Retro Television Reviews: Half Nelson 1.9 “Beverly Hills Princess”

Posted on May 5, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a new feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Fridays, I will be reviewing Half Nelson, which ran on NBC from March to May of 1985. Almost all nine of the show’s episodes can be found on YouTube!

Today, we close the book on the adventures of Rocky Nelson in Beverly Hills.

Episode 1.9 “Beverly Hills Princess”

(Dir by Bernard McEveety, originally aired on May 10th, 1985)

The hottest new thing in Beverly Hills is a movement called Emotional Awareness. Led by the slick Dexter Breen (played by Marjoe Gortner, who was himself a former child evangelist) EA is a self-improvement cult that definitely should not be mistaken for Scientology. Not surprisingly, EA is a scam. Dexter and his people encourage the rich and the powerful to confess all of their secrets during “Awareness Sessions” and then use those secrets to blackmail their followers.

Businessman George Farrell (Dick Van Patten) is sick of being blackmailed. However, when George tries to confront Dexter, he gets into a struggle with one of Dexter’s goons. The goon has a gun, which goes off. Fear not, George is not wounded. However, he is arrested for murder when the goon drops dead. Because George doesn’t want to admit that Dexter was blackmailing over him over an affair he had with a congresswoman, George finds himself sitting in prison.

Fortunately, George Farrell is a client of Beverly Hills Security! After being approached by George’s 14 year-old daughter, Leslie (Sydney Penny), Rocky (Joe Pesci, who was shorter than Sydney Penny) makes it his mission to prove that George didn’t mean to kill anyone. To do this, he’ll visit two more of Dexter’s victims (played, in this week’s cameos, by Rich Little and Lyle Waggoner). He’ll also steal several cars, including a police car. Why is Rocky stealing cars? Because he keeps wrecking them, of course! Detective Hamill (Gary Grubbs) isn’t happy about all of the wrecked cars. When he demands to know why Chester (Fred Williamson) keeps Rocky employed despite all of Rocky’s mishaps, Chester replies, “Because he cares!”

As usual, Rocky recruits Beau (Dick Butkus), Kurt (Bubba Smith), and Annie (Victoria Jackson) to help him out. When Rocky discovers that one of Dexter’s victims is holding auditions for a drag revue, Rocky decides that Annie should audition. “But I’m a real woman!” Annie replies. At this point, I was expecting thing to get pretty cringey but, by the standards of when the show was produced, the whole drag revue subplot was handled with maturity and with a relative lack of cheap jokes. I sat there dreading the moment that Bubba Smith and Dick Butkus would put on ball gowns and start speaking in falsetto but it didn’t happen. Instead, they just mentioned how talented all of the performers were. It was pretty clear that the director of the revue was being blackmailed because he was gay but, again in contrast to a lot of shows and movies from the period, both the show and Rocky treated the character with respect. It was an unexpected moment in a show that many would probably dismiss as just being another generic detective series.

While Rocky is stealing cars, Dean Martin is searching for his. No, Rocky didn’t steal Dean’s car. According to Dean, Sammy Davis, Jr. stole it. In this episode, Dean shares all of his scenes with Fred Williamson. Because this was Half Nelson‘s final episode, this was also Dean Martin’s last onscreen moment. Dean passed away ten years later.

Yes, this was indeed the final episode of Half Nelson. In fact, towards the end of the episode, Rocky crashes Chester’s car and then comments that he’s probably going to get fired as a result. Since this was the final episode, I guess we can assume that, once George got out of prison, Rocky was unemployed and on the next flight back to New York City. I hope he got to take the dog with him.

As for the episode itself, it wasn’t a bad way to wrap things up. Everyone got to do something. Chester defended Rocky, for once. Victoria Jackson got to sing a song. Joe Pesci got one final chance to make a joke about his height, snapping that he was “5’4,” when he heard a report that a car had been stolen by a man standing “5’2.” Dean Martin was clearly unwell during filming but he still had a devilish twinkle in his eye. As always, Marjoe Gortner was a good villain. On the negative side, Rocky didn’t so much solve the mystery as he just stumbled into solutions and Detective Hamill’s intense dislike of Rocky never made any sense. As well, Hamill and Annie were dating in the previous episode but they barely even acknowledged each other in this one, which leads me to suspect that this episode was originally meant to air earlier than it did.

Having now watched the entire show, it’s easy to see why Half Nelson failed to attract a regular audience, despite it’s strong pilot. The show never really found the right balance between comedy and drama and, far too often, it turned into a retread of Beverly Hills Cop. The ensemble often felt underused, with Jackson and Williamson spending far too much of their time sitting in the office. The show had a great star in Joe Pesci but many episodes got bogged down with the antics of Bubba Smith and Dick Butkus.

