Brad reviews FAMILY OF COPS (1995), starring Charles Bronson!

Posted on June 25, 2025 by Bradley Crain

Legendary actor Charles Bronson ended his five-decade career by starring in a series of made-for-TV movies, FAMILY OF COPS (1995), BREACH OF FAITH: A FAMILY OF COPS II (1997), and FAMILY OF COPS III: UNDER SUSPICION (1999). I was in my mid-twenties as this series played out, and I enjoyed each of the installments. Today, I’m going to take a look at the first in the series.

In FAMILY OF COPS, Charles Bronson stars as Police Inspector Paul Fein. Paul, a widower as we enter this story, leads a family who is heavily involved in law enforcement in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His oldest son Ben (Daniel Baldwin) is a detective on the force. Ben is a family man in a loving marriage with several wild kids. Paul’s younger son Eddie (Sebastian Spence) is a patrol cop. Eddie’s single, has a beautiful girlfriend, and seems to be a nice guy with a well-adjusted life. Paul’s oldest daughter Kate (Barbara Williams) is a local public defender. She seems to be dedicated to her work, not leaving much time for a social life. And then there’s Paul’s youngest daughter Jackie (Angela Featherstone), who has moved out to California and refers to herself as “the family curse.” This story opens with Jackie reluctantly coming back to Milwaukee to attend her dad’s birthday party. All Paul wants for his birthday is for his family to be together. We soon learn that neither Ben or Kate care much for Jackie and her irresponsible life choices. As a matter of fact, the reason she ran off to California in the first place was to get out from under her family’s disapproval. It’s not long after she gets back that the family wishes she would have stayed away. Sneaking out of her sister’s house late at night to drink and party, she meets the prominent local businessman Adam Novacek (Simon MacCorkindale), eventually going to his home and engaging in sexual intercourse. Sadly, the next morning she wakes up to Novacek’s recently deceased corpse, and she’s arrested as the prime suspect in his murder. Convinced of her innocence, Paul, Ben, and Eddie set about trying to clear her name and find the real murderer. Besides Jackie, other suspects begin to emerge, including Novacek’s current wife Anna (Lesley-Anne Down), his former wife Laura (Kate Trotter), who’s now confined to a looney bin, and a local gangster named Frank Rampola (John Vernon), who has a vendetta against Paul for recently busting his grandson. How far will Paul Fein go to protect his family in his search for a killer?!!

FAMILY OF COPS is a perfect example of what I would refer to as entertainment for the “older person crowd,” and I don’t mean this as a put-down in any way as I enjoyed the movie. I just mean that it fits a type of entertainment that was popular in the 80’s and 90’s. These types of shows would depend greatly on the charisma or reputation of a veteran actor or actress, would contain simple production values, and would usually follow formulaic plots. Examples of the types of shows I’m referring to include MURDER, SHE WROTE with Angela Lansbury, MATLOCK with Andy Griffith, DIAGNOSIS MURDER with Dick Van Dyke, and WALKER: TEXAS RANGER with Chuck Norris. A combination of my dad, mom and grandma loved all of these shows. I’m a big fan of MATLOCK myself. In this case, FAMILY OF COPS leans heavily on Charles Bronson’s five decades as a tough guy icon to anchor a somewhat formulaic crime film and family melodrama. The role of Paul Fein fits a 73-year-old Bronson like a glove. He’s still in good physical shape, and the movie gives him a couple of opportunities to punch the shit out of some much younger thugs and henchmen. That was fun for me.

