Don Dolan – 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, two special guest stars appear on Hunter!

Episode 2.8 “Million Dollar Misundestanding”

(Dir by Michael Peerce, originally aired on November 16th, 1985)

Hey, it’s Robert Englund!

In this episode, Englund appears as Vaughn. Vaughn is in charge of both the motor pool and the police impound lot. He’s been given orders not to let Hunter ever have a nice car because Hunter inevitably ends up destroying every car that he’s given. Vaughn takes his job seriously. That said, he still gets tricked by Hunter’s old “snatch a key while Vaughn isn’t looking” trick. “HUNTER!” Vaughn shouts as Hunter drives off in a new car that will be totally destroyed by the end of the episode.

It was nice to see Robert Englund. This episode aired in 1985, a year after the release of A Nightmare on Elm Street. This is probably one of the last roles that Englund played that was not, in some way, written to capitalize on him being a horror icon. Instead, he’s just a normal guy who gets annoyed with Hunter. Even when he’s yelling, there’s just something innately likable about Robert Englund.

This episode also features the great Robert Davi. Not surprisingly, Davi plays the main bad guy. He’s a security guard who masterminds the robbery of an armored car. He nets a million dollars in the robbery, kills his co-workers, and then kills his partners-in-crime. He puts the money in the trunk of a stolen Trans Am and then drives off. However, when he stops to make a call from a payphone, the Trans Am is stolen once again, this time by two teenage car thieves. Hunter and McCall crash into the Trans Am, totaling it.

At the police impound lot, the owner of the Trans Am is not happy to see that her car has been destroyed, However, she is happy to discover a million dollars in the trunk. Later, when Hunter and McCall go to her house to personally apologize for destroying her car, they discover her floating dead in her swimming pool. The money is missing.

Believe it or not, Robert Davi is not the murderer here. Instead, the woman was killed by her employer, club owner Tito Constantine (Phil Rubinstein). He has the money hidden on his boat. Davi, who has previously attacked both McCall and Hunter in his search for the cash, hijacks the boat. Hunter and McCall show up and chase after him. It all leads to Hunter and McCall recovering the money and two bad guys ending up all wet. Remarkably, neither one of the bad guys is killed in this episode. That’s a rare event for Hunter.

This was an enjoyably chaotic episode. Hunter is at its best when it focuses on gun fights and car chases and that’s what this episode was all about. Toss in Robert Englund and Robert Davi and you have pure 80s excitement! This episode worked for me.

Due to a chemical spill that is spreading through the ocean, life on Earth is going to end in five years unless something is done. A group of friendly alien offer to give Earth either the “Good Package” or the “Big Gun.” The Good Package can clean up the ocean. The Big Gun is a big gun. They both sound good to me! The aliens only want a glass of water in return and they want that glass to be delivered by CIA Agent Pillbox.

Unfortunately, Pillbox has been killed in the field so the government tracks down a meek office worker named Bob Wilson (John Ritter) who looks just like Pillbox. Tough and streetwise Nick Pirandello (Jim Belushi) is sent to recruit Bob and take him to the aliens. Trying to stop Nick and Bob are a group of rogue CIA agents who would rather get the Big Gun than the Good Package. Nick teaches Bob how to be a “real man” and Bob teaches Nick how to be a real friend. They also beat up clowns.

A box office failure that did even worse with the critics, Real Men is a movie that was saved by cable. When I was a kid, Real Men used to show up on HBO all the time. Whatever flaws the film may have had, the mix of John Ritter’s physical comedy, Jim Belushi’s wiseguy attitude, and the action scenes made it the type of movie that was ideal for home viewing, especially if you had just gotten out of school and wanted to watch something before your parents came home and asked if you had done your homework. Real Men was fun enough to hold up to repeat viewings but it was also slight enough that it wasn’t a huge tragedy if the channel got changed before the movie ended.

When I rewatched Real Men, I thought the film’s storytelling could have been tighter but it still turned out to be better than I was expecting. There were a lot of classic buddy movies released in the 80s and while Real Men may not be the equivalent of a 48 Hours or a Midnight Run, John Ritter and Jim Belushi are still an entertainingly mismatched team. Ritter again shows that he was a master at physical comedy while Belushi provides sarcastic commentary from the side. A lot of the odd couple-style banter is predictable (Bob doesn’t smoke but Nick does) but Ritter and Belushi deliver their lines with enough conviction to still make it work. Nick teaches Bob to believe in himself and Bob is able to both save the world and tell off the neighborhood bullies. The film’s mix of action, science fiction, and broad comedy confounded critics in 1987 but it holds up today.