As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in hosting a few weekly live tweets on twitter and occasion ally Mastodon. I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of Mastodon’s #MondayActionMovie! Every week, we get together. We watch a movie. We snark our way through it.
Tonight, for #MondayActionMovie, the film will be 1994’s T-Force! Selected and hosted by Rev. Magdalen, this movie is yet another thing about cyborgs! So, you know it has to be good!
Following #MondayActionMovie, Brad and Sierra will be hosting the #MondayMuggers live tweet. We will be watching 1969’s Support Your Local Sheriff! It’s on Prime.
It should make for a night of fun viewing and I invite all of you to join in. If you want to join the live tweets, just hop onto Mastodon, pull up T-Force on YouTube, start the movie at 8 pm et, and use the #MondayActionMovie hashtag! Then, at 10 pm et, switch over to Twitter and Prime, start Support Your Local Sheriff, and use the #MondayMuggers hashtag! The live tweet community is a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.
Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Sunday, I will be reviewing the Canadian series, Degrassi Junior High, which aired on CBC and PBS from 1987 to 1989! The series can be streamed on YouTube!
On tonight’s episode …. hey, it’s Spike!
Episode 1.8 “Nothing to Fear”
(Dir by John Bertram, originally aired on March 8th, 1987)
This week’s episode of Degrassi Junior High is important because it’s the first to prominently feature the character of Christine Nelson. Played by Amanda Stepto, Christine was better known as Spike, because of the punk rock-inspired hairstyle that she wore throughout Degrassi Junior High and Degrassi High. Even when she appeared with far more conventional hair on Degrassi: The Next Generation, she was still frequently referred to her by her nickname.
Fans of the Degrassi franchise know that Spike is destined to get pregnant after having sex with her ill-fated junior high boyfriend. They know that Spike is going to keep her daughter and that Emma Nelson is going to be the main character for the first few seasons of Degrassi: The Next Generation. And, of course, Spike is destined to eventually marry Snake. Most of that won’t happen for a while. On this week’s episode, she’s mostly present as a study partner of Voula’s (Niki Kemeny) and L.D.’s (Amanda Cook). When L.D.’s father has a heart attack, Spike and Voula visit him at the hospital but L.D. keeps finding excuses not to.
That may seem selfish on L.D.’s part but L.D. has been terrified of hospitals ever since her mother passed away. L.D. finds excuses not to go to the hospital, from cleaning the kitchen to helping out at her father’s garage. I knew exactly what L.D. was going through, as I’ve also hated hospitals ever since my mom passed away and it’s always a struggle for me to find the courage to step through the front doors of one of them. My Dad has been dealing with Parkinson’s for the past few years and I often do drive him to his doctor appointments so I’ve had to set aside my fear and dislike of them so that I can help him when he needs the help but my nerves still go into overdrive as soon as I step into one of those places.
Anyway, Voula does eventually talk to L.D. about her fear of going to the hospital and L.D. finally finds the courage to visit her father. She arrives just as he’s being released to go back home. So, for once, Voula actually helped someone out. I still think she’s been way too unfair to Stephanie during this season but I’m sure we’ll return to that story in an upcoming episode.
Meanwhile, Yick and Arthur accidentally set free the school snake and they have to spend the entire episode looking for it. It was a bit of silly subplot and I get the feeling that it was included to keep the episode from feeling too grim. That said, the snake silliness really didn’t seem to fit with the scenes of L.D. struggling to come to terms with losing her mother and potentially losing her father.
As the episode ends, L.D.’s father says, “If you think hospitals are scary, try being the father of a teenage daughter.” Apparently, not even a heart attack can defeat dad humor.
Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Sundays, I will be reviewing the made-for-television movies that used to be a primetime mainstay. Today’s film is 1971’s Terror In The Sky! It can be viewed on YouTube.
On a flight heading from Minneapolis to Seattle, several passengers suddenly start to get ill.
Luckily, there’s a doctor on the plane. Sporting sideburns and wearing a turtleneck, Roddy McDowall is quite chic in the role of Dr. Baird, the dedicated medical professional who comes to realize that the passengers are suffering from food poisoning. As Dr. Baird explains it to head flight attendant Janet Turner (Lois Nettleton), everyone who had the chicken for dinner is about get severely ill. Uh-oh …. both of the pilots had the chicken!
Is there anyone on the plane who has any flying experience? George Spencer (Doug McClure) flew a helicopter in Vietnam but, as George explains, it’s an entirely different type of flying all together. George has no confidence about his ability to land the plane but he’s the only chance the passengers have.
