Tag Archives: Mitchell Anderson

Late Night Retro Television Reviews: Highway to Heaven 3.17 “A Night To Remember”

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 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 go back to high school, just in time for prom!  I went to four proms over the course of my high school years and I loved every one of them.  There is no greater American tradition!

Episode 3.17 “A Night To Remember”

(Dir by Michael Landon, originally aired on January 28th, 1987)

It’s time for the prom!

Danny (Mitchell Anderson) wants to ask out Melanie (Kimberly MacArthur) but can’t bring himself to do it because he’s feeling insecure about the fact that his father lost his engineering job and is now working at a gas station.  Danny makes extra money working at the local pizza joint but he loses his job when he throws a punch at bully Richard Davies (J. Eddie Peck, future star of Lambada).

Sammy (Joel Hoffman) wants to ask his lifelong friend, Kate (Susan Savage).  But Sammy feels insecure because he’s short.  When he tries to buy lifts to make himself taller, Richard calls him out right when he’s about to ask out Kate.  Sammy is an aspiring stand-up comedian and he’s on the verge of dropping out of school all together.  “I can be a comedian or a teenager but I can’t be both!”

Don’t worry, though.  Jonathan is their new social studies teacher.  And Mark is the coach of the girl’s volleyball team because every assignment is designed, in some way, to humiliate Mark.  In this case, Mark takes a volleyball to the nose and spends the entire episode worrying that it’s broken.  Mark really can’t catch a break (heh) on this show.  He has to drive everywhere.  He’s usually the one who has to do all of the hard physical work while Jonathan just appears wherever he wants.  Unfortunately, there doesn’t appear to be a union for human angel helpers but then again, it’s not like Mark ever seems to get paid for all of his hard work.

Anyway, the stakes aren’t particularly high in this episode.  Both Danny and Sammy eventually find the courage to ask their dates to the prom, though Danny doesn’t do it until he’s actually at the prom.  And both of them take some time to tell off Richard.  “Still wearing your mother’s underwear?” Sammy asks and Richard turns a dark shade of red as if Sammy has accidentally guessed his greatest secret.

I actually always like these episodes where Jonathan and Mark become teachers.  They’re not as depressing as the ones where they end up working at a shelter or a retirement home.  This episode was just about giving the students the best prom ever and that’s okay.  Not everything needs to be a huge drama!  Sometimes, you just need a night to remember.

Horror on TV: The Hitchhiker 4.4 “Why Are You Here?” (dir by Chris Thomson)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Tonight’s episode of The Hitchhiker is an early example of found footage horror.

Jerry Rulack (played by the star of Midnight Express, Brad Davis, in one of his final performances) is a smarmy TV host who, along with his camera crew, goes from nightclub to nightclub and asks the clubgoers, “Why are you here?”  Eventually, Jerry runs into a rich girl named Donette (Helen Hunt), who turns the question around and leaves Jerry to wonder why he’s there.  Donette and her friends are rich, decadent, and ultimately dangerous.  Eventually, Jerry discovers that there is a price to pay for asking too many stupid questions.  Brad Davis does an adequate Geraldo Rivera impersonation while Helen Hunt seems to be having fun playing someone who literally cares about nothing.  As the Hitchhiker, Page Fletcher is wonderfully judgmental while introducing Jerry and later while considering his fate.

This episode originally aired on March 10th, 1987.

Spring Breakdown: Jaws: The Revenge (dir by Joseph Sargent)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1987 film, Jaws: The Revenge, opens with Amity Island (last seen in Jaws 2) preparing to celebrate Christmas.  Longtime police chief and veteran shark hunter Martin Brody has died but his widow, Ellen (Lorraine Gary), still lives on the island.  Also living on the island is Ellen’s youngest son, Sean (Mitchell Anderson).  Sean is now a deputy and he spends a lot of time patrolling the ocean.  This worries Ellen because the Brodys don’t exactly have the best luck when it come to the water….

