Tag Archives: Darren McGavin

I Finally Watched The Natural (1984, Dir. by Barry Levinson)

Posted on by Dazzling Erin

Earlier today, I finally watched The Natural.

As a baseball fan, it feels like heresy to admit that it took me this long to watch The Natural.  I had seen plenty of scenes from the film.  I knew the music because there’s no way you can watch as much as baseball as I do without hearing it at least a few times every scene.  I knew about Wonderboy and the big home run and how Roy Hobbs came out of nowhere to lead the perennially last-place New York Knights to the championship series but I had never actually watched the entire film from beginning to end.

Until this afternoon.

When the movie started, I was worried.  Robert Redford plays Roy Hobbs, an outstanding hitter whose promising career appears to be over when a mysterious woman (Barbara Hersey) shoots him in the gut.  At the start of the movie, Roy and his girlfriend Iris (Glenn Close) are supposed to be teenagers but Redford was nearly 50 and Glenn Close was close to 40.  The whole point of the first part of the movie is that Roy and Iris are young and they have their whole future ahead of them but the actors were both clearly middle-aged.  There was a scene where Roy strikes out the best batter in the league (Joe Don Baker) and the batter kept calling Roy a kid but Redford looked like he was older than Baker.

The good thing is that you only have to buy Redford as being a teenager for about 15 minutes.  After he gets shot, Roy stops playing for several years.  By the time Roy makes it to the major leagues, he’s supposed to be older than everyone else.  No one gives Roy much of a chance when he’s first signed to the New York Knights.  The other players (including Michael Madsen) don’t respect him and the manager (Wilford Brimley) refuses to play him.  But when Roy Hobbs finally does get a chance to swing his home-made bat, he hits homer after homer.  Roy is a natural, the next great player even if he is at an age when most players retire.  A journalist (Robert Duvall) tries to uncover his background.  A seductress (Kim Basinger) tries to lead him astray.  A gambler (Darren McGavin) and the team’s owner (Robert Prosky) try to get him to throw the big game.  Anyone who has watched a baseball game knows how it ends because we’ve all heard the music and seen that clip.  But even if everyone knows how the story concludes, it’s impossible not to cheer when Roy gets a hit and to feel bad when he takes a strike.  Redford may have been old for a baseball player but he looked good out there, swinging that bat and throwing that ball.

I loved The Natural.  It’s extremely sentimental movie.  Sometimes, it feels old-fashioned.  That’s perfect for baseball, though.  Baseball is a sentimental, old-fashioned game and the story of Roy Hobbs is what baseball is all about.  The Knights are behind for most of the season.  Roy hits a slump.  But neither he nor the team ever give up because they know that baseball is a game of endurance.  It’s not like football, where you just have to win 9 games to make it to the playoffs.  Baseball is about never giving up, no matter what the score is.  Even the movie’s supernatural aspects — the sudden storms, a lightning bolt hitting a tree and creating Wonderboy, and even Glenn Close looking like an angel in the stands — work because baseball is a mystical sport.  It’s the closest thing we have to a spiritual sport.

You couldn’t make a movie like The Natural about football or basketball.  Only the game of baseball could have given us The Natural.

Film Review: Airport ’77 (dir by Jerry Jameson)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Airport ’77 is the one where the plane ends up underwater.

If the first two Airport movies emphasized the competence of the the crew in both the airplane and the airport, Airport ’77 takes the opposite approach.  The first of the Airport films to be released after Watergate, Airport ’77 is a cynical film where no one seems to be particularly good at his or her job.  Viewers should be concerned the minute they see that Jack Lemmon is playing Captain Don Gallagher, the pilot of the soon-to-be-submerged airplane.  As opposed to Charlton Heston or even the first film’s Dean Martin, Jack Lemmon was always a very emotional actor.  He excelled at playing characters who were frustrated with modern life.  Just as with Heston and Martin, Lennon plays a pilot who is having an affair with a flight attendant.  The big difference is that, this time, the pilot is the one who desperately wants to get married while the flight attendant (played by Brenda Vacarro) is the one who doesn’t want to get tied down.  As an actor, Lemmon didn’t have the arrogance of a Heston or the unflappability of Dean Martin.  Instead, Jack Lemmon was the epitome of midlife ennui.  He’s disillusioned and he’s beaten down.  He’s America at the tail end of the 70s.

