Eh. This has been a strong season, with the exception of all the nonsense about the charter schools. Unfortunately, this week’s episode was all about trying to keep Abbott from turning into a charter school and it was a rare heavy-handed misfire for what it is usually one of the smartest shows on television. Ava still made me laugh, though.
Accused (Tuesday Night, FOX)
This week’s episode of Accused was a misfire. It tried to deal with both gun control and misinformation and, in both cases, it just came across as being histrionic. It was like the Reefer Madness of 21st Century anthology shows.
The Bachelor (Monday and Tuesday, ABC)
The thing with this season is that it’s impossible to get excited about Zach and it’s difficult to take anyone seriously when they say that they were falling in love with Zach. Monday featured the hometown visits and a “shocking” departure. (Don’t worry, Charity avoided marrying Zach and she gets to be the new bachelorette). Tuesday featured the Women Tell All, which started out as interesting with lots of petty drama but then all the action stopped so Greer could go through a televised struggle session about her old social media posts. Jesse Palmer announced that the Bachelor franchise will no longer shy away from addressing the actions of its contestants and I rolled my eyes so dramatically that I’m surprised I’m still able to see straight. It’s one thing to address actions. It’s another thing to spend half an hour patting yourself on the back for doing it, especially when it was obvious that both Jesse and Greer were just reciting what they had been told to say.
The Brady Bunch Hour (YouTube)
I finished the series this week. Yay! Seriously, it was kind of fun to experience something as strange as The Brady Bunch Hour but I think if it had lasted longer than nine episodes, I wouldn’t have made it. That final hour nearly broke me.
Farmer Wants A Wife (Wednesday Night, FOX)
After suffering through The Bachelor, this show provided a nice and simple relief. Life on the farm isn’t easy but at least all the farmers are interesting and everyone gets to wear cute country outfits!
Jail (Tuesday Afternoon, Reelz)
This was a Cops-style show that aired in early 2010s. As the title suggests, a camera crew filmed the events in a county jail. Sometimes, they were in Fort Worth. Sometimes, they were in Las Vegas. Whenever they went to Las Vegas, there was one annoying intake officer who always ended up getting attacked by an inmate. Were the inmates attacking because they were violent criminals or because they were on camera? My personal theory is that the intake officer, with his sandy hair and his glasses and his air of unearned authority, was kind of a jerk who just brought out the worst in people.
Anyway, I watched two episodes on Tuesday. A lot of drunks were brought in for the night. Most of the guards were not particularly bright, which made it a bit awkward whenever they tried to get philosophical about why people commit crimes. “I guess until they get tired of us arresting them, we’re going to keep getting called out there.” Okay, whatever you say, dude.
Night Court (Tuesday Night, NBC)
You know, I still like Melissa Rauch but I have to say that, as of this latest episode, I think Abbi is now officially the most annoying character on television. Her fiancé, Rand, came to New York to help her train for a marathon. Rand himself was a pretty annoying character but Abi was a hundred times worse for putting up with him and forcing him on her co-workers.
Night Flight (Night Flight Plus)
On Friday, I watched an episode about the 1984 Oscars. A lot of good songs were nominated that year.
This was a public access show from the 80s. Night Flight Plus has episodes of it and several other old public access shows. I watched one episode on Saturday morning. Gibby Haynes stopped by the set and talked about how he used to be an accountant.
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 California Dreams, which ran on NBC from 1992 to 1996. The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!
This week, California Dreams is Saved By The Bell!
Episode 4.9 “Operation Tony”
(Dir by Don Barnhart, originally aired on November 18th, 1995)
Tony needs to have shoulder surgery and he’s so worried about dying that he not only practices laying very still but he also requires Sam to practice mourning. The night before the operation, he has a dream where he sees his own funeral and, upon waking up, he tries to sneak out of the hospital and …. wait a minute. This seems familiar. The exact same thing happened to Zack Morris on Saved By The Bell!
Yes, this episode is pretty much a remake of Operation Zach. The California Dreams version works a bit better than the SBTB version because Tony is a more sympathetic figure than Zach Morris and, unlike Zach, Tony didn’t have the power to stop time whenever he felt like it so Tony has no way to magically put off the operation. Plus, this episode has a B-plot where Lorena volunteers as a candy striper in an attempt to catch the attention of a handsome doctor. Unfortunately, the doctor explains that he doesn’t date people with whom he works. (I would hope that he also doesn’t date teenagers.) It was a predictable storyline but I still always like episodes that focus, even if just partially, on Lorena because Lorena is who I was always relate to whenever I watch this show.
Anyway, this was a good episode, even it was a familiar one. Let’s move on.
Episode 4.10 “Community Service”
(Dir by Don Barnhart, originally aired on November 25th, 1995)
In this episode, the members of the California Dreams do community service!
Now, I know that I always complain whenever this happens on City Guys but that’s because City Guys usually features Ms. Noble ordering her students to do stuff during their free time. On California Dreams, everyone actually volunteered of their own free will. It is true that Tiffani guilted them into volunteering but still, there’s a big difference between Tiffani looking sad and Ms. Noble telling all of her students what they’re going to give up their weekend just because she says so.
