In the Line of Duty: The Price of Vengeance (1994, directed by Dick Lowry)

Posted on August 12, 2022 by Jedadiah Leland

Johnnie Moore (Brent Jennings) is a former limo driver turned criminal mastermind. The members of his gang look up to him with cult-like admiration. On his orders, they have been robbing businesses all over town. Johnnie says that he is a man of God but he has no hesitation when it comes to ordering his men to threaten and sometimes kill any witnesses. When Detective Tom Williams (Michael Gross) comes to close to finally convincing someone to testify against the gang, Moore orders his assassination. When the members of his gang fail to get the job done because none of them want to shoot Tom when his family is around, Johnnie does it himself by dressing up as a clown and gunning Tom down in front of Tom’s son. That was Johnnie’s biggest mistake because now, he’s got Tom’s best friend, Detective Jack Lowe (Dean Stockwell), after him.

After Street Wars, NBC’s next two In The Line of Duty films both focused on FBI sieges. Both The Siege at Marion and Ambush in Waco featured true stories of the FBI trying to arrest religious fanatics and having to wait out a stand-off. Ambush in Waco was controversial because it was not only based on the Branch Davidian stand-off but it was actually filmed while the stand-off was still going on. Perhaps because of the controversy, The Price of Vengeance tells a much simpler and less exploitive story. Johnnie Moore is a criminal who kills a cop. Jack Lowe makes it his mission to put him away. There’s no risk of anyone watching siding with Johnnie Moore like they may have done with David Koresh while watching Ambush in Waco. Moore kills a man in front of his son and then laughs about it. Everyone watching is going to want to see him get punished and they are going to cheer on the efforts of law enforcement to make sure the punishment fits the crime.

The Price of Vengeance is a typical police procedural but it has a good cast. After playing a killer in the first In The Line of Duty movie and the lead FBI man in the third one, Michael Gross is cast as the victim here and he’s so likable that you’ll be angered when he gets gunned down. Dean Stockwell brings his no-nonsense, down-to-Earth style to the role of Gross’s best friend and Brent Jennings is smug and evil as Johnnie Moore. Mary Kay Place, Kathleen Robertson, and Justin Garms play the members of Gross’s family and they all do a good job of showing the trauma that they’ve suffered as a result of his murder. Keep an eye out for Courtney Gains, playing a member of Moore’s criminal crew. Gains played this same character in a dozen different films. If you see Courtney Gains in a movie, look out because he’s up to no good!

The Price of Vengeance is a standard 90s cop show. Nothing about it will take you by surprise but it’s partially redeemed by its cast.

Quiet Killer (1992, directed by Sheldon Larry)

Posted on June 25, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

When wealthy teenager Sarah Dobbs (Kathleen Robertson) vomits up blood and then drops dead in the middle of New York City, the coroner’s office is baffled as to what killed her. As far as anyone knows, Sarah has just been suffering from the flu, which she apparently contracted when she was recently overseas. However, there is one doctor in New York who thinks that she knows what’s happening. Dr. Nora Hart (Kate Jackson) takes one look at Sarah’s case and decides that the Black Death — the same plague that wiped out half of the world’s population in 54 AD — has come to New York!

Nora wants to shut down the city immediately but Mayor Carmichael (Al Waxman) says that would not only lead to mass panic but it would also an economic disaster. Working with a team of other doctors (including Jerry Orbach, who is always a welcome presence in New York films), Dr. Hart tries to track down everyone who Sarah came into contact with and quarantine them before both a panic and a pandemic breaks out. Unfortunately, one congressman (Howard Hesseman!) doesn’t want to go into quarantine because that would mean admitting that he was in Manhattan to visit his mistress. Despite everyone’s best efforts, mass panic follows.

