It’s one very busy night at a police station. Everyone who is brought in from off the streets has the right to remain silent but no one exercises it. Rookie cop Lea Thompson listens to everyone’s stories. LL Cool J is the documentarian who thought it would be smart to put on Klan robes and a hood and try to infiltrate a demonstration undercover. Patrick Dempsey is the drunk who killed a kid. Carl Reiner comes in and confesses to mercy killing his wife. Christopher Lloyd is homeless. Fisher Stevens is a trans streetwalker. Judge Reinhold, I don’t even know what he was supposed to be. Reinhold actually plays two characters in this film and he’s miscast in both roles. Amanda Plummer is a pizza delivery person who shoots someone in self-defense. No one asks for a lawyer. No one lies about what they did. Instead, they just talk and talk and talk and talk some more. Thompson listens while Robert Loggia, as the chief, growls about donuts.
The Right To Remain Silent is based on a play and that is its downfall. Instead of being a story about a rookie cop and her first night on the job, it’s just a collection of rambling stage monologues. Some of the actors, like Carl Reiner and Christopher Lloyd, do okay. Most of them still seem to be acting for the folks sitting in the back row. It ultimately doesn’t add up too much because the stories are too predictable to make much of an impression. Everyone in this film had the right to remain silent and I wish they had exercised it.
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. Unfortunately, the show has been removed from most streaming sites. Fortunately, I’ve got nearly every episode on my DVR.
This week, the Island is kind of dull. Tattoo is missed.
Episode 7.6 “Second Time Around/Three’s A Crowd”
(Dir by Philip Leacock, originally aired on November 19th, 1983)
Love is in the air again at Fantasy Island! Remember when this show used to feature mermaids and Greek Gods and ghosts and gothic mansions and stuff like that? Those were good times!
Kate Tucker (Cristina Ferrare) comes to the Island to confront her husband, Gary Tucker (Geoffrey Scott, the quarterback from 1st and Ten), about his infidelity. Roarke decides to bring Gary’s mistress, Helen (Michelle Phillips, who once played the mermaid on this very show), to the Island as well! It’s all a part of Roarke’s plan to show both women that Gary’s not worth all the trouble. Kate realizes she doesn’t want Gary and Helen doesn’t want him either. Kate leaves the Island a single woman. Good for her!
Meanwhile, widowed Joan (Dorothy McGuire) comes to the Island and falls for handsome Alan Reynolds (Craig Stevens). Joan’s son (Stuart Damon) is upset at the idea of Joan marrying someone else. Eventually, he comes to see the error of his ways and smiles as Joan and Alan find happiness.
This may have been an episode of Fantasy Island but it felt more like The Love Boat. Roarke helped everyone find true love and Lawrence …. Lawrence was just kind of there. At this point, I kind of feel that, if they were determined to get rid of Tattoo, they should have just had Roarke running the Island by himself. Lawrence’s presence doesn’t accomplish anything beyond making the viewer miss Tattoo.
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, we pay tribute to the year 2008! It’s time for….
4 Shots From 4 2008 Films
The Dark Knight (2008, dir by Christopher Nolan, DP: Wally Pfister)
Rachel Getting Married (2008, dir by Jonathan Demme, DP: Declan Quinn)
Bronson (2008, dir by Nicolas Winding Refn, DP: Larry Smith)
The Baader Meinhof Complex (2008, dir by Uli Edel, DP: Rainer Klausmann)
Today would have been the birthday of the great character actor L.Q. Jones.
Though he was probably best known for the films that he did with Sam Peckinpah and for directing the darkly humorous sci-fi film, A Boy And His Dog, Jones also appeared in Martin Scorsese’s 1995 film, Casino. Playing the role of county commissioner Pat Webb, Jones went toe-to-toe with Robert De Niro and more than held his own. Reportedly, Scorsese asked Jones to rewrite much of his dialogue, in order to give it a western authenticity,
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!
A recently released thief and a bank error are no match for the smiley charisma of Erik Estrada!
Episode 4.9 “Crash Course”
(Dir by Phil Bondelli, originally aired on January 4th, 1981)
Former getaway driver Sonny Matson (Don Stroud) has just been released from prison and he’s fallen back into his old habits. Everyday, he steals a different car and then robs a different business. His crimes are getting progressively more bold and Baker is determined to catch him.
Meanwhile, Ponch notices that he has an extra $4,000 in his bank account. Trying to do the right thing, Ponch reports the discrepancy. The bank accidentally drains all the money from his account. With his checks bouncing all over town, Ponch tries to get the bank fix their error. Good luck with that, Ponch! Luckily, when one of Sonny’s associates tries to rob the bank, it gives Ponch a chance to play the hero….
It’s The Ponch Show! Baker may be the one with a personal stake in capturing Sonny but Ponch is the one with big grin and the majority of this episode’s screentime. Whether he’s thwarting a bank robbery or recruiting all of his co-workers to help him find proof of the bank’s error, Ponch dominates. Poor Baker.
The best thing about this episode was Don Stroud’s performance as Sonny Matson. Stroud played a lot of low-level criminals over the course of his career. With his quick but unfriendly smile, his paranoid eyes, and his cocky attitude, Stroud is actually rather intimidating as Sonny. Whenever Stroud is onscreen, CHiPs actually feels a little bit dangerous! That this episode was memorable was largely due to Don Stroud and the hideous 70s decor of Ponch’s bank. Tacky and dangerous, that’s our CHiPs!
