Tag Archives: 1986

Tales from the Darkside S2 E17: The Shrine (1986)

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Hey, remember when you went to college and your parents turned your bedroom into a sewing room? Well, Cecilia Matthews did one better. She turned it into a psychic freakout where a spectral brat who never grows up and never talks back finally makes her happy as a mother, unlike her real-life child. In this slice of 80s psychological weirdness (based on a Pamela Sargent short story), we meet Christine (Lorna Luft), who comes home for a warm hug only to get the cold shoulder from her mother, Cecilia (Coleen Gray), who is too busy listening to a ghostly child sing “Three Blind Mice” upstairs to hear her own flesh-and-blood daughter pounding on the door.

It’s been six years. Six years since Christine had a nervous breakdown, likely caused by the very woman now offering her tea while treating her like a trespasser. Cecilia has storage in Christine’s old room, a code word for a pink-hued time capsule filled with pom-poms, horse trophies and a literal ghost of Christine’s childhood.

Enter Chrissie (Virginia Keehne). She’s the girl Christine used to be, or at least, the girl Cecilia wanted her to stay. While Christine is trying to process her trauma and navigate a broken life, Cecilia is upstairs, tucked in with a poltergeist version of her daughter, feeding the thing pure nostalgia.

The second act turns into a battle for maternal territory. We get a visit from Toni (Janet Wood), the Avon lady, who drops the bomb that Cecilia spends an unhealthy amount of time talking to the walls. Then there’s brother Chuck (Lary Gilman), who tries to play peacemaker but mostly just serves as a reminder that Christine is the only one in this family actually living in the real world.

Christine confronts Chrissie, who is basically a sentient World’s Best Daughter trophy with a mean streak. There’s shouting, a shattered mirror, and a tug-of-war for Cecilia’s soul. In the end, the power of a grown-up’s grief beats out a phantom’s playground rhymes, as you’d imagine it would. Chrissie goes poof in a flash of light, Cecilia wakes up from her nostalgic trance, and we’re left with two women holding each other in the wreckage of a childhood bedroom.

Most of Christopher T. Welch’s directing work was on TV, while he has also done ADR and production work. This was written by Julie Selbo, who wrote for this series and Monsters, as well as animation.

Tales from the Darkside S2 E16: Printer’s Devil (1986)

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Directed and written by John Harrison (Tales from the Darkside: The Movie) from a story by Ron Goulart, “Printer’s Devil” proves that if you own a small business in Tales from the Darkside, a supernatural entity is definitely going to show up to offer you a deal that ends with you screaming into the void.

Junior P. Harmon (Larry Manetti, taking a break from Magnum P.I.) is a hack writer whose career is deader than a Sunday matinee in a blizzard. He’s staring down the barrel of total failure until he meets Alex Kellaway (Charles Knapp), a creepy old man who looks like he smells of mothballs and brimstone. Kellaway offers him the ultimate ghostwriting deal: Junior gets the fame, the money, and the top of the bestseller list, provided he follows a very specific, very bloody set of instructions.

The catch? Kellaway’s muse doesn’t run on coffee; it runs on organic sacrifices. Junior starts small, knocking off pets to keep the hits coming, and soon he’s the toast of the town, moving in with his high-powered editor, Brenda Hardcastle (Nita Talbot). But the “Printer’s Devil” is a greedy editor, and soon the blood tax goes up. Before Junior can say Pulitzer, he realizes that when you sign a contract with a supernatural entity in a Darkside episode, the fine print is usually written in your own hemoglobin.

The episode even features a deep-cut Easter egg for the die-hards: the song playing on the radio is by Justine Bancroft, the character Lisa Bonet played in “The Satanic Piano.”

Tales from the Darkside S2 E15: A New Lease on Life (1986)

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Archie Fenton (Robert Knepper, Cards of Death and T-Bag on Prison Break) thinks he’s scored the real estate deal of the century: a swanky, high-tech room in the St. George Apartments for $200 a month. The catch? The landlady, Madame Angler (Marie Windsor, who was in everything from Commando Squad and Salem’s Lot to Chamber of Horrors, Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy and Cat-Women of the Moon), has some weird house rules. No nails in the walls, no microwaves and most importantly, he has to provide organic garbage with no bags.

That’s because the building is alive. And it’s quite sensitive. When Archie nails a picture to the wall, the building bleeds. When he tries to feed the disposal unit a bag of chemicals and broken glass, his domicile gets a nasty case of indigestion.

