Retro Television Reviews: Jennifer Slept Here 1.6 “One Of Our Jars Is Missing”

Posted on November 9, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Thursdays, I will be reviewing Jennifer Slept Here, which aired on NBC in 1983 and 1984. The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!

This week, Jennifer is trapped in a jar!

Episode 1.6 “One Of Our Jars Is Missing”

(Dir by Charles S. Dubin, originally aired on November 25th, 1983)

Last week, I announced that George Eliot (played by Fiona Apple’s father, Brandon Maggart), was the worst character on Jennifer Slept Here and perhaps one of the worst characters of all time. This week, however, George is actually pretty tolerable. Instead, it’s his son Joey who is terrible.

Since this series started, Joey has been having to adjust to having to live with the ghost of Jennifer Farrell and, for the most part, he seems to be doing a pretty good job of it. Jennifer has helped out Joey with his problems and Joey has helped out Jennifer on numerous occasions. They’ve been established as being friends.

However, this episode finds Joey and Jennifer uncharacteristically annoyed with each other. Jennifer thinks that Joey makes too much noise in his room. Joey thinks that Jennifer makes too much noise in the attic. Joey spends a lot of time yelling at Jennifer, which makes him look crazy to everyone else. After hearing his son yelling into thin air one too many times, George decides that Joey is truly convinced that there is a ghost in the house.

George’s solution?

Hire an exorcist!

Now, it should be noted that George doesn’t think that the house is haunted. Instead, he thinks that Joey is delusional but George is convinced that an exorcism will cure Joey of those delusions. It’s not a bad plan. When Madame Wanda (played by Zelda Rubinstein, in a performance that is clearly meant to spoof her role in the original Poltergeist) shows up and performs her ritual, it’s obvious that she’s a fake. And yet somehow, she is still able to trap Jennifer in a mason jar.

Joey takes the jar to his room. Now, it should be understood that everyone else thinks that Joey is carrying an empty jar but Joey can see Jennifer trapped in the jar. Instead of unsealing the jar and allowing Jennifer her freedom, he decides to leave her in the jar. He puts the jar on his dresser and then pretends that he’s going to throw a baseball at it….

I mean, seriously …. WHAT THE HECK IS UP WITH THIS!?

It is true that Jennifer can be a bit self-absorbed and definitely more than a little eccentric but, for the most part, she’s been pretty respectful to Joey. She helped Joey throw a fake séance. She helped Joey get over his ex-girlfriend. She’s been very supportive of the son of a man who repeatedly refers to her as having been a “tramp.” And now, Joey’s just going to keep her trapped in a jar? What type of sociopath is Joey?

Earlier in the episode, Joey wrote a rude letter to one of his teachers. He wasn’t planning on mailing it but, when his mother (Georgia Engel) comes across the letter, she takes it to the post office. Suddenly, Joey needs the help of someone who can walk through walls so he opens the jar and allows Jennifer to escape. (So, yes, Joey let Jennifer out of the jar but only because he needed her to do something sneaky for him.) However, Jennifer can no longer walk through walls! Something must have happened with the exorcism.

Joey and Jennifer head over to Madame Wanda’s place, hoping that Wanda can reverse the spell. Of course, Wanda is a fake and didn’t realize she was actually performing a real exorcism to begin with. Wanda has no idea how to reverse anything.

Now, fear not, everything returns to normal by the end of the episode. Jennifer is once again a ghost who can walk through walls and Joey is once again yelling at thin air. As the episode ends, George listens to his son yell and then mutters that he just blew a lot of money on a worthless exorcism. I’m a bit surprised that George is willing to give up that easily. I mean, if someone in your house is apparently arguing with someone that only he can see, that’s cause for concern. Has George never seen an Amityville film? Can he not see the path on which Joey is walking?

This episode felt a bit mean-spirited, which is a shame because it had the potential to be fun. But Joey acting like such a jerk ruined whatever humor could have been mined from Wanda and her attempts to exorcise the house. This whole episode felt just a bit mean-spirited.

Next week, according to the IMDb, Jennifer learns that she can take over people’s bodies so Joey better watch out!

