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Retro Television Review: St. Elsewhere 3.19 “Red White Black And Blue”

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 Fridays, I will be reviewing St. Elsewhere, a medical show which ran on NBC from 1982 to 1988.  The show can be found on Daily Motion.

St. Elsewhere gets political!

Episode 3.19 “Red White Black and Blue”

(Dir by Eric Laneuville, originally aired on February 13th, 1985)

This week, on St. Elsewhere!

  • The First Lady is coming to Boston!  Though she’s going to be visiting Boston General, St. Eligius has been designated as a backup hospital.  While she’s in the area, the Emergency Room will be closed to everyone but her.  As well, some members of the hospital staff have been flagged as security risks — including Dr. Craig!
  • Dr. Craig is not happy about that but eventually, he’s cleared.  It turns out that his wife was the security risk because she once defended the Black Panther Party.
  • Betty White plays Captain Gloria Neal, a doctor who is on the First Lady’s security team.  She is an old friend of Dr. Westphall’s.  At first, it seems like she and Westphall might pursue a romance but it doesn’t happen.  I’m going to guess this is because Gloria realized that Dr. Westphall is the most depressing man on the planet.
  • When a severely injured man is rushed to St. Eligius, Neal refuses to open the Emergency Room.  So, Dr. Craig takes it upon himself to overrule her.  The man dies on the table.
  • Dr. Jacqueline Wade (Sagan Lewis) follows Captain Neal around, complaining about the president’s policies.  In fact, the entire hospital seems to be full of Democrats!  Wow, this President sure must have been unpopular.  Let’s see who it is …. hey, Ronald Reagan!  Three months before this episode aired, Reagan was reelected with 58% of the vote.  He carried 49 states, including Massachusetts.  Apparently, everyone who voted for Walter Mondale worked at the same hospital.
  • Mrs. Hufnagle is back at the hospital.  She is having heart problems.  Dr. Westphall glumly tells the doctors that they have been neglecting her because of her terrible personality.  However, not even Westphall can handle talking to her.  He passes the case over to Dr. Craig.
  • Fiscus has dinner with Shirley Daniels, who says that she hopes she goes to prison for shooting Dr. White.  The next day, Shirley is admitted to the hospital with appendicitis.
  • Victor Ehrlich wrong believes that a child has been abused by his mother.  He gets social services involved.  Later, Westphall sighs with regret and tells Victor that he did the wrong thing.  Westphall is being kind of a prick here.  Legally, if Ehrlich thinks that there’s been abuse, he’s required to report it.  Westphall seems to be upset that Ehrlich can’t read minds.
  • Finally, chronic homewrecker Nurse Rosenthal has to spend the day at the hospital so her lover, Richard, spends the day with her annoying children.  Well, I guess he certainly wasn’t going to spend it with his wife.  I will never understand why this show felt it was necessary to spend so much time with this particular family.  They were all annoying, every single one of them.

This episode opened with a homeless man using an American flag as a blanket and then went on to feature a man selling American flags getting attacked.  That’s about as subtle as things got.  It’s interesting that the show previously established Dr. Craig as being a Republican but apparently, with this episode, viewers were expected to believe that he was not a fan of Ronald Reagan’s.

In other words, this was not a great episode.  This felt like the medical equivalent of one of those Law & Order episodes where all of the salt of the Earth cops start talking about how they never miss Morning Joe.  

Finally, I feel bad for Mrs. Hufnagle,  Even annoying people deserve good medical treatment!

Brad reviews CITY ON FIRE (1987), starring Chow Yun-Fat, and directed by Ringo Lam!

Posted on by Bradley Crain

Ringo Lam’s CITY ON FIRE is one of the first movies starring Chow Yun-Fat that I really wanted to see after I had made my way through the John Woo films. Chow worked with Ringo on a total of 5 films from 1987 – 1992, and they’re a gold mine. I have previously reviewed PRISON ON FIRE and FULL CONTACT, so I decided now was a good time to take a fresh look at this one.  