Here’s the thing, though. The show was always interesting, specifically because it did star Joe Pesci. There was something undeniably fun about having stolid TV actors — like Robert Reed and Dick Van Patten — appearing opposite a combustible force of nature like Joe Pesci. Though there were a few times that Pesci did seem a bit bored with going through the detective show motions, he was still a force of chaos and, by his very presence, he made Half Nelson into something more than just another generic crime show.

Next week, we start Freddy’s Nightmares!

Retro Television Reviews: Half Nelson Episode 1.8 “Malibu Colony”

Posted on April 28, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Last week, I took a look at the sixth episode of Half Nelson, which was called Nose Job and which featured Rocky (Joe Pesci) dealing with an obsessed plastic surgeon who was stalking a former girlfriend. That episode featured not only two villains (it turned out that the plastic surgeon wasn’t the only homicidal stalker in Hollywood) but is also ended with Victoria Jackson’s Annie O’Hara starting a romantic relationship with Gary Grubbs’s Detective Hamill.

Nose Job was followed by an episode called Chariots For Hire. It apparently aired on April 26th, 1985 and that’s really all I can tell you about the episode. Chariots For Hire is the only episode of Half Nelson that has not been uploaded to YouTube. I can’t even find a plot summary for it on the imdb. Chariots For Hire is apparently the lost episode of Half Nelson.

Fortunately, the eighth episode of Half Nelson is on YouTube. So, let’s pick up the adventures of Rocky Nelson in Malibu Colony!

Episode 1.8 “Malibu Colony”

(Dir by James Sheldon, originally aired on May 3rd, 1985)

Rocky, Annie, Beau (Dick Butkus), and Kurt (Bubba Smith) have been assigned to guard what Rocky claims is “one of the most valuable art collections in the world.” Fortunately, this job means that they get to spend a few days hanging out in a fabulous beach house in Malibu! Standing out on the deck of the beach house, Annie looks out at the ocean and says that she can hardly believe that China is on the other side of it.

“I wonder how the egg rolls stay fresh crossing over from that far,” Kurt says.

Before anyone can ponder that question for too long, a half-naked woman runs screaming down the beach while being pursued by two thugs in suits. Rocky saves the woman from the thugs and sends her into the beach house so that she can borrow some clothes from Annie. Once dressed, the woman explains that she’s Nancy Norton (Shari Shattuck) and that she was fleeing from a nearby yacht club. She claims that the owner of the club has some naked pictures of her and she needs to get them back. Rocky, deciding that the art can protect itself, helps Nancy sneak back into the club so that she can retrieve her photographs. However, when she sees the club’s president, Crane (John Beck), she suddenly holds up a gun and shoots at him. Rocky is able to push Crane out of the way of the bullets and then he chases after Nancy.

Fortunately, both Rocky and Nancy make it out of the club without anyone realizing that they’re together. Despite the fact that she nearly made him an accessory to murder, Rocky still wants to help Nancy. Nancy explains that there are no pictures and she wasn’t trying to kill Crane. (“I just wanted to scare him.”) Nancy’s father lost a lot of money while playing poker with Crane and now Crane is threatening to kill him if he doesn’t pay. But Nancy is convinced that the poker game was rigged. The reason she was in club earlier was to take a look at Crane’s cards.

(For some reason, she thought it would be smart to do that while wearing a bikini, the top of which was somehow lost while she was fleeing Crane’s guards. That explains that partial nudity, which I am sure was definitely viewed as being important to the plot and not just as an attempt to boost the show’s ratings.)

Having saved Crane’s life, Rocky is able to get Annie, Kurt, and Beau jobs at the club. Annie models clothes. Kurt and Beau work as waiters. Rocky’s boss, Chester (Fred Williamson), shows up at the club with Dean Martin and is shocked to see all of his employees working there. Dean demands that Chester give them all raises so that they can quit their second jobs.

Eventually, Rocky finds his proof that Crane is a criminal and, with Chester’s help, he takes Crane down. After being stuck in the office for the past few episodes, Chester actually gets to do something in this episode. It’s always nice to see Fred Williamson in action and making it even better is that he smokes a big cigar while he’s taking down the bad guys. Finally, after eight episodes, Half Nelson reminded everyone of why Fred Williamson was so cool to begin with.

This episode definitely earns some points for allowing the entire supporting cast — from Fred Williamson to Victoria Jackson to Dean Martin — to play a role in solving the case of the week. One of Half Nelson‘s biggest flaws was that the appealingly quirky supporting characters often felt underused and Malibu Colony finally gives them a chance to show what they could have done as an ensemble. The mix of Pesci’s wise guy nerve, Jackson’s spaciness, Williamson’s effortless coolness, and Butkus and Smith’s comedic relief is actually pretty entertaining. Unfortunately, as good as the heroes are, Crane is pretty boring villain and the case of the week isn’t particularly interesting. In particular, Nancy’s actions never really make that much sense.

