March Positivity: This Is Our Time (dir by Lisa Arnold)

Posted on March 18, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 2013 film, This Is Our Time, opens with a college graduation and a voice-over from Ethan (Shawn Culin-Young), who explains that everyone goes through four stages when they go to college. The first stage is being excited about getting away from home and being on you own. The second and third stages are about settling down, choosing your major, and maybe meeting the person with whom you want to spend the rest of your life. The fourth stage is all about looking forward to graduation and finally getting to enter the real world.

This Is Our Time follows the story of five friends as they discover what comes after the fourth stage. For two of them, it’s making a living as corporate workers and being pressured to behave unethically. For two others, it’s marriage and a new life working as missionaries in India, ministering to the needs of leprosy sufferers and their children. For Ethan, it means giving up his dream of being a writer and working as a waiter at his father’s bar. But, as Ethan warns us in his narration, one of the five is not going to be alive in a year. The movie follows the friends as they deal with death and try to learn how to live.

Some of the acting is a bit stiff and the attempt to capture the feel of corporate America feels rather comical. (Erik Estrada glowers his way through the role of a dishonest executive.) But, at the same time, the film does end with a message from the founder of Embrace a Village, which actually does provide support for people dealing with Leprosy and the guy is so sincere that it kind of makes you feel guilty for all the snarky thoughts that you had while watching the movie. Whatever else you might want to say about the film, the intentions are good and there’s something to be said for that.

Add to that, Eric Roberts is in the film. Roberts plays Ethan’s father and he brings a lot of genuine emotion to the role. The scene where he breaks down behind the bar in response to having gotten some bad news is well-done. Roberts is kind of famous for accepting almost any role that’s offered to him and he’s said that he hasn’t actually watched the majority of the films in which he’s appeared. Who knows if Roberts actually watched this film but, regardless, his performance was definitely the highlight.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

Retro Television Reviews: The Love Boat 2.5 “Julie’s Aunt/Where Is It Written?/The Big Deal”

Posted on March 15, 2023 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!

Things get a bit icky this week. Ugh!

Episode 2.5 “Julie’s Aunt/Where Is It Written?/The Big Deal”

(Dir by Allen Baron, originally aired on October 14th, 1978)

How icky can one cruise get?

Well, consider this. On this week’s episode of The Love Boat, Captain Stubing’s uncle (Red Buttons) is a passenger on the boat. Uncle Cyrus decides that he likes Julie. How does he express how much he likes Julie? He invites her to his cabin and then lunges at her and starts kissing her. Julie runs out of the cabin and Uncle Cyrus chases her through the corridors of the boat. Once Julie does get away from him, she tells Doc and Gopher about what happened. Doc and Gopher both think that it’s funny.

(Uhmm, guys, this isn’t some old guy with a crush. This is someone who invited the cruise director to his cabin …. AND ATTACKED HER!)

Everyone agrees that Julie should just try to avoid Cyrus and that she should not tell the Captain about what happened. Unfortunately, because Uncle Cyrus told the Captain about how much he enjoys Julie’s company, Stubing insists that Julie spend as much time as possible with Uncle Cyrus. Every time that Julie goes down to his cabin, Cyrus grabs her and starts kissing her. Scene after scene, Julie has to push Cyrus off of her so that she can escape, screaming, into the hallway.

Finally, realizing that she can’t go on like this, Julie realizes that she has to do something, even if both Doc Bricker and Gopher refuse to take the situation seriously. Out of the three choice below, which do you think she goes with?

Call the police
Tell Captain Stubing and demand that he call the police
Have Gopher dress up like a woman and pretend to be a member of the police

If you picked number three, you could have been a writer for The Love Boat!

Ugh! I hated everything about this storyline!