Quiet Killer (which is also known as Black Death) is a made-for-TV movie that used to show up on late night television throughout the 90s. It’s a typically overwrought disaster film and it’s easy to laugh at some of the dialogue and some of the acting. (Kate Jackson is particularly wooden in the lead role.) The first time I saw it, I thought the most interesting thing about it was that it featured Howard Hesseman as a congressman. For those who know Hesseman best for playing characters like Dr. Johnny Fever on WKRP, it’s strange to see him playing a member of the establishment. Hesseman isn’t bad in the role but it never makes sense that he wouldn’t be able to think of a way to explain away his presence in Manhattan. You would think a politician would be better at coming up with an alibi or that he could have pulled some strings to keep it from being revealed that he had been quarantined. Instead, he decides to just run off and potentially infect the entire nation. That’s not what I pay my tax dollars for.

Quiet Killer is a good example of how real-life events can shape how we view a film. Up until just a few months ago, this would have seemed like just another cheesy disaster movie. Watch it today and it feels prophetic. Hopefully, by this time next year, it will be back to just being cheesy.

Cinemax Friday: Blown Away (1993, directed by Brenton Spencer)

Posted on January 31, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

Rich Gardner (Corey Haim) and his brother, Wes (Corey Feldman) both work at a ski resort in Canada. When Rich rescues the wealthy Megan (Nicole Eggert) from being trampled by a horse, she invites him to attend her 17th birthday party. Despite the fact that he’s already dating Darla (Kathleen Robertson), Rich goes to Nicole’s party. Nicole greets him in her underwear and soon, the two of them are having softcore, late night Cinemax-style sex. It’s only in the morning that Rich discovers that Megan is the daughter of his boss, Cy (Jean LeClerc).

With Wes’s encouragement, Rich continues the affair, even after Cy demands that Rich never see his daughter again. Megan eventually tells Rich that she believes that Cy was responsible for the death of her mother and that she thinks they should kill Cy and, after Megan has gotten her inheritance, run off together. At first, Rich is hesitant but when Megan turns up bruised and claiming that her father beat her up, Rich reconsiders Megan’s proposition.

In many ways, Blown Away is typical of the neo-noirs that used to dominate late night Cinemax in the 90s. Take a faded TV or a film star. Toss in an up-and-coming starlet who is willing to do nudity. Add a dimly lit sex scene or two and a surprise twist at the end. In this case, the surprise twist was actually a good one, the faded stars were the Two Coreys, and the up-and-coming starlet was Nicole Eggert.

Before they become direct-to-video mainstays in the 90s, both Corey Haim and Corey Feldman had a good, if brief, run as legitimate film stars. With their subsequent notoriety, it’s easy to forget that they were two of the busiest and most critically acclaimed child actors of the 80s. Corey Haim appeared in movies like Murphy’s Romance and Lucas while Corey Feldman did The Goonies and Stand By Me. They co-starred in films like The Lost Boys and License to Drive. Unfortunately, neither one of them was able to make the transition from being child stars to adult actors. (It didn’t help that both of them had very public struggles with substance abuse and that the 90s saw both of them developing a unique talent for tracking down the worst projects possible and agreeing to star in them.) Blown Away was one of the first of their post-stardom films and, whatever else you may say about it, it’s definitely better than the majority of the films that the pair made afterwards. (Just try sitting through Dream A Little Dream 2.) After years of playing best friends, Blown Away cast them as brothers who always seem to be on the verge of throwing a punch at each other. When Rich and Wes say that they secretly hate each other, it feels less like a movie and more like real-life couples therapy.

Blown Away is a classic of its kind. Though Rich is not a very sympathetic hero and there’s a few scenes where Haim’s tendency to overact gets in the way of the film, Nicole Eggert is a perfect femme fatale and Corey Feldman again shows that he had more talent than he was usually given credit for. If you can overlook a few plot holes (and not spend too much time worrying about how a bunch of teenagers became experts in setting explosives), the film’s storyline is interesting and far darker than the usual late night Cinemax fare. When people like me talk about being nostalgic for the old days of watching Cinemax after midnight, this is the type of film that we’re talking about.