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Late Night Retro Television Review: Highway to Heaven 2.10 “The Monster: Part One”

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 Highway to Heaven, which aired on NBC from 1984 to 1989.  The entire show is currently streaming on Freevee and several other services!

Scottie returns!  Unfortunately, he’s a drunk now.

Episode 2.10 “The Monster: Part One”

(Dir by Victor French, originally aired on December 4th, 1985)

It’s another week and another visit to a small town for Jonathan and Mark.

This time, Mark thinks that they are only in town to visit his cousin, Diane (Margie Impert), and her husband, Scottie (James Troesch), the quadriplegic attorney who appeared in a few episodes during the first season.  Mark tells Jonathan that, when he last spoke to Diane, she said that she had something important to talk to him about.  Mark assumes that Diane is pregnant but actually, it turns out that Diane and Scottie’s marriage is in trouble.  Scottie may be an attorney but he has no clients and Diane has gone back to work to help pay the bills.  Feeling like a failure, Scottie has taken to drinking.

While Mark deals with Diane and Scottie, Jonathan has an assignment.  He working as a handyman for Ella McCullough (Barbara Townsend) and her blind daughter, Rachel (Annabella Price).  At first, Rachel is bitter and stand-offish but Jonathan wins her over by encouraging her to leave her little cottage and explore the world.  While relaxing at a nearby creek, Rachel meets a man (Jeff Kober) who is out for a walk.  Rachel tells the man that he startled her and then mentions that the neighborhood kids talk about a monster named Julian.  Julian lives in the woods and drags off bad kids.

“My name’s Clark,” the man lies.

Actually, the man’s name is Julian but you can understand why he might not want to admit that after listening to Rachel describe him as being a monster.  Julian is not a monster, of course.  He’s a sensitive sculptor who just happens to have a very large birthmark covering half of his face and neck.  Having been ridiculed all of his life, Julian lives with his mom (Ann Doran) and rarely talks to anyone.  Still, Julian falls in love with Rachel and Rachel falls in love with …. Clark.

Julian finally finds the strength to visit Rachel at her cottage.  However, when she tells him that she will be having an operation to resort her sight, Clark yells that he’s Julian and then he runs back into the woods.  Rachel chases after him.  When she trips and hits her head on a rock, Julian runs over to her and tries to help.  Unfortunately, that’s when the police arrives and promptly arrest Julian for assault.

Julian’s going to court!  Hey, does anyone know an attorney who needs a shot of confidence and who has a unique understanding of what it’s like to be an outsider?  We’ll find out next week because this is a two-part episode!

Reviewing a two-parter is always difficult.  Tonight’s episode ends with the story nowhere close to being finished.  I can’t judge the overall story but I can say that Jeff Kober gave a touching performance as Julian and he was the best thing about the first part of The Monster.  As for Scottie, he needs to stop blaming everyone else for his own lack of confidence.  Hopefully, that’s a lesson he’ll learn during the second part of this episode.

We’ll find out next week!

The Films of 2024: The Painter (dir by Kimani Ray Smith)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The Painter tells the rather predictable story of Peter.

Orphaned by a terrorist attack when he was a child, Peter (Charlie Webber) was raised by a CIA agent named Byrne (Jon Voight).  Realizing that the attack had left Peter with superhearing, Byrne raised Peter to be a CIA assassin.  But after a failed mission led to the shooting his pregnant wife, Elena (Rryla McIntosh), an embittered Peter retired from the agency.  Now, going by the name of Mark, he paints!

Why do retired CIA agents always end up living in a cabin and obsessively pursuing only one hobby?  This feels like the 100th film that I’ve seen about a former assassin living in a cabin.  Some retired agents keep bees.  Some become bricklayers.  Some become painters.  Oddly, none of them seem to become both bricklayers and painters.

Anyway, Peter is happy with his isolated life but then, everything is upended when a 17 year-old girl named Sophia (Madison Bailey) follows him to his cabin and claims to be his daughter.  She says that Elena has vanished and she needs Peter’s help to find her.  Peter insists that his name is Mark until his superhearing picks up the sound of heavily armed men gathering outside of his cabin.

