In honor of Daria Nicolodi’s birthday, today’s song of the day comes from Dario Argento’s Deep Red!
Deep Red features the first collaboration between Argento and Goblin and the score remains a classic.
Here’s Goblin performing Profondo Rosso on Italian television in 1975.
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 Hunter, which aired on NBC from 1984 to 1991. The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi and several other services!
This week, Hunter gets another bad assignment.
Episode 1.9 “High Bleacher Man”
(Dir by Arnold Laven, originally aired on December 7th, 1984)
Hunter and McCall have finally arrested Elton Gavin (Michael Baselon), a murderous punk who has been causing mayhem all over Los Angeles. Unfortunately, Gavin works out a deal. For immunity, he’ll turn on gangster Nate Demarest (Richard Romanus). With Demarest eager to kill the informant, Hunter finds himself assigned to protect Gavin until Gavin can testify.
The problem, of course, is that Gavin is a sociopath. Hunter doesn’t want to protect Gavin. He doesn’t want Gavin to get immunity. He certainly doesn’t want to see Gavin back out on the streets. When Hunter learns that McCall once investigated Demarest for killing a federal agent, he asks her to reopen the case. If they can get Demarest on that charge, then there won’t be any reason to give Gavin immunity.
Poor Hunter and McCall. They always get the worst assignments. This was pretty much a standard episode of Hunter but the chemistry between Fred Dryer and Stepfanie Kramer was fun to watch. In the middle of all the action and the bullets, Dryer and Kramer were actually a pretty good comedy team. It’s fun to listen to them talk.
As I watched this episode, I suddenly remembered that Hunter’s father was a gangster and therefore, one would think that Hunter would have more contacts in the world of organized crime than he does. Hunter’s mob background is one of those things that the show sometimes seems to forget about.
The other thing that occurred to me as I watched this episode is that, in 1984, John Amos probably had one of the easiest jobs in television. He played Dolan, Hunter and McCall’s captain. As far as I can tell, his role consisted of showing up at the end of each episode and yelling at Hunter for taking unnecessary risks. That was pretty much it. Amos just had to be annoyed for two-minutes every week.
Of course, it didn’t matter how much Dolan got annoyed,
Hunter got results!
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 Decoy, which aired in Syndication in 1957 and 1958. The show can be viewed on Tubi!
This week, Casey goes undercover!
Episode 1.35 “Tin Pan Payoff”
(Dir by David Alexander, originally aired on June 9th, 1958)
After songwriter Chick Williams is found murdered in his apartment, the only clue that the police have going for them is a vinyl record spinning on Chick’s record player. (Welcome to 1958!) The singer on the record is Sally Masters (Ellen Parker), a local nightclub performer. The police figure out that it’s a “demo record.” Sally is the number one suspect so Casey goes undercover as a music agent and discovers just how cutthroat the business can be.
This episode was a whodunit. It turns out that Chick cheated and betrayed a lot of people in his life. It seems like the entire city of New York has a motive but, since this is Decoy, Casey quickly narrows it down to four suspects. Casey going undercover as a music agent was actually more interesting than the mystery itself, if just because Casey got to dress up and hang out in one of those wonderfully atmospheric New York nightclubs. She also learned about how DJs like Jerry Lynch (Lee Bergere) can make someone a star and also how even successful songwriters like Chick Williams occasionally employed “a ghost writer.” Watching Decoy, it’s hard not to feel that the best thing about Casey’s job is that she has an unlimited wardrobe and she gets to investigate every single facet of New York society.
Like a lot of the later Decoy episodes that I’ve seen, this episode isn’t quite as gritty as the earlier episodes. There’s less emphasis on Casey as a tough cop and more on Beverly Garland looking glamorous undercover. That said, Casey still gets the job done and takes a few minutes to speak directly to the audience. One thing I appreciate about Casey is that she doesn’t let her own feelings get in the way of doing her job. At a time when women were often portrayed being too flighty or emotional to be trusted in a position of authority, Casey always got results.