Opening with an awesomely 80’s, neon-drenched saxophone solo from Teddy Robin Kwan, CITY ON FIRE tells the story of undercover cop Ko Chow (Chow Yun-Fat). He’s practically forced by his handler on the force, Inspector Lau (Sun Yueh), to infiltrate a violent gang of jewel thieves. The problem is that he has a history of getting in way too deep, so deep that he forgets where the job ends and his real life begins. It happens again when he’s able to get close to the leader of the thieves, Fu, played by his KILLER co-star, Danny Lee. When the gang hits a jewelry store with Chow in tow, and with the cops on their trail, everything goes to hell. Some store employees are killed, some gang members are taken out, and Chow even takes one in the gut. As the survivors meet back up at the warehouse, it becomes clear that there’s a mole in their midst, even though not everyone wants to admit it.

Does that premise sound familiar to you? If you’re a big fan of Quentin Tarantino and RESERVOIR DOGS, you can’t help but recognize how strongly his film was influenced by CITY ON FIRE. The influence is clear, especially in the broad strokes of the plotline and at the famous finale, but these are two very different crime films in execution, and they’re both excellent in their own ways.

In the late 80’s, some of the best action and crime films in the world were being made in Hong Kong. So many of the films had a reckless energy, which seems to be especially evident in director Lam’s works. In contrast to John Woo’s stylish action scenes, Lam’s scenes aren’t polished. They’re more grounded, they’re chaotic, and they’re not “cool” at all. For example, the film opens with an undercover named Chan Kam-Wah (Elvis Tsui) being called out and murdered in the middle of a busy market. Stabbed multiple times with a big butcher knife while desperately fighting for his life, the scene plays out in a realistic, clumsy, and very bloody way. In other words, it’s painful to watch without a slow-mo tracking shot in sight. We know immediately that no one is safe, and there’s a palpable tension as the undercover cop / criminal drama plays out that really works for the film.

Chow Yun-fat is fantastic, with his performance winning him his 2nd consecutive Hong Kong Film Award for Best Actor. He’s not the impossibly cool heroic bloodshed hero of the prior year’s A BETTER TOMORROW. Rather, while he’s charming in certain early scenes with his girlfriend Hung (Carrie Ng), when he starts his new assignment, you can see that he’s completely exhausted with his life as an undercover cop, a life that seems to have broken him emotionally. You can almost feel an impending doom with his character that lingers over the film, turning it into something different than your average cops and robbers story. In the other major lead of the film, Danny Lee is so good as the leader of the gang of jewel thieves, Fu. He’s very professional, and once he’s accepted Chow into their ranks, he’s very friendly and personable to him. In these moments, you can see how the two men could bond. But Fu’s also shown that he will kill anyone who gets in his way, so you know it’s inevitable that the two will collide head-on at the end. When it comes, it hits hard.

I highly recommend CITY ON FIRE to any person who enjoys gritty crime films. The action is brutal, the lead performances are excellent, and the drama of the story will leave you emotionally drained as the end credits roll. I can see why it would have had a major impact on a lover of Hong Kong cinema like a young Tarantino!

CITY ON FIRE is currently streaming on Prime Video, PlutoTV, Tubi, and Plex.

Song of the Day: Revenge of the Ninja by Robert J. Walsh

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today’s song of the day comes to us from the soundtrack of the 1983 film, Revenge of the Ninja.  Composed by Robert J. Walsh, this soundtrack will definitely leave you prepared to defeat all of your enemies, ninja-style!

(Actually, don’t try to do that without getting some training once.  I speak with the experience who sprained her ankle multiple times as a result of trying to duplicated Kate Beckinsale’s Underworld moves.)

Late Night Retro Television Review: Hunter 1.4 “A Long Way From L.A.”

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 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 episode makes the mistake of pretending to leave California.

Episode 1.4 “A Long Way From L.A.”

(Dir by Arnold Laven, originally aired on October 26th, 1984)

Bleh.  This episode annoyed me.

