Made in 1985 for CBS, Ace Hits The Big Time is a seriously strange little film.
It tells the story of Horace Hobart (Rob Stone, a likable actor), a 16 year-old kid from New Jersey who has just transferred to a new high school in New York. He’s paranoid about going to his new school because it’s supposedly populated by gang members. The school is so notorious for gang activity that the members of the gang even make an appearance on the front page of the paper of record, The New York Freaking Times! Looking at the newspaper makes Horace Hobart so paranoid that he has musical fantasies in which the members of a gang known as the Purple Falcons surround him, start singing, and then beat him up while doing an interpretive dance.
Horace does eventually find the courage to go to his new high school but he insists on calling himself “Ace,” he wears a jacket with a fearsome dragon embroidered on the back of it, and he wears an eye patch because he’s got …. ewwww …. pink eye. (Remember when Bob Costas got pink eye at the Olympics and traumatized thousands of viewers by insisting on going on the air every night and talking about snowboarding while struggling to keep his eye from popping out of its socket? Those were crazy times!) Ace looks so tough that the real Purple Falcons mistake him for being an associate of a notorious New Jersey gang (no, not the Sopranos) and they recruit him to be a member of their gang. Ace is so convincing as a tough guy that a film crew decides to use him and his friends as extras in a movie! (Interestingly, the director is really involved in picking and working with the extras. There’ll be no second unit crap for Ace and the Purple Falcons!) Unfortunately, another gang insists on trying to make the Purple Falcons look bad. Fortunately, Ace is able to defuse the tension by baking a cake. What?
This is like the dorkiest version of West Side Story ever made and I can’t really figure out what the message is supposed to be. On the one hand, Ace is totally paranoid about any sort of gang violence and goes out of his way to try to prevent a gang war. On the other hand, even before Ace shows up and starts quoting John Lennon, neither one of the show’s gangs are particularly violent or even intimidating. The Purple Falcons are pretty much impossible to take seriously because they’re called “the Purple Falcons.” (They all wear purple, as well. I guess some other gang had already claimed all the cool falcon colors.) They really don’t do any sort of “gang” stuff. Instead, they eat a lot of pizza and appear in a movie. That sounds like a pretty good deal, actually. With its mix of dorky humor, random dance numbers, and “tough” gang talk, this is one of those old time capsules that simply has to be seen to be believed.
As I prepare to return from my vacation to the hard but returning work of putting together this year’s horrorthon, this Ace Attorney AMV feels appropriate.
Anime: Ace Attorney
Song: Time Of Our Lives by Chawki
Creator: Ace Gavinners (as always, please consider subscribing to the creator’s channel. A lot of hard work goes into making an amv!)
Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a new feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Fridays, I will be reviewing T. and T., a Canadian show which ran in syndication from 1987 to 1990. The show can be found on Tubi!
This week, Amy loses her car and her mind!
Episode 1.11 “Junkyard Blues”
(Dir by Dan McCutcheon, originally aired on March 21st, 1988)
“In this episode,” Mr. T tells us, “Amy’s car goes missing and so does Amy. And I finally get my day in court!”
Amy is not having a good day. She’s running later for court so she parks her car in a no-parking zone. When she gets to court, she discovers that she forgot to bring an important file. Fortunately, the judge delays the start of the trial until Amy is prepared to proceed. (Canadian judges are super nice!) T.S. Turner tells Amy not to worry.
“Even good guys have a bad day!” he tells her.
Amy’s day is just about to get worse because, upon leaving the courthouse, she discovers that her car has been towed! She goes from lot to lot, trying to find who towed her car but everyone tells her the same thing. None of them towed a ’78, black VW convertible. Amy tracks down the only witness to the car being taken, a 14 year-old named Sydney (Tara Strong). Sydney is an aspiring journalist and she declares that Amy’s car getting stolen “could be the story that I’ve been waiting for!”
Amy finally returns to the office and, after snapping at administrative assistant Sophie, Amy says, “Pokey’s been stolen!”
“Why would any want to steal Pokey?” Sophie asks.
“It’s a classic! They just don’t make cars like that anymore!” Amy shouts.
“Easy, Amy,” T.S. says, “If it’s stolen, I’ll find it for you.”
Amy, however, is determined to find the car herself. T.S. objects and points out that he’s the private investigator and that Amy is the attorney who is due in court on several important matters. In a move that would get an American lawyer disbarred, Amy tells T.S. to handle all of her court stuff while she looks for her car. She then thinks that she sees Pokey being driven past the office so she runs outside and chases after it, yelling, “That’s my car!”
Somehow, 14 year-old Sydney figures out that Amy’s car has been taken to a chop shop. While Amy takes an adolescent that she barely knows into a potentially deadly situation, T.S. Turner goes to court and plays the role of lawyer. Fortunately, he’s able to get yet another continuance, which is a bit anticlimactic when you consider the potential of Mr. T playing someone pretending to be an attorney.
While T.S. potentially ruins her client’s life, Amy and the teenage girl who she has known for less than a day break into a criminal-controlled junkyard so that they can search for her car. As I watched Amy and Sydney sneak around the auto yard, I found myself wondering if Sydney had parents and if they knew that she was putting her life at risk to help an attorney find a VW convertible named Pokey.
