Late Night Retro Television Review: Highway to Heaven 4.4 “The People Next Door”

Posted on July 10, 2025 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 Highway to Heaven, which aired on NBC from 1984 to 1989. The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi and several other services!

This week, Jonathan and Mark take on prejudice.

Episode 4.4 “The People Next Door”

(Dir by Michael Landon, originally aired on October 21st, 1987)

Dr. William Martin (David Spielberg) is living a double life. His family and his neighbors know him as a white doctor who lives in a suburban community and who is a part of the homeowner’s community. He’s told his wife and his son that his parents died before he met them.

His mother knows him as Dr. Guillermo Martinez, who works at the free clinic in the economically disadvantaged area of town. Anna Martinez (Mariam Colon) works as a maid and has no idea that her son is married and that she’s a grandmother.

Guillermo changed his name and lied about his ethnicity so that he could get ahead as a doctor and it’s worked for him. His best friend is Brad Bowman (John Lawlor), the real estate agent who is dedicated to making sure that only “the right people” move into the neighborhood. But when Jonathan and Mark show up as rival real estate agents and hire Anna to help them clean up the house next door, William/Guillermo is forced to face the truth about who he is.

At the start of this episode, Jonathan tells Mark that their assignment is not only to show William the foolishness of denying his heritage but to also help William’s neighbors become more tolerant. They definitely help out William but they don’t really seem to have much luck with the neighbors. Brad Bowman (no relation!) is as much of a bigot at the end of the show as he was at the start. Jonathan and Mark do arrange for a black family to move into the empty house and then Jonathan and Mark promptly leave the neighborhood. So, I guess the responsibility for teaching everyone else tolerance is going to be on the new homeowners. This is one of those episodes where you wish Jonathan had actually gone to extremes to make his point, instead of just arranging for people to run into each other while wandering around the neighborhood. I know that some people would say, “Well, Brad’s just a bad person,” but wasn’t one the original themes of this show that everyone had the potential to see the light, learn the errors of their ways, and be redeemed?

While the show suggested that there was no hope for Brad to see the error of his ways, it also let Guillermo off way too easy. His wife was surprisingly understanding about her husband lying to her for years. And, in the end, his mother was surprisingly forgiving about him lying about the fact that she had a grandson. Jonathan scolded him briefly but that was pretty much it. My grandmother, who came to this country from Franco’s Spain, would not have been as forgiving.

This episode was well-intentioned but didn’t quite work.

One-Eyed Jacks (1961, directed by Marlon Brando)

Posted on April 3, 2025 by Jedadiah Leland

Rio (Marlon Brando), a young outlaw in the Old West, is betrayed by his partner and mentor Dad Longworth (Karl Malden) and ends up spending five years in a Mexican prison. When Rio escapes, he gets together a new gang and heads for Monterey, California. He wants to both get his revenge on Longworth and also rob the local bank. Things get complicated when Rio actually confronts Longworth and suddenly realizes that he can’t bring himself just to gun the man down in cold blood. Rio is not as ruthless of an outlaw as he thought he was.

However, Rio then meets and falls in love with Louisa (Pina Pellicer), Longworth’s stepdaughter Longworth is willing to do whatever he has to keep Rio away from Louisa and, when Rio starts to think about going straight in an effort to win Louisa’s love, his new gang turn out to be even less trustworthy than his old partners.

A teenage rebellion film disguised as a western (and it’s not a coincidence that the main bad guy is named Dad), One-Eyed Jacks was Marlon Brando’s only film as a director. The film was originally meant to be directed by Stanley Kubrick, who was working from a script written by a once-in-a-lifetime combination of Rod Serling and Sam Peckinpah. Kubrick and Brando worked together to develop the film, with Brando insisting on Karl Malden as Dad. (Kubrick wanted to cast Spencer Tracy.) Ultimately realizing that working on One-Eyed Jacks would mean essentially taking orders from his star, Kubrick stepped down from directing so he could focus on Lolita and Brando took over as director. The film finally went into production in 1958 and would not be released until 1961. Brando’s perfectionism was blamed for the film going massively overbudget and, when it was finally released, One-Eyed Jacks was the first of Brando’s films to lose money. The combined box office failures of One-Eyed Jacks and the remake of Mutiny on the Bounty left Brando in the cinematic wilderness for much of the 60s.

As for the film itself, One-Eyed Jacks takes what should have been a simple story and attempts to turn into an epic. Rio spends a good deal of time brooding and the film seems to brood right along with him. What starts out as a western becomes a forbidden love story as Rio and Louisa fall for each other. Dad Longworth may be an outlaw-turned-sheriff but Malden plays him more as a possessive father who can’t handle that his two stepchildren — Rio and Louisa — are both turning against him and his strict rules. Brando obviously viewed the film as being something bigger than a standard western. Sometimes, his direction works and he does manage to get the epic feel that he was going for. Other times, the film itself seems to be unsure what direction it wants to go in telling its story. This is method directing.

