Eddie was born in Brooklyn. His father was a cop. His grandfather was a cop. His brother was a cop. It was expected that Eddie would become a cop too. Even while he was pursuing a career in music, Eddie joined the NYPD. However, while he was still in training, Eddie was told that he would not be allowed to wear his hair long if he was a member of the NYPD. That was the last straw for Eddie, who later said that he could not imagine spending the next 20 years of his life with short hair. He left the force and returned to music. Unfortunately, the band he was in suspected that he was an undercover narc and kicked him out. Meanwhile, his father tore down and destroyed every Jimi Hendrix poster that Eddie had hanging in his room. Perhaps realizing that New York was no longer going to be a friendly place to live, Eddie headed for California and the rest, as they say, is history.
In this video, though, Eddie is back in New York and working out the of the 18th precinct. While he investigates crimes on the streets, a runaway is sucked into a dangerous lifestyle. Eddie has longish hair in the video so he finally got to be a cop without having to cut his hair.
This video was directed by Martin Kahan, who also did videos for KISS, Scandal, Michael Bolton, and a lot of other people who probably would never have made it as a member of the NYPD.
Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Saturdays, I will be reviewing Saved By The Bell, which ran on NBC from 1989 to 1993. The entire show can be purchased on Prime!
This is the episode that has traumatized thousands of viewers.
(I should note that the IMDb and Wikipedia list this as being this first episode of season 3. Amazon, Tubi, and just about every other streaming site that I’ve seen lists it as being 3.4. In order to keep things simple and to not trigger my ADD, I’m following what the streaming sites say.)
Episode 3.4 “The Last Dance”
(Dir by Don Barnhart, originally aired September 14th, 1991)
Where were you the first time you watched Kelly break up with Zack?
This is the episode. Kelly applies for a waitressing job at The Max and is hired by the new manager, handsome college guy Jeff (Patrick Muldoon). Zack is excited because Kelly will be able to afford a costume for Bayside’s costume dance. Plus, Zack Attack is going to perform. Zack is looking forward to being named king of the dance with Kelly as his queen. Kelly is feeling guilty because she has a huge crush on Jeff. While they’re dancing, she accidentally calls him “Jeff.” Everyone remembers Zack and Kelly talking outside the school, Kelly crying as she asks if they can still be friends.
In my experience, most people blame Jeff for breaking up Zack and Kelly. Jeff is actually pretty sympathetic in this episode and the next. Yes, he kisses and then dates Kelly while also being her boss. That’s a problem. But he doesn’t set out to break them up. For most of this episode he’s polite and professional. Zack, meanwhile, is possessive and fairly immature. When Kelly says she has to get a job because her family is poor, Zack acts as if she’s suddenly speaking a foreign language. Kelly is worried about helping her family. Zack is worried about the school dance. On top of that, he’s the one who decides they should go as Romeo and Juliet, and he doesn’t even help her pay for the costume.
Then there’s Jeff. Yes, he will eventually cheat on Kelly and try to convince her it’s no big deal. That’s later. In this episode he really does seem like a catch. He’s older, but not so much older that it would be a real issue. He’s responsible enough to manage The Max even though he hasn’t graduated from college. Like Kelly, he actually has to work for a living. He stands up for her when customers are rude. He goes out of his way to accommodate her so she can go to the dance. And, on top of all that, he looks like Patrick Muldoon.
I don’t blame Kelly for dumping Zack at all. You can date a hot guy who will stand up for you, or you can date the cute guy who still spends all his spare time with Screech. Who are you going to pick? Be honest.
It’s still hard to watch them break up. Mark-Paul Gosselaar’s most serious SBTB relationship was reportedly with Lark Voorhies, but he and Tiffani Thiessen did date at one point, and there does seem to be genuine emotion in that scene outside the high school. This is one of those rare SBTB moments that actually feels real. The emotions feel earned. I support Kelly’s decision, but if this episode traumatized you, I understand why.
