Late Night Retro Television Review: Pacific Blue 4.18 “Thicker Than Water”

Posted on September 8, 2026 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 Tuesdays, I will be reviewing Pacific Blue, a cop show that aired from 1996 to 2000 on the USA Network! It’s currently streaming everywhere, though I’m watching it on Tubi.

This week, the Pumpkin Man strikes! It’s even dumber than it sounds.

Episode 4.18 “Thicker Than Water”

(Dir by Scott Lautanen, originally aired on March 21st, 1999)

A mob lawyer and his wife have been murdered, and for some reason the bicycle patrol is investigating the case instead of Homicide. When it becomes apparent that the lawyer’s son, Andy Jr. (Scotty Cox), has disappeared, Cory makes it her mission to track him down. This is yet another episode where Cory is willing to do whatever it takes to solve the case. Of course, in Cory’s case, that usually means walking around and glaring at people.

Cory discovers that Andy Jr. is with his real mother, a stripper named Angela (Angela Marsden). Angela was the dead lawyer’s mistress. When Cory tracks down Angela, she learns that Andy doesn’t know his father is dead, but he does know that “the Pumpkin Man” came to the house. Meanwhile, the FBI sends over an agent who is big and bald… JUST LIKE THE LEAD SINGER OF SMASHING PUMPKINS!

You may think that I’m making this up, but no, it’s very, very true. Andy calls the killer the Pumpkin Man because he thinks the killer looks like Billy Corgan. When he sees the FBI agent, Andy shouts, “The Pumpkin Man! SMASHING PUMPKINS!”

Because Cory is currently in hiding with Angela, the bicycle patrol decides to go undercover. Monica gets a job dancing at the strip club. Well, of course she does. Whenever T.C. says that someone is going undercover, that means Monica is going to be looking for clues while undressed. One of the more annoying things about this season is that Monica always does a good job while she’s undercover, but no one ever gives her any credit for it. Instead, the other members of the bike patrol just roll their eyes and give an exasperated sigh whenever Monica says something. If they have a problem with Monica constantly flirting with all of the bad guys, they might want to talk to T.C., since he’s the one who keeps assigning her to do it.

This episode was dumb even by Pacific Blue standards. I already mentioned that it makes no sense for a bunch of uniformed bicycle cops to be investigating a high-profile murder. It also doesn’t really make any sense for a bike cop to go undercover at a strip club. I mean, isn’t that what Vice is for? There’s also a moment where T.C. tells off the FBI for trying to interfere with the investigation. I think the FBI ranks higher than the bike patrol. Finally, the kid playing young Andy was an absolutely lousy actor, and that crooked FBI agent may have been bald, but he still didn’t look that much like Billy Corgan.

Someday I’m going to run out of Pacific Blue episodes to review. It can’t come soon enough.

The Fear (1995, directed by Vincent Robert)

Posted on October 12, 2022 by Jedadiah Leland

Psychology student Richard (Eddie Bowz) wants to conduct a study. After getting permission from the head of his department, Dr. Arnold (Wes Craven!), Richard gathers together a group of students and takes them to his family’s cottage. He introduces the group to “Morty,” a life-sized wooden dummy who Richard has had ever since he was a child. Morty, Richard explains, was carved by a Native American shaman and was then stolen by Richard’s grandfather. Each member of the group is told to confess their greatest fear to “Morty.” Even Richard takes part, confessing that he was scared of Morty when he was growing up.

File this one under “it seemed like a good idea at the time,” because the weekend quickly heads south. Richard’s uncle (Vince Edwards) shows up unannounced with his new girlfriend, Tanya (Anna Karin). Members of the group start to disappear and one of them is assaulted at a Christmas carnival, leading the group to suspect that one of them might be the rapist who has been attacking women on campus. Morty starts to show up in an unexpected rooms in cottage and it appears that everyone’s fears are starting to come true!

