Tag Archives: Ben Murphy

Retro Television Review: The Love Boat 6.24 “So Help Me Hannah/The Maid Cleans Up/CPR IOU”

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!

Love …. exciting and new!

Episode 6.24 “So Help Me Hannah/The Maid Cleans Up/C.P.R, I.O.U.”

(Dir by Kim Friedman, originally aired on March 12th, 1983)

This episode features Gopher bringing a CPR dummy on board.  No one is that interested in learning how to perform CPR, at least not until one of the passengers, Dwaine Fenley (Steven Keats), has a heart attack.  Fortunately, because of his CPR training, Gopher is able to save Dwaine’s life.  Not only does this lead to Dwaine forging a stronger relationship with his father (Milton Berle) but it also leads to Gopher getting promoted to Head Purser.

(Erin doesn’t like to brag so I’ll brag for her and say that she is not only CPR-certified but she also saved someone’s life a few years ago.  CRP is a good thing to learn!)

While Gopher is trying to get everyone to learn CPR, there are other things happening on the boat and, to be honest, they’re all kind of annoying.  For instance, Hannah (Mary Martin) boards the boat and she’s immediately giving everyone advice and singing Cole Porter tunes.  I kind of knew that this story was going to be annoying from the minute Hannah first boarded the ship and the camera zoomed in for a close-up, which was usually a sign that a guest star was going to spend the entire cruise overacting.  That’s the case here, with Mary Martin delivering every line and playing every emotion as if she’s on Broadway as opposed to a television soundstage.  Hannah meets an ex-boyfriend named Jarvis (Max Showalter) and they sing It’s De-Lovely while standing against the ship’s railing and, for me, it was De-Cringey.  Maybe if I was of Mary Martin’s generation, it would have been less cringey.  But I have to admit that I listen to most of those old songs and I think to myself, “De-lovely is not a word.”  Hannah encourages Jarvis to allow his son (Timothy Patrick Murphy) to play piano instead of becoming a real estate agent.

Finally, a maid (Judy Landers) boards the boat because she knows that her employer (Caren Kaye) is cheating on her boyfriend (Ben Murphy).  It’s actually a bit of a complex storyline, at least by the typical standards of The Love Boat.  Personally, I like Judy Landers and Ben Murphy was appropriately rugged and handsome.  Unfortunately, Landers and Murphy didn’t have much chemistry.

A mixed review for this episode, I’d say.  I appreciated the CPR subplot because that was The Love Boat at its most well-intentioned.  The whole thing with Mary Martin singing old songs was cringe city.  And the maid subplot was just kind of boring.  This was not a great cruise but it wasn’t a terrible one either.  At least, after six seasons, Gopher finally got his promotion.

 

 

Lisa Marie Reviews An Oscar Winner: The Graduate (dir by Mike Nichols)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Hello darkness, my old friend….

After watching 1967’s The Graduate, I defy anyone to listen to Simon and Garfunkel sing about the darkness without immediately picturing a young-looking Dustin Hoffman (he was 30 when the film was made but he was playing 22) standing on a moving airport walkway with a blank expression on his face.

If you don’t picture that, maybe you’ll picture Dustin Hoffman floating in a pool, wearing dark glasses and barely listening to his parents asking him about graduate school.

Or maybe you’ll remember him driving his car across the Golden Gate bridge.  Or perhaps sitting at the bottom of his pool with a scuba mask on.  Or maybe you’ll see him awkwardly standing at the desk in the lobby of a fancy hotel, trying to work up the courage to get a room.  Or maybe you’ll just see him and Katharine Ross sitting at the back of that bus with a “what do we do now?” expression on their faces.

(Supposedly, that expression was not planned and was just a result of the shot running longer than expected.)

Ah, The Graduate.  Based on a novel by Charles Webb, Buck Henry’s script remains one of the quotable in history.  “Mrs. Robinson, you’re tying to seduce me …. aren’t you?”  “Plastics.”  “Elaine!”  Myself, I have an odd feeling of affection for the line “Shall I get the cops?  I’ll get the cops.”  Perhaps that’s because the line is delivered by a young and uncredited Richard Dreyfuss, appearing in his second film and adding to the film’s general atmosphere of alienation.

