Daily Archives: May 21, 2024

Late Night Retro Television Review: Baywatch Nights 2.5 “Circle of Fear”

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 Tuesdays, I will be reviewing Baywatch Nights, a detective show that ran in Syndication from 1995 to 1997.  The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!

This week, something is stalking Ryan!

Episode 2.5 “Circle of Fear”

(Dir by Bruce Kessler, originally aired on October 27th, 1996)

This episode opens with a blonde woman performing some sort of strange, witchcraft-related ceremony in the middle of the woods, spinning around until she apparently dies.  The next morning, Diamont Teague approaches Mitch and asks him to head out to the woods and investigate the scene of the ceremony.

As I watched Diamont talk to Mitch about witchcraft, it occurred to me that the Baywatch Nights format change that occurred between the end of season one and the start of season two led to some unanswered questions.  For one thing, where has Garner disappeared to?  Are Mitch and Ryan still private eyes or are they now just hobbyists?  (We haven’t seen them in their office since this season started.)  Even more importantly, who is Diamont and how does Mitch know him?  Why is Diamont continually asking Mitch and Ryan to investigate every strange thing that happens in Malibu?  Does Diamont work for the government or is he just someone who is obsessed with the paranormal?  Where does Diamont live?  Where is Diamont from?  Why can’t Diamont ever investigate anything on his own?  Why does he always tell Mitch and Ryan to do it?  At the start of the season, Diamont pretty much just showed up out-of-nowhere but everyone on the show acts as if he’s been around forever.

At the site of the witchy ceremony, Mitch and Ryan find the remains of an altar and a burned book.  A trip down to the local occult library reveals that the book is an ancient magical text.  Ryan buys an edition of the book and she takes it home with her.  Sitting alone in her new apartment, Ryan finds herself mysteriously compelled to read aloud from the book.  That turns out to be a mistake as Ryan soon finds herself being followed by a spirt that apparently wants to possess her and causes harm to come to anyone who annoys her, including a flirtatious waiter and an obnoxious plumber.  Can Mitch and Ryan drive the spirit out of Ryan’s apartment without Ryan losing her security deposit?

I enjoyed the episode, even if I’m still not quite clear on why Mitch and Ryan are taking orders from Diamont.  After being underutilized over the past few episodes, Angie Harmon steps into the spotlight here and she gives a strong performance, especially in the scenes where she’s first realizing that an unseen spirit is manipulating her and her actions.  Harmon’s down-to-earth style provides a nice match to David Hasselhoff’s more “dramatic” style of acting.  (Indeed, there’s a part of me that thinks this series would have lasted longer if it had dropped the Baywatch connection and instead focused on Angie Harmon solving mysteries and battling ghosts, goblins, and ghouls.)  Baywatch Nights seemed to really hit its stride with this episode.

Next week, Mitch and Ryan travel into the past!

The Films of 2024: The Mummy Murders (dir by Colin Bressler)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Alexis (Leila Anastasia Scott) is a San Antonio news reporter who, while sitting in a small cafe, is approached by a man named Joe (Jason Scarbrough).

At first, Joe just seems like an appreciative fan of Alexis’s reporting, albeit a bit of creepy and pushy one.  But it’s only after Joe sits down, removes his glasses, and starts to speak about his life to Alexis that the truth becomes apparent.  Joe says that he’s the serial killer who has been terrorizing San Antonio for the past few months.  His trademark is that he mummifies the bodies of his victims.  At first skeptical and then increasingly disturbed, Alexis listens as Joe calmly discusses his life, from his childhood as the son of a mortician to his time in the Army, to his current life as a killer.  As the conversation continues, it becomes apparent that Joe has a connection to Alexis and her family.

First released on January 2nd (and therefore, the first film of 2024), The Mummy Murders is a low-budget serial killer film that was filmed on location in San Antonio.  I have to admit that I’m a bit weary of serial killer films, just because there have been so many of them that they can sometimes feel rather interchangeable.  There’s only so many times you can sit through someone giving a long-winded explanation of their motives and their techniques before you start to wonder what the point of it all truly is.  Personally, I am of the opinion that Lars Von Trier pushed the serial killer genre to its logical conclusion with The House That Jack Built.  Matt Dillon plunging into the abyss was not only a fitting end for his character but also a sign that we had learned just about everything that there was to learn about what makes a serial killer tick.  There’s nothing left to discover.

