Retro Television Review: Juvenile Court 1.1 “Pilot”

Posted on August 27, 2026 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! This Thursday, I will be reviewing Juvenile Court, which aired its only episode in syndication in 1958. The show can be found on YouTube!

Episode 1.1 “Pilot”

(Dir by Ralph Nelson, originally aired on September 1st, 1958)

Fifteen-year-old Raymond Pearson (Lee Kinsolving) has been charged with trying to steal a car and almost beating the car’s owner to death. Now he sits in a courtroom with his stepparents and sullenly listens as Commissioner Robert Dortman (Ken Lynch) questions his family and his squirmy accomplice, Charlie Wiggins (Tommy Cook). Dortman’s questions eventually reveal that Raymond’s crimes are linked to his conflicted feelings about his biological father, who wants nothing to do with him. Though Dortman has sympathy for Raymond, he still has to sentence him to juvenile hall. His stepfather promises to support Raymond as best he can.

The key to understanding Juvenile Court is a title card at the start that thanks the Los Angeles Juvenile Courts for their assistance. The pilot is a no-frills courtroom drama that takes place in one location and is essentially just a guy asking questions and then listening to the answers. One can understand why it didn’t become a series: while the actors are all good and believable, the episode’s style is extremely dry.

The interesting thing about this episode is the way it mixes the approaches of both the Left and the Right when it comes to examining Raymond’s crimes. The liberal will look at this show and say, “Raymond became a criminal because he never had a chance to be anything else, not with his father and his insecurities.” The conservative will look at it and say, “Raymond nearly beat a man to death. That’s all that matters.” The show says, “You’re both right!” We learn about Raymond’s sad background, but we also watch as Raymond is sentenced to confinement.

This show reminded me a bit of Decoy, the Beverly Garland cop show that I recently finished reviewing. They’re both from the late ’50s, and they both attempted to capture the feel of a documentary. Just as Decoy’s Casey Jones often had to arrest people who weren’t entirely evil, the commissioner has to send Raymond to juvie despite understanding what led Raymond to commit his criminal acts.

Seen today, Juvenile Court is the type of thing that appeals largely to history nerds like me. There’s not much drama, but it’s still interesting to see what the world was like nearly 70 years ago.

Brad reviews Samuel Fuller’s RUN OF THE ARROW (1957), starring Rod Steiger and Charles Bronson!

Posted on August 12, 2026 by Bradley Crain

RUN OF THE ARROW opens with confederate sharpshooter O’Meara (Rod Steiger) shooting the final shot of the Civil War. With no war to fight and with a heart full of hate for the Yankees, O’Meara declares himself to be a man without a country and heads west. When he’s captured by a band of Sioux warriors led by Crazy Wolf (H.M. Wynant), he invokes the “run of the arrow”, a ritualistic game that could save his life. The problem… no one has ever survived the run of the arrow, but today’s his lucky day as he’s wounded but survives just long enough to be saved by the beautiful Yellow Moccasin (Sarita Montiel). She nurses him back to health and presents him to her tribal chief, Blue Buffalo (Charles Bronson), who eventually allows O’Meara and Yellow Moccasin to get married. Things seem to be going so well, too well. When Crazy Wolf starts another violent campaign against the American army, O’Meara must decide if he’s a Sioux warrior willing to kill American soldiers, or if there’s a part of him that can still love his country?

In RUN OF THE ARROW, director Samuel Fuller made a movie about the damage that occurs when human beings allow their hearts to be so filled with hate that they quit caring about other people. It’s also about what happens when those same people run into rational people, and we find out if they’re capable of considering the possibility that their own hate has blinded them from the truth. In other words, it’s a film that’s possibly more relevant today than it was when it was made in 1957. Bitterness and hate are represented by the characters of O’Meara (Steiger), Crazy Wolf (Wynant), and Lieutenant Driscoll (Ralph Meeker). O’Meara hates Yankees, Crazy Wolf hates the white man, and Driscoll hates the Indians. The rational people are the characters of Yellow Moccasin (Montiel), Blue Buffalo (Bronson), and Captain Clark (Brian Keith). Yellow Moccasin saves O’Meara when everyone else would have just let him die. Blue Buffalo engages in honest conversation with O’Meara and even welcomes him into their tribe. Captain Clark shows O’Meara an empathetic ear and kindness when others have told him to just get over himself. The actions and fates of the characters play out against this dynamic of hatred versus humanity, with the results underscoring just how tragic it is when people focus on the things that separate us rather than the things that unite us. It’s all so unnecessary, but it’s also a realistic vision of the world we live in. The film also struck me as particularly violent for a 50’s western, which also underscores that reality.

