Late Night Retro Television Review: Pacific Blue 3.1 “Inside Straight”

Posted on October 7, 2025 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.

Everyone’s book for another season of bicycles and law-breaking.

Episode 3.1 “Inside Straight”

(Dir by Michael Levine, originally aired on August 3rd, 19997)

One night, while on a date with Chris, TC spots a man holding a gun. TC draws his own gun and yells at the man to drop his weapon. The man turns around. He fires so TC shoots and the man goes down. It turns out that the man was an undercover narcotics detective with a spotless record.

TC is suspended and the bike patrol basically stops doing their job and instead proceed to harass the dead man’s wife and his partner until they discover that the wife and the partner were having an affair and, conveniently, the cop was actually shot by someone who happened to be standing behind TC. It seems like simple forensic evidence (like the amount of bullets on the scene) should have proven that without the bike patrol even getting involved but I guess the cops in Malibu or wherever this show takes place are extremely incompetent.

Meanwhile, the poker game of mobster Joseph Tataglia (Joseph Campanella) gets held up, The thief is a degenerate gambler who tries to frame TC’s older brother, Teddy (Andy Buckley — how, it’s David Wallace from The Office!). The real thief is easily exposed and captured. I’m not really sure what the point of this story was. Tataglia last appeared during the first season but this episode acts as if he’s been a continual presence in the show for the past two seasons. I imagine viewers were confused as to who he was or why he had so much pull with Palermo.

There’s a scene where TC is subjected to an intense interrogation from Internal Affairs and I have to admit that it made me laugh because TC and Palermo were wearing their dorky bicycle cop uniforms while being yelled at by someone in a suit.

Another scene features Victor and Cory telling Chris and TC that there’s a huge crowd waiting to see the movie that they want to see. Victor says TC might have to flash his badge to get tickets. Police arrogance is annoying in general but it’s even worse coming from people who ride bicycles.

It appears that nothing had changed with the start of a new season.

Horror On TV: Hammer House of Horror #7 “The Silent Scream” (dir by Alan Gibson)

Posted on October 7, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today’s episode of televised horror is The Silent Scream, the seventh episode of Hammer House of Horror. It was originally broadcast in the UK on October 25th, 1980.

A quick content warning for everyone: This episode features some scenes of animals in distress so I personally would advise viewer discretion. That said, I simply had to share this episode because it features Peter Cushing’s final performance for Hammer Studios. He plays a seemingly kindly old man who has a very dark secret. A youngish Brian Cox plays the ex-con who gets a job working for Cushing. This is a very unnerving episode with an ending that truly sticks with you.

The TSL Horror Grindhouse: The Beast Must Die (dir by Paul Annett)

Posted on October 7, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

You have 30 seconds to decide who is the werewolf. Is it the professor? Is it the wife of the big game hunter? Is it the long-haired hippie who has a history of cannibalism? Is it the concert pianist? Is it the diplomat? Make your guess and then….

This is the challenge that is presented to the viewers of the 1974 film, The Beast Must Die. The Beast Must Die is a werewolf film. Calvin Lockhart stars as millionaire big game hunter Tom Newcliffe. Tom has invited a group of people to his English mansion because, according to him, one of them is a werewolf and he plans to hunt down whoever it is. It’s not a terrible premise and I imagine that, in 1974, it was probably quite revolutionary to cast a black actor as a millionaire with a large British estate. (In America, the film was marketed as being a blaxploitation film under the title Black Werewolf.)

That said, The Beast Must Die is still best-known for its “Werewolf Breaks.” At certain points in the film, a stopwatch appears on the screen and a narrator asks us if we’ve figured out who the werewolf is yet. The viewer is given 30 seconds to make a guess before the film continues. The “Werewolf Breaks” were apparently added to the film after production was completed and director Paul Annett was not happy about them. The Beast Must Die is, in many ways, a pretty grim film or, at least, it would be if not for the campy narrator telling us that it’s up to us to solve the mystery.

