Zombi 2 (1979, dir. Lucio Fulci, DP: Sergio Salvati)
For today’s song of the day, we celebrate the birthday of Lucio Fulci with Fabio Frizzi’s main theme from 1979’s Zombi 2. If you’ve ever seen the film, it’s impossible to hear this piece of music without imagining hundreds of zombies walking across the Brooklyn Bridge.
Today’s scene that I love comes from Lucio Fulci’s 1981 masterpiece, The Beyond.
Liza (Catriona MacColl) meets the mysterious Emily (Cinzia Monreale) on one of Louisiana’s famous bridges to nowhere. This scene is Fulci at his most dream-like.
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.
98 years ago today, Lucio Fulci — the maestro of Italian genre filmmaking — was born in Rome. Fulci would go on to direct some of the most visually stunning (and, occasionally, most narratively incoherent) films ever made. Fulci worked in all genres but he’ll probably always be best remembered for launching the Italian zombie boom with Zombi 2. His subsequent Beyond trilogy continues to fascinate and delight lovers of both horror and grindhouse filmmaking.
Lucio Fulci, needless to say, is a pretty popular figure here at the TSL. In honor of the date of his birth, it’s time for….
6 Shots From 6 Lucio Fulci Films
A Lizard In A Woman’s Skin (1971, dir by Lucio Fulci, DP: Luigi Kuveiller)
Don’t Torture A Duckling (1972, dir by Lucio Fulci, DP: Sergio D’Offizi)
Zombi 2 (1979, dir by Lucio Fulci, DP: Sergio Salvati)
The Beyond (1981, dir by Lucio Fulci, DP: Sergio Salvati)
The House By The Cemetery (1981, dir by Lucio Fulci, DP: Sergio Salvati)
Murder Rock (1984, dir by Lucio Fulci, DP: Giuseppe Pinori)
Artist Unknown
This is from 1940. She’s got a nice name and a pretty red dress! Life’s good.
At first, I didn’t think I was going to like this video because, at first, the song sounded like every other song that’s been released nowadays. Sometimes, I feel like every up-and-coming female singer works with same committee of songwriters and every song ends up sounding the same as a result. Luckily, around the two-minute mark, the song finally got interesting and it won me over.
The video was filmed in the country and it’s pretty to look at. These are the type of locations that I love to visit with my camera to see if maybe I can capture some of that rural beauty before it goes away. Going for a nice walk is something that I suggest to anyone who finds themselves away from the city. Sometimes, you really do find some strikingly beautiful locations if you’re willing to look for them. Here’s one of my favorite pictures, which I took at a country cemetery in Arkansas. I was lucky enough to turn around just in time to see a deer making a visit.
by Erin Nicole
Enjoy!
Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Mondays, I will be reviewing CHiPs, which ran on NBC from 1977 to 1983. The entire show is currently streaming on Prime!
This week, someone is performing emergency surgery on the street!
Episode 3.23 “Nightengale”
(Dir by Don Weis, originally aired on March 23rd, 1980)
Something strange is happening in Los Angeles. Every time there’s a serious accident, a middle-aged woman (Louise Latham) appears and provides medical help to the injured. At the start of the episode, she even performs an emergency tracheotomy on the side of the freeway. Whenever the highway patrol officer on the scene asks her for her name, she avoids the question. And, whenever an ambulance shows up, she always manages to slip away. As Jon and Ponch discover, the woman is named Lucy Kenton and, even though she’s a medical expert, she’s not a doctor. With the help of the always-understanding Sgt. Getraer, Jon and Ponch help her to get her medical license so that she can legally perform surgery on the street. Good for them!
This was a bit of an odd episode. It seemed strange that the woman somehow always seemed to be around whenever there was an accident. A car would crash and suddenly, Lucy would come running up, almost as if she had been patiently waiting. The show acted as if it was just a coincidence but what are the chances that the same woman would be present at the sites of multiple accidents over the course of just a few days? And what are the chances that Ponch would just happen to be the responding officer at two of those accidents?
To be honest, that’s one of the things that always struck me as being strange about CHiPs. Somehow, the same people keep running into Ponch and Jon over and over again. I mean, Los Angeles is a big city and it’s home to a lot of people. But if you run into Ponch and Jon once, it seems you’re destined to keep seeing them for at least a week. Once they get that first speeding ticket or stern warning, people literally can’t step outside of their house without Ponch and Jon just happening to be somewhere nearby. That’s the sort of thing that would make me paranoid.
The B-plot of this episode featured a teenage couple whose van kept breaking down whenever they tried to run away from home. There wasn’t much to this story but it did feature “special guest star” Dana Plato as the younger sister of the female half of the couple. Plato delivered all her lines as if she was auditioning for a school play. Oddly enough, Dana Plato appeared at the start of this season as herself. She was one of the many celebrities to show up for the roller disco episode.
There really wasn’t much to this episode. It wasn’t terrible but it did feel somewhat insubstantial. We’re coming up on the end of the season and, from the last few episodes, I get the feeling the show’s writers just wanted to wrap things up and start their vacations. I don’t blame them!
Next week, the third season concludes!
Red flags, girls! You need to know how and when to spot them!
Photographer Ariel (Sofia Masson) is the victim of a violent home invasion and her sex buddy Derek (Stephen Huszar) just happens to show up a minute later? Red flag!
