Between 2009 and 2012, Lifetime must have really decided to get behind this “at 17” series of movies. You’ll notice it’s not just Stalked at 17, but Stalked at 17 TM. This time the opening credits tell us that this movie is “Inspired by True Events.” I guess you can say that when your plot is so vague that it must have happened to somebody somewhere.
The movie begins, and we are introduced to our main character played by Taylor Spreitler. I know her character has a name in the movie, but if the script isn’t going to stop making endless references to the show she was on at the time called Melissa & Joey, then I can call her Lennox.
That’s a baby monitor that Lennox is listening to. That’s also most likely a future Lifetime movie when they realize that some Internet of Things baby monitors can be used to look inside other people’s homes. That is if they haven’t already. After Lennox goes to use the microwave, she is grabbed by the last 20 minutes or so of the movie before the film cuts to the title card, and it’s one year earlier.
Lennox and her friend are touring a college when we meet our bad guy for the movie on the left.
It’s also when I realized that the subtitles on the DVD didn’t work and turned on the captions instead. I love that they cast Charles Hittinger as Psycho Dad so he would look really intimidating. It’s probably because if you’ve watched Melissa & Joey, then you know that Taylor Spreitler and vulnerable go together about as much as Bella Thorne and drama.
Psycho Dad invites them to a party, and they of course decide to go. Now, for no good reason whatsoever, a guy wearing a sombrero with a bullseye on his chest.
We learn some very important information at the frat house. No, not that they decided to make him the one who was adopted by a councilwoman instead of Lennox. It’s that they run a very tight ship after Psycho Dad finds puke on the stairs.
Now we meet Lennox’s dad played by none other than whitelighter himself Brian Krause.
I agree, Leo. However, I think Doug Campbell was right to take the title of this movie and start calling the movies “Stalked by”. He’s just jealous because his wife played by Amy Pietz was in Stalked by My Neighbor (2015). This scene exists to tell us that they are having financial difficulties which will play no material role in the film.
Lennox and friend go to the party. As soon as the dialog tells us that Lennox is 16 at present, her and Psycho Dad immediately go upstairs together. After he tells her a sob story, they kiss and it fades to black before going to an establishing shot of her school.
I hope you like establishing shots of her school because you’ll see them 4-5 times in this movie. Heck, later in the movie you’ll get the exact same shot, but only a minute or so before or after the other shot.
Thanks to Lennox texting Psycho Dad, we learn that they did it on February 21st exactly because it is their two month anniversary.
Oh yeah, and his name is Chad. Just like Mister 45 minutes from Accused at 17. Real original there screenwriter Christine Conradt. It looks like Conradt is really passionate about these “at 17” movies seeing as she’s produced five of them. According to her bio on IMDb, she has an “MCJ from Boston University where she focused on cybercrime and juvenile delinquency.” It’s weird that with a focus in cybercrime, she seems to have had nothing to do with Fugitive at 17 (2012) where the girl in question is a hacker.
Now Lennox forgets that this movie is called Stalked at 17 and not Pregnant at 17, but it’s too late. I love how this scene plays out. Lennox is talking to a male friend when she grabs her stomach, and is obviously sick. She makes a mad dash for the bathroom. He quickly follows, but stops at the door, and asks a girl standing nearby to go in to check on her.
The line actually goes like this: “You really need to find a new friend cause that one out there couldn’t even be bothered to make sure you were okay, and sent me inside instead.”
Meanwhile, the film knows it needs to pad itself out.
Lennox is at home and finds out she is indeed pregnant. While that is going on, Psycho Chad is buying jewelry online. Back in Lennox’s bedroom, the movie gives us lines that might as well amount to this: “I don’t know if he was wearing a condom. You know what they say? If you look at it, then you go blind. I just had to take his word for it.” Of course Psycho Chad is happy about the news because it means he’ll have a family of his own now with a child who will love him unconditionally.
Then the two of them go to a restaurant where Psycho Chad blows up at a waiter. That’s basically the rest of the film. Chad gets nuttier, he gets in a fight with Leo, his biological mom he lied about being dead gets out of prison, and they finally get around to where the film started. At least it was fun to see Leo fighting with Psycho Chad along the way.
Lennox, baby, Psycho Chad, and Psycho Mom all end up at a convenience store where things go wrong and Psycho Chad is shot. Then it shows Lennox with the kid, and fades to black. I think this movie has earned the Godfrey Ho red screen end card for how abrupt the ending occurs.
Thus ends the classic tale of girl meets boy, girl gets herself knocked up, boy turns out to want a family, boy turns out to be crazy, everyone does their best to pad out the film, boy is shot, and the credits role. I have to admit that aside from this and Accused at 17, I have never seen credits that start by referring to the cast as “the players.”
At least this one had some kind of a story. That’s way more than I can say for Accused at 17. I have Fugitive at 17 coming soon, then that will be my last “at 17” movie for now.
I know Lisa would normally be the one to tackle these movies, but she just finished writing 40 reviews in about the span of a month. I think it goes without saying that she probably looks like this right now.
I also think it goes without saying that shot doesn’t exist in this movie.
Before the title card appears, we are treated to credits over shots that make us think we are about to watch a crime TV Show. I wish. Something might actually happen if that were the case.
Now we cut to five days earlier where we can tell things are going well because the captions tell us so.
We see some kids at school before we are introduced briefly to Cynthia Gibb at her job. Not sure what she does, and like most things in this movie, I don’t care. We then go back to the school to be introduced to obviously bad girl (Janet Montgomery) and low-rent Miriam McDonald (Stella Maeve) before cutting back to Gibb.
Some guy shows up to remind us he exists in the movie, but not to me. The school returns so we can meet Chad (Reiley McClendon) and obviously good girl who will be “accused”, even though that barely has anything to do with the movie.
Chad is here to tell her that she needs to cancel her plans and come to the best party of the year. I know this not only because the movie says so, but because when have you ever watched a movie where it isn’t supposed to be the greatest party of the year?
The guy who decided to exist for a bit brought along a pair of earrings so we can learn that the good girl is named Bianca (Nicole Gale Anderson). Already this movie is full of lies. Nicole Gale Anderson was 18 when she did this movie. She had long passed the age of 17 when you could be accused, stalked, betrayed, missing, pregnant, and become a fugitive all in the same year. It’s a long tradition going back at least as far as 1931 when Marian Marsh was in Under 18. She actually made that one when she was 17-18 years-old. When you turn 18, life just becomes one long snooze fest.
Bad girl shows up to make sure we know she’s very comfortable lying about people or animals dying before we can go to the party. That, and that her mother will totally back her lies up later in the movie. Fortunately, Bianca doesn’t make it to the party so Chad and another girl can have sex in a bathroom.
The one whose hands those belong to is Dory (Lindsay Taylor). She’s named that because the movie isn’t very well written. Also, her last name in the movie is Holland which goes right along with Cynthia Gibb’s character’s first name Jacqui to create the name of porn/B-Movie star Jacqui Holland. I’ve reviewed several of her films on this site.
All you need to know now is that things don’t go well for Bianca in several ways. Bianca and her friends sit next to a pool in bikinis to talk about boys because they aren’t guys. Otherwise, they would be doing this same scene while playing basketball. We get to see Bianca leave a nice little voicemail for Chad.
However, that’s not really what sets her off. This is what gets her riled up.
45 minutes? Chad’s a 10 minute man, 15 at the most. That’s why the girls decide to pick up Dory to take her to where “the hottest frat guys ever” are located.
Of course by that, they mean the set of Mojave (2015).
Sadly, Oscar Isaac is not there to greet them dressed as Antonio das Mortes. This makes Dory think something is up. She’s right. Dory punches Bianca to make sure she has a bruise on her forehead before she leaves the scene. Then obviously bad girl bashes Dory’s head in with a rock. That’s one Dead Dory.
I did forget one thing. On the way over, Dory made sure to leave a hair clip in the car to be used later in the movie.
In between Bianca leaving and Dory’s head getting hit by a rock, Bianca made sure to stop by a gas station so that someone will have seen her. It matters greatly to the plot, and by that I mean next to nothing. A plot I guarantee won’t matter to you if you watch Accused at 17. Things, stuff, and then we are introduced to our buddy cops.
They are clearly the best because they pay attention to every detail. In 2009, nobody was saying “Mackin'” anymore. That’s why they have a discussion as to whether they say “cuttin'”, “tappin’ it”, “hittin’ it”, or “hookin’ up”. They question Chad and we find out they actually aren’t the best cops around.
Officers, come on? Chad doesn’t seem like the type of guy who goes out to a Saturday Night Fish Fry.
However, I do believe that Chad is the kind of guy who takes Louis Jordan’s advice and when Bianca calls to ask if he’s alone, he tells her “no, I got three girls with me.”
Now they turn their attention to Bianca because the stuff in between the interrogations is really boring, so we need to keep moving along. There is a lot of padding in this movie. However, I have to give Janet Montgomery credit. She does a pretty good job of playing the evil girl. I also have to give the movie credit for how funny it was to see Bianca drive back to the scene of the head bashing the next day and call out Dory’s name as if she is just hiding somewhere. Just when the cop may actually be getting to something with his line of questioning, Cynthia Gibb interrupts to remind him that they still have about half a movie left to go so he better leave.
Now a couple of extras they gave hiking equipment find the body. Blah, blah, blah, and confrontation with evil girl’s mom.
The gist of it is that Barbara Niven can play a lesbian in one movie, a nice mom in a Hallmark murder mystery series, and do roles like this. She’s very versatile. Nothing really of consequence happens here except evil girl and evil mom lie because otherwise how are they going to get away with calling this movie “Accused at 17.”
Well, finally the trip to the gas station earlier and the hair clip left in the car pay off when the cops notice there are only about 30 minutes left in the movie.
They arrest her, so they can finally say with confidence that the title isn’t false advertising. More things happen, but it all amounts to Gibb and Bianca trying to prove her innocence till it’s time for bad girl to confront that other girl who only exists to be killed off.
She apparently needs an inhaler, so evil girl takes it away and sprays all the puffs out of it. No big loss. Again, more stuff happens that is of no real consequence until bad girl pulls a gun on her father.
Dad stops her, and everything is good again. That is except for Dory having had her head smashed in and that other girl having suffocated to death. None of that matters because Bianca puts on the earrings I mentioned earlier. The point of that is the guy who barely existed at the beginning of the film is Gibb’s new boyfriend/dad for Bianca so putting them on means she has accepted him.
This movie was terrible. I’m pretty sure more happened in Superdragon vs. Superman. The movies Stalked at 17 and and Betrayed at 17 arrived today. I’m so grateful that Lisa already reviewed Betrayed at 17 back in 2011. That means I only have to watch it, and not attempt to write about it.
I guess I’ve mentioned director Godfrey Ho enough over the past year that it’s about time I actually reviewed one of his movies. I know I have explained it in other places, but I’ll do it here once more to have it on an actual Godfrey Ho movie review. Godfrey Ho is a director who worked in mainly in Asia during the 1980s and early 1990s. He was famous for the enormous number of films he created in such a short time using the cut-and-paste technique of making movies. What he would do is get together some caucasian actors and film about 15-20 minutes of footage with them. How specific the footage was to the film you’re reviewing is anybodies guess. Sometimes it does feel like he just filmed a bunch of random fights that would insert into several different films. He would then take an old, unreleased, or unfinished film from the region and splice his footage into it with editing done to the whole thing in order to make a new movie. This was a quick and dirty way to make a lot of films very fast. Ho was also known for lifting copyrighted music for his movies. I’ve heard a bit of Pink Floyd’s On The Run and for some reason he chose to use music from A Clockwork Orange (1971) for a touching reunion between a mother and her daughter. That’s the information you need to know before I review this film. Typically people will review Godfrey Ho movies by splitting the two films from each other into the original film (Movie A) and the Ho footage (Movie B), then talk about them separately while bringing up how the two separate movies are linked together. That’s what I am going to do here. Especially because the link barely exists this time around.
Also, Godfrey Ho used many pseudonyms for his films. This time around the role of director Godfrey Ho will be played by Alton Cheung.
Movie A:
Movie A begins with a bus being robbed. They get the bag they need and drive off to the fortress of badly dubbed Asians who have no idea they are in U.S. Catman: Lethal Track. Inside, we meet a guy who I refer to as One Eye.
