Music Video of the Day: Smoking Gun by Robert Cray (1986, dir by ????)

Posted on May 20, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This video was introduced to me by my friend Pat McCurry as a part of his weekly #WhatPatHeard watch party on Mastodon.

Enjoy!

Late Night Retro Television Review: CHiPs 3.21 “The Strippers”

Posted on May 19, 2025 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 Mondays, I will be reviewing CHiPs, which ran on NBC from 1977 to 1983. The entire show is currently streaming on Prime!

This week, the hills have eyes.

Episode 3.21 “The Strippers”

(Dir by Don Weis, originally aired on February 16th, 1980)

Calm down, boys, we’re not talking those types of strippers!

This episode of CHiPs finds Ponch and Jon searching through the California hill country for two rednecks who are stealing cars and stripping them for the parts. One of the strippers is a fat guy who likes to sing while he’s working. The other is a guy played by Evan C. Kim, who later played Clint Eastwood’s partner in The Dead Pool. Baker’s girlfriend’s car gets stolen so this one is …. wait for it …. PERSONAL! Of course, this being CHiPs, the episode is still mostly about Ponch even though Baker’s the one with a personal stake in the case.

It turns out that Ponch and Jon aren’t the only ones investigating crimes in the hills of California. The DEA is investigating a drug-running operation and they really don’t want to two motorcycle cops getting in the way. (Doesn’t the DEA understand that motorcycles are cool? At least they’re not bike cops like those schmucks on Pacific Blue.) The head drug smuggler is played by Morgan Woodward, who was a veteran of the western genre. The old cowboys are smuggling cocaine into Los Angeles. It’s like an extremely depressing country song. There’s no more cattle but there’s plenty of the devil’s dandruff to be sold.

If I seem to be rambling, it’s because there’s not really much to say about this episode. Airing, as it did, late in the season, it’s hard not to feel that show’s writers were probably tired and out-of-ideas when it came to coming up with the plot for this one. Ponch and Jon catch the car strippers who have information on the drug dealers. The car strippers turn informant and hope that they’ll get a deal as a result. Let’s hope so because prison is not a friendly environment to snitches.

This episode did feature one nicely-filmed accident scene, featuring multiple cars flying through the air (in glorious slo mo of doom!) and a bunch of broken glass. Bonnie and Bear cleaned up the accident site so that Ponch and Baker could get back to searching for the car thieves. That was nice of them. It’s all about team work!

Retro Television Review: Miami Vice 4.5 “Child’s Play”

Posted on May 19, 2025 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 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, Sonny is too quick to fire his gun.

Episode 4.5 “Child’s Play”

(Dir by Vern Gillum, originally aired on October 30th, 1987)

This is a dark, dark episode.

While breaking up what appears to be a case of domestic violence between Annette McAllister (Danitra Vance) and Walker Monroe (Ving Rhames), Sonny thinks that he spots someone holding a gun in the next room. Sonny fires through the wall, hitting a 13 year-old boy who Annette claims is her son, Jeffrey. While Jeffrey McCallister lies in a coma, a guilt-ridden Sonny starts to think about his ex-wife and their son, Billy. They live upstate and it’s been a while since Sonny visited. When Sonny does visit, he learns that his ex-wife’s fiancé wants to adopt Billy after the wedding.

Meanwhile, back in Miami, it turns out that there is no Jeffrey McAllister and that the boy who Sonny shot was actually a child soldier, recruited into a gang at an early age so that he couldn’t be sent to prison if arrested. It turns out that Walker and Annette are both involved in a gunrunning operation that is headed up by Holliday (Isaac Hayes). It all leads to one of those patented Miami Vice-style action sequences where Crockett, more or less, allows Walker to fall to his death. Sonny is definitely not in a good mood for the majority of this episode.

Child’s Play could have just as easily been titled The Don Johnson Emmy Submission Episode. This episode revolves entirely around Crockett and his feelings of guilt over shooting a child and also his fear of losing his son. Johnson does a pretty good job in this episode. Over the course of season 3 and the first few episodes of season 4, it really has sometimes seemed as if Crockett was losing his edge. This episode presents us with the return of self-destructive, end-of-his-rope Sonny and not even Johnson’s mullet can distract from the drama.

Thematically, this episode is pretty bleak. We never really learn much about the kid who was shot by Crockett, other than that he has a pretty sizable criminal record for a 13 year-old. By the end of the episode, he’s woken up from his coma but, assuming that he is capable of leaving the hospital, he’s still wanted on several murder charges. The kid basically has no future, even if he does make it to adulthood. Meanwhile, Sonny’s son is growing up without his father and, when Sonny does visit him, there’s really not much of a connection between the two of them.

In other words, everyone’s doomed. This was not a happy episode but, then again, Miami Vice was rarely a happy show.

Monday Live Tweet Alert: Join Us For Final Justice!

Posted on May 19, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in hosting a few weekly live tweets on twitter and occasionally Mastodon. I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of Mastodon’s #MondayActionMovie ! Every week, we get together. We watch a movie. We snark our way through it.

