Episode Guide: Walking Tall

This is an updated version of a post on my old Tripod blog dated 4/17/06.

The cinematic saga of Buford Pusser began in the winter of 1973, when the now-defunct Cinerama Releasing Corporation released WALKING TALL, a crude, simplistic, violent R-rated drama about an ex-Marine and pro wrestler who returned to the Tennessee county of his childhood and single-handedly wiped out organized crime. Joe Don Baker played Pusser, who was elected sheriff of McNairy County after a severe beating by hoodlums left him scarred and near death.

WALKING TALL struck a major chord with rural audiences, who turned it into one of the year’s most talked-about and financially successful films. Pusser planned to portray himself in the 1975 sequel, but he was killed in a mysterious auto accident, and 6’6” Bo Svenson was enlisted to play the lawman who “walks tall and carries a big stick” in two movies and a short-lived NBC television series.

WALKING TALL, the series, premiered the same month that Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as the 40th U.S. President, which may have been too soon. The Reagan administration’s black-and-white views on law and order were an influence on dozens of violent, high-octane Hollywood action movies, many of them starring macho men like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, and Chuck Norris. But when NBC debuted WALKING TALL on January 17, 1981, audiences were still in the sensitive grip of the Carter era and perhaps weren’t quite prepared for a single-minded law enforcer who eschewed the civil rights of the accused if they stood in the way of what he considered to be justice.

Svenson, a familiar face to TV audiences from schlocky TV-movies like GOLD OF THE AMAZON WOMEN and SNOWBEAST, probably felt right at home with Sheriff Buford Pusser’s badge and “pacifier” (his term for the hefty four-foot club he carried in the back seat of his police car) in hand again. The show’s premise was just like that of the WALKING TALL movies in which Svenson had starred. He again was a widower who lived in McNeal (changed from McNairy) County, Tennessee with his father Carl (Walter Barnes, taking over for Noah Beery and Forrest Tucker), son Michael and daughter Dwana. McNeal was a small rural community where everybody knew everybody else, which didn’t make it as difficult as you would think for some of its citizens to get into trouble with the law and run afoul of Buford’s temper.

NBC scheduled WALKING TALL for 8:00pm Central on Saturday nights. Its CBS rival, the shortlived FREEBIE AND THE BEAN (also an action-oriented spinoff of a successful film), was no competition, but both series were slammed in the ratings by THE LOVE BOAT, which formed a Saturday-night juggernaut with FANTASY ISLAND for several years on ABC. After five episodes, the show was pulled, only to reappear six weeks later at 9:00pm on Tuesdays, where another smash ABC series, HART TO HART, buried it, this time for good. Only seven episodes of WALKING TALL were made, and all of them are available on DVD from Columbia/Tri-Star. Because I believe that no TV series should be forgotten, what follows is a somewhat comprehensive WALKING TALL episode guide. Print it out and keep it next to your remote.

WALKING TALL
Bo Svenson as Sheriff Buford Pusser
Walter Barnes as Carl Pusser
Harold Sylvester as Deputy Aaron Fairfax
Courtney Pledger as Deputy Joan Litton
Jeff Lester as Deputy Grady Spooner
Heather McAdam as Dwana Pusser
Rad Daly as Michael Pusser

Music: Edd Kalehoff
Cinematographer: William Gereghty
Editors: Bob Fish, Richard Freeman, Rod Stephens
Production Designer: Stan Jolley
Associate Producer: Stephen Cragg
Producer: Mel Swope
Executive Producer: David Gerber

“The Killing of McNeal County’s Children”
January 17, 1981
Writer: Stephen Downing
Director: Alf Kjellin
Guest Cast: Robert Englund, Charles McDaniel, Eric Stoltz, Whit Bissell.

Pusser investigates when two teenagers become brain-damaged after a few puffs of some powerful new PCP cigarettes. He threatens pusher Bobby Joe Wilson (Englund, later Freddy Krueger in A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET) and is nearly killed when Wilson’s home lab explodes, but still fails to stop the ring led by oily businessman Oliver Moss (McDaniel). Even Buford’s environmentally dubious strategy of assaulting Moss’ trucks and dumping their chemical contents onto the highway makes little dent in the drug’s onslaught of the local high school. It gets personal after two classmates (one is played by future star Stoltz) drug Michael Pusser’s drink with angel dust, which leaves him perched on the school roof thinking he can fly.

“The Protectors of the People”
January 24, 1981
Writer: Donald R. Boyle
Director: Daniel Haller
Guest Cast: Charles Napier, Jesse Vint, William Windom, William Sanderson, Otis Young, Dey Young.

This episode may have the show’s best guest stars, and Boyle (the show’s executive story editor) gives them an incendiary topic to bite into. McNeal runs afoul of the Ku Klux Klan, mainly in the personage of vile Napier (the great character actor with the toothy grin), sadistic Sanderson (NEWHART) and store owner Vint (FORBIDDEN WORLD). In their repulsive desperation to make the county all-white, they attack a white teenage girl while disguised in blackface and then blow up a store owned by black businessman Otis Young (THE LAST DETAIL). It all gets terribly out of control when Pusser’s black deputy Aaron (Harold Sylvester) is framed for raping a white woman.

“Kidnapped”
January 31, 1981
Writer: Paul Savage
Director: John Florea
Guest Cast: Chuck Connors, Edward Albert

Theo Brewster (Connors in a “special cameo appearance”) is shot by a guard during his commission of a bank robbery and taken into custody to Pusser’s jail, where he lies on life support. His sons--also his fellow bank robbers--plot to break him out by taking a local family and Buford’s father hostage.

“Hitman”
March 31, 1981
Writer: Robert E. Swanson
Director: Alf Kjellin
Guest Cast: Merlin Olsen, L.Q. Jones

Not a terribly original concept, but strong direction, particularly during the final act, and good performances make the episode worthwhile. NBC sportscaster and former Los Angeles Ram Olsen, just a few months before starring in his own NBC drama, FATHER MURPHY, is Webb McClain, an old friend of Buford’s who returns to McNeal County to renew their relationship. Unbeknownst to Pusser, however, McClain is an assassin who has been hired by mobster Jones to murder Buford. Svenson and Olsen play the tension perfectly, giving the incredulous idea necessary weight.

“Company Town”
April 7, 1981
Writer: Lee Sheldon
Director: Harvey S. Laidman
Guest Cast: Ralph Bellamy, Lane Bradbury, Art Hindle, Claude Earl Jones

Leaving his regular supporting players behind, Pusser travels to a mining town to investigate the disappearance of a miner who had been riling his employers with talk about low wages and unsafe working conditions. Learning of other missing mining workers with similar rabble-rousing backgrounds, Buford follows the trail of bodies all the way up to the mine’s owner, James Clausen (Bellamy), and his hot-headed son Stuart (Hindle).

“Deadly Impact”
April 14, 1981
Writer: Gregory S. Dinallo
Director: Alexander Singer
Guest Cast: Gail Strickland, Ken Swofford, Richard Herd, James Whitmore Jr.

Credit director Singer and guest star Strickland for pulling off a late-in-the-game story twist that provides this episode with an effective dramatic punch. It smells like SILKWOOD when chemical plant employee Strickland suspects her boss of authorizing illegal dumps of toxic wastes into the nearby river. After she’s nearly run off the road, Pusser protects her from further attempts on her life by putting her up with Carl and the kids at his house, where his relationship with her turns from professional to personal.

“The Fire Within”
June 6, 1981
Writer: Lee Sheldon
Director: Phil Bondelli
Guest Cast: James MacArthur, Ed Nelson, Lance LeGault, Anthony Edwards, John McLiam, Richard Venture

MacArthur, a veteran of eleven seasons on HAWAII FIVE-0, exchanges his badge for a collar in this “special guest star” role as Father Adair, a new priest who takes the confession of a dying criminal. His vows prevent him from telling Pusser any information about what the man was involved with, namely a gunrunning operation masterminded by McNeal County real-estate agent Ed Campbell (Nelson). Look for future ER star Edwards as a horny teenager.

After WALKING TALL’s quick cancellation, star Svenson continued to rack up an army of television and film credits. Many of them were in exploitation movies such as NIGHT WARNING (in which he played a homophobic cop) and the Italian THUNDER WARRIOR (he also reunited with Charles Napier in the Fred Olen Ray ALIEN-ripoff DEEP SPACE), but his best TV performance of the era was a memorable turn in MAGNUM, P.I.’s third-season premiere as Ivan, a KGB agent who had tortured Thomas Magnum (Tom Selleck) in Vietnam and murdered Magnum’s friend Mac in Hawaii. The final confrontation between Magnum and Ivan was quite a corker and is probably the series’ finest moment.

Brian Dennehy played Buford Pusser in A REAL AMERICAN HERO, a CBS movie that aired in 1978, The Rock starred in a 2004 WALKING TALL remake that had nearly nothing to do with the original films or the Buford Pusser legend, and Kevin Sorbo (HERCULES) played Pusser in two direct-to-video sequels to the Rock movie.

