Jeff and I spent most of this week up at beautiful Lake Texoma. In other news, the average temperature at Lake Texoma was 9 degrees. I’ve had a cold for the past few days but I’m feeling better now, just in time to get ready for the Oscars next week!
Today would have been the 85th birthday of actor and director Peter Fonda. Today’s scene that I love comes from Fonda’s best-known film, 1969’s Easy Rider. In this scene, Fonda is the epitome of cool as he and Dennis Hopper prepare to ride their bikes across America.
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!
Today, we celebrate the 121st anniversary of the birth of the great British film director, Terence Fisher. Though Fisher worked in all genres, he is best remembered for the horror films that he directed for Hammer Studios. Along with proving that there was still an audience for horror, he also helped to make stars out of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee.
It’s time for….
4 Shots From 4 Terence Fisher Films
The Curse of Frankenstein (1957, dir by Terence Fisher, DP: Jack Asher)
The Horror of Dracula (1958, dir by Terence Fisher, DP: Jack Asher)
The Curse of the Werewolf (1961, dir by Terence Fisher, DP: Arthur Grant)
Frankenstein and the Monster From Hell (1973, dir by Terence Fisher, DP: Brian Probyn)
Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Sundays, I will be reviewing Homicide: Life On The Street, which aired from 1993 to 1999, on NBC! It can be viewed on Peacock.
This week, we discover why Steve Crosetti has not come back to work.
Episode 3.4 “Crosetti”
(Dir by Whitney Ransick, originally aired on December 2nd, 1994)
Detective Steve Crosetti has yet to return from a week-long vacation in Atlantic City. When Giardello asks Lewis where Crosetti is, Lewis lies and says that he has the flu. In truth, Lewis hasn’t heard from Crosetti but he remains convinced that his partner will soon return and will once again be annoying him with all of his theories about Abraham Lincoln.
Meanwhile, Bolander and Munch are called to the harbor. A body has been fished out of the water. The body has been in the water for a while and, from what we see, its bloated and the skin has turned the purplish color of decay. Bolander and Munch have no idea who the man is but they see that he’s wearing a lapel pin that identifies him as a member of the Fraternal Order of Policeman. They check the body for ID….
Lewis is called in Giardello’s office. Giardello tells Lewis that Steve Crosetti is dead. His body was found in the harbor. Bolander is investigating but all signs seem to indicate that Crosetti’s death was a suicide. Lewis refuses to believe it. He is convinced that Crosetti was murdered, perhaps by someone he investigated. Lewis takes out his anger on Bolander and Munch, feeling that they’re attempting to besmirch Crosett’s reputation by even considering the possibility of suicide.
It’s more than just Lewis’s feelings at stake. If Bolander determines that Crosetti committed suicide, it will make him the fourth Baltimore cop to have committed suicide that year. The brass says that Crosetti won’t get an honor guard if it’s determined that he committed suicide. Giardello subtly suggests that Bolander should rule the death of homicide. Bolander suggests that committing suicide was Crosetti’s final statement. Who are they to ignore a man’s final statement?
In the end, the toxicology results reveal that Crosetti was drunk when he fell in the harbor, leading to Lewis saying the death was an accident. Munch then reveals that Crosetti was also taking several anti-depressants at the time of his death and Lewis is finally forced to admit that Crosetti was not murdered. Crosetti does not get his honor guard, though Pembleton, after spending the whole episode acting as if he didn’t care, puts on his full dress uniform and salutes as Crosetti’s casket passes.
This was an incredibly powerful episode, all the more so because no explanation is given as to what specifically led to Crosetti taking his own life. The genesis behind the episode was not a happy one. One of NBC’s conditions for renewing Homicide for a third season was that Jon Polito, who was not considered photogenic enough for television, be written out. Showrunner Tom Fontana told Polito it would only be a temporary thing and that Crosetti would return once the show had been renewed for a fourth season. Polito didn’t believe Fontana and went to the press, complaining about how the show was being run. As a result, Crosetti ended his life. (Polito and Fontana later ended their feud, allowing Polito to return as a ghost at the end of Homicide: The Movie.) The show uses Crosetti’s suicide as a way to explore the psychological impact of being a cop as well as the impossibility of truly knowing what’s going on inside anyone’s head. Only after Crosetti’s suicide has been confirmed can Lewis look back and see certain signs that Crosetti was unhappy.
Wonderfully acted and wonderfully written, this episode is a dark one but, as so often happens with life’s darker moments, there are moments of humor. Pembleton brags about his parallel parking skills, just to discover that he can’t actually pull out afterwards. An attempt to buy cookies for Crosetti’s reception leads to a fierce argument between Bayliss and Pembleton, regarding both the price of cookies and whether or not the baker was actually Italian. We meet Munch’s younger brother, a rather bitter mortician. When Lewis cleans out Crosetti’s desk, the first thing he pulls out is a slinky. These are small moments but they affirm the humanity of the show’s characters and reminds us that the show and this episode in general is as much about living as it is about dying.
