Daily Archives: April 4, 2024

Late Night Retro Television Review: Highway to Heaven 2.4 “Cindy”

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 Thursdays, I will be reviewing Highway to Heaven, which aired on NBC from 1984 to 1989.  The entire show is currently streaming on Freevee and several other services!

This week, Jonathan and Mark travel to Hollywood …. again.

Episode 2.4 “Cindy”

(Dir by Michael Landon, originally aired on October 23rd, 1985)

Vincent DeGeralimo (Bill Macy) is a fast-talking, good-hearted talent agent who is still trying to sell acts that were out-of-style during Vaudeville.  He wants to get a booking for a lion tamer but Jonathan appears to him and says that Vincent’s main concern should be helping out his daughter.

Cindy DeGeralimo (Hallie Todd) is an aspiring actress who is currently working as a waitress in a diner.  Her evil boss (Alice Ghostley) has three untalented daughters who all want to be actresses as well.  Cindy’s newest coworker, Mark Gordon, just wants to meet a movie star.

Pretending to work in the mailroom of a major Hollywood studio, Jonathan convinces producer Maxim Prince (Kip Gilman) that the best way to find a star for his new picture would be to hold a ball and invite every aspiring actress in town to attend.

Can you see where this is going?  Yep, it’s a remake of Cinderella, except this time Cinderella has a pushy father who keeps trying to change her before she goes to the ball.  Cindy finally gets fed up and says that she wants to be a star but she also doesn’t want to be some sort of Hollywood phony.  Vincent accepts Cindy’s feelings and everything works out in the end.

Usually, I’m pretty lenient when it comes to reviewing this show but this episode just annoyed me.  Even by the standards of Highway to Heaven, it was overly sentimental and heavy-handed.  Bill Macy gave such a frantic performance as Vincent that it was hard to watch him.  As well, Mark was so excited about being in Hollywood that I found myself wondering if he forgot about all the time he spent in Hollywood during the first season.

Indeed, this is not the first episode of Highway to Heaven to feature Jonathan dealing with the entertainment industry and I imagine it won’t be the last.  Considering how much control Michael Landon had over this show, I always get the feeling that the Hollywood episodes were personal for him, especially as they always seemed to deal with parents regretting the fact that they put work ahead of their families.  That said, the portrayal of Hollywood in this episode was so old-fashioned and idealized that I get the feeling that it was Landon’s way of showing what he wished Hollywood was like as opposed to what it actually was.  Landon’s Hollywood is a town where anyone can be a star and anyone can find a happiness.

As for this episode, it was a bit too corny for its own good.  Next week, though, Jonathan battles the Devil for Mark’s soul!  That should be fun.

Film Review: Against Their Will (dir by Denis Malleval)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 2012 French film, Against Their Will, tells the story of two Alsatian teenagers during the Nazi occupation of France.

Lisette (Louise Herrero) is blonde and praised, by the Nazis, for her Aryan appearance.  She appears to always have a positive attitude no matter what is going on.  Lisette’s father is a collaborationist with the Nazis and Lisette publicly defends the German occupiers while privately disdaining them and the war.  Her fiancé, Henri, has been conscripted into the army and has been sent to the Russian front.  He writes her letters but, because he is now required to write only in German and not in the French that he and Lisette grew up with, Lisette cannot read them.

Alice (Flore Bonaventura) is dark-haired and therefore considered to be inferior to Lisette.  This is despite the fact that Alice is fiercely intelligent and has been trained as a nurse.  Alice’s father is a doctor who has been sent to a prison camp as punishment for treating a wounded British soldier.  Alice is rebellious and, unlike Lisette, she has no compunctions about telling the Nazis exactly how she feels about them.  When she is ordered to salute the Nazi flag, she lifts on arm in a stiff salute while using her other hand to extend her middle finger.

Lisette and Alice are amongst the many teenagers who are taken from their families and sent to a German indoctrination camp, where the strict and cruel Trudl (Julia Thrunau) tries to brainwash them.  Lisette and Alice become unlikely friends as they are sent from the camp to work in a munitions factory and finally to serve in the Lebensborn, which was Germany’s eugenics program.  While Alice works in the maternity ward, Lisette’s Aryan appearance attracts the attention of a cruel SS officer.