He’s our villain for Movie A. What his original purpose was…I have no idea. In fact, that can sum up Movie A in a nutshell: I can tell you what happens, but I have no idea why any of it is happening.
One Eye has received a shipment of weapons. Now we cut to party time!
Unfortunately, the party turns sour when this guy pulls a gun out of his drum.
He kidnaps some people. Who knows their identities and who cares?
We now go to a guy driving on the road who is pulled over by a guy in the road. He tells him something that was probably important in the original film. Here it’s nearly incompressible. Also, why was he flagged down in the middle of the road when the next scene is him being shown the guy who was kidnapped? When you watch Godfrey Ho movies, it’s best not to ask questions like that. Unless you are lucky enough to not only find out what the original film was, but get ahold of a copy, your question will go unanswered.
Back with One Eye, they talk for awhile. All you need to know is that they agree they are all brothers.
Meanwhile, some guys fall for the old guy hanging on a tree trick while driving along and get themselves kidnapped too.
One Eye is amassing an impressive collection of people for some reason that has to do with his thin as human hair connection to Movie B.
Now we are introduced to motorcycle girl who is posing as a guy.
I’m sure there was an explanation for her existence or why she seems to have it out for One Eye, but here she just seems to be out for him for no particular reason. She introduces herself as Frederick. Gigi here seems to like what she sees.
Then motorcycle girl sits down to be surrounded by some guys and get into a fight. I’m assuming the director of the original film was a fan of the scene from either Come Drink With Me (1966) and/or Django (1966). They have the same scene in them. It’s just that one uses martial arts and the other a gun. You are probably more familiar with the scene from Come Drink With Me since they recreated it for the movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000). Of course this being a scene in Movie A, it goes absolutely no where. I love the summary on IMDb for Movie A:
“The other half of the movie is a about a whole bunch of Asian people that are just beating each other up for no reason, including a tall guy with an eyepatch and a woman that looks like a man. They have no real purpose in the movie, and seem to just be thrown in.”
That about sums it up.
Motorcycle girl gets a room where some more fighting happens. Also, we get a little comedy bit too. Then something just plain confusing occurs. I mean more confusing than the rest of this film.
And zoom in with love music playing.
Because of the way Ho cut this all together, these two women appear to have just had lesbian sex. Honestly, the shot is so dark, her face kind of looks different, and her chest looks really flat that unless she’s binding, I have a feeling this is a different character that looked similar enough to the motorcycle girl, so Ho had the same woman dub both people and thus they are the same person. I have not been so confused by a Godfrey Ho movie since Ninja Champion (1985). Ninja Champion is a rape revenge movie that I’m quite sure had no rape in the original movie called Poisonous Rose Stripping The Night (1985). I’m also pretty sure the “retarded” character had those stereotypical retarded sounds just to cover up dialog that would otherwise be silent over moving lips. Let’s just assume that Gigi is a lesbian and motorcycle girl must be too, or just went along with it. It’s never really brought up again.
Back with One Eye, he decides to cut down a woman he has kidnapped and rapes her.
I haven’t gotten around to reviewing Troll 3/Quest for the Mighty Sword (1990), but let’s go ahead and play the rape horn.
Now One Eye pays a visit to a general he has kidnapped. He does this so he can mention the name of a character from Movie B that he apparently is working for in order to overthrow the general’s country. A couple lines like that is all you’ll get in this film as a whole. Believe me when I say that Godfrey Ho usually does go to greater extents to make characters from one movie genuinely appear to know characters from the other film. That usually involves a conversation either over the telephone or thru the magic editing technique of cutting back and forth between two people without including a shot that shows them in the same place together. You’ll see none of that here. Just the occasional name drop.
Now motorcycle girl has an action sequence for…um…reasons? I know I ask that in a lot of my movie reviews, but…oh, wait. She has an action sequence so that she can show off her sweet shotgun while on a motorcycle skills.
That’s a good enough reason I’d say. As for who she is fighting, it’s just some random people who stop her in the road. Welcome to Godfrey Ho movies where sense has no place.
Speaking of no sense, this guy shows up with a Molotov Cocktail and saves her life.
Did that makes sense to you and you’re disappointed? Don’t worry. This film has got you covered because it now cuts to random referee guy who is spying on One Eye’s fortress of badly dubbed Asians.
Too bad for him though because he is soon captured by a movie cliche.
One Eye now tells us his origin story to the referee:
“I killed my father when I was 15. That’s right. He was fucking my girl on my bed. I blew his brains out and he took my eye.”
That’s interesting. Not sure how someone takes your eye after you have blown their head off though. I’m sure it’s explained in another part of the story this film is based on by AAV Creative Unit and left out by Godfrey Ho when he developed the story or was removed when Andrew Chan wrote the screenplay.
The next part is rather long. It goes without saying that it is pointless. The guy who rescued her figures out he’s a she. He actually tells her that maybe if she ate a little, then her “tits” would grow. I said it’s never really brought up again, but I’m pretty sure this is the same girl from earlier.
Motorcycle girl smiles at her implying the sex did happen. Also, this girl is happy to see her too. Even other people in the room act like they can see they like each other. That really leads me to believe they had a guy for some, or all of the scenes just dubbed with a woman’s voice.
There’s some escaping, some getting angry, and this guy gets a Rambo trap sprung on him.
Then the movie cuts back to the dumbest thing in Movie B, but we’ll get to that later.
After that, it’s just one long action sequence broken up with Movie B and few lulls in the action. There is one thing to make of note of here. While a guy is just talking to this guy shown below, a sudden music stinger kicks in, it zooms in on his face, and then just cuts back to the other guy talking as if he had just been calmly talking the whole time.
That kind of sudden zoom and music stinger that is out of context with the film seems to be a thing that happens in Godfrey Ho movies as a hazard of splicing two films together.
In the end, One Eye meets his fate.
There’s something weird here too. He shoots him and One Eye appears to fall off the bracing in this barn. We never see his body. It’s just that he fell, and then it cuts to the shooter leaving the barn. I get the feeing that his death didn’t actually happen there in the original film.
End of Movie A!
Movie B:
Now we get to the U.S. Catman part of the movie and how this all links in together.
After One Eye gets his shipment of weapons at the beginning of Movie A, we cut to Movie B to a see a van with a radioactive symbol on it pass Catman and his sidekick.
These guys are so American. The sidekick is wearing a Lowe’s hat, Catman is wearing an “American Sports” jersey, and they just got back from playing baseball. Catman’s sidekick is going to be joining the CIA. At least I think that’s what they said. It’s kind of confusing. Then we hear the car drivers talk about the cat, cat piss, and then that one of the drivers has to take a piss as a result of their discussion.
Time to meet two drug addicts who are nearby to all this.
They can talk all they want about needing a hit, but it’s clearly the full screen aspect ratio that is their real problem. They try to rob the truck with the radioactive cat inside. Catman and his sidekick come to the rescue and we discover why the pause button was invented.
As you already have guessed, he gets scratched by the radioactive cat during the fight. I love that they insert ninja sword sound effects for when the bats are swung around.
Now we cut to a graveyard to find out how Movie A and Movie B have any semblance of a connection.
That’s cult leader Cheever. He is meeting with a guy that must be Russian because of his accent. He talks about previous attempts to take over countries such as Afghanistan that have failed. The gist is that Cheever is supposed to get in touch with the folks from Movie A to support them in order to get the people first to then overthrow the government. This, as opposed to going in with force. They drop a couple of names to make sure we know that they know what is going on over in Movie A. They are planning on starting with Thailand since that’s where Movie A happens to take place.
Then we cut to two guys talking about this whole Cheever situation. The one on the left tells the one on the right to check out the Holy Cheever Church. You’ll never see him again. Unless he is somehow Catman’s sidekick even though said sidekick has no idea what the Holy Cheever Church is later on.
Now Catman is woken up from sleep feeling funny. He discovers that he can touch or seemingly point at electronics and they will turn on. You’ll see him use that power…never in this movie. We do see CNN on TV during this scene, which appears to be talking about Winston Churchill.
Then just as he is getting really happy, his friend walks right in. They’re only working with about 15 minutes of footage here so they have to keep it moving. His friend decides that if he can make electronics turn on, then maybe he can light a cigarette by looking at it. It works of course.
With that out of the way we get: “I feel so strong. I feel I could punch a hole in a fucking wall!”
Clearly he has some sort of super strength. There’s one last thing that needs to be checked.
I’m not kidding when I say they look down wondering if his penis also has super strength too before staring at the hole in the wall again. I guess there is a guy out there who meets up to the standards the girl from Real Genius (1985) has about men she sees. That being a guy who can hammer a six-inch spike through a board with his penis, as she says in that movie. Again, super strength and all are powers that will not really be brought up again.
Time to see Catman in action! The drug addicts from earlier try to rob Catman’s sidekick who is disguised as a road construction worker when Catman shows up to save the day.
No, I didn’t leave anything out. No explanation is ever given about his uniform. Nor is any explanation given how he can deflect bullets with his wrists.
He beats them up and recovers some tube. Not sure what this tube is, but he does mention checking it out using their Cat Computer. You’ll never see it, but they will say it has given them a clue called HCC, which stands for the Holy Cheever Church.
Coming out of church they see a guy just lying around, which means he might know something.
He wants coffee and a hamburger first. Luckily, a neighbourhood 7-Eleven store is nearby.
Now we cut to the Holy Cheever Church. It’s the best part of the movie.
We’ve got our woman strung up onstage.
Then we have a guy juggling, a guy playing with hairspray, a guy hand banging, and a guy training with a punching bag.
They’re the best, or something. Cheever seems pleased which is why he points to something with his cane, it lights on fire, and then it immediately cuts to a woman shampooing her hair. Oh, and the girl onstage was raped by Cheever when she was 13 and has been had by the other guys. I guess that includes the shampooing girl too? She sure seems happy that the woman onstage has been sentenced to death for giving away secrets in what must have been lost footage. She even says, “Kill that bitch!” She’s even chosen to do the decapitation. She really gets into things when her hair is covered with soap. Seriously, what is this?
Then Catman shows up. In comes either the sidekick or the guy undercover. Doesn’t matter. They let tied up woman loose and she sprays them both with something that knocks them out. They wake up on the “Don’t Fuck With Cheever” bullseye.
I have to admit that I didn’t notice any of this sidekick and/or undercover agent confusion while watching this movie. Probably because I was trying to make some sense out of Movie A.
Then we are back at Catman’s apartment where he is drawing sketches of the bad guys when Cheever comes on TV to be interviewed. Catman is surprised.
I would be too. He just spent all that time making sketches of the bad guys and then Cheever ruins it all by just coming on TV to announce where he’ll be. I love that Cheever says his special event called “Everybody Go To God” is going to have more than 200,000 in attendance. Catman calls up to get the details. Either this event never exactly happens, or only a couple of people show up.
At this point, One Eye is dead. The movie has 5 minutes left to wrap up the Catman plot line now. Now Catman and his sidekick stumble upon the guy from earlier on their way to the Cheever event, which they are having trouble finding. That’s why they decide this guy probably knows where it is located.
He tries to get away, but there’s no running from Catman and his sidekick. Especially not his sidekick who punches him several times in the stomach. He tells them where the event is, so they split up.
Catman springs into action by running through the camera to change into his outfit.
They arrive and I guess the drug addicts are working for Cheever? I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. All you need to know is that Cheever says, “I’m gonna burn you alive. I always liked hot pussy.” Then some fighting happens that kills the sidekick guy. Catman pulls a Batarang style thing from his visor and throws it into the chest of Cheever that kills him. Since it is a Godfrey Ho movie, the second that actor lies down and turns his head slightly, it cuts to “The End.” No time to waste.
Clearly there was just too much mystery here, which is why there is a sequel called U.S. Catman 2: Boxer Blow (1993).
I’m not kidding that there was too much mystery. Apparently his sidekick is back in the sequel. Does he look like he’s alive here?
Again, is he the guy from the beginning? Is he someone else? What happened to the other cult members? They weren’t at the miniature over 200,000 people meeting at the end. What was this “Lethal Track” the title spoke of? This was a real mess.