The seven one-hour television episodes on DVD are nothing like TV crime drama at its finest, but its realistic location shooting (all in Southern California, it appears), fine actors, sharp action scenes, and committed, passionate lead performance by Bo Svenson, who could usually be counted on for one deeply felt monologue per show, make it an appealing curiosity for cop-show fans.

The Apple

Note: this post is one of a series of STAR TREK episode reviews originally written for the alt.tv.startrek.tos newsgroup. For more information, please read this post.

THE APPLE
Episode 40 of 80
October 13, 1967
Teleplay: Max Ehrlich and Gene L. Coon
Story: Max Ehrlich
Director: Joseph Pevney

The U.S.S. Enterprise visits Gamma Trianguli VI, a planet populated by naïve pacifist natives who worship Vaal, a stone dragon carved into a hill. As with many false gods encountered by Captain Kirk (William Shatner) during his space journeys, Vaal turns out to really be a sophisticated computer constructed by a previous civilization. And, as per usual, Kirk outsmarts it, blows it up, and forces the locals to learn to stand on their own two feet.

“The Apple” (no points for figuring out the plot’s Garden of Eden allusion) is not one of STAR TREK’s finest moments. The makeup on the namby-pamby aliens is silly, the “stone god” is clearly made of papier-mâché, Ehrlich and Coon’s climax isn’t very climactic, and, as all TREK fans know, Kirk breaking the Prime Directive is never a good thing.

On the other hand, the episode is packed with action and death (four “red shirts” die horribly!), stuff blows up real good, and director Pevney cast some gorgeous women. Well, it’s better than nothin’. Spock (Leonard Nimoy) breaks a very phony-looking Styrofoam rock in two, but Jay Jones playing a red-shirted security guard does one hell of a stunt tripping on an exploding rock. Reportedly, the stunt was a little too dangerous, and Jones was hurt (but not seriously) in the explosion.

Obviously, the main point of interest is guest star David Soul in one of his first television acting jobs, one year before signing on as a regular on HERE COME THE BRIDES. After that western went off the air, Soul co-starred with Arthur Hill on OWEN MARSHALL, ATTORNEY AT LAW before achieving superstardom as one half of STARSKY AND HUTCH. Soul’s role as Makora is fairly minor, and it’s hard to gauge from watching what kind of acting ability or screen charisma he may have had in 1967.

The main guest star, as Akuta, leader of the Vaalians, is Keith Andes, who had been a regular on several series, including THAT MAN DAWSON and GLYNIS, and had appeared in films too. Basically, Andes was a sturdy but still leading man type, basically on par with the Richard Carlsons. My favorite Andes credit, however, is his performance as the voice of Hanna-Barbera superhero Birdman (“Birrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrdmaaaaannn!”), who, with his eagle sidekick Avenger, battled evildoers on Saturday mornings during the late 1960s. Later, those shows were repurposed and satirized on Cartoon Network as HARVEY BIRDMAN, ATTORNEY AT LAW with Gary Cole (A SIMPLE PLAN) revoicing the character.

California native Celeste Yarnall, playing Ensign Chekov’s love interest, is gorgeous—certainly one of the most beautiful actresses to appear on STAR TREK. Today an artist and an ardent believer in holistic health care for pets, Celeste was a busy actress in films and television who is likely best known today for starring as THE VELVET VAMPIRE (for which she performed nude scenes) and with John Ashley in the Philippines in BEAST OF BLOOD. I’m still waiting to see EVE, in which she plays a white jungle goddess in a tiny fur bikini. Celeste is generously available to her fans on Facebook.

The Men from Mobius

I've written a lot here about Trashy Movies. Now I've taken my act on the road, so to speak. Pop on over to By John Charles, where I took part in a four-way discussion with John and fellow Mobius Home Video Forum veterans William Wilson and Mark Tinta about trash cinema, present and past. Among the topics: Brian DePalma, those Cannon cousins Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, Jim Wynorski vs. Andy Sidaris, the overuse of CGI, and, of course, the beloved Roger Corman.

Yeah, it's long, but substantive. And John has pictures!

Take On The Whole Goddamn Government

James Caan’s only film as a director is an earnest adaptation of Leslie Waller’s non-fiction book about a blue-collar worker who spends eight years looking for his children. HIDE IN PLAIN SIGHT is a promising directorial debut, and it’s a shame Caan stopped at one (his actor son Scott of HAWAII FIVE-0 has directed two features).

Caan, who made this between COMES A HORSEMAN and CHAPTER TWO, plays Tom Hacklin, a Buffalo, New York factory worker who loses contact with his children when his ex-wife (Barbara Rae) and her mobster husband (Robert Viharo) are relocated by the Federal Witness Protection Program. The U.S. Government gives Hacklin the runaround when he attempts to uncover his kids’ whereabouts, so, supported by his new wife (Jill Eikenberry) and his well-meaning lawyer (Danny Aiello), he determines to find them himself.

This is the sort of material, as written by Spencer Eastman (KANSAS), that usually plays like a made-for-TV movie, but a passionate performance by Caan and a fascinating subject elevate HIDE IN PLAIN SIGHT to the level of good solid drama. As a director, Caan favors long master and medium shots that allow for greater realism in the storytelling. His and cinematographer Paul Lohmann’s (SILENT MOVIE) naturalistic approach and widescreen camerawork are like peering through a window into Tom Hacklin’s life. An opening three-and-a-half-minute crane shot adds nothing to the plot, but nicely sets up the film’s atmosphere and introduces us to Hacklin’s hard-working background.

Where HIDE IN PLAIN SIGHT lapses is in its telescoping of actual events from eight years to less than two. I understand why Caan and Eastman felt they had to make the true story more cinematic (including the addition of climactic violence that never happened to the real guy), but the downside is that the movie’s episodic nature drains some of the suspense and obscures a few important plot points. I don’t think it’s a serious problem, and Caan’s directorial debut does more things right than wrong. Leonard Rosenmann composed a sparse score, though not sparse enough for the director, who thought music would interfere with the movie’s verite approach and opposed MGM’s edict to include it.

Blood Justice

I'm frequently amazed at how sloppy the editors of Belmont Tower's Marksman paperbacks were. In some of them, author Frank Scarpetta (most likely either Peter McCurtin or Aaron Fletcher) actually calls leading man Phillip Magellan by the wrong name. In book #5, HEADHUNTER, published in 1973, the story appears to pick up right at the conclusion of #4. Since Scarpetta makes little attempt to catch the reader up with the events of that story, you can be forgiven for spending the first few chapters of HEADHUNTER wondering what the hell is going on.

Magellan, having wiped out a bunch of Mafioso in St. Thomas, arrives in Puerto Rico with several suitcases full of drugs and weapons. I think he's planning to stay just temporarily on his way back to the United States, but he's mugged by some crooks on the lookout for naive tourists, then his romantic relationship with Terri White, who seems to have been introduced in the previous book, hits a snag when she is raped.

By this point, the Marksman figures, "What the hell, I'm here anyway, I might as well kill all the Mafia here too." The rest of HEADHUNTER's 159 pages is Magellan kidnapping, torturing, and killing bad guys in Scarpetta's blunt-nosed style that involves the heavy use of exclamation points outside of dialogue. I think I read HEADHUNTER in about two hours, which is meant to be a compliment, I think.

Beast Of Blood

BEAST OF BLOOD starts at the exact point MAD DOCTOR OF BLOOD ISLAND left off. A colorful action sequence at sea dispenses with MAD DOCTOR leading lady Angelique Pettyjohn (not seen here) and clears the way for lovely journalist Myra (Celeste Yarnall) and native girl Laida (Liza Belmonte) to make smoochies with John Ashley’s heroic Bill Foster. Also joining Ashley is Beverly Miller, who was Ashley’s producing partner, and Eddie Garcia, replacing Ronald Remy as the mad doctor Lorca. Miller’s acting as the captain of the ship returning Foster to Blood Island is terrible.

The third in the so-called “Blood Island Trilogy” is the best, even though it veers away from horror toward pulp adventure. Lorca, who survived the fire at the end of MAD DOCTOR, albeit with eyepatch and burned face, is now doing head transplants at his lab in the deep jungle. He keeps Don Ramon, the mutated monster that blew up Foster’s boat during the precredit sequence, alive and twitching on an operating table, while its head survives nearby (Lorca even talks to it!).

Eddie Romero, directing alone after sharing the chair with Gerardo de Leon on BRIDES OF BLOOD and MAD DOCTOR, maintains the gore and nudity and adds visual flair. Ashley was gaining more confidence in his chops as an action star as the Blood Island series wore on, perhaps because he was now getting involved in calling shots behind the camera. Like Pettyjohn in the previous film, Yarnall (THE VELVET VAMPIRE) really doesn’t have much to do except get kidnapped and pop her top. She’s in tune with the screenplay’s men’s adventure tone and certainly game.

