"Private Channel" is clever, inventive eight minute effort from Peter Medak regarding an annoying teen (one person at the Airline called him a twerp) with drum sticks and a radio he's fond of, boarding a plane, immediately getting on the nerves of a stewardess and pilot. During a lighting storm, while in the restroom, Scott Coffey starts to hear (and experience) the thoughts of people on board! Andrew Robinson (also of the JFK TZ episode, Profile in Silver) is grieving father planning to blow up the plane with a bomb under his shirt! Will Coffey be able to convince anyone of what he knows? How the radio and earphones are used on Robinson at the end as frightened passengers worry about their lives is nifty. The kid grew up real quick-like! 7.5/10
"Joyride" has four youths finding a sweet ride from '57 under a tarp in a random yard, deciding to take it for spin, winding up inexplicably in the very year the car was new! A youthful, wild hell-raising Robert Knepper (he has that face you've seen in countless television shows and some movies) urges his brother (Brooke McCarter), brother's gal (Heidi Kozak), and his own girl (Tamara Mark) to go for a stroll around the neighborhoods, soon being chased by police in 1957! When Knepper shoots a police officer in the face and has become overcome by a different personality it seems, the others try to get him to stop. When the group starts to flee, each one winds up out of the car from 1957 back to their own present time! They will need all hands on deck (law enforcement from present day) to drag a determined Knepper out of '57 back where he belongs. So Knepper is possessed by the spirit of a bank robber who used the ride he found in present day, racing around streets as '57 police pursue with McCarter, Kozak, and Mark begging him to halt his crazy speeding and uncontrollable drive to get away. Greg, the McCarter character, just can't say no to Knepper and is nearly arrested / killed because of it! I have to say I thought this was awful. It is a time-warp tale thrown together with below par acting (Knepper would evolve into a much better actor down the road) and a random-as-hell possession angle. The idea is that the bank robber wants to confess for killing a cop and that is why he possessed Knepper, and the cop dragging him out of 1957 with the car servicing as the gateway gets a glimpse into another time. Good-looking car, though. 2/10
"Shelter Skelter" casts Joe Mantegna has a bomb shelter nut just waiting feverishly for nuclear war (!), having stockpiled goods, radioactive and communication tech, weaponry, and door with special device requiring a code. Poor Jon Gries happens to be friends with Mantegna and winds up at his house when a supposed nuclear bomb drops on their town! Mantegna's exhausted wife (played by Joan Allen, of all people) is going to her sister's house in Kansas City while he boozes it up. Danica McKellar (the math genius who also was Ben Savage's paramour of The Wonder Years) is Mantegna's neglected daughter (he teaches his boy how to shoot much to Allen's chagrin). Mantegna's a real louse. He's a drunk with a real attitude problem. When you talk to your buddy about how you hope there's nuclear fallout so "all the scum is burned away", there are a few screws loose. What he does to Gries is reprehensible, but because he took Mantegna to task for how happy go lucky he appears, it was a given he'd dust him off eventually. Allen and the kids looking on at a "dome" set up as a reminder of what *could happen*, with that smirk regarding "where daddy is buried" is quite satisfying. 7/10. The finishing sequence of Mantegna in army fatigues and the rubble above him of what remains of the obliterated city is a knockout.
"Joyride" has four youths finding a sweet ride from '57 under a tarp in a random yard, deciding to take it for spin, winding up inexplicably in the very year the car was new! A youthful, wild hell-raising Robert Knepper (he has that face you've seen in countless television shows and some movies) urges his brother (Brooke McCarter), brother's gal (Heidi Kozak), and his own girl (Tamara Mark) to go for a stroll around the neighborhoods, soon being chased by police in 1957! When Knepper shoots a police officer in the face and has become overcome by a different personality it seems, the others try to get him to stop. When the group starts to flee, each one winds up out of the car from 1957 back to their own present time! They will need all hands on deck (law enforcement from present day) to drag a determined Knepper out of '57 back where he belongs. So Knepper is possessed by the spirit of a bank robber who used the ride he found in present day, racing around streets as '57 police pursue with McCarter, Kozak, and Mark begging him to halt his crazy speeding and uncontrollable drive to get away. Greg, the McCarter character, just can't say no to Knepper and is nearly arrested / killed because of it! I have to say I thought this was awful. It is a time-warp tale thrown together with below par acting (Knepper would evolve into a much better actor down the road) and a random-as-hell possession angle. The idea is that the bank robber wants to confess for killing a cop and that is why he possessed Knepper, and the cop dragging him out of 1957 with the car servicing as the gateway gets a glimpse into another time. Good-looking car, though. 2/10
"Shelter Skelter" casts Joe Mantegna has a bomb shelter nut just waiting feverishly for nuclear war (!), having stockpiled goods, radioactive and communication tech, weaponry, and door with special device requiring a code. Poor Jon Gries happens to be friends with Mantegna and winds up at his house when a supposed nuclear bomb drops on their town! Mantegna's exhausted wife (played by Joan Allen, of all people) is going to her sister's house in Kansas City while he boozes it up. Danica McKellar (the math genius who also was Ben Savage's paramour of The Wonder Years) is Mantegna's neglected daughter (he teaches his boy how to shoot much to Allen's chagrin). Mantegna's a real louse. He's a drunk with a real attitude problem. When you talk to your buddy about how you hope there's nuclear fallout so "all the scum is burned away", there are a few screws loose. What he does to Gries is reprehensible, but because he took Mantegna to task for how happy go lucky he appears, it was a given he'd dust him off eventually. Allen and the kids looking on at a "dome" set up as a reminder of what *could happen*, with that smirk regarding "where daddy is buried" is quite satisfying. 7/10. The finishing sequence of Mantegna in army fatigues and the rubble above him of what remains of the obliterated city is a knockout.