Welcome to Late Night 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 1st and Ten, which aired in syndication from 1984 to 1991. The entire series is streaming on Tubi.
This week, Joe Hears meets his fate.
Episode 4.5 “….The Clock Runs Out”
(Dir by Stan Lathan, originally aired on November 2nd, 1988)
Poor Joe Hearns!
Last episode, Joe went from being a skid row windshield cleaner to being a defense coordinator to being a linebacker on the team. This episode …. well, he dies.
Seriously.
It’s not a particularly noble death either. After a rookie player (played by Kevin Sorbo, of all people) is seriously injured in a prank involving a bull, Hearns decides to go back to the farm and challenge the bull himself. The show ends with the bull charging at Hearns and since Harold Sylvester (the actor who played Hearn) is not listed as having appeared in any episode of 1st & Ten beyond this one, I can only assume that the bull won.
Seriously, what was the point of that whole storyline? Bubba, Jethro, and TD all thought that Joe Hearns would be able to redeem himself on the Bulls. Hearns turned out to be suffering from massive PTSD, the result of having crippled an opposing player the last time he played. This episode, Joe has a near breakdown when one of the team’s new executives reprimands Joe for parking in his spot. And then Joe dies. I guess the lesson here is that he would have been better off if Bubba and Jethro had just left him in that parking lot.
Watching this show, I get the feeling that the writers really didn’t have much direction in the writing room. It’s amazing how often a potentially interesting character like Joe Hearn will be introduced and then dropped an episode later. There have been so many storylines that have been started and abandoned in a similar fashion. This very season started with the Bulls players buying the team and then, three episodes later, they decided that they didn’t want to be team owners after all.
The one thing that remains consistent? The bland affability of OJ Simpson. OJ may not have been a particularly good actor but he certainly was personable. That undoubtedly paid off for him later in life.
Unfortunately, Joe Hearns was not personable. And now, he’s dead.
(Actually, so is OJ.)
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!
Come aboard, we’re expecting you. And love …. won’t hurt anymore…. Actually, that’s not quite true. There’s some real pain in this week’s episode. Then again, there’s also Don Adams and Rich Little. It’s all a bit strange, to be honest.
Episode 7.24 “A Rose is Not a Rose/Novelties/Too Rich and Too Thin”
(Dir by Neil Cox, originally aired on March 17th, 1984)
Hey, Don Adams is on The Love Boat …. again! This time, he’s playing a novelties salesman who is in love with Audrey Meadows. Meadows, however, assumes that Adams is only pursuing her because he wants to place his gag gifts in her store. Adams doesn’t help his case by constantly bringing up his novelties. This was a silly story. It wasn’t bad but it wasn’t particularly memorable. It was pleasant in the way that watching an old sitcom with a grandparent can be pleasant.
Both Doc and the Captain have fallen for Jamie Sloane (Jamie Lynn Bauer), an actress who is up for a big commercial. Jamie worries about her weight. She pops diet pills like crazy. She doesn’t eat at dinner. Yes, that’s right — The Love Boat deals with anorexia! And there’s nothing wrong with that except for the tonal whiplash that comes from having a relatively serious story about a potentially fatal condition playing out next to Don Adams trying to sell novelty gifts and Rich Little pretending to be a woman.
Yep, impressionist Rich Little boards the cruise. He’s playing Barry Corwin, the best friend of singer Rose York. Rose has been hired to sing on the boat but she’s fallen ill. So, Barry boards the boat disguised as Rose …. no, come back. Come back. This is really dumb but at least let me finish the review. Of course, passenger Radford Harcourt (Arte Johnson) falls for Rose. In fact, no one figures out that Rose is actually Barry, even though Rose has a noticeable five o’clock shadow and is wearing a pretty obvious wig. Meanwhile, Barry falls for Julie.
And again, it’s not that this is really a bad story. It’s pretty much a standard silly Love Boat story. But there’s just a massive tonal whiplash here as the episode goes back and forth from Don Adams and Rich Little to a woman dying to be thin. As such, this episode really doesn’t work.
