Change Your Image
movies-109
Ratings
Most Recently Rated
Reviews
Airport (1970)
Light Up Two Niner!
I have always had a soft spot for this movie. I was only 12 years old when I saw it brand new, and it was one of the first "grownup" movies I ever saw with all the infidelity and contrived conflicts. But the film is a perfect example of the "Missing Hero" trope, and perhaps the purest form. The missing hero is a person, or a thing - maybe a weapon - that early on is lost, broken, or missing. Much of the rest of the picture is dealing with the fact that it's not there, and wishing it was. Airport, the missing hero is Runway 29, aka two-niner. 29 is the new longer runway that the pilots prefer - and the families that live off the end of the other not-so-good runway 22 would prefer the planes used 29 as well.
So at the very beginning, a 707 lands and misses his taxiway in the deep snow and gets mired with its tail sticking out over runway 29, effectively shutting it down. It doesn't look like much, but that sucker is stuck. You'd think four jet engines would be enough to power through three feet of snowdrift. But not in this movie.
Of course the biggest fan of Two Niner is pilot Dean Martin. Yep, the guy who plays the lush is your captain and we're headed for... Rome!
The Rome flight takes off on 22 blasting the homes at full power. Of course as we already know, there's a suicidal guy with a bomb on board. This was when the biggest threat was despondent white guys and there was virtually no security. We're talking 1970 here. So when the small bomb damages the plane and it's on its way back - apparently evey airport east of Illinois is closed - the crippled plane well.... it NEEDS two niner!
A footnote here, I flew out of Buffalo in the middle of the Blizzard of 78 - the only reason I didn't leave sooner was because Cincinnati was closed, but Buffalo is the arctic and nothing much bothers them. So my advice to Dean Martin would have been to head for Buffalo, but of course that was some years later.
So with the aid of George Kennedy as Joe Patroni (or should we just call him Scotty), the battle to free up the stuck 707 intensifies. Deano has informed the airport manager (his brother in law no less) that if he doesn't get Two Niner, there'll be "a broken airplane and a lot of dead people".
So there comes a moment when time is running out of course, and at the last minute Patroni drives the 707 out of the way, and the immortal words are spoken... LIGHT UP TWO NINER. The hero is back and just in the nick of time! Ok so I was a kid but I still get chills when I watch that movie and hear that line.
The absent hero is such a common plot device - I am going to keep my eyes open for further examples, but this 1970 star-studded blockbuster is one of the purest and makes no attempt to obfuscate it. The heros - Burt Lancaster, George Kennedy, Dean Martin and his stewardess squeeze - are all there, but the real hero is Two Niner.
One other footnote - my first visit to California in the summer of 1971 included the Universal Studios tour. Got to see the 707 model plane used for the flying shots, the 707 interior mockup, and the re-enactment they did with members of the audience was the bomb scene. I never got to see the movie again until it was released on VHS in the mid 1980s. Now I have the DVD and can also watch it on several streaming platforms. Watching it right now on my laptop!
It's a much better movie than the haters will tell you. Formula? You betcha, because it was the first of its kind. Every disaster movie that followed, not just the Airport series but The Posiedon Adventure, The Towering Inferno, Earthquake... they all owe Airport 1970 a tip of the hat.
Barnaby Jones: Murder-Go-Round (1973)
Character Actors Really Shine - Barnaby's Best
I bought the DVD set of the first season mainly to own my own copy of this episode. I watched the show from the pilot onward several years. Some of the later stories got to be pretty predictable, but this one is absolutely classic Barnaby.
Others have mentioned the basic plot, but the characters who are in on it - Dabs Greer, Lou Frizell, Claude Akins, et al, really own this episode every time they get together. And it's classic Barnaby too in the finale. The final "town council" meeting that has them all yelling at each other - and incriminating themselves - is a beautiful study in ensemble acting. Compare for instance, to the Monopoly game in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. I can watch it over and over and in fact I think I will just as soon as I submit this review.