The Fear is one of those films that used to show up on late Cinemax but I mostly remember it because it was one of those movies that always seemed to be on display at our local Blockbuster. The VHS cover featured Morty giving someone the side-eye and looking dangerous. Morty is the best thing about the movie. Just looking at him is unsettling. Why would Richard be stupid enough to tell people to confess their fears to Morty?

Morty is creepy but the movie doesn’t seem to know what to do with him. Sometimes, Morty is evil and can move on his own and even seems to be capable of possessing someone. Other times, the movie seems to suggests that everything that’s happening is just in Richard’s head and Morty is just a wooden dummy. The story becomes impossible to follow as every member of the group is revealed to have a secret and Richard is finally forced to admit that there is something that he’s even more scared of than Morty. (If, as the film suggests, Morty is mostly after Richard, why does Morty first waste so much time on the other members of the group?) The Fear is not without ambition. It takes the therapy scenes seriously and Eddie Bowz does seem like he’s trying to give a believable performance as Richard. It seems like the people involved wanted to make a good movie. But once everyone’s fears start to come true and the movie moves into a ridiculous subplot about Richard and his stepsister, the movie is too disjointed to work. It doesn’t help that most of the fears are too mundane to really translate into an imaginative death scene. By the end of it all, not even Morty’s that scary anymore.

A Movie A Day #124: Mad Dog Coll (1992, directed by Greydon Clark and Ken Stein)

Posted on May 11, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

New York. The prohibition era. The Coll Brothers, Vincent (Christopher Bradley) and Peter (Jeff Griggs), are sick of working for the Irish gangster, O’Malley (William Anthony La Valle). They want to hang out at the Cotton Club with big time gangsters like Lucky Luciano (Matt Servitto), Legs Diamond (Will Kempe), and Dutch Schultz (Bruce Nozick). Vincent has fallen in love with Lotte (Rachel York), a singer at the club but the club’s owner, Owney Madden (Jack Conley), makes it clear that Lotte is too good for a low-rent thug. After killing O’Malley, Vincent and Peter go to work for Dutch Schultz but soon, they grew tired of the low wages that Schultz pays them. The Colls decide to strike out on their own, leading to all out war with New York’s organized crime establishment.

Vincent Coll was a real-life gangster who actually did go to war with Dutch Schultz and Lucky Luciano. After a five-year old boy was fatally caught in the crossfire of a gun battle between Coll and his rivals, Vincent was nicknamed “Mad Dog” by the New York press. Mad Dog Coll presents a highly fictionalized account of Coll’s life, suggesting that the kid was actually shot by one of Coll’s rivals and presenting Coll as an idealistic rebel who refused to be controlled by Luciano’s organized crime commission. Luciano, Vincent and Peter agree, has sold out and no longer remembers where he came from.

Mad Dog Coll was one of two gangster movies that Menaham Golan produced, back-to-back, in Russia. In fact, Mad Dog Coll may be the first American film in which Russia stood in for America instead of the other way around. Though this film was produced after Golan broke up with his longtime producing partner, Yoram Globus, Mad Dog Coll still has a definite Cannon feel to it. It is low-budget, fast-paced, unapologetically pulpy, and entertaining as Hell. For a Golan production, the performances are surprisingly good. Bruce Nozick steals the entire movie as crazy Dutch Schultz. None of it is subtle but it is enjoyable in the way that only a Greydon Clark-directed, Menahem Golan-produced gangster film can be. 1920s New York is recreated on Russian soundstages. The threadbare production design and cardboard cityscape brings a Jon Pertwee/Tom Baker-era Dr. Who feel to the movie. All that is missing is The Master brewing up moonshine and the Daleks exterminating the Chicago Outfit.

In the U.S., Mad Dog Coll was retitled Killer Instinct, probably to cash in on the recent success of Basic Instinct. The entire cast was featured in the sequel, the Menahem Golan-directed Hit the Dutchman.