On the ground, gruff Marty Treleavan (Leif Erickson) has been summoned to the airport so that he can help to talk George through the landing. Marty explains what all of the instruments do to George. He tells George that he needs to stay in the air for a few hours so that he can get comfortable with the plane. But the people on the plane are getting more ill and George says that he might be ding things up a little but he’s going to land this plane!
Does this sound familiar to anyone?
As I watched this film last night, I found myself saying, “Oh my God, this is just a serious version of Airplane!”
And actually, it is. Terror In The Sky was based on Zero Hour, the 1957 film that also served as the basis for Airplane! (The directors of Airplane! even bought the rights to Zero Hour so that they freely borrow whatever they wanted to from the film.) Indeed, much of the dialogue in both Zero Hour and Terror In The Sky also shows up in Airplane! Even the musical cues in Terror In The Sky and Airplane! are similar.
Terror In The Sky is not a bad film. It’s an efficient made-for-TV film that features several made-for-television veterans, including Keenan Wynn and Kenneth Tobey. Doug McClure grimaces heroically in the role of George Spencer and Roddy McDowall is as likable as ever as the doctor who hates to fly. It’s a very earnest movie about a group of people doing everything that they can to save hundreds of lives. They’re doing the right thing!
But it’s also totally impossible to take the film seriously because you spend the entire movie waiting for Roddy McDowall to say, “Don’t call me Shirley,” or for Leif Erickson to say that he picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue. Every moment and every line makes the viewer think of something funny from Airplane!
Personally, I think they bought their tickets. They knew what they were getting into. I say …. well, you get the idea.
And yes, I did rewatch Airplane! as soon as I finished up Terror In The Sky.
Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Saturdays, I will be reviewingthe Canadian sitcom, Check it Out, which ran in syndication from 1985 to 1988. The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi!
This week, Bingo turns dangerous!
Episode 1.5 “Everyone’s A Winner”
(Dir by Gary Plaxton, originally aired on October 30th, 1985)
Jack Christian, the assistant manager of Cobb’s, has been assigned to oversee the store’s bingo promotion! He has handed out over 3,000 bingo cards to all of Cobb’s customers. Each day, a new number is drawn. The first person to get a bingo will win a free trip to …. GREECE!
Really, Greece? That seems kind of random, especially for a grocery store contest. It seems like it would be easier to just give the winner a discount or even a basket of free groceries. But no, the contest is for a free trip to Greece and everyone in Toronto is excited about it. However, when Murray the Stockboy takes a look at the bingo cards, he notices what everyone else has missed. All of the cards are identical. Apparently, in order to save some money, Christian gave the printing job not to the usual company that Cobb’s uses but instead to his cousin Lenny. And now, once the number 35 is called, 3,000 people will be demanding a free trip to Greece.
Well, that could be a problem.
Another problem is that, when two blind men shop in the store at the same time, the leashes of their service animals get tangled. Security guard Alf untangles the leashes but he gives the wrong dog to each man. The men don’t notice because they’re blind. That said, one of the dogs is considerably larger than the other and that really does seem like something that one should be able to sense, even without eyesight. The dogs lead each man to the wrong home. One man is injured when he falls in a pool. The other man has sex with first man’s wife three times. Now, both men want to sue Cobb’s! Howard’s genius solution is to give both men a shopping cart and telling them to fill it up for free. However, the two men’s dogs end up running through the store, knocking over the bingo machine, and causing the bingo balls to scatter all over the place.
Yay! For some reason, that means the bingo promotion is canceled and everyone totally accepts it because Canadians are nice people. Seriously, if they tried that in the States, the store would have burned to the ground….
Actually, one of the more interesting things about Check It Out! is that the show never specifically says that it’s taking place in Canada, even though it obviously is. Almost every member of the cast has a Canadian accent. All of the measurements make use of the metric system. And yet the show itself will often toss in random references to places and people in the U.S. For instance, Edna has a sister who lives in Florida. In this episode, Howard makes a reference to Ronald Reagan’s economic policies. One gets the feeling that the show’s producers hoped to fool Americans watching in syndication into thinking that this very Canadian show was actually taking place in the U.S. It reminds me a bit of how Italian actors and directors would often be credited with stereotypically “American” name in order to hide the fact that a film was an Italian production.