In Mexico, two American cowboys, Johnny Darrel (Johnny Mack Brown) and Dick Martin (Julian Madison) join a poker game to try to win some money and help out their buddy, Oscar (Sid Saylor). When they discover that cantina owner Manuel Mendez (Ted Adams) has rigged the game, a fight breaks out. The lights turn off. In the darkness, several guns are fired. When the lights come back up, Dick is dead. Mendez convinces Johnny that he accidentally shot his friend in the fight. Guilt-stricken, Johnny tosses aside his guns and returns to Texas.
Johnny has sworn that he will never shoot another gun but when he’s hired to work at a ranch owned by Joan Williams (Claire Rochelle), he finds himself in the middle of a range war between Joan and Brace Stevens (Dick Curtis), with Mendez also making an unwelcome return to Johnny’s life. Even after Johnny discovers the truth about what happened that night at the cantina, he doesn’t pick up a gun. Instead, Johnny fights the bad guys with lassos and plates.
Guns In The Dark is only 54 minutes long and it features actors who will be familiar to any fan of the old B-westerns. Sidekcick Sid Saylor’s stuttering schtick gets old quickly but Johnny Mack Brown is as likable as always in Guns In The Dark and he comes across as being an authentic cowboy even when he’s not carrying a gun Given that this film features even more horse chases than the typical Johnny Mack Brown b-western, it’s good that Brown is so convincing. What isn’t convincing is how stupid Johnny Darrel is required to be in order for him to fall for Mendez’s lie in the first place. I appreciated the change of pace from Brown just using a gun to stop the bad guys but I wish the reason behind it had been more convincing. This isn’t one of Johnny Mack Brown’s more memorable westerns though, as always, it’s easy to see why he was one of the early stars of the genre.
I’ve been having the best time reviewing Rutger Hauer films every Sunday. Today, I revisit THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND from 1983. Hauer made this film the year after BLADE RUNNER, so he was in the prime of his career. It also teams him up with an all-star supporting cast and master director Sam Peckinpah.
THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND opens with CIA Director Maxwell Danforth (Burt Lancaster) watching a recording of agent Laurence Fassett (John Hurt) making love to his wife. When Fassett hits the shower, two KGB assassins come in and kill her. Consumed by grief, Fassett hunts down the assassins and uncovers a Soviet spy network known as Omega. Fassett has identified three American men as top Omega agents… television producer Bernard Osterman (Craig T. Nelson with an awful, glued-on mustache), plastic surgeon Richard Tremayne (Dennis Hopper) and stock trader Joseph Cardone (Chris Sarandon). Rather than arrest the men and risk alarming the KGB, Fassett proposes to director Danforth that they try to turn one of the three men to the side of the West in hopes that this person will provide the information needed to bring down the Omega network.
Enter controversial television journalist John Tanner (Rutger Hauer). Fassett knows that Tanner has been close friends with Osterman, Tremayne, and Cardone since all four attended Berkeley together, and he believes that Tanner can successfully turn one of them. Although initially highly skeptical, the super patriotic Tanner begins to change his mind when Fassett shows him videotaped evidence of his old friends talking with a Russian agent in various capacities. Tanner reluctantly agrees to try turn one of his friends at their annual “Osterman Weekend” reunion which is coming up that week at Tanner’s house. He does have one condition… that Danforth, the CIA director will appear as a guest on his show. Danforth agrees to this condition. So that weekend, Tanner and his wife Ali (Meg Foster) welcome their old friends and their wives into their home, while Fassett has video camera equipment installed and hangs out in a van spying on the festivities. There’s no doubt it will turn out to be an awkward weekend, and you can’t help but wonder if Fassett may have more sinister motives than he’s letting on.
I’ll go ahead and say that I had a great time watching THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND for the first time in thirty-plus years. I’ve often read a criticism that the plot of this film is “incomprehensible.” Based on a book by Robert Ludlum, the story is purposely designed to keep you guessing up until its big reveal, but I didn’t have any trouble following it all. I’d say the biggest issue is that it doesn’t really stand up under close scrutiny. Some of the actions of the various characters don’t always make a lot of sense in light of the movie’s big twist near the end, but that didn’t take away from my personal enjoyment of the film. I just went along with the plot wherever it took me, and that was easy for me to do based on the cast that we have assembled. Any movie that includes Rutger Hauer, Burt Lancaster, John Hurt, Craig T. Nelson, Dennis Hopper, Chris Sarandon, Meg Foster, Helen Shaver, and Candy Yates will get a watch from me. Heck, Tim Thomerson even shows up as a motorcycle cop at one point. It’s a who’s who of excellent actors who always make their films watchable. In my opinion, it’s Hauer, Hurt, Foster and Nelson who do the most with their characters and take home the acting honors for their work here. Burt Lancaster is one of the all-time greats, and he does a good job, but it’s a one note character so there isn’t much he can do. Hopper and Sarandon are also fine, but their characters don’t really stand out. Their screen wives, Shaver and Yates, seem to be here mostly for eye candy because their tops are off for an abnormally large amount of their screen time! Speaking of eyes, the Hauer / Foster team up has to be on the list of the most striking combo pair of eyes in the history of cinema. Foster has the most noticeable eyes of any actress I’ve ever seen.
