Tag Archives: review

Retro Television Reviews: The Master 1.2 “Out-of-Time Step”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a new feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Fridays, I will be reviewing The Master, which ran on NBC from January to August of 1984. Almost all nine of the show’s episodes can be found on Tubi!

The adventures of John Peter McAllister and Max Keller continue!

That’s right, the search for McAllister’s daughter is still on and Max is still learning how to be a ninja.  But, before we get to their latest adventure, it’s time to enjoy the opening credits!

Episode 1.2 “Out-of-Time Step”

(Dir by Ray Austin, originally aired on January 27th, 1984)

“Hi, I’m Max Keller and this is how I spend my mornings….” Max Keller tells us in voice over as we watch footage of Max (Timothy Van Patten) balancing on a rope that’s been tied between two trees.  Yes, Max is still our narrator and John Peter McAllister (Lee Van Cleef) is still training him to become a ninja.  Max is also still traveling in his van and with his hamster.

At the end of the previous episode, Max and McAllister were heading down to Atlanta to search for McAllister’s daughter.  At the start of this episode, we discover that they are in San Francisco, investigating a lead that McAllister’s daughter may have danced at a club called Truffles.  So, did they go to Atlanta or did they just change their mind and decide to stick around California?  More to the point, did NBC say, “Hey, we’re not paying for you people to go out of state?”

Anyway, Truffles turns out to be a club that’s owned by Charlie Patterson (Charles Collins), a former film star who has fallen on hard times.  (Charles Collins was a real-life dancer and when Patterson watches footage of a screen test that his character supposedly did for a Hollywood production, the footage is actually of Collins performing in a 1936 film called Dancing Pirate.)  Patterson has two daughters.  Kelly (Shanna Reed) is a dancer who thrills the club’s patrons every time she steps out onto the stage.  The other, Jill (Lori Lethin), uses a wheelchair.  Jill tells Charlie that he’s “an ex-hoofer with two daughters, one who wheels and one who does cartwheels.”

Upon arriving at Truffles, Max and McAllister discover that Charlie is being intimidated by Chinatown gangster, Johnny Chan (Brian Toshi) and Chan’s main enforcer, Mr. Lika (Soon-Tek Oh).  Mr. Lika spots McAllister’s medallion and realizes that McAllister is a trained ninja.  McAllister spots Mr. Lika’s ring and realizes that Mr. Lika is a member of the Yakuza.   This establishes a mutual respect between the two of them, one that inevitably leads to a final battle between Soon-Tek Oh and Lee Van Cleef’s stunt double.

Of course, McAllister does more than just fight Mr. Lika.  He also encourages Jill to stand up from her wheelchair and take a few steps.  And when Johnny Chan has Kelly kidnapped, he and Max rescue her.  (But not before Johnny shouts at her, “You’re a dancer!  DANCE!”)  It leads to a lot of action scenes but it doesn’t bring them any closer to McAllister’s daughter.

This episode wasn’t bad, largely because Soon-Tek Oh and Lee Van Cleef got a chance to face off.  Even if all of the actual fighting was done by Van Cleef’s stunt double, it’s still undeniably fun to watch these two icons glare at each other and exchange tough guy dialogue.  Plus, there was a lot of dancing!  I always appreciate any show that finds room for more than one dance number, even if they are obviously lifted from Flashdance.

As I mentioned earlier, this episode ended with McAllister and Max nowhere close to finding McAllister’s daughter.  But Max promised that they could keep looking.  I’m sure they’ll find her.  It’s not like America is that big.

Retro Television Reviews: City Guys 4.24 “El-Brain” and 4.25 “Pier Pressure”

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 City Guys, which ran on NBC from 1997 to 2001.  The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!

This week, the city guys finally leave the city for a while.  Drama follows.

Episode 4.24 “El-Brain”

(Dir by Frank Bonner, originally aired on December 16th, 2000)

On Wikipedia, this episode’s plot is described as follows: “El-Train enters the Science Fair to prove that he’s smarter than everyone, including Jamal, who thinks he isn’t.”  Unfortunately, this is one of the episodes that is not streaming anywhere online so I haven’t been able to watch it.  Interestingly. the title of this episode would seem to indicated that I’ve been referring to L-Train by the wrong name all this time.

