Whose Dog Is It Anyway?”

Posted on November 5, 2025 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 Wednesdays, I will be reviewing the original Love Boat, which aired on ABC from 1977 to 1986! The series can be streamed on Paramount Plus!

Come abroad, we’re expecting you….

Uhmm, maybe not this week, Love Boat.

Episode 6.25 “The Dog Show: Putting on the Dog/Going to the Dogs/Women’s Best Friend/Whose Dog Is It Anyway?”

(Dir by Bob Sweeney, originally aired on March 26th, 1983)

This week’s episode stressed me out.

The cruise line is co-sponsoring a dog show that is going to be held in Mexico. The dog that wins will not only receive $10,000 but will also become the new “face” of Honeycutt Dogfood. All the contestants bring their dogs onboard the ship and take the cruise to Mexico.

Seriously, imagine the scene. Hundreds of dogs on cruise ship, floating in the pool and running through the passageways — YIKES! I will admit that the majority of the dogs were cute. There was a white Samoyed dog named Tundra who was just adorable and who could do all sorts of tricks. But still, I spent the whole episode wondering what would happen if a dog accidentally jumped (or fell — oh my God!) overboard. What if one of the dogs had fleas and now, everyone on the boat had them too? Who was cleaning up after the dogs? And what about a passenger — like me, for instance — who wasn’t really a dog person and who bought a ticket without the knowledge that the ship itself would be home to hundreds of canines?

The storylines also made me anxious, just because none of them made much sense. (It was obvious that the main concern for this episode was getting as much cute dog footage as possible.) So, we had Isaac and Gopher buying Tundra from $8 but not realizing that she was a brilliant dog who could do hundreds of tricks. Isaac and Gopher sold the dog to the Captain and Vicki, just to then realize that Tundra was a sure winner in the dog show. Isaac and Gopher tried to convince the Captain to sell the dog back but it turned out the Captain already knew Tundra was a winner. Of course, as employees of the cruise line, neither Gopher nor Isaac nor Vicky should have been allowed to enter a dog in the show in the first place.

And then we had Isaac’s aunt Tanya (Isabel Sanford) running around with a Chihuahua while her husband (Mel Stewart) got jealous. And we had Pamela (Catherine Bach) realizing that Gary (Dirk Benedict) was the new owner of a dog that she had lost two years before. And then there was boozy Mrs. Honeycutt (Jo Anne Worley) boarding the ship and searching for her husband, not realizing that he wouldn’t be arriving until the ship reached Mexico. For his part, Mr. Honeycutt (Gordon Jump) spent most of this episode in Las Vegas with his secretary.

Finally, Harold Pack (Ray Buktencia), who worked in Honeycutt’s mailroom, boarded the boat with some forms from Mr. Honeycutt and was immediately mistaken for his boss. Pretending to be Mr. Honeycutt, Harold romanced a dog owner named Wendy (Heather Thomas). Imagine Wendy’s surprise when she learned Mrs. Honeycutt was on the boat and looking for her husband….

Oh God, I’m getting stressed just writing about all this.

Things worked out in the end. Mr. Honeycutt, having returned from Vegas, announced that there was a tie and all the dogs were winners! Harold protected Honeycutt’s secret and got promoted to Vice President. Pamela and Gary decided to own the dog together. Vicki got Tundra! Yay! I was happy about that. Tundra was adorable!

This episode was exhausting. Too many dogs, too many half-baked stories, too much overacting on the part of Isabel Sanford, it was just too much.

Life is a Beach #3: The Beach Girls (dir by Pat Townsend)

Posted on March 11, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

“You louse! You hussy!”

“What’s a hussy?”

“Who’s loud?”

— Typical dialogue from The Beach Girls (1982)

As you may have guessed from the combination of the film’s title, the film’s poster, and the film’s dialogue, the 1982 comedy The Beach Girls is yet another production from Crown International Pictures.

And if you had any doubts, The Beach Girls quickly erases them by not only featuring the exact same songs that were heard in both The Pom Pom Girls and Malibu Beach but by also reusing a good deal of beach footage that originally appeared in Malibu Beach. Remember that dog in Malibu Beach that kept stealing everyone’s bikini top? Apparently, the folks at Crown International really liked that dog because all of his scenes are awkwardly inserted into The Beach Girls.

In between all of the Malibu Beach footage, The Beach Girls tells the story of three girls who have a nice beach house for the summer and who proceed to throw a party. That is literally the plot of the entire film. Two of the girls — Ginger (Val Kline) and Ducky (Jeana Tomasina) — are up for anything while their best friend, the shy and intellectual Sarah (Debra Blee), desperately needs to relax and have a good time. Fortunately, there’s a sensitive musician at the party. His name is Scott and he’s played by James Daughton, who was also in Malibu Beach. With Scott’s help, Sarah starts to come out of her shell, which largely means that she starts to progressively wear less and less clothes.

