Daily Archives: February 14, 2024

Late Night Retro Television Review: Monsters 1.20 “The Cocoon”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Wednesdays, I will be reviewing Monsters, which aired in syndication from 1988 to 1991. The entire show is streaming on Tubi.

This week, Billy Drago learns an important lesson about cheating, greed, and cocoons.

Episode 1.20 “The Cocoon”

(Dir by John Gray, originally aired on April 29th, 1989)

A woman (Kim Ulrich) is involved in a serious traffic accident, one that should have killed her.  Instead, she survives the accident with hardly a scratch but also without her memory (or so she claims).  A greedy police detective named Richard (Billy Drago) is called in when it is discovered that the woman has a good deal of money but no identification on her.  When the woman says that she knows that she’s wealthy, Richard becomes very interested in helping her regain her memory.

Richard’s girlfriend, Sarah (Silvana Gallardo), is a psychic.  Richard brings her to see the woman, hoping that Sarah will have a vision.  When she handles the woman’s comb, Sarah has a vision of the woman in the 1920s, seducing a man who has been missing for over 60 years.  But the woman appears to be in her 20s in both the present and in Sarah’s vision.  Richard suggests that Sarah might be seeing the woman’s grandmother.

Of course, the truth is a bit more complex.  The woman has been alive for centuries, surviving by wrapping her lovers in a cocoon and then feasting off their life force.  The woman is hoping to make Richard her next lover and Richard, being a bit of a sleazeball, is prepared to go along with it.  However, Sarah has a few tricks of her own….

This was an interesting and ambitious episode, one that attempted to tell a very complex story in just 21 minutes and on a very limited budget.  Unfortunately, the show didn’t really have the resources to do this particular story justice but it’s still hard not to admire the imagination involved.  Throughout the episode there are moments that work really well, like a sequence where Sarah has a vision of all of the different costumes that the woman has worn through the centuries.  The episode also ends with an entertaining little twist.  It’s effective, even if the scenes involving the actual spinning of the cocoon fall victim to the show’s low budget.

Billy Drago was a veteran screen bad guy, one who almost always cast as an evil henchman.  (In Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables, Kevin Costner memorably threw him off of a roof.)  This episode gives Drago a rare leading role, though Richard is just as amoral and sleazy as the characters for which Drago was best known.  Drago does a good job in the lead, playing Richard as being a not particularly smart guy who is undone by his own cockiness.  If nothing else, it’s impossible not to enjoy seeing him get his comeuppance.

Next week on Monsters …. Adrienne Barbeau dabbles in the magical arts!

Love On The Lens: The Amy Fisher Story (dir by Andy Tennant)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Poor Mary Jo Buttafuoco!

As seen in the 1993 made-for-tv movie, The Amy Fisher Story, Mary Jo (Laurie Paton) was just a normal Long Island housewife.  She was married to an auto mechanic named Joey (Anthony John Denison).  She had a family and a nice house and a seemingly perfect life.  But, one day, a teenage girl named Amy Fisher (played by a young Drew Barrymoe) showed up at her front door and claimed that her younger sister was having an affair with Joey.  When Mary Jo accused Amy of lying and then said she was going to call her husband, Amy pulled a gun and shot Mary Jo in the head.  That Mary Jo survived, albeit with partial facial paralysis, was a miracle.

