Tag Archives: Chuck Conners

Film Review: The Mad Bomber (dir by Bert I. Gordon)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Haunted by the death of his teenage daughter and the subsequent collapse of his marriage, William Dorn (Chuck Conners) feels that society is changing too quickly.  He misses the days when people were polite and followed the law.  Now, he’s upset that he can’t even walk around Los Angeles without seeing people littering.  The waitress at the local diner has forgotten the importance of smiling while taking her customer’s order.  Hospitals are full of doctors who don’t care about their patients.  The colleges are full of long-haired drug pushers.  His ex-wife is attending a consciousness raising seminar.  William has had it with the 1970s so he decides to start blowing stuff up.

William starts to wander around Los Angeles.  Usually, he’s carrying a brown paper sack and, inside the sack, he’s got a ticking time bomb.  He always wears the same suit and thick glasses and yet, somehow, no one ever seems to notice or remember him.  Even though all of his bombs are timebombs, they still go off within seconds of him planting them, which means that he’s usually only standing a few feet away with they explode.  William also sends the police tape-recorded manifestos without making any effort to disguise his voice.  William may not be the smartest criminal around but that still doesn’t stop him from terrorizing the city.

Detective Geronimo Minelli (Vince Edwards) is determined to track down the mad bomber, even if it means yelling at everyone that he meets.  Minelli is one of those intense detectives who doesn’t care about what the Supreme Court has to say about the rights of suspects and the accused.  Unfortunately, the only witness who can identify the bomb is George Fromley (Neville Brand), a sex offender who doesn’t want to admit that he saw the bomber blow up a hospital because he was busy assaulting one of the patients at the time.  Can Minelli convince Fromley to provide a physical description of the bomber?  And will William Dorn ever realize that it’s probably not a good idea to store a bunch of ticking time bombs in his basement?

First released in 1972 and also known as The Police Connection, Bert I. Gordon’s The Mad Bomber is unique amongst Gordon’s films in that it doesn’t feature any giant animals or killer bugs.  In this film, the monsters are all human and don’t have any convenient excuses for their behavior.  Though Neville Brand does a good job with the role, George Fromley is still probably one of the most unlikable and despicable characters to ever appear in the movie.  Meanwhile. Vince Edwards plays Minelli as being the type of cop who is one bad day away from massively violating someone’s civil rights during a traffic stop.  The film does build up some sympathy for William Dorn, with still shots of his daughter used to show us what’s going through Dorn’s mind as he plants his bombs.  But then it tosses all that sympathy away by having him target a meeting of feminists, apparently because he blames them for his wife leaving him.

The main problem with the film is that we’re expected to believe that someone who looks like this would be able to walk around Los Angeles and plant bombs without anyone noticing.

That’s nothing against Chuck Conners, who does a good job of portraying William’s frustration with the world.  But still, it’s hard to believe that no one is going to notice a dude who is nearly seven feet tall and who is carrying a ticking shopping bag.

Flaws and all, The Mad Bomber is a watchable and occasionally even an engrossing film.  It’s certainly one Gordon’s better efforts and Gordon does a good job of creating and maintaining a properly ominous atmosphere, even if it sometimes hard to take seriously the sight of Chuck Conners, lumbering around in his suit and trying to discreetly drop off bombs.  In many ways, it’s a film that still feels relevant today. William, like so many. is trying to forcefully stop the world from changing around him.  He’s a man who has lost anything and has decided that it’s the fault of everyone else.  (In many ways, he’s like Rainn Wilson in Super, ragefully reacting to a world is not as simple as he believes it should be.)  The Mad Bomber may not be as much fun as Gordon’s giant monster films but it’s still a film that has something to say.

Horror on the Lens: The Horror at 37,000 Feet (dir by David Lowell Rich)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Hi there and welcome to October! This is our favorite time of the year here at the Shattered Lens because October is our annual horrorthon! For the past several years (seriously, we’ve been doing this for a while), we have celebrated every October by reviewing and showing some of our favorite horror movies, shows, books, and music. That’s a tradition that I’m looking forward to helping to continue this year.

To start things off, we have the 1973 made-for-TV movie, The Horror at 37,000 Feet.  This film starts off like a typical disaster film, with a collection of familiar celebrities catching a flight from Heathrow Airport.    What they don’t know is that celebrity is not the only thing flying across the ocean!  There’s a sacrificial altar sitting in the baggage hold and soon, all sorts of strange things are happening!  Truly, it’s a horror at 37,000 feet!

This film is silly and perhaps even a little bit dumb but it’s also definitely a lot of fun.  To be honest, when you’ve got William Shatner playing an ex-priest who is wondering what happened to his faith, how can you go wrong?  Along with Shatner, keep an eye out for Chuck Conners, Buddy Ebsen, Roy Thinnes, Paul Winfield, Tammy Grimes, and France Nuyen.  Basically, every TV actor who needed a job in 1973 boarded The Horror at 37,000 Feet. 

