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Retro Television Review: Fantasy Island 6.5 “Everybody Goes to Gilley’s/Face of Fire”

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 1984.  Unfortunately, the show has been removed from most streaming sites.  Fortunately, I’ve got nearly every episode on my DVR.

This week, Fantasy Island goes country.

Episode 6.5 “Everybody Goes to Gilley’s/Face of Fire”

(Dir by Jerome Courtland, originally aired on November 20th, 1982)

Mickey Gilley is a country-western singer who comes to Fantasy Island because he wants to finally become a star after years of struggling.  Tattoo, who is a huge country music fan, puts on a cowboy hat and decides that he’ll be Gilley’s “exclusive manager.”  Not so fast, Mr. Roarke says.  Apparently, there’s a country-western bar on the other side of the Island and the owner, Mr. Sherwood (Dennis Cole), has a fantasy of finally having a successful bar.  Roarke arranges for Gilley and Sherwood to become partners.  Gilley is a star whenever he performs in Sherwood’s bar.  In the end, Sherwood and Gilley leave the Island together with Sherwood as Gilley’s new manager.

I’m not a huge country music fan so I have to admit that, until I watched this episode, I had no idea who Mickey Gilley was. (In fact, in my first draft of this review, I repeatedly called him “Dennis Gilley,” so that tells you how much I know about county-western singers.)  Gilley actually was a country music star, one who did spend several years toiling away in small clubs before he finally found success.  This role was autobiographical for him.  It’s a bit odd that he plays himself but maybe he was a big deal in 1982.  As I said, country music is not my area of expertise and 1982 is a bit before my time.  What I can say is that, on the show, Gilley was portrayed in a way that kind of made him seem like a jerk.  I mean, the nonstop complaining and all the demands!  “I’m not here for romance,” he tells Roarke at one point.  Don’t tell Mr. Roarke how to do his job, Gilley!

The other storyline was a take on Jane Eyre.  Jean Harrigan (Lynn Redgrave) is from Nevada, despite being totally English.  She needs a million dollars.  A mysterious rich guy (David Hedison) offers it to her if she can survive a weekend at his home.  His crazy wife is locked away in a bedroom.  She ends up catching on fire towards the end of the episode, freeing things up for Jean and the rich guy.  What’s interesting is that the rich guy says that he originally met Jean when his car broke down in the Nevada desert and Jean gave him a ride.  What’s interesting about this is that, when the legendary Howard Hughes died, a man named Melvin Dummar claimed that he had once given Hughes a ride after coming across him stranded in the Nevada desert and, in return, Hughes left him a good deal of his fortune.  Dummar even produced a will in support of his claim.  The courts ruled the will to have been a forgery and Dummar never received his money, though there still are people out there who defend “the Dummar will” and claims that he was telling the truth about meeting Hughes.  Fortunately, Jean does get her money and a chance to spend some time with the totally charming and handsome David Hedison.

(Hedison was also the best Felix Leiter, appearing in Live and Let Die and License to Kill.)

Perhaps not surprisingly, I preferred the gothic story to the country music story.  I appreciated that Tattoo got to do something this episode.  The scene where he declares himself to be Gilley’s manager felt like a throwback to the show’s earlier seasons.  This journey to the Island was a mixed bag for me, though overall it was a pleasant trip.

Late Night Retro Television Review: CHiPs 3.8 “Hot Wheels”

Posted on 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!

Last night’s review of CHiPs was pre-empted by a sudden storm.  Here it is now, in its entirety,

Episode 3.8 “Hot Wheels”

(Dir by John Florea, originally aired on November 3rd, 1979)

Ponch is still in the hospital, recovering from last week’s accident.  Still, because he’s Ponch, he’s the one who figures out that a bunch of disgruntled fireman are using city trucks to commit their jewelry thefts.  Hey, wait a minute.  Last week’s episode was also about jewelry thefts.  Admittedly, CHiPs was a show that tended to recycle plots but, even by CHiPs standards, this is one of those coincidences that leaves you wondering what exactly was going on in the writer’s room.

Actually, it’s easy to guess.  Erik Estrada really was injured while filming an episode.  The cast that he wears throughout this episode was real and, as easy as it can be to make fun of his overexpressive acting and his tendency to lose his shirt every other scene, you do have to respect that Estrada showed to film this episode at all.  With Estrada injured, one gets the feeling that this episode, just like last week’s, was quickly rewritten to cover the situation.