The Amy Fisher Story was the third of the movies to be based on the true story of Amy Fisher and her affair with Joey Buttafuoco.  If Casualties of Love portrayed Amy as being an obsessed stalker who targeted a saintly man and if Amy Fisher: My Story portrayed Amy as a vulnerable teen who was groomed by a sleazy older man, The Amy Fisher Story suggests that perhaps the truth was somewhere in between.  As played by Drew Barrymore, Amy Fisher is immature, unstable, and self-destructive even before she meets Joey Buttafuoco.  As played by Anthony John Denison, Joey is a cocky and arrogant womanizer who grooms a teenage girl and leads her to believe that the only thing keeping them from being truly together is the fact that he has a wife.  (If Casualties portrayed Joey as being a dumb, salt-of-the-Earth type of guy and Amy Fisher: My Story portrayed him as being coldly manipulative and cruel, The Amy Fisher Story portrays him as being a self-centered idiot who did whatever he felt like doing without thinking about any possible consequences.)  Of all the performers who played Amy and Joey, Drew Barrymore and Anthony John Denison are the most convincing.  On the one hand, that lends a credibility to this film’s version of the events that led to the shooting of Mary Jo.  On the other hand, it also means that neither of the main characters is particularly likable.

The film instead tries to make a hero out of a reporter named Amy Pagnozzi (Harley Jane Kozak), who finds herself assigned to follow the Amy Fisher story when she would much rather be reporting on the upcoming presidential election.  Pagnozzi pops up throughout the story, commenting on the media feeding frenzy and generally acting annoyed by the whole thing.  The problem with this approach is that, for all of Pagnozzi’s condemnation of the country’s tabloid mentality, she’s still a part of the monster.  It’s hard to have sympathy for someone complaining about how a story is covered when they’re the one doing the covering.

Interestingly, for a film that condemns that way the story was covered, The Amy Fisher Story is probably the most tabloid-y of the three films.  Every sordid detail — from Amy and Joey’s motel meetings to Amy’s work as an escort to her subsequent dalliance with a gym owner — is provided in artfully filmed detail.  The result is a film that can feel a bit over-the-top but that’s exactly the right approach to take when it comes to a story like this.  When you’re making a movie about a suburban teenage escort who shoots her boyfriend’s wife, there’s really not much need or room for subtlety.  The Amy Fisher Story works because it fully embraces the melodrama and it features a performance from Drew Barrymore that remind us that, back before she became a permanently cheerful talk show host, Drew was a force of pure chaos.

When it comes to the story of the Fishers and the Buttafuocos, this is the film to see.

Love on the Lens: Amy Fisher: My Story (dir by Bradford May)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Poor Amy Fisher!

In the 1993 made-for-TV movie, Amy Fisher: My Story, Amy Fisher (played by Noelle Parker) is an insecure teenager growing up on Long Island.  She goes to high school.  She has a boyfriend.  She has lots of girl friends.  She has a part-time job.  She has a car.  Everything should be perfect but it’s not.  For one thing, her creepy father (played by veteran Canadian character actor Lawrence Dane) likes to come into her room while she’s trying to sleep and sit on the edge of her bed.  Her mother (Kate Lynch) refuses to believe that there’s anything strange about the way her husband treats their daughter.

When Amy and her father take her car to the local auto body shop, she meets the handsome and slick Joey Buttafuoco (Ed Marinaro).  Amy is polite to Joey but Joey takes one look at Amy and he smiles in a way that immediately lets us know that he’s not to be trusted.  Soon, he’s going out of his way to spend time with Amy and eventually, he seduces her in the house that he shares with his wife, Mary Jo (played by Check It Out‘s Kathleen Laskey).  Soon, Joey and Amy are checking into cheap motels together.  Amy think that she’s in love with Joey and Joey says that he loves her (though only when he wants her to do something).

Joey eventually coerces Amy into becoming an escort, enjoying the stories of her spending time with other older men.  And yet, when Amy follows his orders and gets a gym membership, Joey freaks out when she attracts the attention of a man who is close to her own age.  For her part, Amy starts to wonder whether she and Joey will ever truly be together.  Joey insinuates that his wife would have to die before he could even think of marrying Amy Fisher.  Amy happens to have a friend who has a gun….