Alienation is the main theme of The Graduate.  As played by Hoffman, Benjamin Braddock feels alienated from everything.  He was a track star.  He was a top student in high school and college.  Now, he’s just a college graduate with no idea what he wants to do with the rest of his life.  One can argue, of course, that Braddock brings a lot of his alienation on himself.  He can be a bit judgmental, even though he’s the one who is having an adulterous affair with Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft) while also falling for Mrs. Robinson’s daughter, Elaine (Katharine Ross).  His parents (William Daniels and Elizabeth Wilson) can be overbearing but it’s possible they have a point.  Is he planning on spending the rest of his life floating in their swimming pool?  Benjamin says that he just needs time to finally relax.  After being pushed and pushed to be the best, he just wants time to do what he wants to do before his life becomes about plastics.  When I first saw this movie, I was totally on Benjamin’s side.  Now, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve started to understand where his parents were coming from.  Still, it’s hard not to feel that Benjamin deserves at least a little bit of time to enjoy himself.  That’s what Mr. Robinson (Murray Hamilton) thinks, at least initially.

Mrs. Robinson is the most interesting character in the film, a force of chaos who lives to disrupt the staid world around her.  She’s bored with her marriage and her conventional but empty lifestyle so she has an affair with Benjamin.  Later, she grows bored with Benjamin and his desire to “just talk” for once and she moves on from him.  Benjamin and Elaine are both likable and you find yourself wishing the best for them but Mrs. Robinson is the character who you really remember.  Mrs. Robinson grew up without losing her sense of rebellion.  One doubts that Benjamin and Elaine are going to do the same.

A portrait of American suburbia and 60s alienation, The Graduate would prove to be one of the most influential social satires ever made.  A box office hit, it was nominated for seven Academy Awards.  It was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director (Mike Nichols), Best Actor (Dustin Hoffman), Best Actress (Anne Bancroft), Best Supporting Actress (Katharine Ross), Best Adapted Screenplay (Buck Henry and Calder Willingham), and Best Cinematography (Robert Surtees).  The Simon and Garfunkel songs that set the film’s mood were, for the most part, not eligible.  (Only Mrs. Robinson was written specifically for the film.)  I would argue that the film deserved to be nominated for its editing as well.  In the end, the film only won one Oscar, for Mike Nichols.  But, regardless of what awards it won or lost, The Graduate‘s legacy lives on.

 

 

Retro Television Review: Fantasy Island 6.10 “Operation Breakout/Candy Kisses”

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.

And now, it’s time for …. wait?  What?  *sigh*  Okay.

Episode 6.10 “Operation Breakout/Candy Kisses”

(Dir by George W. Brooks, originally aired on January 15th, 1983)

My fantasy would be to be able to review this episode.

Ever since Fantasy Island was yanked down on all the streaming sites, I’ve been watching the show off of my DVR.  A few years ago, I recorded nearly every episode off of one of the retro stations.  (Sadly, the station also appears to no longer be broadcasting the show.)  Unfortunately, nearly is not all and this is one of the episodes that I did not record.  So, obviously, I can’t review it.

I can talk a little bit about it because I did watch this episode a few years ago.  When I read the plot description on the imdb — Wheelchair-bound Kentucky racehorse breeder Rowena Haversham wants one last chance to win a race; and self-professed failure Danny Clements of Boston wants to turn his life around by breaking an American agent out of a tough foreign prison. — a bit of it came back to me.  I remembered that Rowena (Ann Turkel) was given what she thought was a magic riding crop but that, at the end of the episode, Roarke revealed that the only magic was Rowena’s belief in herself.  I think Rowena was transformed into a younger version of herself and she befriended a young rider played by Jill Whelan and ended up falling in love with Whelan’s father, who played by John Beck and not Gavin MacLeod.  And I remember that Ben Murphy played the guy who entered the prison to save the American spy but it turned out that the prison was run totally by women and the spy was having the time of his life.  I remember bits and pieces but it’s been a few years and I still wouldn’t feel comfortable even trying to tell you whether or not the episode worked.

So, consider this to be a placeholder.  If I ever find Fantasy Island streaming somewhere or if someone is kind enough to reupload the show to YouTube, I’ll come back and review this episode.

Until then, my fantasy is for an official home video release of the entire series as opposed to just the first few seasons.  Seriously, this is a fun show and one that still has a lot of fans.  Yanking it off of Tubi to make room for the Fox reboot that only lasted for two seasons really doesn’t make a bit of sense.

This needs to be fixed!

 

Late Night Retro Television Review: Baywatch Nights 1.19 “Epilogue”

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 Baywatch Nights, a detective show that ran in Syndication from 1995 to 1997.  The entire show is currently streaming on You tube!