Oh well. This was a flawed episode but it still offered up a hint of what Half Nelson could have been. Next week, I will be reviewing this show’s final episode. Until then, L.A. — you belong to me!

Retro Television Reviews: Half Nelson 1.6 “Nose Job”

Posted on April 21, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, Rocky gets involved with a case that’s all about obsession!

Episode 1.6 “Nose Job”

(Directed by Arthur Allan Seidelman, originally aired on April 19th, 1985)

Way back in March, when I watched the pilot for Half Nelson, one thing that I immediately noticed was the chemistry between Joe Pesci and Victoria Jackson. In the pilot, it was pretty clear that Annie O’Hara (played by Jackson) had a crush on Rocky (played, of course, by Pesci) and it was actually kind of cute. The streetwise Rocky and the spacey Annie seemed like they could be an interesting couple and I was actually looking forward to seeing how that storyline developed.

Unfortunately, it didn’t develop. In the episodes immediately following the pilot, both Annie and Rocky’s boss, Chester (Fred Williamson), were sidelined so that the show could focus on Rocky interacting with Beau (Dick Butkus) and Kurt (Bubba Smith). Annie was relegated to staying at the office and answering the phone while Rocky flirted with each week’s guest star. That was definitely a missed opportunity. While Smith and Butkus both provided adequate comedy relief, it’s still hard not to feel that the show often focused so much on them that performers like Dean Martin, Fred Williamson, and Victoria Jackson were pushed to the side.

In this week’s episode, Detective Hamill (Gary Grubbs) asks Annie to go on a date with him and Rocky encourages her to accept, so I guess the potential Rocky/Annie romance is officially dead. At first, Annie doesn’t want to date Hamill because she thinks he’s “a jerk.” (Gary Grubbs, who is one of those actors that most people will immediately recognize even if they don’t know his name, has such an amiable presence that it’s hard to understand where Annie got that idea from.) However, in return for Hamill helping him out with this week’s case, Rocky convinces Annie to give Hamill a shot. Annie and Hamill are a couple by the end of the episode. Yay! Who doesn’t love a romantic ending?

As for this episode itself, it opens with Rocky, Beau, and Kurt providing security on the set of a film. The film appears to be about a revolution in Latin America. April Gray (Mary-Margaret Humes) is playing the lead role, a revolutionary who wears a red beret. (Seriously, it looks like a great film.) When April is nearly run over by an out-of-control truck, Rocky becomes convinced that someone is stalking her. When he discovers that the truck’s accelerator was rigged with surgical string, he decides that a plastic surgeon, Dr. Jonathan Gaines (Jon Cypher), is trying to kill her.

However, before he can accuse Dr. Gaines, he has to find out if April has actually had plastic surgery. As opposed to just asking her, Rocky takes her out on a date. (Beau and Kurt come along as well, so that they can check out the other actresses in the cast and see if any of them had plastic surgery as well.) The only way that Rocky can convince her to go out with him is to take her to an exclusive club. But how can Rocky get reservations!? Fear not, it’s Dean Martin to the rescue! It turns out that Dean is co-owner of the club so he puts down his martini glass for a few minutes and makes a phone call. It’s kind of nice that Dean actually got to be involved in the case this week. Dean’s appearances on this show never last for more than a minute or two and it’s obvious that he wasn’t in the best shape when he filmed them but still, it’s fun to watch him and Pesci act opposite of each other. Pesci always seem to be in awe of Dean.

Before the date, Rocky has to teach Beau and Kurt how to discreetly look for surgery scars. This leads to him showing them how to peak behind someone ears while dancing with them. With the help of Annie, he shows how pretending to lose a contact lens can provide a chance to get on the floor check out someone’s legs for scars. (Unfortunately, the scene is rather awkwardly blocked and framed and, in a few shots, it appears as if Rocky is basically looking straight up Annie’s skirt.) Beau and Kurt are impressed. Chester is less impressed, especially when he catches Rocky crawling around Annie’s legs. Chester yells at Rocky and then goes in his office. And that concludes Fred Williamson’s role in this episode.

During the date, Rocky spots the surgical scars behind April’s ears, indicating that she’s had plastic surgery. It turns out that April not only got a nose job from Dr. Gaines but she also briefly dated him. Rocky realizes that Gaines is now trying to kill her but, as always, everyone tells Rocky that he doesn’t have enough evidence to prove anything. Let’s see. Gaines was on the set when the truck went out of control. The truck’s accelerator was tied down with surgical string. Gaines was the only person on the set with a job that would give him easy access to surgical string. It’s hard not to feel that everyone’s being too quick to dismiss Rocky’s suspicions here.

