Retro Television Reviews: A Very Brady Christmas (dir by Peter Baldwin)

Posted on December 18, 2022 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 Sundays, I will be reviewing the made-for-television movies that used to be a primetime mainstay. Today’s film is 1988’s A Very Brady Christmas!

In A Very Brady Christmas, America’s creepiest family reunites for the holidays.

Mike and Carol Brady (played by Robert Reed and Florence Henderson, of course) have finally got their house to themselves! The children have all moved out. A few have even gotten married and started families of their own. Mike is still an architect, though he now has a mustache that, along with his gray hair, makes him look more like a retired porn actor.

With Christmas approaching, Mike and Carol have each been secretly saving up their money to give the other a trip. Carol knows that Mike loves Greece. Mike suspects that Carol would love to go to Japan. In the end, though, they realize that they would much rather have the entire family come together for Christmas! They buy tickets for everyone. Of course, what they don’t know is that each of the Brady kids has an issue of their own.

For instance, consider the youngest of the Brady kids. Cindy isn’t even herself anymore, mostly because Susan Olsen declined to return for the reunion and Jennifer Runyon was cast in her place. Cindy is away at college and she’s upset that she has to cancel her plans to go skiing just so she can spend the holidays with her family. Meanwhile, Bobby (Mike Lookinland) has dropped out of college so that he can race cars on the NASCAR circuit but he hasn’t told his parents yet! Of course, if Bobby never tells them, he can just keep pocketing that sweet, sweet tuition money.

Meanwhile, Peter Brady (Christopher Knight) is upset because his girlfriend is his boss and she makes considerably more money than he does. Jan (Eve Plumb) is secretly separated from her husband but, because it’s the holidays, they agree to pretend to still be together so that Mike and Carol don’t get upset. Greg (Barry Williams) has grown up to be a smarmy doctor but he is upset that his wife will not be joining him for Christmas with his parents. And Marcia (Maureen McCormick) is trying to keep everyone from discovering that her loser husband has lost his job.

And let’s not forget Alice (Anne B. Davis)! Alice finally married Sam The Butcher but their marriage is on the rocks….

Could the Bradys be more cursed?

Luckily, Mike and Carol are pretty good at uncovering problems and fixing things. (Except, of course, for that time that Mike never figured out that Marcia was acting strange because she wanted to surprise him with his father of the year prize….) Unfortunately, Mike is a bit distracted because his latest building was constructed with cheap material. When an earthquake causes the building collapse, Mike takes it upon himself to rescue two trapped workers. (Most of this takes place off-screen, of course.) When an aftershock hits, it seems like Mike might never emerge from the tomb that he helped to design.

Much like the show that inspired it, A Very Brady Christmas is painfully earnest and …. well, it’s a little dumb. Of course, the main appeal of The Brady Bunch was always the unapologetic mix of earnestness and stupidity but it’s a bit different when all the Brady kids are grown up and they’re still acting just as dumb as they did when they were younger. Robert Reed looks annoyed. Florence Henderson is trouper and gives it her all. With the notable exception of Maureen McCormick, none of the kids grew up to be particularly good actors. (In all fairness, Barry Williams is likable when he makes fun of himself but, in this film, he’s somewhat stiff as the most successful of the Brady kids.) That said, the family singing a Christmas carol while waiting to discover whether or not Mike is dead is one of those moments that is somehow both silly and effective at the same time. It’s pure Brady Bunch. To quote Tony Montana, it’s the yayo of nostalgia.

A Very Brady Christmas aired in 1988 and was enough of a rating success that it actually led to the Brady Bunch being (briefly) revived. Today, it’s impossible to watch the movie without imagining Gary Cole and Shelley Long as Mike and Carol Brady. Even the collapse of the building is no longer an effective dramatic moment due to it being referenced in The Brady Bunch Movie. When Mike does emerge from that collapsed building, you half expect him to say, “Wherever you go, there you are.”

In the end, the Bradys have a merry Christmas. I hope you have one too!

Film Review: Fang (dir by Richard Burgin)

Posted on December 17, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Poor Billy.

