Retro Television Review: Homicide: Life on Street 1.3 “Night of the Dead Living”

Posted on October 20, 2024 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 Sundays, I will be reviewing Homicide: Life On The Street, which aired from 1993 to 1999, on NBC! It can be viewed on Peacock.

This week, the Homicide Squad works the night shift on the hottest night of the year.

Episode 1.3 “Night of the Dead Living”

(Dir by Michael Lehmann, originally aired on March 31st, 1993)

On the hottest night of the year, Giardello’s homicide squad works the night shift. Everyone comes in grumpy. Munch has just broken up with his girlfriend. Bolander is trying to work up the courage to call Dr. Blythe. Bayliss is still obsessing on the Adeena Watson case and he and Pembleton are still trying to figure out how to work together. Kay’s sister is having trouble at home. Felton’s wife hates him. Crosetti worries about his teenage daughter and her boyfriend. Giardello tries to figure out why the air conditioner is only blowing out hot air on what Lewis claims is the hottest night in history.

Despite the heat and the statistics that show that most homicide occur at night, no calls come in. Bayliss is convinced he’s cracked the Watson case when he discovers that the fingerprints on Adeena’s library book belongs to someone named James. He sends Thorson out to arrest James. James turns out to be a seventh grader who thinks he’s being arrested by not paying a library fine. (James did check out the book, when he was in the fifth grade.)

A drunk man dressed as Santa Claus is brought in and later falls through the ceiling when he attempts to escape custody. A baby is found in the station’s basement but it turns out to the cleaning lady’s baby. She brings him to work with her to protect him from the rats that live in their apartment building. Eventually, Bolander works up the courage to call Blythe and Bayliss and Pembleton figure out that Adeena’s body was found where it was because her killer brought the body down a fire escape. At the end of the shift, Giardello assembles his detectives on the roof and joyfully sprays them with the water hose.

It’s an episode that feels like a play, taking place in one location and featuring a lot of monologuing. Each member of the squad gets a their chance in the spotlight, with the episode revealing that every one of them is a bit more complex than they initially seem. Even Munch, the misanthrope, is shown to light a candle in memory of “all those who have been killed.” It’s one of those episodes that makes you understand why Homicide is considered to be classic while also showing you why it struggled in the ratings. In this episode, Homicide revealed itself to be not a cop show but instead a show about people who happened to be cops. Most shows about detectives end with an arrest. This episode ends with Giardello showing his love for the people who work for him. After spending an hour with everyone sweating and complaining, it’s nice to see them happy on the roof of the station house. Yaphet Kotto’s joy in the final scene is a wonder to behold. And yet, it’s easy to imagine how confused audiences, whose expectations had been set by more traditional crime show, would have been.

This episode was meant to be the third episode of the series. NBC decided that it worked better as the finale of the first season and instead made it the ninth episode. Peacock has this episode placed where it originally belonged and, with this review, that’s what I’m going with as well.

Bonus Horror Song of the Day: Hanging Out With My Family by Damien Carter

Posted on October 20, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Whenever I watch 2010’s Birdemic, I wonder how the birds could possibly want to destroy a civilization that is capable of something like Hanging Out With My Family.

Horror on the Lens: The Lodger (dir by Alfred Hitchcock)

Posted on October 20, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

A serial killer known as “The Avenger” is murdering blonde women in London (which, once again, proves that its better to be a redhead). And while nobody knows the identity of the Avenger, they do know that the enigmatic stranger (Ivor Novello), who has just recently rented a room at boarding house, happens to fit his description. They also know that the lodger’s landlord’s daughter happens to be a blonde…

Released in 1927, the silent The Lodger was Alfred Hitchcock’s third film but, according to the director, this was the first true “Hitchcock film.” Certainly it shows that even at the start of his career, Hitchcock’s famous obsessions were already present — the stranger accused of a crime, the blonde victims, and the link between sex and violence.

Also of note, the credited assistant director — Alma Reville — would become Alma Hitchcock shortly before The Lodger was released.

Horror Music Video Video Of The Day: Heads Will Roll by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (2009, dir by Richard Ayoaode)

Posted on October 20, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

And indeed, heads do roll in this video!

The werewolf pays homage to Michael Jackson’s Thriller video. Ironically, Jackson died just a few days before this video was released. Director Richard Ayoade is the same Richard Ayoade who starred in The IT Crowd and The Watch. (Remember The Watch? It wasn’t that bad.)

