bobbyknightmare

Finally, the show is on DVD. So far, just a one disc set, but it contains six great episodes, including the pilot and important episodes that really focus on the relationship between Chico and Ed Brown, and the personalities of both men to help explain how two such different people could care so much for each other. This was a terrific show and had Freddie not died, it could have run for a decade, if Freddie wasn't a movie star by then. Let's hope we can see more episodes released in the future. This was a show that Chicanos could be proud of and that still entertained everyone else.

And yes, the "Cousin Pepe" episode is in there!

Never mind the idea of making Bob Dornan and action movie star, but this boring snoozefest contains what has to be the worst line ever said in movie history.

Dornan is "romancing" a typical Midwest farmgirl and listening to her talk about raising corn. At the end, Dornan tries to make time with her by saying...

...ready for this?

Are you sure?

Seriously, you can stop now.

OK, I warned ya...

"...I always knew sex could be corny, but who knew corn could be so sexy?"

AAAAUUUUURRRRRGGGGGHHHHHH!

Just a piece of advice for film makers. The day-to-day operations of the typical military base or unit usually doesn't make very riveting viewing. Trust me, I know firsthand.

I first encountered this tape, along with its companion, "When The Applause Died," in a video store in North Dakota and rented it often because the archival footage and plain-speaking accounts of the deaths of some of Hollywood's greats were just irresistible to me for their historic value.

I moved away from the Peace Garden State and for years couldn't find this title. Thank goodness for Ebay, that's all I can say. I eventually won both (and if there's a third part to this series, I'd love to find that, too!), and I hope that eventually this will come onto DVD, perhaps updated.

I like this documentary and I think you will too.

I discovered this title, along with companion title "Death In Hollywood," in a video store in Minot, ND. They're both great documentaries, with plenty of classic scenes, movie trailer, clips of performances and pulls no punches in describing and showing the destruction that substance abuse wreaked upon some of the industry's top stars and their families.

Beginning with Fatty Arbuckle and ending with Janis Joplin, the tragic consequences of alcohol and drug abuse are shown, with no attempt to romanticize their affects rather showing the waste and pain that they brought to the performers and their fans.

Perhaps the two titles will one day be updated and put on DVD. Until then, check Ebay often and bid aggressively.

First, Fat Albert. Then, Picture Pages (I know he didn't create it, but do you think of anyone else when the topic comes up?). Then, Bill Cosby creates Little Bill, and cements his legend as not only an entertainer, but and educator. Except for Fat Albert (which I recommend highly), my son has seen both of these works and also catches "The Cosby Show." Believe me, if I had to pick one entertainer that ends up my son's favorite TV star, thank goodness it's Bill Cosby. Even his bad films, like Leonard Part 6 and Ghost Dad, are pretty OK for kids as entertainment. And knowing him, there's been a positive message of some sort in both those films for kids all along that we've been missing.

Pay the three bucks or so to rent this at your local store. I have seen this on TV a few times this year, and every time, it gets mutilated to cut anything that might be considered not politically correct. Wasn't being offensive the whole point of the film? To show the ugly side of people's blind greed, hatred and hypocrisy? Instead, and ABC Family is the worst of the bunch, the cable networks just try to milquetoast Mel Brooks' vision down for family viewing. Hello! When did Mel Brooks ever care about being "family" when he had a point to make?

Rent the movie, it is the funniest thing! And network programmers, if you can't handle Mel Brooks trying to point out reality and truth to you, don't even bother showing his films.

I don't get it to this day. One week, I'm watching a show doing a brilliant parody of those old "lost jungle goddess" films in flawless Abbott and Costello style, the next week, it's gone.

Any show with Rob Reiner directing and Christopher Guest and Joe Flaherty writing should be the biggest thing on television. The episodes I saw were sure funny enough to compete with anything I ever saw. Sadly, it's been reduced to a quick mention in Rob Reiner's resume, which is sad because I could tell that Rob really loved this one.

Any chance there's a video of this floating around somewhere?

As nice as it is to see any film still trying to remember the true origins of Christmas, I get a little creeped out when I see a film trying to fuse Santa, Jesus and Merlin into the same story. The moment I see Santa praying for guidance from Jesus, I keep wondering why he doesn't just let Him handle the devil. Head to head, I think Jesus has a pretty good record against the Mangoat. Why does the devil even care about Santa to begin with? And what does Merlin have to do Christmas to begin with?

