Madhouse (1990, directed by Tom Ropelewski)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Mark (John Larroquette) and Jessa Bannister (Kirstie Alley) have a perfect yuppie lifestyle going until their respective family members show up at their California home and refuse to leave.  First, it’s Mark cousin (John Diehl) and his wife (Jessica Lundy).  Then it’s Jessa’s sister, Claudia (Alison LaPlaca), who has just left her husband and now has to find a new man to support her lifestyle.  Mark and Jessa just want some time alone but instead, they have to deal with a cat who is frequently mistaken for dead, broken marriages, a shipment of cocaine, and a neighbor (Robert Ginty) who builds weird bed frames.  Mark has a big contract to land and Jessa is trying to succeed as a television news reporter but it’s not easy when you’re living in a madhouse.

There are some films that you just like despite yourself and that’s the way I feel about Madhouse.  It’s very much an 80s film, with its emphasis on material goods and achieving the perfect lifestyle.  (The appearance of Dennis Miller as Mark’s co-worker only reminds us of just how much a product of its era that Madhouse is.)  There are a lot of jokes that don’t work and some, like the cat that is continually mistaken for dead, that shouldn’t work but do.  It’s a sitcom transferred to the movies and the humor rarely rises above that level.  It ever stars two of the decade’s biggest sitcom stars, John Larroquette and Kirstie Alley.  Larroquette shows us why he was better suited for television while Alley shows how tragic it was that she didn’t have a bigger film career.  Kirstie Alley gives such a dedicated and fearless performance as someone who has been driven to the end of her rope that it keeps you interested in the film.  Alley, like the great comedic actresses of Hollywood’s golden age, was an actress who could mix physical comedy with barbed one-liners and who was undeniably appealing as she moved from one disaster to the next.  In Madhouse, she was beautiful, frantic, sexy, neurotic, relatable, and funny all at the same time.  By the end of this movie, you really do wish she had gotten more and better opportunities to show off her talents in the years after Cheers went off the air.

Madhouse is nothing special.  It’s a generic comedy about unwanted family guests.  But I’ll always appreciate it for Kirstie Alley.

Retro Television Review: The Love Boat 5.16 “Green, But Not Jolly/Past Perfect Love/Instant Family”

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, Julie wears a wig!

Episode 5.16 “Green, But Not Jolly/Past Perfect Love/Instant Family”

(Dir by Richard Kinon, originally aired on January 30th, 1982)

“Where’s Julie?” Captain Stubing demands and he’s got good reason.  The Love Boat is only a few minutes away from setting sail.  The passengers are checking in and being given directions to their cabins.  And yet, Julie McCoy — the cruise director — is nowhere to be seen!

Fire him, Captain!  Seriously, she’s been erratic this entire season and she seems to have a permanent cold so it’s time to get a new cruise director.

Julie shows up at the last minute.  She reveals that she’s late because she went to see her hair dresser.  And now, she’s a platinum blonde!  She says that she’s proud of her new look.  The rest of the crew pretends to like it.  As for those of us watching, it’s hard not to notice that Julie is actually just wearing a very obvious wig.

Watching this episode, I couldn’t help but think about the fact that, according to a documentary about the show that I recently watched on Tubi, Lauren Tewes was dealing with a fairly serious cocaine problem during the fifth season.  I don’t say that suggest anything bad about Lauren Tewes.  From what I’ve read, cocaine was everywhere in the 80s and she’s hardly the only performer from the time to get into trouble with it.  (Tewes, it should be noted, went to rehab and cleaned herself up.)  Instead, I point that out because a lot of Julie’s actions during the fifth season seem as if they’re best explained by Julie being under the influence.  The moodiness, the impulsivity, the fact that she suddenly doesn’t seem to be all that focused on her job, I think Julie had a problem!  Her hair isn’t platinum blonde.  It’s cocaine white!

Gopher eventually works up the courage to tell her that her new hair color is not flattering.  (And, to be honest, he’s right.)  Gopher gives her some hair dye that he picked up — uh oh! — and Julie uses it — JULIE, WHAT ARE YOU DOING!? — and she wakes up the next morning with green hair.  Julie spends the rest of the cruise in her cabin while the rest of the crew feels guilty.  Even Vicki has a hard time talking to Julie with her green hair.  Then the rest of the cruse decides to die their hair green in solidarity with Julie, just to discover hat Julie’s hair has gone back to its natural color….

