If you ever associated Ted Danson and Richard Masur with child abuse, thanks to Danson being in Something About Amelia and Masur in Fallen Angel, this film will redeem both of them, as they are chasing an entire cabal of abusers.
Based on the Jonathan Kellerman novel of the same name, this tells the story of Alex Delaware (Danson, who also executive produced). A Los Angeles-based psychiatrist, Delaware is testifying against an accused child murder who soon dies in a suspicious manner. However, when detective Milo Sturgis (Masur) takes the case, he soon learns that things are much deeper than that.
Rachel Ticotin (Arnold’s love interest in Total Recall), James Noble (the governor on Benson), David Huddleston (Santa from Santa Claus: The Movie and The Big Lewbowski himself), Merritt Butrick (Death Spa), Charles Lane (Arsenic and Old Lace), Scott Paulin (Cat People) and Deborah Harmon (Used Cars) all show up in this.
For a mid-80’s show, it’s pretty great that Masur’s character is gay and not mincing or a stereotype. The ending is pretty intense as well and probably one of the few times you’ll see Ted Danson in an MMA-style situation.
Thanks Mill Creek The Excellent Eighties set for having so many made for TV movies! You can also watch this on YouTube.
We originally reviewed this film on June 13, 2019, just because it’s the Hoff, you know? We’ll, thanks to its Mill Creek inclusion on the Mill Creek Excellent Eighties 50-film box set that we’re reviewing in full, this month, we’re taking another crack at it. Which is more than this film deserves. It didn’t even deserve the first review.
Ugh. Let’s do this. Oh, this is not excellent. Not by a long shot.
It’s as if the art department knew they had a stinker and just gave up.I mean, that’s the Hoff from Knight Rider on the cover, for gosh sake.And I think that’s Blair from Savage Streets?
It’s direct-to-video U.S. VHS junk like this — courtesy of the Hoff’s musical stardom in Europe, which resulted in this receiving a theatrical release in overseas markets, with another title: Wings of Freedom — that leaves no doubt as to why Linda Blair’s and David Hasselhoff’s careers cooled, quickly, after their demon possession and talking car days of yore. But, it does reunite that demon n’ hot car duo after last year’s Witchery, aka La Casa 4. So . . . there’s your Blair/Hasselhoff Trivial Pursuit movie trivia for the day to amaze your friends.
Okay, so what’s with the dopey W.B, Blue and the Bean title? Ah, it’s the kitschy kharacter names of the story: White Bread (Hasselhoff), Blue (stuntman Tony Brubaker), and Bean (Thomas Rosales Jr. from Speed and Running Scared). They’re three ne’er-do-well bounty hunters hired to protect Blair’s richy-bitchy, natch, snob — who just witnessed her playboy-cum-drug-dealing boyfriend murdered by his Columbian connection. So, if you want to see Blair sportin’ a white cleave gag in a dusty ol’ Mexican farmhouse — and what growing young lad doesn’t — then this is your movie. Will our bounty-trio save her to make it to court to testify?
Uh. Duh. What movie are you watching? Were they trying for the superior action-comedy of Stewart Raffill’s High Risk (also on the Excellent Eighties set)? If so, they failed. Utterly and craptastically.
Worse renderings of the Hoff and Blair ever committed to poster board.
If you want to see ex-stuntman and director Max Kleven do another film — Ruckus, which also starred Blair, his other movie we’ve reviewed at B&S About Movies — then you’re all set. Oh, and if you needed another John Vernon film to complete your set, he’s here as Linda’s rich daddy. So there that. Oh, and since we are in Mexico — and Danny Trejo needs to get his foot in the biz door — well, there’s that watch incentive. It has to be the incentive, as there’s no comedy, no “great one-liners,” and no “great entertainment.” If it wasn’t for the grey-market DVDs paper insert chaffing me, I’d use it and save the Charmin.
As we said, you can pick it up (wipe it off) as part of Mill Creek’s Excellent Eighties box set. You can also watch it for free on Amazon Prime because, well, even Amazon knows a crap bag when they smell one. But, for those without an Amazon account, we found a nice n’ muddy, washed-out VHS rip over on Tubi, which also has Witchery — so you’re double-featured up for a double-ply wipin’ night o’ flushin’.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook.He also writes for B&S About Movies.
Wow, Mill Creek loves this debut film directed by Michael Fischa — or is it because it’s a Susan Blakely flick — as it has appeared on their Pure Terror, B-Movie Blast, and Excellent Eighties 50-Film Packs. And the debate in the B&S cubicle farm rages: who loves this movie more? Melody Vera with her Pure Terror review . . . Sam the Bossman with his review . . . or your’s truly, ol’ R.D.
