Tag Archives: Teri Weigel

Retro Television Review: Miami Vice 2.15 “One Way Ticket”

Posted on 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 Mondays, I will be reviewing Miami Vice, which ran on NBC from 1984 to 1989.  The entire show can be purchased on Prime!

This week, the Canadians are coming!

Episode 2.15 “One Way Ticket”

(Dir by Craig Bolotin, originally aired on January 24th, 1986)

This week’s episode of Miami Vice opens with one of the most unintentionally hilarious shots that I’ve ever seen.  The action starts at a fancy wedding.  The daughter of District Attorney Richard Langley (Jon DeVries) is getting married.  The cream and the crop of Miami society has turned out.  The camera pans over all of the formally dressed men and women until it finally comes to a stop on Sonny, wearing his white suit, a blue t-shirt, and no socks.  He’s attending the wedding Tubbs, who at least bothered to put on a dress shirt.

Seriously, Sonny …. it’s wedding!  Would it kill you to wear a tie or maybe put on socks to go to a wedding?  And, I know I bring this up every week, but how can Sonny continually convince every bad guy in Miami that he’s a drug dealer named Sonny Burnett when he’s doing stuff like attending the wedding of the District Attorney’s daughter?  Does he think that no one is going to notice that the drug dealer who always wears the same white suit looks and sounds exactly like the cop who is always wearing the same white suit?

That said, I guess it’s good that Sonny and Tubbs are the wedding because, during the reception, a coked-up assassin named Sagot (Lothaire Bluteau) pulls a gun and kills not only Langley but also two bridesmaids who happened to be standing close by.  Sagot manages to escape from the reception but, that night, Zito and Switek track him down to Miami’s hottest French Canadian nightclub, Le Lieu, and arrest him on possession charges.

Sagot is working for a French Canadian drug lord named Faber (Jean-Pierre Matte) and, as with all of Faber’s men, his attorney is Laurence Thurmond (John Heard).  Thurmond was a good friend of Langley’s and it’s obvious from the start that he’s not comfortable with the idea of defending the men who killed him.  Thurmond and Crockett also have a long history together.  Crockett blames Thurmond for getting a case dismissed against someone who shot one of Crockett’s partners, though it sounds like Thurmond was just doing his job and Crockett is actually to blame for not following proper procedure while making his arrest.  (Seriously, due process may be a pain in the ass but Sonny has no excuse for not knowing what’s going to happen when he violates it.)  Crockett continually demands to know how Thurmond can live with himself.  Thurmond, who likes to fly a private plane in his spare time, says that it’s not easy.  Then again, Thurmond can afford his own airplane and a wedding suit so, even if it is difficult to live with himself, at least he’s living well.  (And again, Sonny may not like it but everyone has the right to an attorney.  Again, if you’re sloppy enough to not read someone their rights or to search someone’s house without probable cause, that’s on you and not on the person who pointed it out.)

As much as Crockett would love to spend all of his time harassing Thurmond, he has a case to solve.  He wants to get revenge for Langley’s death.  He also wants to figure out who keeps sending him anonymous tips that are full of information that presumably only a defense attorney would know….

Lothaire Bluteau’s makes for a memorably unhinged villain and all of the evil French Canadians made for a nice change of pace from the show’s usual rogue’s gallery.  That said, this episode was pretty much dominated by John Heard, playing the type of role that he played best.  Heard’s morally conflicted attorney has a lot in common with the morally conflicted police detective that he later played on The Sopranos and Heard’s melancholy performance was a nice contrast to Don Johnson’s intensity.  Full of twists and turns, this episode ended on a perfect note.  In the end, Crockett may still not like Thurmond but he finally understands him.

Film Review: Savage Beach (dir by Andy Sidaris)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

1989’s Savage Beach is yet another Andy Sidaris film that doesn’t make a damn bit of sense.

This time, Donna (Dona Speir) and Taryn (Hope Marie Carlton) have been hired to perform a very important mission.  You may remember that Donna works for a super secret government agency while, at one point, Taryn was in the witness protection program.  As a part of their cover, they fly a plane in Hawaii, making deliveries and giving tours.

(To be honest, you would think that, after everything that happened in Hard Ticket To Hawaii and Picasso Trigger, their cover would have blown but apparently not.)

Anyway, this time, they’ve been hired to fly a very important vaccine to a nearby island.  They manage to deliver the vaccine but a huge storm has come up.  As soon as they get back in their plane and start back towards Hawaii, Donna says, “Shouldn’t we get out of these wet clothes?”  While usually I roll my eyes at all of the nudity in Sidaris’s films, I have to admit that line made me laugh out loud.  Maybe it was just the sincerity with which Dona Speir delivered it.  Or maybe it’s just the fact that Andy Sidaris actually sat down, thought up that line, wrote it down, and then directed someone saying it.  One thing that can definitely be said for Andy Sidaris: as a filmmaker, he was totally without shame.

Anyway, the storm gets really bad and Donna and Taryn end up crashing on what they think is a deserted island.  Neither of them appear to be too upset about being stranded on that island, perhaps because Savage Beach was filmed nearly two decade before Lost.  Make no doubt about it, Donna and Taryn are optimists!

