Tag Archives: Bill Duke

Late Night Retro Television Review: Hunter 1.3 “The Hot Grounder”

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 Hunter, which aired on NBC from 1984 to 1991.  The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi and several other services!

This week, the police commissioner is suspected of murder!

Episode 1.3 “The Hot Grounder”

(Dir by Bill Duke, originally aired on October 5th, 1984)

After the police commissioner’s wife is blown up by a car bomb, all the homicide detectives hide out in the bathroom because they don’t want to get assigned the case.  Captain Cain still manages to track them down and gives the case to Hunter and McCall.  When McCall asks Hunter why he didn’t do a better job hiding, Hunter replies, “I’m too tall!”

Hunter and McCall soon come to suspect that Commissioner Crenshaw (William Windom) had his wife killed.  Because Crenshaw was being blackmailed with photographs of him with another man, his wife was threatening to divorce him.  Despite all of the evidence against Crenshaw, the police chief (Jason Bernard) tries to protect him.  Hunter and McCall find themselves suspended from the force.  They still manage to prove Crenshaw’s guilt.  Crenshaw goes to prison and Hunter and McCall get their badges back.

This episode felt like a rough draft.  I enjoyed the humor at the start of it.  All of the detectives trying to hide felt very realistic.  Dryer was always obviously still getting comfortable with the role when this episode was shot but his jokes were well-delivered.  That said, the mystery itself felt half-baked and William Windom was not particularly believable in his role.  By the end of the episode, Hunter had been reduced to repeating, “Works for me,” over and over again.

This episode didn’t really work for me.  It was obvious that the show was still trying to figure out who Hunter and McCall were and how they would react to each other.  As such, their chemistry felt off in this episode and the end result was forgettable.

Retro Television Review: Miami Vice 4.14 “Baseballs of Death”

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!

I saw the title of this week’s episode and I immediately called my sister….

Episode 4.14 “Baseballs of Death”

(Dir by Bill Duke, originally aired on February 19th, 1988)

“Watch this with me,” I told Erin, “it’s a baseball episode!”

“It is?” Erin asked.

“Look at the title!”

I was excited.  I always like to find things that I can watch with my sister and, as we all know, she loves baseball.  She certainly loves baseball more than she loves tv shows about bombs that blow up when you step on them.

Unfortunately, it turned out that this episode was not about baseball.  Instead, it featured a bunch of bombs that blow up when you step on them.  According to this episode, those bombs are known as baseballs.  Sorry, Erin!  Honest mistake….

Misleading title aside, this is a really good episode.  It features Tony Plana as a Chilean diplomat who is trying to buy a shipment of weapons, including the explosive baseballs.  Plana is a chilling villain.  In fact, he’s the first villain of season 4 to actually feel dangerous.  When we first meet him, he’s coldly executing the girlfriend of a tabloid reporter.  Plana’s lack of emotion as he kills and plots to kill feels like a throwback to the soulless sociopaths who made the first season’s rogue gallery.  A very young Oliver Platt shows up as an arms dealer and his nerdy confidence adds to some comedy to what is an otherwise fairly grim episode.  Just as with Plana’s cold villainy, Platt’s cheerful amorality felt like a throwback to the first season.

Indeed, this entire episode felt like a return to what the show used to be.  After a season that’s involved televangelists, bull semen, UFOs, and Crockett getting married to Sheena Easton, it was nice to see an episode that actually felt like an episode of Miami Vice.  Director Bill Dule gave this episode a stylish and, at times, almost surrealistic feel.  Crockett was back to be a cynic.  Castillo stared at the floor and spoke through clenched teeth while Switek actually got to put his phone-tapping skills to good use.  In the end, Tony Plana may have been the villain but, in old school Miami Vice style, the majority of the blame was still put on the U.S. government.  The episode even ended with an exciting boat chase.  All this episode needed was Phil Collins on the soundtrack and it could have passed for something from the first two seasons.

