Tag Archives: Heather Locklear

Late Night Retro Television Review: CHiPs 4.7 “Satan’s Angels”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Mondays, I will be reviewing CHiPs, which ran on NBC from 1977 to 1983.  The entire show is currently streaming on Prime!

This week, Bonnie is taken hostage!  It’s good thing Ponch exists because you know no one else on this show is going to able to rescue her.

Episode 4.7 “Satan’s Angels”

(Dir by Phil Bondelli, originally aired on December 14th, 1980)

When confronting a group of outlaw bikers who are harrassing a teenager (Heather Locklear, in her screen debut), Bonnie is kidnapped!  Reno (John Quade) manages to snap her own handcuffs on her wrists and then drags her to a cabin owned by Stan (William Smith) and his wife (Candice Azzara).

Can the Highway Patrol find the cabin?  The cabin is in the mountains it might not be easy to locate.  It’s a good thing that Ponch and Jon just happen have those motorized hang gliders!   It’s California living to the rescue!  Needless to say, Ponch and Jon (but mostly Ponch) are able to swoop in for the rescue.

This episode didn’t do much for me but then again, episodes about hostage situations rarely do.  Once a character is taken hostage, it pretty much causes the action to slow down to a crawl.  There’s only so many times you can listen to someone being told not to even think about escaping before it gets kind of boring.  This episode did feature the great villainous character actor, William Smith.  It had that going for it.  But, otherwise, the episode itself moved very slowly and it didn’t help that Bonnie herself was required to make a lot of very stupid mistakes so that she could be kidnapped in the first place.  When a show’s storyline depends on a previous competent person suddenly being amazing incompetent, it’s an issue.

This episode’s b-plot featured Getraer’s very pregnant wife continually going the hospital, just to discover it was a false alarm.  Getraer’s wife was played Gwynne Gilford who was (and is) married to Robert Pine.  Their son, Chris Pine, was born a few months before this episode aired.

Retro Television Review: Fantasy Island 6.8 “The Kleptomaniac/Thank God I’m A Country Girl”

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 Tuesdays, I will be reviewing the original Fantasy Island, which ran on ABC from 1977 to 1984.  Unfortunately, the show has been removed from most streaming sites.  Fortunately, I’ve got nearly every episode on my DVR.

This week, we’re reminded that Fantasy Island is apparently the country music capitol of the world.

Episode 6.8 “The Kleptomaniac/Thank God I’m A Country Girl”

(Dir by Don Weis, originally aired on December 11th, 1982)

Fred Simpson (Sherman Hemsley) is a kleptomaniac.  Whenever he sees anything shiny, he hears a bong in his head, explosions occur behind his eyes, and he has to steal it.  He always returns what he steals and pays back his friends but it’s still ruining his life.  No one trusts him.  He comes to Fantasy Island looking to be cured.  Mr. Roarke assigns Tattoo to keep an eye on Fred on the Island.  Unfortunately, Fred is still driven to steal an expensive necklace from courier Emily Carlisle (Roxie Roker).  Fred and Tattoo end up in jail!  Poor Tattoo!

(Seriously, what did Roarke think would happen when he gave that assignment to Tattoo?)

Now, to be honest, I’m not sure that Fred actually got his fantasy.  He and Emily do fall in love and he leaves the Island with her but I’m not sure his kleptomania was cured.  Maybe Emily will provide whatever was missing from his life that caused him to steal.  This episode is somewhat progressive in that acknowledges that kleptomania is an uncontrollable impulse, one that is usually linked to trauma.  (After my parents got divorced, I went through a phase of regularly skipping school so I could shoplift makeup from Target.  It was probably a cry for help on my part, though it just seemed like an adrenaline rush at the time.)  Still, what happens if Fred and Emily break up?  Fred’s got a serious problem and I hate to think that he spent all that money to come to Fantasy Island just so he could go home and get tossed in prison.

Meanwhile, Loretta Wentworth (Loretta Lynn) works at the local Fantasy Island diner.  Lorraine Wentworth (Heather Locklear), the daughter that Loretta gave up for adoption years ago, is coming to the Island to meet her mother for the first time.  Loretta’s fantasy is to be rich for the weekend.  Roarke gives her a nice house and a bunch of servants.  Lorraine is impressed until her jerk of a fiancé (Ted McGinley) tries to put the moves on Loretta.  In the end, things work out, of course.  Lorraine and Loretta grow close.  Loretta and her friends board a bus and say they’re going to Nashville so that Loretta can pursue her country music career.  How is anyone going to drive from Fantasy Island to Nashville?  There’s a big old ocean in the way.