By the way, this video is a part of a Halloween playlist put together by our own Patrick!

Enjoy!

Late Night Retro Television Review: Check It Out! 2.16 “The Oddest Couple”

Posted on October 19, 2024 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 Saturdays, I will be reviewing the Canadian sitcom, Check it Out, which ran in syndication from 1985 to 1988. The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi!

This week, Viker needs help!

Episode 2.16 “The Oddest Couple”

(Dir by Alan Erlich, originally aired on February 8th, 1987)

Viker has been kicked out by his wife, Mrs. Viker (Laura Henry). Mrs. Viker apparently doesn’t have a first name. Even Viker calls her “Mrs. Viker” whenever he talks to her. Because he has been kicked out of his house, Viker has started sleeping on Howard’s couch.

Howard tells Viker that he can’t sleep on his couch, which just leaves Viker with one other option. He moves in with Howard! Normally, I’d wonder how Edna would feel about this but Edna is not in this episode. In fact, there’s no mention of Howard being involved and his apartment suddenly looks like a tacky bachelor pad. He even has a round bed in the living room.

As you can guess by the episode’s title, Howard and Viker make for an odd couple. It’s not a case of one of them being a neat freak and one of them being a slob. In fact, they’re both pretty neat. It’s just that Viker can be a little weird. He gargles extremely loudly. He takes everything that he hears literally. He spends a lot of time talking about his bunions.

Howard attempts to bring Viker and Mrs. Viker together but, when Mrs. Viker catches Viker teaching Marlene how to dance (more about that in a minute) in the store’s aisles, she declares that she can’t trust Viker. But then Howard invites Mrs. Viker to his apartment, where he has prepared a romantic dinner for the Vikers. That’s all it takes for the Vikers to fall back in love and apparently have sex in Howard’s living room bed while Howard waits in the hallway outside.

Why is Viker teaching Marlene how to dance? Because a good-looking customer named Philip (Richard Hardacre) has asked Marlene to come to his country club! Marlene gets all dressed up, does her hair nicely, and looks forward to her date. But then Richard shows up looking like he’s the bassist in Sex Pistols cover band. Richard says that it’s “punk night” at the country club and he wanted to impress his friends by bringing “an actual punk.” Realizing that she was being used, Marlene tells Richard to get lost and then she, Murray, and Christian go out for pizza. Awww! Since this show usually features those three characters at odds, it’s kind of nice to see them all going out as friends in this episode.

(In real life, Kathleen Laskey, who plays Marlene, is married to Jeff Pustil, who played Christian. Even though their characters are usually rivals, the chemistry between the two performers is obvious.)

This was an okay episode. It made me chuckle a few times. It’s obvious that, after the first half of the second season, the showrunners realized that Don Adams and Gordon Clapp made a great comic team. Check It Out is a show that works best when it embraces absurdity and few characters are more absurd than Gordon Clapp’s Viker.

Lisa Marie’s Week In Television: 10/13/24 — 10/19/24

Posted on October 19, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I watched a lot of horror movies this week but I didn’t watch much television. Starting on November 1st, I’m going to have a lot of shows to get caught up on.

I caught the latest installment of American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez. Like a lot of Ryan Murphy’s recent miniseries, American Sports Story started out strong but the last few episodes have felt like padding. It’s not that the episodes aren’t contributing to the story. This week, we watched as Aaron committed what was apparently his first murder and as he started to show signs of CTE. But it’s still hard not to feel as if each episode is basically 20 minutes worth of story stretched out to 50 minutes. We’re halfway through this series and it has yet to really give us a reason why we should care about Aaron Hernandez. He just comes across as being an idiot, regardless of his athletic skills, his terrible childhood, or his status as a self-hating gay man trying to survive in a homophobic culture. He doesn’t seem to be worth all of this trouble.

I watched Hell’s Kitchen. The chefs continue to compete at a high level and they continue to have disastrous dinner services. Hell’s Kitchen is one of the few reality shows not to have massively changed its format over the past four years. The producers know there’s no need to fix something that’s already working. If only the producers of Big Brother and Survivor understood that!

I watched an old episode of Night Flight on Friday. It featured Elvis snarling at the camera.

I watched the episode of Dr. Phil in which Phil and cult expert Rick Ross confronted a guy who said he wasn’t a cult leader despite the fact that he clearly was. There’s a lot negative things that can be said about Dr. Phil’s show but the episodes where he exposed cults and their leaders were always entertaining and worth watching.

