David Bowie was one of the first artists to truly understand the potential power of a good music video and, as can be seen in this video for Ashes to Ashes, he was an early pioneer of the form. At a time when most music videos were just performance clips, Bowie put together a narrative that offered an artistic interpretation of the song’s lyrics and themes and which invited viewers to interpret the song on their own.
The video was largely shot on two beaches in the UK, at Beachy Head and Hastings. Interior scenes were filmed on the set of the Kenny Everett Show. Bowie’s followers were played by the Blitz kids, who were known for frequenting the Blitz nightclub in Covent Garden.
Bowie said that the video was meant to combine the past and the future, which is why Bowie not only appears as an astronaut but also as an Edwardian clown. The scenes with Bowie as an astronaut are, as the lyrics make clear, a reference to Major Tom. The look of the scenes was heavily influenced by H.R. Giger’s work on Alien.
David Mallet would go on to become one of busiest directors of music videos of the 80s, directing videos for Queen, Iron Maiden, AC/DC, and others. David Bowie would also go on to play a huge role in MTV’s history, due to both his videos and his willingness to call out that station’s initial refusal to feature videos from black artists.
As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly live tweets on twitter. 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 9 pm et, Deanna Dawn will be hosting #ScarySocial! The movie? 1983’s Sleepaway Camp!
If you want to join us this Friday, just hop onto twitter, start the movie at 9 pm et, and use the #ScarySocial hashtag! I’ll be there tweeting and I imagine some other members of the TSL Crew will be there as well. It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.
Welcome to Late Night 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 Friday the 13th: The Series, a show which ran in syndication from 1987 to 1990. The show can be found on YouTube!
Agck! Bees!
Episode 2.11 “The Sweetest Sting”
(Dir by David Winning, originally aired on January 16th, 1989)
I have never been stung by a bee or a wasp.
I’m extremely lucky. All of my sisters and all of my cousins have been stung once or twice. My mom was stung multiple times when I was little. But I have never once been stung. I once had a wasp fly straight into my hair and I was able to shake it out without it stinging me. I have had bees land on my bare arm and just sit there without stinging. I once knocked a wasp nest off of a farm doorway and the wasps, while obviously angry, made no attempt to sting me in retaliation. For whatever reasons, the wasps and the bees have decided not to mar my beautiful skin with any of their stingers and I appreciate them for that.
Of course, I’m also very scared that they might someday change their mind. I have no idea what it feels like to be stung but I know it’s painful. On a more serious note, I have no idea whether or not I’m allergic to bees or wasps. I appreciate their kindness but I’m still terrified of their capriciousness.
That’s why this somewhat silly episode of Friday the 13th freaked me out. I say silly because it was about McCabe (Art Hindle), a psycho beekeeper who kept all of his bees in a cursed hive. Whenever he would unleash the bees, the cheap special effects were so bad that it would have made me laugh if not for the fact that I’m already scared enough of innocent bees. Imagine how I feel about cursed ones!
The bees produced cursed honey that can be used to restore the youth of people who allow themselves to be stung by McCabe’s bees. (Because they’re magic bees, they don’t die after stinging someone. I always understood that stinging someone caused a bee to be ripped in half so I’m not sure how the magic works but whatever. I actually kind of feel bad for bees now.) However, the people who accept McCabe’s youth treatment have to have a constant supply of honey and McCabe needs a constant supply of dead bodies so that his clients can fake their own deaths. So, McCabe orders his clients to kill if they want to remain young.
To be honest, the whole plot kind of feels like it was made up on the spot but the great Canadian character actor Art Hindle gives an amusingly over-the-top performance as McCabe. McCabe is the type of villain who laughs whenever he’s thinking about doing something evil. There’s nothing subtle about Hindle’s performance but it works in the contest of the episode’s overall absurdity. The bees are obviously fake. Art Hindle chews up every piece of scenery he can get his hands on. The episode’s a lot of fun.
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.
Mister Who?
Episode 2.15 “Mr. Swlabr”
(Dir by Warner Shook, originally aired on January 28th, 1990)
11 year-old Roy Barton (Robert Oliveri) spends all of his time in the basement of his house, playing with his train set and making dinosaur figurines. His mother (Kate McGregor-Stewart) is abusive. His older sister (Danielle Ferland) is spoiled and self-centered. Roy doesn’t have a friend in the world and has never gotten over his father abandoning the family when he was younger.