Amy Fisher: My Story largely plays out in flashbacks and is narrated by Amy as she sits in her jail cell.  It’s based on the same true story that inspired Casualties of Love, with the main difference being that this is Amy’s version of the story.  And it must be said that Amy’s version, with Amy as an insecure and abused teenager being groomed by a manipulative sociopath, feels considerably more plausible than Casualties of Love‘s portrayal of Joey Buttafuoco as being the misunderstood Saint of Long Island.  Working to Amy Fisher: My Story‘s advantage is that it doesn’t let Amy off the hook.  Ultimately, she’s the one who decides to knock on Mary Jo’s front door and then shoot her when she answers.  Amy is not portrayed as being a saint but she’s not a one-dimensional psycho either.  Instead, she’s a naive and emotionally damaged girl who is so desperate to feel loved that she allows Joey to push her over the edge.

Amy Fisher: My Story is a well-done look at a sordid story.  Ed Marinaro is appropriately sleazy and macho as Joey.  Noelle Parker gives a quiet but strong performance as Amy Fisher, playing her as someone who knows that she’s being manipulated but who still finds herself clinging to the smallest shred of hope that she’s not.  While the film never quite transcends its tabloid origins, it still provides a worthy reminder that there’s always a human behind the headlines.

Love On The Lens: Casualties of Love: The Long Island Lolita Story (dir by John Herzfeld)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Poor Joey Buttafuoco!

As seen in the 1993 made-for-TV movie Casualties of Love, Joey is a saintly, salt-of-the-Earth blue collar guy who works as an auto mechanic on Long Island.  He’s also an aspiring drummer, one who struggles with a major cocaine addiction.  When his loving wife, Mary Jo (Phyllis Lyons), threatens to leave him and take the kids unless he cleans up his act, Joey checks into rehab.  Six months later, he leaves rehab clean and sober and dedicated to his family.  All of the other patients lean out of their windows and wish Joey well.  Everyone loves Joey!

Joey, the most handsome and sweetest auto mechanic in the state of New York, does have a problem, though.  A sociopathic teenager named Amy Fisher (Alyssa Milano) has grown obsessed with him and keeps intentionally damaging her car so that she can come hang out at the garage.  When the other mechanics say that Amy is hot, Joey agrees but that’s all he does.  Joey loves his wife.  When Amy tries to kiss him at a carnival, he shoves her away and then kisses his wife to make sure that everyone understand that Joey Buttafuoco is the best guy ever.  When Amy accuses Joey of giving her a STD, everyone realizes she’s lying because Joey would never have an STD in the first place.

And when Amy shoots Mary Jo in the face, the media and the police try to make it seem like Joey is somehow to blame but again, we know that he’s not.  Joey Buttafuoco is a name that means honor and respect.

Uhmm …. yeah.

So, this is story is very loosely based on a true story and by that, I mean that there was a teenager named Amy Fisher who shot a woman named Mary Jo in the face and later said that she was having an affair with her husband, Joey.  Apparently, there were three made-for-TV movies made about the case, all of which premiered in the same month.  Casualties of Love is told from the point of view of Joey and Mary Jo and it fully supports Joey’s initial claim that he never slept with Amy and she was just some obsessed psycho.

While watching this film, I got bored enough to look up the case on Wikipedia and I learned that, after this movie aired, Joey admitted that he did have an affair with 16 year-old Amy Fisher and he subsequently went to jail for statutory rape.  After getting out of jail, Joey divorced his wife and has subsequently been in and out of trouble with the law.  He also become a regular on TV court shows, where he would sue people who failed to pay him for fixing their cars.  My point is, Joey Buttafuoco sounds like a bit of a sleaze in real life.  That makes this film’s portrayal of him as being some sort of Saint of Long Island feel rather dumb.

Actually, it would feel dumb even if the real Joey Buttafuoco was a solid citizen.  Casualties of Love is one of the silliest films that I’ve ever seen, portraying Joey as being a streetwise former cocaine addict who was somehow too naive to realize that it would look bad to spend time in his office alone with Amy.  As Joey, Jack Scalia is very handsome and very sincere and he feels totally miscast as someone who spends hours working underneath the hood of other people’s cars.  Leo Rossi and Lawrence Tierney both show up, mostly so they can say, “Oh, what were you thinking!?” to Joey.  As Amy Fisher, Alyssa Milano gives an amazingly lifeless performance.  Occasionally she talk fast and plays with her hair.  This is the film’s way of letting us know that she’s supposed to be unhinged.  I mean, I do the same thing.  If you’ve got long hair, you’re going to play with it whenever you got bored.  It doesn’t make you crazy.

