Directed by Terence Calahan — his only IMDB directorial credit — and written by Tom Allen (story consultant for this entire series and Monsters, which was dedicated to his memory) and Howard Smit, this episode is all about hairdresser Anne MacColl (Carol Kane!) fighting teacher Abe North (Bud Cort!) for a winning lottery ticket for the Jack-Pot-Arama.
Abe had used magic to use ticket 666.666.to win, even calling the dean of his school and offending him to the point that he can’t ever get his job back. The problem? Well, the real winning ticket was number 666.667, owned by Anne. He tries to bully her with his magical powers without realizing that her bird isn’t named Lou, it’s truly Lucifer and that she has powers beyond what he can understand.
Oh well — another comedy episode of Tales from the Darkside. At least Kane and Cort are great at what they do. I prefer when the show is more in the horror genre, but what can you do? It’s only twenty minutes and isn’t poorly made.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The Return of Bruno was not produced by Cannon. It was, however, released on video by HBO/Cannon Home Video.
There comes a time in every star’s career when they decide to do something beyond what you know them for. Usually, that means putting out an album. Bruce Willis was a security guard and a bartender — where he had the nickname Bruno — before he became the biggest TV star in America and then a huge movie star thanks to Die Hard. But before that, well, he somehow got signed to Motown and put out The Return of Bruno.
But what if it wasn’t really Bruce Willis but instead his Eddie Wilson-like alter ego Bruno Radolini, the legendary blues singer who influenced everyone. Yes, as if Marty McFly invented rock and roll wasn’t enough, now Willis would take the rest of the credit and bring along tons of musicians along for the ride like Phil Collins, Elton John, Ringo Starr, Grace Slick, Joan Baez, Graham Nash, Stephen Stills, Melvin Franklin, Jon Bon Jovi, Freddie Garrity, The Bee Gees, Paul Stanley and Bobby Colomby to play along. I mean, they got Brian Wilson out of his sandbox to speak about how influential Bruno was. The cherries on top are getting Bill Graham, Wolfman Jack and Henry Diltz to do the same, as well as the aforementioned Michael J. Fox and to ice the cake, as it were, Clive Davis and Don Cornelius, with “America’s teenager” Dick Clark providing the narration.
The album that came out of this has Booker T. Jones, The Pointer Sisters and The Temptations, with material including covers and songs like “Respect Yourself,” (which hit number 5 on the Billboard chart in American and number 7 in the UK) “Under the Boardwalk,” (the 12th biggest selling UK single of 1987 that hit number 2 on their charts; “Jackpot (Bruno’s Bop)” and “Secret Agent Man / James Bond Is Back,” which peaked at number 43 in the UK.
Yes, this album was so successful that Willis had a secon Motown album, If It Don’t Kill You, It Just Makes You Stronger, which is a Nietzsche quote that I assume applies to anyone that makes it through the entire ten songs.
I kid! I have always been a huge Willis fan and when I was a kid I was totally enamored of his Seagram’s wine cooler commericals to the point that I would drink the Seagram’s seltzer and pretend that I was him, rocking sunglasses and performing the kind of white soul that would cause even the Blues Brothers to tell him that this was kind of cringe.
The director of this made for HBO special, James Yukich, has had quite the career. He did music videos like Iron Maiden’s “Flight of Icarus,” “Running Free,” “Wasted Years,” “Ace’s High” and “Two Minutes to Midnight;” Bowie’s “Modern Love;” the “Land of Confusion” and “That’s All” videos for Genesis; “The Flame” for Cheap Trick; “Always There for You” by Stryper, “The Real Me” by W.A.S.P. and Nelson’s “After the Rain” and “Love and Affection.” He also made Double Dragon, which is amazing to me that a Bruce Willis movie doc was made by the very same individual.
It took three people to write this: Paul Flattery, whose career has mainly been in award shows; Bob Hart and, of course, Willis himself, who couldn’t even make it to some of the filming of his own special, so his brother David played him in the Whiskey scene. Willis also is merely acting like he’s playing the harmonica; mostly it’s Bruce DiMattia.
Man, this entire thing is…very 1987. I was in a bunch of high school garage bands then that all wanted to be hair metal bands and always wanted me to write about parties when all I wanted to be was Danzig in the Misfits. One of Bruno’s songs, “Funtime,” feels like lyrics I was forced to write:
“Oh yes, it’s fun time (Fun time) Fun time (Fun time) Let yourself be happy, it’s fun time”
I definitely watched this enough that I had it on a taped from HBO VHS.
Oh 1987 Sam. You knew so little, you little chubby movie geek in the making.
