I love the character actor Stuart Margolin. He’s well known for his work as Angel Martin on the James Garner TV series THE ROCKFORD FILES, but I’ll always appreciate him the most for his important performances with director Michael Winner and actor Charles Bronson in the movies THE STONE KILLER and DEATH WISH. Margolin passed away in 2022 but his legacy on film and TV live on forever!
For a bit of 70’s cinema trivia, if anyone ever asks you who gave Paul Kersey his Colt revolver in the original DEATH WISH, the answer is Aimes Jainchill, played by Mr. Margolin. Join me in celebrating his legacy by watching this scene from the vigilante classic!
The Destroyer series, launched in 1971 by Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir and later chiefly associated with Murphy, is the kind of long‑running action franchise that practically defines “guilty pleasure.” Spanning more than 150 paperback entries and various continuations, it rarely pretends to be anything other than what it is: fast, frequently outrageous pulp about a government assassin and his irascible Korean mentor saving the world by killing people who, in the moral logic of the series, really need killing.
At the center is Remo Williams, a former Newark cop framed for murder, executed on death row, and then quietly “resurrected” to become the enforcement arm for a secret U.S. organization called CURE. The first novel, Created, The Destroyer, uses this grim premise almost as a prologue; the series is far less interested in legal nuance than in setting up a clean break from Remo’s past so he can be remade as a weapon. His new life is one of deniability and isolation, and the books lean into that fantasy of the invisible man behind the headlines, quietly eliminating threats that conventional systems can’t touch. It’s not realistic, and it isn’t trying to be; the appeal lies in how cheerfully the series weaponizes that premise for brisk, punchy adventure.
The real hook, though, is Remo’s training in the Korean assassination art of Sinanju, and his relationship with its current master, Chiun. Chiun, drawn from a secretive village of assassins who have supposedly served emperors and leaders for millennia, turns the usual mentor trope into a running act of ethnic, generational, and cultural clash. He’s vain, mercenary, and spectacularly contemptuous of Americans, and a lot of the series’ humor comes from his withering commentary on U.S. culture, politics, and Remo’s stubbornly ordinary tastes. Remo calls him “Little Father,” and as the books go on, the bickering most often reads like a truly dysfunctional but oddly affectionate family argument played against a backdrop of exploding supervillain lairs. That dynamic is where the series unexpectedly finds a core of warmth amid all the cartoon violence.
On the action front, The Destroyer exists squarely in the men’s adventure boom of the 1970s, alongside series like Don Pendleton’s The Executioner, but evolves into something stranger and more openly satirical. Early on, Remo’s feats are at least vaguely grounded in martial arts exaggeration, but as the volumes pile up, Sinanju becomes almost superheroic: running up walls, shredding steel, and dispatching opponents with fingertips and casual nose‑ripping brutality. The series’ foes range from mobsters to mad scientists, corrupt officials, rogue militaries, and outright parodies of real‑world figures, and the books gleefully mix crime fiction with borderline science fiction and spy‑thriller gadgets. A lot of the fun is in watching Murphy escalate the stakes from book to book, then resolving everything with hands‑on mayhem because Sinanju doctrine disdains guns as spiritually unclean. When it clicks, it has the energy of a comic book written in pure pulp prose.
What keeps The Destroyer from feeling like just another relic of that boom is its tonal tightrope walk between earnest action and broad satire. CURE itself, the secret agency that “does not exist,” is a kind of bureaucratic joke: a tiny office, a frail director, and a mandate to do the dirtiest jobs in the name of national security. The series frequently aims its sharpest barbs at American government, media, and corporate greed, using Remo and Chiun as caustic outsiders who see through the patriotic rhetoric. Later installments lean even harder into political and cultural satire, lampooning televangelists, tech capitalism, and global politics in ways that are sometimes genuinely clever and sometimes just loud. Even when the targets feel dated or obvious, there’s a sense that Murphy is using the form of a disposable action paperback to smuggle in a surprisingly crabby worldview.