Anguish (1987, directed by Bigas Luna)

Posted on October 1, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

John Pressman (Michael Lerner) is a mentally unbalanced, middle-aged, diabetic mama’s boy who is losing his eyesight. When his mother (Zelda Rubinstein) orders John to go out and collect healthy eyes, it leads to John going on a rampage that eventually brings him to a movie theater. After he barricades everyone inside, he starts to pick off the patrons one-by-one, removing their eyes with a scalpel.

Meanwhile, in another theater, an audience watches John’s rampage on the big screen. Is the story of John Pressman just a movie? Maybe. But in the audience, people start to react strangely. A woman breaks down in tears. When John Pressman starts to kill people in his movie, a man in the audience starts to kill people in the real theater. When the mother in the movie-within-a-movie sends her son out to get eyes, is she after the eyes of the people in her movie or the people watching in the audience? Has the madman in the audience been possessed by the movie or is he just another spree killer, an ever-present threat in both the movies and the real world? And how will his rampage be stopped?

Anguish is a clever, multi-layered Spanish horror film. Watching the film, it’s important to remember that it was produced in the middle of a worldwide moral panic about whether or not people could experience violent movies without becoming violent themselves. At first, it seems like the film is saying that horror movies are a bad influence but then there’s a twist ending that turns the entire premise on its head. As the movie peels away layer after layer of plot, you’ll find yourself wondering what’s real and what’s just a movie.

An unheralded horror classic, Anguish is two good movies in one. Obviously, the film about John Pressman and his crazy mother is considerably more cheesy than the one about the madman in the “real” world but both films are full of atmosphere, suspense, and a some surprisingly grisly violence. The movie-within-a-movie also features Michael Lerner and Zelda Rubinstein, two actors who just seem like they were destined to play a henpecked son and his crazy mother. Lerner is one of the best character actors around and Anguish gives him a rare leading role. Lerner makes the most of it, carefully cutting out eyeballs while his mother’s voice echoes in his head.

Anguish is a good head trip of a film. It’s long been rumored that Anguish contains subliminal images and sounds that are designed to make the people watching feel nervous. I don’t know if that’s true, though the film does open with the following classic warning:

During the film you are about to see, you will be subject to subliminal messages and mild hypnosis.

This will cause you no physical harm or lasting effect, but if for any reason you lose control or feel that your mind is leaving your body — leave the auditorium immediately.

Luckily, Anguish is available on DVD and Blu-ray so you can watch it in the safety of your own home.

Film Review: Frances (dir by Graeme Clifford)

Posted on April 27, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Frances Farmer is one of the more tragic figures to come out of Hollywood’s Golden Age.

A talented and beautiful actress, Frances Farmer came out to Hollywood in the 30s and quickly developed a reputation for being difficult. She was politically outspoken at a time when stars were expected to either be apolitical or unquestioningly patriotic. She criticized scripts. She argued with directors and studio heads. She had a well-publicized affair with communist playwright Clifford Odets and she also had numerous run-ins with the police. Some say that she was alcoholic. Some say that she was bipolar. Some say that she had a mental collapse as the result of the pressure that her mother put on her to succeed. Frances Farmer ended up in mental institution, where she was subjected to shock therapy. After she was released, her film career was basically over, though she did end up hosting a local television program. She died in 1970, reportedly alone and struggling to make ends meet. In a posthumously published autobiography called Will There Ever Be A Morning?, she wrote that she was beaten, sexually abused, and eventually given a lobotomy while she was institutionalized. Over the years, there’s been a lot of doubt about whether or not Farmer was actually lobotomized but there is no doubt that Farmer was a woman who was ultimately punished for being ahead of her time. Frances Farmer refused to conform to the safe manufactured image that Hollywood prepared for her and, for that, she was nearly destroyed.

The 1983 film, Frances, is a biopic of Frances Farmer, starring Jessica Lange as Frances and Kim Stanley as her domineering mother. It opens with Frances writing a school essay about why she’s an atheist and it ends with her smiling blankly at a television camera, her independent spirit broken by a lobotomy. In between, we watch as Frances goes to Hollywood and has a self-destructive affair with Clifford Odets (played by Jeffrey DeMunn). The infamous moment when Frances was dragged out of a courtroom while screaming at the judge is recreated and Frances’s time in the institution is depicted in Hellish detail.

