Late Night Retro Television Review: Pacific Blue 2.2 “Daystalker”

Posted on April 29, 2025 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 Tuesdays, I will be reviewing Pacific Blue, a cop show that aired from 1996 to 2000 on the USA Network! It’s currently streaming everywhere, though I’m watching it on Tubi.

This week, the Daystalker stalks wherever it is that this show takes place.

Episode 2.2 “Daystalker”

(Dir by Don Michael Paul, originally aired on August 24th, 1996)

After his girlfriend Sandy (Cindy Ambuehl) is assaulted by a serial rapist, TC becomes obsessed with tracking the so-called Daystalker down. Detective Bonnie Wilson (Gwen McGee), sent to the beach to head up the investigation, thinks that the Daystalker is going to eventually move on from rape to murder. She also thinks that TC is a loose cannon who is going to spook the Daystalker into moving to another city before he can be captured and prosecuted for his crimes. Cory is set up as a decoy and soon finds herself being followed by the Daystalker. Meanwhile, the terribly traumatized Sandy struggles with PTSD.

And, while that’s going on, Elvis and Victor try to get a Rastafarian to take a hex off of them!

This episode epitomizes one of the things that really bugs me out Pacific Blue. On the one hand, we have a very serious storyline about a serial rapist and one of his traumatized victims. A scene where Sandy has to leave a self-defense class because it’s triggers a flashback is a powerful and honest moment, certainly more powerful than anything you would expect to see on a show like Pacific Blue. On the other hand, we have this totally cartoonish subplot about a random Rastafarian putting a hex on Elvis and Victor. At a time when the entire bike patrol is supposed to be out looking for a serial rapist who has assaulted their best friend’s girlfriend, Victor and Chris are laughing because Elvis thinks the hex is making his hair fall out. Never mind the stupidity of the hex plot. Tonally, the two plots don’t go together. With this episode, Pacific Blue reveals that it still doesn’t know if it wants to be a gritty crime drama or just Baywatch on bicycles.

This could have been a very strong episodes. There were moments and lines of dialogue that really stood out for being considerably more thoughtful than one might expect from this show. But it was still an episode of Pacific Blue, which means that the camera still lingered on random women in bikinis and way too much time was spent on TC saying, “I have to do something!” Only TC could make his girlfriend’s rape about himself and only Pacific Blue would let him get away with that.

Even when they’re dealing with a serious issue as they did for half of this episode, it’s hard to escape the fact that these people are bicycle cops. The bicycles, the crisp white shirts, the shorts …. it just makes it hard to them seriously. This was yet another episode where a lot of time was spent with Palermo and TC explaining that bike cops are real cops. We’re at the start of the second season here. If you’re still having to justify your existence at this point, you’re never going to do it.

Maniac Cop III: Badge of Silence (1992, directed by William Lustig)

Posted on October 29, 2023 by Jedadiah Leland

Despite finally getting his burial with honors at the end of Maniac Cop 2, Matt Cordell (Robert Z’Dar) returns for one last outing. Raised from the dead by a voodoo houngan (Julius Harris), Cordell invades a hospital to seek vengeance for a comatose policewoman named Katie Sullivan (Gretchen Baker). In a coma due to the wounds she received while thwarting a convenience store robbery, Katie is being framed by unscrupulous reporters and attorneys who claim that Katie was a bad cop who killed a clerk in cold blood. Cordell sees Katie as being a fellow victim of anti-cop bias and he is not going to let anyone treat her with disrespect, which is something that two doctors (Robert Forster and Doug Savant) are unfortunate enough to discover. Sean McKinney (Robert Davi) and Dr. Susan Lowery (Caitlin Dulany) try to figure out how to bring peace to the souls of both Cordell and Katie.

As opposed to the first two films, Maniac Cop III had a troubled production. Lustig and screenwriter Larry Cohen wanted to set the film in a Harlem hospital and bring in an African-American detective to investigate Cordell’s activities. The film’s Japanese producers insisted that Robert Davi return as the lead, even though the script’s lead character had little in common with the way Sean McKinney was portrayed in Maniac Cop 2. Larry Cohen then refused to do any rewrites on the script unless he was paid more. William Lustig filmed what he could and ended up with a 51-minute movie. Extra scenes were directed by one of the film’s producers and the film was also padded out with outtakes from Maniac Cop 2.

The film is disjointed and there’s too much time devoted to Jackie Earle Haley playing a character who has much in common Leo Rossi’s serial killer from the second film. (Haley’s performance is fine but the character feels superfluous). But the movie’s hospital setting leads to some interesting kill scenes and Z’Dar and Davi both give good performances as two different types of maniac cops. The supporting cast is full of good character actors like Haley, Forster, Savant, Julius Harris, Bobby Di Cicco, and Paul Gleason. Despite the film’s flaws, Maniac Cop III is a solid ending for the trilogy.