Ashley never returned to Blood Island, but he did remain in the Philippines through most of the 1970s. THE WOMAN HUNT, SAVAGE SISTERS, and THE TWILIGHT PEOPLE (a barely disguised takeoff of the Blood Island movies) were a few of the potboilers he was involved with as a star and producer. He eventually became a fulltime television producer, emerging from his performing retirement only occasionally to narrate the opening titles for Stephen J. Cannell’s THE A-TEAM and HARDCASTLE & MCCORMICK series.

Mad Doctor Of Blood Island

If you love naked Filipino women, inept makeup effects, and the wide sideburns of John Ashley, MAD DOCTOR OF BLOOD ISLAND is for you. Produced in Manila as a loose follow-up to BRIDES OF BLOOD, the movie is probably best known for its pre-credit sequence that invites the kids in the audience to take the “Oath of the Green Blood.” Hemisphere Pictures had theaters pass out small packets of “green blood” for the kids to drink. Producer Sam Sherman, who wrote the opening just before leaving Hemisphere to start his own company, Independent-International, claims to have ingested one and become wildly ill.

BEACH BLANKET BINGO co-star Ashley plays Dr. Bill Foster, a U.S. government agent sent to Blood Island to investigate sightings of green-skinned villagers dripping green blood. Along for the ride is Sheila Willard (the immortal Angelique Pettyjohn), ostensibly visiting her alcoholic long-lost father, but in actuality there to scream, get kidnapped, and have sex with John Ashley. The role consists of little more than that.

Foster discovers natives are suffering from “chlorophyll poisoning,” which resident scientist Lorca (Ronald Remy) treats with a sedative, hot soup, and “no green vegetables, of course.” Assisted by Carlos (Eddie Garcia), whose mother remained on Blood Island after the death of his father, and scantily clad native girl Marla (Alicia Alonzo), Foster determines Lorca’s experiments in curing leukemia by injecting chlorophyll into his patients are actually turning them into hideous, green-blooded mutants.

One of many crudely filmed Philippines-based horror films starring Midwesterner Ashley, who would also produce many of them, MAD DOCTOR OF BLOOD ISLAND is audacious, ridiculous entertainment. The direction by Gerardo de Leon and Eddie Romero, who had already collaborated with Ashley on BRIDES OF BLOOD, involves unconvincing day-for-night photography and headache-inducing zooms when someone is being attacked by the monster (probably to disguise the silly makeup). This approach doesn’t really work, and neither does the romance between Carlos and Marla, even though Alonzo is an extremely sensual actress.

Thankfully, the sleaze factor is high. Before the credits roll, a naked girl runs through the jungle and is slaughtered by the zoom-hidden creature. The monster literally tears its victims apart, tossing around heads and limbs. The camera lingers on blood-drenched corpses with intestines hanging out. Ashley manages to hold on to his dignity by being likable and convincing in his weakly choreographed fight scenes, as well as a graphic sex scene with Pettyjohn, who later did adult films using the name Heaven St. John. Ashley returned for a direct Hemisphere sequel, BEAST OF BLOOD, which begins exactly where MAD DOCTOR left off.

Brides Of Blood

After more than a decade of slogging through episodic television and second leads in schlock Hollywood movies, John Ashley, a deep-voiced actor with handsome looks and some charisma, headed to the Philippines to star in this lurid horror movie for Hemisphere Pictures. He ended up staying there for several years, starring in several more drive-in movies and eventually producing them too. When Ashley finally ditched his acting career in the late 1970s, he continued as a prolific producer of television series, including THE A-TEAM and WALKER, TEXAS RANGER.

BRIDES OF BLOOD moves much too slowly, but is just weird enough to be worth a glance. Ashley stars as Peace Corps volunteer (and crack shot!) Jim Farrell, who arrives on Blood Island, located in the South Pacific, via ship, along with impotent scientist Paul Henderson (Kent Taylor, TV’s Boston Blackie) and his nympho wife Carla (Beverly Hills, a notable Hollywood stripper who once dated Mickey Cohen), who despise one another. Henderson is there to investigate the effects of radiation from the atomic bomb tests on Bikini Atoll in the 1940s. What he finds are man-eating trees, a killer butterfly, mutated crabs, and a frightening man-sized creature the natives call “The Evil One.”

It’s doubtful 1968 drive-in audiences, who were used to monster movies being mere kiddie fare, were prepared for the excesses of BRIDES OF BLOOD. The natives placate the Evil One by tying up young virgins, stripping them, and offering them as sacrifice to be slaughtered and ripped to shreds. Created on the cusp of the MPAA ratings system, BRIDES OF BLOOD punctuates the terror with gore and nudity on top of the sexuality of Hills (née Beverly Montgomery or Beverly Powers, her married name), who is perpetually horny, roams at night in daring black lingerie, and is ultimately punished for it. No doubt the kids ate it up.

The silly makeup effects and colorful photography seem more apropos of a movie aimed at children, rather than this steamy jungle melodrama. The Evil One has often been described as looking like the Michelin Man, which is not an unfair comparison. Some parts are genuinely creepy, as when a carnivorous tree gets hold of a child with its tentacles. An attempt is made to humanize the Hendersons’ fractured marriage, which is also a storyline more appropriate for adults.

Mario Montenegro plays the island’s wealthy overseer, Esteban Powers, who lives with his mountainous manservant Goro and a posse of midgets, and the attractive Eva Darren is Alma, Farrell’s love interest who’s due to become an Evil One sacrifice. Hemisphere released BRIDES OF BLOOD in the U.S. on a double bill with BLOOD FIEND, a British horror film starring Christopher Lee, and gave away toy wedding rings to girls in the audience—another indication that studio head Kane Lynn didn’t know who this picture was for. Two more Blood Island features—both starring Ashley—soon followed.

And The Children Shall Lead

Note: this post is one of a series of STAR TREK episode reviews originally written for the alt.tv.startrek.tos newsgroup. For more information, please read this post.

AND THE CHILDREN SHALL LEAD
Episode 60 of 80
October 11, 1968
Writer: Edward J. Lakso
Director: Marvin Chomsky

Unquestionably one of STAR TREK’s worst episodes, “And the Children Shall Lead” guest-stars hotshot defense attorney Melvin Belli, of all people, as an ethereal alien named Gorgan. He uses his mental powers to brainwash the children of the Federation outpost Triacus into killing their parents (!) and then hijacking the U.S.S. Enterprise.

The episode’s main failing is that it is just damn boring. William Shatner hams it up a bit in places, as he was wont to do during the third season. In this case, his performance at least spices up the proceedings a little bit. But not much, as this episode is just difficult to sit through. The constant cutaways to one of the children pumping his or her fist (always accompanied by the same DUM! DUM! music sting) are monotonous, there doesn't seem to be any lesson learned in the end, and the finale in which the children suddenly snap out of their brainwashing by watching home movies is anticlimactic to say the least.

It is perhaps unfair to criticize Belli as an actor, since he isn't one and (it appears) didn't try to be. His scenes were probably all shot in one day, alone, in front of a blue screen with a script girl reading the lines of the actors he was supposed to be reacting to. Not that this gives Belli complete immunity. As one of America’s most successful trial lawyers, he knew something about theater, acting, voice, etc. In this episode, he shows all the range of a high school drama student on downers. He defended the Rolling Stones after the debacle at Altamont, and appears in the Maysles' GIMME SHELTER documentary. I don’t know how he ended up on STAR TREK; maybe he was a friend of producer Fred Freiberger's. It would be interesting to know if STAR TREK’s ratings received a bump because of Belli’s appearance in this particular episode. Sadly, this kind of stunt casting (which is almost never successful on a creative level) continues today.

Writer Edward J. Lakso was a TV hack who managed to write for a number of dramatic series, such as THE BIG VALLEY, MANNIX, CHARLIE’S ANGELS, STARSKY AND HUTCH, PLANET OF THE APES, HART TO HART, etc. I don't remember ever seeing anything worthwhile that he wrote, and some of his CHARLIE’S ANGELS teleplays are quite awful. It seems anyone who owned a typewriter got a third-season script assignment, to the exclusion of the established science fiction authors, such as Jerry Sohl, Theodore Sturgeon, and Harlan Ellison, who wrote during the first two seasons. Lakso shows absolutely no flair (in this episode at least) for plot, structure, irony, dialogue, or, for that matter, drama. He also directed a handful of films during the 1970s, including a Richard Petty biography starring #43 as himself (!), but they’re obscurities today.

On the other hand, Marvin Chomsky, who also made “All Our Yesterdays,” was a terrific director. His credits include ROOTS, HOLOCAUST, INSIDE THE THIRD REICH, BILLIONAIRE BOYS CLUB, and lots of episodic television. Lakso's script is so bad and Belli so miscast that David Lean couldn't have turned this episode into a silk purse, so I'm inclined to give Chomsky the benefit of
the doubt here. Sometimes credited as Marvin J. Chomsky, he won four Emmy Awards.

