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!
Director and screenwriter Nicholas Ray was born 112 years ago today, in Galesville, Wisconsin. He would go on to become one of the most influential American directors of all time, making independently-minded films that celebrated rebels and iconoclasts. The directors of the French New Wave loved him and for good reason.
Today, we celebrate the life and legacy of Nicholas Ray with….
4 Shots From 4 Nicholas Ray Films
They Live By Night (1948, dir by Nicholas Ray, DP: George E. Diskant)
In A Lonely Place (1950, dir by Nicholas Ray, DP: Burnett Guffey)
Rebel Without A Cause (1955, dir by Nicholas Ray, DP: Ernest Haller)
Bigger Than Life (1956, dir by Nicholas Ray, DP: Joseph MacDonald)
Today is Bruce Dickinson’s birthday so today’s music video of the day is not only for a song that Dickinson wrote and recorded but also for a video that Dickinson himself directed. Inertia appears on Dickinson’s third solo album, 1996’s Skunkworks. Though Inertia was not released as a single, it did get its very own music video.
The heat continues! I’ll be glad when winter gets here.
I have started my Summer side job of writing about Big Brother and I’ve also been getting an early start on this year’s October Horrorthon reviews. I can hardly wait for the fall and the winter to get here!
Here’s what I watched, read, and listened to this week.
Films I Watched:
Big Top Pee Wee (1988)
Black Wake (2018)
Bleach (2020)
The Chemical Brothers — Live at Glastonbury (2007)
Clinton Road (2019)
Dark Image (2017)
The Dead Want Women (2012)
Deadly Nightshade (2021)
The Eagles In Performance (2005)
Ghost Track (2022)
The Honeymoon Killers (1970)
Jackie Brown (1997)
The McPherson Tape (1989)
The Return of the Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman (1986)
Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Sundays, I will be reviewing the made-for-television movies that used to be a primetime mainstay. Today’s film is 1995’s Trial By Fire! It can be viewed on YouTube!
Trial By Fire opens with an absolutely heart-breaking scene, in which a teenager named Kip Bouchmeyer (Andrew Kavovit) enters his bedroom, closes and locks the door (and, in the process, locks out his dog, who sits out in the hallway sadly), and then proceeds to shoot himself.
The upper class community in which Kip lived is stunned by his suicide but they are soon also scandalized by reports that Kip had been having an affair with one of his teachers, Paulette Gill (Gail O’Grady). Paulette denies the rumors but soon, Kip’s friends are coming forward and saying that Kip not only told them about the affair but that some of them spied on Kip while he was with her. Paulette continues to deny the accusations but still loses her teaching license. Paulette is put on trial, accused of seducing Kip and setting off the chain of events that led to his death. The only people who seem to be willing to believe Paulette’s side of the story are Paulette’s husband, Roger (Michael Bowen), and her attorney, Owen Turner (Keith Carradine).
Indeed, it doesn’t take long for Owen to discover that there are several inconsistencies in the stories that the other students are spreading about Paulette and how she behaved as a teacher. Owen starts to suspect that Kip’s friends met after Kip’s suicide and concocted the story of Kip and Paulette’s affair on their own. But why would they do that and, more importantly, can Owen convince anyone else?
There have been a lot of movies made about teachers seducing and carrying on affairs with students. (I wrote about one of them, Murder in New Hampshire, just a few weeks ago.) There have been far less films made about teachers who are falsely accused. Interestingly enough, Trial By Fire is based on a true story. Paulette Gill was a real teacher and, just as in the movie, she really was accused of contributing to the death of one of her students. Because it’s based on a true story, Trial By Fire doesn’t answer every question that was raised by the case. Though the film leaves no doubt that Paulette was innocent of seducing Kip, the film leaves it to the viewer to decide whether she was the victim of an actual conspiracy or if a bunch of teenagers just had an overactive imagination. The film also leaves it to the viewer to decide as to whether or not Paulette allowed herself to get too close to her students, even if she didn’t actually have an affair with Kip. It could be argued that Paulette allowed herself to care too much about Kip and was rather naïve in not realizing how easily gossip can spread in a high school. But I think it could also be argued that it’s better to care too much than to not care at all.
It’s a good movie, though a rather sad one. (The image of that dog sitting outside of Kip’s bedroom left me depressed for a full day.) The cast, which is full of TV regulars, does a good job with their characters. I especially liked Keith Carradine’s performance as the tough but fair-minded attorney. Trial By Fire takes a familiar subject and gives it an unexpected spin, leaving the audience to consider what their own complicity would have been if they had found themselves in the same situation.
