The Offer”

Posted on February 28, 2024 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!

This week, it’s a special two-hour episode of The Love Boat!

Episodes 4.5 and 4.6 “The Mallory Quest/Julie, The Vamp/The Offer”

(Dir by Richard Kinon, originally aired on November 15th, 1980)

This week, The Love Boat heads off on a two-week cruise that will take the ship, its crew, and its passengers through the Panama Canal. There will also be stops at all the various islands on the way. This is important because this is one of the episodes that was actually filmed on location. Instead of the usual sets, we get to watch the action play out on an actual cruise ship.

Unfortunately, the actual cruise ship is kind of …. well, tacky. Seriously, it’s hard not to notice that the hallways and the front lobby all look considerably more cramped and weathered than they have in other episodes of The Love Boat. It’s also hard not to notice that the extras (who were apparently actual passengers) are all considerably older than the usual Love Boat background actors.

In fact, with the ship in such disrepair, it is any shocked that Captain Stubing is thinking of leaving? When his old friend, Charlie (Dick Van Patten), boards the ship, he brings him a job offer. If Stubing accepts the offer, he’ll be living in New York, he’ll be making three times the money, and Vicki will get to have a normal life. Stubing loves the sea but he also wants Vicki to have a good future. Vicki — in a scene that was well-acted by both Jill Whelan and Gavin MacLeod — tells him not to worry about her and that he needs to do what makes him happy. And so, the Captain stays with the boat and I presume Vicki will continue to be taught by the tutor that we occasionally hear about but never actually see.

Meanwhile, Julie McCoy has been accused of being a vamp! Maude Victor (Lani O’Grady) is convinced that Julie is trying to steal her fiancé, Roger (Bart Braverman). Eventually, Roger himself become confused and Julie pretends to be interested in Roger just to get Roger and Maude back together again. This was a dumb story and I don’t want to waste any more time on it.

Indeed, for all the Stubing drama and Julie silliness, this two-hour episode was dominated by one story. Arrogant novelist Brian Mallory (Pernell Roberts) boards the boat with his long-suffering wife, Janet (Gayle Hunnicutt). Brian has secretly bought tickets for three other passengers. Peter (Skip Stephenson) is an insurance agent who is due to donate a kidney to his brother. Marvin (Jimmie Walker) owns a bookstore. Marcia Rand (Connie Stevens) brings along her fitness-obsessed boyfriend, Dave Porter (Peter Lupus). Mallory reveals that Peter, Marvin, Marcia, and Gopher were the last four people to see his nephew, Tom. Mallory has never met his nephew but he wants to track him down and apparently, Tom is living on one of the islands that the cruise is scheduled to visit. Brian wants the four of them to help him look for Tom and he offers a $10,000 reward to make things interesting. Why does Brian want to find his nephew? Eventually, it is revealed that Tom is in possession of a family heirloom that Brian feels is rightfully his. Sinister Lucius Kergo (Sorrell Brooke) is also on the cruise and he is determined to get the heirloom for himself.

Janet grows so tired of Brian’s arrogance and his obsession with finding his nephew that she declares that she’s leaving him. Since the cruise is booked up, she ends up staying with Doc Bricker. Doc falls for Janet but he realizes that she truly loves Brian and, when Brian starts to show some humility and some remorse for the way that he’s treated her, Doc encourages her to go back to him …. which she does because this is The Love Boat, not The Divorce Boat.

Anyway, Tom Mallory is eventually tracked down to a monastery in Puerto Rico. Tom gives Brian the heirloom but the newly kind Brian gives it back to him so that he can sell it and use the money to build a free clinic. Good for Brian!

Disheveled cruise ship aside and ignoring that terrible Julie plot, this was a fun episode. The island scenery was gorgeous and the mystery of Tom’s location actually turned out to be a lot more intriguing than I was expecting it would. Watching this episode made me want to take a cruise, even if it is a tacky one.

Retro Television Reviews: The Love Boat 3.3 “The Grass Is Greener/Three Stages of Love/Oldies But Goodies”

Posted on August 23, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

For this week’s cruise, Julie learns that she’s not the only person who can do her job!