And why do we only see secular mascots (Santa, Easter Bunny) for Christian holidays? Why isn't there a Passover Dragonfly or a Kwanza Polar Bear or something?

It's sad that Allison Court is going to be known more for doing the voice of Jubilee on "X-Men" (yes, that's her!) than for this show, which is one of dozens of promising and solid children's shows that never got enough of a chance to catch on. Maybe in its native Canada it gets more respect, but here on the other side of the falls, an educational show is judged more by how much merchandise it sells than how much children learn from it.

For an adult, the show may look at times silly and cheesy, but to toddlers and pre-schoolers, who these shows are aimed at, it's a show that is at the same time exciting and soothing.

Hey, remember when MTV original programming actually had plots and writers, and weren't just cameras aimed at teenagers hoping they'd take their clothes off? Or even when MTV actually played VIDEOS? By bands that weren't talented, but not top 40 pop acts?

Just barely? Well, there once was a time that MTV cared about the products they put their name on, and Beavis and Butthead were the last of that era.

At least MTV decided to pull the plug before running this into the ground, though not before they produced the truly awful spin-off, "Daria". Sure, let's take the most annoying, uninteresting character and build a whole show around her (C'mon, weren't you all just praying for someone to one day toss her in a car trunk and drive it into the lake?).

Huh huh. I said "hole".

But before it ended, MTV made this movie, which was amazingly good, since people had doubts that their schtick could play out for two hours with no videos. They did get a lot of help from a solid cast of supporting characters, such as those played by Robert Stack, Cloris Leachman and Bruce Willis, and a wild plot that needed the whole movie to tie together, but was worth the wait.

And the scene where the whiny hippie got beaten to a pulp was a nice touch, too.

It was like a cinema all star game. Tom Hanks' best performance (Sorry, Gump-heads), Madonna's best performance by far, Jon Lovitz' best performance, even Rosie O'Donnell was likable. It's not often when a movie comes along where everyone in the cast gives their best performance, but this is it. Add to it a real surprise climax that didn't follow the cliche sports movie formula, you have a film every bit as good as Slap Shot and A Season On The Brink.

A few things to look forward to:

Funniest lines: Tom Hanks

Funniest scene: Tom Hanks gets offered the Rockford managers' job

Funniest scene (non-verbal): Dueling signals in the dugout

Best scene: Tom Hanks trying to talk Geena Davis into staying with the team and not quit and get married

Choke back the tears scene: The telegram (You'll know it when you see it)

Underdog character you can't help but root for: Marla Hooch

Enjoy!

If the fans of MST3K, such as me, can ever get together and create an MST3K Hall Of Fame, this movie might be inducted in as a charter member in the film category. John Humphries definitely will be inducted as a charter member in the actors category, along with such luminaries as Joe Don Baker, Ross Hagen, John Agar and...the guy...you know, the one who played Torgo.

Humphries made only one MST3K appearance, but it was a great one, playing a character so annoying that you're just begging the other characters to give him a swirley or rub his face in crunchy underwear.

Fortunately, Humphries seems to have a sense of humor and reality, as he didn't foolishly follow other MST3K actors into years of horrible films, thinking he'd eventually get his big break.

This is the reason I watch "Adult Swim" every week, on the chance that ATHF are in the line-up. An incompetent but egotistical shake, a super intelligent box of fries and a happy-go-lucky meatball spend the day outwitting the most incompetent gang of villains this side of the Amoeba Boys and tormenting their loser neighbor to the point where you can actually feel sorry for the poor, no class, unemployable, grouchy slob.

Shake is similar to at least one person who works with all of us. He's a bully, he's lazy, he's selfish, he's pathetic at what he does, but he feels he's the leader just because he says he is. Frylock is the guy at the office or the plant who actually DOES know what he's doing and saves the day without any desire for the responsibility or glory of leadership. Meatwad is the guy who tries his best, usually doesn't hit the mark perfectly and is just fun to have around.

Full-length movie anyone? Or at least a marathon?

This show has turned me into an instant "Sea Monkey". It's hilarious, I mean laugh out loud funny, with the added kitsch factor of Erik "Mailbox Head" Estrada portraying a marine biologist.