Or continuity for that matter!  Anyone who has seen Jaws 3-D knows that Sean Brody moves down to Florida, became a cowboy, hooked up with Lea Thompson, and worked with his older brother at Sea World.  And yet, as Jaws: The Revenge opens, Sean is suddenly back in Amity, he’s not a cowboy, and he’s engaged to someone who is not Lea Thompson.  Throughout the film, no mention is made of Sean having ever gone to Florida or going through a cowboy phase.  Basically, this film ignores the entire existence of Jaws 3-D.  That would be okay if Jaws: The Revenge was actually a better film than Jaws 3-D but it’s not.  That’s right, Jaws The Revenge fails to even improve on Jaws 3-D.

Anyway, Sean goes out on patrol and promptly gets eaten by a shark.  Ellen loses her mind at the funeral and announces that she doesn’t want her oldest son, Michael (Lance Guest), going anywhere near the water.  Unfortunately, Michael is working in the Bahamas as a marine biologist so …. well, sorry, grandma.

Perhaps to try to help Ellen get over her fear of water, Michael brings Ellen back to the Bahamas with him.  Ellen gets a chance to spend some time with her daughter-in-law, Carla (Karen Young) and her granddaughter, Thea (Judith Barsi).  Ellen also pursues a tentative romance with the local pilot, Hoagie (Michael Caine, who gives a likable performance but who also has absolutely zero romantic chemistry with Lorraine Gary).  However, Ellen still has nightmares about the ocean and she suspects that the shark that killed Sean might be on its way to the Bahamas.  Why?  Because this time it’s personal!

Actually, as crazy as that sounds, it turns out that Ellen’s right.  Unfortunately, it takes the shark a while to get down there and, as such, the audience spends a lot of time watching Ellen, who was always the least interesting character in all of the Jaws films, wander around the Bahamas.  The island scenery is lovely but when you’re watching a Jaws movie, you’re watching for the shark action.  Jaws: The Revenge is only a 90-minute film and the shark doesn’t make its second appearance until the 50 minute mark.

Once the shark does show up, of course, it gets right down business.  It eats a swimmer.  It eats an airplane.  It sinks a boat.  At one point the shark bites someone in half and someone off-screen is heard to shout, “Get a doctor!” as if a doctor is going to be able to do much in that situation.  Ellen sets out to get some revenge of her own, which would be a thrilling moment if Ellen was as iconic a character as Jaws: The Revenge seems to think that she is.  My favorite moment is when Michael Caine reveals that, despite the odds, he somehow managed to avoid getting eaten by the shark.  When someone asks him how he did it, he replies, “It wasn’t easy …. bloody Hell,” and that’s pretty much all that’s said about it.

Ultimately, though, this is the least of the four Jaws films, duplicating neither the suspense of the first two films nor the camp silliness of the third film.  Fortunately, though this film may have been the last official sequel to Jaws, the legacy of the classic original will live forever.

Rebel Days: All-American Murder (1991, directed by Anson Williams)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Artie Logan (Charlie Schlatter) is a wannabe James Dean who keeps getting kicked out of school because he is such a rebel.  His father, a judge, gives Artie one more chance.  Artie can either enroll at Fairfield College or he can go to jail.  Artie chooses Fairfield, where he meets and falls for the beautiful and popular Tally Fuller (Josie Bissett).  However, no sooner does Artie show up for their first date than someone sets Tally on fire and crashes through a window.  Artie is the number one suspect but Detective P.J. Decker (Christopher Walken) still gives him 24 hours to solve the murder and clear his name.  Artie investigates and discovers that Tally was not the innocent, all-American girl that everyone thought she was.  This leads to a nudity-filled flashback that explains why All-American Murder was an HBO mainstay in the 90s.  It also leads to other people being murdered by snakes and hand grenades.

Despite some bloody murders and the presence of Walken and Joanna Cassidy in potentially interesting supporting roles, All-American Murder fails because it asks us to accept Charlie Schlatter as being a charismatic rebel.  When Joanna Cassidy tells him that he’s a “renegade,” not even she sounds like she believes it.  The murder mystery is intriguing but Artie is so obnoxious that you want him to go to prison whether he’s guilty or not.

All-American Murder was directed by Anson Williams, who is best known for playing Potsie on Happy Days.  The Fonz could have framed Ralph Malph for this murder in half the time that it takes Artie to solve it.