But I know what you really want to know.
How coked up was Julie?
Obviously, very coked up. I mean, she didn’t even notice that the cruise’s entertainer was just Rich Little in a wig. Somehow, I can’t help but think this could have been avoided if Ace had been on this cruise but this the second week in a row that the ship has sailed without its photographer on board.
This was an odd cruise. Eating disorders suck.
Zombi 2 (1979, dir. Lucio Fulci, DP: Sergio Salvati)
For today’s song of the day, we celebrate the birthday of Lucio Fulci with Fabio Frizzi’s main theme from 1979’s Zombi 2. If you’ve ever seen the film, it’s impossible to hear this piece of music without imagining hundreds of zombies walking across the Brooklyn Bridge.
Welcome to Late Night 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 Pacific Blue, a cop show that aired from 1996 to 2000 on the USA Network! It’s currently streaming everywhere, though I’m watching it on Tubi.
This week, the bike cops are it again.
Episode 4.7 “Damaged Goods”
(Dir by Michael Levine, originally aired on October 4th, 1998)
Bobby has a new girlfriend named Annie (Tracy Hutson). Bobby says that he’s in love with her. Meanwhile, Granger is in lust with Annie’s best friend, Jo (Shannon Elizabeth, in an early role). After Granger sleeps with Jo, Jo tells him that he owes her $200. It turns out that both Jo and Annie get paid to have sex. Meanwhile, Annie’s roommate is found dead below a 6-story window.
Chris is convinced that Annie’s roommate was murdered. TC and Cory disagree. TC is especially angry because he thinks Chris is spending too much time hanging out with her friends in Homicide. Oddly enough, none of those friends show up in this episode. As well. no one from the Vice Squad shows up to investigate the campus prostitution ring. Instead, this is yet another episode where it somehow all falls to the bicycle cops.
Monica goes undercover and joins Jo and Annie’s therapy group, where Dr. Alicia Alper (Joyce Hyser) teaches that prostitution is empowering. Soon, Jo recruits Monica to work as a an escort. Or, at least, I think it was Jo. This episode is edited in such a haphazard way that it was hard to keep track of what was actually going on.
This episode finds Cory worrying about how she’s going to survive as a single mom. Her ex-boyfriend, Doug (Owen McKibben), returns and says that he wants to be in the baby’s life. Cory says that it’s been over a month since Doug reacted to the news of her pregnancy by walking out on her. Doug threatens to sue for the right to be a part of the baby’s life. Cory has a miscarriage. She says it was due to the stress Doug put her under. Doug says that it was due to Cory still working a very physically demanding and rough job despite being pregnant. I felt so bad for Cory in this episode, especially since the only person (other than Doug) who bothered to visit her in the hospital was Chris, who is pretty much incapable of feeling or showing emotion.
Anyway, it turns out that Annie’s roommate was murdered by a client and then the client was murdered by Dr. Alper. However, when the bike cops arrest her, several other woman all walk up and declares that Dr. Alper is innocent because they killed the client. However, Dr. Alper confesses. Bobby breaks up with his girlfriend. That’s probably for the best. Everyone knows Bobby should be with Monica.
This episode …. oh God. I mean, it tried to liven things up a little. There were a lot of intense interrogation scenes and a lot of jump cuts that were apparently meant to create tension. We would watch Chris ask a question and then jump to someone in a totally different room answering an unrelated question. It was very showy but it wasn’t very effective. These folks aren’t hard-boiled detectives. They’re bicycle cops.
Seriously, where were the real detectives?
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, there’s an interesting crime spree but nothing is more important than Ponch’s feelings.
Episode 5.23 “Trained For Trouble”
(Dir by Barry Crane, originally aired on April 4th, 1982)
Animals have been trained to steal money! A hawk swoops down and steals a bag of cash from an armored car. Chimpanzees rob a bank! It’s madness and the Highway Patrol has its work cut out for them as they attempt to catch whoever has trained these criminal animals. (The minute that one sees Don Stroud’s name in the guest star list, it’s pretty easy to guess who is responsible.)
