Retro Television Review: The Love Boat 6.5 “Hyde and Seek/Command Performance/Sketchy Love”

Posted on 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 Wednesdays, I will be reviewing the original Love Boat, which aired on ABC from 1977 to 1986!  The series can be streamed on Paramount Plus!

This week’s cruise is brought to you by Bolivian Nose Candy.

Episode 6.5 “Hyde and Seek/Command Performance/Sketchy Love”

(Dir by Jerome Courtland, originally aired on October 30, 1982)

Gopher dates a 14 year-old!

WHAT!?

Of course, Gopher doesn’t realize that she’s fourteen.  I’m not really sure how Gopher doesn’t realize that because the girl is played by Kim Richards, who was 18 at the time but looked considerably younger.  It should also be noted that the girl is also pretending to be her own fictional older sister and she claims to be 18 but …. eh.  I have a hard time buying that Kim Richards could have convinced Gopher that she was two different people, just because that underbite was pretty hard to disguise.  Even if we give Gopher the benefit of the doubt, he’s still a guy in mid-thirties, dating a teenager while he’s supposed to be working.  I like Gopher but the Captain might have to find a new purser after this.  How to explain Gopher’s self-destructive behavior?  My theory is that he found Julia’s coke stash.

Fear not, though.  It all works out.  The truth comes out.  Kim Richards’s father (played by Dana Andrews) announces that he’s going to spank his daughter.  She’s fourteen, you’re not going to spank anyone, you old weirdo.

Meanwhile, a dude (Skip Stephenson) who looks like he’s been up a few nights on a cocaine binge falls in love with Morgan Brittany but …. uh oh!  He’s married!  Fortunately, his wife wants to divorce him, probably because of all the cocaine.  To me, the funniest thing about this story is that, as soon as he gets on the cruise, he starts spilling his guts to Isaac as if they’re old friends.  Dude, you don’t know Isaac.  It’s a big ship and Isaac’s the only bartender.  Isaac doesn’t have time to just stand there and listen to you whine.  But that’s the thing with cocaine.  It makes you a tad bit self-absorbed.  Trust me, I’ve seen Scarface.  I know about the yayo.

And finally, Dan Rowan plays a comedian who has been hired to perform on the ship.  His ex-wife (Marion Ross) and daughter (Eve Plumb) just happen to be on the boat as well.  Eve Plumb wants nothing to do with Dan Rowan, believing that he abandoned his family.  Dan Rowan uses his act to explain what really happened and to beg his daughter to forgive him.  I have to say that, if I was a passenger, I would be kind of ticked off.  You show up at the Acapulco Lounge, hoping to have a good laugh and suddenly the headliner is crying and delivering this really depressing monologue.  Thanks for ruining my cruise, jerk!  Seriously, how coked up do you have to be to sabotage your career like that?

This was not my favorite cruise but at least Julia’s hair looked better here than it did last week.  To be honest, the entire boat seemed to be coked up this week.  Hopefully, they’ll all go to rehab and next week will be a bit more pleasant.

 

Brad’s “Scene of the Day” – Yancy Butler and Jean-Claude Van Damme in HARD TARGET (1993)!

Posted on by Bradley Crain

Any person who’s read much of my work knows that I love the Hong Kong director, John Woo. Way back in 1993, Woo made his American film debut with the action flick, HARD TARGET. It seemed every great Hong Kong director of the 80’s and 90’s would work with Jean-Claude Van Damme in their career, beginning with Woo here, and then moving on to Ringo Lam in MAXIMUM RISK (1996), REPLICANT (2001), and IN HELL (2003), as well as Tsui Hark in DOUBLE TEAM (1997) and KNOCK OFF (1998). It was almost a rite of passage!

With today being the 55th birthday of the beautiful actress, Yancy Butler, who co-starred in HARD TARGET, I get the chance to share a fun, bone-cracking scene from early in Woo’s American debut! Enjoy my friends, and happy birthday, Yancy!

Late Night Retro Television Review: Pacific Blue 2.9 “Genuine Heroes”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

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 Pacific Blue, a cop show that aired from 1996 to 2000 on the USA Network!  It’s currently streaming everywhere, though I’m watching it on Tubi.

This week, the cast of Pacific Blue gets outacted.

Episode 2.9 “Genuine Heroes”

(Dir by Terrence O’Hara, originally aired on October 20th, 1996)

Pacific Blue makes an unforgivable mistake in this episode by giving a plum guest-starring role to Charles Napier.  When your show is populated by boring regular characters and actors who are distinguished by their almost total lack of screen charisma, the last thing you want to do is bring in a certifiable badass character actor like Charles Napier.  If Lt. Palermo and the bicycle crew seem charmless during a normal episode, just imagine how much worse they look when compared to Napier.

Napier plays Tyrone Justice, a Texas bounty hunter who has come to Santa Monica to track down a bank robber and his girlfriend.  The members of the bike patrol are like, “We’re not going to let you cause any trouble down here,” and it’s kind of hard not to smirk because Tyrone Justice is Charles Freaking Napier.  He wears a leather jacket and carries a shotgun.  The bike patrol wears shorts and those stupid plastic helmets and spends all of their time riding their bicycles.  Like, seriously, shut up, bike patrol.

