Retro Television Review: Baywatch 1.7 “The Cretin of the Shallows”

Posted on December 6, 2025 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 Saturdays, I will be reviewing Baywatch, which ran on NBC and then in syndication from 1989 to 2001. The entire show can be viewed on Tubi.

This week, there’s a lot happening on the beach!

Baywatch 1.7 “The Cretin of the Shallows”

(Dir by Vern Gillum, originally aired on December 1st, 1989)

Eddie gets his wisdom teeth taken out. Feverish and on pain-killers, he has a hallucination in which Gina Pomeroy (Holly Gagnier) kisses him. Eddie spends the entire episode nervous that Craig is going to discover that he’s having an affair with his wife but actually, Eddie isn’t having an affair. It’s not until the end of the episode that Gina tells Eddie that they never kissed and Eddie finally starts to relax. Gina promises not to tell Craig because “I think it’s sweet.” Myself, I’m just curious as to how stupid Eddie actually is.

Shauni and Jill deal with a teenage boy who has made a bet with his friends that he’ll be able to get a kiss from both of them.

And a horrifying serial killer (Robert Trebor) is stalking the night, brutally murdering people on the beach.

One of these storylines is not like the other!

The first season of Baywatch was seriously weird. Light-hearted lifeguard hi-jinx would be mixed in with scenes of people being murdered. Mitch and Craig weren’t just lifeguards. They were also cops who solved mysteries (Kind of like Baywatch Nights!) and they put their lives at risk to do so. Remember how I mentioned that Gina told Eddie that they never kissed? She told him that after she had been rescued from the serial killer. Gina nearly died! Neither Gina nor Craig seemed to be too upset about that, though. I would be a little bit traumatized but that’s just me.

This episode really didn’t work for me. Personally, I like the light-hearted stuff. It’s dumb but, at heart, Baywatch’s appeal is that it’s a dumb show with nice scenery. Tossing a serial killer into the mix just made things unpleasant. It didn’t feel like it belonged on a show about people running on the beach in red bathing suits.

This is my last Baywatch review of 2025. Retro Television Reviews will be taking a break for the holidays so that I can focus on Awards Season and Christmas movies! Baywatch will return on January 10, 2026.

Horror on the Lens: The Ghost In The Invisible Bikini (dir by Don Weis)

Posted on October 3, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 1965’s The Ghost In The Invisible Bikini, the recently deceased Hiram Stokely (Boris Karloff) is informed that he has just 24 hours to perform a good deed and get into Heaven. He also has 24 hours to keep Basil Rathbone from stealing his estate. Hiram teams up with the ghost of his his dead girlfriend (Susan Hart) and together, they help Hiram’s real heir throw a pool party!

I know, I know. That makes no sense. Go with it, it’s the 60s and it’s a party. The film is silly even by the standards of the typical beach party film but it features Boris Karloff and Basil Rathbone somehow managing to maintain their dignity and Nancy Sinatra singing a song. (Dean Martin’s daughter, Claudia, also makes an appearance.) Even more importantly, this is a film that epitomizes an era. Released in 1965, this was the last AIP beach party movie and it’s a product of the innocent, fun-loving early 60s that would soon be replaced by the violent turmoil of the late 60s. Hiram was probably happy that he got out when he could.

Here is The Ghost In The Invisible Bikini:

Late Night Retro Television Review: CHiPs 3.9 and 3.10 “Drive, Lady, Drive”

Posted on February 17, 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 Mondays, I will be reviewing CHiPs, which ran on NBC from 1977 to 1983. The entire show is currently streaming on Prime!

This week, it’s a special two-hour episode of CHiPs!

Episodes 3.9 and 3.10 “Drive, Lady, Drive”

(Dir by Don Weis, originally aired on November 10, 1979)

The police at nearby Palma Vista are on strike and the state of California has agreed to allow some members of the Highway Patrol to patrol the town until the strike is over. Getraer assigns Baker, Ponch, Bear, and some new guy named Lenny (Leon Isaac Kennedy) to head over to the town, Baker is named the OIC, which I eventually figured out stood for “Officer in Charge.” Getraer knows better than to give the job to Ponch.