Happy October and enjoy The Horror at 37,000 Feet!

Banjo Hackett: Roamin’ Free (1976, directed by Andrew V. McLaglen)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

The great Don Meredith will always be remembered for a few things.

He’s remembered for being the first Dallas Cowboys quarterback, leading the team to multiple championship games but sadly never making it to the Super Bowl.  If you’ve seen North Dallas Forty, the quarterback played by Mac Davis was based on Meredith.  North Dallas Forty was based on a book by Phil Gent, a former Cowboys wide receiver.  When asked about the book and Gent’s portrayal of himself as being the best player on the team, Meredith reportedly said, “Hell, if I had known Phil was that good, I would have thrown him the ball more often.”

Don Mereidth was also one of the first players to make the jump from playing on the field to calling plays in the broadcast booth.  He was the good old boy who served as a foil to Howard Cosell and who sang “Turn out the lights, the party’s over” whenever it became obvious that one team was going to win the game.

He will also always be remembered for an incident in 1979 when, while covering a game in Denver, he supposedly said, “Welcome to Mile High Stadium — and I am!”  This is actually an urban legend.  Meredith never actually said he was high on national television but if a member of the original Monday Night Football Team was going to say that, it probably would have been Dandy Don.

Don Meredith is less remembered for his acting career but, like a lot of retired football players in the 70s, he tried his hand at performing.  As an actor, Don Meredith was a very good quarterback.  His performances were superior to Joe Namath’s but his range was undeniably limited.  Smart producers essentially had Don Meredith play himself, a laid back good old boy who liked his beer and enjoyed hanging out with his buddies.

Banjo Hackett was typical of Don Meredith’s films.  In this made-for-TV movie, Meredith plays the title character.  He’s the nicest horse trader in the old west but not even someone as laid back as Banjo Hackett is going to stand for someone stealing from him.  When he learns that his nephew, Jubal (Ike Eisenmann), has been put into an orphanage and that evil bounty hunter Sam Ivory (Chuck Conners) has stolen Jubal’s favorite horse, Banjo steps up to the huddle.  First, he engineers Jubal’s escape from the orphanage. Then he and his nephew track Sam across the frontier, determined to catch up with him before he sells Jubal’s horse.

Banjo Hackett was obviously meant to serve as a pilot for a television series.  The series never happened but Banjo Hackett itself is a likable film that will be best appreciated by western fans who are looking for something harmless to watch.  Don Meredith may not have been a versatile actor but he had a sincere screen presence and Chuck Conners was always an effective bad guy.  The cast is full of familiar western actors, including Slim Pickens, L.Q. Jones, and Jeff Corey.  As a movie, Banjo Hackett is as amiable as its lead character.

The First Police Story: Slow Boy (1973, directed by William A. Graham)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Long before The Wire, Homicide, Chicago PD, NYPD Blue, or even Hill Street Blues, there was Police Story.

Co-created by cop-turned-writer Joseph Wambaugh, Police Story aired on NBC from 1973 to 1978.  It was an anthology series, with each episode following a different member of the LAPD as they deal with crime and social issues in Los Angeles.  For its time, it was ground-breaking in its realistic approach to the life and work of the police.  Interestingly, the show wasn’t always blindly pro-cop.  Often the cops featured were deeply flawed and the war on crime was frequently portrayed to be unwinnable.  Over the course of its run, Police Story was a regular Emmy nominee and won the award for Best Drama Series in 1976.

Police Story started, in 1973, with a two-hour TV movie.  At the time it aired, the pilot was called Stakeout but it has since aired in syndication under the title Slow Boy.  Vic Morrow stars as Sgt. Joe LaFrieda, a plainclothes detective who can’t keep his marriage together but who can take criminals off the street.  LaFrieda is the second-in-command of a special squad of detectives who specialize in watching and taking down high-profile criminals.  Their methods frequently come close to entrapment but they usually work.  Their current target is Slow Boy (Chuck Conners), the son of a mafia chieftain, who enjoys robbing stores.  When LaFrieda’s first attempt to put Slow Boy in jail is thwarted by a liberal judge and departmental bureaucracy, he and the squad come up with a second, less-than-legal plan to take Slow Boy down.

Considering the involvement of Joseph Wambaugh, it’s no surprise that plot is secondary to exploring the day-to-day lives of the blue-collar cops trying to take Slow Boy down.  The heart of the movie is in the scenes of the cops shooting the breeze and trying to keep each other amused during length shakeouts.  Their humor is often grim and the fascinating dialogue is cynical, dark, and, even by today’s standards, surprisingly raw.  One of the detectives (played by Harry Guardino, who specialized in loud-mouth city cops) is an unapologetic racist.  Though he gets a comeuppance of sorts, the way the film and the rest of his squad handle his racism will undoubtedly make modern audiences uncomfortable, even if it is authentic to the era in which Slow Boy was made.