Pamelyn Ferdin was an excellent child actress who went on to roles as Tony Randall's daughter on THE ODD COUPLE and as a space cadet (literally) on the Saturday morning series SPACE ACADEMY. One of her SPACE ACADEMY costars was Brian Tochi, who also played one of the children in this episode.

How does Kirk know the alien's name is Gorgan? I didn't hear anybody mention it. I'm not even sure the children were aware of his name, since they always referred to him as an angel. It could be that Gorgan is actually the name of the alien's race, but no one told Kirk that either. I refuse to believe that the transporter lacks even the most elementary fail-safe system to ensure that people are not just beamed into space. Doesn't it make sense that the transporter would check to make sure the beaming coordinates are at least within transporting range before beaming takes place? And what about the poor bastards stranded on the planet? During the tag, Kirk tells Sulu to set course for a starbase. Maybe some of Gorgan's brainwashing was still in place.

The parade of daggers and swords that Sulu (George Takei) was so petrified of wouldn't even scare a child.

Terror Stalked The Night

I don't think anyone has ever figured out who author Edson T. Hamill was, whether he was even a real person or a house name, but I'm sure he isn't the same person who wrote Leisure Books' earlier Ryker novels. For one thing, THE SADIST is much better written than the earlier Ryker books, most of which were penned by future best-selling novelist Nelson DeMille.

For that matter, THE SADIST is better written than the previous Hamill novel, THE CHILD KILLER, which may be the nastiest, sleaziest novel I've ever read. It's also dull and blunt, which THE SADIST definitely is not. For one thing, THE SADIST takes the time to flesh out the personality of its antagonist, a hitman named Mike Marlin.

The biggest update to the Ryker series is that its hero is no longer an asshole. Previous installments made its protagonist, tough New York detective Ryker, a grim badass who made Dirty Harry look like Jm. J. Bullock. Preferring to murder suspects rather than apprehend them, Ryker was also humorless and didn't give much of a damn whether innocent bystanders got hurt or not. The Ryker of THE SADIST is a more conventional cop who quips with his fellow cops--hell, just getting along with them is a step up for the character--and shows signs of empathy with victims.

The plot puts Ryker and his partner on the trail of Marlin, a successful hitman for more than twenty years who specializes in offing wives. He's smart enough to stay clear of the law during his whole career, but it's pretty hard to keep a step ahead of the determined Ryker.

The massive change in Ryker's behavior leads me to conclude the Edson T. Hamill of THE SADIST is not the same Hamill of THE CHILD KILLER.

Random TV Title: Mission: Impossible

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE may have opened with more different main title sequences than any other dramatic series in television history. Because the show's editors teased what was to come in the next hour by cutting clips into the opening, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE technically aired 171 different main titles--one for each episode.

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE is most likely the most cleverly written drama in American television history. Each episode was a tightly constructed caper or con featuring government agents with the Impossible Missions Force attempting to overthrow, capture, trick, rob, fool, or even force to be killed a series of foreign spies and dictators (in later episodes, the IMF concentrated on the Mafia and other American criminals). Far wittier and more complex than the Tom Cruise movies that tarnish the MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE name, the 1966-73 television series created by Bruce Geller could never be accomplished in today's TV environment, because it requires too much intelligence on behalf of both its makers and the audience to create.

Even if you've never seen the show, you probably know its theme, one of the best pieces of music ever created for television. Composed by jazz musician Lalo Schifrin, who also scored DIRTY HARRY and ENTER THE DRAGON and wrote the MANNIX theme, in 5/4 time, the theme was often woven into the episodic scores.

Here's a title sequence from the fifth-season episode "Flight." You'll note original stars Steven Hill (who was forced out after the first season) and marrieds Martin Landau and Barbara Bain (who left after the third) have been replaced by Leonard Nimoy (who was just coming off STAR TREK), Lesley Ann Warren, and, of all people, Sam Elliott (!), who was basically alternating episodes with original co-star Peter Lupus at this point (fans loved Loop and hated Elliott, and Peter eventually won back his job fulltime).

Random Comic Book Splash Page: USA Comics #3

Captain Terror battles the Fifth Column in this splash page from the cover story in USA COMICS #3, which hit newsstands in the summer of 1941. It was published by Timely Comics, edited by the legendary Joe Simon, drawn by Mike Suchorsky, and quite possibly written by Stan Lee.

Captain Terror has no superpowers, but is good at busting the heads of traitorous gypsies, as seen here in "The Magic Crystal of Death." Captain Terror appeared only in three issues of USA Comics. After 54 years, writer Mark Gruenwald brought him back as an old man to attend a Golden Age Superheroes reunion in CAPTAIN AMERICA #442.

All Our Yesterdays

Note: this post is one of a series of STAR TREK episode reviews originally written for the alt.tv.startrek.tos newsgroup. For more information, please read this post.

ALL OUR YESTERDAYS
Episode 79 of 80
March 14, 1969
Writer: Jean Lisette Aroeste
Director: Marvin Chomsky

One of STAR TREK’s best love stories, “All Our Yesterdays” strands Captain Kirk (William Shatner), Dr. McCoy (DeForest Kelley), and Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy) in the past of the planet Sarpeidon. Kirk ends up in a time period resembling 17th century England, while Spock and McCoy plunge into Sarpeidon’s Ice Age. They meet a beautiful exile, Zarabeth (Mariette Hartley), with whom Spock falls in love.

I wish Kirk's story had been more fleshed out and given more suspense, but this episode really belongs to Nimoy. Chomsky does generate plenty of suspense near the end as time ticks away waiting for Spock and McCoy to return before the Sarpeidon of the 23rd century goes kablooie in a supernova.

Hartley gained great fame in the late 1970s for a series of amusing Polaroid commercials she did with James Garner (THE ROCKFORD FILES). The two stars had such good chemistry that many viewers believed they were married in real life. Those commercials likely did more for her career than the dozens of parts she had played in TV and movies prior to that. Hartley had a rough life; according to her autobiography and other interviews, she suffered from abuse, alcoholism, and low self-esteem. When she was interviewed during “All Our Yesterday”’s initial airing on the Sci-Fi Channel, she seemed quite self-effacing about her physical appearance in the show, even though (like Maureen O'Sullivan many years before) she’s extremely sexy in her "Jane"-type leather bikini. She wore a similar costume in Gene Roddenberry's GENESIS II TV pilot, in which she had two (!) navels, a few years later. Hartley seems to be a wonderful person, has a great sense of humor, and has continued to work often. She's also one of the few actresses (Lindsay Wagner and Gillian Anderson may be the only others) to win an Emmy for her role in a science fiction series; she was awarded for her role as Bill Bixby's wife in a two-part guest shot on THE INCREDIBLE HULK.

Ian Wolfe, who plays the cranky librarian who sends the Enterprise crew into the past, was very funny as the smartass butler of Mrs. Carlson in a semi-regular gig on WKRP IN CINCINNATI.

Jean Lisette Aroeste wrote only two television scripts—both for STAR TREK. Before “All Our Yesterdays,” which was originally titled “A Handful of Dust,” she penned “Is There in Truth No Beauty?” Just 36 years old at the time her second TREK aired, Aroeste was a librarian at Harvard, UCLA, and Princeton.

George Duning is credited with the episode’s score, which appears to be stock cues composed separately by Duning and Fred Steiner.

Trek To The Past

Back in the day, boys and girls, there were such things as newsgroups. I don’t know if they still exist, because they were soon supplanted by web forums and blogs on nearly any subject you can imagine. Back in the late 1990s, when I was working late hours as a radio broadcaster, I had plenty of free time to kill when all my friends were either at work or asleep. I discovered a newsgroup called alt.tv.startrek.tos, where I encountered many other STAR TREK fans like myself. This happened around the same time the Sci-Fi Channel began airing the original episodes, which had been remastered and augmented with new wraparound segments containing interviews with cast and crew members. William Shatner hosted the episodes, which were seen in 90-minute primetime slots.

I got to watching the Sci-Fi Channel telecasts every night and then going on alt.tv.startrek.tos to see what everyone else was saying. Soon I was writing—not reviews, really—but just general observations about the episodes. I didn’t write about all of them, just occasionally.

Recently, I found them archived somewhere online and decided somebody may find some value in them. I’ve decided to repurpose them as blog posts, which will occur here on an occasional basis. These posts were originally written around 1999. I have augmented them somewhat to provide brief plot synopses, writer and director credits, etc. Since they were originally written in a less structured manner and sometimes as replies to earlier newsgroup posts, I have edited them a bit to make them flow better. Some information has come from sources other than me, including William “Mr. K” Kenlon, but these posts are pretty much original material written by me.