That said, this is also where the “guilty” part of the guilty pleasure label comes roaring in. By modern standards, The Destroyer is extremely non‑PC; race, gender, and nationality are all fodder for jokes that range from sharp‑edged caricature to material that many readers will reasonably find offensive. Chiun’s constant stereotyping of Americans and others is sometimes framed as a way of turning prejudice back on the majority culture, but the books often indulge in broad ethnic humor far beyond him. Women in many entries are treated primarily as scenery, sexual opportunities, or victims, though there are exceptions where they’re more capable players in the plot. If you’re reading with a contemporary lens, you’re likely to hit passages that stop you cold, and the series doesn’t apologize for any of it. Enjoyment here often requires compartmentalizing, acknowledging that the books reflect their era’s blind spots and biases while deciding whether the action and satire still outweigh that discomfort.
In terms of prose and pacing, the series is better crafted than its garish covers suggest but still rooted in the rhythms of fast‑turnaround paperbacks. The dialogue between Remo and Chiun has a crackling, insult‑laced snap that does a lot of heavy lifting in keeping you turning pages. Scenes of action are clear, efficient, and often imaginative in how Sinanju is used, even as the body count mounts to cartoonish levels. The humor, when it lands, blends deadpan absurdity with savage put‑downs, and the books occasionally deliver a line or a situational gag that feels sharper than their reputation would indicate. At the same time, the sheer volume of entries means unevenness is inevitable; some later volumes feel like they are coasting on formula, recycling set pieces and political targets with less bite. As with many long series, the high points are scattered, and part of the experience is learning which eras and authors click with you.
For readers who love action fiction, The Destroyer remains oddly addictive precisely because it refuses to be respectable. It revels in outlandish violence, outsize personalities, and unapologetic satire, while occasionally brushing up against genuine character moments in the Remo–Chiun relationship. The mythology of Sinanju, with its ancient lineage and mercenary code, gives the series a mythic backbone that most of its peers never bothered to build. At the same time, the dated politics, crude humor, and casual cruelty mean it’s not a series you recommend without caveats; it’s something you confess to loving, then immediately start explaining. If you can navigate those contradictions, The Destroyer offers exactly what its best covers promise: a relentless, often ridiculous, sometimes sharp pulp ride that you may not be proud of finishing, but will probably reach for again anyway.
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? 1988’s Waxwork!
If you want to join us this Saturday, just hop onto twitter, start the movie at 9 pm et, and use the #ScarySocial hashtag! It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.
The 1976 film, The Eagle Has Landed, takes place during World War II.
The year is 1943 and, with the war turning against Germany, Heinrich Himmler (Donald Pleasence, in a chilling turn) orders Colonel Max Radl (Robert Duvall) to come up with a plan to kidnap Winston Churchill. When Radl learns that Churchill is scheduled to visit a small, coastal British village, he recruits a cynical member of the IRA, Liam Devlin (Donald Sutherland), to travel to the village and make contact with a Nazi sleeper agent, Joanna Grey (Jean Marsh). While Devlin sets up the operation in Britain and falls in love with Molly Prior (Jenny Agutter), Radl recruits disillusioned Colonel Kurt Steiner (Michael Caine) to lead the mission to kidnap Churchill.
At first the village is welcoming to Steiner and his men, who are disguised as being Polish paratroopers. However, it doesn’t take long for the plan to fall apart. Soon, Steiner and his men are holding the villagers hostage in a church while battling a group of American soldiers led by the incompetent Colonel Clarence Pitts (Larry Hagman) and Captain Harry Clark (Treat Williams). Meanwhile, in Germany, Radl learns that Hitler did not actually authorize the mission to kidnap Churchill and that he has been set up as the scapegoat in case the mission fails.