Billy (Dylan LaRay) lives in Chicago and, at first glance, he’s typical of the many anonymous young men who we see everyday, working in dead-end jobs and just trying to make it day-to-day without having to deal with too much trouble. Billy works at a meatpacking plant, for a condescending boss who brags about being able to pay his daughter’s Princeton tuition while, at the same time, telling Billy that he needs to work harder sweeping up the place. “Do you think my daughter got into Princeton by taking sick days?” the boss asks, not seeming to realize that Billy will never be going to Princeton regardless of how many hours he spends pushing his broom around the warehouse. Indeed, Billy dropped out of school a few years ago. His mother, Gina (Lynn Lowry of I Drink Your Blood and Crazies fame), is suffering from Parkinson’s-related dementia and Billy is constantly rushing home to check on her. Billy never knows if he’s going to be embraced or attacked when he steps through his front door. Billy takes a daily regimen of pills to keep his mind stable. He obsessively washes and sanitizes his hands. He needs everything to be in its proper place but he lives in an increasingly chaotic and unpredictable world.

The one thing that Billy has going for him is that he’s an artist. He’s created an entire fictional world through his drawings, one in which a group of people escape from a dying Earth but then continue to make the exact same mistakes in their new home. His mother’s maid, Myra (Jess Paul), even suggests that Billy should try to get his work published but Billy is resistant. His art is his escape and, though it’s never specifically stated, one gets the feeling that it’s an escape that he wants to keep only for himself. If Billy ever gets out of this world, he’s not planning on taking anyone along with him.

Billy is haunted by the things that he sees as he walks to and from work. Death, whether represented by a dead rodent under a car or by the run-down neighborhood in which he lives, seems to be all-around. After a rat invades his room and bites him, Billy is rushed to the hospital and, despite his frantic protests, he’s injected with the rabies vaccine. (The film’s use of rabies and it’s close-up of a hypodermic needle piercing Billy’s skin will remind some viewers of another Lynn Lowry film, I Drink Your Blood.) Whenever Billy is alone, he sees a hole growing on his arm, one that is full of coarse hair, almost as if there is something living within Billy’s skin. Fang mixes Cronenbergian body horror with visions of Romero-style urban decline. Billy’s Chicago is almost as run-down and bleak as Romero’s Philadelphia was in Martin. The stark imagery leaves little doubt that Billy, at the young age of 23, has basically advanced as far as he’s going to advance in the world. He’s hit a dead end and Billy’s sudden visions of open wounds, vacuous comedians, and rats would seem to suggest that, if there is another world out there, it’s not much of an improvement on the one in which Billy is leaving. Much like the characters in his artwork, Billy is trapped in a never-ending cycle of mistakes and decay.

Fang is a well-directed, well-acted, and well-visualized portrayal of life on the fringes of society, one that captures both the timeless theme of loneliness and the uniquely paranoid atmosphere of today. Though the COVID fears of the past two years are never explicitly mentioned, it’s hard not to think of them as Billy obsessively washes and sanitizes his hands and as he panics over getting the rabies shot. Billy, like so many people today, feels lost and powerless and even his fantasy of escape is tempered by the knowledge that a fantasy can still go wrong. Dylan LaRay does a good job of capturing Billy’s fear and his anger and Jess Paul is sympathetic as one of the few people to actually cares about what Billy and his mother are going through. Lynn Lowry steals the film, playing Billy’s mother as someone who is both frightening and heart-breakingly sad. Much like Billy, she’s no longer is control of her fears and her actions. Fang is a film that captures the horrors of everyday life.

Avatar: The Way of Water (dir. by James Cameron)

Posted on December 16, 2022 by Leonard Wilson

James Cameron is still out there, trying to push the envelope.

My showing of Avatar: The Way of Water was not only 3D, but in HFR (High Frame Rate), which threw me for a loop. The only other movie I’ve ever watched on a large screen in HFR was The Desolation of Smaug and what was by mistake. The underwater scenes in the film are a sight to behold, but your eyes and mind need to adjust to it. HFR is that thing Christopher McQuarrie and Tom Cruise warned us all about earlier this year, the feature on most modern tv’s that enable a ‘smoothing’ effect. Films that normally look grainy are suddenly “live” under the HFR. It works really well for nature shows and sports events, and with a land as lush as Pandora, it’s good if you know what it is. I’m just not sure how well that will translate for audiences at home or for individuals who are new to it all. I can’t even begin to know what the underwater shooting was like for this film. James Cameron is known to be hard on his cast & crew. Ed Harris supposedly decked him once on the set of The Abyss and Mary Elizabeth Mastratonio once walked off set after they had a film issue on one point. I want to say that whatever they went through for The Way of Water seems to have paid off, but the state of movie theatres overall may have something else to say about that.

