Tag Archives: Lisa Marie Bowman

Retro Television Review: The Love Boat 5.3 “Two Grapes On The Vine/Aunt Sylvia/Deductible Divorce”

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 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, The Love Boat hosts a special event!

Episode 5.3 “Two Grapes On The Vine/Aunt Sylvia/Deductible Divorce”

(Dir by Bob Sweeney, originally aired on October 17th, 1981)

This week, the Love Boat is hosting a wine tasting competition!

Basically, the contestants sit in the ballroom.  They take a sip of wine.  They then write down what type of wine they think they just tasted.  All of the members of the crew and the majority of the passengers watch them.  Seriously, it looks like the most boring thing ever.  I mean, I get why the competitors are into it.  The winner gets a lot of money.  But why would you want to watch people drink?  I mean, if you’re crazy into wine, it seems like you’d want to drink it yourself.  What fun is there in watching other people drink something?  I’ll just say that, if I was on a cruise, I would want to do other things.  I would want lay out by the pool or look at the ocean or maybe solve a murder.  What I would not want to do would be to spend hours watching other people drink and then spit.

Also, I have to wonder about the wisdom of hosting a wine tasting competition on a ship that’s captained by a recovering alcoholic.  Did the show forget this key part of the captain’s character?  Merrill Stubing is a recovering alcoholic and he lives his life with the rigorous discipline of someone who is trying to avoid falling back into old habits.  It would seem like Captain Stubing would at least mention his alcoholic past in this episode, especially after Vicki says that she wishes she could take part in the contest.  Wouldn’t this be a good time for Stubing to explain that an addictive personality can be hereditary?

I know, I know.  I’m overthinking.  It’s just because I found this episode to be remarkably dull.  I mean, I love The Love Boat but this episode was just boring.  The whole wine tasting thing just put me to sleep.

It didn’t help that the three stories weren’t particularly interesting.

Robert Guillaume and Leslie Uggams played the two finalists in the wine tasting competition.  They each lied to the other about why they needed the money.  Then they fell in love and they each threw the competition so the other could win the money.  But since they both got the last wine wrong, no one won and no money was awarded.  Wow, wine tasting is a harsh sport!

Tanya Tucker and Michael Goodwin played a married couple who got divorced every year so that they could get a tax break.  This time, they sailed to Mexico for a quickie divorce.  Tucker’s ex-boyfriend, Robert Walden, was on the cruise and Tucker was tempted to stay divorced.  However, she and Goodwin eventually decided to get married a sixth time and to never get divorced again.  I liked this story solely because it was about screwing over the IRS.

Finally, Betty White wanted to marry Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. but he instead fell for Betty White’s friend, Carol Channing.  No worries though!  Fairbanks gave Betty White a job so that she would no longer have to marry for money.

It was all pretty boring.  As I said, I love this show but this episode tasted as flat as a French wine from 1178.

Bonus Song of the Day: Mr. Sandman by The Chordettes

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Thanks to the one and only John Carpenter, the version of this sweet little song that The Chordettes recorded in the 1950s will be forever associated with the Night He Came Home.  Sadly, none of the Chordettes are with us anymore and I haven’t been able to find any interviews about how they felt about their song of teenage love being used in Halloween.

I’d like to think they would have appreciated it.  Michael Myers may not have had hair like Liberace but he did have a mask that looked a lot like William Shatner.

 

Horror Scenes That I Love: Dan O’Herlihy Tells Us What Halloween is All About in Halloween III: Season of the Witch

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Tonight’s horror scene that I love is from the 1982 film, Halloween III: Season of the Witch, a film that has finally started to be recognized for being the horror classic that it is.

In this scene, Conal Cochran (Dan O’Herlihy) explains not only the origins of Halloween but he also discusses how he’s going to make Halloween great again.  This scene is probably the best in the film and it’s almost entirely due to O’Herlihy’s wonderfully menacing performance as Conal Cochran.

“….and happy Halloween.”

A Bonus Horrorthon Blast From The Past: Vincent (dir by Tim Burton)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Vincent Price was born, at the start of the 20th Century, in St. Louis, Missouri.  When he first began his film career in the 1930s, he was promoted as a leading man and he was even tested for the role of Ashley Wilkes in Gone With The Wind.  (Imagine that!)  However, Price would find his greatest fame as a horror icon. 

Among the fans of Price’s horror films was a young animator named Tim Burton.  In 1982, Price and Burton would work together for the first time, with Price providing the narration for a short, stop motion film that Burton had written and directed.  Called Vincent, the film was about a seven year-old boy named Vincent who wanted to be — can you guess? — Vincent Price!  The six-minute film follows Vincent as he gets involved in all sorts of macabre activities.  Of course, as Vincent’s mom points out, Vincent isn’t actually a monster or mad scientist.  He’s just a creative child with an overactive imagination.  (To say the short feels autobiographical on Burton’s part would be an understatement.)  The animation is outstanding and full of wit but it really is Vincent Price’s wonderful narration that makes this short film a classic.

