Tag Archives: review

Retro Television Review: The Love Boat 8.14 “Country Blues/A Matter of Taste/Frat Brothers Forever”

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, Adam’s old fraternity brother takes a cruise.  He’s got a secret!

Episode 8.14 “Country Blues/A Matter of Taste/Frat Brothers Forever”

(Dir by Jerome Courtland, originally aired on December 8th, 1984)

Simon (Farley Granger) and Valerie (Terry Moore) used to be lovers but now, they’re rival interior designers.  They are competing for the chance to redesign that ship’s cabins and, of course, they both end up sabotaging each other.  The Captain grows so frustrated that he decides that the cabins are fine just the way they are and I agree.  The cabins are functional and bland and they encourage the passengers to spend most of their time in either the lounge or at the pool.  As for Simon and Valerie, they realize that they’re still in love.  It’s a win-win-win for everyone.

Country singer Billy Bodine (Matt McCoy) falls in love with Arlene Cort (Leah Ayres), little realizing that she’s been bribed by his manager, Cappy (Claude Akins), to break his heart.  Billy writes his most popular songs when he’s depressed.  After she lies to him about having another lover, Arlene feels terrible, especially after she learns that she’s inspired Billy to write not just one but two songs about how heartbroken he is.  Arlene wants to come lean but, if Arlene confesses, she’ll lose her chance to be on the big Kenny Rogers television special.  Of course, Arlene does confesse.  Love is more important than Kenny.  Billy fires Cappy.  Cappy doesn’t care.  Cappy announces that he’s going to go into the pickle-selling business and make a million dollars.  Arlene finds love but she does lose her chance to be a big TV star.  So, this one is a win-lose-win.

Finally, Adam’s old frat brother, Buzz (Roy Thinnes), boards the ship with Jim Dolan (Michael McGrady).  Buzz says that Jim is his cousin.  Adam promises to find dates for both Buzz and Jim.  Uhmm, Adam, I don’t think Buzz and Jim are interested in the same dates that you are.

This was the first and only episode of The Love Boat to feature a gay couple and, to my surprise, their story was actually handled with a good deal of sensitivity.  Buzz fears that Adam won’t accept that he’s gay but he also doesn’t want to spend the entire cruise living a lie.  (Adam keeps trying to set Buzz and Jim up with every single woman on the cruise.)  When Buzz does come out to Adam, Adam is surprised but accepting.  I appreciated that this episode allowed Adam to have a realistic reaction to Buzz coming out as opposed to turning Adam into some sort of idealized perfect best friend.  Instead, Adam has the reaction that you would expect a good-hearted but old-fashioned boomer to have.  He’s surprised and, briefly, at a loss for words.  The fact that Adam does then accept Buzz for who he is and apologizes for his earlier surprise shows that people can continue to grow and learn, regardless of how old they may be.

Two of the stories were silly but the third one made up for them.  This wasn’t a bad cruise.

 

Late Night Retro Television Review: Pacific Blue 4.21 “Lucky 13”

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 Pacific Blue, a cop show that aired from 1996 to 2000 on the USA Network!  It’s currently streaming everywhere, though I’m watching it on Tubi.

This week, Pacific Blue explores the dark side!

Episode 4.21 “Lucky 13”

(Dir by Emily Skopov, originally aired on April 18th, 1999)

A murder at an occult shop leaves two witches dead.  Another witch is found barely alive on the beach, her body branded with alchemical signs.  The bike cops are dumbfounded.  I’m confused as to why there aren’t any Homicide detectives around.  And Granger …. well, Granger’s freaking out because he’s been having nightmares about his dead friend, Tim.

In this episode, Granger reveals that he knows a lot about occult symbols.  When TC demands to know why Granger knows so much (as if it’s any of TC’s business), Granger explains that he used to be into Satanism.  Obviously, this means that Granger can’t go undercover in this case.  As Cory puts it, it would be like sending a junkie into a drug den.  So, Jamie is the one who gets a job working at the occult shop and pretending to be into Satanism.

How bad is Jamie at working undercover? Well, let’s ignore the fact that there’s no way in Hell anyone would ever believe that bland, boring, mild-mannered Jamie is into the occult.  Instead, let’s talk about the fact that, at one point, Jamie stands in the middle of an aisle of the occult store, where anyone could hear her, and she calls Granger to tell him everything that she’s overheard.  Seriously, she couldn’t step outside to do that?  Later, when Granger unexpectedly show’s up at the Witch’s Brew coffeehouse, Jamie confront him by loudly asking, “Are you trying to take my case!?” despite the fact that they’re surrounded by the people that Jamie is supposed to be secretly investigating.