Archie figures out that the previous tenant, Helen (Patricia Pelham), didn’t move out. She was the main course. Madame Angler and her dragon-jacket-wearing goons, Al and Mac (Ben Frank and Robert Sutton), explain that the building needs to be respected. Archie tries to fight back, but this ends with a giant reptilian tongue slithering out of the disposal chute to drag him into the building’s digestive tract.

This was directed by John Strysik (who also wrote several episodes) and written by Harvey Jacobs and Michael McDowell from a story by Adam K. Jacobs.

Get it? There’s a dragon in a building called the St. George.

Tales from the Darkside S2 E14: Dream Girl (1986)

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Directed by Tinma Ranon, who wrote the script based on a story by Barbara Paul, this is about Andrea Caldwell (Carolyn Seymour), a high-strung theater director with a short fuse and zero patience for her lazy maintenance man, Otto (Lou Cutell, Amazing Larry!). After she berates the poor guy and tosses away his magazine, she and her missing lead actor Syd (John Cedar, who wrote and produced The Manitou!) are sucked into a surreal, low-budget dreamscape where Otto is the boss and they’re the help.

Andrea eventually figures that out and decides that the only way to beat a dreamer is to out-dream him. I mean, only a ninja can kill a ninja. She pops some reds to hijack the fantasy, but wakes up in the dream of Joe D’Amico (Dawson Mays), a stagehand Otto was also  keeping captive. The tragedy isn’t just that she fails to take over; it’s the layering of the dreams. In a precursor to films like Inception, she escapes one man’s nightmare only to fall into the subconscious of another person she mistreated.

Can someone get Ken Lauber on the phone? The score in this one sounds a lot like the music from A Nightmare on Elm Street.

What a weird episode.

Tales from the Darkside S2 E13: Comet Watch (1986)

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Amateur astrologist Englebert Ames (Anthony Heald, Silence of the Lambs) can’t wait for Halley’s Comet, but his wife Charlene (Kate McGregor-Stewart) couldn’t care less. She’s more interested in going to a fancy event with her parents, but he knows this is the last chance he’ll have to see the famous space event. The tension between Englebert and Charlene serves as a satirical look at suburban misery. While Charlene is obsessed with the social status of her parents’ party, Englebert’s obsession is literal escapism.

Then, Lara Burns (Sarah Rush) comes into his room, right out of the telescope, and claims that she disappeared when she and her fiancé watched the comet in 1910. She’s been riding it with Sir Edmund Halley and, of course, she falls for Englebert. By the end, Charlene and Halley (Fritz Weaver) are back on the comet, and our hero has found his love.

Who knew Halley’s Comet wasn’t just a ball of ice and dust; it’s a cosmic cruise ship. The idea that Sir Edmund Halley is still alive, riding his own discovery through the vacuum of space, adds a charming, almost Victorian-sci-fi layer to the story. The ending of this one is rare: the protagonist isn’t punished but rewarded with a literal soulmate from another century, while his overbearing wife finds her own match in the stern historical figure of Halley.

This was directed by Warner Shook, who appears in Creepshow, Knightriders, and Dawn of the Dead; he also directed “Grandma’s Last Wish” in season 1 and “Deliver Us from Goodness” in season 3, as well as two episodes of Monsters. It was written by Harvey Jacobs and Jule Selbo.

While not the most frightening episode, this may be one of the weirder ones. Unlike the grim irony of most episodes, “Comet Watch” leans heavily into romantic screwball comedy and magical realism. It’s often cited alongside episodes like “The Geezenstacks” as examples of the show’s willingness to experiment with tone beyond pure horror.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Lady Terminator (1986)

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If you think you’ve seen it all, “Lady Terminator” (originally Pembalasan Ratu Laut Selatan or Revenge of the South Sea Queen) is here to rearrange your brain chemistry. On paper, it’s a beat-for-beat tribute to James Cameron’s 1984 classic, a film famously rooted in the DNA of Harlan Ellison’s “Demon with a Glass Hand” and “Soldier.” But in the hands of Indonesian visionary H. Tjut Djalil (operating under the pseudonym Jalil Jackson), the cold, metallic logic of Skynet is replaced by ancient, saltwater sorcery. While this may not have been the first film in which mankind battled Nyi Roro Kidul, the Queen of the South Sea, it is definitely the only time that she repeatedly shoots men in the penis with an M16.

