It isn’t the past. It isn’t the present. It’s the future.
The moon has been colonized and, on Earth, the Mayflower II is preparing for its first international flight. It will be carrying passengers from Houston to the lunar station. Test pilot Ted Striker (Robert Hays) claims that the Mayflower II is not ready to make the trip but he’s been in the Ronald Reagan Hospital For The Mentally Ill ever since he had a nervous breakdown after losing his squadron during “the war.”
Aboard the Mayflower II is Ted’s ex-wife, Elaine (Julie Haggerty), and her new boyfriend, Simon (Chad Everett). Simon says the Mayflower II is in perfect shape but he also turns into jelly whenever things get too rough. Piloting the Mayflower II is Captain Clarence Oveur (Peter Graves) and waiting on the Moon is Commander Buck Murdock (William Shatner). The crew of the Mayflower II is going to have a tough flight ahead of them. Not only is the shipboard computer making plans of its own but one of the passengers (Sonny Bono) has a bomb in his briefcase. Also, Ted has broken out of the hospital and is on the flight, boring people with his long stories.
Every successful film gets a sequel and when Airplane! was a surprise hit in 1980, it was inevitable that there would be an Airplane II. Robert Hays, Julie Haggerty, Lloyd Bridges, Peter Graves, and Stephen Stucker all returned. Unfortunately, Jim Abrahams, the Zucker brothers, Robert Stack, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Leslie Nielsen did not. (The directors and Nielsen were all working on Police Squad and their absence is strong felt.) Airplane II recreates many of the same jokes as the first Airplane! but without the first film’s good nature or genuine affection for the disaster genre. Airplane! was made for the love of comedy. Airplane II was made for the love of money and, while there are more than a few amusing moments, the difference is obvious and there for all to see.
Not surprisingly, Airplane II is at its funniest whenever William Shatner is on screen. In the role of Bud Murdock, Shatner pokes fun at his own image and shows himself to be a good sport. He’s still not as funny as Leslie Nielsen or Robert Stack in the first film but that’s because, unlike Stack and Nielsen in their pre-Airplane! days, there had always been a hint of self-parody to Shatner, even in his most dramatic roles. If Stack and Nielsen shocked people by showing that they could do deadpan comedy, Shatner’s performance just confirmed what most suspected, that he had always been in on the joke. Still, he’s the funniest thing in Airplane II and, whenever I rewatch this movie, I am happy he was there.
Airplane II was a box office failure, which is why the world never got an Airplane III. Fortunately, the world did get Hot Shots and The Naked Gun.
Today, we have the 1973 made-for-TV movie, The Horror at 37,000 Feet. This film starts off like a typical disaster film, with a collection of familiar celebrities catching a flight from Heathrow Airport. What they don’t know is that celebrity is not the only thing flying across the ocean! There’s a sacrificial altar sitting in the baggage hold and soon, all sorts of strange things are happening! Truly, it’s a horror at 37,000 feet!
This film is silly and perhaps even a little bit dumb but it’s also definitely a lot of fun. To be honest, when you’ve got William Shatner playing an ex-priest who is wondering what happened to his faith, how can you go wrong? Along with Shatner, keep an eye out for Chuck Conners, Buddy Ebsen, Roy Thinnes, Paul Winfield, Tammy Grimes, and France Nuyen. Basically, every TV actor who needed a job in 1973 boarded The Horror at 37,000 Feet.
Happy October and enjoy The Horror at 37,000 Feet!
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 1974’s Indict & Convict! It can be viewed on YouTube.
There’s been a murder!
The wife of Assistant District Attorney Sam Belden (William Shatner) has been found, shot to death. Making things especially awkward is that the body of her lover is found next to her. Though Belden is the obvious suspect, he has an alibi for the time of the murders. He claims that he was in Las Vegas, attending a convention. Two gas station attendants remember seeing him filling up his car with gas at around the same time that his wife and her lover was being shot.
Attorney General Timothy Fitzgerald (Ed Flanders) is not so sure that Belden is innocent. He instructs two of his top prosecutors to check out Belden’s story and to see if there’s enough evidence to not only indict but also to convict. Bob Matthews (George Grizzard) is a veteran prosecutor and he’s the one who narrates the story for us. Assisting him is Mike Belano, who is played by the always likable Reni Santoni. Just three years before this movie aired, Santoni played Harry Callahan’s partner in Dirty Harry. There was just something about Santoni’s friendly but determined demeanor that made him perfect the role of the supportive partner or assistant.