This really is a terrible episode for Jamie.  When Granger is feeling guilty over the death of Tim (who died shortly after Granger convinced him to give his soul to the Devil), Jamie tells him to stop it with the “self-pity.” Uhmm, Jamie …. didn’t we just spend two episodes listening to you going on and on about growing up in the foster system?  Jamie’s not in a position to talk.  Jamie then ends up sleeping with Granger, though the show suggests that Jamie’s actions were largely due to the influence of being around magic.

Anyway, it turns out the Satanists are planning on sacrificing a virgin witch on “Lucifer’s birthday.”  Granger knows that he has to stop this sacrifice on his own so he gives his superiors a fake address to go to.  Then Granger goes to the real sacrifice.  Fortunately, Bobby Cruz follows him and shows up in time to help Granger shoot the bad Satanists and save the virgin’s life.

(For all the slut-shaming that goes on in this country, it’s not the sluts who end up getting sacrificed in stupid occult rituals.  Promiscuity can save your life.)

With Bobby’s encouragement, Granger goes to Confession.  “It’s been seven years since my last confession….” Uh-oh, this could take a while!

This episode deserves some credit for finally giving Granger a backstory.  That said, this episode featured some of the least convincing occultists that I’ve ever seen and some of the lamest metaphysical dialogue this side of Baywatch Nights.  Actually, if this had been an episode of Baywatch Nights, it would have been a lot more fun.  As it is, it’s hard to buy into the idea that the forces of darkness could be defeated by a bunch of bicycle cops.

At one point, Bobby says that too many people have died because of pentagrams.  Monica points at his crucifix and asks, “What about the Crusades?”  I always find it funny how people seem to think that bringing up something that happened during the Middle Ages is some sort of flex.  Bobby could have just as easily replied, “What about Baal worship, you heathen!?”  I’m a little upset that he didn’t.  That would have been fun.

Oh well.  At least this episode had a horror theme.  October is just a day away!

Retro Television Review: Saved By The Bell: The New Class 2.20 “Drinking 101”

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 Saved By The Bell: The New Class, which ran on NBC from 1993 to 2o00.  The show is currently on Prime.

It’s time for the Bayside Gang to learn a lesson!

Episode 2.20 “Drinking 101”

(Dir by Don Barnhart, originally aired on November 19th, 1994)

It’s school trip time!  Mr. Belding, Screech, the Gang, and a bunch of anonymous Bayside students are spending a week at a ski lodge!

Rachel thinks the ski lodge is romantic but Brian doesn’t care about any of that.  He just wants to ski.  (“I have not skied since I lived in Switzerland,” he says and, for not the first time, I find myself wondering if the show is ever going to explain why he no longer lives in Switzerland.) Lindsay wants to go to a frat party, even if it means lying and saying that she’s a college student.  And Mr. Belding …. he just wants to survive.

It won’t be easy because Belding sprains his ankle as soon as he arrives at the ski lodge.  “My chief!” Screech yells in an early use of the falsetto that will define his character in later seasons.  Belding is supposed to stay off his ankle so, of course, Screech keeps tripping over him and dragging him up the slopes.  As a dancer, I more than know the pain of a sprained ankle and the scenes of Screech reinjuring Belding’s ankle did not make me smile.

While Screech throws a party for Mr. Belding, Lindsay, Rachel, and Megan sneak into a frat party so they can meet some boys.  (Yes, Rachel is dating Brian but she’s mad because all he wants to do is ski.)  Tommy, Bobby, and Brian soon end up at the same party.  Lindsay gets drunk.  Tommy gets drunk.  Tommy rides off on a skimobile and later has an accident.

Lesson learned!

Tommy has a broken leg.  His parents could totally sue the school district for not keeping an eye on him during a school trip.  Screech trips over Tommy’s cast, causing Tommy incredible pain.  Belding tells Lindsay and Tommy that they shouldn’t have been drinking and then he tells Rachel, Brian, Megan, and Bobby that they shouldn’t have let Lindsay and Tommy drink.  Hey, Belding, maybe you should have brought along more adults so they could keep an eye on the students.

