Author Archives: Lisa Marie Bowman

Retro Television Reviews: The Love Boat 2.21 “A Good and Faithful Servant/The Secret Life of Burl Smith/Tug of War/Designated Lover”

Posted on 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 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!

This week, we have a special 90-minute episode of The Love Boat!

Episode 2.21 “A Good and Faithful Servant/The Secret Life of Burl Smith/Tug of War/Designated Lover”

(Dir by Roger Duchowny, originally aired on February 17th, 1979)

It’s a Mills family reunion as John, Juliet, and Haley all board The Love Boat.  Despite being related, the three of them appears in three separate and unconnected stories.  (There is one moment where Juliet walks past John and he gives her a slightly quizzical  “Do I know you?” look.)

John Mills plays Bertram MacDonald, the long-time butler and chauffeur to Estelle Castlewood (Celeste Holm).  Estelle has booked herself a vacation cruise on the Pacific Princess and she’s surprised to discover that Bertram has also booked a cruise.  As Bertram explains it, the only time that he can take a vacation is when Celeste takes a vacation.  At first, Bertram promises to stay away from Celeste during the cruise so that they can both enjoy their vacations without feeling like employer and employee.  However, fate keeps bringing them together and soon, Bertram tells Celeste that he has to resign from his position because he’s now in love with her.  Fortunately, Celeste is also in love with him so it all works out.  Upon returning to America, Bertram again drives Celeste home but, this time, Celeste sits up front with him instead of in the back of her limo.  This was a rather sweet story, largely because John Mills and Celeste Holm had a lot of chemistry and, being two veteran actors, they both knew exactly how to deliver their sentimental dialogue without making it sound overly calculated.

Juliet Mills plays Millicent, who is separated from Sherman (David Hedison).  Millicent boards the cruise with her 8 year-old son, Lucas (Keith Coogan) and she is shocked to discover that Sherman has decided to take the cruise as well.  Lucas blames himself for the separation but, fortunately, he gets a pep talk from a real-life baseball star, Reggie Jackson.  (Yes, I did ask my sister who he was.)  Even better, Sherman and Millicent realize that they still love each other and agree to call off the divorce.  Yay!  Again, this was another story that worked because of the chemistry between the two leads.  Juliet Mills and David Hedison were convincing as a couple who, for all of their ups and downs, were still willing to give their marriage another chance.

Now, you may be wondering what Reggie Jackson was doing on the cruise.  It turns out that Reggie is an old friend of Isaac Washington’s.  Apparently, Isaac was known as “Freight Train Washington” in high school.  Reggie went on to become a multi-millionaire athlete while Isaac went on to become a bartender on a cruise line.  When Reggie boards the boat, he tells Isaac that he doesn’t want anyone to know that he’s famous.  However, in an amusing twist, Reggie soon becomes frustrated when he gets what he asked for. He’s soon reduced to telling people that he’s Reggie Jackson, just to have them reply that he looks nothing like Reggie Jackson.  Not even Captain Stubing believes that he’s Reggie Jackson!  Fortunately, Reggie is finally able to convince Cleo (Telma Houston) that he is who he says he is and the two of them leave the boat together.  As an actor, Reggie Jackson was a bit stiff but he still had decent comedic timing and it was hard not to be amused at his growing frustration over being anonymous.

Finally, Haley Mills plays model Cheryl Tyson.  Gopher is excited that Cheryl is going to be on the cruise.  She’s his favorite model!  He even has a big poster on the wall next to his bed in his cabin.  Unfortunately, every time that Gopher is near Cheryl, he loses the ability to speak in complete sentences.  As such, Gopher spends the majority of the episode fantasizing outlandish, film-inspired scenarios that all lead to him sweeping Cheryl off her feet.  Gopher imagines himself as an explorer, an admiral, a knight, a spy, and as Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca.  He imagines himself as Elton John, performing Pinball Wizard as the Love Boat crew dances around.  He even imagines being in a love triangle with Julie and Cheryl.  Eventually, Cheryl gives him a pity date and it’s …. well, this whole storyline was pretty stupid.  Fred Grandy was likable in the role and Gopher could be an amusingly goofy character but his fantasies were just so silly and poorly written that I couldn’t wait for them to be over.  It’s nice that the show finally gave Grandy a showcase but neither he nor Haley Mills were particularly well-served by this episode.

This was an uneven episode.  Even though the stories featuring John and Juliet Mills and Reggie Jackson were nicely done, the Hayley Mills/Fred Grandy stuff took up the majority of the episode and it dragged the whole thing down.

