For tonight’s Halloween on television, we have the story of four aliens who came to Earth on Halloween and search for candy for their planet. After an initial misunderstanding, two kids help the aliens in their search. It’s sweet!
This was directed by Savage Steve Holland of Better Off Dead fame and it originally aired on October 28th, 1991.
After screwing up a mission to save the leader of his planet from the intergalactic gangster Suitor (William Ball), Shep Ramsey (Hulk Hogan) is ordered to take a vacation. When Shep gets mad and accidentally damages the controls of his spaceship, he’s forced to hide out on Earth while his ship repairs itself. After stealing some clothes from a biker, Shep rents a room from Charlie (Christopher Lloyd) and Jenny Wilcox (Shelley Duvall). Charlie is an architect who hates his job, his boss (Larry Miller), and a malfunctioning traffic light in the middle of town. Charlie doesn’t trust Shep but when Suitor comes to Earth in search of his number one foe, Charlie and Shep are going to have to work together to save Charlie’s family.
Suburban Commando was originally envisioned as being an Arnold Schwarzenegger/Danny DeVito film. Schwarzenegger and DeVito decided to do Twins instead and Suburban Command was (eventually) made with Hulk Hogan and Christopher Lloyd. The idea behind the film had potential but the film itself never comes to life, thwarted by a low-budget and a cast that generates little in the way of chemistry. Things start out well when Hogan is in outer space and the film parodies Star Wars but, once Hogan goes on vacation, the story crashes down to Earth in more ways than one. Hogan was more of a personality than an actor and it’s impossible to see him as being anyone other than Hulk Hogan, even if he is flying through space and wearing intergalactic armor at the start of the movie. Hogan getting angry in space is funny because space is not where you would expect to find him. Hogan getting angry in the suburbs just feels like a half-baked sitcom. Lloyd is too naturally eccentric to be believable as someone trapped in a go-nowhere job. It’d hard to buy Christopher Lloyd as someone who would be scared to tell off his boss or who would need an alien warrior to come down and show him how to loosen up. There’s a lot talented people in the cast but the ensemble never really gels.
This was the last film to be directed by veteran filmmaker Burt Kennedy. Kennedy was best-known for his westerns, including Welcome to Hard Times, Support Your Local Sheriff, and Hannie Caulder. He was not known for his wacky comedies and this film shows us why.
1986 was such a fantastic year.
With movies like Top Gun, Labyrinth and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off already out, the summer would give us Big Trouble in Little China, Aliens, & The Fly (Which at one point you could catch as a double feature with Aliens). The two best announcements at home were that a new baby was on the way and Transformers: The Movie was coming out. By August, we knew the baby would be a boy and a name was already set aside for him. We were naming him after a fallen Officer who was a friend of my father’s on the Force.
Impending older brotherhood was nice, but for 11 year old me, it all took a backseat to the Death of Optimus Prime. Up until then, the most shocking fictional event we had in school was either Return of the Jedi closing the book on Star Wars some years prior, K.I.T.T. getting destroyed (and rebuilt with Super Turbo Boost) in Knight Rider, or Rico losing Angelina in a car bomb during the Season Finale of Miami Vice just a few months back.
I didn’t get a chance to see Transformers: The Movie during the film’s initial run, simply because there wasn’t anyone at home who wanted to sit through it with me. My older brother, through other means, managed to score a VHS copy of the film within the first week or so of its theatrical release. I watched and re-watched that video so many times, and would even pause it to try to draw some of the characters. Eventually, I was able to catch a re-release for the film’s 30th Anniversary.
After two full seasons of the show, Transformers: The Movie was basically Hasbro’s way of cleaning house from the 1984 Generation 1 toy line to introduce a new set. The show sold figures, and the hopes were that the film would do the same. Granted, there were already a large number of Transformers to work with by the time the movie came out. With nearly 50 Autobots and about 35 Decepticons to choose from, the film focused on a few, such as the Insecticons, Dinobots and some of the G1 favorites like Soundwave, Starscream, Jazz & Bumblebee. The Constructicons (and Devestator)were the only group set to be featured in the movie. The Stunticons & Aerialbots would sit this one out. Hasbro really didn’t care too much about the impact of any of these changes on the movie’s plot. While most of the trailers asked “Does Optimus Die?”, their toy commercial line already introduced Rodimus Prime.