Wally Wallerstein (Paul Eiding), a pickpocket wanted in Los Angeles, is arrested in Texas.  Because he needs a break from them, Captain Cain sends Hunter and McCall to retrieve him.  Wally turns out to be a nice guy but, when Hunter’s car breaks down in Wilson County, Texas, Wally is accused of attacking a local waitress and is then killed by a sniper.  The real culprit is pretty obviously Sheriff Jake Cutter (Bo Svenson), who is the stepson of Chuck Easterland (Morgan Woodward), the richest man in town.

Not a single small town stereotype went unused in this episode.  As a Texan, I was annoyed by the fact that everyone had a Southern (as opposed to a Southwestern) accent.  And while I understand that the show probably didn’t have the budget or the time to shoot on location, it was still hard not to smirk at the sight of a very California mountain range in the background.  This is the flatlands, folks.  We don’t have mountains like that in Texas.

Hunter and McCall need to stay in Los Angeles.

Retro Television Review: Decoy 1.30 “The Gentle Gun-Man”

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 Thursdays, I will be reviewing Decoy, which aired in Syndication in 1957 and 1958.  The show can be viewed on Tubi!

In this episode, Casey goes after a gun dealer.

Episode 1.30 “The Gentle Gun-Man”

(Dir by Michael Gordon, originally aired on May 5th, 1958)

After a man is shot dead while committing a liquor store robbery, Casey goes undercover as his widow.  The police don’t just want the man’s accomplice.  They want to know where the man got his specially-modified gun.  The accomplice turns out to be a rather gentle deli owner named “Knish” Levin (Ludwig Donath).  And the gun dealer turns out to be Mr. Johnson (James O”Rear), the same gun dealer who sold Casey her first gun.  (This episode implies that members of the police force have to buy their own guns, which sounds a bit odd.)  Needless to say, when Casey convinces Knish to introduce her to his dealer, Johnson immediately recognizes her.

This episode had a lot of New York location footage.  The scene where Knish leads Casey to Johnson took us from Wallstreet to the waterfront.  Indeed, the locations shots were the best thing about this episode.  The acting in this episode was, by Decoy standards, subpar, with even the usually reliable Beverly Garland struggling to sell her lines.  Unfortunately, this episode’s plot required Casey to make a lot of foolish mistakes, like going to see the gun dealer without proper backup.  I liked the fact that Knish wasn’t portrayed as being a typical thug but otherwise, this episode just didn’t work.

Brad reviews PROJECT GUTENBERG (2018), starring Chow Yun-Fat & Aaron Kwok!

Posted on by Bradley Crain

There was a time when Chow Yun-Fat was one of the hardest working actors in show business. He had 11 different films come out in 1987 alone, and his dedication to making movies would eventually lead him to superstardom all around the world by the turn of the century. Alas, even the greats must eventually slow down and by the end of the 2010’s, it felt like he had practically retired. He only starred in one film between 2017 and 2019. That film was 2018’s PROJECT GUTENBERG, and to say I was looking forward to the film would be quite the understatement. The filmmakers knew how to draw me in as the trailer recreated Chow’s famous scene from A BETTER TOMORROW where he lights his cigarette with a counterfeit $100 bill. The movie promised to play up his most iconic on-screen images, and I was down for it!

PROJECT GUTENBERG introduces us to an artist named Lee Man (Aaron Kwok), who’s been arrested in Thailand and taken to Hong Kong. The local police interrogate him for information about a ruthless counterfeiter known as “Painter.” Reluctant to talk at first due to fear, Lee is convinced that he must provide some information, or he could spend the rest of his life in jail. He eventually begins to tell the story of his time with the elusive criminal mastermind, played by Chow Yun-fat, through a series of flashbacks. Director Felix Chong (writer of the INFERNAL AFFAIRS and OVERHEARD trilogies) has crafted a story that seems like the confession of small fish being used to bait a big fish, before eventually turning into something much more sinister and fascinating. I won’t say anything else about the plot as there’s much fun to be had in watching it unravel!