We also learn about Frances’s relationship with a communist writer named Alvin York (Sam Shepard). It seems like whenever Frances needs to be rescued or just needs someone to talk to, Alvin York pops up. In fact, you could almost argue that York pops up too often. Alvin York was a fictional character, one who was apparently created in order for audiences to have someone to relate to. It’s unfortunate that the film felt that the audience would only be able to relate to Frances if it viewed her life through the eyes of a fictional character because York’s character is a bit of a distraction. Sam Shepard does a good job of playing him and I certainly wasn’t shocked to learn that Sam Shepard and Jessica Lange were romantically involved during the filming of Frances (and for a long time afterwards) because Lange and Shepard do have a very real chemistry. However, from a narrative point of view, Alvin York only works as a character if one accepts that he’s a figment of Frances’s imagination. The film’s insistence that York is an actual person who just happens to show up at every important moment of Frances’s life just doesn’t work.

What does work is Jessica Lange’s performance. Lange is amazing in the role of Frances, whether she’s playing Frances as a hopeful idealist, an out-of-control rebel, or, tragically, as a glass-eyed zombie who has been reduced to appearing on television and assuring audiences that her rebellious days are over. Lange was nominated for Best Actress for Frances. She lost to Meryl Streep for Sophie’s Choice. I’ve seen Sophie’s Choice and Meryl was good but Jessica was better.

Frances was originally offered to David Lynch. He turned the film down so he could work on Dune and instead, the film was directed by Graeme Clifford, who takes a far more straight-forward approach to the material than Lynch would have. Still, Lynch’s interest in Frances Farmer would later lead to him working on stories that centered around a “woman in trouble.” One of those stories became Twin Peaks. Another would become Mulholland Drive.

Guilty As Charged (1991, directed by Sam Irvin)

Posted on March 28, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

Kalin (Rod Steiger) is a crazy old religious fanatic who is rich enough to own a meatpacking plant and hire goons to work for him. Underneath the meatpacking plant, he has a secret prison and an electric chair that he uses to electrocute people who he feels have escaped justice. Helping out Kalin is a crazy preacher, played by Isaac Hayes (!), who waxes philosophically about how much he loves the smell of burning flesh.

While Kalin and the gang are executing people below ground, parole officer Kimberly (Heather Graham) is above ground and wondering why so many ex-cons are mysteriously vanishing. Kimberly is worried that someone may be executing them but then she gets distracted by a politician named Stanford (Lyman Ward). Stanford wants Kimberly to work on his campaign because she looks like Heather Graham and he’s a sleazy politico.

Meanwhile, a man named Hamilton (Michael Beach) has escaped from prison. Hamilton claims that he was framed for a murder that he didn’t commit but no one is willing to believe him. However, Hamilton is telling the truth and the murder was actually committed by Stanford! The only people who know that Stanford is the murderer are Stanford, his wife (Lauren Hutton!!), and his maid (Zelda Rubinstein!!!).

It all leads to one question: How did all of these talented people all end up in this crappy film!?

The strange thing about Guilty As Charged is that, even though the film is centered around the death penalty, the film itself doesn’t seem to have any opinion on the issue. Kalin and his followers are crazy religious fanatics who claim that they’re doing God’s work by executing people and Hamilton is an innocent man who has been marked for death so you would think that the movie is against the death penalty. But then, in a twist that makes no sense, Kalin reveals that he knows that Hamilton is innocent and he’s only using him to get to Stanford and suddenly, the film is for the death penalty. Kimberly is worried that someone is targeting ex-cons but, by the end of the movie, she’s targeting ex-cons herself even though nothing’s happened that should have made her change her mind.

Guilty as Charged is technically a comedy, though most of the jokes are too thuddingly obvious to provoke even the slightest of a smile. Hayes wins some laughs, just because he seems like he’s having fun. Rod Steiger bellows as if he’s getting paid by the decibel and doesn’t seem to be having any fun at all. Guilty as Charged isn’t funny and it’s not thought-provoking but at least it’s got Isaac Hayes.

Horror Film Review: Poltergeist (dir by Tobe Hooper)

Posted on October 23, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1982 film Poltergeist tells the story of the Freeling family.

