Village People Ride Again”

Posted on March 13, 2024 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!

Come aboard, they’re expecting you!

Episode 4.7 “The Horse Lover/Secretary to the Stars/Julie’s Decision/Gopher and Isaac Buy a Horse/Village People Ride Again”

(Dir by Roger Duchowny, originally aired on November 22nd, 1980)

Well, let’s see who is sailing on the Love Boat this week….

Uh-oh.

That’s right! This week, The Village People are taking a cruise! The disco group boards the boat while singing — you guessed it — In The Navy. Captain Stubing is a huge fan of the Village People and he’s excited to learn that they will not only be sailing on the boat but they will also be performing their new song, Magic Night. Stubing mentions that he wishes he could be a village person. He’s already got a hat! And he’s served in the Navy! Stubing never gets around to whether or not he spent the night at YMCA and that’s probably a good thing.

This week, the boat is sailing to Acapulco for the Acapulco Steeplechase. The Village People have entered a horse in the race, one that will be ridden by the Indian. Gopher and Isaac have also bought a horse and entered it into the race. They name the horse “Captain Stubing” and they go through a lot of trouble to keep the real Captain Stubing from finding out that they have snuck the horse on board. The thing is, though — there are a lot of horses on board! Nearly every passenger has brought a horse with them and the boat actually has a stable to hold them all during the cruise. I’m not really sure why it’s a problem for Gopher and Isaac to have a horse, other than the fact that they both spend a lot of time checking in on the horse. “Where is my crew!?” Stubing demands, while looking around the ship.

Paul Willis (Alan Ludden) is traveling with both his horse and his wife, Louise (Betty White). Louise is upset that Paul seems to care more about the horse than her. Louise even considers having a fling with Cliff (David Doyle), a man who wants to buy Paul’s horse.

Meanwhile, wealthy playboy Bret Garrett (Robert Stack) boards the ship and immediately falls in love with Julie. Despite a 30-year age difference, Bret asks Julie to marry him. This is the fourth or fifth times that a passenger has proposed to Julie during the course of a cruise. Julie is happy but the crew worries that Bret might be too worldly and chronically unfaithful for Julie.

Finally, movie star Kim Holland (Loni Anderson) puts on glasses and a brunette wig and pretends to be an Englishwoman named Doris, all in order to keep people from bothering her on the cruise. Tom Benson (Charles Frank) is obsessed, to an almost creepy extent, with Kim. But then he falls in love with Doris, who he believes to be Kim’s secretary. Tom fails to notice that 1) Doris looks just like Kim, just with glasses and brown hair and 2) Doris’s British accent doesn’t sound British at all. Instead, it sounds like an American trying really hard to sound British.

The Steeplechase is won, rather easily, by Paul. Both Gopher and the Indian end up getting thrown off their horses and they engage in a footrace to the finish line, for reasons that are not exactly clear. After the race, Paul finally realizes how much he’s been neglecting Louise and he sells the horse to Cliff. Meanwhile, Captain Stubing says that, next year, he’ll buy a horse with Gopher and Isaac and they’ll enter the horse into the race together. As for Bret, he realizes that he’s not right with Julie and he pretends to cheat on her so that she’ll dump him.

And what about Kim? Well, she tells Tom the truth and also reveals that her real name is June. “Kim, Doris, June,” Tom says, “I can’t wait to get to know all three of you.” Uhmm …. okay, not creepy at all. Anyway, Tom and Kim leave the boat together but, right this episode ended, Kim appeared on an episode of Fantasy Island, in which she was again single and looking to escape her fame. So, I guess she dumped Tom after a week. Good for her! Tom was super creepy.

Finally, all that is left to do is to say goodbye to the Village People.

This episode was an odd one. Robert Stack was charming as Bret, even if he didn’t have much chemistry with Lauren Tewes. Loni Anderson was fairly terrible as Kim, just as she would be on Fantasy Island. And the Village People …. I mean, where do I even begin? For a group associated with both disco and gay liberation, they came across as being an oddly dull collection of characters. Of course, it’s doubtful that the target audience of The Love Boat knew what In The Navy was about or even understood why the members of the group were costumed the way that they were. At one point, the Construction Worker even gives Julie an appreciate glance, as if the show’s producers were saying, “See, those rumors are just rumors!”