But you know what? I like the Werewolf Breaks. They’re fun and, without them, The Beast Must Die would come across as being a film that takes itself way too seriously. Calvin Lockhart, who was so good in Melinda, overacts to a tremendous degree as Tom Newcliffe and, as the film progresses, he goes from being merely eccentric to actually coming across as being rather unhinged in his attempts to discover who is the werewolf. It’s never really clear how he settled on his suspects. (All of them are described as being in the area of several unexplained deaths but it seems like the same could be said of probably hundreds of other people as well.) But once he has them at the mansion, he’s determined to keep them there until he figures out which is infected with lycanthropy. (In this film, the werewolf curse is described as basically being a virus.)

Fortunately, the suspects are played by an interesting gallery of British and American character actors. Charles Gray plays the shady diplomat. Malene Clark is Tom’s wife. Michael Gambon is the pianist while Ciaran Madden plays his wife. Tom Chadbon plays the hippie cannibal while Anton Diffring shows up as the head of security for the mansion. Best of all, Peter Cushing plays the professor who is an expert on werewolves. It’s always a joy to see Peter Cushing in any film. He’s particularly good here, handling his often overwritten dialogue like the pro that he was.

The Beast Must Die is an uneven film. The opening sequence, which features Tom testing the mansion’s security systems, seems to go on forever and the plot is full of twists that fall apart if you give them too much thought, But the Werewolf Breaks made me smile and the supporting cast is a delight. It’s a fun film to watch during the Halloween season.

October Hacks: L.A. Slasher (dir by Martin Owen)

Posted on October 7, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 2016’s L.A. Slasher, an androgynous killer wearing a white suit and a mask decides that reality stars are the worst people in the world so he starts kidnapping them and torturing them and live-streaming their murders. Even worse, he talks to them and talks to us about how he feels about them. I say “even worse” because the voice of the Slasher is provided by Andy Dick. Andy Dick’s nasal voice is even more whiny than usual in this film and it left me wondering what if perhaps death would preferable to listening to Dick speak.

L.A. Slasher is meant to be a satire and I will give it some credit. It hits its targets and there’s even some bite to the scenes in which people on social media start talking about how much they love the slasher. In many ways, this film predicted the Cult of Luigi. Unfortunately, the film itself is so overdirected and cartoonishly-staged that it’s never quite as effective as it wants to be. It’s essentially a live action cartoon and a fairly exhausting one of that. The flashing lights, the constantly prowling camera, the jump cuts, the neon, it’s meant to be overwhelming but instead it’s just annoying.

There are a lot of familiar faces in the cast. Dave Bautista and Danny Trejo shows up as drug dealers. Mischa Barton is the Actress. Drake Bell is the Popstar. Brooke Hogan is the Reality Star. And, of course, Eric Roberts shows up very briefly as The Mayor. Personally, I think the film would have worked better if Andy Dick had played the Mayor and if Roberts had been the voice of the Slasher. Roberts has a much better voice and, with Dick playing the Mayor, it would be easy to just leave his scenes on the cutting room floor.

In the end, I think the main problem is that L.A. Slasher is a film from 2016 that acts as if it’s the first film to ever criticize reality television and the people who populate it. Even in 2016, that argument was hardly new or original. It certainly didn’t need to be made in the voice of Andy Dick.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

On-Stage With The Lens: MacBeth (dir by Phillip Casson and Trevor Nunn)

Posted on October 7, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 1978, Trevor Nunn staged what would become a legendary production of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The play was produced in a small studio theatre, with the actors working in the round were minimum sets and costuming. Shifts in location or mood were indicated are by lighting changes. It was a production that captured both the intensity of the play but also the horror of Shakespeare’s play about ambition, guilt, fate, and multiple murders. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth were played by Ian McKellen and Judi Dench.

This production was filmed and, in 1979, broadcast on Thames Television in the UK. Here, for today’s staged horror, is the Trevor Nunn production of MacBeth, starring Ian McKellen and Judi Dench.

The Eric Roberts Horror Collection: Insane Like Me? (dir by Chip Joslin)

Posted on October 7, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

After his girlfriend and his brother are killed while throwing a party at the local abandoned insane asylum (every town has one!), veteran Jake Morgan (Britt Bankhead) finds himself tossed into a not-abandoned insane asylum. Jake swears that everyone was killed by vampires. The local sheriff (Eric Roberts) swears that Jake is the murderer. The sheriff also happens to be the father of Jake’s dead girlfriend.