Ponch, by the way, is back! After being absent for two episodes due to Erik Estrada actually injuring himself in a motorcycle crash, Ponch returns in this episode and he goes through the entire episode with this huge grin on his face as if he’s saying, “You know you missed me.” Ponch’s return means that Baker is once again relegated to being the strong, silent partner who doesn’t really get to do anything. In fact, Baker crashes his motorcycle early on in this episode, as if the show was trying to tell us, “See? It could happen to anyone!”

The striking cops accuse Baker, Ponch, Bear, and Lenny of being scabs and strike breakers. I’m not really a fan of public sector unions. (When it comes to the police striking, my hero is Calvin Coolidge, who came to fame when he broke up a policeman’s strike in Massachusetts.) Still, it felt strange to watch the show’s heroes cross that picket line. That would definitely not happen on television today.

There’s a lot going on in Palma Vista. There’s some rich kids who keep joyriding in a dune buggy and who think they can escape prosecution by crossing the city limits. (Joke’s on them! The Highway Patrol has jurisdiction everywhere!) There’s some truck hijackers who are setting up a headquarters in town. There’s an angry city councilman (Michael Conrad) who doesn’t feel his children should be held accountable for their actions.

That said, the majority of this two-hour episode centered on a stock car race and one of the racers, Candi Wright (Kelly Harmon). Will Candi win the big race or will she lose to her friendly rival (and possible future romantic partner) Don Croyden (Jordan Clarke)? Will Ponch be able to both date her and do his job? And most importantly, will she be able to adopt a traumatized little girl (played by Tracey Gold) who Candi discovered outside of a burning house? That’s a lot of storylines for someone who wasn’t even a regular cast member and a part of me wonders if maybe this episode was meant to be a secret pilot for a Candi Wright television series. It would explain a lot.

This really was a basic episode of CHiPs, with the only real difference being that it was two-hours long for some reason. A lot of what happened in the episode, especially the racing footage, felt like filler. There was really no need for this to be a double-sized episode. It also doesn’t help that, as opposed to the lovely Los Angeles scenery that we usually see, this episode took place in a rather ugly town. There was some appropriately spectacular crashes but, in the end, this episode ran too long and felt a bit pointless. Get the Highway Patrol back on the highways!

Retro Television Reviews: Fantasy Island 3.21 “Jungle Man/Mary Ann and Miss Sophisticate”

Posted on October 31, 2023 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 entire show is currently streaming is on Youtube!

This week, Fantasy Island is invaded by jungle men and ventriloquists!

Episode 3.21 “Jungle Man/Mary Ann and Miss Sophisticate”

(Dir by Michael Vejar, originally aired on March 8th, 1980)

For years, David Farley (Dennis Cole) starred as Jungle Man on television. When the show was canceled, David made a living by doing public appearances as Jungle Man but then the producers of the show filed a lawsuit. As a result, David is no longer allowed to ever dress up in a loin cloth. David comes to Fantasy Island, hoping for one last chance to be Jungle Man.

(This fantasy, by the way, had its roots in what happened to the original Lone Ranger, Clayton Moore. Moore was told that he could no longer wear the mask in public because a new Lone Ranger movie was coming out. The producers also took Moore to court. Moore reacts by ditching the mask and wearing wrap-around sunglasses instead.)

Mr. Roarke explains to David that his fantasy will make Jungle Man a reality. There will be no stunt doubles and the bad guys might not be as easy to defeat as on television. David says he doesn’t care. He finds himself again in the jungle, transformed into Jungle Man! He also discovers that all of his friends are upset with him because they haven’t seen him for two years. They think that Jungle Man just abandoned them and, of course, Jungle Man can’t explain that the show was canceled.

In Jungle Man’s absence, Queen Mara (France Nuyen) has agreed to surrender the jungle to the evil hunter, Derrick Haskell (Dick Butkus, who between Half-Nelson, Hang Time, and this show, is becoming a bit of a regular on this site). Can Jungle Man prevent Mara from signing over her land? And can he save Rima (Barbara Luna), the woman he loves? And, even more importantly, can he convince Roarke to to let him live forever in the jungle?

Of course, he can. This was a bit of silly fantasy but it still worked because of how earnest Dennis Cole was in the role of Jungle Man. Plus, I enjoyed that life in the jungle had continued even after the Jungle Man television show was canceled. It captured the way that a lot of us feel when our favorite TV show is cancelled and we wonder what happened to all the characters after the finale.