Produced by De Laurentiis Entertainment Group (Near Dark, Blue Velvet), Transformers: The Movie takes us to the future of 2005. The Autobots and Decepticons are still fighting it out, with a few changes in the war. The Decepticons own the Transformers home planet of Cybertron, but the Autobots have control of two of Cybertron’s Moons and a city on Earth. Lead by Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen, Eeyore on The Adventures of Winnie the Pooh), the plan is get back to Earth and then handle the Decepticons from there. Of course, the Decepticons and their leader, Megatron (Frank Welker, The Golden Child) find out about this and intercept an Autobot shuttle, outright killing classic show staples Prowl, Brawn, Rachet and Ironhide. I can’t imagine what it was like to be a kid, bring your favorite toy to the movies, only to see the character it’s based on killed on screen. To make things worse, a planet eating transformer named Unicron threatens both parties, including Cybertron. Can Unicron be stopped?
It wasn’t a total loss. We were introduced to new Autobots in the rookie Hot Rod (Judd Nelson, The Breakfast Club), the war hero Kup (Lionel Stander, TV’s Hart to Hart), the fast talking Blurr (John Moschitta, Jr., Dick Tracy), would be leader Ultra Magnus (Robert Stack, Airplane), an Autobot First Lady in Arcee (Susan Blu), and Triple Changer Springer (Neil Ross). The two most famous vocal additions were Leonard Nimoy (Invasion of the Body Snatchers) the new Deception leader Galvatron and Orson Welles (The Third Man) as Unicron. As a kid, it was pretty awesome to know that both Spock and the “No Wine Before It’s Time” guy were joining in all of this. It made Transformers seem a bit larger. My parents would point out that Orson Welles was “the” Orson Welles, but as Citizen Kane wasn’t on my radar (despite my Dad owning and watching it), I associated him with Wine commercials. To both their credit, Nimoy and Welles did just fine with their vocal talents.
While the animation for Transformers was never fantastic, the movie was a bit of an improvement. It never quite reached the levels of anime films like Fist of the North Star & Golgo 13: The Professional. The Soundtrack was ultimately where the film shined, with a mix of rock music from bands like Lion and Stan Bush and a score by Vince DiCola. Coming off of Staying Alive and Rocky IV, DiCola’s work on Transformers: The Movie was great, and remains a go to album for me when music is needed for a situation.
The Death of Optimus Prime was a bit of a shock to the audiences that saw (and cared about) it. Hasbro would eventually bring Prime back temporarily as a Zombie in an episode of the show’s 3rd Season, and then again to lead in the season’s 2 part finale, “The Return of Optimus Prime”.
After seeing the film, I asked me parents for some of the movie based Transformers. Christmas was put on hold by my Mom as she went into labor around Christmas Eve. I was able to open just one gift before Christmas. This happened to be a Hot Rod figure that I found in a toy store back in November, which was quickly snatched and wrapped for the Christmas Pile before I could get to open it. She had my little brother on Christmas Morning, and we eventually celebrated the holiday half a week later. Bless her heart, she gave me almost the entire Movie line – Galvatron, Rodimus Prime, Springer, Cyclonus, and the Predacons (who weren’t in the movie). Playing with them took a backseat to diaper detail, but hey, that Christmas was one of the best.
Overall, Transformers: The Movie is one of those films I happily return to from time to time. It’s not incredible in any major way, but it takes me back to one element of a magical year.
Dexter Riley (Kurt Russell) is back and just in time because Medfield College is on the verge of getting closed down again.
In The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes, buying a computer was supposed to be the solution to all of Medfield’s financial problems. I guess it didn’t work because Medfield is broke again and corrupt businessman A.J. Arnoe (Cesar Romero) is planning on canceling the school’s mortgage so that he can turn it into a casino.