Sam volunteers for the blood drive. Jake volunteers for Meals on Wheels and eats all the food himself. (In 1995, this was played for laughs. You can only imagine how it would be portrayed today.) Mark helps to clean the beach and ends up smelling like a toxic waste dump. Lorena gives some things to the Goodwill. And Tiffani and Sly end up working at the Teen Help Line. Tiffani tries to sincerely help people while Sly orders pizza and hits on all the female counselors.
Uh-oh! The school is cutting its budget and the Teen Line is going to be closed down! Sly comes up with an idea! Maybe the Dreams can play a benefit concert. I mean, it worked on Saved By The Bell …. TWICE! Sly organizes the concert and basks in everyone’s attention, even though Tiffani is upset that Sly is doing the right thing for the wrong reason. (Calm down, Tiffani.) Fortunately, during the concert, a teen calls in and says he wants to run away from home. Because Sly is the only person in the office, he’s forced to help the caller and he discovers that joy of doing the right thing for the right reasons! Yay! Of course, I imagine this lesson will be forgotten by the next episode. We’ll find out next week!
As a general rule, the best episodes of California Dreams are the ones in which Sly is let loose to be his sleazy but ultimately good-hearted self. Though the story was familiar, Michael Cade did a good job playing the two sides of Sly. Plus, the Dreams performed that “To the End” song, which has a really rocking guitar solo.
Next week, Tiffani tries to heal the bay! Hopefully, she’ll have better luck at it than Mark did during this episode.
Once upon a time, Casey Rhodes (Beau Mirchoff) was a football star. He was a quarterback. Everyone expected great things from him. He was going to be the next Tom Brady. But then a knee injury took him out of the game and a subsequent drug addiction took him out of mainstream society. Now, Casey makes his living pulling off robberies. He may be a criminal but he’s not a bad-hearted one. He may carry a gun but he tries not to shoot anyone who doesn’t shoot at him first. Working with him are a former baseball player named Mike (Trevor Getzky) and Nikki (Keeya King), who is the smartest member of the crew.
Despite Casey’s attempts to do his job with as little violence as possible, a gunfight does break out during one robbery in Los Angeles. When Detectives James Knight (Bruce Willis) and his partner, Eric Fitzgerald (Lochlyn Munro), interrupt the robbery, Fitzgerald ends up getting shot multiple times as Casey and his crew make their escape. With Fitzgerald in the hospital, Knight decides to follow the crew to New York and take out both them and their boss, a former Internal Affairs officer named Winna (Michael Eklund). It turns out that there’s a history between Knight and Winna. Knight wants his revenge on Winna but, at the same time, Winna knows some dark secrets from Knight’s past.
Though it works as a stand-alone film, 2022’s Detective Knight: Rogue is actually the first part of a trilogy that follows the adventures of Detective Knight. (Detective Knight: Redemption was released at the end of 2022 while Detective Knight: Independence came out last month.) The Detective Knight films were among the last of the movies in which Bruce Willis appeared before announcing his retirement. It can be strange to watch Willis’s final films, knowing what we know about what he was going through at the time that he made them. Though he’s definitely the star of the film, Willis is used sparingly in Detective Knight: Rogue and there’s little of the cocky attitude that we tend to associate with Willis’s best roles. Instead, he’s a grim avenger, determined to get justice for both his partner and himself. Willis is convincing in the role, even if the film is edited in such a way that the viewer gets the feeling that a stand-in may have been used for some of the long-shots involving Detective Knight. That said, Willis still looks convincing carrying a badge and a gun and it’s nice to see a Willis film where he’s again playing a hero instead of a villain.
As the football player-turned-thief, Beau Mirchoff gets more screentime than Willis but, fortunately, Casey is an interesting character and Mirchoff gives a strong performance as a criminal who would rather be a family man and who is desperately looking for a way to make up for the mistakes of his past. Towards the end of the film, he does a flawless job delivering a surprisingly well-written monologue about how he went from being a football star to being a common thief. Mirchoff’s strong performance adds a good deal of ambiguity to the film. The criminals aren’t necessarily that bad at heart and, as we learn, the good guys haven’t always been angels in the past. Detective Knight: Rogue becomes more than just another low-budget thriller. It becomes a meditation of regret and redemption.
Detective Knight: Rogue took me by surprise. As directed by Edward Drake (who was also responsible for another effective late Bruce Willis starrer, Gasoline Alley), it’s an intelligent thriller and it’s one that pays tribute to Bruce Willis as an action icon. It’s proof that a good story can sometimes be found where you least expect it.
I’m actually a bit surprised to discover that I haven’t already shared this music video of the day.
We can drive it home with one headlight….
Some songs just get stuck in your head and I think this is definitely one of them. This is also a song that always used to play in the background at one of my favorite used bookstores. I associate One Headlight with searching through old books and learning about history.
The lead singer of The Wallflowers is, of course, Jakob Dylan. Jakob is know for being Bob Dylan’s son and certainly, this song has a Bob Dylanesque feel to it. That said, Jakob made it his own. The music video certainly makes good use of Jakob’s perfect bone structure.
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 Brady Bunch Hour, which ran on ABC from 1976 to 1977. All nine episodes can be found on YouTube!