Some of the performances are very effective in the film. Rod Steiger’s Irish, confederate Sioux is an interesting character and the actor gives it his all as you’d expect. I’m a big fan of Steiger and his performance here only solidifies my respect for him. Brian Keith’s Captain Clark arrives fairly late in the proceedings and comes across as a tough, but honest man of integrity at a point when the movie really needs him. He has an excellent scene with Steiger where he debates the old confederate’s reasons for renouncing his citizenship with both sound logic, empathy, kindness and a hint of likable sarcasm all at the same time. It’s one of the best scenes in the film. And likewise, Charles Bronson, the most buff Hollywood Indian to ever strip down to a loincloth, comes across as a reasonable and kind tribal chief in his dealings. Bronson had played American Indians before, but he was usually more of the renegade, warpath variety, so it was nice seeing him as a good guy here. H.M. Wynant took the renegade Sioux warrior role here which you might have expected for Bronson at the time. He’s suitably fierce but one-dimensional. The same can be said for Ralph Meeker as Lieutenant Driscoll. He’s pretty much just a stereotypical jerk. He’s good at being a jerk though! And Sarita Montiel, voiced by Angie Dickinson, is quite the beauty as Yellow Moccasin.

I’ve recently heard RUN OF THE ARROW compared to Kevin Costner’s DANCES WITH WOLVES, and there are definitely similarities. I won’t go into all of those here, but one of the things I appreciated the most about RUN OF THE ARROW is the fact that the movie makes its feelings known about politics. In a movie filled with characters who have had their lives upended by the various decisions of political leaders, Fuller has crafted a story that focuses most sharply on defining the quality of men based on what’s in their “hearts.” When it’s all said and done, oftentimes the only control we have is the way we respond to the events in our lives, and that’s not politics, it’s personal. To drive this home, an older scout named Walking Coyote tells O’Meara that he could have been a chief if he had wanted to be. When O’Meara pushes him on why he didn’t want the position, Walking Coyote responds with, “Because I hate politics!” On that point, I couldn’t agree more.

Guilty Pleasure #86: The Horror at 37,000 Feet (dir by David Lowell Rich)

Posted on October 9, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I imagine that it should go without saying that, if you’re on an airplane and you’re flying high above the ground, the last thing that you want to deal with is a bunch of angry ghost druids.

And yet, that’s exactly what happens in this made-for-TV horror film from 1973.

The ghost druids are upset because two architects (played by Roy Thinnes and Jane Merrow) have traveled to England, specifically so that they can supervise the deconstruction of ancient druid altar. Now, they’re flying the pieces of the altar back over the ocean so that the altar can be reconstructed in the United States. The spirits of the ancient druids aren’t happy about being moved so they start doing everything they can to make the journey difficult.

First, they attempt to freeze the plane. When that doesn’t work, they decide to rip it in half. One of the passengers, Mrs. Pinder (Tammy Grimes), suggests that maybe the druids will settle down if they’re offered a sacrifice. When the druids reject an offer of a doll, the passengers start to wonder if maybe the spirits would be happier with a human sacrifice.