For his directing debut, Fischa signed on the dotted line with this script penned by Mark Pirro, he who wrote and directed the equally whacked Polish Vampire in Burbank (1983) and Deathrow Gameshow (1987). Polish Vampire — shot for $2500, returned over one million in home video and cable television distribution via late-nights on the USA Network. And Fischa — on his way to make the even more oddball slasher Death Spa, and before the more conventional, retro-blaxploitationer,Crack House — brought Pirro’s werewolf comedy to the screen.
It’s a comedy that has it all: MTV-era synth rock, a horror movie convention, forgotten ’80s stars, still tryin’ ’70s stars (Solid Gold host Marilyn McCoo and Marcia Wallace, aka Edna Krabappel on The Simpsons, and Kimmy Robertson from The Last American Virgin and TV’s Twin Peaks) — and (heart sigh) Susan Blakely. Oh, do we love Susan around the B&S cubicles with Capone, The Lords of Flatbush, The Concorde … Airport ’79, Over the Top, and Dream a Little Dream. And it helps that one of the characters loves horror movies and has posters for Prime Evil, Deathrow Gameshow and Galaxina in her room: for this is a parody by and for horror movie fans that’s also filled with Jewish deli jokes, singing werewolves, John Saxon without a shirt, Susan shavin’ hairy-hairy legs, and a tip o’ the hat to the dentist scene from Little Shop of Horrors.
Susan is Leslie Shaber, a bored suburban mom with a boring, all-about football-loving hubby (John Schuck, Sgt. Charles Enright from McMillan & Wife and the Klingon Kamarag from the first Star Trek filim franchise). And their daughter Jennifer (Tina Caspary, from Can’t Buy Me Love, Teen Witch, Mac and Me) is freaked that her parents are going to get a divorce. She finds support in her horror-movie loving friend Stacey (Diana Barrows of Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood).
Then the actors we love show up: Ruth Buzzi is a fortune teller who tells Jennifer that she has the mark of the pentagram and she’ll fight an unholy evil. John Saxon (check out our Exploring: John Saxon feature) owns a pet store and eats a mouse. Well, he’s a werewolf. Leslie innocently goes into buy a flea collar, he bits her toes (did Quentin Tarantino make this) and she begins to change. And they fall in love.
Now it’s up to Jennifer and Stacy — in bit that sounds like the better known dark comedy horror Fright Night — instead of vampires — fight the werewolves and save mom.
Hey, when you’re watching a movie scripted by the guy who gave us the oft HBO-ran and USA Network-aired Curse of the Queerwolf (1988) and Buford’s Beach Bunnies (1993), you know you’re not getting some mainstream werewolf comedy like Teen Wolf, but something just a little bit from the left of the dial. Hey, Pirro’s the guy who gave us Nudist Colony of the Dead (1991), after all. And Michael Fischa brings it all together quite nicely in his directing debut. Next up, for Micheal is, of course, Crack House with Richard Roundtree then, Sam’s favorite: Death Spa! Hide the asparagus!
This is easily found on many streaming platforms and the DVDs are bountiful — with plenty of ways to get a copy, of course, via Mill Creek Entertainment.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook.He also writes for B&S About Movies.
I mean, who wants to watch Liam Neeson fight wolves or show off his very special set of skills when we can watch him as a conflicted priest trying to save the life of a small boy with epilepsy?
Based on the novel by Bernard MacLaverty, Neeson plays Brother Sebastian, who is part of a Roman Catholic institution for troubled boys in Ireland. The boys are taught to conform to society and to fear God, things that Sebastian finds in conflict with his faith.
When his father dies, Sebastian takes his inheritance and leaves with one of the boys, a ten-year-old named Owen (Hugh O’Conor, Rawhead Rex). But he soon discovers that he’s ill-prepared to take care of the boy and he sees both epilepsy and the home as death sentences.
The end of this movie is certifiably insane. There’s also a Van Morrison score. I would have never watched this if it wasn’t for Mill Creek and I’m not certain that’s a good thing.
Based on a true story of Szilveszter Matuska, who said “I wrecked trains because I like to see people die. I like to hear them scream.” Yes, the man literally orgasmed when he wrecked trains, including his most brutal crime, when he killed twenty-two people and injured a hundred and twenty when he derailed the Vienna Express with dynamite, sending the engine and nine of the eleven coaches to plunge down a hill.
Matuska reportedly escaped from jail in 1945. He may have served as an explosives expert during the latter stages of World War II. No one is sure, as he was never recaptured. Some believe that he served on the Communist side in the Korean War.
Michael Sarrazin plays him in this Hungarian/German made for TV movie directed by Sándor Simó. Somehow, Sarrazin has been in two movies I’ve watched this week.
While history claims — as stated above — that Matsuka only really achieved bliss thanks to train destruction, he sure gets a lot of action in this movie. I think what happened after — even if the film only guessed at what happened — would have made for a better movie.
