Late Night Retro Television Review: CHiPs 4.8 “Wheels of Justice”

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 Mondays, I will be reviewing CHiPs, which ran on NBC from 1977 to 1983.  The entire show is currently streaming on Prime!

This week, not Ponch can smile his way out of the darkness.

Episode 4.8 “Wheels of Justice”

(Dir by Gordon Hessler, originally aired on December 21st, 1980)

The streets of Los Angeles are dangerous in this week’s episode.

Stan West (Basil Hoffman) is a reckless driver who is constantly causing accidents by driving too fast and making unsafe lane changes.  He gets away with it because he keeps changing his name.

Arthur Holmes (Joshua Bryant) is a drunk who Jon and Ponch have pulled over several times.  Arthur gets away with it by claiming, after every accident, that his wife was the one driving,  Denise (Christine Belford) goes along with it, even though she hates the fact that she’s enabling her husband.

A group of cheerleaders drive around and do their cheers while driving!

Finally, a gas leak at the hospital leads to all the newborn babies being loaded into an ambulance for transport.  When the ambulance is side-swiped by Stan, the babies end up at the station.  Getraer gives everyone a lesson on how to properly soothe a crying baby.  It’s cute but it’s also so manipulative that it leaves you feeling oddly used.  But, hey, at least it’s cute!

This episode of CHiPs took a serious turn towards the end when the drunk driver swerved to avoid the cheerleaders and the end result is that his wife was thrown from the car and killed.  When the car was shown crashing in slow motion, the wife’s mannequin actually fell out of the car.  While I imagine that was probably not planned, it still created a memorably macabre image.  In the end, Arthur ends up sobbing while Denise lies dead just a few feet away from him.  That’s a pretty dark ending for an episode of CHiPs.  Not even a quick scene of the officers holding the babies could change the fact that this was a really downbeat episode.

And you know what?  There’s nothing wrong with that.  Driving drunk is selfish, stupid, and dangerous and CHiPs deserves some credit for not holding back.

Retro Television Review: Miami Vice 4.15 “Indian Wars”

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 Mondays, I will be reviewing Miami Vice, which ran on NBC from 1984 to 1989.  The entire show can be purchased on Prime!

This week, Castillo goes undercover!

Episode 4.15 “Indian Wars”

(Dir by Leon Ichaso, originally aired on February 26th, 1988)

The Vice Squad is trying to take down Colombian drug dealer Acosta (Joe Lala).  Acosta does not trust gringos so Crockett can’t pretend to be Burnett this week.  Instead, he’s temporarily promoted to head of the Vice Squad while Castillo goes undercover.  Castillo explains to his bosses that, as a Latino, he’s the only one who can do it.  I’m not sure that I really buy Castillo’s argument.  Do you mean to tell me that, in Miami, there’s only one Latino detective working Vice?  If that’s true, someone really needs to talk to whoever is in charge of giving the detectives their assignments.

Acosta is soon taken out of the picture and replaced by the even more evil Levec (played by the great character actor, Joe Turkel).  Castillo discovers that both Acosta and Levec are being attacked by a paramilitary force that is made up of Native Americans.  Tubbs goes undercover as an anthropologist and discovers that the local Indian chief has made a deal with the drug dealers and his son (Patrick Bishop) is not happy about it.  However, it turns out that the chief’s son is actually an aspiring drug lord himself and that his whole vigilante act is really just his way of getting rid of the competition.

This was not a bad episode, particularly when compared to some of the other episodes that aired during the fourth season.  Joe Turkel made for a great villain and the scenes of the Indians attacking the drug dealers were properly atmospheric.  The episode even includes a small homage to the final showdown from Scarface.  Philip Michael Thomas was mildly amusing when he pretended to be a nerdy anthropologist.  Meanwhile, Don Johnson was barely in this episode at all.  This episode was all about Edward James Olmos’s smoldering intensity as Castillo.

Again, it wasn’t a bad episode but it still felt like it was missing something.  As with so much of season 4, it felt like the show was just growing through the motions.  In this case, it went through those motions with a bit more skill than it did in some of the season’s other installments.  This episode didn’t feature any aliens or any bull semen.  That made it a definite improvement over at least two season 4 episodes.  Still, this episode largely felt like Miami Vice on autopilot.

Live Tweet Alert – #MondayMuggers present RUNNING SCARED (1986), starring Gregory Hines and Billy Crystal!

Posted on by Bradley Crain

Every Monday night at 9:00 Central Time, my wife Sierra and I host a “Live Movie Tweet” event on X using the hashtag #MondayMuggers. We rotate movie picks each week, and our tastes are quite different. Tonight, Monday, August 11th, we’ll be watching RUNNING SCARED (1986), starring Gregory Hines, Billy Crystal, Steven Bauer, Darlanne Fluegel, Joe Pantoliano, Dan Hedaya, Jon Gries, Tracy Reed, and Jimmy Smits.