I’m going to state right up front that Chow Yun-Fat is in prime form. Some actors age with grace, and then there’s the 63-year-old Chow of this film, who’s managed to age with almost a mythic gravitas. This film masterfully highlights his incredible charisma, recreates iconic images of his past gunplay, and then turns it all on its head by making Painter into one of the most evil bastards he’s ever played on screen! It’s an incredible use of his legendary career to provide levels of depth that no words on paper ever could.

Even with the iconic images of Chow Yun-Fat, PROJECT GUTENBERG would not work nearly as well if it wasn’t also a captivating crime thriller. Its counterfeit money operations, double-crosses, gun battles and international intrigue pulled me in, and I found myself on the edge of my seat at times as the story unfolded. The last 30 minutes of the film made me question everything I’d seen up to that point, but in a way that did not take away one moment of my enjoyment. It’s not a completely unique ending, as film lovers will certainly notice, but it works.  

Aaron Kwok’s character of Lee Man is weak in comparison to Painter, but the actor navigates the tightrope of showing just enough emotional desperation that we understand why he’s doing what he does. When the plot starts taking some crazy twists and turns, I was still right there with him. I’ve always liked Aaron Kwok, and even with his bad haircut in the film, I still thought he did a fine job. I also want to shoutout actress Zhang Jingchu (RUSH HOUR 3, OVERHEARD), who plays the woman that Lee Man loves. Her character drives a lot of Lee’s actions in the film, and I found her very beautiful and compelling. Last, but not least, Liu Kai Chi (KILL ZONE, CALL OF HEROES) gets one of the best supporting roles in the film as a vital member of the counterfeiting team who befriends Lee before making an unforgivable mistake.    

PROJECT GUTENBERG was a critical and box office smash when it was released in China in the fall of 2018. It won Best Picture, Director, Screenplay, Cinematography and Editing at the 2019 Hong Kong Film Awards. On a budget of around $40 million dollars, it would bring in over $150 million in China alone, on its way to around $200 million worldwide. It’s a slick crime thriller that serves as a reminder that in the right role, Chow Yun-fat is still one of the great movie stars on the planet. This film understands that, bet the house, and won big.

PROJECT GUTENBERG is currently streaming on the free “Fawesome” streaming service.

Late Night Retro Television Review: 1st & Ten 3.13 “Championship Jinx”

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 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, season 3 comes to an end.

Episode 3.13 “Championship Jinx”

(Dir by Bruce Seth Green, originally aired on December 16th, 1987)

Things have a way of working themselves out on 1st & Ten, especially when the season ends and a lot of plotlines need to be hastily wrapped up.

Last week, TD Parker (OJ Simpson) was arrested under suspicion of ticket scalping.  This episode, it turned out that 1) ticket scalping isn’t illegal and 2) TD’s ex-mistress quickly figured out that her boyfriend was trying to frame him.  Someone trying to frame OJ Simpson!?  Like anyone would ever buy that.  Anyway, the main theme here seemed to be that it was a good thing TD cheated on his wife because otherwise, no one would have been around to exonerate him.

Last week, Yinessa was letting fame go to his head.  This week, his father died and the funeral was a media circus.  Yinessa decided to focus on playing football. That’s a good thing, seeing as how the Bulls had yet another championship game coming up.

Zagreb was concerned that he was a jinx after he appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated.  (Yinessa told him that players who appeared on the cover often lost the spark afterwards.) Luckily, Cliff and Jethro brought in a voodoo priestess (Roxie Roker) to exorcise the jinx.

Before the game, Jill told the team that they weren’t only playing for themselves.  They were playing for the memory of Tom Yinessa’s father.  Unfortunately, the Bulls lost the game at the last minute when Billy Cooper’s game-winning catch was reviewed by the booth and declared to be out of bounds.  So, I guess Yinessa’s father is in Hell now.

And so ends the rather odd third season.  Coach Denardo left after the first episode.  Delta Burke left about halfway through the season, just to be replaced by a new female owner who gave a pre-game speech that referred to all of the previous times she had gone to the Championship Game with the Bulls just to see them lose, despite the fact that she wasn’t even a part of the show’s cast during the previous two seasons.  The season began with a player dying of steroid abuse and ended with OJ Simpson proving his innocence.  Oh!  And Zagreb discovered his father was a CIA agent and then he got married.