Djalil is no stranger to the bizarre; this is the same director who gave us the floating-head-and-entrails nightmare of Mystics In Bali. As Ed Glaser points out in How the World Remade Hollywood, Djalil had a knack for remaking Western hits like A Nightmare on Elm Street through a regional lens. Here, he trades the T-800’s endoskeleton for the wrath of Nyi Roro Kidul, the Queen of the South Sea. The result? Instead of a robot from the future, we get a mystical cycle of vengeance that begins with a legendary sex-and-death sequence involving a literal vagina dentata snake that is eventually forged into a dagger. It’s a mythology that puts the cold efficiency of a microchip to shame.

Barbara Anne Constable plays Tania Wilson, an anthropologist whose investigation into the tomb of the queen leads to being impregnated by a snake and then possessed by Nyi Roro Kidul herself, who we’ve already met via an opening that shows her repeatedly making love to men and killing them when they can’t satisfy her needs until one man is able to pull the snake from her womb, transform it into a dagger and make her cycle of death end for a hundred years.

The queen has a target, pop singer Erica (Claudia Angelique Rademaker), whom she chases for the entire film before she’s saved by NY cop Max McNeil (Christopher J. Hart), a police officer who somehow found himself in Indonesia just in time to shout, “Come with me if you want to live.”

Constable was told that this movie would be for Indonesia only, but it’s played all over the world. A dancer whose leg injury led her to arrive in Hong Kong to pursue a career in modeling and fashion reporting — she was also a Pet of the Month for the Australian Penthouse — she performed her own stunts in this film. At one point, her ankle was skewered by a large shard of glass, and the filmmakers paid her for an entire month while she relearned how to walk.

There’s a morgue scene in this where numerous men are under sheets with blood all over where their privates are, and they discuss if a serial killer is cutting off their wangs. It’s amazing and so much more memorable than any movie I’ll see for the next year. This is the kind of movie I make people watch when they come to my house, a mindblowing assault on the senses, a film where instead of a robot eye the Lady Terminator simply takes out her own, but every other scene is nearly shot-for-shot taken from the American film, but mystic instead of technological, which I can more than get behind.

I want ten sequels to this.

KO-FI SUPPORTER: Telephone (1986)

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Telephone is a 27‑minute short film written, directed, and produced by Eric Red in 1986, in which an emotionally distraught and suicidal woman (Laurie Latham, whose voice is in Reservoir Dogs) dials random numbers, hoping to connect with someone. She ends up reaching a man (Bud Cort, RIP, star of Harold and Maude), telling him that she plans to kill herself in a minute unless he can talk her out of it.

He doesn’t know her. He’s never met her. But suddenly, he has sixty seconds to save a life. The film captures a grueling, intimate power dynamic: while he hangs upside down in inversion boots trying to relax, he is forced into a psychological chess match where the stakes are literal life and death.

Eric Red, a Pittsburgh native, used this short as a calling card for his visceral, high-concept style. You can see the seeds of his later work here—the same DNA that made The Hitcher and Near Dark cult classics. Red has a gift for taking a simple, claustrophobic premise and ratcheting up the tension until it’s unbearable. He would go on to direct Cohen and Tate, Body Parts and Bad Moon, as well as write one of my favorite American giallo films — and one of the first DVDs I ever got — Blue Steel.

Filmed on location in Hollywood in 16 mm, the short is visually striking. The images of the woman’s apartment bathed in neon, and the hazy skyline behind her, are gorgeous. They evoke a mood similar to the famous scenes in Tokyo Decadence, which is impressive considering Telephone predates it by nearly a decade.

For younger viewers, Telephone serves as a time capsule. This was an era before caller ID or “star 69.” When the phone rang, you had no idea who was on the other end. It could be a friend, a telemarketer or—as in this film—a total stranger inviting you into their darkest moment. Red captures the terrifying intimacy of the old rotary phone system. As Latham’s character notes, the connection they share in that half-hour is “more intimate than if we’d fucked.”

The film deals with suicide in a way that feels raw and unpolished. In the mid-80s, these conversations happened in the shadows, and Red brings that isolation to the forefront. Despite the setup, the film’s closing remains a genuine surprise. While some critics argue it could be tighter, the deliberate tempo allows the audience to feel the same exhaustion and emotional depletion as the characters. You really start to feel for Cort’s character. Maybe it’s because as film nerds, we inherently love Cort and want him to succeed.