The breakup is such a big deal that it’s easy to overlook that this episode also introduced Zack Attack. It always cracks me up when Zack says the band will play for free and everyone acts so excited. It’s a school dance, and Zack has basically decided all of his friends are working for nothing that night. When Slater steps out from behind the drum set and duets with Jessie, he’s replaced on drums by Ollie, the nerd with the froggy voice. It’s a shame Ollie wasn’t included in the rockumentary.
Well, Zack is single again. How will he handle it? We’ll find out next week.
As is the tradition here at the TSL Bunker, this month has been all about getting ready for the annual October Horrorthon! As a result, I’ve spent the previous few days watching a lot of horror movie and not a lot of television. Here’s a few thoughts on what little I did watch.
I am still watching and occasionally writing about Big Brother 28. I say that I’m “occasionally” writing about it because, even though I have a whole other blog devoted to the show, I have to admit that I’m kind of over this season of Big Brother. The houseguests are not particularly likable. The twists are even lamer than usual. I’m still not sure why Julie Chen Moonves is still the host. This show has been on the air for 26 years and Julie still seems to struggle with the basics. I was happy that Devens survived this week. Go Devens! You can read my thoughts on Big Brother at Reality TV Chat Blog.
Along with Big Brother, I watched an episode of Big Brother Unlocked, which is the companion series that also airs on CBS. It’s not much of a show but it’s still obvious that co-host Jerry O’Connell is being groomed to take over the main show when and if Julie ever quits. This week, Jay Mohr was a special guest. Jay said he was a Big Brother superfan but he did not sound very convincing. The other guest was Zingbot. I have no idea what Zingbot had to say about the show. I can never understand a word that stupid robot is saying.
Why do I still watch Big Brother if I hate it so much? It’s a case of nostalgia. When I was growing up, I watched Big Brother with my mom. It was our little tradition. When I watch the show today, it brings back a lot of memories. Plus, I’m pretty sure mom would have hated this season as well. This was our favorite show to complain about.
On Thursday, I watched a Rangers game with my sister, the dazzling Erin, The Rangers won! Yay! I’m not a big baseball fan but, as all of our regular readers should know by now, my sister is. When the Rangers win, that makes her happy and it makes me happy for her.
On Wednesday, as I watched for Big Brother to start, I watched episodes of Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune. I took some pride in the fact that I was apparently smarter than the contestants on Jeopardy. As for Wheel of Fortune, it just didn’t feel right for the show to be hosted by anyone other than Pat Sajak. The day after I watched, I read that the Wheel of Fortune announcer was kicked off a plane for looking at an inappropriate site. Yikes!
On Friday night, Jeff and I joined our friend Pat in watching three episodes of a British sitcom called Robin’s Nest. It was a show about a swinging guy in London who ended up living in a tiny flat with two single women. The landlord thought he was gay and I thought he needed a haircut. The show was later adapted for American audiences as Three’s Company. I’ve only seen a few episodes of Three’s Company and I have to admit that I’ve never really cared much for it, if just because the constant misunderstandings were a bit stressful to watch and gave me a headache.
After Robin’s Nest, we watched a show called called Midnight Rider on Night Flight Plus. It was a deliberately surreal sketch comedy show that was obviously designed to be a “cult” hit. We all agreed never to watch the show again. It was annoying.
SCTV, a Canadian comedy show from the late 70s and early 80s, is now available on Netflix! I watched a few episodes on Friday and Saturday and, despite being 50 years old, the show is still very funny. My favorite character was Count Floyd. I had to force myself to stop watching because it was distracting me from doing my Horrorthon reviews. However, I look forward to returning to SCTV in November!
As for my Retro Television reviews, I watched episodes of Degrassi, CHiPs, Pacific Blue, 1st & Ten, Hunter, Sledge Hammer, and Saved By The Bell this week! I’m trying to get all of my Retro Television Reviews for October written in September so I can devote October solely to horror. Wish me luck!