Jump forward a few years and Jake has been released from the asylum. He returns to the town to take out the vampires. The sheriff still claims that Jake is crazy but it soon becomes apparent that the sheriff has got a secret or two of his own….

This 2024 movie got off to a good start and it had an effective ending. I appreciated that Eric Roberts got to do a bit more than he usually does in these type of films. Sheriff Eric Roberts gets to beat someone up and I nearly cheered, even when I wasn’t supposed to. Considering the amount of movies that I’ve watched that have just featured Roberts delivering his lines from behind a desk, it was nice to see him moving around and actually playing a character.

Unfortunately, the middle part of the film drags. When is say drag, I don’t just mean that it moved slowly. I mean that it was so incredibly boring that I found myself checking the time every few minutes. We meet a group of teenage victims and let’s just say that some of them were better actors than others. This is a movie that should have been nonstop vampire mayhem. Instead, it got bogged down with not-very interesting characters delivering flat dialogue.

One final note: the movie features a doctor named Stoker. It’s amazing to think that the entire town is full of vampires and yet no one ever points out that oddness of the doctor being named Stoker. I guess today’s vampires just aren’t that well-read.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

Made-For-TV Horror: Good Against Evil (dir by Paul Wendkos)

Posted on October 7, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1977 made-for-TV movie Good Against Evil opens with a woman giving birth in a hospital. Her baby daughter is forcefully taken from her and given to her father, the sinister Mr. Rimmin (Richard Lynch).

Two decades later, Jessica Gordon (Elyssa Davalos) has grown up and is working at a boutique in San Francisco. When her car is rear-ended by a free-spirited, van-driven single guy named Andy Stuart (Dack Rambo), it’s love at first sight. Jessica and Andy are so caught up in their whirlwind romance that they don’t even notice that there’s a schlubby guy following them everywhere that they go and that strangers are giving them dirty looks. Someone does not want Jessica and Andy to end up together.

How could anyone object to two young people falling in love, you may ask. Well, it turns out that Jessica is meant to be a bride of Satan and the plan is for her to eventually give birth to the Antichrist. Everyone in Jessica’s life works for Mr. Rimmin …. or, at least, everyone but Andy. Andy suddenly showing up and falling in love with Jessica throws a big old monkey wrench into Rimmin’s carefully crafted scheme. Mr. Rimmin reacts by sending an army of adorable cats to harass Andy.

This might sound like it has the makings for a good made-for-TV horror film and, in fairness to Good Against Evil, the first 50 minutes or so are pretty well-done. The movie does a good job of building up and maintaining an atmosphere of paranoia and I enjoyed watching all of the people attempting to discreetly keep an eye on Andy and Jessica whenever they went out. When Mr. Rimmin finally abducted Jessica and took her back to his mansion, I was prepared to see Andy risk his life to rescue her….

That didn’t happen, though. Instead, Andy got involved with the case of a little girl who was possessed. (Again, in all fairness, he got involved because he read a news story about the girl drawing a pentagram while in a coma and he assumed that meant she was a victim of the same cult that abducted Jessica.) Andy meets the girl’s mother (played by Kim Cattrall) and then helps an exorcist (Dan O’Herlihy) perform an exorcism. The movie ends with Jessica, still in the clutches of Mr. Rimmin.

Good Against Evil was apparently a pilot for a television series that wasn’t picked up. I assume the plan was that Andy would have a weekly supernatural adventure while trying to recuse Jessica from Mr. Rimmin. The idea had some potential. As always, Richard Lynch is a wonderfully sinister villain. But the pilot shoots itself in the foot by getting distracted with the whole exorcism storyline. It’s wonderful to see the great Dan O’Herlihy as a priest but the exorcism storyline really does come out of nowhere and the exorcism scene itself so blatantly copies The Exorcist that they really should have given William Peter Blatty an onscreen credit. Sadly, because this was a pilot, the movie ends with the main storyline unresolved. The joke is on us for caring about two people in love.

Good Against Evil is one of those films that can be found in a dozen Mill Creek box sets. Ultimately, it’s as forgettable as its generic name.