Myself, I rarely drink because my tolerance for alcohol is pathetically low.  Still, I have to say that I found it funny that Lindsay woke up with the “worst hangover ever!” even though she only had two beers.  Even with my low tolerance, I’ve never had a hang over.  From my experience, it would have been more realistic for Lindsay to throw up and then fall asleep on a yoga mat.

Anyway, this episode ends with Belding and Tommy recovering from their injuries, the rest of the Gang “grounded for the weekend,” and Screech skiing.  I was kind of hoping the episode would end with the ski lodge being revealed to be the one that Lorena’s father owned on California Dreams.  That would have been a cross-over to remember!

The big problem with this episode — and really, this is something that seem to happen in every Peter Engel-produced teen sitcom — is that the actors were obviously having way too much fun pretending to be drunk.  I mean, hangover or not, Lindsay seemed to be having a good time.

Late Night Retro Television Review: CHiPs 6.10 “Fallout”

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, Bobby learns a lesson and the Getraer family has a crisis!

Episode 6.10 “Fallout”

(Dir by Nicholas Sgarro, originally aired on December 19th, 1982)

Ellen Getraer (Lynn-Holly Johnson), the never-before-mentioned daughter of Sgt. Getraer, has fallen in with a bunch of Episcopalians and is planning to protest a nuclear plant with them. The only problem is that the church bus has bad brakes, and it keeps causing accidents on the highway. Personally, I would have thrown that smarmy Rev. Porter (John Elerick) in prison, but instead the Highway Patrol just gives him a ticket at the first accident and, at the second, they help him and the protesters escape from their burning bus. (Ellen helps too.) At the end of the episode, both Porter and Ellen do get arrested while sitting in front of the nuclear plant, but they’re released soon afterwards. Sgt. Getraer is proud of his daughter for sticking up for what she believes in. And I’m sure he’ll probably remove the arrest from her record when no one’s watching.

This episode was actually more about Bobby Nelson learning how to control his temper while performing crowd control. At a training exercise, for instance, he throws a fit when Bruce brings up the name of his ex-girlfriend. All of this probably would have been more effective if we had previously seen any evidence of Bobby having any sort of temper. Ever since he was first introduced, Bobby has come across as something of a mellow airhead. Anyway, Bobby learns how to control that supposedly fearsome temper, and he does a good job at the nuclear protest. He makes his arrests politely and courteously. As a result, the plant workers (one of whom is played by a young Dennis “Mr. Belding” Haskins) can go to work.

The other big storyline was Ponch and Nelson arriving at the scene after young Louis Hindall (Adam Rich) is hit by a car. You would think this would be especially difficult for Ponch, seeing as how his fiancée was hit and killed by a drunk driver just two weeks ago. But Ponch never mentions her. Instead, he gets upset when he sees the bruises on Louis’s back and realizes that the boy is being abused by his mom’s new boyfriend, Hal (Paul Tulley).

Later, at the hospital, Hal overhears Ponch and Bobby talking about how Hal is an abuser, and he promptly takes off in his car. This leads to a high-speed chase and a fairly impressive stunt where Hal’s car somehow goes airborne and rolls across the top of a trailer. It’s kind of amazing that, while being chased by the cops, Hal’s first instinct was to turn into a lot full of cars that he could crash into.

Finally, upon learning that the LAPD has changed their height requirements, mechanic Harlan Arliss (played by 5’2″ Lou Wagner) puts in for a transfer. Unfortunately, he fails the physical because his eyesight isn’t 20/20. Ponch tells him that with the LAPD, he would have just been another cop. But with the Highway Patrol, he’s the world’s greatest mechanic. Awwww!

At one point, Ponch opens his locker and the inside of it is covered with pictures of women. But there’s no picture of his dead fiancée. Have you no heart, Ponch!?

Documentary Review: Kid 90 (dir by Soleil Moon Frye)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

First released in 2021, Kid 90 is a documentary about what it’s like to be rich, famous, and young.  Apparently, it sucks.  The time that it sucks the most is when you’re no longer a teenager and you’re looking back on on your past and trying to somehow shape it all into a coherent narrative.

