Tonight’s excursion into televised horror is the very first episode of Boris Karloff’s Thriller!
Thriller was an anthology series that lasted from 1960 to 1962. Each episode presented a new story of horror and/or suspense. What makes this series especially memorable is that each episode was introduced by none other than Boris Karloff! I’ve seen a few episodes of Thriller (the entire series is on YouTube) and, to be honest, it’s kind of a hit-or-miss show. But Karloff and that mischievous twinkle in his eye makes it all worth it!
This episode originally aired on September 13th, 1960. It’s called The Twisted Image and stars Leslie Neilsen as a man being stalked by two mentally disturbed individuals. This episode was well-directed by Arthur Hiller and, if it’s more of a suspense story than a horror story, it still has its creepy moments.
Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Tuesdays, I will be reviewing Saved By The Bell: The New Class, which ran on NBC from 1993 to 2o00. The show is currently on Prime.
This week, the Gang learns a lesson about not dropping out of school.
Episode 2.23 “The D Stands For Dropout”
(Dir by Don Barnhart, originally aired on December 10th, 1994)
Oh no! Tommy wants to drop out of high school and work full time as an auto mechanic!
Actually …. that might be for the best.
Since the very first episode, Saved By The Bell: The New Class has portrayed Tommy as being an amiable but dumb guy who just happens to have a savant-like ability for fixing cars. It’s been established, in several episodes, that there’s nothing Tommy can’t do with a car. Since Tommy apparently know everything that there is to know about cars and cars are literally the only thing that he cares about and he always seems to be flunking every class that he takes, why shouldn’t Tommy drop out? What’s he going to do in high school or college? He’s already learned everything that there is no to know about how to fix a car and a good auto mechanic will always be in demand. Plus, Tommy’s cute enough that, if he needs to, he can probably find a rich widow in Beverly Hills to pay his bills.
Drop out, Tommy! Drop out!
Still, Mr. Belding and everyone else insists that Tommy is making a mistake when he drops out of school. Belding tells Tommy’s father (Nick Angotti) that he needs to show some tough love so Tommy realizes how difficult it is in the real world. Tommy is kicked out of his house and has to move in with Screech. Tommy is no longer allowed to help his friends with their science project. Tommy has one of those Saved By The Bell fantasy sequences where Screech refuses to hire him because he doesn’t have a high school diploma….
And really, this is when Tommy should say, “But I’m actually already getting paid good money to do the only thing that I care about and the only thing that I’m actually good at so who cares?”
Instead, Tommy reenrolls in high school and helps the Gang win the science fair by building a remote control car. The competition must have been really weak that year.
Poor Tommy. When he’s an adult, he’s going to look and realize he should have just dropped out when he had the chance.
Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Mondays, I will be reviewing CHiPs, which ran on NBC from 1977 to 1983. The entire show is currently streaming on Prime!
This week, Bruce goes to back to high school.
Episode 6.13 “High Times”
(Dir by Phil Bondelli, originally aired at January 16th, 1983)
The Highway Patrol is investigating a series of car thefts. At the scene of the latest theft, they discover several video games token that can only be used at an arcade that sits near a private school. The auto shop teacher at the school is John Casey (Jim Brown), a former car thief-gone-straight. Ponch and Bobby decide to have Bruce go undercover as a new student.
Not surprisingly, this makes no sense. First off, Bruce is just a cadet. He hasn’t graduated from the Police Academy yet. So, really, it’s debatable whether or not he would even be allowed to do undercover work. Secondly, it was established during his first appearance that Bruce is something of celebrity. He’s the national speedway champion. When he won the championship, his picture was on the front page of the paper, along with an announcement that he planned on becoming a cop. When Bruce shows up at the school, he’s riding his motorcycle and he does a bunch of tricks in the parking lot. It’s as if he wants his cover to be blown!
This was a weird episode. Danny Bonaduce shows up as a student but he doesn’t have anything to do with the car theft plot. (Apparently, he’s not playing the gang leader that he twice played during the previousseasons.) Instead, he just dances in the hallway and is elected king of the Grease Hop. (That’s a school dance where everyone dresses like a character from Grease.) The rest of the student body rolls around on roller skates. As for the thieves, they’re pretty easy to identify. Benny (Andrew J. Lederer) wears glasses and is in debt to some gamblers and is constantly dropping tokens all over the place. Matt (Jon Caliri) is the tough guy who doesn’t see why the tokens are so important to Benny. They’re working not for Mr. Casey but instead for Coach Hutton (Bruce Bauer).
