Tag Archives: Michael Paul Chan

Late Night Retro Television Review: CHiPs 6.3 “Spaceman”

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 Mondays, I will be reviewing CHiPs, which ran on NBC from 1977 to 1983.  The entire show is currently streaming on Prime!

This week, CHiPs jumps the proverbial shark.

Episode 6.3 “The Spaceman Made Me Do It”

(Dir by Winrich Kolbe, originally aired on October 24th, 1983)

There’s three storylines in this week’s episode.  Let’s start with the two that make sense.

In the episodes comedic storyline, the members of the Highway Patrol all receive a chain letter.  Some continue the chain and have good luck.  Others — like Ponch — do not continue the chain and wait for their bad luck.  Grossie mails his letter and then gets an $800 refund from the IRS.  However, at the end of the episode, it’s revealed that the Highway Patrol’s secretary failed to mail the chain letters and the IRS informs Grossie that his refund was a mistake.  Everyone laughs at Grossie.  Poor guy.

The B-plot features Grossie and new officer Kathy (Tina Gayle) tracking down some thieves who are robbing Japanese tourists.  This was a traditional CHiPs story and it was actually kind of nice of the show to acknowledge that Ponch isn’t the only person fighting crime in California.

But then there’s the main plot.  Ponch and Bobby have been assigned to night patrol.  They catch a preadolescent girl named Jodi (Kyle Richards) breaking into a jewelry store.  She says that an E.T. (and yes, she says “E.T.’) ordered her to break into the store because it need the diamonds to fix its spaceship.  Ponch and Bobby take Jodi to the station and Ponch volunteers to serve as Jodi’s legal guardian until her parents can be found.  Dr. Joyce Brothers appears as herself, talking to Jodi and announcing the Jodi is not crazy.

Having watched five seasons of CHiPs, I found myself waiting for the inevitable moment in which it would be revealed that Jodi was being manipulated by a master criminal.  When Jodi ran away to meet up with the UFO, I expected that Ponch and Bobby would track her down and arrest the actual villain.

Instead, when Ponch and Bobby tracked down Jodi, I got a scene of a light shining down from the sky, Jodi being pulled towards the unseen UFO, and Ponch grabbing her and yelling that the aliens can’t have her.  Ponch’s words apparently have the right effect because the lights disappear as the never-seen UFO returns to its own planet.

“What was that?” Bobby asks.

“Whatever you want it to be,” Ponch replies.

No, guys.  I’m sorry.  This is CHiPs.  It’s a show about cops on motorcycles.  It’s not a show about UFOs.  You can’t just introduce an alien on this show and then have everyone shrug it off once they hear that Grossie won’t be getting his tax refund.  This just isn’t the show to try that sort of thing.  (Yes, Force Seven did get pretty weird but that was a backdoor pilot for a different series and Ponch and Jon didn’t actually get involved in any of the mad scientist/karate action.)

I’m going to guess this episode was an attempt to shake things up.  Maybe there was a feeling that, since new star Tom Reilly lacked all credibility as a cop, the show should abandon the straight-forward approach that it used during the Larry Wilcox years.  I’m sure the show had its reasons but this episode just doesn’t feel right.

Of course, some thing never change.  The aliens may have been a surprise but it’s not a surprise that Ponch was the one who (somehow) made them go away.  Aliens or not, this is still….

April Noir: Thief (dir by Michael Mann)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

1981’s Thief tells the story of Frank (James Caan).

Frank is a professional diamond thief, one of the best in the business.  He’s so cool that he even has his own Tangerine Dream soundtrack.  After doing a stint in prison, Frank lives his life very carefully and with discipline.  He’s determined not to return to prison.  His mentor (played by Willie Nelson) is still behind bars and will probably die there.  In fact, Frank has even found himself thinking about abandoning his criminal lifestyle.  He’s got two front businesses, both of which are doing well.  (Frank’s used car lot looks like some sort of alien world.)  He’s fallen in love with a cashier named Jessie (Tuesday Weld) and it’s starting to seem like now would be a good time to settle down and become a family man.  The only problem is that Frank is working for Leo (Robert Prosky) and Leo has absolutely no intention of allowing Frank to walk away.  As Leo puts it, Frank belongs to him.  That’s not a smart thing to say to someone like Frank.

Frank’s an interesting character.  He’s the film’s hero, not because he’s a good guy but because he’s a smidgen better than most of the other bad guys.  He’s a professional, one who goes out of his way avoid unnecessary complications.  When we see him on the job, it’s impossible not to admire just how good he is at stealing stuff.  When he uses a blowtorch to break into a store or a safe, the screen is full of sparks and, for a few minutes, Frank looks like some sort of cosmic super hero brought to life.  We admire Frank but we discover early on that he’s willing to get violent.  He’s willing to pull a gun and threaten his way out of a situation.  Frank is loyal.  He visits his mentor in prison.  He takes care of his partner-in-crime, Barry (Jim Belushi, making his film debut).  He truly loves Jessie.  But, at heart, he’s a criminal who doesn’t hesitate to pull the trigger when he has to.  The question the film asks is whether one can just go straight, after years of breaking the law and living in the shadows.  Can Frank abandon the lifestyle, even for love?  Or is he destined to always be a thief?