Yeah, it’s silly but I kind of enjoyed the storyline.  I like stories about the crew and the members of the cast had enough chemistry that they could even carry a story as silly as this one.  They’re a fun group to watch.

As for the other two stories, Lynda Day George boards the ship with her hyperactive son (a young Corey Feldman).  She meets a high school coach (John Philip Law) who is not scared by her son.  This was a predictable story but I’m a horror fan and an Italian movie fan so seeing George, Feldman, and Law interacting made up for any narrative flaws.

The third story starred Bert Convy and Tanya Roberts and it was about reincarnation.  I don’t believe reincarnation, mostly because people who claim to remember their past lives never remember anything boring.  Instead, they always remember being members of French royalty or the mistress of a Spanish pirate.  As for this story, Convy lies and tries to convince Roberts that they were lovers in a past life.  But then he has black-and-white visions of a chandelier falling on Roberts.  Maybe they were once lovers at another time!  Honestly, who cares?

This was an above average cruise.  I’m glad Julie finally took off that wig.

 

SHANE (The TV Series) – Episode 6: Killer in the Valley (originally aired October 15th, 1966)

Posted on by Bradley Crain

Episode 6 begins with Shane (David Carradine) and Marian Starett (Jill Ireland) riding their horses out on the far reaches of the ranch. While enjoying the beauty of the land, they come across a very sick man in a wagon. He seems to be running a high fever. As they check into the situation, they find out that the man’s wife is in the back of the wagon dead. Shane realizes that it’s more than likely that the couple has a deadly disease. The man dies shortly after, so they bury them and burn the wagons. 

After returning back to the house, Marian starts coming down with a fever of her own. Shane sends Tom Starett (Tom Tully) to Sam’s general store to get quidine, the medicine they will need to treat Marian. Unfortunately, Sam is all out of quidine, so they’ll have to wait until  Barney the medicine drummer (Joseph Campanella) gets to town the next day. Tom takes a room in Sam’s hotel to wait. When local cattle rancher, Rufe Ryker (Burt Freed), gets wind of the fact that the Starett’s are needing quidine, he starts asking questions and finds out that Marian is sick. He decides he needs the quidine for his own farm just in case there’s an outbreak in the valley. When Barney the medicine drummer finally arrives in town, he immediately smells money and decides to hold out to the highest bidder, which means the wealthy Ryker will get the supply, leaving the Starett’s and everyone else out in the cold. When Tom reports this to Shane, and with Marian getting worse by the second, Shane decides he’s got to do something to get the medicine Marian needs, even kill if he has to. To hell with Ryker or anyone else who tries to stop him! 

This episode of SHANE reminded me of two very specific times in my life when I actually witnessed my fellow man either taking advantage of a terrible situation or panicking in a way that shows complete disregard for their friends and neighbors. The first time was the Arkansas ice storm of 2000. Beginning on Christmas Day of 2000, this once in a century ice storm descended upon our state, resulting in mass electrical outages in our community. I lived in town so my electricity was restored after three long days. I remember hearing of houses “out in the county” that did without electricity for weeks. There was a local business who had an inventory of generators. They promptly doubled the price of their generators and took advantage of their neighbors who were in a critical situation. The second time was when I lived through the COVID epidemic and witnessed people taking every roll of toilet paper and every drop of water they could find from the local grocery stores. Unfortunately the combination of fear, panic, greed and selfishness can bring out the very worst sides of our human nature!

The bad reminders aside, I enjoyed Episode 6 of SHANE. It was nice to see Shane and Marian away from the ranch together just enjoying the afternoon and talking. It was unfortunate that they were interrupted by the plague. It’s also in this episode that we get to see Shane and Marian kiss for the first time. Of course she was delirious with the fever and thinking she was talking to her dead husband Joe, but it was still Shane that she kissed and that counts for something! It was also nice seeing Shane go to town, kick some ass, and reveal the medicine drummer for the greedy coward that he is. And just for good measure, Ryker decided to kick his ass too. I liked that. I’d even go as far as saying that Episode 6 is one of the best episodes of SHANE yet. I’m still enjoying the series and look forward to episode 7! 

