Tag Archives: Monte Markham

Retro Television Review: The Love Boat 4.10 “Boomerang/Captain’s Triangle/Out of This World”

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’s cruise is all about adultery and aliens!

Episode 4.10 “Boomerang/Captain’s Triangle/Out Of This World”

(Dir by Richard Kinon, originally aired on December 13th, 1980)

When Donna Dayton (Pamela Sue Martin) boards the boat, Julie immediately notices her wedding ring and asks if Mr. Dayton will be following her.  Donna explains that she’s not married.  She just wears the ring to keep sleazy men from hitting on her.

Julie is shocked.  What if Donna meets someone on the boat!?

Donna says that she has no intention of meeting anyone.

Can you guess what happens next?

Donna meets Scott Hanson (Barry Van Dyke) and it’s love at …. well, not quite first sight.  In fact, Donna is weary of Scott because Scott is on the cruise with his oafish best friend, Lance (Guich Koock, who has a great name if nothing else).  When Lance tries to hit on Donna, Donna shoots him down.  When Scott apologizes to Donna, it leads to them dancing together and then later spending a day in Mexico.  Scott repeatedly says that their relationship cannot continue once the cruise is over.  Even after Scott spends the night in Donna’s cabin (which was kind of a rare occurrence on this show because The Love Boat was usually a surprisingly chaste show), Scott says that he can’t be with Donna.

Finally realizing that she’s still wearing her fake wedding ring, Donna tells Scott, “I’m not married!”

“But I am,” Scott replies.

DAMN!  When did The Love Boat get so dramatic?  When the ship returns to Los Angeles, Donna gives her wedding ring to Julie and announces that the next time she wears a ring, it’ll be because she’s married.

Wow, that was depressing.  Fortunately, the other two stories are a bit less serious.

For instance, Captain Stubing’s friend, Brad (Monte Markham), boards the boat with his wife, Monica (Sue Ane Langdon).  Monica soon starts to hit on Stubing, which leads to Stubing spending all of his time hiding on the bridge.  Doc Bricker, naturally, offers to sleep with Monica.  Fortunately, Stubing figures out that it’s all Brad’s fault and he tells Brad that he needs to spend more time with his wife.  Brad agrees and later learns that Monica just wanted to have an affair because she was insecure about turning 40.  But once Brad starts to pay attention to her again, Monica decides not to cheat on him.  Sorry, Doc!

Finally, in perhaps the silliest Love Boat storyline ever, Martin Fallow (Tom Smothers) is a science fiction fan who is convinced that his local librarian, Elinor Green (Helen Reddy), is an alien from the planet Romulac.  Martin explains to Gopher that Elinor turns into a plant at night and only eats other plants.  Elinor proceeds to eat a flower while Isaac, Gopher, and Martin watch.

Elinor later confesses to Isaac that she is not an alien but she’s been pretending to be one because she knows that Martin is obsessed with science fiction.  Okay, that makes …. well, that actually makes no sense whatsoever.  Elinor thought she could get Martin to love her by pretending to be a plant and …. actually, Martin does fall in love with her so I guess her plan worked.  This was such a weird story.  Fortunately, it was also a lot of fun.  With all the talk of adultery, it was good to have something that was just incredibly silly to serve as a counterbalance.

This was an enjoyable cruise.  Pamela Sue Martin and Barry Van Dyke had so much chemistry as the forbidden lovers that I really did feel bad that they couldn’t be together.  And the alien stuff was dumb but fun.  This was a cruise that truly had something for everyone.

Retro Television Reviews: Fantasy Island 4.8 “Crescendo/Three Feathers”

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 Tuesdays, I will be reviewing the original Fantasy Island, which ran on ABC from 1977 to 1986.  Almost the entire show is currently streaming is on Youtube, Daily Motion, and a few other sites.

This week, we get one good fantasy and one bad fantasy and a reminder that anything can happen on Fantasy Island!

Episode 4.8 “Crescendo/Three Feathers”

(Dir by Michael Preece, originally aired on December 20th, 1980)

This episode confirms that Fantasy Island is the strangest place on Earth.

