Tag Archives: review

14 Days of Paranoia #4: Conspiracy (dir by Adam Marcus)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

2008’s Conspiracy opens in Iraq.

A group of American soldiers are searching for militants.  Amongst them is the grim-faced William “Spooky” MacPherson (Val Kilmer).  When an adorable little girl with a teddy bear approaches the soldiers, MacPherson barely notices.  His mind is on adult threats.  But when the girl reveals that she has a bomb in her backpack, the majority of the soldiers are blown up with her. MacPherson survives, though he loses a leg and ends up with such severe PTSD that he can no longer carry a gun or even make a fist.  Helping him recover from his wounds is his best friend and fellow soldier, Miguel (Greg Serano).

A year or so later, MacPherson is back home.  He lives in a run-down apartment in New York and spends most of his time with a naked woman who speaks Russian.  (Whether she was meant to be his girlfriend or just someone he hired is unclear.)  Miguel continually calls him up and asks him to come down to New Mexico and work on his ranch.  MacPherson refuses at first.  He wants to remain isolated from the world.  But when his flashbacks of the explosion become too intense, MacPherson finally decides to accept Miguel’s offer.  MacPherson pawns a gun so that he’ll have enough money to get a bus ticket.  And then, he heads for New Mexico.

The only problem is that, once MacPherson arrives in New Mexico, Miguel is nowhere to be seen.  Walking through a town that appears to have recently been constructed, MacPherson meets a lot of people who insist that they’ve never heard of Miguel and that there is no ranch at the address that Miguel gave MacPherson.  The police carefully watch MacPherson as he makes his way from business to business, searching for his friend.  No one in town is friendly.  No one seems to want MacPherson around.  Eventually, MacPherson is approached by Rhodes (Gary Cole), the businessman who is building the town and who apparently controls everything that happens within the town limits.  Rhodes is friendly.  Rhodes says that MacPherson, with his white skin and blonde hair, is exactly the type of person that he likes to see in his town.  Can you tell where this is going?

You probably already guessed that Rhodes is an evil businessman who is involved in human trafficking and who smuggles Mexicans across the border to work for his company before then sending back to their home country with next to no money.  You’ve also probably figured out that Miguel was killed by the corrupt police force.  If you haven’t figured that out, you’ve never seen a movie before.  MacPherson teams up with the only kind person in town, Joanna (Jennifer Esposito), and they try to stop Rhodes’s operation.  The entire movie seems to be building up to a scene where MacPherson and Joanna take on the whole town but instead, somewhat anticlimactically, everyone just stands around and watches Rhodes battle MacPherson.  Conspiracy promises a lot but it doesn’t really deliver.

This was one of Val Kilmer’s first straight-to-video roles and he gives a rather detached performance, which is a shame because an actor of Kilmer’s talent could have really done something with this role if he had been in the mood to do so.  But I don’t blame Kilmer for not seeming to be that invested in Conspiracy.  It’s not a very interesting film.  Even the usually dependable Gary Cole just seems to be going through the motions.  The film’s attempt to comment on the pressing political issues of 2008 — illegal immigration, the war in Iraq, the burst of the housing bubble, the recession — only serve to reinforce how shallow and heavy-handed the film actually is.  Watching Conspiracy in 2025, the most interesting about it is that the issues it deals with are the issues that, 17 years later, Americans are still dealing with.

With its portrayal of an isolated town and a scarred war veteran looking for a missing friend, Conspiracy has a lot in common with the classic 1955 film, Bad Day At Black Rock.  Now, that’s a film that is definitely worth seeing!

Previous entries in 2025’s 14 Days Of Paranoia:

  1. The Fourth Wall (1969)
  2. Extreme Justice (1993)
  3. The Lincoln Conspiracy (1977)

Retro Television Review: Fantasy Island 6.6 “The Beautiful Skeptic/The Last Platoon”

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, someone tries to expose Fantasy Island!

Episode 6.6 “The Beautiful Skeptic/The Last Platoon”

(Dir by Ricard Montalban, originally aired on November 27th, 1982)

Your eyes do not deceive you.  This episode was directed by Mr. Roarke himself, Ricardo Montalban!

