Tag Archives: Joseph Ruskin

Retro Television Review: Fantasy Island 6.3 “The Perfect Gentleman/Legend”

Posted on 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 Tuesdays, I will be reviewing the original Fantasy Island, which ran on ABC from 1977 to 1984.  Unfortunately, the show has been removed from most streaming sites.  Fortunately, I’ve got nearly every episode on my DVR.

Smiles, everyone!

Episode 6.3 “The Perfect Gentleman/Legend”

(Dir by Philip Leacock, originally aired on October 30th, 1982)

Jimmy Jordan (Paul Williams, who appeared on a lot of these type of shows) is a rock star who witnessed a mob hit at one of his concerts.  Jimmy did what anyone would do.  He called the police.  They offered to protect him if he testified but then they told him that they probably wouldn’t be able to continue to protect him afterwards.  (Uhmm …. hello?  Witness Protection Program?)  Jimmy decided to fake his own death and then go to Fantasy Island.  His fantasy?  To not get caught by the two mobsters who have been sent to make sure that he’s actually dead.

Uhmmm …. that’s weird.  Like all of that was going on Jimmy just decided to go to Fantasy Island?  And then he shows up on Fantasy Island wearing a trenchcoat over his rock star jump suit?  Weird.

Fortunately, Michelle (Leslie Easterbrook) is on the island and her fantasy is apparently to have a new butler!  Soon, Jimmy is calling himself Godfrey and helping Michelle and her family save their business while Tracer (John Davis Chandler) and Killer (Joseph Ruskin) search for him.  Needless to say, Jimmy and Michelle fall in love and leave the island together and, unless I missed something, it appears that Jimmy is planning on just being Godfrey for the rest of his life.  He even drives Michelle and her daughter to the docks so that they can all fly off to the mainland.  I guess the world is going to go on believing that Jimmy’s dead and….

This fantasy raised way too many unanswered questions and Paul Williams was convincing neither as a rock star or a butler.  This is a fantasy that called out for someone like …. oh, I don’t know.  Sonny Bono, maybe.

The other fantasy was a bit of an improvement, just because it featured the unlikely but surprisingly likable pairing of Michelle Phillips and Andy Griffith.  Phillips plays Andrea Barclay, who has a beautiful singing voice but who suffers from crippling stage fright.  Her fantasy is to successfully perform in front of the toughest crowd ever.

Really?  Roarke says, The toughest crowd?

By now, guests should realize that whenever Roarke says something like that, it means your fantasy is going to be interpreted in a bizarre way that you never expected.  Considering that, the last time that Michelle Phillips was on the show, her fantasy to be the most famous woman in the world somehow led to her becoming Lady Godiva, Andrea really should have known better.  Instead, Andrea is shocked when she finds herself in the Old West, where Judge Roy Bean (Andy Griffith) has promised the citizens of Langtry, Texas that his favorite actress and singer, Lillie Langtry (Madlyn Rhue), will be performing for them.  When Lillie leaves without singing, it’s time for Andrea to put on a mask and pretend to be Lillie as she performs in Judge Bean’s saloon.  Yeah, it’s a silly fantasy but Andy Griffith and Michelle Phillips both put their heart into their performances.  Andy Griffith does his folksy-but-intelligent routine while Michelle Phillips especially deserves a lot of credit for taking things seriously.

This episode had the same problem as last week’s.  Everything felt very familiar.  Last week, we had what seemed like the show’s hundredth boxing and dancing fantasy.  This week, we have what feels like the hundredth singing fantasy.  After five seasons, it’s obvious that the show’s writers had started to run out of ideas.

Next week …. Roddy McDowall returns to Fantasy Island!  Yay!

 

Lisa Reviews An Oscar Nominee: Prizzi’s Honor (dir by John Huston)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

First released in 1985, Prizzi’s Honor tells the story of Charley Partanna (Jack Nicholson), a blue collar guy who lives in Brooklyn and who is a hard-working hit man for the Prizzi crime family.  Charley is the son of Angelo (John Randolph), who is the right-hand man to the family’s elderly but still ruthless Don (William Hickey).  In the past, Charley came close to marrying the Don’s daughter, Maerose Prizzi (Anjelica Huston), and he is almost as much a member of the family as the Don’s two sons, Eduardo (Robert Loggia) and Dominic (Lee Richardson).

