Tag Archives: R.G. Armstrong

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 1.25 “What A Mother Wouldn’t Do”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night 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 Friday the 13th: The Series, a show which ran in syndication from 1987 to 1990. The show can be found on YouTube!

This week, a crib from the Titanic demands blood!

Episode 1.25 “What A Mother Wouldn’t Do”

(Dir by Neill Fearnley, originally aired July 18th, 1988)

After being told that her unborn child should be aborted because it’s just going to die anyway, Leslie Kent (Lynne Cormack) seeks peace inside an antique shop called Curious Goods.  The shop’s owner, Lewis Vedredi (R.G. Armstrong), shows her an antique crib that he says was on the Titanic.  Leslie is intrigued by the crib and, six months later, she is overjoyed when her friends reveal that they have purchased the crib for her as a gift.  Seriously, who wouldn’t want a crib that was once used by a baby who probably drowned in icy water when the Titanic sank?

The crib does have a special power.  It can cure sick babies!  Of course, the cure only works if the crib’s owner first kills seven people in a body of water.  After baby Allison is born, Leslie and her husband Martin (Michael Countryman) start killing random people in an effort to save their baby’s life.

It presents quite a moral quandary.  If Micki and Ryan don’t retrieve the cursed crib, Leslie and Martin will continue to kill.  However, if they do get the crib, Allison will die.  Are they prepared to sacrifice an innocent baby just to get their hands on the crib?  To its credit, Friday the 13th: The Series didn’t shy away from these questions.  In this episode, the villains are not unsympathetic.  Martin hates to kill but he’s trying to save his baby.  As for Leslie, the episode’s title says it all.  What wouldn’t a mother do to save the life of her baby?  As disturbing as the murders may be, they’re nowhere near as frightening as the cold and clinical way that Leslie is ordered to get an abortion at the start of the episode.

In the end, both Martin and Leslie end up sacrificing themselves to save Allison’s life.  But Allison disappears from her crib, leaving a terrified Micki to wonder if the evil within the crib has taken her.  Fear not.  As the final shot show, her babysitter Debbie (Robyn Stevan), grabbed the now healthy baby from the crib and then got on bus to start a new life.  The baby looks up at her and smiles for the first time.  Awwwww!

This was a good episode, with Micki and Ryan both coming to realize that the owners of the antiques are often as much victims as those they harm.  Chris Wiggins dif good job of portraying Jack’s single-minded determination to find all of Lewis’s cursed antiques while Lynne Cormack and Michael Countryman were poignant as two villains for whom you couldn’t help but feel some sympathy.

Next week, season one comes to an end!

Late Night Retro Television Reviews: Friday the 13th 1.5 “Hellowe’en”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night 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 Friday the 13th, a show which ran in syndication from 1987 to 1990.  The show can be found on YouTube!

Tonight, we have the first Halloween episode of Friday the 13th: The Series!

Episode 1.5 “Hellowe’en”

(Dir by Timothy Bond, originally aired on October 26th, 1987)

Somehow, it was not until I watched this episode that I noticed that the Friday the 13th antique shop is names Curious Goods.  I guess that’s a good name for a cursed antique shop.  (It’s probably more inviting than going with something more honest, like Evil Junk.)  Certainly, it appears that it was good enough to keep the place open, even though the owners spent most of their time taking back the antiques from the people who bought them.

This episode takes place during a Halloween party.  Is it a good idea to throw a Halloween party in a location that is full of cursed items?  That’s the exact question that Micki asks Ryan but Ryan thinks that the store needs to do something to let the neighborhood know that it’s not as scary as it looks.  Ryan is actually thinking like a businessman, whereas Micki is thinking like someone who just wants to find all of the cursed antiques so she can get back to planning her wedding.  Personally, I think Micki has the right idea.