As for this week’s episode, Jeff Pustil’s portrayal of Christian’s growing desperation was amusing. Most of the episode’s jokes, however, fell flat. I’ve noticed that this show repeatedly uses the same joke structure. Someone will say something outrageous and then Howard will repeat it in a slightly shrill tone. It gets old after the 10tth times it happens. Admittedly, hhere was some potential to the story. (Check out TheOffice’s “Golden Ticket” episode for an example of this type of story done effectively.) But having everything resolved via a random case of Dues Ex Machina just felt like laziness on the part of the writers.
I guess the lesson here is that you’ll have to pay your own way to Greece.
Well, Horrorthon is over and I’m trying to get caught up on all the shows that I have waiting for me on the DVR and on all the streaming services. It’ll probably take a while for me to watch all of it but that’s okay. I always enjoy a good excuse to just sit on the couch for a few hours.
Here’s a few notes on what I watched this week!
The Amazing Race (Wednesday Night, CBS)
I can’t wait to get caught up on the latest season of The Amazing Race! I watched the latest episode on Wednesday and I’m glad that the team that got U-turned still managed to survive and make it to the pit stop in time. I’ve never been a fan of the U-turn and I always lose a little respect for teams that choose to use it. Of course, this season, it appears that the teams have not been given the option of opting out.
I watched the 5th episode of this Canadian sitcom earlier today. Unless I get too tired to write it up, my review should drop in a few more hours.
Dirty Pair Flash (YouTube)
I watched another episode of this anime on Friday night. I couldn’t really follow the plot but everyone had really neat hair and a lot of stuff blew up. It was stylish and fun in its own incoherent way.
Dr. Phil (YouTube)
I used several episodes of Dr. Phil as background noise this week. I quickly got used to the sound of him yelling about being trained in forensics.
Get Gotti is a three-episode crime docudrama about the efforts to put mobster John Gotti in jail. It’s a story that I’ve heard before but John Gotti was an intriguing figure and the docuseries did a good job of contrasting Gotti’s flamboyant charisma with the somewhat more low-key people who spent years trying to put him in prison. New York in the 80s will always be a fascinating topic.
The second season started with Sir Humphrey getting rid of a troublesome cabinet secretary by tricking Jim into thinking the secretary was planning to launch a leadership challenge. What’s funny is that the secretary was viewed as being a threat because of his radical employment policies but, once he had been manipulated it resigning, Jim decided to continue the secretary’s plan and just take credit for it himself. No one won but it was very funny.
You Are So Not Invite To My Bat Mitzvah is a well-acted, well-written, and sweet-natured coming-of-age film, featuring Sunny Sandler as Stacey Friedman, a Hebrew school student who is eagerly looking forward to both her Bat Mitzvah and the party after while also dreading the prospect of that party being ruined by her well-meaning but kind of embarrassing parents (Adam Sandler and Idina Menzel).
Stacey believes that the party, the first major event of her adulthood, will determine the rest of her life and therefore, it’s important that it be a huge party with a wonderful entrance video and at least one celebrity guest. Her older sister (a wonderfully deadpan Sadie Sandler) tells her not to get her hopes up. Her father tells her to stop obsessing on her party and concentrate on what it means to be Jewish. Stacey can only watch in horror as her parents invite their dry cleaner to the ceremony and her mother insists on buying her a dress that Stacy says makes her look like the woman who takes sick kids out of the classroom.
Still, Stacey knows that no matter what happens, she’ll always have her BFF, Lydia Rodriguez Katz (Samantha Lorraine), at her side. Except that, in the weeks leading up to her Bat Mitzvah, Stacey discovers that Lydia is dating Andy Goldfarb (Dylan Hoffman), the inarticulate soccer player that Stacey has had a crush on for years. Of course, as Lydia points out, every girl at the school has had a crush on Andy for years. In a moment of anger, Stacey announces, “You are so not invited to my bat mitzvah!”
As I said, it’s a sweet and very sincere movie, one that celebrates friendship and family. It’s not particularly shocking that Andy turns out to be a middle school jerk but everyone’s had a crush like Andy Goldfarb and, if they’re lucky, everyone had had friends like Stacey and Lydia. In the end, the message here is that friendship is more important than some boy who can barely speak in complete sentences and that being adult means thinking about more than just your own concerns. It’s a good message. This film acknowledges its debt to John Hughes by having Stacey’s father take her to a festival of Hughes’s film and, like the best of those films, You Are So Not Invited To My Bat Mitzvah is a teen comedy with heart.