I wasn’t a fan of the other two storylines as well. The first featured Hope Lange as Sandra Newberry, the wife of publisher Alfred Newberry (Gene Barry). She is upset to discover that Alfred has invited a Norman Maileresque writer named Mark Littlejohn (Richard Mulligan) to accompany them on the cruise. Alfred wants Mark to hurry up and finish the final chapter of his autobiography. Make wants to steal Sandra away. In the end, Alfred and Mark get into a fight. They’re too clumsy to actually hit each other but they do manage to knock out Captain Stubing. Again, you would think that this would be the sort of thing that would eventually involve the police but instead Stubing just accepts a payment that will come from the royalties of Mark’s book. Whatever. Go deal with your uncle, Captain.

Finally, Martin Scott (Allen Ludden) is a businessman who is selling his business to Brad Collins (Sam Groom). Martin’s daughter, Allison (Mackenzie Phillips), feels like she has to date Brad even though she’s actually in love with a musician named Jim Warren (Erik Estrada). It was hard not to feel that, intentionally or not, Martin was basically pimping out his daughter. Again, it was just icky.

This was not a fun cruise. Hopefully, next week will be better.

Monday Live Tweet Alert: Join Us For Light Blast and Patriot Games!

Posted on October 31, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in hosting a few weekly live tweets on twitter. I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of #MondayActionMovie! Every week, we get together. We watch a movie. We tweet our way through it.

Tonight, for #MondayActionMovie, the film will be 1985’s Light Blast! Selected and hosted by me, this Italian film is the perfect combination of horror, science fiction, action, and Erik Estrada!! The movie starts at 8 pm et! Here’s the playlist!

Following #MondayActionMovie, Brad and Sierra will be hosting the #MondayMuggers live tweet. We will be watching 1992’s Patriot Games, featuring Harrison Ford as Jack Ryan! The film is available on Paramount Plus and several other streaming services!

It should make for a night of fun viewing and I invite all of you to join in. If you want to join the live tweets, just hop onto twitter, start the Light Blast playlist at 8 pm et, and use the #MondayActionMovie hashtag! Then, at 10 pm et, start Patriot Games, and use the #MondayMuggers hashtag! The live tweet community is a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy. I’ve already reviewed Light Blast for this site and I’ll probably review Patriot Games sometime in the upcoming few weeks!

International Horror Film Review: Light Blast (dir by Enzo G. Castellari)

Posted on October 2, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Produced in Italy and first released in 1985, Enzo G. Castellari’s Light Blast is a hybrid of several different genres. There’s a lot of action, there’s a bit of horror, and there’s also some sci-fi. Like the majority of Italian exploitation films that came out during the 80s, it’s designed to have a little something for everyone.

Erik Estrada plays Ronn Warren, a detective with the San Francisco Police Department. (Though the film was filmed on location and it did star American television star Erik Estrada, it’s still very much an Italian production, complete with badly dubbed dialogue and clumsy attempts to capture the peculiarities of American culture.) When we first see Ronn, he’s in his underwear and he’s carrying a turkey. Two inbred criminals are trapped in a bank and they’ve taken hostages. They’ve demanded that the police provide them with dinner and that the food be delivered by someone “not wearing a stitch of clothing.” Ronn is happy to oblige, though he doesn’t go completely naked because Ronn is one of those police detectives who has trouble following orders. Of course, as soon as he gets inside the bank, Ronn proves that he doesn’t need to be fully dressed to stop the bad guys. He just needs for the bad guys to be stupid enough to continually let their guard down and fall for extremely obvious tricks.

While Ronn is showing off his physique, Dr. Yuri Svoboda (played by Enio Girolami, who is credited as Thomas Moore in this film) is planning on terrorizing the city of San Francisco. He’s developed a giant laser gun that he transports on top of a van. Whenever he shoots the laser at any digital clock, it causes people to melt and buildings to explode. His first victims are a teenage boy and girl who are having sex in an abandoned railroad car. His next victims are the innocent spectators of a stock car race. What does Dr. Svoboda want!?

