Tag Archives: Barbara Stuart

Hellfighters (1968, directed by Andrew McLaglen)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Chance Buckman (John Wayne) is the best there is when it comes to fighting oil fires.  Along with Greg Parker (Jim Hutton), Joe Horn (Bruce Cabot), and George Harris (Edward Faulkner), Chance travels the world and puts out fires that the regular authorities can’t handle.  Chance loves his job but he also loves his ex-wife, Madelyn (Vera Miles).  When Madelyn indicates that she wants to remarry Chance but only if he pursues a less dangerous line of work, Chance retires from firefighting and becomes an oil executive.  He leaves his firefighting company to his new son-in-law, Greg.  When Greg and Chance’s daughter (Katharine Ross) head down to Venezuela to battle a fire and find themselves not only having to deal with the flames but also with a band of revolutionaries, Chance is the only one who can help them.

When I was growing up, Hellfighters was one of those movies that seemed to turn up on the local stations a lot.  The commercials always emphasized the idea of John Wayne almost single-handedly fighting fires and made it seem as if the entire movie was just the Duke staring into the flames with that, “Don’t even try it, you SOB” look on his face.  As a result, the sight of John Wayne surrounded by a wall of fire is one of the defining images of my childhood, even though I didn’t actually watch all the way through until recently.  When I did watch it, I discovered that Hellfighters was actually a domestic drama, with an aging Wayne passing the torch to youngster Jim Hutton but then taking it back.

The fire scenes are the best part of Hellfighters and I wish there had been more of them.  The movie gets bogged down with all of Chance’s family dramas but it comes alive again as soon as John Wayne and his crew are in the middle of a raging inferno, putting their lives at risk to try to tame the fire.  Wayne was always at his best when he was playing strong, no-nonsense men who were the best at what they did.  Hellfighters is slow in spots but the fire scenes hold up well.  There’s no one I’d rather follow into an inferno than Chance Buckman.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Highway to Heaven 3.7 and 3.8 “Love and Marriage”

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

This week, we’ve got a two-hour episode of Highway to Heaven.

Episode 3.7 and 3.8 “Love and Marriage”

(Dir by Michael Landon, originally aired on November 12th, 1986)

It’s Mark and Jonathan’s four-year anniversary!

For four years, they have been traveling around the country and helping people out.  Mark is so excited that he makes a cake and decides not to watch the football game so that he and Jonathan can talk about old times.

“I remember the first time I met you,” Mark says at one point.

Later, Jonathan laughs and says that he remembers one really funny adventure they had.

Still later, Mark says, “Remember when Scotty proposed?”

Yay!  I thought as I watched all of this unfold.  It’s a clip show!  This will be easy to review!

However, it turned out that only first 20 minutes of the episode was a clip show.  Soon, Mark got a phone call telling him that his niece was getting married and that she wanted Mark to be the head usher.  Meanwhile, Jonathan put on his collar and became Rev. Smith, the man who would perform the ceremony.

Unfortunately, not all is well at the wedding rehearsal.  When the grandparents of the bride — Clarence (Bill Erwin) and Rose (Mary Jackson) — decide to get a divorce, this leads to the parents of the bride — Frank (Robert Mandan) and Carla (Barbara Stuart) — splitting up as well.  Seeing her elders splitting up, Trish Kelly (Anne Marie Howard) decides that there is no way she could marry Brad (Dean Scofield).

It falls to Jonathan and Mark to bring all of the couple back together.  Mark invades Clarence’s dreams and shows him how empty his life would have been if he had never married Rose.  Jonathan appears to Carla and explains that he’s an angel.  He gives Carla a chance to appear to Frank as a totally different woman.  Calling herself Ono, Carla dates Frank for a week but Frank eventually tells her that he loves his wife too much to be unfaithful to her.  Frank says that dating Ono made him realize how much he loved Carla.  It’s a good thing that Carla actually was Ono or Frank probably would have gotten the heck slapped out of him.

Seeing all of the members of her family getting back together inspires Trish to go ahead and give marriage a try.  Jonathan performs the wedding but now it’s a triple wedding as the grandparents and their parents join their daughter and renew their vows.  Wow, you all,  way to hog the spotlight on Trish’s special day.

This episode was a bit too cutesy for its own good.  I think if Jonathan and Mark has only been repairing one or two relationships, it would have been fine.  But three just felt like showing off and, more importantly, it left the episode feeling a bit overcrowded and overstuffed.

Fortunately, next week’s episode is one that I’ve actually seen before and I can promise you that it’s going to be a huge improvement!

Airplane! (1980, directed by David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Airplane!, which may be the funniest movie ever made, has made me laugh every time that I’ve watched it.  And I’ve watched it a lot!

Whenever I’m getting ready to travel for my day job, I watch Airplane!  Whenever I’m going to Baltimore or West Virginia for the holidays, I watch Airplane!  Whenever I’m in a bad mood and I need something lighten me up, I watch Airplane!  Whenever I’m in a good mood and I want to be in an even better mood, I watch Airplane!