Was it a good season?  Not really.  This isn’t a good show.  But season 3 was definitely a lot stranger than the previous two seasons and that’s definitely a point in 1st & Ten‘s favor.

Next week, we start season 4!

Retro Television Review: The Love Boat 7.18 “Ace in the Hole/Uncle Joey’s Song/Father in the Cradle”

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 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!

This week, the Love Boat gets a new photographer!

Episode 7.18 “Ace in the Hole/Uncle Joey’s Song/Father in the Cradle”

(Dir by Richard Kinon, originally aired on January 28th, 1984)

This episode featured the usual three story structure.  One story I was indifferent too.  One story kept me entertained.  And one story made me cry.

The story made me cry featured Barnard Hughes as Joseph Stobble, a former kids’s show host who has retired because he feels too old for kids to relate to.  Isaac grew up watching Uncle Joey and even gives Uncle Joey a replica of Flapjack, the sock puppet that served as Uncle Joey’s sidekick.  Uncle Joey meets Scott Russell (David Faustino), a child who has recently lost his father.  Uncle Joey helps Scott deal with his emotions by assuring him that it’s okay to cry.

I cried!  Hell, I’m crying just typing this up.  Now, I should clarify that I have a reason for crying.  The end of May will also be the two-year anniversary of the auto accident that eventually led to my father’s passing on August 19th, 2024.  To  be honest, there hasn’t been a day over the past two weeks that I haven’t cried at some point.  When my father died, I threw myself into taking care of my aunt.  After  my aunt died (and she died exactly one year after my father), I threw myself into trying to make the holidays perfect for my sisters.  And, after that, I threw myself into cleaning the house.  Looking back, I understand that I kept throwing myself into new activities because I was trying to outrun just how sad I was.  It’s only now that it’s finally all hitting me.

Would I have cried over Uncle Joey’s story if I wasn’t currently feeling sad?  I think I would have.  It was a sweet story featuring good work from Hughes, Faustino, and the always reliable Ted Lange.

As for the indifferent story, it featured Larry (Michael Spound) getting upset when he meets his mother’s (Lee Meriwether) new husband (Dean-Paul Martin).  It turns out the son and the stepdad are both the same age!  It was kind of boring, to be honest.

Finally, the third story featured Ted McGinley — yay! — as Ashley “Ace” Covington Evans, the new ship’s photographer!  Gopher hired him but he soon regrets it when all the women on board fall for Ave instead of Doc and Gopher.  However, Ace has a problem.  He’s a good photographer but he doesn’t know how to develop film!   (My first thought was that surely someone on the ship had to have a laptop and a printer but then I realized that this was apparently before the age of even digital cameras.)  The ship’s passengers and Stubing are curious as to why Ace hasn’t put up any of the pictures that he’s taken.  Vicki and Julia help out by putting up a bunch of pictures from a past cruise….

(Uhmm, how would that help?  I would assume that the passengers would expect to see pictures of themselves.)

Ace comes clean to the Captain and offers to spend three weeks learning how to develop film.  “Then we shall see you in three weeks,” a very understanding Stubing replies.  (Stubing perhaps knows that Vicki would never forgive him for firing Ace.)

Why did this story work so well?  Ted McGinley, that’s why!  And now, apparently, Ted’s a new cast member.  YAY!  The Love Boat is going to be better than ever!

Brad reviews THE STORY OF WOO VIET (1981), starring Chow Yun-Fat!

Posted on by Bradley Crain

When I became obsessed with Chow Yun-Fat in the latter half of the 1990’s, I would constantly search for his movies at the Suncoast Video Store in the Park Plaza Mall whenever we’d go to Little Rock. Unfortunately, I’d run into cheap looking DVDs with titles like “God of Killers,” but I’d buy them anyway. That’s the title under which I first attempted to watch THE STORY OF WOO VIET, starring a young Chow-Yun-Fat and directed by Hong Kong legend Ann Hui. Whoever distributed the film was making a blatant cash grab on Chow Yun-Fat’s worldwide popularity at the time, and the DVD was terrible. I turned it off after a little while because the print was so dark you could barely see it, and the subtitles were illegible, constantly falling off the screen. I had not attempted to watch the film again until very recently. My friends on “Podcast on Fire” devoted an episode to THE STORY OF WOO VIET, which piqued my interest again. Lo and behold, I found a fine print with English subtitles streaming on Tubi!

