Heavens to Betsy”

Posted on July 30, 2025 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 Wednesdays, I will be reviewing the original Love Boat, which aired on ABC from 1977 to 1986! The series can be streamed on Paramount Plus!

This week, a woman struggles to forgive the son of a man who killed her husband. Two women and a reverend try to balance attraction with the questions of faith. And Gopher gets stuck in a suit of armor….

LOVE! Exciting and new!

Episode 6.10 “The Man In The Iron Shorts/The Victims/Heavens to Betsy”

(Dir by Jerome Courtland, originally aired on November 27th, 1982)

Gopher’s latest girlfriend, Gail (Taylor Miller), is on this week’s cruise. She’s a history teacher and Gopher decides that the best way to impress her would be …. okay, I can’t believe I’m about to type this …. buy a suit of armor and surprise her by wearing it on the boat. With Isaac’s help, he puts on the armor but — oh no! — he gets stuck in the armor. He has wear his purser’s uniform over the armor. The captain notes that Gopher has gained some weight and puts him on an exercise program….

There have been a lot of silly plotlines on The Love Boat but none as silly as this. The problem is that it never makes sense that Gopher would have a suit of armor in the first place. There a lot of presents that you can give someone who loves to study and talk about history. I know this because I’m a history nerd myself. A suit of armor, though, requires a bit too much of a suspension of disbelief, It goes from being silly to being just stupid.

It also doesn’t fit in with the episode’s other big storyline, in which Webb Jones Jr. (Laurence Lau) fell in love with Vanessa Heinsely (Denise Miller). The only problem is that Webb’s father was the drunk driver who killed Vanessa’s father. Vanessa’s mother (played by Ruth Warrick) struggles to forgive Webb for the sins of his his father. Luckily, Captain Stubing — a recovering alcoholic himself — is there to help. This was a serious story about a serious subject and all of the actors handled it well. But it seemed out-of-place when mixed with scenes of Gopher trying to hide the fact that he was wearing a suit of armor.

Finally, Janine Turner and Sharon Gabet played two women who had a crush on a reverend (Robert Pine, the sergeant from CHiPs.) Robert Pine was charming but it was hard not to feel as if Julie needed the reverend more than the two women. At the very least, he could have gotten her off the cocaine and maybe he could have even convinced her to do something about her hair.

(Seriously, Julie’s hair has looked terrible this season!)

The good news is that Gopher eventually got out of that suit of honor and Vanessa and Webb managed to find love. Even an uneven episode of The Love Boat usually has a happy ending and really, that’s all I want.

Retro Television Reviews: The Master 1.8 “The Good, the Bad, and the Priceless”

Posted on June 30, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a new feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Fridays, I will be reviewing The Master, which ran on NBC from January to August of 1984. The show can be found on Tubi!

This week, The Master goes to New York City!

Episode 1.8 “The Good, the Bad, and the Priceless”

(Dir by Michael Caffey, originally aired on March 23rd, 1984)

This week’s episode of The Master asks us to consider just how needlessly complicated an hour’s worth of entertainment can be.

John Peter McAllister (Lee Van Cleef) and Max Keller (Timothy Van Patten) are in New York City! Apparently, McAllister was flipping through a magazine when he came across an advertisement featuring a picture of his long-lost daughter, Terri. The agency responsible for the ad is headquartered in New York. McAllister is excited about the prospect of finally tracking down his daughter. Max is a little sad because he knows that McAllister won’t need him after he finds Terri. And Cat Sinclair (Tara Buckman) is just along for the ride….

Who is Cat Sinclair? She was introduced last episode as a love interest for Max. This episode tests Cat as a third member of the regular cast. Unfortunately, since Cat isn’t a ninja, she doesn’t really got to do much in the episode, other than stand in the background and roll her eyes whenever Max makes one of his terrible jokes. At one point, McAllister mentions that Max has a bit of a crush on Cat but we don’t really see much evidence of it. If anything, both McAllister and Max seem to go out of their way to ignore her.

Anyway, it turns out that the modeling agency is surprisingly willing to give out the home phone numbers of its models. They also have no problem telling McAllister, Max, and Cat that Terri has been booked as a model at a private fashion show being put on by Simon Garrett (George Maharis).

However, what neither McAllister nor Simon Garrett realize is that the woman who shows up at the fashion show and introduces herself as Terri McAllister is not Terri at all but is instead an FBI agent named Gina (Janine Turner), who bears a passing resemblance to Terri as long as she’s wearing a brunette wig. Simon Garrett is not only a fashion designer but he’s also an international criminal. Gina shows up (as Terri) at the fashion show and tries to search Garrett’s office. When Garrett’s security goons discover her, her life is saved by McAllister and Max, who both believe her to be Terri.

(How exactly McAllister, Max, and Cat managed to crash Garrett’s exclusive and private fashion show is not discussed.)