While attending a family wedding, Charley meets and is immediately infatuated with a woman named Irene Walker (Kathleen Turner).  Later, when Charley is sent to California to kill a man who robbed one of the family’s Vegas casinos, he is shocked to discover that the man is Irene’s husband.  Irene swears that she didn’t have anything to do with the casino theft and, after a whirlwind courtship, Charley and Irene get married in Mexico.  What Charley doesn’t know (but eventually discovers) is that Irene is herself a professional killer.  While Charley and Irene try to balance work and love, Maerose conspires to turn the family against Irene and win Charley back.

Directed by the legendary John Huston, Prizzi’s Honor is pitch black comedy about two hard-working people who kill for a living.  (The film’s big set piece is an extended sequence in which Charley and Irene’s attempt to pull a job together goes wrong in every way and they end up arguing about their relationship while dragging dead bodies from one room to another.)  Though Prizzi’s Honor was released long before the series premiered on HBO, the film feels almost like a companion piece to The Sopranos, full of mobsters who are not as clever as they think they are and who struggle to uphold the old ways in an increasingly complicated world.  Particularly when compared to the gangster who populate a film like The Godfather, the Prizzis are defined by their pettiness.  If Don Corleone epitomized wisdom and honor, Don Prizzi epitomizes someone who holds onto power solely for power’s sake.

Prizzi’s Honor is one of those films that probably seemed a bit more revolutionary when it was first released than it does today.  At this point, we’ve seen so many films about hired killers who have quirky conversations while carrying out their work that the mix of violence and dark humor can feel almost like a cliché.  As well, there are certain parts of the film, like the opening wedding sequence, that feel as if they go on for just a few minutes too long, as if John Huston himself was not always comfortable with the balance between the dark drama and the comedy of mob manners.  That said, Jack Nicholson, Kathleen Turner (who gives a performance worthy of the great femme fatales of film noir), Anjelica Huston, John Randolph, and especially William Hickey all give strong enough performances to hold the audience’s attention and the film’s finale cuts to the point in such a way that it leaves you reconsidering everything that you’ve previously seen.  Prizzi’s Honor has its flaws but Nicholson and Turner have such chemistry that the film’s ending sticks with you.

Prizzi’s Honor was nominated for 8 Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Supporting Actor for William Hickey.  (Oddly, Kathleen Turner was not nominated for playing Irene.)  In the end, it only won one Oscar that year, for supporting actress Anjelica Huston.  The Oscars that year were dominated by a far more convention love story, Out of Africa.

Horror on TV: The Twilight Zone 3.24 “To Serve Man” (dir by Richard L. Bare)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

“It’s a cookbook!”

During the month of October, we like to share classic episodes of horror-themed television.  That was easier to do when we first started doing our annual October horrorthon here at the Shattered Lens because every single episode of the original, black-and-white Twilight Zone was available on YouTube.  Sadly, that’s no longer the case.  In fact, there is exactly one episode of the original Twilight Zone on YouTube.

Fortunately, that episode is a classic.  In 1962’s To Serve Man, an alien (Richard Kiel) comes to Earth and invites people to return to his home planet with him.  He leaves behind a book.  When everyone learns that the title of the book is To Serve Man, they excitedly decide that the book must be an instruction manual on how to help mankind.  The truth, as we learn in the episode’s classic finale, is something a little bit different.

Here’s the episode!  Watch it before YouTube yanks it down.

(This episode originally aired on October 2nd, 1962.  It was directed by Richard L. Bare from a script by Rod Serling.  It was based on a short story by Damon Knight.)

Enjoy!

Horror on TV: The Twilight Zone 3.24 “To Serve Man” (dir by Richard L. Bare)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

“It’s a cookbook!”