All of the character actors in this episode are familiar faces for anyone who watched TV in the 60s and 70s. Having them all together with equal roles in the consipiracy was a beautiful thing. And it's perfectly written - in classic Barnaby style he just needles them until they incriminate themselves in front of the whole town. Absolutely the best episode of the show.
The Twilight Zone: Printer's Devil (1963)
It's a Wonderful (Complicated!) Life
This is actually my first time viewing the one-hour TZ episodes. Apparently the longer episodes didn't fit the time slots my local station alloted for the syndicated episodes back in the 70s. I find I'm liking a great many of them, especially this one!
My uncle back in the sixties was a linotype operator at a local publisher, and when his company went to newer publishing equipment, he took one of the linotype machines and put it in his garage - fully operational. He made me several type slugs with my name, and gave me a bunch more, and they were perfect for weighting my model train cars. Later on I had customers who were printers and still used lead type, and scored more of them - sometimes I'd carry a 50 lb box of them to my car. I remember the pot of molten lead in my uncles garage, the sounds and smells. I also got to tour the Cincinnati Enquirer back in the sixties when they still used type, and got to see the whole process from linotype to plates to press. Fascinating. Just out of chance, my career as a computer programmer had me working with a number of printing companies at different stages, so I got familiar with things like 4-color presses, how the paper rolls get turned into finished products like multi-part carbon infused computer forms.
What else to say about Burgess Meredith? The other reviews have summarized the story in detail so I won't, but my spoiler is that this one has a happy ending. Twilight Zone's normal message is that even good guys lose - as in the episode where Burgess becomes the last man alive and just wants to be left alone and read books - but then breaks his glasses. Of course the practical problem solver in me wants to believe he could see well enough to go find some information on how to make eyeglasses, and gets back in business. This episode ends without the "gotcha" aspect.
I have also compared The Outer Limits to TZ, and I've always felt that it suffered being in a one hour format, that the stories would have worked better in the half hour and were typically padded and in the process, made boring. There are some excellent OL episodes but in general it doesn't hold a candle to the Twilight Zone.
I continue to be pleasantly surprised watching the "missing season" of TZ on prime video streaming, and I hope it continues to be available. I have more to discover, in addition to revisiting many old friends.
The Twilight Zone: Living Doll (1963)
Like a doll's eyes....
That chilling line from Robert Shaw in JAWS always made me think of Talky Tina, in one of the most memorable episodes of this classic show. I think the Zone's fifth season contains the most episodes that I saw back in the day, although the show was in daily syndication before I ever saw it at all, and they tended to run the later seasons. All we had then was black and white, so I never knew if these old shows were in color or not.
Telly Savalas is probably not the worst stepfather of all time. He's verbally abusive and cruel, he resents his stepdaughter and apparently he himself can't have children although perhaps he shouldn't. I get the impression that he had not been married long. My own parents were good to me especially when it came to toys, and I appreciated that very much. I became a step parent at the age of 26, with two stepdaughters and that's its own story. I wasn't much of a tough guy, in fact as the older daughter once said, I was kind of like having another kid around and I guess I still am. When they had daughters of their own, I couldn't resist buying them any dolls they wanted or anything else for that matter. Talky Tina is similar in size to the American Girl dolls that came about in the 1990s to immense popularity and price - had to slug it out on ebay a couple of times for those. My granddaughter (now 29) may even still have her American Girl dolls.
Anyway, the little plastic doll is clearly a threat to Erich Streator's manhood. Was he really that mean, or didn't know any other way to be? He finally relents and after his attempts to destroy the doll have all failed - the table saw doesn't even put a nick in her neck - he gives her back, but with the ominous warning "I don't forgive you".
In the end, the tumble that breaks Erich's neck and fulfills Tina's promise could have just been an accident. But then when Annabelle picks up the doll laying in front of her dead husband's face, she says "You better be nice to me".
That theme about "being nice" to an entity with the power to enforce it has been a recurring theme in the Twilight Zone - that Billy Mumy episode for instance, and Star Trek's Charlie X, who is an angst-filled 15 year old entering puberty with the power to seriously mess things up.