That may sound like a cute idea for a show and, to be honest, it is. However, this episode is somehow less concerned with the animals robbing banks than it is with every woman in Los Angeles mistaking Ponch for a Chippendale’s dancer. It turns out that one of the male strippers — “Officer Richard” — looks like just like Ponch. Richard is credited as being played by “Angelo Bernardi.” Seeing as how Bernardi has no other credits on the imdb other than this episode, I’m not convinced that wasn’t Erik Estrada stripping off his uniform.
Consider this to be your weekly reminder that, during the fifth seasos, CHiPs was….
From what I’ve read, Larry Wilcox left this show after the fifth season specifically because he felt Erik Estrada was getting all of the good storylines and had basically become the producer’s pet. Watching this episode, you can see why he would be upset. While Estrada spends the episode being chased by every woman in Los Angeles, Wilcox gets a handful of forgettable lines.
On a positive note, this episode did feature the character actor Dan Hedaya, playing someone who chronically confesses to unsolved crimes. His character was, at least, a little interesting. He also got more lines than Larry Wilcox in this episode which, again, perhaps explains why Jon Baker returned to Wyoming after the fifth season.
Welcome to 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 Crime Story, which ran on NBC from 1986 to 1988. The entire show can be found on Tubi!
This week, the Torello marriage falls apart.
Episode 1.7 “Pursuit of a Wanted Felon”
(Dir by Aaron Lipstadt, originally aired on October 28th, 1986)
Last week, a recently acquitted man named Hector (Ving Rhames) was arrested after murdering his landlord. Torello, Danny, and David Abrams were all upset.
This week, they’ve all moved on. Sorry, Ving Rhames, you were only a one-episode guest star.
David is pursuing his relationship with Suzanne Terry (Pam Grier). At a cocktail party, Detective Walter Clemmons (Paul Butler), the black member of the Crime Squad, approaches Suzanne and warns her that she shouldn’t be pursuing a relationship with “that white boy.” Seriously, this is the first time that Walter’s gotten any real dialogue since the show began and it’s basically to tell Suzanne not to pursue an interracial relationship. “We’re only seven years out from integration,” Clemmons says, an awkward piece of dialogue that is meant to remind viewers that this show takes place in 1963. The show actually deserves some credit for being realistic about how many people would have viewed David and Suzanne’s budding romance in 1963. I just find it interesting that the show’s only regular black character is the one who is shown objecting while all of the white Chicago cops don’t have a problem with it. Who knew the Chicago police force was so progressive in the early 60s?
(I really want to like Stephen Lang’s performance as David but something feels off about it. It’s not a bad performance. I stand by my earlier praise. It’s just that David is such a caricature of an early 60s liberal that it is sometimes hard for me to tell if his character is supposed to be satirical or not. In episodes like this, where David is portrayed as being a cool hipster, Lang can seem a bit stiff and miscast. He’s much better when he’s giving an emotional speech in court.)
Luca continues to prove himself indispensable to Manny Weisbrod. In this episode, he blows up a union leader who doesn’t want to take orders from the mob.
Finally, Mike and Julia Torello split up in this episode. It’s not really a shock. Mike Torello is extremely intense and obsessed with his job. He’s tightly wound, to the point where he seems like he might just randomly shoot someone at any given moment. An attempt to take a relaxing vacation with Julie is a disaster. (The motel is tacky. The service is mediocre. Mike spends the entire time threatening the staff and complaining.) As soon as Torello returns to Chicago, he hops on a plane for Cleveland in an unsuccessful attempt to capture Frank Holman. When Torello returns home, he finds that Julie is preparing to go out with another man.
“You are not going to watch my TV,” Torello says, before grabbing the TV and leaving the apartment with it.