The main fantasy deals with Jack Oberstar (Gary Frank), who wants to go back to World War II so that he can find proof that his brother, Ken (Steve Kanaly), was killed in action and did not, as the army claims, desert and become a black market smuggler.  After the customary warnings from Mr. Roarke, Jack finds himself serving alongside his brother in France.  Jack not only gets to bond with his brother but he also discovers that it was the evil Galloway (Don Stroud) who stole his brother’s identity and went on to become a criminal.  Ken did die heroically but, without his dog tags, he was misidentified.  No sooner does Jack learn all this then he finds himself back in the present.  Jack is happy to know the truth but he regrets not having returned with proof.

However, Mr. Roarke reveals that, while Jack was having his fantasy, a career criminal died while serving a life sentence in France.   By checking his fingerprints, the authorities discovered that the criminal was Galloway, who was long believed to have died in World War II.  Jack realizes that he can now argue that Galloway stole Ken’s identity!  He’s happy, even if he doesn’t have his definite proof.  Myself, I started thinking about how different the world must have been in the days before DNA testing.  Today, Jack presumably wouldn’t even have to go Fantasy Island to prove that the body buried in “Galloway’s” grave was actually his brother.

As for the other storyline, it features Connie Stevens as journalist Christine Connelly, who is determined to prove that Mr. Roarke is a fake.  She tells Roarke that she interviewed eleven former guests and all of them were happy with how their fantasies went.  Christine argues that there’s no such thing as “eleven satisfied customers,” which is a weird way to put it.

Christine brings along two people who have fantasies.  Jay (Jimmie “JJ” Walker) wants to win a weight-lifting competition, despite being Jimmie “JJ” Walker.  Luckily, Roarke has some magic chalk dust that allows Jay to do just that.  (You have to feel bad for everyone who actually wasted their time training for the competition.)  Frank (Herb Edelman ) wants to be reunited with his estranged wife, Connie (Ruta Lee).  This actually proves somewhat difficult, as Connie really doesn’t want to see Frank.  But it turns out that this is because Connie thinks that Frank is having an affair with Christine.  I’m not sure that Roarke reunited Connie and Frank is really greater proof than Jimmie Walker winning a strongman competition but the important thing is that Christine learns to be less of a cynic and to open her mind to the magic of Fantasy Island.

This was not a bad trip to the Island.  Much as Mr. Roarke did with the Island, Ricardo Montalban kept the episode moving quickly and efficiently.  It’s interesting that Fantasy Island started out as this place that was shrouded in mystery but, by the sixth season, it was apparently well-known enough to attract the attention of tabloid television.  In the end, Mr. Roarke proved his good intentions and protected the Island.  Good for him!

 

Song of the Day: Don’t Your Forget About Me by Simple Minds

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Given the fact that today is the birthday of both John Hughes and Molly Ringwald, it seems obvious what today’s song of the day should be.

Hey, hey, hey, hey
Ooh, woah

Won’t you come see about me?
I’ll be alone, dancing, you know it, baby

Tell me your troubles and doubts
Giving everything inside and out and
Love’s strange, so real in the dark
Think of the tender things that we were working on

Slow change may pull us apart
When the light gets into your heart, baby

Don’t you, forget about me
Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t
Don’t you, forget about me

Will you stand above me?
Look my way, never love me
Rain keeps falling, rain keeps falling
Down, down, down

Will you recognize me?
Call my name or walk on by
Rain keeps falling, rain keeps falling
Down, down, down, down

Hey, hey, hey, hey
Ooh, woah

Don’t you try and pretend
It’s my feeling we’ll win in the end
I won’t harm you or touch your defenses
Vanity and security, ah

Don’t you forget about me
I’ll be alone, dancing, you know it, baby
Going to take you apart
I’ll put us back together at heart, baby

Don’t you, forget about me
Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t
Don’t you, forget about me

As you walk on by
Will you call my name?
As you walk on by
Will you call my name?
When you walk away

Or will you walk away?
Will you walk on by?
Come on, call my name
Will you call my name?