In fact, Dr. Gaines is so obviously guilty that it’s also pretty obvious that there has to be someone else involved as well. About halfway through the episode, we learn that the film’s director (played by Timothy Bottoms) also used to date April! In fact, he’s the one who paid for her nose job!

Half Nelson really has not turned out to be the lost classic that I was hoping it would be. The pilot was strong but the episodes after that have struggled to really establish a consistent identity for the show. Watching this show, one gets the feeling that the show’s producers couldn’t decide if they wanted to do a comedy or a drama. As I already mentioned, the focus on the antics of Dick Butkus and Bubba Smith pretty much left the rest of the talented cast with little to do. It’s easy to see why Half Nelson did not last longer than two months.

That said, this was actually a pretty good episode. Yes, there were plenty of detective show clichés but both Jon Cypher and Timothy Bottoms were convincing as the show’s two villains and Joe Pesci’s New York persona provided a nice contrast to the sleek phoniness of Hollywood and Beverly Hills. There was even an exciting car chase, which was entertaining even if it was ultimately a bit superfluous to the plot. Plus, the episode featured Rocky throwing a bomb more seconds before it exploded. This is what the explosion looked like:

Seriously, did Rocky just nuke L.A.!?

This was an entertainingly melodramatic episode. You could see hints of the show that Half Nelson could have been if only it could have maintained a consistent tone.

Next week, Rocky meets Marjoe Gortner!

Retro Television Reviews: Half Nelson Episode 1.5 “Diplomatic Immunity”

Posted on April 14, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

L.A. …. you belong to me….

Episode 1.5 “Diplomatic Immunity”

(Dir by Alan Cooke, Originally aired on April 12th, 1985)

Somebody is stealing luxury cars in Beverly Hills! Detective Hamill (Gary Grubbs) is pretty sure that he’s caught the responsible party, a teenager who was seen near one of the cars when it was taken. The teenager, who is in danger of losing his athletic scholarship, insists that he was just thinking about stealing the car but he didn’t actually do it. Instead, the car was stolen by some guy who arrived on the scene via a limousine. Why would a car thief be getting transported around in a limo?

That’s what Rocky Nelson (Joe Pesci) wants to find out! Just as in the previous episodes, everyone tells Rocky to not get involved. The police tell Rocky to stay out of the way. Rocky’s boss, Chester (Fred Williamson), tells him that it’s not his concern. Rocky’s landlord, Mr. Martin (Dean Martin), stops by the guesthouse to use Rocky’s phone and, though he doesn’t say not to get involved, it’s still pretty obvious that Dean Martin doesn’t care about the car thieves.

Only Rocky cares! Actually, Kurt (Bubba Smith) and Beau (Dick Butkus) care as well. In fact, in this episode, Kurt and Beau get almost as much screen time as Rocky. They follow Rocky around, hoping to learn how to become better detectives. As critical as I can sometimes be of Dick Butkus’s character on Hang Time, he was actually pretty funny on Half Nelson. He and Bubba Smith made a good comedy team and they seem to be having so much fun together that it makes up for the fact that neither one of them had much range as an actor. For instance, when Rocky goes to Beverly Hills High School to do some investigating, Kurt and Beau follow him. Kurt and Beau claim to be two new teachers at the school. “We got traded to this school from Harvard,” Beau says before Kurt explains that they got traded for another teacher and several draft picks. It’s a dumb joke but Butkus and Smith sell it with their enthusiasm.

Eventually, Rocky figures out that the car theft ring is being led by a diplomat (John Saxon) from Central America. Saxon pretends to be collecting money for charity but he’s actually just stealing cars and smuggling them out of the country. Rocky’s investigative techniques are not particularly complex. He “borrows” an expensive car from the studio and then hides in the trunk with his pitbull, Hunk. When Saxon’s henchman (Lewis van Bergen) steals the car, Rocky and Hunk jump into action. Hunk cripples the thief by biting his ankle and then Rocky and his dog run away as the car explodes. “Run, Hunk, run!” Rocky yells.

Rocky, Kurt, and Beau manage to catch Saxon right before he boards a plane to leave the country. The teenager is freed from jail. As he leaves his cell, he complains about the incompetence of the cops. Rocky yells at him for being disrespectful. It’s the best scene in the show, just because it feels spontaneous. It’s almost as if Pesci himself suddenly got mad and started yelling at the kid.

Rocky, Amanda (Victoria Jackson, who has been underused in every episode, with the exception of the pilot), and the rest of the Beverly Hills Security team throws a birthday party for Chester. Dean Martin does not show up. The end credits roll.

