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, we’ve got 1986’s Back to School!
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.
Back to School is available on Prime and Tubi! See you there!
Over the course of 8 episodes, Chaser tells the story of Eddi Sebastian (Russ Russo).
Eddi is a film editor, someone who spends almost all of time looking over different takes of different scenes and trying to arrange them into the perfect story. Eddi is also shy, awkward, and so broke that he’s about to get kicked out of his home. He has a hopeless crush on B-actress Annabel Ruysch (Gia Bay) and he regularly finds himself being bullied by Annabel’s arrogant (and married) boyfriend, Gar Madden (Daniel de Weldon).
When Eddi’s laptop stops working, his replacement comes with a special bonus. Eddi can now use the laptop to not only edit the movies but also to edit real life. As he learns via the mysterious Hal, he can edit anything that happens as long as he does so within a 24-hour period. Anything that he changes becomes his new reality but the editing must be done with a 24-hour period and the laptop must be connected to the internet.
Considering that he is lonely and broke, it is not surprising that, at first, Eddi uses the laptop to his advantage. Soon, he is waking up next to Annabel and heading off with her to Ohio in hopes of helping her shoot a film that will get into South by Southwest. Also in Ohio is Fran Rosemarin (Haley Noel Bedocs), a former actress who beat Annabel out for a role and then, after the film was made, abandoned Hollywood and returned to the anonymity of middle America. While Eddi continually tries to edit his life and Annabel obsesses on what could have been, Fran seems content to plan her wedding, which is also going to be combined with a football watch party.
However, when Gar shows up in Ohio, Eddi is forced to confront the fact that editing life is not as easy (or as harmless) as he assumed.
Directed by Daniel Roemer, Chaser is an intriguingly ambitious series. Starting out as a comedy about a nerdy editor who uses his powers to change a bad date into a good one, the series branches out to consider questions of free will, morality, destiny, and even the struggle of Middle America to survive in a changing world. For all of Eddi’s problems, they’re nothing compared to the old man who is seen standing on the side of the road and holding a sign asking for money. The more that Eddi edits existence, the more complicated things become.
It’s an interesting question, really. Would you edit your life if you could? One of the things that sets movies and television apart from real life is that, while filming, you get multiple takes. The performers get more than one chance to deliver their lines correctly and, if someone says the wrong thing, the director can yell “cut” and call for another take. Ideally, the editor uses the best takes. Sometimes, the editor even combines several different takes, mixing them into something that appears to have been shot all at once as opposed to multiple times. One could argue that the editor becomes almost God-like in their power to decide what will be seen and what will be left on the cutting room floor. In the movies, everyone always knows the right thing to say and they always react in the most cinematic way possible. Every failure can be edited out. That’s one reason why, especially in troubled times, people turn to the movies. But some would argue that it’s the unexpected and the spontaneous events, the ones that we can’t control, that make life worth living. In Chaser, Eddi gets to live the dream of every movie lover. He gets to treat his real life as a film but, as quickly becomes apparent, there’s a difference between editing events and actually living with the end results.
As I said, it’s an intriguing story and it’s one that plays out at a brisk place over 8 episodes. The visuals are often wonderfully surreal and the cast does a good job of bringing the multi-layered story to life. One thing I really liked about this show is that no one was mere caricature. The character of Fran could have easily been one-dimensional but instead, as played by Haley Noel Bedocs, she became one of the most interesting characters on the show.
Chaser is available on Amazon Prime so be sure to check it out.
In this video for Wild Child, Blackie Lawless follows one woman through the desert, just for her to always disappear when he gets too close. Maybe she knows that W.A.S.P. and Blackie Lawless were among the top targets of Tipper Gore’s anti-rock campaign in the 80s. Supposedly, at the heyday of Gore’s crusade, venues that booked W.A.S.P. would get bomb threats while the members of the band were themselves receiving death threats. Someone even tried to shoot Blackie Lawless.
(Ironically, Blackie Lawless was raised in the church and is reportedly even more of a Christian than Tipper Gore was at the time she was accusing W.A.S.P. of corrupting America’s youth.)
This video was directed by Rick Friedberg, who went from working with W.A.S.P. to working with Leslie Nielsen on several projects.
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 …. it’s Halloween!