Our first fantasy features Toni Tennille as a world-famous singer named Susan Lohmann.  Susan has been invited meet her favorite composer and songwriter, Edmund Dumont (Monte Markham).  Dumont lives in seclusion on Fantasy Island, in an estate that is surrounded by wild animals and where he is tended by a blind butler (James Hong).

Susan is excited to meet Edmund, until she walks in on him playing his piano and discovers that he’s a …. BEAST!  Though he has the body of a human, he has the face of a wolf.  It turns out that Edmund lives in seclusion because he feels that the world would never accept his appearance.  And Susan promptly proves him correct by screaming and demanding to leave.  Susan flees the estate.

Susan’s manager is glad that Susan is free because now she can appear in concert in London.  However, Mr. Roarke informs Susan that Edmund suffers from a curse and the only thing that could have cured him would have been the love of Susan.  Edmund is now determined to die, surrounded by the animals on his estate, the only creatures who accepted him.  Susan, realizing that she was a little bit hard on a guy who couldn’t help his appearance, returns to the estate, gives Edmund a kiss, and Edmund turns into a handsome guy.  Yay!

So, there’s a huge problem here.  Susan Lohmann is incredibly unlikable.  Yes, Edmund may look different.  But all Edmund did was invited her to his estate so that he could express his appreciation for the way the she sings his songs.  Susan claims that Edmund should have told her, in advance, about the way he looked.  Yes, Susan, God forbid someone unattractive appreciate your talent or have any talent of his own.  Seriously, Susan was the worst.

Slightly more likable is Alan Colshaw (Hugh O’Brian), a pilot who has spent a year feeling like a coward.  He was piloting a plane that crashed in the jungle.  Alan went for help and, according to the three other passengers (played by Diane Baker, James Wainwright, and Peter Lawford), he never returned and, instead, he ran off with a stash of diamonds that was on the plane.  Alan says that he is sure he didn’t intentionally desert them but he can’t remember for sure because he’s been suffering from memory loss.

Mr. Roarke gives Alan a medallion, one that will allow him and the others to see what happened when the plane crashed.  As for Alan, he brings along three white feathers, which he plans to give to each of the survivors as a way to symbolize that he’s not the coward that they think he is.  (Yes, it doesn’t make much sense to me, either.)

Lena (Diane Baker) is the first to forgive Alan.  Alan realizes that he’s in love with Lena and he tells Mr. Roarke that he wants to change his fantasy.  He just wants to spend the rest of his life with Lena.  Roarke informs Alan that he can’t do that because …. ALAN IS DEAD!  He died while trying to get help after the crash.  Alan has come back to life for the weekend so that his spirit can find peace.

That’s a pretty neat twist and, to its credit, the show sticks with it.  Alan eventually proves that he wasn’t a coward and that another one of the passengers stole the diamonds and then he vanishes into the afterlife.

“Boss,” Tattoo says, “you mean he was a …. g-g-ghost!?”

“Oh, Tattoo!” Roarke snaps, “Please do not tell me that you are prejudiced!”

Fantasy Island may be a strange place but some things — like Roarke passive aggressively attacking Tattoo — never change.

Retro Television Review: The Astronaut (dir by Robert Michael Lewis)

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 Sundays, I will be reviewing the made-for-television movies that used to be a primetime mainstay.  Today’s film is 1972’s The Astronaut!  It  can be viewed on YouTube!

NASA has successfully landed a man on Mars!  The entire world watches as Col. Brice Randolph (Monte Markham) makes his way across the Martian surface.  However, suddenly, the signal goes out.  Viewers are assured that this is the sort of thing that happens all the time with interstellar travel.  What they don’t know is that the signal went down because Brice suddenly died.  While the surviving members of the mission return to Earth, NASA tries to figure out how to keep anyone from finding out what happened to Brice.  NASA director Kurt Anderson (Jackie Cooper) knows that the President wants to cut the budget and the death of an astronaut would probably provide the perfect excuse for taking money away from NASA and canceling the Mars program.