So, enjoy reading what I wrote about STAR TREK more than a decade ago. Your comments are, as always, highly welcome. I will reproduce the posts in alphabetical order. Not every episode will be covered.

Mafia Death Trap

So here Robert Briganti is, just minding his own business, relaxing in the Maine woods with his elderly new friend Lem Perkins, when a couple of Mafia "pigs" take a potshot at him and accidentally kill Perkins instead. This makes Briganti, known among Mob circles as the Assassin, mad. Really mad. Mad enough to go to Boston and wipe out the local capo, Franco Toriello, and his entire organization.

So goes BOSTON BUST-OUT, the third and final Assassin paperback, all published by Dell in 1973. 1973 was also the year author Peter McCurtin began writing novels about the Marksman for Belmont Tower, and it's clear that the Assassin books were intended for the Marksman, as both characters have the same origin and the same bloody concept.

BOSTON is practically plotless: just a series of kidnaps, beatings, and shootings as Briganti kills his way through Toriello's entire family. Barely a hero by this point, Briganti even snatches the old man's young girlfriend, sleeps with her, and sends her back to Toriello with false information that he knows will kill her. Coldblooded mofo, that Assassin.

As these things go, BOSTON BUST-OUT isn't bad. It's maybe a little long at 192 pages, but it ain't exactly packed with a lot of big words. As entertaining as it is, it's easy to see why the Assassin didn't last. He isn't an original or terribly interesting character, and there's nothing about him that stands out among the Sharpshooters and the Marksmen and the Liquidators that were competing for eyeballs. Pretty good cover though, especially the blue background that makes the illustration really pop.

His True Story Can Be Told

Roger Corman produced this 20th Century Fox exploitation film that plays very loosely with the established facts of Al Capone’s life. 44-year-old Ben Gazzara plays 19-year-old Al Capone as the film begins, and when John Cassavetes (HUSBANDS) in a one-day cameo as Frankie Yale calls Gazzara “kid,” I dare you not to snicker. Corman and director Steve Carver, who previously made BIG BAD MAMA and THE ARENA for Corman’s New World Pictures, are more concerned with getting sex and violence on-screen as cheaply as possible, and as a titillating drive-in picture, CAPONE works pretty well.

The screenplay is by Howard Browne, a very fine novelist (THIN AIR) and TV writer (MAVERICK) who also penned Corman’s THE ST. VALENTINE’S DAY MASSACRE, footage from which is recycled here. It rushes very quickly from Capone’s apprenticeship with Johnny Torrio (Harry Guardino) in the Chicago mob through his arrest for income tax evasion and eventual death from syphilis. Carver makes plenty of stops for period car chases and bloody Tommy gun shootouts on the backlot streets that unconvincingly serve as Chicago. One early scene set in rural Joliet features the familiar dirt roads, brown grass, and mountainous terrain of the Fox Ranch (now Malibu Creek State Park).

Corman assembled a heckuva good cast, who seem more interested in their paychecks than the material. The acting is comically bad, particularly Gazzara’s hilariously unrestrained performance, complete with bulging cheeks and foot-long cigars. Sylvester Stallone (between THE LORDS OF FLATBUSH and DEATH RACE 2000) is Frank Nitti, who outlives Capone in this version. Susan Blakely, just prior to heating up the small screen in RICH MAN POOR MAN, is Capone’s mistress Iris Crawford. Also with Royal Dano, Frank Campanella, John Orchard, Martin Kove, John Davis Chandler, Carmen Argenziano, Robert Phillips, George Chandler, Beach Dickerson, and Dick Miller.

CAPONE is not part of Shout Factory's Roger Corman's Cult Classics series, apparently because it was made for Fox and not New World. Shout Factory, as usual, did a terrific job packaging the film for DVD, providing it in its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio. Among the extras are two trailers, two television spots, and the trailer for THE ST. VALENTINE'S DAY MASSACRE. Even better is the audio commentary with Nathaniel Thompson moderating Steve Carver. The director offers some nice stories involving the actors, such as the innovative ways in which good friends Guardino and Gazzara would try to upstage one another, and working on a tight four-week schedule and budget on soundstages and backlots at Universal, Fox, Warner Brothers, and Paramount.

Somebody Had Bitch For Breakfast

The most frightening thing about MEGA PYTHON VS. GATOROID is knowing how many of its viewers are forty-year-old men sitting home in their underwear fast-forwarding to the Debbie Gibson/Tiffany catfight scene. The only reason this movie exists is because former teen pop singer Gibson (“Only in My Dreams”) had starred in The Asylum’s MEGA SHARK VS. GIANT OCTOPUS, and you know somebody at the studio or at SyFy thought, “Hey, wait a minute…what if we hired the other late-1980s teen singer, Tiffany (‘I Think We’re Alone Now’), to co-star in a sequel?”

Since both women had already posed nude for PLAYBOY, putting Tiffany and Debbie together in a cheap monster movie does, honestly, seems like a good way to attract eyeballs to SyFy on a Saturday evening. To little surprise, when MEGA PYTHON VS. GATOROID premiered on SyFy in January 2011, it drew more than 2.3 million viewers. That probably means we can expect Kylie Minogue to fight a giant Gila monster in the next Asylum sequel.

Debbie is Nikki Riley, an eco-terrorist who releases a bunch of pythons into the swamp, where they grow to massive size and start eating people. Tiffany is Terry O’Hara, a park ranger whose genius idea to fight the snakes is to feed steroids to the alligators, so they’ll grow to massive size and eat the snakes. How well do you think that plan works?

Both stars get to wear tiny shorts, sing on the soundtrack, and call each other “bitch” (many, many times). They’re also pathetic but game actresses who wink their way through the script’s in-jokes about their musical careers. No one is taking this movie seriously, particularly the visual effects supervisors, who crap out half-baked CGI work that looks like a six-year-old did it in Microsoft Paint and is less convincing than the Reptilicus puppet of the 1960s. Really, whoever created these effects should be embarrassed.

So should director Mary Lambert, who once was something of a big deal (PET SEMATARY), not that you would guess from her clumsy staging here. Surprisingly, veteran soap star A Martinez (SANTA BARBARA) is working hard to create a performance, and THE WEST WING’s Kathryn Joosten provides wry humor. Micky Dolenz, playing himself (!), is beyond being embarrassed by this point in his career. It was a nice surprise to see Kristen Wilson, the slinky host of Comedy Central’s ‘90s series STAND-UP STAND-UP, make an appearance. Griffith Park, the L.A. Arboretum, and Bronson Canyon play the Everglades.

Do-It-Yourself A-Bombs

The Death Merchant is as violently death-obsessed as ever in his 19th adventure: ARMAGEDDON, USA!, published by Pinnacle in Our Bicentennial Year 1976. Author Joseph Rosenberger, who actually wrote all of the Death Merchant novels without passing them off to ghosts, was one of men's adventure fiction's most idiosyncratic writers. Considering the lengthy passages of graphic gunplay and violence and the frequent proselytizing performed by his leading man, there's no mistaking a Rosenberger chapter for anyone else's.

ARMAGEDDON, USA! has a pretty good though not terribly original plot. A right-wing organization called The Sons and Daughters of the Stars and Stripes have hidden atomic bombs in three U.S. cities and promise to explode them unless the President resigns. Based near St. Louis, Missouri, Richard Camellion and his CIA team (which includes one woman) race against their deadline to track down the SDSS' leader, elderly nutbag H.G. Motts, and find out which cities are targeted for destruction. Rosenberg delivers a nice twist in the form of Motts' airtight backup plan involving goons hired to set off the bombs manually in case of government interference, but they think they're just exploding arson devices!

If you're read a Death Merchant novel or just my earlier reviews of Death Merchant novels, you're aware of Rosenberger's penchant for drawn-out action scenes that flamboyantly describe in almost fetishistic detail the number of ways the human body can be destroyed. ARMAGEDDON, USA! has more going on between the violent interludes than usual, including a couple of long dialogue scenes in which Camellion preaches anti-religion views presumably belonging to Rosenberger.

It has been said that Rosenberger was using the Death Merchant series to parody the simplistic action series dotting the literary landscape during the 1970s, such as Don Pendleton's Mack Bolan books, but I'm not buying it. If it's satire, it's too clever for me to pick up on.

The Dirty Dolls Of Devil's Island

Roger Corman didn’t invent the women-in-prison genre, but there’s little doubt the three movies his New World Pictures released in 1971 and 1972 were influential. All three were filmed on location in the Philippines using sexy young unknowns looking for a big break. One of them, Pam Grier, who appeared in all three and made her film debut in THE BIG DOLL HOUSE, parlayed their box office success into a career as the top female action star of the 1970s. This week, Shout Factory released the trio—THE BIG DOLL HOUSE, THE BIG BIRD CAGE, and WOMEN IN CAGES—on a 2-DVD set as part of its amazing Roger Corman’s Cult Classics series.