The supporting cast of the film is solid. Daniel Baldwin and Angela Featherstone make the biggest impact. Baldwin is good as the oldest son, a hothead, tough guy on the job who is constantly being humbled at home. Featherstone has the most beautiful eyes, and her rebellious character seems to have a good heart, but she just can’t seem to keep herself out of trouble. Paul Fein’s love for his troubled daughter Jackie is a sweet part of the story and provides something that most of us can relate to. She told me that she “loved Charles,” and I think you can see that in their scenes together. Sebastian Spence and Barbara Williams don’t have a lot to do in this first installment, but their characters will get their own moments to shine in the sequels. I also enjoy seeing John Vernon and Lesley Anne-Down show up in the movie as various persons of interest throughout the story. Bronson and Lesley Anne-Down had recently worked together in DEATH WISH V: THE FACE OF DEATH (1994) and were reportedly good friends in real life. Ted Kotcheff directed FAMILY OF COPS, which I find kind of disappointing. The same guy who directed movies like NORTH DALLAS FORTY (1979) and FIRST BLOOD (1982) didn’t bring anything special to the table in this film. I know it’s a modestly budgeted made-for-TV movie, but the best that can be said for the direction is that it’s workmanlike, and you would never suspect that the director had once helmed the original Rambo movie.

Ultimately, I enjoy FAMILY OF COPS because it stars Charles Bronson. Even as an older man, Bronson still dominates a scene, and the ratings success of the movie proved that Bronson still had an audience who wanted to see him on screen. And even though the story isn’t very unique and the central mystery isn’t very exciting, just the fact that Bronson is leading a solid story that includes action, crime, mystery and family melodrama will always provide some moments of joy for his fans like me. This is far from Bronson’s best work, but the old workhorse still knows how to entertain!

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 3.14 “Repitition”

Posted on May 23, 2025 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 Fridays, I will be reviewing Friday the 13th: The Series, a show which ran in syndication from 1987 to 1990. The entire series can be found on YouTube!

This week …. hey, where is everyone?

Episode 3.14 “Repetition”

(Dir by William Fruet, originally aired on February 5th, 1990)

After newspaper columnist Walter Cromwell (David Ferry) accidentally hits and kills a girl with his car, he finds himself consumed with guilt. He also start to hear the girl’s voice in his head, demanding that he bring her back to life. Walter just happens to have a cursed amulet, one that allows the owner to bring someone else back to life as long as he kills someone who is wearing the amulet. Walter’s first victim is his dying mother. But after he kills her, he starts to hear her voice demanding to be brought back to life. So, Walter commits another murder, one after the other, trying to bring back to life every one who he kills.

This was an interesting episode because neither Johnny nor Jack were anywhere to be seen. Instead, it was just Micki and she only appeared at the start and the end of the episode. The entire episode focused on Walter and his descent into madness and, it must be said, that worked just fine. This show’s strength has always been its collection of cursed antiques and this episode allowed us to see how one of them actually works. We saw how the amulet manipulated Walter and how Walter himself became more and more hooked on using the amulet’s power. I’ve always viewed the antiques as being a bit like drugs and their users being addicts and this episode certainly played into that theory.

This was an intense episode, featuring moody visuals and a strong script from David Lynch’s daughter, the future director Jennifer Lynch. After last week’s odd episode, it was nice to see an episode this week that actually got to the heart of what this series was always supposed to be about.

14 Days of Paranoia #5: Bloodknot (dir by Jorge Montesi)

Posted on February 19, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 1995’s Bloodknot, we are introduced to a grieving family.

Evelyn (Margot Kidder) and Arthur (Allan Royal) are mourning the death of their oldest son, who was in the military and who died during a military operation in the Middle East. Their other son, Tom (Patrick Dempsey), spends his time working on cars and helping out local racecar driver Mike (Craig Sheffer). Youngest daughter Gail (Ashleigh Ann Wood) doesn’t really have much of a personality but she’s definitely worried about her mother.

Suddenly, Connie (Kate Vernon) shows up in town. Wearing a uniform that is slightly too large for her, Connie claims that she served with Evelyn’s dead son and that they eventually became more than just friends. That’s strange, Evelyn says, he never mentioned you. Connie replies that she encouraged him to write more but, for whatever reason, he didn’t. Everyone agrees that what’s important now is that Connie has introduced herself to the family. Soon, Connie is living at the mansion and making flirtatious eye contact with both Arthur and Tom. One might expect Evelyn to be concerned about this but instead, Evelyn is too busy walking around in a depressed daze and blaming her “sinful” past for all the recent tragedy.

