Jon van Ness | Through the Shattered Lens

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 Freevee!

This week, the first season comes to a close!

Episode 1.22 “Flashback!”

(Dir by Michael Caffey, originally aired on April 1st, 1978)

When a recent graduate from te motor school joins the unit, he immediately rubs everyone the wrong way. Brent Delaney (Joe Penny) may have graduated at the top of his class but, as Baker points out, he flunked public relations and everyone quickly tires of his holier-than-thou approach to policing. Add to that, his father is a bigshot politician and everyone assumes that Delaney is just some rich kid who got the job through his connections. Delaney’s arrogant and cocky attitude doesn’t do much to change that impression.

Fortunately, Baker and Ponch are both willing to look past Delaney’s cockiness. In fact, they spend the majority of the episode remembering how, one day, a CHiP officer named Jon Baker met a cocky dirt bike rider named Ponch (Erik Estrada) and also how Baker talked Ponch into applying for a spot on the force. No one gave Ponch much of a chance, largely because of his background as a juvenile delinquent and his friendship with a gang leader named Henry (Edward James Olmos). But, soon, Ponch and Baker were patrolling the streets and rescuing two women who were trapped in a car that they accidentally drove into a swimming pool. Ponch proved himself. Will Delaney?

Yes, this a flashback episode but, interestingly enough, most of the flashbacks appear to have been shot specifically for this episode. (There were two clips that I recognized as coming from the show’s pilot but the rest of the flashbacks appeared to be original.) The flashbacks don’t play out in a chronological order, either. Instead, they are somewhat randomly triggered by Ponch or Baker hearing an engine backfiring or spotting some person on a bike. This episode comes as close as one can to answering the question of what a cop show directed by Nicolas Roeg would look like.

As for Delaney, he eventually proves his worth when he takes down a group of bikers who were stealing CHP motorcycles. (One of the bikers is played by John Furey, who is best-known for playing Paul in Friday the 13th Part II.) It’s a pretty good thing that Delaney caught those guys, seeing as how his motorcycle was one of those that was stolen. Having proven himself, Delaney is welcomed into the CHP. Even the formerly skeptical Grossman and Bear end up shaking his hand and telling him that he did a good job. Way to go, Delaney! I imagine we’ll never see him again.

And so ends the first season of CHiPs. It was a fun season. There was nothing particularly challenging about any of the first 22 episodes but the scenery was gorgeous and some of the chase scenes were exciting. That’s really all you can ask for with a show like this. Though I understand that Larry Wilcox and Erik Estrada did not particularly like each other, that wasn’t obvious during the first season. In fact, even Estrada’s tendency to overact was nicely paired with Wilcox’s tendency to do the opposite. For the first season at least, they came across like legitimate partners and friends.

Next week, we start season 2!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXmvGqlp8NY

The 1977 film End of the World has got a great opening scene. An obviously distraught priest (played by none other than Christopher Lee!) steps into an isolated diner. He tells the counterman that he needs to use the phone. The counterman says, “Sure, father.” And then suddenly, everything in the dinner starts blowing up. The phone, the coffee, the pinball machine, everything explodes. The counterman ends up trying to unsuccessfully throw himself through a window. The priest, looking rather confused, steps outside of the diner and he runs into …. his exact double! Christopher Lee meets Christopher Lee!

Again, that’s a great opening and it’s really not a surprise that the rest of the film can’t live up to it. Once the two Christopher Lees disappear into the darkness, the focus of the story shifts to a scientist named Andrew (Kirk Scott) and his wife, Sylvia (Sue Lyon, who years previously played Lolita). Andrew spends a lot of time sitting in front of a boxy computer and staring at the screen. He’s picking up strange transmissions from space and he’s trying to translate them. Andrew goes home. He and his wife got a party. Andrew sits in front of the computer a while longer. Andrew goes home. Andrew goes to work. Andrew keeps staring at the computer….

“Wait,” you’re saying at this point, “isn’t this is a Christopher Lee movie?”

Yes, it is. Christopher Lee is indeed top-billed and he’s hardly in the movie at all. I’d like to think that, when asked why by an intrepid reporter why he agreed to star in End of the World, Lee laughed and replied, “For the money, of course.” But, according to Lee’s autobiography, he did the film because he was told that he would be appearing with a cast of distinguished actors like Jose Ferrer, Dean Jagger, and John Carradine. Now, Dean Jagger does have a small cameo in the film but Ferrer and Carradine are nowhere to be seen. Either they left the production or someone lied to Sir Christopher!

Anyway, back to the plot. Eventually, Andrew figures out that the space transmissions are predicting natural disasters. We don’t actually see any of these disasters because, after all, this is the end of the world on a very low budget. But we are assured that the disasters are happening. Andrew and Sylvia discover that the transmissions are coming from a convent in the middle of the desert. Andrew and Sylvia go to investigate and they discover that the nuns are….

ALIENS!

Now, this is actually a pretty good twist and there are some vaguely humorous scenes of the the nuns working in a space lab. It turns out that the nuns (and one of the Christopher Lees) are stranded on this planet because their spaceship broke down. They don’t really like Earth, considering it to be an ugly and polluted place. They’re planning on ending the world but they need to leave before the whole place blows up. They demand that Andrew help them fix their transporter and they’re going to hold Sylvia hostage until he does so….

It’s all a bit silly but, as you’re watching the film, you can’t help but wish that it had been even sillier. I mean, alien nuns and Father Christopher Lee? That sounds like the makings of a certain type of classic! But, unfortunately, the film never fully embraces the full potential of its absurdity. It takes forever for Andrew and Sylvia to actually reach that convent and even the alien nuns become rather passé after a few minutes. Christopher Lee is fun to watch as always and his character’s irritation with being stuck on Earth was obviously mirrored by Lee’s irritation with being in the film. And, despite all else, let’s give credit where credit it is due — the title lives up to its promise. The world may end in a pile of stock footage but an end is an end.

Anyway, this one is pretty much for Christopher Lee completists only. Watch the opening and then fast forward to the end.