Jamie Bozian | Through the Shattered Lens

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 1987’s The Last Fling! It can be viewed on YouTube and Tubi.

Phillip Reed (John Ritter) is an attorney who has never gotten married, despite all of his friends trying to set him up with single women. Even his law partner (Scott Bakula) worries about how Phillip’s love life is going. Phillip’s married best friends (Paul Sand and Kate Zentall) think that Phillip is scared of commitment. Phillip’s mother (Paddi Edwards) thinks he’s gay. Joanne Preston (Shannon Tweed) enjoys sleeping with him but she owns a lot of cats that make him sneeze. And since he’s played by John Ritter, you better believe that every sneeze is more dramatic than the last.

Gloria Franklin (Connie Selleca) is engaged to marry Jason Elliot (John Bennett Perry) but she worries that her rigidly controlled lifestyle has caused her to miss out on enjoying her time as a single person. When she finds out that Jason is going to go to Las Vegas for a wild bachelor party, she decides to have one last fling of her own.

Phillip and Gloria meet each other at the zoo. (Again, because Phillip is played by John Ritter, there are multiple shots of him making monkey noises while looking at the gorillas.) Gloria tells Phillip that her name is Marsha Lyons. Their meeting leads to Phillip and Gloria/Marsha spending the weekend in Mexico together. (A very young, pre-Saved By The Bell Mario Lopez shows up as the kid who gives them their renal car.) Despite an unseen mishap that causes their car to catch on fire, Phillip and Gloria spend a romantic night at a villa. When Phillip wakes up the next morning, he’s convinced that he’s finally found the woman with whom he wants to spend the rest of his life. However, Gloria is already gone. She leaves behind a video confession, in which she tells Phillip that she’s going to be getting married.

Phillip returns to Los Angeles, determined to track down the mysterious Gloria and stop that wedding.

The Last Fling is an uneven romantic comedy. It starts out as an amiable and sweetly funny film, with both Connie Sellecca and John Ritter giving likable performances. But once Phillip returns from Mexico and starts searching for Gloria, it gets a bit too manic for its own good. Instead of being a funny movie about two human beings looking for love, it instead becomes a live-action cartoon with John Ritter running from one location to another while being chased by Gloria’s husband-to-be. The movie ends up getting so frantic that it actually becomes a bit annoying, which is a shame considering how things started. By the end of the movie, Phillip is so obsessive that it’s hard not to feel that Gloria would be better off just staying single and maybe spending the next weekend in Mexico with Scott Bakula.

The director of The Last Fling played Buzz in Rebel Without A Cause. Fortunately, no one plays chicken in this movie.

Packard Walsh (Nick Cassavetes) has a pretty good business going. He and his gang of “road pirates” patrol the Arizona desert. Whenever they spot a car that they want, they demand that the driver race for pink slips and they cheat to win. Through fear and intimidation, Packard rules the town of Brooks and not even Sheriff Loomis (Randy Quaid) can stop him.

Packard is obsessed with Keri Johnson (Sherilyn Fenn), who works as a carhop at Big Kay’s Burger. Packard considers Keri to be his property and even demands that she drink his blood so that they will be forever linked. Earlier, Packard and his gang killed Keri’s boyfriend, Jamie. When a new kid named Jake (played by Charlie Sheen) shows up in town, both Keri and Jamie’s brother (Matthew Barry) feel as if they know him from somewhere. Jake also has scars on his back the match Jamie’s wounds.

Shortly after Jake’s arrival, a mysterious black Turbo Interceptor appears on the roads. The unseen driver challenges each member of Packard’s gang to a race and then purposefully crashes into them. Whenever the Turbo explodes, it rematerializes somewhere nearby. When the driver does finally get out of the Turbo, it turns out that he’s covered in black leather armor and his face is hidden behind a black helmet.

According to Rughead (Clint Howard), the only member of Packard’s gang who did not take part in Jamie’s murder, the driver is “a wraith, man! A ghost, an evil spirit — and it ain’t cool!”

The Wraith is one of those films that always used to show up on TV when I was a kid. Thought it was often advertised as being a horror film, it’s actually an uncredited remake of High Plans Drifter with Clint Eastwood replaced by Charlie Sheen. Seen today, The Wraith is a major nostalgia trip. One of the fun things about watching the movie is ticking off all of the clichés that make this a definite 80s film, from the cars to the slang to the soundtrack. (It does not get more 80s than a soundtrack featuring both Billy Idol and Robert Palmer.) Packard’s gang is all made up of generic punk types. My favorite was Skank (David Sherrill), who had a mohawk and drank brake fluid.

Of course, the cars are the main appeal of The Wraith. All of the, are cool (even Rughead’s pickup truck) but the obvious star of the film is that black Turbo Interceptor. At its best, it rivals even Marty McFly’s DeLorean as the coolest car to show up in an 80s sci-fi film.