Tag Archives: George Stover

Retro Television Review: Homicide: Life On The Street 4.20 “The Wedding”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Sundays, I will be reviewing Homicide: Life On The Street, which aired from 1993 to 1999, on NBC!  It  can be viewed on Peacock.

This week …. someone’s getting married!

Episode 4.20 “The Wedding”

(Dir by Alan Taylor, originally aired on May 10th, 1996)

Kevin Lungo, a Baltimore radio host, is found dead.  The previous day, he announced on his program that he was not only in favor of abortion but he was in favor of requiring any pregnant woman with an IQ of less than 100 to have one.  Did that comment lead to him being gunned down in a parking lot?

(When this episode aired, 100 was considered to be an “average” IQ.  Now, the average IQ is considered to be 90.  That’s not a good thing.)

We never really find out.  The case is handled by Giardello and Kay and, while Kay has never heard of Lungo, it turns out that Giardello used to enjoy listening to him.  (Hopefully, Giardello disagreed with Lungo’s pro-eugenics stance.)  When the radio station offers a $5,000 reward for any tips, someone calls in and give the name of the “killer.”  When Giardello and Kay follow-up on the tip, the suspect pulls a gun and is shot dead by Giardello.

Giardello feels guilty about the shooting.  He tells that Kay that, when he was younger, he was able to shoot well-enough that he could simply wound a suspect, instead of killing him.  Making it even worse is that the dead man has an alibi.  The call was just a practical joke between friends.  “Why did you have to kill him!?” the dead man’s friend wails.

Back at the squad room, Lewis shocks everyone by announcing that he’s getting married to a woman that they’ve never heard of.  While he doesn’t invite any of his co-workers to the wedding, he does ask them to attend a reception at the Belvedere Hotel.  He tells Pembleton to order and pay for the flowers.  He asks Russert to arrange for the band and an open bar and asks if she would be willing to cover the cost.  (“Until my next paycheck,” Lewis assures her.)  Munch assumes that Lewis is lying.  Most of the squad room suspects that Lewis is lying.  But they give him the benefit of the doubt and show up for the reception.

Also going to the reception is Carrie, the very glamorous sister of Kay Howard.  Carrie is visiting from Florence and soon, both Kellerman and Bayliss are shamelessly flirting with her.  An actress named “Margaret May” is credited as playing Carrie.  Of course, Margaret May is actually Melissa Leo.

With the exception of Giardello and Kay (who are still working the Lungo murder), all of Lewis’s colleagues show up at the ballroom.  Even the crusty forensics examiner, Scheiner (Ralph Tabakin), shows up.  “Do you want to dance?” he asks Russert’s daughter.  “NO!” she replies.

But where’s Lewis?  Lewis is missing.  Was Munch right?  Pembleton, who is there with his very pregnant wife, is not amused.  As Brodie films him, Pembleton announces that he is going to kill Lewis and he will never get caught because of his experience as a homicide detective….

Fortunately, Lewis shows up before Pembleton gets his gun.  And accompanying Lewis is his new wife, Barbara Shivers (Karen Williams)!  The reception is a huge success.  The band plays.  Kellerman and Bayliss both try to hold onto Carrie’s attention.  Scheiner watches as Russert’s daughter proceeds to dance with everyone but him.  Finally, Giardello and Kay show up.  Kay warns Bayliss that Carrie is dangerous.  Bayliss asks why.  Kay says that Carrie likes to play game and she just does whatever feels good.  Bayliss looks intrigued….

Mary Pembleton’s water breaks on the dance floor as she goes into labor!  (In a nice twist, Mary Pembleton was played by Andre Braugher’s real-life wife, Ami Brabson.)  As the episode ends, even Giardello smiles.  For all the ugliness in the world, there is still hope.

I loved this episode!  Homicide’s greatest strength was its ensemble and here, everyone gets a chance to show off.  Yaphet Kotto reminds us of what an imposing actor he truly was, though my favorite Giardello moments continue to be the times when he allows himself to get amused by the absurdity of it all.  What really made this episode was for me was that, even with the wedding reception and Mary going into labor, the episode never allowed itself to be sentimental.  For most of the episode, everyone is skeptical about Lewis getting married and, having watched Meldrick Lewis for four season, I was skeptical too!  In the end, the episode earned its right to emotionally satisfying through smart storytelling and good acting.

Call Girl Of Cthulhu (2014, directed by Chris LaMartina)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

I guess it was inevitable that a movie would be made with that title.

Carter Wilcox (David Phillip Carollo) is a virgin artist who draws pictures of ancient symbols for the one-eyed Professor Edna Curwen (Helenmary Ball) and who meets and falls in love with a call girl/stripper named Riley (Melissa LaMartina).  Because Riley has got an octopus-shaped birthmark on her ass, she gets kidnapped by a cult who tries to turn her into the bride of Cthulhu.