There is some hope. Dexter has accidentally created an invisibility spray. Not only does it tun anything that it touches invisible but it also washes away with water so there’s no risk of disappearing forever. Dexter and his friend Schuyler (Michael McGreevey) know that they can win the science fair with their invention but the science fair doesn’t want to allow small schools like Medfield to compete unless they really have something big to offer. Dexter tells the Dean (Joe Flynn) that he has a sure winner but Dexter also refuses to reveal what it is because he doesn’t want word to leak before for the science fair. The Dean decides to raise the money to pay off the mortgage by becoming a golfer, as one does. Schulyer works as the Dean’s caddy while Dexter uses the invisibility spray to help the Dean cheat. That’s a good message for a young audience, Disney! But when Arno finds out about the spray, he wants to steal it so he can rob a bank.
This was even dumber than The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes but it was also hard to dislike it. The comedy was too gentle, Kurt Russell and the rest of the cast were too likable, and the special effects were too amusingly cheap in that retro Disney way for it to matter that the movie didn’t make any sense. When a bunch of college kids learn the secret of invisibility and use it to cheat at golf, you know you’re watching a Disney film.
Medfield College has a problem. No one takes the college seriously. Maybe if the college could win the big college quiz show, people would finally stop laughing at Medfield but the students are not academically talented. Professor Quigley (William Schallert) thinks that the college needs to finally buy a new-fangled device called a computer. The Dean (Joe Flynn) says that there’s no way any college can afford something as expensive as that! Luckily, businessman and gangster A.J. Arno (Cesar Romero) is willing to donate one of his computers. It takes several students to move the computer into the lab because the computer is huge.
Medfield finally has a computer but are the students smart enough to win that quiz show? Popular jock Dexter Riley (Kurt Russell) happens to be in the lab during a freak thunderstorm. When both he and the computer get struck by lightning at the same time, it leads to Dexter becoming a human computer. He suddenly knows everything. He can speak any language and solve any equation. He can answer any question/ Whenever anyone shines a light into Dexter’s ear, they see circuit boards. No one really cares that none of this makes sense. Medfield is going to win that quiz show for sure! But first, Dexter is going to have to escape from Arno, who fears Dexter now knows all the details about his gambling ring.
Watching this Disney film was a real eye-opener for me. Computers are such a part of my everyday life that it was strange seeing a college making such a big deal about getting one. The computer that Medfield got looked more like the type of computer that NASA used to go to the moon than the ones that were in my high school computer lab. I was worried that no one seemed to care that Dexter had a circuit board in his head. Not even Dexter seemed to care. It was also funny to me that all he had to do was get struck by lightning while standing near a computer and suddenly, he knew how to speak every language and solve every problem. I use a computer everyday and I can still only speak English and Spanish. I feel like I’m getting cheated.
The whole movie was absolutely ludicrous but I did enjoy watching this movie. It was too sweet, innocent, and good-natured not to enjoy. There was nothing realistic about the movie but it was nice to imagine a world where everyone gets along, the bad guys are all too buffoonish to really be dangerous, and a serious knock on the head leads to thing returning to normal instead of permanent brain damage. Kurt Russell was only 18 when he made The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes but he could already carry a movie.
There’s a giant lizard rampaging through New York, the result of a mutation that happened as a result of being exposed to radiation. The military tries to stop the lizard but it turns out that stopping a giant lizard is not that easy. Scientists try to understand the lizard and how it came to be a destructive giant. The media breathlessly reports from the scene as two wisecracking cameramen do their best to record every second of the mayhem. The reporters call this lizard …. GODZILLA!
But is it Godzilla?
No, it’s not. Oh, it may be called Godzilla. And the movie itself may be called Godzilla. But the creature at the center of the 1998 American film Godzilla is definitely not Godzilla.
Godzilla was released with a great deal of fanfare in 1998, with commercials and toys and a lot of hype. Diddy, back when he was still calling himself Puff Daddy, recorded a song for the soundtrack and upset thousands of Led Zeppelin fans like my Dad who found themselves having to deal with kids who thought Kashmir was called Follow Me. (Diddy singing, “Follow me?” AGCK! How cringey is that!?) But, like many of the film of Roland Emmerich, it’s been almost totally forgotten in the years since.