I say
La, la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la
La-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la
La-la-la-la, la-la-la-la
La-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la
La-la-la-la, la-la-la-la
La-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la
When you walk on by
And you call my name
When you walk on by

Songwriters: Keith Forsey / Steve W. Schiff

THE SEVEN-UPS (1973) – Roy Scheider in a gritty 70’s cop thriller!

Posted on by Bradley Crain

I’m guessing it started with JAWS (1975) and JAWS 2 (1978) since they played often on Fox-16 out of Little Rock when I was a kid, but I’ve been a fan of actor Roy Scheider for as long as I can remember. He’s one of those actors who has his own section in my massive collection of physical movie media. I’ve read about every film he’s ever made, and I’ve watched most of them. Surprisingly, THE SEVEN-UPS is the first Roy Scheider film I’ve written about on The Shattered Lens. 

NYPD detective Buddy Manucci (Roy Scheider) leads a team of elite cops, known as the “seven-ups.” They’ve acquired this nickname because most of the criminals they arrest receive sentences that are 7 years and longer, which makes their superiors on the force very happy. Granted, the team does use a variety of unorthodox methods to find and arrest the criminals, which can also rub their superiors and some of their fellow cops the wrong way. Buddy’s childhood friend Vito Lucia (Tony Lo Bianco), an undertaker by trade who has his finger on the pulse of the criminal activities in his community, serves as an important snitch for the team, with his information often leading to major busts. Unbeknownst to Buddy, prominent members of various organized crime families and other white-collar criminals start getting kidnapped and held for ransom in the community. Buddy’s unaware of the full extent of the kidnappings, but he asks his old friend / snitch Vito about this when he actually witnesses the abduction of a crooked bail bondsman he’s following named Festa. We know that Vito is the mastermind behind all of the kidnappings, and his two main henchmen, Moon (Richard Lynch) and Bo (Bill Hickman), are impersonating cops just long enough to confuse and abduct the various criminals. When the Seven-Ups stake out a funeral meeting of various mobsters in the area, squad member Ansel (Ken Kercheval) is killed as part of a screwed-up abduction attempt. Buddy spots Moon and Bo trying to flee the area and tries to chase them down in an incredible car chase that ends when Buddy is almost decapitated in a violent collision with a parked 18-wheeler. With one of their own dead and with the wild chases through the streets, the members of the team are placed on suspension and even investigated as suspects for the kidnappings. Not content to just lay low during their suspensions, the seven-ups continue to try to figure out what’s going on, doing whatever it takes to get the information they need. When Buddy and his group start applying incredible pressure to some of the local mobsters about who shot Ansel, he gets information that ties the killing and the kidnappings to his friend Vito. This time when he meets with Vito, Buddy feeds him false information, thus setting a trap to bring the whole operation down.

After viewing THE SEVEN-UPS again for the first time in a while, it continues to be my opinion that this movie is severely underrated. It’s a great cop film from the early 70’s, anchored by an excellent lead performance from Roy Scheider, who’s wearing one of the coolest leather jackets in the history of cinema. Coming in hot off the heels of THE FRENCH CONNECTION (1971), and with many connections to the Oscar winner, it seems that somehow this great film has fallen through the cracks over the years. I mean, how often do you hear people talk about this movie? THE SEVEN-UPS is directed by Philip D’Antoni, his only directorial credit, although he did serve as the Producer for both BULLITT (1968) and THE FRENCH CONNECTION. D’Antoni clearly values a good car chase sequence. THE SEVEN-UPS contains a thrilling car chase, which really isn’t that big of a surprise when you learn that stunt coordinator Bill Hickman, who plays the bad guy Bo in this film, coordinated the car chase sequences in BULLITT and THE FRENCH CONNECTION. This film features my personal favorite car chase sequence from any film that I’ve seen to date. Don Ellis composed the memorable musical score, a service that he also provided in THE FRENCH CONNECTION. I point out all of these ties to THE FRENCH CONNECTION because, in my humble opinion, the talent behind that film created another classic in THE SEVEN-UPS. 

Complimenting Roy Scheider’s lead performance, THE SEVEN-UPS has a strong supporting cast. Tony Lo Bianco, Ken Kercheval (of DALLAS fame), Bill Hickman, and Richard Lynch are all quite memorable in their respective roles. I also like the 1973 New York City setting for the film. In movies like this and the following year’s DEATH WISH, we get to see a New York that no longer exists. To me, this only adds to the gritty realism of the film. 

