Tag Archives: Kim Milford

Retro Television Review: Crime Story 1.1 “Pilot”

Posted on 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 Mondays, I will be reviewing Crime Story, which ran on NBC from 1986 to 1988.  The entire show can be found on Tubi!

In 1986, riding high on the success of Miami Vice, Michael Mann signed on as executive producer of Crime Story, a cop show that Mann imagined would run for five seasons and which would follow a group of cops and gangsters from 1960s Chicago to 1980s Las Vegas.  The show was co-created by former Chicago cop Chuck Adamson and it starred another former Chicago cop, Dennis Farina.

Though generally well-received by critics, Crime Story struggled in the ratings.  The show’s highly serialized-nature made it difficult for audiences to follow.  (This was in the pre-streaming age, when viewers couldn’t just get online and catch up with what they may have missed.)  Crime Story only lasted for two seasons but it has since developed a strong cult following and is now regularly listed as one of the best cop shows ever made.

I’m going to find out if that’s true over the next few months.  Two weeks ago, I finished up Miami Vice.  Now, it’s time for Crime Story.

Episode 1.1 “Pilot”

(Dir by Abel Ferrara, originally aired on September 18th, 1986)

In Chicago, on a rainy night in the early 1960s, a group of masked robbers hold up a fancy restaurant and then try to escape with a group of terrified hostages.  On the scene is the Major Crimes Unit, led by the grim Lt. Torello (Dennis Farina, a former real-life cop).  The end result is that all of the robbers end up dead, the hostages end up traumatized, and one of Torello’s men, the obviously doomed Wes Connelly (William Russ), appears to be losing his mind over the violence that he has to deal with every day.

The plot of the pilot is actually pretty simple.  A gang of thieves is holding up restaurants, banks, and stores in Chicago.  Torello believes that an ambitious gangster named Ray Luca (Tony Denison) is behind the robberies and Torello is correct.  The cool and sociopathic Ray is working with Johnny O’Donnel (David Caruso).  O’Donnel may be a childhood friend of Luca’s but his parents are friends with Torello.  When gangster Phil Bartoli (Jon Polito) orders Luca to kill O’Donnel after the latter robs one of Bartoli’s jewelry stores, it’s personal all-around.

Plot-wise, it’s pure Michael Mann.  The cops and the gangsters are both obsessive.  Luca will kill anyone to get ahead in the underworld.  Oddly, his only real loyalty seems to be to his dumbest henchman, Pauli Taglia (John Santucci, a real-life former jewel thief who was once arrested by Dennis Farina).  Torello may be fighting on the side of the law but he’s often just as quick to resort to violence as Luca.  Director Abel Ferrara’s style can be seen in a scene where Torello is visited by the ghost of the recently murdered Wes Connelly.  Torello is burned out and paranoid, flying into a rage when he sees his wife, Julie (Darlanne Fluegel), dancing with another man at a wedding.  (The man in question turns out to be Torello’s cousin, whom Torello didn’t even recognize because he apparently doesn’t have much of a connection to anyone outside of the police force.)  Towards the end of the episode, there’s a shoot-out in a department store and it’s hard not to notice that neither the crooks nor the cops seem to be all that concerned with the innocent bystanders trying to not get caught in the crossfire.

The pilot is dark, gritty, and, in its way, as stylized as any episode of Miami Vice.  It never seems to stop raining and, even during the day, the skies are permanently gray and dark.  The early 60s are recreated like a fever dream of pop culture, with rock and roll on the soundtrack, cars with tail fins screeching down the street, and Bartoli living in a house that looks more like a tacky diner then a true home.  Torello and his men wear their dark suits and trenchcoats the way that soldiers wear their uniforms.

It’s an effective pilot, though we don’t really get to know much about the men working with Torello at the Major Crimes Unit.  Bill Smitrovich, in the role Detective Danny Krycheck, establishes himself as being Torello’s second-in-command but that’s about it.  Stephen Lang appears in a handful of scenes as David Abrams, a liberal public defender who is the son of a prominent gangster.  Both Luca and Torello seem to want to make David into an alley and the episode hints that he will eventually have to make a choice.  The episode ends with Luca in sunny Florida, meeting with veteran gangster Manny Weisbord (Joseph Wiseman).  Torello, meanwhile, remains in dark Chicago.

The Crime Story pilot was deemed good enough to be released as a feature film in Europe.  It also led to a series on NBC, which I will be reviewing here, every Monday!  On the basis of the pilot, I’m looking forward to it.

Live Tweet Alert: Join #FridayNightFlix for Laserblast!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly live tweets on twitter.  I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of #MondayActionMovie!  Every week, we get together.  We watch a movie.  We tweet our way through it.

Tonight, at 10 pm et, I will be hosting #FridayNightFlix!  The movie? 1978’s Laserblast!

Which film has Kim Milford, Roddy McDowall, Eddie Deezen, Keenan Wynn, Rainbeaux Smith, Gianni Russo, Dennis Burkley, and two Claymation aliens!?  This film!