There were maybe only 3 people in my 3pm showing, and they seemed to stay for it. I know Cameron wants to save it all, but I feel the theatre experience is still dying. That’s a discussion all it’s own, but not here and now.

The Way of Water finds us having moved on some years after the events of the first film. Jake (Sam Worthington, Man on a Ledge) and Neytiri (Zoë Zaldaña, Guardians of the Galaxy) have a family of five now, living amongst the Omaticaya clan of Na’vi in the lands they moved to since losing Hometree in the first film. The boys, Neteyam (Jamie Flatters, Black Dog) and Lo’ak (Britian Dalton, Ready Player One) are like teenage Marines in training, dutifully following their dad’s orders up until the point where curiousity gets the best of them. The daughters, Kiri (Sigourney Weaver, Aliens) and little Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss), take a bit after their mom in some ways. There’s also Spider (Jack Champion, The Night Sitter), a young human who is close to Kiri. When humans return to Pandora, the Sullys find themselves once again under attack and on the run, colonization being the big bad it always was. Jake’s just trying to protect his family as best he can, something any parent can relate to. This takes them to a separate water based Na’vi tribe that takes them in and shows them their way of life. That, I really enjoyed. Though I’m mostly a loner at heart, seeing families and communities gel and work together plucks all the right heartstrings for me. There’s nothing that good teamwork can’t resolve and the story keeps circling that with Cameron’s “Family as a Fortress” theme.

If the Saw Movies taught us anything, it’s that you can always expand on a single story with fillers. They took one film, and weaved tons of side points without damaging the main thread. The Fast & Furious films did the same, making sure to keep the continuity, while adding additional content in between. Cameron had four other writers on board along with himself – Shane Salerno (Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem), Amanda Silver (War of the Planet of the Apes), Rick Jaffa (Dawn of the Planet of the Apes), and Josh Friedman (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles). With The Way of Water, I felt they were pretty successful at doing the same. The film even plants a few seeds here and there for future installments, should Cameron get the green light to go forward with his other 3 films.

If the plot suffers from any problems, it’s that they also took a page out of the Top Gun: Maverick flight manual in following the first film’s flow a little too closely. While The Way of Water has a plethora of new content – vehicles, machines, animals, locales – the story still moves along the path of the first film, making it just a little predictable. I was able to call out two scenes before they occurred. Other than those moments, I spent most of the film either really worrying about the Sully family – they’re outgunned, after all – and marveling at the views.

The editing is also a little weird. I understand this is a big undertaking, but some of the cuts between scenes seemed really abrupt to me, as if someone said…”This scene is out to explain this..you got it?! Good! Moving on to the next…” ..while the audience is still frantically taking notes on what just happened. At 3 hours and 12 minutes (just 11 minutes longer than Avengers: Endgame), there’s a lot to see, but I felt the pacing was okay. If there’s any part of the movie that could be used for a bathroom break, there is an extended sequence with a whale-like creature that could be your best opening. The movie might require more than one viewing to take it all in, but perhaps this is Cameron’s plan all along. One never truly knows.

The sound in The Way of Water was good. Explosions are sharp, animal sounds are cute and the hissing/wailing of Na’vi are clear (though strangely annoying after a while – we get it, you’re in pain or angry, ). The one element I was concerned with was the music. With James Horner’s passing in 2015, those shoes would be a little hard to fill. I originally hoped that Marc Streitenfeld would get the nod, based of his work on Prometheus. Composer Simon Franglen picks up where Horner left off, having worked together on the original Avatar score. Franglen knocks it out of the park, with a score that pays homage to Horner’s work while still making it his own sound.

The Way of Water introduces some new characters and cast. In addition to those previously mentioned, we also have Kate Winslet (Titanic) and Cliff Curtis (Sunshine) as the leaders of the Water Na’vi. Bailey Bass (Claudia in AMC’s Interview With the Vampire) plays their daughter, who helps to train the Sully children. Edie Falco (Nurse Jackie) is on board as a General charged with operations on Pandora. Jermaine Clement (What We Do In The Shadows) is also on hand as a marine scientist. Although everyone’s performances are good, the movie really belongs to the Sully children, with Weaver’s Kiri being the standout. Kiri’s a great character, reminding me a lot of Jinora from The Legend of Korra, and her story arc might be the best one of the lot.