The band Lard recorded a song about Matsuka in which they sang:
Remember this:
No matter how many books you ban
No matter how many records you burn
The seeds of fertile fetishes
Are planted at an early age
And somewhere out there
Someone amongst you
May at this very moment lust
For derailing trains
A millionaire is suspected of buying an ad agency to use it as a way of brainwashing the public for his political ends. Hmm . . . subliminal messaging through inaudible sounds and images hidden in TV audio signals and magazine spreads . . . John Carpenter’s They Live, anyone?
The millionaire here is the mysterious Ted Quinn (Robert Mitchum) who buys out the giant Montreal ad agency Porter & Stripe where Philip Morgan (Lee Majors) serves as its top copywriter and project manager. Of course, as with any corporate takeover, half of the firm’s staff is soon blown out the door and replaced by “Quinn’s people.” And Morgan is getting the old “do you like your job” trope when he complains about being kept out of the loop on the firm’s new accounts.
Next thing you know, the firm’s geeky-and-too-nosey-for-his-own-good Sam Goldstein (very familiar Canadian actor Saul Rubinek), who discovered Quinn is using the firm’s new slew of commercial spots to influence a political election, ends up dead. Now it’s up to Lee and Valerie Perrine, as his love interest, natch, to get to the bottom of the advertising-cum-political tomfoolery.
I love Lee Majors, and Robert Mitchum is always cool in-the-role (but barely here; this is a Lee Majors joint, after all), but when cheapo Canadian tax shelters films masquerade as an American-made film by casting beloved U.S. actors in lead roles, what we usual end up with is, not a theatrical film, but a telefilm that pisses us off by baiting us with Lee Majors.
If this had been made in the early ’70s by a major U.S. studio, say MGM or 20th Century Fox — and cast Charlton Heston as the ad man discovering the subliminal political campaign — and had Paddy Chayefsky adapt Paul Gottlieb’s superior, best-selling novel for Sidney Lumet to direct — Agency could have been a twisted sci-fi version of the Academy Award-winning Network. Or we could have had Madison Avenue taken to task in a political paranoia thriller that reminded of director Alan J. Pakula and screenwriter Robert Towne’s The Parallax View.
I love my Lee Majors joints, but — through no fault of his own (his Fawcett-Majors Productions didn’t back this one) — Agency is a flat-as-a-pancake conspiracy thriller providing a non-intriguing conspiracy devoid of thrills. If you’re in the market for sci-fi conspiracy thrillers of the ’80s HBO-variety, then stick with Micheal Crichton’s Looker from 1981 starring Albert Finney — at least that one had some computer 3D modeling and funky light-hypnosis guns to wow us. Of course, when it comes to subliminal conspiracies of the Canadian variety, none is finer than David Cronenberg’s Videodrome.
You can watch Agency on You Tube or watch it as a free-with-ads stream courtesy of IMDb TV’s Amazon Prime channel (caveat: both are fuzzy VHS-to-DVD rips). In 2001, Anchor Bay issued a now out-of-print DVD version, which, no surprise, is the best of the DVD transfers in the market. If you’re a Lee Majors Canadian film completist, then you’ll want to seek out the 1984 TV movie The Cowboy and the Ballerina (we found a clip on You Tube).
Luckily, the fine folks at Mill Creek Entertainment come through in the clutch by including Agency on their Excellent Eighties 50-Movie Pack.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.
After everyone took the Mill Creek picks that they wanted, I jumped in and picked up the stragglers, the survivors, the movies no one else wanted to watch.
A movie with a bunch of orphans who turn to John Huston as a kindly priest and the game of soccer to save their orphanage? Why would anyone have picked anything else? And an appearance by Pele? What is wrong with all the other writers on this site?
Director Terrell Tannen edited The Boogeyman and The Boogeyman II, which was really like only directing one movie if you’ve seen the second one. He also produced, edited and second unit directed Olivia, which is one of the strangest movies I’ve ever seen. I have no idea how this prepared him to make a religious soccer movie.
Between this and Victory, I have now seen two soccer movies with Pele in them. And John Huston too, now that I think about it.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Welcome to Mill Creek Month! As you know, we love our Mill Creek box sets, so we’re doing an entire month of these films. The first set we got into was their B-Movie Blast 50-Film pack, then their Gorehouse Greats 12-Pack. And as with those sets — as is par for the course with these bricks of films, with their mashups of movie mayhem —their Excellent Eighties 50-Movie set is no different, with its crazy mix of drive-in ditties and lost network TV movies across all genres. So, to start our unpacking of this set . . . here’s our first review!