That said, it’s not a bad party.  Ryan dresses up like a renaissance prince.  Micki wears a black gown that is to die for.  (I assume Micki is costumed as the lead singer of an 80s goth band.)  Jack, who really should have been the voice of reason when Ryan first suggested the party, dresses up like a wizard.  A lot of people from the neighborhood come to the shop and they watch as Jack performs some simple magic tricks.  Unfortunately, the party is ruined when two dummies wander down to the basement and accidentally activated a crystal ball.  The lights in the store go out.  There are scary noises.  Everyone abandons the shop, except for Ryan and Micki.

Where is Jack?  He’s taking a mysterious little girl trick-or-treating, just to suddenly discover that the girl is actually a Satanic creature who was sent to distract him while the ghost evil uncle Lewis (R.G. Armstrong) confronted Ryan and Micki in the shop.  Lewis, who is wandering around because the damned are apparently allowed to do so only on Halloween night, lies and says that he needs the amulet of Zohar so that he can free his wife from a curse but, after Ryan and Micki stupidly bring him the amulet, Lewis announces that the amulet will actually allow him to transfer his spirt into the body of someone who has recently died, as long as that person died from natural causes.  Lewis is going to use the amulet to return permanently to the land of the living.

Lewis and the little demon girl head down to the local morgue.  Fortunately, Jack has broken free of the trap that the demon put him in and Ryan and Micki have, for once, managed to figure out what’s happening on their own.  Between the efforts of Jack, Ryan, and Micki and Lewis’s own pickiness when it comes to picking a body, Lewis’s time runs out and he is dragged back to Hell.

This was a fun episode.  Not only did did it feature Ryan and Micki wearing their very 80s Halloween costumes but it also featured an enjoyably over-the-top performance from R.G. Armstrong as evil Uncle Lewis.  All Halloween episodes should be as enjoyable as this one.

 

Late Night Retro Television Reviews: Friday the 13th 1.1 “The Inheritance”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night 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 Friday the 13th, a show which ran in syndication from 1988 to 1990.  The show can be found on YouTube!

Despite the name of the series and the fact that producer Frank Mancuso was responsible for both the films and the show, Friday the 13th: The Series did not involve Camp Crystal Lake or Jason Voorhees.  Instead, it was a supernatural-themed show about two cousins, Micki (Robey, who has red hair like me!) and Ryan (John D. LeMay), who inherited a cursed antique shop from their uncle, Lewis.  When they discovered that Lewis spent the last few years of his mortal life selling cursed antiques, they realized that it was up to them to track down the evil items before they could cause too much harm to the world.  Working with them was Lewis’s former partner, Jack Marshak (Chris Wiggins).

Episode 1.1 “The Inheritance”

(Dir by William Fruet, originally aired on October 3rd, 1987)

On a rainy night, antique store owner Lewis Vandredi (R.G. Armstrong) is literally dragged into the depths of Hell, the result of a long-ago deal that he made with the devil.  The store is inherited by Lewis’s niece and nephew, Micki Foster (Robey) and Ryan Dallion (John D. LeMay).

Micki and Ryan, at first, don’t seem to have much in common.  Ryan is a practical joker whose first reaction upon entering the store is to put on a rubber mask and wait for his cousin to show up so that he can startle her.  The much more responsible Micki just wants to sell off whatever is in the store so that she can return home to her fiancé, an attorney who really doesn’t understand why she has to waste her time with any family stuff at all.  The only thing that Micki and Ryan have in common is that neither one of them knows that their uncle made a deal with the devil to sell cursed antiques.  That changes when Lewis’s former business partner, Jack Marshak (Chris Wiggins), shows up and not only tells them about Lewis’s supernatural activities but also finds the ledger where Lewis recorded all of his sales.

Uh-oh, it turns out that Micki herself has sold something from the shop.  She sold an extremely ugly doll to Mr. Simms (Michael Fletcher), who in turn gave it to his bratty daughter, Mary (played by a 7 year-old Sarah Polley).  Yes, the doll is cursed and yes, Mary is already using it to get revenge on anyone who annoys her.  First, she uses the doll to kill her stepmother.  Then, she uses the doll to kill the sweet babysitter who asked Mary to be polite about asking for snacks.  When Micki and Ryan show up to retrieve the doll, Micki chases Mary to playground, where Mary uses the doll to make a statue breathe fire and a merry-go-round to spin dangerously fast.  Fortunately, while Mary is tormenting Micki, Ryan walks up and snatches the doll away from her….