The film is very much a legal procedural, with the emphasis on not only the investigation but also on the strategies and the techniques that are used in the courtroom by Matthews and defense attorney DeWitt Foster (Eli Wallach). In many ways, it feels like a forerunner to Law & Order. Usually, I love court procedurals but Indict & Convict was a bit too slow and high-minded for its own good. Maybe it’s because I’ve been spoiled by all of the legal shows that I’ve seen but I have to admit that I spent a good deal of Indict & Convict wanting the prosecutors to get on with it. Flanders, Grizzard, Santoni, and Wallach were all ideally cast but the film itself sometimes got bogged down with all the debate about the best way to win a conviction. It’s a shame because the story itself is an intriguing one and I actually enjoyed the movie’s use of spinning newspaper headlines to let us know what had happened in between scenes. Also, as a classic film fan, I enjoyed seeing Myrna Loy as the judge. She didn’t get to do much other than say, “Sustained” and “Overruled,” but still …. Myrna Loy!
Most people who watch this film will probably do so out of the hope of seeing some trademark Shatner overacting. William Shatner doesn’t actually get to say much in this film. He spends most of the running time sitting silently at the defense table. Towards the end, he does finally get a chance to deliver a brief speech and it’s everything you could hope for. Shatner takes dramatic pauses. Shatner emphasizes random words. Every line is delivered with the subtext of, “Pay attention, Emmy voters!” Eventually, Shatner would learn the value of laughing at oneself but apparently, that lesson had not yet been learned when he did Indict & Convict.
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 1988’s Broken Angel! It can be viewed on YouTube.
Chuck Coburn (William Shatner) has a nice house in the suburbs, a nice job, a nice car, and a nice Bruins jacket. He’s hoping that he can once against have a nice marriage with his wife (Susan Blakely), despite the fact that she cheated on him and she still thinks that he spends too much time at work.
Chuck is proud of his teenage daughter, Jaime (Erika Eleniak). Jaime seems like the perfect suburban and angelic teenager. But then Jaime goes to prom and her best friend, Jenny (Amy Lynne), is gunned down in front of her. Jaime runs from the scene and vanishes. As Chuck searches for his daughter, he is stunned discover that Jaime, Jenny, and their boyfriends were all a part of a gang! His perfect daughter was smoking weed, doing cocaine, selling crack, and taking part in rumbles with a rival Asian gang. Even worse, Jaime’s gang was called …. LFN!
LFN? That stands for Live For Now. The Live For Now Gang. Whenever we see the members of the gang preparing to get into a fight with another gang, they all chant, “LFN! LFN!” LFN is a gang of white suburban teenagers and they look just as dorky as they sound. I mean, I think it would be bad enough to discover that your child is in a gang but discovering they were in a dorky gang would probably make it even worse.
The majority of Broken Angel is made up of scenes of Chuck searching the mean streets of Los Angeles. He partners with a social worker (Roxann Dawson) who is herself a former gang member. Chuck discovers that his daughter’s street name was — *snicker* — Shadow. He also befriend a member of the LFN’s rival Asian gang and tries to encourage her to go straight. This leads to scene in which he is attacked by Al Leong. Somehow, middle-aged William Shatner manages to beat up Al Leong. That, in itself, is worth the cost of admission.
Broken Angel deals with a serious issue but it does so in such an overwrought and melodramatic fashion that most viewers will be moved not to tears but to laughter. In Broken Angel, William Shatner gave the type of overly dramatic and self-serious performance that he routinely pokes fun at today. If you’re one of those people who enjoys listening as Shatner emphasize random syllables and takes meaningly pauses, this movie will give you a lot to enjoy. In every scene, Shatner seems to be saying, “Notice me, Emmy voters! Notice me!” Of course, it wouldn’t be until Shatner learned how to laugh at himself that the Emmy voters would finally notice him.
The film ends on an abrupt note but with the promise of better days ahead. Just remember — keep an eye out for the LFN!
Hi there and welcome to October! This is our favorite time of the year here at the Shattered Lens because October is our annual horrorthon! For the past several years (seriously, we’ve been doing this for a while), we have celebrated every October by reviewing and showing some of our favorite horror movies, shows, books, and music. That’s a tradition that I’m looking forward to helping to continue this year.