The documentary was produced, directed, and written by Soleil Moon Frye, a former child actress who originally found fame in the early 80s as the star of a sitcom called Punky Brewster.  That show was a bit before my time but I do remember seeing her on that episode of Saved By The Bell where she pretended to like Screech for his spaghetti sauce money.  She’s also appeared in a few horror films, many of whom have found a second life in the streaming era.  The daughter of actor Virgil Frye (he was the creepy in security guard in Herb Freed’s Graduation Day), Soleil apparently started carrying a video camera around at a young age and was constantly filming her friends, who included people like Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Mark Wahlberg, David Arquette, Stephen Dorff, the skaters who appeared in Larry Clark’s Kids, and a host of others.  She also saved all of her diaries and her voicemails.  Kid 90 was assembled from those artifacts.  Soleil tells her story while discussing the pressures of being a young woman in Hollywood and being objectified when she was barely old enough to be considered a teenager.  She talks about drugs, sex, her friends who died young, and the unique trauma of growing up while the entire world watches and judges.  She talks about a relationship with an older man, who she doesn’t name even while pictures of her with Charlie Sheen appear on the screen.  What she doesn’t do is go into too much detail.

Indeed, while watching Kid 90, the main thing that struck me was how guarded everyone seemed to be, even in the candid footage that was shot when they were all teens.  Young Soleil asks her friends about their philosophy of life and none of them can come up with anything particularly interesting.  Instead, they all sound like their reading from a script that was handed to them by a publicist.  The voicemails that we hear are largely generic and uninteresting and, if not for the title card that accompanies each one, we would have no idea who was talking.  (There’s only so much meaning that one can wring out of, “Hey, just calling to see if you were around.”)  Yes, Leonard DiCaprio appears in a clip or two but DiCaprio also served as a producer on the film so you can be sure that those clips were very carefully selected.  In the present, a handful of actors talk about the process of going from being teen actors to adults.  Brian Austin Green talks about the first time that he realized that there were people who did not like him.  (His shock about the failure of his rap career is actually kind of poignant.)  David Arquette is goofy but honest when discussing his history of drug abuse.  Stephen Dorff is thoughtful.  Mark-Paul Gosselaar is likable but obviously careful about saying anything that could come back to haunt him.  (I’ve never seen Gosselaar give a bad interview, largely because he’s a master of revealing just enough without revealing too much.)  And then you’ve got poor Soleil, who struggles to assign some sort of bigger meaning to her youthful memories.  She obviously doesn’t want to be known as just another spoiled child actress but, when she shares footage of herself hanging out with a bunch of New York skaters, it’s hard not to see her as being anything other than a rich kid slumming.

(Not that’s anything wrong with that!  I did plenty of slumming when I was in college.)

In the end, Kid 90 is really about the innate human desire to take all of the random events of our life and shape them into some sort of grand narrative.  Unfortunately, life is never really that easy to explain or categorize.  No one in the film, Soleil included, really lets their guard down.  I can’t say that I blame them.

 

 

Insomnia File #79: Bring Him To Me (dir by Luke Sparke)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable or streaming? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!

Are you having trouble getting to sleep tonight?  Is your excitement about the upcoming Horrorthon keeping you awake?  Well, if that’s case, you can always go over to YouTube and watch the 2023 film, Bring Him To Me.

In Bring Him To Me, Barry Pepper plays the driver.  He’s a quiet man, a career criminal who is good at his job but who also doesn’t seem to particularly like it.  We don’t really learn much about the Driver, at least not until the very end of the film.  But one look at Pepper’s rough-hewn face and his world-weary eyes tells us more about him than any monologue could.  He’s someone who has seen things that he would rather forget.

In this film, his job is to transport a talkative and asthmatic man credited as being the Passenger (Jamie Costa).  We do eventually learn the Passenger’s name and quite a bit about his family situation.  That’s because the Passenger will not stop talking.  While the Driver is trying to do his job and transport the Passenger without getting emotionally involved in any of it, the Passenger simply will not stop revealing details about himself.

The film takes place entirely at night.  The Driver finds himself being pursued by a number of different people, including a shady pawn shop owner (Sam Neill) who wants vengeance for both a theft and a beating.  The film doesn’t always follow a linear timeline so it takes a while before it becomes clear just exactly what’s going on.  Fortunately, there’s enough action and moral ambiguity to hold the viewer’s attention.  This is the type of film that demands a lead who can keep everything from spinning out of control and Barry Pepper fulfills the role admirably.