Retro Television Review: Fantasy Island 7.13 “Ladies Choice/Skin Deep”

Posted on October 7, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Tuesdays, I will be reviewing the original Fantasy Island, which ran on ABC from 1977 to 1984. The show is once again on Tubi!

Smiles, everyone, smiles!

Episode 7.13 “Ladies Choice/Skin Deep”

(Dir by Don Weis, originally aired on January 28th, 1984)

The highlight of this week’s episode is Mr. Roarke beating someone up.

The person on the other end of the beating is John McDowell (Lloyd Bochner), who owns a winery on the Island and who, for reasons that aren’t particularly clear, hates Mr. Roarke. When McDowell discovers that Fancy Summerfield (Kim Lankford), who grew up at the winery when it was owned by her father, is in love with Mr. Roarke, McDowell decides to manipulate her to hurt Roarke. Fancy, who is upset that Mr. Roarke doesn’t return her romantic feelings, allows herself to fall for McDowell but then realizes that McDowell is a jerk.

A party at McDowell’s mansion leads to a fist fight between Roarke and McDowell. McDowell starts it but Roarke ends it. He beats up McDowell with such ease that McDowell surrenders. Fancy realizes that McDowell is not the man for her and she also realizes that Roarke does care about her, even if he’s not in love with her. (This episode implies that Roarke does not allow himself to fall in love with mortal women. It’s understandable when you consider what happened when he got married.)

And let’s give credit where credit is due. Ricardo Montalban looked good beating up Lloyd Bochner. Admittedly, it was obvious that the majority of the fight was filmed using stunt doubles but, in those rare occasions where we saw Roarke’s face as he threw a punch, Montalban looked like he knew what he doing.

(Lawrence, needless to say, did not come to Mr. Roarke’s aid during the fight. In fact, Lawrence was barely in this episode.)

As for the other fantasy, it was pretty stupid. Joe (Michael Lembeck) comes to the Island with his loudmouth buddy, Vinnie (Fred Travalena). They are attending a sports expo. Vinnie is all about hitting on the models but Joe falls for Paula Santino (Donna Pescow), who is pretty but definitely not glamorous. The main problem with this fantasy was that both Joe and Paula were neurotic quip machines so listening to them have a conversation made me want to rupture my ear drums. Vinnie, for his part, said some pretty bad things about Paula. Roarke was too busy beating up John McDowell to do anything about it.

This episode was …. actually, not quite as bad as some of the other season seven episodes that I’ve recently watched. The second fantasy got old pretty quickly but the first fantasy featured Roarke beating someone up and there’s something to be said for that. The main problem with this episode is that none of the Island guests were particularly likable but I still appreciated that Roarke was willing to go to all of that trouble for them.

Then again, without Tattoo around, Roarke really doesn’t have any choice but to take on all the trouble himself. What else is he going to do? Depend on Lawrence?

Horror Novel Review: Killer On The Road by James Ellroy

Posted on October 7, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

First published in 1986 and considerably shorter than the typical James Ellroy novel, Killer On The Road takes the form of the memoirs of Martin Plunkett, a child genius who grew up to be a prolific serial killer.

The book starts with Plunkett already serving a life sentence at Sing Sing. He’s a killer who is now off the road and his memoirs are less about his plans and more about his own struggle to understand how he became the killer that he became. There are plenty of possible explanations, going all the way back to his dysfunctional childhood and the trauma of his parent’s divorce. He may be brilliant but he spends all of his time wishing that he could turn invisible like a comic book character and spy on people in their homes. He comes to idolize Charles Manson but is disappointed when, while in prison, he meets the actual Manson and discovers that he’s just a rambling loser. The book is written in Plunkett’s own words and, in typical sociopath fashion, he thinks very highly of himself but careful readers will look between the lines and see someone who is just as confused by what he became as everyone else. For all of his intelligence and his nonstop speculation about the human condition, Plunkett ultimately seems like an empty vessel. Plunkett’s years on the road are full of unexpected detours. A meeting with a cop definitely do not go the way that anyone would probably expect it to go. Even though the story is narrated Plunkett, people like FBI agent Dusenberg come across as fully developed characters as well.