I can’t remember how old I was when I first saw Airplane! but I know I wasn’t yet ten.  While a lot of the humor went over my head at that young age, it did not matter because I laughed at all the sight gags, like the heart hopping around on the doctor’s desk and the line of passengers waiting to “calm down” the hysterical woman.  I laughed when Ted Stryker (Robert Hays) and Elaine (Julie Haggerty) got covered in seaweed while making out on the beach.  I laughed at the people dying while listening to Ted’s story, even though I didn’t fully understand that it was because of Ted boring them to death.  I loved it when Kareem Abdul-Jabbar got annoyed with the kid in the cockpit, even though young me really didn’t know who Kareem was other than he was a basketball player.  Otto the autopilot was the coolest character around.  Stephen Stucker’s Johnny made me laugh with his nonstop energy.  “Excuse me, stewardess, I speak Jive.”  “And don’t call me Shirley.”  “It looks like I picked the wrong time to stop sniffing glue.”  Every time I heard them, I laughed at all of those lines.  I didn’t have to understand why Lloyd Bridges was suddenly upside down.  I just knew it was funny.

As I got older and rewatched the film, I started to pick up on the humor that earlier went over my head.  I traveled to Turkey when I was twelve and our tour guide spent an hour telling us that Midnight Express was not a fair representation of her country.  After that, I suddenly understood why Captain Oveur (Peter Graves) wanted to know if Joey had ever been to a Turkish prison.  I came to appreciate Julie Hagerty and Lorna Patterson as the two flight attendants.  Airplane! still made me laugh but I came to understand that it was also a love story.  What adolescent boy watching Airplane! didn’t want to be Robert Hays, not only landing the plane but also getting kiss Julie Hagerty at the end of the movie?

And then, as I learned more about the movies, I realized that Airplane! was a pitch perfect parody of the disaster genre and I came to understand the brilliance of casting actors like Lloyd Bridges, Robert Stack, Peter Graves, and especially Leslie Nielsen in this film.  From the first time I saw the movie, Nielsen always made me laugh because he had the best lines and he delivered them with deadpan perfection.  But, as I got older, I came to understand that Nielsen was doing more than just saying funny things.  He was sending up his entire career.  I’m a part of the generation who grew up laughing at Leslie Nielsen the comedy superstar and it’s always strange for me to see him in one of his older, serious roles.  I have Airplane! to thank for that.

There’s so much to say about Airplane!  I could write a thousand words just talking about my favorite jokes and one-liners or how much I enjoyed Stryker’s flashbacks.  It’s my favorite movie and one that still makes me laugh even though I know all of the jokes by heart.  (I’ve always thought Howard Jarvis waiting for Stryker to return to the taxi was one of the best, though underrated, jokes in the movie.)  Airplane! is close to 50 years old and it’s still just as funny today as when I first saw it.

In fact, I think I’ll go watch it right now!

Lisa Cleans Out Her DVR: Dreamer (dir by Noel Nosseck)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

(I am currently trying to clean out my DVR!  I recorded this 1979 sports film off of FXM on February 1st!)

In Dreamer, Tim Matheson plays a character named Harold Nuttingham.  His nickname is Dreamer.  Do you think it’s possible that Harold has a dream!?  Well, it would probably be a really cruel nickname if he didn’t!

Dreamer lives in small town Illinois.  He loves to bowl.  He spends all of his time down at the local bowling alley, where everyone knows him and they all love him and his dreams of becoming a professional bowler.  His mentor is named Harry White (Jack Warden) and runs the pro shop.  Harry dreamed of being a famous, champion bowler but his dreams didn’t come true.  But now he can help Dreamer’s dreams work out.  Everyone loves the fact that Harry is helping Dreamer.  Dreamer’s girlfriend is named Karen Lee (Susan Blakely).  She loves that Dreamer loves bowling but she is frustrated because everyone keeps telling Dreamer that it would be a mistake to take her to his games.  Karen might bring bad luck.

Everyone in his hometown loves Dreamer but the Professional Bowling Association (which apparently is an actual thing) doesn’t love Dreamer.  They don’t want to let Dreamer compete on a professional level.  Or, at least, they don’t until Dreamer meets with them personally and shows off his amazing bowling skills.  Then they love Dreamer.

Even though Dreamer is the new guy on the professional circuit, the audiences love him.  And all the other professional bowlers love him, even when they lose to him.  Everyone loves Dreamer, perhaps because everyone loves a dreamer…

Are you getting the impression that Dreamer might be one of the most positive movies ever made?  Well, it is.  Hardly anyone says a bad word about anyone in Dreamer.  Nobody tells Dreamer to give up.  Dreamer never really suffers from any self-doubt, though he does injure his thumb at one point.  There is a moment of tragedy towards the end of the movie but it’s one of those tragedies that leads to better things.  You can’t have light without a little darkness, though Dreamer seems to suggest that you can come awfully close.

Normally, films get on my nerves when they’re overwhelmingly positive but I can’t really complain about a movie like Dreamer.  It’s just so earnest and sincere.  There’s no real conflict and there’s no real drama but everyone in the movie is just so damn likable that you almost feel guilty for wishing something unexpected would happen.  Dreamer struggles and fails to make bowling cinematic but Dreamer’s a nice guy so you wish him the best.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about Dreamer is that it was directed by Noel Nosseck, who also directed an incredibly odd little grindhouse film called Best Friends.  Best Friends, which I recommend tracking down, is almost the anti-Dreamer.  Watch Best Friends to have your faith in humanity destroyed and then follow it up with Dreamer so your faith can be restored.

Or don’t.  It’s really up to you.