Well, he’ll always be L-Train to me.  And I hope he did well at the science fair.  I’m also going to assume that Jamal learned a lesson about judging people.

Episode 4.25 “Pier Pressure”

(Dir by Frank Bonner, originally aired on December 16th, 2000)

Chris has got access to his father’s vacation home for the weekend so the kids are going to the Hamptons!

Everyone is super excited about the idea of going out on Chris’s father’s yacht.  The only problem is that the yacht’s captain has called in sick.  Fortunately, Chris knows how to sail.  He, Cassidy, Dawn, and Al take the yacht out for a spin.  As you can probably guess, this leads to one disaster after another.  First off, Al forgets to pack the food because he’s tired of Dawn trying to micromanage his life.  Secondly, Chris and Al turn out to be not quite the expert fishermen that they claimed to be.  Third, after turning off the engine, Chris can’t figure out how to drop the anchor.  Fourth, the boat floats until it hits a sandbar.  Fifth, the boat runs out of gas.  Sixth, the boat runs out of power.  Seventh, Al announces that everyone is going to starve to death.  That does seem like a distinct possibility but at least they’ll get to experience a little bit of the yacht life before they die.  Plus, if they die, the show will be over and I can start watching something better.

Meanwhile, Jamal and L-Train invite two women up to the house, which they now claim to own.  The women make themselves comfortable in the living room.  Suddenly, Ms. Noble and Billy show up!  What are they doing there!?  It turns out that they’re spending the weekend at the Hamptons as well and they just decided to stop by.  Seriously, school’s out.  It’s the weekend!  No one wants to see their principal on the weekend!  And really, I am kind of suspicious of any principal who would decide to just drop in on their students during they’re own vacation.  That’s weird.

Fortunately, it all works out in the end.  Jamal suddenly notices that Chris, Al, Dawn, and Cassidy haven’t come home.  The coast guard is called.  Everyone lives!  Yay!  This is the type of episode that I can’t stand, where every problem is the result of people just being unbelievably stupid.  But at least it only lasted 30 minutes or so.

Next week, season 4 ends!

The Eric Roberts Collection: Joker’s Poltergeist (dir by Christopher S. Lind)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 2020’s Joker’s Poltergeist (also known as Joker’s Wild), Eric Roberts plays James Jennings.  Jennings was a part-owner of the Palace Theater Chain until his partner, Rand Place (Martin Kove), forced him out and gave the business to his daughter, Aurora Place (Lacie Marie Meyer).  After apparently filming himself discussing how he is going to be starting a movement and how no one is ever going to forget him, James dresses up like a clown, goes down to the theater, and guns down the audience of a film called Joker’s Wild.  He also kills Rand before being shot himself by another theatergoer, William Remmington (Ari Boyland).

Clips of James’s final message are shown throughout Joker’s Poltergeist but we never actually see Roberts interacting with the rest of the cast.  (When James starts shooting people at the theater, he does so under a mask that he never removes and the end credits indicate that an actor other than Roberts played James in those scenes.)  This is obviously one of those films where Roberts filmed his scenes over the course of an hour or two, probably in his own office.  He certainly wasn’t on the set.  The same can be said of Martin Kove, who only appears as a part of a video message that Rand taped for Aurora before the shooting.  For that matter, Dustin Diamond appears for a few brief seconds and again, only as a part of a filmed message that Aurora watches.

Instead, the majority of the film takes place a year after the shooting.  Aurora is fighting to not only re-open her theater but to also keep concealed carry legal in her state.  She is now dating William and is a part of a support group made up of other survivors of the massacre.  From the moment Aurora reenters the old theater, she starts to have strange visions of killer clowns, demonic doctors, and sleazy politicians.  “You shouldn’t like guns….” the evil doctors chant at her.  At one point, she and her friends are trapped in the theater and being taunted by the spirits of the dead and, at another point, Aurora is suddenly in a hospital and being menaced by killer nurses.  Aurora struggles to figure out what is real and what is a dream, with the film suggesting that theater itself has become a separate dimension that is populated by James’s victims.  At its best, the film plays out like an unsettling nightmare, the type that doesn’t necessarily cause you to wake up screaming but which still remains fresh in your mind throughout the day.

