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Retro Television Reviews: Jennifer Slept Here 1.3 “Not With My Date You Don’t”

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 Jennifer Slept Here, which aired on NBC in 1983 and 1984.  The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!

This week, Jennifer helps out when it looks like both Joey and Marc are about to get their hearts broken.

Episode 1.3 “Not With My Date You Don’t”

(Dir by John Bowab, originally aired on November 4th, 1983)

I should start this review with an admission.  Though every episode of Jennifer Slept Here has been uploaded to YouTube, some of the uploads are a bit better than others.  That’s not the fault of the uploader.  The uploader undoubtedly used the best copy of the third episode of Jennifer Slept Here that they had available.  It’s just an acknowledgement that Jennifer Slept Here is a show that briefly aired 40 years ago and it’s doubtful that anyone, at that time, knew that a reviewer would need a good copy of the third episode to watch in 2023.  The 3rd episode of the show is available on YouTube but the sound quality is a bit muddy and I often struggled to understand all of the dialogue.  So, I’m just going to admit right now that I did the best that I could and if I misheard anything, I apologize.

As for the episode itself, it opens with Joey rehearsing asking out a classmate in front of his mirror.  Jennifer materializes in a red dress that is to die for.  Joey asks Jennifer where she’s going to go in that outfit and Jennifer says that she’s just going out.  To be honest, Joey’s question is a good one because, seriously, where does Jennifer have to go?  She’s a ghost!

When Jennifer finds out that Joey is feeling nervous about asking pretty blonde Linda (Viveka Davis) to go on a date with him, she decides to help him out by going to school with him.  This makes sense because, as we all know, there’s nothing more attractive than a teenage boy who wanders around his school talking to himself.  Anyway, with Jennifer’s encouragement, Joey asks out Linda but she informs him that she already has a date ….. WITH MARC (Glenn Scarpelli)!  Marc is Joey’s annoying best friend.

Joey’s parents set him up with a blind date, who I think was named Eileen (Megan Daniels).  At least now Joey can go on a double date to the movies with Marc and Linda.  (Yeah, there’s no way that won’t be awkward.)  However, Eileen turns out to be a punk rocker with multi-colored hair, who yells at the movie and  totally embarrasses Joey in front of Marc, Linda, and Jennifer (who decides to tag along in ghost form).  Eileen decides that the movie sucks and leaves.  Linda asks Marc to go get her some more popcorn and, after he leaves, she immediately moves over to Marc and starts hitting on him.  Jennifer is scandalized, saying that Linda has no morals.

Later, after the date, Joey is feeling pretty proud of himself when Marc suddenly shows up and accuses Joey of “stealing my girl.”  This brings their friendship to an end.  Yay!  Seriously, Marc is a dork!  Joey needed a better friend.  Jennifer, however, is upset that Joey is allowing Linda — a girl with no morals! — come between him and his dorky friend.

The next day, in school, Jennifer decides to take actions into her own invisible ghost hands by grabbing Linda, shoving her up to the chalkboard, and then grabbing Linda’s hand and forcing her to write that she lied on the chalkboard.  Apparently, the reason she lied was to get Joey to buy her tickets to a Rick Springfield concert but don’t quote me on that.  This where that muddy soundtrack kicked in and made it difficult for me to follow all of the conversations.  All I know that Jennifer forced Linda to write, “I lied” and then Jennifer added, “Springfield tickets” underneath Linda’s admission.  So, that would suggest Linda either wanted to see Rick Springfield or maybe Dusty Springfield, depending on the depths of her musical knowledge.  Or maybe she actually wrote Springsteen on the chalkboard.  I really couldn’t tell.  The important thing is that Joey dumps Linda for being dishonest and he and Marc are friends again.

Even when it came to the parts that I could understand, I wasn’t a huge fan of this episode, largely because I felt it was way too judgmental of Linda.  I mean, really, the only thing that Linda did was flirt with a guy who she hoped would take her to a concert.  It’s not like she was married to either Marc or Joey.  In fact, she only went out with Marc once before hitting on Joey so it’s not like Linda was really even dating either one of them.  Ann Jillian’s outfits were cute but this episode just didn’t work for me.