Against Their Will starts out strong, showing how even the most intelligent and independent of people can be forced to do things that go against their beliefs, whether as a result of brainwashing or just plain fear.  The scenes in the indoctrination camp and later in the munitions factory show how the Nazi government treated both people in both Germany and the occupied territories as cannon fodder in their war with the Allies.  Even during an air raid, Alice is ordered to continue working and, even though one mistake could lead to an explosion that would kill both them and several of their co-workers, Alice and Lisette are continually told to speed up when it comes to making the shells that will later be dropped on the Allies.

The film loses its way during the final third, largely because French girls — even ones from the German-influenced Alsace region of France — would never have been sent to the Lebensborn, which was meant to be exclusively for the breeding of “pure” Germans.  By suggesting otherwise, the film unintentionally downplays the nationalism and the racism at the heart of the Nazi ideology.  The film’s framing device — in which one of the women tells her story to her granddaughter — also feels a bit awkward and the film also makes a bit too much use of the stereotype of the good German, the one Nazi who is not quite as cruel as the others.

The first half of the film is a strong portrayal of life under an occupation, with both of the lead actresses giving good performances as two women who deal with their circumstances in very different ways.  It’s just a shame that the film’s conclusion doesn’t live up to what came before it.

Idaho Kid (1936, directed by Robert F. Hill)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

When the wife of rancher Clint Hollister (Earl Dwire) died in childbirth, Clint was so distraught that he rejected his son, Todd.  Todd was raised by a rival rancher, John Endicott (Lafe McKee).  Hollister resented Endicott for taking his son and a feud developed between the two families.  Hoping the end the feud, 15 year-old Todd ran away from home and made a new life for himself as a frontier scout named Idaho.

15 years later, Idaho (Rex Bell) returns home with his sidekick, a reformed outlaw known as The Kid (David Sharpe).  Neither Hollister nor Endicott recognize Idaho and, without revealing his identity, Idaho tries to stop their feud.  Hollister’s men want to keep the feud going and they manipulate Hollister into challenging his own son to a duel.

Idaho Kid is one of the better B-westerns that Rex Bell made between 1928 and 1936.  Though the film has its share of action scenes, Idaho Kid‘s intelligent script puts more emphasis on character development than most B-westerns, with Hollister especially being portrayed as a complex character as opposed to just a stock western villain.  Rex Bell always seemed authentic whenever he was riding a horse or shooting a gun.  Idaho Kid shows that he could also play more than just a standard western hero.

Though he was being pushed for stardom by Fox Film, Rex Bell voluntarily retired from the film industry in 1936 and instead pursued a career in politics.  He was the Lieutenant Governor of Nevada when he died of a heart attack in 1962.

 

Retro Television Review: Beane’s of Boston 1.1 “German Week”

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 Thursdays, I will be reviewing Beane’s of Boston, which aired on CBS in 1979.  The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!

This week, we take a look at an attempt to bring a British show to America.

Episode 1.1 “German Week”

(Dir by Jerry Paris, originally aired on May 5th, 1979)

Beane’s of Boston is a venerable department store, a landmark of Boston.  The store is housed in a multi-story building and it is run by the elderly but still horny Frank Beane (Tom Poston).  Frank takes a break from ogling his secretary and sneaking off to the strip club to demand this his nephew, Franklin Beane (George O’Hanlon, Jr.), explain why the 4th floor — which houses the Men and Ladies’ Wear Department — is losing money.

Franklin admits that sales have been off but he has a plan.  What if the store only sold German products for a week?  And what if the employees dressed in lederhosen and did German dances?

The 4th floor employees are not particularly enthused.  The head of Ladies’ Wear, Mrs. Slocum (Charlotte Rae), served as a WAC during World War II and once found herself with a German soldier on top of her after a landmine went off.  Mr. Peacock (John Hillerman), the stuffy floor manager, feels that he looks like an idiot dressed in a German outfit.  Meanwhile, in the Men’s Department, elderly Mr. Granger (Morgan Farley) sleeps while the flamboyant Mr. Humphries (Alan Sues) answers the phone in his most “masculine” voice and Mr. Lucas (Larry Bishop) hits on the just-hired administrative assistant, Ms. Brahms (Lorna Patterson).