Just when it looks like the party might be on the verge of concluding, six garbage bags of weed wash up on the beach. That comes in handy once all of the uptight authority figures start to show up and demand that the party end. Fortunately, the super weed inspires everyone to just relax and have fun. Not even the eventual arrival of the Coast Guard can stop this party…

The Beach Girls is pretty much your typical Crown International teen sex comedy. The main thing that distinguishes it from The Pom Pom Girls and Malibu Beach is that the main characters in The Beach Girls are all female. And while the three main characters all still required to spend a good deal of the film undressed, this is a rare teen comedy where the guys are just as likely to get naked as the girls and where the girls have as much fun as the guys. As a result, there’s little of the misogyny that lay underneath the surface of The Pom Pom Girls and, to a lesser extent, Malibu Beach.

Don’t get me wrong. The Beach Girls, which is currently available Hulu and has also been included in a few Mill Creek box sets, is hardly a great or even a good film. It’s pretty much a standard sex comedy where both the characters and the jokes are predictably dumb. But, when taken on its own modest terms, it’s an inoffensive little time capsule.

Plus, the film’s beach house is really nice! Seriously, that’s one thing that I love about films from the 80s. Even the low-budget comedies always take place in the nicest houses!

Back to School #33: Savage Streets (dir by Danny Steinmann)

Posted on September 2, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

“Too bad you’re not double-jointed…because then you’d be able to bend over and kiss your ass goodbye!” — Brenda (Linda Blair) in Savage Streets (1984)

The year is 1984 and the streets are…savage! As in Savage Streets, a low-budget exploitation film that combines high school melodrama with vigilante justice.

Savage Streets tells the story of big-haired Brenda (played by Linda Blair of Exorcist fame), a tough high school senior who attends one of the most graffiti-covered schools in America. Seriously, I’ve seen a lot of bad high schools in a lot of not-so-good movies since I started this Back To School series but it’s hard to think of any of them that look quite as bad as the high school in Savage Streets. The halls are dirty. A fight breaks out every few seconds. Students sit in class and light up cigarettes. Can anyone be surprised that Principal Underwood (John Vernon) spends all of his time wandering the hallways and growling out lines like, “Go fuck an iceberg!” When he and Brenda have a confrontation in his office, Principal Underwood smirks and says, “You’re a tough little bitch, aren’t you?”

What’s truly sad is that, as bad as Underwood is, he’s still nicer than just about every other man in the movie.

Brenda has a lot to deal with. For one thing, it appears that she’s only enrolled in three classes. The first class is a gym class where apparently, the teacher has just written down “Aerobics” on every page of her lesson plan. While Brenda and her friends work out, local dumb jock Wes (Brian Mann) shows up to stare at her. When Wes’s girlfriend, Cindy (Rebecca Perle), confronts Brenda in the changing room after class, Brenda replies, “I wouldn’t fuck him if he had the last dick on Earth.” Cindy responds by going, “AAAAAAAAAAGHHHHH!” and then attacking her. Brenda’s other class appears to be a science class of some sort. It turns out that Cindy’s in that class, too. So, once again, it’s time for another fight…

If you’re getting the feeling that everybody at this school has nothing better to do than fight — well, you’re right.

Brenda has other problems as well. Brenda’s younger sister (future horror mainstay Linnea Quigley, giving the closest thing to a truly good performance to be found in this particular film) is a deaf mute and Brenda’s best friend is pregnant and getting married. When a really pathetic gang of losers known as the Scars assault her sister and kill her best friend, Brenda responds by dressing up in black leather, grabbing a crossbow, and giving the Scars some real scars to worry about…

Savage Streets is one of those films about people with ugly thoughts doing ugly things in largely ugly settings. In many ways, it’s a surprisingly mean-spirited film and not one that I would suggest for anyone who is easily offended. (Following his work here, director Danny Stienmann was hired to direct Friday the 13th — A New Beginning, which is perhaps the most unapologetically exploitative of all the Friday the 13th films.) And yet, at the same time, I appreciated the fact that Savage Streets not only featured a woman kicking ass but also doing it without the help of a man. Even better, not only does Brenda not need a man to help her but she doesn’t want one either. Brenda is unique for being totally independent and, whatever else one might say about this frequently messy and amateurish movie, it celebrates that independence.

So, does that make Savage Streets into a secretly subversive feminist film?

No.

But it still makes Savage Streets better than your average vigilante-with-a-crossbow film.