Hi, everyone! Tonight, on Mastodon, I will be hosting the #TubiThursday watch party! Join us for the original Red Dawn (1984)!
You can find the movie on Tubi and Prime and you can join us on Mastodon at 9 pm central time! (That’s 10 pm for you folks on the East Coast.) We will be using #TubiThursday hashtag! See you then!
Red Dawn (1984, dir by John Milius, DP: Ric Waite)
Today is Jane Campion’s birthday and today’s song of the day comes from Michael Nayman’s beautiful score for her best film, 1993’s The Piano.
Today, the Shattered Lens wishes a happy birthday to Gal Gadot.
Perhaps not surprisingly, today’s scene that I love comes from the film that made Gadot a star worldwide, 2017’s Wonder Woman. Steve Trevor thinks that no one can cross No Man’s Land. Wonder Woman (played, of course, by Gal Gadot) is going to prove him wrong.
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, the Shattered Lens wishes a happy 70th birthday to cinematic provocateur, Lars Von Trier!
It’s time for….
4 Shots From 4 Lars Von Trier Films
Europa (1991, dir by Lars Von Trier, DP: Henning Bendtsen,
Edward Kłosiński, Jean-Paul Meurisse. Released as Zentropa in North America)
Breaking the Waves (1996, dir by Lars Von Trier, DP: Robby Muller)
Dogville (2002, dir by Lars Von Trier, DP: Anthony Dod Mantle)
Melancholia (2011, dir by Lars Von Trier, DP: Manuel Alberto Claro)
by Paul Rader
This cover is from 1967.
Cannonball was the biggest hit for one of the best bands of the 90s, The Breeders. And the song’s music video was one of the best that ever played on MTV. According to Kim Deal, this song was inspired by the Marquis De Sade. Thanks to this video, most of us will always associate this song with the Deal sisters having fun in rehearsal, Josephine Wiggins showing off her cool professionalism, and Jim MacPherson beating the Hell out of those drums.
This video was directed by Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon and a young up-and-comer named Spike Jonze. This was Jonze’s first music video.
Enjoy!
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 1st and Ten, which aired in syndication from 1984 to 1991. The entire series is streaming on Tubi.
This week, OJ’s in trouble!
Episode 3.12 “Of Scalpers and Superstars”
(Dir by Bruce Seth Green, originally aired on December 9th, 1987)
O.J. Simpson gets arrested!
Okay, technically, OJ Simpson is not the one being arrested. He’s just playing TD Parker, the Bulls’s general manager. TD is the one who is arrested at the end of this episode after being framed for stealing 5,000 ticket to the Championship Game and selling to a ticket scalper. Still, as is so often the case with this show, the casting of OJ Simpson does bring a while new layer to the action of meaning to the action onscreen.
Who framed TD? The answer is Dolph Crane (Forry Smith), a former player who was cut from the team. Dolph has never appeared on the show before but, judging from what TD says when he sees Dolph hanging around the stadium, it seems that Dolph was cut last season. One of the things that I’ve noticed about 1st & Ten is that new characters will often pop up out of nowhere and people will act as if they’ve been there the whole time. Dolph appears to be one of those pop-up character. Dolph mentions that he’s now dating TD’s former mistress. Dolph and the owner of Arizona’s team are the ones who conspire to take out TD. Hopefully, they didn’t plant a bloody glove anywhere in the office.
The Bulls are going to the Championship Game …. again! Maybe they’ll actually win this time. This is their third trip to the game, after all. It’ll be kind of sad if they win without Coach Denardo, though. Coach Grier just isn’t as much fun as foul-mouthed Ernie Denardo.
The entire team gets mad at Yinessa. After getting injured during a game, he decides that he needs to make as much money as possible so he allows his agent (Bobby Hosea) to promote him as being the “star” of the team. The rest of the team feels that isn’t fair. The thing is, though …. Yinessa is kind of the star. He’s the quarterback. If he has a bad day, the team doesn’t win. The Bulls are a bunch of crybabies. When they find out that a team music video is being reimagined as a Yinessa music video, they literally look like they’re about to break down in tears. No wonder they always lose the Championship Game.