This week, The Brady Bunch Hour comes to a close and with it, I gain my freedom from having to watch any more pitch perfect but incredibly boring performances from Florence Henderson.
Episode 1.9
(Directed by Jack Regas, originally aired on May 25th, 1977)
Two things happened on May 25th, 1977.
First of all, a film called Star Wars opened in theaters across the country.
Secondly, on ABC, The Brady Bunch Hour aired for the final time.
The final episode begins in the same way as all of the previous episodes. The Kroftettes do a kickline before driving into the pool and the audience applauds while the announcer reads off the names of the Bradys and announces that tonight’s special guest stars include Paul Williams, Rip Taylor, Lynn Anderson (who was a country-western singer), and Ann B. Davis.
Dressed in blue, The Bradys come out and perform a song called I’ve Got Love, which was written for a Broadway musical called Purlie. Purlie was a show about a black preacher living in the South during the Jim Crow era so you have to wonder how exactly the song relates to anything having to do with The Brady Bunch. As led by Florence Henderson, the Bunch turns the song into an “up with people”-style anthem. The Kroftettes meanwhile swim around with a punch of plastic hearts.
The song ends and, as the rest of their family struggles to catch their breath, Carol welcomes everyone to the show.
“I love love!” Carol announces.
The banter starts and the joke this time is that Carol enjoyed the song so much that she just won’t stop singing even while the rest of the family is trying to talk. This gets annoying pretty quickly because we’ve all had a relative like Carol, that person who can carry a tune and who goes out of their way to make sure that no one ever forgets it. Reportedly, one of the main reasons that Florence Henderson agreed to do The Brady Bunch Hour was because she wanted to transform herself into a Barbra Streisand-style singer and the producers agreed to allow her to do a solo in every episode. Henderson did not have a bad voice but she still had a tendency to oversell every song that she sang, performing in an over-rehearsed manner that revealed little real personality. During the last few episodes, a desperation creeped into Henderson’s performances, as if she felt that she alone could save the show by singing the Heck out of every song that she got.
After a minimum amount of banter (in which not a word is said about this being the final episode of the series), we cut to Carol and the kids performing a song called We’ve Got Us in front of a cardboard city skyline. For some reason, everyone’s dressed for golf.
At one point, the Brady daughters carry Carol across the stage while Carol sings. The audience applauds but Cindy looks like she’s struggling not to lose her grip on Carol’s ankles.
Peter and Bobby then carry Greg out on their shoulders while Greg sings. At one point, they nearly drop Greg and Greg’s reaction (his singing voice goes up several octaves) would seem to indicate that this was not at all planned.
After the rest of the Bunch marches off stage, Peter sneaks back and discovers that Mr. Merrill (played, of course, by Rip Taylor) is sleeping on a park bench. Mr. Merrill gets upset when Peter tries to move a trashcan because that is apparently where Mr. Merill keeps all of his stuff. Peter finds a slinky in the trashcan and Mr. Merrill announces, “Haven’t you ever seen Palm Springs?” Peter also finds a bottle of liquor in the the trashcan. Mr. Merrill explains that it’s “Beethoven’s fifth.” Peter and Jackie proceed to perform Me and My Shadow and it’s just as painful as it sounds.
The show goes to commercial. When it comes back, Fake Jan announces that the next guest is “my favorite female recording star, Lynn Anderson.” Fake Jan spends so much time praising Lynn that Greg comes out and tells Fake Jan that giving Lynn too much of a big build-up will make Lynn nervous. “Ladies and gentleman,” Fake Jan says, “a singer who’s not too bad, Lynn Anderson!” (To give credit where credit is due, I laughed.) Lynn Anderson comes out and sings a song called Right Time Of The Night and Fake Jan was right. She’s not too bad.
As Lynn finishes up the song, Fake Jan announces that Lynn is the best. “You just can’t say stuff like that on TV,” Greg says, sounding a bit like a jerk, if we’re going to be honest. Fake Jan demands that Greg tell her one person who sings as well as Lynn Anderson, who looks as good as Lynn Anderson, who has more hit records than Lynn Anderson, and who has beautiful blonde hair like Lynn Anderson.
“Paul Williams,” Greg says. “Great musician, but he’s a troublemaker …. remember when he came by the house?”
“Oh yeah,” Fake Jan says, “that was trouble.”
It’s flashback time!
We cut to the Brady Compound, where Alice is attempting to break up with Rip Taylor’s Jackie Merrill. Carol interrupts their fight to tell Alice to go clean another part of the house. Alice agrees to go on a date with Jackie, mostly to get him to go away. After Merrill leaves, Carol announces that Paul Williams is coming over. Marcia enters the living room, dressed in overalls because Paul Williams is into simple things, “like how people feel inside.”
Carol says…. I am not making this up …. Carol says, “Oh. Well, maybe you should swallow him, then.”
*snicker*
Greg enters the living room and starts leaving copies of his songs all over the living room. Marcia makes fun of his lyrics. Greg tells her, “Watch your mouth.”