Overall, Avatar The Way of Water is some serious eye candy. You might feel a little sad coming back to Earth after all the wonder Pandora has to offer. Disney could go wild on the merchandizing on this if they wanted (and they probably will). It manages to drop a number of surprises and information on the audience, though the overall trip may be a little too similar to the first film. I’m hoping Cameron gets the 3rd film set.

Retro Television Reviews: Born Innocent (dir by Donald Wyre)

Posted on December 11, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Fresh off of her Oscar-nominated role in 1973’s The Exorcist, 15 year-old Linda Blair starred as Christine “Chris” Parker in Born Innocent.

Chris is a 14 year-old who has frequently been caught running away from home. When you consider her home life, it’s easy to understand why she keeps running away. Her father (Richard Jaeckel) is quick to lose his temper and obviously has no clue how to relate to a teenage daughter. When he gets angry at Chris, he beats her. Chris’s mother (Kim Hunter) spends all of her time smoking cigarettes, watching TV, and refusing to acknowledge what Chris is going through. Chris’s older brother (Mitch Vogel) has escaped from their abusive home but he’s now got a family of his own and there’s no room for Chris. With no other options available to her, Chris resorts to frequently running away from home. In the eyes of the system, this makes her both a delinquent and a repeat offender. However, as quickly becomes apparent, Chris is very naïve and hardly a criminal. Instead, she’s just someone trying to escape a terrible situation.

After getting caught once again, Chris is sent to a juvenile detention center. Unfortunately, because of overcrowding, Chris is sent to one of the toughest centers, one where she is surrounded by people who have done a lot more than just run away from home. Everyone knows that Chris doesn’t belong at the center but there’s no where else to send her. With the exception of one teacher (played by Joanna Miles), the staff is too overwhelmed to look after Chris. Meanwhile, the other inmates see Chris as being an easy victim and they start to bully her. Eventually, Chris loses her innocence and becomes just as ruthless and angry as her former victimizers.

Born Innocent is often described as being an exploitation film and, indeed, one can just look at the artwork at the top of this review and see how the film was advertised when it was eventually released on video. That said, the film itself may be undeniably melodramatic but there’s also a sincerity and a sensitivity to it that sets it apart from other women in prison films. Born Innocent is all about how the System creates criminals. From the start of the film, it’s obvious that being locked up is the last thing that Chris needs. Instead, Chris just needs someone to be willing to listen to her but the System would rather just toss her in juvenile hall and then forget about her. Only Chris’s teacher cares about her but, by the time they actually meet, it’s already too late for Chris. She’s already been tossed into a situation where the only thing that matters is survival. Born Innocent is controversial for a scene in which Chris is attacked by several other inmates and sexually assaulted with with a plunger. It’s a shocking scene and I can only imagine have television audiences in 1974 reacted to it. In this scene and the scenes that immediately follow, Linda Blair gives a harrowing performance that captures the emotional trauma of what Chris has been put through. It’s not easy to watch and that’s the point.

Unfortunately, Blair is a bit less convincing during the second half of the film, in which Chris becomes progressively more and more cold-hearted. The idea is that Chris, in order to protect herself, becomes just as intimidating as the girls who attacked her. Unfortunately, the vulnerability that made Linda Blair ideal for The Exorcist and the first half of this film also make it difficult to take her seriously as cold-hearted sociopath. During the second half of the film, Blair tries so hard to come across as being tough that she never convinces us. Later, in films like Savage Streets, Blair would become one of the toughest badasses around but, in this film, she still come across as being essentially born innocent.

Holiday Spirit: The Greatest Store In The World (dir by Jane Prowse)

Posted on December 5, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Here to help you get in the holiday spirit, we’ve got a British film from 1999!

The Greatest Store In The World tells the story of a single mother and her two daughters. When the film begins, they’re living in a van but, after the van catches on fire, they upgrade things by moving into a luxurious London department store. Along with coming together as a family and celebrating the holidays, they also thwart an attempt to rob the store. It’s a good-natured little movie, one that reminds the viewer of how fun the world could be before the rise of COVID-fueled authoritarianism. It was filmed in Harrods, though the name itself is not actually uttered in the film. Fans of Doctor Who will want to keep an eye out for Peter Capaldi while fans of larger-than-life actors will be happy to see the great Brian Blessed.

(I should admit that, when I was little and my family was constantly moving from one state to another and I was always having to say goodbye to whatever new friends I had made, I used to fantasize about living in a big mall. Perhaps that’s one reason why this sweet-natured film brought a tear to my mismatched eyes.)