German week is a disaster, bringing in a profit of $12.94.  But, fortunately, old Frank Beane is dating a German woman and she loves the idea.  So, no one loses their job….

If this sounds familiar and if you’re reading this in America, you’ve probably seen an episode of the infamously terrible British sitcom Are You Being Served? on PBS.  Beane’s of Boston was an attempt to do an American version of that sitcom and, just as The Office would do decades later, the pilot essentially took a script from the British series and populated it with American actors.

Setting aside the question of whether or not the world needed more than one version of Are You Being Served?, the idea of transporting that very British sitcom to Boston was not, in itself, a terrible one.  Boston is one of our oldest cities and, while it may be best-known today for its robust blue collar culture, there were still enough stuffy Protestants around to make it believable that a store like Beane’s could survive.  That said, the pilot still falls flat, largely because everyone but John Hillerman seems to be miscast and even Mr. Peacock is considerably less amusing once you take away his title of colonel.  While the British original was known for its broad comedy, it appears like a model of subtlety when compared to the performances of Alan Sues as Mr. Humphries and Larry Bishop as Mr. Lucas.  As well, why would any store do a German week in a city that is best-known for its strong Irish community?  Why not do an Irish Week?  It perhaps made sense in Are You Being Served? but, in Beane’s of Boston, it just makes Franklin seem like such an idiot that you almost feel like he deserves to lose his job.

Beane’s of Boston did not have the same success as Are You Being Served?  German Week would be the only episode aired.

Scenes That I Love: Robert Downey, Jr. and Nicholas Pryor in Less Than Zero

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today, the Shattered Lens wishes a happy birthday to actor and now-Oscar winner Robert Downey, Jr!

Today’s scene that I love comes from 1987’s Less Than Zero.  Long before he played Iron Man, Downey played Julian, a young, self-destructive drug addict in Los Angeles.  In this scene, Julian talks to his father, played by the great character actor, Nicholas Pryor.

Downey has said that playing Julian was not a huge stretch for him as he was dealing with his own growing drug addiction while making Less Than Zero.  (Considering how heavy-handed the film was in its anti-drug message, it’s interesting that both Downey and Andrew McCarthy have talked about first experimenting with cocaine while making the film.)  It’s been quite a turn-around for Downey, who went from being a poster boy for self-destruction to a beloved pop cultural icon.  Just last month, Downey won an Oscar for his performance in Oppenheimer.  He deserved every minute of the applause he received.

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special Andrei Tarkovsky

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

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!

On this date, 92 years ago, Andrei Tarkovsky was born in Russia.  Before he was murdered by the KGB in 1986, Tarkovsky was responsible for some of the most intriguing and visually stunning films ever made.  Today, we pay tribute to Tarkovsky’s art and his legacy.  It’s time for….

4 Shots From 4 Andrei Tarkovsky Films

Ivan’s Childhood (1962, dir by Andrei Tarkovsky, DP; Vadim Yusov)

Solaris (1972, dir by Andrei Tarkovsky, DP: Vadim Yusov)

Mirror (1975, dir by Andrei Tarkovsky, DP: Georgy Rerberg)

Stalker (1979, dir by Andrei Tarkovsky, DP: Alexander Knyazhinsky)

Music Video of the Day: Inside Out by Anthrax (1998, directed by Marcos Siega)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Today’s music video of the day is a take on the classic episode of The Twilight Zone where William Shatner spots something on the wing of an airplane.  This time, it’s not a goblin.  Instead, it’s John Bush-era Anthrax!

Director Marcos Siega is one of those directors who did music videos for just about everyone who was anyone.  Eventually, he moved on to directing episodic television, along with the occasional movie.  Among the shows that he’s directed for: Dexter, True Blood, The Flight Attendant, and Batwoman.

Enjoy!