That said, when taken on its own terms, The Mummy Murders is effectively creepy.  Again, it’s an extremely low budget movie and, towards the end of the film, the boom mic makes a presumably uninvited appearance.  There’s some holes in the film’s plot and I took issue with a lot of the choices that Alexis made throughout the film.  But Jason Scarbrough gives an effectively unhinged performance as Joe and the film deserves a lot of credit for not trying to make him into some sort of erudite, witty Hannibal Lecter-style murderer.  Instead, Joe is a believable creep who takes pride in his crimes because they’re the only thing for which he’s ever shown any ability.  Joe looks at both Alexis and the audience with a thousand-yard state, leaving little doubt that there’s zero room for kindness or empathy in Joe’s death-obsessed mind.  In an especially creepy moment, Joe talks about his excitement when, as a pre-teen, he discovered that the body of a girl on whom he had a crush had been brought to his father’s mortuary.  It’s icky and it’s creepy but it’s probably a more realistic portrayal of the killer’s sick mindset than what is found in most films.

As a final note, The Mummy Murders was shot on location in San Antonio.  San Antonio’s a lovely city.  More films should shoot down there.

Danger Zone (1996, directed by Allan Eastman)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Framed on charges of dumping toxic waste, Morgan (Billy Zane) accepts a CIA mission to travel to the fictional African country of Zambeze and to track down his former friend, Jim Scott (Robert Downey, Jr.).  Scott is an ex-CIA agent who faked his own death and who is now leading a revolution against the oppressive government of Zambeze.  Scott knows the location of several barrels of uranium.  Also searching for the uranium is the ruthless Mr. Chang (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa).  Morgan teams up with Dr. Kim Woods (Lisa Collins) but soon discovers that he has to be careful of who to trust.

There is a surprisingly lot of talent in the cast of this film.  Along with Zane, Downey, Collins, and Tagawa, Ron Silver appears as the shady political operative who joins Morgan in Zambeze.  The cast may be good but it doesn’t take long to see that everyone in this film was there mostly for the money.  No one brings their A-game to Danger Zone and both Downey and Silver often look like they’re struggling to deliver their lines with a straight face.  Downey, especially, gives a self-amused performance, delivering his lines in a thick and indecipherable Southern accent.

(It is easy to forget that there was a time when Robert Downey, Jr’s career was regularly cited as being the ultimate Hollywood cautionary tale.  Everyone knew he was talented but, in the 90s, his well-publicized struggle with drug addiction and the time that he spent in jail made him practically uninsurable and unhirable.  He ended up appearing in a lot of films like this one before he eventually got clean and reinvented himself as the face of the MCU.  In the 90s, most people would probably have been shocked to hear that Downey would eventually win an Oscar and receive a standing ovation as he accepted it.)

Danger Zone does have some good action scenes.  The movie ends with an attack on a train that is actually pretty exciting.  Unfortunately, the rest of the film suffers from bad acting and an incoherent plot that makes Danger Zone almost impossible to follow.  You can fly into the Danger Zone but you won’t want to stay.

Retro Television Review: Fantasy Island 5.2 “The Devil and Mr. Roarke/Ziegfeld Girls/Kid Corey Rides Again”

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 Tuesdays, I will be reviewing the original Fantasy Island, which ran on ABC from 1977 to 1984.  Almost the entire show is currently streaming on Daily Motion, YouTube, Plex, and a host of other sites.

This week is a busy one as Mr. Roarke deals with several guests, a new assistant …. AND THE DEVIL!

Episode 5.2 “The Devil and Mr. Roarke/Ziegfeld Girls/Kid Corey Rides Again”

(Dir by Don Chaffey, originally aired on October 17th, 1981)

The plane lands at the Island, carrying four people in search of a fantasy.  Waiting to greet them are Mr. Roarke, Tattoo, and Julie.  After being told that she wasn’t ready to greet the guests last week, Julie has finally been promoted.  And if you thought that Mr. Roarke and Tattoo occasionally had an awkward chemistry, it’s nothing compared to how awkward things feel with a third person cheerfully taking part in their conversations.  Wendy Schaal is likable enough as Julie but it’s hard to understand why, in-universe, the character is there.

As for our guests, Joan (Barbi Benton in old-age makeup) and Rubi (Audrey Landers, in even more old-age makeup) are former Ziegfeld girls who want to relive their youth.  Joan’s niece, Billie (Betty Kennedy), is appearing in a Ziegfeld-style revue that is being directed by Carl Wagner (Dack Rambo).  Mr.  Roarke agree to make Rubi and Joan young again, with the understanding that it will only be for the weekend and that they can’t tell anyone about their fantasy while they’re experiencing it.  The women agree and are overjoyed when they are transformed into their younger selves.  (I’m going to guess that Benton and Landers were probably even happier to ditch the old age makeup.)  Rubi promptly decides to steal Carl away from Billie.  Joan is shocked by Rubi’s behavior and she has to decide whether to allow her friend to live her fantasy or to tell the truth about what she and Rubi are doing on the island.