This week, Griff gets a storyline!  Who?  Oh yeah, Griff!  He’s like the photographer who hangs out at the detective agency sometimes.  He was played by Eddie Cibrian and he was listed in the opening credits so I guess he was supposed to be a major character, despite never doing or even saying anything.

Anyway, on to this week’s episode….

Episode 1.19 “Epilogue”

(Dir by Reza Badiyi, originally aired on April 27th, 1996)

Griff is concerned about his old friends, RJ (Jared Murphy) and Rene O’Gill (Julianne Morrs).  Their mother has just recently died and Rene suspects that she was murdered by their stepfather, Robert Houston (Ben Murphy).  RJ, meanwhile, is a junky for both adrenaline and amphetamines and his girlfriend, Candy (Carmen Electra), seems like she might be a bad influence.  Both RJ and Rene are due to receive a good deal of money from their trust funds and, if anything happened to them, that money would go to Robert.

Wanting to learn the truth about her mother’s death, Rene hires Mitch and Ryan to investigate.  Because Mitch is a terrible private eye, he decides to have Donna go undercover to discover if Robert is hiding anything.  Keep in mind that Donna does not work for the detective agency, has got a club to run, is already training to become a lifeguard, and has absolutely no investigative experience.  And, of course, it turns out that there really wasn’t any need to have Donna go undercover because, just as Mitch is terrible at investigating stuff, Robert is terrible at covering up the fact that he’s a murderer.

How does Mitch solve this case?  When he discovers that someone has been calling Rene’s answering machine and getting her messages without her knowledge, Mitch says, “Dial Star 69.”  That’s the extent of Mitch’s detective work in this episode.

(Answering machines and Star 69, could this show be any more of a product of the 90s?)

The main problem here is that the episode revolves around Griff and his romantic feelings for Rene but since Griff is a character who has only appeared in a handful of episodes and never really made much of an impression, it’s hard to really get either emotionally or mentally involved with his story.  When RJ is killed during a jet ski race, Griff gets upset and blames Robert but again, we don’t know Griff, we don’t know RJ, and we don’t know Robert.

The best that can be said about this episode is that it features some fun flirtation between David Hasselhoff and Angie Harmon, though not nearly enough.  Probably the most interesting thing about this episode is that it tries to be noticeably more racy than previous episodes and the editing often feels so abrupt that it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that there was a more explicit version of the episode made for Europe.  Carmen Electra plays a femme fatale here and she does do a good job of being playfully evil.  Later, she would join the cast of regular Baywatch, playing a different character who didn’t murder anyone.

Next week …. oh, who knows?  I just want to get to the second season already.  That’s when all the aliens and undead Vikings start to show up.

Retro Television Reviews: The Love Boat 2.20 “Best of Friends/Aftermath/Dream Boat”

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 just weird.

Episode 2.20 “Best of Friends/Aftermath/Dream Boat”

(Dir by George Tyne, originally aired on February 10th, 1979)

This cruise is all about excitement and letdowns.

For instance, Doc Bricker is super excited because his former mentor, Dr. Art Akers (Richard Anderson), is a passenger on the cruise.  But then Bricker is letdown when he discovers that, due to a traffic accident, Dr. Akers has lost his arm and can no longer practice medicine.  Bricker also discovers that Dr. Akers feels that Bricker has wasted his potential by taking a job as a cruise ship doctor.  As Dr. Akers puts it, Doc Bricker should be performing surgery and working in a hospital and not wasting his time dealing with seasick debutantes.  Obviously, we’re meant to feel that Dr. Akers is being unfair and Akers is definitely a jerk.  At the same time, it is really hard to think of very many times that this show actually showed Dr. Bricker doing anything other than hitting on the passengers.  I know that there was an episode where he delivered a baby and another where he performed surgery while at sea but, for the most part, Doc does seem to spend most of his time drinking at the bar and hanging out at the pool.

Anyway, Doc Bricker does get a chance to prove himself.  He notices that Akers’s wife, Laura (Diana Muldaur), appears to be hooked on the anti-anxiety pills that she’s been taking ever since the car accident that cost her husband his arm.  At first, Akers refuses to listen to Bricker but then Laura ends up stumbling around the ship in a daze and Akers is first to admit that his wife is a junkie and Doc Bricker is actually a doctor.  So, I guess that’s a happy ending to that story.

