The Unnominated #17: Honkytonk Man (dir by Clint Eastwood)

Posted on May 31, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Though the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences claim that the Oscars honor the best of the year, we all know that there are always worthy films and performances that end up getting overlooked. Sometimes, it’s because the competition too fierce. Sometimes, it’s because the film itself was too controversial. Often, it’s just a case of a film’s quality not being fully recognized until years after its initial released. This series of reviews takes a look at the films and performances that should have been nominated but were, for whatever reason, overlooked. These are the Unnominated.

1982’s Honkytonk Man was a Clint Eastwood film that I had never heard of, until I came across it on Prime. I decided to take a chance and I rented it. I’m glad that I did because it turned out to be one of Eastwood’s best films.

Clint stars as Red Stovall, a country singer turned farmer during the Great Depression. Kyle Eastwood stars as Red’s nephew, 14 year-old Whit “Hoss” Wagoneer. When Red gets an opportunity to perform at the Grand Old Opry, he decides to head for Tennessee. Since Red is dying of tuberculosis and barely knows how to drive a car, he is accompanied by Grandpa Wagoneer (John McIntire) and Whit. Whit may be young but he knows how to drive and soon, he’s driving Red and Grandpa across the country. When a highway patrolman (Tim Thomerson) stops them, he says that Whit is too young to drive. After watching a speeding Red struggle to keep the car in the right lane, the patrolman pulls up beside them and says, “Let the kid drive.”

Honkytonk Man features an unexpected performance from Eastwood. Typically, we think of Eastwood’s characters as being the epitome of cool. Red is definitely not that. Red is a screw-up, someone who gets arrested while trying to steal chickens and who frequently gets conned by those that he meets during his journey. When the car breaks down in Arkansas, Red is too busy drinking to remember to catch the bus to Tennessee. He spends the night with a hitchhiker named Marlene (Alexa Kernin). The next morning, Whit wakes Red up and informs him that he only has a few minutes before the next bus leaves. Marlene announces that she’s pregnant. “HOLD THE BUS!” Red yells as he hastily puts on his clothes.

That said, Whit loves his uncle and the two Eastwoods, Clint and Kyle, both give excellent performances in Honkytonk Man. In fact, his performance here is probably the best that Clint Eastwood has ever given. Clint plays with his own image here. Initially, the film almost feels like a satire of Clint’s hypermasculine persona. (There is one scene where Eastwood handles a gun but it doesn’t play out the way that you might expect it to.) But, as the film progresses and Red’s illness grows worse, we start to understand Red and his way of looking at the world. Red is flawed but he loves his nephew and he loves music and, in the end, what’s important is not whether or not his song were recorded but instead that he spent his final days with Whit. The film may start out as a comedy but it ultimately becomes a meditation on aging and how one faces the inevitability of death.

As a director, Eastwood takes his time. He lets the movie play out slowly, with the casual pace of country story. It’s a film full of wonderful performance and beautiful visuals and it more than earns our patience. Wisely, Eastwood the director realizes that this story really isn’t about Red. The story is about Whit (or Hoss, as he asks to be known) and his experiences with his uncle. Whit worships his uncle but he also comes to learn that the most important thing is to be able to respect yourself. In this film, Clint Eastwood knows the story that he’s telling and he knows exactly how to tell it.

Honkytonk Man went unnominated as far as the Oscars are concerned. In the year when the well-intentioned but dramatically inert Gandhi dominated the awards and the nominations, Honkytonk Man was forgotten. That’s a shame.

Previous Entries In The Unnominated:

Uncommon Valor (1983, directed by Ted Kotcheff)

Posted on April 9, 2025 by Jedadiah Leland

Retired Marine Colonel Jason Rhodes (Gene Hackman) and oilman Harry MacGregor (Robert Stack) share a tragic bonf. Both of them have sons that served in Vietnam and are listed as being MIA. Believing that their sons are still being secretly held in a POW camp in Loas, Rhodes and MacGregor put together a team to sneak into Southeast Asia and rescue them.

With MacGregor supplying the money and Rhodes leading the mission, the team includes Blaster (Red Brown), Wilkes (Fred Ward), Sailor (Randall “Tex” Cobb), and Charts (Tim Thomerson), all of whom served with Rhodes’s son. Also joining in his helicopter pilot Curtis Johnson (Harold Sylvester) and former Marine Kevin Scott (Patrick Swayze), whose father was also listed as being MIA in Vietnam. After a rough start, the group comes together and head into Laos to bring the prisoners home!