*snicker*
Anyway, Marcia runs off crying. Mike enters the living room, looking confused. Carol explains that Paul Williams is only coming over to discuss what he’s going to do on the show. He doesn’t want to see Greg’s music or hang out with Marcia. A disgruntled Greg collects all of his lyrics. Finally, after Greg leaves the living room, Paul Williams rings the doorbell.
Paul tells Mike that he’s a “big fan of yours.” The audience laughs because Paul Williams is short. However, it turns out that Paul Williams is an even bigger fan of Carol’s. As Paul flirts shamelessly with Carol, Mike leaves to get the kids. Mike and the kids re-enter the living room just in time to hear Paul announce that he’s in love with Carol. The show cuts to commercial.
When the show returns, Mike is standing on stage, by himself. He’s wearing another one of his turtlenecks. “Welcome back to the second half of my family’s favorite show,” Mike tells us. Mike makes fun of Paul for being short and then shows us what happened at the Brady compound.
What happened?, you may ask. Well, Mike tells Paul that he doesn’t appreciate Paul loving his wife. Bobby asks if Mike is going to punch out Paul but Carol says that Mike doesn’t punch people out. “Good,” Paul says, “anyone over 5’5 punching me is assault with a deadly weapon.” (Because Paul Williams is short, get it?) Cindy asks Paul why he’s in love with Carol, as if even she can’t believe it. Paul says that Carol is “one foxy lady.” Mike promptly sends the children out of the living room and then starts yelling at Paul (or, at the very least, his voice goes up an octave or two as he expresses his annoyance).
Paul apologizes and then says that he has a compulsive personality “because I’m short,” and that occasionally, he does something compulsive like declare his love for Carol Brady. Paul then suggest that he and Carol could get married on the show. After Carol turns him down, Paul explains that he only came on the show so he could meet Carol. He then Carol a broach that once belonged to his grandmother. “She was a very foxy lady too,” Paul says, “Short but foxy.” Paul leaves.
“What a sweet man,” Carol says, looking at the brooch.
“He’s a loon!” Mike declares.
Before Mike can say anything else insensitive about the man who just opened up his mental health on national television, Fake Jan comes running in with Lynn Anderson. Lynn mentions that Paul Williams is in love with her and then holds up a brooch that Paul gave her. “It was his grandmother’s!”
We cut to the pool, where Peter has decided to outsmart Greg by getting in the pool himself. Greg swears that he wasn’t planning on pushing Peter in the pool this week. Peter climbs out of the pool and announces that Paul Williams is the next musical guest. “He’s so short,” Peter says, “he needs a ladder to get into a good mood.” Paul comes out and shoves both Greg and Peter in the pool.
Paul then sings The Hell Of It, a song that he wrote for Brian DePalma’s Phantom of Paradise. While he sings, thunder rumbles on the soundtrack, the Kroftettes perform in the pool, and the lights in the studio flash on and off. It’s actually surprisingly good for The Brady Bunch Hour but you have to wonder how the show’s target audience felt about a song that was sung from the point of view of someone who had just sold his soul to the Devil.
We then cut to a country road, where Carol sings a country song called Born To Say Goodbye. She’s no Lynn Anderson, that’s for sure. Still, listening to the lyrics, you have to wonder if she sang this knowing that the show was about to end. Despite the fact that no one on the show has mentioned anything about this being the final episode, one would have to think that the Bunch had some sort of knowledge that things weren’t looking good for the show’s future.
We then cut to a comedy skit, in which Paul Williams tells us that the member of the Brady Bunch will be recreating the voyage of Columbus. At one point, Williams flubs his lines but keeps going. According to Wikipedia, several members of the cast and crew have said that Paul Williams was drunk while filming The Brady Bunch Hour and that is definitely the vibe that comes through. Anyway, the skit is actually about what was going on with Columbus’s family while Christopher was out exploring and it’s called The Columbus Bunch. The members of the Bunch all speak with exagerrated Italian accents. It’s annoying as Heckfire. The skit goes on forever and as I watched it, I actually found myself thinking of the terrible fantasy sequences that used to appear on Saved By The Bell. It’s painful and the fact that everyone involved seems to be trying so hard makes it even more painful.
It’s time for the final finale of The Brady Bunch Hour! This week, there’s no banter before the finale. Instead, the Bunch appears on stage, wearing white suits. Mike says “The finale this week is….” and I honestly can’t understand what it is that he says next. It sounds like he says, “The finale this week is done,” but that wouldn’t make any sense. All I know is that the members of the Bunch desperately run off stage, as they do at the start of every finale. Again, I’m not sure why anyone thought it was a good idea to show the Bunch as being totally scatter-brained and incapable of the least bit of professionalism but whatever. The show’s almost over.
As for the finale, it’s all about music.
The Krofetettes dance while Bobby, looking like Satan’s stepchild, plays a ragtime tune on the piano.
Mike and Carol sing a few bars from the hottest song of 1950, Music! Music! Music!
Marcia sings Look What They’ve Done To My Song, Ma, which was a song by Melanie, the folk singer who appeared on an earlier episode.
Carol, who is literally sitting in front of a poster that reads Easy Listening, performs 1962’s The Sweetest Sounds, a song that was previously covered by Barbra Streisand.