Equality is a relatively recent concept in the annals of human history. The first time a pint sized 98-pound weakling pulled a pistol on a 250-lb thug swordsman had to have been quite a shocker. In this case, a 18 inch plastic doll takes up for a little girls who deserves better, and perhaps her cruel stepfather didn't deserve to die. But then again... I've seen again and again, guys 4 hours out of jail for domestic violence claiming they haven't had a drink in almost 20 hours, wanting everything back... then demanding it... and then things get all out of hand all over again.
I didn't intend this to be a psychiatric evaluation of Mr. Savalas's character, but he was not physically abusive -well except to the doll anyway. Verbal abuse can be just as bad, or can escalate. In any case, I have little tolerance for domestic violence and I've heard every excuse in the book. I'll leave that right where it is, but in the end this is certainly one of my top five Twilight Zone episodes, if not my outright #1 favorite. I also should say that by the time I saw this episode, I had already seen Kojak so I was familiar with Telly Savalas. Even though he's the bad guy, there's still a lot of Kojak there - the sarcasm, grumpiness. Check him out in Capricorn One, a sensationally wacky film that I initially avoided because it seemed like a platform for moon landing deniers, but it's really quite a ride. Telly is the reluctant hero, and he's a dellight to watch chew the scenery while dodging the fabled black helicopters. Oh well, that's another review!
Lost in Space: The Promised Planet (1968)
Party Like It's 1999!
I saw this episode in the early 70s when I was still pretty square. Plus I had a crush on Penny so I got to see her compulsively table dancing to what was projected to be cool music of the future. Watching it now, the music seems too slow. And that Prince song 1999 has a whole new meaning today. It's now over 40 years old and at the time it seemed to say hey in 2000 the party will be over, so party now! In 2023, 1999 is in the past and represents the end of the anything-goes roaring nineties (thanks Sheryl Crow for immortalizing that notion too).
Watching this silly episode now, it's just as campy and fun as the first time. The music I thought was rockin then.... well I hadn't seen enough go-go dancers and today I love finding old TV music shows with background go-go dancers whose names will never be known, just like Penny's dance partners in their tie-dye leotards. I don't know how anyone can hate this episode if they can rate the whole three seasons of ridiculousness any higher.
Oh yeah, I also liked Star Trek's hippie episode and I've become a fan of 60s TV episodes that take a stab at depicting hippie and youth culture. Mod Squad took ex-hippies and turned them into square - and unarmed - cops. Check out The Girl From Uncle "The Drublegratz Affair" for a Seattle rock band doing a silly song about a Bulgarian baby that causes an avalanche. With Stefani Powers cage dancing. And so on. Pick any post-cowboy TV show from 1965 or so onward. And see just how much Hollywood didn't get it. I love the stuff. And look for videos of go-go dancers... almost every live or lip synced pop song on TV had them. Pulled off the contract dockets and given cute costumes and one rehearsal. Hey they were pros. The unsung extras that made TV fun.
I won't be jumping on (and breaking) any tables, but I can still watch and enjoy.
Star Trek: The Mark of Gideon (1969)
Planet of the Trillion Bunny Suits!
Everyone has described this episode pretty well. I only rate it a 2 because a) all third season episodes get a handicap of +1, b) I reserve the lowest rating for The Alternative Factor, alone, and c) It's still Star Trek but real close to the bottom. The plot and such has been fleshed out but a few points:
* Spock figures out the Enterprise is fake in about 3 seconds. Of course he was expecting something like this with the different coordinates. Kirk OTOH, although unwittingly drugged, plays right into it from the get go.
* Gideon is described as "encased in a living mass". Such a thing would be rather difficult to film. Maybe the new CGI version brings us a billion digital Gideons instead of the two dozen extras in bunny suits bumping into each other.
* How did Gideon have the resources to build a duplicate of the Enterprise? Forget that, how did they find the SPACE? Just shove more people closer and closer - kind of like a black hole of people?
* Historical situations of overcrowding have come about due to refugees from natural disasters, or deliberate crowding of prisoners into a small space. Assuming Gideon is the size of earth, how many people would it take to pack the place wall to wall (sea to shining sea?) with people? The calculation gives me a headache.