One day, Roy opens a box of cereal and finds a small dinosaur toy. Roy puts the toy in water and it comes to life. Mr. Swlabr (voiced by New York performance artist Rockets Redglare) says that he’ll be Roy’s friend and promises that he’ll never leave. Awwwww! Roy’s evil mother tries to drown Mr. Swlabr with a hose but the water just causes Mr. Swlabr to grow into an even bigger dinosaur. Mr. Swlabar spits a bunch of green goo on Roy’s sister. It doesn’t hurt her but it does convince her and her mother to do whatever Roy tells them to do.
This was an odd episode. It played out like a particularly macabre fairy tale, with Roy finally getting a friend who was big enough to bully everyone who was previously bullying him. It had its moments. I teared up a bit when Roy begged Mr. Swlabr not to abandon him the way that his father did. But, in the end, the hand puppet dinosaur was a bit too silly to be an effective monster.
Probably the most interesting thing about this episode was the casting of Rockets Redglare as the voice of Mr. Swlabr. From the 1970s up until his death in 2001, Rockets Redglare was a fixture of the New York underground. He was a comedian, a performance artist, and eventually a character actor. He worked as a drug counselor while, at the same time, delivering drugs to people like Jean-Michel Basquiat and Sid Viscous. He was reportedly the last known person to have seen Sid and his girlfriend Nancy Spungen alive and he was a suspect when Nancy was later found dead. According to Phil Strongman’s PrettyVacant: A History of Punk, Redglare later told his friends that he was the one who had murdered Nancy. That said, musician Howie Pyro later said that Redglare was notorious for making up stories to get attention. (For their part, the police focused their investigation on Sid Viscous, who they claimed confessed despite the fact that Viscous was also too drugged out to really remember much of anything. The main lesson here: Stay away from the heroin.) Redglare went on to become a bit of an underground celebrity, appearing in movies directed by Jim Jarmusch, Stee Buscemi, and Olive Stone. (He played himself in Julian Schnabel’s Basquiat). Redglare died at the age of 52, saying in his final interview that everything he did, he “did to excess.” RIP, Mr. Swlabr.
Welcome to Late Night 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 Baywatch Nights, a detective show that ran in Syndication from 1995 to 1997. The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!
This week, Donna’s got a knife!
Episode 2.11 “Possessed”
(Dir by David W. Hagar, originally aired on February 2nd, 1997)
A notorious serial killer dies when a prison bus is struck by several cars. His blood gets on several of the people present at the accident and, as a result, he starts possessing them person-by-person. He inhabits a body, commits several murders, and, once his current body expires, he moves on to the next person.
For instance, lifeguard Donna DiMarco was on the scene of the accident and soon, she finds herself putting on sexy lingerie, grabbing a knife, and driving around in search of young hitchhikers to seduce and kill. Oh no! That’s not the Donna that we all know. Fortunately, Mitch and Ryan realize what’s happening and Mitch is able to track Donna down before she kills her first hitchhiker. The killer’s spirit flees Donna’s spirt and possesses its next victim.
Ray Reegun (Robert Ginty) is a cop who was one of the first people on the scene of the accident. When he becomes possessed by the killer, he immediately heads down to Mitch’s office and kidnaps Ryan. While Mitch tries to find them, Ray takes Ryan to an abandoned movie theater and tells her about all of the great movies that have premiered at the theater.
“Is this you or is this the killer?” Ryan asks.
It seems like a strange question to ask. I mean, does it really matter? Ray is possessed by a serial killer and is holding Ryan prisoner. So, whether it’s Ray or the killer who is into the movies really doesn’t seem that important. Bad people can like movies too, after all. And Ray’s married so if he’s the one flirting with Ryan at the theater, that’s not a good thing.
Fear not, though. Mitch is able to save both Ryan and Ray. It’s left ambiguous as to whether or not the evil spirit has truly been defeated after it leaves Ray’s body. The episode actually ends with Ryan and Mitch leaving to check on another person who was at the accident so who know? We know that Mitch went back to being a lifeguard after the end of this season but we don’t know what happened to Ryan. Maybe she’s still running around the country, trying to track down that spirit.