Nooooooo! Not Olivia! Sadly, Olivia was eliminated this week when she failed to guess to whom Karsyn was related. Olivia was my favorite so …. well, I’ll still watch the show but now I’m just watching because I want to see people eliminated. This show is so addictive.
Geraldo (YouTube)
On Sunday, I watched an episode of this old talk show from the 80s in which a brawl between Nazis and civil rights leader Roy Innis led to Gerald Rivera getting his nose broken.
The Moment Of Truth (YouTube)
I had totally forgotten about this incredibly mean-spirted game show that aired on Fox back in 2008. Basically, people took a lie detector exam and they received money for each question they answered truthfully. If they were caught in a lie, they lost all of their money. Needless to say, the questions got progressively more and more personal. The episode that I watched on Tuesday featured a woman who won money by admitting that she had been fired from stealing, that she kept secrets about her father from her mother, and that she would leave her husband for her ex-boyfriend. Then the woman was asked if she felt she was a good person and her reply of “Yes,” was found to be deceptive so she lost everything. It was one of the most awkward things that I’ve ever seen.
Naturally, I had to watch another episode on Wednesday. Paul won $100,000 but he also disgusted his girlfriend and family by confession that he felt he could never be loyal to one woman and that was paid for sex while in college. Again, it was awkward but compulsively watchable.
Sally Jessy Raphael (YouTube)
On Sunday, I watched an episode called “He’s Not Good Enough For My Daughter.” Everyone on the show was pretty trashy and it was kind of hilarious watching Sally try to act like she was hosting a serious discussion.
Stars on Mars (Fox, Monday Night)
Andy Richter has been eliminated and to be honest, I’m surprised. Andy’s funny but I think he’d be a little bit annoying to travel to another planet with.
The Steve Wilkos Show (YouTube)
On the episode that I watched on Sunday night, a woman was upset because a “crazy psycho” was stalking her boyfriend. It turned out that the boyfriend wasn’t quite as innocent as he claimed, which I saw coming from a mile away. I enjoyed this episode. It was like an incredibly over-the-top Lifetime movie.
On Monday, I was so depressed, after watching a film called The Honeymoon Killers, that I tried to cheer myself up by watching two episodes. The first one featured Steve kicking an abuser off his stage and that was fun to watch. The second featured a woman who thought her boyfriend was gay and who demanded that he take a lie detector test to prove that he was straight.
On Tuesday, I watched an episode in which a man pretended to have a heart attack to avoid stepping out on stage and seeing the son who he had abandoned years ago. The audience was not impressed. The audience was even less impressed with the woman at the center of the next episode that I watched. Her six children had been taken away from her by the Department of Child Welfare and she was determined to have a seventh child with a teenager who appeared to be suffering from some sort of brain damage. It was disturbing to watch, to say the least.
You Don’t Know Jack (YouTube)
This was a game show, based on the computer game, that aired on ABC in 2001. It was hosted by Paul Reubens. I watched an episode on Saturday morning. The questions were pretty easy. The main attraction of the show was to watch Reubens play the role of the hilariously shallow game show host. It was amusing, though the humor seemed like it would work best in small doses as opposed to on a weekly basis.
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 Welcome Back Kotter, which ran on ABC from 1975 to 1979. The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi!
This week, Epstein becomes a vet and a flu epidemic hits the school.
Episode 1.18 “Dr. Epstein, I Presume”
(Dir by Bob LaHendro, originally aired on January 29th, 1976)
At home, over a checkers game, Gabe tells Julie about his uncle, Walden Kotter. Walden was always concerned as to whether or not he was going to go to heaven.
“Did he ever find out?” Julie asks, without a noticeable lack of enthusiasm.
Gabe explains the Walden went to India and asked the High Llama. “The good news,” the High Llama said, “is that you are going to Heaven. The bad news is that you leave Thursday.”
The next day, an energized Gabe enters his classroom and tells the Sweathogs that it’s time for them to read their compositions about what they want to do with their lives. Barbarino wants to be a guy who never writes compositions. Freddie says that he doesn’t know what he wants to be but he wants to make sure it’s something that pays a lot of money. Horshack says that his essay is not about what he wants to be but about what he wants. “Dear Santa….” Horshack begins.
Suddenly, Gabe realizes that Epstein is not in the class. “I ain’t seen him,” Barbarino says before Epstein suddenly shows up at class, late because he says his pet hamster Florence is sick. Epstein has put Florence in a box and brought her to school with him. Everyone takes a look at the hamster. Epstein explains that he also owns several white mice and a chicken.
“Have you ever considered becoming a vet?” Gabe asks.
“My cousin was in the army, he didn’t like it,” Epstein replies.
“A veterinarian!” Gabe yells.
Epstein says he likes to eat meat.
