Since today would have been Robert Altman’s 100th birthday, it only seems right that today’s song of the day should come from his best film. In this scene from 1975’s Nashville, Keith Carradine sings I’m Easy as Altman’s camera finds each of his lovers in the audience, all convinced that Carradine is singing expressly to them.
This song won Nashville it’s only Oscar. It also made Keith, who wrote the song, the only Oscar winner amongst the fabled Carradine family.
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 what would have been the 100th birthday of the great director, Robert Altman! It’s time for….
4 Shots From 4 Robert Altman Films
MASH (1970, dir by Robert Altman, DP: Harold E. Stine)
The Long Goodbye (1973, dir by Robert Altman, DP: Vilmos Zsigmond)
Nashville (1975, dir by Robert Altman, DP: Paul Lohmann)
3 Women (1977, dir by Robert Altman, DP: Charles Rosher, Jr.)
Yay! It’s a new music video from Sleigh Bells!
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 Wednesdays, I will be reviewing Monsters, which aired in syndication from 1988 to 1991. The entire series is streaming on YouTube.
This week, the survivors of the end of the world discover that they might not as along as they think they are.
Episode 3.10 “The Waiting Game”
(Dir by Bruce Spandello, originally aired on December 9th, 1990)
Following a nuclear war, four survivors are stuck in two different shelters. In one shelter, Lt. Eric Tyler (Doug McKeon) and Captain Stanley Levitt (Stephen Burleigh) wait until it’s safe to go outside. They are in communication, via walkie-talkie, with Lt. Maureen Knox (Carrington Garland) and Capt. Andrew Garza (Leo Garcia). Knox and Garza are not handling things quite as well as Tyler and Levitt. In fact, Garza is convinced that he sees people moving outside of the bunker and he wants to go outside and investigate, despite the fact that the whole world is presumably radioactive now. Tyler and Levitt struggle to keep Garza and later Knox from going outside to look for phantom survivors. Soon, Tyler and Levitt start to realize that they aren’t as alone as they thought they were.
The idea behind this episode of Monsters is an intriguing one. Though a nuclear war has wiped out most of human civilization, it hasn’t destroyed an ancient vampire who is now roaming the world. In fact, the war has just made the vampire even stronger. The nuclear fallout has blocked out the sun, plunging the world into darkness and allowing the vampire to move around freely. Once it becomes obvious that Knox and Garza have both been captured and turned into vampires, Tyler and Levitt are faced with the question of how long they can resist. They may have survived the war but now, it appears that they’re going to be trapped in their bunker for the rest of their lives.
This was a superior episode of Monsters. I don’t know the specifics of what was going on behind-the-scenes but Monsters seems to have really hit its stride during the third season. The production values are noticeably higher than they were during the first two seasons. The guest stars are better-known. In general, the stories themselves are far more interesting and intelligently written. This episode is atmospheric and appropriately claustrophobic and it also features four excellent performances from McKeon, Burleigh, Garland, and Garcia. It’s hard to imagine an episode this good airing during the show’s first or even second season. But it’s definitely an example of the quality that I’ve now come to expect from the third season.
Personally, I would have stayed in that bunker for as long as it took. And I really do think the vampire kind of screwed up. By turning everyone into a vampire, he pretty much guaranteed that he and his new friends are going to run out of food in record time.
In 1995’s Bloodknot, we are introduced to a grieving family.
Evelyn (Margot Kidder) and Arthur (Allan Royal) are mourning the death of their oldest son, who was in the military and who died during a military operation in the Middle East. Their other son, Tom (Patrick Dempsey), spends his time working on cars and helping out local racecar driver Mike (Craig Sheffer). Youngest daughter Gail (Ashleigh Ann Wood) doesn’t really have much of a personality but she’s definitely worried about her mother.