Enjoy!

Retro Television Reviews: Return of the Rebels (dir by Noel Nosseck)

Posted on December 4, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Mary Beth Allen (Barbara Eden) used to be the wife of the leader of Rebels, Arizona’s toughest motorcycle gang. She’s now a widow and she operates a Colorado River campground. Her teenager daughter, Amy (Deanna Robbins), has got a crush on a local boy named K.C. Barnes (Patrick Swayze) and that’s a problem because K.C. is kind of a jerk.

Every weekend, K.C. and his gang descend on the campground and proceed to have a good time, redneck-style. They set up a few kegs of beer. They water ski. They play loud music. They get into fights. They drive their vans all over the property. They are so disruptive that Mary Beth is losing customers. For reasons that are not quite clear, the police refuse to help her. For some reason, K.C. seems to be determined to drive Mary Beth out of business. And when I say “for some reason,” what I mean is that there’s absolutely no reason for K.C. to be as obnoxious as he is. It’s not like he owns a rival campground or anything. He’s not going to gain a thing by running Mary Beth out of business. K.C.’s only motivation seems to be that he’s a jerk. Unfortunately, he’s played by a young Patrick Swayze, who was a bit too likable to be believable as someone who would be a jerk just for the Hell of it. Swayze smirks and sneers and laughs whenever Mary Beth yells at him but, up until the last few moments of the film, he still comes across more as being an overgrown teenager who is too dumb to realize how annoying he’s being than a true villain. When K.C. does suddenly reveal himself to be a true villain, it’s a bit jarring. It’s like seeing the neighborhood bully suddenly pick up a gun and rob a bank. Swayze’s character was definitely bad but he didn’t seem that bad,

Regardless of K.C.’s level of villainy, his antics are threatening to put Mary Beth out of business. She goes into the city and pays a visit on Sonny (Don Murray). Sonny used to be a member of the Rebels. Now, he’s a fairly successful auto mechanic. He’s also always been in love with Mary Beth. When he finds out that Mary Beth needs help, he decides that it’s time to get the old Rebels back together so that they can put some young punks in their place.

The problem, of course, is that some of the old Rebels are really, really old. Al Williams (Robert Mandan) was once the most fearsome dude on a motorcycle but now he sells used cars and collapses after he’s challenged to run down to the end of the street. Mickey Fine (Jamie Farr) is now more concerned with taking care of his family than riding motorcycles. Jay Arnold Wayne (Christopher Connelly) is a wealthy businessman who …. well, he doesn’t get much of a personality beyond that. “Wild” Bill Karp (Michael Baseleon) is still wild but he’s also middle-aged and out-of-shape.

Can Sonny get the gang back together before K.C. takes over the campground? And even if he can, will he able to gather enough former Rebels to take on K.C.’s surprisingly large gang? Seriously, when K.C. and his gang show up at the campground, K.C. appears to be leading a convoy. It’s almost as if the entire population of Arizona is following K.C. around for the weekend.

As you may have already guessed, Return of the Rebels struggles to find a consistent tone. On the one hand, the battle between the old bikers and the young rednecks is a dangerous one and the film tries to generate some suspense over whether everyone will survive. On the other hand, the film’s cast is full of sitcom veterans who often deliver their lines as if they’re waiting for a laugh track to punctuate their point. On the one hand, Patrick Swayze’s gang is supposed to be dangerous. On the other hand, they’re Patrick Swayze’s gang. For a bunch of delinquents, it seems like all they really want to do is spend the weekend water skiing and drinking beer. Obviously, beer and motorboats don’t always go well together but Swayze and his friends still never come across as being quite as dangerous as they’re supposed to be.

Return of the Rebels is a film about getting old. The members of the Rebels have all found success but all of them are nostalgic for their days of being “outlaw” bikers and they get one final chance to show everyone what they can do. It’s not a bad theme but again, the film can never quite make up its mind how seriously it wants us to take either the Rebels or Swayze’s gang. It’s a bit of a mess. That said, the scenery was gorgeous and I’m enough of a country girl that I definitely got a little thrill out of watching scenes of various pickup trucks and vans driving through the river. I have a weakness for rebels and reformed bikers. It’s an amiable film, even if it doesn’t make much sense in the end.

