Diane Robin | Through the Shattered Lens

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 Hunter, which aired on NBC from 1984 to 1991. The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi and several other services!

This week, there’s somebody else shooting criminals in L.A.

Episode 1.8 “Dead or Alive”

(Dir by Guy Magar, originally aired on November 30th, 1984)

Jimmy Joe Walker (Wings Hauser) is a cowboy bounty hunter who wears black and carries a wide array of weapons. He hunts for criminals who are wanted “dead or alive.” He specializes in brining them in dead because …. well, he just like shooting people. Hunter and McCall try to capture the escaped bank robber Panhandle Pete (Jimmie F. Skaggs) before Jimmy Joe puts a bullet in him.

This was a pretty average episode of Hunter, one that was mostly distinguished by the cheerfully unhinged presence of Wings Hauser. With his Southern accent and his country clothes, Hauser largely gives the same performance here that he gave in Vice Squad. The only difference is that he’s playing a bounty hunter and not a pimp here. He still finds time to beat up McCall. I can’t help but notice that McCall is constantly getting either shot or punched on this show. I think the idea is to show that McCall is just as tough as Hunter and I do like the fact that, no matter how serve the injuries, McCall never stops fighting back. That said, it would be nice to see someone else get a black eye for once.

(This is also yet another episode that finds McCall working undercover as a prostitute. She spends the first half of the episode wearing a blue top with feathers attached to the sleeves. I kept expecting someone to mention the feathers but not even Wings Hauser said a word about them. You would expect Wings to be all over that.)

The plot of this one felt a bit silly. A bank robber named Panhandle Pete? Really? I get the feeling that this episode was done in order to protect the show from charges that it glorified the idea of gunning down criminals. We’re supposed to look at Hunter and Jimmy Joe and say, “Hunter shoots a lot of people but at least he doesn’t laugh about it.” This was Hunter’s version of Magnum Force.

Again, this was an average episode but it’s worth watching just for Wings Hauser.

Last night, I watched the latest Lifetime premiere, Deadly Mile High Club!

Deadly Mile High Club tells the story of three people who end up flying the unfriendly skies together. Tanya (Allison McAtee) is a flight instructor who has been haunted ever since the tragic crash that took the life of her lover and co-pilot.

Jake (Marc Herrmann) is the handsome guy who has a go-nowhere warehouse job where he works for his constantly critical mother-in-law, Margaret (Diane Robin). Jake has decided to make some changes in his life, starting with learning how to fly.

And finally, Annie (Anna Marie Dobbins) is Jake’s wife. They’ve been married for six years and, unfortunately, they’ve hit a rough patch. Annie is busy going to school and Jake is constantly fighting with Annie’s mother. When Jake tells Annie that she sounds just like her mother, Annie exiles him to the living room couch and good for her! Annie likes to wear pink. In particular, she likes to wear a pink hat, which is something that comes back to haunt both her and Jake later on in the movie.

Jake decides to hire Tanya to teach him how to fly. This quickly turns out to be a mistake because, while Tanya is a good teacher, she’s also totally obsessed with Jake. After Jake tells her that he and Annie had a fight the night before, Tanya flies him out to Palm Springs and suggests that they spend the night at a hotel. Jake eventually turns her down but later on, during one of their lessons, Tanya has Jake fly over his house. He looks down and he sees a strange man kissing a woman wearing a pink hat in the driveway. Is Annie cheating on him!?

Realizing that things are just getting too strange, Jake attempts to switch over to a different flight instructor. That flight instructor is named Gonzo (Damon K. Sperber) and he is, without a doubt, one of the greatest supporting characters to ever appear in a Lifetime movie. Gonzo lives up to his name, dressing like an old World War II pilot and then doing dangerous stunts in an old school biplane while his employees — who are all wearing retro purple flight attendant uniforms — assure everyone watching that flying is safer than driving. I won’t go into what happens to Gonzo but let’s just say that Tanya has a way of getting what she wants.

Anyway, Deadly Mile High Club is a lot of fun. It’s one of those Lifetime films that fully embraces the melodrama and goes cheerfully over the top with a wink and a smile. Tanya is the type of psycho who has no problem trying to trick someone into pushing their wife out of a plane and the entire cast appears to be having a ball with their crazed characters. Allison McAtee especially does a great job as the unhinged Tanya and she delivers all of her lines with just the right amount of menace and humor. Deadly Mile High Club is an entertaining film, one that takes the usual Lifetime tropes of the psycho stalker and the clueless husband and the loyal wife and which bring new life to them by putting them up in the sky. It’s also a film that has a nicely self-aware sense of humor, which makes it all the more fun to watch.

Deadly Mile High Club was on last night and it will undoubtedly be on again so keep an eye out for it. And definitely, keep watching the skies!