Greg sings a song called Music Is My Life. Greg’s voice isn’t terrible but it’s awfully generic. He might need to get a different life, especially considering that this is the final episode.
Geri Reischl, who is so talented that she deserves to be referred to by her real name (and not Fake Jan) for this performance, comes out and sings Hey Mister Melody and once again shows that she was way too musically talented for this show. She and Florence Henderson had the best voices of the cast but, unlike the overly rehearsed Henderson, Geri actually brought some spontaneity to her performances.
Rip Taylor and a miserable-looking Ann B. Davis perform The Music Goes Round and Round.
Paul Williams and Lynn Anderson perform an Old Fashioned Love Song. One can almost sense Florence Henderson fuming off-stage over Lynn getting to be the one who performed with Paul Williams.
The Brady kids come out and sing Piano Man with the all the good-natured cheer of a church youth group.
The finale ends with the entire cast doing an unenthusiastic version of I Believe In Music. Paul Williams dances with Florence Henderson while a manic Rip Taylor throws confetti all over the stage.
After a commercial break, the Bunch comes out to say goodnight.
“Remember last week when I said, ‘I guess this bring us to the end of tonight’s show?” Carol says.
Yes, we do. Carol, is there something you need to share with the audience about the show’s future?
“Well, I’m saying it again this week,” Carol says, “I guess this brings us to the end of tonight’s show.”
Mike tell Carol that she should come up with something new to close the show and Carol does a stuttering impersonation of Porky the Pig and that’s when I nearly threw a shoe at the screen. Fortunately, I was distracted by Cindy saying, “And don’t worry about Paul Williams, he’s not really crazy.” Everyone says goodnight and the show ends….
….and never returns!
So, The Brady Bunch Hour has come to an end and what have we learned from these reviews? Cocaine was very popular in the 70s.
“Put your weight on it!” Tyrone Williams (Rudy Ray Moore) shouts at the start of 1979’s Disco Godfather. It’s a phrase that he regularly employs as he encourages everyone at the local disco to hit the dance floor and show off their moves. All Tyrone has to do to get people to dance is to shout out his catch phrase. He’s such a beloved figure in the community that most people just call him, “Godfather.”
The Godfather is the uncle of Bucky Williams (Julius Carry), a promising young basketball star who seems to have his entire future ahead of him. However, what the Godfather doesn’t know is that Bucky has fallen in with the wrong crowd and they’ve been pushing him to smoke …. ANGEL DUST! Bucky’s girlfriend tries to warn him that he’s been smoking too much of “the whack” but Bucky doesn’t heed her warning. Suddenly, Bucky is in the middle of the dance floor, freaking out as he imagines being attacked by zombie basketball players and a sword-wielding witch. He also sees the Disco Godfather, telling him to calm down, but suddenly the Godfather is transformed into a skeleton!
After Bucky is subdued and taken down to the local PCP recovery center (which is full of users who are all screaming, rolling around on the floor, and generally acting whacked out), the Godfather decides that he can no longer stand by while his community is victimized by the PCP dealers. With the help of Noel (Carol Speed), the Godfather starts a group called Angels Against Dust and starts a campaign to “attack the whack!” While the Godfather tracks down the dealers, Noel holds a rally where, at one point, she announces that everyone is going to have to come together and “whack the attack.”
The fact that this obviously flubbed line was included in the final film tells you much about what makes Disco Godfather such an interesting viewing experience. The film was shot very quickly and with very little money and, as such, second takes were a luxury that the film couldn’t afford. However, there’s also an undeniable charm to the film’s low-budget style. It’s amateurish but it’s amateurish in the most likable way possible. Even in the case of the “whack the attack” line, it’s hard not to appreciate that Carol Speed didn’t let that one flub stop her from giving the rest of her speech. By that same token, it’s also hard not appreciate that, later in the film, a never-before-seen character suddenly helps the Godfather fight off a bunch of pushers. This character was played by Moore’s karate instructor and his appearance is totally random and yet totally appropriate. In the world of DiscoGodfather, the chaotic plotting is the point. The more random the film becomes, the more it suggests a universe ruled by chance and coincidence. The total lack of logic starts to make sense. Werner Herzog would probably love this film if he ever saw it.
Rudy Ray Moore, of course, was a famously raunchy comic who was best-known for playing Dolemite in three films. However, Disco Godfather finds him in a bit more of a dramatic mood, as he tours the local PCP ward and tells everyone he meets that they have to “attack the whack,” Compared to the Dolemite films, there’s considerably less sex and profanity to be found in DiscoGodfather. There are several fight scenes and Rudy Ray Moore gets to show off his karate moves but the violence is never as over the top as it was in Dolemite. The problem, however, is that Rudy Ray Moore was a natural-born comic and, as a result, every line that he utters, regardless of how serious the topic, sounds like its building up to a punchline. Moore gets to do some dramatic acting at the end of the film, when the Godfather is himself force fed the whack and he starts to hallucinate various disturbing images. “That’s not right, mama!” the Godfather says at one point and indeed, the trip sequence is the strongest part of the film, a genuinely surreal trip into the subconscious of a man who just wanted to encourage people to dance.