This is another one of those action films where the main character is someone who kills without the slightest hesitation and who has trouble showing his emotions.  Naturally, there’s a conspiracy inside the CIA and this leads to several scenes of people saying stuff like, “Copy that.”  The only fictional character who ever sounded cool saying, “Copy that,” was Kiefer Sutherland on 24.  All the rest of these people are just pretenders.

The Painter is pretty stupid.  It won’t take you long to guess who the main villain is going to turn out to be and it also won’t take you long to guess how the final showdown is going to go.  The action scenes are so haphazardly edited that it’s difficult to keep track of who is actually fighting who and, even if you did know who was fighting who, you wouldn’t really care because none of these people are particularly compelling.

In general, if your main character is going to be remorseless killer, it’s a good idea to cast a charismatic actor in the lead role.  Audiences will forgive a lot as long as their watching someone with a compelling screen presence.  Unfortunately, both Charlie Webber and Madison Bailey give rather bland performances and neither Peter nor Sophia are particularly likable characters.  In particular, Peter drags one innocent computer store owner into his mess and then doesn’t seem to be particularly upset when the poor guy ends up with a bullet in his brain.  It’s one thing to be an assassin.  It’s another thing to be a jerk about it.

On the plus side, Jon Voight is enough of an old pro to understand that this is a movie that does not reward subtlety and he gives a performance that is totally over-the-top but which is also more than appropriate for the material with which he’s working.  (Voight is still a talented actor and it’s a shame that, due to voting for different candidates than the majority of Hollywood, he’s pretty much going to end his career appearing in movies like this.)  As well, Max Montesi gives such a cheerfully bizarre performance as a rival assassin that he actually bring the movie to life whenever he’s on the screen.

Unfortunately, the lunacy of Voight and Montesi is not enough to save The Painter.  At one point, someone dismisses Peter’s paintings as being “derivative.”  They could have been talking about this film as a whole.

Retro Television Review: Malibu, CA 1.3 “Miss Malibu”

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 Malibu CA, which aired in Syndication in 1998 and 1999.  The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!

I was warned about this episode.

Episode 1.3 “Miss Malibu”

(Dir by Gary Shimokawa, originally aired on October 25th, 1998)

Wow, check out these two douchebags!

On the left, we’ve got Scott, who is supposed to be the studious brother.  On the right, we’ve got Jason, who is supposed to be the cool brother.  It can be difficult to keep the two of them straight, even though they don’t really resemble each other physically.  The problem is that neither really has much of a personality, beyond taking off their shirt and staring at girls.

Their father is going to convention in Las Vegas so he leaves the twins in charge of the restaurant.  Why would he do that?  We’re only three episodes in Malibu, CA but every episode so far has featured these two idiots doing something stupid with the restaurant.  Does the restaurant not have an assistant manager who could run the place?

Before leaving, their father tells Scott and Jason to be sure to feed the fish in the restaurant’s aquarium.  Dumbass Scott (or maybe it was Jason) is so distracted by Samantha and her friends that he accidentally dumps a bunch of bacon bits into the aquarium and kills a goldfish.  Scott and Jason assume that they’ve killed their father’s favorite fish, Goldie.  They’re worried that their father is going to be mad at them.  Personally, I think they should think about the fact that they killed an animal that was depending on them to do the bare minimum to keep it alive.

Maybe they can buy a new fish!  The only problem is that the goldfish was an extremely rare breed and it will cost them $500 to get a new one.  How can they raise $500?  Maybe they should take it out of the restaurant’s cash registers.  Maybe they should pawn some of their expensive belongings.  Maybe they should ask their rich friend Murray for a loan.  Maybe they should just tell their Dad the truth because, sadly, fish do die.  They can leave out the fact that they murdered the fish, if they want.

Instead of doing any of that, they decide to throw a fake beauty contest.

WHAT!?

They’ll charge every one an entry free and advertise the contest as coming with a $500 prize.  But, since Jason, Scott, and Murray will be the judges, they’ll just announce that Sam is the winner and then Sam will give them back the prize.  Seriously, this is the plan they come up with.  Out of everything that they could have done, this is what they do.