Another sign that Airport ’77 is a product of the post-Watergate era is the character of co-pilot Bob Chambers (Robert Foxworth).  Chambers might seem like a nice and friendly professional but actually, he’s the one who comes up with the plan to knock out all of the passengers with sleeping gas and fly the plane into the Bermuda Triangle so that his partners-in-crime can steal the valuable art works in the cargo hold.  Chambers plans is to land the plane on an unchartered isle so that he and Banker (Monte Markham) can make their escape before the rest of the people on the plane even wake up.  Instead, Chambers turns out to be as incompetent a pilot as he is a criminal.  He crashes the plane into the ocean, where it promptly sinks to the bottom.  The impact wakes up the passengers, all of whom can only watch in horror as the ocean envelopes their plane.  With the water pressure threatening to crush the plane, Captain Gallagher and engineer Stan Buchek (Darren McGavin) try to figure out how to get everyone to the surface.

As usual, the passengers are played by a collection of familiar faces.  Olivia de Havilland and Joseph Cotten play former lovers who are reunited on the flight.  Christopher Lee is a businessman who is unhappily married to alcoholic Lee Grant.  Grant is having an affair with Lee’s business partner, Gil Gerard.  A young Kathleen Quinlan plays the girlfriend of blind pianist Tom Sullivan.  Robert Hooks is the bartender who ends up with a severely broken leg.  As the veterinarian who is called to doctor’s duty, M. Emmet Walsh gives the best performance in the film, if just because he’s one of the few characters who really gets to surprise us.  Actors like George Furth, Michael Pataki, and Tom Rosqui all wander around in the background, though I dare anyone watching to actually remember the names of the characters that they’re playing.  Airport ’77 has the largest number of fatalities of any of the Airport films, largely because even the good guys aren’t really sure about how to reach the surface.

George Kennedy returns as Joe Patroni, though his role is considerably smaller in this film than it was in the first two.   He shares most of his scenes with James Stewart, who plays the owner of the plane.  Fortunately, neither Stewart nor Kennedy were on the plane when it crashed.  Instead, they spend most of the movie in a control room, getting updates about the search.  They don’t get to do much in the film but it’s impossible not to smile whenever Jimmy Stewart is onscreen, even if he is noticeably frail.

Airport ’77 is the best-made of all of the Airport films.  The crash is well-directed and the scenes of water dripping into the plane are properly ominous.  There’s not much depth to the characters but Jack Lemmon and Darren McGavin are likable as the two main heroes and Christopher Lee seems to be enjoying himself in a change-of-pace role.  Olivia de Havilland and Joseph Cotten, two old pros, are wonderful together.  That said, Airport ’77 is never as much fun as the first two films.  Even with the plane underwater, it can’t match the spectacle of Karen Black having to fly a plane until Charlton Heston can be lowered into the cockpit.

Horror on TV: The Night Strangler (dir by Dan Curtis)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

For tonight’s horror on television, we have 1973’s The Night Strangler.

This is the sequel to The Night Stalker and it features journalist Carl Kolchak (Darren McGavin) in Seattle.  (After all the stuff that happened during the previous movie, Kolchak was kicked out of Las Vegas.)  When Kolchak investigates yet another series of murders, he discovers that paranormal murders don’t just occur in Las Vegas and aren’t just committed by vampires.

I actually prefer this movie to The Night Stalker.  The Night Strangler features a truly creepy villain, as well as a trip down to an “underground city.”  It’s full of ominous atmosphere and, as always, Darren McGavin is a lot of fun to watch in the role in Kolchak.

Enjoy!