THE BIG DOLL HOUSE was only the second film produced by New World and was an immediate smash. Director Jack Hill (COFFY), screenwriter Don Spencer (SWEET SUGAR), and executive producer Corman basically created the new style of women-in-prison picture with this fast-paced mixture of violence, nudity, feminism, and social commentary. Judy Brown (THE MANHANDLERS) has the leading role as red-haired Collier, who is tossed into a crummy cell in a prison in the Philippines along with brassy blonde Alcott (Roberta Collins), black lesbian Grear (Grier, who also performed the theme song), political prisoner Bodine (PETTICOAT JUNCTION’s Pat Woodell), and junkie Harrad (Brooke Mills). Food fights, shower scenes, fights, seductions, and kinky tortures abound until the prisoners finally bust out and get revenge against sadistic warden Dietrich (Christiane Schmidtmer) and loony head guard Lucian (Kathryn Loder).

Although the subject matter sounds grim, Hill directs with wit, using comic-book-style wipes between scenes and camping up the more violent material (no blood is seen) to take the sting out of it. The leading actresses are not just beautiful and willing to disrobe on camera, but they also appear to “get” what Hill is aiming for and adjust their performances accordingly. THE BIG DOLL HOUSE is pure fantasy with many iconic scenes, lines (“Get it up or I’ll cut it off!”), and images (Brown in cutoffs firing a pair of burp guns from the hip) that inspired a whole slew of women’s prison pictures, including Hill’s pseudo-sequel, THE BIG BIRD CAGE.

By the time Corman and Hill got around to making the follow-up to DOLL HOUSE a year later, the market had been saturated with women’s prison movies that filled the screen with nudity and degradation. Hill’s solution was to send up the genre and pack even more humor into the movie than DOLL HOUSE had. Thus, the delightfully pulpy THE BIG BIRD CAGE.

Once again, beautiful women wearing very little clothing are imprisoned in a hellhole in the Philippines. Grier returns as a different character, Blossom, an armed robber who gets tossed into the clink with innocent bystander Terry (THE PRICE IS RIGHT model Anitra Ford), tough black Mickie (Carol Speed), wisecracking Bull (Teda Bracci), tall Karen (Karen McKevic), and sex-starved Carla, whom I believe was intended to be played by DOLL HOUSE’s Roberta Collins, but was instead essayed by blond Candice Roman, who looks and acts exactly like her. Sid Haig also returns from DOLL HOUSE as a revolutionary named Django who breaks his lover Blossom out of prison.

Given more money and more time for the sequel, Hill provides the fast-paced action and nudity the genre required, but with a few stylish twists. For instance, all the guards at the prison are gay men, which not only turns the cliché of lesbian prison matrons upside down, but also becomes a source of politically incorrect (but not tasteless) humor. The centerpiece of BIRD CAGE, however, is the title prop, an intriguing three-story contraption that ostensibly serves as a sugar mill, but is really more of a large visual gag.

During the year between the release of DOLL HOUSE and the production of BIRD CAGE, Corman contracted Filipino filmmaker Gerardo de Leon (MAD DOCTOR OF BLOOD ISLAND) to make another women-in-prison quickie. Grier, who performed so well in DOLL HOUSE, starred as a ruthless gay prison matron named Alabama in WOMEN IN CAGES.

For this depraved drive-in movie, Corman cast Judy Brown and Roberta Collins from DOLL HOUSE as Grier’s co-stars, along with Jennifer Gan (NAKED ANGELS) as new fish Jeff. This simp is framed for heroin possession by her weasely pimp boyfriend and sent to Alabama’s jungle jail. Mess with Alabama, and you get sent to her “playpen,” where her methods of torture include whipping, a spinning wheel, and stone boots into which a naked inmate is strapped over a flaming brazier. As if Jeff doesn’t have it bad enough, one of her cellmates, junkie Stoke (Collins), has been hired by her weasely pimp boyfriend to kill her.

For sure, de Leon knows how to deliver the goods that drive-in audiences were looking for. WOMEN IN CAGES offers de rigueur amounts of nudity, catfights, brutality, and racial conflict. But it also lacks the humor of the Jack Hill duo, and because de Leon is a less insightful filmmaker than Hill (to be fair, almost everyone working in the genre was), WOMEN IN CAGES is much less interesting. Gan’s character is too dumb to root for, and the padded climax wears out its welcome.

Grier, although obviously beautiful with unbeatable screen presence, is miscast as the villain. She hadn’t developed enough as an actress by this point to stretch in a role that required more than her own natural charms. Collins handles a more dramatic role than she was used to just fine, but playing a part with no humor in it took a big arrow out of the talented comedienne’s thespian quiver. Top-billed Brown appears to be having a nice time with her tongue in her cheek.

There’s no faulting the look of the film, which appears yanked off the cover of a FOR MEN ONLY or MEN’S ACTION “sweat magazine” cover. Production design (the playpen is really fantastic) and photography are surprisingly imaginative. The musical score consists of recycled Les Baxter cues from previous Roger Corman features.

All three movies look better than they ever have on home video and probably as least as good as their theatrical releases. Both DOLL HOUSE and BIRD CAGE, in addition to trailers and TV spots, port over Jack Hill’s audio commentaries from the earlier New Horizons DVDs, which are in every way inferior to the new Shout Factory discs.

The most important supplement is FROM MANILA WITH LOVE, a 50-minute documentary that covers DOLL HOUSE and BIRD CAGE. It’s a delight, featuring nearly every important creative force from the two films, including Corman, Hill, producer Jane Schaffer (who has rarely, if ever, been interviewed about these movies, to the best of my knowledge), actors Ford, Roman, Bracci, Brown, and Haig, and writer James Gordon White (THE INCREDIBLE 2-HEADED TRANSPLANT), who apparently wrote the first draft of DOLL HOUSE and brought it to Hill before it was rewritten by Don Spencer, who receives sole screenplay credit. The late Roberta Collins also appears courtesy of earlier interview footage taken from an unknown source. Pam Grier, who reportedly wanted more remuneration than Shout Factory was able to provide for her participation, is noticeably absent.

It’s an old story by now, but one worth repeating. Shout Factory is doing a helluva job packaging its Roger Corman collection, and this edition featuring THE BIG DOLL HOUSE, THE BIG BIRD CAGE, and WOMEN IN CAGES is no exception.

Going (Not Very) Berserk

SCTV stars John Candy, Joe Flaherty, and Eugene Levy made this scattershot Canadian comedy the same year Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas brought their Great White North characters to STRANGE BREW.

GOING BERSERK, which was written by Dana Olsen (THE ‘BURBS) and director David Steinberg (PATERNITY), would likely had been much funnier had it been penned by its stars, who each won two Emmys for writing SCTV NETWORK 90 shows. Perhaps it wasn’t developed specifically for Candy, Levy, and Flaherty, who look lost.

The closest that GOING BERSERK gets to reminding fans of SCTV is a pair of parodies that would have probably been rejected by the show: a kung fu spoof (a dead horse after KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE’s brilliant “A Fistful of Yen”) and a meanspirited updating of FATHER KNOWS BEST (that features Elinor Donahue!). At least these setpieces break up the hamfisted plot, which stars Candy as John Bourgignon, who runs an unsuccessful limousine service with his best pal Chick Leff (Flaherty).

John’s impending marriage to Nancy (THE WONDER YEARS’ Alley Mills), the daughter of presidential candidate Ed Reese (Pat Hingle), is endangered by Reese’s nemesis, religious cultist/con artist Sun Yi Day (Richard Libertini). Day concocts a plan to brainwash John using a playing card and writhing aerobicizers into assassinating his new father-in-law on his wedding day.

GOING BERSERK’s major failure is a paucity of scenes of the SCTV actors together. Levy is sadly underused as a sleazy filmmaker named Salvatore DiPasquale, who hounds John to convince Reese to let him film the wedding. Flaherty is wasted in a straight part; he’s awkwardly included in one scene in which he literally does nothing but watch Hingle and Levy. Director David Steinberg, a standup comic with a Second City background, became a prolific TV director, but his work here is bad. His timing is haphazard, and he stages some sight gags out of camera range.

Candy survived this flop, moving on to scene-stealing supporting parts in SPLASH and VOLUNTEERS that turned him into one of the 1980s’ top comedy stars. Levy, also funny in SPLASH, joined Christopher Guest’s repertory company and acted in the first eight (!) AMERICAN PIE comedies. Flaherty starred in the ‘90s sitcoms MANIAC MANSION and POLICE ACADEMY: THE SERIES.

Blazing Fury

An earlier version of this review was posted here four years ago. With the Warner Archive's release of the film on DVD-R, I have updated and reposted it.