Disco Godfather is one of those films that you just have to see. When Disco Godfather isn’t learning about PCP, he’s telling everyone to “put your weight on it” and, as a result, this film not only features a lot of anti-drug hysteria but it also features a lot of dancing. This is very much a film of its time. In one the film’s few deliberately funny moments, the album cover for the SaturdayNightFever soundtrack is seen covered in cocaine. Of course, the Disco Godfather doesn’t need cocaine to have a good time and he certainly doesn’t need the whack. He just needs the music and people willing to put their weight on it.
Disco Godfather was not a box office success when it was originally released, with Moore later saying that he made a mistake by toning down his persona for the film. Moore was probably correct but, seen today, Disco Godfather is an enchantingly berserk time capsule. Watch it and then be sure to watch Eddie Murphy play Rudy Ray Moore in the Netflix biopic, Dolemite Is My Name.
In the Boston of the early 1960s, Loretta McLaughlin (Keira Knightley) is a reporter for the Boston Record American. Loretta is frustrated with a newsroom that is dominated by a boys club of aging, overweight, sexist old timers. When she thinks that she’s discovered that there is a murderer targeting and strangling elderly women in Boston, she goes to her editor, Jack Maclaine (Chris Cooper), and asks to be allowed to write up a story about her suspicions. Jack would prefer that Loretta write a story about the new toaster that’s been released by Sunbeam.
So, Loretta does some investigating on her own and she discovers that the police suspect that all of the recent murders are being committed by one man. The story that she writes ends up on the front page and it even leads to her sharing a sip of whatever alcohol Jack has in his flask. The Boston police initially deny Loretta’s story and it looks like Loretta is going to spend the rest of her career reviewing kitchen appliances. But then the police just as suddenly confirm Loretta’s story and Loretta is back on the Strangler beat. She’s partnered with a veteran reporter named Jean Cole (Carrie Coon).
Together, Loretta and Jean battle sexism while investigating not just the Strangler but also the police department’s incompetence. Their reporting makes them local celebrities, with many people coming to them with the leads that the police couldn’t be bothered to follow up on. Despite Jean’s warnings about getting too involved with the case, Loretta obsesses over the Strangler’s crimes. Could the murderer be Daniel Marsh (Ryan Winkles), the boyfriend of one of the victim’s? Could it be George Nassar (Greg Vrostros), a criminal who reportedly has a genius IQ? Or could it be Albert DeSalvo (David Dastmalchian), the man who confesses to the crimes under the condition that his confession cannot be used in court and the belief that his family will be sent the reward money that would otherwise go to someone who helped the police to catch the Boston Strangler? DeSalvo, who was given a life sentence for a series of rapes that he committed before and after the murders began, is never convicted of any of the murders but, with his confession, the murders are declared to be solved. But are they? Loretta is not so sure.
Boston Strangler is not the first film to be made about the murders but I think that it might be the first to seriously explore the theory that DeSalvo was lying when he confessed to the majority of the murders. (As the film points out, DeSalvo’s cellmate just happened to be the same George Nassar who was also a suspect in the murders.) 1968’s The Boston Strangler, for instance, explained away the inconsistencies in DeSalvo’s confessions by suggesting the DeSalvo suffered from dissociative identity disorder and that DeSalvo himself didn’t understand what he was doing. This latest version of the story, however, presents DeSalvo as being a streetwise, lifelong criminal who confessed because his lawyer, F. Lee Bailey, convinced him that he would get a book deal and that he would be sent to a mental hospital as opposed to a prison. A title card at the end of the film informs us that DNA testing has confirmed that DeSalvo committed one of the 13 murders to which he confessed but that the other 12 murders remain unsolved. While one might wonder why anyone would confess to a murder that they didn’t actually commit, it’s actually something that has happened on more than a few occasions. Typically, the false confession will come from someone who, like DeSalvo, is already looking at a life sentence and who has nothing to lose by helping the police close the book on some unsolved crimes. The confessor gets a little extra notoriety and maybe some special treatment and the cops get to increase their clearance rate. In Boston Strangler, it’s suggested that DeSalvo’s confession was accepted because everyone wanted the crimes and the fear that went with them to just magically go away.
It’s an intriguing theory and one that has more evidence to back it up than the majority of conspiracy theories that one comes across online. Unfortunately, Boston Strangler really doesn’t do the story much justice because it focuses on the least interesting part of it. We don’t learn much about the investigation, DeSalvo, or the lives of the Strangler’s victims. Instead, the film gets bogged down with newsroom politics, as Loretta demands to be taken seriously and Jean offers advice on how to play the political game. Every journalism cliché is present, from the crotchety old editor to the afterwork bar to the publisher who doesn’t want to upset the city’s power brokers. Admittedly, when it comes to journalists, there’s probably a good deal of truth to be found in all of those clichés but the film still leans a bit too heavily into them. Every time we see Chris Cooper looking at the front page and taking a sip from his flask, we’re reminded that we’ve seen the exact same scene in a hundred other movies about newspapers.