Next week …. Freight Train Washington falls in love!

The TSL Grindhouse: Exterminator 2 (dir by Mark Buntzman)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Four years after the end of the first Exterminator, the man they drove too far is driven too far again….

As you may remember, the first Exterminator ended with the CIA shooting vigilante John Eastland (Robert Ginty) because Eastland’s anti-crime activities were somehow making the President look bad.  The wounded Eastland fell into the Hudson River.  “Washington will be pleased,” the CIA agent said to the gunman.  However, the film’s final shot revealed that Eastland had survived his plunge.

1984’s Exterminator 2 opens with Eastland returning to New York City.  He’s got a small apartment and a police scanner and when he hears a report that an elderly couple is being menaced by a group of thugs, he puts on a welding mask and uses his flame thrower to set the criminals on fire.  Of course, he doesn’t actually arrive in time to save the old couple from getting shot and killed.  Just because Eastland has decided to become a vigilante, that doesn’t mean that he’s particularly good at it.

The first Exterminator was a grim and gritty thriller that took itself very seriously.  In fact, one could argue that it took itself a bit too seriously.  Exterminator 2, which was produced by Cannon Films, takes a slightly different approach.  This is obvious as soon as Mario Van Peebles shows up as X, a cult leader who is looking to take over the New York drug trade.  Van Peebles, with his model good looks and his quick smile, is not exactly the most intimidating of villains.  And X is not exactly the most brilliant of bad guys.  For one thing, he drives a car with a big red X spray painted on one of the doors, which doesn’t seem to be the smartest thing to do when you have both the police and crazed vigilante hunting for you.

Fortunately, for X, John Eastland is easily distracted.  After he sets a few people on fire, he seems to lose interest in actually being a vigilante and instead, a large portion of the film is taken up with him getting a job collecting garbage with his friend, Be Gee (Frankie Fasion).  (Much like the previous film’s Michael Jefferson, Be Gree served with Eastland in Nam.)  Eastland also meets and falls in love with a dancer named Caroline (Deborah Geffner).  Unfortunately, a trip to Central Park leads to Caroline getting attacked by a bunch of X’s followers.  With Caroline in a wheelchair, Eastland has little choice but to pick up his flame thrower and transform his garbage truck into a tank of destruction….

Exterminator 2‘s production was a troubled one.  Director Mark Buntzman was one of the producers of the first Exterminator and apparently, Cannon disliked his first cut of Exterminator 2.  Director William Sachs (who was Cannon’s resident “film doctor”) was brought in to do extensive reshoots in Los Angeles.  Unfortunately, by the time Sachs was brought in, Robert Ginty had already moved on to another project and Sachs was forced to use his stunt double for any scenes involving Eastland.  (This is one reason why Eastland spends much of the film wearing a welder’s mask.)  Also because of Ginty’s absence, Sachs ended up adding a lot of scenes that focused on Van Peebles’s performance as X, with the end result being that the film often seems to be more about X and his gang than it is about Eastland and his hunt for revenge.  (Unfortunately, this also led to a lot of unresolved subplots, including one in which X orders one of his roller skating henchman to kidnap a woman off the street so she can be used to test a new batch of heroin.)  Many of the scenes featuring Ginty have a totally different feel to them from the scenes featuring Van Peebles and Ginty’s stunt double.

The end result is a film that really doesn’t have any sort of narrative momentum.  One is never really sure what either X or Eastland is hoping to accomplish.  Instead, they just kind of wander around until they have their final confrontation.  Along the way, there’s a few poorly edited fights but there’s also a lot of scenes that are just included to serve as filler.  As I already mentioned, Van Peebles is not a particularly menacing villain but Ginty also isn’t a particularly compelling hero.  Ginty’s goofy screen presence was nicely subverted by the grime and grit of the first Exterminator but, in the second film, he just comes across as being petulant and even a bit whiny.

The first Exterminator famously ended with the lines, “Washington will be pleased.”  I don’t think anyone would particularly be pleased with Exterminator 2.  As a final note, I will admit that I was so bored with this film that, when I watched it, I barely noticed when it ended and Tubi segued into showing a film called Executioner 2.  That pretty much sums up the entire Exterminator 2 experience.

Retro Television Reviews: Fantasy Island 3.3 “Tattoo: The Love God/Magnolia Blossoms”

Posted on 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 Tuesdays, I will be reviewing the original Fantasy Island, which ran on ABC from 1977 to 1986.  The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi!