DARK OF THE SUN is one of the greatest action movies of the 1960s, maybe of all time. Released in 1968, it's a beautifully photographed and edited action picture with seminal tough-guy performances by Rod Taylor (THE BIRDS) and former football pro Jim Brown (THE DIRTY DOZEN). And until the Warner Archive recently put it out on DVD-R, few of us ever got a chance to see it looking its best in its theatrical 2.35:1 ratio. Never before released on home video, DARK OF THE SUN had aired a handful of times on Turner Classic Movies, but never looking as good as it does now.

The mission is succinctly set early on. The new president of war-torn Congo, Mwamini Ubi (Calvin Lockhart), hires Captain Bruce Curry (Taylor) to put together some men and a five-car train and take them on a journey to rescue some citizens and, oh, yes, liberate $25 million in uncut diamonds too, while he's there. Curry, who never met a mercenary job he wouldn't take if the money was right, recruits his friend Ruffo (Brown), a Congolese educated at USC, ex-Nazi captain Henlein (Peter Carsten, dubbed by Paul Frees) and his troops, and alcoholic physician Wreid (Kenneth More). Curry has just three days in which to complete his mission, partially because of the invading Simba force—African nationalists ripping a bloody swath across the country, slaughtering men, women, and children, cutting them into small pieces, and feeding them to their enemies.

Director Jack Cardiff was better known as an Oscar-winning cinematographer (BLACK NARCISSUS). He made fifteen films as a director (several with Rod Taylor), but DARK OF THE SUN is his magnum opus. Excitingly lensed in Jamaica, DARK OF THE SUN is fast-paced and loaded with rich dialogue penned by journeymen Adrian Spies (HAUSER’S MEMORY) and Ranald MacDougall (CLEOPATRA), who adapted a Wilbur Smith novel. It's just 100 minutes long, and I wouldn't be surprised if plenty was left on the cutting-room floor. Yvette Mimieux's (Taylor's co-star in THE TIME MACHINE) role as a widow rescued in the nick of time from rampaging Simbas comes across as perfunctory, and it seems that more could have been done with actor Olivier Despax’s role as a cowardly French soldier.

On the other hand, I wouldn't want Cardiff to have sacrificed any of the blistering action, including epic-looking raids, a chainsaw fight, Taylor bouncing his Jeep down a rocky stream in pursuit of an enemy on a raft, and particularly a suspenseful sequence in which Brown and Taylor infiltrate a grisly Simba celebration. DARK OF THE SUN is one of the toughest, most violent adventures of the 1960s. Blood flows freely, and Carsten’s Nazi shoots down two children in one of the film’s most shocking scenes. French jazz pianist Jacques Loussier, who rarely worked on English-language films, composed a marvelous score that effortlessly buttresses Cardiff's crisp direction.

We Want Our Lungs To Be Pink When They Fry Us

By far, the most popular characters created for the long-running Canadian comedy series SCTV were the dimwitted Canucks Bob and Doug McKenzie played by Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas. Never seen without toques on their heads and beers in their hand, these two knuckleheads evolved from two-minute television sketches to a North American fad fueled by magazine covers, a platinum comedy album, and this silly movie based, believe it or not, on HAMLET.

STRANGE BREW sends Bob and Doug to the Elsinore brewery, where they try to con the company into giving them free beer to make up for the mouse they allegedly found in one of their empties. Instead, they stumble upon a sinister plot by Brewmeister Smith (Max von Sydow!) and Claude Elsinore (Paul Dooley) to drive Claude’s niece Pam (Lynne Griffin), the brewery’s new owner, insane and use the beer to dispense a mind-control drug that will allow Smith to rule the world.

Okay, eh, like, it’s a dopey idea played for maximum giggles by Thomas and Moranis, a couple’a hosers with keen comic timing honed over several years of playing these characters on television. Although the SCTV sketches were totally improvised, STRANGE BREW’s script lets the two men develop a relationship between the brothers that goes beyond beer and back bacon and makes them heroes to root for.

The absurdist opening with the McKenzie brothers attending the premiere of their film-within-a-film, a ridiculously cheap and inept science fiction thriller, prepares you for a different kind of movie that settles into something straighter (more or less) after the opening titles (and theme song composed and sung by Ian Thomas, Dave’s brother). Still, it nicely ties the film to the Great White North sketches and certainly gets STRANGE BREW off to a howling start.

One of the more quotable comedies of the 1980s, STRANGE BREW was written by Thomas and Moranis after MIRACLE MILE’s Steve de Jarnatt took a couple of swings at the screenplay. It’s not only unusual in that its two stars co-directed it, but also because it’s a rare film shot in Canada for a primarily American audience that’s also set there. Angus MacInnes (WITNESS), SCTV’s Mary Charlotte Wilcox, and NATIONAL LAMPOON contributor Brian McConnachie are also in it. Score by Charles Fox. Onscreen title: THE ADVENTURES OF BOB & DOUG MCKENZIE: STRANGE BREW.

Moranis and Thomas left SCTV, which was still airing 90-minute episodes on NBC, to make STRANGE BREW. Two months after MGM released STRANGE BREW, John Candy, Eugene Levy, and Joe Flaherty released another “SCTV movie,” GOING BERSERK, which was a flop (and also had Paul Dooley in it).

Hippie Professor Faces Murder Rap

JUDD FOR THE DEFENSE was a very good but low-rated lawyer series that aired on ABC from 1967 to 1969. Carl Betz, formerly the doting husband and father on THE DONNA REED SHOW, played a flashier character in Clinton Judd, a flamboyant, high-priced Texas attorney who flew all over the country defending his clients in cases that either involved a lot of media coverage or a controversial issue or both.

Very likely based on F. Lee Bailey, Judd was no Perry Mason. He didn't win all his cases, and the show sometimes felt ripped from the headlines with episodes about race relations, abortion, draft dodging, migrant workers, and care of the mentally ill.

The TV show also spawned two tie-in paperback novels, both written by Lawrence Louis Goldman, a screenwriter with credits including two Roger Corman movies, the fine sci-fier KRONOS, and many television series, including JUDD FOR THE DEFENSE. Goldman's first JUDD novel is true to the series, sending Judd and his young associate Ben Caldwell (played on TV by Stephen Young) to Ben's alma mater of Commonwealth University to defend an elderly professor accused of murder.

Dr. Leland Michales (sic), an old liberal who had Ben in some philosophy classes during the younger man's college days, is conducting legal and university-sanctioned experiments with LSD, which include dosing volunteers and monitoring their actions. When the experiments begin to garner the school negative publicity, the administration demands that Michales quit his research and return the LSD. When he refuses, the school suspends him. But when a female student falls from the college's bell tower to her death while under the influence of acid, Michales is arrested on a murder charge.

While much of the dialogue sounds a little dated today--the way many books, movies, and TV shows from the 1960s do--it also sounds reel coming from the mouths of Commonwealth's college students. As in the series, Ben does most of the legwork, interviewing witnesses and tracking down leads, leaving the dramatic courtroom shenanigans to his mentor Judd. At 222 pages, Goldman has plenty of room to develop the characters and the mystery plot, and his experience working on the TV show lets him adapt the qualities that made it an Emmy- and Edgar-winning series to the page.

Even if you aren't familiar with JUDD FOR THE DEFENSE, Goldman's novel is still an absorbing mystery and highly recommended. Goldman's followup, THE SECRET LISTENERS, was also published by Paperback Library in 1968.

Shock By Incredible Shock

During the 1950s, drive-ins were flooded with science fiction programmers about giant insects rampaging cities and eating people. Only one of them came from Great Britain.

THE COSMIC MONSTER, a relative obscurity today that recently made its Turner Classic Movies premiere, was based on a British television serial penned by silent-movie actress Rene Ray, who later adapted it for a novel. Distributors Corporation of America, probably best known for releasing Edward D. Wood Jr.’s PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE, unleashed the feature version, written by Paul Ryder (THE GIRL IN THE PICTURE), stateside on a double bill with THE CRAWLING EYE. Both films starred blustery American actor Forrest Tucker (F TROOP), who also starred in Hammer’s THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN while in England.

Even if every other part clicked, THE COSMIC MONSTER’s dire direction by Gilbert Gunn (WINGS OF MYSTERY) would probably still sink it. Stodgily paced and woodenly performed by actors struggling to find something in their flat characters to accentuate (even the normally avuncular Tucker appears deflated), the picture plods along from one technobabble conversation to the next while the viewer awaits something resembling the shocks promised in its poster (“Every second your pulse pounds, they grow foot by incredible foot!”). There must have been a lot of disappointed viewers leaving the theater in 1958.

Mad scientist Laird (Alec Mango) and his sensible assistant Gil Graham (Tucker) are performing magnetic experiments. One accidentally tears a hole in the ionosphere, which causes cosmic rays to turn a hobo into a psycho killer and cause insects to grow larger than humans. It takes about an hour into this 75-minute movie for the melee between man and bug to get going, and even then the action is badly staged, shot, and edited with macro photography of normal insects acting as unconvincing special effects.

