4 Or More Shots From 4 Or More Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!
Today is William Shatner’s birthday, which means that it is time for….
4 Shots From 4 William Shatner Films
Judgment at Nuremberg (1961, dir by Stanley Kramer, DP: Ernest Laszlo)
Incubus (1966, dir by Leslie Stevens, DP: Conrad Hall)
Big Bad Mama (1974, dir by Steve Carver, DP: Bruce Logan)
The Devil’s Rain (1975, dir by Robert Fuest, DP: Alex Phillips Jr.)
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, for #ScarySocial, I will be hosting 1988’s Zombi 3!
If you want to join us on Saturday night, just hop onto twitter, start the film at 9 pm et, and use the #ScarySocial hashtag! The film is available on Prime! I’ll be there co-hosting 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!
George Foreman was one of those guys who I expected would be around forever.
When I was growing up, I knew George Foreman as the good-natured boxer who would throw punches for 12 rounds and then make jokes immediately afterwards. On HBO, he was usually the commentator who showed the most concern for the well-being of the fighters in the ring. On that infamous night in 1997, when Oliver McCall had an apparent mental breakdown while facing Lennox Lewis in the ring, while the other ring announcers spent their time talking about how bad the night was for the sport and how Don King was destroying the integrity of HBO Boxing, George Foreman was the only one to express any concern about what was happening in Oliver McCall’s head and to say that he hoped McCall would be okay once the fight ended. That made a big impression on me. George Foreman may have fought for a living but he never gave up his humanity.
It was only later that I saw the clips of young George Foreman, fighting Ali in Zaire, and I realized how intimidating Foreman had been before he made his comeback in his 40s. Foreman said that losing Ali in Zaire hurt, both because of the defeat and also Ali’s constant taunting. Foreman, who famously declined to join in the protests when he was on the 1968 U.S. Olympic team, resented Ali’s claim that Foreman was a sell-out. (These were the same accusations that Ali tossed at every opponent that he fought but for Foreman, someone who had struggled with poverty when he was younger and who credited boxing with saving him from a life of crime and prison, they especially stung.) Foreman could have joined Joe Frazier in spending his entire life bitter over his treatment by Ali but Foreman forgave him. When the documentary about the fight, When We Were Kings, won the Oscar for best documentary, Foreman was at the ceremony with Ali and helped his former opponent step up the stairs to the podium.
George Foreman in Zaire
It’s always hard to believe that the scowling and uncommunicative Foreman of the 70s was the same George Foreman who became an American institution, selling the George Foreman Grill and proving that he still had what it took to be a champion at age 45. Foreman credited finding religion with giving him a new outlook on life. At the same time he was making his comeback in the ring, Foreman was working as a minister and working with at-risk youth in Houston. He was a man who found success but he was also a man who gave back.
Foreman didn’t win every fight. He lost to Ali in Zaire and to Jimmy Young in Puerto Rico. After he made his comeback, he lost to Evander Holyfield, Tommy Morrison, and Shannon Briggs. Holyfield and even Morrison won their fights fair and square. (Morrison was booed after he won not because he didn’t deserve the victory but because he was Tommy Morrison.) A lot of people, including me, felt that Foreman was robbed by the judges when it came to the Briggs fight but Foreman accepted the decision with grace. As I get older, I feel more and more appreciation for what George Foreman accomplished. He made a comeback when most people had written him off and he did it with humor and humility.
Yesterday, Big George Foreman passed away at 76. I’ll miss him.
Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a 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 entire series can be found on YouTube!
This week, Johnny screws up, making the type of mistake that Ryan never would have!
Episode 3.7 “Hate On Your Dial”
(Dir by Allan Eastman, originally aired on November 6th, 1989)
This week’s cursed antique is an old car radio from 1954. Smear it with the blood of someone who has just died and the car will transport you back to …. 1954. That seems like an oddly specific curse and a kind of pointless one. What if the car radio ends up in the possession of someone who doesn’t care about 1954?
(And, to make clear, Jack does specifically state that the curse involves going back to 1954.)
The car radio does end up in the possession of Ray Pierce (Michael Rhoades), a racist auto mechanic who uses the car to go back to 1954 so that he can hang out with his father in Mississippi. His father (Martin Doyle) is a member of the Klan, along with his friend, Joe (played, in an early performance, by Henry Czerny). The 1954 scenes are filmed in black-and-white. When the show travels back 1954, the first thing we see is an “I Like Ike” billboard, featuring Dwight Eisenhower and a Confederate flag. Obviously, someone in the show’s Canadian writer’s room didn’t know who supported segregation in 50s and who didn’t. There was a political party wrapping itself in the Confederate flag in 1950s Mississippi but it wasn’t the Republicans and their candidate wasn’t Dwight Eisenhower.