Although some of the passengers are reluctant to buy into the whole sacrifice thing, a few of them do start to come around. For instance, there’s a perpetually angry businessman who is played by Buddy Ebsen. Once he realizes that the druids aren’t going anywhere, he has no problem with the idea of a human sacrifice. There’s also a cowboy played by Will Hutchins. If sacrificing a human is what he has to do to have another chance to ride the range, that’s what he’s going to do. Paul Winfield plays a distinguished doctor who tries to keep everyone calm while Chuck Connors is stuck in the cockpit, trying to keep the plane in the air while his passengers and crew debate the ethics of human sacrifice.

And then there’s William Shatner.

Shatner plays a former priest who has lost his faith. From the minute he gets on the plane, he starts drinking and he doesn’t stop for almost the entire movie. It doesn’t matter what’s happening on the plane, Shatner always has a glass in his hand. Playing a character who never has anything positive to say, Shatner smirks through the entire film. Shatner delivers all of his lines in his standard halfting and overdramatic fashion and it’s something of a wonder to behold. Shatner has said that The Horror At 37,000 Feet may be the worst movie in which he ever appeared and just one look at his filmography will show why this is such a bold statement.

The Horror at 37,000 Feet is definitely a film of its time. The plane comes complete with a swinging cocktail lounge, William Shatner wears a turtle neck, and all of the flight attendants wear boots and miniskirts. Everything about this film screams 1973. It’s an incredibly silly but undeniably fun movie. With a running time of only 73 minutes, the pace is fast and the druids don’t waste any time getting down to business. The film’s on YouTube so check it out the next time you’ve an hour and 13 minutes to kill.

Previous Guilty Pleasures

Icarus File No. 24: Express to Terror (dir by Dan Curtis)

Posted on October 1, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The year was 1979 and Fred Silverman, the president of NBC, had an idea.

How about a television series in which each week’s episode would depict a different group of passengers going on a trip? The passengers would all be dealing with their own stories, some of which would be dramatic and some of which would be humorous. With any luck, some of them might even fall in love over the course of their journey!

To keep the audience interested, the show would also feature a cast of regular characters, the crew. Edward Andrews would play the captain, a sensible and by-the-book type. Robert Alda played Doc, the doctor who was also a bon vivant. Patrick Collins was the goofy purser. Nita Talbot played Rose, the perky director of entertainment. Michael DeLano was the bartender who always had the best advice for the passengers….

Does this sound familiar?

If you think that it sounds like Fred Silverman just ripped off The Love Boat …. well, you’re wrong. The Love Boat took place on a boat. Supertrain took place on a train.

At the time that Supertrain went into production, it was the most expensive television production of all time. Before the pilot film was even shot, NBC had spent ten million dollars on the Supertrain sets. Not only was a fake train built but two models were also constructed for the shots of the train moving through the countryside. At the time, the assumption was that the costs would be easily covered by the money that NBC stood to make from broadcasting the 1980 Summer Olympics. Unfortunately, Jimmy Carter decided that the U.S. would be boycotting the Olympics as a way to protest Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan. The only thing that kept NBC from going bankrupt was that the BBC was apparently run by someone even more incompetent than Fred Silverman. The BBC paid $25,oo per episode for the rights to air Supertrain in the UK. Supertrain proved to be such a disaster that the BBC never actually aired the episodes that they had purchased.

1979’s Express to Terror was the pilot to Supertrain. (It was later released in some territories as a stand-alone film.) Directed by horror impresario Dan Curtis (who was also brought in to produce the series), Express to Terror opens with an apparently drunk Keenan Wynn playing the role of railway baron Winfield Root. Winfield loudly announces to a group of nervous investors that he has created ” an atom-powered steam turbine machine capable of crossing this country in 36 hours!” A few months later, Supertrain sets off from New York to Los Angeles.

The main thing that one notices about the train is that it’s incredibly tacky. For all the money that Winfield Root (not to mention NBC) poured into the thing, it looks awful. The cabins are bland and also seem to be constantly shaking as the train rumbles over its tracks. Whereas The Love Boat featured glorious shots of passengers enjoying themselves on an open-air deck, Express to Terror features a lot of shots of passengers trying to squeeze their way through narrow and crowded hallways. There’s a disco car, which sounds like fun but actually looks like a prom being held in a locker room. There’s a swimming pool but you can’t really lay out by it because it’s on a train. Winfield is among the passengers and he continually refers to the train as being “Supertrain” in conversation, which just sounds dumb. “The next person who stops Supertrain,” he announces “will be walking to L.A!”