Henry and Elinor Colander (Mario Roccuzzo and Alice Ghostley) are making a special meal for their 25th anniversary. Yet they still have a place at the table for Sybil (Fredrica Duke), a girl they’ve just met who has broken up with her boyfriend Mark (Michael Cedar).
Directed by John Strysik and written by James Houghton, this was based on a story by D.J. Pass that originally was printed in Twilight Zone magazine. Obviously, you can tell the direction that this is all heading as soon as it starts, but it’s still a pretty solid episode that doesn’t descend into the silliness that some Darkside entries get into.
Ghostley’s acting makes this episode. If it was filmed today, they would probably lean in more toward the idea that the old couple doesn’t want children but a young woman to spice up their sex lives. But hey — it was 1985. That certainly happened, but it wasn’t as prevalent as the internet allows us to believe.
Look — if you’re hiking with your abusive partner and suddenly a nice couple wants you to get into the jacuzzi in a room full of animal heads, don’t. Just don’t.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Act of Vengeance was an HBO movie not produced by Cannon but was released on video by HBO/Cannon Video.
Act of Vengeance is based on the book by Trevor Armbrister and is all about the corruption that occurred during the United Mine Workers’ presidential elections in 1969, including the death of Joseph “Jock” Yablonski, played in this movie by Charles Bronson with no mustache!
Directed by John Mackenzie and written by Scott Spencer (who wrote the novel Endless Love was based on), it starts with Jock being surprised by his wife (Ellen Burstyn) and family on his birthday. They’re upset that Tony Boyle (Wilford Brimley) has been picked as the mine worker president. Jock laughs it off but starts to realize that Tony is a horrible leader, someone who has no empathy when eighty miners die in West Virginia and no ethics when he asks Jock to do some creative accounting.
Two of Tony’s underlings, Albert Pass (Alan North) and Silous Huddleston (Hoyt Axton) figure out what to do: hire lowlifes like Hudleston’s son-in-law Paul (Robert Schenkkan), who has be convinced by his wife Annie (Ellen Barkin) to do the hit, along with Claude (Maury Chaykin) and Buddy Martin (Keanu Reeves) to kill Paul as he sleeps in bed with his wife, killing her and their daughter Charlotte (Caroline Kava) too.
That’s right. Bronson gets shot dead while he sleeps. Come on!
You could watch this as John Wick versus Paul Kersey or Theodore Logan getting revenge for Bill S. Preston, Esq. for Death Wish 3 or just a movie where Bronson gets to flex his dramatic muscles. A lot of it probably hit home for him, as before he was an actor, Charles Dennis Buchinsky was a coal miner in his hometown of Ehrenfeld, PA, starting at the age of ten when his father died. He claimed in interviews that he earned a dollar for each ton of coal that he mined and that he and his brother often found themselves nearly dying in cave-ins.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This originally was on the site on August 13, 2021. Really Weird Tales was not produced by Cannon but was sold on videotape by HBO/Cannon Video.
You have to give it to HBO. Between The Hitchhiker and Tales from the Crypt, they were keeping the horror anthology in business throughout the 80s. Really Weird Tales is made up of three episodes of a comedy version of that format with Joe Flaherty as the host.
Flaherty, a Pittsburgh local, was a major part of Second City and SCTV. Horror fans will respect him pretty much forever for his Count Floyd character, which is a loving tribute that pokes fun at the horror hosts that he grew up with, including “Chilly” Bill Cardille.
There are three stories here that all have pretty high production value. “Cursed With Charisma” is all about a mysterious stranger (John Candy) coming to save the town of Fitchville with new ideas of how to sell real estate, as well as an alien invasion. It was directed by Don McBrearty, who directed 1983’s American Nightmare and is still working, directing holiday direct-to-cable movies.
“I’ll Die Loving” has Catherine O’Hara as a woman who blows up real good every man that she falls in love with. Where the last segment felt almost too long, this one seems too short. It was directed by John Blanchard, who directed episodes of SCTV and The Kids in the Hall.
Finally, the best story is “All’s Well That Ends Strange,” which pits Martin Short as a lounge singer trying to get into the good graces of a Hefner-style publisher, win the heart of a centerfold played by Olivia d’Abo and escape with his life after he learns that all of the perfect bodies of the women in the mansion aren’t all that natural. It’s a rare horror role for Short, who is great in this episode. It was directed by Paul Lynch, who knows something about making a horror film, what with Prom Night and Humongouson his resume.
While this doesn’t always work all the time, Really Weird Tales should have had more than three episodes to find its footing.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This was on the site for the first time on May 23, 2020. The Babysitter was not produced by Cannon but was released on video by HBO/Cannon Video.