Late Night Retro Television Review: Highway to Heaven 4.19 “The Correspondent”

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 Highway to Heaven, which aired on NBC from 1984 to 1989.  The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi and several other services!

This week, Jonathan is a dream warrior.

Episode 4.19 “The Correspondent”

(Dir by Michael Landon, originally aired on February 24th, 1988)

Journalist Hale Stoddard (Darren McGavin) sits in a South American prison cell and waits to be executed.  One-by-one, the other prisoners are dragged out of the cell and shot by the country’s new government.  Hale passes the time by writing a letter that he knows no one will ever read.

Suddenly, Hale is no longer in the cell.  Instead, he’s in the basement of his house.  And there’s Jonathan.  Jonathan explains that time has stopped and now, Hale is in his wife’s dream.  Martha (Patricia Smith) dreams of Hale never being at home.  She dreams of their son having both arms, even though he lost those arms in an accident when he was younger.  (She also dreams of their now-adult son as always being a child.)  Martha dreams about Hale’s former mistress, Eleanor (Eileen Barnett), standing around the house.  (Hale argues that Eleanor was never in the house but Jonathan explains that, in Martha’s dreams, she is.)  Hale comes to realize how often he deserted Martha because he couldn’t deal with settling down and raising a family.  And now, while Martha dreams of him, Hale is about to be shot and killed….

Except, he’s not.  It turns out that the South American prison was Hale’s dream.  When Hale wakes up, he’s still at home.  He tells Martha that he won’t be going to South American after all.

Awwww!  How sweet.

This was a bit of a weird episode but I liked it.  I appreciated how the show created Martha’s dream world by adding randomly weird details (like an oversized chair at the breakfast table, which was meant to represent Hale’s absence).  Darren McGavin gave a good performance as Hale and resisted the temptation to overact.  With the episode, the show tried to do something different and, for the most part, it succeeded.

Horror on TV: The Night Stalker (dir by John Llewelyn Moxey)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Long before he achieved holiday immortality by playing the father in A Christmas Story, Darren McGavin played journalist Carl Kolchak in the 1972 made-for-TV movie, The Night Stalker.  Kolchak is investigating a series of murders in Las Vegas, all of which involve victims being drained of their blood.  Kolchak thinks that the murderer might be a vampire.  Everyone else thinks that he’s crazy.

When this movie first aired, it was the highest rated made-for-TV movie of all time.  Eventually, it led to a weekly TV series in which Kolchak investigated various paranormal happenings.  Though the TV series did not last long, it’s still regularly cited as one of the most influential shows ever made.

The Night Stalker is an effective little vampire movie and Darren McGavin gives an entertaining performance as the rather nervous Carl Kolchak.

Enjoy!

Review: By Dawn’s Early Light (dir. by Jack Sholder)

Posted on by Arleigh

1990’s By Dawn’s Early Light is a film adaptation by HBO of William Prochnau’s novel Trinity’s Child. The film, when it first aired on HBO, seemed dated since the Soviet Union was ultimately going through its death throes as the military build-up initiated during the Reagan Administration crippled the USSR economically (they too tried to match the build-up in conventional and nuclear forces). Yet, despite the ending of the Cold War, recent events domestically and around the world has shown that the world never truly left behind the shadow of nuclear war.

The film is simplicity in the way the plot unfolds. A failed coup by dissident Soviet military commanders fails, but it’s after-effects of creating a “hot war” between the US and the USSR succeeds as both US President and Soviet Premiere make mistakes in their decisions. Decisions heavily influenced by their military commanders who see only black and white in how their respective nations should respond militarily. By Dawn’s Early Light shares some similarities to the classic 60’s Cold War films like Dr. Strangelove and Fail-Safe. Both films deal with the human frailties and flaws helping influence events that could lead to nuclear Armageddon for the whole planet. By Dawn’s Early Light concentrates on several storylines to highlight the stress and difficulties individuals must face to either follow their orders to their inevitable conclusion or allow their conscience to help make the moral decisions in trying to stop the madness spiraling out of control. Though some people’s decisions are left wanting, the film ends with a glimmer of hope that may just bring the world from the brink of annihilation.