The Eagle Has Landed can seem like a bit of an odd film. For a film that was released in the same year as Network, All The President’s Men, and Taxi Driver, The Eagle Has Landed feels rather old-fashioned and almost quaint in its storytelling. This was the final film to be directed by John Sturges, a director who started his career in the 1940s and whose best-known films included The Magnificent Seven and The Great Escape. Sturges’s direction is efficient but not at all flashy. (It’s a film that feel like its very much a product of the mid-60s as opposed to the mid-70s.) The story plays out at a deliberate pace, one that leaves no doubt that the film was based on a novel. In fact, it sometimes feels as if the film itself should have chapter headings. The film holds your interest but it’s hard not to feel that a film that should have been an epic action film has instead been turned into something far less ambitious.
Sturges works with an ensemble cast, with no one member of the cast really dominating over the other. (I guess if the film has a main character, it would be Donald Sutherland’s Liam Devlin but, for all the time that’s devoted to him, he actually doesn’t do that much once the action starts.) The cast is full of good actors, though a few of them are miscast. Neither Michael Caine nor Robert Duvall make much of attempt to sound German. As a member of the IRA, Donald Sutherland sounds as Canadian as ever. Fortunately, Caine, Duvall, and Sutherland are all strong-enough actors that they can make an impression even with somewhat distracting accents. Treat Williams is a bit bland as the heroic American but Larry Hagman generates a few chuckles as Williams’s amazingly dumb commanding officer. The important thing is that ensemble is strong enough to hold the viewer’s attention.
The Eagle Has Landed is an old-fashioned but still entertaining film. The actors are fun to watch, the action scenes are fairly exciting, and it ends with a clever twist, one that was apparently historically accurate. It’s a well-done historical melodrama, even if it’s never quite as epic as it aspires to be.
On the set of a popular soap opera, actor Mark Stanton (Sean Kanan) dies after he films a kiss with co-star Kris Buckner (Genie Francis). Kris is accused of intentionally poisoning Mark to get back at him for trying to force her off the show but Kris says she’s innocent. Fortunately, Kris is the goddaughter of Perry Mason (Raymond Burr).
This movie was the last time that Raymond Burr played Perry Mason and it actually aired a few weeks after his death. There are scenes that are hard to watch because it is clear that Burr was not doing well during filming. He rarely stands and when he does, he still leans against the table for support. He’s still great when he’s asking questions and making objections but physically, it’s obvious that he was struggling. He still lights whenever he’s talking to Della, though. The best scenes in the movie are just Raymond Burr and Barbara Hale being Perry and Della. Their affection for each other shines through in every scene. The mystery is routine but the guest cast is full of daytime drama royalty like Stuart Damon, Linda Dano, and Genie Francis.
As I said when I started reviewing these movies at the start of the month, my Aunt Kate loved watching these movies. I know she watched them when they first aired and later, when they started re-airing them on Hallmark or MeTV, she loved rewatching them even though she already knew who the murderer was going to be. I would watch with her sometimes. We agreed that Perry and Della were in love and that Paul Drake, Jr. was Della’s son, even if he didn’t know it.
Rewatching all of the movies this month, what struck me is that most of them are still a lot of fun. Sure, there’s a few clunkers. But the majority of the 27 Perry Mason films are still entertaining to watch. Raymond Burr as Perry Mason and Barbara Hale as Della Street? Nobody did it better.
Today’s song of the day could probably double for a scene that I love but that’s okay. I’ve always loved the Nothing Ever Happens On Mars song from Waiting to Guffman.
(Mars? “Where’s that!?”)
It’s such a marvelous scene. Yes, it captures the absurdity of regional theater but it also captures the underlying sweetness of it as well. We may laugh but it’s still hard not to be touched by how much the members of the audience love it.
And, in the contest of the show, it’s a nice reminder that we’re not that different. Martians get bored with their hometown as well!
When I heard that the actress Catherine O’Hara had passed away, I immediately thought of Waiting For Guffman.
I know that a lot of people immediately thought of Schitt’s Creek. And I imagine that a lot of people thought of her as the desperate mother in Home Alone. And definitely, there are a lot of people on twitter who are posting clips of her work on SCTV right now. But I’m a theater nerd and, when you’re a theater nerd, Waiting for Guffman pretty much feels likes watching your life on film.
