Richard Wagner – Through the Shattered Lens

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Mondays, I will be reviewing Crime Story, which ran on NBC from 1986 to 1988. The entire show can be found on Tubi!

This week, Michael Mann directs the downfall of Luca!

Episode 1.20 “Top of the World”

(Dir by Michael Mann, originally aired on March 6th, 1987)

Luca has taken control of Vegas, and now he’s out of control. He’s gambling nonstop and cheating to win. While his wife spends all of her time watching The Price Is Right, Luca is carrying on affairs with both Bambi (Debbie Harry) and Max Goldman’s wife, Joanne (Debra Stipe). Luca has everything that he’s spent this entire season saying that he wanted: money, legitimacy, and power. But at heart, he’s still the same Chicago gangster that he’s always been. As Torello deduces, he needs the risk and the danger that come with being a criminal. Without it, he doesn’t know what to do with himself.

At the beginning of this episode, Torello tells the demoralized members of the MCU that they can do one of two things. They can either track down Luca’s parents and shoot them for having him, or they can start over with their attempt to build a case against him. (Torello, as intense as ever, doesn’t seem to be joking about tracking down Luca’s parents.) Torello’s plan is to sow dissension among Luca’s troops. When dapper courier Tony Dio (Paul Anka) is spotted leaving Luca’s casino with a suitcase full of skimmed cash for Manny Weisbord, he’s stopped by Torello and essentially kidnapped. They then let Max know that Luca has been sleeping with his wife and insinuate that Luca killed Tony and took the money for himself.

Meanwhile, Luca is temporarily barred from working at his casino by the Nevada Gaming Commission. He can’t even step into any of the places that he owns. Stuck at home with his wife, Luca starts to go stir-crazy. When Steve Kordo tells Luca that Weisbord is asking where his money is, Luca decides that Max is trying to stab him in the back. Luca has Frank Holman plant a car bomb in Max’s car. Though the bomb goes off, Max survives. At the hospital, a severely burned Max tells Torello that he has no intention of being a rat.

However, someone else is, and it’s exactly who you would least expect. Luca, high on pills and self-pity, rapes Pauli’s girlfriend, Donna (Audrey Matson). Pauli grabs a shotgun and starts wandering around Vegas, searching for Luca. Torello is able to arrest Pauli in a diner. Pauli tells Torello the details of every murder that Luca committed over the season, including the murder of David Abrams’s father.

After a shoot-out with Luca’s bodyguards at the casino, Torello, Abrams, and the MCU track Luca down to a restaurant where he’s having dinner with Bambi. (They’re celebrating because an appellate court has stayed the order keeping Luca out of his casinos.) At first, Luca is smug. But when he hears that Pauli is the one who betrayed him, his smile disappears. The episode ends as Luca is taken into custody.

This episode was directed by the show’s executive producer, Michael Mann. Mann does a great job keeping the action moving and showing both Luca’s rapid rise and his just-as-rapid descent. Visually, Mann plays up the darkness in which all the characters live. Nearly every scene takes place at night. When we see Torello sitting in his office, the shadows are so heavy that they almost seem to be swallowing him. This episode reminds us that, just as Luca will always be a Chicago gangster, Torello will always be a Chicago cop. Luca and Torello live in the same darkness, and it’s threatening to devour them both.

Next week, the first season concludes!

Corbin Nash (Dean S. Jagger) is a New York cop who has been suspended for shooting a rapist. While he and his stepfather (Bruce Davison, making a cameo appearance) sit in a bar and talk about how much the world sucks, they are approached by a mysterious man (Rutger Hauer, also making a cameo appearance) who explains that Corbin’s father was not just a minor league baseball player but he was also a demon hunter who was murdered by his enemies in Los Angeles. Jack confirms that what the stranger says is true.

Corbin does what anyone would do. He moves to Los Angeles, joins the LAPD, and starts to investigate cases of missing children. This leads to Corbin being captured and held prisoner by two vampires, a drag queen named Queeny (Corey Feldman, camping it up to a cringe-worthy degree) and Queeny’s lover, Vince (Richard Wagner). Queeny and Vince force their prisoners to participate in cage matches until finally feeding on them. Corbin escapes but, as the Blind Prophet (Malcolm McDowell, collecting a paycheck) reveals, Corbin is now a vampire. Like a less memorable version of Blade, vampire Corbin sets out to battle evil.

The film’s overall tone is grim and serious, which makes Corey Feldman’s mincing performance as Queeny feel all the more out-of-place. Watching him in films like this, it can be easy to forget that Feldman was actually a fairly good actor before his career went off the rails in the 90s. As a child, he appeared in some classic films and, as a teenager, he often redeemed otherwise subpar material. But he never made the transition into adult roles. Being one of “The Two Coreys” didn’t help and he had the misfortune of struggling with drugs before Robert Downey, Jr. made rehab cool. Well into his 20s, he was still playing high school students and, even today when he’s in his 50s, Corey Feldman still comes across as being the world’s oldest teenager. That’s certainly the impression that I got from Corbin Nash, where Feldman seems like a high school theater student who is more interested in showing off than actually acting.

Of course, Feldman’s self-indulgence is still more interesting than the rest of the film, which feels like an origin story for a super hero who never really took off. There are a few interesting idea to be found in the film but mostly, it just feels like a cut-rate version of Blade and a dozen other recent vampire films. Corbin Nash never creates an identity of its own.