Retro Television Reviews: Gidget’s Summer Reunion (dir by Bruce Bilson)

Posted on December 25, 2022 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 Sundays, I will be reviewing the made-for-television movies that used to be a primetime mainstay. Today’s film is 1985’s Gidget’s Summer Reunion! It can be viewed on Tubi!

Back in the 1970s, when the rest of the country was worrying about political corruption, inflation, and an out-of-touch president with an embarrassing family, Gidget, Jeff, and their friends were carefree California teenagers who spent all of their time either hanging out on the beach or running into the ocean with a surfboard. It was a time when they had not a care in the world and, obviously, it couldn’t last forever.

Nearly 10 years later, Gidget (Caryn Richman) and Jeff (Dean Butler) are now married and their surfboards have been safely stored away in the garage. Jeff works as an architect and it’s obvious that his new boss, Anne (Mary Frann), wants to make their professional relationship into something personal. Gidget, meanwhile, owns her own travel agency and, apparently, it’s a success even though Gidget rarely seems to spend much time at the office. Gidget is hyperactive and a bit self-absorbed and, as such, she usually only shows up at work long enough to tell her employees about her latest problems before then running out of the office in an impulsive attempt to fix everything.

What problems do Gidget and Jeff have? Well, for one thing, they live in a giant house despite the fact that they’re nearly broke. They’re both workaholics and, as a result, they don’t spend as much time together as they used to. They got married and then they became strangers. It’s been years since they last went down to the beach. When Gidget’s niece, Kim (Allison Barron), wants to learn how to surf, it doesn’t even occur to her to ask her aunt or her uncle. Instead, she ends up hanging out with a sleazy, beer-drinking surfer named Mickey (Vincent Van Patten).

Fear not! Gidget has a plan! Jeff’s birthday is coming up and Gidget decides that it would be a great idea to use her travel agent powers to get the entire gang back together again. She wants to bring all of the old surfers back to help celebrate Jeff’s big day. The only problem is that the old gang isn’t entirely easy to find. Plus, one of Gidget’s tour guides has to drop out of leading a tour in Hawaii. Gidget is forced to go in his place. Can she get back from Hawaii in time to save Jeff from Anne and Kim from Mickey? And even more importantly, will she ever be able to track down the old gang? Will the movie end with a bunch of balding guys surfing while the Beach Boys play on the soundtrack? Can you guess the answer?

The best thing that can be said about Gidget’s Summer Reunion is that the beach looked nice and the Hawaii scenes reminded me of the wonderful summer that my family and I spent in Hawaii. And the film is correct when it points out that adulthood is never as easy as we expected it to be when we were teenagers. However, the film suffers from the fact that a lot of Gidget’s problems could have been solved by Gidget actually taking a few minutes to think before acting. It’s one thing to be free-spirited and impulsive. It’s another thing to totally lack common sense. For instance, Gidget and Jeff’s old surfboards are stolen out of the back of Gidget’s convertible and, while you can certainly feel bad for Gidget’s loss, you do have to wonder what she was expecting when she basically just left them out in the open, where anyone could get their hands on them. Jeff isn’t off the hook either, as it was pretty much obvious to everyone but him that Anne was trying to get him to cheat on his wife. Gidget and Jeff are a cute couple but they don’t seem to have a brain cell between them.

Oh well. At least the beach looked nice!

The Bravos (1972, directed by Ted Post)

Posted on January 18, 2022 by Jedadiah Leland

Major John David Harkness (George Peppard) is the commander of Fort Bravo, a small and ill-equipped frontier fort. Despite having only 77 soldiers and not many supplies, Harkness has managed to keep an uneasy peace between the local Indian tribes and the settlers who move through the area. The peace, however, is disturbed when an arrogant wagon master (Pernell Roberts) kills the son of the tribal chief.

That’s not all that Harkness has to worry about. A German outlaw (Bo Svenson) is hiding out at the camp. His head scout (L.Q. Jones) suspects that something is forcing the local tribes out of the area. Two settlers from Missouri (played by Barry Brown and Belinda Montgomery) are at the fort and trying to decide whether they should continue westward or return to Missouri. Finally, Harkness’s 12 year-old son, Peter (Vincent Van Patten), has been expelled from his New England boarding school and is being sent to Fort Bravo to live with his father. When Major Harkness refuses to turn the wagon master over to the Indians, they kidnap his son instead.

The Bravos was made for television and originally aired on ABC in 1972. It was apparently meant to serve as the pilot for a television series, one that would have followed the daily adventures of the Major, his son, and all of the men at Fort Bravo (who were played by television mainstays like Dana Elcar, Randolph Mantooth, and George Murdock.) For all intents and purposes, Pernell Roberts, Bo Svenson, Belinda Montgomery, and Barry Brown are all “special guest stars” and are meant to serve as examples of the type of television-friendly actors who would visit Fort Bravo on a weekly basis. That the pilot didn’t lead to a series isn’t surprising. TV westerns may have dominated the ratings in the 50s and the 60s but they quickly went out of fashion in the 70s as networks realized that they could make more money selling ad space for Norman Lear sitcoms and cop shows. In the 70s, the people that advertisers were wanting to reach were watching Archie Bunker and Starsky and Hutch, not George Peppard.

