Today’s scene that I love comes from my favorite Greydon Clark movie, 1990’s The Forbidden Dance!
Yes, this scene is technically a spoiler. It’s got music! It’s got dancing! It has some deeply questionable stereotypes and some obvious virtue signaling! It has that classic line, “We should just boycott their ass!” It’s got Sid Haig! It’s got everything you could ever hope for!
And remember — this film is dedicated to the preservation of the rain forest.
Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Tuesdays, I will be reviewing Baywatch Nights, an detective show that ran in Syndication from 1995 to 1997. The entire show is currently streaming on Youtube!
You guys know the drill. Thanks to the Vicodin I took earlier, I spent Tuesday in a bit of a daze. So, I’m running late with my review of Baywatch Nights. Fear not! Here it is:
Episode 1.12 “Thin Blood”
(Dir by Georg Fenady, originally aired on February 10th, 1996)
Ryan’s sister has come to Los Angeles!
Charlie McBride (Laura Harring) claims that she’s just in town to see her sister but Ryan has her doubts. Charlie has always been the irresponsible member of the family and Ryan can only watch helplessly as Charlie and Mitch pursue a tentative romance. Since this is a Baywatch spin-off, that means that Charlie and Mitch spend a lot of time on jet skis. It’s not true love unless you get on the jet skis. Charlie also takes the time reveal that Ryan could have been a model and a pageant winner if she hadn’t abandoned everything to be a private eye. To that, I say, “Well, yeah. She’s Angie Harmon.”
However, it turns out that Ryan was correct. Some New York criminals are in town, searching for the money that they claim Charlie stole from them. They’re even willing to kidnap Ryan and hold her hostage until they get their money back. Once again, it’s up to Mitch and Garner to do their thing and rescue Ryan. Interestingly enough, they manage to do so pretty easily. This is one of those episodes where the bad guys are so incompetent that they are pretty much doomed from the start. David Hasselhoff may have captured them but Billy Warlock and Erika Eleniak probably could have done the job just as easily. Hell, I bet Parker Stevenson could have done it. Maybe even Kelly Ward.
Anyway, the emphasis here is on Ryan and her feelings of resentment towards her sister and her feelings for Mitch. Though it was pretty much abandoned once the show became an X-Files rip-off during the second season, the first season of Baywatch Nights really tried to play up the will they or won’t they aspect of Ryan and Mitch’s relationship. There really wasn’t much suspense about that. Angie Harmon and David Hasselhoff had a likable chemistry but it was a brother/sister type of relationship. There was nothing romantic about it, at least not in 49 of the 50 states. Ryan liked Mitch but she also knew she could do better. That was why Ryan was such a cool character.
This was a pretty forgettable episode, one that was really only interesting for a chance to see Laura Harring play the same type of role she would later play to far different effect in David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive. It’s late so I’m going to leave it at that. Baywatch Nights needs to hurry up and bring on the aliens and the vampires or the sea monsters!
Welcome to the aughts. The new century started out with the terror of 9-11 and it ended with the collapse of the world’s economy. In between, a lot of films were released. Some of them were really good. A few of them were nominated for Best Picture. Most of them were not. As always, there were snubs aplenty.
2000: Michael Douglas Is Not Nominated For Wonder Boys
I recently saw someone online bemoaning the fact that Michael Douglas appears to be fated to end his career as a supporting character in the MCU as opposed to playing the type of “mature” roles with which he made his reputation. And I actually think that person had a good point. Michael Douglas, whose performances once epitomized the last few decades of the 20th Century, does seem a bit out of place surrounded by CGI and responding to the overly quippy dialogue of the MCU. If you want to see a truly good Michael Douglas performance that doesn’t involve anyone shrinking, check him out in Curtis Hanson’s Wonder Boys. Though Wonder Boys won the Oscar for Best Original Song and picked up nominations for Editing and Adapted Screenplay, Michael Douglas’s wonderful lead performance was overlooked.
2001: Mulholland Drive Is Almost Totally Ignored
Considering the reverence with which it is now viewed, it’s interesting to note that Mulholland Drive only received one Oscar nomination, for David Lynch’s direction. The film was not nominated for Best Picture. Naomi Watts and Laura Harring both went unnominated. At the time, I imagine the film was too strange for Academy voters and its origin as a television pilot probably worked against it. Today, it is regularly cited as one of the best films ever made.
2002: Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks Are Not Nominated For Catch Me If You Can
Catch Me If You Can was that rarest of movies, an underrated Steven Spielberg production. Christopher Walken was nominated for Best Supporting Actor and the film’s score was nominated as well. But both Leonard DiCaprio and Tom Hanks went unnominated, despite doing some of the best work of their careers.
2002: Robin Williams Is Not Nominated For One Hour Photo
One Hour Photo featured what I consider to be Robin Williams’s best and most poignant performance. It was also perhaps his most frightening performance, which probably explains why the Academy shied away from honoring it.
2003: Scarlet Johansson Is Not Nominated For Best Actress For Lost In Translation
Though Bill Murray got most of the awards attention, Scarlet Johansson’s performance was just as important to the success of Lost In Translation.
2004: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Is Not Nominated For Best Picture or Best Actor
Even before he decided to present himself as being an expert on vaccines and modern art, I wasn’t a huge fan of Jim Carrey’s. That said, even I have to admit that he deserved a nomination for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The film itself was only nominated for two Oscars. Kate Winslet was nominated for Best Actress and Charlie Kaufman won the Oscar for Original Screenplay. The film deserved quite a bit more.
2007: Once Is Not Nominated For Best Picture
This is one snub that I haven’t quite gotten over. Once, a beautiful independent film from Ireland, deserved far more love than it received from the Academy. That said, it did win the Oscar for Best Original Song and Glen Hansard gave one of the best acceptance speeches in Oscar history. So, there is a little justice.