You probably already guessed that Connie is not who she says she is. Indeed, Connie has come to the family with an agenda of her own. She’s looking for vengeance and I won’t spoil it by revealing what she’s upset about but I will say that it’s fairly dumb and makes less sense the more that you think about it. Tom’s girlfriend, Julie (Krista Bridges), suspects that Connie is a liar but can she prove it? Julie even talks to the officer from whom Connie stole her uniform after Connie met and seduced her at a bar. Why would Connie, who seems to be willing to kill anyone, leave that one person alive? Obviously, it’s so Julie can learn the truth but still, it’s an oversight on Connie’s part that makes little sense.

(Julie isn’t a very interesting character but she does get to wear a really nice pair of boots so at least she’s got that going for her.)

Looking at the members of this film’s cast — Patrick Dempsey, Craig Sheffer, Kate Vernon — and you have to wonder if someone specifically said, “Let’s make an paranoia-themed, erotic thriller with the least interesting actors of the 90s.” (Yes, Dempsey got better but, in this film, he was still doing the goofy awkward thing.) This film goes through all the usual steps. Connie starts out as being friendly and then progressively reveals herself to be more and more unhinged. The men are reduced to stuttering incoherence by the sight of Connie smiling at them. For this type of film to work, the actors have to be fully willing to embrace the melodrama but instead, both Kate Vernon and Patrick Dempsey give oddly lowkey performances, with Vernon’s attempt at a seductive smile instead coming across like a smirk that should have clued everyone in to the fact that she was not to be trusted. If you’re appearing in a film like this, you should at least have a little fun. As for Craig Sheffer, he’s as mind-numbingly dull as ever.

The film does improve a bit towards the end, largely because Connie’s secret reason for harassing the family is so implausible that it can’t help but be a bit entertaining to listen to the characters discuss it. Overall, though, this was pretty boring. Let this film be a lesson to all — embrace the melodrama!

Previous entries in 2025’s 14 Days Of Paranoia:

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th The Series 2.3 “And Now The News”

Posted on May 10, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a new feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Fridays, I will be reviewing Friday the 13th: The Series, a show which ran in syndication from 1987 to 1990. The show can be found on YouTube!

This week, Jack is on vacation so Ryan and Micki try to retrieve an antique on their own. Near disaster ensues. I swear, why is Jack always running off? How can you take a vacation when your job is to literally save the world? You know who never got a decent vacation? Atlas.

Anyway, onto the episode….

Episode 2.3 “And Now The News”

(Dir by Bruce Pittman, originally aired October 14th, 1988)

With Jack on vacation, it falls to Micki and Ryan to track down the latest antique, a cursed radio that will reveal information to its owner as long as the owner uses the radio to kill a certain number of people. (The radio brings people’s greatest fears to life. So, if you’ve got a thing about snakes, watch out!) Micki and Ryan discover that the radio is currently in the possession of Dr. Avril Carter (Kate Trotter), who works at the local mental hospital and who is murdering patients so that the radio will help her with her research. Dr. Carter really wants to win that Nobel Prize.

Ryan and Micki really probably should have waited for Jack to come back because their attempts to get the radio back leads to one disaster after another. Ryan even manages to get electrocuted while trying to climb over the hospital’s security fence. Micki, meanwhile, does manage to get into the hospital but she is soon reminded that the majority of the patients are serial killers and perverts.