The entire cast of Waiting for Guffman is brilliant. It’s definitely the most emotionally satisfying of all of Christopher Guest’s mockumentaries. But I’ll have a special place in my heart for Catherine O’Hara and Fred Willard as the community theater superstars. Today’s scene that I love features O’Hara and Willard giving the audition of a lifetime in Waiting For Guffman.
“The world isn’t run by weapons anymore, or energy, or money. It’s run by little ones and zeroes, little bits of data. It’s all just electrons.” — Cosmo
Sneakers is one of those early-’90s studio thrillers that feels oddly cozy for a movie about global surveillance and information control. It plays like a hangout movie that just happens to revolve around a world-breaking black box, and whether that balance works for you will pretty much decide how much you click with it.
Set in San Francisco, Sneakers follows Martin Bishop (Robert Redford), a one-time radical hacker now leading a boutique team that gets paid to break into banks and corporations to test their security. When a pair of supposed NSA agents lean on him about a skeleton in his past, they strong-arm him into stealing a mysterious “black box” from a mathematician, which turns out to be a codebreaker capable of cracking pretty much any system on Earth. From there, the crew gets pulled into a bigger conspiracy involving shady figures and high stakes, with Martin confronting echoes from his activist days.
The first thing that jumps out about Sneakers is the cast, which is frankly stacked even by modern standards. Redford brings an easy, weathered charm to Bishop; there’s a low-key joke baked into the movie that this legendary leading man is now playing a guy who looks like he spends more time worrying about his back pain than saving the world, and it works. He’s surrounded by a motley crew: Sidney Poitier’s ex-CIA operative Crease, Dan Aykroyd’s conspiracy-addled tech nut Mother, David Strathairn’s blind audio savant Whistler, and River Phoenix’s eager young hacker Carl. Mary McDonnell rounds things out as Liz, Martin’s ex, who gets roped back into his orbit and ends up doing some of the film’s most memorable social-engineering work.
What makes this lineup click—and really shine—is how effortlessly the ensemble works together, especially with Robert Redford and Sidney Poitier anchoring it as the team’s leaders. Redford’s Bishop is the steady, pragmatic brain, always one step ahead but grounded by his regrets, while Poitier’s Crease brings that sharp-edged authority from his CIA days, barking orders with a mix of gruffness and loyalty that keeps everyone in line. Their dynamic is electric: you get these moments where Bishop’s quiet scheming bounces off Crease’s no-nonsense intensity, like when they’re coordinating a break-in and trading barbs mid-scheme, and it sells the years of trust they’ve built. It elevates the whole group, giving the younger or quirkier members—Mother’s wild theories, Whistler’s uncanny ears, Carl’s fresh energy—a solid foundation to riff off, turning what could be chaos into a tight, believable unit. Phil Alden Robinson directs the film almost like an ensemble comedy interrupted by bursts of espionage, so the banter and the little grace notes between jobs end up being as memorable as the heists themselves. There’s a looseness to the way the team bickers, teases, and riffs on each other that sells the idea they’ve been doing this for years, long before the plot kicked in. You feel that especially in scenes where they’re all huddled around some piece of tech or puzzling out a clue; the script allows them to overlap, crack side jokes, and be fallible instead of treating them like slick super-spies who never misstep.
Tonally, the movie walks an interesting line. On one hand, this is very much a tech thriller about the power of information, with the ominous “Setec Astronomy” anagram (“too many secrets”) tying it all together. On the other, this is a film where an extended sequence revolves around tricking a socially awkward engineer on a date so they can steal his voice patterns and credentials, and the whole thing plays like a romantic caper more than anything. Robinson leans hard into suspense in key stretches—most notably toward the end, where tension builds through clever set pieces involving motion sensors, improvised skills, and closing threats—but even then the movie never loses its sense of mischief.