Half Nelson‘s main weakness is that, despite having an once-in-a-lifetime cast, the plots tend to feel somewhat generic. It just doesn’t feel right to have actors like Joe Pesci, Fred Williamson, Dean Martin, and even Dick Butkus and Bubba Smith dealing with the type of boring cases that any 80s TV detective could have solved. That said, compared to the previous episodes of Half Nelson that I’ve watched, this episode was okay. Pesci got to show off his streetwise attitude and, as always, he seemed to be happiest when acting opposite Dean Martin. John Saxon was stuck playing a one-note villain but it’s still always enjoyable to watch Saxon as he plots to do something bad. This episode was enjoyable if not exactly memorable.

Retro Television Reviews: Half Nelson Episode 1.4 “Uppers and Downers”

Posted on April 7, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The adventures of Rocky Nelson continue!

Episode 1.4 “Uppers and Downers”

(Dir by James Sheldon, originally aired on April 5th, 1985)

When a burglar alarm goes off in Beverly Hills, it’s Rocky Nelson (Joe Pesci) of Beverly Hills Patrol to the rescue! Reaching the mansion of a local businessman (played by Cliff Gorman), Rocky discovers that the alarm was set off by a racoon.

(“A racoon is Beverly Hills!?” Gorman’s wife says, in a tone that suggests that racoons are unknown creatures in California.)

Rocky also happens to spot the next door neighbor (Nancy Stafford) leading her personal trainer into her house, whispering that she’s going to show him her bedroom. At first, Rocky is amused but, later that day, Rocky hears that the personal trainer has been found, floating in Stafford’s swimming pool. Stafford claims that the trainer had a heart attack while swimming but, upon arriving at the scene, Rocky immediately figures out that the trainer died in the house and was then dragged out to the pool. Stafford swears that she didn’t kill him and Rocky believes her. However, when the autopsy report reveals that the trainer was dead before he was put in the pool, Stafford is arrested and charged with murdering him by hitting him over the head.

Despite being told by his boss (Fred Williamson) to stay away from the case, Rocky feels that he has to prove Stafford’s innocence. Rocky’s first plan is to have his associates, Kurt (Bubba Smith) and Beau (Dick Butkus), disguise themselves as mortuary attendants and steal the trainer’s body from the crematorium. Rocky then takes the body to a coroner who does a second autopsy and discovers that not only did the trainer have a heart attack but that he was also poisoned! Someone slipped the trainer a pill that was specifically designed to cause a heart attack. Now, it’s up to Rocky to discover who that person was and clear Stafford’s name before Stafford’s husband (Brett Halsey, a veteran of Italian horror and spaghetti westerns) files for divorce.

Rocky deduces that the trainer was probably targeted by a jealous husband. Rocky decides to disguise himself as a physical trainer so that he can get close to all of the dead man’s former clients. How does Rocky prepare for this role? He does calisthenics with his landlord, Dean Martin. When Rocky mentions that he needs someone to determine whether or not his clients are lying to him, Dean Martin suggests that he steal a lie detector from the set of “Burt’s new film.” (I’m guessing that Burt was a reference to Burt Reynolds, Dean’s co-star in two Cannonball Run films.) Rocky promptly goes down to the studio backlot and steals a bunch of Burt Reynolds’s property.

(The backlot was a prominent and amusing part of the show’s pilot but it was ignored during last week’s episode. I was glad to see it back for this episode because Dean Martin instructing Joe Pesci to steal Burt Reynolds’s lie detector will never not be amusing.)

Rocky meets with all of the dead trainer’s clients and tricks them into hooking themselves up to the lie detector by telling them that it’s a instrument that will check their heart rate. Rocky discovers that any number of people could have wanted the trainer dead. However, those of us in the audience already knows that Cliff Gorman is the murderer because we witnessed Gorman gloating about it earlier in the episode. Rocky eventually figures it out as well and tricks Gorman into confessing by pretending to take one of the heart attack pills while driving Gorman around Beverly Hills.

Thanks to the visit to the studio lot and Dean Martin’s eccentric performance, this episode was an improvement on last week’s. That said, it still suffered from the fact that the murder itself wasn’t that interesting (with Gorman’s ruthless businessman not getting much characterization beyond being evil). Despite being second and third-billed in the opening credits, neither Victoria Jackson nor Fred Williamson got to do much in this episode and considering that both of those performers had their own unique and eccentric style, it feels like a bit of waste to just have them sitting in the office and uttering just a handful of lines per episode. The main appeal of the show continues to be Joe Pesci, who brings a lot of streetwise charm to Rocky. In the episodes that I’ve watched so far, Pesci is likable and engaging as Rocky and I think his performance would surprise a lot of people who are used to Pesci playing killers with hair-trigger tempers. Rocky is smart and tough but ultimately rather friendly. In his performance in Half Nelson, one can see hints of his later performance in The Irishman, I just wish the rest of this show was as consistently good.