During the month of October, we like to share classic episodes of horror-themed television.  That was easier to do when we first started doing our annual October horrorthon here at the Shattered Lens because every single episode of the original, black-and-white Twilight Zone was available on YouTube.  Sadly, that’s no longer the case.  In fact, there is exactly one episode of the original Twilight Zone on YouTube.

Fortunately, that episode is a classic.  In 1962’s To Serve Man, an alien (Richard Kiel) comes to Earth and invites people to return to his home planet with him.  He leaves behind a book.  When everyone learns that the title of the book is To Serve Man, they excitedly decide that the book must be an instruction manual on how to help mankind.  The truth, as we learn in the episode’s classic finale, is something a little bit different.

Here’s the episode!  Watch it before YouTube yanks it down.

(This episode originally aired on October 2nd, 1962.  It was directed by Richard L. Bare from a script by Rod Serling.  It was based on a short story by Damon Knight.)

Enjoy!

 

Horror on TV: The Twilight Zone 3.24 “To Serve Man”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

On this day, 58 years ago, one of the most influential shows in the history of television, The Twilight Zone, premiered on CBS.  Created by Rod Serling, this anthology show not only featured some of the best actors and writers in the business but it also used tales of the unexpected to address some of the most pressing issues of the day.  (Many, if not all, of those issues remain relevant today.)  The Twilight Zone inspired a countless number of future filmmakers and writers and it remains popular today.  The annual New Year’s Eve and 4th of July marathons on SyFy continue to delight viewers both new and old.

When we first started doing our annual October horrorthon here at the Shattered Lens, every single episode of the original, black-and-white Twilight Zone was available on YouTube.  Sadly, that’s no longer the case.  As I sit here writing this, while several episodes from the show’s later (and largely unsuccessful) revivals have been uploaded,  there is exactly one episode of the original Twilight Zone on YouTube.

Fortunately, that episode is a classic.  In 1962’s To Serve Man, an alien (Richard Kiel) comes to Earth and invites people to return to his home planet with him.  He leaves behind a book.  When everyone learns that the title of the book is To Serve Man, they excitedly decide that the book must be an instruction manual on how to help mankind.  The truth, as we learn in the episode’s classic finale, is something a little bit different.

Here’s the episode!  Watch it before YouTube yanks it down.

Enjoy!

Horror on TV: The Twilight Zone 3.24 “To Serve Man”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

You know what?

I’ve spent this October irritated by the lack of episodes of the Twilight Zone on YouTube.  I mean, I understand the importance of copyright laws and everything but seriously, how can you take away the Twilight Zone in October!?

However, I finally managed to find one — and exactly one — episode of The Twilight Zone on YouTube.  And it’s a classic!  (And who knows how long it’ll be available so don’t hold off on watching it!)  Here is the classic “To Serve Man” episode of The Twilight Zone!

Enjoy and bon appetit!

 

Horror on TV: Twilight Zone 3.24 “To Serve Man”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

TheTwilightZoneLogo


I shared this episode of The Twilight Zone two years ago for Halloween but the YouTube video has since been taken down. So, here it is again!


There’s a lot I could say about To Serve Man but really, all that needs to be acknowledged is that it’s a classic and features one of the best endings ever.


To Serve Man was written by Rod Serling and directed by Richard L. Bare. It originally aired on March 2nd, 1962.


Bon appetit!


Horror on the Lens: Diary of a Madman (dir by Reginald Le Borg)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

For today’s horror on the lens, check out the 1963 film, Diary of a Madman!

It’s simply not October without at least one film featuring the great Vincent Price.  In Diary of a Madman, Price plays Simon Cordier, a French magistrate.  What is it that’s causing Simon’s personality to change?  What is making him suffer from greater and greater delusions?  Is he just going insane?  Or is he being haunted by a malevolent spirit known as a horla!?

Any film that features Vincent Price being sinister is worth watching and Diary of a Madman actually features one of his better performances.  Overall, Diary of a Madman is an enjoyable attempt at psychological horror.

Enjoy it below!