Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 19th, 2009
It all starts with antique dealer Uncle Lewis. He made a deal with the devil to help His Evilness to distribute cursed and evil objects through his store. Objects included Jack The Ripper’s scalpel. Finally Satan comes to collect Uncle Lewis and his tattered soul, leaving his niece Micki (Robey) to clean up the mess. She and cousin Ryan (Le May) have the unenviable task of tracking down these items and sealing them safely away so they can do no more harm. They were often assisted in their task by Jack (Wiggins) who knew something of the occult. The series ran from 1987 to 1990 and never made more than a ripple in the ratings. The show included Steve Monarque as Johnny Ventura in this second season.
We pretty much pick up where the previous season left off. Uncle Lewis might have been defeated and killed, but Lewis had enchanted a mirror before he died, allowing him to open a portal to Hell and escape. So it’s back to tracking down the artifacts and getting them all returned. Artifacts this season included a voodoo mask, antique radio, violin bow, make-up case, handkerchief, pocket watch, World Series ring, pendant, snow globe, and snow shoes.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on February 19th, 2009
Sabrina, the Teenage Witch is a character that actually originated in 1962. She debuted in Archie Comics for the publication Archie’s Mad House issue #22. She was intended to be one of those one-shot characters, but the audience liked her so much that she found a home in Archie Comics for a while, even getting her own book starting in 1971. In 1996, a television show was launched. It would last seven seasons and one-hundred and sixty three episodes. This was a great run for a show that was only created to bring a little bit of magic into everybody’s lives.
Sabrina Spellman (played by Melissa Joan Hart) has enrolled into Adams College. She decides to leave behind her aunts, Hilda and Zelda (played by Caroline Rhea & Beth Broderick) and move into the dorms. Salem (voiced by Nick Bakay), her talking cat (he’s really a trapped warlock) also can’t come as she must try to adjust to college life alone.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 13th, 2009
Night Court appeared on the scene at NBC in 1984 and was to last 8 seasons. If you thought it looked and sounded a lot like Barney Miller, you won’t be surprised to learn that a number of key people, including creator Reinhold Weege, came from that classic cop comedy. Several key elements of Miller can be found in Night Court. The themes are almost identical with both beginning with an easily identifiable bass run. The most important imported element from Miller was the constant parade of the kookiest and craziest criminals this side of the Cuckoo’s Nest.From a hick farmer played by then beginner Brent Spiner to hookers with hearts, Night Court relied heavily on the eccentric character to provide most of its laughs.
Harry Stone (Anderson) is a young hip judge who almost blunders into a judgeship of a Manhattan evening session courtroom. The role appears tailor fit for Anderson’s style of humor. The character even retained Anderson’s flair for amateur magic. He was always trying to bring levity to even the most dire of circumstances. Joining him in his courtroom was prosecutor Dan Fielding, played by the extremely funny John Larroquette. He was a material man with an overactive lust for the ladies. He was self centered and always looking to gain from someone else’s misfortune. He would often find himself having to suck up to the young judge who he found too footloose with the law. His groveling always brought the judge a perverse pleasure. The court was presided over by two bailiffs. Bull was played by Richard Moll. He was a mountain of a man with a bald head. While he might look and act like a monster who would eat little babies, he was in fact, a gentle and often childish character with an IQ lower than his shoe size. His partner and mentor was Selma, played by the raspy voiced Selma Diamond. Selma was a no nonsense, say what she wanted to, chain smoking authority in the courtroom. Unfortunately, Diamond would pass away after this second season, and this is your last chance to catch the character. Charles Robinson joined the cast in the second year as the court’s new clerk. He was likely the most “normal” member of the cast. Throughout its run there were a rather large number of actresses to play the public defender role in the series. Eventually that role went to Markie Post who kept it for the longest time. In season two it was Billy Young playing a very awkward Ellen Foley. The character never clicks with any of the others, and she will also be gone at the season’s conclusion.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on February 11th, 2009
My initial reaction to most kid shows that have references to the bible are a mixture of sarcasm and skepticism. There is one exception to that rule: Veggie Tales. Veggie Tales was started in 1993 when VHS was still strong and kids were still highly impressionable under the influence of a weathered old videotape. They bring together a wonderful blend of a fun children’s show (under the guise of a bunch of talking vegetables) and have very good values to live one’s life by. So in my first title to review from the people at Big Idea, I receive a DVD about Abe and his Amazing Promise. Hopefully this Abe character has a promise about some cookies, I’m hungry.