…. and that’s it!

Seriously, it’s kind of an anti-climatic ending but I get it.  This was the first episode and, obviously, it was more important to establish why Micki and Ryan were the new owners of an antique store than to really offer up a complicated story of the supernatural.  This was a pilot and it got the important part of the job done, introducing the premise and the characters.  Robey and John D. LeMay were instantly likable as Micki and Ryan and the antique store was an intriguing location.  The story with the doll may not have been anything special but the pilot did leave me looking forward to next week’s episode.  And personally, I kind of liked how simple the solution was this week.  Mary was an awful brat so there was something really satisfying about Ryan just snatching that doll away from her.  Take that!

Next week: Ryan and Micki go to a monastery!

Retro Television Reviews: Fantasy Island 3.5 “The Chain Gang/The Boss”

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 entire show is currently streaming is on Youtube!

What I’ve long-feared has happened.

Tubi has removed the original Fantasy Island from its site.  The recently-canceled Fox version can be viewed but not the original.  Don’t get me wrong.  I liked the new Fox version.  But these are Retro Television Reviews and a show that premiered in 2021 is not yet retro.

Fortunately, quite a few episodes are on YouTube and it’s probable that the original complete series will again end up streaming somewhere.  So, I’m going to try to continue to review this show.  I can’t guarantee that I won’t run out of episodes at some point.  For instance, it doesn’t appear that much of seasons 6 or 7 can be found, even on YouTube.  (Unfortunately, it appears that only the first three seasons of Fantasy Island have been released on DVD.)  But I’m going to do my best!

Episode 3.5 “The Chain Gang/The Boss”

(Dir by Michael Vejar, originally aired on October 19th, 1979)

Tattoo has decided that he wants to be an artist!  Mr. Roarke demands to know why because God forbid Tattoo have a life outside of spotting the plane.  Tattoo admits that he wants to get the island women to pose for him.  Mr. Roarke orders Tattoo to abandon his art career and head down to the docks to meet the plane.

The plane is carrying two guests who hope, much like Tattoo, to change their lives.

Cindy Carter (Donna Mills) is a switchboard operator who has a crush on her boss, Brent Bailey (Brett Halsey).  Her fantasy is to be the boss of her own company.  Mr. Roarke grants her wish and soon, Cindy is in charge of her own multi-national corporation.  In fact, her corporation owns Brent Bailey’s business!  Cindy also gets a executive assistant named Gary Pointer (Roddy McDowall).  Unfortunately, it turns out that Brent isn’t a very nice person and he’s been siphoning money out of the pension fund.  He threatens to frame Cindy to keep her from approving an audit of the fund.  However, with Gary’s support and eventual love, Cindy stands up to Brent and reveals his wrong-doing.  Mr. Atwell (Stacy Keach, Sr.), the presumed-dead head of the company, suddenly shows up at the stockholder’s meeting and announces that he faked his own death to discover who was embezzling from the pension fund.  The stockholders applaud as Brent Bailey is taken away from the police.  It’s all rather silly and melodramatic but the likable presence of Roddy McDowall kept the story entertaining.

Meanwhile, Mike Jenner (Dennis Cole) came to the Island to confront Eddie Collins (Cameron Mitchell), the criminal that Mike believes murdered his father and framed him for a theft.  (There’s a lot of theft in this episode.)  Mr. Roarke reveals that Eddie lives in a nearby fishing village.  Mike goes to the village, spots Eddie, and punches him.  Eddie hits back….

….and both of them are sentenced to spend a year on a chain gang!

Fantasy Island has a chain gang!?  And the chain gang is overseen by a redneck named Captain Hawks (R.G. Armstong)!?  Why has this never been mentioned before?  I mean, is it normal to sentence paying guests to spend a year on the chain gang?