Season 4 has been uneven but this episode felt like classic Vice.  Erin thought the episode would have been better with actual baseballs and I agree with her that the title was misleading.  That said, this was still an enjoyable throwback to what the show used to be.

Commando (1985, directed by Mark L. Lester)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

John Matrix (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is a former colonel in the U.S. Amy Special Forces.  He was one of the best at what he did but he’s now retired from all that and lives in the mountains of California with his young daughter, Jenny (Alyssa Milano).  When Capt Bennett (Vernon Wells), Martix’s former comrade-in-arms, kidnaps Jenny, Matrix is told that he has 11 hours to assassinate the leader of the country of Val Verde so that General Arius (Dan Hedaya) can launch a coup.  Knowing that the bad guys are planning on killing both him and Jenny no matter what he does, Matrix instead takes out Arius’s men as he makes his way to where Jenny is being held captive.

Commando is one of my favorite Schwarzenegger films.  It has some of the best one-liners (“I like you, Sully, I kill you last,”), some of the best character actors (Sully is played by David Patrick Kelly), and also one of Schwarzenegger’s best performances.  In Commando, Schwarzenegger shows that he’s willing to poke fun at himself, which was something that set him apart from many of the action heroes of the 80s.  (Stallone eventually learned how to poke fun at himself but it took a very long time.)  At his California home, Matrix chops down and carries a tree without breaking a sweat.  During a chase through a mall, Matrix easily lifts up a phone booth.  Matrix may be trying to save the life of his daughter but he still takes the time to come up with one-liners and fall in love with flight attendant Cindy (Rae Dawn Chong).  Commando is essentially just a big comic book brought to life and Schwarzenegger understands that and gives a very knowing, self-aware performance.  Director Mark Lester wastes no time getting to the action and the result is one of the most entertaining action films of the 80s.

Believe it or not, Commando was originally envisioned as being a Gene Simmons picture.  When the KISS frontman turned down the film, the script was rewritten for Arnold Schwarzenegger.  Schwarzenegger made this film after The Terminator and it was another box office success.  As for Gene Simmons, he would have to wait for Runaway to make his action debut.

14 Days of Paranoia #5: Payback (dir by Brian Hegeland)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1999 film, Payback, opens with Porter (Mel Gibson) lying on a kitchen table while a grubby-looking doctor digs two bullets out of his back.  The scene takes place in almost nauseating close-up, with the emphasis being put on the amount of pain that Porter endures to get rid of those bullets.  Immediately, we know that Porter is not someone who can safely go to a regular hospital.  Porter is someone who exists in the shadows of mainstream society.

He’s also someone who spends a lot of time getting beaten up.  Even back when he was still a big star, Mel Gibson always seemed to spend a good deal of his films getting beaten up and tortured in various ways and that’s certainly the case with Payback.  Porter gets punched.  Porter gets shot.  Porter has a encounter with an over-the-top dominatrix (played by Lucy Liu).  At one point, Porter allows two of his toes to be smashed by a hammer, just so he can trick the his enemies into doing something dumb.  As played by Gibson, Porter stumbles through the film and often looks like he’s coming down from a week-long bender.  It’s interesting to think that Payback is a remake of 1967’s Point Blank, which starred Lee Marvin as Walker, an unflappable career criminal who never showed a hint of emotion or weakness.  Porter, on the other hand, is visibly unstable and spends the entire film on the verge of a complete mental collapse.  A lot of people try to kill Porter and Porter kills almost all of them without a moment’s hesitation.

(Of course, both Porter and Point Blank‘s Walker are versions of Parker, a career criminal who was at the center of several crime novels written by Donald “Richard Stark” Westlake.)

After helping to pull off a $140,000 heist from a Chinese triad, Porter was betrayed and left for dead by his former friend Val Resnick (Gregg Henry) and his wife, Lynn (Deborah Kara Unger).  Porter, who just wants the $70,000 cut that he was promised, starts his quest for the money by tracking down Val and Lynn, and then continues it by going after the three bosses (played by William Devane, James Coburn, and Kris Kristofferson) of “The Outfit,” a shadowy organization that Val had gotten involved with.  Along the way, Porter deals with a motely crew of corrupt cops, violent criminals, and sleazy middlemen.  (David Paymer has a memorable bit as a low-level functionary with atrocious taste in suits.)  Porter also hooks up with a prostitute named Rosie (Maria Bello), who might be the only person that he can actually trust.