Bob the Tomato receives a fan’s letter and decides to read it. He is joined by Junior filling in for Larry (the Cucumber). The fan’s letter is about “waiting” for something special. Bob relates his answers to the ancient biblical tale of Abraham and Sarah. This tale tells the story of how Abraham asked for a child and how it took fifteen years for them to receive that child. However, despite the hard pressures and substantial turmoil for Abe and his wife, God kept his promise and delivered them a child as a reward for their faith.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on February 10th, 2009
What a sordid mess!
Melrose Placelingered in the dark recesses of viewers’ hearts and souls as the guiltiest of pleasures for seven seasons. Wrapping up at the end of its seventh season with a ridiculously clichéd fake death twist for two major characters, the ingredients for it all are here in the fifth season – or the first half of it.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 4th, 2009
Hedda and Neal (Lydia Lunch and Don Bajema) are a couple whose relationship needs work. They have retreated to an old plantation house for precisely that reason, but then Hedda invites over her former lover, Jackson (Henry Rollins). The inevitable triangle that occurs is intercut with flashes of other events from the house’s past.
The fact that the film is barely more than half-an-hour long will be perceived as either a blessing or a curse, depending on the viewer. While this is not as abrasive as Lunch’s collaborations with Richard Kern (Fingered), it will be a hard sell for many viewers due to technical aspects alone (see below). Lunch cuts loose as a femme fatale, but her revealing outfits and pale-face-and-crimson-lips makeup remain resolutely New York Underground, looking rather silly in the rural setting. Some evocative shots, then, and some amusing bits of dollar-store surrealism (check out the bunnies in the kitchen), but also rather more pedestrian than it thinks it is.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 4th, 2009
I was first introduced into the somewhat twisted world of Dave Barry in 1986 when I moved to Florida. The Tampa paper carried his Sunday column, and all I can remember is that it had something to do with dinosaurs on the beach and that I couldn’t stop laughing. For years afterward both my wife and I made the column regular Sunday reading. As years went on other things fill one’s life, and I only occasionally read the material until he disappeared almost completely from the Central Florida scene, keeping more to himself some 250 miles to our south. He’s since spent a lot of time playing in a writer’s band with the likes of Stephen King. So I was pretty eager when Dave’s World first came to television in 1993. To say I was disappointed wouldn’t exactly be fair. The show was pretty funny, but Harry Anderson was so ingrained in my mind from his Night Court role that I never did accept him as Dave Barry. Once I was able to separate the character from the writer, the show was a little better going for me.
Anderson supplies narration to the show in a voice much like that of his column so that we’re placed into that world. It was a nice touch. Dave (Anderson) worked from home. He had a wife (Matthews) who was a teacher. He also had two young children. Most of the show dealt with Dave’s childlike look at the world around him. He found life to border on the ridiculous, and that’s what he wrote about. His world was also populated by the typical guy friends that have become staple in shows like King Of Queens and Everybody Loves Raymond.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 4th, 2009
Who says no one likes a guy who’s negative all the time? Becker has got to be one of the most cynical, grumpy, and negative characters to grace our sit-com screens. He’s a guy you probably love to hate, and he’s also hilarious. Ted Danson spent over a decade behind the bar at Cheers and could have easily called it a career. You know, stop while you’re ahead. Instead he climbed right back into the television saddle and reemerged as Dr. Becker. This time he’s a medical doctor who hates everything and everyone around him. Refusing to display that little bit of a heart we all know he has, Becker spends most of his life complaining about everything. Never before has it been so much fun to watch a guy moan and groan for twenty minutes at a time. Fortunately for him, Becker is truly a dedicated doctor, and while he’s likely to complain about it the whole time, he’ll go to any extreme to help a patient.
