Blast from the Sci-fi Past
So I’ve just started watching the new Sci-fi miniseries “The Lost Room” and I have to say I’m liking it so far. Something about the style and subject matter sent my mind wandering back to two older series that I loved as a youth.
The first one was called Nightmare Cafe. From tv.com:
“A mysterious and mystical all-night cafe gives second chances to deserving people. It’s staffed by Fay and Frank, two people who made bad choices in life and whose paths crossed with the cafe in the first episode. There’s also Blackie, another enigmatic figure who has been working with the cafe longer. Together, the three use the powers over time and space that the cafe grants them to help the worthy and punish the evil, just as they themselves have been helped.”
Powers over time and space, you say? You can see why it jumped to mind when I started watching The Lost Room.
The second one was Friday the 13th, no relation to the movies. From the prologue:
“Lewis Vendredi made a deal with the devil to sell cursed antiques. But he broke the pact, and it cost him his soul. Now, his niece Micki, and her cousin Ryan have inherited the store… and with it, the curse. Now they must get everything back and the real terror begins.”
Mysterious powerful items that the protagonists are desperate to collect, you say?
Anyway, thank god for the internet, and for my friends in the sci-fi club who helped me dredge up these old gems from descriptions ringing with eloquent quality like, “you know, that show, with the people… and they were in a restaurant that time traveled? And that other one, like the Stephen King book, but a TV series, with magic antiques?” Yeah.
By sometime tomorrow I’ll have a good review of the first episode of Lost Room. Sci-fi is showing them on heavy rotation, so if you haven’t seen the first 3 (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday), just keep watching.