Also going into the past is a meek shoe salesman named Ned Plummer (Arte Johnson).  Ned wants to go back to the old west so that he can meet his hero, outlaw Kid Corey.  Corey is famous for disappearing after pulling off a million dollar robbery.  Ned even has an old picture of Corey in which Corey possesses a definite resemblance to Ned himself.  Mr. Roarke warns Ned that, when he goes to the past, the bullets will be real and he won’t be able to return to the present until his fantasy is over.  Given a magic horse, Ned rides into the past and promptly meets Kid Corey (Jack Elam).

It turns out that Kid Corey doesn’t look like Ned.  It also turns out that Kid Corey is not the Robin Hood-type figure that he was made out to be in the history books.  Kid Corey isn’t even a Kid!  He’s an irascible old man who doesn’t lift a finger when Ned is arrested by Sheriff Matt (Cameron Mitchell, naturally enough), taken to jail, and sentenced to hang.  Oh no!  It sound like it’s time for Mr. Roarke to save Ned, right?  Well, Mr. Roarke is busy with another situation so it’s Tattoo who shows up in Ned’s fantasy and, oddly, Tattoo doesn’t seem to be that worried about Ned getting executed.  Maybe Tattoo is planning on blaming it all on Julie.  (That said, it is nice to see Tattoo get to do something more than just as Mr. Roarke questions.  In this episode, Herve Villechaize seems to be enjoying the chance to show off his snarky side.)

What is occupying Mr. Roarke’s attention?  Well, Satan (Roddy McDowall) has returned to the Island.  He claims that he’s just looking for a relaxing weekend but it soon becomes obvious that, once again, he wants Roarke’s soul.  Mr. Roarke warns Julie to be careful what she says around the Devil.  So, of course, Julie promptly offers to give away her soul.

Now, in Julie’s defense, she was trying to save a guest who was drowning in quicksand and what she said is that she would do anything to save the guest’s life.  Satan hears and saves the guest in return for Julie giving him her soul at midnight.  Still, I have to wonder why Julie hadn’t been previously trained on how to pull someone out of quicksand.  I mean, if she’s ready to meet the guests then I would think that Roarke would have given her quicksand training.  That really seems like the first thing that someone should learn when they start working on Fantasy Island.

(For that matter, why is there so much quicksand on a resort!?)

Satan — surprise! — is willing to call off his deal with Julie in return for Roarke giving up his soul at midnight.  Roarke agrees but then he tricks Satan by singing a contract transferring possession of his soul to Julie.  Since Roarke’s soul is now Julie’s, Roarke can’t get give it away.  Because the overly cocky Satan spends too much time gloating and then gets upset over being conned, he loses track of time and the midnight hour passes without Satan taking anyone’s souls.

(I’m not sure if any of this would hold up in court but, to be honest, I don’t really know much about contract law.)

With three stories and a new sidekick to introduce, this was a very busy episode.  The Ziegfeld and the Old West fantasies were nicely done.  The Ziegfeld costumes were to die for and Jack Elam was memorably uncouth in the role of Kid Corey.  That said, as you can probably guess, the main attraction here is Roddy McDowall hamming it up as the Devil.  He and Montalban both seem to be having a lot of fun in this episode and their confrontation is entertaining to watch.  I wish Julie hadn’t been portrayed as being such a naive fool but still, this was an enjoyable weekend on the Island.

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special Dinosaur Day Edition

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

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!

Since, as my sister has already pointed out, today is Dinosaur Day, it only makes it sense to continue to pay tribute to everyone’s favorite prehistoric marvels.  It’s time for….

4 Shots From 4 Dinosaur Films

The Ghost of Slumber Mountain (1918, dir by Willis O’Brien, DP: Willis O’Brien)

One Million Years B.C. (1966, dir by Don Chaffey, DP: Wilkie Cooper)

Planet of the Dinosaurs (1978, dir by James Shea, DP: Henning Schellerup)

Carnosaur (1993, dir by Adam Simon, DP: Keith Holland)

Scenes That I Love: Mr. T Predicts “Pain” in Rocky III

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

I saw that today was Mr. T’s birthday and, for a while now, I’ve been reviewing T and T, a Canadian detective show that he starred in for three seasons.  I figured I could have shared a scene that I love from T and T but there really aren’t any scenes from T and T that are worth loving.  Besides, we all know what we immediately think of when it comes to Mr. T.

For today’s scene that I love, here’s Mr. T as Clubber Lang in Rocky III:

Music Video of the Day: Twilight Hotel by Quiet Riot (1986, directed by Dominic Orlando)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Twilight Hotel was the second single to be released off of QRIII, the fifth studio album from Quiet Riot.  Unfortunately, neither the single nor the video was as popular as the other single released off of QRIII, The Wild and the Young.

Director Dominic Orlando also directed videos for Kansas, The Beach Boys, Celine Dion, Dolly Parton, The Fat Boys, and several other artist that you would not necessarily expect to see at a Quiet Riot concert.

Enjoy!