Next week: Joe Pesci faces off against John Saxon! That sounds promising! We’ll see how it goes.

Retro Television Reviews: Half Nelson 1.3 “The Deadly Vase”

Posted on March 31, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The pilot for Half Nelson was pretty good! Now, let’s see if this rest of the show lived up to its promise.

Episode 1.3 “The Deadly Vase”

(Directed by Alan Cooke, originally aired on March 29th, 1985)

I cannot escape Robert Reed.

Seriously! Robert Reed is one of those actors who seems to show up every week in my retro television reviews. If he wasn’t starring in The Brady Bunch Hour, he was guesting on The Love Boat or Fantasy Island. And now, he’s the guest villain in this week’s episode of Half Nelson!

Reed, with his graying perm and his aging porn star mustache, plays Seymour Griffith. Griffith is a fabulously wealthy Beverly Hills attorney who is planning on becoming even more wealthy by stealing a valuable vase and selling it to a crooked antiques dealer named Morgan (Cesar Romero). Unfortunately, while stealing the vase, Griffith kills the owner. (Griffith is also having an affair with the dead man’s wife.) Somewhat inconveniently, for Griffith, the dead man was a client of the Beverly Hills Patrol! Rocky Nelson is on the case, both because he’s romantically pursuing the dead man’s daughter (Michelle Johnson) and also because Rocky believes in justice.

This week’s villains

The tone of The Vase is notably different from the pilot that preceded it. The Pilot had its comedic elements (such as Rocky continually borrowing famous cars from the studio) but it was ultimately fairly serious and it even ended on something of a down note, with Police Chief Parsons (George Kennedy) committing suicide rather than face justice for the murders that he committed. In the pilot, Rocky was definitely out-of-place as a New Yorker in Los Angeles but, at the same time, he was finding his way around his new town and learning how to fit in.

The Deadly Vase, on the other hand, reimagines Rocky as a short, Italian version of Eddie Murphy’s Axel Foley from Beverly Hills Cop. Chester (Fred Williamson), who was a supportive boss in the pilot, is suddenly a bit uptight about Rocky investigating a crime in Beverly Hills. He even sends his newest recruits, Kurt and Beau (played by Bubba Smith and Hang Time‘s Dick Butkus), to follow Rocky around Beverly Hills and make sure that Rocky doesn’t offend any rich people with his New York attitude. This episode pretty much just duplicates the plot of Beverly Hills Cop. During one car chase, The Heat Is On plays on the soundtrack and it’s hard not to notice that the other musical cues are almost identical to the ones heard in Beverly Hills Cop.

Smith and Butkus aren’t the only new members of the cast. Dependable character actor Gary Grubbs joins the show as Detective Hamill, who is far less a fan of Rocky’s than Parsons was. Hamill shows up long enough to order Rocky to stay off the case and to get growled at by Rocky’s pit bull. Hamill also gets to have a conversation with Dean Martin about whether or not Frank and Sammy and Shirley MacClaine would be willing to do a benefit for the Beverly Hills police department. Dean is only onscreen for a few minutes but it’s still nice to see him there.

Joe Pesci, who was so strong in the pilot, spends most of this episode looking more than a little annoyed so I’m going to guess that he may not have been happy with the show’s new direction. About the only time Pesci seems to be having fun is when Rocky is hired to play a hot dog in a commercial. The director of the commercial is played by Donald O’Connor and yes, Pesci does wear a hot dog costume.

Joe Pesci getting dressed up like a hot dog pretty much saved this episode as the mystery itself was fairly bland and Robert Reed never really felt like a worthy opponent to Rocky. Hopefully, next week’s episode will be a bit of an improvement …. or, at least, let’s hope the show finds another excuse to put Joe Pesci in a hot dog costume.

Stroker Ace (1983, directed by Hal Needham)

Posted on December 24, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

In 1983, Burt Reynolds had the choice of appearing in two films.

He was offered the role of former astronaut Garrett Breedlove in Terms of Endearment, a role that director/screenwriter James L. Brooks wrote specifically with Reynolds in mind. The role was designed to play to all of Reynolds’s strengths and none of his weaknesses. It was also a key supporting role in a film that was widely expected to be an Oscar contender.

Or, Reynolds could star in Stroker Ace, another car chase film that was going to be directed by his old friend, Hal Needham. No one was expecting Stroker Ace to be an Oscar contender but Needham and Reynolds had made three similar films together and all of them had been hits at the box office.

Reynolds decided to star in Stroker Ace. Jack Nicholson received the role of Garrett Breedlove and went on to win his second Oscar. As for Burt, he later called Stroker Ace “the beginning of the end.”