If you want to join us this Friday, just hop onto twitter, start the movie at 10 pm et, and use the #FridayNightFlix hashtag!  I’ll be there tweeting and I imagine some other members of the TSL Crew will be there as well.  It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.

Laserblast is available on Prime, Tubi, YouTube, Pluto, and almost every other streaming service!  On twitter, I’ll be sharing a commercial-free link for the film begins.

See you there!

Spring Break on the Lens: Laserblast (dir by Michael Rae)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Before I say anything else, I should admit that I fully understand why some of you are going to say that the 1978 science fiction film, Laserblast, is not a spring break film.

First off, it takes place not on the beach but in the desert.  There is a scene that takes place at a pool but it’s one of those cheap pools that all of the desert towns have.

Secondly, the film itself doesn’t take place during the spring.  It takes place during the summer, when the sun is bright and harsh.  The teenagers in the film might not be in school but that’s just because it’s their summer vacation.

I get it.

But, as far as I’m concerned, Laserblast is spiritually a spring break film, even if it isn’t technically one.  I mean, just look at the film’s hero, Billy.  As played by the very handsome Kim Milford, Billy is a mellow guy with blonde hair, stoned eyes, and the attitude of someone who can say, “Right on!” and make you believe that everything will be right and on.  Billy even drives a totally 70s van.  Everything about Billy and his girlfriend, Kathy Farley (Rainbeaux Smith), screams Malibu.  Even in the desert and in the summer, they are the ideal spring break couple.

Billy, of course, gets in some trouble over the course of the film.  He stumbles across a space gun in the desert.  Billy doesn’t know what we know, that the space gun was accidentally left there by two adorable claymation aliens who previously visited Earth so that they could kill the gun’s owner.  Billy just thinks it’s a cool gun.  Soon, Billy is blowing up the town and turning into a green-skinned monster.  Billy even blows up a sign that’s advertising Star Wars, which is made doubly interesting by how much Kim Milford resembles Mark Hamill.  (The same year that Laserblast came out, Hamill and Milford acted opposite each other in Corvette Summer, with Milford’s mellow confidence providing a nice counter to Hamill’s somewhat hyperactive earnestness.)  Much like a drunk spring breaker who ends up vomiting into the ocean, Billy has found something that he enjoys and he’s allowing it to take over his life.  The space gun represents every vice and addiction that’s out there to tempt people into risking their lives and their sanity and their totally 70s van.  (We don’t see much of the inside of the van but I’m willing to bet that it has shag carpeting and a strobe light.)  The spring breakers in The Real Cancun spent their week drinking themselves into a stupor.  Billy, on the other hand, spends a week blowing stuff up and turning into a monster.  Of course, that’s the great thing about spring break.  How you spend your time is your business.

Laserblast is a low-budget film, one that is often listed as being one of the worst films ever made.  Myself, I love the film because I think the aliens are cute and I enjoy Kim Milford’s performance as Billy.  Actually, for a film that didn’t cost much to make, Laserblast has a surprisingly impressive cast.  Technically, it’s not a shock to see Roddy McDowall in the film, since McDowall apparently accepted every role that he was offered in the 70s.  But Roddy’s trademark neurotic eccentricity is still welcome in the small role of Billy’s doctor.  The great character actor Dennis Burkley shows up as a fascist deputy.  Gianni Russo, who played Carlo Rizzi in The Godfather, plays a government agent who shows up from out of nowhere and who wears a cream-colored suit that makes him look like a wedding DJ.  Keenan Wynn, who also apparently accepted any role he was offered in the 70s, plays Rainbeaux Smith’s drunk grandfather.  Best of all, Eddie Deezen, who was best known for playing stereotypical nerd characters in films like Grease, shows up as a bully named Froggy!  After getting bullied by Eddie Deezen, who wouldn’t pick up the first space gun they found and start blasting rocks?

Laserblast is fun, just like spring break.  I like it, just like spring break.  So does Arleigh so be sure to check out his review, as well!

Film Review: Corvette Summer (dir by Matthew Robbins)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1978 film, Corvette Summer, tells the story of Kenny Dantley (Mark Hamill).

Kenny is a student at a high school in Southern California.  He lives in a trailer park and he’s kind of dumb.  He’s the type who rarely shows up to class and, when he does, it’s just to discover that he managed to score a D-minus on his last test.  Kenny doesn’t think school’s important, though.  All Kenny cares about is cars.  He doesn’t date.  He doesn’t have friends.  But he can rebuild a corvette and spend hours talking about why it’s the greatest car in the world.

Yes, Kenny’s an idiot.

Kenny’s auto shop teacher, Mr. McGrath (Eugne Roche), warns Kenny that he’s spending too much obsessing on cars.  Don’t fall in love with a car, Mr. McGrath says.  A car is just a machine and a machine will always let you down.  A machine is something that you build so you can sell it and move on to something else.  To me, Mr. McGrath makes sense but Kenny’s like, “No, that’s totally squaresville.  Real melvin, man.”