I have mixed feelings about Payback.  (So did director Brian Hegeland, who was reportedly fired towards the end of shooting and later released a far different director’s cut.)  Though the film does a good job of capturing the visual style of a good neo-noir, the story itself is so violent and grim that it actually gets a little bit boring.  The film’s advertising encouraged audiences to “Get ready to root for the bad guy,” but there’s really no reason to root for Porter.  He’s an inarticulate and ruthless killer with no sense of humor.  If anything, the people that he kills seem to be far more reasonable and likable than he does.  In Point Blank, Lee Marvin may have been a bastard but he was good at what he did and you at least got the feeling that he wouldn’t go after any innocent bystanders.  In Payback, Porter is such a mess that his continued survival is largely due to dumb luck.  It’s hard to root for an idiot.

That said, the film does do a good job of capturing the feeling of people living on the fringes of society.  The Outfit is not a typical Mafia family but instead, a collection of businessmen who work out of nice offices and, in the case of William Devane’s Carter, come across as being more of a senior executive than a crime boss.  (James Coburn and Kris Kristofferson, meanwhile, come across as being two former hippies who made it rich on Wall Street.  They’re elderly versions of Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin.)  The film does a good job of creating a world where no one trusts anyone and everyone is being watched by someone.  In one memorable scene, the three men sent to watch for Porter discover that he’s been watching them the entire time.  Never forget to look over your shoulder to see who might be following.

Flaws and all, this 1999 film does a good job of capturing the atmosphere of paranoia that, for many, would come to define the early part of the 21st Century.

14 Days of Paranoia:

  1. Fast Money (1996)
  2. Deep Throat II (1974)
  3. The Passover Plot (1976)
  4. The Believers (1987)

Deep Cover (1992, directed by Bill Duke)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

When Russell Stevens was 10 years old, he saw his father get gunned down while holding up a liquor store.  Now, 20 years later, Russell (Laurence Fishburne) is a cop who is so straight that he doesn’t even drink.  But because of his father’s background, a psychological profile that indicates Russell is unique suited to understand how the criminal mind works, and the fact that he has no loved ones at home, he is recruited to work undercover.  His weaselly handler, Carver (Charles Martin Smith), explains that going undercover means that Russell is going to have to become a criminal 24/7.  He can’t just do his job for 8 hours a day and then go back to his normal life at night.

With the government’s money, Russell sets himself up as a dealer, buying and selling the drugs that are destroying his community.  It does not take long before Russell meets David Jason (Jeff Goldblum), a lawyer and aspiring drug kingpin.  At first, David makes Russell as being an undercover cop but, after Russell is arrested by the righteous but clueless Detective Taft (Clarence Williams III), David changes his mind and brings Russell into the operation.  The line between being a cop and a criminal starts to blur, especially after David and Russell start to bond over their mutual dislike of their boss, Felix (Gregory Sierra).  It doesn’t take long for Russell to get in over his head.

There have been a lot of films made about undercover cops losing themselves in their new criminal identity but few take the story to its logical conclusion like Deep Cover does.  Russell may start out as a straight arrow but, by the end of the movie, he’s killed a dealer in cold blood and broken his own personal pledge to never do cocaine himself.  He also discovers that David is often a more trustworthy partner than his own colleagues in law enforcement.  Fishburne and Goldblum both give excellent, spot-on performances as Russell and David and they’re supported by an able cast of weasels and tough guys.  I especially liked Charles Martin Smith’s performance as Carver.  (When Russell asks Carver if he’s ever killed a man, Carver laughs and says that he went to Princeton “just to avoid that shit.”)  Gregory Sierra is also great in the role of Felix and I loved that, of all people, Sidney Lassick played one of Felix’s henchmen.  That’s like seeing John Fiedler play the Godfather.

