Tag Archives: Charles Howerton

Late Night Retro Television Review: CHiPs 3.17 “E.M.T.”

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 Mondays, I will be reviewing CHiPs, which ran on NBC from 1977 to 1983.  The entire show is currently streaming on Prime!

This week, Ponch and Baker go to school!

Episode 3.17 “E.M.T.”

(Dir by Phil Bondelli, originally aired on January 19th, 1980)

Thinking that it will be an easy class and a chance to meet female college students, Ponch convinces Baker to attend a special EMT course at UCLA.  Ponch also thinks that they’ll get paid overtime for taking the class but it turns out that he didn’t read the fine print.  No one gets paid for going to the class.  Oh well.  At least he and Baker will get a chance to relax, right?  Nope!  The instructor, Michael Adams (played by veteran screen bad guy William Smith), is someone who Ponch and Baker earlier stopped for a minor traffic violation.  He takes an immediate dislike to Ponch and Baker and basically spends the entire class accusing them of just wanting to show off.  And, considering everything that we know about Ponch, he’s probably right.

Michael Adams is bitter because his son, Warren (Pat Petersen), was in an accident and, due to the cops not knowing how to handle someone with a spinal injury, Warren now has to use crutches to get around.  Michael is so bitter that he almost seems to be embarrassed by his son’s disability.  Boo, Michael, boo!  Seriously, what an unlikable creep.  And yet, I get the feeling that we’re supposed to understand and respect Michael, even if he is a jerk.  Part of the problem is that William Smith was one of those actors who always came across as being naturally sinister.  Smith played a lot of bikers and corrupt cops over the course of his career.  He was someone who just looked menacing and perpetually annoyed.  In this episode, I kept expecting him to try to kill Baker and Ponch.  Don’t get me wrong.  William Smith was a good actor but, in this episode, he just seems miscast.

Ponch and Baker do put their training to good use, especially when a makeshift cave collapses on two boys who were using it as a hideout.  Ponch and Baker also use their skills to save a man who fell out of a truck.  In one of those weird coincidences on which CHiPs thrived, Ponch and Baker just happened to be hang gliding nearby when the accident with the truck happened.  Oh, Jon and Ponch!  Don’t ever let anyone say that you guys spend way too much time together.

(Seriously, does Baker have no friends outside of the police force?  At least Ponch seems to know his neighbors.)

Eventually, Ponch and Baker win Michael over, especially when Michael himself needs to be rescued.  Later, they visit Michael in the hospital and everyone has a good laugh as the end credits roll.  Good for them!  As for this episode, I actually liked getting to see Ponch and Baker doing something other than riding their motorcycles on the highway.  To me, this show’s main worth is as a time capsule and this episode allowed us all to see what UCLA was like back in 1980.  It was pretty nice!

Smokey Bites The Dust (1981, directed by Charles B. Griffith)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Sheriff Hugh “Smokey” Turner (Walter Barnes) of Cyco County, Arkansas is determined to capture teenage car thief and prankster, Roscoe Wilton (Jimmy McNichol).  Roscoe is determined to disrupt the high school homecoming dance by abducting the homecoming queen, Peggy Sue (Janet Julian).  Peggy Sue is, at first, determined to escape from Roscoe but changes her mind as they flee from her father, who just happens to be Sheriff Turner.

From producer Roger Corman, Smokey Bites The Dust is an 88-minute car chase film where the most spectacular getaways and crashes are lifted from other Roger Corman productions.  Eagle-eyed viewers will spot footage from Eat My Dust, Grand Theft Auto, and Moving Violations.  In order to explain why the cars keep changing from scene to scene, the chase moves from county-to-county where both Roscoe and Sherriff Turner inevitably end up ditching (or crashing) their old car and then stealing a new vehicle to continue the pursuit.

That’s not much of a plot so the run time is padded out with several subplots.  A local moonshiner tries to sell his special brew to a group of Arabs.  Peggy Sue’s boyfriend, Kenny (William Forsyth, in one of his first films), joins in the chase.  Dick Miller flies around in a helicopter and also gets involved in the chase.  None of it makes any sense and none of it is particularly amusing but Roger Corman undoubtedly made a lot of money pushing this thing into Southern drive-ins and letting people assume it was some sort of a sequel to Smokey and the Bandit.

Most of the acting is pretty bad.  When it comes to being an incompetent sheriff, Walter Barnes is no Jackie Gleason.  Jimmy McNichol comes across as being seriously disturbed.  Of the main cast, Janet Julian is alone in giving an appealing and naturalistic performance as Peggy Sue.  While Julian (who has since retired from acting) never became the star she deserved to be, she is remembered for her later turn as Christopher Walken’s lawyer and girlfriend in 1990’s King of New York.

A Movie A Day #209: Assassination (1987, directed by Peter R. Hunt)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Charles Bronson, man.

Long before Clint Eastwood starred in In The Line of Fire, Charles Bronson played an over the hill secret service agent in Assassination.  Having just returned to active service after a six month leave of absence, Jay Killian (Charles Bronson), thinks that he is going to be assigned back to the presidential detail.  Instead, he is given the job that no one wants.  Jay is assigned to protect the first lady, Lara Craig (Jill Ireland, Bronson’s real-life wife).

Lara is a handful.  Every one tells Killian that she is “even worse than Nancy.”  (This running joke probably played better in 1987.  If Assassination had been released ten years later, Lara would have been described as being “even worse than Hillary.”)  Lara does not like being told what she can and cannot do. When she refuses to follow Killian’s orders not to ride in a convertible, she ends up getting a black eye when a motorcycle crashes and Killian instinctively throws her to the floor.  Lara may not like Killian but when, she is targeted by a notorious terrorist (Erik Stern), she will have to learn to trust him.  Her life depends on it, especially when it becomes clear that the order to have her killed is coming from inside the White House.  It turns out that the President has been impotent for years.  That may not have troubled Lara before but now Killian is showing her that a real man looks like Charles Bronson.  A divorced president will never be reelected.  A widowed president, on the other hand…

Assassination was one of the last films that Bronson made for Cannon.  It’s never as wild as Murphy’s Law, Kinjite, or many of Bronson’s other Cannon films but it is always interesting to watch Bronson acting opposite of Ireland.  Bronson famously did not get along with many people but he loved Ireland and that was something that always came through in the 15 movies that they made together.  Whenever Bronson and Ireland acted opposite each other, Bronson actually seemed to be enjoying himself.  And while it may be subdued when compared to his other Cannon films, Assassination provides just enough scenes of Bronson being Bronson.

Who other than Bronson could tell his much younger girlfriend that, because of her, he might “die of terminal orgasm?”

Who other than Bronson could drive around a motorcycle with machine gun turrets and execute a jump that would put his old co-star Steve McQueen to shame?

Who other than Bronson could use a bazooka to kill one man and then smile about it?

Charles Bronson, man.  No offense to Bruce Willis, who will be trying to step into Bronson’s gigantic shoes with the upcoming Death Wish remake, but nobody did it better than Bronson.