Martin Benson, memorable as Solo, the gangster that gets squashed inside a car in GOLDFINGER, plays Smith, an alien who speaks perfect English with a British accent (his people have been monitoring ours for years and even teaching their children about us). His performance is the best in the movie, though Smith plays like a deux es machina. Amazingly, when he tells Tucker about his extraterrestrial origins, the American unbelievably accepts the explanation without even an eyeblink.

THE COSMIC MONSTER is one of the rarest of ‘50s “big bug” movies and deservedly so. Aside from one cool shot of a creature eating the face off some poor schmuck, there’s little of interest in it, and Forrest Tucker seems uncomfortable in it.

The Most Exciting Experience In A Woman's Life

Russ Meyer’s lone attempt at mainstream filmmaking was THE SEVEN MINUTES, an adaptation of Irving Wallace’s 1969 sudser. Meyer’s previous film for 20th Century Fox, BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS, made a lot of money and enticed the studio to hire him for something more down-to-earth. Fox still didn’t trust him, however. When Meyer replaced Richard Fleischer (THE BOSTON STRANGLER) as director, the studio cut the budget from $6 million to less than $2 million.

Despite its studio pedigree, THE SEVEN MINUTES is recognizably Meyerian with its quick cutting, spoofy musical score (by Stu Phillips), and sexually aggressive female characters. It’s also something of a mess, mostly because Meyer seems unsure whether or not to take the material seriously. Half the film is set in a courtroom, and the various cross-examinations arguing the merits of free speech versus censorship are sharply written by Richard Warren Lewis and portrayed. However, Meyer plays the other scenes for camp, and the jagged shifts in tone are annoying. Why should we bother to think about the issues when the director doesn’t seem to want us to?

Wayne Maunder, just coming off the western TV series CUSTER and LANCER, stars as Mike Barrett, an attorney hired by publisher Phil Sanford (Tom Selleck (!), who had been in MYRA BRECKINRIDGE) to defend a young bookstore manager who sold the police the popular novel THE SEVEN MINUTES, written by the late J.J. Jadway in 1935 and considered pornographic by some standards. Barrett’s case runs into real problems when a young man named Jerry Griffith (John Sarno) is busted on a rape charge and blames the book for his crime.

Meyer flooded his supporting cast with every old white character actor in town—Philip Carey, Jay C. Flippen, Ron Randell, Lyle Bettger, John Carradine, Charles Drake, Stanley Adams, Olan Soule, Harold J. Stone, Jackie Gayle, Alex D’Arcy, Berry Kroeger, David Brian, Regis Cordic—added regular players Charles Napier, Stuart Lancaster, James Iglehart, and Edy Williams (his then-wife), and brought in Yvonne DeCarlo (THE DESERT HAWK) for a crowdpleasing cameo at the end. If nothing else, THE SEVEN MINUTES provides some enjoyment in watching the cast—you’ll also spot Marianne McAndrew, Jan Shutan and even Wolfman Jack!

Meyer’s fling with Hollywood suits didn’t take, though. He didn’t like THE SEVEN MINUTES, Wallace hated it, and audiences stayed away. So it was back back to the boobs-and-square-jaws route with BLACKSNAKE, which was also a flop, and the triumphant SUPERVIXENS.

Street Vigilante

STREETS OF BLOOD was the second in Manor Books' series about Bronson: Street Viglante; I've now read and reviewed all three of them. As you may have already guessed, they're heavily influenced by the 1974 film DEATH WISH, which starred Charles Bronson as a liberal New York architect who turns deadly vigilante when his family is attacked by street scum. I'm surprised Manor was able to dodge a lawsuit, the influence is so strong.

I suspect STREETS OF BLOOD was written by a different author than BLIND RAGE, though both are credited to Philip Rawls. Leonard Levinson, a longtime pulp writer who contributed to the Sharpshooter and Apache Wars series, among others, penned this one. In BLIND RAGE, the violence is more vulgar and graphic than the other books. Bronson has few qualms about knocking off innocent bystanders, and he has an affair with a teenage girl during his swath of vengeance.

STREETS OF BLOOD forgets all that. It's stated he hasn't been with a woman since his wife's murder two years previously, and Bronson is more compassionate in this book. He's still patrolling the streets of New York, killing muggers and rapists though. The body count is amusingly high, and Levinson keeps the action moving at a nice clip. Some conflict in the form of a cop named Jenkins who figures out Bronson's "night job" works well too.

He's A High-Speed Disaster

Shout Factory continues its superlative Roger Corman's Cult Classics series with this 2-disc DVD containing two car-crash features starring Ron Howard, then the star of ABC's hit HAPPY DAYS.

How did New World Pictures head Corman get big-time TV star Howard to do a cheap drive-in movie? By promising the former child actor a chance to make his own movie, which became GRAND THEFT AUTO. EAT MY DUST, released in 1976, was written and directed by Charles B. Griffith, a terrific screenwriter who provided Corman with dark comic stories for LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS and BUCKET OF BLOOD, but fell miserably short in the films he directed. UP FROM THE DEPTHS and SMOKEY BITES THE DUST are woeful movies, but EAT MY DUST gets by on the strength of its charming actors and copious highway destruction.

Howard plays Hoover Niebold (Griffith loved to give his characters silly names), a girl-crazy teenager who steals a race car belonging to Big Bubba Jones (Dave Madden, the harried manager of THE PARTRIDGE FAMILY) to impress snobbish blonde Darlene (TRAPPER JOHN, M.D.’s Christopher Norris, looking fine in yellow hotpants and white go-go boots). That’s all the impetus Griffith needs to smash a gaggle of police cruisers and stock cars in pursuit of Hoover and his friends. Warren Kemmerling acts properly harried as Hoover’s dad, the local sheriff, and Griffith peppers the narrative with sight gags and puns to break up the chases. Madden’s creative cursing (“Bull-double-dee-goddamn-loney”) and sneaky in-jokes referencing other Corman pictures are fun. Barbara Peeters, who went on to direct New World movies (HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP), directed the second unit, and actor Bill Paxton (ALIENS) was a set decorator.

Corman lived up to his word, and one year later, Howard, who would one day win an Academy Award for A BEAUTIFUL MIND, was directing his first film at the age of 22. Wanting to capitalize on the box-office success of EAT MY DUST, Corman asked Ron and his actor father Rance to write another screenplay with basically the same idea--a young couple on the run surrounded by car crashes.

Howard’s reputation for getting more bang for his bucks must have started on GRAND THEFT AUTO, as cars chase, crash, smash, and blow up with surprising regularity. He plays Sam Freeman, a poor youth engaged to be married to Paula Powers (fresh-faced Nancy Morgan), the daughter of snobbish gubernatorial candidate Bigby Powers (Barry Cahill). When Bigby opposes his daughter’s marriage—he’s already arranged her engagement to whiny polo player Collins Hedgeworth (Paul Linke)—Paula steals his Rolls Royce and makes a mad dash with Sam for Vegas to elope—a feat made more difficult by an army of pursuers after a $25,000 bounty offered by Bigby.

Reportedly filmed for $600,000, GRAND THEFT AUTO is decent drive-in fare with enough broad humor and car crashes to keep audiences awake. It isn’t particularly sophisticated, but it is quickly paced by Howard (who also penned the script with his actor father Rance) and sharply edited by Joe Dante, who was directing New World pictures himself (HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD). Howard gets goofy supporting performances from his brother Clint and Peter Isacksen (the tall doofus from CPO SHARKEY) as a pair of hot-rodding idiots, Hoke Howell as a greedy minister, and TV mom Marion Ross (HAPPY DAYS) as a rich woman who wrestles a cop.

The funky score is by Peter Ivers, who never again worked in film before his murder six years later. Dante, producer Jon Davison (AIRPLANE!), second unit director Allan Arkush (ROCK AND ROLL HIGH SCHOOL), and unit production manager Michael Finnell (THE HOWLING) went on to work together several times in various combinations.

The Ron Howard double feature receives ace treatment from Shout Factory, putting them out in letterboxed presentations for the first time and drenching them with extras. For EAT MY DUST, Shout Factory produced a new interview with Howard and a new featurette on poster artist John Solie to go with a previously released making-of doc (starring Christopher Norris, editor Tina Hirsch, and cinematographer Eric Saarinen) and a short conversation between Corman and critic Leonard Maltin. GRAND THEFT AUTO contains two audio commentaries--Howard and Corman ported over from the old New Concorde DVD and a new one starring Dante, Arkush, Rance Howard, and second unit key grip Ben Haller. The other new extra is a short piece on Rance and Clint Howard, who also appears in both films. A Ron Howard/Corman conversation and a Corman/Maltin chat are carried over, and trailers for both movies are included.

Howard’s next directorial efforts were in television until breaking through with the hilarious NIGHT SHIFT in 1982. He more or less retired from acting then.