Carol Gilmore (Carol Lynley) is super excited when she boards the cruise because she’s going to finally meet the man who is engaged to her best friend, Gwen (Donna Pescow).  She’s also excited because a handsome passenger named Paul (Ben Murphy) hits on her as soon as he sees her.  However, she’s letdown when she subsequently discovers that Paul is Gwen’s fiancé!  Even after he learns that Carol is Gwen’s best friend, Paul asks Carol to meet him on the deck at midnight.  Carol does so and Paul tells her that he hit on her because he was feeling nervous about getting married but that he felt terrible and ashamed as soon as he did so and that hitting on Carol only reminded him of how much he loves Gwen.  Carol thinks that is the most romantic thing that she’s ever heard.  Gwen is far less impressed and she dumps both her fiancé and her best friend.  However, Gwen reconsiders when she later sees Paul dancing with Carol and she decides that she needs both of them in her life.

Finally, the crew is super excited when Captain Stubing is offered a job as the captain of the Lorelei, which is a legendary cruise ship.  Though they don’t want to lose him, they do want Stubing to be happy so they spend the entire cruise telling the Lorelei’s owner (Hans Conreid) about what a great guy the Captain is.  However, the Captain does not want to leave the Pacific Princess so he starts acting like a jerk in hope that the offer will be rescinded.  When the Lorelei’s owner announces that Stubing is such a great captain that he’ll hire him even if he is a jerk, Stubing is forced to finally admit that he doesn’t want the job.

This was a weird episode.  All of the stories felt as if they were only halfway written before filming started.  The stuff with Gwen, Carol, and Paul felt especially strange, as there was really absolutely no reason for Gwen to change her mind about taking Paul back, beyond the fact that the story had to resolve itself somehow.  The storyline about Dr. Akers was a bit more developed but Akers himself was such a jerk that it was hard to really care about him or his bitterness over Bricker having an enjoyable life.  As for Captain Stubing’s storyline, it required Stubing to act in ways that were totally out-of-character for him.  A Stubing who can’t speak his mind is not the Stubing that the viewers know.

Yeah, this was a weird cruise.  I’m just glad everyone made it back home.

Retro Television Reviews: Fantasy Island 2.17 “The Stripper/The Boxer”

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 1986.  The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi!

Smiles, everyone, smiles!  This week, we’ve got stripping and boxing!

Episode 2.17 “The Stripper/The Boxer”

(Dir by Lawrence Dobkin, originally aired on February 10th, 1979)

This week, Tattoo is wearing a monocle because his cousin Igor has discovered that they are descended from royalty.  Roarke is not impressed.  Indeed, he seems to be genuinely angered by Tattoo’s suggestion that he’s somehow better than him.

As for the fantasies, first off the plane is Maureen Banning (Laraine Stephens).  Maureen is a runaway heiress.  Her father doesn’t want her to marry a poet named Barnaby (William Beckley) so she has snuck off to Fantasy Island so that she can get married over the weekend.  Unfortunately, her father’s private detectives have followed her to the island.  In a panic, Maureen hops onto the first bus that she sees.  It turns out the bus is the tour bus for a burlesque show and the show’s manager, Russ McCoy (Michael Callan), has a fantasy that concerns bringing the show to Broadway.  Maureen is mistaken for a famous burlesque dancer.  Fortunately, Sheba Palumbo (Mamie Van Doren) and Betty (Beverly Powers) are avid tabloid readers and they immediately recognize Maureen as the runaway heiress.  They agree to teach her how to dance so that she can stay on the island and marry Barnaby.  Except, of course, Maureen is now starting to feel more attracted to Russ….

This fantasy was okay.  I enjoyed the dancing and I also enjoyed thinking about how much Gary Loggins would have enjoyed watching his favorite actress, Mamie Van Doren, teach Maureen all the moves.  I think the main problem with this fantasy is that, even after she ran way, Maureen never seemed to be in control of her own fate.  The appeal of dancing on stage, whether you’re an old school burlesque performer or a modern-day stripper, is that it gives you all the power but, for Maureen, it just seemed like something to do until she finally got around to getting married.

The other fantasy involves Billy Blake (Ben Murphy), a boxer who only has three years to live.  He wants a chance to fight the other leading leading championship contender.  Even though the fight will be unofficial, Billy just wants a chance to show that, if not for his fatal disease, he could have been a champ.  Of course, if he takes too many hits to the head, Billy could die in the ring.  Billy is okay with that until he discovers that his former high school girlfriend, Jennie Collins (Maureen McCormick), is working on the Island.  Billy’s trainer (Forrest Tucker) tells Jennie to stay away from Billy and Jennie is ashamed of all of the “things” she did when she ran off to Hollywood to try to become a star.  (Like starring on The Brady Bunch Hour, perhaps….)  But, in the end, Billy realizes that his real fantasy is to spend his last remaining years with Jennie.  Personally, I found myself wondering why Billy didn’t consider a fantasy where he was cured of his terminal but unnamed disease.  Then he could both be champion and spend the rest of his life with Jennie.