The acting by the cast of Rebecca DeMornay, Powers Boothe, James Earl Jones, Darrin McGavin, Martin Landau and Rip Torn are well done. Rebecca DeMornay and Powers Boothe anchor one of the subplots as romantically involved B-52 crew pilots whose conflict comes from their own intimate closeness affecting command decisions and from the stress of families lost by the rest of the bomber crew. Darrin McGavin, Rip Torn and Martin Landau anchor the other subplot of competing Presidents. One a physically incapacitated US leader trying to avert escalating the conflict to the point of no return with another recently sworn in who fears of losing a nuclear war and thus wanting to strike back full and hard. In between these two leaders is the diabolical performance by Rip Torn as a warmongering Army colonel who sees only winning the war as the only objective. At times, the performances do become hampered by the simplicity of the script, but the cast power through to the end.

In the end, the film might look a bit dated in its production design (this was 1990 and many years before HBO became known for premiere television production) but the story itself is very current and relevant.  What might have been a nice Cold War relic fairy tale when it first aired in 1990 on HBO has taken on more of a cautionary tale as more nations begin to acquire nuclear weapons with some of these nations not just enemies of the US and the world in general, but also led by men whose hold on sanity seem tenuous at best. By Dawn’s Early Light is a great piece political “what if” that hopefully remains just that and not a prediction of reality to come.

Horror on the Lens: The Night Strangler (dir by Dan Curtis)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

For today’s horror on the lens, we have 1973’s The Night Strangler.

This is the sequel to The Night Stalker and it features journalist Carl Kolchak (Darren McGavin) in Seattle.  (After all the stuff that happened during the previous movie, Kolchak was kicked out of Las Vegas.)  When Kolchak investigates yet another series of murders, he discovers that paranormal murders don’t just occur in Las Vegas and aren’t just committed by vampires.

I actually prefer this movie to The Night Stalker.  The Night Strangler features a truly creepy villain, as well as a trip down to an “underground city.”  It’s full of ominous atmosphere and, as always, Darren McGavin is a lot of fun to watch in the role in Kolchak.

Enjoy!

Horror on the Lens: The Night Stalker (dir by John Llewelyn Moxey)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

For today’s horror on the lens, we have a real treat!  (We’ll get to the tricks later…)

Long before he achieved holiday immortality by playing the father in A Christmas Story, Darren McGavin played journalist Carl Kolchak in the 1972 made-for-TV movie, The Night Stalker.  Kolchak is investigating a series of murders in Las Vegas, all of which involve victims being drained of their blood.  Kolchak thinks that the murderer might be a vampire.  Everyone else thinks that he’s crazy.

When this movie first aired, it was the highest rated made-for-TV movie of all time.  Eventually, it led to a weekly TV series in which Kolchak investigated various paranormal happenings.  Though the TV series did not last long, it’s still regularly cited as one of the most influential shows ever made.

The Night Stalker is an effective little vampire movie and Darren McGavin gives a great performance as Carl Kolchak.

Enjoy!

Late Night Retro Television Review: Monsters 2.2 “Portrait of the Artist”

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 Wednesdays, I will be reviewing Monsters, which aired in syndication from 1988 to 1991. The entire series is streaming on YouTube.

This week, a visit to an art gallery goes terribly wrong.

Episode 2.2 “Portrait of the Artist”

(Dir by Gerald Cotts, originally aired on October 8th, 1989)

Lucille Clay (Lucille Kennedy) visits an isolated art gallery that appears to be sitting in the middle of nowhere.  The studio is full of macabre paintings of women and children who appear to be in some sort of mortal danger.  Watching over the gallery is Hubert (Darren McGavin), who claims to be just an old farmer who was hired to look after things while the actual artist is in Nepal.

