Made in 1985 for CBS, Ace Hits The Big Time is a seriously strange little film.
It tells the story of Horace Hobart (Rob Stone, a likable actor), a 16 year-old kid from New Jersey who has just transferred to a new high school in New York. He’s paranoid about going to his new school because it’s supposedly populated by gang members. The school is so notorious for gang activity that the members of the gang even make an appearance on the front page of the paper of record, The New York Freaking Times! Looking at the newspaper makes Horace Hobart so paranoid that he has musical fantasies in which the members of a gang known as the Purple Falcons surround him, start singing, and then beat him up while doing an interpretive dance.
Horace does eventually find the courage to go to his new high school but he insists on calling himself “Ace,” he wears a jacket with a fearsome dragon embroidered on the back of it, and he wears an eye patch because he’s got …. ewwww …. pink eye. (Remember when Bob Costas got pink eye at the Olympics and traumatized thousands of viewers by insisting on going on the air every night and talking about snowboarding while struggling to keep his eye from popping out of its socket? Those were crazy times!) Ace looks so tough that the real Purple Falcons mistake him for being an associate of a notorious New Jersey gang (no, not the Sopranos) and they recruit him to be a member of their gang. Ace is so convincing as a tough guy that a film crew decides to use him and his friends as extras in a movie! (Interestingly, the director is really involved in picking and working with the extras. There’ll be no second unit crap for Ace and the Purple Falcons!) Unfortunately, another gang insists on trying to make the Purple Falcons look bad. Fortunately, Ace is able to defuse the tension by baking a cake. What?
This is like the dorkiest version of West Side Story ever made and I can’t really figure out what the message is supposed to be. On the one hand, Ace is totally paranoid about any sort of gang violence and goes out of his way to try to prevent a gang war. On the other hand, even before Ace shows up and starts quoting John Lennon, neither one of the show’s gangs are particularly violent or even intimidating. The Purple Falcons are pretty much impossible to take seriously because they’re called “the Purple Falcons.” (They all wear purple, as well. I guess some other gang had already claimed all the cool falcon colors.) They really don’t do any sort of “gang” stuff. Instead, they eat a lot of pizza and appear in a movie. That sounds like a pretty good deal, actually. With its mix of dorky humor, random dance numbers, and “tough” gang talk, this is one of those old time capsules that simply has to be seen to be believed.
As I prepare to return from my vacation to the hard but returning work of putting together this year’s horrorthon, this Ace Attorney AMV feels appropriate.
Anime: Ace Attorney
Song: Time Of Our Lives by Chawki
Creator: Ace Gavinners (as always, please consider subscribing to the creator’s channel. A lot of hard work goes into making an amv!)
Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a new feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Fridays, I will be reviewing T. and T., a Canadian show which ran in syndication from 1987 to 1990. The show can be found on Tubi!
This week, Amy loses her car and her mind!
Episode 1.11 “Junkyard Blues”
(Dir by Dan McCutcheon, originally aired on March 21st, 1988)
“In this episode,” Mr. T tells us, “Amy’s car goes missing and so does Amy. And I finally get my day in court!”
Amy is not having a good day. She’s running later for court so she parks her car in a no-parking zone. When she gets to court, she discovers that she forgot to bring an important file. Fortunately, the judge delays the start of the trial until Amy is prepared to proceed. (Canadian judges are super nice!) T.S. Turner tells Amy not to worry.
“Even good guys have a bad day!” he tells her.
Amy’s day is just about to get worse because, upon leaving the courthouse, she discovers that her car has been towed! She goes from lot to lot, trying to find who towed her car but everyone tells her the same thing. None of them towed a ’78, black VW convertible. Amy tracks down the only witness to the car being taken, a 14 year-old named Sydney (Tara Strong). Sydney is an aspiring journalist and she declares that Amy’s car getting stolen “could be the story that I’ve been waiting for!”
Amy finally returns to the office and, after snapping at administrative assistant Sophie, Amy says, “Pokey’s been stolen!”
