Tag Archives: Lisa Marie Bowman

Late Night Retro Television Review: Hunter 1.4 “A Long Way From L.A.”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Thursdays, I will be reviewing Hunter, which aired on NBC from 1984 to 1991.  The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi and several other services!

This episode makes the mistake of pretending to leave California.

Episode 1.4 “A Long Way From L.A.”

(Dir by Arnold Laven, originally aired on October 26th, 1984)

Bleh.  This episode annoyed me.

Wally Wallerstein (Paul Eiding), a pickpocket wanted in Los Angeles, is arrested in Texas.  Because he needs a break from them, Captain Cain sends Hunter and McCall to retrieve him.  Wally turns out to be a nice guy but, when Hunter’s car breaks down in Wilson County, Texas, Wally is accused of attacking a local waitress and is then killed by a sniper.  The real culprit is pretty obviously Sheriff Jake Cutter (Bo Svenson), who is the stepson of Chuck Easterland (Morgan Woodward), the richest man in town.

Not a single small town stereotype went unused in this episode.  As a Texan, I was annoyed by the fact that everyone had a Southern (as opposed to a Southwestern) accent.  And while I understand that the show probably didn’t have the budget or the time to shoot on location, it was still hard not to smirk at the sight of a very California mountain range in the background.  This is the flatlands, folks.  We don’t have mountains like that in Texas.

Hunter and McCall need to stay in Los Angeles.

Retro Television Review: Decoy 1.30 “The Gentle Gun-Man”

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 Thursdays, I will be reviewing Decoy, which aired in Syndication in 1957 and 1958.  The show can be viewed on Tubi!

In this episode, Casey goes after a gun dealer.

Episode 1.30 “The Gentle Gun-Man”

(Dir by Michael Gordon, originally aired on May 5th, 1958)

After a man is shot dead while committing a liquor store robbery, Casey goes undercover as his widow.  The police don’t just want the man’s accomplice.  They want to know where the man got his specially-modified gun.  The accomplice turns out to be a rather gentle deli owner named “Knish” Levin (Ludwig Donath).  And the gun dealer turns out to be Mr. Johnson (James O”Rear), the same gun dealer who sold Casey her first gun.  (This episode implies that members of the police force have to buy their own guns, which sounds a bit odd.)  Needless to say, when Casey convinces Knish to introduce her to his dealer, Johnson immediately recognizes her.

This episode had a lot of New York location footage.  The scene where Knish leads Casey to Johnson took us from Wallstreet to the waterfront.  Indeed, the locations shots were the best thing about this episode.  The acting in this episode was, by Decoy standards, subpar, with even the usually reliable Beverly Garland struggling to sell her lines.  Unfortunately, this episode’s plot required Casey to make a lot of foolish mistakes, like going to see the gun dealer without proper backup.  I liked the fact that Knish wasn’t portrayed as being a typical thug but otherwise, this episode just didn’t work.

Scenes That I Love: Fast Times At Ridgemont High

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today, we wish a happy birthday to director Amy Heckerling!

In this scene from the Heckerling-directed 1982 film Fast Times At Ridgemont High, Brad finally gets a moment of triumph.  Played by Judge Reinhold, Brad spends most of this movie being humiliated.  He kind of deserves it because he can definitely be a bit full of himself, especially when he was working at All-American Burger.  But, at the same time, he’s there for his sister when she needs someone and, for a character in a 1982 teen comedy, he’s refreshingly nonjudgmental.

In this scene, poor Brad has been reduced to working at an all-night convenience store.  Wherever Brad works, he appears to be destined to have to wait on Jeff Spicoli (Sean Penn.)  When James Russo attempts to hold him up, Brad finally snaps and becomes the hero that he’s always wanted to be.

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special Ruggero Deodato 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 lets the visuals do the talking!

Today would have been the 87th birthday of the great Italian director, Ruggero Deodato!  And that, of course, means that it’s time for….

4 Shots From 4 Films

Live Like A Cop, Die Like A Man (1976, dir by Ruggero Deodato, DP: Guglielmo Mancori)

The House On The Edge of the Park (1980, dir by Ruggero Deodato, DP: Sergio D’Offizi)

Raiders of Atlantis (1983, dir by Ruggero Deodato, DP: Robert D’Ettore Piazzoli)

Body Count (1986, dir by Ruggero Deodato, DP: Emilio Loffredo)

Late Night Retro Television Review: 1st & Ten 3.13 “Championship Jinx”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night 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 1st and Ten, which aired in syndication from 1984 to 1991. The entire series is streaming on Tubi.

This week, season 3 comes to an end.

Episode 3.13 “Championship Jinx”

(Dir by Bruce Seth Green, originally aired on December 16th, 1987)

Things have a way of working themselves out on 1st & Ten, especially when the season ends and a lot of plotlines need to be hastily wrapped up.

Last week, TD Parker (OJ Simpson) was arrested under suspicion of ticket scalping.  This episode, it turned out that 1) ticket scalping isn’t illegal and 2) TD’s ex-mistress quickly figured out that her boyfriend was trying to frame him.  Someone trying to frame OJ Simpson!?  Like anyone would ever buy that.  Anyway, the main theme here seemed to be that it was a good thing TD cheated on his wife because otherwise, no one would have been around to exonerate him.