Back in 2019, I took my wife to Dallas, and while we were there, she asked if we could visit the South Fork Ranch. As many of you probably know, this is the setting for the wildly popular TV series DALLAS, that originally ran from 1978 through 1991 producing 356 episodes. She loved the series growing up and especially enjoyed watching it with her “granny” back in West Virginia. When we got back home from the trip, I hopped onto Amazon and purchased the entire original series for her, a set of TV movies, and even the series reboot that ran from 2012 through 2014, producing another 40 episodes. We watched everything over the next 6 months. The rebooted series starred, among others, Jesse Metcalfe as the grown up version of Christopher Ewing. My wife really liked him in the series, so he’s become one of our favorites that we like to watch on Hallmark and many other movies. The other day I watched a romantic comedy Jesse starred in called THE OTHER END OF THE LINE (2007). It’s currently streaming on Prime, so I decided to write up my thoughts on the film.
In THE OTHER END OF THE LINE, Shriya Saran plays Priya Sethi, a young woman working at a CitiBank call center in Mumbai, India. One day she gets a phone call from Granger Woodruff (Jesse Metcalfe), an American advertising executive, when he becomes a victim of identity theft. While working to resolve the situation, sparks being to fly during their conversations, and Priya, quite smitten with the handsome American, decides to travel to San Francisco to meet him in person. Through a variety of rom-com type circumstances, Priya ends up creating a false identity that she uses as she meets and spends time with Granger. As they continue to hit it off, her deception begins to create some serious complications. These issues come to a head when her very traditional dad, who expects her to marry a guy he’s chosen for her back in India, shows up in San Francisco. The blissfully ignorant Granger is suddenly made aware of Priya’s real life, and the two are faced with rather awkward and difficult decisions for how to move forward. Will Priya choose true love over cultural tradition? Will Granger take a chance and pursue her even though she’s been deceiving him? This is a romantic comedy, so you probably have a good idea how it might play out!
I enjoyed THE OTHER END OF THE LINE mainly because I’m an undemanding sucker for rom-coms, and I liked Jesse Metcalfe and Shriya Saran in the lead roles. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Saran on-screen before, but she’s extremely beautiful and charming, and I can definitely see why Metcalfe’s character would fall in love with her. I did! Metcalfe is good as the business obsessed American who has a bit more depth and heart than you might initially suspect. The leads carry what story there is just fine, and I found myself with a smile on my face as the end credits appeared. With that said, the story itself could be a bit of a problem to more demanding viewers. This has all been done many times before, and there isn’t anything unique to differentiate this film from countless others. Cliches abound as you can pretty much guess what’s going to happen from frame to frame. And the supporting characters aren’t much to write home about either. The “best friends” are exactly what you’d expect them to be, and not really in a good way. The supporting character that had the most potential for me was Saran’s dad. Unfortunately, he was set up to be a goofus for most of the film, so when he gets to flex his acting muscles at the end, the character’s more serious scenes don’t really hit home for me. On another positive note, I did enjoy seeing the contrast in the film’s settings in San Francisco and Mumbai, India. One of the funniest moments in the movie involves Metcalfe’s character’s attempt to get across Mumbai as quickly as possible while navigating different forms of the city’s public transportation.
Overall, I recommend THE OTHER END OF THE LINE to undemanding viewers who enjoy sweet, cookie cutter romantic comedies. I think there’s plenty to enjoy. However, if you watch the movie with one of those people who likes to make fun of everything, that person will have plenty of material as well!
The frontier town of Denton has become lawless, plagued by murders, robberies, and cattle rustling. The town’s sheriff (Russell Simpson) just cannot seem to bring peace to the streets. That’s because the sheriff is secretly responsible for all the crime. He’s working in cahoots with the town banker (Clarence Wilson) and he’s sets his sights on taking over a ranch owned by Frances Robinson. As was so often the case with B-westerns, it all comes down to stealing someone else’s land.
The federal government sends Marshal Johnny Mack Brown to bring some order to the town. Working undercover, Brown gets hired as Robinson’s ranch and he quickly chases off all of the bad ranchhands, He brings his friend, singing cowboy Bob Baker, onboard to work as the ranch foreman. With Fuzzy Knight providing comic relief, Brown sets out to thwart the next stagecoach robbery and to expose the evildoers of Denton.
This was the first western that Brown made with Universal Pictures. Bob Baker, who had previously been the star of the studio’s B-westerns, was demoted to second lead and, eventually, he quit making films for Universal all together. Unlike Baker, who was angry at being demoted, Fuzzy Knight was always happy to provide sidekick duty and would go on to co-star in all of Brown’s Universal westerns. From the start, Brown and Knight had the chemistry that made them a good B-movie team.
DesperateTrails is a typical B-western but, as always, Brown elevates things with his performance. From the minute that Brown rides into town, he screams authenticity. He’s pretty tough in this film, which includes a scene where he coolly takes care of a gang of outlaws with just one rifle. The best performance here comes from Russell Simpson, who gets angrier and angrier as the film goes on and all of his plans fall apart.
For fans of the B-western genre, DesperateTrails has a lot of entertainment to offer.
It’s one very busy night at a police station. Everyone who is brought in from off the streets has the right to remain silent but no one exercises it. Rookie cop Lea Thompson listens to everyone’s stories. LL Cool J is the documentarian who thought it would be smart to put on Klan robes and a hood and try to infiltrate a demonstration undercover. Patrick Dempsey is the drunk who killed a kid. Carl Reiner comes in and confesses to mercy killing his wife. Christopher Lloyd is homeless. Fisher Stevens is a trans streetwalker. Judge Reinhold, I don’t even know what he was supposed to be. Reinhold actually plays two characters in this film and he’s miscast in both roles. Amanda Plummer is a pizza delivery person who shoots someone in self-defense. No one asks for a lawyer. No one lies about what they did. Instead, they just talk and talk and talk and talk some more. Thompson listens while Robert Loggia, as the chief, growls about donuts.
Through the Shattered Lens 