It turns out that they’re not alone.  Apparently, there’s treasure buried on the island and, as a result, all sorts of people are showing up.  Most of them are villainous.  Some of them are heroic.  There’s even another Abilene cousin, Shane Abilene (Michael J. Shane).  Everyone wants that treasure.  Everyone except for … THE WARRIOR!

Who is the Warrior (Michael Mikasa)?  He was a soldier in the Japanese army during World War II.  Left behind on the island, he’s still fighting the war.  Or something.  Actually, it’s not always easy to understand what the Warrior or anyone else is doing on the island.  The Warrior does decide to protect Donna and Taryn and both of them try to keep his existence a secret from the rest of the people on the island but that doesn’t really work out.

Honestly, Savage Beach should not have been as complicated as it was.  It should have been a simple story where Donna and Taryn outwitted a bunch of pirates on a desert island.  Instead, more and more people just keep showing up on that beach.  Good luck trying to keep them all straight.

It’s probably unnecessary to say that Savage Beach was a mess.  I think “mess” is probably one of the words most commonly used in any review of an Andy Sidaris film.  However, like most Sidaris films, the whole thing is too good-natured to really dislike.  In fact, the plot is so incoherent that it actually becomes strangely fascinating.

Add to that, as a result of watching Savage Beach, I now know that you can safely undress and fly a plane at the same time.  If I ever get my pilot’s license, I’ll be sure to remember that!

A Movie A Day #330: The Banker (1989, directed by William Webb)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

It’s hard out here for a pimp and even worse for a banker.

Spaulding Osborne (Duncan Regehr) is a successful banker at the height of the 80s but handling all that money can be stressful.  Everyone needs a way to relax.  Osborne unwinds by painting his face like a tiger and murdering prostitutes with a laser sighted crossbow.  A worshipper of the ancient Gods, Osborne believes himself to be immortal and sees his murder spree as a way to collect souls.  Two pimps (Leif Garrett and Jeff Conaway) keep Osborne supplied with victims.  When Osborne suspects that one of the pimps has betrayed him, he demands that the pimp name all of the seven dwarves if he wants to live.  It pays to know your Disney.

What Osborne didn’t count on was that the chief of police (Richard Roundtree) would assign one of his weariest detectives, Dan (Robert Forster), to the case or that the detective’s TV reporter ex-wife (Shanna Reed) would get promoted to the anchor desk and start a crusade to have him captured.  Can Detective Dan capture Osborne before Osborne kills every prostitute in the city?  Will Dan be able to protect his ex-wife from the banker?

A film about a greedy banker who kills poor people on the side?  The Banker was released twenty years too early.  If it had been released in 2009, it probably would have an Oscar.  Instead, it was released straight-to-video in 1989 and exiled to late night Cinemax.  Unfortunately, the idea behind The Banker is more interesting than the execution, with most of the kills happening offscreen and any social commentary being rushed through so that the movie can get to the next nude scene.  Not surprisingly, the best thing about The Banker is Robert Forster, who is at his world-weary best.  Forster went through some tough times before Quentin Tarantino resurrected his career with Jackie Brown but movies like The Banker show that Forster never stopped giving good performances.

 

A Movie A Day #289: Night Visitor (1989, directed by Rupert Hitzig)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Billy Colton (Derek Rydall) is a teenager who has a reputation for exaggeration.  Lisa Grace (Shannon Tweed) is his next door neighbor, a high-priced prostitute who does not mind if Billy spies on her.  When Billy tries to tell everyone about his wild new neighbor, no one believes him.  Billy decides to prove his story by grabbing his camera and sneaking next door.  Instead of getting proof that she’s a prostitute, Billy witnesses his neighbor being murdered by a robed Satanist, who just happens to be Zachary Willard (Allen Garfield), Billy’s hated science teacher!  Billy goes to the police with his camera but Captain Crane (Richard Roundtree) points out that Billy forgot to take off the lens cap.

What can Billy do?  He knows that Zachary and his strange brother, Stanley (Michael J. Pollard), are sacrificing prostitutes to Satan but he can’t get anyone to believe him.  Working with his best friend (Teresa Van der Woude) and a burned out ex-cop (Elliott Gould), Billy sets out to stop the Willard Brothers.

Combine Rear Window with late 80s Satanic conspiracy theories and this is the result.  Not as bad as it sounds, Night Visitor is an unfairly obscure movie about Satanism in suburbia. While it has its share of dumb moments (like when Billy uses a watermelon to end a car chase), it also has enough good moments that suggest that Night Visitor is deliberately satirizing the excesses of the Satanic panic that, at the time of filming, was sweeping across the nation.  It also has a once in a lifetime cast.  Along with those already mentioned, keep an eye out for character actor extraordinaire Henry Gibson and future adult film star Teri Weigel.  Allen Garfield is especially good as the evil Mr. Willard.  Any actor can say, “I sacrifice you in the name of Satan.”  It takes a good actor like Allen Garfield to say it without making anyone laugh.

One final note: this movie was originally called Never Cry Devil, which is a much better title than Night Visitor.