Buddy and Portia’s Story”

Posted on August 16, 2023 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 Wednesdays, I will be reviewing the original Love Boat, which aired on ABC from 1977 to 1986! The series can be streamed on Paramount Plus!

The Love Boat sets sail for season 3!

Episode 3.1 and 3.2 “The Alaskan Wedding Cruise: Carol and Doug’s Story/Peter and Alicia’s Story/Julie’s Story/Buddy and Portia’s Story”

(Dir by Roger Duchowny, originally aired on September 15th, 1979)

The third season of The Love Boat starts with a special voyage to Alaska and a two-hour running time. It’s double the guest stars, double the melodrama, double the goofiness, and double the romance! The opening also features new clips for Doc, Gopher, and Julie. Whereas the first two seasons introduced Doc listening to his own heartbeat, the third season opening features him laughing while leaning against a railing. Gopher’s new opening credit features him looking wistfully out at the ocean and it’s a much more mature look for him. As for Julie, she’s still smiling and perky but she’s let her hair grow out. If the first two seasons of The Love Boat featured Julie looking like the star of the high school drama department, she looks more like the most popular cheerleader now. As for the Captain, he continues to salute the camera and Isaac continues to do his signature pointing.

The episode opens in Canada. The boat is docked in Vancouver, where it has been rented out by a huge and wealthy wedding party. The boat will be sailing to Alaska. Isaac has been reading everything that he can find about Alaska and he spends most of the episode sharing trivia about the state’s history. Gopher, preparing for Alaska’s cold weather, buys a gigantic coat. Meanwhile, Doc Bricker makes jokes about his ex-wives and Capt. Stubing tries to keep everything professional. (“You’re not going to the North Pole!” he snaps at Gopher when he sees the size of his new fur coat.)

As for Julie, her mind is elsewhere. Alaska is where Jack (Tony Roberts) lives. Who is Jack? During the second season, he was a passenger who fell in love with Julie and who asked Julie to marry him. She knows that she’s going to see Jack in Alaska and she’s going to give him an answer as far as his proposal is concerned. (If you don’t remember Jack asking Julie to marry him, don’t feel bad. I had forgotten about it, too. Fortunately, the first hour of this episode is full of flashbacks to Jack’s previous episode.) Is Julie ready to settle down? While Julie tries to make up her mind, she also has to deal with the romantic intentions of the wedding party’s dorky best man (Donny Most).

As for the wedding party, Carol (Lisa Hartman) and Doug (Mark Harmon, sporting a truly unfortunate haircut) are looking forward to getting married, even though Doug’s ex-girlfriend (Caren Kaye) is also on the boat and determined to win Doug back. If that means jumping out a cake while wearing a bikini, she’ll do it. Doug is more concerned about the fact that his estranged, alcoholic father, Peter (Ray Milland) had turned up on the cruise despite having not been invited to or even informed about the wedding. Peter has stopped drinking and is trying to make peace with his son and his ex-wife, Alicia (Eleanor Parker). What Doug and Alicia do not know is that Peter is terminally ill. And what neither Doug nor Peter knows is that Alicia is on the verge of filing for bankruptcy.

Meanwhile, Carol’s plain-spoken grandfather (Lorne Greene) feels uncomfortable with all of the rich folks but then he meets Doug’s equally plain-spoken aunt (Audra Lindley). Could we be heading for a double wedding? It is The Love Boat, after all!

There aren’t really any big surprises on this episode but it’s likable nonetheless. For this episode, the crew and the cast actually sailed to Alaska and all the action was filmed during an actual cruise. The scenery is gorgeous, even if it’s obvious that the cast was frequently freezing while filming their scenes. By this point, the show’s regulars had their chemistry down perfectly and all of the 3rd season premiere’s guest stars are well-selected. I especially liked the performances of Lorne Greene, Audra Lindley, the great Ray Milland, and Tony Roberts. Julie and Jack’s reunion was far more touching that I think anyone would expect from a show like The Love Boat, with Tony Roberts playing the role of Jack so well that the viewer really did believe that, under different circumstances, he and Julie truly would have had a wonderful life together. This was a great way to start the third season.

