Jeffrey Tambor, Saturday the 14th (1981) 
Saturday the 14th (15) (Howard R. Cohen, USA, 1982) Richard Benjamin, Paula Prentiss, Jeffrey Tambor, Severn Darden. 76 mins.
‘Things may be bad on Friday the 13th,’ reads an ancient and evil book of enchantments, ‘but they get worse on Saturday the 14th.’ When a nice, ordinary couple moves into a super-haunted house, their bratty son fools around with the magical tome and unleashes a horde of silly-looking monsters on the world. The TV set only gets Twilight Zone reruns, eyeballs float in the coffee, a pair of vampires lurk in the garden, the Creature From the Black Lagoon looms out of the bath, and ravenous creatures from another dimension raid the fridge at dead of night. This is an amiably slapdash horror spoof, pitched slightly broader than The Addams Family, but with enough lunatic ideas to keep you engaged throughout its trim running time. Benjamin and Prentiss are so accomplished at light comedy that it’s a shame director/writer Cohen didn’t give them a little more to do; the film is stolen by Jeffrey Tambor as a balding Dracula and Severn Darden as Dr Van Helsing, the ultimate exterminator.
First published in City Limits.
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