Scenes That I Love: The Tiger Scene From Manhunter

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Since today is Michael Mann’s birthday, today’s scene that I love comes from his 1986 film, Manhunter.

In this scene, a blind woman (played by Joan Allen) pets a sedated tiger while her new boyfriend (Tom Noonan) watches.  This would actually be a pretty romantic scene if not for the fact that her boyfriend is also a homicidal maniac.  This is a scene that, when you watch the film, seems to come out of nowhere but, when you look back, you realize it was one of the key moments in the narrative.  While the killer watches the woman who represents a possible redemption embrace another predator, the profiler played by William Petersen continues his way into the killer’s tortured psyche.

This scene is Michael Mann at his best.

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special Michael Mann Edition

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

4 Shots From 4 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, we celebrate the 82nd birthday of the great Michael Mann!  It’s time for….

4 Shots From 4 Michael Mann Films

Thief (1981, dir by Michael Mann, DP: Donald Thorin)

Manhunter (1986, dir by Michael Mann, DP: Dante Spinotii)

Heat (1995, dir by Michael Mann, DP: Dante Spinotti)

Public Enemies (2009, dir by Michael Mann, DP: Dante Spinotti)

Song of the Day: Night Train to Mundo Fine by John Carradine

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

On this date, 119 years ago, the great actor John Carradine was born in New York City.

Over the course of his career, Carradine worked for just about everyone.  He appeared on stage.  He appeared in film and television.  He played the great roles of Shakespeare and he also played Dracula.  He was a part of both the John Ford and the Fred Olen Ray stock companies.  He had a reputation for taking almost any role offered to him and, as a result, his huge filmography offers up a wonderful amount of variety.

He was also a singer!  Here he is performing today’s song of the day, Night Train to Mundo Fine!  This song was featured Coleman Francis’s Red Zone Cuba.  Say what you may about the song or the film, how can you not love Carrdine’s dramatic (and perhaps slightly mocking) delivery of the lyrics?

Late Night Retro Television Review: Pacific Blue 1.5 “Out Of The Past”

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 show is proving difficult to review.

Episode 1.5 “Out of the Past”

(Dir by Terrence O’Hara, originally aired on March 30th, 1996)

Look, I tried.  I really did.

This episode should have fascinated me.  It featured three storylines.  Palermo was told take a vacation when it became obvious that a serial killer known as The Angel (Tim Thomerson) had returned to the beach and was targeting doctors.  Palermo and The Angel had a history, with Palermo failing to capture The Angel during the killer’s previous spree.  This time, The Angel tried to force a journalist (played by Barry Miller) to record his crimes for posterity.

Meanwhile, Chris and TC went undercover as guests at a hotel so that they could catch a thief and a peeping tom.  Chris and TC pretended to be romantically involved and were so dedicated to maintaining the act that they ended up spending a good deal of the episode hanging out together in their underwear.

Finally, both TC and Del Toro were obsessed with catching a speeding biker who continually managed to outrun and outmaneuver them.  Compounding their embarrassment was the revelation that the biker was a woman.

Mystery, empowerment, and lingerie.  Those are three of my favorites things but this episode still managed to thoroughly bore me.  I had to view it three times because I kept getting distracted whenever I tried to sit down and just watch the show.  Admittedly, with my ADHD, my attention span is on the short side but still, this episode of Pacific Blue was remarkable in that, no matter what happened, I just didn’t care.

Why?  Why can’t this show even work in a so-bad-its-good kind of way?  The characters are just boring and interchangeable.  The men are all grim and serious-minded and, physically, they’re all the same type.  They’re all tall and lean and blandly handsome and none of them have any quirks or interests to really make them stand-out.  The women are also bland and spend most of their time smirking at their male co-workers.  Who are these people?  Who cares?

