Late Night Retro Television Review: Highway to Heaven 2.1 and 2.2 “A Song For Jason”

Posted on March 21, 2024 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 Thursdays, I will be reviewing Highway to Heaven, which aired on NBC from 1984 to 1989. The entire show is currently streaming on Freevee and several other services!

This week, Highway to Heaven begins its second season with a two-part episode.

Episodes 2.1 and 2.2 “A Song For Jason”

(Dir by Michael Landon, originally aired on September 18th and September 25th, 1985)

Well, this is certainly a tear jerker.

The two-part second season opener of Highway to Heaven finds Jonathan and Mark assigned to work at Camp Good Times, an actual summer camp for children who have cancer. And while Jonathan is, as usual, enthusiastic about the assignment, Mark responds by begging to be allowed to sit this one out. Jonathan’s response is to tell Mark to stop feeling sorry for himself and to help the kids. Mark starts to walk away from his friendship with Jonathan until he runs into one of the kids, Jason (Joshua John Miller, whose best-known work as an actor might be as the scary child vampire in Near Dark). Jason basically repeats the same thing that Jonathan said, telling Mark that he needs to stop feeling sorry for himself. Mark realizes that if a kid like Jason can be brave in the face of cancer then the least Mark can do is spend a summer as a camp counselor.

(Adding a bit of poignance to all this is that both Victor French and Michael Landon would die of cancer five years after this episode aired.)

Jason is the son of rock star Miki Winner (Barry Williams — yes, Greg Brady). Miki is always finding excuse not to spend any time with his sick son. Maybe Jonathan can change his mind.

But that’s not all!

Curtis (played by a ten year-old Giovanni Ribisi in his acting debut) is scared to death to go outside, a result of his overprotective mother (Robin Riker) constantly harping on the fact that he could die at any minute. Can Jonathan help Curtis have fun while encouraging his mom to let Curtis be a kid?

Teenage jock Gary (Brian Lane Green) has bone cancer and might lose his leg. Can he got over his bitterness and get a date with camp counselor Trish (Jill Carroll)?

And will Mark finally realize that there is hope to be found in even the most dire of situations?

(The answer to all of that is yes but you probably already guessed that.)

Even by the standards of Highway to Heaven, this episode was a bit heavy-handed, without a subtle moment to be found. Barry Williams is as unconvincing a rock star here as he was on The Brady Bunch Variety Hour. Some of the kids were better actors than others. It’s also hard not to feel that the story could have been told in just one episode. The first part, especially, feels a bit padded. That said, it all still brought tears to my mismatched eyes because, seriously, how couldn’t it? This is one of those episodes where the show’s earnestness and sincerity really worked to its advantage. The episode is so heartfelt that it feels rather churlish to be too nit-picky about it. In the end, flaws and all, the episode works.

Add to that, if you can’t enjoy the scene where Jonathan disguises himself as a barber and shaves a bully’s head, I don’t know what to tell you.

Death Warrant (1990, directed by Deran Sarafian)

Posted on January 1, 2024 by Jedadiah Leland

A series of murders have occurred at Harrison State Prison in California. What better way to investigate the crimes and catch the guilty than to send in an undercover cop? Who can enter a California prison and investigate the crime without drawing too much attention to himself? It would have to be someone who could blend in with the population without seeming out of place.

How about Jean-Claude Van Damme?

Van Damme, in one of his early films, stars as Louis Burke, a Canadian with a Belgian accent who comes to Los Angeles to track down a serial killer known as the Sandman (Patrick Kilpatrick, who was last seen running for governor of California in 2021) and then just sticks around. Burke enters the prison and somehow, he is not immediately tagged as being a B-movie star who is working for the police. I guess California prisons are full of Belgian kickboxers.

A realistic portrait of prison and police work, this is not. But it is Van Damme at his most berserk, flexing his muscles and shouting at his enemies and getting hit in the head by a flying wrench at one point. To the surprise of no one, the Sandman eventually ends up in the prison with Burke and it leads to an epic showdown that takes place in the middle of a prison riot. The fight is exciting because Van Damme and Kilpatrick were two tough actors who, at that point in their careers, had nothing to lose by going all out on screen.

(Of the three major B-action stars of the 90s, Dolph Lundgren was the one you watched because he could actually act. Steven Seagal was the one you watched because you hoped someone would beat him up. Jean-Claude Van Damme was the one you watched because he could actually do everything he did in the movies in real life as well.)

There are many good actors to be found in Death Warrant, playing paper-thin characters. Robert Guillaume is the one-eyed clerk who takes Burke under his wing. Larry Hankin is the biggest weasel in the prison. Art LaFleuer is the prison guard from Hell. George Dickerson is the obviously corrupt official. Abdul Salaam El-Razzac is the voodoo priest who watches over the prison. Cynthia Gibb is the attorney who pays Burke a conjugal visit. It’s good to see them all.