You can watch this on the director’s YouTube page.

SRS BLU RAY RELEASE: Truth or Dare? Legacy (1986, 1994, 1998, 2011)

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Originally released in 1986, Truth or Dare: A Critical Madness has become a cult horror classic. This low-budget film, shot on 16mm, still resonates with fans of 1980s horror. It gained renewed attention when Elijah Wood called it his all-time favorite horror movie.

Truth or Dare remains one of the first direct-to-video, and it’s high time someone — like SRS — put them all out in one set.

Truth or Dare: A Critical Madness (1986): In the 1985 horror anthology, Tim Ritter created a short called “Truth or Dare” in the movie Twisted Illusions. A year later, he’d expand that story into this slasher.

While most 18-year-olds were worrying about prom, Tim Ritter was in Palm Beach County orchestrating a bloodbath. Despite the SO aesthetic common to the era, shooting on 16mm gave it a slightly more cinematic, if not grimy, texture.

The drama behind the scenes was as chaotic as the film itself. The creative differences”between Ritter and producer Yale Wilson led to Ritter being locked out of the editing room and taken off the credits. Wilson’s cut was the one that hit the shelves of mom-and-pop video stores, leading to a long-standing rift that Ritter finally resolved in later “Director’s Cuts.”

Mike Strauber (John Brace) finds his wife Sharon in bed with his best friend Jerry, and poor Mike has the kind of mental breakdown that inevitably turns one into a slasher villain. 

The hitchhiker sequence is the film’s first true water-cooler moment, as if anyone works in a real office anymore or would discuss SOV murders at said water cooler. As Mike drives, he hallucinates a passenger who goads him into a self-mutilating game of Truth or Dare. The practical effects here, with Mike slicing into his own arms and chest with a razor blade, are uncomfortably tactile. When the camera reveals the passenger seat is empty, we realize we aren’t watching a standard slasher; we’re watching a breakdown.

A year later, Mike gets released from the Sunnyville Mental Institution. Blame budget cuts. Blame too many patients. Blame the fact that Mike is both crazy and smart. His good behavior is noticed, and the first thing he does when he gets out is kill Jerry and then go after his ex-wife. When he’s wounded in this murder attempt, he goes back to Sunnyville and is soon back to hallucinating disfigured patients telling him to destroy his face and wear a mask. After one of the attendants is dumb enough to taunt Mike with a photo of his ex-wife, he stabs the orderly with a pencil to the eye, Fulci-style and finds a cache of weapons, because that’s exactly what is sitting around a mental hospital.

At this point, Mike just goes wild, committing crimes such as hitting a stroller with his car — the baby launches high in the air — and then going back to roll over the mother; machine gunning an entire bench full of senior citizens; doing a drive-by chainsawing of a Little League player, and finally trying to kill his wife all over again. Oh, Mike, they’re just going to put you back in Sunnyville.

Ridiculous in all ways and therefore worth watching. I also believe that Rob Zombie completely stole the papier-mâché first mask Michael wears in his remake from this movie.

Truth or Dare: Wicked Games (1994): You can kind of sort of consider this the sequel to Tim Ritter’s Truth or Dare, even if it has none of the same characters, except that Gary (Kevin Scott Crawford) is the cousin of that first movie’s Mike. He’s having a lot of the same issues that that guy once did as he comes home to catch his wife riding another man. Now, a copper masked killer is running around and Gary’s friend Dan (Joel D. Wynkoop) starts to think that his buddy is that slasher.

We’re back to Sunnyville Mental Hospital, where Dr. Seidow (co-writer Kermit Christman) and it turns out that there may be more than one killer. Spoiler, there totally is or maybe this is all in Mike’s head and he’s been thinking of killing again. Dan is into kinky sex, Dr. Seidow is a maniac obsessed with one of his patients who likes to burn herself with cigarettes and all three — four — of them hate women.

The opening is a deliberate echo of the first film, the ultimate déjà vu of domestic betrayal. However, Gary’s reaction is less of a silent break and more of a loud, messy implosion. It sets the tone for a movie that isn’t just about a killer, but about a community of broken, predatory men.

It’s also the only film I’ve ever seen where a slasher takes a moment to take a bite of a sandwich while chasing his victim. It also has someone get killed with a sprinkler. By that, I’m saying they get a sprinkler jammed right through them.