My final thoughts are that I did like the Catman parts just for how goofy they are, but that the rest worthless. I am looking forward to watching the sequel. However, if you are new to Godfrey Ho, then I recommend one of the Pierre Kirby movies. He’s the best actor he worked with that I have seen so far. They are also less confusing for the most part. Go with something like Thunder of Gigantic Serpent (1988).
Wicked Deeds is much like Carnal Wishes (2015) in that it takes a familiar film noir and/or noirish elements and adds explicit sex. However, unlike Carnal Wishes, it screws up in my opinion. Also, I doubt that my review of Wicked Deeds will end up being a part of a political scandal like it was when Ted Cruz pulled that attack ad of his. She didn’t even have a sex scene in the movie, but only made a cameo appearance at the end of the film. That didn’t stop the law firm Rick Santorum once worked for from paying a visit to my review.
I’m not really surprised that somebody at K&L Gates looked at my review. What I am surprised at is that I didn’t do any hacking to get that image. I was looking at our site’s stat section when I saw a weird URL so I clicked on it. What should have just been an internal network message from some sort of edge router to the person coming to my review from a computer at the firm was actually at a publicly accessible URL. I’ve seen this one other time on another one of my late night cable reviews. I don’t know why ScanSafe thought this was a good idea.
I also don’t know why the filmmakers of Wicked Deeds thought it was a good idea to take an otherwise decent porno noir and extend the sex scenes so long that any pacing is broken. At least they were kind enough to give me a title card that I didn’t have to black box in any way.
The movie begins like slasher movies do. Except instead of someone getting killed, two people have sex. The two people are a married couple. She is named Kira (Anna Morna). Luckily, we are getting An Erotic Tale of Ms. Dracula (2014) Anna Morna rather than Lolita from Interstellar Space (2014) Anna Morna. The husband is Roy (Chad White). He too was in both An Erotic Tale of Ms. Dracula and Lolita from Interstellar Space. You may remember him as playing Van Helsing. I will give the sex scenes in this movie one thing. They tend to be more intimate and erotic, then the usual stuff you see. That’s why I don’t mind this opening sex scene so much, but them reusing the length of this scene for all of them, becomes a problem. This sex scene should have been the longest to establish intimacy between the married couple, while the later sex scenes should have gotten shorter and shorter to go along with the building of suspense in the film.
Something else to mention here is that this is another one of these that was shot by Lex Lynne Smith. So, no matter what, it is well shot for these movies. Usually that’s something you say almost as an insult to a film, but after seeing some of these shot on video sex late night cable movies like Monster of the Nudist Colony (2013), I mean it genuinely.
After they are finished, we get a scene almost like the one from Carnal Wishes. At the end of the married couple’s sex scene he just got up and left for a late night meeting. Here, we find out that he is going out of town to do some survey work. She kind of wants to come along, but he tells her that they both know she doesn’t like the jungle heat. She brings up that the hotel probably has a nice spa so that he has an excuse to bring up that he finally heard back from the handyman who is going to fix their spa. It’s not only part of the setup for the film, but also an obvious reference to the stereotype that all porn begins with a woman inviting over a pizza deliveryman for sex. She also mentions that she would feel more comfortable if she had a gun in the house also as a setup for something later in the film. He says absolutely not, and that having guns in the house means it’s just an accident waiting to happen. Funny how some these porno films seem to have more progressive politics than a lot of mainstream cinema.
Anyways, you can see that there is a gun in the house. It’s in his night table, but even having watched the whole film, I still don’t know if it was a gun he or she was keeping in secret. She wakes up to find that not only has her husband left a rose on his pillow for her, but the handyman named Derrick (Ryan McLane) has arrived. You may remember Ryan McLane as the toughest scientist to convert in Vixens from Venus (2016).
She goes back inside the house and receives a mysterious phone call asking her who the killer was in the first Friday the 13th movie. That, or something about telling her that her husband needs to stay out of Mexico. She tries to get in touch with him, but no such luck. She calls her sister-in-law Rose (Chanel Preston). She comes over to try and calm her down. I don’t know where you might know Chanel Preston from, but she did play Marilyn Chambers in Night at the Erotic Museum (2015). That reminds me that I will have to get around to reviewing Behind the Green Door (1972). Not because it was a landmark film of the genre, but because an early childhood friend of mine was the daughter of parents who managed the Mitchell brother’s empire. Neither of us was told by our parents till we were older.
Kira goes to take a shower or something and comes back to find this.
It’s another joke about the whole pizza deliveryman cliche. This is also where the film starts to get strange because Kira talks with her sister shortly afterwards and she denies it ever happened. At this point, Kira just chalks it up to her sister being embarrassed to have hooked up with a handyman she has never met before. But the weirdness doesn’t stop here. It only grows. I think it’s safe to say that the film is going for the Gaslight (1944) type thing here. It’s not really a spoiler because I am going to explain the whole thing anyways.
After talking with her sister, Kira lies down and appears to go to sleep. Then we are treated to a sex scene between her and the handyman. Interestingly, she wakes up suddenly from it in her bed rather than on the couch where she was lying down before the scene started or at the pool where the scene occurred. It goes without saying that she still can’t reach her husband.
Sis continues to try and calm her down, which is precisely why she invites her friend Tracy over so that actress Silvia Saige can get her fifth acting credit on IMDb. Once again, it’s a sex scene that goes on way too long. It’s there because it’s another thing that Kira needs to witness to further push her into a perceived insanity when everyone acts like it didn’t happen.
Even the pictures/video she takes with her not-iPhone will end up magically disappearing later on. After that scene finally ends, we get a reappearance of Mister New Jersey Show Me State from Scared Topless (2015). That being Billy Chappell making an appearance as another handyman there to fix the spa. He even has a text that he claims was sent by Kira to him.
Kira finds that the pictures are missing and everyone denies anything she has seen. She goes up to bed, which apparently means the couch where her husband appears out of nowhere.
The scene of course goes on too long again. The next morning she finds the rose on his pillow, but when she gets Roy on the phone he says he’s still in Mexico. Kira’s sister is very concerned and brings in a doctor played by Robert Baldwin.
It’s not likely, but you may have seen Baldwin in something like the Fred Olen Ray film Illicit Dreams 2 (1998). As you can see, he is very concerned for Kira. Again, she goes to sleep and again, she is visited for another sexual encounter. This time it’s the original handyman.
This is when things really start to spin out of control. I say that because even my iPad decided this scene needed a Dutch tilt.
Kira confronts the handyman about taking advantage of her while she was drugged by the doctor. She cuts him with a knife and he flees. She then tells her sister that she thinks she might have been raped. Then the handyman comes downstairs and doesn’t remember any of it. In fact, he’s not even cut.
Kira kicks both her sister and the handyman out of the house, but finds blood on the floor. She comes into her living room to head upstairs and sees the other handyman with Tracy.
This is a perfect example of why this film ultimately doesn’t work. This should immediately lead to her going upstairs to discover this.
This scene should also be followed immediately by her passing out and falling down the stairs, which then leads us to our dramatic reveal and ending. But in both cases, they lead to long sex scenes. It completely ruins the suspenseful atmosphere that should be present in this part of the film. It leads me to believe that on the one hand they wanted to do this Gaslight style story, but on the other hand they were obligated to have a certain number of sex scenes that were required to be of a certain length. It’s like watching an action movie where foot or car chases go on so long that you are no longer caught up in the moment. Too bad cause I like the ending.
It turns out that the husband and the sister-in-law arranged this whole thing to drive Kira crazy. The doctor even performed ECT on her. The idea was that the only way Roy could get around the prenup that Kira’s brother had him sign was to get her committed.
But what about that gun from earlier?
Cut to black, and we hear gunshots.
If they had just trimmed down the sex scenes so that they moved from long and intimate to short almost glimpses as her mind spiraled more out of control, then this could have been one of the best of these I’ve seen so far. Sadly, it doesn’t do that. It’s one of these films that I call a missed opportunity.
I did say I would write this a few days after I watched part 1, but obviously that didn’t happen. My health problems hit me hard. That’s why I greatly appreciated the person who thanked me for providing instructions on how to find songs used in Hallmark movies in my review of Valentine Ever After. I also found it hilarious to receive a comment by someone who I believe thinks they know quite a bit about Hallmark movies seeing as they wanted to lecture me about them bundled together with personal attacks. They must have missed the recent Hallmark movie Hearts of Spring. It covered leaving nasty comments with personal attacks about how you know better than someone about something on that person’s blog when you disagree with their opinion and the damage it can cause. It was also about mint chocolate chip milkshakes.
But we aren’t here to discuss the wonderful world of writing movie reviews. We’re here to discuss this film, and hopefully have a little fun doing it. Especially with what happened today. Right, Ted?
Karen Kingsbury’s The Bridge, Part 1 (2015, dir. Mike Rohl)
The movie begins not quite where the first film left off. The first film had two kids named Ryan and Molly who go to college, meet, and fall in love before going their separate ways basically because there was a second part to the movie. The actual reasons are that there was an extra guy and girl along with Molly’s dad who came in between the two of them. It also had the story of Charlie and Donna who come together after a personal tragedy to create a bookstore whose main mission isn’t so much to sell books, but act as a place where people can bond over their love of reading. They called it The Bridge. The movie ended with Donna turning down Charlie to go back to church with him and standing at the checkout counter with “to be continued…” below her.
This film begins by treating us to that conversation between Molly (Katie Findlay) and Ryan (Wyatt Nash) from the end of the first film. That one where the phones were sometimes lit up near the character’s ear, and sometimes not.
I’m still not sure why that was a thing. To my knowledge, all cellphones turn the screen black so that you don’t accidentally hit buttons with your face when you are talking on them next to your ear. I’ve seen other Hallmark movies do this right sometimes and other times incorrectly.
After that we cut to Seattle, Washington 7 years later. Seeing as the first film started in 2009 and took them to Christmas of that year, it would mean that this film takes place in 2016 during the holidays. I guess that’s why they originally planned to air this at that time. I can’t imagine what a disaster that would have been considering the plot of this film. Then they cut to this shot that immediately follows the title card, which told us when and where we are.
I know A Christmas Detour had a litany of ridiculously photoshopped in Christmas stuff at the very beginning of the film. However, not only does director Ron Oliver have a sense of humor, but his movie was supposed to be a comedy. These two movies on the other hand are supposed to be rather serious. Plus, the movie then cuts inside to show us Molly and her dad (Steve Bacic) who-along with the sets-announce clearly that we are at his business. The establishing shot didn’t need to be there. Particularly if this was how it was going to look. While not needing to be there, I can’t say I’m shocked that it ended up there after seeing 170+ Hallmark films at the time of writing this review. Just like I’m not shocked that the dialog between Molly and her dad is there establish that she is on the brink of marrying the guy who wasn’t worth mentioning in my first review and becoming CEO of her dad’s company just before fate will intervene to bring her back to Ryan. That’s her Hallmark movie within this Hallmark movie.
Now we are reintroduced to Ryan who has just arrived home for the holidays. They decided to age Wyatt by having him grow a little facial hair.
I’m sorry, but there’s just something about the pattern of his mustache hair that says Frollo Gaston from The Secret of the Hunchback (1996) to me.
The Secret of the Hunchback (1996, dir. Mike Joens & Ken C. Johnson)
While I really did think it was going to happen, Charlie does not sprout wings in this like Quasimodo does in that film to reveal he’s an angel.
If there’s anything they did to Molly to age her, then it’s so superficial that I didn’t even notice. Still, she does actually look like an adult instead of Emilia Clarke in Terminator Genisys (2015) who really looked like a teenager.
Then we are re-introduced to Charlie (Ted McGinley) as he goes around town saying the bookstore will be rebuilt and open for business soon. It’s at times like this in the film that I wonder if it was purely budget or if Hallmark trimmed a few scenes to make this fit the runtime they had for this early airing of the film. We never really see the storm except for a weird scene. Charlie enters The Bridge after talking to people on the street and then looks up at a hole in his ceiling when we get a flashback to the storm. It’s very short, but at first I honestly thought Donna (Faith Ford) had been struck by lightning.
It’s a very short scene. I didn’t try to catch a screenshot like that. It’s how it came out. It’s also the only one I have that illustrates the lightning part of things.