Anyway, Eddie and Mike set aside their difference and break out out the prison camp.  (Fantasy Island has prison camps!?)  During their escape, Eddie gets trapped in quicksand.  Mike does eventually rescue him but only after Eddie confesses to having framed Mike’s father.  As soon as Eddie confesses, Mr. Roarke shows up in his jeep.  Apparently, Mike is now free to leave the Island with his fiancee (Pat Klous) while Eddie is sent to the Fantasy Island prison for the rest of his life.  Much as the other fantasy was saved by the reliable likability of Roddy McDowall, this episode was saved by Cameron Mitchell’s grouchy presence.  One could always trust Mitchell to give it his all while playing a bad guy.

With the fantasies taken care of, Tattoo returns to his art.  When he asks his model to pose naked, she destroys all of his paintings while Mr. Roarke laughs and laughs.  Mr. Roarke really does hate his assistant.

Horror on TV: Friday the 13th: The Series 2.1 “Doorway to Hell” (dir by William Fruet)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Tonight, for our horror on the lens, we have the first episode of the 2nd season of Friday the 13th: The Series!

Guess what? Uncle Lewis is, once again, trying to reenter the world of the living! Can Micki and Ryan stop him!?

This episode originally aired on September 30th, 1988.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7D-WdNPf030

Horror on TV: Friday the 13th: The Series 1.26 “Bottle of Dreams” (dir by Mac Bradden)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Tonight’s episode of Friday the 13th: The Series is the finale of the first season.  When the spirit of Uncle Lewis (R.G. Armstrong) attempts to re-enter the world of the living, it leads to Micki and Ryan reliving some of their worst memories.

The episode originally aired on July 25th, 1988.

https://youtu.be/fK68QcRLAZk

Horror on TV: Friday the 13th: The Series 1.5 “Hellowe’en” (dir by Timothy Bond)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Tonight’s episode of Friday the 13th: The Series is a Halloween episode!

For some reason, Ryan and Micki decide that it would be a good idea to throw a Halloween party in a cursed antique store.  Unfortunately, their evil Uncle Lewis is determined to return from Hell and what better time to do that than on the greatest holiday of them all!?

This episode is distinguished by the presence of the great character actor R.G. Armstrong, going totally over-the-top as Lewis and having a lot of fun while doing it!  Something to keep an eye on during the Halloween party are the costumes.  You’ll see a lot of sheets and leotards.  You won’t see many familiar characters, largely because it would have cost money to feature any of them.  That’s not a complaint, though.  Personally, I like it when people make their own Halloween costumes, as opposed to just copying whatever’s popular.

This episode originally aired on October 26th, 1987.

https://youtu.be/uByCgST_40M

Cotter (1973, directed by Paul D. Stanley)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Cotter (Don Murray) is an alcoholic Native American who works as a rodeo clown.  One day, when he’s too drunk to do his job, a bull rider is killed as a result.  All of the other bull riders track Cotter down in his trailer and tell him that his days of being a clown are over.  They tell him that if they ever see him anywhere near another rodeo, they’ll kill him.  It’s a dramatic scene that would probably be more powerful if Cotter wasn’t wearing a clown make-up while rolling around on the floor in a drunken stupor.

With nowhere else to go, Cotter returns to his hometown and tries to surprise his old friend Roy (Rip Torn) by jumping through Roy’s front door while wearing his clown make-up.  However, when Cotter jumps into the living room, the only person he meets is Roy’s half-naked wife, Leah (Carol Lynley) and she promptly fire two barrels worth of buckshot at him.  Showing the reflexes that would have saved that bull rider’s life if only Cotter had been sober, he manages to duck out of the way.

When Roy comes home, he’s at first excited to see his old friend.  He even invites Cotter to stay with them.  Leah slowly warms up to Cotter.  However, the other townsfolk are suspicious of Cotter because of his heritage and his reputation for being a hard drinker.  When a local rancher turns up dead, almost everyone immediately assumes that Cotter must be responsible.  Not even Roy is willing to stand up for his friend.