Accompanying Lucille is Roger Darcy (Beeson Carroll), a man who walks with a pronounced limp.  Lucille claims that Roger is an art critic but, as soon becomes apparent, that’s a lie.  Roger is actually the father of a missing teenage girl and he is stunned when he sees that one of the paintings looks just like her.  In fact, all of the paintings appear to be of someone who has recently disappeared.  Convinced that the artist is a serial killer, Roger demands to be taken to the artist’s cabin.  What Roger doesn’t know is that the gallery hides an even bigger threat.

This episode ends with a twist.  It’s not a bad twist and it actually took me by surprise.  Unfortunately, the rest of the episode is not as good as the twist ending.  I had high hopes when I saw that this episode was going to take place in a gallery and that it was going to star Darren McGavin.  But, and it pains me to say this, McGavin just isn’t very good in this episode.  McGavin was an actor who always had a tendency to go a little bit over the top.  That wasn’t a problem when he was playing Kolchak or the father in A Christmas Story.  But, in this episode, he’s so blustery that it’s obvious that he’s hiding something from the start and it makes Roger and Lucille seem all the dumber for trusting him.

Indeed, the other big problem with this episode is that Roger and Lucille continually do the stupidest things possible.  None of their actions make sense.  Why, if they believed a serial killer was lurking around the gallery, would they split up?  Why would they be so quick to trust Hubert?  Why, after escaping, would one of them then return without any backup?  Why does neither one of them seem to be particularly upset about the possibility that either Hubert or the artist murdered Roger’s daughter and then used her for his painting?  They both behave so stupidly that it’s hard to really care what happens to them.

This story had some potential but, unfortunately, the execution just didn’t live up to it.

Retro Television Review: The Death Of Me Yet (dir by John Llewellyn Moxey)

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 Sundays, I will be reviewing the made-for-television movies that used to be a primetime mainstay.  Today’s film is 1971’s The Death Of Me Yet!  It  can be viewed on YouTube.

Welcome to Middletown!

Middletown is a nice, comfy, and friendly little town.  As you might guess from the name, it seems just like the type of town that you would expect to find in the middle of the country.  Edward Young (Doug McClure) is a friendly and popular citizen of the town.  Everyone loves to see Edward walking around Middletown with his girlfriend, Alice (Meg Foster, of the otherworldly eyes).  But one day, Edward comes home to find a message waiting for him.  He has been “activated” and it’s time for him to leave Middletown and head to …. THE UNITED STATES!

You see, Middletown is in the middle of a country.  It’s in the middle of Russia, to be exact.  It’s a KGB training center, where sleeper agents learn how to pass for Americans.

Edward heads to America, where he takes on the name of Paul Towers.  Over the years, Paul settles in a town that looks a lot like Middletown.  Paul becomes a newspaper publisher and he comes to love America.  He also marries Sibby (Rosemary Forsyth), the sister of defense contract Hank Keller (Dana Elcar).  When one of Hank’s executives dies under mysterious circumstances, Hank offers to bring Paul into the business.

Paul is reluctant, both because he doesn’t know if he could pass the background check that the FBI is going to run on him and also because he suspects that someone is trying to kill him!  When he sees Alice and his former KGB handler (Richard Basehart) in town, Paul realizes that he’s going to have to pick a side and face the consequences of all of his actions.

The Death of Me Yet is an enjoyably twisty thriller, one that embraces the melodrama while having some fun with the idea of a bunch of sleeper agents doing business in a generic American town.  Doug McClure’s natural earnestness makes him an odd choice for the role of a lifelong spy but the casting works in that it explains why no one has ever suspected Paul in the past.  As always, Darren McGavin is a welcome presence as the FBI agent who assures Paul that he will be doing a thorough background check.  Richard Basehart makes for a good villain and Meg Foster’s enigmatic screen presence keeps the viewer guessing as to what her ultimate goal may be.

The film ends with the hint of continued adventures for Paul.  It wouldn’t surprise me if this movie was made with an eye on turning it into a weekly series.  As far as I know, that series never happened, though The Americans would later feature many of the same themes and ideas found in The Death of Me Yet.  The Death of Me Yet holds up as an entertaining espionage thriller.