In the first film, Charlie had a character who was thin as a playing card. In this second film, McGinley actually gets to do some acting as we see him trying to deal with the destruction of the bookstore. Of course good acting for Charlie is not meant to be here for some reason so he winds up getting attacked by a pole in his car and is out in a coma for the remainder of the film. That’s too bad cause for a brief period there, you really do get a glimpse of McGinley adding some depth to Charlie.
Then Molly comes back to town and discovers this whole situation with The Bridge along with Ryan. By the way, that’s the whole movie. Charlie ends up in a coma because he shouldn’t have been behind the wheel in his state and hit a pole. Molly comes back to town and with Ryan’s help, rallies the community and leverages the Internet to rebuild The Bridge. Then we get Charlie waking up from his coma to find that all is well thanks to the bonds he formed with and between the people the bookstore touched. I would think Hallmark viewers would be expecting something more substantial seeing as they were being asked to wait a whole year for this second film.
There are a couple of little subplots if you can even call them that. It’s really just the film tying up a few loose ends/removing a few roadblocks concerning Molly and Ryan to make sure they can end the film on a kiss between them.
There is one thing I found unintentionally funny about this movie.
I get why there are no last names. I mean I have seen Hallmark movies populate lists of names like this with crew members, but I understand. What’s funny is the one on the bottom. I wouldn’t think it was worth mentioning the obvious thing people associate with the name Slim if not for something that happened while I was watching the film. I mean other than this obvious association with the name Slim.
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964, dir. Stanley Kubrick)
I’m going to mention it because there is an actor in this movie that I kept mistaking for Wyatt Nash.
It really took till this scene for me to know for sure that I was seeing a different character when the guy in the blue shirt was onscreen. So, of course I’m thinking “will the real Wyatt Nash please stand up” when I see the name Slim.
My final thoughts on this one are that they basically took a single Hallmark film and divided it in two. If this had been condensed to a single film, then it still wouldn’t have been that good honestly, but it would have been an actual Hallmark movie. To give Karen Kingsbury the benefit of the doubt again, I have to imagine that her book didn’t divide the story with a seven year gap. I’m guessing there was more time to develop their relationship and flesh out Donna and Charlie that builds to all the connections that developed through the bookstore ultimately allowing them all to survive the literal and metaphorical storm. With obvious religious stuff that I’m sure is more pronounced in the book thrown in.
Long story short, don’t bother with either of these movies. There are far better films Hallmark has made. Even their usual average B-Movies are also often enjoyable on some level. Even if that is just the enjoyment of riffing on them and noticing goofs they make. Even the screenwriter of Hello, It’s Me told me on Twitter she was enjoying my reactions to the dialog she had written. People have a lot of fun doing live tweets of Hallmark movies and the cast and crew will sometimes hop onboard to have fun with the audience too. At the end of the day, these reviews are to give you my opinion on the film and to hopefully guide you to ones you’ll enjoy. Even if that’s just because I’ve talked about it enough that regardless of what I thought about it, you decide it sounds like something you might enjoy.
As always if they list them, here are the songs:
It seems to be a regular thing for me when I write these reviews to listen to a single song on an endless repeat. Might as well mention it as a little footnote for people. The song for this review was Holding Back the Years by Simply Red.
In retrospect, I probably should have been listening to Culture Club’s Do You Really Want To Hurt Me.
I know I already wrote about this film in one of my Amazon Prime experiment posts. For reasons that aren’t important, I am writing a long form review of this film. A bit of a fresh look.
Before anything, the movie starts with a title card saying something I’ve never seen on a movie. It says “Deposito Legal: V1912-2012”. From what I can gather online, this seems to essentially be a cultural preservation program by the Spanish government. Regardless, I’m not sure why it was necessary for it to be there at the beginning of the film along with the normal opening credits that you’d expect. Then again, this is a foreign indie movie from Amazon Prime so I guess I should be thankful there are even credits on this thing.
During the opening credits we get a kind of cool jazz sound that you might expect in a 90s late night cable movie or TV Show. Spicy City had one of these. Then we cut to a beach and meet one of our leads named Piero (Andrea Bruschi).
If you like that shot, then you might actually enjoy this movie because he and the female lead will often stare at things. Sometimes they will even stare right at you. Cut to title card, then we find out where Piero works.
I must admit that after the late night cable soundtrack over the credits followed by a guy on the radio, I was having flashbacks to Zalman King’s Pleasure or Pain.
Pleasure or Pain (2013, dir. Zalman King)
However, this movie won’t be assaulting you with endless erotica. Instead, it will be assaulting you with endless art film cliches. Also, he really reminded me of DJ Fernando Martinez from Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. You can take a listen below if the video is still up.
He also mentions that he is broadcasting from Berlin before cutting to some empty places to make sure we know some Antonioni things are going to be happening in this movie. Then we meet our female lead Andrea (Katrin Bühring).
This should ring some French New Wave bells for me, but I just can’t think of any. No worries! I have plenty more. She’s on her way to the bookstore. She works there with her friend Marianne (Katharina Rivilis) that is most likely a lesbian and likes to stare and rub up against Andrea.
This is when we find out she is involved with a guy named Oliver who is too busy to go and see French movies with her. You can’t really blame Oliver. She could be going to see Nouvelle Vague (1990). Apparently, someone ordered a book by Wilhelm Genazino because any movie with a lot of French New Wave references must include books. Now we cut to Piero making a call at a phone booth. He sets up a meeting before walking in front of what appears to be a rundown theater.
After standing there, he turns and goes inside. He happens to show up near the beginning of Shoot The Piano Player (1960).
Shoot The Piano Player (1960, dir. François Truffaut)
That was François Truffaut’s second feature film. It’s the first scene between Charlie and Léna. A large part of the movie is Charlie trying to get over his past and open up to her. It’s also about pulp fiction gangsters riding around with a kid, which contains one of the most awesome insert shots of all time. One of the gangsters says, “If I’m lying, may my mother keel over this instant!”
Shoot The Piano Player (1960, dir. François Truffaut)
No one else is in the theater except our two leads.
I’m just going to assume that the ghosts from Good Bye, Dragon Inn (2003)…
Good Bye, Dragon Inn (2003, dir. Ming-liang Tsai)
migrated to Germany in the past decade or so to haunt this theater. The two of them of course take notice of each other, but don’t say anything. By that, I mean they stare at each other before cutting to the final scene of Shoot The Piano Player after Charlie is back at the bar, finds a new barmaid working there since Léna was gunned down, and somewhat solemnly plays the piano while looking off into the space behind the camera.
We see them briefly on a bus before going home with Piero where he seems to have just records, some lights, and a mattress on the floor.
Nice to know the Alain Delon spartan bedroom design caught on after Le Samouraï (1967).
Le Samouraï (1967, dir. Jean-Pierre Melville)
Okay, to be fair, Bosch was probably thinking of the bedroom from The Mother and the Whore (1973).
The Mother and the Whore (1973, dir. Jean Eustache)
Especially since that is considered to be the last film of the French New Wave, and we see a clip from the film that is considered to have given birth to the French New Wave later on in this movie.
He looks up to see a crack in his ceiling.
Doctor Who
We now cut to more empty spaces to remind us of Antonioni before going to a park. Andrea is talking about how she needs to go and take photos of an abandoned building so the movie can reference Red Desert (1964) and Blow-Up (1966) before it is turned into a shopping mall. They also complain about development in the city, which is followed by people doing annoying things in the park.
Would have made my day if it were some people re-enacting Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (1968). Instead, it’s just some street performers waiting around for the ending of Nights of Cabiria (1957).
We then go to the title card with the camera panned left of the tower before we are back in the radio booth with Piero. He’s here to tell us that he has become obsessed by a guitarist that he hopes to get into the studio.
More scenes of outside including a shot to remind us this was probably shot in 2012.
That, and multiplexes are destroying single screen theaters with disposable films like The Hunger Games (2012). We should be returning to get more and more out of films like Shoot The Piano Player. Or simply buy the DVD like I did, and save yourself the trouble of a theater. After convincing his boss that he should go and interview this guitarist, we cut to every conversation an art film like this must include. Luckily they remember to leave dialogue heavy conversations to Éric Rohmer films by ending it short so we can get back to Antonioni.
Also, more of Andrea’s co-worker staring at her.
Now Piero’s girlfriend breaks up with him via a shot through glass into a restaurant. Not sure of why they weren’t filming in the restaurant, but I think this screenshot sums up this whole girlfriend thing.
We get the same scene with Andrea and her boyfriend, but they don’t breakup. Some more things happen, which has Andrea assaulted by jump cuts before she stares at the movie ticket. Then more outside Antonioni shots.
Just assume that if I don’t show it, then you’re getting shots like the ending of L’Eclisee (1962).
L’Eclisse (1962, dir. Michelangelo Antonioni)
L’Eclisse (1962, dir. Michelangelo Antonioni)
Back in the plot of the film, Piero goes to the bookstore where she works. He’s looking for a book on the sea and Andrea brings him one that happens to be written by Marguerite Duras. That way I can show a screenshot of her film India Song (1975).
India Song (1975, dir. Marguerite Duras)
It juxtaposed cool imagery with sound that was played from a separate soundtrack which didn’t match what was onscreen even when people spoke to each other. I recall it being about trying to create a cultural island while trapped in another countries’ sea. Ties in with this film. They don’t actually acknowledge that they saw each other in the theater, but he makes note of her name before leaving. Then we cut so the movie can do a mini-version of Wavelength (1967) by zooming in on a picture of the sea, but this time with a platform at the center of it.
Wavelength (1967, dir. Michael Snow)
Piero stares at the crack wishing Matt Smith would come and fix it for him before walking past some red neon lights to pose, then goes back to the mysterious cinema.
Back at the bookstore, an annoying customer comes in so that Andrea will also have a reason to return to the theater. First, she kindly lets them shoot some handheld camerawork on her while she walks to get on a bus. Sadly, she goes from one annoyance to another.
That’s right, they are playing that movie.
Breathless (1960, dir. Jean-Luc Godard)
However, he’s not there now probably because he thought they were going to be playing a better French New Wave film like The 400 Blows (1959). That’s why after more DJ and Antonioni, we cut to a tracking shot. You didn’t think you’d get away watching a movie comprised of art film cliches from the 1960s that built on and fought cliches of Old Hollywood to tie in with the film’s ambivalence about the interconnections of the modern world while fighting against the destruction of local culture without one of these, did you?
I’m sure if they had held this shot a little longer than Jean-Pierre Léaud would have walked by Piero. It could have happened! He was waiting around on a bench in What Time Is It There? (2001).
What Time Is It There? (2001, dir. Ming-liang Tsai)
Then Piero goes and stands against a wall.
There isn’t even a clean white Antonioni wall to lean against anymore.
L’Avventura (1960, dir. Michelangelo Antonioni)
Also, he stands there so that I can embed Michael Jackson’s Smooth Criminal.
Cut to more buildings, then we see Andrea run into a telephone booth. Not for any real reason other than so Piero can also run in there like in Old Hollywood movies and they can have a moment. They are also there because in movies the rain conveniently stops after the scene has finished. Just like in Bicycle Thieves (1948).
Bicycle Thieves (1948, dir. Vittorio De Sica)
The rain started so we could get this great scene with these guys. Then they turned off the rain machine so Antonio could spot the original international title of the movie and begin to chase him.
He tells her he has a radio program, they acknowledge each other’s existence, and their meeting in the cinema before parting ways. They are both not happy with it. He even takes a video of her walking away from him with his cellphone.
This is as good a time as any to mention that they keep switching languages in this movie to further the mish mash of cultures.
She goes home and we apparently need to see a shot of her head in the shower for a few seconds before she broods on the couch. Then we cut to Orlando Bosch’s Instagram feed…
to tell us that Piero has finally decided to “travel” to see the musician he was obsessed with before meeting Andrea. He sees the musician playing and goes to sit on a fountain. If the ghost of Anita Ekberg isn’t in it, then I don’t care about this part of the film.
Back home, Andrea is smoking, like they both do in this movie, before she notices that Piero is on the radio.
Now Piero runs down the street because he’ll be damned if Andrea is the only one who will do the Jean Seberg run at the end of Breathless in this movie.