This episode ended wth the Bulls heads to the Championship and OJ heading to jail. That seems about right. Good luck to the team!
Back in the day, The Guvnors were one of the most feared and powerful firms around. Based in London, this group of football hooligans were famous for the brutality of their fights. More than 20 years later, they’ve all retired from hooliganism and, more or less, gone on to live normal lives. (One of them is a cop!) Their former leader, Mitch (Doug Allen), preaches non-violence and worries about his son copying his past mistakes. When he runs into the former members of a rival firm at a soccer game, he makes a point of shaking hands with them. The past is over.
When young drug dealer Adam (Harley Sule) takes over a London manor estate, he is eager to fight the former members of the Guvnors so that he can establish that he and his gang are now in charge of the neighborhood. Mitch tries to ignore him until a former Guvnor, Mickey (David Essex), is murdered in his home. Mitch gets the old firm back together again for one last brawl.
Also know as Hoodies vs Hoodlums, The Guvnors is gritty but contrived, with action that plays out at a slow pace while managing to hit just about urban gang movie cliche imaginable. There was a lot of potential to the idea of Mitch getting the old gang back together again but it doesn’t happen until nearly an hour into this 95-minute movie so, with the exception of a sepia-toned flashback, we don’t really get much of an idea of who these people were in the past. Doug Allen project quite authority as Mitch but rapper Harley Sule (credited here as Harley Sylvester) is unimpressive in the role of Adam. He doesn’t come across as being a dynamic enough leader to take over a manor estate, let alone defeat a group of middle-aged football hooligans.
Despite a premise with a lot of kick, The Guvnors misses the goal.
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!
Set sail for adventure, your heart on a new romance….
Episode 7.17 “Aunt Emma, I Love You/Hoopla/The First Romance”
(Dir by Don Weis, originally aired on January 21st, 1984)
This episode is just silly.
Sid Casear and Rose Marie play newlyweds who are on their honeymoon cruise. The only problem is that Rose Marie has brought along a picture of her Aunt Emma, who never approved of Sid Caesar. Aunt Emma always wanted to go on a cruise but having her picture around is seriously cramping Sid Caesar’s style.
Teenage Philip McKeon is expecting to meet his father (Bert Convy) on the boat. Instead, he meets Convy’s secretary (Irena Ferris). Son and secretary fall for each other. The only problem is that the secretary has already fallen for the father! And soon, the father is on the boat as well!
That said, neither one of those stories really matter. This episode’s main focus is on the Harlem Globetrotters, who are taking the cruise to Mexico, where they’re supposed to play an exhibition game. Isaac’s friend (Darrow Igus) is the manager of the Globetrotters and he’s already sold a lot of tickets to the game. Unfortunately, when the stadium is flooded, the game is cancelled. It looks like Igus is going to be broke and fired. Wait a minute — what if the Globetrotters play a game on the boat? And what if the other team is made up of the Love Boat crew!?
Uhmm …. would that really be a workable solution? I mean, imagine that you spent a lot of money to see a basketball game in a stadium. Now, imagine being told that the game will instead take place in a small dining room on a cruise ship and that one of the teams is going to be exclusively made up of middle-aged white people, with the exception of one unathletic teenage girl. I might not demand all of my money back but I would probably ask for at least half of it.
Needless to say, the Globetrotters win the game. The Love Boat band plays a really sad-sounding version of Sweet Georgia Brown. The whole thing is just odd.
As I said, it was a very silly cruise.
In the sprawling, often grimy landscape of underground comics, few characters have managed to carve out as distinct—or as controversial—a niche as Cherry, the perpetually eighteen-year-old protagonist born from the mind of cartoonist Larry Welz. Originally debuting in 1971 under the moniker Cherry Poptart, the character became a fixture of counter-culture erotica, eventually settling into a self-titled series that would span decades. Welz’s work was instrumental in helping to usher in the vibrant, anarchic underground comics movement in San Francisco during the tumultuous social and political landscape of the 1960s and 1970s. Engaging with Cherry today is an exercise in complex appreciation; it is the definition of a “guilty pleasure,” a work that exists at the intersection of satirical wit, overt hedonism, and a stylistic homage to the quintessential American comic book aesthetic.