* I realize it's a parable. It's a potentially real problem blown so far out of proportion as to be ridiculous. Not long after, China began its "One Child" policy, which had many unintended consequences - none the least of which is - not enough young people today. The earth is overpopulated today, and yet there are people that think every family should have their own organic garden. I can't even get decent tomatoes and I've been at it several years AND I have the space. What about 10 million New Yorkers in hi-rises, where will their organic gardens go?
* I must admit, I was creeped out seeing this episode the first time at age 12 - the brief scenes of people bumping into each other like a Tokyo subway. Where are they going? Do they have jobs? Gotta wonder how even Hodin's tiny little government outpost is funded. Do they all pay taxes?
* This episode appears to have been created by putting two unrelated stories together. Badly. Somebody came up with the notion of putting Kirk on the Enterprise by himself, as a mystery. It really has nothing to do with the whole overpopulation question.
* Hodin says anyone on Gideon would kill to have a place to himself. Really? Why don't they then? A shortage of essential resources has been a frequent cause of war, from the smallest to the largest scale imaginable.
* Ya know what, it's still Star Trek and I'd watch this even over a lot of other things. Kirk's girl this time is boring and far dumber than his usual conquests, and offers nothing for him except lame non-answers to his questions. So he falls for her "Gideon and Gideon, what is Gideon?" routine.
* All else aside... if the solution to the population problem was simply to introduce a disease, the universe certainly must have offered infinite possibilities. Heck, invite a bunch of Klingons down for shore leave. They'll kill a few hundred but probably infect trillions.
A terminally silly and pointless episode. I've always wanted to have my say about it. Spock's Brain is... highly logical in comparison. The idea of a human brain being interfaced to a vast network is certainly not new to science fiction, not even in 1969, and creeps a little closer to reality every year. Earth's population may continue to increase, but something will put a stop to it. It is inevitable. It may be one problem we don't look forward to solving, nor will we like the solution. The bubonic plague paved the way for the Renaissance in Europe. With the population reduced by 1/3, simple survival was no longer something to have to fight and die for. Humans had time to think, create, actually live.
If you were a bunny-suit extra on this episode, congrats on surviving the population crunch! Oh and who made all the bunny suits? Was there a bunny suit factory? Did people work there? Or were most of the inhabitants naked and only the ones bumping outside the government HQ given bunny suits?
Such fun to ask such silly questions. The Mark of Gideon is the silly answer.
Star Trek: All Our Yesterdays (1969)
Yeah But Why The Middle Ages?
This is a gem of an episode from near the very end. Very sad when the star silently explodes at the end, taking the planet and all of its history with it.
But I have a question. What is the fascination with the middle ages? If you're going to live out your life in the past, why would you pick a time when human conditions were close to their worst? Plagues, warlords, feudalism, thug rule? Kirk ended up there by accident but the magistrate that he discovers has come from the future actually chose that life. Ok, he made himself a person of power but must have had some strange fantasies.
Then again, a very popular series called Game of Thrones takes place on a fictional world in the age of having to get on your knees and say "your grace" to murdering despots. I guess it makes for good drama, and then there's the SCA re-enactors, but that's all in fun and they have a festival with turkey legs and all. But if I had to go live my life out in our planet's past, I think I'd stay the hell away from that period of time, at least in that place.
He called to the spirit... and did call it... Bones! One time when the nickname proved to be... inconvenient.
And the very quotable wench: "I'm game lov. Lead'n all fallo. Wheerrrez Librarrreee?"
Star Trek: The Next Generation: Yesterday's Enterprise (1990)
Let History Never Forget The Name... ENTERPRISE
Not sure what else I can say, this was the best episode of TNG, bar none. When I saw the opening and that ship came through the rift and everything changed, I got those "Mirror Mirror" vibes. The perfect teaser and the bit with Worf and the prune juice. Then suddenly... no Worf, and a cast member who thought she could do better and quit in the first season is back there on the bridge.