Suddenly, Connie (Kate Vernon) shows up in town. Wearing a uniform that is slightly too large for her, Connie claims that she served with Evelyn’s dead son and that they eventually became more than just friends. That’s strange, Evelyn says, he never mentioned you. Connie replies that she encouraged him to write more but, for whatever reason, he didn’t. Everyone agrees that what’s important now is that Connie has introduced herself to the family. Soon, Connie is living at the mansion and making flirtatious eye contact with both Arthur and Tom. One might expect Evelyn to be concerned about this but instead, Evelyn is too busy walking around in a depressed daze and blaming her “sinful” past for all the recent tragedy.
You probably already guessed that Connie is not who she says she is. Indeed, Connie has come to the family with an agenda of her own. She’s looking for vengeance and I won’t spoil it by revealing what she’s upset about but I will say that it’s fairly dumb and makes less sense the more that you think about it. Tom’s girlfriend, Julie (Krista Bridges), suspects that Connie is a liar but can she prove it? Julie even talks to the officer from whom Connie stole her uniform after Connie met and seduced her at a bar. Why would Connie, who seems to be willing to kill anyone, leave that one person alive? Obviously, it’s so Julie can learn the truth but still, it’s an oversight on Connie’s part that makes little sense.
(Julie isn’t a very interesting character but she does get to wear a really nice pair of boots so at least she’s got that going for her.)
Looking at the members of this film’s cast — Patrick Dempsey, Craig Sheffer, Kate Vernon — and you have to wonder if someone specifically said, “Let’s make an paranoia-themed, erotic thriller with the least interesting actors of the 90s.” (Yes, Dempsey got better but, in this film, he was still doing the goofy awkward thing.) This film goes through all the usual steps. Connie starts out as being friendly and then progressively reveals herself to be more and more unhinged. The men are reduced to stuttering incoherence by the sight of Connie smiling at them. For this type of film to work, the actors have to be fully willing to embrace the melodrama but instead, both Kate Vernon and Patrick Dempsey give oddly lowkey performances, with Vernon’s attempt at a seductive smile instead coming across like a smirk that should have clued everyone in to the fact that she was not to be trusted. If you’re appearing in a film like this, you should at least have a little fun. As for Craig Sheffer, he’s as mind-numbingly dull as ever.
The film does improve a bit towards the end, largely because Connie’s secret reason for harassing the family is so implausible that it can’t help but be a bit entertaining to listen to the characters discuss it. Overall, though, this was pretty boring. Let this film be a lesson to all — embrace the melodrama!
Previous entries in 2025’s 14 Days Of Paranoia:
Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Wednesdays, I will be reviewing the original Love Boat, which aired on ABC from 1977 to 1986! The series can be streamed on Paramount Plus!
Love, exciting and new …. come aboard, they’re expecting you….
Episode 5.18 “His Girls Friday/A Wife for Wilfred/The Girl Who Stood Still”
(Dir by Robert Scheerer, originally aired on February 13th, 1982)
Wilfred (Tom Smothers) is a single guy who tells the crew that he’ll pay $10,000 to whoever helps him find a wife on the cruise. The members of the crew each introduce Wilfred to a different woman and soon, Wilfred has five women following him all over the boat. However, when Isaac hears Wilfred bragging about how he conned the crew into doing all the work for him and how he was lying about the $10,000, the crew hires Marilyn (Connie Stevens), who runs the ship’s flower shop, to pretend to Wilfred’s wife.
Ha! Joke’s on Wilfred! No wait, the joke’s on the crew. Marilyn and Wilfred fall in love. Meanwhile, Julie remains single.
Meanwhile, Howard Ethan (Dick Van Patten) boards the ship with his loyal and superefficient secretary, Doris (Rue McClanahan). Doris is a great secretary but when Howard finds out that Cindy Nevins (Judy Landers) is looking for a secretarial job, he tries to figure out how to get Doris to quit so that he can hire Cindy. Maybe he and Doris could just fall in love. Myself, I wonder why people were always doing work while on The Love Boat. Isn’t a cruise supposed to be a vacation? And yet, every episode seemed to feature someone determined to spend the cruise in their cabin and getting some work done. I appreciate the spirit, I guess. I mean, I write film reviews while I’m on vacation so I guess I can relate. But still, if you’re going to pay for a luxury cruise, wouldn’t you at least want to use it as an excuse to forget about your responsibilities on the mainland?