To start things off, we have the 1973 made-for-TV movie, The Horror at 37,000 Feet. This film starts off like a typical disaster film, with a collection of familiar celebrities catching a flight from Heathrow Airport. What they don’t know is that celebrity is not the only thing flying across the ocean! There’s a sacrificial altar sitting in the baggage hold and soon, all sorts of strange things are happening! Truly, it’s a horror at 37,000 feet!
This film is silly and perhaps even a little bit dumb but it’s also definitely a lot of fun. To be honest, when you’ve got William Shatner playing an ex-priest who is wondering what happened to his faith, how can you go wrong? Along with Shatner, keep an eye out for Chuck Conners, Buddy Ebsen, Roy Thinnes, Paul Winfield, Tammy Grimes, and France Nuyen. Basically, every TV actor who needed a job in 1973 boarded The Horror at 37,000 Feet.
Happy October and enjoy The Horror at 37,000 Feet!
While many celebrated International Cat Day on August 8th, it also happened to be National Tarantula Appreciation Day. As a result, I decided to return to a film that terrified me when I was little (and watched when I was far too young), 1977’s Kingdom of the Spiders.
As a kid growing up near the beginning of cable, movies were regularly during the weekends shown on prime time TV. This consisted of about 5 main channels in New York City: CBS (Channel 2), NBC (Channel 4), ABC (Channel 7), WNYW (Channel 5, which would become Fox in the Mid80s), WWOR (Channel 9), and WPIX (Channel 11). In addition to this, Channel 5, 9, and 11 would have movies playing on weekday afternoons just before the nightly news. I ended up watching Kingdom of the Spiders at my grandmother’s house, from under her bed. I didn’t sleep well for a while after this movie.
I don’t know why she ever owned it, but my Grandmother had this near clear shower curtain with a giant red and black spider on it. The web started from the center and spread out to the edges of the curtain. The image below is the closest approximation I could find to the one she owned. This was the source of my arachnophobia, which caused me to either enter the bathroom with my eyes closed, or use the basement bathroom (which had the rare added chance of seeing actual spiders). She tried to make me see the reality of it once, scooping me up and lifting me in front of the curtain to realize it was just a plastic sheet. My imagination was a little too much, however, and all I saw was something that wanted to cocoon and drink me dry. I screamed and flailed in her arms, and that was the end of that.
The premise for Kingdom of the Spiders is incredibly simple. At first, life is pretty comfortable in Verde Valley, Arizona. You’ve a family of cattle ranchers in the Colby’s (played by Spartacus‘ Woody Strode and Can’t Stop the Music‘s Altovise Davis). However, when a farmer’s cattle begin to fall ill and eventually dies, Dr. Rack Hansen (William Shatner, Miss Congeniality) is brought in to figure out what’s happening. Between heavily flirting with this brother’s widow Terry (Marcy Lafferty, Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Shatner’s wife at the time) and taking care of her daughter, Laura (Natasha Ryan, The Amityville Horror), it’s a surprise Rack has the time to help the Colby’s out.
When he sends in the blood samples to a lab for more research, the diagnosis is spider venom on a highly toxic scale. It’s so toxic that a spider specialist, Diane Ashley (Tiffany Bolling, Open House) is brought in to help. Of course, this springs Rack into action. After they meet, he cuts her off on the road, gives her his best one liner and then picks her up and takes her to his favorite restaurant (in her car, mind you). Rack’em, indeed.
Over lunch, they come to an understanding that DDT might be the cause of their tarantula menace. Having killed off their regular food sources of insects, the spiders have moved on to larger game. A quick visit back to the Colby Ranch confirms their fears. A spider mound is on their farm and the decision is eventually made to burn it down. Burning helps, but little do the humans realize that the spiders had exit strategies of their own. They also had additional mounds that the humans never even noticed.
With time running around out, Rack and Diane eventually decide the answer is more DDT, but the spiders thwart the attempt and decide from that point on, it’s all out war. Can the town survive the assault?
So, the spiders in Kingdom of the Spiders are just tarantulas. While all tarantulas are spiders, not all spiders are tarantulas. We’re not talking about the small house spiders from Frank Marshall’s Arachnophobia. They can be dangerous too, depending on the type. The Brown Recluse in particular has venom that is necrotic and will eat away the flesh around a bite. This movie focuses on the large hairy ones.