The title character of Stroker Ace is a good old boy race car driver. He’s a typical Reynolds character. He grew up in the South and learned how to race cars by watching moonshiners outrun the police. Now, he’s a star on the NASCAR circuit but he’s also arrogant and needlessly self-destructive. Because this is a Hal Needham car chase movie, those are portrayed as being good traits. When Stroker loses his former sponsor after pouring wet concrete on him, he’s forced to accept sponsorship from a crooked chicken mogul (played by Ned Beatty, who deserved better). When Stroker’s not driving his car while dressed as a chicken, he’s romancing the prudish Pembrook Feeney (Loni Anderson).

It’s hard to describe the plot of Stroker Ace because it really doesn’t have a plot. There’s a few scenes where Burt looks directly at the camera and smirks. It’s supposed to remind us of Smoky and the Bandit but Stroker Ace doesn’t have the spectacular stunts that the first film had nor does it have the comedic energy of Jackie Gleason. Instead, it’s got Jim Nabors as a mechanic named Lugs. The former star of Gomer Pyle does say “Golly” but he doesn’t sing.

The main problem with Stroker Ace is that there’s no reason to root for Stroker Ace. The Bandit was good at his job and cared about his car. The same thing is true about the stuntman that Burt played in Hooper. Stroker is a racer who would rather destroy his car than come in second and who loses his sponsorships because of his own stupid behavior. Stroker Ace doesn’t care about anything so it’s difficult to get outraged over him having to wear a chicken suit while racing.

Reynolds later described turning down Terms of Endearment for Stoker Ace as being one of the biggest mistakes of his career. When he talked about how the Terms of Endearment role won Nicholson an Oscar, Reynolds added that he didn’t win anything for Stroker Ace because “they don’t give awards for being stupid.” It was a missed opportunity for sure and Reynolds would have to wait another fourteen years before Boogie Nights finally proved that he could do more than drive cars and smirk at the camera.

Despite the failure of Stroker Ace, Reynolds and Needham remained friends and even made two more film together (Cannonball Run II and Hostage Hotel). Their friendship later served as the basis for the relationship between the characters played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.

Black Moon Rising (1986, directed by Harley Cokeliss)

Posted on July 6, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

The FBI needs someone to steal a computer disk that can bring down a corrupt Las Vegas corporation so they hire reformed thief Sam Quint (Tommy Lee Jones). Quint manages to steal the disk but he finds himself being pursued by Ringer (Lee Ving), an old acquaintance who now works for the corporation. In order to keep the disk from falling into Ringer’s hands, Quint hides it in the back bumper of an experimental racing car called the Black Moon. The Black Moon, which runs on water and can fly when it reaches its top speed, is being taken to Los Angeles by Earl Windom (Richard Jaeckel) so Quint assumes that he’ll just follow Window to L.A. and then retrieve the disk when no one is watching.

However, as soon as the Black Moon arrives in Los Angeles, it’s stolen by Nina (Linda Hamilton). Nina works for Ed Ryland (Robert Vaughn), an outwardly respectable businessman who secretly runs a syndicate of car thieves. Now, Quint and Nina (who conventiently falls in love with Quint) have to steal the car back from Ryland while staying one step ahead of both Ringer and the FBI.

Black Moon Rising is not a movie that you watch for the plot or for the non-existent romantic chemistry between Tommy Lee Jones and Linda Hamilton. You don’t even watch it for the white collar villainy of Robert Vaughn, who basically just recycles his performance from Superman III. This is a movie that you watch for the car! The Black Moon is definitely an impressive vehicle. Who wouldn’t want to steal one of these?

In a car chase movie like Black Moon Rising, the most important thing is that the car must be cool. The Black Moon looks like something Mad Max would drive and it can actually fly so, by definition, it’s pretty cool. Unfortunately, Black Moon Rising doesn’t spend as much time with the car as it should. The movie gets bogged down with the scenes of Quint and Nina falling in love and Quint having to deal with his FBI handler (played by Bubba Smith). This is a film that would have benefited from being directed by someone like Hal Needham, who understood that people don’t come to car chase movies for the plot. They come to car chase movies because they want to see people driving fast and cars crashing in spectacular ways. Still, even though the car isn’t onscreen as much as it should be, the car is still cool enough to make Black Moon Rising watchable.

One final note: the screenplay is credited to John Carpenter. Though the imdb claims that this was the first script that Carpenter ever sold and that the film spent ten years in development, Carpenter says that he wrote the script around the same time that he made Escape from New York. He also says that he’s never actually seen the completed film.