The underrated Vic Morrow gives one of his best performances as the tough but sympathetic LaFrieda, who is bad at everything but his job.  He is ably supported by a host of familiar character actors.  Ed Asner plays LaFrieda’s reactionary lieutenant while Sandy Baron is great in the role of an informant.  Diane Baker was also perfectly cast as LaFrieda’s potential girlfriend.  (She first meets the detective while Slow Boy is holding a gun to her head.)  Finally, Chuck Conner is as intimidating as always as the sadistic Slow Boy.

Slow Boy is a tough and uncompromising police procedural and it provided a great start for Police Story.  Reruns of Police Story currently air on H&I on Sunday morning.

30 Days of Noir #6: Walk The Dark Street (dir by Wyott Ordung)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1956 film noir, Walk The Dark Street, opens with a platoon of soldiers fighting in the Korean War.

Dan Lawton (Don Ross) has been promoted to lieutenant and Sgt. Tommy Garrick (Eddie Kafafian) isn’t happy about it.  Despite the fact that he and Dan were once good friends, Tommy now is openly insubordinate.  Dan claims that Tommy is just jealous that Dan got promoted while Tommy didn’t.  Tommy, however, claims that Dan is too incompetent to lead the men.  He writes a letter to his older brother, Frank (Chuck Conners).  In the letter, Tommy says that, if he dies, Dan is to blame.  Shortly after sending the letter, Tommy is killed in battle.

After the war, Dan returns to the United States.  When he enlisted in the army, he left behind a small hardware store and now he’s returned to discover that the store’s insurance has lapsed and that he’ll need several thousand dollars to renew it.

While Dan tries to come up with a way to save his store, he also decides to pay a visit to Tommy’s brother.  Why does Dan drop by Frank’s apartment?  It’s difficult to say.  When Dan first shows up in Frank’s doorway, you assume that he’s going to praise Tommy or maybe seek some sort of forgiveness for Tommy’s death.  Instead, Dan just tells Frank that Tommy wouldn’t have gotten killed if he had followed orders (!) and then mentions that he and Tommy didn’t always get along (!!).  Like, seriously, what’s the point of telling Frank any of this?  What does Dan think that he’s accomplishing?

Frank doesn’t seem to be too upset over Tommy’s death.  In fact, Frank is actually a lot more interested in talking about his love of hunting.  Frank even shows Dan some film that he shot during his last safari, which means that those of us in the audience get to spend four minutes watching nature documentary stock footage that has little to do with the rest of the movie.  Frank explains that he has a heart condition so he can’t go abroad to hunt anymore.  Poor Frank!  But, hey, Dan’s going to be in Los Angeles for the next two days and Frank does still own a gun so maybe Frank could just hunt him!

At first, Dan’s not too enthusiastic about the idea of being hunted by Frank.  Frank, however, assures him that they won’t be using real bullets.  Instead, they’ll hunt each other with “camera guns.”  Apparently, you pull the trigger and, instead of firing a bullet, the gun fires a cartridge that takes a picture.  Dan’s still reluctant but then Frank offers to pay him $10,000.  You can renew a lot of insurance for $10,000!

Quicker than you can say “Most Dangerous Game!,” Frank is stalking Dan through Los Angeles.  What Dan doesn’t realize is that Frank was lying about using a camera gun.  He wants revenge for his brother’s death so he’s hunting Dan with live ammunition!

This is one of those films that probably sounds more interesting than it actually is.  After setting up an intriguing premise, Walk The Dark Street doesn’t really do much with it.  It turns out that neither Dan nor Frank is particularly clever so nearly the entire movie is just footage of them walking down various streets in Los Angeles.  If you’re a history nerd like me, you might get a kick out of seeing what the streets of Los Angeles looked like in the mid-50s but otherwise, there’s not much excitement to be found in this movie.

The film stretched its credibility to the breaking point when Dan, while trying to hide from Frank, just happens to randomly run into Tommy’s ex-girlfriend, Helen (Regina Gleason).  Whereas Frank is stoic to a fault and Dan is just an incredible dumbass, Helen at least gets to tell everyone off.  She’s not impressed with either Frank or Dan, which makes her the default audience surrogate.  Helen figures out what Frank is planning but Dan refuses to believe her because, again, Dan’s not very smart.  While it may not have been the film’s intention, it’s hard not to feel that Tommy had a point about Dan being incredibly incompetent.

Aside from offering a chance to see what Los Angeles looked like back in the 50s, Walk The Dark Street is largely forgettable.