Thief was Michael Mann’s feature film debut.  (The Jericho Mile was Mann’s directorial debut but it was made for television.)  Thief is full of the usual Mann themes and also Mann’s signature style, showing that Mann knew exactly what type of films he wanted to make from the start of his career.  The nights are full of shadows.  The days are deceptively calm.  The neon of Frank’s car lot glows like another dimension.  The final bloody shoot out takes place at night, in the type of suburban neighborhood in which most people would probably love to live.  And holding the film together is James Caan, giving a coolly centered performance as a man who has learned to hold back his emotions and who won’t be controlled by anyone.  Halfway through the film, Caan delivers a seven-minute monologue about life in prison and it’s an amazing moment, one in which Caan shows just how good of an actor he truly was.  Thief is an effective and stylish neo-noir, one that sticks with you as the end credits roll.

 

A Movie A Day #49: Body Chemistry 4: Full Exposure (1995, directed by Jim Wynorski)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

51tj679zxfl

After five years of kinky sex and murder, the Body Chemistry franchise ended with Body Chemistry 4: Full Exposure.

Like the third film, Full Exposure was directed by Jim Wynorski and produced by Andrew Stevens.  Shannon Tweed stepped into the role of murderous Dr. Claire Archer, replacing Shari Shattuck.  Shannon Tweed was always one of the most talented of the actresses who regularly appeared on what was then nicknamed Skinemax.  It wasn’t just that Tweed always seemed to being give it her all in her films’ frequent sex scenes.  Tweed also had the look and style of an old-fashioned femme fatale.  It was easy to imagine her trading sultry quips with Alan Ladd or Tom Neal.  This made Tweed perfect for the role of Claire Archer and her performance was a noticeable improvement on Shari Shattuck’s.  It’s just too bad the rest of the film was such a snoozefest.

In Full Exposure, after getting away with three murders in the first two Body Chemistry films, Claire has finally been arrested.  She is on trial for killing Alan Clay (Andrew Stevens) at the end of the third film.  However, she has a hotshot lawyer named Simon Mitchell (Larry Poindexter) and she is soon up to her old tricks, having sex with Simon in his office, a parking garage, and an elevator.  Simon’s aide, Lane (Marta Martin), has come across proof of Claire’s crimes but Claire has a plan to take care of that.  She always does.

Full Exposure starts out as a typical Body Chemistry film, with neon-lit sex scenes, but it quickly get bogged down in lengthy courtroom sequences.  In the previous three films, Claire at least had some sort of motivation but here, it’s never clear why she would try to destroy her lawyer’s life during the trial instead of waiting until he had, at least, gotten her off the hook.  Tweed is a perfect Claire but the rest of the cast is just going through the motions.   Though Claire once again got away with murder, there were no more chapters to her story after this one.  The Body Chemistry franchise managed to do a lot with a very thin premise but Full Exposure shows, that by the fourth film, there was no where left to go.

Back to School Part II #39: The Glass House (dir by Daniel Sackheim)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

the_glass_house_2001_film

Originally, I was planning on using the 2001 thriller The Glass House as one of my guilty pleasure reviews.  Because, seriously, this film truly is one of the guiltiest of all guilty pleasures.  I mean, there’s so much that you can criticize about the movie but it’s so much fun that I always feel rather bad for doing so.  However, after giving it some thought, I decided to use The Glass House as one of my Back to School reviews.  Seeing as how I just totally trashed a Leelee Sobieski film called Here On Earth, it only seems fair to now recommend one of her films.

In The Glass House, Leelee plays Ruby Baker, a 16 year-old whose parents are killed in a car accident.  Though their uncle (Chris Noth) wants to adopt them, the will states that Ruby and her nine year-old brother (Trevor Morgan) will instead be looked after by their parents’ best friends, Erin (Diane Lane) and Terry (Stellan Skarsgard).

Now, here’s the thing.  This is going to blow your mind.  Guess where Erin and Terry live?  They live in a big mansion in Malibu and the entire house is made out of … GLASS!  We have a title, right!?  But wait, there’s more!  Guess what Terry and Erin’s last name is?  That’s right — GLASS!  So, the house is not only literally a glass house but it’s also the Glass house as well!  And beyond that, there’s that old saying that people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones and … well, that really doesn’t apply to this film.

Anyway, I’m making such a big deal about the title because it pretty much tells you everything that you need to know about The Glass House.  There is not a single subtle moment to be found in this entire film. And really, this is not a film that requires or rewards subtlety.  We know that Terry Glass is up to no good from the minute we meet him, largely because he’s played by Stellan Skarsgard and when was the last time Stellan Skarsgard played a trustworthy character?  Skarsgard pretty much gives the same performance here that he’s given in almost every thriller that he’s ever appeared in (including David Fincher’s rehash of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo — which I’m still ticked off about, by the way) but it works wonderfully because there’s not a hint of pretension to The Glass House.  It just wants to entertain and it does just that.  There’s little that can match the entertainment value of watching Stellan Skarsgard go totally over the top.

Sure, the film has all sorts of flaws.  Ruby’s intelligence changes from scene to scene, depending on what the film’s story needs her to do.  (For that matter, the same thing can be said about every character in the film.)  But the film’s a lot of fun and Leelee Sobieski gives one of the best and most sympathetic performances of her career.  Ruby may be an inconsistent character but she’s so well-played that you like her anyway.  In a film that often threatens to go just a little bit too crazy, Leelee gives a performance of both believable grief and believable inner strength.  She keeps the film grounded just enough that you’ll continue to watch even when the narrative hits a rough patch.  As well, Bruce Dern is hilariously sleazy as a possibly duplicitous attorney.  The only thing more entertaining than watching Stellan Skarsgard go over the top is watching Bruce Dern do the same thing in the same film.

The Glass House is one of those films that seems to show up on cable constantly.  And, 9 times out of 10, I’ll at least watch at least a little bit of it.  It’s just a fun movie.