If you're looking for me Sunday nights at 11:45, then this is where you'll find me.

Yo, Cartoon Network, think that maybe you can stop playing one of the dozens of annoying, lame installments of "The Land Before Time" one weekend to run all of these episodes back-to-back?

...but it helps to know what the "Canadian Content Law" and other Canadian references mean. Lucky me, I am and I do.

Even so, The Red Green Show is a human cartoon with all of the pitfalls, screw-ups, lapses of judgement and fun that one could expect from The Simpsons, Warner Brothers and Family Guy.

Besides that, Red Green is a parody of everything that men are expected to be by either gender. Red's Handyman's Corner shows a man more obsessed with getting the job done quickly and cheaply, and have his project stay together just long enough to be effective.

And while his projects somehow survive, nothing else seems to fall the way of the gang at Possum Lake. Their get-rich-now schemes verify the wisdom of the adage "Those who strive to create a fool-proof plan too often underestimate the ingenuity and persistence of fools".

Red may keep his stick on the ice, but his head and those of his friends, God only knows where they've gone.

As you can tell from my chosen screen name (a nickname I got on the job), I had a great interest in this film and it paid off. After all the pre-film publicity and trailers, I expected a scene in which disgruntled players and whiny referees chased Coach Knight with torches to the old windmill.

Instead, and having read the book I know this, the film stayed very close to the book and made a real attempt to show both Knight in his rages and tantrums and as a mentor, friend and a loving father. This film gives no quarter to either the pro-Knight or anti-Knight fans. The casting was excellent and the film's action scenes looked like these guys at least hit the local high school gym a few hours per week to get ready.

If I have any complaint with this film, it's that they seemed to try to use basketball footage to connect random episodes from the book. There would be a very moving, intense scene, then a graphic saying something like "Indiana won seven of the next eight games". This is like making a movie about World War II beginning with Hitler's election in Germany, then showing a graphic saying "Germany invaded Poland in 1939 and then conquored France", then cutting to a scene of The Battle of the Bulge.

But other than that, this was a great film, one of the few truly great sports films.

From what passes for the mind of the thinking man's thinker, Weird Al Yankovic, we have a film that was prophetic in that it showed us a world where anyone could have his/her own station. And it showed a station that is no worse than many of the "real" networks and much better than most.

Tell me that we don't need U-62 more than we need four home shopping channels or C-SPAN 3. The funny part about this whole movie is that somehow, I thought that as the movie went along, Al was thinking "maybe that's not such a bad idea".

Had this riot not been released in the same summer as Batman, Indiana Jones and other blockbusters, this would have been considered on a par with The Naked Gun, Monty Python and National Lampoon. Instead, it remains a wonderful, insane little secret for those of us who have seen it and were lucky enough to own a copy on video or now DVD.

And I thought it was great that Al offered a cameo role to Dr. Demento, who helped put him on the map.

I honestly don't know what's keeping them from making UHF-2.

This was a pretty funny movie, especially if you're a fan of pro wrestling and recognize the characters involved. Benedict plays a variation of his Face Man character, only no Mr. T to get him out of trouble (surprisingly). Throw in Charles Nelson Reilly, Billy Barty and a dancing Bruno Sammartino, you have to get some laughs, even accidentally.

Well worth the two hours.

This was truly a poor movie, considering the actors involved. But it was way ahead of its time in addressing the major questions of medical cloning. Is it ethical to create life only to destroy it? And the most important question: who decides who benefits from this and who suffers?

I'm happy to see that some in Hollywood are going an extra mile to recognize the great work and talent of our great horror film actors like Lugosi, Karloff, Price and the Chaneys.

But I'm disappointed to see that John Carradine hasn't received his share of credit yet. Carradine had this great aura about him of the man teetering on the precipt between sanity and madness in many of his parts. And no one who ever saw him in even the B films such as "Unearthly" or "Red Zone Cuba" can ever say that he wasn't by far the best performer in the picture or say that he ever gave less than his best efforts.

I consider myself a person who is willing to judge any film on its own merits. I'm patient with low-budget films that at least TRY to be something worth watching.

My patience has its limits, however, and this is a movie that goes far beyond them. This film was so bad that I don't even feel it's worth it to type the title of it.

