Tag Archives: David Proval

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th 1.23 “Badge of Honor”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night 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 Friday the 13th: The Series, a show which ran in syndication from 1987 to 1990. The show can be found on YouTube!

This week …. OH MY GOD, IT’S JOHN STOCKWELL!

Episode 1.23 “Badge of Honor”

(Dir by Michelle Manning, originally aired on July 5th, 1988)

Victor Haas (David Proval) is a club owner and also the head of Canada’s most violent ring of counterfeiters.  Detective Russ Sharko (Val Avery) is obsessed with taking Victor down.  Victor attempts to dissuade Sharko by using a car bomb to take out Sharko’s wife.  That just makes Sharko more determined.  However, when Sharko’s obsession leads to a bust-gone-wrong and a dead cop, Sharko is kicked off the force.  Sharko now has to take Victor and his man down on his own.  Fortunately, he happens to own an antique sheriff’s badge.  When he pins the badge on someone, that person suffers a violent death.

This sounds like a job for Micki and Ryan.  (Jack, again, is out of town.)  However, Micki and Ryan are distracted by the arrival of Tim (played by one of my favorite 80s leading men, the superhot John Stockwell).  Tim is Micki’s ex-boyfriend and soon, he and Micki are picking up where they left off.  (When the season began, Micki was engaged so I guess Tim must have been the boyfriend before the fiancé.)  Ryan gets jealous because — surprise! — he’s kind of in love with Micki.  Of course, just a few episodes ago, Ryan was in love with a preacher’s daughter.  And then, after that, he was in love with Catherine, who was murdered by an evil journalist.  Ryan seems to fall in love easily so….

Actually, wait a minute.  RYAN AND MICKI ARE COUSINS!  WHAT ARE YOU DOING, RYAN!?  Of course, they’re not first cousins but still …. it just doesn’t seem right!

Anyway, at first, it seems like Ryan might be correct to be suspicious of Tim because Tim approaches Victor and offers to help him with his counterfeiting ring.  But then we learn that Tim is with the FBI!  Why is the FBI working in Canada?  I guess maybe the show’s producers were still trying to convince viewers that Friday the 13th took place in America, despite the fact that all of the directors and most of the actors were Canadian and the show itself was clearly filmed in wintry Canada.  (This episode is a bit of an oddity in that all three of the main guest stars — David Proval, John Stockwell, and Val Avery — were born in the Lower 48.)  The important thing is that Tim’s a good guy but — uh oh! — Tim also gets shot and dies at the end of the episode.  Micki is a little bit sad but Ryan is kind of relieved because it means he’ll have a chance to hook up with his cousin….

SERIOUSLY, WHAT THE HELL!?

This episode got a little bogged down with all of the counterfeiting stuff.  It felt more like an episode of Miami Vice than Friday the 13th.  The badge was also a bit of a boring antique because it didn’t really do anything other than kill people.  Other antiques changed the personality of the people who owned them and demanded a quid pro quo for their powers.  This antique is far more simple and kind of dull.

Oh well.  It’s a less-than-memorable episode but John Stockwell was hot and I’m a bit disappointed that he apparently won’t be making a return appearance.

Next week, we meet Ryan’s father and discover that he’s not a good man at all!

Retro Television Review: Miami Vice 2.5 “The Dutch Oven”

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 Mondays, I will be reviewing Miami Vice, which ran on NBC from 1984 to 1989.  The entire show can be purchased on Prime!

Well, this sucks!  Tubi is no longer streaming Miami Vice.  Hopefully, the show will soon have a new streaming home.  As for the episode that I reviewed below, I had to buy it on Prime.  It cost next to nothing but still, there’s a larger issue, namely my desire to watch stuff for free.

Episode 2.4 “The Dutch Oven”

(Dir by Abel Ferrara, originally aired on October 25th, 1985)

This week’s episode of Miami Vice opens with a typical Vice situation.  Trudy is undercover as a prostitute.  Tubbs is undercover as a drug buyer.  When the dealers try to rip Tubbs off, it leads to an exciting and well-shot car chase that ends in an alley.  One of the dealers points his gun at Sonny and Trudy and, four shots later, he’s lying dead on the ground.

For once, though, it’s not Sonny who did the shooting.  Instead, all four shots were fired by Trudy.  This time, it’s Trudy who is shaken by taking someone’s life and it’s Trudy who finds herself being harassed by Internal Affairs.  Feeling lost, Trudy goes to a party hosted by her ex-boyfriend, David (Cleavant Derricks).  Soon, Trudy and David are back together but, when Trudy discovers that someone is dealing drugs at David’s parties, she is forced to confront the fact that her boyfriend might not be an innocent bystander.