Made for a low-budget, Cotter is a well-intentioned film that doesn’t work.  A large part of the problem is that, while Don Murray and Rip Torn were both good actors, they both overact in Cotter.  For some reason, both of them yell the majority of their lines.  Torn was a good bellower but Don Murray, who was usually a far more low-key actor, seems uncomfortable in his role.  While it is true that Don Murray first found stardom playing a headstrong cowboy in Bus Stop, it’s also that, from the 60s onward, Murray was always best cast as men of authority and it’s hard to buy him as an irresponsible character like Cotter.  Maybe the film would have worked better if Torn and Murray had switched roles.  Carol Lynley seems more comfortable with her role than either one of the two male leads, though she doesn’t get to do much beyond suffer at the hands of Roy and eventually fall in love with Cotter.  Also giving a good performance is Sherry Jackson, cast as a sympathetic barmaid, though she’s also not given much to do beyond reacting to Cotter and Roy.

Cotter doesn’t have a bad message and it at least acknowledges that Cotter’s alcoholism is largely his way of dealing with the prejudice that he’s suffered his entire life, though Cotter’s monologue on the subject would have probably been more effective if it had been delivered by an actual Native American actor instead of the very white Don Murray.  Unfortunately, good intentions aside, Cotter just never really comes together as a movie.

Review: Predator (dir. John McTiernan)

Posted on by Arleigh

Predator 1987

It would be accurate for one to say that Arnold Schwarzenegger was king of the 80’s action flicks. He first burst onto the scene in the titular role in Conan the Barbarian then it’s follow-up sequel. Yet, it would be his role in James Cameron’s The Terminator in 1985 that would make him a household name.

He began to crank out action films after action film every year to varying degrees of success and quality between 1984 and 1987. It would be in the summer of 1987 that he would add a third iconic action film role to stint as Conan the Barbarian and the relentless cybernetic killer, the Terminator.

Maj. Dutch Schaefer in John McTiernan’s action scifi Predator cemented Arnold Schwarzenegger as the most bankable movie star of the 1980’s. The film itself has become a go-to classic whenever film fans of all stripes discuss what were some of the best films of the era. Yes, I do categorize Predator as one of the best to come out of the 1980’s. It does more than hold it’s own when stacked up against Oscar winners, festival darlings and indie cult-favorites.

It’s a film that takes the premise that “man is the most dangerous game” to new levels by adding in a scifi element to the story. That scifi element being an extraterrestrial hunter who comes to Earth every so often to hunt. It’s chosen prey tends to be killers, fighters and soldiers at the top of their craft and usually during times of extreme conflict.

The film, as written by the two brothers John and Jim Thomas, actually works like a slasher horror film in the beginning as Dutch and his team of elite commandos trek through the Central American jungle on a rescue mission. A mission that lands the team in finding the grisly remains of another American special forces team. Questions come up as to whether their CIA liaison (played by Carl Weathers of Rocky and Rocky II fame) knows more about the true nature of their supposed rescue mission than he’s willing to let on.

It’s once the team, still being stalked through the jungle by an unseen predator, finally find the people they’re suppose to rescue that all hell breaks loose in more ways than one. The action is loud, messy and exquisitely choreographed and filmed. Unlike some of the action films of the last ten years, Predator succeeds with it’s action scenes for having a director who uses very long takes and little to no hand-held to keep the action geography easy to follow and the action choreography unencumbered by too many edits and cuts.

Even once the team realizes that they were now being hunted and that whoever, or whatever is hunting them, the film still continues to stay on a creative track. When I mentioned that the film plays out like slasher film, it does in way in that the titular character behaves and moves like slasher killers. It seems to be everywhere and nowhere. The very victims it’s hunting only see it when it’s too late and death’s upon them.