This episode really didn’t do much for me, despite the presence of Heather Locklear and Ted McGinley.  It was nice to see Tattoo get involved in someone’s fantasy and Roarke got to give a speech about the true meaning of love but neither fantasy really worked for me.  Loretta Lynn was a great singer but a very stiff actress.  This trip to the Island was not as memorable as it could have been.

Horror Film Review: The Return of Swamp Thing (dir by Jim Wynorski)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

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.

Retro Television Review: City Killer (dir by Robert Michael Lewis)

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 the made-for-television movies that used to be a primetime mainstay.  Today’s film is 1984’s City Killer.  It  can be viewed on YouTube!

Leo Kalb (Terrence Knox) has come to Chicago.  In many ways, Leo would appear to have a lot going for him.  He’s intelligent.  He’s reasonably good looking.  He served honorably in the military.  Despite his intelligence, he comes across as being a bit of an innocent in the big city.  He’s got a good job, working as an electrician.  It might not be glamorous work but there’s always something appealing about a man who knows how to work with his hands.

Unfortunately, all of those appealing qualities are negated by the fact that Leo’s a loon.  The main reason he’s come to Chicago is to stalk Andrea McKnight (Heather Locklear).  The main reason that Andrea moved to Chicago was to get away from Leo.  Like Leo, Andrea has found some success in Chicago but that’s all turned upside down when Leo calls her and says that he wants to get back together.  Andrea doesn’t want anything to do with Leo so Leo starts blowing up buildings.

That’s right, he starts blowing up buildings.  He also announces that he wants the city of Chicago to pay him an exorbitant amount of money.  He wants a helicopter to fly him to the airport.  He wants to take an airplane to South America, where his bomb-building skills will presumably be put to good use by the The Shining Path.  And he wants Andrea to come with him.  As become clear, the money and the plane are really just red herrings.  Mostly, he just wants Andrea.  The press calls him the Love Bomber.

Lt. Eckford (Gerald McRaney) is assigned to try to negotiate with Leo and also to keep an eye on Andrea.  Needless to say, Andrea takes one look at Lt. Eckford’s powerful mustache and she starts to fall in love with him.  Eckford, meanwhile, starts to fall Andrea, even though he’s a bit older than her and there’s a paternal element to the way that he talks to her that just makes the whole thing feel kind of icky.  (That said, if a mad bomber is blowing up the city just because you won’t date him, it’s perhaps understandable that you would fall for the first person who could not only provide protection but who also didn’t try to make you feel guilty about what was going on.)  Leo senses that Andrea and Eckford are falling in love and he becomes determined to blow up even more stuff.

City Killer is a bit of ridiculous film.  The main problem is that the viewer is asked to believe that, even though Leo is the most wanted man in Chicago and is dominating all the headlines, he could still safely wander around the city and wire building to explode without anyone noticing.  The film presents itself as being a police procedural but one gets the feeling that police must be incredibly incompetent for Leo to successfully blow up so many buildings.  That said, Gerald McRaney is a properly sturdy hero and Terrence Knox is convincingly unhinged as Leo, begging Andrea to love him even while threatening to blow up the very building on which she’s standing.  Heather Locklear doesn’t got to do much, other than answer the phone and look upset whenever a building explodes, but she does it well.  As a veteran TV actress, she knew how to embrace the melodrama and, when you’re appearing in a film like City Killer, that’s the best thing you can do.

Body Language (1992, directed by Arthur Allen Seidelman)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Betsy (Heather Locklear) is a workaholic executive who has finally gotten the prize promotion at the Orpheus Capital Corporation.  Along with her new office, Betsy also gets a new assistant but when that assistant mysteriously disappears, she is replaced by Norma (Linda Purl).  Norma is just as ambitious as Betsy but she just can’t seem to make her way up the corporate ladder, no matter how hard she tries.  Norma soon grows indispensable to Betsy, comforting her when she breaks up with her boyfriend (James Acheson) and also supporting her when Betsy refuses to sleep with her sexist new boss (Edward Albert).  Before you can say “Single White Female,” Norma is dressing like Betsy, talking like Betsy, dating Betsy’s ex, and trying to take over Betsy’s life.  When Betsy eventually catches on, she discovers just how far Norma will go to be her.