The plot seems to be a secret between Ray Dennis Steckler and his writer because he never revealed any of it in two hours. The actors appear to have never been properly introduced to each other. The performance scenes are reminiscent of a bunch of your drunk relatives at a wedding trying to dance or do karaoke (save for the comedian, who is like that guy at the office who seems to mistake "Hi" for an invitation to try out his stand-up routine).

The sound quality was horrible, but that may have been a blessing when I remember what dialogue I COULD make out, particularly the pompadour guy who played Russian Roulette with accents.

This may have been the one movie that Mike Nelson and the Bots were seriously tempted to walk out on...even considering they were in a spaceship. Well, a cold, horrible death in the inky blackness of space would have been a more merciful fate.

I don't get this one. From looking at his biography, Robert Easton strikes me as a capable, talented performer, certainly someone who should have seen this one coming a mile away. Even Alan Hale deserved much better.

Yet, there they are on screen, basically going out of their way to be loathsome and stupid for us and evoking only pity instead. And when you consider that these two are the most believable people in the cast...

But some fault should go behind the camera, too. It took an hour for the writer to finally reveal to us that the redneck couple were growing marijuana on their farm, then never went anywhere with that.

This film was so blatantly lousy, the gang at MST3K must have marked this on their schedule as "Open Date".

Joe Don Baker is, in my eyes, a likeable enough lug who, like many actors, happened to grow a little older and a little thicker at a time when Hollywood had no tolerance for people who weren't under 30 and/or at least 45 percent post-consumer plastic.

So wisely, Baker decided to switch from leading man roles to character roles; the big, rough-edged but likeable and honest cop roles like Mitchell and T.J. Geronimo.

Baker's work in the late 70s and early 80s remind me of that one uncle that your parents didn't like to be around, but the kids loved and who was always the first one there to help when the family was in need.

Anyways...

"Final Justice" is probably as good a movie as one could have expected from the producers of the European and kid-with-rich-parents-and-just-out-of-film-school cheap-offs that provide MST3K with so much of their schedule. Baker was believable in his role, as was his constantly frustrated yet admiring partner.

Ladies and gentlemen, I doubt highly that Joe Don Baker looked at the script and saw it as his ticket to an E! Celebrity Profile. What he did see it as was a chance to stay busy, have fun and make a few bucks. And give him credit, he always puts his all into every film he does. How many performers can truly say the same?

As hard as the MST3K gang laugh at Joe Don baker, he gets the biggest laugh of all. Their constant slaps at him are only keeping his career alive.

If it wasn't for them, how many of you would be reviewing this movie?

Good television does not just entertain but make you wonder. This show makes me wonder several things...

* Why did it take another 20 years for executives to find another good series for Ken Howard?

* Why did this show survive only three years while CBS allowed "Alice", "One Day At A Time", "The Jeffersons" and "All In The Family" to die pathetically three years after they stopped being entertaining?

* Who makes these decisions, anyhow?

This was by far one of the best shows ever. Set in an inner city, the directors worked hard to make it realistic. And they did. Jackson got killed. Thorpe and Coolidge got herpes from the same woman. Reese fell victim to an unscrupulous high school coach. Salami had an affair with a teacher. Hayward's cousin died of a drug overdose. Goldstein struggled with his faith. Coach Reeves struggled with the death of a player during practice. Gomez joined a gang. The show's honesty and wonderful direction and script was so good it was even played on public television in some areas.

Coach Reeves mentored the kids, but never patronized them or tried to be "down" with them. His attitude was "Believe it or not, I've been where you are. So I'll offer you my advice. You can take it or not, but you will have to live with the results either way, so choose carefully." And Reeves also learned from the kids and they learned from each other.

It was a show with limitless potential, but was on a network with limited vision. Pity.

Sigh. I never stop being amazed at those who watch low budget projects expecting "The Sound Of Music". As far as the indy action films go, "The Quest For The Lost City" (or "The Final Sacrifice" as I know it) is an enjoyable film that doesn't try to extend itself too far out of its budget and acting capabilities. A reasonable plot, sets that looked like they fit with the story, characters that similarly fit in with the story and some good action scenes. The background music sounded a little annoying at times, particularly the 1980s video game music during some driving scenes, but otherwise, a good film given its resources.

Besides, it was nice to see a hero in Rowsdower who looked like one of us in the audience for a change.