Episode 3.3 “The Grass is Greener/Three Stages of Love/Oldies But Goodies”

(Dir by Alan Rafkin, originally aired on September 22nd, 1979)

This week, Julie is super excited when her friend, Tina Philips (Joan Hackett), boards the cruise with her young son, Brian (Adam Rich). Tina and Julie went to cruise director school together, where they were both taught by none other than Captain Stubing.

(As I’ve mentioned before, there have been a lot of weird continuity issues with establishing just how long anyone had actually known Captain Stubing. During the first season, everyone was unsure of what to make of Captain Stubing and none of them had any experience sailing with him. But, in the second season, Stubing was suddenly celebrating his five year anniversary as the ship’s captain. And, in this episode, Stubing is established as being Julie’s mentor.)

Tina had a crush on Stubing while she was a student and Stubing had a bit of a crush on her as well. Though Tina could have had a great career as a cruise director, she decided to get married and settle down instead. Now, with her marriage falling apart, Tina boards the boat and immediately starts giving Stubing and Julie advice. Julie, meanwhile, takes care of Brian while Tina dances with the captain. Tina lives Julie’s life and Julie lives the life she could have had if she had stayed in Alaska and gotten married. It turns out that Julie’s a great substitute mom but Tina is a terrible substitute cruise director. Her idea of throwing a sock hop is a huge bust and, to be honest, it does seem a bit childish for a luxury cruise. In the end, Tina returns to being a single mom and Julie returns to being childless and career-driven. Yay, I guess.

Meanwhile, Nora (Amanda Blake) boards the ship with her daughter, Daphne (Karen Morrow). Daphne is determined to marry a millionaire but Nora is the one who finds love when she meets the wheelchair-bound Phillip (Barry Sullivan). Unfortunately, Phillip’s stuffy valet, Perkins (Werner Klemperer), insists that Philip needs to stay in his cabin and watch his blood pressure. Fear not, though. Daphne finds a millionaire and the millionaire hires away Perkins so now Phillip and Nora are free to have fun. Yay!

(Though, really, Phillip should keep an eye on his blood pressure….)

Finally, Mike (Eddie Mekka) and Robin (Lani O’Grady) seems like a perfect couple, except for the fact that Mike is convinced that all relationships go through three stages before ending and he has an annoying habit of saying stuff like, “We’ve just entered stage two!” Robin gets tired of Mike and his cynicism and eventually, Mike decides to give love a try because …. well, I’m not sure why. I think it was because the episode was nearly over.

This episode was pleasant but, ultimately, rather forgettable. Nora and Phillip were a nice couple but Perkins was portrayed in an over-the=top villainous light, especially when one considers that he was just doing the job he was hired to do. Mike and Robin seemed like they were still destined to break up, even as they left the ship in love. I did enjoy the scenes in which Tina’s sock hop party turned out to be a bust, just because it seemed like a dumb idea from the minute she mentioned it. That said, the main message of this episode seemed to be that having a family and career were two mutually exclusive things, which I certainly did not agree with.

Again, this was not necessarily a bad episode. It was just kind of a bland one.

Back to School Part II #7: Cage Without A Key (dir by Buzz Kulik)

Posted on August 24, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

For the fifth film in my Back To School series of reviews, I watched Cage Without A Key, a made-for-TV movie from 1975.

17 year-old Valerie Smith (Susan Dey) would appear to have everything. She has a loving mother and a loyal best friend. She just graduated from high school and has been accepted to a good college. She’s looking forward to going down to San Francisco for the weekend before starting her summer job. The future look great and, of course, that means that she’s about to make the biggest mistake of her life.

And she’s going to do it 70s style!

When her car breaks down on the way to San Francisco, she makes the mistake of accepting a ride from a long-haired guy in a Volkswagen microbus. Buddy Goleta (Sam Bottoms, in full 70s weirdo mode) went to high school with Valerie and appears to have a crush on her. Buddy also appears to be a little bit crazy himself as he tells everyone that he meets that Valerie is “my old lady.” Finally, Buddy pulls over to a convenience store and kills everyone inside. Since Valerie’s in the microbus, she gets arrested along with Buddy. Since Buddy claims that he and Valerie are lovers, she’s convicted of being an accessory and is sentenced to a … REFORM SCHOOL!

(Cue dramatic music.)

