Joseph Culp | 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 Thursdays, I will be reviewing Highway to Heaven, which aired on NBC from 1984 to 1989. The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi and several other services!

This week, Jonathan and Mark are speech therapists.

Episode 5.11 “The Inner Limits”

(Dir by Michael Landon, originally aired on July 21st, 1989)

George (Tim Choate) has spent years speechless and paralyzed. However, after George’s brother, Paul (Joseph Culp), has a chance meeting with speech therapist Jonathan Smith, it is discovered that George is actually a genius who can communicate through blinking and who hopes to write a book. Paul goes from wanting to move out of his childhood home and into an apartment with his girlfriend, Jessica (Lorie Griffin) to feeling like he has a duty to spend the rest of his life helping his mother (Julianna McCarthy) take care of George.

I’ve been crying a lot this year. I lost my Dad in 2024. Exactly one year later, I lost the aunt who helped to raise me when I was a child. I didn’t really get a chance to mourn my Dad because I immediately became one of my aunt’s caregivers. I thought that if I couldn’t save my Dad from Parkinson’s, I could at least save my aunt from Alzheimer’s. After my aunt passed, I threw myself into the holidays and I dealt with my emotions by buying lots of presents for other people. It’s only now, in the light of 2026, that it’s all truly hitting me. I cry very easily right now and I cried while watching this episode. There’s a sincerity and earnestness to Highway to Heaven that gets to me, despite how corny the show could sometimes be.

That said, this episode had the same flaws as most of season 5’s episodes. Jonathan and Mark were only in a few scenes and the majority of the episode was carried by Joseph Culp and Julianna McCarthy, both of whom tended to overact during their big emotional scenes. Culp eventually won me over but McCarthy’s performance was so theatrical and over-the-top that it really did take you out of the story.

That said, I did cry. Would I have cried if I wasn’t currently in mourning? I think I would have, actually. The final shot of a young boy reading George’s book while sitting in a wheelchair earned those tears. We never really know how many people we help, do we?

It’s not that bad.

Produced by Roger Corman and made for a budget of only a million dollars, the very first film version of The Fantastic Four is best known for having never been released. Stan Lee always claimed that the film was never meant to be released and that it was only made so that German producer Bernd Eichinger could hold onto the rights for the characters. Eichinger has always said that he wanted to release the flm and it was Avi Arad, the future founder of Marvel Studios, who asked him not to because he felt a low-budget B-movie would damage the Marvel brand. Arad has said that Eichinger is telling the truth and considering the reception that Albert Pyun’s Captain America received, I can understand why Arad was concerned.

Though the film was never officially released, bootleg copies are out there. I’ve seen the movie a few times and I watched it again last night. Watching it, I was reminded that The Fantastic Four is not as bad as people say.

It’s an origin story. Reed Richards (Alex Hyde-White) flies into space with his girlfriend Sue (Rebecca Staab), her annoying kid brother Johnny (Jay Underwood), and Reed’s best friend Ben (Michael Bailey Smith). Cosmic comet rays lead to them developing super powers. Reed can stretch. Johnny can burst into flame. Sue can turn invisible. Ben turns into a creature with orange, rocky skin. On Earth, they battle both the evil Doctor Doom (Joseph Culp) and the Jeweler (Ian Trigger) for possession of a powerful diamond.

The low budget is obvious and the script isn’t great, with the Jeweler being a truly unimpressive villain. (Unlike Doctor Doom, the Jeweler was created specifically for this movie.) But the movie still has more genuine heart than the future big-budget Fantastic Four films. Alex Hyde-White plays Reed as being brilliant but self-absorbed. Sue is a thankless role but Rebecca Staab does her best. Jay Underwood is annoying as Johnny but Johnny was annoying in the comic books as well. This version of The Fantastic Four is the only movie, so far, to capture and stay true to the spirit of the characters.

This is especially true when it comes Michael Bailey Smith’s performance as Ben Grimm. More than either Jamie Bell or Michael Chiklis, Smith realistically portrays Ben’s bitterness over knowing that he will never be able to return to his former life. Of all the film versions of the Fantastic Four, this is the only one that adequately captures both the look and the personality of The Thing. He become a real person and not just an actor in a rubber suit. This movie is also the only one, so far, to really do a decent job of portraying Dr. Doom’s megalomania. It’s interesting that the film that Marvel didn’t want released is the one that stays true to the original comic book.

The Fantastic Four will be joining the MCU in 2025. Ironically, considering that Marvel Comics started with the Fantastic Four, they’ll be among the last of the major characters to get an MCU film. There’s hope that the new Fantastic Four will reverse the MCU’s declining fortunes. I’ve been skeptical ever since I heard the Silver Surfer was going to be played by Julia Garner but hopefully, I’ll be wrong. Galactus is one of the great Marvel villains and I hope the new Fantastic Four will do him justice. When people are watching the massively hyped, big budget, CGI-heavy version of The Fantastic Four, I hope at least some will remember the low-budget version that could barely afford a single special effect and I hope they’ll remember that it wasn’t that bad.