Cleaning out the DVR: Dirty Little Secret (dir by Linda-Lisa Hayter)

Posted on December 2, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

On the outside, Joanna (Melissa John Hart) and her 17 year-old daughter, Lucy (Lizzie Boys), seem like they have a good life.

Joanna is a nurse who is beloved by both her patients and her co-workers. She works hard and she often worries about money but she is also responsible for saving lives. One of her former patients, Drew (Edward Foy), has even fallen in love with her and is pursuing a relationship with her. Drew is nice, considerate, and a financially stable. He seems like he would be anyone’s dream but Joanna is hesitant about getting close to him or anyone else.

Lucy is a smart student and a talented artist and her guidance counselor thinks that she should apply to F.I.T. in New York City. When Lucy says that she’s not sure that she could afford it, she is assured that she could probably get a scholarship or a grant. Lucy has a close friend named Kaylie (Pavia Sidhu) and a potential boyfriend named Josh (Wern Lee) and she should be looking forward to a great future. Instead, she’s spending all of her time making up excuses to keep people from coming by her house.

Joanna and Lucy share a secret. Joanna is a compulsive hoarder. Her house is so cluttered that she can’t find a thing. While Joanna watches home improvement shows and talks about all of her plans for the future, Lucy struggles to find room to sleep. Lucy is forced to take showers at school because Joanna couldn’t find the water bill. When Lucy tries to secretly throw away some bubble wrap, Joanna catches her and yells, “What about if I want to send gifts!?” The clutter is so terrible that Joanna is constantly struggling with her asthma.

It easy to cast Joanna as the villain here but, as the film makes clear, both she and Lucy have been abandoned by the rest of their family. Joanna’s husband walked out years ago. Lucy’s older sister, Sara (Samantha Hodhod), refuses to come by the house or even talk to Joanna but, at the same time, she expects Lucy to put all of her plans on hold so that she can take care of their mother. Everyone has given up on Joanna but Lucy is convinced that she can somehow fix things. It ultimately leads to tragedy and leaves the audience wondering if anyone in the family ever really had a chance.

This is one dark Lifetime movie.

I have to admit that, though I’m compulsively clean and organized, I always have a bit of sympathy for hoarders. When you grow up in an unstable household, it’s easy to put a lot of importance in the things that you own because those are the thing that aren’t going to abandon you. Even the simplest or most mundane items can come to represent either a good memory or hope for a better future. I’ve seen a few episodes of Hoarders and I always despise the family members who yell at the hoarder for not throwing stuff out. What the people yelling don’t understand is that those possessions are often the only source of comfort and stability that a hoarder has. Throwing stuff away means throwing away memories and hope. (The other reason why I don’t like it when people yell on Hoarders is because they’re usually only yelling to show off for the cameras. People will ignore a problem for years and then try to play the hero as soon as a television crew shows up.) Myself, I have a sentimental attachment to just about everything I own. Fortunately, I also have a storage unit.

Melissa Joan Hart does a good job playing Joanna, who alternates between pretending that everything is normal and flying into a rage whenever she can’t find something in the house. Lizzie Boys is also effective as Lucy, who has been unfairly burdened with not only protecting the family’s secrets but also with taking care of her mother. At the end of the movie, it’s obvious that both characters deserved to be treated better than they were. Both characters sacrifice their chances for happiness in order to keep the family secrets. It makes for an effective and sad Lifetime film, one that will hopefully inspire a little compassion for not only the hoarders but also the people who try to take care of them.

What Lisa Marie Watched Last Night #224: Ice Road Killer (dir by Max McGuire)

Posted on December 2, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Last night, I watched Ice Road Killer on the Lifetime Movie Network!

Why Was I Watching It?

It had been a while since I had last watched a Lifetime movie and, with this year soon to come to a close, I figured that last night would be a good time to start catching up.

What Was It About?

While on her way to pick up her daughter from college, Helen (Sarah Allen) nearly runs over a young woman named Carly (Zoe Belkin). Carly claims that she’s stranded. Because the roads are icy and a heavy snow is falling, Helen agrees to give Carly a ride to wherever Carly is going. Needless to say, Helen’s daughter, Lauren (Erica Anderson), is not amused.

Of course, what Helen doesn’t realize is that Carly and her boyfriend, Boyd (Connor McMahon), are planning on robbing her. But what Carly and Boyd don’t realize is that they are being followed by a psycho trucker (Michael Swatton), who is looking for revenge.

What Worked?