On the one hand, the film is obviously based on the 2012 Dark Knight Rises shooting that it feels more than a little distasteful.  On the other hand, the film is intriguingly surreal and Lacie Marie Meyer gives a really good performance as Aurora.  (Yes, it would appear that she was named after Aurora, Colorado, which is one reason why the film feels so distasteful even though it has a handful of effective moments.)  The film does attempt to say something about guns, with Aurora being a proponent of the 2nd amendment and the gun-grabbing mayor and his wife being behind the efforts to tear down the theater.  It’s hard to really say which side the film comes down on, though I think it’s ultimately more pro-gun control than anything else.  That said, the film’s portrayal of the mayor and his wife as being vapid politicians who want to keep their own guns while taking away everyone else’s felt true to life.

Joker’s Poltergeist is ultimately a bit too icky and exploitive to really work but it still has its moments.  It’s a movie that keeps you guessing, if nothing else.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

  1. Star 80 (1983)
  2. Blood Red (1989)
  3. The Ambulance (1990)
  4. The Lost Capone (1990)
  5. Love, Cheat, & Steal (1993)
  6. Love Is A Gun (1994)
  7. Sensation (1994)
  8. Doctor Who (1996)
  9. Most Wanted (1997)
  10. Mr. Brightside (2004)
  11. Six: The Mark Unleased (2004)
  12. Hey You (2006)
  13. In The Blink of an Eye (2009)
  14. The Expendables (2010) 
  15. Sharktopus (2010)
  16. Deadline (2012)
  17. Miss Atomic Bomb (2012)
  18. Lovelace (2013)
  19. Self-Storage (2013)
  20. This Is Our Time (2013)
  21. Inherent Vice (2014)
  22. Road to the Open (2014)
  23. Rumors of War (2014)
  24. A Fatal Obsession (2015)
  25. Stalked By My Doctor (2015)
  26. Stalked By My Doctor: The Return (2016)
  27. The Wrong Roommate (2016)
  28. Stalked By My Doctor: Patient’s Revenge (2018)
  29. Monster Island (2019)
  30. Seven Deadly Sins (2019)
  31. Stalked By My Doctor: A Sleepwalker’s Nightmare (2019)
  32. The Wrong Mommy (2019)
  33. Free Lunch Express (2020)
  34. Her Deadly Groom (2020)
  35. Top Gunner (2020)
  36. Just What The Doctor Ordered (2021)
  37. Killer Advice (2021)
  38. The Poltergeist Diaries (2021)
  39. My Dinner With Eric (2022)

The TSL Grindhouse: Killing American Style (dir by Amir Shervan)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Filmed in 1988 but apparently not released until 1990, Killing American Style is a low-budget variation on The Desperate Hours.

The film opens with a ruthless criminal named Tony Stone (Robert Z’Dar, of Maniac Cop fame) leading a daring robbery of an ice cream truck depot.  All of the ice cream trucks have come back for the day and, when Tony and the boys show up, the money is still being counted.  Tony quickly takes control of the situation, intimidating everyone with both his weaponry and his amazing jawline.

Unfortunately, for Tony, the robbery is not as successful as he thought.  Yes, he gets away with a lot of money but the police quickly track him down to his home, where he’s in the process of having sex with his stepmother.  Tony is arrested and, in record time, sentenced to a maximum security prison.  (Seriously, the arrest, conviction, and sentencing all seem to happen on the same day.)  Tony is put on a prison bus but then the bus itself stops to help out a stranded motorist.  The motorist turns out to be Tony’s brother, Jesse (Bret Johnston).  In the resulting shootout, all of the guards are killed but Jesse is wounded.  Tony and his associate, Lynch (John Lynch …. hey, I wonder if that’s just coincidence?), take Jesse to a nearby ranch house.

The house belongs to John Morgan (Harold Diamond), who is a long-haired kickboxing champion.  When Tony arrives, John is out of the house and beating up the dad of a kid who bulled Morgan’s son, Brandon.  John is not happy to come home and discover Tony holding his entire family hostage.  For that matter, Morgan’s son isn’t amused by it either.