Congo is the kind of movie that makes perfect sense as a guilty pleasure because it is always hovering just above the level of complete nonsense, yet it has enough energy and conviction to remain enormously watchable. Directed by Frank Marshall, the 1995 film turns Michael Crichton’s jungle-thriller premise into a sprawling mixture of monster movie, treasure hunt, corporate conspiracy, technological anxiety, and old-fashioned adventure serial. It is loud, messy, often ridiculous, and loaded with moments that should not work at all. But that is the pleasure of Congo: it commits so completely to its bizarre material that the movie becomes difficult to dislike.
The setup is wonderfully overstuffed. A corporate expedition disappears while searching for a legendary diamond mine in the Congo, apparently after encountering some mysterious, deadly force. At the same time, primatologist Peter Elliot is preparing to return Amy, a gorilla he has raised and taught sign language, to the wild. Amy has recurring dreams—or perhaps memories—of a strange jungle city, and she communicates through a glove that translates her signs into a robotic voice. Before long, Peter, Amy, corporate representative Karen Ross, Romanian explorer Herkermer Homolka, and a mercenary guide named Captain Munro Kelly are all headed toward the same lost city, where diamonds, ancient ruins, and murderous white gorillas await.
That synopsis alone explains why Congo has developed such a devoted guilty-pleasure reputation. It is a movie where satellites, laser weapons, genetically engineered guard apes, corporate greed, sign-language research, volcanoes, and ancient African mythology all exist in the same story without anyone pausing to question the sheer overload of it. The movie treats every development with sincere urgency, even when the audience is watching Amy the gorilla say “Amy good gorilla” through a computerized voice device. It is impossible not to admire the confidence. Congo never winks at the audience, never admits that its premise is wild, and never cuts itself down to a more manageable size. It simply keeps adding more adventure-movie ingredients until the whole thing becomes strangely hypnotic.
Laura Linney’s Karen Ross and Dylan Walsh’s Peter Elliot are meant to anchor all of that craziness, but they are also among the film’s blandest elements. Linney is a talented actress, and she brings a professional focus to Karen’s corporate mission, but the character is written in such functional terms that she rarely feels like more than the person carrying the plot’s technological and business-related exposition. Karen is competent, determined, and occasionally vulnerable, but she never develops a particularly distinctive personality. Linney plays her with a seriousness that fits the film’s overall tone, yet that seriousness can make her feel oddly distant. She is there to make sure the satellite plot, the diamond plot, and the rescue plot keep moving, rather than to provide much spark on her own.
Walsh has an even tougher assignment as Peter. He is essentially the emotional center of Amy’s story, and the film needs the audience to believe in his paternal, almost codependent relationship with her. But Peter is such a mild, generic protagonist that he often gets swallowed by the movie’s more eccentric ideas. Walsh is not bad, exactly; he is simply too subdued for a film filled with volcanic eruptions, killer gorillas, and Tim Curry speaking every line as though he is announcing the end of civilization. His performance has a sincere gentleness that helps the scenes with Amy, but it also makes him feel like he wandered in from a quieter, more conventional family adventure. When the movie becomes bigger and stranger, Peter’s personality does not expand with it.
That blandness becomes especially noticeable because Ernie Hudson and Tim Curry are having such an obviously fantastic time in their roles. Hudson plays Captain Munro Kelly with the relaxed confidence of someone who knows he is the coolest person in the room. Munro is a professional guide, a fighter, a pilot, and a survivor, but Hudson does not turn him into a grim action-movie cliché. He gives the character humor, charisma, and a reassuring calm under pressure. Whenever the group faces another disaster—whether it is hostile terrain, dangerous animals, mercenaries, or the increasingly unhinged situation inside the lost city—Hudson makes Munro feel like the one person who might actually know what he is doing.
Hudson’s performance also gives Congo a sense of fun that the central characters sometimes lack. He has an easy screen presence, and he seems to understand that the film works best when it leans into the pleasures of a grand, pulpy adventure. Munro is not a particularly deep character, but Hudson makes him memorable through timing, attitude, and sheer likability. The movie becomes livelier whenever he takes charge, whether he is negotiating with people in the field or calmly reacting to another completely absurd revelation. If Karen and Peter are the story’s functional leads, Munro is the character who gives the audience someone to enjoy following.