That playfulness can be both a strength and a limitation. The upside is obvious: Sneakers is fun. It’s easy to watch, easy to rewatch, and it rarely drowns you in jargon for the sake of sounding smart. Instead, it abstracts the tech into clear stakes—this box breaks codes, this system controls money and power—so you always understand the “why” behind every scheme even if you don’t follow every “how.” The downside is that, for a movie nominally about the terrifying implications of a universal decryption key, it doesn’t dig as deeply into the horror of that idea as it could. It gestures at themes of privacy, state overreach, and the weaponization of data, but it’s more interested in using those ideas as a playground than as something to rigorously interrogate.
Viewed from 2026, the tech is obviously dated—landlines, old terminals, magnetic cards—but that almost works in the film’s favor now. There’s a retro-futurist charm to seeing characters talk about “ones and zeroes” and the power of information as if they’re whispering forbidden knowledge, when today that conversation is basically the nightly news. At the time, the film was praised for being ahead of the curve on the idea that whoever controls data controls everything, and you can still feel that prescience. The irony is that what was once cutting-edge has softened into a kind of warm nostalgia, which might be why the movie has quietly settled into cult-favorite status rather than staying in the mainstream conversation.
On a craft level, the movie is sturdy across the board. John Lindley’s cinematography keeps things bright and clean rather than shadow-saturated, which reinforces that lighter tone; San Francisco looks lived-in and slightly mundane, not like a glossy cyber-noir playground. James Horner’s score is a big asset: a jazz-inflected, airy sound that gives scenes a sense of cool rather than danger, which again nudges things toward caper more than hard thriller. It’s the kind of soundtrack that sneaks into your head and quietly sets the mood without demanding too much attention, and a lot of fans single it out as one of his more underappreciated efforts.
If there’s a major weak spot, it’s probably in how the film handles its big ideas and antagonists. The central conflict draws on ideological clashes from the characters’ pasts, but it mostly serves as a charismatic foil rather than a fully fleshed-out debate. The story doesn’t push too hard on challenging cautious pragmatism versus radical change, or probe deeply into who benefits from the status quo. For a tale built on “too many secrets,” the moral landing feels predictable rather than revelatory.
The film also shows its age in how it uses certain characters, especially Liz and Carl. McDonnell gets moments to shine—her date with Werner Brandes is a highlight—but Liz is often pushed to the side once the plot machinery gets going, which is a shame given the sparks between her and Redford. River Phoenix’s Carl is similarly underused; he’s the young blood in a team of older pros, and you can see hints of a more emotionally grounded arc there, but the film keeps him mostly in comic-relief mode. It doesn’t derail the movie, but it does contribute to the sense that Sneakers is more interested in being a breezy ensemble hang than in fully developing everyone it introduces.
Still, it’s hard to deny the movie’s overall charm. The central heist beats are cleanly staged, the reversals are satisfying without being overcomplicated, and the script gives almost every member of the team at least one clutch contribution so it feels like a true group effort. The later stretches cleverly tie together the tech setup and character dynamics, ending on a light coda that underscores the film’s affection for its quirky crew over global intrigue.
As for how it holds up, Sneakers isn’t an untouchable classic, but it’s a very easy film to recommend if you have any affection for ’90s thrillers, ensemble casts, or tech-adjacent stories that don’t drown you in circuitry diagrams. Some of its politics feel glib, some of its gadgets are charmingly antique, and its big questions about Information Age ethics are more backdrop than deep dive. But the film’s mix of laid-back humor, light suspense, and grounded, slightly rumpled characters gives it a distinct flavor that a lot of modern, hyper-slick hacker movies lack.
If you go in wanting a serious, hard-edged exploration of cyber-warfare and state power, Sneakers will probably feel like it’s only skimming the surface. If you’re in the mood for a smart, lightly twisty caper that lets you spend two hours with a killer cast tossing around clever dialogue amid escalating capers, it’s still a very satisfying watch.
Through the Shattered Lens 