Finally, Bess Hensinger (Vera Miles) boards the boat with her daughter, Abigail (Denise Miller). Abigail is stunned to learn that Bess invited a boy that Abigail likes to join them on the cruise. How will Jim (James Osmond) react if he discovers that Abigail has …. scoliosis!? This storyline was actually the best of the episode, if just because it was the only one where the male half of the romantic pairing didn’t come across as being totally sleazy. Jim was a genuinely nice guy and, needless to say, he didn’t care that Abigail has scoliosis. Denise Miller give an excellent performance as the insecure Abigail. As an asthmatic teenager, I always dreaded the thought of using my inhaler in front of other people so I could relate to what Abigail was going through. I may not have cared about the other two stories but I was happy things worked out for Jim and Abigail.
One good story out of three is usually not something brag about but Abigail and Jim were such a winning couple that they really did make this episode worth the trouble. Despite Wilfred and Howard, this was a good cruise.
We woke up to glorious snow this morning. It’s pretty, even if it’s not quite the blizzard that we were promised by the weather service. That said, it’s 11 degrees outside and I’m looking forward to spending the next few days cuddled up inside.
In others words, let it snow!
Here’s Dean Martin expressing the thought perfectly in today’s song of the day.
Oh, the weather outside is frightful
But the fire is so delightful
And since we’ve no place to go
Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!
Man it doesn’t show signs of stopping
And I brought me some corn for popping
The lights are turned way down low
Let it snow! Let it snow!
When we finally kiss goodnight
How I’ll hate going out in the storm
But if you’ll really hold me tight
All the way home I’ll be warm
And the fire is slowly dying
And, my dear, we’re still goodbying
But as long as you’d love me so
Let it snow! Let it snow and snow!
When we finally kiss goodnight
How I’ll hate going out in the storm
But if you really grab me tight
All the way home I’ll be warm
Oh, the fire is slowly dying
And, my dear, we’re still goodbying
But as long as you’d love me so
Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!
Songwriters: Jule Styne / Sammy Cahn
Point Blank (1967, directed by John Boorman)
Today is the anniversary of the birth of one of the greatest of the screen tough guys, Mr. Lee Marvin! Today’s scene that I love comes from the 1967 film, Point Blank. In this short but emotionally exhausting scene, Angie Dickinson hits Lee Marvin’s career criminal, over and over again. Marvin, for his part, barely reacts. This scene is the epitome of Lee Marvin’s mystique. He played men who only showed emotion when it was necessary. Dickinson hits Marvin to try to make him feel something but Marvin’s career criminal in beyond such concerns.
From Point Blank, here is today’s scene that I love:
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!
John Frankenheimer was born 95 years ago today, in New York City. He got his start working in live television and went on to become one of the best directors of thrillers around. After getting off to a strong start in the 60s, directing several classic films (many of which had a political subtext), Frankenheimer struggled in the 70s (though even that decade saw him directing the classic Black Sunday) before making a comeback in the 90s. (1998’s Ronin is regularly cited as having one of the best car chases ever captured on film.) He was also one of the first film directors to make the transition to regularly working for cable channels like TNT and HBO. Indeed, the films that he made for HBO played no small part in establishing HBO’s reputation as being a “prestige” network.
It’s time for….
4 Shots From 4 John Frankenheimer Films
The Manchurian Candidate (1962, dir by John Frankenheimer, DP: Lionel Lindon)
Seven Days In May (1964, dir by John Frankenheimer, DP: Ellsworth Fredericks)
Seconds (1966, dir by John Frankenheimer, DP: James Wong Howe)
Black Sunday (1977, dir by John Frankenheimer, DP: John A. Alonzo)
Today, we wish a happy birthday to the one and only Victoria Justice! I’m currently up at our lakehouse so I can relate to this video in spirit, even though it’s currently 18 degrees up here. It’s the thought that counts.
Enjoy!
Through the Shattered Lens