Replacing the papier-mâché with a copper mask gives the killer a more urban legend feel. It’s cold, reflective and fits the 90s direct-to-video aesthetic while maintaining that homemade creepiness that makes these movies feel like they were found in a basement.

There’s another somewhat sequel to Truth or Dare, Writer’s Block, but that movie doesn’t have insane genius — I say that in the nicest of ways, trust me — of Tim Ritter, who imbues this with plenty of ridiculous energy. Is it central Florida giallo? Nearly.

Screaming for Sanity: Truth or Dare 3 (1998): In the years since Mike Strauber first put on the mask, a whole universe has started to swirl amongst him, like the man who treated him, Dr. Dan Hess (Joel D. Wynkoop), who also hates Mike; Clive Stanley (Ken Blanck), who was a victim of Strauber’s murder spree and lost his wife and child when they were run over in the first film; the man treating him, Dr. Reznor (Maurice Mayberry Jr.) and Ken Kregg (Franklin E. Wales), who is selling merchandise related to the killings.

In the original 1986 film, Clive was just a background casualty of Mike’s nihilism, the man who lost his wife and child in the infamous stroller/car sequence. Clive isn’t just a survivor; he’s a man whose soul was deleted by Mike Strauber. His habit of slicing himself open isn’t just a callback to Mike’s razor-blade game; it’s a physical manifestation of his Survivor’s Guilt. He is literally carving Mike’s legacy into his own skin.

Oh yeah, the copper mask is back and worn by people who dream of being Mike or want to have sex with him. Plus, Dr. Hess is also being stalked, and his wife even gets nailed to a wall. Having Joel D. Wynkoop return, this time as Dr. Dan, creates a delicious bit of casting confusion for Ritter fans. Is he the same Dan from Wicked Games? In the Ritter-verse, the faces remain the same even as the roles shift.

Hess represents the medical establishment that failed to contain Mike. His hatred for Strauber isn’t just professional; it’s visceral. Watching his life get dismantled, specifically the brutal imagery of his wife nailed, proves that in the Truth or Dare cinematic universe, being near Mike Strauber is a death sentence for your loved ones.

Directed by Ritter, who wrote it with Ron Bonk and Kevin J. Lindenmuth, this is the Truth or Dare? sequel I always wanted. This is totally for continuity nerds, where a supporting character becomes the lead.

By ending on a cliffhanger, Ritter essentially promises that the critical madness is an infinite loop. It’s not about Mike the man anymore; it’s about Mike the Idea.

And hey — footage from the first movie comes back! This then sets up the next film, which I appreciate.

Deadly Dares: Truth or Dare Part IV (2011): Tim Ritter updates the franchise’s core theme: the dangerous intersection of fragile male egos and deadly games. In 1986, Mike Strauber was driven mad by a private game; in 2011, Tuner Downing (Casey Miracle) is driven mad by a public one.

Directed by Ritter (who wrote the script) and Joel D. Wynkoop, this follows the theme of all these films: women break men when they dump them, games of truth or dare can quickly turn deadly, and lots of people will be killed. Rose (Heather Price) Tuner’s girlfriend left him because he wouldn’t get naked for a dare video. This leads Tuner to DareTube.com, which acts like the Ice Bucket Challenge, except the dares get as wacky as you’d hope.

This entry ditches the 16mm grain and the 90s camcorder fuzz for a sharp, sterile digital look. It makes the violence feel more real and less cinematic, mimicking the actual videos found on the dark corners of the internet.

Tuner’s friend Axel (Billy W. Blackwell) and his perhaps new girl, Dara (Jessica Cameron), grab a video camera and head out to record dares, while Tuner paints his face copper. As those dares get more intense, Tuner breaks into the mental hospital where Strauber has been kept, only for it to end up being Rose, who was trying to see if he’d do the ultimate dare to prove his love. She stabs him, he dies…

Turning the final girl into the villain is a sharp subversion. When Rose reveals that the breakout was a test. It reframes the entire franchise. It suggests that the women in this universe aren’t just victims; they are the architects of the games that destroy the men.

The final revelation that the entire movie — the breakout, the murders, the betrayal — has all been a dying hallucination as Tuner kills himself is the ultimate “Ritter” ending. It’s a return to the psychological roots of the original. Mike Strauber’s legacy isn’t a body count; it’s a mental illness that convinces you to destroy yourself.

