunting of Helen Walker is currently on YouTube and it’s fine viewing for a rainy night.

Previous Insomnia Files:

Story of Mankind
Stag
Love Is A Gun
Nina Takes A Lover
Black Ice
Frogs For Snakes
Fair Game
From The Hip
Born Killers
Eye For An Eye
Summer Catch
Beyond the Law
Spring Broke
Promise
George Wallace
Kill The Messenger
The Suburbans
Only The Strong
Great Expectations
Casual Sex?
Truth
Insomina
Death Do Us Part
A Star is Born
The Winning Season
Rabbit Run
Remember My Name
The Arrangement
Day of the Animals
Still of The Night
Arsenal
Smooth Talk
The Comedian
The Minus Man
Donnie Brasco
Punchline
Evita
Six: The Mark Unleashed
Disclosure
The Spanish Prisoner
Elektra
Revenge
Legend
Cat Run
The Pyramid
Enter the Ninja
Downhill
Malice
Mystery Date
Zola
Ira & Abby
The Next Karate Kid
A Nightmare on Drug Street
Jud
FTA
Exterminators of the Year 3000
Boris Karloff: The Man Behind The Monster

Sometimes They Come Back (1991, directed by Tom McLoughlin)

Posted on October 23, 2022 by Jedadiah Leland

In 1963, nine year-old Jim Norman witnessed a group of juvenile delinquents murder his older brother Wayne in a tunnel before getting killed themselves when a train came barreling down the tracks. Twenty-seven yeas later, Jim (Tim Matheson) is a history teacher and he has returned to his hometown to take a job at his old high school. He is haunted by memories of what happened in the tunnel and then he is haunted for real as, one by one, all of the dead delinquents returns to life and enroll in his class. They want revenge on the man that they blame for their fiery deaths.

Based on a Stephen King short story, Sometimes They Come Back was actually produced for television. It originally aired on CBS, complete with a warning that viewer discretion was advised. Though the ghost greasers are too ridiculous to really be scary (one of them laughs like a hyena), the movie was still more graphic than anything else that played in primetime that year. I wonder how television audiences, in those pre-American Horror Story days, reacted to one of Jim’s students being dismembered in the backseat of a car and the ghost greasers then tossing pieces of his body over the bridge?

Tim Matheson takes the material seriously and gives an intelligent performance as Jim Norman. Fans of Newhart might enjoy seeing William Sanderson (a.k.a. Larry of Larry, Darryl, and Darryl) playing a serious role as the one greaser who wasn’t killed by the train. Most of the other characters, including Jim’s wife and his students, are forgettable. The movie’s glaring weakness is the ghost greasers themselves. Even with their Satanic car and their threatening ways, they’re too cartoonish to be frightening. Sometimes They Come Back has its strengths but ultimately, it’s a middling Stephen King adaptation.

Horror on TV: Friday the 13th: The Series 2.6 “Master of Disguise” (dir by Tom McLoughlin)

Posted on October 21, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Tonight, for our horror on the lens, we have the sixth episode of the 2nd season of Friday the 13th: The Series!

In this episode, an actor uses a makeup case that was once owned by John Wilkes Booth to improve his looks! Unfortunately, the makeup is fueled by murder! This episode features horror and romance. Prepare to shed a tear for poor Micki. This episode also features a shout out to the great Boris Karloff.

This episode was directed by Tom McLouhlin, who also directed Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives!

This episode originally aired on November 11th, 1988.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AewJbN-1t4s

Horror On The Lens: The Haunting of Helen Walker (dir by Tom McLoughlin)

Posted on October 7, 2019 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Stop me if this sounds familiar.

Now, The Haunting of Helen Walker does take some liberties with Henry James’s source material. The novella was a masterpiece of ambiguity. The Haunting of Helen Walker is …. less so. Let’s just say this version doesn’t leave much doubt as to whether or not there’s actually ghosts in the mansion. That said, it’s still an entertaining made-for-TV movie.

Check out my full review here and watch the film below.

Enjoy!