Rick Zumwalt | Through the Shattered Lens

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 Baywatch Nights, a detective show that ran in Syndication from 1995 to 1997. The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!

This week, the world goes mad!

Episode 2.20 “Hot Winds”

(Dir by Parker Stevenson, originally aired on May 3rd, 1997)

A hot wind is blowing down from the hills and into Los Angeles.

People are going crazy in the streets. Strangers are attacking each other for no reason. Riots are breaking out. The world seems like it’s gone off its axis and no one knows how to react. Is the heat driving everyone mad or is it something else? Diamont Teague tells Mitch and Ryan that he suspects that something supernatural is happening. Mitch, as usual, argues that people in Los Angeles have always been crazy. Not like this! Diamont says.

Is Diamont correct? As he, Mitch, and Ryan leave the office, they run into an aggravated man who proceeds to beat on a brick wall until his hands are covered in blood. Mitch assumes that the man must be on drugs. Diamont says that they need to drive out to the desert so that they can find the source of the wind. Mitch is skeptical until he starts seeing a ghostly image of a robed man carrying a scythe.

It’s a long trip out to the desert, made even longer by the rioting and the madness all around. Mitch stops long enough to keep a woman from throwing her baby over a ledge. But, as soon as Mitch grabs away her baby, the woman jumps anyway. It’s quite a fall and somehow, the woman survives. Luckily, Mitch is there to render CPR while the crazed crowd watches. The world may going mad but Mitch is still a lifeguard, dammit.

Driving through the desert, Ryan wonders why she, Mitch, and Diamont aren’t going crazy like everyone else. It’s a good question. Seriously, last week was a lot of fun because it gave us a chance to watch the Hoff got possessed by a demon. It’s hard not to regret that he didn’t get a chance to go crazy in this episode.

In the desert, the robed man with the scythe dances. The scythe apparently is what sends down the hot air. If Mitch can get the scythe away from the man, the violence can stop. Who is the man? Apparently, he’s a devil worshipper. Ryan suspects that there might be hundreds of similar people out there. Maybe they’re the ones who are responsible for all the madness in the world! Has Ryan already forgotten that, a few episodes ago, it was established that the Knights Templar secretly controlled the world?

This episode was actually not bad. The scenes of people suddenly going mad were effective and the man in the desert was actually a pretty ominous image. Even the show’s overreliance on Dutch angles felt effective for once, drawing the audience into a world that was permanently off-balance. I enjoyed this episode and I’ll remember it the next time I see a stranger yelling on a street corner.

For the longest time, whenever I would see a movie at the DFW Alamo Drafthouse, I would always found myself watching a clip that the Alamo management chose to show before the actual movie. I can’t really remember the specific reason why they were showing the clip. I imagine it was meant to advertise some special series of testosterone-fueled movies but I really couldn’t tell you for sure.

However, I will never forget the clip itself.

It basically featured Sylvester Stallone arm wrestling a bald giant with a mustache. As they both struggled to see who would slam down whose wrist first, a crowd of rednecks went wild. The bald giant growled and groaned. Meanwhile, Sylvester Stallone was busy … stalloning. Seriously, you would not believe some of the expressions that passed across Stallone’s face over the course of this one scene.

And finally, after much growling and a lot of constipated facial expressions, Stallone slammed down the guy’s wrist. The crowed went wild. Stallone stood up and did the Rocky pose with both of his arms raised in triumph.

Meanwhile, in the audience, I said, “What zee Hell did I just watch?”

(Yes, I did pronounce the with a z. It was cuter that way.)

Well, it turns out that the scene was taken from a 1987 film called Over The Top. Now, the scene itself isn’t included in the montage below but I think watching this video will still give you a general sense of what Over The Top is like.

Over The Top turns up on cable fairly regularly and that’s how, after several visits to the Alamo, that I ended up watching the actual film. Over The Top is an appropriate title because the film’s melodrama truly is over-the-top. It’s in no way good but it definitely has a “what the Hell am I watching” sort of appeal.

Stallone plays Lincoln Hawk and let’s just take a few minutes to appreciate that name. When you’ve got a name like Lincoln Hawk, you know that you’re never going to be an accountant or a teacher or … well, really, anything that a person not named Lincoln Hawk would be. Instead, when you’ve got a name like Lincoln Hawk, you become a truck driver. And you marry a rich woman (played by Susan Blakely), despite the disapproval of her judgmental father (Robert Loggia). You have a son and, if you have a sense of humor, you name him Booth Hawk. Or, in the case of this film, you name him Michael Cutler Hawk (played by David Mendenhall, who was also in Space Raiders) and send him off to military school.

When Lincoln’s wife dies, her father takes custody of Michael. Even after Lincoln rams his truck into the front of the mansion, Michael still wants to stay with his grandfather. However, Lincoln can’t spend his time mourning the loss of his family. He has big plans — like starting his own trucking company.

And how is Lincoln going to do that?

By winning the World Armwrestling Championship, of course!

(Oh come on … that makes total sense in a 1987 Sylvester Stallone movie sort of way!)

Will Lincoln win the championship? Will Michael bond with his father? Will Lincoln and his father-in-law develop a grudging respect? If you don’t know the answer, you’ve never seen the movie before…

Remember how, when I was talking about the Kevin Bacon film Quicksilver, I mentioned how some films were obviously made by people who simply could not understand that not everyone was as fascinated by some silly activity as he or she was? That’s definitely the case with Over The Top, a film that takes place in an alternative universe where everyone in the entire world is obsessed with arm wrestling.

And it’s all rather silly but it’s also very watchable, in much the same way that American Anthem was very watchable. Over the Top is not a good film but it’s just so over the top that you owe it to yourself to see it at least once.