As directed by Matt Ruskin, Boston Strangler has the washed-out, shadowy look that David Fincher used to good effect in Zodiac. The difference is that, in Zodiac, the shadows created a feeling of an all-enveloping evil slowly consuming the world. Zodiac’s visual style felt as if it was showing the viewer a true picture of the heart of darkness. In BostonStrangler, the visual style just leads the viewer to suspect that the director watched Zodiac before filming. The film’s visuals are so washed-out that it actually becomes a bit boring to look at. This is the rare film that makes Boston seem bland. Interestingly, when the action briefly moves to Michigan, the visuals suddenly become much more colorful and interesting. Perhaps by design, there’s a vibrancy to the Michigan scenes that is missing from the rest of the film. Unfortunately, those Michigan scenes are very brief.
The cast is full of talent but the majority of the performers are let down by a script that doesn’t allow anyone to have more than one or two personality traits. Keira Knightley speaks with a convincing Boston accent and has a few good scenes in which she shows that Loretta is coming to understand the true horror of the story she’s covering but the script itself doesn’t allow Loretta to have much of a personality beyond being outraged. Carrie Coon, cast as potentially the most interesting character in the film, also feels underused. As for Chris Cooper, he glowers with the best of them but the film can’t figure out much to do with him beyond having him drink from his flask.
There’s an interesting moment in the film in which it is suggested that DeSalvo built a false confession out of the details that he came across in Loretta and Jean’s stories about the crimes. It’s a moment that suggests that the media itself has some culpability when it comes to the crimes of men like Albert DeSalvo and whoever else may or may not have been strangling women in 1960s Boston. It’s perhaps the most honest moment of the film but it’s also a moment that’s not followed up on. That’s a shame because it suggests the movie that Boston Strangler could have been if it hadn’t gotten so bogged down with all the journalism film clichés. (Again, I would mention Zodiac as the prime example of how to do this type of film effectively.) Boston Strangler hints at the bigger story but it never really goes far beneath the surface.
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, Ms. Noble gets married and her students get involved for some reason.
Episode 4.6 “Students of the Bride”
(Dir by Frank Bonner, originally aired on October 7th, 2000)
Ms. Noble’s wedding day is coming up and, because Ms. Noble is the most unprofessional educator in New York, she allows her students to find out that she doesn’t have a dress, a venue, a cake, a florist, or a wedding band. Jamal, Cassidy, Dawn, L-Train, Al, and Chris step up to help Ms. Noble plan her wedding.
……
Are you freaking kidding me?
Look, I love weddings as much as anyone. I love planning them and I love telling people what they have to wear and I love coming up with the song list for the reception. But seriously — MS. NOBLE IS THE PRINCIPAL! Add to that, she’s an adult and so is the man she’s supposed to marry. Why are they incapable of planning their own wedding? Why are a bunch of high school students throwing a bachelor party for Billy? Doesn’t Billy have any friends his own age? Speaking of which, does not Ms. Noble have anyone her own age to help her plan her wedding? Do neither of these two have any family in New York? How does this make any freaking sense!?
Anyway, it turns out that having a bunch of high school kids plan your bachelor party is a mistake because Ms. Noble gets upset when she sees Billy dancing with the hula girls that L-Train brought to the school. (Of course, they have the bachelor party on the roof of Manny High.) Ms. Noble and Billy fight and say that maybe they shouldn’t get married. The kids make it their mission to make sure that Ms. Noble gets married to Billy. “Ms. Noble’s getting married if I have to marry her myself!” Jamal says. SHE’S YOUR PRINCIPAL, YOU WEIRDO!
Oh! And Jamal and Cassidy briefly fall in love but then they realize that it’s just because they’ve been working on the wedding and they’re both in a romantic mood. Remember when Cassidy was dating Chris? Whatever happened with that?
God, this is a stupid episode. Ms. Noble does get married at the end of the episode so yay. Let’s move on.
Episode 4.7 “Mo’ Money Mo’ Problems”
(Dir by Frank Bonner, originally aired on October 14th, 2000)
L-Train invents a glow-in-the-dark basketball. Al, Chris, and Jamal form a company to sell the ball. Al lets the power go to his head and he learns an important lesson about how to treat his employees. Good for him. I think the more important question raised by this episode is why they allowed this to happen with Chris’s hair.
I mean, Scott Whyte was not a bad-looking guy but he spent the majority of City Guys with the least flattering haircut imaginable.
While Al is learning an important lesson about business, Dawn is getting cast in a commercial and Cassidy’s getting jealous. Cassidy gives Dawn a lot of bad advice, which Dawn believes because Dawn could be an incredibly stupid character. After Cassidy comes clean, Dawn steps aside so that Cassidy can fulfill her dream of acting in a commercial. Of course, this all leads to Cassidy getting hit in the face with a pie. Ugh. I hate pie gags. They always look so messy.
This was a fairly middling episode but Steven Daniel did get a chance to show off his physical comedy skills when L-Train was left alone in the basketball factory. That was definitely a plus. As well, no one was roped into helping Ms. Noble plan her honeymoon so that was another plus.
Next week, the neat guys continue to be smart and streetwise!
First released in 1975, Deadly Hero tells the story of Edward Lacy (Don Murray).