Baker gets a temporary partner in this episode.  It’s the return of his former motorcycle mate, John Clayton!  Clayton was apparently Baker’s partner before Ponch.  Clayton has a reputation for being a practical joker,  It’s all anyone can talk about.  Clayton is a legendary prankster!  They really want us to know that Clayton’s a fun guy before he shows up and we discover that he’s played by Andrew Robinson, the actor who is best-known for playing the Scorpio Killer in Dirty Harry.  Robinson wears a mustache as Clayton, probably in an attempt to keep 1979 audiences from looking at the screen and going, “Hey, I remember that guy hijacking a school bus!”

(I should mention that Andrew Robinson himself was a committed pacifist when he filmed Dirty Harry, to the extent that he actually flinched whenever he had to shoot the killer’s gun and he actually traumatized himself while filming the school bus hijack.  He actually sounds like a pretty nice guy who just happened to play one of the most loathsome screen villains of all time.)

Baker works with Clayton and it must be said that Larry Wilcox does seem to be noticeably happier when he’s acting opposite Robinson than he ever did when he was acting opposite Estrada.  The episode features Clayton performing a heroic and dangerous rescue at one point and it’s easy to see that that scene was originally conceived with Estrada in mind.  It’s also easy to imagine Estrada flashing his big grin at the end of the scene while Robinson, on the other hand, plays up the fact that anyone, even a dedicated cop, would be absolutely exhausted after all that.

Robinson does a good job as Clayton and it’s always fun to see Martin Kove play a villain on show like this.  This was a good episode.  Estrada, I assume, will be back on his bike next week.

Music Video of the Day: Weight of Desire by Tennis (2025, dir by BLDG Blossom Liu and Danny Gray)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today’s music video of the day has a weird vibe that I like.  Watching  it, I found myself thinking about those weird cults that would form communes in the wild and everyone would have the same hairstyle and every night would end with a sing along around the campfire.  Admittedly, I’m not sure if these cults actually exist but I always imagine they’re out there somewhere.  Personally, I would dread running into them.

Enjoy!

Retro Television Review: Miami Vice 3.17 “The Afternoon Plane”

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 Mondays, I will be reviewing Miami Vice, which ran on NBC from 1984 to 1989.  The entire show can be purchased on Prime!

This week, Tubbs has an adventure!

Episode 3.17 “The Afternoon Plane”

(Dir by David Jackson, originally aired on February 20th, 1987)

While attending a New Age-y wedding with his latest girlfriend Alicia (Maria McDonald), Tubbs wins a vacation to a tropical island!

It’s about time something …. well, I was going to say something good but honestly, I guess we should just be happy that anything is happening to Tubbs at all.  When this show started, Tubbs was the audience surrogate.  He was the one who came down to Miami and learned about the drug scene.  We saw Miami through his eyes.  But, by the time the third season rolled around, it was pretty clear that Miami Vice hard largely become the Crockett show.  Don Johnson was the star and Philip Michael Thomas often seemed like a supporting character.  Tubbs may have been cooler than Switek but, often times, both of them took a backseat to Crockett.  This week, however, Tubbs finally get his own episode.  Crockett shows up for a few minutes at the start of the episode and that’s it.  This is the Tubbs show!

Of course, it turns out that the vacation does not go the way that Tubbs was expecting.  He runs into a drug dealer named Leon Wolf (Vincent D’Onofrio, making his television acting debut), someone who Tubbs previously put in jail.  Tubbs soon discovers that his old enemies, the Calderone family, are on the Island and they’re looking forward to getting their revenge on Tubbs.  Tubbs, of course, has no legal jurisdiction on the island and the local police certainly aren’t going to help him out.  In fact, many people on the island resent Tubbs because they blame America’s war on drugs for their poverty.  Drug smuggling is big business and it provides an income to a lot of people who would starve otherwise.

Orlando Calderone (John Leguizamo) is coming on the next afternoon plane and no one is willing to defy Orlando by helping Tubbs get off the island.  The episode becomes a Caribbean High Noon, with the clock ticking down and no one willing to stand up and help the endangered law man.  There are some on the island who want to fight back and drive away the Calderones.  But no one is willing to take the chance.

It would have been a lot more compelling if Orlando had been played by someone other than John Leguizamo, who is just as cartoonishly unconvincing here as he was the first time that he appeared on the show.  I know that Miami Vice was early in Leguizamo’s career but his performance here is so unconvincing that it really does make the Calderones just seem like a bunch of low-level punks instead of a feared criminal syndicate.  The final gun battle between Tubbs and the Calderones is handled well-enough but it’s never quite as compelling as it would be if Orlando Calderone was actually an intimidating villain.  In typical Miami Vice fashion, Alicia is seriously wounded in the battle.  It pays not to get involved with either Tubbs or Crockett.