A Movie A Day #115: Zero Tolerance (1994, directed by Joseph Mehri)

Posted on May 2, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

In Zero Tolerance, Robert Patrick plays Jeff Douglas, an FBI agent who is sent down to Mexico to pick up a recently captured drug dealer. Ray Manta (Titus Welliver) is the head of the White Hand drug cartel and he is not happy about having been arrested. When Ray tells Jeff that his entire family is being held hostage and will be killed unless Ray is allowed to escape, Jeff demands that Ray give him his word that no harm will come to his wife and children. Ray gives his “word of honor,” not realizing that his associates have already killed Jeff’s family. Jeff is now out for revenge and he is not going to let the FBI, with its rules and procedures, stand in his way. Jeff is not only out to get Ray. He is also going to track down and kill every member of the White Hand, which includes everyone from Mick Fleetwood (yes, that Mick Fleetwood) to Jeffrey Anderson-Gunter (playing almost exactly the same role that he played in Marked for Death and Only The Strong) to Ator the Invincible himself, Miles O’Keeffe.

(How much keeffe is in this movie? Miles O’Keeffe! Ha ha, that never gets old!)

Robert Patrick is one of those actors who can make any movie worth watching and Zero Tolerance, an otherwise forgettable revenge flick, is proof of that. No one plays a revenge seeking killing machine with as much panache as Robert Patrick. After his family is killed, Patrick crosses the country, stopping everywhere from New Orleans and Las Vegas and seeing vengeance with a determination that almost makes Charles Bronson and Clint Eastwood seem mellow by comparison. This is the type of movie where Robert Patrick literally drives his car through the side of a helicopter and, even after the helicopter explodes, still emerges unscathed.

There’s only one man who could pull that off.

Robert Patrick.

Insomnia File No. 18: Only The Strong (dir by Sheldon Lettich)

Posted on July 25, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!

Last night, if you were suffering from insomnia at one in the morning and you turned over to one of the Cinemax stations, you could have watched the 1993 film, Only The Strong.

Only The Strong is an example of a film genre that is a personal favorite of mine. This is one of those films where a dedicated but unorthodox teacher returns to his old high school and saves a bunch of troubled teenagers by teaching them how to beat the crap out of each other. (For another example, check out The Principal.) It’s hard for me to explain why I always enjoy these films. I’m always tempted to say it’s because there’s a part of me that would love to be a teacher but, honestly, that answer is way too easy. Add to that, if I was a teacher, I doubt I’d be one of the “I’m going to teach you how to beat the crap out of each other” teachers that tend to show up in these films. It seems like that would be a lot of effort.

In fact, now that I think about it, I don’t think I’ve ever met a “I’m going to teach you how to beat the crap out of each other” type of teacher. I get the feeling that these teachers might not actually exist. Maybe that’s why I like these films. For someone, like me, who went to a very nice but somewhat boring high school in the suburbs, a film like Only The Strong is the ultimate fantasy of what high school was like.

Anyway, in Only The Strong, Mark Dacascos plays Louis Stevens. Louis was a troubled teenager but, luckily, he took a sociology class taught by Mr. Kerrigan (Geoffrey Lewis). Kerrigan taught Louis that there was something more to life than just selling drugs and getting into fights. After he graduated, Louis joined the Green Berets and spent four years living in the jungles Brazil. In Brazil, he learned capoeira, a type of martial art that combines dance, acrobatics, and kick boxing. In fact, Louis got so good at capoeira that, when he is recalled to the states, a village wiseman gives him a special instrument, a musical bow called a berimbau.

Louis returns to his old high school and visits Mr. Kerrigan. He discovers that Kerrigan has been beaten down by life and is no longer the inspiring teacher that he once was. He also discovers that his ex-girlfriend, Dianna (Stacey Travis), is now a teacher and she’s dating another teacher, Hector Cervantes (John Fionte). Hector assumes that Louis worked for the CIA in Brazil and accuses him of organizing death squads.

Annoyed by what has happened to his old high school, Louis starts to leave. However, before walking out, he uses capoeira to beat up a Jamaican drug dealer. Everyone is so impressed that Louis is soon working for the high school, teaching 12 of the school’s worst students both capoeira and self-discipline…

(To be honest, as I watched the movie last night, none of the 12 students really seemed to be that dangerous to me. It was difficult to imagine the majority of them ever committing a felony, though I could visualize more than a few of them waiting in line at Starbucks. Then I remembered that this movie was made in 1993 and perhaps it was easier to scare audiences back then.)

It doesn’t take long for Louis to start to make a difference. In fact, it only takes a four-minute training montage. Soon, those 12 students are being respectful and thinking about the future. Donavon (Ryan Bollman) is even remixing capoeira music and acting so worshipful towards Louis that you just know that he’s going to end up getting killed towards the end of the film, in order to provide Louis with the proper motivation to go out and kick some ass. Unfortunately, the local Brazilian drug lord is not happy about Louis’s influence (especially after Louis encourages the drug lord’s cousin to spend his weekend camping instead of stripping cars). Needless to say, it all leads to a violent showdown. It also all leads to one of those inspiring graduation ceremonies that always tend to pop up in movies like this.

Anyway, Only The Strong is one of those films that currently has a 0% rating at the Rotten Tomatoes but I thought it was kind of fun in its own stupid way. (It probably helps to be half-asleep when you watch it.) Even if you don’t buy into the film’s argument that it could be used to save an inner city high school, capoeira is a lot of fun to watch and Mark Dacascos has an appealing smile, which serves to set him apart from a lot of the other actors that starred in actions films in the 1990s. Only The Strong is silly but fun, making it a good film to watch at one in the morning.