For a Lifetime film, Ice Road Killer had some effectively scary moments and some creepy locations. (The motel where Helen, Lauren, and Carly initially attempted to spend the night was memorably run-down and it brought back some memories of my own childhood road trips.) The ice, the snow, and the howling wind all added up to create an otherworldly atmosphere and Christopher Guglick’s original score was appropriately ominous.

Michael Swatton was wonderfully creepy as the psycho trucker.

What Did Not Work?

A huge issue that I had was that Carly and Boyd’s robbery scheme never made sense to me. Instead of just robbing Helen when she first stopped to pick up Carly, Boyd instead followed behind Helen and Carly while they drove down the icy road. If you’re going to rob a random driver, it seems like it would make more sense to just do it and make a run for it instead of dragging it all out.

Another issue that I had was with the idea that anyone, in the year 2022, would actually pick up a hitchhiker, especially someone like Helen who had reason to not trust people in general. I get that the weather was bad but still, it seems like a stretch that Helen would give Carly a ride, arrange for Carly to spend the night in a motel with Helen and her daughter, and then leave Carly — a total stranger — alone with the $500 that Helen could not afford to lose.

You always have to be willing to suspend your disbelief when it comes to Lifetime films, that’s usually a part of the fun. This film just asked you to suspend it even more than usual.

“Oh my God! Just like me!” Moments

I am a fairly compassionate person and I do believe in helping those in need but there’s no way in Hell that I would ever pick up a hitchhiker, regardless of how bad the weather conditions are. If I see a person stranded on the side of the road, I might feel bad for them but I’m still not going to let them get in my car. I might encourage someone driving behind me to pick them up but I’ve seen too many horror films to make that mistake myself. So, I couldn’t relate to that part of the film.

However, I also don’t drive well in cold weather. When Helen ran her car off the icy road and nearly ran over Carly, I could totally relate to that.

Lessons Learned

Don’t pick up hitchhikers and by nice to truck drivers!

Heatseeker (1995, directed by Albert Pyun)

Posted on December 1, 2022 by Jedadiah Leland

Directed and co-written by Albery Pyun, Heatseeker takes place in the near future, in the year 2019! The world is a corrupt and dangerous place where the poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer. Corporations are as powerful as governments. (Albert Pyun, prophet.) Each corporation is represented by an MMA fighter because it’s not enough that a corporation provide a needed good or service. Their fighters also have to be able to win tournament after tournament.

Chance O’Brien (Keith Cooke) is a world champion fighter who is unique because he fights without corporate sponsorship and he is also not a cyborg. While every other fighter has been “enhanced,” O’Brien remains all-natural. Evil CEO Tsui Tung (Norbert Weisser) wants to show off his newest fighter, Xao (Gary Daniels). Tung arranges for Chance’s girlfriend and trainer to be kidnapped as a way to force O’Brien to travel to New Manila and take part in the ultimate fighting tournament. Tung’s plan is for Xao to defeat Chance while the entire world is watching. Chance just wants to rescue his girlfriend, even if she is now being forced to train Xao.

Heatseeker, I watched in memory of director Albert Pyun. Pyun was the master when it came to movies about cyborgs entering MMA tournaments and Heatseeker is typical of his films. The plot is incoherent but no one is watching for the plot. The fights are the attraction and Pyun doesn’t waste too much time before getting into them. Gary Daniels and Keith Cooke may not have been the best actors but they were pros when it came to fight scenes and they both give it their all as the work their way to their inevitable final confrontation. Since all of the fighters, except for Chance, are also cyborgs, that means that each match ends with sparks and exposed stainless steel.

Pyun fans will get exactly what they want out of Heatseeker. Along with the tournament, Heatseeker also features performance from Pyun regulars like Tim Thomerson and Thom Matthews. One thing it does not do is feature anyone seeking heart but you can’t have everything.

Film Review: Don’s Plum (dir by R.D. Robb)

Posted on December 1, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Filmed in 1996 and given a very limited European release in 2001, Don’s Plum is a micro-budget indie film. It’s about a group of young friends who meet up at a diner called Don’s Plum and spend the entire night talking to each other. It’s filmed in grainy black-and-white and the majority of the dialogue is improvised. The main characters continually let us know that they’re friends by referring to each other as “bro.” There’s a lot of conversations but none of it adds up to much. In many ways, it feels typical of the type of indie films that were inspired by the early work of Richard Linklater and Kevin Smith. Unfortunately, it’s not a particularly good or interesting film.