From what I’ve read, while most tarantulas have venom, it’s not particularly dangerous to humans. The only real exception to this are the Funnel Web spiders of Australia. They’re super aggressive and their venom can kill. Thankfully, according to a USA Today article, no one on that continent’s been killed by one since 1980. Additionally, some tarantulas only really use their fangs as a last resort. They will usually choose to flick the hairs off their back, which sting the eyes and noses of most predators.
There were about 5000 tarantulas used in the movie, with a mix of real ones for the early close ups and fake models for some of the wider shots. I’ve always wondered if the American Humane Society supervised the film, because it looks looks like a number of them were killed (at least in the last third).
Shatner is pretty much himself here, bringing that style he always does to a role. It’s not the over the top levels of Captain Kirk or Denny Crane, but it’s still fun to watch. Though I haven’t been able to confirm it, I’m told that Tiffany Bolling was one of the few people that wasn’t scared to work with the arachnids and that helped to get her the role. Most of the cast are okay, thought their reactions to spiders might cause one to laugh more than to share in their fear. Granted, I’d probably react the same way as most of them.
There’s one part involving Mrs. Colby with a gun that shares the same musical piece used in David Cronenberg’s Rabid and Scott Sanders’ Black Dynamite. Much like the classic Wilhelm scream, this musical piece seems to pop up in older movies now and then.
Overall, Kingdom of the Spiders is a decent film to unleash upon your Arachnophobic friends to watch them squirm. The spiders may spend more time running away from their prey, but some low to the ground camera shots help to make things more interesting.
Remember when William Shatner became the oldest man to go into space?
It’s okay if you’ve forgotten. It happened way back in 2021 and that was like — well, it feels like it was about 30 years ago. Add to that, Shatner went up in space as a part of Jeff Bezos’s space program and Bezos’s attempts to conquer space have pretty much been replaced by Elon Musk’s attempts to conquer space in the national consciousness.
That said, it was a really big deal when it happened. I think there were a lot of people who were concerned that, at the age of 90, Shatner wasn’t really physically fit to go into space and that it would be really depressing if Shatner didn’t make it back to Earth. There were others who pointed out that Jeff Bezos’s Blue Orbit may have gone high up in the sky but that it didn’t quite break through the atmosphere. The people on the ship, including Shatner, experienced weightlessness and got to see what the Earth looked like from space without actually literally going into space. George Takei had to be a whiny little child about it because that’s pretty much the way Takei reacts to anything positive happening to William Shatner. And, of course, many people said that Jeff Bezos should have been spending his money on fixing the Earth instead of trying to escape it. Those were the same people who, later that year, wrote positive reviews of Don’t Look Up.
That said, it was all just really cool. Star Trek may bore me to tears but even I was still moved by the thought of William Shatner going into space, even if it was just for a few minutes. It was a moment to spark the imagination and to inspire optimism. I think those are two things that the professional naysayers are incapable of possessing or understanding. But it’s imagination and optimism that will make the world a better place.
Anyway, there’s a 50-minute documentary about Shatner’s voyage into space, one that I just watched. It’s on Prime and, quite appropriately, it’s called Shatner In Space. In all honesty, Shatner In Space is largely a commercial for Jeff Bezos. There’s not point in denying that. The first half of the documentary features perhaps a bit too much footage of Jeff Bezos, one of the world’s richest men, trying to present himself as just being a humble sci-fi nerd who grew up on a ranch. Brilliant businessman that he is, Bezos is not the most charismatic person in the world and that’s especially obvious when he’s sharing scenes with William Shatner. There’s undoubtedly a lot that you can say about William Shatner but no one can deny that, even at 90, the man knows how to work a scene.
But, fortunately, Shatner himself seems to be so sincerely excited about the prospect of going into space that it even makes Bezos tolerable. The documentary doesn’t include as many scenes as one might hope of William Shatner training for his mission. Personally, I would be curious to know what type of precautions were taken before sending a 90 year-old person into space because, who knows …. I might be 90 before I get the chance to try it for myself! I did notice that, of the crew, Shatner was the only one not to really indulge in the weightless aspect of the trip. While everyone else floated around the capsule, Shatner seemed content to stay in his seat and look at the Earth below. The fact that Shatner, who has pretty much made a late-in-life career out of parodying his reputation for being a bit pompous, seems to be, at that moment, at a loss for words is actually rather touching.
