Disc Reviews

Three-time widower Ben Cartwright  (Greene) runs his famous Ponderosa Ranch with the aid of his three grown sons from three different mothers. There’s Little Joe (Landon), Adam (Roberts) and Hoss (Blocker). Set some time in the mid 1800’s, this long-running series followed the family’s many exploits. In the late 1950’s westerns accounted for six of the top ten programs on TV. Only Gunsmoke had a longer run than Bonanza. From 1959 to 1973, Ben Cartwright and his boys rode across the small screen. Years later in syndication the series re-emerged as Ponderosa, and a handful of TV movies continued the tale into the 90’s.We never have grown tired of the genre that gave us such heroes as John Wayne and Clint Eastwood.

Unlike many of the 1960's Western television shows, Bonanza was all about the characters. You rarely saw a gunfight. There was often a bit of fisticuffs, but usually it ended with a lesson that violence never pays. The show prided itself on using the Western genre to deliver a family kind of show, and it's no surprise that series star Michael Landon would use many of the same kinds of stories and lessons on his own Little House On The Prairie. The Cartwrights are always helping widows, the wrongly accused, and the local Indian population. That help often lands them in hot water.

The setting for Gunsmoke was the by-now-famous Dodge City, circa 1870’s. Phrases like “get out of Dodge” would enter the popular lexicon as a result of this resilient series. Marshall Dillon (Arness) was charged with keeping the peace in Dodge City. The only other character to see the entire 20-year run was kindly Doc Adams (Stone). Star Trek’s own Doc, Leonard McCoy, took many of his traits from Doc Adams. He was the humanitarian of the city, always looking to help someone. Like McCoy, he had a taste for bourbon and a soft heart underneath a rather gruff exterior and was always ready with free advice. Dillon’s love interest throughout most of the series was Miss Kitty Russell (Blake). While there were certainly a few romantic undercurrents, the romance never came to fruition. Miss Kitty was a prostitute on the radio and was likely one here as well, but CBS chose to underplay that aspect of her character as a “saloon girl”. Finally Dillon’s faithful sidekick deputy was Chester (Weaver). Chester often found himself in trouble and was the naïve son figure to Dillon.

Gunsmoke is the longest-running scripted live-action television show in history. The series ran from 1955 to 1975. At first it was a half-hour black-and-white show that evolved into a color hour by 1967. It actually started before the days of television, premiering on radio in 1952. Then it was William Conrad as the tough-as-nails Marshall Matt Dillon. When television came into its own, Gunsmoke made the jump to the bright living room box and made history. Westerns would ride across our small square screens for the next three decades, making it the most successful genre of that time, and it was Gunsmoke that started it all. The television version of Gunsmoke was originally conceived as a vehicle for John Wayne, who opted to remain in movies. Yet it was Wayne himself who suggested James Arness, and it turned out to be a career for the one-time “carrot” monster from The Thing. Gunsmoke started before all of the big westerns and was around when most of them had departed.

Slugterra reminds me of the cartoons from my childhood — like G.I. Joe and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles — where the good guys are always extolling the virtues of friendship, hard work and fair play. The show also seems to be a cross between Pokemon and Transformers, featuring competitors dueling with little creatures called “slugs” that transform into powerful beasts once they hit 100 mph.

One hundred miles beneath the Earth’s surface lies the world of Slugterra. The story revolves around young Eli Shane, an enthusiastic young “slugslinger” who wants to follow in his father’s footsteps of upholding justice and fighting evil. That evil comes in the form of Dr. Blakk, a billionaire scientist obsessed with being the best at dueling and the power that comes from that. Helping Eli fight against Dr. Blakk are his friends: Pronto, a moleniod (think mole-people) tracker with an over-inflated ego; Trixie, the slug expert and amateur filmmaker; and Kord, a cave troll and the group’s mechanic. With each new slug and adventure Eli encounters, he learns more about what it means to be a Shane while coming closer to defeating Dr. Blakk and his mutated “ghoul” slugs.

What makes the horror genre so unique is that it doesn’t have any rules, but it has one goal: to scare us.  And the weirdest thing I find about horror is that so many people enjoy being scared, and, well, some of us have watched some pretty rotten things all in the name of a cheap thrill (my reasoning for watching A Serbian Film).  Lately the trend in horror is to be in the world where our heroes on the screen are put through some very “real” situations and it kind of poses the question: how far is too far? 

Cherry Tree Lane is far from an original story; I somewhat see it as Funny Games meets Ils aka Them.  This is not to insult the film by any means, but let’s face it, there have been plenty of home-invasion films, to the point it could almost be its own subgenre.  But what Cherry Tree Lane does do is put us in this real-time scenario where two parents are held captive as their captors wait for their son to come home.  The terror isn’t from the violence we see on the screen, or even off the screen for that matter; the real terror in fact isn’t violent at all, but is in fact the waiting for the impending doom we know the son has in store for him.