Here’s why this is a dumb plan.  To let people know about the fake Miss Malibu contest, they have to print up signs.  They have to find time to hang up the signs around town.  They have to print up entry forms.  In fact, if they’re going to get enough people to enter to raise $500, they’re going to have to print up and copy a lot of entry forms.  They’re going to have to rent out a spot on the beach to hold the contest.  They’re going to have to install a lighting and sound system for the pageant.  It’s going to cost them way more than just $500 to hold a fake beauty contest.  If they have $500 for this, why don’t they have $500 for a new fish?

Sam is reluctant to go along with the plan so Scott and Jason, as if they weren’t already unlikable enough, lie to her and tell her that their father is a recovering alcoholic and losing the fish will cause him to start drinking and driving again.  Seriously, what the Hell?  Sam agrees to enter the pageant but then the plan hits another snag when Sam has an allergic reaction to her tanning lotion and her face turns orange.  Jason and Scott decide to asks Stads to enter as their ringer.  When Stads says she doesn’t like the way beauty pageants demean women, Scott removes his shirt and shows off his muscles until Stads agrees to help.  Wow, Scott — way to take advantage of the fact that a really nice person has a crush on you.  WHAT A DOUCHEBAG!

Anyway, I feel like I’ve already wasted too much time on this so I’ll cut to the chase.  The pageant does not raise enough money to pay for the new fish but Stads once again demeans herself and pretends to be Jason and Scott’s younger sister when she asks the fish salesman to give them the replacement fish at a lower price.  (Does Stads have any self-respect?)  Scott and Jason put the new fish in the aquarium but then it turns out that Goldie wasn’t the fish that died.  Instead, Goldie is a big gray fish that their father named after Goldie Hawn.

Wow, funny.

You may have guessed I did not care much for this episode.  The main problem is that Jason and Scott are so incredibly unlikable that it’s impossible to root for them.  They did the wrong thing, they exploited their friends, and they didn’t even really seem to appreciate the fact that Stads abandoned her principles to help them out.  Zach Morris and even California Dreams’s Sly Winkle would have at least felt a smidgen of guilt.  But Jason and Scott are just jerks.

Ugh, what a terrible 23-minute viewing experience!

Will next week be better?  Probably not.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Monsters 2.8 “The Demons”

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 Monsters, which aired in syndication from 1988 to 1991. The entire series is streaming on YouTube.

This week, Monsters gives us the story of several Arthurs.  Unfortunately, it’s not a very good story.

Episode 2.8 “The Demons”

(Dir by Scott Alexander, originally aired on November 19th, 1989)

On an alien planet, an alchemist named Arturus (Richard Moll) is desperate to get more of something that he calls “Drast.”  He decides that the best way to do this would be to summon a demon and demand that the demon give the Drast to him.  However, when Arturus tries to cast the spell, he makes a mistake and he ends up summoning a human insurance agent named Arthur (Jeff Silverman).  It takes a while but Arthur eventually figures out that he is Arturus’s human equivalent and that “Drast” is actually gold.  Arthur lies and tells Arturus that he has to go back to Earth to get the Drast.

Once he returns to Earth, Arthur decides to cast his own spell and summon a demon to help him break free from Arturus.  Since Arthur uses the same spell the Arturus used, he makes the same mistake and he ends up summoning Arturo (Eddie Deezen), a nerdy, red-skinned, dog-faced creature from another dimension who, it turns out, is just as obsessed with insurance as Arthur is.  Arthur sends Arturo to take care of Arturus, which Arturo does.  For some reason, Arturo taking care of Arturus largely takes place off-screen.  Having the main villain thwarted off-screen really does leave one wondering just what exactly the point of the story was in the first place.