The film’s dialogue has been quoted by so many fans that memes have been created around them. Yet, this doesn’t mean that the film is hilarious. What it does have was that masculine, brother’s-in-arms banter and quips that’s become a sort of signature for screenwriter and director Shane Black who was hired to do some uncredited rewrites on the Thomas Brother’s original script. Black would also end up playing one of the commandos in the film.

Outside of Arnold himself, Predator would be best-known for the effects work by the late and great Stan Winston, who would come in to help redesign the title character (with some help from his buddy James Cameron) and the rest as they would say was film history. It would be difficult to go anywhere around the world, show the Predator to some random person and they not know what it is.

Predator was one of those films that people, at first, thought was just a mindless, popcorn flick. The type of cinema that was to be seen then forgotten for better fare. Yet, in the end, Predator ended up becoming not just a classic of its genre, but a perfect example of a film that transcends it’s genre roots to become just a great film, in general.

Lisa Reviews A Film That Was Not Nominated For Any Oscars: Mr. Billion (dir by Jonathan Kaplan)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1977 film Mr. Billion tells the story of Gudio Falcone (played by Terence Hill, whose real name is Mario Girotti).  Guido has got a pretty good life going in Italy.  Everyone in his village loves him.  He works as an auto mechanic.  When we first see him, he speeding around in a red sportscar.  When he returns to the garage, he smiles and says, in Italian, “Just like Steve McQueen.”  Guido may not be rich but he’s happy.

But that’s all about change!

Well, not the happy part.  Guido is pretty much always happy.  But he’s about to get rich.  It turns out that Guido is the last surviving relative of Antonio Falcone.  Years ago, Antonio immigrated to America and founded Falcon Motors.  The company eventually made Antonio one of the richest men in the world.  Unfortunately, the big Falcon Motors sign eventually fell off the company’s headquarters and it landed right on top of Antonio.

Everyone’s upset about Antonio’s death.  Well, everyone but the company’s vice president, John Cutler (Jackie Gleason).  John was naturally expecting that he would be named Antonio’s successor and that he would also inherit all of Antonio’s money.  Instead, Antonio’s will leaves everything to Guido!

Why?

Because, apparently, Guido never asked Antonio for anything more than a “pair of American cowboy boots.”

Cutler and his sleazy attorney (William Redfield) are soon on the next flight to Italy.  When they find Guido, they make sure to compliment him on his cowboy boots.  They explain to Guido that he has twenty days to go San Francisco and sign the proper papers.  If he’s any later than 20 days he’ll lose the money.  Of course, that shouldn’t be a problem since Guido can fly over anytime that he wants…

Except Guido refuses to fly!  No, he says that if he’s going to go to America, he’s going to arrive there the same way that Antonio did.  He is going to take a boat to New York City and then ride a train all the way to California.

Did you guess that the very next scene would be Guido standing on the dock of a cruise ship, staring at the Statue of Liberty?  And did you also also guess that, upon disembarking, he would immediately find himself besieged by reporters, one of whom declares him to now be the world’s most eligible bachelor?  If so, good work.

But here’s the big question.  Did you also predict that John Cutler would attempt to sabotage Guido’s trip to California and that the sabotage would involve hiring a private detective (Valerie Perrine)?  Even more importantly, did you predict that the detective would eventually end up falling in love with simple but honest Guido?

Because that’s totally what happens!

At the time that Mr. Billion was made, Terence Hill was a huge star in Europe but was barely known in the United States.  He was best known for appearing in a series of comedic Spaghetti Westerns with Bud Spencer, the majority of which featured Hill as a lazy but likable ne’er do well.  In Mr. Billion, Hill is cast as the exact opposite, as an earnest man-of-the-people who is so nice that it’s almost painful.  Add to that some major tone problems (the film cannot make up its mind if it wants to be a comedy, an action film, or a romance) and you have a pretty forgettable movie.

And that’s kind of a shame because Terence Hill showed some legitimate charm in the lead role.  The role may have been underwritten but all Hill had to do is flash that winning smile and it didn’t matter.  It’s unfortunate that Hill didn’t get a more appropriate vehicle for his American debut.