Tonight, for #MondayActionMovie, the film will be 1984’s Final Justice, starring Joe Don Baker! I picked it so you know it’ll be good.

It should make for a night of fun viewing and I invite all of you to join in. If you want to join the live tweets, just hop onto Mastodon, find the movie on YouTube, Tubi, or Prime, hit play at 8 pm et, and use the #MondayActionMovie hashtag! The live tweet community is a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.

See you soon for some Joe Don excitement!

Song of the Day: The Love Theme From The Sword and the Sorcerer by David Whitaker

Posted on May 19, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In honor of Albert Pyun’s birthday, today’s song of the day comes from the soundtrack of his greatest film, The Sword and the Sorcerer.

Scenes That I Love: Pete Townshend and The Who at Woodstock

Posted on May 19, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today is Pete Townshend’s 80th birthday and today’s scene that I love features Pete Townshend (as a member of The Who) performing at Woodstock in 1969.

Roger Daltrey later said that this was the worst gig that they ever played and The Who did end up going on stage early in the morning, with the sun rising as they performed See Me, Feel Me. The majority of The Who’s performance was not included in the initial release of the Woodstock documentary but the noticeably grainy footage would later be included in various rereleases.

Unfortunately, no cameras recorded the moment when Pete Townshend became the hero that 1969 needed by kicking a ranting Abbie Hoffman off of the stage. But, audio of the incident survived.

Here is The Who at Woodstock:

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special Albert Pyun Edition

Posted on May 19, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

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, on what would have been his 72nd birthday, we celebrate filmmaker Albert Pyun!

It’s time for….

4 Shots From 4 Albert Pyun Films

The Sword and the Sorcerer (1982, dir by Albert Pyun, DP: Joseph Margine)

Cyborg (1989, dir by Albert Pyun, DP: Philip Alan Waters)

Captain America (1990, dir by Albert Pyun, DP: Philp Alan Waters)

Kickboxer 2 (1991, dir by Albert Pyun, DP: George Mooradian)

Music Video of the Day: In My House by Kendra Morris (2025, dir by ????)

Posted on May 19, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Watching this video reminded me that 1) glasses can be cool and 2) I need to make an appointment with the eye doctor soon and see if my vision has gotten any worse. I’m pretty sure it has but I’ve been putting off the visit.

Enjoy!

Late Night Retro Television Review: Degrassi High 2.5 “Body Politics”

Posted on May 18, 2025 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 Sunday, I will be reviewing the Canadian series, Degrassi High, which aired on CBC and PBS from 1989 to 1991! The series can be streamed on YouTube and Tubi

Just when Lucy thinks that she’s out, they pull her back in.

Episode 2.5 “Body Politics”

(Dir by Phillip Earnshaw, originally aired on December 3rd, 1990)

Lucy is depressed because the big dance is coming up and no one has asked her. She makes another one of her video diaries for L.D., in which she says, “I know I can be kind of mouthy.” That’s true but being “kind of mouthy” is a Degrassi tradition and screw anyone who can’t handle someone having an opinion!

Anyway, Lucy does get a date with Dale (Cameron Graham), a jock with a cute smile. But when the Girls Volleyball Team discovers that the Boys Basketball Team has been given all of the best practice slots in the gym (basically, the basketball team gets to practice in the afternoon for as long as they want while the volleyball team only gets a few minutes in the morning), Lucy finds herself starting another protest. However, when she discovers that Dale is the captain of the basketball team, Lucy starts to wonder if she should back off. She wants to go to the dance!

The creepy Farrell twins insist that Lucy has to be their leader and their spokesperson. This episode was the first time that the Farrells were prominently featured in the second season and I had forgotten how annoying they could be with their constant demand that Lucy lead every single protest. Seriously, I’m kind of sympathizing with Lucy’s desire to avoid getting involved.

Lucy does eventually step up and make her argument about the girls deserving equal time to the Phys Ed. department. It doesn’t do any good. It turns out that, when Dale said that no one cares about Girls Volleyball, he was right. Lucy loses her fight and her date. But the president of the senior class, the never before-seen Bronco (L. Dean Ifill), is impressed by Lucy’s fighting spirit and asks her to the dance. So, things work out.

(Lucy, of course, is destined to be crippled and blinded by Wheels in an auto accident but that’s a while off.)

As for the other plots in this week’s episode, Patrick, the Irish guy who was dating Spike at the end of last season, is single again and asks Liz out on a date. Spike says she’s fine with it but actually she’s jealous. Hey, it happens! And Alexa and Michelle finally decide to be friends again. Yay! Seriously, it’s always nice when friendships are saved.

This episode could have been better. The main problem was that I didn’t buy a lot of the Lucy story. I mean, how come there wasn’t a coach or anyone supervising the gym while the basketball players and the volleyball players were having their argument? How come the athletic teams didn’t already have a set schedule for when they would practice? Since when are the Farrell twins athletic and why can’t they ever do anything without demanding that Lucy be their spokesperson? How exactly is L.D.’s father getting away with traveling around the world with his daughter who I imagine is legally required to be in some sort of school? There were just too many unanswered questions.