“Why would any want to steal Pokey?” Sophie asks.
“It’s a classic! They just don’t make cars like that anymore!” Amy shouts.
“Easy, Amy,” T.S. says, “If it’s stolen, I’ll find it for you.”
Amy, however, is determined to find the car herself. T.S. objects and points out that he’s the private investigator and that Amy is the attorney who is due in court on several important matters. In a move that would get an American lawyer disbarred, Amy tells T.S. to handle all of her court stuff while she looks for her car. She then thinks that she sees Pokey being driven past the office so she runs outside and chases after it, yelling, “That’s my car!”
Somehow, 14 year-old Sydney figures out that Amy’s car has been taken to a chop shop. While Amy takes an adolescent that she barely knows into a potentially deadly situation, T.S. Turner goes to court and plays the role of lawyer. Fortunately, he’s able to get yet another continuance, which is a bit anticlimactic when you consider the potential of Mr. T playing someone pretending to be an attorney.
While T.S. potentially ruins her client’s life, Amy and the teenage girl who she has known for less than a day break into a criminal-controlled junkyard so that they can search for her car. As I watched Amy and Sydney sneak around the auto yard, I found myself wondering if Sydney had parents and if they knew that she was putting her life at risk to help an attorney find a VW convertible named Pokey.
Fortunately, T.S. gets out of court in time to head down to the junkyard, toss around the car thieves, and help Amy rescue her car from being smashed. Unfortunately, even after knocking out the thieves (“Goodnight, brother,” T.S. says.), T.S. is still not able to prevent Amy from accidentally destroying her car while trying to figure out how to lower it from the junkyard crane.
“It’s okay, Amy,” T.S. says, “So what if you’re not a good detective?”
“It was just a car,” Sydney says.
“THERE’S NO OTHER CAR LIKE THAT IN THE WORLD!” Amy yells at the teenager who risked her life to help a total stranger.
Presumably because he doesn’t want to have to spend the rest of his life listening to Amy complain about her car, T.S. buys Amy a new black VW convertible.
In the past, I’ve wondered why this show usually only focuses on one of the T’s. Now I understand that it’s because Amy Taler, the other T, is an incredibly annoying character who will risk other people’s lives and not even say thank you afterwards. This episode featured too many scenes of Amy yelling about her car and not enough scenes of T.S. gruffly telling people to stay out of his way. I mean, I love my car too but I’m not going to force a stranger to break into a chop shop with me to search for it. I’d probably ask my sisters to do it.
Anyway, let’s move on.
Episode 1.12 “Killing Time”
(Dir by Dan McCutcheon, originally aired on March 21st, 1998)
“On this week’s episode,” Mr. T tells us, “Amy and I get put on full alert when an escaped killer come back in town, seeking revenge.”
Years ago, Joe Nichols (played by Geza Kovacs, a favorite of David Cronenberg’s) was convicted of murdering his ex-wife’s new husband. The key testimony in the case against him was given by his five year-old daughter, Wendy (Mairon Bennett). And who was the prosecutor who sent Joe to prison? Amy Taler!
Yes, apparently Amy was prosecutor before she went into private practice. It’s kind of interesting how the show is continually revealing contradictory details about Amy’s past, almost as if the show’s writers were making up the character as they went along. Amy tells T.S. that the Nichols case was the last she prosecuted before switching sides. Joe Nichols was a viscous killer and he needed to be taken off the streets so I’m not sure why the Nichols case would be the one that would lead to Amy resigning from the prosecutor’s office.
Anyway, Joe escapes from prison and returns to whatever Canadian city T and T is supposed to take place in. The cops think that Joe is coming for his daughter but T.S. thinks that Joe is actually after Amy and decides to stake out Amy’s apartment so that he can beat up Joe when he shows up. And that’s what happens.