Most of the previous episodes of Monsters had elements of humor to them.  This is the first episode to actually be a straight-out comedy and it doesn’t work at all.  Richard Moll and especially Eddie Deezen do manage to be amusing but the majority of the episode is centered around Jeff Silverman’s Arthur.  Silverman spends a lot of time frantically running around his house and yelling.  It gets to be a bit annoying.  The episode is so determined to convince you that it’s hysterically funny that it ends up beating the audience over the head with every punchline and basically begging the viewer to laugh.  There’s a desperation to the show’s humor and it quickly wears out its welcome.  Even potentially interesting ideas — like both Arturus and Arthur screwing up the same spell in the same way — ultimately fall flat.  Watching this episode, I was very much aware of the feeling of wanting to like what I was seeing considerably more than I actually did.

As I mentioned earlier, Eddie Deezen is really the only consistently funny thing about this episode.  The combination of his nerdiness and his fearsome appearance made me laugh more than I was expecting.  Sadly, I know Eddie Deezen has recently had to deal with some pretty serious health issues.  I’m hoping the best for him.

Next week’s episode will hopefully be a bit better.

The Films of 2024: Wanted Man (dir by Dolph Lundgren)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Johansen (Dolph Lundgren) is a San Diego cop who remains on the force despite the fact that most of his old friends and former partners have retired.  When he’s filmed beating up a Mexican man on the highway, he becomes the latest target of the Defund The Police movement.  It doesn’t matter that the man was a human trafficker who was driving truck full of kidnapped women.  Johansen has become an embarrassment.

Normally, you would think this would lead to Johansen being fired or, at the very least, suspended.  Instead, his bosses decide to send him to Mexico to escort two prisoners back to the United States.  Rosa (Christina Villa) and Leticia (Daniela Soto-Brenner) are two sex workers who witnessed the murder of a group of DEA agents.  Their testimony could be key to identifying the killers.  Despite his friend and former partner, Brynner (Kelsey Grammer), telling him that he should just retire rather than allow the police department to continually push him around, Johansen heads down to Mexico.

It turns out that bringing the women back to the United States is not going to be easy.  A roadside ambush leaves Leticia dead and Johansen severely wounded.  Though Rosa’s initial instinct is to abandon Johansen in the desert, she eventually takes him to the home of her cousin, a police officer named Miguel (Rocko Reyes).  As Johansen recovers, he discovers that the people who want Rosa dead are not going to give up and that he cannot trust anyone.

Let’s give some credit where credit is due.  Dolph Lundgren knows how to direct an efficient B-movie.  He has an adequate visual eye, he makes good use of the arid desert setting, and he gets believable performances out of the majority of his cast.  Christina Villa especially does a good job as the tough but ultimately kind-hearted Rosa.  The movie has a bit more going on underneath the surface than the typical B-action film.  Johansen is forced to reconsider his own prejudices while the film’s villains argue that they were forced into their actions by a society that refuses to take care of those who are expected to risk their lives to protect the status quo.  It’s not a dumb movie, though it does feature a lot of characters doing rather dumb things and the big twist demands that the viewer accept one too many coincidences.

Lundgren not only directed but co-wrote the script.  Apparently, he first came up with the idea of the film in 2006.  Interestingly, it’s obvious that the film went into production when Defund The Police was still a strong and powerful political movement and the film itself ultimately suggests that the police should be, if not defunded, at least massively reformed.  Of course, by the time the film was released in January, the Defund movement was considerably less powerful and was being blamed for the sharp increase in crime across the nation.  Chants of “Defund the police” have been replaced by cries of “Fund the police, for the love of God!”  That’s the danger which trying to make a film with a political subtext in an age with a 24-hour news cycle.  What was popular when a film goes into production will often be a spent force by the time the film actually gets released.

As for Wanted Man, it’s an efficient B-movie that gets the job done.  If nothing else, the sight of Dolph Lundgren and Kelsey Grammer playing best friends is just weird enough to keep things watchable.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Baywatch Nights 2.4 “The Strike”

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 Tuesdays, I will be reviewing Baywatch Nights, a detective show that ran in Syndication from 1995 to 1997.  The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!

This week, Mitch is struck by lightning!