At the core of the series’ appeal is the striking contrast between its visual presentation and its mature, often raunchy subject matter. Welz famously adopted an art style that directly mirrored the work of Dan DeCarlo, the legendary artist who defined the iconic look of the Archie comics. By utilizing the clean, “happy teenager” lines of mid-century Americana—often associated with the wholesome, classic adventures of Riverdale—and infusing them with unrestrained, sex-positive, and frequently explicit content, Welz created a powerful visual dichotomy. This deliberate juxtaposition of a quintessential teen comic aesthetic with an adults-only narrative creates a jarring, transgressive experience that makes the work particularly effective as a guilty pleasure. There is an undeniable, subversive thrill in seeing character designs that evoke the innocent charm of Betty or Veronica placed in scenarios that would have sent the strict mid-century Comics Code Authority into a tailspin.
The character of Cherry herself is a fascinating, if problematic, focal point. Defined by her insatiable curiosity, liberal attitude, and complete lack of inhibitions, she is less of a traditional narrative character and more of an agent of chaos who wanders through various high-school-adjacent tropes. Because she remains eighteen, the series avoids the weight of traditional character growth, opting instead for an episodic format where the pleasure is derived entirely from the immediate situation—be it a pop-culture parody, a bizarre social commentary, or a sexual escapade. While the series is categorized as erotica, to dismiss it solely as such is to overlook the sharp satirical edge that occasionally pokes through the panels. Fans of the underground and transgressive culture scene often point out that Cherry frequently served as a vehicle for Welz to comment on the broader socio-political zeitgeist of the era. By utilizing the “anything goes” freedom of the underground press, the series tackled issues and social norms that mainstream comics dared not touch, masking biting critiques within its provocative and irreverent framing.
This thematic depth, however, exists in tension with the repetitive nature of the stories. As a guilty pleasure, the series relies on a specific cadence: the setup of a conventional trope, the predictable introduction of sexual absurdity, and the punchline. For the dedicated reader, this repetition is comforting and familiar, but it is also the source of the series’ main weakness. There are moments where the narrative feels like it is running on fumes, and the reliance on sexual shock value can feel stagnant compared to more modern or structurally daring indie comics. Furthermore, admitting to enjoying Cherry in a contemporary landscape is complicated by how the series has—or hasn’t—aged. Much of the humor and the treatment of gender dynamics feel firmly rooted in the specific, often male-gaze-dominated world of mid-century underground comix.
Consequently, it is a work that requires a reader to compartmentalize; one can admire the historical significance of Welz’s contribution to erotic art and the audacity of his stylistic parody while simultaneously acknowledging that the execution of certain themes feels archaic. This is why Cherry remains a quintessential guilty pleasure. It does not aim for the lofty aspirations of a graphic novel masterpiece, nor does it try to serve as a beacon of progressive morality. Instead, it succeeds as a piece of “low-brow” entertainment that is proud of its own transgression. The inclusion of guest work, such as a rare script by Neil Gaiman in Cherry Deluxe, highlights that the series was often respected within its own subculture as a legitimate, if edgy, playground for creative expression.
Looking back, the series acts as a testament to the “anything goes” ethos of the underground press era. While there are certainly other adult-oriented comics that might offer more robust character arcs or sophisticated storytelling, few manage to balance the specific blend of nostalgia, irreverence, and raw, unapologetic hedonism that defines the Cherry universe. It is a series that invites the reader to lean into the discomfort and find humor in the sheer absurdity of the scenarios. For those who enjoy exploring the fringes of comic history, Cherry remains a vital, if occasionally flawed, artifact. It represents a time when comics were a battlefield for free speech and a canvas for uninhibited adult fantasy. As a guilty pleasure, it holds up because it never pretends to be anything other than what it is: a fun, slightly reckless, and undeniably bold experiment in the possibilities of the medium.
Previous Guilty Pleasures
Through the Shattered Lens 