Anderson’s solution is to recruit a substitute.  Eddie Reese (Monte Markham) has a slight resemblance to Brice, one that can be perfected through plastic surgery.  While the mission returns from Mars, Eddie goes through a crash course to teach him how to talk, walk, and think like Col. Brice Randolph.  Eddie is told that he’ll have to be Brice until the NASA scientists can figure out what led to Brice’s death.  Once they do know what went wrong with the mission, Eddie will have to go into NASA’s version of the witness protection.

Eddie proves to be a quick learner and it helps that he, like so many others, looked up to Brice.  However, while Eddie can fool almost everyone else, he cannot fool Brice’s wife, Gail (Susan Clark).  When Eddie actually treats Gail with kindness and shows sympathy for her nervous condition, she realizes that there’s no way that Eddie is actually her husband.  Apparently, Brice was not quite the saintly figure that the public believed him to be.  Eddie and Gail soon fall in love for real but when NASA finally discovers what led to Brice’s death, it looks like their new life together might be over as abruptly as it begun.

The Astronaut is a low-key conspiracy …. well, I hesitate to call it a thriller.  There’s little of the things that one typically associated with a conspiracy thriller.  There’s no black helicopters.  There’s no shadowy assassins.  There’s no army of men walking around in black suits.  Instead, there’s just a bunch of nervous bureaucrats who are desperate to keep the rest of the world from discovering just how much they screwed up.  As played by Jackie Cooper, the head of NASA isn’t so much evil as he’s just way too devoted-to-his-job for his own good.  In many ways, this is probably one of the most realistic conspiracies ever portrayed on film.

In the end, The Astronaut is a portrait of two lonely people who find love in the strangest of circumstances.  Susan Clark and Monte Markham make for a likable couple and the viewer really does hope that things will work out for them.  What this film lack in conspiracy thrills, it makes up for in human drama.  It appealed to both my romantic and my rabid anti-government sides.  What more could one ask?

Retro Television Reviews: The Master 1.4 “Hostages”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to 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 The Master, which ran on NBC from January to August of 1984. The show can be found on Tubi!

This week, The Master teams up with an old enemy.

Episode 1.4 “Hostages”

(Dir by Ray Austin, originally aired on February 10th, 1984)

“Hi, I’m Max Keller….”

This episode of The Master opens with Max (Timothy Van Patten) flying high above California in a motorized hang glider.  Apparently, this is the latest part of Max’s ninja training, though I have to wonder where the hang glider came from and whether or not being able to use a hang glider is a specific ninja skill.  The more I think about it, the more it seems that McAllister (Lee Van Cleef) is just leading Max on for his own amusement.

Max spots a woman (Jennifer Runyon, who later took over the role of Marcia Brady in A Very Brady Christmas) who is sitting behind the wheel of an out-of-control car.  Apparently, the brakes have failed and the car will soon careen over the side of a cliff!  Max swoops down and rescues the woman, minute before her car crashes and explodes.

The woman is Alice Clayton, the extremely talkative daughter of U.S. Senator Sam Clayton (Robert Dowdell).  Don’t worry, no one was trying to kill her.  The brakes just failed on their own.  A grateful Alice invites Max and McAllister to come to a party that the senator is throwing at his hillside mansion.

Soon, Max and McAllister are wearing tuxedos and hanging out at the party.  A CIA agent named Malory (one-time Bond star, George Lazenby) recognizes McAllister and accuses him of running a “subversive ninja school.”  Meanwhile, by an amazing coincidence, Okasa (Sho Kosugi) — McAllister’s former student who has taken a vow to kill him — also happens to be at the party.  He even takes the time to throw a ninja star at McAllister.

But that’s not all!  The party is also crashed by a group of terrorists, lead by Serena (Randi Brooks) and Castile (David McCallum).  The terrorists kidnaps Alice, her father, and the wives of several European diplomats.  The head of the CIA (Monte Markham) orders McAllister and Malory to set aside their differences and to rescue the hostages.  Max also decides to help which means that the hang glider makes another appearance as Max soars above the terrorist compound.

