It’s amazing the things that you see while you’re out running. Seriously, I start nearly every morning with a run and …. well, I’ve never seen any of the stuff that’s seen in this video but then again, I’m also not running in Portland.
Is this a Halloween video? Dracula would say yes.
Enjoy!
Welcome to Late Night 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 Baywatch Nights, a detective show that ran in Syndication from 1995 to 1997. The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!
This week, Mitch and Ryan go to the future!
Episode 2.15 “The Mobius”
(Dir by David Livingston, originally aired on March 2nd, 1997)
Mitch and Ryan’s plans to attend the opening of a hot new club on the beach are interrupted by the arrival of Ashley (Laura Interval), who is an old college friend of Ryan’s. Ashley explains that her husband and colleague, John (Neil Roberts), has managed to open a portal to an unknown world and now he spends all of his time obsessing on it.
(Well, who wouldn’t?)
Accompanied by Teague, Mitch and Ryan go with Ashley to the laboratory. John is busy tossing a football into the portal. Something or someone on the other side throws the football back. Teague and Ryan are really impressed with the portal. Ashley and Mitch both think that the portal is something that shouldn’t be messed with. When Ashley accidentally stumbles into the portal and vanishes, Mitch and Ryan follow.
They find themselves in what appears to be the ruins of Los Angeles. Ryan speculates that they’re in a parallel universe while Mitch thinks that they might be in the future. (Technically, they’re both right. It is the future but it’s the future of a parallel universe.) Mitch finds a newspaper announcing that the world had caught on fire due to pollution burning a hole in the Earth’s atmosphere. In an amazing coincidence, they also stumble across one of Ryan’s professors. Professor Arnold (Kay E. Kuter) is old and dying but he still has his notes that detail what should have been done to prevent the end of the world.
Mitch, Ryan, and Ashley want to get those notes back to the present but it won’t be easy. Not only do they have to find the portal before it closes but they also have to avoid a bunch of mutated humans who now spend their time dressed like monks and chasing people around the ruins. Even when Ryan, Ashley, and Mitch do find the portal back, the professor’s notes burn up as they pass through.
“I guess we’ll have to figure it out for ourselves,” Mitch says, looking at the charred binder.
Yes, this episode has a message! Don’t pollute or Los Angeles will end up looking like a messy studio backlot and all your friends will join the Holy Order of Cannibal Mutations. One has to wonder whether or not this episode influenced Cormac McCarthy when he wrote The Road. Hmmm …. probably not.
Heavy-handed messaging aside, it’s not a bad episode. If there’s any actor who born to run through a messy backlot while fighting mutant monks, it’s David Hasselhoff. Especially when compared to the previous two episodes, The Mobius is fast-paced and it actually has a plot that the viewer can follow. It’s silly but it’s fun, in the way that a show like Baywatch Nights should be.
As the episode ends, the Hoff suggests that maybe, if the future’s bad, we should be sure to enjoy the present. That sounds like good advice to me! That’s the wisdom of the Hoff.
In this episode from 1961, Charles Bronson stars as Yank Dawson, an aging boxer who finds himself in haunted auditorium in England during World War II. Bronson was 39 years old when he starred as Yank Dawson and he gives a good performance. The role makes good use of both Bronson’s imposing physicality and also the smoldering anger that would eventually make Bronson a star in both Europe and, later, the United States.
The episode below first aired on January 10th, 1961.
The dead! Are after me!
The 1986 film, Raiders of the Living Dead, features what may be the greatest song ever written about zombies. For your listening pleasure, here is George Edward Lott’s The Dead Are After Me!
For today’s scene that I love, here is the classic scene from 1980’s Inferno, Dario Argento’s follow-up to Suspiria. In this scene, Irene Miracle takes a fateful swim. I’ve seen this film several times and this sequence still creeps me out! Not only does it remind me of my own very strong fear of drowning but I also wish someone had been there to say, “Don’t do that, you’re going to ruin that pretty dress!”
This scene is Argento at his most dream-like and frightening.
8 Shots From 8 Films is just what it says it is, 8 shots from 8 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 8 Shots From 8 Films is all about letting the visuals do the talking.
As you might have just guessed, today’s director is Dario Argento. And these are 8 shots from 8 films!
8 Shots From 8 Dario Argento Films
The Bird With The Crystal Plumage (1970, dir by Dario Argento, DP: Vittorio Storaro)
Deep Red (1975, dir by Dario Argento, DP: Luigi Kuveiller)
Suspiria (1977, dir by Dario Argento, DP: Luciano Tovoli)
Inferno (1980, dir by Dario Argento, DP: Romana Albano)
Trauma (1993, dir by Dario Argento, DP: Raffaele Mertes)
The Stendhal Syndrome (1996, dir by Dario Argento, DP: Giuseppe Rotunno)
Sleepless (2001, dir by Dario Argento, DP: Ronnie Taylor)
Dracula 3D (2012, dir by Dario Argento, DP: Luciano Tovoli)
For today’s horror on the lens, we have a real treat! (We’ll get to the tricks later…)
Long before he achieved holiday immortality by playing the father in A Christmas Story, Darren McGavin played journalist Carl Kolchak in the 1972 made-for-TV movie, The Night Stalker. Kolchak is investigating a series of murders in Las Vegas, all of which involve victims being drained of their blood. Kolchak thinks that the murderer might be a vampire. Everyone else thinks that he’s crazy.
When this movie first aired, it was the highest rated made-for-TV movie of all time. Eventually, it led to a weekly TV series in which Kolchak investigated various paranormal happenings. Though the TV series did not last long, it’s still regularly cited as one of the most influential shows ever made.
The Night Stalker is an effective little vampire movie and Darren McGavin gives a great performance as Carl Kolchak.
Enjoy!
Inferno (1980, dir by Dario Argento, DP: Romana Albano)
Today’s horror song of the day comes from Keith Emerson’s soundtrack of Dario Argento’s Inferno. I have to admit that, when I first saw Inferno, I thought that Emerson’s music was maybe a little bit too overdramatic for the film but, on subsequent viewings, it’s really grown on me.
Emerson did not have an enviable task, having to follow up Goblin’s soundtrack for Suspiria. But Emerson pulled it off, crafting a score that compliments Goblin’s earlier work while maintaining an identity of its own.
by James Avati
The sure hand of God says someone’s going to Hell and it’s not going to be the two women who are NOT lurking outside someone else’s window. This cover is from 1953.
Skulls, fire, and loud music in the desert?
Why, that’s perfect for Halloween!
Enjoy!
Through the Shattered Lens 