A Movie A Day #42: Hero and The Terror (1988, directed by Steve Tannen)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

hero_and_the_terror_posterDanny O’Brien (Chuck Fucking Norris!) is a tough Los Angeles cop who has been nicknamed Hero.  Danny hates it when people call him “Hero.”  Maybe if Danny knew what people usually call cops, he would not complain so much about his nickname.  Three years ago, Danny captured Simon Moon (Jack O’Halloran), a neck-breaking serial killer nicknamed “The Terror.”  After he was captured, The Terror faked his own death and disappeared.  He ended up living in a deserted theater and not bothering anyone until the Mayor of Los Angeles (Ron O’Neal, Superfly himself!) decides to tear down his new home.  The Terror does not take kindly to urban renewal and goes on another killing spree.  Can Hero track down and beat the The Terror while also making it to the hospital in time to see his girlfriend give birth to their baby?

Not surprisingly, Hero and the Terror is one of the films that Chuck made for Cannon Films in the late 80s and, along with Chuck and Ron O’Neal, it features Cannon regulars Steve James and Billy Drago.  (Billy Drago actually plays a good guy, for a change.)  It’s obvious that Chuck was trying to broaden his horizons with Hero and the Terror: with the exception of the final confrontation between Hero and the Terror, there’s less kung fu action than in his previous films and a lot of the movie is dedicated to his relationship with his girlfriend and his struggle to handle her pregnancy.  That’s all good and well and the Chuck Norris of Hero and The Terror is a much better actor than the Chuck Norris who could barely deliver his lines in Breaker, Breaker but, ultimately, a Chuck Norris movie with more human interest and less roundhouse kicks just feels wrong.

(On Netflix, there’s a whole documentary about how Chuck Norris’s roundhouse kicks led to the collapse of Nicolae Ceaușescu’s communist dictatorship in Romania.  It’s called Chuck Norris vs. Communism.  Communism didn’t have a chance.  Hopefully, Chuck will never turn against capitalism because, if he does, it’ll probably lead to another stock market crash.)

I once read an interview with Gene Hackman, in which he was asked to name his least favorite of the movies that he had made.  Hackman selected March or Die.  “I can’t believe I was in something called March or Die,” Hackman said.  If he thought March or Die was a bad title, he should be happy that he didn’t end up in Hero and The Terror.  Give Chuck Norris credit.  Even if he’s not Gene Hackman and even if the movie does not really work, he is the only actor who could credibly star in something called Hero and the Terror.

Film Review: Prime Time (1977, directed by Bradley R. Swirnoff)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Prime TimeThe great character actor Warren Oates appeared in a lot of fairly obscure movies but none are as obscure as Prime Time.

With a running time of barely 70 minutes, Prime Time is a comedic sketch film that was meant to capitalize on the then-recent success of The Groove Tube, Tunnelvision, The Kentucky Friend Movie, and the first season of Saturday Night Live.  According to the Unknown Movies Page, Prime Time was financed independently and was picked up for distribution by Warner Bros.  After the Warner execs saw the finished film, they decided it was unreleasable so the film’s production team sold the film to Cannon Pictures, who were famous for being willing to release anything.  The movie played in a few cities under the terrible title American Raspberry and then went straight to VHS obscurity.

Sketch comedies are usually hit-and-miss and Prime Time is definitely more miss than hit.  The majority of the film is made up of commercial parodies but, since most of the commercials being parodied are no longer on the air, the humor has aged terribly.  There is also a wrap-around story.  The President (George Furth) and a general (Dick O’Neill) try to figure out where the commercial parodies are coming from and stop them before the broadcast leads to a riot.   There are a few funny bits (including Harry Shearer as a stranded trucker looking for a ride and Kinky Friedman singing a song about “Ol’ Ben Lucas who has a lot of mucus”) but, for the most part, the film is epitomized by a skit where people literally get shit dumped on their head.  The film’s opens with an incredibly racist commercial for Trans Puerto Rican Airlines and it’s all downhill from there.