Ultimately, One-Eyed Jacks is an interesting experiment, one that doesn’t really work but which still features Charles Lang’s outstanding cinematography and one of Karl Malden’s best performances. As Brando’s only directorial effort, the film is a curiosity piece, one that will be best enjoyed by western fans who have the patience for something a little different. And, for what it’s worth, based on the film’s visual beauty and the performances that he gets from the cat, I think Brando could have developed into a fine director with a little more experience. However, it was not to be.

An Offer You Can’t Refuse #19: Scarface (dir by Brian DePalma)

Posted on July 9, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

“Hello to my little friend!”

Hi, little friend….

BOOM!

The 1983 film, Scarface, is a misunderstood film. As we all know, it’s the story of Tony Montana (Al Pacino), who comes to Miami from Cuba along with his friend, Manny (Steven Bauer). In return for murdering a former member of Castro’s government, Tony is given a job working for Frank Lopez (Robert Loggia). When it becomes obvious that Tony is becoming too ambitious and might become a threat to him, Frank attempts to have Tony killed. However, the assassination attempt fails, Tony murders Frank, and then Tony becomes Miami’s richest and most powerful crime lord. Soon, Tony is burying his face in a mountain of cocaine while making deals with a sleazy Bolivian drug lord named Alejandro Sosa (Paul Shenar). Tony also marries Frank’s mistress, Elvira Hancock (Michelle Pfieffer), though it’s obvious from the start the the only person that Tony truly loves is his sister, Gina (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio). Anyway, it all eventually leads to a lot of violence and a lot of death. Even F. Murray Abraham ends up getting tossed out of a helicopter, which is unfortunate since his character was a lot of fun.

Scarface is a famous film, largely because of Oliver Stone’s quotable dialogue and the no holds barred direction of Brian DePalma. However, I think that people get so caught up on the fact that this is a classic gangster film that they miss the fact that Scarface is also an extremely dark comedy. It satirizes the excess of the 80s. Once Tony reaches the top of the underworld, he becomes a parody of the nouveau riche. He moves into a gigantic house and proceeds to decorate it in the most tasteless way possible and there’s something oddly charming about this crude, not particularly bright man getting excited over the fact that he can finally afford to buy a tiger. Towards the end of the film, there’s a scene where Tony rants while lounging in an indoor hot tub while Elvira languidly snorts cocaine and complains about the crudeness of his language and, at that moment, Scarface becomes a bit of a domestic comedy. Tony’s reached the top of his profession, just to discover that it takes more than a live-in tiger and a wardrobe of wide lapeled suits to achieve true happiness. So, he ends up sitting glumly in his office with a mountain of cocaine rising up in front of him. “The world is yours” may be Tony’s motto but it turns out that the world is extremely tacky. For all of his attempts to recreate himself as a wealthy and sophisticated man, Tony is still just a barely literate criminal with a nasty scar and a sour disposition. The only thing he’s gotten for all of his ruthless ambition is an order of ennui with a cocaine appetizer.

I’ve always found Brian DePalma to be an uneven director. He has a very distinct style and sometimes that style is perfectly suited to the story that he’s telling (i.e., Carrie) and sometimes, all of that style just seems to get in the way (i.e. The Fury). Scarface, however, is the ideal story for DePalma’s over-the-top aesthetic. DePalma’s style may be excessive but Scarface is a film about excess so it’s a perfect fit. For that matter, you could say the same thing about Oliver Stone’s screenplay. Stone has since stated that he was using almost as much cocaine as Tony Montana while he wrote the script. The end result of the combination of Stone’s script, DePalma’s hyperactive direction, Pacino’s overpowering lead performance, and Giorgio Moroder’s propulsive score is a film that feels as if every minute is fueled by cocaine. It’s not just a film that’s about drugs. It’s also a film that feels like a drug.

Scarface is a big movie. It runs nearly three hours, following Tony from his arrival in the United States to his final moments in his mansion, taking hundreds of bullets while grandly announcing that he’s still standing. (Even after all of the bad things that Tony has done — poor Manny! — it’s impossible not to admire his refusal to go down.) It’s also a difficult movie to review, largely because almost everyone’s seen it and already has an opinion. Personally, I think the film gets off to a strong start. I think the scenes of Tony ruthlessly taking control of Frank’s empire are perfectly handled and I love the scenes where Pacino and Steven Bauer just bounce dialogue off of each other. They’re like a comedy team who commits murder on the side. I also loved the “Take it to the limit” montage, which belongs in the 80s Cinema Hall of Fame. At the same time, I think the final third of the movie drags a bit and that Tony’s sudden crisis of conscience when he sees that a man that he’s supposed to murder has a family feels a bit forced. It also bothers me that Elvira just vanishes from the film. At the very least, the audience deserved more of an explanation as to where she disappeared to.