The other fantasy was …. well, it was weird and creepy and surprisingly dark. Annette Funicello played Mary Ann Carlin (Annette Funicello), a world famous ventriloquist. Mary Ann is worried that she can no longer tell where her personality ends and where the personality of her dummy, Valerie, begins. Is there anything creepier than a ventriloquist with a personality conflict?

Mary Ann’s fantasy is to separate her personality from Valerie’s for a weekend so that she can decide what to do with her career. (This sounds like something that would be better handled by a therapist than a resort owner but whatever.) Mr. Roarke’s solution is to turn Valerie into a living human being. Unfortunately, it turns out that Valerie has a man streak and she not only seduces Mary Ann’s boyfriend (Don Galloway) but she also gives a surreal performance in which, somehow, Mary Ann is transformed into the dummy.

Fortunately for Mary Ann. everything works out. She finally snaps out of whatever spell she was under and she tossed Valerie, who is now suddenly a doll once again, in a fire. Mary Ann and her boyfriend leave the Island, planning on getting married and settling down. Apparently, Mary Ann doesn’t have a problem with the fact that her boyfriend had sex with a ventriloquist’s dummy but I still imagine that it’s something she’ll bring up whenever they have a disagreement about something. “You think I’m spending too much money!? Remember that time you screwed a block of wood?”

It really doesn’t make much sense at all but it’s so surreal and weird that it’s fun to watch. This fantasy was the Island at its most nightmarish and certainly, that makes it an appropriate fantasy to close out October with!

Spring Breakdown: The Ghost In the Invisible Bikini (dir by Don Weis)

Posted on March 2, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1966 film, The Ghost In The Invisible Bikini, asks the question, “What can you do if you want to have a beach party but you don’t have a beach?”

The answer: “Find a pool!”

Seriously, a pool is just as good as a beach and fortunately, Chuck (Tommy Kirk) has a pool where his friends can hang out and listen as Vicki (Nancy Sinatra) sings a song. It’s in a big old mansion and hey, it might be haunted. It used to belong to Hiram Stokeley (Boris Karloff) and he’s dead now so he certainly won’t mind, right?

Well, what if he’s not dead!?

Oh wait, actually, he is dead. But he’s still hanging around. It turns out that he needs to do at least one good deed in order to get into Heaven. (Isn’t starring in Frankenstein enough? I mean, c’mon…..) It also turns that Hiram only has 24 hours to do that good deed or it’s off to Hell for him. Maybe he could figure out a way to help Chuck and his family win his fortune! Hiram enlists the help of his long-dead girlfriend, Cecily (Susan Hart). Cecily, we are told, is wearing an invisible bikini but we just have to take the film’s word on that because it’s invisible and, seeing as how Cecily’s a ghost, it’s always possible that only reason she’s transparent is because she’s a spirit. I mean, seriously, who knows how ghosts work?

Anyway, it’s not going to be easy for Hiram and Cecily to ensure that Chuck inherits that fortune, largely because Chuck and all of his friends are idiots. The other problem is that Reginald Ripper (Basil Rathbone), Hiram’s lawyer, is determined to win that money for himself and, if you have any doubt that he’s a bad dude, just check out his name. GOOD PEOPLE ARE NOT NAMED REGINALD RIPPER! Fortunately, even though Reginald graduated from law school and is played by Basil freaking Rathbone, he’s still an idiot and he comes up with the stupidest plan possible to get Chuck and friends out of the house.

He’s going to make them think that it’s haunted!

(But it is haunted….)

Reginald’s plan is to have his evil associates, J. Sinister Hulk (Jesse White), Chicken Feather (Benny Rubin), and Princess Yolanda (Bobbi Shaw), pretend to be monsters and ghosts in order to scare all of the teens out of the house. He also enlists his daughter, Sinistra (Quinn O’Hara), to help but Sinistra isn’t really bad. She’s just extremely near-sighted and someone thought it would be a good idea to name her Sinistra.

And then the bikers show up! This is one of AIP’s beach party films so, of course, there are bikers. Eric von Zipper (Harvey Lembeck) shows up and pretends to be Marlon Brando in The Wild One. Of course, at the time this film was made, the real Marlon Brando was filming Arthur Penn’s The Chase so I’m going to guess that Harvey Lembeck probably had more fun pretending to be Brando than Brando was having being himself….

