Late Night Retro Television Reviews: Highway to Heaven 1.10 “Help Wanted: Angel”

Posted on November 30, 2023 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 Thursdays, I will be reviewing Highway to Heaven, which aired on NBC from 1984 to 1989. The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi and several other services!

This week, Mark falls in love and Jonathan directs a movie.

Episode 1.10 “Help Wanted: Angel”

(Dir by Michael Landon, originally aired on November 21st, 1984)

This is a strange episode.

The first half of the episode plays out like almost a parody of Highway to Heaven. In fact, I would assume that it was a parody except for the fact that this was only the show’s tenth episode and that’s a bit early for any show to start intentionally parodying itself.

Still in Hollywood, Jonathan and Mark come across a sign that has been posted by someone named Joey. “Angels Needed,” the sign says. The sign has an address that turns out to be a community center, one that is populated by a mix of cranky retired people and young criminals. The center’s maintenance worker is a developmentally challenged young man named Joey Smalls (Dennis Fimple). Joey put up his sign because he wants an angel to help an elderly screenwriter named Martin Lamm (John Lormer). Martin has written a script about a magician and he wants to not only make the film but also fill the cast with people from the neighborhood.

No sooner have Mark and Jonathan stepped into the community center and met Joey and Martin then they are suddenly joined by a man named Petros (Al Ruscio). Petros speaks in a thick Greek accent and he says that he has also seen Joey’s sign, he has read Martin’s script, and he wants to produce the movie. And he wants Jonathan to direct it and Mark to play the role of a sea captain who falls in love with a woman who has “a past,” as Petros puts it. As the woman, they cast Stella (Stella Stevens), who actually does have a past.

We then jump forward several weeks. Jonathan is directing the film, even though he doesn’t seem to have a crew and we don’t actually see any cameras filming anything. Joey has impressed everyone with the sincerity of his acting and he is now friends with former gang member, Chewy (Randy Vasquez). Mark, meanwhile, is falling in love with Stella.

So, that’s the first half of the episode. It’s all very broadly acted and the dialogue frequently crosses the line from sentimental to mawkish. I have to admit that I rolled my eyes more than a few times because it all felt so overdone.

But then, the second half of the episode opens with Petros approaching Jonathan. Jonathan asks Petros about his past. Petros says that he was born in Galilee and that, before starting his current line of work, he was a fisherman. Jonathan realizes that Petros is actually St. Peter and he’s been sent down to help Jonathan out with his mission. It turns out that Jonathan’s mission is not really about Joey or Martin. Instead, it’s about Stella, who is going to die and it’s about Mark, who is about to lose the woman that he’s fallen in love with. Realizing that Stella’s character is also going to die in the movie that he’s supposedly directing, Jonathan asks if they can just rewrite the script but Peter tells him that they can’t. What is going to happen is going to happen.

And it does happen, though not before Mark asks Stella to marry him and Stella says yes. When she finds out that she’s ill, Stella leaves Mark a note saying that she’s dumping him for an ex-boyfriend. At first, Mark is angry but, with Jonathan’s help, he realizes the truth. Mark finds Stella waiting for him on the beach where they filmed their scenes for the movie and they get married as the ocean crashes behind them. And then, off-screen, Stella dies.

And I went from rolling my eyes to actually wiping away tears because, as broad and kind of annoying as the first half of the episode was, the second half was sensitively directed by Michael Landon and sincerely acted by both Victor French and Stella Stevens. If the first half felt like a parody, the second half was a reminder of why this show still remains popular on so many streaming platforms. At its best, there was an unapologetic earnestness to Highway to Heaven. This was a show that said that it was okay to cry and to have emotions and to care about people. This was a strange episode but, ultimately, a surprisingly effective one.

Film Review: Blood Red (1989, directed by Peter Masterson)

Posted on June 11, 2019 by Jedadiah Leland

The time is the 1890s. The place is California. Sicilian immigrant Sebastian Collogero (Giancarlo Giannini) has just been sworn in as an American citizen and owns his own vineyard. When Irish immigrant William Bradford Berrigan (Dennis Hopper) demands that Sebastian give up his land so Berrigan run a railroad through it, Sebastian refuses. Berrigan hires a group of thugs led by Andrews (Burt Young) to make Sebastian see the error of his ways. When Sebastian ends up dead, his wayward son, Marco (Eric Roberts), takes up arms and seeks revenge.