Both Price and Burton would later call making this film one of the most creatively rewarding collaborations of their respective careers.

On Halloween Eve, enjoy Vincent!

Here’s The Trailer for Lake George, Which Does Not Feature A Giant Crocodile

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

When I first saw that this trailer was for a film called Lake George, I automatically thought of Lake Placid and assumed that this was another film about a giant crocodile.

Well, it’s not.  Apparently, it’s a film in which Jeremy Renner Shea Whigham plays a criminal who is forced to do one last job.  However, when he falls in love with the woman he was supposed to kill, they go on a road trip instead.

ROAD TRIP!  That sounds like a good idea.

Anyway, here’s the trailer for Lake George.

4 Shots From 4 Horror Films: Special George Romero Edition

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films is all about letting the visuals do the talking.

Today’s director is one of the most important names in the history of American horror cinema, George Romero!

4 Shots From 4 George Romero Films

Night of the Living Dead (1968, dir by George Romero, DP: George Romero)

Season of the Witch (1973, dir by George Romero, DP: George Romero)

Dawn of the Dead (1978, dir by George Romero, DP: Michael Gornick)

Creepshow (1982, dir by George Romero, written by Stephen King, DP: Michael Gornick)

Here Is The Trailer For Marvel Television, including Daredevil: Born Again

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Yesterday, Disney+ released a trailer for all of the new Marvel shows that will be coming out later this year and in 2025.  The majority of the trailer highlight Daredevil: Born Again.

Admittedly, we’ve gotten used to Marvel and its movies and its show and, as such, a new Marvel trailer is no longer the big event that it used to be.  (The Marvel trailers that excite us usually involve characters like Deadpool, who comment on and satirize the conventions of the comic book movie.  We love Deadpool’s jaded perspective because we’ve all gotten jaded ourselves.)

That said, the Daredevil: Born Again footage looked cool.  The animated stuff was a bit of a mixed bag.  (Jeff tells me that Marvel Zombies have been around for a while but I still laughed when they showed up in the trailer.)  Ironheart looks insanely boring.  But Daredevil, I’m cautiously optimistic about.

Here’s the trailer.

A Blast From The Past: Orson Welles’s 1938 Broadcast of The War of the Worlds

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

On October 30th, 1938, Orson Welles and the Mercury Theater On The Air broadcast an adaptation of H.G. Wells’s War of the Worlds and, legend has it, they scared the ever-loving heck out of America.

Actually, there’s some debate as to just how panicked America got when they heard the Mercury Theater On The Air’s adaptation of War of the Worlds.  There was definitely some panic but there are differing reports on just how wide spread it was.  For our purposes, let’s assume that the entire country was terrified at the same time and that everyone was loading up a shotgun and planning to go out and look for aliens.  One thing is for sure.  With his adaptation of War of the Worlds, Orson Welles managed to invent the whole found footage genre that would later come to dominate horror cinema in the late 90s and the aughts.  Every found footage horror film owes a debt to what Orson Welles accomplished with War of the Worlds.  We won’t hold that against Orson.  Instead, it’s just another example of how far ahead of his time Orson Welles was.

H.G. Wells, the original author of War of the Worlds, and Orson Welles only met once, while they were both in San Antonio, Texas in 1940.  (Orson Welles and H.G. Wells hanging out in San Antonio?  To be honest, that sounds like it would make a good movie.)  They were interviewed for a local radio station.  H.G. Wells expressed some skepticism about the reports of Americans panicking while Welles compared the radio broadcast to someone dressing up like a ghost and shouting “Boo!” during Halloween.  Both Wells and Welles then encouraged Americans to worry less about Martians and more about the growing threat of Hitler and the war in Europe.

I’ve shared this before but this just seems like the time to share it again.  Here, for Halloween Eve, is the 1938 Mercury Theater On The Air production of The War of the Worlds!

Horror on the Lens: How To Make A Monster (dir by Herbert L. Strock)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

You’ve seen I Was A Teenage Werewolf….

You’ve watched I Was A Teenage Frankenstein….

Now, it’s time to watch How To Make A Monster!

Released in 1958, How To Make A Monster is a clever little horror satire from American International Pictures in which the stars of Teenage Werewolf and Teenage Frankenstein are hypnotized into believing that they actually are the monsters that they played!  The main culprit is a movie makeup artist (Robert H. Harris) who has been deemed obsolete by the new bosses at AIP.

Be sure to watch for the finale, which features cameo appearances from several other AIP monsters!  And read my full review of the film by clicking here!