This episode features Johnny making another one of his trademark mistakes, this time selling the cursed radio to Ray’s “slow” brother, Archie (played by Cronenberg regular Robert A. Silverman). Only after Johnny sells it does he realize it was probably cursed. Micki yells at him for not checking the manifest before selling it. Then Jack yells at him too. Jack remains angry with him for nearly the entire episode. It’s understandable that Jack would be upset but then again, maybe they shouldn’t have left inexperienced Johnny alone in the shop in the first place. Maybe they shouldn’t even be selling antiques at all. That would definitely solve the problem.
Anyway, this episode featured some of the worst Southern accents that I’ve ever heard and it also featured a cursed objects that didn’t make much sense. Johnny learned an important lesson about being careful about selling things and I guess that’s a good thing. That said, Ryan never would have made that mistake!
What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable or streaming? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!
If you’re having trouble sleeping tonight, you can go over to Tubi and watch 1992’s Mind, Body & Soul.
Brenda (Ginger Lynn) has a new boyfriend! After years of getting stuck with duds, Brenda is happy to finally be dating Carl (Jesse Kaye), who is handsome and successful and has a thing about wanting her to drip hot candle wax on his body. Everything’s going fine until Carl asks her to come hang out with some friends of his. It turns out that they’re all Satanists and they’re planning on sacrificing a woman. Fortunately, the police arrive before the sacrifice can be carried out. Unfortunately, all the Satanists run off and leave innocent Brenda takes the blame.
After she’s arrested and spends several days in jail, Brenda is finally bailed out by defense attorney John Stockton (Wings Hauser). Because Carl apparently blew up her apartment (and, the police say, himself with it), Brenda doesn’t have anywhere to stay. She accepts John’s offer to stay at his place. John promises to be a perfect gentleman. He’s a former probation officer and he just wants to help.
And Brenda definitely needs some help! She suspects that Carl isn’t really dead. She keeps having bizarre visions of the robed and masked leader of the cult. She suspects that the cult might still be after her and, when she agrees to appear on a local talk show to tell her story, she finds herself stunned to be sitting across from an actual witch. Her former cellmate, Rachel (Tamara Clatterbuck), has just been released from prison and is willing to help Brenda out. Again, Brenda needs the help. The cult is after her and it’s going to take a lot of intelligence to survive and that’s probably going to be Brenda’s downfall because it’s hard to think of a dumber character than Brenda.
(Seriously, if my boyfriend took me to a Satanic cult meeting on a date, I would be out of there before they even got around to the human sacrifice part of the night.)
This film is so incredibly dumb that I don’t even know where to begin. Occasionally, I’ll see an incoherent horror film and I’ll give it a good review because the incoherence can sometimes add to the terror. Two of my favorite directors, Lucio Fulci and Jean Rollin, both deliberately made horror films that didn’t make sense because they were tying to capture the feeling of being in a nightmare. Mind, Body & Soul makes sense as long as you accept that Brenda, Rachel, and almost every other character in this film is mind-numbingly dumb. The plot works as long as you accept that there is not a shred of intelligence to be found amongst any of the characters, including the bad guys. This is a dumb film that is never scary. It does feature a fair amount of nudity, which I imagine was probably meant to be the film’s main selling point.
On the plus side, Wings Hauser is always entertaining. You’ll be able to guess the big plot twist that involves his character but no matter. With his quick smirk, he at least seems to be enjoying himself. As was so often the case, Hauser’s performance is the only one in this film that feels like an actual performance. Wings Hauser was an actor who always gave it his all, even while appearing in something like this.
As a teenager of the late 80’s who was absolutely obsessed with movies, I spent a lot of time in the local videos store in and around Conway, Arkansas. I would meticulously go through their entire inventory. Nobody wanted to go with me to the video store because they knew they were going to be there for awhile. That’s where I first became obsessed with Charles Bronson, and he’s been my obsession to this day, over 20 years after his death.
The video store was a place where I also discovered a lot of other amazing actors. It would always go something like this; I would see a person’s name on a movie that looked good. I would watch the movie and enjoy it. I would go back to the store and notice that person was in a lot more movies. I would then try to watch them all. This pattern started with Bronson, and then moved on to actors like Clint Eastwood, Roy Scheider, Burt Reynolds, Rutger Hauer, and yes, Wings Hauser. On a side note, I always thought it was pretty cool that two of my favorite actors had practically the same name, Hauer and Hauser. The video stores were full of movies starring Hauser that I thought looked good. My preferred box art would generally feature Hauser holding a gun (see picture at the top), and usually with generic sounding titles like DEADLY FORCE (1983), HOSTAGE (1986), NO SAFE HAVEN (1987), DEAD MAN WALKING (1988), and MARKED FOR MURDER (1990). When I rented a movie “starring Wings Hauser” in the 80’s through the early 90’s, I had a pretty good idea what I’d be getting. It would usually be a low budget movie, with some solid action and some sexy ladies, all anchored by a likable and charismatic performance from Wings Hauser. Those are the types of low budget, action movies that I really loved and Hauser did a bunch of him. I know they aren’t great movies, certainly not of the same quality of Hauser’s own best work in movies like VICE SQUAD (1982) and THE SIEGE OF FIREBASE GLORIA (1988), but I enjoyed them so much growing up.