Uncommon Valor is one of the many movies released in the 80s in which Vietnam vets returned to Asia and rescued those who were left behind. In the 80s, there was a very strong belief amongst many Americans that soldiers were still being held prisoner in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos and Hollywood was quick to take advantage of it. The box office success of Uncommon Valor set the stage for films like Rambo and Missing In Action, film in which America got the victory that it had been denied in real life.

What set Uncommon Valor apart from the films that followed was the cast. Not surprisingly, Gene Hackman brings a lot more feeling and nuance to his performance as the obsesses Col. Rhodes than Sylvester Stallone and Chuck Norris brought to their trips to Vietnam. The film surrounds Hackman with a quirky supporting cast, all of whom represent different feelings about and reactions to the war in Vietnam. Fred Ward’s character suffers from PTSD. Randall “Tex” Cobb, not surprisingly, is a wild man. Patrick Swayze’s character is trying to make the father he’ll never know proud. Robert Stack and Gene Hackman represent the older generation, still trying to come to terms with everything that was lost in Vietnam and still mourning their sons. The raid on the POW camp is exciting but it doesn’t feature the type of superhuman action that’s present in other POW-rescue films. Col. Rhodes and his soldiers are ordinary men. Not all of them survive and not all of them get what they want.

Uncommon Valor started out as a screenplay from Wings Hauser, though he’s not present in the cast of the final film and he was only given a “story” credit. John Milius served as producer. Director Ted Kotcheff is best-known for First Blood, another action film about America’s struggle to come to terms with the Vietnam War.

Brad’s “Stand-up of the Day” – Tim Thomerson with Freddie Prinze & Friends!

Posted on April 8, 2025 by Bradley Crain

As a big-time lover of B-movies in the 80’s and 90’s, I’ve mostly known Tim Thomerson as Dollman and Jack Deth in all those Trancers movies. I know there’s a bunch of those because Lisa hosted every one of them on #FridayNightFlix. But I found out a few years ago that he was also a well known stand up comedian who did a Charles Bronson impression. On his 79th birthday, I thought I would celebrate his stand up comedy. Be on the lookout for the Bronson impression that starts at about the 4 and a half minute mark. And this is definitely NSFW! Enjoy, my friends!

THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND (1983) – Rutger Hauer teams up with Sam Peckinpah!

Posted on February 23, 2025 by Bradley Crain

I’ve been having the best time reviewing Rutger Hauer films every Sunday. Today, I revisit THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND from 1983. Hauer made this film the year after BLADE RUNNER, so he was in the prime of his career. It also teams him up with an all-star supporting cast and master director Sam Peckinpah.

THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND opens with CIA Director Maxwell Danforth (Burt Lancaster) watching a recording of agent Laurence Fassett (John Hurt) making love to his wife. When Fassett hits the shower, two KGB assassins come in and kill her. Consumed by grief, Fassett hunts down the assassins and uncovers a Soviet spy network known as Omega. Fassett has identified three American men as top Omega agents… television producer Bernard Osterman (Craig T. Nelson with an awful, glued-on mustache), plastic surgeon Richard Tremayne (Dennis Hopper) and stock trader Joseph Cardone (Chris Sarandon). Rather than arrest the men and risk alarming the KGB, Fassett proposes to director Danforth that they try to turn one of the three men to the side of the West in hopes that this person will provide the information needed to bring down the Omega network.

Enter controversial television journalist John Tanner (Rutger Hauer). Fassett knows that Tanner has been close friends with Osterman, Tremayne, and Cardone since all four attended Berkeley together, and he believes that Tanner can successfully turn one of them. Although initially highly skeptical, the super patriotic Tanner begins to change his mind when Fassett shows him videotaped evidence of his old friends talking with a Russian agent in various capacities. Tanner reluctantly agrees to try turn one of his friends at their annual “Osterman Weekend” reunion which is coming up that week at Tanner’s house. He does have one condition… that Danforth, the CIA director will appear as a guest on his show. Danforth agrees to this condition. So that weekend, Tanner and his wife Ali (Meg Foster) welcome their old friends and their wives into their home, while Fassett has video camera equipment installed and hangs out in a van spying on the festivities. There’s no doubt it will turn out to be an awkward weekend, and you can’t help but wonder if Fassett may have more sinister motives than he’s letting on.