This was a strangely insubstantial episode, even by the standards of CHiPs. So much time was spent on Bonaduce and his friends acting silly in the halls that one got the feeling that the production team was fantasizing about doing any show other than another episode of CHiPs.
Probably the most surprising thing about this episode is that Bruce went undercover as a high school student instead of Ponch.
In this, the final episode of Freakylinks, Ethan Embry and the team try to prove that a murder was actually a supernatural occurrence. Their efforts are recorded for a true crime television show. The mockumentary approach is reminiscent of The Blair With Project, which was done by the same people who were behind FreakyLinks. So, there you go!
It’s too bad that there was never a Baywatch Nights/FreakyLinks cross-over.
Oh well. This episode aired on June 22nd, 2001 and it brought to an end the story of Derek Barnes.
Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Mondays, I will be reviewing Crime Story, which ran on NBC from 1986 to 1988. The entire show can be found on Tubi!
This week, a member of the Taskforce has an issue.
Episode 2.3 “Always A Blonde”
(Dir by Robert Dalva, originally aired on October 20th, 1987)
Since they apparently have nothing better to do, Torello and the members of the Task Force are trying to bust the Vegas marijuana syndicate. This episode opened with Torello and the boys at a jazz club and, at first, I was worried that Abrams would show up with his saxophone and start playing like he used to do during the first season. (Those scenes were always a bit cringey.)
Instead, the attempted jazz-club sting falls apart because the youngest member of the Task Force, Joey (Billy Campbell), leaves his post when he spots his high-school girlfriend, Doreen (Britta Phillips), walking along the Vegas Strip. It turns out that Doreen is now a prostitute who is working for a notoriously sadistic pimp named Ray Keech (Tony Maggio).
Last week, the Task Force put their actual job on hold so that they could help out Torello’s ex-wife. This week, they do it to help out Joey. When Ray discovers that Doreen is planning on leaving him, he murders her. This leads to a chase through Vegas and a well-shot scene where Joey beats up Ray with the city’s neon glowing behind them.
One thing that I’ve noticed about Crime Story is that, other than Torello and Abrams, the other members of the Task Force often come across as ciphers. We really don’t know much about them, beyond the fact that Joey is young, Danny is Torello’s best friend, Walter is old, and Nate once had a gambling problem. We don’t know much about their families, other than the fact that all of them were able to move from Chicago to Las Vegas without it being too much of an issue. We do know that they’re all loyal to Torello, sometimes to an almost cult-like degree. With this episode, we learn a little about Joey, but it’s still not really enough to make this rather predictable story compelling. If anything, this episode made Joey look totally unprofessional and erratic. Should he even be on the Task Force if he can’t even take part in a simple stakeout?
The absence of Luca and Pauli continues to be felt. Is it really Crime Story if half of the story is missing?
Robert F. Lyons is one of my favorite character actors, and he turned 87 years old on October 17, 2026. One of the best nights of my life was when I was able to interview him, along with host Eric Todd, on the THIS WEEK IN CHARLES BRONSON PODCAST episode “Everyone calls me Bobby.” I mostly appreciate him based on his work with Bronson (DEATH WISH II, TEN TO MIDNIGHT, MURPHY’S LAW), but he’s got over 100 credits, and he’s given a lot of memorable performances in films and on TV over the years. As far as the horror genre, I generally think of his role as Skeeter Norris in THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SCARECROW (1981). When I was looking through his filmography this week, I noticed he had guest-starred in an episode of FREDDY’S NIGHTMARES that premiered on February 4th, 1990. Having never watched an episode before, this seemed like the perfect time to check it out.
I only watched the first part of the episode in order to see Lyons, but his story concerns an obnoxious sculptor (Lyons) who fakes his own death to avoid prosecution after the accidental death of one of his models. This also has the added benefit of increasing the value of his work. He instructs his wife, who knows he’s really alive, to sell his remaining sculptures for the premium before they head to France and live out their lives in luxury. The narcissist that he is, he goes stir crazy cooped up in his loft apartment, even accusing his wife of having an affair. Unsurprisingly, things don’t go well for him in the end.