Have you ever wondered what would have happened if the famously self-indulgent directors Michael Cimino and Francis Ford Coppola teamed up to make a movie about the American Dream? The end result would probably be something like Blood Red. Like Cimino’s The Deer Hunter and Heaven’s Gate, Blood Red begins with a lengthy celebration (in this case, in honor of Sebastian’s naturalization ceremony) that doesn’t have much to do with the rest of the film but which is included just to make sure we know that what we’re about to see is more than just a mere genre piece. Like many of Coppola’s films, Blood Red features a tight-knit family, flowing wine, and a score composed by Carmine Coppola. The only difference between our hypothetical Cimino/Coppola collaboration and Blood Red is that the Cimino/Coppola film would probably be longer and more interesting than Blood Red. Blood Red is only 80 minutes long and directed by Peter Masterson, who seems lost. There’s a potentially interesting story here about two different immigrants fighting to determine the future of America but it gets lost in all of the shots of Eric Roberts flexing his muscles.

For an actor known for his demented energy, Eric Roberts is surprisingly dull as the lead but Blood Red is a film that even manages to make veteran scenery chewers like Dennis Hopper and Burt Young seem boring. (Hopper’s bizarre attempt at an Irish brogue does occasionally liven things up.) The cast is full of familiar faces like Michael Madsen, Aldo Ray, Marc Lawrence, and Elias Koteas but none of them get to do much. Of course, the most familiar face of all belongs to Eric’s sister, Julia. Julia Roberts made her film debut playing Marco’s sister, Maria. (Because the film sat on the shelf for three years after production was completed, Blood Red wasn’t released until after Julia has subsequently appeared in Mystic Pizza and Satisfaction.) She gets three lines and less than five minutes of screen time but she does get to briefly show off the smile that would later make her famous. Today, of course, that smile is the only reason anyone remembers Blood Red.

A Movie A Day #29: Boss of Bosses (2001, directed by Dwight H. Little)

Posted on January 29, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

boss Who was the boss of bosses? According to this movie, he was Paul Castellano. A cousin-by-marriage to the notorious crime boss Carlo Gambino, Castellano grew up in New York City and first became a made man in the 1930s. After four decades of loyal service, Castellano succeeded Carlo as the boss of the Gambino Crime Family. As portrayed in this movie, Castellano attempted to keep the Gambinos out of the drug trade and tried to steer both his biological and his crime family into legitimate businesses. However, not everyone appreciated Castellano’s vision of the future and, in 1985, he was assassinated on the orders of his eventual successor, John Gotti.

Considering that this biopic was made for TNT and was directed by Dwight H. Little (who was best known for directing films like Halloween 4 and Free Willy 2), it’s probably not surprising that not a single mob cliché goes unturned in Boss of Bosses. At first, I had a hard time accepting Chazz Palminteri as Castellano because Palminteri sounded exactly like Joe Mantegna voicing Fat Tony on The Simpsons. Once I got over the vocal similarities, I saw that Palminteri was actually giving a very good, noncartoonish performance as Castellano but the film itself never convinces us that Castellano was anything more than a forgettable placeholder between the reigns of the legendary Gambino and the flamboyant Gotti.

Boss of Bosses, which is also known as Godfather of New York, is currently available on YouTube.

Embracing the Melodrama Part II #90: Showgirls (dir by Paul Verhoeven)

Posted on May 28, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Well, this is it!

Showgirls in the 1995 film that, 20 years after it was first released, is still held up as the standard by which all subsequent bad films are judged. The story behind the production is legendary. Screenwriter Joe Ezsterhas was paid a then-record sum to write a script that ripped off All About Eve and featured lines like, “Come back when you’ve fucked some of that baby fat off,” and “You’re the only who can get my tits poppin’ right!” (And let’s not forget the heroine’s oft-repeated catch phrase, “It doesn’t suck.”) A major studio specifically hired Paul Verhoeven with the understanding that he was going to give them an NC-17 rated film. And finally, the lead role was given to Elizabeth Berkley, an actress whose previous experience amounted to co-starring on Saved By The Bell.

(And, let’s be honest, the only reason Jessie Spano was a tolerable character was because she wasn’t Screech.)

Berkley plays Nomi Malone, a sociopath who wants to be a star. She hitchhikes her way to Las Vegas where, as is destined to happen to anyone who shows up in Vegas or New York with a clunky suitcase, she is promptly robbed of all of her possessions. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” she yells, showing off the very expensive dialogue that was written for her by Joe Ezsterhas. Eventually, Nomi starts to take her frustration out on a random car. The car, it turns out, belongs to sweet-natured Molly (Gina Revara), who is a seamstress for a tacky Vegas show called Goddess.