Lee Van Cleef’s stunt double gets quite a workout in this episode of The Master.  Not only do Okasa and McAllister have a brief fight but McAllister also gets to take on an entire compound full of terrorists.  Of course, McAllister wears his full of ninja uniform while doing all of this, all the better to hopefully keep us from noticing that Lee Van Cleef isn’t the one doing all of the kicking and hitting.  And I will say that, in this episode, the fights were fairly well-done.  The plot was predictable but the fights were probably about as exciting as you could hope from a network television show that aired in the 80s.

Other than the fights, the best thing about this episode was the chance to see George Lazenby playing a character who was Bond in everything but the name.  Lazenby himself has said that one of the reasons he struggled with the role of James Bond was because he was too young when he starred in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.  In this episode of The Master, Lazenby is older and a bit more weathered and he’s totally believable as a spy who is tough but who still enjoys the better things in life.  As well, David McCallum does a good job as the cynical terrorist, though his character isn’t really given much to do.

I actually kind of enjoyed this episode of The Master.  As opposed to the previous three episodes, it focused on the action and it didn’t really have any slow spots.  It was a fun episode.

Horror on the Lens: Hotline (dir by Jerry Jameson)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Yay!  Brianne O’Neill (Lynda Carter) has a got a new job, working at a crisis hotline!

Boooo!  The serial called known as the Barber is now obsessed with calling her!

The Barber is known as the Barber because he cuts his victims’s hair before killing them, which as far as I’m concerned, make him even worse than a normal serial killer.  You have to wonder if he resents being known as the Barber as opposed to The Stylist.

Anyway, it’s up to Brianne to figure out why The Barber keeps calling her and to hopefully discover his identity.  For whatever reason, no one else seems to be that concerned about it.

That’s the plot of Hotline, a 1982 made-for-TV movie that is today’s horror on the lens.  It’s not a bad film, though it does inspire a certain amount of snarkiness while you’re watching it.  For the most part, though, it’s well-acted and effectively directed.  If you’ve got 95 minutes to kill, why not kill them with Lynda Carter, The Barber, and Frank Stallone?

A Movie A Day #341: Hot Pursuit (1987, directed by Steven Lisberger)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

When high school student Dan Bartlett (John Cusack) is late arriving at the airport, he finds himself watching as the plane taking his girlfriend (Wendy Gazelle) and her parents (Monte Markham and Shelley Fabares) to the Caribbean takes off without him.  Dan catches the next available flight and tries to track down his girlfriend and her family.  Helping him out is a Ganja-smoking islander (Keith David) and a crusty sea captain (Robert Loggia).  Complicating matters is that Dan’s girlfriend has been kidnapped by pirates (Jerry Stiller and his son, Ben)!

John Cusack got his start appearing in dopey 80s teen comedies and Hot Pursuit shows why he eventually declared that he would never appear in another one.  Hot Pursuit relies on the idiot plot.  If everyone in the movie didn’t act like an idiot, there wouldn’t be much of a movie.  Cusack seems bored in his role, only waking up towards the end of the movie when he gets to pick up a machine gun and blow away the pirates’ hideout.  (Cusack even gets to do a Rambo-style yell while riddling the building with bullets.)  This was Ben Stiller’s film debut and he has a few funny scenes.  The movie probably would have worked better if Stiller and Cusack had switched roles.

One final note; Hot Pursuit was produced by Pierre David, who also produced several of David Cronenberg’s early films.  It’s probably not a coincidence that Wendy Gazzelle’s character is named Lori Cronenberg.

Cleaning Out The DVR, Again #5: We Are Still Here (dir by Ted Geoghegan)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

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The fifth film on my DVR was the 2015 haunted house film, We Are Still Here.  I recorded We Are Still Here off of the SyFy channel on March 20th.  Sad to say, I really can’t remember what I was doing or watching on March 20th while my DVR recorded one of the best horror movies of the previous year.  I was probably watching something pn Lifetime.  That usually seems to be the case.

But anyway, let’s talk about We Are Still Here.

As a self-professed lover of both horror and old grindhouse exploitation films, there is really no excuse for it to have taken me this long to see We Are Still Here.  We Are Still Here is one of those wonderfully low-budget indie films that mixes a traditional genre — in this case, the haunted house film — with a far less traditional view of humanity.  With its mix of bump-in-the-dark horror and cynicism about human nature, We Are Still Here feels like a mix of the Coen Brothers and H.P. Lovecraft.