The plot: Two street-wise Chicago cops have to shake off some rust after returning from a Key West vacation to pursue a drug dealer who nearly killed them in the past.

Peter Hyams directed RUNNING SCARED, and it’s one of the very best “Buddy Cop” films out there. So, if a night full of action and laughs sounds good to you, join us on #MondayMuggers and watch RUNNING SCARED. It’s on Amazon Prime, Tubi, and PlutoTV! I’ve included the trailer below:

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special Stuart Gordon Edition

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

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!

78 years ago on this date, director Stuart Gordon was born in Chicago, Illinois.  Gordon went from experimental theater to feature films and was responsible for some of the most visually memorable horror films of the past century.  Perhaps no other American director was a strong interpreter of the work of H.P. Lovecraft than Stuart Gordon.

Today, we honor Stuart Gordon with….

4 Shots From 4 Stuart Gordon Films

Re-Animator (1985, dir by Stuart Gordon, DP: Marc Ahlberg)

Dolls (1987, dir by Stuart Gordon, DP: Marc Ahlberg)

The Pit and the Pendulum (1991, dir by Stuart Gordon. DP: Adolfo Bartoli)

Castle Freak (1994, dir by Stuart Gordon, DP: Mario Vulpiani)

Scenes That I Love: “What We Have Here Is A Failure To Communicate” from Cool Hand Luke

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today would have been director Stuart Rosenberg’s 98th birthday.  Our scene of the day come from one of Rosenberg’s best-known and best-remembered films, 1967’s Cool Hand Luke.

This is a scene that featured the line that’s been kept alive by cops, drill sergeants, and angry teachers to this day.

Music Video of the Day: The Memory Remains by Metallica, featuring Marianne Faithfull (1997, directed by Paul Andresen)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

There are many reasons why Jason Newsted is one of the greatest bassists of all time.  Beyond his talent, there’s his honesty.  Newsted is someone who is going to shoot straight, no matter what the question may be.  For instance, in 2002, Newsted was asked if, as a heavy metal fan, he would have bought Metallica’s 1997 album, Reload.

Newsted, who had left Metallica the previous year, replied, “Not if I heard ‘The Memory Remains‘ first.”

The Memory Remains might not be Metallica’s song.  Newsted was definitely right about that.  But it does have a memorable video, one that shows that, once the band broke their previous “no videos” stance, they quickly figured out how to use the format to their advantage.

This video was shot at the Van Nuys Airport and it had a budget of $400,000.  The room that they are performing in was actually a constructed box.  The room moved while the band remained stationary on a platform, which created the impression of the band playing while on a giant swing.  Marianne Faithfull adds her vocals as well.

Enjoy!

 

Retro Television Review: Degrassi High “School’s Out”

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 Sunday, I will be reviewing the Canadian series, Degrassi High, which aired on CBC and PBS from 1989 to 1991!  The series can be streamed on YouTube and Tubi

School’s out!  What does the future hold for the students of Degrassi High?

“School’s Out”

(Dir by Kit Hood, originally aired on January 5th, 1992)

The series finale of Degrassi High left viewers with a few unanswered questions, particularly concerning the future of Joey and Caitlin’s relationship.  Indeed, when the series ended, the majority of the characters still had another year left in high school.

School’s Out, a television movie that aired on CBC Television in 1992, was an attempt to bring closure to the Degrassi story.  Starting with everyone but the perennially academically challenged Joey Jeremiah graduating, School’s Out deals with the final summer before everyone leaves for college or adulthood.  Joey asks Caitlin to marry him and, when she says she’s not sure that she’s ready, he instead cheats on her with Tessa Campanelli.  Joey loses his virginity to Tessa.  Caitilin eventually loses her virginity to Joey (and, at the time, assumes that she’s his first as well).  Snake does not lose his virginity over the summer and spends almost the entire film in a funk about it.  Wheels becomes an alcoholic and ends up in prison after he crashes his car and kills a kid.  Lucy, who was Wheels’s passenger, ends up blind and crippled.  Simon and Alexa finally get married.  Snake, meanwhile, drops the first F-bomb ever heard on Canadian television.  Caitlin drops the second.  “You were fucking Tessa Campanelli!?” As for Tessa, she ends up pregnant, has an abortion, and then apparently hops on a bus and vanishes.

Things got dark!