Episode 2.4 “The Strike”

(Dir by David W. Hagar, originally aired on October 20th, 1996)

While working as a lifeguard, Mitch saves a young man named Jake (Sean Blodgett) from drowning.  However, no sooner has Mitch pulled Jake out of the ocean and shaken his hand than they are struck by a sudden lightning bolt.  (Being struck by lightning is a scary thing but I have to admit that I chuckled a bit at the random lighting bolt in this episode.  It seriously just came out of nowhere!)  A bunch of Baywatch lifeguards run out to rescue both Mitch and Jake.  What’s interesting is that none of these lifeguards were from the main series.  (Seriously, I would have thought that at least Michael Newman would have shown up.)  Baywatch Nights was trading on the Baywatch name but, other than David Hasselhoff, it couldn’t afford any of the Baywatch actors.

Due to being struck by lightning (and, oddly, the show seems to suggest that the lightning truly was just a random thing that happened), Mitch and Jake become psychically linked.  Mitch can hear Jake’s thoughts in his mind and when it becomes obvious that Jake is an alien being pursued by a mysterious organization, Mitch, Ryan, and Daimont set out to track Jake down and rescue him.

This episode, with its hints of government cover-ups and alien conspiracies, owes a lot to The X-Files.  (Actually, the entire second season of Baywatch Nights owes a considerable debt to The X-Files.)  As a student of conspiracy theories (albeit a skeptical one), I appreciated the episode’s attempt to create a genuine atmosphere of paranoia.  That said, this is still Baywatch Nights and that means that the majority of the episode was basically Mitch and Jake being chased from one location to another.  It all got to be a bit repetitive but it remained entertaining.

The best part of this episode is that it allows David Hasselhoff to embrace his inner William Shatner.  Hasselhoff has always been a natural overactor and he’s at his most likable when he’s not being at all subtle.  This episode not only features the Hoff getting mad about a conspiracy but it also involves a few scenes where he starts to speak in Jake’s voice as a result of their mind-meld.  Hasselhoff throw himself into the performance.  Again, there’s nothing subtle about any of it but that’s the Hasselhoff charm.  As a friend of mine once said while we were watching Starcrash, “Every country should have a Hoff.”

This episode ends on a sad note, which gives Hasselhoff an excuse to get teary-eyed.  How can Mitch continue to be a skeptic after everything that he sees in this episode?  Will he finally be willing to admit that there are things out there that cannot be rationally explained?  You would think so but Mitch can be remarkably stubborn.  We’ll find out next week!

The Films of 2024: Madame Web (dir by S.J. Clarkson)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Cassie Webb (Dakota Johnson) is a paramedic in New York City.  Haunted by the fact that her mother died while giving birth to her while looking for a special spider in Peru (and I cannot believe that I just wrote that), Cassie struggles with showing her emotions and opening up to people.  In fact, her only friend appears to be her fellow paramedic, Ben Parker (Adam Scott).  Ben’s sister-in-law is pregnant and Cassie tells him, “You’ll be a great uncle, Ben.”

After a near-death experience, Cassie discovers that she has the ability to see into the future.  She also discovers that a strange man named Ezekiel (Tahar Rahim) wants to kill three teenage girls, Mattie (Celeste O’Connor), Anya (Isabela Merced), and Julia (Sydney Sweeney).  Cassie does what anyone would do.  She kidnaps the three girls to keep them safe and then hops on a plane to Peru to find out how Ezekiel is connected to her mother’s death.

Madame Web is the latest entry in Sony’s Spider-Man Universe.  Because Sony has the rights to Spider-Man, all of the MCU films featuring Spider-Man have been co-productions with Columbia Pictures and have been distributed by Sony.  With Spider-Man emerging as one of the few characters to remain a strong box office draw for Marvel, Columbia has produced a series of Spider-Man-adjacent films that feature characters who have appeared in Spider-Man-related media.  While Marvel and Disney have Tom Holland swinging his way through New York, Sony has to settle for Adam Scott and Dakota Johnson in an ambulance.