(Well, okay, Kenny doesn’t use those exact words but you can tell that he’s thinking them…..)

Anyway, Kenny and the shop class have just rebuilt a red corvette and Kenny’s convinced that it’s the greatest car ever.  However, on the same night that the car makes its debut by cruising down the streets of Kenny’s hometown, it’s stolen!  Maybe Kenny shouldn’t have given the keys to Danny Bonaduce.  Kenny gets so angry that he smashes a cup of coke and attempts to beat up Bonaduce.

Mr. McGrath tells Kenny that these things happen and he suggests that Kenny instead look into enrolling at a community college after high school.  Kenny, however, is too obsessed with finding his car to listen to Mr. McGrath.  He even prints up flyers with a picture of the corvette.  “Have you seen this car?” the flyers ask.  Amazingly, it turns out that someone has.  He tells Kenny that he saw the corvette in Las Vegas.

That’s all it takes for Kenny to head to Nevada.  Of course, since Kenny doesn’t have a car, he has to hitchhiker.  Despite the fact that Kenny looks like a killer hippie and tends to spend a lot of time yelling in a somewhat shrill manner, he’s picked up by Vanessa (Annie Potts).  Vanessa is an “aspiring prostitute” who lives in a van.  “Vanessa” is written on the side of the van, which means that it will be useless if anyone ever needs to use it as a getaway vehicle for a bank robbery.  Way to go, Vanessa.

Once they arrives in Las Vegas, Kenny and Vanessa work a series of different jobs while looking for that corvette.  Along the way, Kenny falls in love, discovers that there’s more to life than just cars, and also suffers a bit of disillusionment when one of his mentors turns out to be not as perfect as Kenny originally believed.

Corvette Summer is best known for being Mark Hamill’s first post-Star Wars role.  He’s in almost every scene of the film and, to be honest, his performance kind of got on my nerves.  Some of that is because, as written, Kenny is almost unbelievably stupid.  But Hamill doesn’t help things by giving a rather shrill performance in the lead role.  Though the film may be a coming-of-age comedy, Hamill is so intense in the role that he comes across as being less like a naive teenager and more like a mentally unbalanced time bomb.  You find yourself hoping that he’ll get the car back before he’s forced to take hostages.  Annie Potts is a bit more likable as Vanessa but her character is dreadfully inconsistent.  One gets the feeling that she’s mostly just there so that Kenny can finally lose his virginity and be a little bit less of a loser by the end of the movie.

I will say that I did really like the performance of Kim Milford, who plays a superslick car thief named Wayne Lowry.  As I watched the film, it took me a few minutes to realize where I recognized Milford from.  He was the star of Laserblast, a film that featured Milford finding a laser gun and using it to blow up a sign advertising Star Wars.  Milford only has a small role in Corvette Summer and we’re not supposed to like him but he’s so handsome and sure-of-himself that it’s hard not to prefer him to the rather histrionic character played by Mark Hamill.

Corvette Summer is such a film of the 70s that watching it is like stepping into a time machine.  That’s not necessarily a bad thing, of course.  Indeed, in 2020, the main appeal of a film like this is a chance to see how people lived in 1978.  (It’s always a bit odd to watch a movie where no one carries a phone or has a twitter account.)  Watching this film in 2020, it’s hard not cringe a little at the sight of not only Kenny hitchhiking but also people stopping to pick him up.  Seriously, are they just trying to get killed?

The Daily Grindhouse: Laserblast (dir. by Michael Rae)

Posted on by Arleigh

The latest pick from Grindhouse of the Day will be from the sci-fi genre and this one I remember clearly as I saw it several times on one of those UHF channels that showed cheap sci-fi and horror flicks. This particular grindhouse pick made a major impression in my preteen mind due to the awesome laserblast weapon which gave the flick its title. Yes, the latest grindhouse pick is literally titled, Laserblast.

It was released in 1978 and I’d hazard a guess and say it was part of the cheap, B-movie craze that tried to capitalize on the megasuccess of Star Wars. This sci-fi grindhouse was awesome when I first saw it as an 8-year old but now I look at it and think to myself, “This thing is so awful that it’s gone beyond any level of awfulness and come out the other side as some sort of classic.” It’s still quite awful, but even now it still entertains even if not the same reasons as when it was first seen. I can understand why the MST3K guys over at Comedy Central picked on it.

The flick had a late 70’s, San Fernando Valley porn sheen to it, but minus all the stuff which made those flicks must-see. The special effects were rudimentary, though I will say that the stop-motion animation for the aliens who hunted down the people who got corrupted by the laserblaster were quite good for such a low-budget. If I had to tell someone two reasons why this should be seen at least once its for the aliens and the awesome cheesiness of the laserblaster.

This flick has the distinction of being director Michael Rae’s only film. He hasn’t made a film since. It would seem he gave it all to this single one. It’s also notable for being the first major work for composer Joel Goldsmith (son of renowned film composer Jerry Goldsmith) who would continue later in his career to composing the soundtrack to sci-fi tv series and major videogame franchises.