This week, Mr. Roarke tries to kill Tattoo!

Episode 3.3 “Tattoo: The Love God/Magnolia Blossoms”

(Dir by Earl Bellamy, originally aired on Sept. 21st, 1979)

This week’s episode of Fantasy Island opens with Tattoo driving his mini-car across the island and nearly running over a group of Islanders.

Tattoo has every reason to be excited!  This week, he is getting his fantasy.  Using a fake name (Dr. H.L. Oottat — spell the last name backwards), Tattoo requested a chance to come to the Island and live out his fantasy of being irresistible to women.  At first, Mr. Roarke pretends as if he had no idea that Dr. Oottat was actually Tattoo but, by the end of this episode, it’s pretty clear that Roarke not only knew who Oottat was but that he also saw this fantasy as his best chance to kill off his troublesome assistant.

Seriously, how else can you explain how Mr. Roarke grants Tattoo his fantasy.  Tattoo wants women to find him attractive.  (That’s actually kind of sad.  Poor Tattoo!)  So, Mr. Roarke arranges for a bunch of native Islanders to mistake Tattoo for their legendary love god, Nooyeeowee.

Words goes out that Nooyeeowee has returned to the Island.  A group of Islanders take Tattoo to their village.

The chief explains that, as the Love God, Tattoo is not only responsible for deciding who in the tribe will marry who but that his presence will also guarantee successful fishing expeditions.  Unfortunately, Tattoo is also expected to be able to fly.  When one of the islanders, jealous because Tattoo has stolen his girlfriend, accuses Tattoo of being a fraud, Tattoo is told to prove his powers by taking flight.  Instead, with the help of a native girl, Tattoo gets in a canoe and flees back to the main island.

Mr. Roarke acts as if he’s happy to have his assistant back but let’s be honest here.  Mr. Roarke has shown, on numerous occasions, that he cannot be fooled or tricked by anyone.  Are we to believe that Mr. Roarke didn’t realize that the letter from Dr. Oottaat was actually from Tattoo?  After three seasons of listening to their passive-aggressive banter, it should be obvious to anyone that Roarke and Tattoo actually hate each other.  Personally, I think Mr. Roarke was hoping Tattoo wouldn’t be able to escape.

As for the second fantasy, it features Pamela Franklin and Lisa Hartman as two women who want to become Southern belles by returning to what they consider to be the most romantic time and place in US. History, Civil War-era Georgia….

Uhmm…. yeah.  This is definitely a fantasy that would not be allowed today.  But, back in 1979, Roarke sends the women back to Civil War era Altanta so that they can both pursue a romance with the two Confederates of their dreams.  Lisa Hartman falls hard for Dack Rambo, who is made up to look like Clark Gable.  Pamela Franklin falls just as hard for Christopher Connelly, who is made up to look like Leslie Howard.  Unfortunately, their night at the plantation is ruined by the arrival of an evil Union captain, played by Luke Askew.

Sadly, the fantasy ends before the belles get a chance to marry their men.  But no worries!  It turns out that the two men were also on the Island to live out their fantasies of fighting for the Confederacy during the Civil War.  So, everything works out….

This was a weird episode and, as I mentioned earlier, it’s definitely one that would not be made today.  I can only imagine how Twitter, if it had existed back then, would have reacted to the Civil War fantasy and the frequent appearances of Dixie on the soundtrack.  To be honest, though, the the two belles were less in love with the Confederacy and more just obsessed with Clark Gable and Leslie Howard.  Tattoo’s fantasy was actually the cringier of the two, with Tattoo pretending to be a God just to get laid and its suggestion that the Islanders will basically just worship anyone that they can convince to come to their village.

(Why don’t they worship Mr. Roarke then?  I mean, he has literal magic powers!)

As I said, this episode was just very weird.  1979, you know?

The TSL Grindhouse: The Exterminator (dir by James Glickenhaus)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

First released in 1980, The Exterminator begins during the Vietnam War.

Two soldiers, John Eastland (Robert Ginty) and Michael Jefferson (future Cannon Film mainstay Steve James) have been captured by the Viet Cong and can only watch as a third soldier is beheaded by his captors.  (The graphic beheading, in which the camera lingers on the head slowly sliding off the neck, is an early warning of what this film has in store for its audience.)  Jefferson manages to free himself from his bonds and kills most of the enemy soldiers.  After Jefferson frees him, Eastland fires a bullet into the still twitching body of the VC commander.