The ABC Friday Night Movie for November 28, 1980, The Babysitter was directed by Peter Medak, who was also in the chair for movies like The Changeling, Cry for the Strangers, Zorro the Gay Blade, Romeo Is Bleeding, Species II and The Ruling Class. What an amazing lineup of films to have on your resume and such a disparate list of movies.
Dr. Jeff Benedict and his wife Liz (TV movie supercouple William Shatner and Patty Duke) have moved from Seattle to Chicago. Between their daughter Tara (Quinn Cummings, The Goodbye Girl) and the demands of housework, Liz isn’t doing so well. That means they bring in a live-in nanny named Joanna Redwine (Stephanie Zimbalist, before Remington Steele) and that’s when things go to seed.
Before you can say movie of the week, Joanna has Liz drinking again and convinced that Jeff has a mistress. While that game is afoot, she’s also trying to convince Jeff that loading his clown into her cannon while wifey is passed out is beyond a good idea
This is when you fire the babysitter. That said — if they did, we would not have the next hour and change of this movie.
Before it’s over, the bodies of the last family Joanna killed — wrapped in plastic a half decade before Laura Palmer — have shown up, she’s wearing Patty Duke’s lingerie and served up a dinner of raw beef tongue. The family is lucky that they know John Houseman, who saves them all.
I have a weakness for both made for TV movies and ones where babysitters slowly drive a family insane. This movie is at the center of this magnificent cycle and must be experienced. These TV movies are exploitation films, with small budgets and insane stories, that scream at you the entire time they are on the screen.
Get ready for the adventures of the seaQuest DSV 4600, a deep submergence vehicle of the United Earth Oceans Organization (UEO). The UEO? Well, that group was created in 2018 — in the continuity of this show — after a battle within the Livingston Trench.
Designed by retired naval captain Nathan Bridger (Roy Scheider), the series begins as humanity finds itself out of natural resources and begins to mine the ocean floor. Several gold rush-style mining communities now exist within this unexplored territory and the seaQuest seeks to protect them from other countries and sometimes each other.
Bridger just wanted to stay retired, particularly after his son Robert died in a naval battle and he promised his dying wife that he would never go back to the sea. But you know…they keep bringing pulling him back.
This show debuted to great fanfare, with the first season’s plots all about oceanographic research, environmental issues, politics and the interpersonal relationships of the crew. By the end of the first season, low ratings led to a cliffhanger where Bridger sacrificed the ship to prevent an ecological disaster.
And that’s where things get weird.
When it was decided the show would come back, NBC and Universal moved production from Los Angeles to Orlando, which led Stephanie Beacham, who played Dr. Kristin Westphalen, to leave the show (all of the battles between the producers and network didn’t help either). It’s also why Stacy Haiduk (Lieutenant Commander Katherine Hitchcock) left, but Royce D. Applegate (Chief Manilow Crocker) and John D’Aquino (Lieutenant Benjamin Krieg ) were let go because NBC wanted a younger crew.
The original crew also had Lucas Wolenczak (Jonathan Brandis), Commander Jonathan Ford (Don Franklin), Lieutenant Tim O’Neill (Ted Raimi) and Sensor Chief Miguel Ortiz (Marco Sanchez). They’d be joined by the telepathic Dr. Wendy Smith (Rosalind Allen), weapons officer Lieutenant James Brody (Edward Kerr), genetically engineered gill-breathing Seaman Anthony Piccolo (Michael DeLuise), Lieutenant Lonnie Henderson (Kathy Evison) and Dagwood (Peter DeLuise), a GELF (genetically engineered life form) who served as the ship’s janitor.
Whereas season one often had serious science — and each episode ended with facts from oceanographer Dr. Bob Ballard, the technical advisor for the show, inspiration from Bridger and the man who actually discovered the wrecks of Titanic, Bismarck and Yorktown — other than finding an ancient spaceship, season two had a monster of the week feel to compete for better ratings. Demons, aliens, fire-breathing worms, the god Neptune, time travel, a prehistoric crocodile and so much more was, well, too much for Scheider to handle.
He referred to the new storylines, giving multiple interviews to the Orlando Sentinel where he said the show as “Saturday afternoon 4 o’clock junk for children. Just junk — old, tired, time-warp robot crap” and “…childish trash…I am very bitter about it. I feel betrayed… It’s not even good fantasy. I mean, Star Trek does this stuff much better than we can do it. To me the show is now 21 Jump Street meets Star Dreck.” That 21 Jump Street dig must have been directed at the DeLuise brothers, who were once on that show before joining the cast.