Unfortunately, though the film may be silly, it’s not much fun.  The direction is workmanlike and the film’s portrayal of Joey and Mary Jo’s marriage is so earnestly bland that the film never even rises to the level of camp.  The film ends with a warning that Amy would soon be eligible for parole.  (Oddly, it also points out that Amy could take college courses in jail, as if that was a bad thing.)  Meanwhile, “Mary Jo is taking it one day at a time.”  Fortunately, Mary Jo eventually took herself out of Joey’s life and filed for divorce.  That’s the happy ending this film lacks.

Retro Television Review: The Love Boat 4.2 and 4.3 “The Family Plan/The Promoter/May The Best Man Win/Forever Engaged/The Jurors”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Wednesdays, I will be reviewing the original Love Boat, which aired on ABC from 1977 to 1986!  The series can be streamed on Paramount Plus!

This week, The Love Boat heads to the Virgin Islands in a special two-hour episode!

(For syndication purposes, this episode is technically listed as being two episodes.)

Episode 4.2 and 4.3 “The Family Plan/The Promoter/May The Best Man Win/Forever Engaged/The Jurors”

(Dir by Roger Duchowny, originally aired on November 1st, 1980)

One of the cool things about The Love Boat is that, at least once per season, the cast and crew would actually film on location on an actual cruise.  You can always spot these episodes by the fact that they’re usually two-hours long, there’s more passengers than usual, and the guest stars tend to spend more time on the upper deck than in their cabins.  It may not sound like much but there’s just something undeniably fun about seeing the actual ocean while the ship’s crew and the show’s guest stars go through the motions.  It’s a reminder that we live on a beautiful planet and we should all make the effort to go out and see some of it.

The fourth season’s location shoot followed the boat as it sailed from the Virgin Islands to Los Angeles, with stops in Curacao, Venezuela, and Panama.  Along with all of the usual romance and laughs, this episode is a bit of a travelogue as Gopher, Julie, and the Captain all take their turn telling the passengers about the history of where they are sailing.  Isaac even gets into the act, pointing out the Virgin Islands to Doc Bricker.  (Being the walking HR nightmare that he is, Bricker can’t hear that name without making a comment about it.)  For a history and travel nerd like me, that was enough to make this episode fun.

As for the storylines, it was typical Love Boat silliness.  Promoter Larry Evans (Darren McGavin) is promoting a contest in which 50 engages couples will be married by Captain Stubing in a mass wedding aboard the ship.  (It’s kind of like what happens in cults, now that I think about it.)  One lucky couple will win money, a house, and a car.  Larry boards the ship with his wife, Sheila (Debbie Reynolds) and it quickly becomes apparent that their marriage is struggling, despite the happy facade that Larry attempts to put up.  When Larry’s plan for a network television special falls through, he’s offered a bribe by one of the engaged couples.  When Sheila learns that Larry is considering taking the bribe, she announces that she wants a divorce and then starts spending a lot of time with Captain Stubing.  Again, Vicki gets her hopes up that she’ll soon have a stepmother.

Meanwhile, Carl Lawrence (Peter Graves) boards the ship to try to keep his son, Ted (Brian Kerwin), from rushing into a marriage with Carrie (Erin Moran).  Meanwhile, Carrie’s mother, Mary Ann (Kathie Browne), boards to keep Carrie from rushing into a marriage with Ted.  Carl and Mary Ann are eager to work together to keep this wedding from happening.  But then Carl and Mary Ann fall in love and start planning a rushed wedding of their own.  “Are we hypocrites?” Carl wonders.  Yes, you are.  But you’re also Peter Graves so you can pretty much do whatever you want.