Seriously, that was pretty much the entire episode. That 30-minute run time pretty much guaranteed that T and T would always keep everything direct and to the point. Geza Kovacs is as menacing in this episode as he was as Greg Stillson’s bodyguard in Cronenberg’s adaptation of The Dead Zone. But it’s hard not to regret that this episode lacked the usual T.S. Turner quips. Other than yelling at a cop for calling him and “interrupting my cookie break,” T.S. didn’t have many memorable lines in this episode which, to me, defeats the whole purpose of casting Mr. T as a private investigator.
Well, that’s two disappointing episodes of T. and T! Hopefully, next week will be a return to form for both the show and T.S. Turner.
As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly live tweets on Twitter and Mastodon. 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 10 pm et, #FridayNightFlix has got 1992’s Diggstown! When James Woods teams up with Lou Gossett, Jr., it’s time for boxing action!
If you want to join us this Friday, just hop onto twitter, start the movie at 10 pm et, and use the #FridayNightFlix hashtag! It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.
Diggstown is available on Prime and Tubi! See you there!
Today is Oliver Stone’s birthday so, for all conspiracy-loving readers, here is a key scene from Stone’s 1991 film, JFK! In this scene, Kevin Costner’s Jim Garrison meets the mysterious man known as X (played by Donald Sutherland). X explains the conspiracy to Garrison.
This scene certainly convinced a lot of people. Personally, I think Oswald acted alone but one cannot deny Stone’s talent as a filmmaker.
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!
129 years ago today, the great French film director Jean Renoir was born in Paris! The son of Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Jean would go on to become just as revolutionary a force in the world of cinema as his father was in the world of painting. Today, in honor of the birth and legacy of Jean Renoir, here are….
4 Shots From 4 Jean Renoir Films
Grand Illusion (1937, dir by Jean Renoir, DP: Christian Matras)
The Rules of the Games (1939, dir by Jean Renoir, DP: Jean-Paul Alphen, Jean Bachelet, Jacques Lemare, Alain Renoir)
The Southerner (1945, dir by Jean Renoir, DP: Lucien N. Adroit)
The Woman On The Beach (1947, dir by Jean Renoir. DP: Leo Tover and Harry J. Wild)
John Carpenter’s Suburban Screams is an upcoming horror anthology, in which “true” tales of horror are dramatized. I’m not really sure how involved John Carpenter really is with the production but his name in the title is enough to ensure that I’ll be watching the premiere on October 13th.
The trailer for Aquaman and The Lost Kingdom dropped today. Much like the first Wonder Woman, the first Aquaman was one of the few DC films that felt worth the effort to sit through. Will the second Aquaman film continue that tradition or will it be more like the second Wonder Woman? We’ll find out soon enough.
Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Thursdays, I will be reviewing South Central, which aired, for 10 episodes, on Fox in 1994. The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!
This week, James Mosely returns to South Central!
Episode 1.5 “Men”
(Dir by Stan Lathan, originally aired on May 10th, 1994)
Because Tasha has a babysitting job and Andre is sneaking out of the house so that he can check in on Nicole, Joan finally has a night to herself. She goes next door, where Sweets (Paula Kelly) is throwing a party. Sweets thinks that Joan should hook up with Dr. Ray McHenry (Ken Page), who is Andre’s mentor and who also brings in a $100,000 a year and who is also obviously in love with Joan.
Joan, however, is more interested in Isaiah (Michael Beach), who is a local food distributor who comes to the Co-Op on a daily basis and demands to be paid for the food that he’s dropped off. Isaiah and Joan start talking and Joan is impressed to learn that Isaiah is also an independent building contractor and that he manages two apartment buildings. When Joan mentions that there are still cracks in her bedroom from the last earthquake, Isaiah offers to come over to her house and take a look at them. Joan takes him up on his offer.
Just when Joan and Isaiah are starting to get romantic, Tasha comes home from babysitting and see Joan and Isaiah kissing. Tasha, who still believes that her father is going to come back into her life at any minute, gets upset and runs out of the house. (As the child of divorced parents, this scene hit pretty close to home for me.) Tasha does eventually return, as does Andre. They both demands to know how Joan could bring some other man into the house. Andre shouts that Joan should stop leading on Ray. (Ray, of course, is standing in the room when he does so.) Joan tells both of her children that her personal life is her business and that she doesn’t owe them any explanations.