By the end of the second season, it seemed like the show would be canceled — yet again — so the final episode “Splashdown” has the crew being abducted by aliens, then fighting in a civil war that destroys the seaQuest — yet again! — and everyone dead.
And yet the third season happened!
Scheider requested to be released from his contract with NBC but was asked to appear in a few more episodes. Edwin Kerr asked to quit as well and was asked to stay long enough to die in season 3’s “SpinDrift,” while NBC’s scheduling — which contributed to low ratings as the series moved around all the time — caused the episode “Brainlock” to air with his character still alive.
Now, only Jonathan Brandis, Don Franklin and Ted Raimi stayed on, as if the show was a band playing ribfest with hardly any original members left (even Dr. Bob Ballard was gone). Now called seaQuest 2032, the crew arrived ten years back on Earth ten years later, Bridger retired and Michael Ironside came on as Captain Oliver Hudson. He immediately set some boundaries: “You won’t see me fighting any man-eating glowworms, rubber plants, 40-foot crocodiles and I don’t talk to Darwin.”
Oh yeah — Darwin was a talking dolphin voice by the man who is every talking animal, Frank Welker.
Elise Neal also joined the show as Lieutenant J.J. Fredericks as storylines moved more toward corporate greed running the world and political tension. Only 13 episodes aired before finally, the show was done for good.
There were model kits, trading cards, video games and even Playmates action figures (check out this article on seaQuest Vault), but the show always struggled to catch on with viewers, if they could find it.
Going back and watching this again in box set form, it’s fascinating to see how the show changes and struggles for direction in a condensed format. Week by week, it’s not as strange. When binged, it seems absolutely deranged. I’m glad in some way that I wasn’t in love with the show when it aired. It would have broken my heart.
The Mill Creek blu ray box set of seaQuest DSV has every episode of the show, plus new interviews and featurettes with the series creator Rockne S. O’Bannon, as well as the directors and crew. Plus, you get several deleted scenes. Get it from Deep Discount.
Carolina (Dorothy Lyman, Naomi from Mama’s Family) does Tarot card readings and is popular with her customers, as she always brings them the best of news. Once her competitor — Madame Marlena (Carmen Matthews) — switches out her deck, the fortune change to be filled with death. The cards can’t be destroyed, but can Carolina change her fortune?
The one good thing I can say is that this episode sticks to being horror and doesn’t veer into the silly side of the darkside. I’m such a grump, I realize, but the more jokey these episodes get, the cringier they become.
When wealthy Gordon Duvall (Peter Lawford) uses his private plane to get Danny, one of his workers (Michael McGreevey), to the hospital, pilot Stu (Sandy McPeak) gets lost and they have to land on what they think is an uncharted and isolated island. Too bad for the men — which include Mike (Steven Keats), Wendell (Clint Walker) and J.J. (Guich Koock) — that a crash of women and nuns years ago turned that into a place where Lizbeth (Jaime Lyn Bower) communicates with the spirit of the long-dead Sister Theresa.
With a tribe of women that includes Snow (Kathryn Daniels), Chocolate (Jayne Kennedy from Body and Soul!), Flower (Rosalind Chao), Bambi (Deborah Shelton, Sins of the Night) and Jo Jo (Susie Coelho, Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo), the normal matriarchal society moments happen — “What is a kiss?” Snow asks one of the men — and Lizbeth agrees to let the men stay if they take care of the cannibalistic headhunters that live on the island.
I mean, yes, it’s cheesy, but how magical of a world did we once live in where this kind of stuff aired on TV with no warning? We were once better.
The Kino Lorber blu ray release of this made for TV movie has a new 2K master and commentary by Made for TV Mayhem‘s Amanda Reyes and Kindertrauma co-founder Lance Vaughn. You can get it directly from Kino Lorber.
Yes, two Tales from the Darkside episodes in a row have now had a corny pun for a title, but at least this episode presents a truly horrific concept that today’s audience might not understand: TV screenwriter Leon (Harry Anderson) has his life taken from him by the voice of his answering machine.
One of eight episodes directed by Frank De Palma — he also worked on the spiritual sequel series Monsters — and written by Haskell Barkin (who wrote the other punnily titled “Djinn, No Chaser“), this episode starts with that strong premise and then works to a silly conclusion, one of the things outside of budget that holds this series back from being thought of in the same breath as The Twilight Zone or Night Gallery.
That said — this one does have Dick Miller in it, playing Leon’s agent. Marcie Barkin from Fade to Blackand Smokey and the Good Time Outlaws is also in this as Leon’s long-suffering partner.
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