The only photograph from Ariel’s exhibit that sells is an erotic selife called “No Daddy Issues” and then Derek suddenly wants to be called “daddy” while in the bedroom? Guess what? That’s a red flag!
Derek invites Ariel to his estate for the summer without telling her that he’s a widower and that he has a stepdaughter named Chloe (Jasmine Vaga)? You better believe that’s a red flag!
Chloe is the same age as Ariel and physically resembles Ariel and calls her stepfather “daddy?” Red flag, red flag, red flag!
I watched this movie because it was about a photographer and there really aren’t that many non-documentaries about photographers. I didn’t think that the selfie that Ariel sold was that impressive but some of her other photographs showed a hint of talent. But a photographer has to be aware of the world around her and she has to be able to see the things that other people miss. That’s what distinguishes a photographer from someone who just has a camera. How could any photographer miss all the red flags and all the strange atmosphere inside of Derek’s estate?
(I did like that Ariel had somehow developed a system to allow her to develop film and make prints within seconds. I’d love to know how she did that.)
Fatal Exposure requires a big suspension of disbelief. If you can do it, then the film itself is enjoyably trashy. Derek’s gothic mansion is a great location and the acting wasn’t bad at all. But you just have to be willing to accept that someone could miss all of those red flags. Derek was too obviously evil from the start but he did give Ariel a nice studio to work in. Maybe he wasn’t all bad.
In 1969, a group of television network executives get together and decide the world needs a sitcom that will mix music with family comedy. The result is The Partridge Family. While Shirley Jones (Eve Gordon) tries to keep her television family safe from the networks and, in some cases, their own dysfunctional families, David Cassidy (Rodney Scott) struggles with being a teen idol and Danny Bonaduce (Shawn Pyfrom) deals with living with an abusive father (William Russ). Danny finds a new father figure in the form of co-star Dave Madden (Michael Cheiffo) while Danny dates his tv sister, Susan Dey (Kathy Wagner).
This was one of the many made-for-TV movies that took advantage of boomer nostalgia at the turn of the 20th Century. Like most of those movies, Come On Get Happy is on the shallow side, providing the details that everyone had already heard without digging too far underneath the surface. The main thing that sets this film apart from so many other behind-the-scenes movies is that the cast, for the most part, actually resemble the real-life people that they’re playing. That’s especially true in the case of Shawn Pyfrom. If you’re a fan of the show or Cassidy’s music, this movie might appeal to you. I Think I Love You is still a banger.
It’s well-made but it’s still hard not to feel that it would have been more entertaining just to watch a 2-hour interview with the real-life Danny Bonaduce.
Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Mondays, I will be reviewing Miami Vice, which ran on NBC from 1984 to 1989. The entire show can be purchased on Prime!
This week, it’s the most infamous episode of Miami Vice ever!
Episode 4.7 “Missing Hours”
(Dir by Ate De Jong, originally aired on November 13th, 1987)
This is an episode that I had been waiting for years to see. From the moment I decided to review Miami Vice, I started to read about and hear about this seventh episode of the four season. This was the episode was supposedly so bad that many people consider it to be the point that Miami Vice “jumped the shark.” This is the episode were James Brown plays a white-suited singer named Lou de Long, who has going from performing songs to giving lectures about UFOs. (James Brown is essentially playing himself, right down to the presence of I Feel Good on the soundtrack.) This is the episode where Trudy disappears for 12 hours and then returns with no firm memories of where she was. This is the episode where even Crockett and Tubbs see a UFO. Even though his appearance here does not receive as much attention as much a James Brown’s, Chris Rock made his television debut as a nerdy technician named Carson who was into UFOs. Carson mentions getting his information for “computer bulleting boards” and everyone looks at him as if he’s speaking Esperanto.
This is the episode that is frequently cited as being the worst in Miami Vice history and really, who am I to disagree?
It pains me to say that. I really wanted to like this episode, just because it is so strange and and I’ve always been a bit of a contrarian at heart but …. no, this episode really doesn’t work. The sad truth of the matter is that, for all of his other talents, James Brown was a lousy actor and, with the exception of Michael Talbott and Philip Michael Thomas (who both appear to be having fun), the regular cast gives performance that suggest they all knew this episode was a bad idea. Miami Vice was at its best when it was a cynical and downbeat show about the futility of the war on drugs. There’s really no reason for Miami Vice to ever do a science fiction-themed episode. Somehow, this is the second such episode to air during the fourth season.
Of course, the episode’s most unforgivable sin is that it ends with Trudy waking up in bed. Not only is that ending a cop out but it’s also pretty rude to anyone who was actually trying to follow the plot or who was actually worried about whether or not Trudy had been brainwashed by the aliens. Perhaps if this had been a Halloween episode, all of this could have been excused but apparently, this episode aired in the middle of November.
Poor Trudy. Seriously, Olivia Brown didn’t really get many episode built around her character. It’s a shame that, when they gave her one, it was this one. Next week on Miami Vice, who knows? I’m on vacation. We’ll see what happens!
We’re watching THE MECHANIC (1972) on our #MondayMuggers live tweet tonight (see my prior post for the details). The film is a character study of an aging hitman, that just happens to feature some awesome action sequences. In case you’re on the fence about joining us, here’s a little taste of badassery to whet your appetite!
Through the Shattered Lens 