Police Academy 6: City Under Siege (1989, directed by Peter Bonerz)

Posted on April 30, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

The sixth Police Academy film opens with another crime wave. Considering that the Police Academy Class of 1984 was supposedly the best to ever graduate, they don’t seem to have done much to clean up the city. This time, a series of robberies are being committed in the Wilson Heights neighborhood. Since Captain Harris (G.W. Bailey) and Lt. Proctor (Lance Kinsey) don’t seem to be capable of upholding the law in their precinct, the Mayor (Kenneth Mars) orders Harris to work with Commandant Lassard (George Gaynes) and the usual gang of Police Academy graduates.

Carey Mahoney is still missing in action but Nick Lassard (Matt McCoy) has transferred up from Miami and has taken Mahoney’s place as the resident smartass. Also returning are Sound Effects Man (Michael Winslow), Hightower (Bubba Smith), Hooks (Marion Ramsey), Callahan (Leslie Easterbrook), Tackleberry (David Graf), and, after having been absent for the previous two films, Sgt. Fackler (Bruce Mahler)!

I cannot believe I’m saying this but Police Academy 6 turned out to be better than I remembered. It’s just as stupid as all of the other Police Academy films but everyone seems to be having a good time and Matt McCoy no longer feels out of place as Mahoney’s replacement. Bruce Mahler’s return as Fackler also means a return to the physical comedy that he excelled at in the first two films and the total incompetence of Harris and Proctor is handled better here than it was in the previous few films. A welcome addition to the cast is Gerrit Graham, as the childish head of the robbers. (Whereas the previous few films at least tried to pretend like the criminals were a potentially serious threat, City Under Siege presents them as being as clownish as everyone else in the film. It’s a better approach because it’s not as if anyone watches a Police Academy film expecting to see something like The French Connection or Fort Apache, The Bronx.) Police Academy 6 is a stupid, stupid movie and the jokes are as juvenile as ever but, along with Part 3, it’s still one of the better sequels.

Police Academy 6 was the first Police Academy film to not be a box office hit. It would be followed by one final sequel, Mission to Moscow, which I’ll take a look at on Saturday.

Police Academy 5: Assignment Miami Beach (1988, directed by Alan Myerson)

Posted on April 29, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

Police Academy 5 starts as so many Police Academy films have started. Commandant Lassard (George Gaynes) is getting progressively more loopy and Captain Harris (G.W. Bailey) is plotting to take over the Academy. This time, Harris thinks that he has come up with the perfect plan when he discovers that Lassard has reached the mandatory retirement age.

With retirement looming, Lassard attends one final law enforcement convention in Miami. At the convention, Lassard is to be honored as “Police Officer of the Decade” because it was apparently a very slow decade. Lassard decides to bring along his favorite academy graduates so that they can celebrate with him and meet his nephew, Sgt. Nick Lassard (Matt McCoy, who you may recognize as Seinfeld’s Lloyd Braun or maybe as the spokesman for Hartford Insurance). The commandant invites Sound Effects Guy (Michael Winslow), Tackleberry (David Graf), Hightower (Bubba Smith), Hooks (Marion Ramsey), Callhan (Leslie Easterbrook), and House (Tab Thacker). Notice who isn’t there? This was the first Police Academy film without Steve Guttenberg’s Carey Mahoney and Commandant Lassard celebrating his career without inviting his most loyal graduate doesn’t seem right.

Once what is left of the old gang arrives in Miami, they get caught up in the usual Police Academy shenanigans. Rene Auberjonois plays a jewel thief who accidentally switches bags with the Commandant and who has 24 hours to retrieve the stolen diamonds. It’s Florida so there are women in bikinis and an Everglades boat chase. Harris gets humiliated in every way possible. The jokes are even more juvenile than usual. Nick Lassard uses sunscreen to permanently label Harris as being a “dork” so everyone on the beach calls Harris a “dork.” That’s as sophisticated as things get.

Unfortunately, there’s a Steve Guttenberg-shaped hole at the center of Police Academy 5 and not even as formidable a thespian as Matt McCoy can fill it. Even though Guttenberg always seemed like he was miscast as both a cop and a former juvenile delinquent, Police Academy 5 shows how important he really was to the franchise. Mahoney was the closest thing that the Police Academy films had to a fully developed character and, without him around, it’s even more obvious how thinly drawn all of the other characters were. (Guttenberg was filming Three Man And A Baby while Police Academy 5 was in production though, in an A.V. Club interview a few years ago, Guttenberg said the real reason he wasn’t invited to Miami Beach was because the producers couldn’t afford to pay his salary. “You’ve got to get paid!” Guttenberg explained.)

I will, however, give Police Academy 5 some credit. Rene Auberjonois does what he can with his bumbling jewel thief and the scene where Tackleberry pulls a gun on a shark made me laugh. Otherwise, Police Academy 5 is no Police Academy 3.

Tomorrow, it’s time for … you guessed it! …. Police Academy 6!