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, there’s an interesting crime spree but nothing is more important than Ponch’s feelings.
Episode 5.23 “Trained For Trouble”
(Dir by Barry Crane, originally aired on April 4th, 1982)
Animals have been trained to steal money! A hawk swoops down and steals a bag of cash from an armored car. Chimpanzees rob a bank! It’s madness and the Highway Patrol has its work cut out for them as they attempt to catch whoever has trained these criminal animals. (The minute that one sees Don Stroud’s name in the guest star list, it’s pretty easy to guess who is responsible.)
That may sound like a cute idea for a show and, to be honest, it is. However, this episode is somehow less concerned with the animals robbing banks than it is with every woman in Los Angeles mistaking Ponch for a Chippendale’s dancer. It turns out that one of the male strippers — “Officer Richard” — looks like just like Ponch. Richard is credited as being played by “Angelo Bernardi.” Seeing as how Bernardi has no other credits on the imdb other than this episode, I’m not convinced that wasn’t Erik Estrada stripping off his uniform.
Consider this to be your weekly reminder that, during the fifth seasos, CHiPs was….
From what I’ve read, Larry Wilcox left this show after the fifth season specifically because he felt Erik Estrada was getting all of the good storylines and had basically become the producer’s pet. Watching this episode, you can see why he would be upset. While Estrada spends the episode being chased by every woman in Los Angeles, Wilcox gets a handful of forgettable lines.
On a positive note, this episode did feature the character actor Dan Hedaya, playing someone who chronically confesses to unsolved crimes. His character was, at least, a little interesting. He also got more lines than Larry Wilcox in this episode which, again, perhaps explains why Jon Baker returned to Wyoming after the fifth season.
In 1965’s The Ghost In The Invisible Bikini, the recently deceased Hiram Stokely (Boris Karloff) is informed that he has just 24 hours to perform a good deed and get into Heaven. He also has 24 hours to keep Basil Rathbone from stealing his estate. Hiram teams up with the ghost of his his dead girlfriend (Susan Hart) and together, they help Hiram’s real heir throw a pool party!
I know, I know. That makes no sense. Go with it, it’s the 60s and it’s a party. The film is silly even by the standards of the typical beach party film but it features Boris Karloff and Basil Rathbone somehow managing to maintain their dignity and Nancy Sinatra singing a song. (Dean Martin’s daughter, Claudia, also makes an appearance.) Even more importantly, this is a film that epitomizes an era. Released in 1965, this was the last AIP beach party movie and it’s a product of the innocent, fun-loving early 60s that would soon be replaced by the violent turmoil of the late 60s. Hiram was probably happy that he got out when he could.
It seems a little bit strange that today was, for many people, the first day of Spring Break.
First off, it was cold and rainy today and, whenever I found myself glancing out a window and being confronted by the gray weather, it was very hard for me to imagine having any fun on a beach.
Secondly, for reasons that I never quite understood, the University of North Texas’s Spring Break was always a week after everyone else’s. As a result, I’ve been conditioned to think of Spring Break as starting during the third week of March.
I always looked forward to Spring Break, despite the fact that we always got out a week late. In fact, it was kind of nice to know that, when my friends and I got down to that year’s beach, the most obnoxious of the alcoholic frat boys would already be back in Oklahoma. I’ve always loved the beach, which is odd because I’m scared of drowning. Fortunately, you don’t have to swim to look good in a bikini.
Now, of course, I’m an adult and I don’t get a Spring Break. But that doesn’t mean that I can’t relive the fun of it all by spending the next few days watching and reviewing beach movies!
For instance, earlier today, I discovered that the 1963 film Beach Party was available on Netflix. I watched the first 40 minutes during my lunch and then, as the day progressed, I watched the rest of it in bits and pieces until finally, nearly 8 hours after starting the film, I finished it. Needless to say, this is absolutely the worst way to watch a film like Beach Party. Beach Party was designed to be a film to be enjoyed but not thought about. It’s the cinematic equivalent of fast food. Watching Beach Party in increments of 2 or 3 minutes at a time is a bit like buying a Wendy’s bacon cheeseburger and not eating it until the next day.
(Or so I assume. I would never do that because, seriously, Wendy’s makes the best bacon cheeseburgers!)
It feels kind of silly to try to describe the plot of something like Beach Party but here goes: Frankie (Frankie Avalon) and Delores (Annette Funicello) are two teenagers in love. Or, at the very least, Delores is in love. Frankie, however, has a hard time saying it. Frankie and Delores are planning on spending the weekend at a beach house where, Frankie tells her, it will be just like they’re married. Though it’s never explicitly stated (like many films from the early 60s, Beach Party is all about the euphemisms), Frankie is obviously expecting that he and Delores will finally be having sex in that beach house. However, Delores had the same idea so she invited all of their friends to stay at the beach house as well, specifically to keep her from giving in during a moment of weakness.
Meanwhile, Prof. Robert Sutwell (Robert Cummings) is also hanging out on the beach. He’s an anthropologist who has a rather prominent beard. He’s studying the sex lives of teenagers. Since they’re adults, Robert and his assistant Marianne (Dorothy Malone) are actually allowed to say the word “sex.”
Speaking of which, that’s one thing that nobody on the beach seems to be doing. Robert is too obsessed with his work, Marianne is too frustrated with his lack of interest, Frankie is too busy surfing and singing, and Delores says she’s not interesting in “being a woman” until she’s married. There’s constant flirting going on, of course but, for the most part, these teenagers make the spring breakers from From Justin To Kelly look wild. (One can only guess what would happen if any of them ever ran into the spring breakers from Spring Breakers….)
That said, I do think that I did spot Frankie and his friends passing around a joint during one scene. According to some comments at the imdb, it was probably meant to be a cigarette that Frankie was sharing with his friends Ken (John Ashley) and Deadhead (Jody McCrea) but it sure looked like a joint to me. Plus, Frankie was listening to beatnik poetry at the time and we all know those crazy kids loved the poetry and loved the marijuana.
Oh! And did I mention that there’s a motorcycle gang in this film? Because there so totally is. The Rat Pack is led by a guy named Erich Von Zipper (Harvey Lembeck) and they pretty much show up whenever the film starts to run out of ideas…
Now, it may sound like I’m being pretty critical of Beach Party but actually, I thought it was fun in a time capsule sort of way. This is one of those films that is so obviously a product of the time in which it was made that watching it is a bit like getting to take a ride in a time machine. Everything about this film — from the dialogue to the cultural attitudes to the clean-cut teenagers to the music to the bizarrely modest bikinis — practically screams 1963. As a secret history nerd, I loved the part of Beach Party.
Add to that, Vincent Price has a cameo! That’s always fun.
Anyway, Beach Party is currently available to be watched on Netflix and Hulu. If you can’t get to the beach this year, you can always watch Frankie Avalon getting high in Beach Party.
Through the Shattered Lens 