Screencaps for Ep 4.05 added
The screencaps for School of Fear are now accessible through the episodes' page. When a teacher becomes victim of violence among teenage students of rival gangs at a high school, Leopold Summer, a dismissed and old-fashioned teacher kidnaps four of the most troublesome pupils in order to teach them lessons for life in an abandoned school building. His highly-sophisticated methods of getting the students into his 'class-room' as well as his obviously serious effort to help them getting out of the misery they're in, however, impresses only one of the kidnapped guys. The other three are somewhat between anger and hatred, although time tells that in at least two of them a sparkling flame of reason is still burning. Mike and Steve are hunting for Richie Martino - one of the two who are suspected to have shot the teacher to death - but Martino is also chained to the school desk in Mr. Summer's private class-room. Meanwhile, Steve is also approaching the abandoned school while following a tip - and finally gets chained as well. There's an interesting and intriguing development among the students without delivering an implausible plot, and all this peaks in the final leg of this episode when the father of the sole female student, Judy Harris, gets a tip from a bummer as to where he had found his daughter's wallet (Summer had informed Judy's father that he was holding his daughter for good and that he would not do her any harm). Of course, furious Mr. Harris is about to free his daughter - who tells her father (against the truth) that Summer had 'his hands all over her body' - but Mike can impede another crime last-minute. This does not prevent Summer's death, though, who roams around in the old building, hearing voices from the past, and finally crashes through a derelict floor.
This episode starts out at the 'Manual High School' which actually is George Washington High School in the Outer Richmond. Following the death of teacher Walter Randolph, Summer and the school's Vice Principle, bandy words in old Holy Cross Church at Eddy Street in the Fillmore District. Summer's house is located in the Corona Heights, and he first picks up Jeffers at a 'dayworker meeting point' at Eddy and Divisadero, then kidnaps Pruitt in front of his parents' house in the North Panhandle. The abandoned 'Thomas Paine Academy' is supposed to be in the Western Addition (Summer turns into an 'alley' just off Scott and Ellis) but the actual estate was a deserted orphanage located between Ingleside Terraces and Westwood Park (one can recognize the tower of former El Rey Theatre in background when Mr. Harris arrives in his Ford Mustang). Judy Harris' father, by the way, meets the bummer at the corner of Scott and Ellis, the same location where Summer turned onto the alley which is supposed to end up in the estate of abandoned 'Thomas Paine Academy' school. Special thanks to David Gallagher of the Western Neighborhood Project, who finally identified the area which is known as 'Dorado Terrace' nowadays. The remainders of the huge orphanage complex were demolished shortly after this episode was filmed, making space for a condominum project.