It turns out that he wants a lot of money. Now, if Dr. Svoboda tried this today, I imagine the city would quickly pay up and Dr. Svoboda would be given a police escort to the airport. But this film was made in the 20th Century, back when people were still willing to fight back against mad scientists with lethal death rays! Soon, Ronn Warren is running around San Francisco, battling Dr. Svoboda’s henchmen while trying not to get melted himself. And, of course, it would not be a movie about San Francisco if there wasn’t at least Bullitt-inspired car chase. For this chase, Ronn steals a stock car and chases the bad guys throughout the city. Whenever anyone gets in Ronn’s way, he and the car just jump over them while the film’s synth-heavy musical score goes appropriately crazy.

What to say about Light Blast? It’s a bit of a dumb movie but, to its credit, it doesn’t take itself too seriously. The melting effects are both so grotesque and so obviously fake that you won’t know whether to laugh or to scream. Castellari keeps the action moving quickly and Estrada delivers all of his lines through gritted teeth, an indication that both of them knew better than to worry about things like logic or motivation. Why Dr. Svoboda melting people? Because he wants to. How can he somehow get away with driving around in a van that has a very obvious laser gun on top of it? There wouldn’t be a film otherwise. That’s just the way Light Blast is. It’s stupid but it’s so unapologetic in its stupidity that it’s hard not to be entertained.

Spirits (1990, directed by Fred Olen Ray)

Posted on October 22, 2021 by Jedadiah Leland

In this sex-filled take on The Haunting of Hill House, Robert Quarry leads a group of researchers to a haunted house. Amy Goldwyn (Brinke Stevens) is the smart psychic who knows the house isn’t safe but who still gets possessed by a demon and ends up hammering a nail through her palm. Beth (Kathrin Lautner) is the self-described “bitch” who has a lesbian past because this is a direct-to-video 90s film. Harry (Oliver Darrow) is the cocky womanizer who gets seduced by a succubus. The house is haunted by the spirit of a fallen priest and his demonic nuns. Only another priest, Father Anthony Vicci (Erik Estrada!), can save the researchers but that holy water that he’s carrying around is only going to work if he regains his faith and seeks forgiveness for his past sins.

As far as I know, Spirits is only available on VHS. So, if you do watch it, you’re going to need a VCR that works. Considering how easily an old VCR can break down and how it’s nearly impossible to get them repaired, you’re going to need to realize that Spirits could very well be the last tape you ever watch on the old machine. Do you want to take the risk? I took the risk and, for what it is, Spirits is not that bad. It’s a Fred Olen Ray films and it’s got Brinke Stevens and Michelle Bauer in it so you know what you’re going to get. Still, after I finished it, I realized that, if Spirits had been the last thing I ever watched on that old VCR, I would have been pissed. If my VCR is going to break, I’d rather it break while I was watching a tape full of hours of Must See TV from 1996.

Spirits has a few things to recommend it. Brinke Stevens was one of the best of the direct-to-video scream queens and she actually does give a “real” performance as Amy. The sight of Erik Estrada, playing a tortured a priest as if he was a character on a particularly racy telenovela, was certainly entertaining. Finally, there was Count Yorga himself, Robert Quarry, as the main ghost hunter. Otherwise, Spirits is a typical direct-to-video Fed Olen Ray film, with cheesy music, terrible special effects, and laughable dialogue. There’s a lot of nudity, of course but you can find the same amount of nudity in films that you can safely watch on DVD or Blu-ray. If you’re going to risk the VCR, the movie is going to need to have more to offer.

Horror on TV: Kolchak: The Night Stalker 1.17 “Legacy of Terror” (dir by Don McDougall)

Posted on October 27, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Tonight, on Kolchak….

All across Chicago, people are losing their hearts …. literally! A string of murders are all connected by the fact that the heart has been cut out of the body. Could it be the work of an Aztec death cult that’s being led by a centuries-old mummy!?

Carl Kolchak is going to find out!

The episode originally aired on February 14th, 1975. Wow! Happy Valentine’s Day!

Enjoy!