I’ll go ahead and say that I had a great time watching THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND for the first time in thirty-plus years. I’ve often read a criticism that the plot of this film is “incomprehensible.” Based on a book by Robert Ludlum, the story is purposely designed to keep you guessing up until its big reveal, but I didn’t have any trouble following it all. I’d say the biggest issue is that it doesn’t really stand up under close scrutiny. Some of the actions of the various characters don’t always make a lot of sense in light of the movie’s big twist near the end, but that didn’t take away from my personal enjoyment of the film. I just went along with the plot wherever it took me, and that was easy for me to do based on the cast that we have assembled. Any movie that includes Rutger Hauer, Burt Lancaster, John Hurt, Craig T. Nelson, Dennis Hopper, Chris Sarandon, Meg Foster, Helen Shaver, and Candy Yates will get a watch from me. Heck, Tim Thomerson even shows up as a motorcycle cop at one point. It’s a who’s who of excellent actors who always make their films watchable. In my opinion, it’s Hauer, Hurt, Foster and Nelson who do the most with their characters and take home the acting honors for their work here. Burt Lancaster is one of the all-time greats, and he does a good job, but it’s a one note character so there isn’t much he can do. Hopper and Sarandon are also fine, but their characters don’t really stand out. Their screen wives, Shaver and Yates, seem to be here mostly for eye candy because their tops are off for an abnormally large amount of their screen time! Speaking of eyes, the Hauer / Foster team up has to be on the list of the most striking combo pair of eyes in the history of cinema. Foster has the most noticeable eyes of any actress I’ve ever seen.

This is the great Sam Peckinpah’s final film, and I don’t agree with the people who complain that his career ended with a whimper. THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND is not in the same league as THE WILD BUNCH, RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY, THE STRAW DOGS, or THE GETAWAY, but not many films are, including most of his own. And this movie is certainly visionary in one area, and that is found in its main theme about the damage that can be done with the manipulation of the media, including physical media, like videotape and audiotape. The primary driver of the film from the very beginning to the very end is the danger of false information that looks and sounds true. I can promise you that as I type this, and as you read it, there are people all over this world trying to make lies sound or appear true so they can share them on the news and on social media. I invite you to question everything you read, watch or hear on any outlet where you receive your news. Peckinpah’s final film beats this into our heads, just 40 years earlier.

Sam Peckinpah was known for his stylish and violent action sequences. THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND is more of a paranoid thriller, but it does feature some good action. There’s a chase sequence early in the film where Hauer’s wife and son are kidnapped, and he’s forced to commandeer the truck of honeymooners John Bryson (a Peckinpah regular) and Anne Haney (Greta from LIAR LIAR) to take off in hot pursuit. The scene features Peckinpah’s signature stunts, slow motion, and a myriad of cool tracking shots. There’s another fun scene where Hauer is using a baseball bat to defend himself against his pal Craig T. Nelson, who’s been shown to be a martial arts expert. It’s an exciting scene even if Hauer does get his ass kicked, in slow motion no less. And I always appreciate a movie with some good crossbow action, especially when it’s being wielded by a lady. The poster of the film prominently features a lady with a crossbow and we get to see Meg Foster step into that role in the actual film. She gets one especially gruesome, blood gurgling kill.

Overall, I think THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND is a good film. It is not nearly as bad as the critics of the time labeled it, and it’s not as good as Peckinpah’s best work, but you can certainly do a lot worse. It has a great cast, a timely message, a lot more sex and nudity than I remembered, and some cool action sequences. It’s definitely worth a watch!

Late Night Retro Television Review: Pacific Blue 1.5 “Out Of The Past”

Posted on February 4, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

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 Pacific Blue, a cop show that aired from 1996 to 2000 on the USA Network! It’s currently streaming everywhere, though I’m watching it on Tubi.

This show is proving difficult to review.

Episode 1.5 “Out of the Past”

(Dir by Terrence O’Hara, originally aired on March 30th, 1996)

Look, I tried. I really did.

This episode should have fascinated me. It featured three storylines. Palermo was told take a vacation when it became obvious that a serial killer known as The Angel (Tim Thomerson) had returned to the beach and was targeting doctors. Palermo and The Angel had a history, with Palermo failing to capture The Angel during the killer’s previous spree. This time, The Angel tried to force a journalist (played by Barry Miller) to record his crimes for posterity.