Oh, and immediately after posting that picture of Piero, I realized that actor Andrea Bruschi has the same first name as the female character his character falls in love with. Well played, Orlando. Well played. He should go on one of those movie game shows like the one in We All Loved Each Other So Much (1974) where one of the main characters lost because of a technicality over whether the question was asking about the character or the actor. It’s probably an easter egg about their interconnectedness. It fits since the next scene has Andrea staring at a candle before we are transported to the white dimension! Here they have sex before staring at us naked.
I’m sorry, but I took one look at this and instantly thought of Black Love (1971).
Black Love (1971, dir. Herschell Gordon Lewis)
Piero then talks more on the radio and I don’t care. We now go to Andrea walking across the streets before she goes into fast-motion. She does this so that I can include Kylie Minogue’s The Loco-motion.
During this fast-motion she appears to cross the same crosswalk twice. Could just be a similar looking one. I guess she is really out there hoping to run into him. She should have known that he would be standing in front of street art of Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley.
Luckily he then walks by a building that says “Luka” on the side of it now.
Lucky for me because I never have a good excuse to include a Suzanne Vega song in a review.
Or it’s supposed to be a reference to Luka from ER seeing as the character was from Croatia, ER is one of the most important TV Shows of all time, and Germany and Croatia have a history of relations so important that there’s even a Wikipedia article on it. Nah, I’m going with Suzanne Vega.
Then we cut to him at a record shop before settling on him at a bar. He meets some girl, there’s bad singing while they are drunk, he sleeps with her, and off he goes. I have no idea why that scene exists other than that it looks like they stumble onto the set of Before Sunset (2004) at one point. Doesn’t have anything to do with the movie either as far as I can tell, so onward.
Andrea now goes to abandoned buildings to take photographs…
because there were no colorful looking factories to take pictures of.
Red Desert (1964, dir. Michelangelo Antonioni)
Red Desert (1964, dir. Michelangelo Antonioni)
Meanwhile, David Hemmings is back in the park from earlier taking photographs.
Blow-Up (1966, dir. Michelangelo Antonioni)
There is something noteworthy here because this film does love to use art film cliches. When she walks through the entrance of the globe I’m quite sure it does a temporal overlap twice so we see her enter it three times from three different angles. Also…
Hemmings clearly beat Andrea to taking pictures here and left his calling card. I love how during that shot you can hear sound that I swear is like music Goblin would compose for one of Argento’s films. I only mention that since Hemmings was in Deep Red (1975).
We then go back to her place. We can see she uses a Sony Vaio computer. She uploads her photos to Facebook. The ghost theater has it’s own Facebook page. Most likely because Kino Intimes is an actual theater in Berlin that has been around since 1909. The scene is there so that she can notice a picture of the theater and remember the chance encounter.
She now turns to her creepy co-worker. She says she knows he hosts a radio show at midnight. She also gets a call from that long forgotten boyfriend of hers. She tells him she’s too busy for him. That’s when it’s time to go club dancing.
Dancing and kissing your co-worker. She goes to the bathroom to try and cool off, but the jump cuts aren’t helping matters. Then suddenly we are back at the bookstore to find out that Angela was so drunk she didn’t know she had kissed Marianne, which as we all know is when to make your move.
She’s says no thanks, but is clearly not happy. The jump cuts make matters worse for her though so after more Antonioni and Piero talking on the radio, she goes and has sex with her boyfriend. Then she immediately breaks up with him. She takes a bath and dunks her head underneath the water. This time we are transported to the black dimension for more of the living art exhibit.
Realizing how stupid the shots were, she pulls her head out of the water and proceeds to start drinking. Once again, the jump cuts only make matters worse for her. Then it’s off to walking for Andrea. She walks through a tilt shift shot before settling on a bench.
The Passenger (1975, dir. Michelangelo Antonioni)
Back at the bookstore, Piero returns. He finally asks her out. They are going to meet on a bridge. It’s difficult to get dressed when jump cuts keep interfering. Anyways, as she is going to the bridge she is attacked by the Clockwork Orange gang because…
Leos Carax already struck a claim on lovers meeting on a bridge many years ago.
The Lovers on the Bridge (1991, dir. Leos Carax)
As a result, they miss their meeting. Think he’s simply going to return to the bookstore under the assumption that something must have come up like a normal person would do? Are you crazy? When someone misses a meeting with you, then it’s time to brood in public and drive out into the middle of nowhere to stare into the distance naked.
Andrea decides to stare into the candle, which in the past transported her to the white dimension. It doesn’t work this time so she runs back to the phone booth to feel it up. After Piero stares at the crack in his ceiling some more, he decides to not go back to the bookstore, but to also go and mope in the phone booth. Honestly, this is where the film should have quit while it was ahead. We could have just chalked him not sticking around, not returning to the bookstore, and her not looking up the radio station to two people who had a sudden connection, but were easily scared back into isolation. They had both returned to the place they shared a meeting, and would have never seen each other again. People do that kind of thing in real life. It’s not unrealistic. Unfortunately, the movie goes on for another 10 minutes.
We cut to Andrea and she tries calling the radio station where he works, but they moved. More jump cuts ultimately make this task impossible for her. She also has the painting of the sea the editing gave us the impression was at his place earlier.
After she has a conversation with her creepy co-worker about love, we cut to what could have been, as they have a meeting on the bridge that never happened. We get some of that sweet 80’s music video black and white like in Simply Red’s If You Don’t Know Me By Now.
Or if you can forgive some of the grain, then the black and white from Debbie Gibson’s Only In My Dreams. Black and white took the place of color in the 80s for dream sequences.
Again, it could stop here too, but it continues. Piero goes on the radio to say more dialog that probably ties in with the story, but I don’t care about. Both Andrea and Piero go to a train station and miss each other there because what would a movie like this be without a train scene with the characters missing each other?
The big problem here is that the longer this missing each other and trying to find each other stuff goes on, you just keep wondering more and more why he doesn’t go back to the bookstore. He even returns to the movie theater, but apparently the bookstore is off limits.
Andrea is now bothered at the bookstore by a little kid and out of focus camera obstructions at the bottom of the frame…
so she returns to the park from earlier. Those street performers finally have their time to shine, which culminates in tossing her a glass globe before running away. She goes home because that’s where the jump cuts live. They help her this time because she gets a call with an address of where Piero resides. Then it’s time for her to do the Seberg run.
Breathless (1960, dir. Jean-Luc Godard)
She arrives at his place and stands in his doorway staring. It cuts to the white dimension to show her naked, then back to him naked looking out his window. Then cut to the beach from the start of the film where he says, “I once dreamed she was coming to me and looked at me.” End of movie.
So, what part was real? Any of it? Was this one of those movies with an unreliable narrator like this one.
Last Year at Marienbad (1961, dir. Alain Resnais)
Maybe he’ll return to the bookstore in a year to try and convince her they had a thing once while playing a symbolic game with her creepy co-worker.
If you feel like Monica Vitti looks here…
L’Avventura (1960, dir. Michelangelo Antonioni)
then I don’t blame you.
It’s obvious that Orlando Bosch put a lot of thought into making this movie, but he forgot a few things. The first is that it was 2015 when he released this movie. These art film cliches were old by the time The Lovers on the Bridge came out in the 90s after being filtered through MTV. I don’t care if they were metaphors for something else as one user review I read somewhere says. They are endless and really grate on the nerves. You stop caring what they could possibly be there for, and just want them to stop.
He also couldn’t have picked a worse 60’s art film director to focus on than Antonioni. Ingmar Bergman is even quoted on IMDb as not liking him, which of course is somewhat hilarious since he died on the same day as him. Even my first film class book makes special note about the criticism about his work: “All his characters live lives that are boring and empty, meaningless and sterile and that his films are accordingly boring, sterile and abstract.” A view I do not share. Antonioni just seems to be the trend these days so I’m guessing that’s why he went with it. I’ve seen it show up in many films of the past 25 years that cover similar themes to this film. You can even say that The Time Machine (I Found at a Yard Sale) (2011) tried to do the Antonioni thing.
It’s annoying and it has holes in the script when it doesn’t end at the right time. Just let this stuff go. All of these films are readily available if people want to revisit them. There’s no need to compile a best of collection. Leave them in the past, and move on. They are perfectly captured and preserved. I hope Bosch takes the talent he seems to have, and puts it into his own work, with his own style.
Finally, I’ve reached the last one of the Sal V. Miers late night cable movies currently available. This is the second best one after Bikini Model Mayhem (2016). Again, Miers politics are all over this one like they were in Bikini Model Mayhem. He also added some of his love for Old Hollywood into the mix. Let’s dig in.
After another one of those annoying title cards that I had to black box, we are introduced to one of our main characters and a guy who will disappear as fast as he did Bikini Model Mayhem.
That’s Officer Supansky on the right. He’s played by Robbie Carroll who needed to be convinced to support G.W. Bushwacker in Bikini Model Mayhem. On the left is Felicity who is played by Katie Morgan. You may remember her as playing the first robot we were introduced to in Bikini Model Mayhem and the warden in Bad Girls Behind Bars (2016). This film is much more of an ensemble cast movie than Bikini Model Mayhem or Bad Girls Behind Bars. He is not actually revealed to be a cop quite yet. He is here to hire her for a whopping $50. She doesn’t think that’s enough. I’m pretty sure what he does next would be considered entrapment. He strips butt naked. That apparently makes things totally different for her. Of course we can’t see that for no good reason except this is late night cable. In fact, just after she goes in with her mouth, it cuts to the outside of the building. Then it goes back inside for the standard game of hide the penis while the guy stays in a Zen like trance and either the girl goes over the top or tries to match his intensity. I believe this is the only time I’ve seen the male actors sweat, or at least appear to sweat. Once that business is over with he proves himself to be the dick they can show.
No seriously, his full name is Dick Supansky. Then I learn another interesting phrase from a Miers’ movie. According to her, he “got his ashes hauled.” I still prefer the burping of the worm joke from Bad Girls Behind Bars. He offers her an alternative to going to jail. She can go participate in a ridiculous plot so the movie can make a political statement instead of having to serve time. She of course takes his offer instead of jail because we already had that movie.
Before we get to find out what she is going to have to do, we are introduced to a character that honestly had me worried. I know having a character who has “cognitive disabilities” didn’t stop the movie Forrest Gump (1994) from him having sex. Regardless, it had me worried, but there’s a payoff to this.
That’s Charlie played by Brandon C. Greene. He works as the janitor at a science facility. In the end, it’s his film as he slowly but surely emerges from the background.
From right to left that’s easy to manipulate (Otto Bauer), harder to manipulate (Pristine Edge), and hardest to manipulate (Ryan McLane). Pristine Edge. I like that one. I also like that if you change Otto and Ryan to Jack and John, then you get Jack Bauer and John McLane.
Next we meet the two ladies who will be joining Felicity.
That’s Piper on the left played by Erika Jordan and Violet in the middle played by Dillion Harper. We find out that 18 months prior, the scientists made contact with aliens from Venus because of course they did. Also because of course they did, they want to use a mind transfer device to put three people from Venus in their bodies. Felicity is a little confused. Not as confused as Violet though since she thought the scientists meant they would baking cookies to host a party for the people from Venus. Felicity wonders why the three of them are ideal candidates. I mean she’s a hooker, Piper is a drug runner, and Violet jaywalked after she robbed a liquor store. The scientists explain the deal. First, they don’t have much choice. Two, the people from Venus insisted on attractive women. Felicity still thinks this is weird, but I know this would seal the deal for me.
That’s a face you can trust. However, they aren’t convinced yet. That’s when they leave the lab set of Bikini Model Mayhem to talk outside of what looks like a house painted blue. Let’s get the political commentary in here now. Felicity says it sounds scary, Violet says “they are scientists”, Felicity says “What does that have to do with anything?”, and Piper asks her if she is a Republican.
Time for Old Hollywood. Felicity says it all seems a little too Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948). Violet says Freaky Friday. I think we can safely say she is referring to the Lindsay Lohan version considering Felicity responds with “there’s no accounting for taste.” It’s sad, but I haven’t seen either version or Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. No, they don’t make the joke at the start of a sex scene about Who’s On First.