Film Review: Do or Die (dir by Andy Sidaris)

Posted on March 10, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

So, imagine this.

You and your BFF are at a luau in Hawaii. Fires are being spun. People are dancing. Drums are being beaten. It’s almost time to eat the pig and suddenly, you discover that a mysterious old man wants to speak to you. The man is surrounded by armed guards but you’re used to that. Both you and your BFF work for the government. You blow things up and save the world for a living!

Anyway, the old man informs you that he is a master criminal named Kane. He’s one of those “I’m going to take over the world” types but apparently, you keep thwarting his plans. He’s a little bit upset about that and why not? It’s hard enough trying to conquer the world without having somebody continually blowing up all of your friends. He says that he’s going to have you killed.

Uh-oh!

But fear not! Kane isn’t going to kill you right there and then. It turns out that Kane has a code of honor that he lives by. He may be evil but he believes in fair play. So, Kane says that he’s going to kill you later. Apparently, he’s hired six different teams of assassins. Over the next couple of days, they’re going to try to kill you. Fortunately, the team’s aren’t going to work together or anything intelligent like that. That wouldn’t be fair. Instead, they’re going to come at you one at a time. Once one teams fails to kill you, they’re out of the hunt.

How would you react? What would be the first thing that you and your BFF would do?

Would you make sure your guns were loaded, lock the doors, and then wait for the first team to make their move?

Would you try to make the first move, maybe trying to take out Kane right then and there?

Or maybe you would leave the country and try to start a whole new life under a new identity?

I’d probably go with the third option but that’s not what Donna (Dona Speir) and Nicole (Roberta Vasquez) do when Kane (Pat Morita) tells them that they’ve been targeted. Instead, they get topless and relax in the hut tub while discussing how much it sucks that someone wants to kill them.

Honestly, this shouldn’t come as a surprise. The 1991 film, Do or Die, was directed by Andy Sidaris. In a Sidaris film, a topless hot tub party plays much the same role as the family get togethers that often end the Fast and the Furious movies. Still, it’s hard not to be a little bit disappointed by their sudden passivity. After all, Donna is the same agent who previously used a rocket launcher to blow up Erik Estrada at the end of Guns.

Speaking of Erik Estrada, he’s back. However, he’s playing a different character than he played in Guns. Now, he’s a heroic agent named Rico. When Donna and Nicole finally get around to letting their boss, Lucas (William Bumiller), know what’s going on, Lucas recruits Rico to help protect them. Bruce Christian (Bruce Penhall) and Shane Abilene (Michael Shane) are also brought in as well. Shane still has terrible aim. I know that’s a running joke in all of the Sidaris films but you really do have to wonder why the government continues to employ someone who sucks at a huge part of his job.

Anyway, Donna and Nicole eventually head for the mainland but that doesn’t do much good because Kane put a tracking device on her watch and Donna apparently lost several IQ points between the end of Guns and the start of this movie. At first, they go to Vegas but eventually, they end up in Louisiana. This leads to the usual remote-controlled boats and helicopters, the same ones that appear in nearly every Sidaris film. Needless to say, a lot of stuff gets blown up.

And it’s all pretty boring, to be honest. It sounds like it should be fun, what with all the different assassins showing up and Kane getting more and more frustrated as Donna and Nicole continue to survive. But, unfortunately, none of the assassins are that interesting. Most of the film takes place in Caddo Parish. My family lived in Shreveport for a year and a half. I like Caddo Parish. But it really can’t compare to Hawaii as far as photogenic locations are concerned.

Do or Die had potential but it got lost in the hot tub.

Film Review: Guns (dir by Andy Sidaris)

Posted on March 9, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

As you can probably tell by looking at the poster at the top of this review, the 1990 film Guns was Andy Sidaris’s attempt to make a Bond film. Not only does the poster feature a man in a tuxedo and two gun-wielding women but the tag line even reads, “James Never Had This Kind of Help!”