If you want to see your favorite characters go out in a blaze of glory, a battle to end all battles... and it's all quite real, because in the end they have but one mission. Yes, I knew as soon as I saw the opening, that I was looking at the best TNG episode and I enjoyed it all the way through as such. Amazingly it was written by a committee and was a bunch of different stories thrown together. Sometimes the best of the best things have really crazy back stories. Like all the BS with Harlan Ellison over TOS's best episode, or all the craziness behind the scenes in The Wizard of Oz, or Citizen Kane. I think it's rare that greatness just emerges from the creative womb all in one perfect piece. Someone did a fantastic job pulling Yesterday's Enterprise together, and clearly the actors loved their work.
It's unfortunate that a later episode undoes some of the heroics of this one - including Tasha's death with honor - for some silly Romulan sub-plot that could have been written for anybody. I just watch this one as if it happened just as we thought.
Mission: Impossible: The Bank (1967)
One of the best.
Of course everyone in East Berlin speaks English with a fake German accent. Shows nowadays often will have the actors actually speaking in their language with subtitles translating, but all that stuff would have gotten in the way of a great story and a great mission. Of course Star Trek veterans James Daly and Gene Dynarski - Mr. Flint from Requiem For Methusala and lithium miner Ben Childress from Mudd's Women. We get to see a lot of the characters moves on both sides. Yes some knowledge of the era of divided Germany and divided Berlin is helpful. The Berlin Wall was built when I was a little kid and I grew up hearing stories of heroic escapes to the west. I always thought it was amusing that the Communists claimed they had the best system, but they had to build a wall to keep their citizens in place. I never thought I'd see the fall of the wall, or the fall of the Soviet Union in my lifetime but it was now over 30 years ago and the re-unified Germany is probably more prosperous and powerful than any other time in its history. And at peace no less.
This episode is a wonderful capsule of the Cold War era, and that within the Communist system there were all kinds of criminals working one way or another. In this case a neo-nazi conspiracy, but that is secondary to the story. The guy is simply a thief and murderer and the Communist government has no use for him. I have to wonder how the IMF got tipped off to begin with, or how their people were so easily entering the country. And more importantly - leaving after their mission was completed. Of course any TV fan of this show and the other Desilu shows will recognize "East Berlin" as the old RKO back forty. I think it should have had its own reality show, about how that strip of land and fake buildings was used to represent everything from Manhattan to alien planets.
I'm watching it again right now. Much contrast between the early episodes with Martin and Barbara and the later ones as the cast thinned out and the missions were more about American criminals. This is the good stuff.
NCIS: Los Angeles: A Bloody Brilliant Plan (2019)
A Fun Hostage Episode
I guess all of the hate has to do with the accents - real and fake. I found them a bit annoying but the finale is a pretty good payoff. It's how any hostage situation should end. I actually really despise people who take hostages - they are cowards and deserve what they get. In this case, it was a bloody brilliant plan. I enjoyed it more than some of the more violent torture stories and I'm about as sick of Afghanistan as most of the rest of the world is. So this is the first episode in season 11 I've been compelled to review, if for no other reason than to counter all the nasty reviews. To put things in perspective I've also been watching vintage (original) episodes of Mission: Impossible. Virtually every story is impossible or implausible - that's the theme of the show. I still enjoy it.
Star Trek: Spectre of the Gun (1968)
Campy Fun in Season Three
How many of you guys know everything you know about the OK Corral gunfight from this episode? That was all I knew until I saw the movie TOMBSTONE, which is a whole lot more accurate. Interestingly they make a big deal out of the fact that Billy Claiborne survived the gunfight, but Chekov had already been "killed" by one of the Earps. Now that let them know they were in a fantasy (in case they hadn't already figured that out) but if they had reached back one more paragraph in their remembered history, they would have known that Ike Clanton ALSO survived the gunfight. Yep, Kirk was cast in the role of the guy who ran off and wasn't killed until two years later. And there were a couple other guys that were higher up in the cowboys gang that weren't there.
Suffice it to say the real John Holliday was lot more like Val Kilmer portrayed him in Tombstone, not the tough guy personna we see in this episode. He was of course a crack shot.