Anne (Barbra Crampton, a veteran of horror films like Castle Freak and You’re Next) and Paul (Andrew Sensenig, who played the mysterious antagonist of Upstream Color) are a married couple who are struggling to deal with tragedy.  Their son, Bobby, was recently killed in a car wreck.  Anne is trapped in a prison of depression, while Paul just wants to move on with their lives.  Hoping that it will help them to forget their sadness, Paul and Anne buy a house in New England.

(New England, not coincidentally, was also the home of H.P. Lovecraft, as well as being the setting for some of his best-remembered stories.)

But, of course, the house proves to be anything but therapeutic.  From the minute they move in, Anne is convinced that they are not alone.  With every mysterious sound and strange happening within the house, Ann becomes more and more convinced that the spirit of Bobby is with them.

If you’re a horror fan, you will not be surprised to learn that they are not alone.  There is a presence in the house but is it Bobby or is it something far more sinister?  Shortly after moving in, Anne and Paul meet their new neighbors.  As friendly as they may be, there is definitely something off about Dave (Monte Markham) and his wife, Cat (Connie Neer).  Dave tells them that the house was originally a funeral home an about how it was owned by the mysterious Dagmar family.  The Dagmars were reportedly forced to leave town after it was learned that they were selling the bodies brought to them for burial and burying empty coffins.  Could this have anything to do with the strange vibe that Anne and Paul both get from the house?

Despite Paul’s skepticism, Anne invites her friends, May (Lisa Marie) and Jacob (Larry Fessenden), to come for a visit.  May and Jacob are both spiritualists and Anne hopes that they can contact Bobby’s spirit.  Again, it’s not a spoiler to reveal that they do contact something.  The surprise comes from what they contact and what happens as a result.

We Are Still Here is a chilly and dream-like film, one that wisely devotes as much time to creating and maintaining a properly creepy atmosphere as it does to all the expected scare scenes.  When the presence in the house is finally revealed, it’s a scary moment but for me, the most haunting scenes in the film are the shots of the snow-covered landscape surrounding the house.  The icy roads are as cold and unforgiving and as potentially dangerous as anything that might be living in the old Dagmar house.  And, just as the weather cannot be controlled, neither can the paranormal.

We Are Still Here is a deliberately paced film.  In fact, it’s probably a bit too deliberate to really be effective when viewed with commercial interruptions.  We Are Still Here works because it creates an atmosphere of foreboding and certain doom and it’s hard to maintain an atmosphere when, every 20 minutes or so, the action has to stop for a commercial about Tide pods.  To best appreciate this film and what it has to say about loss, faith, and delusion, it’s necessary to watch the story unfold without any pause to the narrative.

Fortunately, this intelligent and well-acted horror film is currently available on Netflix, where it can be viewed without commercial interruption!  If you’re a horror fan, you owe it to yourself to watch.

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Embracing the Melodrama Part II #50: Hustling (dir by Joseph Sargent)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

hustling21I have to admit that I had ulterior motives for reviewing the film Hustle as a part of Embracing the Melodrama.  I was already planning on reviewing another 1975 film about prostitutes, one that I had recently watched on Netflix.  That name of that film was Hustling and, for whatever reason, it amused me to imagine being alive in 1975 and going to see Hustle at a movie theater and then coming home, turning on TV, and finding myself watching a film called Hustling.

So really, if I was going to review one of those films, I had to review the other, right?  It made perfect sense at the time!

Anyway, as for Hustling, it’s a film about prostitutes in New York and the wealthy magazine writer who decides to interview them for an article.  Watching the film, what I immediately noticed was that, even though the film had a properly gritty feel to it, none of the characters ever cursed and, for a film about sex workers, there was no nudity.  Though the characters continually talked about getting beaten up by their pimps, all of the violence occurred off-screen.  Even more importantly, whenever something dramatic happened, the scene would fade to black.  It was almost as if the movie was pausing for an unseen commercial.

