Daily Archives: October 19, 2024

Late Night Retro Television Review: Check It Out! 2.16 “The Oddest Couple”

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 Saturdays, I will be reviewing the Canadian sitcom, Check it Out, which ran in syndication from 1985 to 1988.  The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi!

This week, Viker needs help!

Episode 2.16 “The Oddest Couple”

(Dir by Alan Erlich, originally aired on February 8th, 1987)

Viker has been kicked out by his wife, Mrs. Viker (Laura Henry).  Mrs. Viker apparently doesn’t have a first name.  Even Viker calls her “Mrs. Viker” whenever he talks to her.  Because he has been kicked out of his house, Viker has started sleeping on Howard’s couch.

Howard tells Viker that he can’t sleep on his couch, which just leaves Viker with one other option.  He moves in with Howard!  Normally, I’d wonder how Edna would feel about this but Edna is not in this episode.  In fact, there’s no mention of Howard being involved and his apartment suddenly looks like a tacky bachelor pad.  He even has a round bed in the living room.

As you can guess by the episode’s title, Howard and Viker make for an odd couple.  It’s not a case of one of them being a neat freak and one of them being a slob.  In fact, they’re both pretty neat.  It’s just that Viker can be a little weird.  He gargles extremely loudly.  He takes everything that he hears literally.  He spends a lot of time talking about his bunions.

Howard attempts to bring Viker and Mrs. Viker together but, when Mrs. Viker catches Viker teaching Marlene how to dance (more about that in a minute) in the store’s aisles, she declares that she can’t trust Viker.  But then Howard invites Mrs. Viker to his apartment, where he has prepared a romantic dinner for the Vikers.  That’s all it takes for the Vikers to fall back in love and apparently have sex in Howard’s living room bed while Howard waits in the hallway outside.

Why is Viker teaching Marlene how to dance?  Because a good-looking customer named Philip (Richard Hardacre) has asked Marlene to come to his country club!  Marlene gets all dressed up, does her hair nicely, and looks forward to her date.  But then Richard shows up looking like he’s the bassist in Sex Pistols cover band.  Richard says that it’s “punk night” at the country club and he wanted to impress his friends by bringing “an actual punk.”  Realizing that she was being used, Marlene tells Richard to get lost and then she, Murray, and Christian go out for pizza.  Awww!  Since this show usually features those three characters at odds, it’s kind of nice to see them all going out as friends in this episode.

(In real life, Kathleen Laskey, who plays Marlene, is married to Jeff Pustil, who played Christian.  Even though their characters are usually rivals, the chemistry between the two performers is obvious.)

This was an okay episode.  It made me chuckle a few times.  It’s obvious that, after the first half of the second season, the showrunners realized that Don Adams and Gordon Clapp made a great comic team.  Check It Out is a show that works best when it embraces absurdity and few characters are more absurd than Gordon Clapp’s Viker.

Lisa Marie’s Week In Television: 10/13/24 — 10/19/24

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

I watched a lot of  horror movies this week but I didn’t watch much television.  Starting on November 1st, I’m going to have a lot of shows to get caught up on.

I caught the latest installment of American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez.  Like a lot of Ryan Murphy’s recent miniseries, American Sports Story started out strong but the last few episodes have felt like padding.  It’s not that the episodes aren’t contributing to the story.  This week, we watched as Aaron committed what was apparently his first murder and as he started to show signs of CTE.  But it’s still hard not to feel as if each episode is basically 20 minutes worth of story stretched out to 50 minutes.  We’re halfway through this series and it has yet to really give us a reason why we should care about Aaron Hernandez.  He just comes across as being an idiot, regardless of his athletic skills, his terrible childhood, or his status as a self-hating gay man trying to survive in a homophobic culture.  He doesn’t seem to be worth all of this trouble.

I watched Hell’s Kitchen.  The chefs continue to compete at a high level and they continue to have disastrous dinner services.  Hell’s Kitchen is one of the few reality shows not to have massively changed its format over the past four years.  The producers know there’s no need to fix something that’s already working.  If only the producers of Big Brother and Survivor understood that!