Last week, Yinessa was letting fame go to his head.  This week, his father died and the funeral was a media circus.  Yinessa decided to focus on playing football. That’s a good thing, seeing as how the Bulls had yet another championship game coming up.

Zagreb was concerned that he was a jinx after he appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated.  (Yinessa told him that players who appeared on the cover often lost the spark afterwards.) Luckily, Cliff and Jethro brought in a voodoo priestess (Roxie Roker) to exorcise the jinx.

Before the game, Jill told the team that they weren’t only playing for themselves.  They were playing for the memory of Tom Yinessa’s father.  Unfortunately, the Bulls lost the game at the last minute when Billy Cooper’s game-winning catch was reviewed by the booth and declared to be out of bounds.  So, I guess Yinessa’s father is in Hell now.

And so ends the rather odd third season.  Coach Denardo left after the first episode.  Delta Burke left about halfway through the season, just to be replaced by a new female owner who gave a pre-game speech that referred to all of the previous times she had gone to the Championship Game with the Bulls just to see them lose, despite the fact that she wasn’t even a part of the show’s cast during the previous two seasons.  The season began with a player dying of steroid abuse and ended with OJ Simpson proving his innocence.  Oh!  And Zagreb discovered his father was a CIA agent and then he got married.

Was it a good season?  Not really.  This isn’t a good show.  But season 3 was definitely a lot stranger than the previous two seasons and that’s definitely a point in 1st & Ten‘s favor.

Next week, we start season 4!

Retro Television Review: The Love Boat 7.18 “Ace in the Hole/Uncle Joey’s Song/Father in the Cradle”

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 gets a new photographer!

Episode 7.18 “Ace in the Hole/Uncle Joey’s Song/Father in the Cradle”

(Dir by Richard Kinon, originally aired on January 28th, 1984)

This episode featured the usual three story structure.  One story I was indifferent too.  One story kept me entertained.  And one story made me cry.

The story made me cry featured Barnard Hughes as Joseph Stobble, a former kids’s show host who has retired because he feels too old for kids to relate to.  Isaac grew up watching Uncle Joey and even gives Uncle Joey a replica of Flapjack, the sock puppet that served as Uncle Joey’s sidekick.  Uncle Joey meets Scott Russell (David Faustino), a child who has recently lost his father.  Uncle Joey helps Scott deal with his emotions by assuring him that it’s okay to cry.

I cried!  Hell, I’m crying just typing this up.  Now, I should clarify that I have a reason for crying.  The end of May will also be the two-year anniversary of the auto accident that eventually led to my father’s passing on August 19th, 2024.  To  be honest, there hasn’t been a day over the past two weeks that I haven’t cried at some point.  When my father died, I threw myself into taking care of my aunt.  After  my aunt died (and she died exactly one year after my father), I threw myself into trying to make the holidays perfect for my sisters.  And, after that, I threw myself into cleaning the house.  Looking back, I understand that I kept throwing myself into new activities because I was trying to outrun just how sad I was.  It’s only now that it’s finally all hitting me.

Would I have cried over Uncle Joey’s story if I wasn’t currently feeling sad?  I think I would have.  It was a sweet story featuring good work from Hughes, Faustino, and the always reliable Ted Lange.

As for the indifferent story, it featured Larry (Michael Spound) getting upset when he meets his mother’s (Lee Meriwether) new husband (Dean-Paul Martin).  It turns out the son and the stepdad are both the same age!  It was kind of boring, to be honest.

Finally, the third story featured Ted McGinley — yay! — as Ashley “Ace” Covington Evans, the new ship’s photographer!  Gopher hired him but he soon regrets it when all the women on board fall for Ave instead of Doc and Gopher.  However, Ace has a problem.  He’s a good photographer but he doesn’t know how to develop film!   (My first thought was that surely someone on the ship had to have a laptop and a printer but then I realized that this was apparently before the age of even digital cameras.)  The ship’s passengers and Stubing are curious as to why Ace hasn’t put up any of the pictures that he’s taken.  Vicki and Julia help out by putting up a bunch of pictures from a past cruise….

(Uhmm, how would that help?  I would assume that the passengers would expect to see pictures of themselves.)

Ace comes clean to the Captain and offers to spend three weeks learning how to develop film.  “Then we shall see you in three weeks,” a very understanding Stubing replies.  (Stubing perhaps knows that Vicki would never forgive him for firing Ace.)

Why did this story work so well?  Ted McGinley, that’s why!  And now, apparently, Ted’s a new cast member.  YAY!  The Love Boat is going to be better than ever!

Scenes That I Love: The Opening Tracking Shot from Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Since today is Orson Welles’s birthday, I wanted to share at least one scene that I love from his films.  The famous tracking shot from 1958’s Touch of Evil, which begins in America and ends in Mexico, truly shows Orson Welles at his visionary best.

It’s also Welles at his most clever.  Knowing that he wouldn’t be given control over the editing of the footage he shot, Welles included as many long shots as possible to make it more difficult for an editor to chop up or alter his vision.