I have to admit that, when Bring Him To Me started, I didn’t have much hope for it.  The non-linear timeline, the occasional forced quirkiness of the dialogue, and the constant cursing made the film seem like it was just another heist film made by someone who was trying to be the next Tarantino.  That said, the film won me over.  Barry Pepper won me over.  The gorgeous night cinematography won me over.  And eventually, even the twisty story won me over.  In the end, director Luke Sparke managed to bring all the disparate elements together into an intriguing noir-flavored film.

Bring Him To Me surprised me by actually being a decent movie.  That’s one of the fun things about watching a random movie in the middle of the night.  You never know what you might discover.

Previous Insomnia Files:

  1. Story of Mankind
  2. Stag
  3. Love Is A Gun
  4. Nina Takes A Lover
  5. Black Ice
  6. Frogs For Snakes
  7. Fair Game
  8. From The Hip
  9. Born Killers
  10. Eye For An Eye
  11. Summer Catch
  12. Beyond the Law
  13. Spring Broke
  14. Promise
  15. George Wallace
  16. Kill The Messenger
  17. The Suburbans
  18. Only The Strong
  19. Great Expectations
  20. Casual Sex?
  21. Truth
  22. Insomina
  23. Death Do Us Part
  24. A Star is Born
  25. The Winning Season
  26. Rabbit Run
  27. Remember My Name
  28. The Arrangement
  29. Day of the Animals
  30. Still of The Night
  31. Arsenal
  32. Smooth Talk
  33. The Comedian
  34. The Minus Man
  35. Donnie Brasco
  36. Punchline
  37. Evita
  38. Six: The Mark Unleashed
  39. Disclosure
  40. The Spanish Prisoner
  41. Elektra
  42. Revenge
  43. Legend
  44. Cat Run
  45. The Pyramid
  46. Enter the Ninja
  47. Downhill
  48. Malice
  49. Mystery Date
  50. Zola
  51. Ira & Abby
  52. The Next Karate Kid
  53. A Nightmare on Drug Street
  54. Jud
  55. FTA
  56. Exterminators of the Year 3000
  57. Boris Karloff: The Man Behind The Monster
  58. The Haunting of Helen Walker
  59. True Spirit
  60. Project Kill
  61. Replica
  62. Rollergator
  63. Hillbillys In A Haunted House
  64. Once Upon A Midnight Scary
  65. Girl Lost
  66. Ghosts Can’t Do It
  67. Heist
  68. Mind, Body & Soul
  69. Candy
  70. Shortcut to Happiness
  71. Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders
  72. Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders II
  73. Don’t Kill It
  74. Listen To Me
  75. 300 Miles For Stephanie
  76. Hackers
  77. Rolling Vengeance
  78. Nails

Film Review: Go (dir by Doug Liman)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

“What is rock and roll?” — Fire Up The Shoeshaw by Lionrick

In 1999’s Go, Sarah Polley plays Ronna, a supermarket cashier who is on the verge of getting kicked out of her apartment because she can’t pay the rent. (As Julianne Moore put it in Boogie Nights, “My landlord is a real jerk.”) When Adam (Scott Wolf) and Zack (Jay Mohr) approach her and ask if she can hook them up with twenty ecstasy pills, Ronna agrees. Her co-worker, Simon (Desmond Askew), is a low-level dealer and he’s gone to Las Vegas for the weekend. Ronna decides to get the pills from Simon’s connection, Todd Gaines (Timothy Olyphant). Because Ronna doesn’t have enough money to pay Todd, she agrees to leave her friend Claire (Katie Holmes) behind as collateral.

Meanwhile, Simon goes to Vegas with Marcus (Taye Diggs), Singh (James Duval), and Tiny (Breckin Meyer). While Singh and Tiny deal with the consequences of eating too much shrimp and Marcus deals with people assuming that he must work at the casino, Simon nearly burns down the hotel and then manages to piss off both a bouncer (Jimmy Shubert) and his father (J.E. Freeman).

Finally, in the film’s third storyline, Adam and Zack are revealed to be two soap opera actors who are secretly dating and who were busted by a bizarre cop named Burke Halverson (William Fichtner). Halverson wants Adam and Zack to help him set up Todd Gaines. However, beyond that, Halverson really wants Adam and Zack to have Christmas dinner with him and his wife (Jane Krakowski). Adam and Zack suspect that Halverson has ulterior motives and he does. However, it turns out that neither one of them could have guessed what Halverson really wants them to do.