I watched and reviewed Homicide, Miami Vice, and The Love Boat! I also watched and shared several episodes of One Step Beyond.

And that’s it!

Retro Television Review: Welcome Back, Kotter 4.4 “Once Upon A Ledge”

Posted on October 19, 2024 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 Saturdays, I will be reviewing Welcome Back Kotter, which ran on ABC from 1975 to 1979. The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi!

This week, Arnold Horshack gets to be a hero!

Episode 4.4 “Once Upon A Ledge”

(Dir by Norman Abbott, originally aired on October 2nd, 1978)

Seriously, what is going on at Buchanan High?

Gabe is vice principal but he’s away at a teacher’s conference. Horshack and Washington are once again running the student store. Epstien is once again working for the audio visual department. Barbarino is nowhere to be seen. This new Sweathog, Beau, is apparently the most popular guy in school, even though this is only his second episode. Perhaps the strangest development is that Julie is now working as Mr. Woodman’s administrative assistant. When did this happen? I can’t even remember what Julie’s previous profession was but I don’t think it had anything to do with education in general or Buchanan High in specific.

Mary Johnson (Irene Arranga) is a shy student who feels that she doesn’t have any sort of identity in the school. She’s one of three Mary Johnsons at Buchanan High. She’s not Mary Johnson the Jock. She’s not Mary Johnson the Cheerleader. She’s Mary Johnson, the one with the perfect teeth. When she tells Woodman that she wants to transfer into the remedial classes so that she can be a Sweathog, Woodman tells her that her C-average makes her ineligible. She can’t even succeed at being a bad student.

Feeling lost, Mary climbs out on a ledge and threatens to jump. Woodman, Julie, and each of the Sweathogs tries to talk her in but it’s only Horshack who is able to get through to her. Horshack actually walks out onto the ledge himself so that he can talk to Mary about what’s it’s like to feel like an outsider. Horshack gets Mary to come in, though he nearly falls off the ledge himself.

While binging and reviewing this show, it’s occasionally been easy to criticize Ron Pallilo’s performance as Arnold Horshack, though I think the real culprits were the show’s writers, who tended to make Horshack into such a strange character that I don’t think anyone could play him without being annoying. But, to give credit where credit is due, Pallilo gives a really good performance in this episode. Indeed, in some ways, this episode feels like a throw back to season one, when the Sweathogs still had a bit of grit and angst to them.

This was a simple but effective episode, even if the absences of both Gabe Kaplan and John Travolta were definitely felt. (Nothing against Stephen Shortridge — who I’ve seen give good performances on The Love Boat and Fantasy island — but Beau was no substitute for Vinnie Barbarino.) Still, it was nice to see Pallilo get a chance to once again play Horshack as a human being as opposed to a walking punchline. And, for once, Woodman got to show his nice side, as he tried to help Mary feel better about her place in the school. This was a surprisingly well-done episode.

Bonus Horror Song of the Day: Do It To Me by Riz Ortolani

Posted on October 19, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Since I earlier shared the theme song from The New York Ripper, it only seems appropriate to share another 70s-style Italian horror theme song. From the infamous House On The Edge of the Park, here is Riz Ortolani’s Do It To Me.

Seriously, this is a song that gets stuck in my head every time that I hear it.

Horror on the Lens: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (dir by John S. Robertson)

Posted on October 19, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Ever since the birth of film, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde has been a popular subject for adaptation. Not only does the classic story of a good doctor who unleashes his evil instinct via potion serve as a potent metaphor for everything from sexual repression to drug addiction, but the dual role of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde has provides an excellent opportunity for an actor to show off.

The first film adaptation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is believed to have been made in 1908. Two more version followed in 1912 and 1913 and then, suddenly, 1920 saw three different film versions.

The best known of the 1920 version is our film for today. This version is best remembered for John Barrymore’s powerful performance in the title role but it also holds up remarkably well as a work of cinematic horror.

Horror Song Of The Day: New York One More Day by Francesco De Masi

Posted on October 19, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Tonight’s horror song of the day is perhaps not as well-known as some of the other songs that I’ve shared. It appeared in Lucio Fulci’s controversial (to put it mildly) giallo, The New York Ripper. That film is so infamous for its violence, nihilism, and killer who quacks like a duck that it is something overlooked that it features a great score from Francesco De Masi.

This is the main theme from The New York Ripper and it captures the movie’s mix of horror and police procedural. It’s the 70s cop show theme from Hell.