A young Giancarlo Esposito appears in this episode, playing an up-and-coming dealer named Adonis.  Adonis is an old friend of David’s and he’s also the one who is responsible for selling the drugs at the parties.  (It turns out that David actually is innocent.)  Sonny, realizing that Trudy is too close to the case and still emotionally shaken by the earlier shooting, goes undercover to take Adonis down.  Of course, Adonis doesn’t surrender easily and the episode ends with him literally daring Trudy to shoot him.  Trudy hesitates so Sonny sends Adonis to the ground with one punch.  As far as endings go, it doesn’t quite feel like a Miami Vice ending.  Season one, for instance, had no hesitation about ending with gunshots.  Gina shot Burt Young in cold blood.  Pam Grier killed several drug dealers and apparently got away with it.  Bruce Willis’s wife shot him on the courthouse steps.  Dennis Farina was shot in his car at the end of Lombard.  This episode, though, ends with Sonny demonstrating that he can make arrests without killing people and with Trudy still not having to deal with her fear of using her weapon.  It feels a bit wishy-washy, to be honest.

On the plus side, Abel Ferrara does a good job directing this episode.  The opening action scene is genuinely exciting and the entire episode is permeated with a melancholy atmosphere.  This episode deserves some credit for acknowledging that the Vice detectives spend a lot of time investigating and arresting people with whom they’ve become friends.  And it’s good that, after spending so much time in the background, Trudy finally got a showcase episode and Olivia Brown got a chance to prove she could carry a story.  This is an effective episode, even if it never quite becomes a classic.

Horror on TV: Friday the 13th: The Series 1.23 “Badge of Honor” (dir by Michelle Manning)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

On tonight’s episode of Friday the 13th, Val Avery plays an angry cop who uses an antique sheriff’s badge to get revenge on the mobster who put his wife in a coma.  The mobster is played by David Proval, who later played RIchie Aprile during the second season of The Sopranos.  (You might remember Janice shooting him in the chest.)

This episode was directed by Michelle Mannings who, while working as an executive at Paramount, produced both Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club!

This episode originally aired on July 9th, 1988.

 

Cleaning Out The DVR: The Star Chamber (dir by Peter Hyams)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Here’s a good example of why I need to clean out my DVR more regularly:

I recorded the 1983 legal thriller, The Star Chamber, off of Starz on March 14th.  I know what you’re saying.  “Big deal!  That wasn’t that long ago.”  Well, did I mention that it was March 14th, 2017?

That’s right!  The Star Chamber sat on my DVR for over a year before I finally got around to watching it last night.  You’d be justified in asking why it took me so long and I’m afraid that I really couldn’t give you a definite answer.  I can, however, tell you the four main reasons why I recorded it in the first place:

  1. I’m always intrigued whenever I come across a movie of which I haven’t previously heard.
  2. The movie was described as being about a conflicted judge and I just happen to love legal films.
  3. I really, really liked the title.  The Star Chamber?  Did that mean it took place in a room full of stars?
  4. Before I recorded The Star Chamber, I only had 55 films on the DVR.  Since I don’t like odd numbers, recording The Star Chamber took care of that problem.

As for the film itself, The Star Chamber is another one of those movies where a group of vigilantes end up getting pissed off because liberal California judges are letting too many murderers go free because of pesky, constitutional technicalities.  The twist here is that the vigilantes are the same judges who keep tossing out evidence and ruling that confessions are inadmissible in court.  After spending their day setting free the dregs of society, the judges all gather in a nearby house and review the evidence before voting on whether or not they believe the accused was actually guilty.  If the verdict is guilty, the judges promptly hire a hit man who proceeds to clean up the streets.

The newest member of this tribunal is Judge Steven R. Hardin (Michael Douglas).  Hardin is haunted by the technicalities that forced him to toss out a case against two accused of child murderers.  (Making things even worse, the child’s father commits suicide afterward.)  Despite his initial reservations, Judge Hardin signs off on hiring an assassin to take the two men out.  But, when it becomes apparent that the two men actually were innocent, Judge Hardin is horrified to discover that there’s no way to call off the hit…

The Star Chamber is an oddly constructed movie.  When the movie starts, it feels like a typical police procedural.  From there, the movie turns into a rather talky examination of the U.S. legal system, with Judge Hardin trying to balance his idealism with the often frustrating reality of what it takes to uphold the law.  The movie then briefly turns into a conspiracy film, featuring middle-aged men in suits holding secret meetings and debating whether or not they’re serving the greater good.  And then, towards the end of the movie, it turns into an action film, with Judge Hardin being chased by two drug dealers, a contract killer, and a suspicious police detective (Yaphet Kotto).  Judge Hardin may start the movie as a conflicted liberal but he ends at someone who can blow up the entire second floor of a drug lab.  In many ways, The Star Chamber is a deeply silly film but, as directed and co-written by Peter Hyams, it’s also just pulpy enough to be entertaining.  The dialogue may be over-the-top but so is Michael Douglas’s performance so it all evens out in the end.

It may have taken me a while to get around to watching The Star Chamber but I’m glad that I finally did.  It’s a ludicrous film and all the more entertaining as a result.