Meanwhile, Chris and TC went undercover as guests at a hotel so that they could catch a thief and a peeping tom. Chris and TC pretended to be romantically involved and were so dedicated to maintaining the act that they ended up spending a good deal of the episode hanging out together in their underwear.

Finally, both TC and Del Toro were obsessed with catching a speeding biker who continually managed to outrun and outmaneuver them. Compounding their embarrassment was the revelation that the biker was a woman.

Mystery, empowerment, and lingerie. Those are three of my favorites things but this episode still managed to thoroughly bore me. I had to view it three times because I kept getting distracted whenever I tried to sit down and just watch the show. Admittedly, with my ADHD, my attention span is on the short side but still, this episode of Pacific Blue was remarkable in that, no matter what happened, I just didn’t care.

Why? Why can’t this show even work in a so-bad-its-good kind of way? The characters are just boring and interchangeable. The men are all grim and serious-minded and, physically, they’re all the same type. They’re all tall and lean and blandly handsome and none of them have any quirks or interests to really make them stand-out. The women are also bland and spend most of their time smirking at their male co-workers. Who are these people? Who cares?

Perhaps the biggest flaw with this episode and the show so far is that the members of the bicycle patrol just look dorky and they peddle around the beach. The worse thing is when they have to chase a suspect down a flight of stairs and they literally pick and carry their bicycles as they do so. It’s hard to take bicyclists seriously, even when they’re cops.

Watching the show, I kept thinking about the bicycle cops who used to patrol the campus where I went to college. No one took them seriously and everyone knew the experience of being yanked over by one of them and being asked, “You been drinking tonight?” when you were totally sober. It happened to me, one night, when an old ankle injury was acting up and I was walking with a slight limp. I was already feeling self-conscious about it and getting stopped when all I wanted to do was get home and rest my ankle didn’t help. The insistence that I must have been drunk or otherwise under the influence and also the assumption that I was obligated to stand around while the cops slowly talked to each other left me feeling violated. Whenever I see TC or Palermo sitting on their bikes with their oh-so serious “I am a badass” facial expressions, I remember every bad experience that I’ve ever had or I’ve ever seen someone else have with a cop.

My hope is that Pacific Blue, over the course of its run, eventually found a way to make its characters less annoying and more likable. (For instance, I don’t mind the cops on CHiPs because at least they’re entertaining.) I guess we’ll find out!

Guilty Pleasure No. 71: Submerged (dir by Fred Olen Ray)

Posted on October 1, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

THUNDERSTRIKE!

Listen, if you’re going to watch the 2000 film Submerged, you better be a big fan of the term “Thunderstrike,” because it’s repeated so many times that one gets the feeling that the actors just loved saying it.

Thunderstrike is a satellite that was built by western businessman Buck Stevens (Dennis Weaver). He and his daughter (Nicole Eggert) and her sort-of boyfriend (Hannes Jaenicke) are all flying to Hawaii so that they can conduct more tests on the Thunderstrike. However, arms dealer Owen Cantrell (Tim Thomerson) wants the Thunderstrike for himself so he sends a mercenary named Jeff Cort (Coolio. Yes, Coolio.) to steal the plans from the airplane. The plan is to kill the pilot, substitute a new pilot, and then crash the plane into the ocean …. which is pretty much what happens, despite the best efforts of heroic CIA agent, Rex Manning (Maxwell Caulfield).

Actually, wait a minute. Maxwell Caulfield’s character is named Jim Carpenter. Well, I don’t care. He’ll always be Rex Manning to me!

While Special Agent Mack Taylor (Brent Huff) tries to stop Cantrell from stealing the Thunderstrike, Captain Masters (Fred Williamson) tries to figure out a way to bring the plane to the surface.

If this sound familiar, it’s because Submerged has the same plot as Airport ’77.

If it looks familiar, it’s because Submerged lifts a lot of footage from Airport ’77, including the scene where the plane crashes, the scene where the plane settles on the ocean floor, and the scene where the plane is lifted off the ocean floor. Even a scene of water pouring into plane is lifted from Airport ’77, which means that the plane in Submerged suddenly has a staircase that no one apparently noticed before.