“Not a vegetarian, a veterinarian!”
It goes on for a while but eventually, Epstein realizes that he could be “Dr. Epstein” and he agrees to talk to the guidance counselor about his new career goal. Yay!
Meanwhile, in the teacher’s lounge, Ms. Helms (Laura Zucker), the school guidance counselor, tells Mr. Woodman that computers and VHS tape are going to change the way that principals run their schools and teachers teach their classes. Remote learning is the future!
“Are you telling me,” Mr. Woodman says, “that someday, I will be able to run this school without having to deal with any students? Imagine that …. a school without students!”
Mr. Woodman is so excited about the idea that you have to feel bad that he wasn’t around for the COVID lockdowns. Seriously, he would have been in Heaven.
Overhearing them, Gabe starts to imitate a robot teacher. After an annoyed Woodman leaves the teacher’s lounge, Gabe brings in Epstein so he can talk to Ms. Helms. Ms. Helms tells Epstein that he doesn’t have high enough test scores to ever pursue a career outside of simple manual labor. She further says that encouraging Epstein to dream of being a vet is unfair to both him and dangerous to his animals. Visibly hurt, Epstein says, “That was the shortest career I’ve ever had,” and storms out of the lounge.
When Ms. Helms explains that teachers should not get close to their students, Gabe replies, “Up your nose with a computer hose.”
As always happens whenever something bad happens at school, the Sweathogs show up at Gabe’s apartment, where they ruin his latest attempt to try to get Julie to laugh. Epstein, Horshack, Freddie, and Barbarino all show up with Epstein’s animals and tell Gabe that they are all now his responsibility. (It turns out that Epstein owned a turtle named Truman Capote.) Epstein announce that all of his animals will be better off without him and Robert Hegyes delivered the line so sincerely that my heart broke a little for him. Seriously, whenever I’m about to dismiss this show as being too silly for its own good, it’ll surprise me with a scene of earnest sincerity.
Anyway, it turns out that Florence the Hamster is pregnant and this somehow leads to all of the Sweathogs donning surgical scrubs while Forence gives birth in Gabe’s classroom.
Gabe runs out the classroom and returns with Ms. Helms. Ms. Helms sees that Epstein supervised the whole process and admits that Epstein might have what it takes to be a doctor. When Epstein says that the two baby hamsters are named Julie and Gabe, the human Gabe tells the hamster Julie a joke about his Uncle Max, who was 64 years old and married a 28 year-old girl.
Back at the apartment, Human Gabe tells Human Julie about his Uncle Max who was 64 years old and …. well, you get the idea. When told that making love at his age could be fatal, Max replied, “If she dies, she dies.” Ouch!
This is the second Epstein-centric story of the first season and, much like the first one, it’s surprisingly effective. Robert Hegyes did a really good job of revealing that, underneath his tough exterior, Epstein was just an insecure kid who needed someone to believe in him. This was a good episode, even if I did find myself wondering where the Sweathogs found those surgical scrubs.
Episode 1.19 “One Flu Over The Cuckoo’s Nest”
(Dir by Bob LaHendro, originally aired on February 5th, 1976)
At the apartment, Julie is upset over getting a crank call. Gabe tells her about the time that he called a butcher and asked him if he had pig’s feet. “Where do you buy your shoes?” is the punchline.
At the school, everyone is out with the flu so the gifted class has been combined with the remedial class. The Sweathogs are upset over having to share their class with the smart kids but actually, they’re just insecure because they think Gabe likes the smart kids more than them. Gabe reassures them by asking them a lot of sports-related questions. In the end, the flu takes out everyone except for Gabe and Horshack. This was an extremely simple episode and I got the feeling that it was probably meant to air earlier in the season than it did. The Sweathogs’s individual personalities seemed to a bit less defined than usual and Gabe seemed like he was still struggling to win the trust of his students. Considering that we’ve already seen the Sweathogs visit Gabe at his apartment several times, everything about their relationship in this episode felt a bit off.
To wrap things up, Gabe tells Julie about his Uncle Morris. Morris told a judge that he was worried that he wouldn’t be able to become a U.S. citizen because he spoke “poor English” but, fortunately, the judge also spoke poor English. So, I guess that worked out.
As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly live tweets on twitter. 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 9 pm et, Tim Buntley will be hosting #ScarySocial! The movie? 2018’s Six-Headed Shark Attack!
If you thought a shark with five heads was dangerous, just you wait until you a shark with six!
If you want to join us this Friday, just hop onto twitter, start the movie at 9 pm et, and use the #ScarySocial hashtag! I’ll be there tweeting and I imagine some other members of the TSL Crew will be there as well. It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.
Through the Shattered Lens 