You pretty much know what you’re going to get when it comes to this movie and it pretty much delivers.  There’s plenty of nudity, blood, juvenile humor, and references to the work of H.P. Lovecraft.  The pacing is abysmal and the acting is terrible but surprisingly, the gore was disgustingly realistic and the special effects were not awful.  The tentacled monster was probably about as convincing as it could be in a film like this.  You can tell where the most of the money in the budget went.

The actors playing Carter and Riley are forgettable and chemistry-free.  The one good performance came from Dave Gamble as the smug cult leader.  Never allow yourself to get too smug when dealing with the Great Old Ones.

The TSL’s Horror Grindhouse: Fiend (dir by Don Dohler)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1980 film, Fiend, is a movie that should be viewed by every aspiring indie filmmaker.  I’m going to tell you why in a few paragraphs but first, allow me to tell you what Fiend is.

Fiend opens with ominous music and a shot of a seemingly deserted cemetery.  While the camera tracks it’s way from headstone to headstone, we become aware of a red light that seems to be floating above the ground, as if it’s searching for something.  The light suddenly plunges into a grave.  A few seconds later, the man who was in the grave claws his way to the surface.  Just one look at him reveals that he’s been dead for quite some time.  However, you might be distracted from the facial decay by the fact that the man is glowing.

The man staggers about, eventually coming across a young woman who has been abandoned in the cemetery by her jerk of a boyfriend.  The man grabs her from behind and wraps his hands around her neck.  Briefly, the man’s glow seems to pulse and then it fades away.  The man is no longer a decaying corpse.  Now, he’s just a middle-aged guy with a huge mustache.  He looks like he should be teaching a remedial math class.

(Perhaps not coincidentally, Don Leifert, the actor playing our living corpse, actually was a teacher.)

Now calling himself Eric Longfellow, the man moves into a nice house in the suburbs and establishes himself as a music instructor.  Longfellow tends to keep to himself, which certainly makes the neighbors a bit curious about him.  Longfellow would probably be more sociable if not for the fact that, every few days or so, he starts to decay.  For that reason, he has to have a constant supply of victims so that he can suck out their life force and renew himself.  Helping him out with this issue is Dennis Frye (played by George Stover, who was apparently a civil servant when he wasn’t acting), who is kind of squirmy and owns some of the ugliest suits ever tailored.  (I assume that Dennis Frye’s name is an homage to Dwight Frye, who played Renfield in the Bela Lugosi-version of Dracula.)

Now, of course, you can only suck the life force out of so many people before people start to notice that something strange is going on.  Longfellow is unfortunate enough to live next door to Gary Kender (Richard Nelson), who is a plain-spoken, beer-drinking guy who just happens to have a mustache that’s almost as huge as Longfellow’s.  Gary doesn’t trust Longfellow so he starts to do some research on his mysterious new neighbor….

Now, here’s the thing to remember about Fiend.  It was made foe $6,000.  That would translate to about $18,000 today.  Either way, it’s a tiny budget.  And yet, it’s an effective (if occasionally goofy) little film and, more often that not, it’s effective precisely because it was shot for next to nothing.  The grainy images give the film a feeling of immediacy.  Though the majority of the murders may have happened in broad daylight because day is easier to light than night, all those daytime murders contribute to the sense of unease, the feeling that no one’s safe at any time.  Even the amateur quality of the performances contribute to the film’s overall dream-like feel.  Director Don Dohler may not have been able to afford expensive special effects or realistic gore but, as a result of that, his direction emphasizes atmosphere over jump scares.  I mean, don’t get me wrong.  This is definitely an amateur film, full of clunky dialogue and the occasional slow scene.  But so what?  Even those flaws add to the film’s nicely surreal atmosphere.

I mean, consider this.  Don Dohler made this film nearly 40 years ago and he spent less money on the entire production than most films spend during one day of shooting.  It was released in only a handful of theaters and I imagine it probably didn’t get rave reviews from the mainstream critics.  And yet, here we are, decades later, and Fiend still has a growing cult of admirers.  It’s available on YouTube and, if you do watch it, I encourage you to read the comments posted underneath the video.  Several of them are from people who either worked on the film or who knew Don Dohler and Don Leifert.  For the most part, everyone seems to have fond memories of both this film and the filmmakers.

Fiend works because, instead of surrendering to the film’s low budget, Don Dohler used it to his advantage.  There’s a lesson there for us all.

Horror on the Lens: Galaxy Invader (dir by Don Dohler)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

For today’s horror on the lens, we present the 1985 film, Galaxy Invader!  In this film, an alien that looks a lot like the Creature from the Black Lagoon crash lands in the woods of Maryland.  He soon finds himself being hunted by rednecks, students, and even more rednecks.  A much more in depth review of this little film can be found over on Ryan The Trash Film Guru’s site so let me just say that Galaxy Invader is a prime example of so-bad-that-its-good filmmaking.  This is one of those films that was made for a low budget, featured actors who were definitely not professionals, and yet, it’s so achingly sincere that you can’t help but appreciate it on some level.

Enjoy Galaxy Invader!