Gina continues to pretend to be Terri so that she can convince McAllister to help her figure out what Garrett’s current scheme is. Meanwhile, Garrett recognizes McAllister as an American ninja so he arranges for his men to kidnap Gina (who, again, everyone thinks is Terri). He threatens to kill Gina/Terri unless McAllister uses his ninja powers to break into the Brooklyn Museum of Art and steal the Crown Jewels of England. McAllister agrees to do so, which leads to an extended sequence of Lee Van Cleef’s stunt double avoiding the security lasers by doing elaborate back flips. Timothy Van Patten’s stunt double then does the exact same back flips. Who knew that stealing the Crown Jewels would be so simple?

As you can probably guess, this all leads to all the stunt doubles getting into a fight at Garrett’s office. Garrett is arrested. The crown jewels are recovered. Both McAllister and Max turn out to be surprisingly understanding about Gina having lied to them. One would think that McAllister, who is essentially being hunted a ninja assassins because he came to America to find his daughter, would be a bit more upset over having his emotions so blatantly manipulated but McAllister actually appears to be amused by the whole thing. Again, it’s hard not to suspect that finding Terri is not really as big a thing to McAllister as Max seems to believe it to be.

This is one of those episodes where everything was dependent upon everyone else being an idiot. These are typically my least favorite episodes of any show and that’s the case here. It’s kind of a shame because Lee Van Cleef and Timothy Van Patten both had some good moments in this episode. The scenes where Max talked about how much he’s going to miss McAllister after they find Terri actually did have some emotional heft but it wasn’t enough to make up for the episode’s missteps. I will admit that I smiled a bit at a subplot about an ad guy who wanted McAllister to put on a cowboy outfit and pose for a series of deodorant ads. McAllister took one look at the outfit and said, “I would never wear that.” Oh yes, you would, Van Cleef!

Next week: Okasa returns!

Cliffhanger (1993, directed by Renny Harlin)

Posted on March 15, 2022 by Jedadiah Leland

Sylvester Stallone is Gabe, a mountain climber who also works as a rescue ranger. Michael Rooker is Hal, Gabe’s colleague and former best friend. Hal blames Gabe for the death of his girlfriend, Sarah. Gabe also blames himself and is planning on getting out of the rescue game. But before Gabe can quit, he’s got one last mission to perform. Qualen (John Lithgow) is a psychotic former spy who has masterminded a multi-million dollar robbery. A plane crash leads to the loot getting scattered in the mountains. Qualen takes Hal and Gabe prisoner and tries to force them to help him track down the money.

Cliffhanger was made during one of the slower periods of Stallone’s career. He had temporarily retired the roles of both Rocky Balboa and John Rambo and, as an action star, he was being overshadowed by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Stallone had tried to reinvent himself as a comedic actor, with the result being Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot! The former Oscar nominee was now only winning Razzies and he was running the risk of becoming better known for his messy divorce from Brigitte Nielsen than for his recent films. Things weren’t looking good for Stallone but, fortunately, the box office success of Cliffhanger revived his career.

Seen today, Cliffhanger holds up well as an undemanding but enjoyable action film. It’s a very much a film of its time, complete with John Lithgow hamming it up as a British villain and Northern Exposure’s Janine Turner playing Stallone’s loyal, helicopter-owning girlfriend. Stallone’s best films are the ones where he is willing to surrender his ego and he does that in Cliffhanger. It may be a Stallone film but the best lines go to Michael Rooker and the true stars of the film are the mountains and the scenes of Stallone and Rooker trying to climb them. With Cliffhanger, Stallone was smart enough to stay out of the way and just trust that the image of him dangling above the Rockies would bring in the audience. It was a smart decision. Though Cliffhanger is often overshadowed by Stallone’s other 1993 hit, Demolition Man, it’s still an entertaining film in its own right.

Cliffhanger was directed by Renny Harlin, the Finnish action specialist whose promising career would subsequently take a hit and never really recover from directing Cutthroat Island. Mountain climbing and Renny Harlin just seem to go together and Cliffhanger is one of his better films. Here’s hope that, just as Stallone has done many times in the past, Renny Harlin will eventually his comeback as a director.

A Movie A Day #279: The Ambulance (1990, directed by Larry Cohen)

Posted on October 14, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

Josh Baker (Eric Roberts) is an extroverted artist for Marvel Comics who meets Cheryl (Janine Turner) while walking around New York City. Josh and Cheryl hit it off but when Cheryl suddenly collapses, she is picked up by a mysterious ambulance. When Josh goes to the hospital to check on her, he is told that Cheryl was never brought in. Soon, Josh discovers that people all over New York have been put into back of the ambulance and have never been seen again. Unfortunately, nobody believes Josh. Not the veteran NYPD detective (James Earl Jones) who Josh approaches with his suspicions. Not the staff of the hospital. Not even Stan Lee! The only people willing to support Josh are an elderly investigative reporter (Red Buttons) and an inexperienced detective (Megan Gallagher).

Yes, Stan Lee does play himself. While he had made a few cameo appearances on television and had previously narrated a French film, The Ambulance was Stan Lee’s first real film role. Josh works at an idealized version of Marvel Comics, where the artists are well-paid, no one is pressured into producing substandard work, and Lee is an avuncular father figure. It is the Marvel Comics that I used to imagine working at when I was growing up, before I found out about what actually happened to artists like Jack Kirby, Joe Simon, and Steve Ditko.

