Retro Television Reviews: The Master 1.11 “Failure to Communicate”

Posted on July 21, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

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 Master, which ran on NBC from January to August of 1984. The show can be found on Tubi!

This week, we meet Max Keller’s father!

Episode 1.11 “Failure to Communicate”

(Dir by Sidney Hayers, originally aired on May 4th, 1984)

This week’s episode of The Master opens with McAllister (Lee Van Cleef) teaching Max (Tim Van Patten) how to fight even while blindfolded. McAllister explains that, when one’s sight is taken away, the other senses become even stronger. Hmmm…. I wonder if this will prove to be relevant to their next adventure?

Having apparently given up on trying to find McAllister’s daughter (not that they ever seemed to be trying that hard to begin with), Max and McAllister head to Los Angeles so that Max can visit his father. Max’s father, Patrick (Doug McClure), has been estranged from Max ever since the death of Max’s mother and older brother. However, under McAllister’s guidance, Max has learned the importance of forgiveness.

However, before Max can drop in on his father, he and McAllister have to rescue Kathy Hunter (Ashley Ferrare), who is being chased by three men in a cemetery. McAllister is impressed when Kathy uses some martial arts skills of her own to fight off the men. (Kathy explains that she has been in training for six years.) McAllister takes Kathy home to her father, a wealthy bunker named Jason Hunter (J.D. Cannon). Max, meanwhile, goes to his father’s law office.

However, Patrick is not at his office. Instead, Max meets Patrick’s administrative assistant, Laura Crane (Rebecca Holden). Laura is blind but, as we saw at the start of the program, that just means that all of her other senses are now superhuman. As soon as she meets Max, she knows that he recently stopped off at a gas station and that he drives a van. All it takes is for her to touch his face for her to realize that she is Patrick’s son.

Patrick, unfortunately, is not doing too well. He is now an alcoholic and he’s more likely to be found in the local cocktail lounge than in court. He’s in danger of losing his license and he’s also struggling financially. In fact, at the cocktail bar, Patrick is meeting with Straker (Marc Alaimo), one of the men who previously tried to abduct Kathy in the cemetery. Straker is blackmailing Patrick into helping with Staker’s next attempt to kidnap Kathy. Of course, when Max arrives at the bar looking for his father, all Hell breaks loose when Max sees the men from the cemetery. Patrick can only watch as Max and a late-arriving McAllister chase the men out of the bar.

After the bar fight, Max and Patrick have a tense meeting at Patrick’s office. Max accuses his father of being a bitter drunk. Patrick says that Max is irresponsible. Patrick tells Max to get out of his life. Meanwhile, McAllister escorts Laura back to her apartment. Okassa (Sho Kosugi) shows up and we get yet another fight, this time between Sho Kosugi and Lee Van Cleef’s very busy stunt double.

The next day, Patrick, Laura, McAllister, and Max all end up at a reception for Kathy. Patrick spots the three kidnappers at the reception and, having had a change of heart, attempts to lead Kathy outside to safety. However, this just leads to both Patrick and Kathy being kidnapped. Straker calls Kathy’s father and demands a $3,000,000 ransom but, fortunately, Laura smelled cemetery dirt on the men who grabbed Kathy so Max and McAllister head back to the cemetery, break into a church, and manage to rescue both Kathy and Patrick!

Yay! I guess the episode’s over, right?

Nope, not even close.

While Max and McAllister are rescuing Patrick and Kathy, Straker is busy kidnapping Laura. Straker then calls Kathy’s father and announces that he still expects to get his 3 million or “your lawyer’s secretary gets it!” Kathy’s father is like, “Why would I pay 3 million dollars for someone who I don’t even know?,” which is kind of a fair question even if it’s not a popular one. McAllister, however, tells Kathy’s father that it’s important to take care of everyone, even the strangers.

Patrick finally breaks down and admits that he was a part of the plot to kidnap Kathy. He tells Max and McAllister that the man behind the plot is actually Paul Stillwell (Mark Goddard), who is Jason Hunter’s head of security. (This seems familiar….) Patrick also explains that Stillwell is holding Laura prisoner on the Princess Louise, a decommissioned cruise ship that has been turned into a floating restaurant.

Accompanied by Patrick, Max and McAllister go to the ship. Unfortunately, Okassa pops up out of nowhere and gets into another fight with Lee Van Cleef’s stunt double so it falls to Patrick and Max to rescue Laura. (Patrick suddenly turns out to have some martial arts skills as well, which is a bit odd considering that Patrick is a middle-aged, overweight, out-of-shape, alcoholic attorney.) The bad guys try to outsmart Max by turning out all the lights on the boat but Laura is able to use her supersenses to help Max beat up Straker’s men in the dark. Laura is rescued and the bad guys are sent to prison!