The most ridiculous thing of all is that an alien civilization would sentence five of the Enterprise's bridge crew to die in a simulation - perhaps they were not really going to die at all. What were they planning to do with the rest of the crew? The Melkotians would have just blown them up. But... it was all a test of course, not unlike The Corbomite Maneuver. I can't rate this episode higher than a 5, but because it is Star Trek TOS, pretty much everything starts with a 5 except for The Alternative Factor (zero), Mark of Gideon (1), and a few other sub-5s.
NCIS: Hawai'i: Rescuers (2021)
Great Fight!
Very much enjoyed the climactic fight at the end, elevated the episode in my eye. Love to see the bad guys get more than cuffs or a bullet. This guy got the crap beat out of him in the end. Interesting story overall.
The opening scene with the water rescue was cool too. I enjoy the focus on the jobs these folks do. The rest of the story... guy gets out of prison and wants revenge... kind of predictable. When the guy is on a suicide mission, sometimes you have to give him what he wants but this time... ha ha back to the slammer. I love it when the killer's plans don't work out. The surprise attack by the agent was cool too. I have run out of NCIS episodes to watch so working my way through Hawaii. But so far not that many. I might just go back to the beginning and start again. Like the latest NCIS, this show misses Mark Harmon. Will be interesting to see the future. I haven't seen enough of NCIS Hawaii yet to really know all the characters.
NCIS: Naval Criminal Investigative Service: The Arizona (2020)
Christopher Lloyd Still Has It
Mr. Taber from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Jim from Taxi, the Klingon Kruge, and Doc Emmett Brown, the role he was born to play. Ok, he's not 95 years old. My brother's father in law lived to be 95, and served in the Pacific. I heard a few of his stories. I realized I probably will never get to visit Pearl Harbor and the USS Arizona Memorial while any Pearl survivors are still living to guide me. It is something I'd like to do. Three of my uncles served in WW2, and I never heard any of their real stories. The Greatest Generation did the job. I can think of no higher praise than - they got the job done. They were asked, they stepped up. Many of my classmates had fathers who served, some even mothers. But any stories I heard then were the public ones - the kind you tell to a class of 4th graders. The personal stories, I've only heard a few.
For a time I was driving my father in law to the VA for his doctor appointments. Sitting in the waiting room with veterans of Iraq, Afghanistan, the Gulf War, Vietnam, Korea (as my father in law is), and occasionally WW2. I feel like a voyeur listening to them talk, but I just keep my mouth shut. What can I say, except thank you.
This is a great episode - the plot isn't really important, but the story it tells is.
NCIS: Naval Criminal Investigative Service: Blarney (2020)
I Hate Hostage Episodes
All predictable. The only reason I give this a 5 is because they played the crooks in a creative way. All hostage taking episodes should end with sniper bullets, preferably in the first 5 minutes. Every show that ever existed - even sitcoms - seems to do a hostage episode. A crime show in its 17th season is probably up to at least 17, I'm not counting.
Among hostage episodes of all flavors, this ranks about in the middle. I don't know if I have a favorite. The old Mannix episode "Sunburst" is actually one of the first I ever saw and has some interesting twists, especially when it came to the hostages themselves.
The old "Save my buddy" at gunpoint trope is worn out. I'd love to see a doctor, paramedic, or someone thought to be, just give the guy some massive pain. We've all seen the scenario a hundred times and imagined what we'd do. I'd do something off the wall if I had the chance.
Mannix: A Gathering of Ghosts (1971)
Oh come on, it wasn't that bad
No car chases on Mulholland, but Mannix does outgun the rifleman with his 2: Colt Detective Special. I want one of those guns!
Two Star Trek alumni... actually that's about average, some Mannix episodes have as many as five. And filmed in another section of the RKO Back Forty. For some reason, the history of this back lot mentions a handful of Star Trek episodes filmed there, Gone With The Wind, Mayberry... but they fail to mention probably a dozen or more Mannix episodes. This one used the western ghost town, but I'm pretty sure it's part of the same parcel. It's too bad the land in the heard of LA was so valuable - it would be a wonderful tourist destination for any fan of old movies and uncounted TV shows.