The main drama features Steve Lawrence as Mike Post, a Hollywood agent with a gambling problem who thinks that someone on the train is trying to kill him. Actually, the assassin is after a different Mike Post (Don Stroud) but that Mike Post is a criminal who, after entering the witness protection program, changed his name to Jack Fisk. The criminal Post is hoping that the agent Post will be killed by mistake. The criminal Mike Post has a girlfriend named Cindy (Char Fontane) who falls in love with the agent Mike Post. Fred Williamson appears as a football player-turned-assassin. George Hamilton plays a Hollywood executive. Don Meredith is the alcoholic best friend of the agent Mike Post. Stella Stevens is on the train as a diva. So is Vicki Lawrence, playing a naive innocent.

Express to Terror tries to mix comedy and drama but it doesn’t really work because the “Good” Mike Post doesn’t really seem to be worth all the trouble. Steve Lawrence gives a mind-numbingly bad performance in the role and, as a result, “Good” Mike Post really isn’t any more sympathetic than “Bad” Mike Post. The main problem is that “Good” Mike Post comes across as being a coward and there’s only so much time that you can watch a coward act cowardly before you lose sympathy for him. Being scared is one thing. Being so dumb that accidentally gets your fingerprints on a knife that’s just been used to kill a man is another thing.

As for the members of the crew — the captain, the doctor, the bartender, and such, they take a back seat to the drama of the two Mike Posts. It’s a bit odd because no one on the train — not even Winfield Root — seems to be that upset by the fact that one of their passengers is murdered while the train is going through a tunnel. You would think that everyone would be worried about the future of Supertrain at that point. A murder is not good for publicity but Winfield Root is oddly unconcerned about it. I swear, light rail people are almost as heartless as bicyclists!

Of course, the worst thing about Express to Terror is that it promises terror but it doesn’t deliver. When I see a the word “terror” in a film directed by Dan Curtis, I expect a little terror! Other than Steve Lawrence’s overacting, there really wasn’t anything particularly terrifying about Express to Terror.

As for Supertrain, it ran for nine episodes and was promptly canceled. Fred Silverman left NBC and spent the rest of his career as an independent producer. Supertrain’s tracks got too close to the sun and they nearly took down a network.

Previous Icarus Files:

Horror on TV: Twilight Zone 2.5 “The Howling Man”

Posted on October 18, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This is one of my favorite episode of The Twilight Zone. I originally shared it two years ago but it has subsequently been taken off of YouTube. At first, that upset me but then I realized that it gave me the perfect excuse to share it again!

In The Howling Man, American wanderer Dave Ellington (H.M. Wynant) comes across a castle. There’s a man (Robin Hughes) being held prisoner in the castle. Brother Jerome (the great John Carradine) explains that the man is the devil. The man says that Brother Jerome is crazy. Dave Ellington has to decide who to believe.

This well-acted, dream-like episode was written by Charles Beaumont and directed by Douglas Heyes. It originally aired on November 4th, 1960.

Horror on TV: Twilight Zone — “The Howling Man”

Posted on October 3, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Tonight’s offering of Horror on TV is another episode of The Twilight Zone.

In The Howling Man, H.M. Wynant plays a rational man who, during a walk across Europe, finds himself in an isolated monastery. Wynant discovers a bearded prisoner (played by Robin Hughes) who explains that he’s being held prisoner because he was caught kissing his girlfriend in public. However, Brother Jerome (played by the legendary John Carradine) claims that Hughes is the devil himself! It’s left up to Wynant whether to set the man free or to leave him imprisoned…

Written by Charles Beaumont and directed by Douglas Heyes, The Howling Man is a favorite of mine. Not only does the show establish and maintain an atmosphere of palpable menace but it also features a brilliant ending.

Enjoy The Howling Man.