This is the great Sam Peckinpah’s final film, and I don’t agree with the people who complain that his career ended with a whimper. THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND is not in the same league as THE WILD BUNCH, RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY, THE STRAW DOGS, or THE GETAWAY, but not many films are, including most of his own. And this movie is certainly visionary in one area, and that is found in its main theme about the damage that can be done with the manipulation of the media, including physical media, like videotape and audiotape. The primary driver of the film from the very beginning to the very end is the danger of false information that looks and sounds true. I can promise you that as I type this, and as you read it, there are people all over this world trying to make lies sound or appear true so they can share them on the news and on social media. I invite you to question everything you read, watch or hear on any outlet where you receive your news. Peckinpah’s final film beats this into our heads, just 40 years earlier.
Sam Peckinpah was known for his stylish and violent action sequences. THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND is more of a paranoid thriller, but it does feature some good action. There’s a chase sequence early in the film where Hauer’s wife and son are kidnapped, and he’s forced to commandeer the truck of honeymooners John Bryson (a Peckinpah regular) and Anne Haney (Greta from LIAR LIAR) to take off in hot pursuit. The scene features Peckinpah’s signature stunts, slow motion, and a myriad of cool tracking shots. There’s another fun scene where Hauer is using a baseball bat to defend himself against his pal Craig T. Nelson, who’s been shown to be a martial arts expert. It’s an exciting scene even if Hauer does get his ass kicked, in slow motion no less. And I always appreciate a movie with some good crossbow action, especially when it’s being wielded by a lady. The poster of the film prominently features a lady with a crossbow and we get to see Meg Foster step into that role in the actual film. She gets one especially gruesome, blood gurgling kill.
Overall, I think THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND is a good film. It is not nearly as bad as the critics of the time labeled it, and it’s not as good as Peckinpah’s best work, but you can certainly do a lot worse. It has a great cast, a timely message, a lot more sex and nudity than I remembered, and some cool action sequences. It’s definitely worth a watch!
Yeah, I’m running late with this. That seems to be the theme of my life this weekend but no matter! Here it is, my week in television.
American Murder: Gabby Petito (Netflix)
Netflix’s Gabby Petito documentary didn’t necessarily tell me anything that I didn’t already know about that tragic and awful case. Indeed, I kind of found myself getting angry at the documentary as I watched the endless footage of Gabby because it reminded me that Gabby Petito — and every other crime victim — deserved more than to be the latest subject of America’s fascinating with the morbid and the sordid. (Of course, it’s hypocritical of me to judge as I was the one watching the documentary.) But, in the end, I did feel that the documentary made an important point. There were so many red flags about Brian Laundrie but no one wanted to admit it, not the cops and not Gabby’s friends. Gabby was failed by so many people.
Up until I saw this documentary, I was not convinced that Brian’s family really knew the full extent of his crimes. Now, I’m convinced that they not only knew but tried to help him cover them up. It’s infuriating.
Check it Out! (Tubi)
I reviewed Check It Out! here. I’ll soon be finished with this show and I have to admit that I’m kind of proud of being the only person to have actually sat down and reviewed every single episode.
Case and I have now started the third and final season of this creepy German show. It’s all about time travel, black holes, and people having nonstop sex without any emotional connection. The architecture is brutalist, the cinematography is dark, and everyone seems to be fairly depressed. It’s very German and very intriguing.
Chef Ramsay was back in New Orleans, helping out another surprisingly ugly restaurant. Seriously, how can a restaurant succeed when it looks like a trailer? Again, a former football player was brought in to provide emotional encouragement. I will undoubtedly find myself in New Orleans in the future but I’ll probably never eat there.
I finished up Scamanda this week, watching the final two episodes. For all the build-up, the finale was a bit disappointing. Amanda was arrested and convicted and then, for 30 minutes, we listened to a bunch of podcast hosts talk about how they came across the story and went viral with it. I love true crime documentaries but true crime podcast hosts are always so annoying and self-important.
Happy 100th to Edward Gorey, who left his estate to charities benefitting dogs and cats and left the rest of us a lifetime of unforgettable illustrations.
Through the Shattered Lens 