It is easy to compare this film to Single White Female, though Body Language actually aired on the USA Network two months before Single White Female was released.  The main difference between the two films is that Single White Female was an R-rated theatrical release whereas Body Language is unmistakably a television production.  That means no bad language, no nudity, no graphic violence, only a little sex, and not a hint of psychological nuance beyond Norma being the type of girl who snuffs out candles with her fingers.  Single White Female‘s main strength was the effort that Jennifer Jason Leigh went to make her unstable stalker into a believable character who had more motivation than just being crazy.  The script for Body Language is less concerned with why Norma does what she does.  Betsy is glamorous and successful.  Norma is neither of those things and, in this film’s view of things, that is more than enough motivation for her to try to take over Betsy’s life.

Still, the underrated Linda Purl does the best that she can with the role of Norma and she has a few good moments where Norma lets the mask slip and reveals how unstable she actually is.  Heather Locklear matches her as the workaholic who learns that climbing the corporate ladder can be murder and she shows why she was so often cast in films like in-between appearing on shows like T.J. Hooker, Dynasty, and Melrose Place.  If you grew up in the 90s, it’s hard to watch any old Heather Locklear tv movie without feeling nostalgic.

Horror Film Review: Firestarter (dir by Mark L. Lester)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Adapted from Stephen King novel, 1984’s Firestarter is a film about a girl with a very special power.

Back in the day, a bunch of college students needed weed money so they took part in a government experiment.  Half of them were told that they were being given a placebo.  The other half were told that we would be given a low-grade hallucinogen.

Surprise!  The government lied!  It turns out that everyone was given the experimental drug!  Some of the students ended up going crazy.  One unfortunate hippie clawed his eyes out.  Meanwhile, Vicky (Heather Locklear) gained the ability to read minds.  She also fell in love with Andy McGee (David Keith), a goofy fellow who gained the ability to mentally control people’s actions.  They married and had a daughter named Charlie (played by a very young Drew Barrymore).  Charlie, it turns out, can set things on fire!  She’s a firestarter!

Well, of course, the government can’t just leave the McGees out there, controlling minds and setting things on fire.  Soon, the McGees are being pursued by the standard collection of men in dark suits.  Vicky is killed off-screen, leaving Charlie and Andy to try to find some place where they’ll be safe.

Good luck with that!  This is the government that we’re talking about.  The thing with films like this is that the government can do practically anything but it never occurs to them to not all dress in dark suits.  I mean, it just seems like it would be easier for all of these secret agents to operate if they weren’t automatically identifiable as being secret agents.  Anyway, Andy and Charlie are eventually captured and taken to The Farm, a really nice country estate where Andy and Charlie are kept separate from each other and everyone keeps talking about national security.

Running the Farm is Capt. Hollister and we know that he’s a bad guy because he wears a suit and he’s played by Martin Sheen.  Working with Hollister is John Rainbird (George C. Scott), a CIA assassin who kills people with a karate chop across the nose.  When Charlie refuses to show off her firemaking abilities unless she’s allowed to talk to her father, Rainbird disguises himself as a custodial engineer and proceeds to befriend Charlie.  Of course, Rainbird’s plan is to kill Charlie once she’s displayed the extent of her powers….

Stephen King has written that he considers this film to be one of the worst adaptations of one of his novels but, to be honest, I think the movie is actually a bit of an improvement on the source material.  Firestarter is probably the least interesting of Stephen King’s early novels.  Supposedly, Charlie was based on King’s youngest daughter and, reading the book, it’s obvious that everyone’s fear of Charlie is mostly a metaphor for a father trying to figure out how to raise a daughter.  Unfortunately, instead of concentrating on those primal fears, the book gets bogged down in boomer paranoia about MK-ULTRA experiments.

The movie, however, is just silly enough to be kind of charming.  For example, consider the way that Andy grabs his forehead and bugs out his eyes whenever he uses his powers.  Andy’s powers may be slowly killing him but he just looks so goofy whenever he uses them that you just can’t help but be entertained.  And then you’ve got Drew Barrymore sobbing while setting people on fire and George C. Scott growling through all of his dialogue and even Martin Sheen gets a scene where he gets excited and starts jumping up and down.  (And don’t even get me started on Art Carney and Louise Fletcher as the salt-of-the-Earth farmers who try to protect Andy and Charlie….)  Some of the special effects are a bit hokey, as you might expect from a film made in 1984 but occasionally, there’s a good shot of something (or someone) burning up.  It’s all so over-the-top and relentlessly dumb that you can’t help but be entertained.  You can even forgive the fact that basically nothing happens between the first 10 and the last 15 minutes of the movie.

Firestarter‘s silly but I liked it.

Confessions of a TV Addict #7: TJ HOOKER and His Amazing Hair Helmet!