Oh, boy, Sam . . . when this was first assigned to me as “Second Sight” — without romantic the suffix — I thought I’d have to fly off the top ropes of the Civic Arena and whoop-ass Shirley Doe (my boss’s wrestling altar ego) for stickin’ it to me with that friggin’ John Larroquette monstrosity from 1989, you know, from back in the day when Bronson Pinchot was a “thing,” poised as the next Robin Williams . . . Bess Armstrong’s heart-weeping cuteness (Jaws 3-D) in the film, be damned. . . .
Sorry, Sam.
As it turns out, this debut entry on this Mill Creek set is an ’80s CBS-TV movie based on the best-selling romance novel Emma and I by Sheila Hocken. The “Emma” in this case, is a dog.
What? Why are you snickering? What gives with the eye rolls?
I’m not a totally heartless B-Movie slob. I can be romantic! Just not Hallmark Channel-romantic . . . only old “Big Three Network” romantic. And I’ll take a romantic dog-chick flick over a psychic-infused Balki Bartokomous flick any day of the week — and twice on Sundays.
How obscure and lost is this film: it’s easier to find a clean image of the book than the TV adverts or DVDs.
TV movie powerhouse Elizabeth Montgomery shines (as always) as Alexandra McKay, a woman who has been blind for nearly 20 years. Fearful that people will take advantage of her condition, she’s staunchly independent, living a sheltered, private life — a world where she only trusts her best friend: her always dependable guide dog, Emma. She allows love to enter her life when she meets Richard Chapman, an art dealer. And it’s great to see Barry Newman — of Vanishing Point fame — as said art dealer, allowed to stretch his thespian wings in a dramatic-cum-romantic role.
Now, we know . . . ugh, romance . . . chick flicks . . . argh! So, we’ll play the John Korty card to get you to watch.
John’s career dates back to directing numerous episodes of PBS-TV’s Sesame Street, while his theatrical and TV movie efforts date to the early ’60s. If you grew up in the ’70s, you know John put his previous skills as a documentarian to good use in the TV rating juggernaut Who Are the DeBolts? and Where Did They Get Nineteen Kids? that was hosted by Henry “The Fonz” Winkler (The Lords of Flatbush). Korty also wrote and directed Oliver’s Story (1978), the not-as-successful-and-critically-lambasted sequel to the early ’70s standard for maudlin-romance flicks: Love Story (1970). Another one of Korty’s biggies was the civil rights-drama The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1974).
But wait, hey you! Star Wars fan: John Korty directed the Lucasian knockoff, The Ewok Adventure (1984).
All in all, this is great stuff. This is why we have Mill Creek sets: to preserve well-made, forgotten films . . . and not just Crown International, B-Movie schlock. Bravo, Mill Creek!
And the Mill Creek sets keep on rockin’ our DVD decks! Another 12 movies put to rest. Previously, we jammed on Mill Creek’s B-Movie Blast 50-Film Pack. And we’re not done yet! We unpacking another 50 films to close out the month with Mill Creek’s The Excellent Eights 50-Film Pack.
Every November — to whet our appetites for Halloween — we tackle a Mill Creek box of fifty movies. We started with the Chilling Classics set in 2018 and also did the Pure Terror set in 2019. For 2020, we jammed on the Sci-Fi Invasionset. And Mill Creek’s 12-Packs always come in handy for our theme weeks, such as our recent “Fast and Furious Week,” when we a lot of films, quickly. To that end: the Savage Cinema set did the job. And, back in March, we were so giddy with glee that we finally got our own copy of 9 Deaths of the Ninja courtesy of the Explosive Cinema 12-pack, we paid it forward to Mill Creek and reviewed all of the films in the pack.
Many thanks to Rob Brown, Herbert P. Caine, Dustin Fallon, Robert Freese, Sean Mitus, Bill Van Ryn, Jennifer Upton, and Melody Vera for chipping in with their reviews for our month-long Mill Creek project!
Somehow, the Excellent Eighties set has taken a break from showing us the best, the worst and the somewhere in between of Crown International Pictures to take us back to the days of made for TV movies, a place that this site knows all too well.
Originally airing March 21, 1983 and also known as the sexier title Doctor In Paradise, this is all about a young doctor named Dr. Kyle Richards(Anthony Geary) who is managing a doctor’s office in the Hamptons.
That sexy title is not so appropriate because this is a movie all about the heartbreak of herpes, which was the worst thing that could happen in 1983. Dr. Kyle decides to go public with the news that this town is getting more than just cold sores.
Most of the fun of this movie comes from spotting the stars amongst the cast, like Who’s the Boss star Judith Light, NCIS protagonist Mark Harmon, Robert Vaughn and Shawn Schepps, who went on to write Encino Man, Son In Law and Drumline. Did you know they made a TV movie sequel to Encino Man called Encino Woman? Yep. They sure did.
You know who taught me about herpes? Paul Bartel. I think I did OK.
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