Because they are being pursued by a grim and determined police detective (played by Jim Brown …. yes, the same Jim Brown who starred in countless blaxploitation films in the 70s), Tony and his men do not want to run the risk of leaving the house to retrieve the loot from the robbery themselves.  So, they send Morgan out to pick up the suitcase from Tony’s stepmother.  I guess they assume that Morgan will be able to move around inconspicuously despite the fact that Morgan is a 6’1 kick boxer with long hair.  I mean, there’s no way that Morgan is going to be able to move around without being noticed by the cops.

Of course, before Morgan can get the money, he also has to get a doctor for Jesse.  Dr. Fuji (Joselito Rescober) agrees to help, despite the fact that he never seems to be quite sure what’s actually going on with all the angry men who keep pointing guns at each other.  When Dr. Fuji mentions that he wants to kill Tony “Japanese style,” Morgan promises that he’s going to kill Tony “American style.”  It’s never really made clear what the difference is between the two styles, though the American version does seem to involve a bit more kickboxing.

Anyway, this is an incredibly cheap and dumb movie but Robert Z’Dar seems like he’s having fun as Tony and …. well, to be honest, Robert Z’Dar is really the only reason to recommend this film.  He gives an enjoyably over-the-top performance, one that certainly contrasts with the more subdued performance of Harold Diamond.  (For his part, Diamond often seems to be struggling to stay awake.)  Hostage movies usually bore me to tears and this one had a lot of slow spots but it also had shots like the one below:

Eh.  Let’s call it even.

Retro Television Reviews: The Love Boat 2.14 “Julie Falls Hard / Double Wedding / The Dummies”

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!

Welcome aboard.  Don’t expect much from your cruise this week.

Episode 2.14 “Julie Falls Hard / Double Wedding / The Dummies”

(Dir by Bob Claver, originally aired on December 16th, 1978)

Agck!  It’s the most horrifying episode in the history of the Love Boat!

Your eyes do not deceive you.  There are indeed two ventriloquists on this week’s cruise.  Married entertainers Patti Harmon (Ruth Buzzi) and Michael Harmon (Sid Caesar) have been hired to amuse the ship’s passengers.  Unfortunately, they’ve recently separated.  Patti thinks that Michael is incapable of expressing his emotions unless he’s carrying around his dummy.  And it turns out that she’s right because Michael really does carry that dummy around with him everywhere and he has frequent conversations with it.  Even when Michael inevitably apologizes for being a bad husband and asks Patti for another chance, he has to use the dummy to do it.

Seriously, it’s creepy!  I mean, everything works out in the end.  Michael and Patti decide to give their marriage a second chance and their dummies end up kissing as well.  But seriously, ventriloquist dummys are just weird.  Have you seen that episode of The Twilight Zone where the guy tries to switch one dummy out for another so the original dummy gets mad and destroys his replacement?  Have you seen the classic Anthony Hopkins film, Magic?  CREEPY!

Of course, this episode features not just the scariest story in Love Boat history.  It also features the stupidest.  Two twins (Cyb Barnstable and Trish Barnstable) board the cruise with their fiancés (played by David Nelson and Fred Travelena).  No one can tell the twins apart!  Not even Isaac!

Anyway, the twins worry that they might be making a mistake because it seems like each one is marrying a man with the opposite personality.  The twin who likes to stay up late is engaged to the man who goes to bed early.  The twin who likes to be responsible and level-headed is engaged to man who is wild and unpredictable.  So, when the twins disembark the boat so that they can get married in Mexico, they decide to switch places on their wedding day.  But then when the twins return to the boat with their new husbands, they decide that they made a mistake so they switch back.  They can do that because they’re twins!  Seriously, that’s the entire story.

Bleh!  This was so stupid.  Even writing about it was painful.

Finally, Julie’s in love!

Jack Chenault (Tony Roberts) is taking the cruise with his two young daughters and, when he sees Julie, it’s love at first sight.  The daughters wants their Dad to marry Julie as well.  One of the daughters is played by a very young Melora Hardin, who would grow up to play Jan Levinson on The Office.