2008: The Dark Knight Is Not Nominated For Best Picture
If ever there was a comic book movie that deserved to be nominated for Best Picture, it was this one. To me, I think the main reason why The Dark Knight is superior to so many other comic book movies is because, even with Batman and the Joker running around, it still feels as if it’s taking place in the real world. The smartest decision that Christopher Nolan made was to use a real city for Gotham instead of constructing a phony-looking set. The fact that The Dark Knight received 8 nominations without also receiving a nomination for Best Picture leaves little doubt that the film’s lack of a nomination was due to its origins as a comic book movie. There was such an uproar about The Dark Knight failing to pick up a Best Picture nomination that the Academy increased the number of Best Picture nominees to ten. (Of course, that’s didn’t do much to help anything.)
2008: Robert Downey, Jr. Is Not Nominated For Best Actor For Iron Man
The MCU is now so big that it’s easy to forget that, if Robert Downey, Jr. hadn’t been a convincing Tony Stark in 2008, the whole thing would have never happened. Going back and watching the early MCU films, before they got bogged down in their own formula, can be an eye-opening experience. Downey’s performance in the first Iron Man holds up extremely well. He goes from being an irresponsible businessman to being a hero and he’s convincing at every turn. He gave such a good performance that it convinced even those of us who weren’t comic book readers to stick around and see what was coming up next in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
2009: George Wyner Is Not Nominated For Best Supporting Actor For A Serious Man
Not all snubs involve big stars or famous actors. Some of them involve talented character actors like George Wyner who totally knock their one scene out of the park but who still don’t get the recognition that they deserve. In A Serious Man, Wyner plays the rabbi who tells Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) the parable of the dentist who found Hebrew phrases on the teeth of one of his patients. It’s a mesmerizing scene, thanks to George Wyner’s skill as a storyteller.
Agree? Disagree? Have a snub of your own that you’d like to mention? Let us know in the comments!
Coming up next, we go from the 2010s to the present day!
DANCE!
I love to dance, I loved to teach others how to dance, and I love watching other people dance. If you’ve been reading my reviews for a while, then you know that I can not resist a film that features a lot of dancing. It doesn’t matter if the director is inept. It doesn’t matter if the script makes no sense. It doesn’t matter if the actors don’t have a bit of acting talent to use to their advantage. As long as the film features a lot of dancing, I’m happy.
Seriously, people, when in doubt … DANCE!
Let’s take the 1990 film The Forbidden Dance, for instance. Now, if I wanted to be nit-picky, I could probably find a lot to criticize about this film. I mean, this film even has a pro-environmental message and you know how annoyed I can get with message films. And you know what? You can do a google search and you can find all sorts of insanely negative reviews of this film.
But you know what?
I don’t really care about any of that. This is, at heart, a dance film. It features almost non-stop dancing, so I really can’t be too critical of it. Add to that, it also features memorable performances from Sid Haig and the late Richard Lynch. Unfortunately, neither Haig nor Lynch get out on the dance floor because, if they had, The Forbidden Dance would have been legendary.
The Forbidden Dance begins in the Brazilian rain forest. A tribe of Native Brazilians is happily dancing and basically not bothering anyone. As we learn later on in the film, the dance that they are doing is called the Lambada and apparently, the Brazilian government tried to ban it “because it was too sexy.”
(Amazingly enough and according to Wikipedia, the Lambada apparently was an actual dance craze back in 1990. The Forbidden Dance came out on the exact same weekend as a competing film about the Lambada. That film was called, appropriately enough, Lambada. Strangely enough, two years ago, I randomly reviewed that film for this very site.)
Anyway, all the dancing and the fun is interrupted by the arrival of Benjamin Maxwell (Richard Lynch), a mercenary who works for a Big Evil Corporation. Maxwell tells the tribe that they might want to stop dancing and leave because the rain forest is going to be destroyed.
Naturally enough, the tribe’s king responds to this by sending his daughter, Nisa (Laura Harring), to America. Accompanying Nisa is Joa (Sid Haig), a witch doctor. However, Nisa and Joa’s attempts to invade the headquarters of Big Evil Corporation results in Joa being arrested.
(Incidentally, you might recognize Laura Harring from David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, where she played a similarly mysterious character who was lost and hunted in Los Angeles.)
Left to fend for herself, Nisa gets a job working as a maid for a wealthy family. And while neither Mr. nor Mrs. Anderson has much interest in the backstory of the help, their son Jason (Jeff James) is a different story. As Jason’s mother complains, Jason doesn’t have much interest in anything other than dancing. And, when Jason spots Nisa dancing in her bedroom, he becomes intrigued with her. Ignoring the snobbish reactions of his wealthy friends, Jason asks Nisa to teach him the Lambada!
And hey! Guess what! There’s going to be a dance contest and it’s going to be televised! What better way to get a platform to protest the destruction of the Brazilian Rain Forest then by winning the contest? Standing in the way of this plan: Benjamin Maxwell (who, in one icky scene, demands that Nisa dance for him), Jason’s parents and friends, and the fact that, through a complicated series of events, Nisa ends up being forced to dance in the sleaziest club in Los Angeles.
So, look — there’s all sorts of things that I could say about The Forbidden Dance but it features a lot of dancing so I’m inclined to be generous towards the film, especially since Laura Harring and Jeff James both know how to move and look really good dancing together. I mean, the word Dance is right there in the title. The film promises dancing and it delivers. Plus, it also delivers Sid Haig and Richard Lynch at their demented best.
So, why complain when you can … DANCE!?
Through the Shattered Lens 