I Dared You!: Truth or Dare Part V (2017): Directed by Tim Ritter and Scott Tepperman, this centers on a man named Dax (Tepperman) has gone insane after a past attack by Mike Strauber. Since then, he’s grown angry not just at his attacker, but with the man who let him go, Dr. Dan Hess (Joel D. Wynkoop), who is now a private detective.

Before we get to that. we see Dax in a video store, where he finds a copy of the original movie. A woman grows angry at him and chases him from the store, as he steals a porn magazine. As he reads it in the woods, he is attacked by Strauber, becoming one of the victims of the infamous chainsaw car attack from all the way back in 1986.

Now, Chainsaw Dax wears a half-mask, much like the man who ruined his face. He starts killing — and playing truth or dare — while Hess searches for people using the DareTube.com site, which has been up for a few years, so they must have good SEO.

The man who treated Dax, Dr. Desmond Hall (Jim O’Rear) was really setting this all up, putting Dax on the path to murder, setting him up with Sara (Trish Erickson-Martin) and putting him after Hess, all because that man stole his woman. So Dax goes and records Hess having sex with Linda (Ashley Lynn Caputo) and posts it on the internet, which in no way seems as godo of a revenge as killing someone. Linda gets kidnapped and Hess has to do a series of dares, like taking heroin which is just a bunch of video effects, to save his wife.

After cutting off his own finger, robbing a bank, hitting a cross-dressing Dr. Hall with an axe and jaming a syringe into Dax’s eyeball, Hess finds his wife and walks away.

Seeing Dax find a physical copy of the original Truth or Dare creates a movie-within-a-movie loop. It suggests that in this universe, Mike Strauber’s crimes were so infamous they were turned into the very exploitation films we are watching. By the time Hess walks away, the franchise has come full circle. It started with a man losing his mind over a cheating wife and ends with a man losing his finger (and his dignity) to save one.

Extras on this SRS blu-ray release include all new commentary tracks, short films, trailers, photo galleries, interviews, making ofs, behind the scenes footage and more. You can get this from MVD.

Murder, She Wrote S3 E10: Stage Struck (1986)

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The murder of the leading lady’s understudy disrupts a play starring two previously married actors.

Season 3, Episode 10: Stage Struck (December 14, 1986)

Two of Jessica’s old friends bring her back to her old job at a theater. One of them faints on stage, and then her understudy dies.

Who’s in it, outside of Angela Lansbury?

Shea Farrell is Larry Matthews.

Bob Hastings (Commissioner Gordon’s voice in the Batman cartoons) plays Eddie Bender.

Donald Most — come on, Donnie! — is T.J. Holt

Edward Mulhare may have been Rex Harrison’s understudy in My Fair Lady on Broadway. But we all know him from Knight Rider. Here, he plays Julian Lord.

Christopher Norris (Eat My Dust) as Pru Mattson.

Dan O’Herlihy (Conal Cochran and The Old Man!) is Alexander Preston.

Eleanor Parker plays Maggie Tarrow.

John Pleshette is Nicky Saperstein.

John Schuck from McMillan and Wife is Chief Merton P. Drock.

Ann Turkel (Humanoids from the Deep) as Barbara Bennington.

Smaller roles include Richard Hoyt-Miller, Annie Gagen, and Jeffrey Lippa as reporters; Weldon Bleiler as a doctor; and Fritz Ford as an onlooker.

What happens?

Julian Lord and Maggie Tarrow are essentially the Lunt and Fontanne of Jessica’s past, a legendary acting duo who were once married and still share a spark, though it’s heavily smothered by egos and secrets. They invite Jessica to the Applewood Playhouse for a revival of The Night of the Phoenix, but the production is cursed from the jump.

Maggie’s health is failing, and her understudy, Barbara Bennington, isn’t just waiting in the wings. She’s actively sharpening her claws. But when Maggie faints and Barbara gets her big break, she doesn’t just break a leg. She drops dead mid-scene after drinking from a prop decanter.

In the middle of all this, the cop in charge — Chief Drock — tries to sound like Hercule Poirot.

While he’s being a weirdo, Jessica realizes that the poison in the prop wine was meant for the leading lady, but the real target was always the person holding the secret.

Who did it?

When JB confronts Julian backstage, she learns that the blackmail was over the fact that he and Maggie had conceived a child and given it up for adoption. Julian admits to Jessica that he poisoned the wine specifically to kill Barbara and keep their secret buried. To make the accident look like it was meant for Maggie and deflect suspicion from himself, he had previously played with Maggie’s vitamins to make her faint, ensuring Barbara would be the one on stage to drink the lethal dose.