Of course, the next day, Joan tells Isaiah that she doesn’t feel like she can get into a relationship with him or anyone else. Her life is too complicated. Isaiah promises to wait until it’s less complicated.
This episode was a good example of what made South Central far more interesting than other sitcoms. Joan loves her children and she has sacrificed a lot to take care of them. But, as this episode shows, she’s not always happy about that fact. Having gotten married young and also having had to drop out of college after her divorce, Joan feels that she’s missed out on a lot of experiences. At the same time, I can understand why both Tasha and Andre felt upset. Andre doesn’t want anyone taking his role as “man of the house,” (though it’s not a role for which Andre is well-suited) and Tasha doesn’t want anyone replacing her father. And then you have poor old Ray, who is the nicest character on the show and who, if we’re going to be honest, allows himself to be taken advantage of by both Joan and Andre. None of the characters are all good or all bad. Instead, they’re all very human.
That said, this episode suffers a bit because Michael Beach, who is normally a very good actor, gives an oddly stiff performance as Isaiah. He’s handsome enough that it’s believable that Joan would want to invite him back to her room but the character doesn’t really have enough of a personality for one to feel that Joan is missing out by not having a long-term relationship with him.
Episode 1.6 “Dad”
(Dir by Stan Lathan, originally aired on May 17th, 1994)
Tasha is celebrating her 14th birthday but she’s not happy. She’s not happy about the decorations that Joan has hung in the backyard for her party. (“It looks like Deion did them,” she snaps about the decorations that Joan was up until four in the morning preparing.) She’s not happy when she discovers that the meat for the hamburgers was purchased at the Ujamaa co-op. (I agree. Co-op food is the worst.) She’s especially not happy because she has yet to receive a present in the mail from her father, James. Andre says that she’ll be grown and working at the post office herself before she ever receives anything from their father. Joan is upset over Tasha’s resentful attitude but she keeps repeating, “It’s her day.”
As opposed to his sister, Andre is happy because Nicole comes to the party with her friend, Candi (Madlina Williams). Though Andre’s friend, Rashad, originally dismisses Nicole as being “bougie,” he changes his mind as soon as he sees Candi. As for Nicole, she seems to be excited about finally seeing Andre’s house but it’s hard not to feel that Rashad has a point. In many ways, Nicole comes across like the type of rich activists who are convinced that they know what it’s like to struggle because they spent a week “living the wage.”
Halfway into the party, Tasha and Andre’s father, James (Glenn Plummer), shows up in the backyard. While Tasha is overjoyed to see her father, neither Joan nor Andre are happy to see him. James turns out to be very charismatic and soon, for everyone but Andre, he’s the life of the party. He even manages to get Joan to dance with him. When two gang members show up, uninvited, and nearly get into a fight with Andre, James is the one who is able to talk them into leaving the party. Everyone treating James like a hero is too much for Andre and the two of them argue. James accuses Joan of not properly raising Andre and says that Joan only cares about money and material things. James reveals that it was Joan who kicked him out of the house and demanded a divorce. James also suggests that Joan’s bad parenting is what led to Marcus’s death. Joan slaps James and orders him to leave but then she can only watch in horror as Tasha leaves with him.
Six hours later, Tasha returns home. When Joan asks Tasha what she and her father did for six hours, Tasha just says that they talked and had dinner and that they returned one of Joan’s presents so that James could use the money to buy a new jacket for Tasha. Joan says that Tasha can love her father but it would be nice if she could occasionally show some appreciation for everything that Joan does for her on a daily basis. The episode ends with the sound of Tasha sobbing.
Happy birthday!