Which, of course, it was.  Hustling was made for television and, as I watched it, it was easy for me to imagine that I was actually watching the latest Lifetime original film.  It certainly followed a pattern that should be familiar to anyone who has ever watched a movie on Lifetime.  Wanda (Jill Clayburgh, giving an excellent performance) is a veteran prostitute who, after being arrested for the hundredth time, is told that the charges against her will be dropped if she allows herself to be interviewed by magazine writer, Fran Morrison (Lee Remick).  At first Wanda refuses but, after her pimp refuses to pay her fine and suggests that she should just accept spending a few months in jail, Wanda reconsiders and accepts Fran’s offer.

The rest of the film charts Fran and Wanda’s unlikely friendship.  Wanda tells Fran what it’s like to be prostitute.  Fran encourages Wanda and the other prostitutes to stand up for their legal rights.  Wanda deals with a society that looks down on her.  Fran deals with a boyfriend (Monte Markham) who can’t understand why she’s so concerned about a bunch of prostitutes.  Wanda considers going back to her pimp.  Fran considers exposing all of the “respectable” men who use prostitutes.

So, Hustling is pretty predictable and, not surprisingly, rather dated but it’s also a fairly effective portrait of life on the margins of society.  Lee Remick is stuck playing a one-note character but Jill Clayburgh is great in the role of Wanda. If nothing else, Hustling was filmed on location in some of the sleaziest parts of 1970s New York City and therefore, the film serves as a bit of a historical document.

For those wishing to check it out, the film’s currently available on Netflix.

Embracing the Melodrama Part II #40: One Is A Lonely Number (dir by Mel Stuart)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

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You’ve probably never heard of the 1972 film One Is A Lonely Number.  I certainly hadn’t until, a few weeks ago, I happened to come across it on TCM.  Like a lot of films that have apparently been forgotten by history, One Is A Lonely Number is one that deserves to be remembered.

One Is A Lonely Number opens with the end of a marriage.  James Brower (Paul Jenkins), an arrogant college professor, coldly packs his collection of vinyl records into a box and tells his wife, Amy (Trish Van Devere), that he’s filing for divorce and that he’s leaving her.  She asks him why.  He coolly mentions something about her throwing out a prized copy of Paradise Lost and then leaves the apartment.

Shocked, Amy goes to the college and asks her husband’s students if they’ve seen him.  They tell her that James canceled his final exam and has since disappeared.  At first, Amy insists that James is going to come back and denies that they’re getting a divorce.  When she finally does accept that her marriage is over, Amy is forced to be independent for the first time.

What she quickly discovers is that the world is full of people who are looking to take advantage of both her vulnerability and her naiveté.  When she goes to an employment agency, she explains that she has a degree in Art History and that she minored in Philosophy.  Frighteningly (especially in the eyes of this particular holder of a degree in Art History), all this gets Amy is a job as a lifeguard at the local pool.  When she finally find herself attracted to another man, she doesn’t discover that he’s married until the morning after.  And when she finally discovers why her husband actually left her, she discovers that he was even more of a stranger to her than she realized.

Fortunately, there are a few good spots in Amy’s life.  Her best friends Madge (Jane Elliott) and Gert (Janet Leigh) provide support.  (“Men are shit,” Gert explains at one point.)  And she strikes up a poignant friendship with a widowed grocer (Melvyn Douglas).

There are so many scenes in One Is A Lonely Number that ring true, even when viewed today.  Amy finally realizes that her marriage is over while trying on clothes and ends up sobbing by herself.  Amy, Gert, and Madge get drunk and talk about their exes, laughing away their shared pain.  Amy discovers that the man from the employment agency (played, as a disturbingly plausible creep, by Jonathan Goldsmith who is best known for being the Most Interesting Man In The World for Dos Equis) expects her to “repay” him for his help in getting her a demeaning job as a lifeguard.  Amy panics when she can’t find what’s happened to that kindly grocer.

One Is A Lonely Number moves at its own deliberate pace but it’s still one that you should watch and stick with until the end.  It’s an intelligent and well-acted movie and the film’s poignant final scene will fill you with hope.  Watch it the next time that it shows up on TCM.