Also, like the best of John Hughes’s films, it’s full of memorable characters. It’s tempting to roll your eyes when you see just how many people involved in this film are named Sandler but everyone gives such a good performance that you quickly forget about any charges of nepotism. We all know that Adam Sandler has made a lot of bad films over the years but he seems to finally be at a point in his career where he’s no longer embarrassed by the fact that he can actually be a good actor. Sunny Sandler is likable and relatable as Stacey and easily carries the film’s emotional moments while Sadie Sandler’s deadpan delivery is one of the movie’s highlights. Idina Menzel, who also played Adam Sandler’s wife in the far different Uncut Gems, is perfectly cast as Stacey’s overbearing but loving mother and Sandler’s real-life wife, Jackie Sandler, is well-cast as Lydia’s mother. Samantha Lorraine makes both her friendship with and her anger at Stacey feel real and poignant. Sarah Sherman is great as the quirky but ultimately quite wise rabbi. Even Luis Guzman shows up and is responsible for some of the film’s funniest moments.
If I had seen this film two months ago, I probably would have said that it was a simply a well-made and very likable coming-of-age film. Seeing it today, at a time when Jews are being told not to enter certain neighborhoods and to hide any external signs of their religion and their cultural background, You Are So Not Invited To My Bat Mitzvah feels very relevant. At a time when anti-Semitism is being mainstreamed and posters of abducted Jewish children are being ripped off walls and people are openly chanting the most vile of words, You Are So Not Invited To My Bat Mitzvah feels almost defiant. It is a film about people who proudly and unapologetically Jewish and, when Stacey reads from the Torah at her Bat Mitzvah, it’s not just the prelude to a party or a chance for her to realize that her friendships are more important than the Andy Goldfarbs of the world. It’s a religious ceremony, it’s a cultural tradition, and it’s a proud and triumphant declaration of identity, one that defies all of the hateful bigots. In these troubled times, You Are So Not Invited To My Bat Mitzvah is a film that takes on an entirely new importance.
Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Saturdays, I will be reviewing Welcome Back Kotter, which ran on ABC from 1975 to 1979. The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi!
This week, we have the start of a two-part story!
Episode 2.18 “Whatever Happened to Arnold? Part One”
(Dir by Bob LaHendro, originally aired on February 3rd, 1977)
At the apartment, Gabe tells Julie about his uncle who was a skin diver. His name was Mike Nelson Kotter. One day, Mike was shocked to see a guy go down 40 feet without equipment. When Mike demanded to know what the guy was doing, the guy replied, “You jerk! I’m drowning!”
At school, Epstein amuses the Sweathogs by doing his Mr. Kotter impersonation.
Gabe walks in on Epstein’s routine but he’s not upset because it actually gives him the perfect excuse to tell the Sweathogs about the school drama festival. He needs some volunteers to appear in one scene from a play, which Gabe will direct.
“Acting is stupid,” Barbarino says, “Pretending to be somebody else.”
Horshack disagrees and shows off his acting skills by falling to his knees and declaring his love for Freddie. Freddie proceeds to do his Harry Belafonte impersonation which leads to Barbarino ripping his t-shirt and shouting, “Stella!” before Gabe then does his Vito Corleone impersonation and compliments Barbarino’s Marlon Brando.
“I was doing John Wayne,” Barbarino replies.
Realizing that Horshack actually is serious about wanting to act, Gabe offers to direct Horshack in a scene from Cyrano de Bergerac. Of course, Horshack’s co-star will be Judy Borden (Helaine Lembeck), who goes to Mr. Woodman to complain about having to work with a Sweathog, though she should be used to it by now as she ends up having to work with them every time that she appears on the show. Woodman tells Judy to do what he does and imagine that she’s a missionary and the Sweathogs are a bunch of cannibals preparing to eat her.
“Throw me into the pot! THROW ME INTO THE POT!” Woodman starts yelling.
Later, when Woodman sees Horshack in costume and carrying a sword, Woodman shouts that Kotter is “arming the Sweathogs!” before adding, “Call out the national guard!” Poor old Woodman.
Unfortunately, Gabe’s attempts to hold rehearsal are interrupted by Barbarino, Freddie, and Epstein, who all show up and proceed to heckle Horshack and Judy. First Judy storms off. That’s to be expected because that’s what Judy always does. But then Horshack gets angry, yells that he’s trying to do something good for all the Sweathogs, and storms off the stage.