And why not? It’s a forgettable film. It’s the epitome of an assembly-line action blockbuster, the type of thing that Roland Emmerich is known for. There’s comic relief, in the form of Hank Azaria. There’s a nerdy scientist hero in the form of Matthew Broderick. Broderick’s scientist has an ex-wife and yes, Godzilla’s invasion of New York gives them a chance to get back together. There’s a mysterious Frenchman who is played, somewhat inevitably, by Jean Reno. The Mayor of New York is a fat guy named Ebert (Michael Lerner) and he has an assistant named Gene (Lorry Goldman) and they get a lot of screentime because Emmerich wanted to make fun of two films critics who didn’t care much for his work. In fact, the Mayor and his assistant get so much screentime that it distracts from the rest of the film. Emmerich was directing a multi-million dollar reboot of a beloved franchise and he was more concerned with a petty feud.
He certainly wasn’t concerned with Godzilla. Personally, I like the giant lizard and one of the only effective moments in the film is when the lizard discovers that its children have been killed by the military. But that lizard is not Godzilla and the fact that Emmerich made a Godzilla film without Godzilla indicates that he didn’t really care about the monster or its fans. This film has no love for its source material and that’s a shame. The Godzilla films are fun! And the fact that the majority of the ones made up until the release of this film looked kind of cheap and featured a Godzilla who was obviously a man in a rubber suit only added to the fun. There’s not much fun to be found in this version of Godzilla. The movie looks great without ever making much of an impression.
And you know what? Having gotten this review out of the way, I’m ready to get back to reviewing the true Godzilla films. They may not have cost as much as Emmerich’s film but they’ve got heart.
Previous Godzilla Reviews:
Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Thursdays, I will be reviewing Highway to Heaven, which aired on NBC from 1984 to 1989. The entire show is currently streaming on Freevee and several other services!
This week, Jonathan and Mark do their bet to save the world from nuclear annihilation. Good for them!
Episode 2.20 “Summit”
(Dir by Dan Gordon, originally aired on March 5th, 1986)
Maria Malinoff (Eda Reiss Merlin), a Russian immigrant, is dying. Before she dies, she wants to see her son one last time.
The good news is that her son, Andrey Malinoff (Nehemiah Persoff), is currently in the United States. Even better, Mark and Jonathan have been assigned to let Andrey know that his mother wants to see him and to convince him to set aside his bitterness and see her.
The bad news is that Andrey is now the deputy premier of Russia and the reason why he’s in the United States is to attend a summit with the President (voiced by Frank Welker). Andrey is a communist who doesn’t believe in angels or American exceptionalism!
Mark and Jonathan are able to get jobs as waiters for the summit. (It helps that there is another angel working at Camp David.) They are even able to get Andrey away from his handlers long enough to take him to see his mother. Andrey is convinced that Jonathan and Mark are with the CIA and their whole “mission” is a trick to keep him from attending the summit. Mark dislikes Andrey because he’s a Russian and he think his country is superior to America. Jonathan dislikes Andrey because he’s abrasive and refuses, at first, to accept that Maria is his mother.
Eventually, though, Maria starts to talk about what Andrey was like as a child. Realizing that she is who she says she is, Andrey sits with his mother and talks to her until she passes away. Then, he returns to the summit a (slightly) changed man. He may still be a communist but at least now he knows the meaning of the word compassion. Mark takes a few minutes to ask Andrey and the President to work out their differences, explaining that everyone in the world is scared of nuclear war. The President, who is heard but not seen, is touched by Mark’s plea and agrees to have a long conversation about peace with Andrey.
Having apparently brought about world peace, Mark and Jonathan head off to their next assignment.
This episode — which was one of the few to be directed by neither Michael Landon nor Victor French — just felt silly, especially when compared to the strong episodes that came before it. Nehemiah Persoff does a lot of blustering in the role of Andrey but he never convinces us of the character’s emotions or his transformation. As an anti-communist, I enjoyed listening to Mark insult the Russians but otherwise, this well-meaning episode was a definite misfire.
What fresh Hell is this?
The 1989 film Return of Swamp Thing is one of the many bayou-set films that I’ve watched recently. On most streaming sites, it is listed as being a “horror film” and there’s a few horror elements to be found in the film. There’s mutants and hybrids and evil moonshiners. There’s a lot jokes that are so corny that you might get scared just from hearing them. I can accept the idea that this film is technically a part of the horror genre but the film is more of a comedy than anything else. That’s not a complaint on my part, by the way. I knew what I was getting into as soon as I saw that it was directed by Jim Wynorski. Jim Wynorski has been poking fun at himself and his films for longer than I’ve been alive.