Horror Film Review: Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker (by William Asher)

Posted on October 13, 2019 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This is an unexpectedly odd psychological thriller from 1981.

Okay, well, actually, I guess the technical term for this film would be “slasher” because it does feature a dark secret from the past and a series of gruesome murders and some 20-something teenagers getting naked. That said, calling this movie a slasher brings to mind thoughts of Friday the 13th and Halloween and, as much as I’ve defended those films in the past, it’s hard to compare them to a film like Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker. Nor is the film comparable to more giallo-influenced slashers that came out in the late 70s and the early 80s. The identity of the murderer is revealed too early for that.

The murderer is Cheryl Roberts (Susan Tyrrell), who may seem like a perfectly normal suburban widow but who has some bad habits. For instance, when she’s sexually rejected by television repairman Phil Brody (Caskey Swaim), she reacts by grabbing a knife and stabbing him to death in the kitchen. When the police arrive, she says that he attempted to rape her. When it’s later revealed to her that Phil was gay and in a committed relationship with the local high school basketball coach, she snaps that “Homosexuals are very sick people!” Cheryl goes on to murder several more people, all because she views them as a threat to her relationship with her nephew, Billy (Jimmy McNichol).

Billy is a senior in high school. His parents died in a mysterious car crash when he was an infant and he’s been raised by his aunt Cheryl. Billy has an opportunity to go away to college on a basketball scholarship but Cheryl isn’t happy about that. Cheryl never wants Billy to leave and she’s not above drugging his milk to make sure that he has a bad game while the college scouts are watching. Cheryl is also not happy that Billy has a girlfriend, Julia (Julia Duffy). When she finds out that Billy and Julie are sexually active, Cheryl’s response is to trap Julia in the basement.

Aunt Cheryl is not Billy’s only problem. There’s also Detective Joe Carlson (Bo Svenson). Carlson has been assigned to investigate the murder of Phil and he quickly becomes fixated on the fact that Phil was gay and that he was in a relationship with Billy’s coach, Tom Landers (Steve Eastin). Despite all of the evidence that Cheryl’s killing people left and right, Carlson becomes obsessed with proving that Billy’s gay and that he murdered Phil as the result of a love triangle. It quickly becomes clear that Carlson, who brags about his own military service, is incapable of going for more than five minutes without accusing someone of being gay. (Of course, Carlson never says “gay.” Instead, he uses a slur that begins with the letter F and he uses it a lot.)

What sets this film apart from other horror films of the era is that the rampant homophobia is not played for laughs or for shock value. Traditionally, being gay in a 1980s horror film meant that the character was either going to be held up as an object of ridicule or, in many cases, turn out to be the murderer. Instead, in Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker, the gay characters are literally the only fully sympathetic people in the entire film. Instead, the film’s villains are homophobes like Carlson, Cheryl, and Eddie (Bill Paxton!), a bully who gives Billy a hard time over his friendship with the coach. As many people as Cheryl kills over the course of the film, the bigger monster is Carlson, who is so determined to indulge his prejudices that he’s blind to everything that’s happening in front of him.

It makes for an unexpectedly thoughtful slasher film. Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker has its flaws, to be sure. I wish, for instance, that Julia and Billy weren’t such bland characters. (They’re well-acted but neither is written with much depth.) There’s some pacing issues as well. But overall, this is an unexpectedly good thriller which features two horrifyingly plausible performances from Susan Tyrrell and Bo Svenson.

Film Review: Kidz in the Wood (1996, dir. Neal Israel)

Posted on September 5, 2016 by Valerie Troutman

I don’t know how I come across these things. This was a Disney Channel movie that was filmed in 1994, but aired in 1996 starring Dave Thomas. It also has Candace Cameron before the Bure. The quality is low because somebody filmed this off their TV. Luckily they did a great job. It looks decent and sounded just fine.

Dave Thomas plays a teacher who works at every troubled school from every 90s movie ever. You know this immediately because of the gang stereotypes that walk over.