After knowing Julie for one day, Michael announces that he’s in love with her and he wants her to come live with him in Alaska.  Julie is tempted but ultimately, she can’t leave her life on the boat behind.  Jack is heart-broken but Julie promises to see him the next time that she’s in Alaska.  So, I imagine we will never hear about Jack again.

This third storyline wasn’t bad.  Especially when compared to the other two, it was actually sweet and rather touching.  It helps that Tony Roberts gave a convincing performance Jack.  That said, asking someone to marry you after only knowing them for one day?  Unless you’re a young king looking to legitimize the Treaty of Troyes, that’s never a good idea.

This week’s cruise was not a good one.  Hopefully, next week’s will be less scary and less dumb.

Retro Television Reviews: Fantasy Island 2.22 “The Comic/The Golden Hour”

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 1986.  The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi!

This week, Fantasy Island brings us a mix of crime and comedy!

Episode 2.22 “The Comic/The Golden Hour”

(Dir by Earl Bellamy, originally aired May 5th, 1979)

Since this series began, I’ve been wondering what the legal status of Fantasy Island is.  Is it a territory of the United States?  Is it a part of the British Commonwealth?  Is it an independent nation?  Finally, in this episode, the question is answered.  Fantasy Island is an independent nation, though one that appears to be closely aligned to the United States.  And Mr. Roarke is the sole legal authority.  In short, Mr. Roarke is a bit of a dictator and the Island’s laws are pretty much determined by his whims.

This becomes apparent when a plane is forced to make an emergency landing on the island.  The plane is carrying a prisoner named Mike Banning (Michael Parks) to the United States.  When Federal Marshall Victor Grennan (Morgan Woodward) announces that there is no way he’s going to let Mike out of his handcuffs, Mr. Roarke announces that he’s in charge of the Island and, on the Island, no one is handcuffed.  Reluctantly, Grennan sets Mike free.

It also turns out that Mr. Roarke had a specific reason for wanting Mike on the island.  While in prison, he developed a pen pal relationship with a woman named Sandy Larson (Toni Tennille).  Mike’s letters provided a lot of comfort to Sandy after an auto accident left her in a wheelchair.  In fact, Sandy is in love with Mike and she’s on the Island!  Roarke arranges for Mike and Sandy to finally meet face-to-face.  Unfortunately, Sandy is self-conscious about her wheelchair and Mike feels like he’s a loser with no future.  Mike even tries to escape at one point, running through the jungle until he’s eventually captured by the Marshal.  Still, despite all of that, Mike and Sandy realize that they really do love each other.  Mike is willing to finish out his three years in prison if it means that Sandy will be waiting for him on the outside.  Fortunately, a bit Deus ex Machina comes into play as evidence is miraculously found that proves that Mike wrongfully convicted.  Yay!

While all of that’s going on, joke writer Jerry Burton (Fred Grandy) fantasizes about quitting his job working for comedic legend Danny Baker (Jack Carter) and instead pursuing a stand-up career of his own.  Mr. Roarke arranges for Jerry to perform at a bar on the northside of the Island.  Roarke explains that the bar is popular with the workers at the local pineapple plantation.  (See?  We’re learning even more about the Island!)  However, when the bar is shut down due to a brawl, Jerry instead finds himself performing at the big Fantasy Island talent show.  In fact, he’ll even be substituting for Danny, who was scheduled to host but has been held up on another part of the Island.

At first, Jerry bombs.  He has no confidence.  But then Danny joins him on stage and they bring down the house.  Jerry and Danny arrived on the Island as employee and employer but now, they’re leaving a comedy team.  Yay!  Plus. Jerry reconnects with his old high school girlfriend (Pat Klous).  Yay again!

The comedy stuff was fun, largely because Fred Grandy was as likable and goofy here as he was as Gopher on the The Love Boat.  However, what really made this episode memorable was the method intensity that Michael Parks brought to the role of Mike Banning.  While all the other guest stars goof around and enjoy the scenery, Parks plays his role with a seething rage.  It’s unexpected but it works.

All in all, this was a good episode.  The combination of Fred Grandy and Michael Parks turned out to be just what Fantasy Island needed.