Episode 2.5 “The Devil and Jonathan Smith”
(Dir by Michael Landon, originally aired on October 30th, 1985)
It’s Halloween and Mark Gordon has got himself in some trouble.
Left alone while Jonathan helps a guy learn that gambling is never a good idea, Mark accidentally runs over a kid. The child is taken to the hospital in critical condition. Though Mark is told that the accident was not his fault, he still feels guilty and remarks to one doctor (Anthony Zerbe) that he would even give up his own soul for the child to get better. And wouldn’t you know yet — suddenly, the child gets better!
It turns out that the doctor wasn’t a doctor at all. He was Jabez Stone, a bookstore owner who works for the Devil (played, with two horns on his head, by Michael Berryman). Jabez explains that unless Mark holds up his end of the bargain, the child will die. He gives Mark a contract to sign, stating that he will give his soul to the Devil at the end of Halloween. Without Jonathan around to advise him, Mark signs the contract.
When Jonathan does finally return from his mission, he’s not happy to hear about what Mark has done. Jonathan explains that he can’t just order Jabez to destroy the contract. Instead, he’s going to have to somehow convince Jabez to give him the contract. In short, Jonathan is going to have to pull a con job. Since he’s an angel, Jonathan is not allowed to lie or steal. But there is a con artist named CJ Barabbas (Conrad Janis) who might be willing to help.
Or, CJ might be planning on tricking Jonathan into surrendering his own soul to Devil! As CJ tells Jabez, he would be willing to do anything to make sure he got a cushy office job if he should happen to end up in Hell. Is CJ planning on betraying Jonathan or is it just another part of the con?
Well, you can guess the answer. We’re only in the second season of a five-season show and, if Jonathan lost his soul, that would make the rest of the series kind of awkward. There’s never any doubt that CJ is playing a long con on Jabez and the Devil and it’s actually pretty easy to guess just how exactly he’s going to pull it off. This isn’t The Sting. It’s Highway to Heaven.
That said, this was a fun episode. Michael Berryman and Anthony Zerbe both seemed to be having a ball playing such cartoonishly evil characters and Conrad Janis was actually rather charming in the role of CJ Barabbas. Season 2 has gotten off to an uneven start but this episode was both humorous and, in its way, kind of touching. Landon and French were close friends in real life and that friendship comes through as Jonathan tries to keep Mark from spending an eternity in Hell.
Next week, Jonathan teaches a bunch of factory workers a lesson about pollution!
The original Red Dawn doesn’t get as much credit as it deserves.
It’s often described as just being an anti-communist film but actually, it’s a lot more complex than that. Yes, it’s about a group of teenagers who wage guerilla warfare against communist invaders. But it’s also about how those teenagers lose their innocence as a result and how they all come to realize that war is not as simple as they thought it was. The movie celebrates the Wolverines while also mourning that they were put in the position to have to risk and sacrifice their lives in the first place.
That’s what today’s scene that I love is all about. After they are tracked down and attacked by a group of Russian soldiers, the Wolverines discover that one of the original members of the group visited his father in town and was forced to swallow a tracking device. In this scene, the group is forced to deal with the reality of war. The fact that the traitor was a friend to all of them and popular enough to be president of his class just adds to the difficulty of emotionally processing with his betrayal. Patrick Swayze can’t bring himself to pull the trigger. C. Thomas Howell, on the other hand, is so quick to shoot his former friend that you realize just how consumed by hate he has become.
Today’s scene was directed by the brilliant John Milius.
Tom and Fred Denton (Preston Foster and Jim Davis) are two frontier lawmen who are frustrated with their jobs. They are both owed backpay. When they shoot an outlaw, they are expected to pay the $80 burial fee. Neither Tom nor Fred feels that they are appreciated by banks and the railroads that expect them to risk their lives on a daily basis.
When Tom and Fred are informed that their younger brother, Matt (Kim Spalding), has been convicted of murder and sentenced to hang in another town, they ride off to save him.
Even though Tom and Fred can both provide an alibi for Matt and it is obvious that Matt has been framed by a corrupt railroad agent, the town is still determined to hang him. Tom and Fred manage to rescue him from the gallows but, in the process, a deputy is killed. Now wanted by the authorities, the Denton brothers are forced to team up with the same outlaws that they used to hunt. Soon, the Dentons are robbing banks and trains and their old friend, Pete Coleman (Monte Blue), has been ordered to captured them, dead or alive.