Anyway, as I said, this is basically a commercial for Jeff Bezos but it’s hard not to enjoy watching Shatner go into space.
Today, the Shattered Lens wishes a happy 91st birthday to William Shatner! Not only is William Shatner an actor, a director, a writer, a famed wit, and a legendary Canadian but he’s also a singer!
Here is William Shatner performing Somehow You Do. This song was written by Diane Warren and the video was directed by John Ottman.
Was I the only one who was relieved that William Shatner didn’t die this week?
Seriously, when I heard that the 90 year-old Shatner was going to be taking a trip on one of the Amazon rockets, I was really worried. First off, you’re taking a 90 year-old into space. Secondly, you’re doing it with a rocket that people don’t really know that much about. And third, that 90 year-old is a cultural icon and one who probably played no small role in causing people like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk to become obsessed with conquering space in the first place. With the exception of George Takei, everyone loves William Shatner. (And, at this point, Takei’s constant sniping about Shatner is coming across as being just a little bit petty. Move on, George! People love you, too.)
As I watched Shatner land back on Earth, I found myself thinking about The Devil’s Rain, a film from 1975 that starred William Shatner as a man whose exploration of the unknown led to a far less triumphant result.
In this film, Shatner plays Mark Preston, a youngish man who lives on ranch with his father (George Sawaya) and his mother (Ida Lupino). For some reason, the Preston family owns a book that is full of evil magic. Satanic high priest Jonathan Corbis (Ernest Borgnine) wants the book and when the Prestons refuse to hand it over, he makes it his mission to destroy them. He gets things started by turning Mark’s father into a weird, waxy zombie who melts in the rain. Not wanting the same fate to befall the rest of the family, Mark grabs the book and heads to a desert ghost town that has been taken over by Corbis and his followers. Mark never returns.
Mark’s older brother, Tom (Tom Skerritt) then shows up in town, searching for Mark. Accompanying him are his wife (Joan Prather) and a paranormal researcher (Eddie Albert). Tom discovers that Corbis is transforming his followers into zombies who have no memories and who exist only to …. well, I’m not sure what the point of it all is but I guess it basically comes down to Corbis needing something evil to do. Not only has Mark become one of his Corbis’s followers but, if you keep an eye out, you might spot a very young John Travolta in the background. This was Travolta’s film debut. According to the end credits, the character he plays is named Danny. Danny Zuko, perhaps? That would serve him right for making Sandy doubt herself.
The Devil’s Rain is one of the many low-budget movies that William Shatner did between the end of the Star Trek TV show and the start of the Star Trek movies. It’s a bit of an disjointed film, as I think any film starring William Shatner and Tom Skerritt as brothers would have to be. Skerritt gives a very laconic performance, playing his character as if he was the star of a Western. Shatner, meanwhile, does that thing where he randomly emphasizes his words and gets the full drama out of every sentence and facial expression. But, as much as Shatner overacts, you can’t help but enjoy his performance because he’s William Shatner and that’s what he does. The same is true of Ernest Borgnine, who overacts in his role just as much as you would expect Ernest Borgnine to overact when cast as an evil cult leader. For that matter, Eddie Albert isn’t exactly subtle as the paranormal researcher. Don’t even get me started on Keenan Wynn, playing yet another small town sheriff. Let’s just say that, with the exception of Tom Skerritt, the cast of The Devil’s Rain is not necessarily full of actors noted for their restraint. That said, there’s something rather charming about everyone’s attempts to steal every scene in which they appear.
The Devil’s Rain is a deeply silly film but that doesn’t make any sense but it’s hard not to get caught up in it. Even if the fact that this film is perhaps your only opportunity to see John Travolta melt on screen isn’t enough to make you watch, Shatner vs. Borgnine with Skerritt approaching in the distance is just too entertaining to resist! Thankfully, Shatner survived appearing in this film and revitalized his career through a combination of Star Trek movies and Canadian tax shelter flicks. He’s a survivor. In fact, I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised that, even at the age of 90, Shatner has no trouble going into space. William Shatner’s going to be around forever.
It isn’t the past. It isn’t the present. It’s the future.
Through the Shattered Lens 