Submerged was directed by the wonderful Fred Olen Ray and seriously, how can you not love it? Between the cast and the fact that it features all of the best parts of Airport ’77, this is a film for which the term guilty Ppeasure was invented! It helps that the cast, for whatever reason, appears to be taking the film rather seriously. This film was Dennis Weaver’s final screen appearance and he seems to be having a ball playing a cheerful good old boy who can’t wait to put a dangerous satellite in the sky.

Plus, the film features Rex Manning!

Plus, Jack Deth!

Plus, Black Caesar!

Plus …. THUNDERSTRIKE!

Previous Guilty Pleasures

Retro Television Reviews: Fantasy Island 3.10 “Class of 69/The Pug”

Posted on August 15, 2023 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 Tuesdays, I will be reviewing the original Fantasy Island, which ran on ABC from 1977 to 1986. Almost entire show is currently streaming is on Youtube!

This week, boxing comes to Fantasy Island!

Episode 3.10 “Class of 69/The Pug”

(Dir by Earl Bellamy, originally aired on November 24th, 1979)

Once again, this episode opens with no banter between Mr. Roarke and Tattoo. Instead, Tattoo announces the arrival of the plane and rings the bell and then he and Mr. Roarke head down to the docks to meet their guests. This is the third episode in a row without any pre-guest banter and I have to admit that I’m really missing it.

As for this week’s guests, they’re an improvement on last week’s rather forgettable offering.

Joey Lee (Gary Collins) is a former heavyweight boxer who comes to the Island with his son, Mitch (K.C. Martel). Joey thinks that he’s just been hired to serve as a sparring partner for the world champion, Jackson Malone (Fred Williamson). Jackson has a title defense coming up, right on the Island. What Joey doesn’t know is that Mitch’s fantasy is for his father to have a shot at the championship. When Malone’s opponent has to drop out of the fight, Joey is named as a substitute. Mitch is excited, until he finds out that Joey is being pressured to take a dive in the third round. Will Joey throw the fight? And, even if Joey doesn’t, how will Mitch react to seeing his father getting pounded in the face by the world champion? Will Mitch learn that his love for his father is more important than his father’s championship?

This fantasy was a typical Rocky rip-off, right down to Fred Williamson doing a credible Apollo Creed impersonation. The problem, of course, is that the middle-aged and mild-mannered Gary Collins was in no way credible as a heavyweight boxer. The fact that the world champion was played by an actual athlete didn’t help matters. (It’s true that Carl Weathers, like Williamson, was also a football player before he played Apollo but Sylvester Stallone himself had been an amateur boxer before he played Rocky so it was easier to buy the idea of their match going the distance.) In the end, I liked the fact that Mitch realized that his father’s health was more important than being champion. The fantasy had a nice ending, even if it’s difficult to buy the set-up.

The other fantasy featured Adrienne Barbeau as Brenda Richards. When she first arrives on Fantasy Island, Tattoo comments on how obese Brenda is, even though she’s only a few pounds overweight. (Adrienne Barbeau wears a very unconvincing fat suit.) Mr. Roarke explains that Brenda was humiliated at her high school prom when her date, arrogant jock Lance (Tim Thomerson), tricked her into undressing in the gym before then bringing in the entire senior class in to laugh at her. (Yikes!) The high school reunion is being held on Fantasy Island and Brenda’s fantasy is to get revenge. Roarke gives her a potion which allows her to be thin for 48 hours. (In reality, Barbeau just ditches the fat suit.)

At the reunion, Brenda tricks Lance into taking off his wig. The entire senior class discovers that Lance is totally bald and they laugh and laugh. Everyone is impressed with Brenda’s revenge except for Brenda’s old high school friend, Bernie Drexel (Fred Grandy, taking a break from The Love Boat). Brenda sees that she was just as cruel to Lance as he was to her back in high school so she makes a public apology and encourages everyone to be kind to one another. Barbeau then puts the fat suit back on. Bernie says that Brenda will always be the most beautiful woman that he knows. Awwwww!

I actually liked this fantasy, largely because of the chemistry between Barbeau and Grandy. Plus, Tim Thomerson made a great arrogant jock. I know that some people will say that this episode featured too many jokes about Brenda’s weight (especially considering the fact that, even before drinking the potion, Brenda was hardly obese) but I appreciated the fact that it had an anti-bullying message. And if her romance with Bernie inspires Brenda to eat healthy and start getting regular exercise, all the better!