I always assume that the folks at Marvel and Disney probably groan a little whenever they hear that a new Sony film is coming out.  The MCU Spider-Man films have been consistently strong, with all three of them proving popular with both audiences and critics.  The Sony Spider-Man films, on the other hand, often seem like throwbacks to the bad old days of the early aughts, when most comic book films were still cheap and kind of embarrassing.  Madame Web doesn’t do much to change this perception.  In fact, the film is even set in 2003, complete with a Blockbuster Video store prominently featured in one scene, Britney Spears’s Toxic playing in a roadside diner, and a totally random reference to American Idol.  (What’s funny is that the jokey reference to American Idol would really only work if the show were no longer on the air but actually, it’s still airing on CBS.  No one ever seems to notice anymore but it’s still there.  If the movie really had any guts, it would have had Dakota Johnson says that she was going home to watch Paradise Hotel.)

Slow-paced and featuring some of the most awkward line readings this side of a community theater production of Bus Stop, Madame Web is not a particularly engaging film.  After a truly abysmal prologue set in Peru, the film spends about half-an-hour giving us a tour of Cassie’s not particularly interesting life as a tough New York paramedic before finally getting started on the main story.  And even then, the film leaves the viewer feeling cheated because none of three girls — who we are told are all destined to become super heroes — actually become super powered over the course of the film.  The film basically says, “They’re all going to be Spiderwoman …. BUT NOT TODAY!”   The problem with that approach is that it’s hard not to feel that the only interesting thing about the three girls is that they’re eventually going to have super powers.  Without the powers, they’re just kind of boring.  Cassie is the only one who has a super power but being able to see three minutes into the future isn’t that much of a power.  Dakota Johnson and the rest of the cast all seem to be bored out of their minds and who can blame them?

The main problem with Madame Web is that it’s just not much fun.  The best super hero films are fun to watch.  That goes for the Marvel films, the DC films, and even the Sony films.  (Admit it, the first Venom was kind of fun.)  Even with The Dark Knight films, Christopher Nolan understood that the villains had to be flamboyant to make up for Christian Bale’s rather dour Batman.  In this film, we’re never quite sure what Ezekiel wants or even who he is.  He’s just a random evil guy and not a particularly memorable one.  Madame Web does make some attempts at humor but the sitcom-style jokes are negated by Dakota Johnson’s flat delivery.  (Oddly enough, sitcom veteran Adam Scott is stuck playing a serious character.)  Overall, there’s an overwhelming blandness to Madame Web.  It doesn’t engage,.  It doesn’t thrill.  It doesn’t make you cheer or even jeer.  It’s just kind of there.

The film sets up a sequel but, judging from how the film did at the box office and how not even the film’s cast has pretended to be happy with how the film turned out, I’d expect to see Morbius 2 before another installment of Madame Web. 

Retro Television Review: Fantasy Island 5.1 “Show Me A Hero/Slam Dunk”

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.  Almost the entire show is currently streaming on Daily Motion, YouTube, Plex, and a host of other sites.

Smiles, everyone, smiles!  It’s time to start the 5th season!

Episode 5.1 “Show Me A Hero/Slam Dunk”

(Dir by Phillip Leacock, originally aired on October 10th, 1981)

The fifth season brings some changes to Fantasy Island.

For instance, at the start of the season premiere, Roarke gifts Tattoo a platform that he can stand on while greeting and saying goodbye to the guests and so that he can, visually, be on equal footing with Mr. Roarke.  From what I’ve read, this was something that Herve Villechaize specifically requested as a condition for agreeing to continue with the show.  Considering that the previous season didn’t give Tattoo much to do, I can understand Villechaize’s logic.

The other big change is that Roarke has a new assistant.  His goddaughter, Julie (Wendy Schaal), has spent the summer working on Fantasy Island.  She only appears briefly in this episode, asking Mr. Roarke if she can greet the guests with him.  Roarke tells her that she’s not quite ready but perhaps next week, she will get the opportunity….

And really, Julie should feel good about that because neither fantasy is really that interesting this week.

Matt Kane (Sonny Bono) is a short sportswriter who wants to become a great basketball player and play for a team called the California Top Hatters (who the Hell came up with that name?) because he thinks that’s the only way that he’ll be able to win the heart of Ginger Donavon (Jenilee Harrison), the daughter of the team’s coach (Forrest Tucker).  Mr. Roarke warns Matt that there’s more to love than being able to play basketball but he still gives Matt a pair of magic sneakers.