Lacy is an 18-year veteran of the New York Police Department and a proud family man. Lacy is clean-cut, handsome in a blandly pleasant way, and he has a wife and several children. He’s a member of the Knights of Columbus and there are times when he imagines himself pursuing a career in politics. One of the first things that we see Lacy do is introduce an anti-crime mayoral candidate named Reilly (George S. Irving) at a Knights of Columbus rally. Lacy goes out of his way to make sure that he and his family make a good impression but Reilly barely seems to notice him.
Lacy is also a racist who enjoys pulling and using his gun. He was once a detective but a long string of brutality complaints has led to him being demoted back down to being a patrolman. He and his partner (Treat Williams, making his film debut) spend their time patrolling the streets of New York City, getting dirty looks and verbal abuse from the people who they are supposed to be protecting. Much like Travis Bickle in the following year’s Taxi Driver, Lacy obsesses on the crime and the decay that he sees all around him.
Sally (Diahn Williams) lives a life that is a hundred times different from Lacy’s. She’s a cellist and a conductor. She spends her days teaching and her nights conducting at an avant-garde theater. Sally and Lacy have little in common but their lives become intertwined when Sally is attacked and briefly held hostage by a mentally disturbed mugger named Rabbit (James Earl Jones). Responding to a call put in by Sally’s neighbor (Lila Skala), Lacy discovers Rabbit holding a knife to Sally’s throat in the hallway of Sally’s apartment building. At first, Lacy handles the situation calmly and he manages to talk Rabbit into not only releasing Sally but also dropping his knife. However, instead of arresting the now unarmed and docile Rabbit, Lacy shoots and kills him.
Knowing that he’s about to be investigated and that he’s made enemies in the department due to his political activities, Lacy convinces the still-shocked Sally to lie and say that she witnessed Rabbit lunging for Lacy’s gun before Lacy fired. Lacy is proclaimed a hero and soon, Reilly is inviting him to appear at rallies with him. Lacy’s political dreams seem to be coming true but Sally starts to feel guilty about lying. Realizing that Sally is planning on revealing the truth about what happened, Lacy goes to extreme measures to try to keep her quiet.
Deadly Hero is an interesting film, one that is certainly flawed but which ultimately works as a portrait of the authoritarian mindset. Ivan Nagy directs without much visual flair and, especially at the start of the film, he struggles to maintain a consistent pace. For instance, the scene where Rabbit initially menaces Sally seems to go on forever, long beyond whatever was necessary to convince the audience that Rabbit was a dangerous guy. (With the amount of time that Nagy lingers over shots of Sally being menaced by Rabbit, I was not surprised to read that Nagy and Dianh Williams apparently did not get along during filming.) That said, the film’s low budget actually works to its advantage, with the grainy cinematography giving the film a gritty, documentary feel. The film was shot on location in New York City and it’s interesting to watch the actors interact with real New Yorkers. While Lacy is never a sympathetic character, seeing the actual streets of New York does go a long way to explaining why he’s so paranoid. This is one of the many 70s films in which the overriding message seemed to be that New York City was the worst place on the planet.
The film is dominated by Don Murray, who plays Lacy as being a blue-collar fascist who has learned how to hide his anger and his hatred behind a quick smile and an outwardly friendly manner. Feeling confident that everyone will back him up, he has no hesitation about executing an unarmed black man. Even when it becomes obvious that Sally is not going to continue to lie about what happened, Lacy is still arrogant enough to assume that he can charm her into changing her mind. When that doesn’t work, Lacy becomes increasingly unhinged and vindictive. The film’s final ambiguous image suggests that there really is no way to escape the Edward Lacys of the world.
With its portrayal of a violent cop who is convinced that he will be protected by the system, Deadly Hero feels extremely relevant today. Of course, Deadly Hero also suggests that the same system that Lacy is exploiting can be used to take him down, with Lacy eventually being investigated by both Internal Affairs and the District Attorney’s office. The film leaves it ambiguous as to whether or not the rest of the police are as dangerous as Lacy. Is Lacy a product of the system or is he just someone who has figured out how to exploit the system? To its detriment, that’s a question that the film doesn’t answer. Still, much like Harvey Hart’s similarly underappreciated Shoot, Deadly Hero is an always-interesting and occasionally insightful look at the authoritarian mindset.
Today’s music video of the day is another break-up anthem. In this case, it’s Michelle Branch singing Goodbye To You while going through all of her break-up rituals. These rituals include going to a pawnshop and exchanging her ring for a guitar and taking a goldfish to the beach. Along the way to the beach, she witnesses a forest fire. The fire actually looks pretty serious and undoubtedly, many lives were lost as a result. However, this video reminds us that nothing is more important than going to the beach and singing away your troubles.
(To be honest, I’m surprised the roads weren’t closed because that forest fire looked really dangerous. I know that California gets a new wildfire every week but still, I found myself wondering if Michelle’s going to have a home to which to return once she gets finished singing on the beach.)
This video was directed by Francis Lawrence, who also did The Hunger Games sequels. If Jennifer Lawrence had been driving that car, she would have gotten out and helped to put out that fire. I mean, I like the beach too and there’s even a little downtown pawnshop that I love but even I know that there are things that are more important.
Through the Shattered Lens 