That said, I tend to like the odd episodes of The Love Boat and this episode functioned as a time capsule, if nothing else. All it needed was Charo and it could have been put in a museum!

Badlands of Dakota (1941, directed by Alfred E. Green)

Posted on April 4, 2022 by Jedadiah Leland

This B-western takes place in the legendry frontier town of Deadwood. It’s a town that’s patrolled by General George Custer (Addison Richards) and which is home to Wild Bill Hickok (Richard Dix) and Calamity Jane (Frances Farmer). When outlaw Jack McCall (Lon Chaney, Jr.) and his gang start disguising themselves as Sioux and start robbing stagecoaches, young homesteader Jim Holliday (Robert Stack) is appointed town marshal. Unfortunately, Jim’s older brother, Bob (Broderick Crawford), has gotten involved with McCall and his gang. Bob has also never forgiven Jim for marrying Anne (Ann Rutherford), the woman that Bob loved. Jim struggles to get the town to take him seriously. When Jim tries to put out a fire that’s threatening to burn down several businesses, the citizens laugh at him and shoot a hole in the water hose. No one said that the people of Deadwood were smart. Ann wants to leave town but McCall and his gang are growing more brazen in their attacks and when one of Jim’ mentors is murdered, Jim has no choice but to get justice and revenge. Meanwhile, the real Sioux grow tired of being blamed every time a stagecoach is robbed and they launch their own attack on the town.

Though the plot may be predictable, Badlands of Dakota is memorable for the cast that was assembled to bring its familiar story to life. Along with those already mentioned, the cast also includes Andy Devine as a saloon owner, Hugh Hubert as the town drunk, Fuzzy Knight as the town’s stagecoach driver, and the folk band, The Jesters, as the town’s entertainment. They all do their part to bring the town of Deadwood to life. Frances Farmer steals the film with her tough and unsentimental portrayal of Calamity Jane and Lon Chaney, Jr. is an effectively hard-edged villain. This was one of Robert Stack’s first films and he’s appropriately stiff and upright as Jim. Jim is the only honest man in Deadwood, which also means that Jim is fairly boring when compared to everyone else around him. It’s also difficult to accept him as being Broderick Crawford’s younger brother, though Crawford does a good job of portraying the personal betrayal that Bob feels when he discovers that Jim has married Anne.

Not surprisingly, Badlands of Dakota plays havoc with history. This is especially true when it comes to Addison Richards’s sober and reasonable portrayal of a middle-aged General Custer. (The real-life General Custer died when he was only 36 and could reportedly be slightly erratic. Not to mention, Custer died the same year that Deadwood was founded so it’s doubtful that he ever visited the city, much less had a personal friendship with Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane.) Still, there’s a lot here to entertain fans of B-westerns. Along with all of the familiar faces in the cast, there’s also a sequence with an out-of-control stage coach that makes good use of rear projection and the film’s final gun battle is exciting and well-directed. It’s a quick 76 minutes, full of all the action and bad history that a western fan could hope for.

Dangerous Curves (1988, directed by David Lewis)

Posted on November 6, 2019 by Jedadiah Leland

Last night, I watched Dangerous Curves.

This was a dumb, dumb film from the late 80s. Tate Donovan and Grant Heslov star as two college students who lose a Porsche in San Diego and then have to get it back. Fortunately, the Porsche is the grand prize in a beauty contest so Donovan and Heslov just have to hope that their friend Michelle (Danielle van Zernick) wins. This should have been fun because it featured a hot car and several hot girls in bikinis but it also featured Tate Donovan and Grant Heslov as our “heroes.” Donovan plays the uptight college student and comes across like one of the flunkies who helped Ted Kennedy cover-up Chappaquiddick. Grant Heslov plays the carefree college student who constantly ruins everyone else’s life. Neither one has the screen presence necessary to make us overlook how stupid their characters are. On the basis of Dangerous Curves, it’s easy to see why Heslov went into producing and Tate Donovan went into doing character roles in films produced by Grant Heslov.

On the plus side, Robert Stack and Leslie Nielsen are funny in small roles. And the car is hot and the film features as many bikinis as a typical episode of Miami Vice. Watching the movie might remind you of the fun you had playing Grand Theft Auto: Vice City back in the day.

There’s nothing wrong with that.