I watched an old episode of Night Flight on Friday.  It featured Elvis snarling at the camera.

I watched the episode of Dr. Phil in which Phil and cult expert Rick Ross confronted a guy who said he wasn’t a cult leader despite the fact that he clearly was.  There’s a lot negative things that can be said about Dr. Phil’s show but the episodes where he exposed cults and their leaders were always entertaining and worth watching.

I watched and reviewed Homicide, Miami Vice, and The Love Boat!  I also watched and shared several episodes of One Step Beyond.

And that’s it!

Congratulations to the Yankees, the American League champions!

Posted on by Dazzling Erin

Start spreading the news, the New York Yankees are going to their first World Series since 2009!  They clinched the American League championship tonight, defeating the Guardians in Game 5 of the ALCS!

As for who the Yankees will be facing, the Dodgers have a chance to clinch the NLCS tomorrow and the Mets have a chacne to tie things up and keep the series going.  I’m hoping the Mets do just that because a World Series featuring the Yankees and the Mets just feels like a baseball dream come true!

Congratulations to the Yankees!  Good luck in the World Series!

Horror on TV: One Step Beyond 3.3 “The Death Waltz” (dir by John Newland)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Tonight’s episode of One Step Beyond is called The Death Waltz.  It’s about what happens when, in 1860, two calvary officers fall in love with the same young woman, Lillie (Elizabeth Montgomery).  Lillie has a great time playing the two men against each other but, when one of them is killed by Apaches, she rather heartlessly goes to a dance with the surviving suitor.

Unfortunately, for her, the dead man’s ghost decides to go to the dance as well….

The episode originally aired on October 4th, 1960.

Enjoy!

The Stone Tape (1972, directed by Peter Sasdy)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Peter Brock (Michael Bryant) is the leader of a team of researchers who work for an electronics company that is trying to come up with a new recording technique to keep up with their Japanese competitors.  Peter and his team move into an old Victorian mansion that is said to be haunted.  After Jill Greeley (Jane Asher) thinks that she’s seen a ghost, Peter theorizes that the stone walls of the mansion have actually recorded everything that has happened at the location over the years, like a security tape.  Some people, like Jill, are sensitive enough to pick up on the images of the past.  Other people, like Peter, are so determined to use what he calls The Stone Tape to his own advantage that it leads to tragedy.

The script for The Stone Tape was written by Nigel Kneale, who was also responsible for creating Quatermass.  As he did with his Quatermass stories, Kneale took an otherwise standard horror story and added an interesting scientific twist.  Peter is a classic villain who makes the mistake of thinking that he can control that which he does not understand.  Ghosts and spirits may just be recordings of past events but that doesn’t mean they can’t hurt you.  There’s a lot of screaming in The Stone Tape but there’s also some very interesting ideas, good acting, and intelligent directing from Peter Sasdy.  First broadcast by the BBC in 1972, The Stone Tape is a classic ghost story, creepy and clever with a killer ending.

Retro Television Review: Welcome Back, Kotter 4.4 “Once Upon A Ledge”

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 Saturdays, I will be reviewing Welcome Back Kotter, which ran on ABC  from 1975 to 1979.  The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi!

This week, Arnold Horshack gets to be a hero!

Episode 4.4 “Once Upon A Ledge”

(Dir by Norman Abbott, originally aired on October 2nd, 1978)

Seriously, what is going on at Buchanan High?

Gabe is vice principal but he’s away at a teacher’s conference.  Horshack and Washington are once again running the student store.  Epstien is once again working for the audio visual department.  Barbarino is nowhere to be seen.  This new Sweathog, Beau, is apparently the most popular guy in school, even though this is only his second episode.  Perhaps the strangest development is that Julie is now working as Mr. Woodman’s administrative assistant.  When did this happen?  I can’t even remember what Julie’s previous profession was but I don’t think it had anything to do with education in general or Buchanan High in specific.