Because of its TV origins, The Bravos is a fairly bland western. It would be a few years before George Peppard would reinvent himself as a grizzled character actor and he’s sincere but fairly dull here. Pernell Roberts is more effective as the headstrong wagon master and perhaps The Bravos would have worked better if Roberts and Peppard had switched roles. In the end, the main reason to see the film is for the chance to see L.Q. Jones play a heroic role for once. A member of Sam Peckinpah’s stock company, Jones brings some authentic grit to his role as the fort’s only scout. Jones played a lot of villains but I always preferred him as one of the good guys.

The Bravos ends with a few major subplots unresolved. Maybe they would have been resolved during the show’s first season but it was not to be.

A Movie A Day #50: Survival Run (1979, directed by Larry Spiegel)

Posted on February 19, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

This poster for Survival Run reflects absolutely nothing that happens in the movie.

“We are young/ We are free/ Anyone know a better place to be?/ Takin’ it easy/ My baby and me….”

So goes the deceptively mellow opening theme song of Survival Run. In this one, teenager Chip (Vincent Van Patten) and his five best friends take off for the weekend. When their van breaks down in the middle of the desert, they light a campfire, sing a song, and have sex.

Takin’ it easy, my baby and me.

When they later decide to search for help, they stumble across a group of men in the valley. The men are being led by Peter Graves, who tosses one of the teens a beer and says, “This’ll put hair on your chest, kid.” The kid looks down at his chest, says, “Where’d it go!?,” and then touches him armpits. “There it is!” he says.

We are young, we are free

The men say they’re prospectors but they’re actually drug smugglers. When the same teen who couldn’t find his chest hair is murdered, a fight for survival begins. Despite that killer opening song, Survival Run takes forever to get started, the action scenes are poorly directed, and the teens are too stupid and poorly written to be sympathetic. However, Survival Run does feature Peter Graves and Ray Milland as the two most unlikely drug smugglers in the world. Peter Graves wears a red ascot and an all khaki outfit with rapidly spreading sweat stains. Ray Milland wears a suit while sitting out in the broiling desert. Milland, who was 72 at the time, spends most of the movie sitting. One of the teenage girls thinks he’s intriguing.

Dangerous international drug smugglers Ray Milland and Peter Graves

Infamous international drug smugglers Ray Milland and Peter Graves

When I was growing up in Baltimore, Survival Run used to frequently come on TV in the afternoon. I’m still not sure why but I imagine a lot of fans of the Biography Channel were tricked into tuning into this one, just to watch in shock as Peter Graves killed teenagers in the middle of the desert. Ray Milland did this 35 years after winning an Oscar for The Lost Weekend. As for Vincent Van Patten, he was the Van Patten who didn’t appear in Mel Brooks films or win an Emmy for his work on Boardwalk Empire.

Peter Graves and Ray Milland vs. the least known member of the Van Patten family.

Anyone know a better place to be?

Horror Film Review: Hell Night (dir by Tom DeSimone)

Posted on October 23, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

It’s pledge initiation night at Generic University! Four students are hoping to join the Alpha Sigma Rho fraternity and its sister sorority. Denise (Suki Goodwin) is English and never goes anywhere without a supply of quaaludes and a flask of Jack Daniels. Seth (Vincent Van Patten) is the blonde jock, who wants to spend the entire night hooking up with Denise, despite the fact that Denise keeps calling him, “Wes.” Jeff (Peter Barton) is the sensitive rich kid who fears that the only reason he’s getting into the fraternity is because of his family’s money. And Marti (Linda Blair) is the girl from a poor family who works on cars during her spare time. In order to pass the initiation, they have to spend the night in deserted Garth Manor.

However, they won’t be alone in Garth Manor. The president of the fraternity, Peter (Kevin Brophy), is planning on spending the entire night playing pranks on them. Helping him will be his girlfriend, May West (Jenny Nuemann) and his nerdy best friend, Scott (Jimmy Sturtevant). Unfortunately, what Peter did not realize was that the four pledges are all smart enough to know that he’s going to be trying to scare them. As a result, they just ignore his best efforts to make things creepy.

Of course, what none of them know is that the legend of Garth Mansion is actually true. As Peter explains at the beginning of the film, it has long been rumored that Mr. Garth murdered his entire family, except for his horribly deformed son Andrew. They say that Andrew still lives in the mansion, waiting for a chance to attack and kill all trespassers…

And that’s pretty much exactly what happens!

But you know what? For a relatively straight forward slasher film from 1981, Hell Night is not a bad film at all. In fact, with its relative lack of gore, nudity, and painfully stupid victims, it can probably be argued that Hell Night is a slasher film for people who don’t like slashers. Hell Night emphasizes atmosphere over easy shocks and actually devotes some time to characterization. Even if the majority of the characters are familiar horror film types, you still care about them. Even poor Denise, who has the thankless role of being the sexually independent girl who you know is doomed from the minute she first appears on screen, gets a few good lines.

(Plus, the film opens with a costume party so, of course, all of the outfits are to die for!)

One of the things that really made Hell Night effective is that the characters are not idiots. They don’t just stand around waiting to be picked off. At first, they just assume that any and all strangeness is a result of Peter trying to scare them. When it becomes obvious that Andrew Garth is alive, one of them manages to escape the manor and goes straight to the cops. And how do the cops react? They tell him that they’re tired of dealing with drunk frat boys and order him to go home, adding to the hopelessness of the situation.

(But, honestly, if some random guy told you that a deformed monster was trying to kill him, would you believe him?)

Hell Night is full of scary atmosphere, clever lines, and good acting. As far as early 80s slasher movies go, it’s one of better examples of the genre.