Posted on by gary loggins

gary loggins's avatarcracked rear viewer

TV Cop Shows ran rampant during the 1980’s. There were gritty street cops, female cops, Dirty Harry-inspired cops, MTV cops, debonair cops, teenage cops, and every other permutation you could think of, short of outer space cops. But for Cops With The Best Hair, it has to be… no, not CHARLIE’S ANGELS, but TJ HOOKER!

TJ HOOKER starred William Shatner (which kind of makes this a semi-outer space cop show, no?) as Hooker, a veteran on the LCPD (standing in for Los Angeles) who serves as mentor to the younger cops. Shatner, who by this time was, shall we say, follically challenged, wore a perm-coiffed toupee which never got mussed no matter how many times he ran down bad guys, got in hellacious fights, or got it tousled by his latest love interest:

As Warren Zevon would say, “His hair was perfect”!

Also with perfect hair was costar Adrian Zmed…

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Lisa Cleans Out Her DVR: Illusions (dir by Victor Kulle)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

(Lisa is currently cleaning out her DVR.  It’s taking forever and she’s loving every minute of it.  This is almost as fun as a Degrassi marathon.  Lisa recorded the 1992 psychological thriller, Illusions, off of Indieplex on March 1st.)

Illusions gets off to a pretty good start.  In a blue-tinted room, a man and a woman make out, with the whispered dialogue suggesting that they’re doing something that they’ve specifically been told not to do.  The woman is worried when an older woman opens the door but the man assures her that the older woman can’t see.  Soon, the film is switching back and forth, from the forbidden lovers to the old woman chopping up a huge chunk of meat.  The opening reminded me of the classic Italian horror film, Beyond The Darkness.

It’s an enjoyably surreal scene, one of many to be found in Illusions.  When we first meet Jan Sanderson (Heather Locklear), she’s waking up from a nightmare.  She’s in a hospital, recovering from some sort of earlier breakdown.  Her doctor (Susannah York) doesn’t think that Jan is ready to leave the hospital but Jan disagrees.  Jan can’t wait to rejoin her husband.

Her husband is Greg Sanderson (Robert Carradine), an archeologist who is currently working at a dig and who doesn’t appear to have much in common with Indiana Jones.  When Jan leaves the hospital, she moves into a house near the dig, one that Greg is renting.  As soon as Jan moves into the house, strange things start to happen.

For instance, she meets the caretaker, George (Ned Beatty).  George is an alcoholic, one who has recently been abandoned by his wife and his children.  According to Greg, George has a skill for telling scary stories.  For instance, there’s the one that he tells Jan about a murder that occurred in the house years ago.  Maybe George isn’t exactly the guy you want to have talking to someone who is recovering from a nervous breakdown?

However, before Jan can spend too much time getting freaked out about George, something else happens.  Greg’s sister arrives.  From the minute that Laura (Emma Samms) arrives, it’s obvious that she and Jan don’t like each other.  That Jan is nervous around her sister-in-law is understandable.  I love my future sister-in-law and I still spend hours worrying about whether or not she thinks I’m as cool as I think I am.  What’s strange is that Laura seems to view Jan as almost being a romantic rival.  From the minute that Laura arrives, she and Greg are whispering to each other and sharing flirtatious jokes.

(The fact that Greg and Laura were the couple in the film’s opening scene certainly doesn’t do anything to make them any less creepy.)

Jan finds herself suspecting that Laura may be conspiring against her.  When she orders Greg to tell his sister to go home, Greg says that he will.  When Jan wakes up the next morning, Laura’s gone.  Greg says that he kicked her out.  But Jan is haunted by a nightmare in which she murdered her sister-in-law and Greg helped to cover it up…

WHAT’S GOING ON!?

Well, you probably already know.  You’ve seen Gaslight, right?  You’ve seen Diabolique.  Maybe you’ve even seen a few Lifetime films.  You know how this stuff works.  Illusions is not exactly a surprising film and the movie itself occasionally feels disjointed.  The use of body doubles during the nude scenes is jarringly obvious and Jan’s narration was supplied by an actress who clearly wasn’t Heather Locklear.  Locklear, Beatty, and Samms all gave good performances but Robert Carradine was oddly cast.  His presence in the film made me think of Illusions as being Sam McGuire: The Early Years.

And yet, I still kinda liked Illusions.  It’s got just enough weird dream sequences for me to enjoy it.  You know me.  There’s nothing I love more than a weird dream sequence.  Many a mediocre film has been saved by blue mood lighting.