Overall, THE SEVEN-UPS is a movie I recommend without any reservations. If you’re a fan of 70’s cop thrillers, you simply can’t go wrong with this one. 

I share the trailer for THE SEVEN-UPS below:

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

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!

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!

14 Days of Paranoia #3: The Lincoln Conspiracy (dir by James L. Conway)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

When it comes to conspiracy theories involving presidential assassinations, the theories surrounding JFK may get all the attention but it’s the theories surrounding the death of Abraham Lincoln are usually far more plausible.

Unless, of course, it’s the theories that are pushed in the 1977 docudrama, The Lincoln Conspiracy.

A mix of documentary-style narration and really cheap-looking historical reenactments, The Lincoln Conspiracy essentially indicts almost everyone who was alive in 1865 as being a part of either the conspiracy or the subsequent cover-up.  Really, it’s remarkable how many historical figures are implicated in this film.

With the Civil War coming to a close, President Lincoln (John Anderson) hopes to pursue a generous reconstruction policy for the former Confederate States.  Secretary of War Edwin Stanton (Robert Middleton), Senator Ben Wade (Dick Callinan), and a host of other are all opposed to this plan, both because they want vengeance and they also want to make as much money as possible off of the Southern cotton fields.  They come up with a plan to impeach Lincoln but, in order to draw up the articles, they have to make sure that Lincoln is not seen for a few days.  When Col. Lafayette Baker (John Dehner) discovers that an actor named John Wilkes Booth (Bradford Dillman) is planning on kidnapping Lincoln, Stanton and his conspirators decide to give Booth their unofficial support.  However, when the plan changes at the last minute and Stanton decides that it would actually be a bad idea to kidnap Lincoln, an angry Booth decides to just kill Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, and William Seward.

Booth succeeds in shooting Lincoln and making his escape.  The other members of Booth’s group all fail in their assignments.  Andrew Johnson becomes president.  Though grievously wounded, William Seward survives.  Booth flees to Canada and …. oh, you thought Booth died?  No, that was just a look alike who was shot by a bizarre soldier named Boston Corbett.  By allowing everyone to believe that Booth was killed, Stanton is able to cover up any role he and his allies played in inspiring the assassination.  Unfortunately, Col. Baker keeps a diary and it seems like he might be planning on revealing the truth but he dies mysteriously before he can.

(And, to give the film some credit, Col. Baker’s sudden death at 41 was an odd one.  And, though it’s not really explored in the film, Boston Corbett, the man who shoot Booth, really was a weirdo who was described by contemporaries as being a religious fanatic who castrated himself and claimed to hear the voice of God.)

It’s a big conspiracy theory that is presented in The Lincoln Conspiracy.  In fact, it’s a bit too big to really be taken seriously.  The film pretty much accuses everyone in Washington of having a part in the assassination.  The film itself has the cheap look of a community theater production and the use of Dr. Samuel Mudd as a narrator only adds to the film’s silliness.  If you’re a fan of gigantic and thoroughly implausible conspiracy theories, as I am, the film is entertaining in its way.  If nothing else, Bradford Dillman certainly looks like how most people probably imagine John Wilkes Booth to have looked.  Otherwise, The Lincoln Conspiracy is far-fetched and not at all realistic, which is why I assume that a lot of people in 1977 probably believed every word of it.

Previous entries in 2025’s 14 Days Of Paranoia:

  1. The Fourth Wall (1969)
  2. Extreme Justice (1993)

Retro Television Review: Miami Vice 3.18 “Lend Me An Ear”

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, Crockett and Tubbs are both spectacularly bad at their jobs.

Episode 3.18 “Lend Me An Ear”

(Dir by James Quinn, originally aired on February 27th, 1987)

This week’s episode of Miami Vice centers around Steve Duddy (John Glover), an eccentric former cop-turned-surveillance expert.  When the Vice Squad has trouble bugging the home and phone lines of a mysterious Greek criminal named Alexander Dykstra (Yorgo Voyagis), Crockett and Tubbs approach Duddy for help.  Little do they know that Dubby is also on Dykstra’s payroll.  Duddy sells them the bugs that they plant in Dykstra’s home.  Then Dykstra calls Duddy and Duddy removes them.  Dykstra doesn’t know that Duddy works for the cops and the cops don’t know that Duddy works for Dykstra.