Then there is Tim Curry as Herkermer Homolka, who delivers what can only be described as a masterclass in hammy, scenery-chewing entertainment. Curry does not merely play Homolka; he devours the role with a kind of operatic enthusiasm. Every line is delivered in his grand Romanian accent with the force of a proclamation, and every gesture suggests that Homolka believes he is the hero of the greatest expedition in history. Curry appears to be enjoying himself so much that it becomes infectious. He is not interested in realism, restraint, or subtle characterization. He is there to make every scene larger, louder, and more theatrical.
Homolka is already a ridiculous figure on the page: a pompous explorer with a famous family name, an exaggerated ego, and a dramatic flair that makes him seem less like a real adventurer than a flamboyant villain from a lost serial. Curry recognizes that the only correct way to play him is at maximum volume. His performance turns every bit of dialogue into an event. He gives the impression that he has spent years preparing speeches for this exact jungle expedition, waiting for the chance to announce his discoveries to the world. Even when Homolka is making selfish or foolish decisions, Curry makes him too entertaining to hate.
The contrast between Curry and the more restrained leads is one of the reasons Congo feels so odd. Linney and Walsh approach the material with a level of seriousness that suggests they are trying to preserve some emotional credibility. Hudson and Curry, by contrast, seem to recognize that credibility is not really the point. Hudson brings a cool, knowing charm, while Curry turns the movie into a one-man theatrical spectacle whenever he appears. Neither approach is necessarily wrong, but the difference creates a tonal imbalance. The film’s heroes feel flat because its supporting players are so much more alive.
The killer gorillas, of course, are another major source of the film’s guilty-pleasure appeal. These are not normal gorillas defending their territory. They are pale, vicious creatures bred to protect the diamond city of Zinj, and they attack with the exaggerated menace of monsters in a haunted-house ride. The effects have not aged gracefully. The suits and animatronics are visible, the movements can be stiff, and the creatures are often more amusing than frightening. Yet they remain memorable because the movie gives them a distinct, nightmarish look: white fur, glowing eyes, sharp teeth, and sudden appearances from dark corridors or jungle fog.
Frank Marshall directs the action with enough pace and polish to keep Congo from collapsing under the weight of its own silliness. The jungle setting, the ruined city, the expedition equipment, the satellite imagery, and the volcanic finale all give the movie a bigger sense of scale than its reputation might suggest. It feels like a genuine studio blockbuster from a time when Hollywood would spend serious money on an unapologetically strange idea. The film is not elegant, and it is certainly not believable, but it is never boring for long.
As a conventional adventure movie, Congo is uneven. Its African setting is often treated as a vague, dangerous backdrop, and its plot is overloaded with enough corporate jargon and techno-babble to distract from the more entertaining monster-movie material. But as a guilty pleasure, it is hard to beat. The movie is too bizarre to be generic and too sincere to feel cynical. Laura Linney and Dylan Walsh may be stuck playing bland characters at the center of the chaos, but Ernie Hudson and especially Tim Curry make the journey worth taking. Curry’s performance alone is a treasure: a joyous, magnificent display of overacting that turns Congo from a merely strange blockbuster into something genuinely unforgettable.
I was 15 years old when Michael Keaton took over the role of Batman. That was a big deal at the time. He’s had a lot of great roles, but I’ll always love him as the superhero of my youth.
Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Saturdays, I will be reviewing Baywatch, which ran on NBC and then in syndication from 1989 to 2001. The entire show can be viewed on Tubi.
This week, we meet Eddie’s never-before mentioned brother.
Episode 2.18 “Sharks Cove”
(Dir by Monte Markham, originally aired on April 20th, 1992)
Shauni’s friend Debbie Kent (Monica Lacy) throws a party on the beach with her boyfriend, Zack (Spencer Rochfort). When Debbie and Zack get in the water, Debbie suddenly yells out Zack’s name and is then apparently pulled below the surface by something. Zack runs back to the beach and says that a shark got Debbie.
