Tag Archives: Felicity Waterman

Late Night Retro Television Review: Pacific Blue 2.18 “Full Moon”

Posted on 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, it all about bicycles and sex.

Episode 2.18 “Full Moon”

(Dir by Scott Lautanen, originally aired on February 23rd, 1997)

This week, Pacific Blue gives us the erotically-charged story of two people with no personality falling for each other.  Don’t worry, though.  Even though Chris and TC both put in for transfers so that they won’t violate Palermo’s “No Doing It On The Job” policy, they eventually realize that they’re not actually in love.  After TC kisses Chris and they prepare to move into the bedroom, Chris suddenly says that she can tell that TC feels like he’s “about to have sex with your sister,” and TC nods, as if that’s a feeling that he’s extremely familiar with.

TC and Chris fall for each other while investigating a series of ATM robberies.  The two robbers (Robert Kerbeck and Felicity Waterman) were at least convincingly sleazy.  Cory kills one of the robbers.  How humiliating it must be to be killed by someone who rides a bicycle for a living!

Meanwhile, Palermo was shocked to discover his name was in a madame’s little black book.  Palermo, you hypocrite!  Put that man in jail!  But then it turned out that madame (played by Charlie Spradling) just put random names in the book so that she could use it for blackmail.  That was pretty clever of her.  Still, I find it hard to believe that anyone, outside of the bike patrol, would have had the slightest idea who Palermo was.

This was another episode that failed because not only are the characters not interesting but they’re all pretty much indistinguishable.  Chris and Cory at least have differing hair colors.  But, from a distance, Palermo, TC, and Victor all might as well all be the same guy.  If you told me that this episode was actually about Palermo falling in love with Chris, I’d have to believe you because Palermo and TC are pretty much impossible to tell apart.  Human drama only works when the characters are recognizably human.

Agck!  That’s mean!  Oh well, it’s late….

Thunder In Paradise (1993, directed by Douglas Schwartz)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

R.J. “Hurricane” Spencer (Hulk Hogan) is a former Navy SEAL who now lives in Florida and makes his living with his superboat, Thunder.  Spencer’s best friend, Bru (Chris Lemmon), is also his business partner.  There’s nothing that Spencer and Bru can’t do.  This movie starts with Spencer taking the boat down to Cuba so he can rescue the family of a dissident and bring them back to Florida.  It ends with his using his boat to save the lives of his wife (Felicity Waterman) and his stepdaughter (Robin Weisman) from some treasure hunters who have made the mistake of kidnapping them.  Spencer’s marriage is one of convenience.  His wife needed a husband to get her fortune and he needed a rich wife to keep his business going.  His father-in-law (Patrick MacNee) doesn’t trust him but Spencer’s a top-notch American hero.

Though it was initially released direct-to-video, Thunder in Paradise was actually a pilot for a syndicated television show that started a few months later.  Both the film and the show were from the producers of Baywatch and it shows with the emphasis on the beach, the bikinis, the corny humor, and the cartoonish villains (led, in this case, by Flash Gordon himself, Sam Jones).  Of course, it’s a Hulk Hogan movie so none of that is really a negative.  Hogan might be playing Hurricane Spencer but he’s really playing himself and there’s enough self-aware humor to make Thunder In Paradise entertaining in a way that No Holds Barred definitely was not.  (I liked that, during a fight on another boat, there just happened to be a wooden chair sitting on the deck that Hogan could break across his opponent’s back.)  Chris Lemmon and Hulk Hogan are a surprisingly good team (Lemmon’s brain provide a needed  contrast to Hogan’s bawn) and Carol Alt is on-hand as the owner of a beach bar.  Naturally, a handful of Hogan’s fellow wrestlers shows up as well, Brutus Beefcake, Jim “The Anvil” Neidhardt, Giant Gonzalez, Jimmy Hart, and others.  As a fan of The Avengers, I was happy to see Patrick MacNee, even if his character was just a typical distrustful father-in-law.

Corny, silly, dumb, and more fun than it probably should be, Thunder In Paradise is an entertaining product of its time.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Baywatch Nights 2.9 “Night Whispers”

Posted on 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 Baywatch Nights, a detective show that ran in Syndication from 1995 to 1997.  The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!

This week, a vampire comes to California!

Episode 2.9 “Night Whispers”

(Dir by Reza Badiyi, originally aired on  November 24th, 1996)

The mysterious Francesca (Felicity Waterman) is being held in police custody as a suspect in the murder of a jogger.  The jogger was found with his throat slit.  Ryan, who was there when the body was found, suspects that Francesca might be vampire.

Why?  Ryan has her reasons.

  1. Francesca speaks with the same type of unplaceable Eastern European accent that all vampires tend to speak with.
  2. Francesca wears sunglasses inside and says she can’t go out during the day because her eyes are just too sensitive to the sunlight.
  3. Francesca occasionally wears a cape.
  4. Francesca wears gloves to hide her vampire hands.
  5. Francesca’s gown was splattered with the dead guy’s blood.
  6. Francesca does not cast a reflection in her apartment’s mirror.

(Why do vampires even own mirrors?)

Ryan seems like she has a pretty good case but Mitch is skeptical.  Mitch doesn’t believe in any of that supernatural stuff, despite the fact that he’s spent the past few months dealing with sea monsters, ghosts, and government conspiracies.  Just a few episodes ago, he stepped into a house and was transported through time!

I mean, don’t get me wrong.  I understand skepticism.  For the most part, I’m a skeptic too.  But the main reason that I’m such an adamant skeptic is because I haven’t ever had anything supernatural happen to me.  Now, if I started meeting ghosts and sea monsters on a regular basis, I would probably become less of a skeptic.  I would reexamine all of my prejudices and I would say, “Hey, maybe something is out there.”

Not Mitch, though!  Mitch listens to Ryan explain why she thinks Francesca is a vampire and he laughs it off.  What’s odd is that it takes Ryan forever to get around to mentioning that Francesca does not cast a reflection.  Instead, she fixates on Francesca wearing gloves in California.  Trust me, the whole mirror thing is a lot more convincing than the glove thing.  Some people wear gloves and some people don’t but everyone (except for the undead) casts a reflection.  Ryan also points out that Francesca doesn’t have a birth certificate and ….. SHE’S NOT REGISTERED TO VOTE!

A trip to the police station to visit Francesca goes terribly wrong when Francesca gets out of her cell and proceeds to stalk Mitch, Ryan, a detective, a pimp, and two prostitutes through the building.  Though Francesca is willing to drink anyone’s blood, it becomes obvious that she’s obsessed with capturing the Hoff and really, who can blame her?  I imagine she would be quite popular with her co-workers if she was the one who turned the Hoff into a vampire.

This is a deeply silly episode but the same can be said of just about every episode of Baywatch Nights.  There’s no reason to take this show seriously.  The important thing is that the action movies fairly quickly, Felicity Waterman appears to be having a ball as the vampire, and the Hoff and Angie Harmon get to show off the chemistry that made Baywatch Nights a lot more fun than it had any right being.  This may not be a classic vampire tale but it’s an entertaining one.