Go is one of those films that seems like the greatest thing ever made when you’re a teenager and you’re watching it at your friend’s house with the volume turned down super low so that their parents don’t come in the room and ask why William Fichtner is wandering around naked while talking to Jay Mohr about cologne. Under those circumstances, it makes sense that the employees of a grocery store would all look like models and that they would spend their break playing the dead celebrity game. When you’re the right age, it doesn’t matter that Todd Gaines is a homicidal drug addict. All that matters is that Timothy Olyphant has probably never been sexier than he was in this film.

Once you grow up, it becomes a bit more obvious that Ronna, Simon, and even Adam and Zack are basically complete and total idiots and that they really have no one to blame but themselves for the trouble that they get into. When you’re a teenager and you watch Go, you ask yourself, “How could anyone evict someone during the holidays!?” When you’re an adult and you watch Go, you ask yourself, “Why didn’t you just pay your rent, Ronna?”

That said, I still love Go. Yes, it’s basically a rip-off of Pulp Fiction, but it’s still an energetic, well-acted, and surprisingly funny movie and I love the soundtrack. I love the fact that the film actually earns the right to be called Go by giving us a narrative that never stops to catch its breath. It’s a film about being young and being stupid and it perfectly captures why so many of us have nostalgia for the mistakes we made years ago. Go was Doug Liman’s follow-up to Swingers and feels like the type of film that would have been produced by Trent and Sue. It’s derivative, irresponsible, and oddly charming. It’s a mix of Los Angeles and Vegas that encourages us all to never stop moving.

The TSL Grindhouse: The Black Connection (dir by Michael Finn)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Miles Carter (Bobby Stevens) is a smooth-talking Vegas drug dealer who owes the Mafia a good deal of money due to some missing cocaine.  Knowing that he’s in trouble but still confident that he can outsmart a bunch of goombahs in ill-fitting suits, Miles heads to Albuquerque so he can make another drug deal that will net him enough money to pay off the mob.  But Miles isn’t actually planning on paying back the mob.  Instead, he’s planning on taking whatever money he makes and then fleeing to Mexico.  However, the Mafia has an assortment of overweight hit men with bad haircuts and they’ve all been sent to take down Miles.

That’s the plot of 1974’s The Black Connection.  Or, at least, I think that’s the plot.  It’s not a particularly easy film to follow.  The film starts out with nearly thirty minutes of minor characters talking to each other and making phone calls.  Once Miles does finally show up, it’s difficult to really know what he’s trying to pull because 1) the dialogue is so muddled that it’s nearly impossible to make out and 2) Bobby Stevens was not a particularly good or compelling actor.  Instead, he was the lead singer for a band called The Checkmates, ltd.  His bandmates appear in minor roles and also perform the film’s rather generic score.  Bobby Stevens supposedly came up with the story for The Black Connection but it’s interesting to note that, in the opening credits, there’s no “written by” credit.  Instead, someone is credited with being a script supervisor.   That would perhaps explain why the film doesn’t really seem to be complete story as much as it’s just a bunch of random scenes that have been strung together.

The Black Connection is not a long film but I would still say that it’s probably about 60% filler.  This is one of those films where no one does anything without announcing that they’re going to do it and then debating whether or not they should actually do it before doing it.  It’s revealed that phones make Miles paranoid and yet the entire film is full of people talking and talking and talking on the phone.  I lost track of how many shots there were of people dialing a landline and then waiting for someone to answer.  There were also multiple shots of people in phone booths.  At times, the film felt as if it should have been put in a time capsule so that, decades later, people could experience what it was like to live in the days before the invention of the iPhone.

There are a few scenes that work or, at the very least, are watchable.  A scene in which a fat mobster shows off his karate skills is interesting because …. well, he’s a fat mobster.  A scene in which two other mobsters grin while firing their guns into a car is notably gruesome and made all the more disturbing by the joy that the mobsters take in their work.  Finally, the film ends on a downbeat note that would probably be more effective if not for the buckets of fake blood that were apparently splattered around right before the director shouted, “Action!”

This film was produced by the infamous Harry H. Novak.  It’s nowhere near as sleazy as some of Novak’s other films.  That’s actually kind of a shame.  Sometimes, sleaze is the only thing that can save a film this inept.