It’s a disturbing and sad but compulsively readable book. It may have been written before Ellroy developed his signature style but it stills shows his strengths as a storyteller. Interestingly enough, Ellroy later stated in My Dark Places that he based Martin Plunkett’s dysfunctional youth on his own, which definitely leaves one happy that James Ellroy discovered writing as an outlet for his emotions. Unlike Martin Plunkett, James Ellroy went on to become one of the best writers of our current era.

October True Crime: In Broad Daylight (dir by James Steven Sadwith)

Posted on October 7, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

On July 10th, 1981, Kenneth Rex McElroy was gunned down in Skidmore, Oklahoma. He was shot while sitting in his truck. Over 40 bullets were fired into the truck but only two actually hit McElroy. His fourth wife, Trena (who Kenneth first met when she was 12 and he was 35), was sitting beside him at the time but was not hit by any bullets. McElroy was 47 years old when he was gunned down in broad daylight. There were reportedly 46 witnesses who saw the shooting occurred. When interrogated by the police, not a single one said that they saw anything. Quite a few did mention that Ken McElroy had gotten exactly what he deserved.

Ken McElroy was a high dropout, a barely literate career criminal who rustled cattle, burned down houses, raped his fourth wife when she was just 12, and then killed her family’s dogs in order to intimidate them into not pressing charges against him. He was known as the town bully, a surly man who had 17 children with 6 different women and who would shoot anyone who disagreed with him. Whenever he was charged with a crime, he would intimidate the witnesses into not testifying against him. In 1980. he got angry at a store owner after one of his kids was accused of shoplifting candy. McElroy shot the man and was put on trial for attempted murder. For once, he was convicted but he was freed on bail while awaiting appeal. When it become apparent that McElroy would not be going to prison for a while, the citizens of Skidmore….

Well, I should probably chose my words carefully. The truth of the matter is that no one has even been charged with or convicted of killing Ken McElroy. It is known that several citizens did have a meeting a few night before McElroy’s death and that they discussed what they could best do to keep McElroy from hurting anyone else. It’s also knoqn that, a week before he was shot, McElroy walked into the local bar with his rifle and dared anyone who wanted him dead to come get him. Does that mean that a group of concerned citizens took it upon themselves to dispense vigilante justice? That’s what Trena always claimed but again, no one was every charged, indicted, or convicted. The death of Ken McElroy remains officially unsolved.

Perhaps that’s why the names were changed for the 1991 made-for-television movie In Broad Daylight. Brian Denney may be playing a character named Len Rowan but, for anyone familiar with the case, it’s obvious that he’s playing Ken McElroy just as Marcia Gay Harden is obviously playing Tena McElroy, even if her character is called Adina. The film doesn’t change the name of the town and it doesn’t change the circumstances that led to McElroy’s death. W watch as McElroy intimidates the owners of a grocery store (played by Cloris Leachman and John Anderson) and even attempts to bully the local police (represented here by Chris Cooper). The film features a gun-toting crowd surrounding Len Rowan’s vehicle but it’s shot in such a way that their faces are blurry.

In Broad Daylight was filmed in Texas and it definitely captures both the beauty and the potential danger that comes with living in a rural community. Everyone in town knows everyone else. There’s a strong sense of community but, because the community is so small and isolated, it’s easy for a man like Len Rowan to bully the entire town. Some of the actors lean a bit too hard into their country accents. (Lord protect us from Yankees trying to sound Southern.) But the main members of the supporting cast — Cloris Leachman, John Anderson, Chris Cooper, Marcia Gay Harden — all give convincing performances. As for Brian Dennehy, he’s absolutely horrifying as the astoundingly cruel Len Rowan. Dennehy plays Len as being a man who might not exactly intelligent (the real Ken McElroy dropped out of school early) but who is positively brilliant at intimidating people. Dennehy plays Rowan as if he has a death wish. All of his threats and his speeches make it clear that he’s just daring someone to shoot him. Even when he realizes he’s about to get shot while sitting in his truck, he sit there and accepts the inevitable. Perhaps even he was getting sick of dealing with himself.

After watching In Broad Daylight, it’s easy to understand why no one came forward as a witness. By his own actions, Ken McErloy was destined to die violently. A few people just decided to speed things up a little. Who knows who?