Polish Ham: Jack Benny in TO BE OR NOT TO BE (United Artists 1942)

Posted on May 3, 2018 by gary loggins

cracked rear viewer

Comedian Jack Benny got a lot of mileage (and a lot of laughs) making fun of his movie career, especially THE HORN BLOWS AT MIDNIGHT . While that film isn’t half as bad as Jack claimed it was, even better was Ernst Lubitsch’s TO BE OR NOT TO BE, a topical (at the time) tale of a band of Polish actors taking on the invading Nazis during WWII. Jack’s got his best film foil here, the marvelous Carole Lombard, and the movie’s got that wonderful “Lubitsch Touch”, a blend of sophistication and sparkling wit evidenced in classic films ranging from THE MERRY WIDOW and DESIGN FOR LIVING to NINOTCHKA and HEAVEN CAN WAIT.

Benny plays Joseph Tura, the self-proclaimed “greatest actor in the world”, and Lombard is his bantering wife Maria. Together, they lead a troupe of actors in Warsaw in a production of “Hamlet”, but every time Tura begins…

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Embracing the Melodrama Part II #27: The Caretakers (dir by Hall Bartlett)

Posted on April 17, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Whenever I go to Half-Price Books, I always seem to end up spending most of my time browsing the “nostalgia” section. This is where they keep all of the old paperbacks that were published long before I was born. This is where you can find old romance novels, “for adults only” novels, detective novels, and occasionally you’ll even find mainstream novels that were apparently considered to be quite daring when they were originally released. These novels usually carry cover blurbs that brag about how controversial they are and how they deal with the “real issues of today.”

Usually, these novels are pretty silly and over-the-top which is why I always seem to end up buying a lot of them. About a year ago, I bought a novel from 1959. It was by Dariel Telfer and it was called The Caretakers. The cover features a naked woman standing in front of several nurses and doctors. The cover blurb announces that The Caretakers is “A shattering novel about nurses, doctors, and patients in a state hospital where emotions readily explode!” The back cover features a pull quote from Time: “Will shock as well as arouse compassion.”

Now, I have to admit that I have yet to get around to actually reading The Caretakers. However, thanks to TCM, I recently saw the 1963 film version and it’s a film that definitely embraces the melodrama.

How melodramatic is The Caretakers? It’s melodramatic enough that it opens with Lorna Medford (Polly Bergen) stumbling into a movie theater and having a nervous breakdown. Since this film was made in 1963, her mental breakdown is represented by spinning the camera around and getting hyperactive with the zoom lens, all while Bergen shrieks and tears at her hair.

Lorna is sent to a mental hospital, where she meets several other patients and is treated by Dr. MacLeod (Robert Stack), who is a rebel. We know that he’s a rebel because everyone else at the hospital keeps telling him that he’s a rebel and complaining about his use of radical use of group therapy. Under Dr. MacLeod’s guidance, Lorna reveals that she hasn’t gotten over the tragic death of her child.

As the film progresses, Lorna gets to know the rest of the patients. They’re a mixed bunch, all played by actresses who clearly saw this as their chance to pick up an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress and were determined to make as big an impression as possible. For instance, Barbara Barrie plays Edna, who never speaks but who does enjoy setting fires and who, whenever she’s feeling persecuted, poses as if she’s hanging from a cross. And then there’s grandmotherly Irene (Ellen Corby), who is supposed to be the nice one but always looks like she’s on the verge of very sweetly shoving a pair of knitting needles into someone’s eyes.

However, my favorite patient was the cynical Marion (Janis Paige), precisely because she was so cynical and, as a result, she got all the best lines. Marion is a former prostitute who now hates all men and Paige has a lot of fun playing the role. Whenever Paige is giving one of her long, angry monologues, she practically grabs the film and refuses to let it go.

And then, of course, there’s Joan Crawford. Crawford doesn’t play a patient. Instead, she’s the head nurse and she doesn’t approve of Dr. MacLeod’s methods. Crawford announces early on that she’s been attacked by a patient in the past and her main concern is protecting her staff. She teaches a self-defense class. If you’ve ever wanted to see a middle-aged Joan Crawford flip someone over, The Caretakers is a film to watch.

And that’s The Caretakers for you. It’s one of those films that takes itself so seriously that it becomes humorous despite itself. As a result, the film is a lot of unintentional fun.

And who knows?

Maybe someday, I’ll get around to reading the book!