But no matter! Flaws and all, Scarface is a violent satire that holds up surprisingly well. Al Pacino’s unhinged performance as Tony Montana is rightly considered to be iconic. Pacino’s gives such a powerhouse performance that it’s easy to forget that the rest of the cast is pretty impressive as well. I particularly liked the wonderfully sleazy work of F. Murray Abraham and Paul Shenar. That said, my favorite character in the film remains Elvira, if just because her clothes were to die for and she just seemed so incredibly bored with all of the violent men in her life. She goes from being bored with Frank to being bored with Tony and how can you not admire someone who, even when surrounded by all Scarface’s excess, just refuse to care?

Scarface is an offer that you can’t refuse.

Previous Offers You Can’t (or Can) Refuse:

Horror Film Review: The Possession of Joel Delaney (dir by Waris Hussein)

Posted on October 17, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The Possession of Joel Delaney is a film that I watched a few years ago and it totally freaked me out. It’s a film about possession that has never gotten as much attention as The Exorcist but seriously, this is one frightening movie.

This 1972 film takes place in New York City. Norah Benson (Shirley MacClaine) is a rich and spoiled socialite, a snob who might brag about how nice she is to her maid but who would never dream of being caught dead visiting the neighborhood where she lives. On the other hand, her younger brother — Joel Delaney (Perry King) — is a self-styled bohemian. He’s just as rich as his sister and, in many ways, he’s just as much of a snob. However, he disguises that fact by living in the “bad” part of town and hanging out with (and both idealizing and condescending to) the poor. (When people talk about the “bad” part of the town in this film, they’re euphemistically referring to any part of the city where the majority of the residents are not white.) If The Possession of Joel Delaney were made today, Norah would be Sasha Stone and Joel would be Devin Faraci.

Norah is extremely protective of Joel. In fact, the film suggests that there might be something more to their relationship than just a sibling bond. Norah worries about Joel living in a bad neighborhood. She worries about his friends. She reacts jealously when she meets his girlfriend, Sherry (Barbara Trentham).

So, you can imagine that Norah is rather upset when Joel is suddenly arrested for trying to kill his landlord. Judged to be insane, Joel is sent to Bellevue. Joel claims that he has no memory of attacking anyone. In order to get out of the mental hospital, Joel lies and says that he was on drugs.

Moving in with Norah and her two kids, Joel starts to act strangely. He starts to quiz Norah about her sex life. He plays too rough with the children. He tries to set Sherry’s hair on fire. And he starts to speak in Spanish!

Could it be that Joel has been possessed by the spirit of his friend, Tonio? Tonio, it turns out, was the landlord’s son. It also appears that Tonio was the main suspect in a series of decapitation murders. Could Tonio have moved his spirit into Joel’s body? That’s what Norah’s Puerto Rican maid, Veronica (Miriam Colon), thinks! Veronica quits her job, rather than have to deal with possessed Joel.

Norah decides to go to Veronica’s home and ask what’s happening with Joel. What follows is a mix of horror and social satire. Despite being a total stranger in Veronica’s neighborhood, Norah seems to be shocked when Veronica doesn’t exactly act overjoyed to see Norah standing in front of her small apartment. As Norah demands to know what’s happening with her brother and Veronica explains that Joel may be possessed, you can’t help but get the feeling that Norah is more upset by the fact that Joel has been possessed by someone poor than by anything else. In these scenes, Norah becomes the ultimate symbol of wealthy white privilege.

Meanwhile, Joel is going more and more crazy. It all leads to one of the most horrifying sequences that I’ve ever seen, in which a possessed Joel torments Norah’s two children. It’s an amazingly disturbing scene, one that is all the more upsetting because, in the title role, Perry King had previously done such a good job portraying Joel as being irresponsible but likable. I don’t want to give too much away, beyond saying that the scene gave me nightmares and if you’re triggered by scenes of child abuse, you should not watch The Possession of Joel Delaney.

As I said, The Possession of Joel Delaney has never really gotten the credit that it deserves. It’s always overshadowed by The Exorcist. But if you want to see a truly scary film and if you like a little social satire mixed in with your horror, The Possession of Joel Delaney is one to track down.