As for Patrick, the Hunter family decides not to press charges because they understand that Patrick was being blackmailed. Swearing that he’s going to live his life the right way from now on, Patrick pours out his last remaining liquor bottle. Hooray!

This was one of those episodes that was a bit too busy for its own good. Rather than have Max and McAllister fight against worthy opponents, this episode just had Max and McAllister continually defeat the same three idiots over and over again and you have to wonder why it never seemed to occur to the bad guys to change their strategy when it came to whole kidnapping thing as opposed to repeating the same thing over and over again. With all of those kidnappings and rescues, there really wasn’t much time left for the emotional heart of the story, which should have been Max mending his relationship with his father. Considering how much of this series has focused on Max and McAllister’s family issues, it was a bit anti-climatic that Max’s real father just turned out to be some drunk who was being blackmailed. At least some of the fight scenes were well-choreographed and Rebecca Holden did a good job as Laura Crane, even if the character herself was occasionally too flawless and perfect to be believed.

Next week, maybe McAllister will finally remember that he’s supposed to be looking for his daughter. We’ll see!

The TSL’s Horror Grindhouse: Circus of Horrors (dir by Sidney Hayers)

Posted on October 5, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

About 15 minutes into this film from 1960, Donald Pleasence gets mauled to death by a dancing beer.

Pleasence plays a character named Vanet. Vanet is an alcoholic who, circa 1947, owns a circus. He also has a daughter named Nicole (Yvonne Monlaur), whose face is scarred as a result of wounds that she received during Germany’s bombing of London. When a plastic surgeon named Dr. Bernard Schuler (Anton Diffring) operates on Nicole and manages to “take away” her scars, Vanet is so thankful that he signs over ownership of the circus to Schuler. Vanet then promptly tries to dance with a bear and gets killed. Poor Vanet.

It turns out that Schuler is a brilliant plastic surgeon but he’s also kind of insane. He and his associates (played by Kenneth Griffith and Jane Hylton) are on the run from the police. However, even with the cops after him, Schuler has to experiment. His plan is to use the circus as a front. He’ll recruit scarred criminals, operate on them, and then require them to perform in his circus. That plan doesn’t really make much sense but I guess a fugitive plastic surgeon has to do what he has to do. Still, it’s hard not to be amused by Schuler describing his plans for the circus as if he’s just come up with the most brilliant plan ever as opposed to just a bunch of gobbledygook. At no point do any of his assistants point out that his plan makes no sense so I guess he must pay well.

Anyway. the film jumps forward twelve years and what do you know! The plan worked! The circus is a hit! People from all over Europe come to Schuler’s circus. The circus is famous for featuring the most beautiful women in the world. The circus is also famous for several mysterious and fatal accidents. INTERPOL thinks that it’s possible that Schuler is intentionally killing his performers for the free publicity. When Schuler makes plans to take his circus back to the UK, Scotland Yard is given a call and a heads up about what Schuler’s been doing. A nosy reporter investigates while the murders continue unabated….

Circus of Horrors is odd. It’s as if someone reached into a bag and pulled out random cards that read, “Circus,” “plastic surgery,” and “Word War II subtext” and then did what they had to do to construct a plot out of those three elements. Of those three elements, the World War II subtext is probably the most interesting. The majority of Schuler’s patients were scarred as a result of the war (which Europe was still recovering from in 1960) and Schuler is played by German actor Anton Diffring. It’s easy to see Schuler, with his German name and his love for medical experimentation, as a stand-in for Nazi fugitives like Josef Mengele and Klaus Barbie. Schuler and his circus move across Europe and, in the end, it’s going to take Europeans working together to stop him. The shadow of World War II hangs over every scene.

Beyond that, Circus of Horrors is a flamboyant mix of horror and soap opera. The colors are bright, the blood flows freely, and the melodrama is definitely embraced. It’s like a Hammer film, just without a Hammer cast. Unfortunately, Anton Diffring is a bit bland in the role of Schuler. One could imagine an actor like Christopher Lee or Peter Cushing working wonders with the role but Diffring often seems to be bored with the whole thing. As well, the film sometimes get bogged down with footage of the circus performers doing their thing. For instance, do we need to see the clowns and the acrobats when what we really want to see is the murderous knife thrower? Circus of Horrors has its moments but, while watching it, it’s hard not to think about how much more fun it would have been if it had been a Hammer film.

4 Shots From 4 Witchy Films: Burn, Witch, Burn, Season of The Witch, The Craft, Maleficent

Posted on October 6, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking.

Today, we celebrate witches everywhere with….

4 Shots From 4 Witchy Films