One of the best crime thrillers of the 90s, Deep Cover is not only a detective film but it’s also a politically-charged look at why America’s war on drugs was doomed to failure.  No sooner does Russell get into position to catch the man behind Felix’s operation than he’s told to drop the case because the State Department thinks that the drug lord could be politically helpful to them in South America.  As Russell discovers, the War on Drugs is more interested in taking out the soldiers on the streets than the generals in charge.  While men like Carver sit in their offices and move people around like pieces on a chess board, people like Russell are left to clean up the mess afterward.

The Dirt On The Relentless: American Satan (2017, directed by Ash Avildsen)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

The Relentless are the biggest band in the world, even though their music sounds like it belongs in the 80s.  Led by charismatic singer Johnny Faust (Andy Biersack), the Relentless have just released their debut album, American Satan.  Now, they’re touring the country, doing every drug they can get their hands on and every groupie that stops by their hotel.  The moral guardians say that The Relentless are a bad influence and are leading their children into Satanism.  For once, the moral guardians are right.  Back when they were just a struggling band in Los Angeles, The Relentless made a deal with Satan (Malcolm McDowell).  All they had to do was sacrifice the lead singer of a rival band (played by former teen idol Drake Bell) and all their dreams would come true.  However, if Johnny Faust had bothered to study his namesake, he’d know better than to make a deal with the devil.

The best thing about American Satan is that it was obviously made by people who know the music industry.  All of the details at the start of the film, with the Relentless struggling to get noticed and having to hit the streets and sell tickets to their own show, felt true.  It helps that most of the members of the Relentless were played by actual musicians.  What they lacked in acting talent, they made up for with authenticity.  The music industry is a tough business to break into, regardless of how good or bad your band is.  After watching Johnny and the Relentless struggle with crooked promoters and unsympathetic label owners, it was believable that they would consider signing a deal with the devil.

Much like the band, the movie lost its way after the contract with the devil was signed and official.  The rioting, the groupies, and the drugs were all too predictable and the movie just became The Dirt with Satan replacing Ozzy.  American Satan seems to be building up to an epic conclusion but it never seals the deal.  Instead, it just ends with a whimper, as if no one was sure where the story was supposed to be heading.  Still, any movie that finds roles for Malcolm McDowell, Bill Duke, Goldberg, and Denise Richards can’t be all bad.

At its worse, American Satan is an anti-climatic take on the Faust legend.  At its best, its Tipper Gore’s worst nightmare.

Scenes I Love: Predator “Jungle Shootout”

Posted on by Arleigh

Predator Jungle Shoot

I recently reviewed John McTiernan’s classic scifi action Predator. It is a film that many kids both young and those young at heart loved watching on the bigscreen. The 1980’s some would consider the golden years of action filmmaking.

It was a decade where action instead of dialogue ruled. Where muscle-bound stars like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone dominated the box-office. Even with the resurgence and current renaissance of the action film genre, many still reminisce about the action flicks of the 80’s and how they truly didn’t make them like they used to.

If there’s ever a great example of just how over-the-top and testosterone-fueled the action films were of this decade of the 80’s (also known as the decade of excess) then one can’t go wrong with showing the uninitiated the jungle shootout scene from Predator.

One doesn’t need to be into guns to appreciate the majesty of this scene.

Review: Predator (dir. John McTiernan)

Posted on by Arleigh

Predator 1987

It would be accurate for one to say that Arnold Schwarzenegger was king of the 80’s action flicks. He first burst onto the scene in the titular role in Conan the Barbarian then it’s follow-up sequel. Yet, it would be his role in James Cameron’s The Terminator in 1985 that would make him a household name.

He began to crank out action films after action film every year to varying degrees of success and quality between 1984 and 1987. It would be in the summer of 1987 that he would add a third iconic action film role to stint as Conan the Barbarian and the relentless cybernetic killer, the Terminator.