While my favorite Wings Hauser movies featured him as a cop, we watched him in so many different types of roles. I remember our family renting TOUGH GUYS DON’T DANCE (1987). None of us knew what the hell was going on in that movie. Hauser would co-star in movies like BEDROOM EYES II (1989), OUT OF SIGHT, OUT OF MIND (1990), and BEASTMASTER 2: THROUGH THE PORTAL OF TIME (1991). I’d watch them all. Hell, he even directed a graphic slasher flick called THE ART OF DYING (1991). That movie is nuts! No matter the quality of the movie, I always enjoyed seeing Hauser on screen.
When YELLOWSTONE hit it big on TV a few years back, my wife Sierra loved the character Rip Wheeler. Since Rip is played by Cole Hauser, I took that as an opportunity to introduce her to his dad Wings Hauser. I never watch an episode of YELLOWSTONE that I don’t think of Wings Hauser and those old times at the video store. The first Wings Hauser movie I introduced my wife to was VICE SQUAD, but we watched quite a few of his movies over the last couple of years. It has been fun revisiting the films and sharing them with her.
Wings Hauser will always have a special place in my heart, because I spent a lot of time with him. Today, as a tribute to him, I share my story and a scene from DEADLY FORCE. It’s just a fun car chase scene featuring Wings in one of his low budget action movies. This is the Hauser I loved the most. Rest in peace, sir!
First released in 2004, Irish Eyes tells the story of two brother, born eleven months apart.
Tom Phelan (John Novak) is the older brother, the one who is destined to go to law school, join the Justice Department, and to marry Erin (Veronica Carpenter), the daughter of one of Boston’s most prominent attorneys. Tom’s future lies in politics. As he makes his reputation by taking down members of the Boston underworld, he finds himself being groomed for attorney general and then who knows what else.
Sean Phelan (Daniel Baldwin) is the younger brother. Haunted by the murder of his father and stuck at home taking care of his mother (Alberta Watson) while Tom goes to college, Sean soon pursues a life of crime. He falls under the influence of the Irish mob, led by Kevin Kilpatrick (Wings Hauser). Sean quickly works his way up the ranks. It doesn’t matter how much time he does in prison. It doesn’t matter how many people he has to kill. It doesn’t matter if it alienates the woman that he loves or if it damages his brother’s political career, Sean is a career criminal. It’s the one thing that he knows. When Sean finds himself as the head of the Irish mob and also the American connection for the IRA, his activities are originally overlooked by his brother. Sean even threatens a reporter who makes the mistake of mentioning that Sean and Tom are brothers. But soon, Tom has no choice but to come after his brother. What’s more important? Family or politics?
Obviously (if loosely) based on Boston’s Bulger Brothers (Whitey became a feared criminal while brother John became a prominent Massachusetts politico), Irish Eyes doesn’t really break any no ground. Every mob cliché is present here and so is every Boston cliché. Don’t rat on the family. Don’t betray your friends. The only way to move up is to make a move on whoever has the spot above you. Every bar is full of angry Irish-Americans. Every fight on the street turns deadly. Everyone is obsessed with crime or politics. The film, to its credits, resists the temptation to have everyone speak in a bad Boston accent. (The Boston accent, much like the Southern accent, is one of the most abused accents in film.) Sean narrates the films and you better believe he hits all of the expected points about life on the street.
That said, it’s an effective film with enough grit and good performances to overcome the fact that it’s just a wee predictable. Daniel Baldwin is appropriately regretful as Sean and John Novak does a good job of capturing the conflict between Tom’s love of family and his own political ambitions. Curtis Armstrong shows up and is surprisingly convincing as a psychotic IRA assassin. Admittedly, the main reason that I watched this film was because Wings Hauser was third-billed in the credits. Hauser only appears in a handful of very short scenes and that’s a shame. In those few scenes, he has the rough charisma necessary to be believable as the crime boss who holds together the neighborhood and it’s hard not to regret that he didn’t get more to do in the film. That said, the film still works for what it is. It’s a good mob movie.
This film was originally entitled Irish Eyes. On Tubi, it can be found under the much clunkier name, Vendetta: No Conscience, No Mercy.
Through the Shattered Lens 