There weren’t many surprises with this fantasy but Ben Murphy and Maureen McCormick were an undeniably cute couple.  I hope they had many good times before Billy’s agonizing and tragic death.

Next week …. John Saxon comes to Fantasy Island!

Retro Television Reviews: Gidget’s Summer Reunion (dir by Bruce Bilson)

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 Sundays, I will be reviewing the made-for-television movies that used to be a primetime mainstay.  Today’s film is 1985’s Gidget’s Summer Reunion!  It  can be viewed on Tubi!

Back in the 1970s, when the rest of the country was worrying about political corruption, inflation, and an out-of-touch president with an embarrassing family, Gidget, Jeff, and their friends were carefree California teenagers who spent all of their time either hanging out on the beach or running into the ocean with a surfboard.  It was a time when they had not a care in the world and, obviously, it couldn’t last forever.

Nearly 10 years later, Gidget (Caryn Richman) and Jeff (Dean Butler) are now married and their surfboards have been safely stored away in the garage.  Jeff works as an architect and it’s obvious that his new boss, Anne (Mary Frann), wants to make their professional relationship into something personal.  Gidget, meanwhile, owns her own travel agency and, apparently, it’s a success even though Gidget rarely seems to spend much time at the office.  Gidget is hyperactive and a bit self-absorbed and, as such, she usually only shows up at work long enough to tell her employees about her latest problems before then running out of the office in an impulsive attempt to fix everything.

What problems do Gidget and Jeff have?  Well, for one thing, they live in a giant house despite the fact that they’re nearly broke.  They’re both workaholics and, as a result, they don’t spend as much time together as they used to.  They got married and then they became strangers.  It’s been years since they last went down to the beach.  When Gidget’s niece, Kim (Allison Barron), wants to learn how to surf, it doesn’t even occur to her to ask her aunt or her uncle.  Instead, she ends up hanging out with a sleazy, beer-drinking surfer named Mickey (Vincent Van Patten).  

Fear not!  Gidget has a plan!  Jeff’s birthday is coming up and Gidget decides that it would be a great idea to use her travel agent powers to get the entire gang back together again.  She wants to bring all of the old surfers back to help celebrate Jeff’s big day.  The only problem is that the old gang isn’t entirely easy to find.  Plus, one of Gidget’s tour guides has to drop out of leading a tour in Hawaii.  Gidget is forced to go in his place.  Can she get back from Hawaii in time to save Jeff from Anne and  Kim from Mickey?  And even more importantly, will she ever be able to track down the old gang?  Will the movie end with a bunch of balding guys surfing while the Beach Boys play on the soundtrack?  Can you guess the answer?  

The best thing that can be said about Gidget’s Summer Reunion is that the beach looked nice and the Hawaii scenes reminded me of the wonderful summer that my family and I spent in Hawaii.  And the film is correct when it points out that adulthood is never as easy as we expected it to be when we were teenagers.  However, the film suffers from the fact that a lot of Gidget’s problems could have been solved by Gidget actually taking a few minutes to think before acting.  It’s one thing to be free-spirited and impulsive.  It’s another thing to totally lack common sense.  For instance, Gidget and Jeff’s old surfboards are stolen out of the back of Gidget’s convertible and, while you can certainly feel bad for Gidget’s loss, you do have to wonder what she was expecting when she basically just left them out in the open, where anyone could get their hands on them.  Jeff isn’t off the hook either, as it was pretty much obvious to everyone but him that Anne was trying to get him to cheat on his wife.  Gidget and Jeff are a cute couple but they don’t seem to have a brain cell between them.

Oh well.  At least the beach looked nice!

Coming Down The Mountain: Runaway! (1973, directed by David Lowell Rich)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Runaway! begins with a train starting a slow descent down a snowy mountain.  On board the train are collection of skiers, gigolos, conductors, and engineers.  One couple discusses their upcoming divorce.  An athletic father tries to bond with his less-athletic son.  A slick con artist tries to convince a depressed young woman not to throw herself from the train.  A group of skiers put on an impromptu concert, banging on their suitcases like bongo drums.  They get so loud that the conductor doesn’t even hear the engineer desperately trying to contact him.  What none of the passengers realize is that the train’s brake engines have frozen and the train is about to start hurtling down the mountain.  Unless the chief engineer can figure out a way to stop the train, everyone’s going to die!