The next day, there has still been no sign of Horshack. Freddie, Epstein, and Barbarino tell Gabe that they broke into Horshack’s house but didn’t see any sign of him or his family. With Horshack missing, that means someone is going to have to put on the fake noise and play Cyrano in his place.
“Stella!” Barbarino shouts.
Anyway, the day of the drama festival comes and Barbarino …. well, he’s not a very good Cyrano. He forgets his lines. He talks back to the audience. He and Judy argue in the middle of the scene. He dances while delivering the few lines that he does remember. He ends the scene by falling to his knees and screaming, “Stella!” But it doesn’t matter because he’s a young John Travolta and he’s absolutely adorable with his fake nose. The audiences loves him but Barbarino says that the moment feels hollow because this should have been Arnold’s moment.
“Where could he be?” Freddie asks.
“I don’t know,” Gabe says, “but I think the problem is something more serious than this play. But what?”
And, on that rather ominous note, this episode ends. Fear not, we’ll learn what happened to Horshack in the next episode. For now, let’s just remember that John Travolta did a very convincing Brando and a very amusing Cyrano. The entire cast of this show did a good job (and I especially enjoy John Sylvester White’s weekly descent into insanity) but episodes like this remind us of why John Travolta is the one who went on to become the biggest star.
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, for #ScarySocial, Deanna Dawn will be hosting 1988’s American Gothic!
If you want to join us on Saturday night, just hop onto twitter, start the film at 9 pm et, and use the #ScarySocial hashtag! The film is available on Prime. I’ll probably be there 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.
Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a new feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Fridays, I will be reviewing Friday the 13th, a show which ran in syndication from 1987 to 1990. The show can be found on YouTube!
Tonight, we have the first Halloween episode of Friday the 13th: The Series!
Episode 1.5 “Hellowe’en”
(Dir by Timothy Bond, originally aired on October 26th, 1987)
Somehow, it was not until I watched this episode that I noticed that the Friday the 13th antique shop is names Curious Goods. I guess that’s a good name for a cursed antique shop. (It’s probably more inviting than going with something more honest, like Evil Junk.) Certainly, it appears that it was good enough to keep the place open, even though the owners spent most of their time taking back the antiques from the people who bought them.
This episode takes place during a Halloween party. Is it a good idea to throw a Halloween party in a location that is full of cursed items? That’s the exact question that Micki asks Ryan but Ryan thinks that the store needs to do something to let the neighborhood know that it’s not as scary as it looks. Ryan is actually thinking like a businessman, whereas Micki is thinking like someone who just wants to find all of the cursed antiques so she can get back to planning her wedding. Personally, I think Micki has the right idea.
That said, it’s not a bad party. Ryan dresses up like a renaissance prince. Micki wears a black gown that is to die for. (I assume Micki is costumed as the lead singer of an 80s goth band.) Jack, who really should have been the voice of reason when Ryan first suggested the party, dresses up like a wizard. A lot of people from the neighborhood come to the shop and they watch as Jack performs some simple magic tricks. Unfortunately, the party is ruined when two dummies wander down to the basement and accidentally activated a crystal ball. The lights in the store go out. There are scary noises. Everyone abandons the shop, except for Ryan and Micki.
Where is Jack? He’s taking a mysterious little girl trick-or-treating, just to suddenly discover that the girl is actually a Satanic creature who was sent to distract him while the ghost evil uncle Lewis (R.G. Armstrong) confronted Ryan and Micki in the shop. Lewis, who is wandering around because the damned are apparently allowed to do so only on Halloween night, lies and says that he needs the amulet of Zohar so that he can free his wife from a curse but, after Ryan and Micki stupidly bring him the amulet, Lewis announces that the amulet will actually allow him to transfer his spirt into the body of someone who has recently died, as long as that person died from natural causes. Lewis is going to use the amulet to return permanently to the land of the living.
Lewis and the little demon girl head down to the local morgue. Fortunately, Jack has broken free of the trap that the demon put him in and Ryan and Micki have, for once, managed to figure out what’s happening on their own. Between the efforts of Jack, Ryan, and Micki and Lewis’s own pickiness when it comes to picking a body, Lewis’s time runs out and he is dragged back to Hell.
This was a fun episode. Not only did did it feature Ryan and Micki wearing their very 80s Halloween costumes but it also featured an enjoyably over-the-top performance from R.G. Armstrong as evil Uncle Lewis. All Halloween episodes should be as enjoyable as this one.
Through the Shattered Lens 