At the end of the episode, Mr. Roarke tells Tattoo that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. “To me,” Mr. Roarke says, “you are six feet two inches tall.”

Uhmmm….yeah, I don’t know how I feel about that ending. It seems like the show, whether intentionally or not, is saying that Tattoo will be forever unloved because of his height. Even without the pre-guest banter, Roarke is finding ways to passive-aggressively taunt his assistant. That’s life on Fantasy Island.

Heatseeker (1995, directed by Albert Pyun)

Posted on December 1, 2022 by Jedadiah Leland

Directed and co-written by Albery Pyun, Heatseeker takes place in the near future, in the year 2019! The world is a corrupt and dangerous place where the poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer. Corporations are as powerful as governments. (Albert Pyun, prophet.) Each corporation is represented by an MMA fighter because it’s not enough that a corporation provide a needed good or service. Their fighters also have to be able to win tournament after tournament.

Chance O’Brien (Keith Cooke) is a world champion fighter who is unique because he fights without corporate sponsorship and he is also not a cyborg. While every other fighter has been “enhanced,” O’Brien remains all-natural. Evil CEO Tsui Tung (Norbert Weisser) wants to show off his newest fighter, Xao (Gary Daniels). Tung arranges for Chance’s girlfriend and trainer to be kidnapped as a way to force O’Brien to travel to New Manila and take part in the ultimate fighting tournament. Tung’s plan is for Xao to defeat Chance while the entire world is watching. Chance just wants to rescue his girlfriend, even if she is now being forced to train Xao.

Heatseeker, I watched in memory of director Albert Pyun. Pyun was the master when it came to movies about cyborgs entering MMA tournaments and Heatseeker is typical of his films. The plot is incoherent but no one is watching for the plot. The fights are the attraction and Pyun doesn’t waste too much time before getting into them. Gary Daniels and Keith Cooke may not have been the best actors but they were pros when it came to fight scenes and they both give it their all as the work their way to their inevitable final confrontation. Since all of the fighters, except for Chance, are also cyborgs, that means that each match ends with sparks and exposed stainless steel.

Pyun fans will get exactly what they want out of Heatseeker. Along with the tournament, Heatseeker also features performance from Pyun regulars like Tim Thomerson and Thom Matthews. One thing it does not do is feature anyone seeking heart but you can’t have everything.

The Incredible Hulk Returns (1988, directed by Nicholas Corea)

Posted on October 4, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

Scientist David Banyon (Bill Bixby) has a secret. His real name is David Banner and he has spent the last ten years in hiding, traveling up and down the highway and searching for a cure to a very strange condition. As the result of getting dosed with gamma rays, David Banner sometimes transforms into an angry green monster known as the Hulk (Lou Ferrigno). The world believes that David Banner is dead and Banner must let them continue to believe that until he can find a cure for the monster within.

The Incredible Hulk Returns is a continuation of the old Incredible Hulk television series, which was the first (and, until the MCU came along, only) successful attempt to build a live action show around a Marvel super hero. Premiering in 1978, The Incredible Hulk ran for 5 seasons and got good ratings and, for a comic book series, surprisingly decent reviews. However, it was also expensive to produce and it was abruptly cancelled in 1982, before the show got a chance to wrap up David’s story. When The Incredible Hulk ended, David Banner was still alone and hitchhiking from town to town. Six years later, The Incredible Hulk Returns caught up with David and tried to sell viewers on a “new” Marvel hero as well.

David “Banyon” is now living in California and working at the Joshua-Lambert Research Institute. It’s been two years since he last turned into the Hulk. He controls his rage by being careful not to get involved in any dangerous situations. He also has a girlfriend, Dr. Maggie Shaw (Lee Purcell). David is designing the Gamma Transponder, which he thinks will cure him of his condition. Life’s good until Donald Blake (Steve Levitt) shows up.

A student of Banner’s, Blake recognizes his former teacher and approaches him with a crazy story. When Blake was in Norway, he stumbled across a tomb that contained a hammer that contained the spirit of Thor, a Viking warrior who was banished to Earth by Odin. To prove that he’s telling the truth, Blake commands Thor to emerge from the hammer. When Thor (played by Eric Kramer) does, he makes such a mess in the laboratory that David transforms into the Hulk.