The best thing about this episode is that radio actually has a voice. Henry Ramer provides the voice of the “radio announcer,” who says stuff like, “And now the news …. after this murder” and such. At the end of the episode, it even taunts Dr. Carter when she fails to kill the required number of people and announces that Carter will never win a Nobel Prize. (The radio then proceeds to electrocute her.) In a nice touch, the announcer continues to talk to Ryan and Micki even when they’re taking it down to the vault. It offer to help them out in their quest, in return for a certain amount of murders. Micki and Ryan end up tossing the radio back and forth between the two of them. The episode even ends with a freeze frame of the radio in the air. Hopefully, they got it into the vault eventually.

This was a fun episode. The mental hospital was a atmospheric location, the radio was an inspired antique, and Kate Trotter gave a good performance as the villainous Dr. Carter. After two less than enthralling episodes, And Now The News was a definite return to everything that worked about the first season.

Late Night Retro Television Reviews: Friday the 13th: The Series 1.20 “The Quilt of Hathor: The Awakening”

Posted on March 1, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

How many more people must die before the Quilt of Hathor is stopped!? Let’s find out.

Episode 1.20 “The Quilt of Hathor: The Awakening”

(Dir by Timothy Bond, originally aired on May 9th, 1988)

We pick up where the previous episode ended. Ryan is still living with the ultra-religious Pentites and is still viewed with suspicion by the majority of them. He is still in love with the Reverend Grange’s daughter, Laura. And Effie Stokes still has the quilt that she can use to enter the dreams of others and kill them.

However, Effie is not the main villain here. Instead, it is the Reverend Grange (Scott Paulin) who is corrupted by the quilt. When the community’s elders tell Grange that it is important that he select a wife, he finally selects Effie. Effie is overjoyed but, as soon becomes clear, she intends to use the quilt to kill Grange on their wedding night so that she can take over the community. However, in the dream, Grange gets the upper hand and kills Effie instead. Soon, Grange is using the quilt to go after anyone in the community with whom he has a grudge. And when the members of the community suspect that witchcraft is afoot, he casts the blame on Ryan.

This is the episode where Ryan nearly gets burned at the stake. Fortunately, Micki and Chris show up just as Ryan is about to be set on fire. They distract the Pentites long enough for Laura to discover Effie’s body and to reveal that Grange is the murderer. A long chase ends with Grange falling out of a barn to his death.

That, of course, also kills Laura and Ryan’s romance. Ryan realizes that he has a holy duty to help Chris and Micki track down cursed antiques. And Laura says that she has to stay behind to help the community rebuild. Personally, I think she’s just reluctant to declare her love for the man who killed her father. That’s understandable.

This was not a bad episode. I liked the way that, for once, we got to see how a formerly good and reasonable person could be corrupted by one of the cursed antiques. Laura and Ryan’s romance was a bit too obviously lifted from Witness but still, John D. LeMay and Carolyn Dunn had a likable chemistry together. Just as with the first part of the story, the surreal nightmares were well-done and genuinely frightening.

Next week, Ryan and Micki search for a haunted camera!

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 1.19 “The Quilt of Hathor”

Posted on February 23, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, Micki screws up and Ryan finds love!

Episode 1.19 “The Quilt of Hathor”

(Dir by Timothy Bond, originally aired on May 2nd, 1988)

Looking to retrieve a cursed quilt that allows its owner to enter other people’s dreams and kill them, Micki and Ryan go undercover as members of the Pentite Sect.

Who are the Pentites? Basically, they’re Mennonites except for the fact that they’re called Pentites. They are a hard-worked and religious community, one that eschews modern technology. The members of the sect dress modestly, they don’t sing or dance, and they do everything that their leader, Reverend Grange (Scott Paulin), tells them to do.

Effie Stokes (Kate Trotter) is in love with the Reverend and wants to become his wife. She also happens to own the Quilt of Hathor and soon, she is entering the dreams of her romantic rivals and killing them. While Effie is trying to win the love of Reverend Grange, Ryan is falling in love with Grange’s daughter, Laura (Carolyn Dunn). Quicker than you can say Witness, Ryan is temping Laura to dance and being forced to fight Laura’s suitor, Matthew (Diego Matamoras), while balancing above an open flame pit. I don’t think Mennonites do that, which is probably why the Pentites broke off from them in the first place.