Matt becomes a great basketball player.  (For some reason, the team is practicing on Fantasy Island).  Coach Donavon says that, if Matt wants a place on the team, he’ll have to beat out rookie sensation Skyhook Schuyler (Peter Isacksen).  Fortunately, Matt comes to realize that he can’t win Ginger by being the best player.  Instead, he has to be a better person.  He removes his shoes and bombs the try out.  But he gets to leave the island with Ginger.

Sonny Bono was a frequent guest star on both this show and The Love Boat.  He always played dorky guys who tried too hard to be cool.  That’s certainly the case here but what should be charming is made a bit bland by the total lack of chemistry between him and Jenilee Harrison.  On the plus side, Tattoo actually gets to do something in this fantasy, serving as a confidante to Skyhook.  It turns out that Skyhook is just as insecure about being tall as Tattoo is about being short.  To help Skyhook, Tattoo paints a picture of him so that Skyhook can see his kind soul.  Awwww!  Seriously, Herve Villechaize totally earned his right to stand on that platform.

As for the other fantasy, Helen Ross (Connie Stevens) is engaged to Ted Kingman (Martin Milner) but she can’t get over her former lover, John Day (David Hedison).  She thinks that John died while serving in the military but Mr. Roarke reveals that John actually survived the war and he lives on a nearby island.  Helen is reunited with John, just to discover that he’s a cad who faked his own death and became a deserter.  Helen leaves the Island feeling confident in her decision to marry Ted.

It’s only after she leaves that the truth is revealed.  Ted is currently serving a prison sentence.  Mr. Roarke arranged for Ted to have a weekend with freedom, on the condition that he lie about his situation to Helen so that she could move on from their failed romance.  So, basically, Mr. Roarke took Helen’s money and then lied to her.  Uhmm …. seriously, what the Hell, Mr. Roarke?

This was a bit of an underwhelming start for the fifth season but fear not!  Next week …. Roddy McDowall returns as the Devil and he wants Mr. Roarke’s soul!

Til then….

Late Night Retro Television Review: CHiPs 2.4 “Disaster Squad”

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 Freevee!

This week, Ponch attacks a reporter …. or does he?

Episode 2.4 “Disaster Squad”

(Dir by Gordon Hessler, originally aired on October 7th, 1978)

In a change-of-pace for this show, it’s Officer Jon Baker who gets a girlfriend in this week’s episode.  Ellen Roberts (Liberty Godshall) is a recently divorced woman with an annoying 4 year-old named Chris (Christian Zika).  Because Baker doesn’t want any kids around to ruin his action, he gets Ponch to hang out with Chris.  Fortunately, it turns out that Chris loves motorcycle and even owns his own mini-bike.

Impressed by how well Chris can handle his bike, Ponch enters Chris in a children’s dirt bike race.  When one of the other racers knocks Chris down in the middle of the race, an angry Chris says that he’s going to hit the other racer.  Ponch tells Chris to never hit anyone and he says that he’s ashamed to hear Chris speak like that.  Chris promises not to ever fight.

But then, the next morning, Chris turns on the TV and sees a report about Ponch punching out an obnoxious news reporter (Harvey Jason) who got in the way while Ponch and Jon were dealing with a suicidal motorist.  The anchorman (played by Regis Philbin!) then comes on TV and basically says that Ponch is the epitome of everything bad about the police.   Chris starts sobbing.  Ponch lied about not fighting!  Chris hops on his mini-bike and, still crying, drives away.

What Chris doesn’t know is that Ponch was set up.  Lee and the members of “the Disaster Squad” have been following Ponch and Baker around, filming accidents, and getting in the way.  (At one point, one of Lee’s men event tosses a road flair under a car that’s leaking oil, causing an explosion.)  Lee doctored the tape of an earlier confrontation with Ponch to make it appear the Ponch threatened and hit him.

But that doesn’t matter to Chris.  With tears flowing down his cheeks, he drives his little motorcycle into the Los Angeles river.  Fortunately, Ponch and Baker find him in time to save his life and teach him an important lesson about fake news.