Return of Swamp Thing is a sequel to Wes Craven’s 1982 Swamp Thing, a film that I haven’t seen but which I’ve been assured was considerably more serious than the sequel. (That’s the difference between Craven and Wynorski.) The film features Louis Jourdan as Dr. Arcane, a mad scientist who lives in a mansion in Louisiana. Dr. Arcane is obsessed with finding the secret to immortality, which he thinks lies in splicing together different strands of DNA. As a result of Arcane’s experiments, the swamp is now crawling with bizarre human/animal hybrids. The bayou is no longer a safe place but, fortunately, the bayou has a protector! Swamp Thing (Dick Durock) is a human-plant hybrid who wanders around the swamp and beats up evil doers. Swamp Thing is described as being a humanoid vegetable but he really just looks like a stuntman wearing a green costume.
Abby Arcane (Heather Locklear) is Dr. Arcane’s stepdaughter. She thinks that Arcane had something to do with her mother’s death and, of course, he did. Abby heads down to the swamp to confront Arcane but, unfortunately, it turns out that she’s in over her head when it comes to surviving in the bayou. When she’s not being chased by the weird mutant creatures, she’s having to deal with toothless moonshiners. Do you know what the worst bayou is? Bayouself! (Did I already tell that joke this month?) Fortunately, Abby is not alone for long because Swamp Thing emerges from the water and protects her. Abby quickly falls in love with Swamp Thing.
“I’m a plant,” Swamp Thing tells her.
“I’m a vegetarian,” she replies, which I guess means she’s going to cannibalize Swamp Thing after he’s no longer any use to her. Yikes! Look out, Swamp Thing!
Dr. Arcane wants to use Abby’s DNA for his experiments. Swamp Thing decides to protect Abby and the two dumbass kids who keep following him around. It’s time for a battle in the bayou!
Obviously, Wynorski does not approach this material seriously or with a hint of subtlety and that’s definitely the right approach to take. The sight of Louis Jourdan in the Louisiana bayous is so ludicrous that you have no choice but to laugh at it. That said, the film is never quite as funny as one might hope. It’s easy to imagine it working as a 30-minute pilot for a Swamp Thing sitcom but, as an 90-minute film, it quickly runs out of gas. Louis Jourdan looks bored but Dick Durock is amusingly earnest as Swamp Thing. Heather Locklear shows a flair for comedy but the box office failure of The Return of Swamp Thing pretty much ended her film career before it began.
After this, I think I’m going to avoid the swamp for a while.
In many ways, the 1997 monster film Anaconda is an incredibly dumb movie but let’s give credit where credit is for. Whoever was in charge of casting this movie managed to assemble the most unlikely group of co-stars that you would ever expect to see in a movie about a documentary crew who run into a giant snake while sailing down the Amazon River.
I mean, let’s just consider the most familiar names in the cast. Jennifer Lopez. Ice Cube. Jon Voight. Owen freakin Wilson. I mean, it’s not just that you wouldn’t expect to come across these four people all in the same movie. It’s that they all seem to come from a totally different cinematic universe. They’ve all got their own unique style of acting and seeing them all on the same small boat together is just bizarre. You’ve got Jennifer Lopez, delivering her lines with a lot of conviction but not much sincerity. And then you’ve got Ice Cube coolly looking over the Amazon and basically daring the giant snake to even think about trying to swallow him. Owen Wilson is his usual quirky self, delivering his lines in his trademark Texas stoner drawl. And then you’ve got Jon Voight.
Oh my God, Jon Voight.