Who made it?

This was directed by John Astin, who was Harry Pierce in other episodes, and written by Philip Gerson.

Does Jessica dress up and act stupid? Does she get some?

No! Ugh.

Was it any good?

It’s a decent one.

Any trivia?

This episode reveals how Jessica met her husband Frank. Their romance blossomed in the theatre community, proving that Jessica has always had a flair for the dramatic, even if she prefers the technical side of the stage.

Edward Mulhare and Ann Turkel were also on Knight Rider. 

Give me a reasonable quote:

Jessica Fletcher: Oh, certainly not. No, but I was Applewood’s second-best set painter. And in case you haven’t guessed, there were only two.

What’s next?

Jessica comes to the aid of Dorian Beecher, a shy poet who is the prime suspect when his bully is found dead.

Murder, She Wrote S3 E9: Obituary for a Dead Anchor (1986)

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When an obnoxious out-of-town TV personality is murdered, it’s up to Jessica to figure out the killer.

Season 3, Episode 9: Obituary for a Dead Anchor (December 7, 1986)

Jessica agrees to a television interview for an old friend but is surprised when a different reporter arrives after a boat explosion kills her old buddy. Or does it?

Who’s in it, outside of Angela Lansbury?

Sheriff Amos Tupper is Tom Bosley, but you knew that.

Abby Dalton. Mother Speed in Roller Blade Warriors: Taken By Force is Judith. Her husband, Kevin, is played by Chad Everett from The Intruder Within.

Robert Hogan is Dr. Wylie Graham.

Robert Lipton plays Richard Abbott.

Paula Roman is actress Kathleen Lloyd (The Car).

Mayor Sam Booth is Richard Paul.

Robert Pine, Sgt. Joseph Getraer from CHiPs is Doug Helman.

Rex Robbins is George Fish.

Mark Stevens is Nick Brody.

Smaller roles include James Lemp as Gerald Foster (AKA Erik Stern; he was in The Love Butcher), Frank Annese as Ronald Ross, Patti Karr as Clara Polsby and Paul Ryan as a commentator.

What happens?

Jessica expects to do an interview with TV reporter Paula Roman, but ends up with a much rougher interviewer, Kevin Keats. Soon after the segment, his boat blows up, and reporters come to Cabbot Cove, all looking for a killer.

As you’d expect from an episode of this show, everyone hated Keats. For example, he cheated on his wife, and she wished that he lived long enough for her to divorce him. And Jessica is dealing with a lot of gruff from the mayor, who is concerned that she’s making the town look bad by doing the interview, which he wanted her to do in the first place.

Sheriff Tupper almost solves the case, and when he asks Jessica if he’s right, she agrees. He’s kind of shocked.

Who did it?

Nick Brody, a laid-off newsman, is angry about the way TV is changing for the worse.

Who made it?

This was directed by Walter Grauman and written by Robert Van Scoyk, the show’s story editor, from a story by Bob Shayne.

Does Jessica dress up and act stupid? Does she get some?

I mean, she did make Tupper feel pretty good when he was right about the case. Maybe.

Was it any good?

A decent episode. After the Magnum episode, we needed a little calm down.

Any trivia?

Richard Paul’s first appearance as Cabot Cove’s do-nothing mayor, Sam Booth.

In this episode, we learn that the B in J.B. Fletcher is for Beatrice. Her full name is Jessica Beatrice MacGill Fletcher

When Jessica first meets Nick Brody, a painting of a ship like the movie Mutiny is behind him. That movie starred Angela Lansbury and Mark Stevens, who are playing the characters on this show.

Give me a reasonable quote:

Jessica Fletcher: But what did killing Mr. Helman solve for you? He was only following the network’s orders.

Nick Brody: Without Helman, I had a better-than-even chance of staying with the show. I had more experience than any of them. To hell with the audience research. So I wasn’t young, vicious or even pretty, but I was the one who could talk sense to them. I’m a newsman. I’m not a performer. I tried to tell Doug that. But whatever he started out believing, in the end, he bought the idea that the wrapping paper, the wrapping paper, was more important than the package. If you don’t mind, I’d like to finish this rewrite while we’re waiting for the sheriff. Just dial nine for an outside line.

What’s next?

The murder of the leading lady’s understudy disrupts a play starring two previously married actors. John Astin directs this one.