Maj. Dutch Schaefer in John McTiernan’s action scifi Predator cemented Arnold Schwarzenegger as the most bankable movie star of the 1980’s. The film itself has become a go-to classic whenever film fans of all stripes discuss what were some of the best films of the era. Yes, I do categorize Predator as one of the best to come out of the 1980’s. It does more than hold it’s own when stacked up against Oscar winners, festival darlings and indie cult-favorites.

It’s a film that takes the premise that “man is the most dangerous game” to new levels by adding in a scifi element to the story. That scifi element being an extraterrestrial hunter who comes to Earth every so often to hunt. It’s chosen prey tends to be killers, fighters and soldiers at the top of their craft and usually during times of extreme conflict.

The film, as written by the two brothers John and Jim Thomas, actually works like a slasher horror film in the beginning as Dutch and his team of elite commandos trek through the Central American jungle on a rescue mission. A mission that lands the team in finding the grisly remains of another American special forces team. Questions come up as to whether their CIA liaison (played by Carl Weathers of Rocky and Rocky II fame) knows more about the true nature of their supposed rescue mission than he’s willing to let on.

It’s once the team, still being stalked through the jungle by an unseen predator, finally find the people they’re suppose to rescue that all hell breaks loose in more ways than one. The action is loud, messy and exquisitely choreographed and filmed. Unlike some of the action films of the last ten years, Predator succeeds with it’s action scenes for having a director who uses very long takes and little to no hand-held to keep the action geography easy to follow and the action choreography unencumbered by too many edits and cuts.

Even once the team realizes that they were now being hunted and that whoever, or whatever is hunting them, the film still continues to stay on a creative track. When I mentioned that the film plays out like slasher film, it does in way in that the titular character behaves and moves like slasher killers. It seems to be everywhere and nowhere. The very victims it’s hunting only see it when it’s too late and death’s upon them.

The film’s dialogue has been quoted by so many fans that memes have been created around them. Yet, this doesn’t mean that the film is hilarious. What it does have was that masculine, brother’s-in-arms banter and quips that’s become a sort of signature for screenwriter and director Shane Black who was hired to do some uncredited rewrites on the Thomas Brother’s original script. Black would also end up playing one of the commandos in the film.

Outside of Arnold himself, Predator would be best-known for the effects work by the late and great Stan Winston, who would come in to help redesign the title character (with some help from his buddy James Cameron) and the rest as they would say was film history. It would be difficult to go anywhere around the world, show the Predator to some random person and they not know what it is.

Predator was one of those films that people, at first, thought was just a mindless, popcorn flick. The type of cinema that was to be seen then forgotten for better fare. Yet, in the end, Predator ended up becoming not just a classic of its genre, but a perfect example of a film that transcends it’s genre roots to become just a great film, in general.

A Movie A Day #265: Hoodlum (1997, directed by Bill Duke)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

1930s.  New York City.  For years, Stephanie St. Clair (Cicely Tyson) has been the benevolent queen of the Harlem underworld, running a successful numbers game and protecting her community from outsiders.  However, psychotic crime boss Dutch Schultz (Tim Roth) is determined to move into Harlem and take over the rackets for himself.  With the weary support of Lucky Luciano (Andy Garcia), Schultz thinks that he is unstoppable but he did not count on the intervention of Bumpy Johnson (Laurence Fishburne).  Just paroled from Sing Sing, Bumpy is determined to do whatever has to be done to keep Schultz out of Harlem.

When I reviewed The Cotton Club yesterday, I knew that I would have to do Hoodlum today.  Hoodlum and The Cotton Club are based on the same historic events and both of them feature Laurence Fishburne in the role of Bumpy Johnson.  Of the two, Hoodlum is the more straightforward film, without any of the operatic flourishes that Coppola brought to The Cotton Club.  Fisburne is surprisingly dull as Bumpy Johnson but Tim Roth goes all in as Dutch Schultz and Andy Garcia is memorably oily as the Machiavellian Luciano.  Hoodlum is about forty minutes too long but the gangster action scenes are staged well.  Bumpy Johnson lived a fascinating life and it is unfortunate that no film has yet to really do him justice, though Clarence Williams III came close with his brief cameo in American Gangster.  (Interestingly enough, Williams is also in Hoodlum, playing one of Shultz’s lieutenants.)