The secret to Becker’s genius is characters. Like Cheers before it, Becker is populated with wonderfully distinctive characters played by actors carefully cast for the roles. To start with there’s his office nurse, Margaret, played skillfully by Hattie Winston. Margaret runs things for Becker in his doctor’s office. She’s pretty much his mother and the brains behind the outfit. She’s one of those straight talking ladies that don’t take any guff, and that means not even from Becker. The office assistant is Linda, played by Saw star Shawnee Smith. Linda’s used to getting by on her looks, which is fortunate because she’s naive and a little short on the intelligence front. How she got the job and holds it is anyone’s guess, but her blundering makes for some classic comedy. Becker spends much of his off time at a café owned by Reggie. Reggie is portrayed by Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s resident Trill, Terry Farrell. There’s a hint of a romantic interest here. Reggie is more interested talking about her own pitiful social life than serving her customers. Jake, played by Alex Desert, is blind, and interestingly enough runs a newsstand out of Reggie’s Café. He’s pretty much Becker’s best friend and often foil. A frequent patron of the Café is sleaze Bob, played by Saverio Guerra. He’s got the hots for Reggie and just about any other woman who meets his criteria (breathing) even though he’s married to an unseen wife. Bob always refers to himself in the third person and is clearly the most entertaining support character on the show. He was a recurring character up to year three where he was finally upgraded to regular. I can’t imagine the Becker universe without him.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 4th, 2009
The second season of The Invaders saw a shift in the show’s focus. Vincent has started to get his message out there, and some of these people are organizing. There’s no doubt, that if left to continue, the show might have taken on a more resistance center much like Kenneth Johnson’s V mini-series. If you’re looking for a conclusion, you won’t really get it. Vincent’s still out there, and so are the Invaders. Unfortunately, The Invaders only lasted for two seasons, and David Vincent never did manage to warn the world. While he was able to defeat the many tasks The Invaders were plotting, all he was able to do was delay the inevitable. There was a revival mini-series in the 90’s that did include Roy Thinnes reprising his role of David Vincent, but he was not the central character. Instead it was Quantum Leap’s Scott Bakula that took on the job of trying to warn the world and stop the Invaders from completing their tasks. The mini-series was intended as a back door pilot for a new show, but whether it be ratings or lack of network interest, the new series never materialized, leaving the invaders and their plots to dissolve in the otherworldly existence of cancellation. There is some talk that the Sci-Fi Channel has considered at potential show, but again nothing has ever really come of those rumors.
Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not really out to get you. That old axiom has never been more true than for David Vincent in the Martin Quinn series The Invaders. Quinn was best known for his police procedural shows like The FBI. At the time of the The Invaders Quinn was going into the final season of one of his most popular shows, The Fugitive. While most people over the years have compared The Invaders to that Quinn production, they were really not as similar as all that. In The Fugitive the hero, Richard Kimball, played by David Janssen, had a very specific mission. He was wrongly convicted of killing his wife and was on the trail of the real killer, whom he had witnessed. The “one armed man” became an iconic figure in television history and provided Dr. Kimball with his “Holy Grail”. David Vincent’s mission was far more complicated and seldom so cut and dried. He was honestly more akin to Dr. Bennell, played by sci-fi favorite Kevin McCarthy from Invasion Of The Body Snatchers. In both cases you had one man who knew that aliens were invading and even replacing humans. As I watched this collection of Invaders episodes, I couldn’t help but be reminded of McCarthy’s famous scene running down the street trying to convince the world of the impending invasion.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 3rd, 2009
Director Rene Daalder is best known in cult film circles as the man who gave us Massacre at Central High. But now Cult Epics has released a pair of his films (this and Here Is Always Somewhere Else) that seem more in keeping with his real interests. A long and twisting road led to this effort, starting with an abortive collaboration with Russ Meyer and the Sex Pistols, which brought Daalder into the world of punk rock. In that field he met Tomata Du Plenty, vocalist for The Screamers. After funding for their proposed collaboration Mensch collapsed and Du Plenty’s HIV-positive status became apparent, they put together the present film out of a mixture of footage from the abandoned project, plus new elements. The striking result is Du Plenty as the last survivor of nuclear holocaust, holed up in his bunker, declaming/singing poetic rants about the history of the United States, all the while surrounded by a phantasmagoria of bizarre sights. Whether the result is compelling or pretentious (or both) will depend on one’s sympathies with respect to the art scene from which it emerges, but that it is a work that rigorously works out its conceptual and artistic premises all the way to the end cannot be denied.
Audio