The film jumps forward to 1980.  Living in New York City, Jefferson and Eastland are still best friends and co-workers at a warehouse.  For a second time, Jefferson saves Eastland’s life when the latter is attacked by a gang calling themselves the Ghetto Ghouls.  When the Ghouls get their revenge by tracking down Jefferson and piecing his spine with a meat hook, Eastland gets his revenge by killing …. well, just about everyone that he meets.

Though The Exterminator was obviously inspired by Death Wish, a big difference between the two films is that Eastland doesn’t waste any time before starting his anti-crime crusade.  In the original Death Wish, Paul Kersey (played by Charles Bronson) starts out as a self-described “bleeding heart” liberal who was a conscientious objector during the Korean War.  Even after his wife and daughter are attacked (and his wife killed) by Jeff Goldblum, Kersey doesn’t immediately pick up a gun and start shooting muggers.  Indeed, it’s not until the film is nearly halfway over that Kersey begins his mission and, in one of the film’s more memorable moments, he reacts to his first act of violence by throwing up afterwards.  While one could hardly call Death Wish an especially nuanced film, it does at least try to suggest that Kersey’s transformation into a vigiliante was a gradual process.

The Exterminator, on the other hand, goes straight from Eastland informing Jefferson’s wife about the attack to Eastland threatening a tied-up Ghetto Ghoul with a flame thrower.  When did Eastland kidnap the Ghetto Ghoul?  Why does Eastland have a flame thrower?  Where exactly has Eastland tied up the Ghetto Ghoul?  None of this is explained and the film’s abruptness gives it an almost dream-like feel.  The film plays out like the fantasy of everyone who has ever been mugged or otherwise harassed.  Magically, Eastland suddenly has the skills and the resources to outsmart not just the criminals but also the police who have been assigned to stop him.  Even the CIA is assigned to take down Eastland because his anti-crime crusade is inspiring people to wonder why the President hasn’t been able to reduce crime.  The film plays out like the type of daydreams that Travis Bickle had when he wasn’t driving his taxi.

Eastland is ruthless in his kills but fortunately, everyone he kills is really, really bad.  The Ghetto Ghouls clubhouse is decorated with a poster of Che Guevara but Che’s revolutionary rhetoric isn’t worth much when the Exterminator’s after you.  A mob boss makes the mistake of not telling Eastland about the Doberman that’s guarding his mansion so into the meat grinder he goes.  New Jersey loses a state senator when Eastland discovers him torturing an underage male prostitute.  The film was shot on location in New York City and the camera lingers over every grimy corner of the city.  A scene where Eastland walks through Times Square takes on a cinéma-vérité feel as people jump out at him and try to entice him to take part in everything the city has to offer.  If Death Wish suggested that Paul Kersey’s actions were saving New York, The Exterminator suggests that we should just let John Eastland burn the whole place down.

With his youthful face, Robert Ginty looks more like a mild-mannered seminarian than a hardened veteran of both Vietnam and the mean streets of New York but, ultimately, that works to the film’s advantage.  If anything, it explains why everyone who meets him trends to underestimate what he’s capable of doing.  B-movie vet Christopher George overacts in his usual amusing way as he plays the detective who has been assigned to catch The Exterminator.  Samantha Eggar plays a doctor who starts dating George for no discernible reason.  The scenes featuring George and Eggar often seems as if they belong in a different film but they do provide some relief from the rather grim and gruesome scenes of The Exterminator killing almost everyone who he meets.

The Exterminator was controversial when it was originally released and it still retains the power to shock.  It’s easy to laugh at some of the film’s more melodramatic moments but there were still more than a few scenes that I watched with my hands over my eyes.  The film’s hard edge grabs your attention from the start and the idea of the CIA sending assassins to take out a neighborhood vigilante is so over the top and ridiculous that it’s kind of hard not to appreciate it.  That the film totally buys into its paranoid worldview (“Washington will be pleased.”) makes the whole thing far more compelling than it should be.

As ludicrous as it all is, The Exterminator is a film that defies you to look away.

Here’s The Trailer For Five Nights At Freddy’s

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Who here is excited about Five Nights At Freddy’s!?

I will admit that I am, even though I’ve never played the game on which the film is based.  The trailer looks like fun and isn’t it time for Matthew Lillard to make a comeback?

Here’s the trailer:

Retro Television Reviews: Hang Time 5.5 “Too Good To Be True” and 5.6 “Shall We Dance?”

