Judith McConnell | 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 Tuesdays, I will be reviewing Baywatch Nights, an detective show that ran in Syndication from 1995 to 1997. The entire show is currently streaming on Youtube!

This week, Mitch considers the blues!

Episode 1.9 “Blues Boy”

(Dir by Reza Badiyi, originally aired on November 25th, 1995)

Lyle Logan (Michael Preston) is a 13 year-old musical prodigy who plays a guitar on the Malibu Pier with his guardian, Ned Simon (Greg Wrangler). Seven years earlier, Lyle witnessed the murder of his father by his Uncle Willie (Nathan Cavaleri). Now, Uncle Willie has just been released from prison and he’s searching for Lyle because he believes that Lyle knows where his father stashed the money from a robbery.

Uncle Willie has his men abduct Ned, planning on using him for leverage to get to his nephew. Lyle approaches Mitch and hires the detective agency to track Ned down. However, Mitch, Ryan and Garner are more interested in learning the truth about Lyle’s background. Though Lyle at first refuses to open up and even tries to run away when Mitch asks him about his background, Lyle eventually comes to trust the group. Together, they save Lyle from Uncle Willie. As for the stash of money, it’s in a first aid kit that breaks apart when it’s tossed into the ocean. The money watches up on the beach, where everyone goes crazy trying to grab some for themselves.

This was a pretty simple episode. In fact, it was a struggle to come up with 200 words to say about the plot. There’s not a lot going on, beyond Lyle running up and down the pier and Uncle Willie-looking evil. The only thing that kept this from being an episode of Baywatch was the presence of Angie Harmon and the lack of red bathing suits. In many ways, this episode highlights one of the biggest problems for Baywatch Nights. Far too often, the show just feels like a detective-themed episode of Baywatch (a show that actually did feature several detective-themed episodes both before and after the Baywatch Nights experiment). This episode, for instance, barely features any scenes that take place at night. Mitch does most of his investigating during the day, which is when he really should be working as a lifeguard.

The episode’s inability to escape the shadow of its parent show is exemplified by a scene that occurs about halfway through the episode. We get an extended sequence in which Ryan, Garner, and Mitch listen to Lyle play his guitar and they all have flashbacks to their past. Ryan’s memories deal with being the daughter of a navy officer. Garner remembers tossing a football back and forth with his father. And Mitch …. well, Mitch just has Baywatch flashbacks. It’s one of those silly, overly earnest scenes that one expects to find any production starring David Hasselhoff. (And the montage is, of course, scored by the Hoff singing a song.) Still, it’s hard not to notice that, while Ryan and Garner both have a past, Mitch just has another television show.

The episode ends with Lyle meeting and playing with B.B. King. Hopefully, B.B. adopted the kid. Seriously, he had been through a lot.

So, imagine this.

You’re on vacation in a tropical paradise. (Maybe you’re even there on Spring Break, just so we can justify including this review in my series of Spring Break film reviews.) One night, while wandering around the city, you get grabbed by a bunch of robe-wearing monks. The monks proceed to tie you up and then force you to take a canoe ride from the sewer to the middle of the jungle. Once you reach the jungle, you’re informed that you’ve been kidnapped by a cult that worships a shrunken head in a box. The members of the cult have been around for centuries but they’ve managed to retain their youth by drinking the blood of the women who they kidnap off the streets of the city. Like you, for example.

That would probably freak most people out. That would certainly freak me out. Not only do I not particularly care for the jungle but I’m also pretty attached to my blood. However, when this exact same thing happens in the 1974 film The Thirsty Dead, no one seems to be particularly shocked to hear about it. Instead, the kidnapped women all kind of shrug and accept their fate as if it all makes total sense.

In fact, Claire (Judith McConnell) appears to develop Stockholm Syndrome within record time. She’s a dancer in Manila who, within hours of being kidnapped, is soon joking with her abductors. She makes it clear that she’s apparently fine with being kidnapped and donating her blood to a good cause. It’s never really clear why she’s okay with that but Claire is so determined to do what she wants to do (even if that means being subservient to a bunch of 100 year-old cultists) that it’s hard not admire her stubbornness.

On the other hand, Laura (Jennifer Billingsley) is determined to escape. Even though the members of the cult believe that she’s the reincarnation of one of their goddesses, Laura wants to get back to civilization. She thinks that one of the cultists, Baru (John Considine), might be willing to help her. However, as Baru explains, if he goes too far into the jungle, he’ll lose his youth and basically just waste away.

(Just in case there’s any doubt on the part of anyone reading this review, the cult is right about the whole eternal youth thing. One cultist makes the mistake of venturing too far out into the jungle and transforms from 49 to 50 right in front of our eyes!)

The Thirsty Dead is an odd film. On the one hand, the first few minutes of the film is undeniably sordid. Claire dances in a cage. Laura gets knocked over the head by a cultist and ends up with her hands tied behind her back. The camera lingers on a doll of a baby floating in a sewer. When the women first find themselves in the jungle, Claire jokes about being sold into prostitution and the whole film, up until that point, has had a rather icky feel to it. However, once the cult shows up, The Thirsty Dead suddenly becomes a rather tame film, one that’s almost totally free of graphic gore and sexual innuendo. The Thirsty Dead ultimately feels less like a film and more like an extended episode of some 70s sci-fi show. For a film about a blood-sucking cult, there’s surprisingly little blood. It feels a bit off and, to be honest, it’s a little boring. This is the type of film that calls out for a sleazier approach.

Despite being rather forgettable, The Thirsty Dead has achieved the dubious immortality of being included in several Mill Creek box sets, the ones with names like 100 Horror Classics or 50 Chilling Thrillers. So, in all probability, you’ve got The Thirsty Dead on DVD or Blu-ray without even realizing it. If you somehow don’t already have The Thirsty Dead in your film collection, you can always watch it on YouTube or Prime or probably a hundred other streaming sites. The Thirsty Dead will never die.