There’s Steven the father (Craig T. Nelson) and Diana the mother (JoBeth Williams). There’s the snarky teenager daughter, Dana (Dominique Dunne), who has a surprisingly good knowledge of the local motel scene. There’s the son, Robbie (Oliver Robins), who is scared of not only a big ugly tree but also a big ugly clown doll that, for some reason, sits in his bedroom. And then there’s the youngest daughter, Carol Ann (Heather O’Rourke).

They live in a planned community in Orange County, sitting just a few miles away from the cemetery. (Or so they think….) They’ve got a nice house. They’ve got nice neighbors. They’ve got a nice dog. They’re getting a pool in the backyard. There are hints that Steven and Diana may have once done the whole rebellion thing. They still occasionally get high, though they do it with a smugness that somehow manages to make marijuana seem less appealing. But, for the most part, Steven and Diana are happy members of the establishment. Steven sells real estate and is a favorite of his boss, Mr. Teague (James Karen). Diana is a stay-at-home mom who doesn’t get upset when some unseen spirit rearranges all the furniture in the kitchen (seriously, that would drive me crazy). They’re the type of family that falls asleep in front of the TV at night, which is a bit of a mistake as Carol Ann has started talking to the “TV people.”

Strange things start to happen. As mentioned earlier, furniture starts to rearrange itself. Whenever Carol Ann sits down in the kitchen, an unseen force moves her across the floor. Diana, for whatever reason, thinks this is the greatest thing ever. Then, on the night of a big storm, the big ugly tree tries to eat Robbie and Carol Ann goes into a closet and doesn’t come out. Though Carol Ann has vanished, the Freelings can still hear her voice. Apparently, she’s been sucked into another dimension and she’s being encouraged to go into the light.

Of course, this leads to the usual collection of paranormal researchers moving in. The house decides to pick on one unfortunate guy and he ends up not only eating maggot-filled meat but also imagining his face falling apart over a sink. A medium named Tangina (Zelda Rubinstein) comes by and reprimands Steven and Diana for not doing exactly what she says. Of course, it turns out that Tangina isn’t quite as infallible as she claims to be….

To me, Poltergeist is the epitome of a “Why didn’t they just leave the house” type of film. Don’t get me wrong. I understand that once Carol Ann vanished, Diana and Steven had to stay in the house to rescue their daughter. I’m talking about all the stuff that went on before the big storm. Seriously, if a ghost started moving furniture around in the kitchen, I’m leaving the house. At the very least, I’m not going to take my youngest daughter and invite the ghost to push her around the kitchen. Even stranger is that, at the end of the film, the Freelings still don’t leave the house even though the situation with Carol Ann has been resolved. They hire a moving truck and make plans to leave but, instead of spending a night in a hotel, they instead decide to spend one more night in a house that’s apparently possessed by Satan.

Poltergeist is famous for bringing together two filmmakers who really seem like they should exist in different universes. Steven Spielberg produced while Tobe Hooper directed. It seems like it’s impossible to read a review of Poltergeist without coming across speculation as to how much of the film should be credited to Spielberg and how much should be credited to Hooper. It must be said that the film does occasionally feel like it’s at war with itself, as if it can’t decide whether to embrace Spielberg’s middle class sensibilities or Hooper’s counter-culture subversiveness. On the one hand, the emphasis on special effects and the early scenes where the Freelings watch TV and Steven gets into a remote control fight with his neighbor all feel like something Steven Spielberg would have come up with. On the other hand, the obvious joy that the film takes in tormenting the Freelings feels more like Tobe Hooper than Steven Spielberg. Or take the film’s finale, where the special effects are pure Spielberg but the scene of Diana getting assaulted in bed and then thrown around her bedroom feels like pure Hooper. Really, it’s the mix of two sensibilities that make the film compelling. Poltergeist’s planned community is appealing but it’ll still kill you.

Anyway, I like Poltergeist. I certainly prefer the original to the remake. It’s a silly film in many ways but it’s still effective. Once you get over how stupid Diana acts during the first part of the film, JoBeth Williams gives a strong performance as a mother determined to protect her children. And Craig T. Nelson gives a classic over the top performance, especially towards the end of the film. Just listen as he screams, “Don’t look back!” That said, my favorite performance comes from James Karen, who is perfectly sleazy as the outwardly friendly, cost-cutting land developer.