This episode was a slight change of pace.  Apparently, everyone but Philip Michael Thomas got to take some time off during filming and, as a result, Thomas gets to show his own unique style as Rico Tubbs.  Still, this episode was never as compelling as it needed to be.  Hopefully, we are now done with the Calderones.

Song of the Day: The Hunt by Jerry Goldsmith

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The late composer Jerry Goldsmith was born 96 years ago today.  Over the course of his long career, he composed many classic film scores.  He was nominated for 18 Oscars and won for his score for The Omen.

Today’s song of the day comes from Goldsmith’s score for 1968’s Planet of the Apes!  Listen to this and try not visualize Charlton Heston being chased by a bunch of gorillas on horseback.

The 2025 Super Bowl: Some Commercial Thoughts

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In previous years, after the Super Bowl, I’ve listed my favorite ads of the night.  I’m not going to do that this year because, quite frankly, I don’t have enough ads to list.  This year, the Super Bowl was boring.  The game was boring and the ads were boring.  There were barely any new movie trailers.  In previous years, Leonard and I exhausted ourselves trying to keep up with and share all of the Super Bowl movie spots.  This year, we could take things easy.

As for the game …. listen, I’m not a football person.  Our longtime readers know that.  Usually, when I’m bored with a football game, I assume it’s because I’m just not into football.  But this year, the game was so slow that even my colleagues here at TSL got bored with it.  While the biggest game of the year was being played in New Orleans, we largely used the game as background noise as we talked about everything from HBO’s True Detective to whether or not it was acceptable to nuke all of your enemies in Civ.  Once I realized that there weren’t going to be any big commercials, I immediately started thinking about relaxing in a hot tub for an hour or two.  It turned out to be a little less than an hour because it’s cold outside, folks!

What a disappointing game.  I can’t believe that I actually pre-empted my retro television reviews for that thing.  Oh well!  Live and learn.

Actually, now that I think about it, there was one commercial that I really liked, just because it featured a horse.

I’ve seen some speculation online that the commercials were safe and predictable this year because ad agencies are still adjusting to how to advertise in the second Trump era.  That’s possible.  It’s been a long time since I’ve seen Super Bowl commercials that were so determinedly nonpartisan.  In the past, I think the general assumption that advertisers made was that the country was full of politically active young people with a lot of spending money and, as a result, it only made sense to tailor commercials to them.  Hence, we got Zachary Quinto dramatically reading the ending of 1984 for Amazon Audible and Kylie Jenner defusing tensions at a protest by giving a Pepsi to a cop.  We got a commercial for a migraine medicine in which the main character was able to go to a protest because her migraine cleared up.  There was even a commercial featuring a teenage girl leading an environmental rally because she had the confidence that went along with having clear skin.  All the online complaining was taken as a badge of honor.  “We’re making the right people mad,” as the saying goes.  But, with the recent elections, it’s now kind of obvious that the supposedly leftward tilt of the country was much overestimated.  It felt like the ads this year were trying to reclaim the middle, nonpartisan ground that was originally abandoned in 2017.  They did so by playing everything safe.  As a result, none of the commercials this year were controversial but, at the same time, none of them were particularly interesting either.  It says something about how bland things were that the most talked about commercial was another one of those flaky “He Gets Us” commercials, which feel like almost a parody of the shallow understanding most people have of theology.

(Incidentally, we watched the game on Tubi.  Tubi did a very good job of streaming the game, with none of the trouble that Netflix has had with its live events.)

In other words, the Super Bowl was boring this year but I did enjoy watching it with my TSL colleagues.  And I love horses!  And now, on with the rest of 2025!

Song of the Day: Little People Blues by Vincent & Pesci

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today’s song of the day is an instrumental that was recorded and released in 1972.  Frank Vincent is playing the drums.  Joe Pesci is on guitar.  Even if not for the celebrity connection, I would love this song.  It’s really good!

 

THE BLOOD OF HEROES (1989) – Rutger Hauer and Joan Chen play in the Jugger Super Bowl! 

Posted on by Bradley Crain

As an obsessed Rutger Hauer fan of the early 90’s, I was working my way through the man’s back catalogue of films when I came across THE BLOOD OF HEROES (1989) on the shelves at my local video store. With its post-apocalyptic setting and its strange sport of jugger, I’ll admit that it was not the kind of film that I’m most drawn to. I generally preferred watching Hauer taking down the bad guys in movies like WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE (1986) and BLIND FURY (1989), which was released the very same year. However, it was a relatively recent Hauer film, so I rented it, cautiously optimistic that it would be entertaining. At the time, it was not my favorite Hauer film, but I remember an 18-year-old version of myself thinking it was okay. I’ve watched it a couple of times over the last 30 years, and even own the DVD, but it’s not one that I pull off the shelf very often. I decided it was time for a fresh viewing. 