Shauni, who is still haunted by Jill’s shark-related death in season one, insists on investigating this one on her own. She quickly figures out that Debbie faked her death because her father (Ernie Lively) was putting too much pressure on her to become a competitive, Olympic-class swimmer. It turns out that Debbie has just been hiding out in Zack’s trailer for the past few hours.
Meanwhile, Eddie decides to bring his older half-brother, Bobby (Blake Gibbons), to the beach. Bobby is schizophrenic and lives on a ranch, but his therapist thinks it would be a good idea for Bobby to spend the weekend with Eddie. Bobby ends up stealing a lifeguard outfit and running off. When Eddie eventually finds him, Bobby is on the edge of the pier, trying to rescue someone who isn’t really there. Bobby plunges into the ocean. Eddie saves his life, and hopefully he pays to get Bobby a new therapist, because this one obviously had no idea what she was talking about.
This was a strange episode. Baywatch previously established Eddie as a former juvenile delinquent from Philadelphia who came to Malibu to get away from the gang life. This episode features flashbacks of Eddie and his brother growing up in California, and Eddie is presented as the one who pays for Bobby to stay at the ranch, despite the fact that Eddie was previously portrayed as having come to California without a dime to his name. (Eddie even slept in his lifeguard tower until Gina and Craig agreed to take him in.) The first season also established that Eddie had a younger sister who drowned. In this episode, he has an older half-brother who was schizophrenic and, in the flashbacks, there’s no sign of a sister. Baywatch is not exactly a monument to continuity.
As for Debbie, she returns home and is forgiven by her father. Considering that lifeguards and police officers have been spending the last day or so searching for her, I assumed she would be in a bit more trouble than she was. Faking your own death is not something that I would recommend.
The Hoff was barely in this episode. Maybe it was his week off.
As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly live tweets on Twitter and Mastodon. I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of #MondayActionMovie! Every week, we get together. We watch a movie. We tweet our way through it.
Tonight, at 10 pm et, #ScarySocial presents The Last Shark!
If you want to join us this Saturday, just hop onto twitter, start the movie at 10 pm et, and use the #ScarySocial hashtag! It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.
The Last Shark is available on Prime! See you there!
In honor of Werner Herzog’s birthday, today’s scene that I love comes from one of his best films. 1972’s Aguirre, The Wrath of God not only established Herzog as a major filmmaker but it also showed that he was the director who could get the best out of the notoriously difficult Klaus Kinski.
In this scene, Kinski plays the mad conquistador, Aguirre. Lost with his men in the Amazon, Aguirre establishes control over the dwindling expedition.
4 Or More Shots From 4 Or More Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!
Today, the Shattered Lens wishes a happy birthday to one our favorite directors, the great Werner Herzog! It’s time for….
8 Shots From 8 Werner Herzog Films
Fata Morgana (1971, dir by Werner Herzog, DP: Jörg Schmidt-Reitwein)
Aguirre The Wrath of God (1972, dir by Werner Herzog. DP: Thomas Mauch)
The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974, dir by Werner Herzog, DP: Jörg Schmidt-Reitwein)
Stroszek (1977, dir by Werner Herzog, DP: Thomas Mauch)
Woyzeck (1979, dir by Werner Herzog, DP: Jorg Schmidt-Reitwein)
Nosferatu The Vampyre (1979, dir by Werner Herzog, DP: Jörg Schmidt-Reitwein)
Fitzcarraldo (1982, dir by Werner Herzog, DP: Thomas Mauch)
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009, dir by Werner Herzog, DP: Peter Ziedlinger)
This book first came out in 1950. The cover and the book’s plot about five French women living together in London during World War II were so controversial that Canada banned it outright and the U.S. House held hearing on whether or not the book was immoral. The controversy also made the book a best seller and helped launch the genre of lesbian pulp fiction.
Through the Shattered Lens 