Anyhow, they decide to do it so Piper steps inside of a shower…
and emerges as Zorax. Felicity becomes Zonondor. Violet becomes Zimbabwe. The movie is on auto-pilot now. The three visitors from Venus are here to drain the scientists of their smarts via an orgasm, or the “little death” as they call it. They aren’t really worried about the male ones, which is why they insisted on attractive women to be their hosts. They didn’t know that “one of the greatest minds on Earth” could be female based on their “survey of Earth’s popular culture.” Zorax says this, to which Zonondor corrects her that this was true “at least, not up until the 1960’s.” Very true. We didn’t even get Space Mutiny till 1988 and the MST3K episode on it till 1997.
David Ryder: Listen, lady!
Lea Jansen: Doctor!
David Ryder: Doctor!
Crow: Doctor Lady!
Also, harder to manipulate must have been bisexual as all women in late night cable movies are because it just takes Zorax saying she saw a spider for her to be all over her. They are also bisexual presumedly because that stuff is much easier than playing hide the sausage from the camera. The hardest to manipulate is that way because he and hard to manipulate are an item. He eventually caves in and is turned into a blabbering idiot like his colleagues.
During all of this, Charlie has become more and more of a prominent character as he finds a pair of panties and notices these very smart people he works around are acting like children. He’s onto the visitors from Venus. He has a nice little conversation with the ladies. He explains that he knows he’s not the smartest person around. He knows he’s stuck taking care of the scientists since the universe of this movie stops at the edge of the set. They tell him smarts aren’t everything. He tells them that it’s still helpful. He’s also not 100% convinced that these visitors really are doing this for the greater good to prevent Earth from coming after Venus. He explains that the scientists could have done great things, but now they are helpless. Ultimately, he proposes that while he believes they could have focused their smarts on problems at home instead of space exploration, why not leave their smarts with him. The visitors had already made it clear that the smarts they got from the scientists were really of no use to them.
Of course his argument is solid and so is another part of him because that’s the only way the transfer is going to work.
With the ladies given their bodies back, they depart to leave Charlie to get to work. Oh, but before Felicity leaves, she actually offers her services to Charlie who says he already had that while she was out. Charlie decides to roll up his sleeves and get to work.
So, let’s say you strip out all of the sex from this movie. You have three white scientists who are interested in exploring space. Three women are given a chance to be a plot device instead of going to jail. One of which was arrested by a cop who took advantage of her because according to him: “I can.” Three visitors from Venus come to Earth because they believe these three white scientists are going to use their intelligence to ultimately attack them. They deliberately insist on attractive female bodies because they are convinced by Earth’s popular culture that the scientists can only be straight men. They drain the three scientists of their smarts. A lightly mentally handicapped black man figures them out. He convinces them to give him their smarts with the concession that he’ll focus on problems here on Earth. Interesting.
Then just like Bad Girls Behind Bars, we get a blooper reel. It’s far more complete though. The only part of it that is noteworthy is when you can hear Miers speaking. Miers says, “I’m rolling sound…unlike when I started in this business. Buster Keaton, he was, he was great.”
I couldn’t find that explicit quote doing a cursory Google search, but it certainly fits Keaton.
Here is how I rank the three Sal V. Miers movies currently available through the Cinemax/HBO apps:
I don’t read comic books. I’m not a big fan of superhero movies. I’m not particularly a fan of the Marvel movies we have been getting. I couldn’t get my hands on the 70’s Captain America movies. Jedadiah had the nerve to write about the Turkish Captain America movie before I started writing on Through the Shattered Lens. I don’t really even recall much about the Chris Evans’ Captain America movies except he’s kind of lovable, but vapid. None of that matters. This is pure cheesy fun. The only real crime this movie commits is not having a budget. That, and I think they thought they were making a Bond film. Let’s dig in because to not talk about this film in detail would be an injustice.
This movie drops you right into something that just screams Captain America: 1936 Italy.
Get used to title cards. This movie has a bunch of them even when they aren’t necessary, or don’t make any sense. We are introduced to a child prodigy when the movie bothers to subtitle the actors speaking foreign languages so we can actually know what’s going on. I thought I had a dubbed version of this movie for awhile. In come the Nazis or Fascists and they take the kid and kill his family. A tape recorder is running during this because he was playing the piano. It winds up recording the murder of his family.
Now it’s off to Fortress Lorenzo. I know this because the title card tells me so.
We are here because we need to watch the bad guys looking at stock footage of a white rat. Then the grand reveal!
Okay, they are working with a low budget, but that is simply a rat they have turned into Red Skull Rat. We do actually get a real Red Skull (Scott Paulin) when they put the kid in what looks like an electric chair.
There’s a female scientist (Carla Cassola) here who doesn’t like what is being done to this kid and escapes as they zap him. What part is she going to play in this movie? Wait for it later. It’s kind of awesome and really stupid.
Now we cut to 7 Years Later, which means 1943 because again, title cards told me so. Two of them in case I can’t add and to make sure I know that 7 years have past for…um…reasons? Now we are at the White House, which is in Washington, D.C. Thank goodness for this title card. Otherwise, I might have been confused.
We find out that the scientist lady who escaped 7 years prior in 1936 Italy from Fortress Lorenzo perfected a process of taking a boy with birth defects and making him “as fast and as strong as an athlete” in America. Hitler already has Red Skull at this point. They plan to have a regiment of super soldiers and Steve Rogers has volunteered to be the first. You might be thinking right now that the few lines of dialog that were subtitled earlier mentioned how old the kid was so that adding 7 years would explain how Red Skull will appear as an adult. Of course not.
Now we go to Redondo Beach, California via another title card.
Meet 1990’s Captain America (Matt Salinger)!
I did not try to catch him with looks like that on his face. He does that all on his own throughout this movie. He limps around and says goodbye to the family and girlfriend. Now it’s off to a top secret diner with scientist lady. They get there one week later. I know this because another title card tells me so.
It would have been very confusing without it. At least I thought it was them. It turns out it’s a couple of military guys who proceed to go through a secret entrance in the cloakroom and down to an underground lab. Of course Senator Kirby is there.
Is that Jack Kirby? He really does call him Senator Kirby. He is also the only person he greets by name for no reason. They’ve kept all the details about this a secret between one guy and the lady because once they die, the movie can just randomly give Captain America his things without having to explain anything. How fast does that happen?
Zap him!
I love how during this they cut several times to parts of his body that don’t appear to change to show he is getting stronger. His vitals signs are stable. Thank God! Also, thank God for plot convenience because there’s a traitor in their midst you see. He immediately shoots and kills both the guy and the scientist before getting himself electrocuted. Captain America also takes a bullet to the chest.
Don’t worry about him. We now cut to him lying in a bed.
I can’t tell you how much time has passed, where this bed is located, or if this building is the White House or not because there wasn’t a title card to tell me so. Taking a bullet to the chest is really going to put the Captain down for awhile, right? I mean he’s not Superman or anything. They even said that earlier. That’s not a issue for 1990’s Captain America. He hears something about the bad guys having a launch site and he’s up and ready in the blink of an eye.
Then we cut to footage of a plane from so far back that we can’t tell it isn’t actually from 1943 or whenever it is now. He now has his uniform and his shield. The uniform is apparently fireproof and looks like it does because the scientist lady loved the red, white, and blue.
Captain America says that there’s something nobody has talked about. It’s that he would like some backup. Captain America wasn’t paying attention earlier. Since the traitor killed off the guy and scientist lady, he is the only one of his kind. Captain America jumps out of the plane and within seconds is spotted.
Then with probably the best special effects this movie has to offer, he throws the shield to knock down a guard tower. Cut to Red Skull who apparently is psychic because an alarm going off automatically means it’s Captain America.
Meanwhile, Captain America is outside probably wondering why it’s necessary for him to be wearing the uniform when there’s no fire around. That’s of course when he blows some stuff up to make his own fire before entering the launch site. He spots Red Skull, says “holy mackerel”, and greets him by throwing his shield at him. Red Skull catches it without any trouble.
He throws the shield into the ground. Red Skull proceeds to beat Captain America up and straps him to a rocket.
He mentions New York while he is strangling Captain America, but then tells him the rocket is going to the White House. Captain America grabs Red Skull’s hand to make him come along for the ride so Red Skull cuts off his own hand, and the missile launches. Now we cut to Washington, D.C. again.
I’m not sure where in Washington, D.C. though because the title card doesn’t tell me this time. It cuts to another building and then to what I think is a hotel room. There’s a kid there who is up at 4 A.M. because he wants to see the president since the title card said the set he is on is in Washington D.C. Mom puts him to bed and the kid makes a wish to be the president one day. The kid is having none of this. He gets up and grabs his decoder ring.
I’d make a joke about Ovaltine seeing as that is a Captain Midnight decoder ring, but something way better is about to happen. The kid now goes to that place we saw earlier and sees this through his camera.
Captain America sees the kid so he punches and kicks on the rocket till a wing breaks off. The rocket nearly hits the kid.
Then the rocket misses the building. That’s right. Captain America kicked and punched a rocket he was attached to and it changed its trajectory to miss the target. You won’t see Chris Evans do that in any Captain America movie. Probably because it’s bullshit. Anyhow, we now cutaway to somewhere in Alaska.
I’m not sure where in Alaska, but it certainly is “somewhere”. Wherever it is, the rocket crashes into the ground and there is a hand in a red glove sticking out of it now. I’m not sure rockets work that way so that missing the White House would place it in Alaska, but I’m no expert. However, I am an expert at reading title cards because I now know we are in Springfield, Ohio.
This is the house of the kid from earlier who is talking to his friend about what he saw. Thanks to him we find out that was the White House earlier. The movie also helps you to know that Captain America kicked off a wing from the rocket because if you blink during that scene you’ll miss it.
The kids decide they need to figure out who this guy on a rocket was. The blonde kid asks if he had a trident. The other kid says no, which means it wasn’t Sub-Mariner. The kid also rules out that it was the Human Torch because he would have blown up the rocket. Yes, the kids just ruled out that our current Captain America was strapped to the rocket. I would say that’s the coolest thing in this movie, but I’d be lying.
Now we fly through the decades to reach 1993. The kid grew up to be Ronny Cox who was elected as president in 1992. Ronny Cox is going to be leaving for Rome to try and negotiate a ban on “environmentally damaging industrial practices.” By that I mean he is going to Rome so that Red Skull can easily have him kidnapped.
We then cut to that place from earlier. There’s no title card, but thankfully it does look like the one that said the White House. Ronny Cox talks to a General Fleming who doesn’t like these new environmental guidelines President Ronny Cox has written up. He also isn’t happy that his leg lamp he had in A Christmas Story (1983) was broken because he’s played by Darren McGavin. Now we go to Fortress Lorenzo, Italy.
First necessary title card we’ve had in awhile seeing as the shot of this place was so dark earlier that it could have been anything. Not sure why we really need to know this is Fortress Lorenzo though seeing as they could have just used the same establishing shot and then cut to Red Skull inside or other established villains. Inside we find that Red Skull is a ventriloquist on top of being psychic because he doesn’t actually move his lips, but we hear his voice.
What’s that you say? He’s too far away in that screenshot to tell that his lips are closed? Don’t worry! His lips don’t move here either.
Finally, Red Skull decides it’s time to speak with his lips. This is when we find out that it was Red Skull that hired Sirhan Sirhan to kill Bobby Kennedy and Oswald to kill JFK. Also, it apparently cost over $22 million to kill Martin Luther King. Because doing these things were so tough and they didn’t get anything for it, he decides that instead of killing Ronny Cox, they should implant something into his brain to control him. Red Skull also isn’t so red anymore and has hair. He also wears gloves so we can’t see that he has both of his hands. I’m going to just stop calling him Red Skull at this point. He’s Red “Blofeld” Skull, or Redfeld for short.
Now we cut to Alaska.
It is the same shot from earlier, but minus the “somewhere in” and the blue tint. Some Germans from a West German Alaskan Field Station find Captain America. I know this because of an actual sign and not a title card. They brought him back in a block of ice where we get blurry shots, closeups of eyes, and ice falling on the ground. Captain America has broken right out of the ice and immediately leaves without saying a word.
Captain America doesn’t have time to talk. He only has an hour left in the movie and hasn’t even made it back to California before going on vacation in Italy. That is his shield he is holding. It was nice of Redfeld to strap his shield to the missile along with him. No really, he did strap Captain America to the rocket with his shield.