This episode …. where to begin?  It opened with a good chase scene and it featured a truck flipping over so that was good.  But then bratty little Chris showed up and the whole episode went downhill.  The child playing Chris was, to be charitable, not exactly the world’s best actor and his over-the-top reaction to seeing Ponch hit someone was bit too silly to inspire anything other than a chuckle.  “Ponch said never to hit anyone!” Chris wails.  Well, kid, Ponch is a damn hypocrite.  Sorry.

It was all pretty silly.  Baker finally got to do something other than gaze at Ponch in amazement but, in the end, the story was still pretty much Ponch-centered.  One thing I noticed about this episode is that Getraer had absolutely no sympathy for Ponch, even though he believed Ponch was being set up.  Seriously, I get that Getraer has a lot to deal with but does he have to be a jerk all the time?

Next week …. Ponch and Baker continue to keep California safe!

The Films of 2024: Orion and the Dark (dir by Sean Charmatz)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 1995, an 11 year-old boy named Orion (voiced by Jacob Tremblay) lives in Philadelphia.

He has two loving parents.  He lives in a nice house.  He has his fist crush, on his classmate Sally (voiced by Shino Nakamichi).  He has a bully (voiced by Jack Fisher) who enjoys giving him a hard time and he has several notebooks full of his thoughts and drawings.  He also has a lot of fears.

Indeed, it’s his fears that largely define Orion.  Some of his fears are understandable.  I don’t like wasps or murder clowns either.  Some of his other fears are a bit more elaborate.  He’s scared of his bully but he’s even more scared of fighting his bully because he might accidentally break the bully’s nose and drive a piece of bone into the bully’s brain, therefore killing him.  His biggest fear, however, is his fear of the Dark.

In fact, Orion spends so much time talking about how much he hates the dark and how scared he is of the dark that Dark (Paul Walter Hauser) appears to him in human form and explain that he’s getting tired of Orion blaming him for anything.  Dark takes Orion with him as he travels across the world, bringing darkness to various countries and overseeing various other elements, like Sweet Dreams (Angela Bassett), Unexplained Noises (Golda Rosheuvel), Insomnia (Nat Faxon), Quiet (Aparna Nancherla), and Sleep (Natasia Demetriou).  Dark shows Orion that there’s no need to scared of the dark and that everyone involved is just doing their job.  Orion comes to understand and appreciate Dark but, when he makes the mistake of saying that he still kind of likes Light (voice by Ike Barinholtz) better, it leads to a lot of hurt feelings and resignations….

If this sounds a bit weird, one should keep in mind that the story is being told by the adult Orion (voiced by Colin Hanks) to his daughter, Hypathia (Mia Akemi Brown).  Adult Orion is telling the story to help Hypathia deal with her own fears and it soon becomes obvious that he’s making it up as he goes along.  Hypathia is aware of this and has no hesitation about calling out the stuff that doesn’t make any sense.  And when Orion proves incapable of coming up with a satisfactory ending for his story, Hypathia jumps into the story herself in an attempt to bring it all to a proper conclusion.  But once she’s in the story, can she get back out?

Orion and the Dark may sound like a standard “conquer your fears and believe in yourself” animated film but the script was written by Charlie Kaufman and, in typical Kaufman fashion, the story is full of twists and turns and more than a few moments of commentary on the whole act of storytelling itself.  There’s actually a lot going on in Orion and the Dark, with the film ultimately becoming a tribute to the power of imagination and to all of the parents-turned-storytellers in the world.

I’m a bit notorious for crying while watching animated films and I will say that Orion and the Dark brought tears to my eyes more than a few times.  It’s an incredibly sweet movie, one that can be appreciated by both children and adults.  It’s a movie about not just conquering fears but also using those fears to make oneself stronger.  The final message is that light cannot exist without the dark and vice versa but that’s okay.  There’s much to love in the light but the dark can be lovable too.  Fear is a part of life but it’s not the only part of life.

Creatively-animated and featuring a strong cast of voice actors, Orion and the Dark is definitely one to check out.