One final note: Hoodlum features William Atherton in the role of District Attorney Thomas E. Dewey.  Atherton plays Dewey as being a corrupt and sleazy politician on Luciano’s payroll.  In real life, Dewey was known for being so honest that Dutch Schultz actually put a contract out on his life after he discovered that Dewey could not be bribed.  I am not sure why Hoodlum decided to slander the subject of one of America’s most famous headlines but it seems unnecessary.

Embracing the Melodrama Part II #63: American Gigolo (dir by Paul Schrader)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

American_gigolo_postWell, here we are!  A month and two days ago, I announced the start of Embracing the Melodrama Part II, a 126-film series of reviews.  At the time, I somewhat foolishly declared that I would manage to review all of these films in just three weeks!  Four weeks later and we have finally reached the halfway point.

So yeah…

Anyway!  We started this series of reviews with 1927’s Sunrise and we have worked our way through the films of the 30s, the 40s, the 50s, the 60s, and the 70s.  And now, as we hit the halfway point, it’s appropriate that we start a new cinematic decade.

In other words, welcome to the 80s!

Let’s start the 80s off with the 1980 film, American Gigolo.  Directed by Paul Schrader, American Gigolo is — much like Schrader’s Hardcore and The Canyons — a look at the sleazier side of life in California.  Julian Kaye (Richard Gere) is the most successful male escort in Los Angeles.  He’s handsome, he’s confident, he speaks multiple languages, and he maintains a proper emotional distance from … well, from everyone.  He’s got a fast car, expensive clothes, a great apartment, and — because it is the 80s after all — a small mirror that is perpetually coated in cocaine residue.

We don’t really learn much about Julian’s past.  We don’t know much about who he was before he became the American Gigolo.  (If this movie were made today, American Gigolo would be a part of the MCU and would end up joining The Avengers.)  However, the film is littered with clues.  For instance, we know that he used to work exclusively for Anne (Nina Van Pallandt) but he’s become so successful that Anne has lost her hold over him.  Before Julian worked for Anne, he worked for Leon (Bill Duke), a gay pimp.

Julian’s sexuality is a big question mark throughout the entire film.  Though all of his current clients are female and Julian brags about his ability to leave a woman feeling sexually satisifed, the film leaves it ambiguous as to whether or not he actually likes women.  (It’s suggested — though never explicitly stated — that Julian slept with men while he was working for Leon.)  Ultimately, for someone who has sex for a living, Julian seems oddly asexual.  It’s hard not to feel that Julian is only truly capable of desiring his own carefully constructed image.

Is Julian capable of love?  That’s the question that Michelle Stratton (Lauren Hutton) has to consider.  Michelle is unhappily married to a member of the U.S. Senate but she’s having an affair with Julian.

Michelle’s relationship with Julian is tested when Julian is accused of murdering one of his clients.  While Julian begs both his clients and his business associated to provide him with an alibi, he discovers that he’s basically alone.  Convinced that someone’s trying to frame him, Julian destroys his apartment and his car searching for clues.  As he grows more and more paranoid, his perfect image starts to crack and Michelle has to decide whether or not to sacrifice her marriage to protect him.

American Gigolo is technically a murder mystery but the murder doesn’t really matter.  Instead, it’s a character study of a man who is empty inside until, in Job-like fashion, he loses everything.  It’s also a very watchable exercise in pure, sleek, and probably cocaine-fueled style.  Richard Gere has always been an oddly hollow actor (and that’s not necessarily meant as a criticism) and that suggestion of inner emptiness makes him the perfect choice for the role of Julian Kaye.

American Gigolo is making the premium cable rounds right now.  Keep an eye out for it and don’t be surprised if you find yourself singing Call Me afterwards.