As I said earlier, this was my first episode of FREDDY’S NIGHTMARES. I didn’t know exactly what to expect, but I did enjoy the nostalgia of seeing Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) host the episode, even if his comments were a little corny. I don’t want to speak for the entire series, but based on this one episode alone, the story seemed designed to teach our protagonist a thing or two about the right way to treat people. Despite his artistic talent, our lead was selfish, jealous, bitter, and abusive to everyone around him, and he learned a valuable, but deadly lesson. I enjoyed Lyons’ performance, and I thought Fabiana Udenio was extremely sexy as his wife. I mean seriously, the guy should have been thanking God that he had her rather than treating her like crap. This being the early 90s, he had an earring in his left ear and a cute little ponytail, but he truly is a jerk and Lyons went all in as he always seemed to in his best performances.
I’m glad I watched this episode, even if I don’t necessarily have the desire to go back through the entire series. Lyons is good, and the story had a reasonable, if superficially manufactured, moral lesson for a guy who had treated the important people in his life kind of like property. If another episode catches my attention in the future, I’ll definitely give it a watch!
P.S. I’ve attached a link to our interview on TWICB just in case interviews with character actors like Lyons interest you. It was so much fun for me!
Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Sunday, I will be reviewing the Canadian series, Degrassi: The Next Generation, which aired from 2001 to 2015! The series can be streamed on YouTube and Tubi.
(Dir by Eleanore Lindo, originally aired on February 9th, 2004)
Manny is pregnant and frightened. Craig, however, is overjoyed and can’t wait to be a father at 15. During their lunch period, Craig shows up with a book of baby names. When Ashley sees and hears Craig and Manny debating what they should name the baby, she immediately figures out what has happened. She then proceeds to announce it to the entire cafeteria.
Craig is still enthusiastic about being a father, but Manny is having doubts. When Emma briefly leaves Manny and Craig alone with Baby Jack, Craig freaks out over having to change the baby’s diaper. Manny realizes that if Craig can’t handle that, he can’t handle being a father. She decides to get an abortion. Both Emma and Craig are upset by Manny’s decision. Emma, who knows that her mother considered getting an abortion when she was pregnant, feels that Manny should give the baby up for adoption. Craig still thinks that he and Manny can raise the child themselves. But Manny says that she can’t handle the idea of giving birth and that she’s too young to be a mom. In the end, Emma supports Manny’s right to make her own decision, even if she doesn’t agree with it.
As much as I complain about Emma as a character, Degrassi deserves a lot of credit for how this episode portrays her reaction to Manny’s decision to get an abortion. Emma’s opposition to abortion is treated respectfully, and the episode allows the viewers to make up their own minds about the issue while also making it clear that neither Manny nor Craig was mature enough to raise a child. It’s the type of thing that Degrassi did so well in its early seasons. (Unfortunately, later seasons would be a bit more heavy-handed when it came to dealing with issues like abortion.)
Unfortunately, this episode’s nuanced and intelligent take on abortion is matched with one of the worst B-plots in Degrassi history. After JT tells Liberty that he will never like her and that it’s time for her to get over her crush, Liberty shifts her attention over to Sean. When Sean and Liberty are assigned to work together on a class assignment, Liberty starts trying to act “tough” to win Sean’s interest. Of course, for Liberty, this means dressing up and talking like a minor character in Grease. Eventually, Sean says, “You’re as edgy as a butter knife,” and Liberty is crushed once again. However, it turns out that Sean’s friend, Towerz (Travis Donegan), likes smart girls. So, Liberty finally gets a boyfriend!
Oh, this was just embarrassing to watch. I felt bad for everyone involved. Not only was Liberty made to look like a crazed stalker, but the idea of her dating Towerz—who is a part of the crew that’s been stealing supplies from the school—made no sense at all. It didn’t help that all of this played out in between scenes of Cassie Steele and Miriam McDonald doing some of the best work that they ever did on Degrassi.
This episode was considered to be so controversial that it didn’t even air in the States until 2006, two years after it originally aired in Canada.