(Seriously, Goddess makes Satan’s Alley from Staying Alive look like a work of quiet genius.)

Soon, Nomi is living in Molly’s trailer and working as a stripper at the Cheetah Club. The Cheetah Club is owned by Al, who is amazingly sleazy but who is also played by Robert Davi. Robert Davi is one of those actors who knows how to make terrible dialogue interesting and it’s instructive to watch him perform opposite Elizabeth Berkley and the rest of the cast. Whereas the majority of the cast always seems to be desperately trying to convince themselves that their dialogue is somehow better than it actually is, Davi knows exactly what he’s saying. Watching his performance, it’s obvious that Davi understood that he was appearing in a bad film so he figured that he might as well enjoy himself.

The same can be said of Gina Gershon, who plays Cristal Connors, the star of Goddess. Sexually voracious Cristal is basically a male fantasy of what it means to be bisexual. Cristal hires Nomi to give a lapdance to her sleazy boyfriend, Zack (Kyle MacLachlan, giving a good performance despite having to spend the entire film with hair in his eyes) and then arranges for her to be cast in the chorus of Goddess. There’s absolutely nothing subtle about Gershon’s performance and that’s why it’s perfect for Showgirls. It’s been argued that Showgirls is essentially meant to be a huge in-joke and, out of the huge cast, only Gershon, Davi, and occasionally MacLachlan seem to be in on it.

Certainly, it’s apparent that nobody bothered to tell Elizabeth Berkley. Berkley gives a performance of such nonstop (and misdirected) intensity that you end up feeling sorry for her. She’s just trying so hard and she really does seem to think that she can somehow make Nomi into a believable character. And it’s actually a bit unfair that Elizabeth is always going to be associated with this film because I doubt any actress could have given a good performance in a role as inconsistently written as Nomi. One second, Nomi is a wide-eyed innocent who is excited about living in Las Vegas. The next second, she’s screaming, “FUCK OFF!” and threatening strangers with a switch blade. She may be a survivor (and I imagine that’s why we’re supposed to root for her) but she’s also humorless, angry, and apparently clinically insane.

Hilariously, we’re also continually told, by literally everyone else in the movie, that she’s a great dancer, despite the fact that we see absolutely no evidence of this fact. Check out this scene below, where Nomi dances with a lot of enthusiasm and little else.

Once Nomi is cast in Goddess, she promptly sets out to steal both the starring role and Zack from Cristal. Nomi’s cunning plan, incidentally, amounts to fucking Zack in his pool and shoving Cristal down a flight of stairs. Nomi’s finally a star but when a Satanic rock star named Andrew Carver (William Shockley) comes to town, Nomi is confronted with the sordid truth about Las Vegas and, because this long film has to end at some point, Nomi must decide whether to take a stand or…

Well, you can guess the rest.

(Incidentally, I like to assume that Andrew Carver was meant to be a distant cousin of the great short story writer Raymond Carver.)

There seems to be two schools of thought when it comes to Showgirls.

Some critics claim to Showgirls is just crap. They say that it’s a terrible film with bad dialogue, bad acting, and terrible direction. These critics view Joe Eszterhas as being the villain of this tale, a misogynist who conned the studios into paying two million dollars for a terrible script.

And then other critics claim that Showgirls is crappy on purpose. They claim that Verhoeven meant for the film to be a satire of both American culture and Hollywood showbiz dramas. For these critics, Verhoeven used Eszterhas’s terrible script and Elizabeth Berkley’s inexperience to craft a subversive masterpiece.

Myself, I fall somewhere in between. Based on Verhoeven’s other films — Starship Troopers comes immediately to mind — I think his intent with Showgirls probably was meant to be satirical and subversive. But, at the same time, I would argue that Verhoeven’s intent doesn’t change the fact that Showgirls is a surprisingly boring film. For all the sex and the nudity and the opulent costumes and sets and all of the over-the-top dialogue, Showgirls is never really that interesting of a film. It barely even manages to reach the level of being so-bad-that-it’s-good. Instead, it’s slow, it’s draggy, and — satiric or not — the bad performance, the bad dialogue, and the nonstop misogyny get a bit grating after a few minutes.

Of course, that’s why you should never watch Showgirls alone. Showgirls is a film that you have to watch as a part of a group of friends so that you can all laugh together and shout out snarky comments. The first time I ever saw Showgirls was at a party and it was a lot of fun. But, for this review, I rewatched the film on Netflix and I was surprised by how much of a chore it was to sit through the entire running time. This is one of those films — like Birdemic and The Room — that you have to watch with a group. You watch for the experience, not the film.