Idealized though it may be, the Marvel connection is appropriate because The Ambulance is essentially a comic book adventure. It does not matter how many times Josh gets hit by a car or falls out of a window, he always recovers in time for the next scene. When Josh does discover who is behind the ambulance, it turns out to be a villain who would not be out-of-place in a Ditko-era Spider-Man story.

The Ambulance is another one of Larry Cohen’s New York horror stories. Like most of Cohen’s films, it is pulpy, cheap, and entertaining. Eric Roberts is as crazy as ever and the movie is full of good character actors like James Earl Jones, Red Buttons, Richard Bright, and Eric Braeden. The Ambulance may be dumb but it is always entertaining.

Cleaning Out The DVR Yet Again #14: Maggie’s Passage (dir by Mike Norris)

Posted on November 27, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

(Lisa recently discovered that she only has about 8 hours of space left on her DVR! It turns out that she’s been recording movies from July and she just hasn’t gotten around to watching and reviewing them yet. So, once again, Lisa is cleaning out her DVR! She is going to try to watch and review 52 movies by Wednesday, November 30th! Will she make it? Keep checking the site to find out!)

Maggie’s Passage is a film that I recorded off of Channel 58 on November 13th. Though I didn’t realize it at the time, Channel 58 specializes in showing faith-based programming. (Channel 58 previously aired both Island of Grace and The Encounter. Right now, they appear to be in the middle of doing a Left Behind marathon. If you’re reading this, Kirk Cameron, the check is presumably in the mail.)

The main reason that I recorded Maggie’s Passage is because it was filmed down here in Dallas. As opposed to my friends who live in New York, Los Angeles, and Toronto, it’s rare that I actually get to see my hometown onscreen. I mean, sure, countless episodes of Cheaters have been filmed in Dallas but, for the most part, most movies about Dallas are actually filmed in Louisiana. Even Dallas Buyers Club was actually shot in New Orleans!

(Incidentally, New Orleans looks nothing like Dallas.)

Originally released in 2009, Maggie’s Passage was directed by Mike Norris. Mike is the son of Chuck Norris. This led me to suspect that Chuck would make a cameo appearance at some point, perhaps standing outside of Club Dada or taking a selfie in front of the Big Red Courthouse. But no, Chuck never shows up. Instead, Maggie’s Passage is about a teenage girl named Maggie (Ali Faulkner). When she was little, Maggie was adopted by Jenny (Janine Turner) and her husband. After her stepfather dies, Maggie runs away from home and tracks down her birth mother. After discovering that her birth mother wants nothing to do with her, Maggie ends up working on Harry Hines Blvd. for an abusive pimp. When she finally escapes, Maggie is taken in by Grace (Sheran Goodspeed Keyton) and a group of extremely religious homeless people. In almost any other film (like in Split Image, which was also filmed in Dallas), this would lead to Maggie becoming a part of a cult but, since this film was airing on Channel 58, it instead leads to a lot of talk about lost faith, redemption, and prayer.

I had mixed feelings about Maggie’s Passage. There were certain scenes, especially at the start of the film, that brought back some definite memories of being a rebellious, scared, and out-of-control 16 year-old. When Maggie was wandering down the street with the Dallas skyline behind her, I definitely cringed a little because I not only knew the location but I knew the feeling as well. In those early scenes, I sat there and I thought about how, if not for a few strokes of luck, I could have easily been Maggie. Ali Faulkner is definitely a better actress than you typically expect to find in a low-budget faith-based film and Mike Norris knows how to tell a story cinematically. Even though I knew it was a religious film, the first half of Maggie’s Passage never felt preachy…

Add to that, there was a scene where Maggie was walking along this bridge! This photo, by the way, was taken by our own Dazzling Erin Nicole!

But then Maggie met those homeless people and the whole movie went downhill. Movies always tend to idealize the homeless and their living conditions (which, incidentally, does a great disservice to those who actually are homeless and who are too busy trying not to die to spend all of their time sharing their faith-based wisdom with every runaway white teenager who they happen to come across) and Maggie’s Passage took this tendency to the extreme. Whenever I saw those good-hearted, enlightened, cheerful, and rather clean-cut homeless people talking to Maggie about what St. Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans, I found myself thinking about the guy who I always see defecating in front of the Frank Crowley Courthouse. Or maybe the old woman who used to always approach me at Mockingbird Station, rambling about how the Vatican put a tracking device in her forehead. Or maybe the guy who I saw camped out behind a Wal-Mart in Oak Cliff, struggling to sit up straight and surrounded by empty beer bottles. These are people who really need our help and movies that sentimentalize their existence or portray them as being magical caregivers don’t do them any good. In the end, Maggie may find God but the homeless are still living on the streets and the film doesn’t seem to see that as being a problem.

That said, I still appreciated seeing Reunion Tower on film.