(Of course, that’s not really true, as anyone who has seen Dr. No, Goldfinger, The Spy Who Loved Me, or For Your Eyes Only can tell you.)

Much like a Bond film, Guns features a secret agent fighting to defeat an international conspiracy. The agent’s efforts lead her and her allies to several different cities in several different … well, really only one country. Being a Sidaris film, it’s doubtful the Guns really had the budget to film anyplace other than the United States but still, the action does move from Lake Huvasa, Arizona to Hawaii to Las Vegas. That’s about as close as a Sidaris film ever gets to featuring exotic locations.

(If Lake Havusa sounds familiar, that’s because Jimmy Kimmel gave away at trip to Lake Havusa during the Oscars.)

And like any good Bond film, Guns has a flamboyant and almost comically evil villain. Juan “Jack of Diamonds” Degas (telenovela star and future reality tv mainstay Erik Estrada) is an international gun dealer and an all-around sociopath. He’s the type who shoots someone and then smirks about it. He’s so evil that he’s even got Danny Tejo working as his main henchman! That’s really evil! Estrada gives a surprisingly good performance in the role. Especially when compared to the forgettable villains who appeared in Sidaris’s previous films, Juan Degas feels like a worthy opponent. It’s not just that he’s evil. It’s that he’s so damn smug about it. You can’t wait to see him get taken down.

Degas is planning on smuggling a bunch of Chinese weapons into America through a base on Hawaii. The only problem is that Donna (Dona Speir) and her new partner, Nicole Justin (Roberta Vasquez), are based in Hawaii! Degas knows that he has to get rid of them if he’s going to have any hope of succeeding. (For whatever reason, it never occurs to Degas to smuggle the weapons through Guam or American Samoa. I mean, there are other islands out there.) When Degas sends two cross-dressing assassins to kill Nicole, they end up not only shooting the wrong woman but also killing a friend of Dona’s as well.

Now, it’s personal!

Except, it was already personal. In a typical example of Sidaris’s make-it-up-as-you-go-along style of plotting, it turns out that Degas previously killed Donna’s father. And now, it appears that it might get even more personal because Degas has kidnapped the Attorney General of Nevada, who happens to be Donna’s mother!

Obviously, this means that it’s time to gather together another group of misfit agents and take down the bad guys. That means that Savage Beach‘s Shane Abilene (Michael J. Shane) and Bruce Christian (Bruce Penhall) both show up again. It also means that a lovable magician named Abe (Chuck McCann) gets to help out as well. Unfortunately, one member of the team is eventually blown up by a remote control boat.

That’s right! A remote control boat! For some reason, remote control vehicles were a Sidaris obsession and it’s not a Sidaris film without someone getting blown by either a remote control boat or helicopter.

Anyway, there’s a lot of explosions to be found in Guns but the good thing is that it’s women blowing stuff up and it’s women who are in charge of the entire operation. That’s the thing with a Sidaris film like this one. For all of the nudity and the double entendre-filled dialogue, Guns was an action film where women got to shoot the guns, beat up the bad guys, and ultimately save the world from a smirking misogynist. When Donna picked up that rocket launcher, it was both ludicrous and empowering at the same time.

Guns is one of Sidaris’s better films. For once, despite all of the usual Sidaris red herrings, the plot can actually be followed and Estrada is an appropriately hissable villain. While the film may not be able to compete with the best of the Bond films, it’s still more fun that SPECTRE.

A Movie A Day #322: CHiPs (2017, directed by Dax Shepard)

Posted on November 27, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

Based on the campy 70s cop show that will live on forever in syndication, CHiPs is about two unlikely partners who, after a rough beginning, work together to catch a cop’s killer and capture a gang of armed robbers.

Officer Jon Baker (Dax Shepherd) is a flaky former motocross champion who joins the California Highway Patrol to try to impress his estranged wife (Kristen Bell). Baker pops painkillers like candy, throws up whenever he enters an unfamiliar house, and has a knee that randomly goes out. Baker can’t shoot, fight, or think but he sure can ride a bike.