As for Warren Oates, he appears in an early skit.  He and Robert Ridgely (best known for playing Col. James in Boogie Nights) play hunters who take part in the Charles Whitman Celebrity Invitational, climbing to the top of the Tower on the University of Texas campus and shooting at the people below.  It’s even less funny now than it probably was in 1977.

How did Warren Oates end up in a movie like Prime Time?  Even great actors have bills to pay.  As for Prime Time, it is the one Warren Oates film that even the most dedicated Warren Oates fan won’t regret missing.

Warren Oates and Robert Ridgely in Prime Time

Warren Oates and Robert Ridgely in Prime Time

Embracing the Melodrama Part II #74: Perfect (dir by James Bridges)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

PerfectOkay,before reviewing the 1985 film Perfect, I have three things to say.

Number one, I nearly captioned the picture above “John Travolta, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Little Xenu.”  And then I laughed and laughed.  But, in the end, I resisted temptation because I’m an adult now.

Number two, Perfect came out in June in 1985, a few months before I was born.  As a result, I have no idea what the 1985 reviews looked like.  However, it still seems to me that you’re taking a big risk when you give a movie a title like Perfect, especially when the movie itself is far from perfect.  How many reviews opened with, “Perfect fails to live up to its name…”

And finally, as a result of seeing both this film and Staying Alive, I have to say, “What the Hell, John Travolta?”  Seriously, what the Hell was going on?  John Travolta gave a great performance in the 1970s, with Saturday Night Fever.  And then in the 1990s, he was good in Pulp Fiction, Get Shorty, Face/Off, Primary Colors, and a few others.  (For our purposes here, we shall pretend that Battlefield Earth never happened.)  Even though most of Travolta’s recent films have been forgettable, his performances have generally been adequate.

So, seriously, John — what was going on in the 80s?  Because judging from both Perfect and Staying Alive, John Travolta apparently totally forgot how to act during that decade.  When I reviewed Staying Alive, I said that Travolta’s performance managed to create a whole new definition of bad.  But he’s actually even worse in Perfect.  It helped, of course, that in Staying Alive, Travolta’s character was supposed to be stupid.  In Perfect, on the other hand, he’s actually supposed to be a brilliant reporter.

Or, at the very least, he’s supposed to be brilliant by the standards of Rolling Stone.  Travolta plays Adam Lawrence, an award-winning reporter for Rolling Stone.  The magazine, by the way, plays itself and so does its publisher, Jann Wenner (though his character is technically named Mark Roth).  What’s interesting is that the film itself doesn’t necessarily paint a flattering picture of Rolling Stone or Jann Wenner, though admittedly a lot of that is due to the fact that Wenner himself gives a performance that is even worse than Travolta’s.  It’s impossible to watch Perfect without thinking about the fact that Adam is writing for the same magazine that would eventually put Dzokhar Tsarnaev on the cover and publish the UVA rape story.

Anyway, if I seem to avoiding talking about the exact plot of Perfect, that’s because there’s not really much of a plot to describe.  Adam, a hard-hitting investigative journalist, is doing research on a story about how people are hooking up at gyms.  Wenner agrees.  “We haven’t done L.A. in a while!” he says.  Adams joins the a gym called the Sports Connection, which he is soon calling “The Sports Erection” because he’s a super clever reporter.  He falls in love with an aerobics instructor, who is played by Jamie Lee Curtis.  She doesn’t trust reporters but is eventually won over by Travolta’s … well, who knows?  Mostly she’s won over because the plot needs some conflict.  She gets on Adam’s computer and she types, “Want to fuck?”  Adam says sure but then tries too hard to dig into the dark secret from her past.  “You’re a sphincter muscle!” she shouts as him.  Adam writes a compassionate and balanced article about the Sports Connection.  Wenner edits the article and turn it into a sordid hit piece.  (And again, you wonder why Wenner agreed to play himself.)  Feelings are hurt, issues are resolved, and eventually everyone takes an aerobics class.

Honestly, the entire movie is mostly just a collection of scenes of Jamie Lee Curtis and John Travolta working out.  And, in all fairness, Curtis does about as well as anyone could in this terrible film.  Travolta, on the other had … well, just check out the scene below and maybe you’ll understand why I had a hard time concentrating on Travolta’s acting.

Perfect fails to live up to its name.