Death Warrant is a dumb and entertaining B-movie that doesn’t take itself too seriously. It’s not Van Damme’s best but it’s not his worst either. It’s Damme fun.

Robots With A Cause: Class of 1999 (1990, directed by Mark L. Lester)

Posted on October 6, 2019 by Jedadiah Leland

The year is 1999 and John F. Kennedy High School sits in the middle of Seattle’s most dangerous neighborhood. Teenage gangs have taken over all of the major American cities and just going to school means putting your life in danger. However, Dr. Bob Forest (Stacy Keach!), the founder of MegaTech, has a solution. He has taken former military androids and reprogrammed them to serve as educators. JFK’s principal, Miles Langford (Malcolm McDowell!!), agrees to allow his school to be used a testing ground. Soon, Miss Conners (Pam Grier!!!) is teaching chemistry. Mr. Byles (Patrick Kilpatrick) is teaching gym. Mr. Hardin (John P. Ryan) is teaching history. When they’re not teaching, these robots are killing truant students and manipulating two rival street gangs into going to war.

Imagine mixing Rebel With A Cause with The Terminator and you get an idea of what Class of 1999 is like. Two of the only good teenagers (played by Bradley Gregg and Traci Lind) figure out that the teachers are killing their classmates but they already know that they won’t be able to get anyone to listen to them because they’re just kids who go to school in a bad neighborhood. Meanwhile, the teachers have been programmed to do whatever has to be done to keep the peace in the school. Why suspend a disruptive student when you can just slam his head into a locker until he’s dead? Director Mark L. Lester (who previously directed Class of 1984) is an old pro when it comes to movies like this and he’s helped by a better-than-average cast. Any movie that features not only Stacy Keach and Malcolm McDowell but also Pam Grier is automatically going to be cooler than any movie that doesn’t.

When Class of 1999 was made, 1999 was considered to be the future and, in many ways, the movie did prove to be prophetic. We may not have robot teachers (yet) but the idea of arming teachers and expecting them to double as cops has become a very popular one over the past few years. Personally, I wouldn’t want to send my children to a school where the teachers all have to carry a gun while teaching but that may just be me.

Back to School #43: River’s Edge (dir by Tim Hunter)

Posted on September 8, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In his film guide, Heavy Metal Movies, Mike McPadden describes the disturbing 1987 teen crime drama River’s Edge as being “666 Candles“. It’s a perfect description because River’s Edge appears to not only be taking place in a different socio-economic setting than Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club but perhaps on a different planet as well.

River’s Edge opens with a close-up of a dead and naked teenage girl lying on the edge of a dirty, polluted river and it gets darker from there. The dead girl was the girlfriend of the hulking John Tollet (Daniel Roebuck, playing a character who is miles away from his role in Cavegirl). As John explains to his friends, he strangled her for no particular reason. His friends, meanwhile, respond with detachment. Their unofficial leader, the hyperactive Layne (Crispin Glover), insists that since nothing can be done about the dead girl, their number one concern now has to be to keep John from getting caught. While Layne arranges for John to hide out with a one-legged drug dealer named Feck (Dennis Hopper), two of John’s friends, Matt and Clarissa (played by Keanu Reeves and Ione Skye), consider whether or not they should go to the police. Oddly enough, John really doesn’t seem to care one way or the other.

Seriously, River’s Edge is one dark film. If it were made today, River’s Edge would probably be directed by someone like Larry Clark and, in many ways, it feels like a distant cousin to Clark’s Bully. The teenagers in River’s Edge live in a world with little-to-no adult supervision. Matt’s mom is more concerned with whether or not Matt has been stealing her weed than with the fact that Matt might be covering up a murder. The local high school teacher is a former hippie who won’t shut up about how much better his generation was compared to every other generation. In fact, the only adult with any sort of moral code is Feck and he’s usually too busy dancing with a sex doll to really be of much help. It’s a world where no one has been raised to value their own lives so why should they care about a dead girl laying out on the banks of the river?

The film features good performances from Keanu Reeves, Ione Skye, and Daniel Roebuck but really, the entire movie is stolen by Crispin Glover and Dennis Hopper. In the role of Layne, Glover is a manic wonder, speaking quickly and gesturing even when he isn’t making a point. When Layne first shows up, he seems like he’s just overly loyal to his friend John but, as the film progresses, it becomes more apparent that he’s less concerned about protecting John and more interested in ordering other people to do it. For Layne, protecting John is ultimately about maintaining power over Matt, Clarissa, and the rest of their friends.

As for Dennis Hopper — well, this is one of those films that you should show to anyone who says that Hopper wasn’t a great actor. The role of a one-legged drug dealer who lives with a sex doll sound like exactly the type of role that would lead Hopper to going totally over-the-top. Instead, Hopper gave a surprisingly subtle and intelligent performance and, as a result, he provided this film with the moral center that it very much needs.