Posted on 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 Hang Time, which ran on NBC from 1995 to 2000.  The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!

I’ll always remember, me and my friends at Hang Time….

Episode 5.5 “Too Good To Be True”

(Dir by Miguel Higuera, originally aired on October 16th, 1999)

Michael’s father is out of town and — oh no! — Michael has damaged the family car.  Michael has to raise the money to fix the car before his father comes home so Michael gets a job delivering pizzas.  Since this is a Peter Engel-produced show, this means that Michael has to dress up and talk like a pirate.

Fortunately, Michael meets a real estate agent who happens to be a fan of Deering basketball.  The agent gives Michael a job and even loans him the money to pay for the car repairs!  Yay!

Unfortunately, Michael is dating Julie again and, as usual, Julie just can’t let anyone else be happy.  She decides that the real estate agent is trying to recruit Michael to play basketball at Indiana Tech.  Apparently, it’s against the rules for recruiters to offer gifts to students.  Julie tells Michael that he has to quit his job and then she gets the rest of the team to tell Michael the same thing.  Michael’s first instinct is to tell everyone to mind their own business.  And really, Michael has a point here.  It’s his life and seriously, I’m sure everyone bends the rules.  If he’s a good enough player and if he goes to a school with enough rich benefactors, no one will ever care.  But, eventually, Michael quits his new job and refuses to take the money.  By the end of the episode, he is once again dressed as a pirate and delivering pizzas.

“I’m proud of you,” Julie says, “you followed the rules.”

(Rules are for suckers.)

Meanwhile, Coach K is totally excited because he’s bought a new telescope so he can watch a comet fly by the Earth.  Yay!  I’ve been critical of Coach K in the past but he’s actually pretty likable in this episode and Dick Butkus does a good job of playing up his almost childlike excitement over seeing the comet.  Of course, Julie pops up to say that the comet is no big deal because Julie has to ruin everything.

Let’s move on.

Episode 5.6 “Shall We Dance?”

(Dir by Miguel Higuera, originally aired on October 23rd, 1999)

At the start of this episode, the audience goes crazy as Michael asks Julie out on a date.

“You two are so getting back together!” Mary Beth tells Julie.

Uhmmm …. last episode, they were back together and Julie was going out of her way to ruin Michael’s future.  Once again, we have another example of NBC deciding to show these episodes out of order and allowing continuity to be damned.

Anyway, Michael and Julie start dating again.  However, Julie also discovers that she and Antonio love to swing dance!  (Over the past five seasons, there’s been absolutely nothing about Julie that suggested she would be into swing dancing but whatever….)  Julie and Antonio decide to enter a swing dancing contest and soon, they’re spending all of their time together.  Always a force of chaos, Mary Beth subtly suggests to Michael and Kristy that their respective significant others may be falling for each other.  Even a bizarre cameo from Dr. Drew Pinsky (who apparently lives in Deering and shops at the local mall) can’t keep Michael and Kristy from getting jealous.

This was actually a fun episode, just because of all of the dancing.  Jay Hernandez and Daniella Deutscher did get married after co-starring on Hang Time so Mary Beth wasn’t totally wrong about there being chemistry between Julie and Antonio.  If I really wanted to be critical, I would point out that this is yet another episode where Julie is actually pretty self-centered (she abandons Michael in the middle of a date so that she can go practice a new dance move with Antonio) but …. eh.  There was too much dancing for me to be overly critical.

There was also a pretty stupid B-plot, where Silk and Eugene tried to film Coach K. losing his temper so that they could send it into America’s Funniest Home Videos.  Didn’t the same thing happen on California Dreams and City Guys?  It might have happened on One World, too.  All of these shows blend together after a while.  Still, despite the dumb B-plot, I enjoyed this episode.

Monday Live Tweet Alert: Join Us For Deep Rising and Lone Wolf McQuade!

Posted on 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 occasion ally 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 1998’s Deep Rising!  We’ll be paying tribute to the great Treat Williams.

Following #MondayActionMovie, I will be guest-hosting the #MondayMuggers live tweet!  We will be watching 1983’s Lone Wolf McQuade, starring Chuck Norris and David Carradine!  The film is on Prime and Tubi!

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, pull up Deep Rising on YouTube, start the movie at 8 pm et, and use the #MondayActionMovie hashtag!  Then, at 10 pm et, switch over to Twitter and Prime, start Lone Wolf McQuade, and use the #MondayMuggers hashtag!  The live tweet community is a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.   

Enjoy!