The warden — Mrs. Little (Katharine Helmond) — insists that she’s not running a prison. Instead, she’s running a very progressive school where the students all happen to be thieves and murderers. The school even has pleasant euphemisms for all the standard prison film elements. For instance, no one is put in solitary confinement. Instead, they’re sent to meditation.

Anyway, while Valerie waits for her dedicated public defender (David Brandon) to prove her innocence and get her out of reform school, she finds herself being approached by the various gangs who run the school. Valerie says she doesn’t want anything to do with any of that. She just wants to fly under the radar until she’s set free. But then she’s approached by a predatory lesbian and, as we all known from watching other prison films, nothing will make you join a gang faster than being approached by a predatory lesbian…

Okay, Cage Without A Key is not exactly Orange Is The New Black. What it is, however, is a time capsule of the time it was made. Everything from the slang to the clothes to the attitudes to the squishy, upper class liberalism of Valerie’s lawyer practically screams 1970s.

Add to that, classic film lovers will appreciate the fact that the evil gang leader is named Suzy Kurosawa!

Incidentally, Cage Without A Key was written by Joanna Lee, who readers of this site will probably best remember for playing one of the alien invaders in Plan 9 From Outer Space.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jU37bRN5t0

Back to School #18: Massacre At Central High (dir by Rene Daalder)

Posted on August 26, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzX2RNGGM7U

With a title like Massacre at Central High, you probably think that this 1976 film is a low-budget slasher film. However, you’re totally wrong. Instead of being a low-budget slasher film, Massacre at Central High is a low-budget political allegory and it’s a pretty good one at that. It’s also not exactly an easy film to see (I had to watch it off of a scratchy, old VHS tape), which is unfortunate because it’s probably one of the best exploitation films of the 1970s.

Massacre at Central High takes place at a high school in Southern California. The first thing that you notice about Central High is that there aren’t any adults around. The students don’t ever appear to go to class. Instead, they spend their time roaming the halls. The school is run by four wealthy jocks who enforce order, repress independent thought, and spend most of their time hanging out in an exclusive lounge. Of the four ruling jocks, Mark (Andrew Stevens) is the most sensitive, an overall nice guy who doesn’t approve of the excesses of the others but, at the same time, isn’t willing to stand up to them either.

The Ruling Clique

As for the other students, they spend their time being alternatively harassed and cared for by the jocks. They’re told, of course, that everything is for their own good and that their survival depends on the survival of Central High. Spoony (Robert Carradine) is caught and punished for spraying political graffiti on the lockers. Oscar (Jeffrey Winner) is regularly bullied by the jocks on account of his weight. School librarian Arthur (Dennis Kort) is attacked for being an intellectual. When Rodney (Rex Steven Sikes) makes the mistake of parking his car in one of the jock’s space, they react by stealing and wrecking his car.

Things start to change when track star David (Derrel Maury) transfers to Central High. David is an old friend of Mark’s and, at first, Mark attempts to get him to join the ruling clique. However, David is disgusted by the other jocks and starts to stand up for the oppressed students. The jocks (with the exception of Mark) respond by lowering a car down on David’s leg, crushing it.

No longer able to run track and now moving with a permanent limp, David refuses to tell anyone the truth about how he injured his leg. Instead, he returns to school and gets his revenge, methodically murdering all of the jocks except for Mark. Mark and his girlfriend Theresa (Kimberly Beck) now find themselves transformed into societal pariahs within the halls of Central High. Meanwhile, the formerly oppressed students step up to fill the power vacuum and, to David’s disgust, they quickly turn out to be just as bad as their now deceased oppressors.

David Is Disappointed

Now realizing that most revolutions are waged by the lower class against the upper class for the sole benefit of the middle class and that there’s absolutely no way to bring any real change to Central High, David instead makes plans to destroy the entire high school…

Surreal and dream-like, Massacre at Central High is a potent allegory that takes the concept of absolute power corrupting absolutely to its logical extreme. It’s a film that celebrates revolution while, at the same time, asking, “What’s the point?” It’s a film that looks at politics, society, and culture and actually has the courage to suggest that it might be better just to give up on all of it. Featuring excellent performances from Maury, Beck, and Stevens and wonderfully off-center direction from Rene Daalder, Massacre at Central High is not an easy film to track down but it’s definitely one worth seeing.