Thor is not Banner’s only problem. Jack LeBeau (Tim Thomerson!) and Mike Fouche (Charles Napier!!) want to steal the Gamma Transponder and turn it into a weapon. Also, reporter Jack McGee (Jack Colvin) s back in town and still obsessed with proving that the Hulk exists.

The Incredible Hulk Returns may be a continuation of David Banner’s story but the main reason it was filmed was so it could serve as a backdoor pilot for a Thor television series. The Thor TV series never happened and, for those who are used to Chris Hemsworth’s comedic take on Thor, it’s jarring to see Eric Kramer playing the role like a third-tier professional wrestler. For fans of The Incredible Hulk TV series, it’s even more jarring to see the Hulk fighting alongside a viking. Unlike the comic book, the TV series usually tried to ground its stories in reality, with Banner’s transformations into the Hulk serving as the show’s only concession to its comic book origins. The villains played by Thomerson and Napier both seem like typical bad guys from the show’s heyday but Thor just doesn’t belong. Fans of the show will resent Thor taking the spotlight away from David Banner and the Hulk while fans of Thor will notice that this version of Thor is apparently not the god of thunder but instead just an egotistical viking who got on Odin’s nerves.

Bill Bixby was always The Incredible Hulk‘s not-so-secret weapon, taking and playing his role very seriously. He continues to do that in The Incredible Hulk Returns but how seriously can anyone come across when they’re speaking to Thor? By the end of the movie, Thor and Blake head off on their own adventures while Banner resumes hitchhiking. Thor and Blake would not be seen again but David Banner’s adventures would continue in The Trial of the Incredible Hulk.

Cinemax Friday: Die Watching (1993, directed by Charles Davis)

Posted on July 31, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

Mentally scarred by the night that his mother murdered his father, Michael Terrence (Christopher Atkins) is a video editor who makes his living filming naked models and who deals with his mental issues by then asphyxiating those same models. Michael’s main kink is that he ties his victims up in front of a monitor and then films them as they die, basically forcing them to witness their own murders. In other words, Michael is one sick puppy who has perhaps seen Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom a few too many times.

Despite the fact that dead actresses and models are turning up all over Los Angeles, Detectives Lewis (Tim Thomerson) and Barry (Carlos Palomino) have no idea that Michael is responsible. In fact, no one suspects Michael. His neighbor, an aspiring artist named Nola (Vali Ashton), even hires Michael to help her promote her artwork. Despite the fact that Nola already has a boyfriend, she and Michael fall in love. Falling in love causes Michael to lose his urge to kill but it may already be too late as a video of one of his murders has fallen into the wrong hands.

For some reason, Christopher Atkins was a direct-to-video and Cinemax mainstay in the 90s. I’ve never understood why because he was a terrible actor with absolutely no screen presence. Unlike C. Thomas Howell, who was bland in mainstream films but usually surprisingly good when he did direct-to-video work, Atkins was always forgettable regardless of whether he was appearing in a major studio production or something like Die Watching. For a film like this to work, the film has to convince you that there’s at least a chance the murderer could have been a decent human being if not for his tragic past. Atkins just comes across like a natural born weirdo. Atkins gives a sweaty and nervous performance but he makes Michael so obviously disturbed that it’s impossible to buy that Nola would dump her boyfriend for him. Judd Nelson or, again, C. Thomas Howell probably could have pulled off the role. Christopher Atkins just feels wrong.

Of course, the target audience for this film doesn’t care about the acting or the plot or anything else. They care about the women and those who watch a film like this solely for the nudity won’t be disappointed. Vali Ashton is actually really likable as Nola, though the film is stolen by Erika Nann, who plays Nola’s sex-obsessed roommate and who gets the best lines. (Of course, there’s a difference between getting the best lines in Die Watching and getting the best lines in something like Hamlet.) It’s also good to see Tim Thomerson in practically anything, even when it’s something as dumb as Die Watching.

Die Watching is pretty dire but it does predict the rise of a very specific type of internet culture. When Michael accidentally sends one of his murder tapes to a producer instead of one of his sex tapes, the producer is not disturbed but instead, he’s intrigued by the commercial possibilities. Even Michael knows that’s messed up! If Die Watching were made today, of course, that producer would probably own an adult website and he would be talking about selling the murder videos on the dark web. It just goes to show that the more things chance, the more they remain the same.