In the bleak, desolate, futuristic world of THE BLOOD OF HEROES, Rutger Hauer plays Sallow, the leader of a team of juggers. They go from town to town challenging the local team in a sport where you win by placing a dog skull securely on a stake. It’s an extremely violent game consisting of two teams with five players. Four players basically beat the crap out of the opposition with clubs and chains, in hopes that they can provide protection to their one player, the “quick,” who can get the skull on the stake. We meet Sallow’s team who consists of Dog Boy (Justin Monjo), Mbulu (Delroy Lindo), Big Cimber (Anna Katarina), and Young Gar (Vincent D’Onofrio) as they enter a town ready for a match. They win, but Dog Boy, their quick, has his leg broken in the process. Luckily for them, the opponent’s quick Kidda (Joan Chen), who was at least partially responsible for Dog Boy’s gruesome injury, is available to head towards the next town with the ragtag crew! She turns out to be a hell of a player, who’s willing to do whatever it takes to win, including biting an ear off when it’s required. This is what I call dedication. During the course of the story, we find out that Sallow used to be a professional jugger who played in “The League” in the underground cities where the rich, aristocratic people live and treat their champion juggers “almost” like one of them. He got banished when he engaged in a forbidden relationship with one of the overlord’s daughters. With his team of juggers, especially the super talented Kidda and Gar, Sallow leads them to the big city where they will challenge the professionals. For Sallow, it’s a shot at redemption. For the others, it’s a chance to be noticed by the League, which will lead to a much more luxurious life, when they’re not bashing their opponents brains in of course. I may have exaggerated a bit in my headline when I referred to this challenge as the “Jugger Super Bowl,” but it’s still kind of a big deal! 

After rewatching THE BLOOD OF HEROES again, while it’s still not my favorite kind of film, I can confidently say that I enjoyed it very much this time around. Most of that joy stems from watching Rutger Hauer in his prime. He’s such a charismatic actor and that even comes across in such a grim setting. I also like his character type, that of the disgraced former hero searching for redemption against a system that had previously discarded him. There’s usually much satisfaction to be had with this type of character, and this movie delivers on that premise. Joan Chen is very good as the new addition to the team who dreams of escaping her town and becoming a jugger star! She and Hauer really carry the film. The rest of the cast also added to my enjoyment of the movie. For me, It’s a lot of fun watching actors like Vincent D’Onofrio and Delroy Lindo in relatively early roles in their long and distinguished careers. I really enjoyed seeing Australian actors Hugh Keays-Byrne and Max Fairchild, both veterans of the MAD MAX series, appear near the end of the film when they make it to the city. Max Fairchild is especially impressive as one of the League juggers and former friend to Hauer. I wanted to give one more shout out, and this one goes out to actor Gandhi MacIntyre, who plays the team manager and doctor in the film. He has a very likable presence and made me smile on multiple occasions. The movie’s pretty serious and dark, and Gandhi’s sense of humor is a welcome presence. 

THE BLOOD OF HEROES is written and directed by David Webb Peoples. To date, it’s the only feature length film that Peoples has directed. In my opinion, he does a fine job. He certainly creates an interesting world, with huge contrasts between the barren, rocky outside landscapes and the overcrowded, underground cities. This is not a world I want to live in, but Peoples brought his vision to the screen, albeit within clear budget limitations. Considering it’s from the same guy who wrote BLADE RUNNER (1982) and UNFORGIVEN (1992), the story is pretty simple. And this is fine by me. The story of redemption for some, and of the dream of newfound glory for others, is a story that all of us can relate to at some point in our lives. At this point in my own life, I can relate to both! The movie features some ugly and violent images, but I found myself emotionally pulling for the ragtag group of underdogs in the big game at the end. It’s also pretty cool that Peoples made up his own game when writing the screenplay, albeit a game I would never want to play. The game Jugger, a less violent version of the game introduced in the film, is currently played all over the world. 

One final thing I wanted to point out about THE BLOOD OF HEROES is the fact that an author named Danny Stewart has written a book called “Saluting the Blood of Heroes – Behind the Apocalyptic Film.” I just learned of this book while researching the film today for this review. It was published in July of 2024. I just love a world where a person is able to get a book published about the making of an obscure, low budget film from the late 80’s. I won’t be surprised if this ends up in my Amazon cart really soon. 

I’ve included the trailer for THE BLOOD OF HEROES (AKA – THE SALUTE OF THE JUGGER) below: