Mr Marshak is having nightmares about WWII Nazi Camp Commader Horst Mueller. He discovers to his horror that his veteran friends are being strangled to death one by one with barbed wire. He must travel to the German prison where Mueller is to see what he knows about the murders and to investigate rumors of a 1000 Year Reich. In the meantime a mysterious radio announcer arrives in America also talking about the Reich. Saw this one before the wall fell. Small amounts of German used with nice big subtitles. Really really good. The photography is great with the nightmares in black and white and the rest of the story in vivid color.
3 Reviews
The Nazis are coming! (Again)
francisxwolfe22 May 2016
A Faustian metaphor warning against the return of Nazism. Somewhat prescient. The piece preceded the popularity of Limbaugh and Howard Stern, both of whom could be seen as prototypes to an immensely popular radio personality capable of capturing the imagination of America's more susceptible bigots. Now we have Trump as a viable candidate for the real-life reanimated Hitler with many of the same easy answers to complicated issues: EG "...round 'em up and deport 'em...", "... ban Muslim immigration and register them all...". The piece was intended to remind people that fascism, like a dormant virus, may very well erupt and permanently destroy the legacy our founding fathers had in mind.
Nazis, Why Did It Have To Be Nazis?
Gislef25 October 2020
Warning: Spoilers
"The Butcher" is a pretty good episode. You can't put Colin Fox and Nigel Bennett together in an episode and end up with something bad. Having Julius Harris is the icing on the cake. There's also the fact that those pesky cousins aren't in this episode. "The Butcher" is all about Jack and his World War II buddies. We get the welcome return of Chris Wiggins after a several-episode absence.
There's also some timely political commentary here, as Rausch becomes a right-wing radio host named Steiner and preaches his white supremacy/Nazi garbage on the airwaves.
And we get a shirtless Chris Wiggins: a little something for the ladies.
As noted in Trivia, the Amulet of Thule is not a cursed antique. So the episode is just a retelling of the horrors of Nazis, told through Jack's point of view. It's an unusual 'Friday the 13th: the Series' episode, but it's an effective supernatural tale. It does seem a little shoehorned in, but Wiggins, Harris, Fox, Bennett, and John Gilbert as Shaw all sell it. It's the only TV script by writers Ron Magid and Francis Delia (Delia also directed), and one gets the impression that they neither knew or cared what the "standard" F13: series story was. They wanted to tell a story about a Nazi zombie and right-wing talks show host, and by god, that's what they did. More power to them.
It's also interesting that they had Jack travel to West Germany. The show rarely took a cosmopolitan approach, and the trip to West Germany helps to expand the show while still feeling like a natural outcome. It's clear they filmed all of the "West Germany" scenes with either stock footage, an actor speaking German on an indoor set, or a few close-cropped outdoor scenes. But it's effective, nonetheless.
Wiggins was never better, and Colin Fox is a lot more terrifying as a Nazi sorcerer than he ever was in "The Poison Pen" or even "Tails...". Nigel Bennett doesn't have a lot to do but look ominous, but he does that very well as in most of his TV appearances. I don't buy him as a charismatic radio-show host. Mainly because they do nothing to establish him as such: he rose through the markets what appears to be ten minutes after he was resurrected from the dead? The supporting cast is effective enough, and it's good that the show dwells more on World War II veterans than the usual kids and youngish actors that the show usually features.
The ending doesn't quite land. Jack kills Mueller's reanimated Nazi zombie. But Mueller himself is still alive. The writers were apparently going for an "Evil never dies" vibe, what with Mueller's boasting of a master race echoing in Jack's ears as he locks the box up in the vault. But it still feels somewhat unsatisfactory: Jack has killed the zombie but not the zombie master.
Overall, "The Butcher" is a nice little horror episode. It isn't much of a 'F13' episode, but it doesn't try to be. Instead, the writers dwell on the supernatural and real-world horror of Nazis.
But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?
There's also some timely political commentary here, as Rausch becomes a right-wing radio host named Steiner and preaches his white supremacy/Nazi garbage on the airwaves.
And we get a shirtless Chris Wiggins: a little something for the ladies.
As noted in Trivia, the Amulet of Thule is not a cursed antique. So the episode is just a retelling of the horrors of Nazis, told through Jack's point of view. It's an unusual 'Friday the 13th: the Series' episode, but it's an effective supernatural tale. It does seem a little shoehorned in, but Wiggins, Harris, Fox, Bennett, and John Gilbert as Shaw all sell it. It's the only TV script by writers Ron Magid and Francis Delia (Delia also directed), and one gets the impression that they neither knew or cared what the "standard" F13: series story was. They wanted to tell a story about a Nazi zombie and right-wing talks show host, and by god, that's what they did. More power to them.
It's also interesting that they had Jack travel to West Germany. The show rarely took a cosmopolitan approach, and the trip to West Germany helps to expand the show while still feeling like a natural outcome. It's clear they filmed all of the "West Germany" scenes with either stock footage, an actor speaking German on an indoor set, or a few close-cropped outdoor scenes. But it's effective, nonetheless.
Wiggins was never better, and Colin Fox is a lot more terrifying as a Nazi sorcerer than he ever was in "The Poison Pen" or even "Tails...". Nigel Bennett doesn't have a lot to do but look ominous, but he does that very well as in most of his TV appearances. I don't buy him as a charismatic radio-show host. Mainly because they do nothing to establish him as such: he rose through the markets what appears to be ten minutes after he was resurrected from the dead? The supporting cast is effective enough, and it's good that the show dwells more on World War II veterans than the usual kids and youngish actors that the show usually features.
The ending doesn't quite land. Jack kills Mueller's reanimated Nazi zombie. But Mueller himself is still alive. The writers were apparently going for an "Evil never dies" vibe, what with Mueller's boasting of a master race echoing in Jack's ears as he locks the box up in the vault. But it still feels somewhat unsatisfactory: Jack has killed the zombie but not the zombie master.
Overall, "The Butcher" is a nice little horror episode. It isn't much of a 'F13' episode, but it doesn't try to be. Instead, the writers dwell on the supernatural and real-world horror of Nazis.
But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?
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