Mary Johnson (Irene Arranga) is a shy student who feels that she doesn’t have any sort of identity in the school.  She’s one of three Mary Johnsons at Buchanan High.  She’s not Mary Johnson the Jock.  She’s not Mary Johnson the Cheerleader.  She’s Mary Johnson, the one with the perfect teeth.  When she tells Woodman that she wants to transfer into the remedial classes so that she can be a Sweathog, Woodman tells her that her C-average makes her ineligible.  She can’t even succeed at being a bad student.

Feeling lost, Mary climbs out on a ledge and threatens to jump.  Woodman, Julie, and each of the Sweathogs tries to talk her in but it’s only Horshack who is able to get through to her.  Horshack actually walks out onto the ledge himself so that he can talk to Mary about what’s it’s like to feel like an outsider.  Horshack gets Mary to come in, though he nearly falls off the ledge himself.

While binging and reviewing this show, it’s occasionally been easy to criticize Ron Pallilo’s performance as Arnold Horshack, though I think the real culprits were the show’s writers, who tended to make Horshack into such a strange character that I don’t think anyone could play him without being annoying.  But, to give credit where credit is due, Pallilo gives a really good performance in this episode.  Indeed, in some ways, this episode feels like a throw back to season one, when the Sweathogs still had a bit of grit and angst to them.

This was a simple but effective episode, even if the absences of both Gabe Kaplan and John Travolta were definitely felt.  (Nothing against Stephen Shortridge — who I’ve seen give good performances on The Love Boat and Fantasy island — but Beau was no substitute for Vinnie Barbarino.)  Still, it was nice to see Pallilo get a chance to once again play Horshack as a human being as opposed to a walking punchline.  And, for once, Woodman got to show his nice side, as he tried to help Mary feel better about her place in the school.  This was a surprisingly well-done episode.

Bonus Horror Song of the Day: Do It To Me by Riz Ortolani

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Since I earlier shared the theme song from The New York Ripper, it only seems appropriate to share another 70s-style Italian horror theme song.  From the infamous House On The Edge of the Park, here is Riz Ortolani’s Do It To Me.

Seriously, this is a song that gets stuck in my head every time that I hear it.

Horror Scenes That I Love: “You left the bodies!” from Poltergeist

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Admittedly, this is a pretty short scene.  It’s only 16 seconds, taking from the much longer climax of 1982’s Poltergeist.

That said, this is one of the greatest over-the-top moments in cinematic history.  I defy anyone to watch Poltergiest without shouting “YOU LEFT THE BODIES!” afterwards.  As an actor, Craig T. Nelson has never been one to worry about subtlety so, when you give him an excuse to yell about headstones and bodies….

(Also, give some praise to the great James Karen, heroically matching Nelson’s intensity throughout the scene.)

4 Shots From 4 Horror Films: Special Tobe Hooper Edition

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

4 (or more) Shots From 4 (or more) Films is just what it says it is, 4 (or more) shots from 4 (or more) of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 (or more) Shots From 4 (or more) Films lets the visuals do the talking.

Today, I am proud to pay homage to a director from my home state, a man who changed the face of horror and the movies but who was treated terribly by a jealous film industry.  I am talking, of course, about Texas’s own Tobe Hooper.  Hooper redefined horror with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.  Though his later films were never quite as critically or financially successful as that classic, many of them have since been rediscovered by audiences who now better appreciate Hooper’s quirky sensibility.  Hollywood may not have known how to handle Tobe Hooper but horror fans like me will always appreciate him.

It’s time for….

4 Shots From 4 Tobe Hooper Films

Live Tweet Alert: Join #ScarySocial for Wrong Turn!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly live tweets on twitter.  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 9 pm et, Deanna Dawn will be hosting #ScarySocial!  The movie?  2003’s Wrong Turn!

If you want to join us this Friday, just hop onto twitter, start the movie at 9 pm et, and use the #ScarySocial hashtag!  I’ll be there tweeting and I imagine some other members of the TSL Crew will be there as well.  It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.

Wrong Turn is available on Prime!

See you there!