Poltergeist is still a good, scary film. And, if anyone wants to play a lengendary prank this Halloween, show it to someone who has a fear of clowns.

Back to School #35: Sixteen Candles (dir by John Hughes)

Posted on September 3, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 80s are often considered to be the golden age of teen films and that’s largely due to the work of one man, John Hughes. A former advertising copywriter and a contributor to National Lampoon, Hughes went on to direct and write some of the most influential films of all time. By deftly mixing comedy with themes of alienation, rebellion, and youthful disillusionment, Hughes changed the way that teenagers were portrayed onscreen and his influence is still felt today, in everything from Juno to Superbad to Easy A to … well, just about any other recent film starring Michael Cera.

(Okay, I know Michael Cera was not in Easy A but it really seems like he should have been…)

Hughes made his directorial debut in 1984 with Sixteen Candles, a comedy about love, birthdays, and weddings set in an upper class suburb of Chicago. (I have to admit that, much like with My Tutor, one reason that I like this film is because I like seeing where everyone lives.) As the film opens, Samantha Baker (Molly Ringwald) is not having a particularly good time. For one thing, everyone is so wrapped up in her older sister’s wedding that they’ve forgotten about Sam’s sixteenth birthday. Her house is full of wacky grandparents (and one foreign exchange student named Long Duk Dong). At school, Sam is in the unenviable position of being neither popular enough nor unpopular enough to actually be noticed by anyone. Instead, she’s just there. She has a crush on Jake Ryan (Michael Schoeffling) but is convinced that Jake doesn’t even know that she’s alive. (Of course, she’s wrong.) She’s also being pursued by a character who is occasionally referred to as being “Farmer Ted” but is listed in the end credits as simply being “The Geek.” (I’m going to refer to him as “The Geek” because Farmer Ted makes him sound like he should be killing people in a SyFy original movie.) As played by Anthony Michael Hall, The Geek isn’t your typical high movie nerd. Instead, he’s the outspoken and confident king of the nerds and he’s proud of it. The Geek is madly pursuing Sam and has made a bet with his friends (including John Cusack) that he’ll not only have sex with her but he’ll prove it by bringing them her panties. (BAD GEEK! — but fortunately, Anthony Michael Hall gives such an energetic and likable performance that you can forgive him.)

There are parts of Sixteen Candles that have not aged well. And, by that, I’m mostly referring to the character of Long Duk Dong, who is so well-played by Gedde Watanabe that it’s tempting to ignore just how racist the portrayal of his character really is. As well, I know that a lot of my more erudite friends would probably only briefly look away from their copy of Thomas Piketty’s Capital In The 21st Century, just long enough to pronounce that Sixteen Candles is essentially a film about “first world problems.”

Well, maybe it is. But I don’t care. I like it. John Hughes’s script is full of classic lines and funny characters, Anthony Michael Hall is likable as the Geek, and, as played by Michael Schoeffling, Jake Ryan is the epitome of the perfect guy. If your heart doesn’t melt a little when he says that he’s looking for true love, it can only be because you don’t have a heart. And finally, Sam remains a character that we can all relate to. As played by Molly Ringwald, she’s the perfect sullen everygirl.

Of course, an undeniable part of the charm of Sixteen Candles comes from the fact that it really is a film that could not be made today. Sixteen Candles may take place in an entirely different world from films like The Pom Pom Girls and Suburbia, but it’s still just as much of a time capsule.

First off, there’s about a thousand apps out there that will make sure that you never forget anyone’s birthday. If the film was made today, Sam’s parents would have checked their e-mail and found a message from Facebook telling them that “Samantha Baker has a birthday this week!” They could have just written “Happy birthday to a wonderful daughter!” on her wall and half of Sam’s problems would have been solved.

Secondly, it’s doubtful that, if the film was made today, the Geek would be able to get away with just showing everyone’s Sam’s panties. Instead, they would have demanded nude pics, which would have then been posted on the internet for the entire world to see. And let’s be honest: “Can I send my friends naked pics of you?” doesn’t quite have the same ring to it as “Can I borrow your underpants for ten minutes?”