It’s off to the White House now. Ronny Cox looks at a paper filled with a lot of nonsense text that is repeated in several locations. There is also a picture taken by a scientist at the Alaskan station that he so did not take because we saw him take a picture of Captain America’s back and not a profile shot. None of that matters because as Ronny Cox is about to toss the paper onto a table, we see that 150 convicts have been released.
That must have been wonderful news for Menahem Golan who produced this movie. It meant there would be plenty of criminals on the street for Charles Bronson to shoot in Death Wish V (1994). Ronny immediately calls his old friend who now works for the Washington Dispatch, which was established in 1889. Again, I know this because an actual sign tells me. Don’t worry, the title cards come back. Ronny Cox’s old friend grew up to be Ned Beatty.
He is here because he already did Superman (1978) so he needed to balance that out with a Marvel movie. Beatty is off to find out what happened.
Then we go to Rome via a title card and are introduced to Redfeld’s daughter.
Why? Because Redfeld doesn’t do things himself anymore. He sends his daughter to deal with Captain America. How does that logic work? Redfeld couldn’t even keep his own hand against Captain America and he is a super soldier too. She’s not going to seduce him either. He is legitimately sending her to kill Captain America. Last time we saw Captain America he was in Alaska, but he has made his way to Northern Canada.
I love how it cuts to Captain America breathing heavily against a tree, to a chopper in the sky, and then to a newspaper being held by one of the bad girls that says “British Columbia Gazette”. Maybe because they realized that Northern Canada could mean he was over near Hudson Bay or that they thought their audience wouldn’t know where British Columbia was located. This did come out in 1990 (sort of) so I’m going with option number two.
The ladies immediately spot Captain America to which he gives us another great look.
Ned Beatty is also out here driving around because somehow! What follows is Captain America being chased through the forest by women on motorcycles. He throws and hits the daughter in her helmet before getting shot by her in the arm. That’s when Ned Beatty shows up because just roll with it. He asks Captain America who they were and he says Nazis.
Now we get what is probably the most ridiculous thing in the movie. As Ned Beatty talks to Captain America, he notices that Beatty has a tape recorder made in Japan and is driving a Volkswagen. Captain America isn’t looking so good here.
That’s when this happens.
Yep! Captain America just pretended to be car sick so he could steal Ned Beatty’s car. You won’t see Chris Evans do that. Most likely because Captain America isn’t supposed to be a car thief. I also love that it’s Ned Beatty in particular he leaves in the middle of the wilderness.
He keeps driving till he runs out of fuel, then gets into the back of a truck. The truck then drives by the camera with it’s back door open and ocean in the background, which means Captain America has reached California.
He also has a trench coat now and a bag conveniently big enough to hold his shield. He is very confused by this lady who probably was once an extra on Baywatch. He then finally finds his house from the beginning of the movie. A car pulls up in front of the place and this woman (Kim Gillingham) gets out.
That of course means it’s Captain America’s girl from the 1940s who looked like this.
He tries to grab her, she hits him in the head with her purse, and Captain America falls to the ground.
I guess he was crazy from the heat. Surprisingly, the credits say it is the same actress who played both roles. I don’t see it, but hair and makeup can do some amazing things. What did she have in her purse anyways that knocked him down so easily? We get a little reintroduction here between Captain America and his girlfriend in old lady makeup who is the mother of the blonde named Sharon.
Then we go back to Fortress Lorenzo where honestly Redfeld’s daughter appears to use the fact that Ned Beatty is a Pulitzer prize winning reporter as a reason that she couldn’t capture Captain America. I guess that means if Roger Ebert had been out there, then he would have also gotten Captain America to safety because he once won a Pulitzer prize. He also would have gotten his car stolen. She’s also convinced that the reporter can lead them to Captain America.
A few things happen now, but it just means that everyone knows where Captain America is now. What’s really important is that Captain America is now learning how to work a VCR.
You can see that Redfeld’s daughter wasted no time whatsoever because she has already bugged the place and is listening in from the top of the frame.
I think you know what happens now. Ned Beatty shows up and dies. Captain America’s old flame dies. Her husband winds up in the hospital. Captain America and Sharon escape Redfeld’s daughter’s wrath. During this scene we also find out that scientist lady kept a diary because Captain America needs to know Redfeld’s real name. Oh, and while they don’t show it. It appears that Redfeld’s daughter electrocuted the old girlfriend to death offscreen. She doesn’t mess around. Neither does Captain America at the end of this movie. That’s another part that’s awesome about this film. The president has also been kidnapped by 20 heavily armed men. I don’t believe that. Redfeld only uses the baddest of the bad 1980s girls that money can buy.
Things have really gotten serious, but I’ll pare you the details.
He goes to the previously secret diner, into the ladies room, knocks down a wall, and descends into the secret room. He finds the diary before having to defend himself from bad guys. Captain America really has two modes of fighting in this movie: ninja mode and street brawler mode. Either way, he wins through the power of wildly confusing editing. He wins, and it’s off to Italy with Sharon. Can you guess what happens next?
Captain America again pretends he needs to puke, then takes the car to leave Sharon behind. This time it’s even better than before. The reason is because in about 1 minute of runtime she catches up to him making that taking the car scene pointless. They are at some people’s house who give them the tape recorder from the beginning of the film, they get it fixed, and they are off to have lunch so they can be attacked.
Captain America runs away and discovers the two dumbest kids in Italy who don’t know to move when two people are running towards them with a car speeding behind the two people running towards them. Flip, confusing editing, Captain America pays for a bike, and they take that bike immediately off a cliff because it has no brakes. Captain America has no problem stealing cars, but he pays for bicycles.
During all of this action one of the ladies dropped her purse with a picture of Redfeld inside, the weather magically changes to rain, and then they start driving to Fortress Lorenzo where the weather is just fine again. The bad guys are in pursuit. Do I need to show what happens next? Nah, she gets out, spots the bad guys, runs back to the car, and drives it away to draw the bad guys away from Captain America who she has now ditched. That appears to be the running gag in this movie. She is captured and held separately in the fortress with Ronny Cox. Captain America now dons the uniform once more and somehow climbs up on this ledge.
You know the drill. Sharon and Ronny Cox escape on their own. Along with Captain America and crazy editing, they force Redfeld to a cliff where he apparently keeps his piano for some reason.
Redfeld is going to set off a bomb so Captain America pulls out the tape recorder to remind him of the child he once was. Redfeld’s daughter also shoots Captain America in the arm again here. It’s a very touching moment as he remembers, his daughter looks on, and he looks off the cliff realizing what a monster he has become. However, he still wants to set off the bomb to destroy them both so Captain America throws his shield and knocks him off the cliff.
I love how it looks like you can see someone dressed like Redfeld’s daughter push the dummy of Redfeld off the cliff.
Redfeld’s daughter picks up a gun to shoot Captain America. Captain America’s shield is still in the air and on its way back to him. He tells her “heads up”, we hear it hit her, and he catches it. We never see her body or the shield connect with her head. Captain America just severed Redfeld’s daughter’s head with his shield. I can’t think of any other explanation.
With the bad guys defeated, Captain America looks off towards the sky for some reason.
Then he appears in full uniform and transforms into his comic book character.
But there’s one final piece of information we need to know. The nations agree to an environmental protection treaty. Ronny Cox says to remember those who have “sacrificed all to make our world a better place to live.” And “to Captain America, we are all back in the fight.” They even ask you in the credits to support The Environmental Protection Act of 1990.
There is one more thing to mention here.
This movie was an American and Yugoslavian co-production. That wasn’t unusual. Jadran Film worked on many co-productions. They would fall from being a powerhouse when Yugoslavia broke up. Yugoslavia was breaking up into separate states right around 1990. That means as Yugoslavia was about to break into separate states, they co-produced a movie about one of the most nationalist and patriotic superheroes in the world.
My final thoughts on this movie are to go enjoy the new Captain America movie, then come back and have some fun with this one. At the very least, it will make you appreciate that we are getting Marvel movies now that have proper budgets, good actors, and crews that put in an effort into making the films. 1990’s Captain America approves!
I know I’m a little late to this one, but there’s a real benefit to that for me. I get to watch part two in a few days. Hallmark was originally going to wait a whole year to air the second part. However, after receiving a bunch of angry feedback, which must have been really bad, they aired the second part in March. Hallmark of course kept calling it “popular demand.” I doubt that. This is going to be a short review because there isn’t a movie here. I’m going to deflate it for you and me. If you’ve already seen The Notebook (2004), then just go watch that again. This could have easily been called Karen Kingsbury’s The Notebook. It’s also one of the most lazily produced Hallmark movies I’ve watched so far. How fast do we get to see that? Here is what it cuts to right after that shot above.
I had no idea that North Carolina moved to the metric system back in the 1990s. I also didn’t know that North Carolina moved to British Columbia, which is the only place Murchie’s exists. That’s Ted McGinley down there as Charlie. He will be a slightly altered psychic version of himself from The Note movies. Inside we find Donna played by Faith Ford.
It also looks like Karen Kingsbury can time travel back to 1997 to place her book released in 2015 on the shelves. It will pop up in other places too. There are of course other recent books back in 1997 as well.
They meet over a copy of Slow Road to Brownsville by David Reynolds, fall in love, get married, she gets pregnant, it’s stillborn, and suddenly they get the idea to create a bookstore in order to get over their loss by helping others via that bookstore. Bookstore made! Enter the kids of the film.
Now we meet every rich young girl heading off to college.
I’m really glad this is a Hallmark movie and not a Lifetime movie, or that shot would probably mean something totally different. Her name is Molly (Katie Findlay) and she’s from a mansion with text floating below it that tells us we are now in “Seattle 2009”. The back of that head belongs to every father who wants their kid to go to college so they can come back and take over the family business. He is played by actor Steve Bacic. Another guy comes into the room here. That sentence alone is about as much acknowledgment of his character this movie gives him. We also find out that Molly and her best friend are actually 300 years old on top of her friend being cute and funny. Those lines and a few others are there because they didn’t have much faith in Katie Findlay and Steve Bacic to convey their relationship to us with their face and body language even though they both did that perfectly. Especially Steve Bacic who comes prepackaged with the face that instantly says that.
Then this happens.
Not sure what happened with the camera there, but moving on. We also find out that her mother is dead because Hallmark, and that Molly has no major. That doesn’t sound odd. She’s a freshman.
Anyways, we are now off to Nashville, Tennessee. Molly nearly walks into oncoming traffic so that her love interest for the movie can rescue her. His name is Ryan (Wyatt Nash) since going with Noah would be too obvious considering a storm is going to wipe out the bookstore in part two.
That thing popping up behind him is a guitar because he’s a musician. They go to sign up for classes and keep finding that they are picking out the same ones. They say it’s to “step outside [their] comfort zone.” He immediately takes her to The Bridge, which is the name of the bookstore. We again find there are Karen Kingsbury books all over the place. Also, Karen has once again used her powers of time travel to make a cameo.
If R.L. Stine can use his ability to slide into different dimensions in order to appear in Goosebumps (2015), then I’m fine with this.
Upon meeting Molly, Charlie immediately is able to tell that she has traveled out of the country, is a sport’s fan, and she loved The Little House Series as a kid. Ryan says Charlie is a magician, but I’m waiting for part two where I’m sure he’s going to turn out to be a Whitelighter. He’s as devoid of self as Brian Krause’s character was on that show. So is Ryan for that matter.
This all goes exactly where you think it does. They look around and he drops her out on a trail to walk home through the forest.
I know that they later explain this as her trying to hide that her Dad has her setup in a great place and she is trying to hide that from him, but this still came across as weird.
Ryan decides to take Molly on a tour of Franklin, Tennessee. He says, “Most people head straight for Nashville, but Franklin is really hitting its stride.” I agree, it is well on its way to turning into Oak Bay, British Columbia as those street signs and banner behind them announce to the audience.
They have some more back and forth, then it’s back to the forest for Molly.
There’s a lot of talking and it is a bit tough to tell how much time has past. It all amounts to them having something they want to do, but needing a kick in the butt in order to follow through with it. That, and even after she tells him about living in a great house, he still leaves her in the forest. She also gives him a copy of Jane Eyre. Never read it, but I have seen I Walked With A Zombie (1943), which probably is the weirdest film adaptation of that book.