Tom McMann (Ted Knight) and Mary Hubble (Rue McClanahan) have been engaged for ten years.  Mary fears that Tom won’t go actually go through with the wedding and Tom suddenly finds himself unable to say the words, “I do.”  Can Isaac help them out?

Marv Prine (Don Most), who previously sailed on last season’s Alaskan cruise, boards as the best man for the wedding of his friend Brian (Lloyd Alan) and Emily (Charlene Tilton).  However, Brian decides he’d rather run off with an old girlfriend and he leaves it to Marv to break the news to Emily.  Marv can’t bring himself to do it so he keeps making excuses and promising Emily that Brian will meet them at the next port.  Marv falls in love with Emily but suddenly, Brian shows up.  When he finds out that Marv didn’t tell Emily the truth about him standing her up, Brian decides to go ahead with the wedding.  Emily becomes convinced that Marv was trying to steal her away from Brian but then she finds a receipt from a cheap hotel and she realizes the truth.  “You’re not a man,” Julie tells Brian.  WAY TO GO, JULIE!

Finally, the Captain assigns Doc Bricker the task of judging the couples contest.  Doc thinks that it sounds tedious so he passes the job onto Gopher.  However, when Doc sees that the other two judges are Valerie (Dawn Wells) and Rena (Ann Jillian), he conspires to take Gopher’s place.  While docked at Curacao, Doc sends Gopher assure to pick up some medical supplies.  Gopher, of course, walks up to a cop and asks for help finding “the drugs.”  When the cop doesn’t understand, Gopher says, “I want to buy drugs.”  Long story short, Gopher ends up in jail and the ship sails off without him.

Wow, that’s a lot to deal with!  But don’t worry it all works out.

Gopher meets a Spanish diplomat’s daughter and is not only freed from jail but he also gets a girlfriend and a limo for his trouble.  When the ship docks in Los Angeles, Valerie and Rena abandon Doc so that they can take a ride in Gopher’s new limo.

Larry does not take the bribe and saves his marriage.

Everyone else gets married.

Yay!  A happy ending!  Except, of course, for Vicki, who thought she was going to get a stepmother.  But don’t worry, Vicki. There’s still 6 more seasons to go.

This was a fun episode.  It made me want to take a cruise.  Interestingly enough, this is also a prophetic episode.  A cruise for engaged couples in which one couple wins a big prize?  Today, there’s not a network around that would pass on that.

See?  The Love Boat knew exactly where America sailing.

It’s Love, Part 10

Posted on by Dazzling Erin

Happy Valentine’s Day and Happy Ash Wednesday!

Today is the day that we celebrate love and sacrifice!

Love isn’t always easy and some people have a hard time around Valentine’s Day.  If you’re single, do not despair.  You’re not the first person to find yourself in this situation and you won’t be the last.  Though you may feel like you, you are not alone.  The path to true love is never an easy one to travel but the destination makes the trip worth it.  Even in the 1950s and the 1960s and the 1970s, Valentine’s Day wasn’t an easy day for everyone.  Love can hurt.

Screenshot

As difficult and as frustrating as it can be to find true love, we will never stop searching because finding it makes it all worth it.

So. if you’re alone or if you’re a part of a couple, if you’re single or married, in love or simply enjoying life, happy February 14th!  May it be a good day, no matter what it means to you.

 

Happy Valentine’s Day From The Shattered Lens

Posted on by Dazzling Erin

It Must Be Valentine’s Day by Erin Nicole

Whether you’re single or if you’re in a committed relationship or even if you don’t care about any of that stuff, the Shattered Lens wishes you a happy Valentine’s Day!  Or, if you’d prefer, a happy February 14th!

(As for myself, I’m more than happy with a simple “Have a blessed Ash Wednesday.”)

Have a wonderful day, no matter what you celebrate!