Tag Archives: Bradley Gregg

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: Sawdust 1.1 “Pilot”

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 Thursdays, I will be reviewing Sawdust, which aired on CBS in 1987.  The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!

From executive producer Ed Zwick, we have a show about a really terrible father.

Episode 1.1 “Pilot”

(Dir by Jeffrey Hornaday, originally aired on July 3rd, 1987)

We bought a circus!

That’s the premise behind Sawdust, in which an accountant named Max Galpin (James Eckhouse) buys a circus after the owner dies.  He then pulls his teenage children out of school and, along with his wife, he decides to live with and run the circus.

What!?

Like seriously, why would he do that?  Unfortunately, the purchase of the circus and the moment when Max tells his family that he’s ruined their lives all take place off-screen.  Max mentions them in his voice-over narration and he says something about how, at an auction of the former owner’s possessions, he bid on the circus but he was surprised when he won.  So, I guess maybe Max wasn’t actually planning on buying the circus but he just bid on it to …. what?  I mean, as a part of my day job, I have been to auctions before and I’ve bid on stuff for my boss.  It was fun and yes, sometimes people do make bids just to run up the price of something.  But I still find it hard to believe that someone could 1) accidentally buy a circus and 2) justify uprooting his family to run the circus.

At first, Max’s wife (Marsha Waterbury) and his daughter (Kellie Overbey) and his son (Bradley Gregg) are not happy with him but that changes once they actually arrive at the circus and get caught up in the excitement of putting on a show.  Max’s daughter takes the longest to come around, mostly because Max wants her to wear a skimpy outfit while walking across a tight rope that is suspended above the ground.  His daughter probably wouldn’t die if she lost her balance but still, it would be embarrassing and what type of father does that to his daughter?  I mean, is walking across a tight rope an easy thing to do?  Meanwhile, Max gets shot out of a cannon, his wife works with an elephant, and his son dresses up like a gorilla.  Max is willing to risk his daughter’s dignity but his son just has to dress up like a gorilla.  What the Hell?

Max gets to know the ringmaster, Serge (Elya Baskin), who quits in a huff but then comes back because the circus is all he knows.  And Leslie Jordan shows up, not saying a word but playing various musical instruments.  We also meet a man who has been hired to serve as the tutor for Max’s kids because again, Max has pulled them out of school so that they can join the circus.  Max really is a terrible father.  What a jerk.  Seriously, his children have not only left behind all of their friends but also whatever hope they may have had of getting into an Ivy League college.  Now, they’ll have to settle for a state school.  And why?  Because their father, despite having no circus experience, decided to run a circus.

This pilot was so weird.  There was a laugh track but the show took itself oddly seriously.  Max is a character to whom most viewers would have mixed feelings and the rather frantic performance of James Eckhouse does little to make him sympathetic.  There would not be a second episode.

Robots With A Cause: Class of 1999 (1990, directed by Mark L. Lester)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

The year is 1999 and John F. Kennedy High School sits in the middle of Seattle’s most dangerous neighborhood.  Teenage gangs have taken over all of the major American cities and just going to school means putting your life in danger.  However, Dr. Bob Forest (Stacy Keach!), the founder of MegaTech, has a solution.  He has taken former military androids and reprogrammed them to serve as educators.  JFK’s principal, Miles Langford (Malcolm McDowell!!), agrees to allow his school to be used a testing ground.  Soon, Miss Conners (Pam Grier!!!) is teaching chemistry.  Mr. Byles (Patrick Kilpatrick) is teaching gym.  Mr. Hardin (John P. Ryan) is teaching history.  When they’re not teaching, these robots are killing truant students and manipulating two rival street gangs into going to war.

Imagine mixing Rebel With A Cause with The Terminator and you get an idea of what Class of 1999 is like.  Two of the only good teenagers (played by Bradley Gregg and Traci Lind) figure out that the teachers are killing their classmates but they already know that they won’t be able to get anyone to listen to them because they’re just kids who go to school in a bad neighborhood.  Meanwhile, the teachers have been programmed to do whatever has to be done to keep the peace in the school.  Why suspend a disruptive student when you can just slam his head into a locker until he’s dead?  Director Mark L. Lester (who previously directed Class of 1984) is an old pro when it comes to movies like this and he’s helped by a better-than-average cast.  Any movie that features not only Stacy Keach and Malcolm McDowell but also Pam Grier is automatically going to be cooler than any movie that doesn’t.