As the story starts, we meet Woo Viet (Chow Yun-Fat) on a boat full of starving refugees. We learn that he’s a former Vietnamese soldier escaping to Hong Kong in hopes of making his way to the United States. It’s a tough start as we see a baby die of malnourishment and an old man murdered by Vietnamese special agents, which leads to Woo Viet fighting off and killing those same agents, all within the first 15 minutes. On the run for murder, he’s lucky that his Hong Kong pen pal, social worker Lap-Quan (Cora Miao), can help him get fake papers for his escape to the United States. As he’s getting ready to leave, he meets the beautiful Shum Ching (Cherie Chung), who’s also using fake documents to get to the U.S. Unfortunately, the Hong Kong trafficker who’s supposed to be helping them, has sold Shum Ching to a powerful gangster in the Philippines with plans to turn her into a prostitute. When she’s taken away from the Manila airport, Woo Viet goes after her. Unable to kick enough ass to save her, he ends up working as a hired gun for her kidnapper in hopes of buying her freedom. Throw in Shaw Brothers legend Lo Lieh as Sarm, Woo Viet’s partner in crime in Manila, and the stage is set for an escape to a better tomorrow or loneliness and a quick death.

After viewing the film, it’s probably best that I couldn’t watch THE STORY OF WOO VIET back in the late 1990’s. At that time, I wanted Chow Yun-Fat as the honorable gangster of films like A BETTER TOMORROW and THE KILLER, or the badass cop of HARD-BOILED. I could not have appreciated director Ann Hui’s work here, the second film in her “Viet Nam trilogy.” Gritty and downbeat, it’s about as far away from John Woo’s stylish films as you can get. When the violence comes, it lands with a painful thud as nails enter heads, knives slash bodies, and even toothbrushes are shoved through cheeks. This is Ann Hui working within a genre film plotline while infusing it with something akin to bleak realism. She would go on to develop her legendary career with the next year’s BOAT PEOPLE, and she would use Chow a couple of more times in films like LOVE IN A FALLEN CITY and THE POSTMODERN LIFE OF MY AUNT. This is not peak Ann Hui, but she still brings something interesting to this early effort.

As far as the performances go, Chow may have been 5 years away from the superstardom of A BETTER TOMORROW, but he already had what it took to be a film lead. Even in a film like this, without his heroic bloodshed honor, he has a way of making it look easy. Cherie Chung is appealing as Shum Ching, and she was soon on her way to film stardom in Hong Kong hits like PEKING OPERA BLUES, AN AUTUMN’S TALE (with Chow), and John Woo’s ONCE A THIEF (also with Chow). Like many Hong Kong actresses before her, after a string of successful films she would get married and retire in 1991. I like Cora Miao early in the film as the kind social worker, but she fades as the film progresses. Miao would work with Chow and Ann Hui frequently throughout the 80’s. Like Chung, she retired in 1991 and married director Wayne Wang (THE JOY LUCK CLUB). Finally, I wanted to give a shoutout to Lo Lieh as Woo Viet’s one friend, Sarm. While he may be known best for his classic work with Shaw Brothers in films like the FIVE FINGERS OF DEATH and THE 36TH CHAMBER OF SHAOLIN, he gives a solid character performance here and would go on to work in Hong Kong for another two decades.

THE STORY OF WOO VIET is not at the top of the list of films that Hong Kong legends Chow Yun-Fat and Ann Hui would work on, but it’s still an important watch to see their obvious talent at this point in their careers. I’m glad I finally watched the film in 2026. After all the life I’ve lived since those days digging through the DVDs at the Park Plaza Mall, there’s no way it could have hit me the same way then that it does now.