Voight plays Paul Serone, a Paraguayan who says that he can help the documentary crew find an isolated Amazon tribe but who, once he gets on the boat, basically takes over and announces that he’s actually a snake hunter and he’s planning on capturing the biggest anaconda in existence. It takes a while for the snake to show up. When it finally does, it’s actually a pretty impressive throw-back to the type of cheesy by entertaining monsters that used to show up in drive-in movies back in the 50s and the 60s. But really, the biggest special effect in the movie is Jon Voight. Wisely, Voight doesn’t waste any time trying to be subtle or in anyway believable in the role of Serone. Instead, Voight gives a performance that seems to be channeling the spirit of the infamous Klaus Kinski. Voight growls, snarls, and glares as if the fate of the world depended upon it and he rips into his Paraguayan accent with all the ferocity of a character actor who understands the importance of being memorable in an otherwise forgettable movie. It’s as if Voight showed up on set and looked at what was going and then said to himself, “Well, Jon, it’s all up to you.” Serone is really a pretty vicious character. I mean, he literally strangles a character to death with his legs! But, thanks to Voight’s crazed energy he’s still the most compelling character in the movie. It’s really scary to think about what the film would have been like without Voight shaking things up. Along amongst the cast, Voight seems to understand just how silly Anaconda truly is. Voight takes a rather middling monster movie and, through sheer force of will, manages to make it at least somewhat entertaining.
Personally, I’d like to see a remake of Anaconda, one that would feature the same cast but would be directed by Werner Herzog. Just imagine if Herzog had told the story of that trip down the Amazon. Gone would be the bland dialogue and rudimentary character motivations. Instead, we’d have Jennifer Lopez slowly going insane while hundreds of monkey lay siege to the boat and Ice Cube musing on the never ending conflict between man and nature. Herzog’s Anaconda would probably be just crazy enough to keep up with Jon Voight’s performance.
So, I’m just going to be honest here.
I did watch Transformers: The Last Knight. I didn’t see it at the theaters, of course. To date, I’ve only seen one Transformers movie on the big screen. It was the fourth one and not only did I get motion sick but when I left the theater, I discovered that I was having trouble hearing. Even though I watched Transformers: The Last Knight on a small screen, I still made sure to take some Dramamine beforehand. That may have been a mistake because this movie somehow drags things out for 2 hours and 30 minutes. That’s a lot of time to spend trying to stay awake while watching something that doesn’t even try to make sense.
So, yes, I did watch Transformers: The Last Knight but I’m not really sure what I watched. I know that there was a lot of camera movement. There was a lot of stuff blowing up. Robots would fly into space. Robots would return to Earth. Robots turned into cars. All of the robots spoke in these gravelly voices and half the time, I couldn’t really understand what they were saying. Mark Wahlberg was around and he spent the entire movie with this kind of confused look on his face. His Boston accent really came out whenever he had to deliver his dialogue. One thing I’ve noticed about Wahlberg is that the less he cares about a movie, the more likely he is to go full Boston. To be honest, if I just closed my eyes and listened to Wahlberg’s accent and tuned out all of the explosions and robot talk, I probably would have thought I was watching Manchester By The Sea.
Anthony Hopkins was also in the movie, playing a character who might as well have just been named “Esteemed British Person.” It’s always fun to see Hopkins in a bad movie, just because he knows that his deserved reputation for being a great actor isn’t going to suffer no matter how much crap he appears in. He always goes through these movies with a slightly bemused smirk on his face. It’s almost as if he’s looking out at the audience and saying, “Laugh all you want. I’ll still kick anyone’s ass when it comes to Shakespeare…” Anyway, Hopkins is mostly around so that he can reveal that the Transformers have been on Earth since time began. Why, they even saved King Arthur!
The plot has to do with a powerful staff that can be used to bring life back to the Transformers’s home planet. The problem is that using the staff will also destroy all life on Earth or something like that. So, of course, the good Transformers are trying to save Earth and the bad Transformers are like, “Fuck Earth, let’s blow stuff up.” Or something like that. The main good Transformer — Optimus Prime, I guess — gets brainwashed into becoming an evil Transformer. Of course, since Anthony Hopkins is in the movie, the majority of the film takes place in England and that can only mean a trip to Stonehenge!
And…
Look, I’ve exhausted myself. I’m not going to say that Transformers: The Last Knight is a terrible movie because, obviously, someone out there loves this stuff. I mean, they’ve made five of these movies so someone has to be looking forward to them. They’re not for me, though.
Some day, I hope Micheal Bay directs a Fifty Shades of Grey movie. I look forward to watching Christian and Ana discuss consent while the world explodes behind them.
Through the Shattered Lens 