I’ve already reviewed School’s Out once.  It’s not only a classic Degrassi film but it’s a great teen film period.  Rewatching it, I truly was struck by just how incredibly dark things got in School’s Out.  Degrassi High had its share of dark moments but never to the extent as seen in School’s Out.  I mean, Wheels’s goes to prison!  Watching Degrassi High over the past few months, it was easy to see that Wheels was destined to eventually end up in some sort of trouble.  He was too angry and too self-centered and not willing to take responsibility for his actions.  There was a reason why, even before the events in School’s Out, Snake was distancing himself from his former friend.  Still, Wheels is a character who grew up over the course of the show.  It’s still strange to think that the quiet “good kid” from Degrassi Junior High eventually grew up, developed a drinking problem, killed a child, and was sentenced to prison.  As easy as it is to dislike Wheels, it’s still hard not to mourn who he could have been if a few things had just gone differently in his life.

That actions have consequences has always been one of the main themes of Degrassi.  By lying and cheating on Caitlin, Joey not only loses the love of his life (albeit temporarily) but Tessa herself is left to suffer alone.  Lucy, with a brilliant future ahead of her, makes the decision to get into a car being driven by the drunk Wheels and, when we last see her, she’s in a hospital bed and unable to see.  School’s out and sadly, the students at Degrassi High can no longer escape the real world consequences of their actions.

School’s Out was meant to bring closure to Degrassi.  And it did, for nearly ten years.  Of course, all good things come back to life.  Degrassi: The Next Generation would premiere in 2001.  We’ll start looking at it next week.

Retro Television Review: Homicide: Life On The Street 4.1 “Fire: Part One”

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Sundays, Lisa will be reviewing Homicide: Life On The Street, which aired from 1993 to 1999, on NBC!  It  can be viewed on Peacock.

Episode 4.1 “Fire: Part One”

(Directed by Don Scardino, originally aired on October 20th, 1995)

Hey, guest reviewer here!  It’s my pleasure to review the fourth season premiere of Homicide.  As someone who lived in Baltimore while the show was airing, I watched every episode of Homicide (and later, The Wire).  It was always interesting to see Frank Pembleton and Tim Bayliss and John Munch and Kay Howard walking down streets that I recognized.  It didn’t matter that the show presented Baltimore as being a hotbed of murder and corruption, mostly because anyone who has lived in Baltimore knows that our city is often just that.  There are wonderful places and people in Baltimore.  There’s also a a lot of problems.

Enough editorializing from me!  Let’s talk about the fourth season premiere.  It opens with Kay and Munch talking about how Detectives Beau Felton and Stanley Bolander have been suspended without pay for 22 weeks because of some drunken shenanigans at a cop convention.  That was the way that the show wrote out former series regulars Daniel Baldwin and Ned Beatty.  (Baldwin was dropped due to his drug addiction.  Beatty wanted to get back to movies.)  Felton?  Sure, I could imagine him doing something stupid at a convention.  But the idea that conservative, straight-laced Bolander would join him in that behavior?  That’s never sat well with me.  That was out of character for Stanley Bolander.

Gee’s unit is now down by three detectives.  He needs replacements but Megan Russert — Tim’s cousin, we’re told! — says that they can’t afford to hire any new detectives.  Maybe Gee should reach out to another division and see if anyone wants to transfer.  Gee looks at the Board, which is covered in red ink.  His remaining detectives are struggling to close cases and nobody wants to partner up with Lewis.

Pembleton and Bayliss, the best Homicide team out there, are investigating a warehouse fire.  An unidentified body has been found in the warehouse, burned to a crisp.  They meet Detective Mike Kellerman (Reed Diamond), the cocky and youngish arson investigator who is convinced that the fire was set by a bigshot businessman named Matthew Rowland.  Kellerman gets on Pembleton’s nerves but he bonds with Bayliss.  Even though it hasn’t happened by the end of this episode, it’s obvious that Kellerman  is going to end up at Homicide.  And because everyone in this episode keeps talking about how they refuse to partner up with Lewis, you can guess who Kellerman is going to end up working with.

Mike Kellerman went on to become one of the best characters on the show.  Everyone remembers the Luther Mahoney story arc.  Reed Diamond eventually became a key member of the ensemble.  But I can remember the controversy that initially greeted his character.  A lot of viewers and critics resented that he was replacing the popular Ned Beatty.  (No one really cared about Daniel Baldwin.)  Reed Diamond was seen as a pretty boy actor who was intruding on a gritty crime drama.  As an introduction, this episode doesn’t do Kellerman many favors.  He comes on very strong and, within minutes, he’s antagonizing and double guessing Pembleton.  A scene where Megan confronts him about going after Matthew Rowland makes it seem like the show is trying too hard to be a typical cop drama.  It reminded me of when Itchy & Scratchy added Poochie and Poochie was just too in your face with his coolness.  Luckily, Reed Diamond was a better actor than Homer Simpson and Mike Kellerman did not die on the way back to his home planet.  Instead, after this shaky introduction, he became a key member of one of the best casts in the history of television.

This episode ends on a cliffhanger, with another fire being set at another warehouse.  Kellerman’s going to be around for a while, whether Frank Pembleton likes it or not.