It’s an interesting idea. I liked the idea of the spirit jumping from person-to-person and the idea of the spirit moving in the order of the people who arrived at the scene of the accident predates the Final Destination films. The first half of the show, which featured Donna trying to kill that hitchhiker, was enjoyably absurd, But the stuff with Ray and Ryan got bogged down with Ray giving that endless monologue in the theater. Watching this, one gets the feeling that whoever wrote the episode lost intrest about halfway through. Not even the presence of Robert Ginty can liven things up.
Oh well. Next week — two Vikings come back to life and they’re mad! Woo hoo!
As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly live tweets on twitter. 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 9 pm et, Tim Buntley will be hosting #ScarySocial! The movie? 2010’s The Wolfman!
If you want to join us this Friday, just hop onto twitter, start the movie at 9 pm et, and use the #ScarySocial hashtag! I’ll be there tweeting and I imagine some other members of the TSL Crew will be there as well. It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.
Welcome to Late Night 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 Friday the 13th: The Series, a show which ran in syndication from 1987 to 1990. The show can be found on YouTube!
This week, we’ve got the saddest episode of Friday the 13th yet!
Episode 2.10 “Night Hunger”
(Dir by Martin Lavut, originally aired on January 9th, 1989)
As a young boy, Michael Firono was constantly told by his father, Dominic (Nick Nichols), that he should always play to win and that, if he lost, it was because he was a wimp. Needless to say, once Mike became a teenager, he did not have a great relationship with his father. Seeking an escape from his abusive household, Mike spend all of his time at the local antique store where, on his 16th birthday, the store’s owner, Lewis Vendredi (R.G. Armstrong), gave him a special silver chain.
Mike (played by Richard Panebianco) has grown up to be an angry young man. He always wears the chain around his neck. Hanging on the chain is the key to his car. Mike loves to race his car and, far from being the loser that his father claimed he would grow up to be, Mike cannot be beat. His car is amazingly fast and Mike is incredibly (one might even say supernaturally) skilled behind the wheel. His main goal is to defeat his childhood rival, Deacon (Real Andrews), who is now a street racer himself. Deacon is hesitant to race Mike, precisely because Mike seems to be so driven to win that racing with him can be even more dangerous than usual. To Deacon, street racing is fun. For Mike, it’s an obsession.
Of course, Mike has a secret. As long as he’s wearing the silver chain, he can’t be defeated. But he has to kill people and dip the key in their blood for the chain to work. Jack, Micki, and Ryan set out to reclaim the silver chain but an accident results in both the chain and the key being absorbed into Mike’s body. With the chain and the key now sitting next to Mike’s heart, Mike’s eyes not only glow red but his car seems to have a mind of its own….
This is another one of those episodes of Friday the 13th where the villain is himself a victim. Even before he met Lewis and received the silver chain, Mike was doomed. His abusive father left Mike feeling so insecure and so obsessed with winning that there was really no way Mike wasn’t going to end up snapping eventually. In the present day, Dominic finally understands how much he hurt Mike and he feels guilty about it but it’s too late to undo the damage that’s been done. Like a pusher befriending people most likely to get addicted to his product, Uncle Lewis saw Mike as someone who would easily succumb to a cursed antique. Mike becomes addicted to using the key and that leads to him doing a lot of bad things. But the real curse here is not the silver chain but instead Mike’s abusive childhood. Mike never had a chance.
This is a genuinely sad and well-acted episode, with Mike’s obsession eventually destroying him. As happen so often with this show, Ryan and Micki are left with the knowledge that, while they can reclaim the cursed objects, they can never repair the damage that they’ve done.
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.
Episode 2.14 “Bed and Boar”
(Dir by Sara Driver, originally aired on January 21st, 1990)
Traveling salesman John Dennis (a young Steve Buscemi) just wants to get a good night’s rest in a sleazy motel but, unfortunately, the couple in the room next to his is making a racket. A woman and a man are fighting and yelling at each other. “Bitch! Bitch!” the man seems to be yelling. Finally, the woman (Jodie Markell) leaves her room, runs through the stormy night, and ends up in John’s room.