When Class of 1999 was made, 1999 was considered to be the future and, in many ways, the movie did prove to be prophetic.  We may not have robot teachers (yet) but the idea of arming teachers and expecting them to double as cops has become a very popular one over the past few years.  Personally, I wouldn’t want to send my children to a school where the teachers all have to carry a gun while teaching but that may just be me.

A Movie A Day #94: Eye of the Storm (1991, directed by Yuri Zeltser)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

A motel sits off of a highway in the Nevada desert.  One night, two criminals (Ally Walker and German boxer Wilhelm von Homburg) brutally murder the husband and wife who own the motel.  Their youngest son, Steven, flees the criminals by jumping through a window and is left for dead.

Ten years later, the motel is still sitting off the highway, operated by the blind Steven (Bradley Gregg) and his older brother, Ray (Craig Sheffer).  Ray is very protective of his brother and, when a car pulls up to the motel, he does not even want to turn on the vacancy sign.

The motel’s newest guests are a very unlikely couple.  Marvin Gladstone (Dennis Hopper) is an alcoholic gambler who regularly berates at his much younger trophy wife, Sandra (Lara Flynn Boyle).  Marvin and Sandra were heading to Las Vegas to renew their vows but the drunk Marvin accidentally drove their car off the road.  Now, Marvin and Sandra are stranded at the motel while a dust storm approaches and one of the brothers turns out to be psychotic.

Eye of the Storm is another low-budget and predictable thriller from the 1990s but, taken on its own terms, it’s not bad.  Along with some striking shots of the desert, Eye of the Storm features a quartet of strong performances.  For fans of David Lynch, the main interest here will be seeing Blue Velvet‘s Dennis Hopper and Twin Peaks‘s Lara Flynn Boyle as a couple in trouble.  Hopper especially seems to be enjoying himself and when his character leaves the movie, Eye of the Storm becomes much less interesting.  Lara Flynn Boyle is sexy throughout, enough to make you reconsider everything you thought you knew about Donna Hayward.

See this one on a double bill with Red Rock West.

A Movie A Day #83: Shattered: If Your Kid’s On Drugs (1986, directed by Burr Smidt)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Shattered: If Your Kid’s On Drugs is a typical anti-drug video from the 1980s.  The story is familiar after school special material.  Kim (Megan Follows) and Rick (Rick Segall) are upper middle class kids who live in the suburbs.  Rick is a track star.  Kim is at the top of her class.  That all changes when they start hanging out with the local drug dealer (Dermot Mulroney), who gets Rick hooked on marijuana and Kim hooked on cocaine.  Kim gets an F on her report card.  Rick can no longer jump the hurdles.  Eventually, their parents stop drinking and taking valium long enough to force them into rehab.  The message is that tough love is the only solution.

The only thing that makes Shattered: If Your Kid’s On Drugs noteworthy is the strange and unexpected presence of Burt Reynolds and Judd Nelson, playing themselves and commenting on the action.  The first scene in the video is Burt and Judd driving their pickup truck through the suburbs, talking about how nice it is.  “Lot of nice restaurants,” Burt says.  “Are you going to buy me lunch?” Judd asks.  “Lot of nice restaurants,” Burt replies.  “This town is the American Dream,” Judd says.  “Or the American nightmare,” Burt adds.  When Kim and Rick are getting high in Dermot Mulroney’s chartreuse microbus, Burt and Judd sit on a picket fence and shoot the crap.  Burt can’t understand why teens would use drugs and Judd reminds him that it has been a while since he was a teenager. Rumor has it that both Burt and Judd appeared in this video to fulfill court-ordered community service.

Everything works out in the end.  If you have any doubt, just look at Burt giving us a thumbs up before the final credits roll.