Fortunately, T.S. gets out of court in time to head down to the junkyard, toss around the car thieves, and help Amy rescue her car from being smashed. Unfortunately, even after knocking out the thieves (“Goodnight, brother,” T.S. says.), T.S. is still not able to prevent Amy from accidentally destroying her car while trying to figure out how to lower it from the junkyard crane.
“It’s okay, Amy,” T.S. says, “So what if you’re not a good detective?”
“It was just a car,” Sydney says.
“THERE’S NO OTHER CAR LIKE THAT IN THE WORLD!” Amy yells at the teenager who risked her life to help a total stranger.
Presumably because he doesn’t want to have to spend the rest of his life listening to Amy complain about her car, T.S. buys Amy a new black VW convertible.
In the past, I’ve wondered why this show usually only focuses on one of the T’s. Now I understand that it’s because Amy Taler, the other T, is an incredibly annoying character who will risk other people’s lives and not even say thank you afterwards. This episode featured too many scenes of Amy yelling about her car and not enough scenes of T.S. gruffly telling people to stay out of his way. I mean, I love my car too but I’m not going to force a stranger to break into a chop shop with me to search for it. I’d probably ask my sisters to do it.
Anyway, let’s move on.
Episode 1.12 “Killing Time”
(Dir by Dan McCutcheon, originally aired on March 21st, 1998)
“On this week’s episode,” Mr. T tells us, “Amy and I get put on full alert when an escaped killer come back in town, seeking revenge.”
Years ago, Joe Nichols (played by Geza Kovacs, a favorite of David Cronenberg’s) was convicted of murdering his ex-wife’s new husband. The key testimony in the case against him was given by his five year-old daughter, Wendy (Mairon Bennett). And who was the prosecutor who sent Joe to prison? Amy Taler!
Yes, apparently Amy was prosecutor before she went into private practice. It’s kind of interesting how the show is continually revealing contradictory details about Amy’s past, almost as if the show’s writers were making up the character as they went along. Amy tells T.S. that the Nichols case was the last she prosecuted before switching sides. Joe Nichols was a viscous killer and he needed to be taken off the streets so I’m not sure why the Nichols case would be the one that would lead to Amy resigning from the prosecutor’s office.
Anyway, Joe escapes from prison and returns to whatever Canadian city T and T is supposed to take place in. The cops think that Joe is coming for his daughter but T.S. thinks that Joe is actually after Amy and decides to stake out Amy’s apartment so that he can beat up Joe when he shows up. And that’s what happens.
Seriously, that was pretty much the entire episode. That 30-minute run time pretty much guaranteed that T and T would always keep everything direct and to the point. Geza Kovacs is as menacing in this episode as he was as Greg Stillson’s bodyguard in Cronenberg’s adaptation of The Dead Zone. But it’s hard not to regret that this episode lacked the usual T.S. Turner quips. Other than yelling at a cop for calling him and “interrupting my cookie break,” T.S. didn’t have many memorable lines in this episode which, to me, defeats the whole purpose of casting Mr. T as a private investigator.
Well, that’s two disappointing episodes of T. and T! Hopefully, next week will be a return to form for both the show and T.S. Turner.
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, #FridayNightFlix has got 1992’s Diggstown! When James Woods teams up with Lou Gossett, Jr., it’s time for boxing action!
If you want to join us this Friday, just hop onto twitter, start the movie at 10 pm et, and use the #FridayNightFlix hashtag! It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.
Diggstown is available on Prime and Tubi! See you there!
Today is Oliver Stone’s birthday so, for all conspiracy-loving readers, here is a key scene from Stone’s 1991 film, JFK! In this scene, Kevin Costner’s Jim Garrison meets the mysterious man known as X (played by Donald Sutherland). X explains the conspiracy to Garrison.
This scene certainly convinced a lot of people. Personally, I think Oswald acted alone but one cannot deny Stone’s talent as a filmmaker.
4 Shots From 4 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!
129 years ago today, the great French film director Jean Renoir was born in Paris! The son of Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Jean would go on to become just as revolutionary a force in the world of cinema as his father was in the world of painting. Today, in honor of the birth and legacy of Jean Renoir, here are….
4 Shots From 4 Jean Renoir Films
Grand Illusion (1937, dir by Jean Renoir, DP: Christian Matras)
The Rules of the Games (1939, dir by Jean Renoir, DP: Jean-Paul Alphen, Jean Bachelet, Jacques Lemare, Alain Renoir)
The Southerner (1945, dir by Jean Renoir, DP: Lucien N. Adroit)
The Woman On The Beach (1947, dir by Jean Renoir. DP: Leo Tover and Harry J. Wild)
Metallica burns the stage with today’s music video of the day. You Must Burn! is one of the many songs to be found on Metallica’s 11th studio album, 72 Seasons. This song (and this album) finds Metallica playing with a new-found intensity while James Hetfield releases some of his most introspective and troubled lyrics to date. It’s a good return to form.
The video was directed by Timothy Saccenti, who did several of the other 72 Seasons videos as well.
Through the Shattered Lens 