Micki does figure out that Effie is the one with the quilt and she even manages to grab it away from her. However, when she tells Ryan that it’s time to return to the antique shop, Ryan replies that he can’t go with her. Ryan has fallen in love with Laura and is planning on living the rest of his life as a Pentite.

Micki returns to the shop and, heartbroken, she tells Jack that she lost Ryan. Jack then reveals that she also managed to grab the wrong quilt. So, basically, Micki really screwed up.

This is a two-part episode so I imagine that Micki will return to the Pentite community next week and hopefully, she’ll pay attention and grab the right quilt this time. Will Ryan return to the civilization with her? Considering that John D. LeMay didn’t leave the show until the end of the second season, I imagine he probably will.

This was a pretty good episode. The scenes where Effie entered the dreams were well-directed and definitely achieved a nightmarish intensity. Some of the Pentite stuff was a little bit silly but John D. LeMay really sold his decision to stay with the sect. With everything that we’ve seen of Ryan on this show, his decision actually makes sense. Ryan has always been the one searching for deeper meaning while Micki is the more down-to-Earth member of the team.

Next week: Part two of the Quilt of Hathor!

Horror on TV: Friday the 13th: The Series 2.3 “And Now The News” (dir by Bruce Pittman)

Posted on October 19, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Tonight, for our horror on the lens, we have the third episode of the 2nd season of Friday the 13th: The Series!

Kate Trotter plays a psychiatrist who, due to a cursed radio, is capable of helping even the most troubled of her patients! Unfortunately, for everyone that she helps, someone else has to die!

This episode originally aired on October 14th, 1988.

https://youtu.be/sxfYCWxVeEc

Horror Film Review: The Silence (dir by John R. Leonetti)

Posted on October 30, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

“Don’t make a sound!”

“Why not?”

“Because we’re characters in the 2019 film, The Silence.”

“Uhmmm….okay.”

“And there’s monsters flying around the car.”

“Oh, is that what those are? I thought they were like fruit bats or something.”

“And they only hunt by sound.”

“Wait.”

“So, if you make a sound, they’ll swoop down and kill the entire family, even old grandma in the back seat.”

“Does any of this seem familiar?”

“Shhhh….”

“I swear this film feels familiar.”

“Oh please …. this is nothing like A Quiet Place.”

“Uhmm …. big flying creatures swarming on people who make noise and killing them. How is this not like A Quiet Place?”

“Well, The Silence not only features creatures that only hunt by sound but there’s also a subplot that comes out of nowhere, about a bunch of cultists who have cut out their tongues and who want to sacrifice the family to the monsters.”

“Oh.”

“Nothing like A Quiet Place.”

“So, basically, this just A Quiet Place meets a bad episode of Fear The Walking Dead.”

“Kind of but you know what? The Silence has got Stanley Tucci in the cast and he’s an Oscar nominee! Plus, Kiernan Shipka plays Tucci’s deaf daughter and she’s Sabrina. Also, Miranda Otto is in it and she-costars with Kiernan on that Sabrina show, so this entire movie really does feel like a particularly messed-up episode of Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.”

“So, basically, this movie is a A Quiet Place meets Fear The Walking Dead meets that terrible Sabrina show.”

“My point is that this film has a really good cast and it’s also got the guts to totally waste them in uninteresting roles.”

“How does that take guts?”

“It also has the guts to kill off the adorable family dog because sometimes you just have to make difficult choices to say alive.”

“Especially when you’re living in a second-rate version of A Quiet Place, right?”

“LISTEN!”

“Uhmm …. should you have just yelled like that, considering all the monsters killing anyone who makes a sound?”

“Whoops.”

“Well, we’re screwed …. AAAAAAGH!”

And the rest is silence.