Meanwhile, VJTV (which I guess is the show’s version of MTV) is shooting on the beach for spring break.  Del Toro has a crush on VJTV personality Ginger Delvecchio (Angelica Bridges).  Cory rolls her eyes whenever Del Toro sees Delvecchio, complaining that Delvecchio’s career is due solely to her sex appeal and how she looks in a bikini.  (This argument perhaps would have worked better if delivered on a show that didn’t open every episode with stock footage of women in bikinis.)  Cory complaining feels out of character.  Usually, Kelly is the member of the bike patrol who is written to be  an annoying straw feminist.  At the end of the episode, Ginger leaves VJTV for a show that is obviously meant to be Baywatch.  Seeing as how Pacific Blue itself is an obvious rip-off of Baywatch, all of the smirks and sighs feel a bit hypocritical.

Anyway, this episode was pretty dumb.  It’s impossible to take people who ride bicycles seriously.  When the bike patrol arrested Charles Napier, I had to laugh.  There’s no way Charles Napier would ever surrender to some douchebag on a bicycle.

 

Brad’s Scene of the Day – Andre Braugher in FREQUENCY (2000)!

Posted on by Bradley Crain

Andre Braugher is one of those actors that just makes everything better. Taken from us way too soon, Braugher passed away back in 2023 at just 61 years of age. You get the feeling that he still had some great work left in him…

Happy Birthday in cinema heaven, Andre! Thanks for all the amazing work! Enjoy this scene between Andre Braugher and Dennis Quaid in one of my all-time favorite movies, FREQUENCY.

Nam Angels (1989, directed by Cirio H. Santiago)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

During the Vietnam War, an American patrol is captured by a German (Vernon Welles) who plans to sell them to the VC.  Only their commanding officer, Lt. Vance Calhoun (Brad Johnson), manages to get away.  When he’s told the the Army can’t spare any men for a POW rescue mission, he instead recruits a group of Hell’s Angels who just happen to be hanging out in Vietnam.  When the Hell’s Angels learn that there’s gold hidden in the caves near the POW camp, they hop on their motorcycles and heard on out.

You might wonder why the Hell’s Angels were in South Vietnam to begin with.  The easy answer is that they were there to raise Hell and spread the legend of their motorcycle club.  The truth is that they were there to win the war for America.  Like many Vietnam films released in the 80s, the main message of Nam Angels is that America could have won if not for the cowardly officers who weren’t willing to rescue our POWs.  America should have listened to Vance Calhoun and the Hell’s Angels.  Meanwhile, the real-life Hell’s Angels sued the filmmakers for trademark infringement.  It doesn’t get more American that!

As for Nam Angels, it has all of the explosions and motorcycles that are promised by the title and, as always, Vernon Wells is a good villain.  Considering the premise, it’s disappointing that Nam Angels proves itself to be a typical straight-to-video war movie but it still features all of the action, torture, and tough talk the fans usually want from these movies.  It ends with a quote from John Milton that doesn’t really have anything to do with the film that we just watched.

This was one of the 104 films that Cirio Santiago directed over his career.  Reportedly, Steven Spielberg was a fan of this one, casting Brad Johnson in Always on the basis of his performance in Nam Angels.  Make good movies because you never know who might be watching.

Retro Television Review: Fantasy Island 6.21 “Remember When….”

Posted on 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 Tuesdays, I will be reviewing the original Fantasy Island, which ran on ABC from 1977 to 1984.  Unfortunately, the show has been removed from most streaming sites.  Fortunately, I’ve got nearly every episode on my DVR.

This week …. oh no!

Episode 6.21 “Remember When”

(Dir by Philip Leacock, originally aired on May 7th, 1983)

After crashing his little car, Tattoo ends up in the Fantasy Island hospital.  Roarke cancels all of the weekend’s fantasies so that he can stay by Tattoo’s side and keep Tattoo cheerful until it’s time for him to have life-saving surgery.  Roarke and Tattoo share memories and …. YEP, IT’S A CLIP SHOW!

Actually, for a clip show, it’s not that bad.  Yes, there’s a lot of awkward dialogue.  “Boss, remember that time Mickey Gilley opened up his place?”  That said, the clips are well-selected and they all feature Herve Villechaize at his best, turning this episode into a Tattoo tribute.  At the end of the episode, Tattoo says that he’s never going to leave Fantasy Island.  Which …. well, we’ll get to season 7 in a few weeks.

Anyway, clip shows are pretty much impossible to review.  Let’s just be happy that Tattoo pulls through.  That accident looked serious!

 

Scenes That I Love: Karen Black Performs in Nashville

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The great actress Karen Black would have been 86 years old today.

Karen Black does not receive a lot of screentime in Nashville but she definitely makes an impression as the driven, self-centered, and oddly likeable Connie White.  (“She can’t even comb her hair” — Connie White on Julie Chrisite.)  Here she is, performing one of the songs that she wrote herself for the film.  The audience was largely made up of actual Nashville residents, who reportedly very much appreciated Black’s performance.