Made for television in the year between the release of The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno, Runaway! is a low-key but entertaining disaster movie.  With a running time of only 70 minutes, Runaway! doesn’t waste any time getting down to business and, even if it is a low-budget movie, there’s no way that an out-of-control train racing down a mountain can’t be exciting.

Compared to the other disaster movies of the era, Runaway! does not exactly have an all-star cast though there are some familiar faces.  Vera Miles and Ed Nelson are the divorcing couple while Martin Milner is the father who puts too much pressure on his son.  Ben Murphy is the gigolo who refuses to pay for a ticket on general principle while Darleen Carr is the woman who wants to jump to her death.  Most of them are just there as placeholders.  It’s obvious from the start that the real stars of the film are going to be the train and the mountain.  However, the famously gruff character actor Ben Johnson manages to make an impression just by being Ben Johnson.  Johnson plays the chief engineer and, as long as he’s manning the engine, you know that the train’s passengers are in good hands.

Runaway! has never been released on DVD or even VHS but it is currently available on YouTube.

A Movie A Day #154: The Day They Hanged Kid Curry (1971, directed by Barry Shear)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Welcome to the Old West.  Hannibal Heyes (Pete Duel) and Kid Curry (Ben Murphy) are two of the most wanted outlaws in the country, two cousins who may have robbed trains but who also never shot anyone.  After being promised a pardon if they can stay out of trouble for a year, Heyes and Curry have been living under the names Joshua Smith and Thaddeus Jones.

During a trip to San Francisco to visit his old friend, a con artist named Silky O’Sullivan (Walter Brennan), Heyes is told that Kid Curry is currently on trial in Colorado.  When Heyes goes to the trial, he discovers that the accused (Robert Morse) is an imposter and that the real Kid Curry is watching the trial from the back of the courtroom.  It turns out that the man of trial is just an attention seeker , someone who is so desperate for fame that he is willing to be hanged to get it.  At first, Curry thinks this is a great thing.  After the imposter hangs, everyone will believe that Curry is dead and they’ll stop searching for him.  Heyes, however, disagrees, especially after the imposter starts to implicated Heyes in crimes that he didn’t commit.

Obviously inspired by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Alias Smith and Jones was one of the last of the classic TV westerns.  Though I originally assumed that it was the show’s pilot, The Day They Hanged Kid Curry was actually the first episode of the second season.  With commercials, it ran 90 minutes.  Because of its extended running time, The Day They Hanged Kid Curry was not included in Alias Smith and Jones‘s standard rerun package.  Instead, it was edited to remove the show’s usual opening credits and it was then sold as a motion picture, despite the fact that it is very obviously a television show.

As long as no one is expecting anything more than an extended television episode, The Day They Hanged Kid Curry is okay.  I have never been a big Alias Smith and Jones fan but this episode’s plotline, with Robert Morse confessing to crimes he didn’t commit just so he can have a taste of fame before he dies, feels prescient of today’s culture.  For classic western fans, the main reason to watch will be the chance to see a parade of familiar faces: Slim Pickens, Henry Jones, Paul Fix, and Vaughn Taylor all have roles.  Most important is familiar Western character actor and four-time Oscar winner, Walter Brennan, as Silky O’Sullivan.  This was one of Brennan’s final performance and the wily old veteran never loses his dignity, even when he’s pretending to be Kid Curry’s grandmother.

As for Alias Smith and Jones, it was a modest success until Pete Duel shot himself halfway through the second season.  Rather than retire the character of Hannibal Heyes, the show’s producers replaced Pete Duel with another actor, Roger Davis.  One day after Duel’s suicide, Davis being fitted for costumes.  This move was not popular with the show’s fanbase and Alias Smith and Jones was canceled a year later, though it lived on for years in reruns.

Horror On The Lens: Time Walker (dir by Tom Kennedy)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today’s horror on the lens is 1982’s Time Walker!

Time Walker tells the story of what happens when a mummy that’s actually an alien awakens on a college campus.  As you might guess, mayhem and bad fashion choices ensue.  To be honest, Time Walker is not the best horror film ever made.  In fact, it’s actually pretty bad.  However, it is definitely a time capsule of the era in which it was produced and it has one of those WTF endings that you kind of have to see for yourself.

Enjoy!