That’s the big problem with this movie: stereotypes. They are all over this thing. That, and Dave Thomas whipping a Native American. The drug trip is a little weird too.

We meet some of our other main characters such as one played by David Lascher who you might recognize from Hey Dude and Sabrina, the Teenage Witch. He’s busy sexually harassing a blonde.

Here’s Candace!

Ah, 90s! She is a bit of a nymphomaniac in this. I am quite sure that at one point she asks if an egg frying on her tongue will turn on a guy. She’ll turn on a dime too once she gets a talking to by a female teacher who gives her horrible advice.

Next we get a guy who is a hypochondriac played by Alfonso Ribeiro.

Bill Clinton then rears his head.

Dave Thomas makes an attempt to connect with his students about history. This includes trying to get the students to remember Robert E. Lee because they have seen The Crow (1994) with Brandon Lee.

Next we meet the 90s strong female stereotype named Ms. Duffy.

Two actors from Stargate SG-1 are in here too, but what it comes down to is that Dave Thomas wants to take his kids on an Oregon Trail type trip. When I was a kid we just had a computer game that did it for us. The principal tells Ms. Duffy (Julia Duffy) to go with them and record Dave Thomas screwing up so they can fire him despite his tenure. There we have our movie.

At the end of the day, these three are the best part of the movie other than the Native American they travel with during part of the film.

They will say every single 90s saying you can imagine. I’m shocked they missed “that’s the way I like it” or “homie don’t play that.”

It’s off to the woods for these kidz. But first we get the mandatory hanging the kid out of the bus window bit.

In my day, we just held up signs for truckers driving past that said “honk if you’re horny.”

They arrive and we meet the hippest Native American I have ever seen in a movie.

This guy is awesome. He is played by Byron Chief-Moon.

Then we are off on the trail where Dave Thomas promptly gets himself flung off the wagon.

During this whole thing we are getting a voiceover narration from Thomas because he has ancestors that are tied to this whole thing. It will barely have anything to do with anything. Then Dave Thomas whips the Indian.

Now Dave Thomas decides it is time to eat a berry. That berry is a hallucinogen, which immediately sends him on a drug trip.

He even starts seeing everyone as if they were in old times. This includes the Indian.

This is immediately followed by morons on the wagon.

This was made for television.

Throughout the remainder of the film, the three gang guys think they are going to escape and go to Vegas.

Around the campfire, Ms. Duffy wants to sing something by Snoop Snoopy Dog.

She seems to think all rap is about guns and violence when she attempts to rap herself. I’d love to say that kind of thinking is only from the 80s and 90s, but I heard this same nonsense in a “documentary” called The Mask You Live In from 2015 that is currently on Netflix. But enough about propaganda.

Oh, and Candace Cameron is thinking about sex.

She even gets into Hey Dude’s sleeping bag before he gets there.

The next day Dave Thomas whips the Indian again.

Then one more time for good measure before he realizes he doesn’t need the whip.

After one of the wagons goes over in the water, the Indian goes on ahead where they are going to meet up eventually. This is done so that the teachers and the kids have their time to resolve their issues together.

Then Ms. Duffy gives Candace Cameron a sex talk. It amounts to stop being slutty and play hard to get instead. I’m pretty sure she actually uses the word “slutty”. Not exactly the right speech to give this girl. Maybe a simple, he’s obviously not interested, so you might want to move on would have done it. She can explore her sexuality as she pleases. She isn’t putting her or anyone else’s lives in danger.

Since all these people are idiots, they soon get themselves attacked by bees. That means it is time to put horse poop on Ms. Duffy.

Even a skunk doesn’t want anything to do with her.

As all this goes on you get the typical stuff you would expect as the kids start coming around, the teachers start to like each other, and the three gang guys get scared by a bear.

This leads right where you expect it to go.

That’s right. The teachers fly off a cliff leaving the kids to think they are dead. I mean dead dead. They have no reason to believe they are alive. Here’s the cliff to drive home the point.