One of the many low budget westerns to be produced by the Lippert Company, Three Desperate Men is a cut above the usual B-western. None of the Dentons want to be outlaws but they are forced into it by circumstances out of their control. The real villains of the film are the bankers and the railroad tycoons who hoard the land and the money and who try to cheat men like Tom and Fred out of their rightfully earned wages. The Denton brothers ultimately decide that their number one loyalty is to each other and that leads to the movie’s fatalistic conclusion, which is surprisingly violent for a 1951 western. Preston Foster, Jim Davis, and Monte Blue head a cast that is full of tough and authentic western veterans and the action scenes are imaginatively staged by director Sam Newfield. Three Desperate Men is a B-western that can be enjoyed even by those who don’t like westerns.
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 1775, which aired on CBS in 1992. The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!
This week, we take a trip into the past. Welcome to 1775!
Episode 1.1 “Pilot”
(Dir by David Trainer, originally aired on September 5th, 1992)
The year is 1775 and the streets of Philadelphia are awash in rumors of war and revolution. While some prepare for war and others continue to declare their loyalty to the British Empire, Jeremy (Ryan O’Neal) and Annabelle Proctor (Lesley-Anne Down) just try to run their inn and find suitable husbands for their three daughters. The youngest daughter (Danielle Harris, of Halloween fame) wants a horse because all of her friends have a horse. She also wants to run off with a patriot and is offended when the pro-British Governor Massengill (Jeffrey Tambor) stops by the inn.
The Proctors know that one way to marry off their daughters would be to have them attend a fancy ball. Unfortunately, that would require paying money that they don’t have. Jeremy may have to ask his smug brother-in-law for cash. His brother-in-law’s name? George Washington. Who plays George Washington? Somewhat inevitably, Adam West.
Now, I know Adam West playing a smug and superficial George Washington might sound like a lot of fun but West only shows up for one scene and it’s a short one at that. And he really doesn’t get any fun lines or really any opportunity to do any of his trademark Westing. It’s a bit of a wasted opportunity.
Actually, the entire show feels like a wasted opportunity. Reportedly, 1775 was an attempt to do a Blackadder for America but the pilot lacks all of Blackadder’s lacerating wit. Instead of poking fun at American history and traditions in the way that Blackadder did to the Brits, 1775 is just a typically lame family sitcom that happens to take place in 1775. The youngest daughter wants a horse …. BECAUSE IT’S 1775! If it was the modern era, she would want a car. That’s the entire joke.
As for the show’s cast, Lesley-Anne Down delivers a few snarky put-downs with elan but Ryan O’Neal appears to be lost in the main role. Have you seen that famous clip of Ryan O’Neal saying, “Oh man, oh God,” over and over again? Well, that’s the level of his performance here. O’Neal sleepwalks through the show, delivering his lines in the weary voice of someone who needs the paycheck but otherwise could hardly care less. When he gets exasperated with his daughters, he sounds numbly homicidal. It’s not a pleasant performance and it features none of the fierce intelligence that Rowan Atkinson brought to countless incarnations of Edmund Blackadder.
Not surprisingly, only one episode of the show aired before it was canceled. The series didn’t even reach the start of the Second Continental Congress but that’s okay. We all know how that went.
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 is John Milius’s birthday and you know what? It should be a national holiday!
It’s time for….
4 Shots From 4 John Milius Films
Dillinger (1973, dir by John Milius, DP: Jules Brenner)
Big Wednesday (1978, dir by John Milius, DP: Bruce Surtees)
Conan The Barbarian (1982, dir by John Milius, DP: Duke Callaghan)
Red Dawn (1984, dir by John Milius, DP: Ric Waite)
Submarine Stories was a pulp magazine that was appeared sporadically in 1929 and 1930. Published by Dell Publishing, it was a companion magazine to Navy Stories and it featured articles and fiction about submarines. Though it didn’t receive much attention at the time, SubmarineStories is now considered to be one of the most difficult of pulp titles to find, making issues of the magazine highly prized amongst collectors.
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.
Through the Shattered Lens 