It sounds like a pretty good deal for Steve Duddy, no?  But when Duddy witnesses Dykstra commit a murder that was caused by Dykstra using one of Duddy’s voice analyzers to discover whether or not her girlfriend was lying about cheating on him, Duddy decides to try to take down Duddy.  First, he calls the homicide department and, using a device to disguise his voice, he reports that Dykstra just killed someone.  When that doesn’t work, he splices together some recordings to make it appear as if Dykstra is setting up a crime.  When that doesn’t work and Dykstra decides to take out Duddy, Duddy just kills Dykstra and his men.  Crockett and Tubbs arrest him, charging him with interfering with an investigation.  The charges are ultimately dropped but, when Duddy returns to his home, he finds a video message from Crockett.  “I’ll be watching you!” Crockett says.

This was a strange episode, if just because the main theme seemed to be that the members of the Vice Squad weren’t that smart.  Not only were they repeatedly fooled by Duddy but also Dykstra as well.  Really, anyone with as much experience as Crockett and Tubbs should have been able to figure out what Duddy was doing.  Duddy’s reaction when he heard the 9-11 call (“Sounds like someone’s altering their voice!” Duddy says) should have been a dead giveaway that Duddy knew more than he was telling.  And yet, somehow, Crockett and Tubbs didn’t figure out anything strange was happening until the episode was nearly over.

Dykstra, incidentally, was not a drug dealer.  He was a money launderer and he really didn’t make much of an effort to hide that fact.  I figure it out pretty quickly.  But, again, it took Crockett and Tubbs nearly the entire episode to figure out what Dykstra’s business actually was.  Crockett and Tubbs just had a really off-week with this episode.

On the plus, John Glover was memorably odd as Duddy.  Up until he discovers Dykstra is a murderer, Duddy is having the time of his life playing both sides against each other and it’s actually kind of entertaining to watch.  Apparently, this was Duddy’s only appearance on Miami Vice.  That’s a shame because his character definitely had potential.

Next week: Viggo Mortensen, Annette Bening, and Lou Diamond Phillips all stop by Miami!

Late Night Retro Television Review: Degrassi High 1.12 “Natural Attraction”

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 Sunday, I will be reviewing the Canadian series, Degrassi High, which aired on CBC and PBS from 1989 to 1991!  The series can be streamed on YouTube!

Welcome back to Degrassi Hiiiiiiiiiiiigh!

Episode 1.12 “Natural Attraction”

(Dir by Kit Hood, originally aired on January 23rd, 1990)

This week’s episode of Degrassi High centers around the Farrell twins.  I always have a bit of an issue with the Farrell twin episodes because I can never remember which one had the abortion and, beyond that, they’re really not that interesting as characters.  I know that one is more talkative than other and that the one who didn’t have an abortion ended up making out with Wheels at a party.  But again, personality-wise, they’re both kind of boring characters.

Anyway, this week, Erica is dating an 11th grader who reminds her of the boy who impregnated her over the summer.  (“Who does he remind me of?”  “Kyle, from the summer.”  “Oh yeah!”)  Heather is concerned that Erica is going to get pregnant again and they’re going to have to take another trip to the abortion clinic and once again run into that old woman with plastic fetus doll.  Erica doesn’t think her abortion was that big of a deal but it haunts Heather, who feels that she took part in a murder by accompanying Erica to the clinic.

And I will say this.  Particularly when compared to the way Degrassi: The Next Generation and Netflix Degrassi dealt with the issue of abortion, Degrassi High deserved a lot of credit for treating both sides fairly.  No one — whether they agree with Erica’s decision or not — is reduced to being a caricature on this show and that’s something that I personally appreciate.  That doesn’t necessarily make the Farrell twins any more interesting than they were before but even that feels like a good move on the show’s part.  Not everyone who has an abortion is interesting.  Sometimes, they’re kind of boring and have a habit of glaring at anyone who talks to their twin.