That said, Don’s Plum has achieved a certainly level of infamy due to the fact that two of the talkative friends are played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire. DiCaprio plays Derek, an arrogant, abrasive, and manipulative womanizer. Tobey Magurie plays Ian, a weirdo with a spacey smile. DiCaprio and Maguire were both up-and-coming stars when they filmed Don’s Plum. DiCaprio, who had already received his first Oscar nomination and who had just finished shooting William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, was a year away from Titanic. Maguire was also a year away from his breakthrough role in The Ice Storm. DiCaprio and Maguire not only starred in Don’s Plum but they’re also responsible for the film having never been commercially released in North America.

There’s a lot of conflicting stories about why DiCaprio and Maguire have both attempted to keep the film from being released. DiCaprio’s story is that neither he nor Maguire were aware that they were shooting a feature film. Instead, they thought they were making a short film and the only reason that they even showed up during the two nights of filming was because they were friends with the director, R.D. Robb. The film’s producers, on the other hand, claimed that DiCaprio and Maguire always knew that they were making a feature film and that the reason they objected to the film’s release was because they were embarrassed by how much personal information they revealed while improving. The truth is probably somewhere in between.

Of course, it’s also possible that DiCaprio and Maguire didn’t want the film to be seen because the film kind of sucks. The dialogue is tedious, the film’s pace is painfully slow, the grainy black-and-white cinematography is dull, and the film’s soundtrack is so muddy that it’s difficult to understand what the characters are actually talking about. Playing a total douchebag, DiCaprio does get to show off his natural charisma but Tobey Maguire appears to be dazed and confused in the role of Ian. To be honest, both DiCaprio and Magurie are outacted by Kevin Connolly, who plays one of their friends and who would later go on to play the only vaguely likable character on Entourage. (Connolly also directed the Brechtian gangster movie, Gotti.) Connolly may not be as showy as DiCaprio or Maguire but his steady presence provides a nice contrast to Maguire’s fidgety mannerisms and DiCaprio’s need to always be the center of attention.

DiCaprio, Maguire, and Connolly are joined by Scott Bloom, playing the boring friend who will sleep with anyone. Jenny Lewis gives a good performance in the role of DiCaprio’s quasi-girlfriend. Amber Benson plays a hitchhiker who is abruptly chased out of the diner (and the movie) by an incredibly obnoxious DiCaprio. At one point, Ethan Suplee wanders through the diner, playing a character who is identified in the credits as being “Big Bum.” Everyone gets their chance to improv a monologue, often while staring at the bathroom mirror. Eventually, DiCaprio’s character reveals a tragic secret from his past and it would have been an effective scene if not for the fact that it comes out of nowhere.

Oh, improv. Improv has led so many directors and performers down the wrong path. It’s an attractive idea, I suppose. Get a camera. Get some of your best friends to visit for the weekend. Shoot a movie! Who needs a script when you can just make it up as you go along. Unfortunately, what’s often forgotten is that improv only works if you have a solid story idea or theme that you can continually return to if and when the improv itself starts to lose focus. Curb Your Enthusiasm is a famous for being improved but all of the improvisations are based on a plot that’s discussed and set in stone ahead of time. Don’s Plum feels more like one of those weird shows that George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh came up with for HBO in the mid-aughts. (Remember that one with the acting class? Frank Langella played a pompous acting teacher named Goddard Fulton and one of his students got a role on One Tree Hill.) Don’s Plum meanders without any real direction, with none of the actors really trying to challenge each other. An improved film like this needs a force of chaos, like Rip Torn provided for Norman Mailer’s Maidstone. Instead, this film can only offer DiCaprio caricaturing his pre-Aviator persona as a hard-partying and often abrasive movie star. (If nothing else, this film shows just how much DiCaprio has benefitted, as both an actor and a public personality, from collaborating with Scorsese.)

Don’s Plum is one of those films that is only well-known because of how difficult it is to see it. But now you can see it on YouTube! You can watch it and then you can ask yourself what all the controversy was about. At this point, I think both DiCaprio and Maguire have proven themselves as actors and allowing for Don’s Plum to get, at the very least, a proper video release wouldn’t hurt the reputation of either one of them. If anything, the best way to get people to forget about Don’s Plum would be to give them to the chance to try to sit through it. There’s nothing about this film that sticks with the viewer, beyond the fact that neither Leo nor Tobey want anyone to watch it.