I Love It When A Plan Comes Together

No time for a regular posting tonight, but I'll have to write about SNAKES ON A PLANE eventually. I saw it on Saturday night, and we had a terrific time. New Line did a decent job marketing this thing, but it was never really going to be a hit. It opened at about $15 million, which is about the best that could be expected from an R-rated horror movie that isn't a sequel. Regardless of the film's box office, it's a genuinely good B-movie, well-paced, funny and fun. Director David R. Ellis, a former stuntman, is 3-for-3 as a director, and I recommend you check out his earlier films FINAL DESTINATION 2 and CELLULAR.

Here's a bizarre clip for you of a drunken George Peppard rambling on a segment of NBC's PASSWORD PLUS. I believe this is from 1979--long before THE A-TEAM gave Peppard a career resurgence. Allen Ludden, the host, does a pretty good job maintaining a semblance of dignity and deserves some credit for ad-libbing something that sounds normal after George's ranting. You can see Peppard sipping from a plastic cup that probably doesn't have water in it (as an aside, how strange is it to see someone smoking on a game show!).



By the way, the female celebrity is Elaine Joyce, who was pretty and smart and appeared on a lot of daytime game shows, as well as prime time series (she even did a MAGNUM, P.I., Chicken). She was married to Bobby Van, who also was on a lot of game shows and even hosted a few of them. Van died of a brain tumor in 1980, but she continued her career and even co-starred in a one-season sitcom titled MR. MERLIN. Years after Van's death, Joyce married Neil Simon.