Officer Francis Llewelyn “Ponch” Poncherello (Michael Pena) is actually an FBI agent named Castillo who has been assigned to work undercover to investigate corruption in the CHP. Ponch is a sex addict who is obsessed with yoga pants and who keeps accidentally shooting his former partner (Adam Brody).

Both Baker and Ponch are given one identifying characteristic. Baker’s thing is that he always says the wrong thing and then apologizes. Ponch’s thing is that he always says the wrong thing and then doesn’t apologize. That is about as deep as things get.

I’m not really sure who this movie is supposed to appeal to. Michael Pena and Dax Shepard have been good in other productions but they’re both awful here, let down by a script that does not have much to offer beyond tepid bromance and dick jokes. The humor is too deliberately lowbrow and raunchy to appeal to the people who were fans of the quaintly innocent TV show but it’s also neither meta nor clever enough to appeal to the audience that made hits out of 21 and 22 Jump Street. I guess the ideal audience for this film would be people who still find gay panic jokes to be hilarious because CHiPs is full of them. If the last movie you saw was made in 1999 and starred Adam Sandler and David Spade, CHiPs might be right up your alley.

CHiPs is a terrible fucking movie but what really distinguishes it from other terrible movies is the amount of contempt that it seems to have for its source material. The Jump Street movies might have poked fun at the TV series that inspired them but it was still obvious that the films were being made by fans. CHiPs can’t even be bothered to use the original’s theme music as anything other than a way to punctuate a few cheap jokes. Erik Estrada, the original Ponch, does have a cameo but only so he and the new Ponch can talk about eating ass in Spanish. Otherwise, there is nothing that links the movie to the TV show. A more accurate title would have been Two Assholes On Motorcycles, except the motorcycles really are not that important to the film. So, I guess the title would actually just have to be Two Assholes. That sounds about right to me.

CHiPs proves that not every stupid cop show needs a movie version. Now, excuse me while I get back to work on my T.J. Hooker spec script…

Music Video of the Day: Pepper by Butthole Surfers (1996, dir. Gavin Bowden)

Posted on August 11, 2016 by Valerie Troutman

Just like with Alanis Morissette’s You Oughta Know, Pepper by Butthole Surfers was one of those songs that came at an odd time. That brief little window between the musical renaissance of the early-90s and the musical plague of the late-90s. In between we got interesting transitional groups like Butthole Surfers and PUSA.

The music video is simultaneously dark with it’s lyrics and crime scene presentation, but then we suddenly switch gears to something that looks like a variety show and/or old commercials. Even the cops from the dark part come over to act as backup dancers for the band. On the dark side, Erik Estrada shows up as a kidnapping victim who is being rescued from the lead singer of the band. For people who are older than me, the name means the show CHiPs, which I’m sure is why he is in this music video. However, to people of my generation, he will always be Marco Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar Diego Garcia Marquez from Sealab 2021.

I honestly don’t really get it all too much. To me it’s all about contrast in how songs tend to switch gears from the verses to the chorus and back. Much like the video switches from the police scenes during the verses, then goes to the colorful portions during the chorus and back again. Sometimes it intermixes them a bit, but by and large, they are divided. That’s about all I’ve got other than that I like this song, and the video reminds me of the one for Frontier Psychiatrist by The Avalanches.

However, Wikipedia adds a little more to the story. It tells me that the reason the police and Estrada are shown eating corn from a can is a reference to how music videos are made. Apparently music video directors are told to “have this shot and that shot – how they’re spoon-feeding images to the audience.” Sounds like he is describing making any film. Except maybe Derek Jarman’s Blue (1993), which is just a blue screen while audio plays over it. There had to be more to the quote. Some context that makes the statement make more sense like that he is talking about being given direction by producers and people from the band’s record company about things they have to include.

Lisa has since added even more to the story in the comments.

Enjoy!