Anyway, this is a stupid movie even by the standards of the AIP beach party films. It’s also notably disjointed. That probably has something to do with the fact that Karloff and Susan Hart weren’t actually added to the film until after the movie had already been shot. Apparently, AIP felt that the first cut of the movie was missing something so they said, “Let’s toss in a little Karloff!” Of course, Boris Karloff was such an old charmer that it doesn’t matter that he doesn’t ever really interact with anyone other than Susan Hart over the course of the film. You’re just happy to see him.

So yeah, technically, this is not a good film but, at the same time, you kind of know what you’re getting into when you watch a movie called The Ghost In The Invisible Bikini. The jokes fall flat. The songs are forgettable. But the whole thing is such a product of its time that it’s always watchable from an anthropological perspective. Add to that, you get Boris Karloff and Basil Rathbone, doing what they had to do to pay the bills and somehow surviving with their dignity intact. Good for them.

Back to School #14: The Teacher (dir by Howard Avedis)

Posted on August 26, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

“She Corrupted The Youthful Morality of an Entire School!” the tagline for the 1974 film The Teacher screams out.

Uhmmm, no.

In fact, that’s probably one of the most deceptive taglines in the history of film advertising. However, we shouldn’t be surprised that it was used. Like The Young Graduates, The Teacher was produced by Crown International Pictures. Crown International was all about getting people to buy tickets and they probably figured that more people would pay to see a movie about a teacher corrupting “an entire school” than they would for a film about a 28 year-old teacher having an affair with one (and only one) 18 year-old who has recently graduated high school.

The relationship is between Diane (Angel Tompkins) and Sean (Jay North). Diane lives next door to Sean’s family. She’s married to a man who spends most of his time on the road, racing motorcycles and only occasionally calling his wife. Diane is a teacher but we only briefly see her standing outside of the local high school. While Sean admits that he has always had a crush on her and, at the start of the movie, even spies on her while she’s sunbathing, it’s never made clear whether or not Sean was ever actually in any of her classes. In fact, the only thing controversial about their eventual relationship is that there’s a 10 year age difference between them. But that really doesn’t seem to bother anyone, with the exception of two old women who happen to see Diane and Sean out on a date.

Teacher and Not A Student

That, of course, doesn’t mean that Diane doesn’t have anything to teach Sean. As the film’s theme song tells us, “Every boy needs a teacher, to help show him the way…”

But here’s the thing. Considering how tawdry one would naturally expect a film like The Teacher to be, it’s actually treats Diane and Sean’s relationship with a lot of sensitivity. Tompkins and North have a lot of chemistry together and both of them give natural and believable performances. In many ways, this film is a sincere attempt to explore an unlikely relationship. I’ve always felt that in almost every 70s exploitation film, there’s an art film waiting to break out. That’s certainly the case with The Teacher.

However, The Teacher isn’t just about Diane “teaching” Sean. It’s also about a guy named Ralph, who also happens to be obsessed with Diane. (When, at the start of the film, Sean is spying on Diane, little does he suspect that Ralph is spying on him.) We know Ralph is a bit off because he’s always talking to himself, he drives a hearse, and he’s played by Anthony James. You may not recognize his name but if you’re a fan of 70s and 80s exploitation cinema, you know who Anthony James is. He’s one of those very intense, very creepy-looking character actors who would always show up playing psychos and evil henchmen.

Anthony James

Ralph is not only obsessed with Diane but he also blames Sean for the death of his younger brother. It seems that Sean and Ralph’s brother were spying on Diane when, somehow, Ralph’s brother ended up falling to his death. (If you get the feeling that literally every male in this film appears to spend the majority of his time watching Diane — well, you’re right.) Ralph wants vengeance and, in his defense, Sean never really does seem to be that upset about the death of his best friend.

Because this film was made in the 70s, it all leads to surprisingly somber ending that will probably inspire you to reconsider any belief you may have in a benevolent God.

I have to admit that, out of all the Crown International films that I’ve recently watched, The Teacher was a favorite of mine. Watching the film — with its constantly shifting tone and it’s mix of arthouse pretension and grindhouse melodrama — is an odd experience that epitomizes everything that I love about old exploitation films.

Thank you, Crown International, for always being you.