Once again, I found myself very much relating to Tasha in this episode. On the one hand, it’s easy to see that, underneath James’s charm, he’s basically an immature man who can barely take care of himself. Tasha has idealized him, largely because she doesn’t have to deal with him on a day-to-day basis. He’s just someone who sends her gifts and tells her that her mother is the reason why they can’t be a family. At the same time, Joan may want to be thanked but how often has she thanked Tasha for taking care of Deion? Joan has sacrificed a lot for her kids but Tasha is often expected to sacrifice a lot as well. Andre gets away with everything because no one expects him to be responsible. Tasha, meanwhile, is expected to always be the responsible one. In the end, both James and Joan are guilty of making Tasha’s birthday about themselves instead of allowing it to be about Tasha.
That’s a pretty heavy theme for a sitcom but that’s what set South Central apart from other shows of the era. It’s also probably the main reason why South Central only lasted 10 episodes. As well-acted and well-written as this episode is, it’s still a birthday episode that ends with a 14 year-old girl sobbing in her living room. There’s not a laugh track in the world that’s going to lessen that pain.
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, Gopher sings!
Episode 3.6 “Gopher’s Greatest Hits/The Vacation/One Rose A Day”
(Dir by Alan Rafkin, originally aired on October 13th, 1979)
What a pleasant cruise this turned out to be!
Two sisters, Joan (Joanna Cassidy) and Olivia (Jaye P. Morgan), are apparently regulars on the boat. They sail so often that Captain Stubing literally jumps for joy when he sees that they are once again on the ship. Joan and Olivia always take the cruise together and usually, they have a wild time. But this year, Olivia is shocked when Joan shows up with her husband, Byron (Conrad Janis)! Byron is a bit uptight and not at all happy when he starts to hear stories about how wild his wife and sister-in-law have gotten in the past. He assumes that Joan has cheated on him. She hasn’t but Olivia has cheated on her husband. In the end, Olivia continues to have fun and Joan decides that it’s time to settle down. This story suffered a bit because Byron came across as being insufferably self-righteous but Joanna Cassidy and Jaye P. Morgan were believable as sisters. As someone who has enjoyed a wild vacation or two with her sisters, I could relate.
Meanwhile, Janet Latham (Martha Scott) is taking her first vacation since the death of her husband. Her florist, Henry (Don Ameche), is also on the cruise. Every day, during their marriage, Janet’s husband would have Henry deliver a single white rose to Janet. After her husband died, Henry continued to deliver the roses to Janet. He allowed Janet to believe that her husband had arranged for her to continue to receive the daily roses but it turns out that Henry has been delivering them on his own because he’s fallen in love with her. Janet does fall in love with Henry on the ship, though she fears that she’s betraying her husband’s memory. Fortunately, by the end of the cruise, she’s ready to take another shot on love. This story worked wonderfully, largely due to the sincere and heartfelt performances of Martha Scott and Don Ameche. There was a tremendous amount of sincerity to their love story and it was impossible not to smile at the sight of them leaving the cruise together.
Finally, Julie has a problem! The singer that she scheduled to perform in the Acapulco Lounge gets the mumps and has to cancel at the last minute. Julie has to find a replacement. Fortunately, it turns out that Gopher has a great singing voice. He performs at the Lounge, wearing a pink tuxedo and acting like a drunk brat packer. The audiences loves him. The captain, once skeptical, applauds. Gopher thinks that they love his singing but actually, they all think that he’s parodying a bad lounge act. When the captain congratulates Gopher for being a brilliant comedian, the crestfallen Gopher says that he’s only going to sing in the shower from now on. So, Julie arranges for a fake shower to be placed in the middle of the Acapulco Lounge so that Gopher can sing Danny Boy while Isaac holds a watering can over his head. Again, the captain loves it. This was undoubtedly a goofy storyline but goofiness was Fred Grandy’s strong suit and it’s hard not to smile at his over-the-top interpretation of Mack the Knife.
This was a good episode that really showed how much fun The Love Boat could be at its best. From the sentimental Don Ameche/Martha Scott storyline to Fred Grandy dancing around the pool, this was an entertaining cruise.