John take one look at the woman in her white nightgown (which has gotten soaked in the rain) and decides that he has absolutely no problem with her staying in his room. He has no problem with her removing her wet nightgown and wrapping herself in the sheets of his bed. The only problem that John has is with her husband (Charles Kay-Hune), who not only tries to break into the room but also has the head of a boar.
You would think that would be enough to convince John to find another motel but instead, after chasing off the board husband, John spends the night with the woman. John declares that he’s falling in love with the woman. When her husband literally tears down a wall to get at them, John fights off and kills the woman’s boar-headed husband.
And it’s only then that it occurs to John that the woman might be a witch (“He wasn’t yelling bitch, he was yelling….”) and that maybe she was the one responsible for turning her husband into a pig. (Someone has obviously never read The Odyssey.) Of course, by this point, John is himself starting to turn into a pig.
The good thing about this episode is that it features a young Steve Buscemi, playing one of his trademark quirky characters who never knows when to stop talking. The bad thing is that the episode doesn’t really give Buscemi much to do, other than be an idiot. Since it was obvious, to me, that the woman was a witch and that she was the one who turned her husband into a boar, I spent the entire episode waiting for some sort of a surprise twist. I was waiting for John to reveal that he was a warlock or a werewolf or a vampire or anything other than just a salesman in a motel room. But that never happened. As a result, the whole story felt rather pointless.
On the plus side, the husband was frightening. The show did a good job with the boar makeup because I I did jump a little when that thing came bursting into the room. This was a case where the monster was better than the story.
Welcome to Late Night 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 Baywatch Nights, a detective show that ran in Syndication from 1995 to 1997. The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!
This week, the threat comes from space!
Episode 2.10 “Space Spores”
(Dir by Richard Freidman, originally aired on January 19th, 1997)
Having completed another intergalactic mission, the Space Shuttle Discovery returns to Earth. Of course, when I say Earth, what I actually mean is America because we all know which country is the most important around here.
Unfortunately, the Discovery also spreads a bunch of “space dust” over a small farm in California. It wasn’t intentional on the part of the Space Shuttle crew. Those people are saints! Instead, it’s just one of those accidents that happens. The problem is that space dust is a lot more dangerous than Earth dust. Earth dust can trigger asthma attacks (believe me, I know), while space dust can cause animals to explode.
At first, the government shows up at the farm, all decked out in their HAZMAT gear. A few days later, Daimont Teague drags Mitch and Ryan out to the farm so that they can take another look. Daimont doesn’t bother to give either Mitch or Ryan a HAZMAT suit and he also doesn’t bother to tell them what exactly they’re looking for. He says he wants them to keep their minds fresh but I think it’s more a case of Teague just being a dick. I mean, why would you task a lifeguard with investigating space dust?
While Daimont goes off to meet with his connections in the government, Mitch and Ryan investigate the farm. They discover that the space dust has caused a lot of animals to explode. They also discover the farmer is dead but his young daughter, Katie (Ashley Buccille), has survived. Unfortunately, when the family dog explodes, Ryan and Katie end up covered in space dust. Now, Mitch and Griff (who shows up because he apparently has nothing better to do on a Sunday night) have to get Ryan and Katie to a decompression chamber before the space dust causes them to explode. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of evil government types who are more worried about the public learning about the space dust than they are about saving the lives of Ryan and Katie.
I was kind of surprised by how much this episode depressed me. It was entirely due to the exploding animals. We only actually see a rat and then the dog explode but apparently, a cat explodes off-screen and so do several other animals. I always get upset when bad things happen to animals on shows like this. For whatever reason, I don’t really seem to care that much when the same thing happens to a human being. Some of that’s because I’ve seen all the other human beings on other shows. I was glad that Angie Harmon didn’t blow up because Angie and I are both Texas girls and we vote the same way. But even if Mitch hadn’t been able to save Ryan, I know that Angie would have still gone on to appear on Law & Order and Rizzoli & Isles after this show ended. Whereas with animals, I don’t have that reassurance.
This episode, I didn’t really like. I appreciated the anti-government theme but all of the exploding animals just weren’t for me.
Through the Shattered Lens 