Does that scene sounds familiar? That’s probably because Michael Mann later reused the scene, almost word-for-word, in Heat. It’s a good scene. It’s certainly the most memorable moment in this episode.
Otherwise, this episode felt a bit bland. Torello’s doomed marriage isn’t really that interesting and I actually kind of got annoyed with David and Suzanne going to a cocktail party when they really should have been trying to get Hector out of prison. I laughed at Torello’s irritation at the hotel and his line about the TV. Those were the highlights. The rest of this installment was forgettable.
All my life, my Dad has told me that Roger Corman’s BLOODY MAMA (1970), which was filmed completely in Arkansas, contained scenes filmed along the beautiful white bluffs of Calico Rock, Arkansas. Dad and I watched it today, and we didn’t see any such scenes. I did some quick internet research, and it turns out my dad has been spreading misinformation all these years. He had mistaken the film for a different movie called BOOTLEGGERS (1974). It was filmed in and around the Ozark town of Calico Rock, and it was directed by B-movie maestro Charles B. Pierce (THE LEGEND OF BOGGY CREEK, THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN). I was very happy to see that it was streaming on Amazon Prime, so I decided to give it a watch.
Set in rural Arkansas during the Prohibition era, the movie follows Othar Pruitt (Paul Koslo) and his moonshine-running buddy Dewey Crenshaw (Dennis Fimple) as they manufacture high quality moonshine whiskey and battle their local business rivals, the Woodalls, led by their vicious patriarch Rufus (Seamon Glass). When he’s not battling the Woodall’s, Othar finds time to hang out with his grandpa (Slim Pickens) and romance the tough but beautiful Sally Fannie (Jaclyn Smith, who receives an “introducing” credit). If you’ve seen many southern redneck movies, you probably know where this is all heading, but the fun is watching how it gets there!
BOOTLEGGERS is not a traditionally great movie, but there is a lot of fun to be had if you’re in the right frame of mind for some crude regional filmmaking. Director Charles B. Pierce clearly understood rural Arkansas in a way most filmmakers don’t. The dusty roads, cave-based moonshine stills, and run down old homes feel more authentic since they are actually filmed on location. I’ve been through that area many times, and he gets it right. Heck, a lot of the extras look like they wandered into the scenes straight off the local streets and fields. The print I watched looks like a really bad VHS copy, but Tak Fujimoto’s cinematography still manages to capture the beautiful nature of the area with its beautiful mountains and limestone cliffs hanging over the White River. One gripe though… the characters keep referring to the river as the Buffalo River, which is another beautiful river in Arkansas, but it is not the river in this movie.
Another element of the film that I found interesting is the casting of Paul Koslo as the lead and good guy of the film, Othar Pruitt. Koslo almost always plays a slimy bad guy, at least he did in Charles Bronson’s 70’s films THE STONE KILLER, MR. MAJESTYK and LOVE AND BULLETS. The German born actor is actually pretty good as an Arkansas redneck, and he seems more comfortable handling the revenge sections of the film than he does the romance and comedy.
As far as the other cast members, Dennis Fimple steals most of his scenes as Othar’s friend Dewey. He’s the goofy but lovable hillbilly friend that these types of movies almost always have. He’s fun here. I always love seeing Slim Pickens and he’s pretty much exactly what you’d expect as an old moonshiner with plenty of homespun wisdom. Jaclyn Smith, a couple of years before her CHARLIE’S ANGELS fame, has a few fun scenes as a pistol-packing local hairdresser who takes a liking to Othar. Needless to say, when she did hit it big, the producers shamelessly repackaged the film to make it seem she was much more important to the plot than she actually is. All part of the 70’s fun of trying to make a buck at the drive-in!
At the end of the day, BOOTLEGGERS isn’t as professionally made as a movie like the Arkansas set WHITE LIGHTNING with Burt Reynolds. What it is though, is a solid southern redneck film, set in a beautiful location, with good performances and a violent ending that should please its intended audience. It certainly did me!
Through the Shattered Lens 