As for the rest of this episode, I’m going to guess that the show’s “stars” must have been on vacation because it’s pretty much dominated by students who usually don’t get storylines.  Dorothy (Annabella Waugh) encourages her friend Tessa Campanelli (Kirsten Bourne) to ask Scooter to the school dance.  This is the first episode to give Tessa storyline and, while it’s not much of a story, it is interesting for those of us who know the important role that Tessa is going to eventually play in the history of Degrassi.  As for Scooter, he doesn’t know how to slow dance so his friend Bart teaches him.

Meanwhile, Alison (Sara Holmes) and Amy (Jacy Hunter) get into a fight over the fact that Amy is going to the dance with Snake, despite the fact that Alison used to like Snake.  They end up getting into a big argument and throwing all of the clothes that they’ve borrowed from each other all over the girl’s restroom.  I could relate because, going to high school with my sister one grade above me, we certainly had our fights and arguments about …. well, exactly the same thing that Alison and Amy were fighting about.  But, at the same time, this is really the first episode in which Alison and Amy have been major characters.  I like that Degrassi High was an ensemble show but there were definitely times when the show would suddenly push a character into the spotlight without giving the audience any opportunities to get to know the character ahead of time.  For instance, I had totally forgotten that Alison liked Snake.  Doesn’t she knows that Snake is destined to marry Spike?

Next week, Joey discovers he has a learning disability!

14 Days of Paranoia #2: Extreme Justice (dir by Mark L. Lester)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

What type of justice?

Extreme justice, y’all!

In this 1993 film, Lou Diamond Phillips stars as Jeff Powers.  Who is Jeff Powers?  He’s a cop!  He wants to keep the street safe!  Sometimes, he knows that you have to be willing to break the rules!  He’s a cop who does things his way!

Okay, is that enough exclamation points?  I’m not just using them to be obnoxious.  The film is pretty much just one big exclamation point.  The action is hyperintense and the film is full of characters who always seem like they’re just one step away from exploding.  No one in this film is particularly calm or laid back.  From the start, everything is dialed to eleven and it just keeps going higher and higher.

After Jeff is put on probation for roughing up a suspect, he receives an invitation to join an elite squad of detective.  Led by the charismatic Detective Dan Vaughn (Scott Glenn, giving a performance that is so over-the-top that he yells straight at the camera at one point), the Special Investigative Section is the best of the bed.  Upon joining, Jeff finds himself a member of a sacred fraternity of law enforcers.  Working with men like the always amused Detective Larson (Yaphet Kotto) and the somewhat paranoid Angel (Andrew Divoff), Jeff finds himself tracking some of the biggest criminals in the city.

What Jeff also discovers is that SIS does more than just arrest criminals.  The SIS has been given an unofficial license to kill and they end up executing as many people as they take to jail.  Often times, Vaughn will tells the men to allow a crime to be committed so that they can then dispense their own brand of justice.  In the film’s most disturbing scene, the members of SIS wait until after a woman has been raped in an alley before they move to neutralize her attackers.  When Jeff finally decides that he can’t be a part of all this and tries to reveal what’s going on, he discovers that the SIS has some support in some very high places.  Who cares if the SIS is allowing crimes to be committed or if an innocent person occasionally gets caught in the crossfire?  At least they’re taking care of the criminals!

Extreme Justice is a crude and energetic film and one that is based on some of the stories that spread about the LAPD’s RAMPART division in the 90s.  That the film works is a testament to the performances of Phillips, Kotto, and Glenn and also the direction of Mark L. Lester.  An exploitation vet who occassionally made big studio action films as well, Lester keeps the pace moving at breakneck speed and, even more importantly, he allows both sides to have their say.  While Jeff is upset about SIS’s methods, Detective Vaughn is correct when he says that his unit is targeting the worst of the worst.  It makes for an unusually intelligent exploitation film, one that leaves the audience with a lot to consider.  How far would you go to keep your neighborhood safe?

Previous entries in 2025’s 14 Days Of Paranoia:

  1. The Fourth Wall (1969)