Perhaps the biggest flaw with this episode and the show so far is that the members of the bicycle patrol just look dorky and they peddle around the beach.  The worse thing is when they have to chase a suspect down a flight of stairs and they literally pick and carry their bicycles as they do so.  It’s hard to take bicyclists seriously, even when they’re cops.

Watching the show, I kept thinking about the bicycle cops who used to patrol the campus where I went to college.  No one took them seriously and everyone knew the experience of being yanked over by one of them and being asked, “You been drinking tonight?” when you were totally sober.  It happened to me, one night, when an old ankle injury was acting up and I was walking with a slight limp.  I was already feeling self-conscious about it and getting stopped when all I wanted to do was get home and rest my ankle didn’t help.  The insistence that I must have been drunk or otherwise under the influence and also the assumption that I was obligated to stand around while the cops slowly talked to each other left me feeling violated.  Whenever I see TC or Palermo sitting on their bikes with their oh-so serious “I am a badass” facial expressions, I remember every bad experience that I’ve ever had or I’ve ever seen someone else have with a cop.

My hope is that Pacific Blue, over the course of its run, eventually found a way to make its characters less annoying and more likable.  (For instance, I don’t mind the cops on CHiPs because at least they’re entertaining.)  I guess we’ll find out!

Retro Television Review: Fantasy Island 6.4 “The Angel’s Triangle/Natchez Bound”

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, an angel comes to the Island.

Episode 6.4 “The Angel’s Triangle/Natchez Bound”

(Dir by Bob Sweeney, originally aired on November 6th, 1982)

Death takes a holiday!

Well, not literally.  The Angel of Death, Michael Eden (played by Gary Collins), does come to Fantasy Island but he’s working.  Years ago, he was meant to take soul of Catharine Harris (Carol Lynley), a woman who was in a car accident with her husband, Brent Harris (Doug McClure).  Michael could not bring himself to allow Catharine to die.  So, she miraculously survived.  But now, years later, Michael has been sent to collect the soul of Brent.  Brent and Catharine have come to Fantasy Island to have the honeymoon they missed out on due to the car accident.  Michael has come to make sure that the honeymoon is a tragic one.

Michael very much wants to take Brent’s soul.  If Brent’s dead than maybe Michael and Catharine could (somehow) be together.  But when Brent is taken ill and sent to the Fantasy Island hospital, Michael sees how much Catharine loves her husband.  And he allow Brent to live, which seems a bit unfair to …. well, like anyone.  Or at the very least, anyone who has ever died or lost a loved one.

The interesting thing about this fantasy was that it established that Roarke is apparently not an angel.  When Roarke introduces Tattoo to Michael, Roarke says that Michael “is not like us.”  This leads to a funny moment in which Tattoo, upon hearing that Michael is the angel of death, announces that he some work to catch up on.  I always like it when Tattoo gets to do more than just wave at the airplane.  As for the rest of this fantasy, it wasn’t bad.  Carol Lynley did a good job as Catharine.  Gary Collins was a bit stiff but it kind of worked for his character.  Doug McClure was as goofy as ever.

The other fantasy features Jennilee Harrison as Jenny Ryan, a Vegas card dealer who wants to work on a Mississippi steamboat.  She gets her wish and promptly gets involved with helping a writer named Samuel Clemens (Stephen Shortridge, a.k.a. Beau on Welcome Back Kotter) and a kid named Huck Finn (Adam Rich) hide an escaped slave (Sam Scarber) from a dastardly gambler and slave hunter (Roddy McDowall).  Did I mention that Clemens is having trouble coming up with a plot for his new book?  Jenny inspires Mark Twain, helps Jim get to safety, and returns to the present with a pet frog.  Sure, why not?  This storyline was predictable, largely because I read Huckleberry Finn in high school.  However, Stephen Shortridge was, somewhat surprisingly given his work on Kotter, perfectly charming as Mark Twain and Roddy McDowall obviously enjoyed hamming up his villainy.  (To be honest, when I saw Roddy’s name in the opening credits, I was hoping he’d be returning as Satan.)

This was not a bad episode, especially compared to the previous season 6 episodes.  Both fantasies held me attention and apparently, the Angel of Death will leave you alone if he thinks you’re cute.  That’s good to know!