Some blonde shows up now for the same reason as the guy from the beginning and is as worth mentioning as a single sentence affords. We need to keep moving cause we have plenty less of this movie to talk about.
Quick scene of Charlie harassing his wife to come to church with him.
No, he doesn’t quote the title of his 2015 movie Do You Believe?, and he gives in to go see a cheesy action flick. Would have made my day if he said the local theater was doing a retrospective of 90s action films and they were going to show Blue Tornado (1991).
The main thing the movie revolves around is an assignment to make a video about where he is going to be in 10 years that Ryan has been given. On the Charlie and Donna side, it’s figuring out that bookstores aren’t just a checkout counter and never really were in order to keep afloat.
Then…well…things sure happen. Sort of. They just spend time together. She starts coming around to not taking over the family business. We find out he can’t sing, but the movie tells us he is amazing and he is offered a chance to drop out to go on tour with someone. You aren’t missing anything. Oh, we do find out that Charlie really likes Christmas!
He also believes that dogs have every right to be chefs.
More things happen. Blah. Then this occurs.
Yes, those three things do happen in quick succession. We see Douglas Sirk snow outside, Ryan says “it’s snowing”, and then Ryan and Molly step outside to no snow falling. It doesn’t start up again either.
Stuff happens and Molly’s cellphone magically goes from being lit to dark a couple of times between camera cuts during a single conversation. That part was at least entertaining.
Ryan and Molly are apart. Charlie and Donna are still together. Donna still won’t go to church with him. And to be continued…
I jumped over scenes, but you missed nothing. They are just people in front of a camera doing and saying nothing of consequence. In other words, it’s like watching The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 (2014). The Bridge is the classic tale of a writer who took a bunch of romance cliches, arranged them into a religious allegory, Hallmark saw what they thought was a gold mine, threw as little money as possible at it, delivered a movie where nothing happens or is resolved, told people they’d have to wait a year for the conclusion, and then were told that was unacceptable by their audience so they aired part two a few a months later. I haven’t read the book, but to give Kingsbury the benefit of the doubt, I would be pissed to see my work turned into this if I were her.
I’ve only glanced at the plot summary for part two, but I’m guessing her stillborn pregnancy isn’t water under The Bridge. It will reappear as a literal storm that destroys the bookstore. Charlie will die in the comfort of his religion and with her side at his side. Donna will come to the Church. The movie will still think we actually care about the two young actor’s story who are there just to have a happy ending contrast to the patchwork life led by Donna and Charlie. Finally, Ryan and Molly will have a kid that will be the grandchild Donna never had after she and Charlie largely adopted Ryan and Molly in their own way. At least that’s what I am expecting.
I have to watch part two at this point, but you don’t have to watch either of them.
Sure looks like the same place from On the Twelfth Day of Christmas and Murder, She Baked: A Plum Pudding Mystery. It may be the same place as in those movies, but I’m not sure. This is North Bay, Ontario you are looking, which is where the film was shot. That’s a step up here since last time they put the title card over a shot of Littleton, New Hampshire.
It looks like these Flower Shop Mystery movies are a thing now. I don’t mind. Especially not when they are written by good old Gary Goldstein. It seems you can always count on a Hallmark film written by Goldstein to have something odd in it. I would love to know if these things are in his scripts and if he does it on purpose, or if it is just a strange coincidence. Regardless, this one is no exception.
The Chicago Cafe has still been changed to the Chicago Bar. Although, you will see Marco (Brennan Elliott) walk around the kitchen of his “bar” carrying groceries. Not sure what that was about. Art On Main has also still been changed to Bloomers Flower Shop via a tarp. It looks fine on her shop, but I don’t get why they bothered with his place. Also, if you go to Google Maps, then you’ll find a Asian character next to the word “Chicago”. I’m guessing that was photoshopped out or the place changed between July 2015 and when they made this. That’s possible seeing as it changed drastically between September 2013 and 2015 according to photos on Google Maps. I lean towards photoshopping because of a scene later, but let’s move on and talk about the movie now.
The movie begins and we get three for the price of one with this screenshot.
First, Abby Knight (Brooke Shields) has been sent money anonymously to deliver black roses to someone. Second, Abby’s assistant Nikki Bender (Kate Drummond) was just reminded she truly works for a nutcase. Turns out Abby already compared the handwriting to signatures on old receipts. She also said she couldn’t get DNA off the envelope flap because it is self-adhesive. That is Nikki’s reaction. That was me when I saw a shot later in this film. Finally, they put the two prominent actors from Degrassi in the same cast listing. But that’s not all!
That’s right! Someone involved with these movies realized they accidentally called it Mills College in the first film. They make sure you know they fixed it. Yes, the plot does revolve around the college, but they show that name a lot. They also have a scene where the news gets the name of the flower shop wrong and they repeatedly yell at the screen to correct them.
We find out that the black roses are for a Bruce Barnes (Daniel Kash) who happens to be the pre-law professor for Abby’s daughter Sydney (Celeste Desjardins). Abby is apparently terrified of him. We also find out that Kenny (Ricardo Hoyos), her TA, is the only thing keeping her in the class. It is pretty cool when your TA is Zig Novak from Degrassi.
Marco now comes in to remind us he still exists. Normally that would be me trying to be funny and cynical, but he seriously only gets in a couple of words before Abby is off and running to the college. Abby runs into an old lawyer friend of hers who teaches at the college. I think this screenshot sums up how much she likes him.
They had some bad experiences in the past. Abby does bring up that up that he “dated and dumped half of [her] friends.” However, I don’t think it helps when one of your answers to that is “I showed every one of your girlfriends a great time, and I would’ve shown you the same, if you’d ever given me a chance.” So, it was all but her that he went out with rather than just half, and he would have shown all of them a “great time.” Good work, pal! No seriously, good job! You made sure no one will care when you are dead. A case they both once worked on that he won is also brought up here to give us information for the ending of the movie.
After talking with her daughter so Sydney can setup a red herring by telling us the guy getting the black roses has famous black pencils, she goes to his office. But first, we have to pass by his secretary to introduce her character and find out there is some obvious friction between her and the professor.
He likes black pencils, is being delivered black roses, and has a black secretary. I totally didn’t spot that while watching the movie. Then we meet Bruce. She winds up calling him a “tool” to Marco, but this site isn’t Hallmark. His character is an asshole. Plain and simple. That’s all you really need to know about him. This is just another setup for Abby to become the prime suspect in the murder that is about to happen. This happens because Abby doesn’t put up with assholes. She decides to turn around outside and go right back to his office after having initially left the building.
Actor Jeff Teravainen has part of a black pencil glued to his chest and isn’t moving. He’s dead. That’s when Abby runs out to get help and I realize just how obvious this film tried to make who the killer is so I’m skipping this part. All you need to know is that no one but Abby was in their with the body. I love how they have Brooke refer to the black roses as “theme roses.” It’s too bad he doesn’t ask what theme. This whole bit is the equivalent of an old murder mystery movie where the detective says the killer is somewhere in this room so nobody leave the house.
She returns to the shop where Marco and Abby have a little back and forth about Abby keeping a “low profile.” Then we find out that this must be the official news station of Hallmark movies…
Then we meet Connor McKay of the Illinois-Eagle Times.
Pat Mastroianni can call himself whatever he wants in this movie, but he will always be…
Degrassi Junior High
in my heart. By the way, between him and actor Ricardo Koyos, that means we have an actor from the first episode of Degrassi-discounting The Kids of Degrassi Street-and an actor from the most recent episode of Degrassi in the same movie together. That’s awesome! Sadly, he’s barely in the movie. Maybe he’ll be a recurring character seeing as the press is bound to keep popping up in these movies.
Now it’s time to vent to Beau Bridges, which also reminds us he exists because he’s gone as fast as Marco. This is followed by another fly over of the actual place they filmed this in. I can’t tell you how refreshing this is after that last few Hallmark movies I watched that pieced together stock footage from all over the place. Along those lines, I give them credit for this too.
Often when a Hallmark movie shows a newspaper or an article online then they just use someone else’s writing. Sometimes they slightly modify it. The first film did it. That’s probably here as well, but they made sure to put this wrapping on it so that I wasn’t able to notice. Good work!
The detective comes in to remind us that Abby had knocked over pencils in the professor’s office earlier so that her fingerprints would be on the one that killed the guy. With his lines done, actor Paulino Nunes makes his exit. He has to get back to beating out other actors for having the highest number of acting credits in a lifetime. He’s a busy man.
Now the suspects board comes out.
I hope you like that board because you will be looking at it and listening to a lot of conversations around it during this movie. Explaining all the info dropped at this board would be really boring. So, let’s laugh at this lady’s shocked look on her face when she sees Abby, who is now famous as a potential murderer, walking on the street.
On the upside for Abby, business has picked up since she has become a prime suspect in a murder. People all want those black “revenge roses”. Nikki says they are “for bad occasions. Arguments, divorces, breakups, just to say ‘I hate you’.” That part is immediately followed by a scene with the detective where Brooke Shields does this after venting about the dead man, which included calling him a “womanizer”.
After Marco and Abby talk to each other, they go on a stakeout like they did in the first movie. This time it’s of the dead guy’s funeral on the ground floor of a building with windows. Marco heads in to scope things out while Abby uses her binoculars. Joey Jeremiah stops by her car to remind us he is still in the movie before leaving again. In here Marco gets in a conversation with the dead guy’s wife so I can be proven wrong part way through writing this review. Turns out it’s “Chicago Bar and Grill”. He even calls it a restaurant. This only leaves me more confused. We can clearly see neighboring businesses have their real names. Well, they did seem to remove where it says “Lingerie & Luxuries” on Cintra May’s, which is next door to his Bar and Grill, but still. I guess they thought it would constitute official endorsement, or maybe that’s what it was called in the book. I don’t know.
We are also reminded that Barnes is a jerk to his secretary. Kenny also shows up to the funeral to again remind us he is in the movie still. I really think this movie wanted you to constantly think that it had to be one of the actors from Degrassi since they are kind of on the periphery of all the action. Heck, Joey is actually seen in the background looking in Abby’s flower shop in the dark at one point. We also learn that Kenny was real friendly with a guy who was involved in a case awhile back.
Board time!
Abby goes and talks with Kenny who mentions some internship that the dead guy supposedly secured him. He also mentions that the dead guy had just split up with a woman so that we suspect the secretary.
This is when Kelly Taylor popped up to tell me it’s time to dance.
I will not! I looked through a bunch of episodes of Beverly Hills, 90210 to find an onscreen writing credit for Gary Goldstein to include here, but failed. I’m not happy. Help me, Beau!
Yeah, but I’m not supposed to eat ice cream anymore. However, we’ve now reached the point where you have the setup of this film. I could take you through the rest, but it would be me regurgitating their mulling over the board and getting information to add to that board by talking to people. It’s as boring as it sounds.
My final thoughts are these. They dropped the extra guy who was in the first one. That’s a plus. Another plus is that they didn’t have to do any setup so we could cut right to Marco and Abby solving a mystery. However, I swear I remember more snappy screwball comedy back and forth between them in the first film, and it just isn’t here. Luckily, we do have another one of these films coming in June. Gary seemed to try to improve between the first and second, so maybe the third one will bring in more of that kind of dialogue. Also, the board thing really gets annoying. It didn’t help to organize the facts, but seemed to just confuse me more. Maybe that was the intention. Regardless, I can’t recommend this one even if it did have Pat Mastroianni in it who I really hope will be playing a recurring character.
Now, if you want to know who did it, then scroll past this picture of another fine moment of Joey Jeremiah from Degrassi Junior High. This was back when he was probably small enough that Brooke Shields could have easily broken him in half. He’s really tiny in that first episode.
There are no songs to include this time so you can stop here.
Okay, here you go. Kenny did it. He had worked on a case with the guy who was killed. A case Abby was on back when she worked as a lawyer. He wasn’t given the credit for his work. Kenny wanted to get away from his father. His father bribed the dead guy to not give Kenny a clerkship far away since he wanted him to take over the family business. Kenny saw an opportunity to kill the professor and blame it on Abby. He made sure to do it before the dead professor sent out any of the letters about the job. That way he could arrange to get it himself. Thus, he would escape his father.
Not too satisfying of an ending. Not too satisfying of a mystery. Not too satisfying of a movie. Skip this one.
Through the Shattered Lens 