Jason Evers is the real bad guy, we know that from his appearance as the speedy guy in "Wink of an Eye", an exceedingly boring Trek episode. And Diana Muldaur, who played three different doctors in Trek - Ann Mulhall in Return to Tomorrow, Miranda Jones in the "Medusa" episode, and a whole season as Kate Pulaski on Next Generation.
I'm surprised Joe doesn't know how to fix a phone cord. I guess he's not McGyver.
And poor Thorny - whoever that is/was, gets blamed for the killings but turns out he had nothing to do with it. It's nowhere near as boring as some of the others. Or Wink of an Eye.
Too bad Mike Connors never got a guest role on Star Trek. He's maybe the only other actor that could have replaced William Windom in The Doomsday Machine - but Windom's performance was stellar. But I digress. I guess it can't be that great if I'd rather talk about Star Trek. But the truth is, these two shows made my days and weekends back in my youth, and I still love them today. I've had the entire Star Trek series on video since 1985, and I had them all on audio tape more than a decade before that, but only recently the entire Mannix series became available on DVD. I'm on my second complete trip through, and seasons 2, 3, and 4 are my favorites and the ones I remember best.
Not great but a long way from the worst - those come later.
Mannix: Figures in a Landscape (1970)
Pretty Stupid Hastings
Yes, that was pretty stupid... Hastings.
Way back in the 70s I used to make audio tapes of TV shows to listen to - I still spend more time listening than watching these old familiar shows. Anyway, I taped this episode and when I re-used the tape, I inadvertently made a loop tape of "That was pretty stupid... Hastings". Having a brother who remembers everything, now almost 50 years later if I ever say "well that was pretty stupid", he always adds "Hastings".
Hastings was pretty stupid. There isn't much dialog in the last third of the show but that one memorable line. Because of that it's one of the episodes I remembered in the greatest detail when I eventually got the DVDs. Some of them I barely remember if at all. The whole darkroom bit - wondering if "double X" (aka Kodak Plus-X film) has high enough resolution to make out the faces of people in a window a couple hundred feet away. I was into black & white photography at the time and noticed the nice setup - I believe a Beseler 45 MXT enlarger with a powered carriage to raise and lower it. For expanding those large format 4x5 negatives.
Mannix discovering that Barry had duplicated the negative and airbrushed out the faces - but on triple X (Kodak Tri-X) was the key to the whole thing. As usual Mannix isn't watching his back while all this is going down. Hastings was pretty stupid - first allowing himself to be blackmailed by Barry, then killing him and dragging Mannix into it to fulfill the plot. But bringing Mannix into anything you don't want found out is... pretty stupid, Hastings.
Although two people die, amazingly the bad guy is alive (maybe a little dehydrated) to turn over to Art. Instead of the usual "Hey Art, bad guys are in there, all dead - I'm leaving with the girl now, see you tomorrow".
What can I say, it's a good episode and it's different.
NCIS: Naval Criminal Investigative Service: Ready or Not (2017)
I tried to find something to like
I liked Morgan the cop, of course he didn't make it. But every time I see any law enforcement officer give up his weapon I want to scream. I know that's a big no-no, and I have no idea how much it may happen in real life. I have friends who are police officers, and they may have faced a hostage situation, but I wouldn't have ever heard the stories from them if they had handed their weapons over.
The only thing I didn't see coming was the female "hostage" actually being an accomplice. And would the guy have shot her if McGee had shot him first? We'll never know. I think Hollywood writers feel they have to disarm the good guys to avoid an hour-long episode being a 5 minute episode.
I give it a 5 because I still love the show. I've spent the past year streaming from the beginning up to this point - the good, the bad, the worse. The turnover bugs me. DiNozzo irritated me as much as he irritated McGee in the early seasons but I grew to like him - and his Bob Wagner dad. I know more turnover is coming still. The ending was a bit satisfying but Yorka doesn't die. Maybe his fate is worse, we can imagine.
I'm on the next episode now - back to Afghanistan again. Although it does kind of look like the barren hills of LA. NCIS is the longest running show if its type, and believe it or not I like that about it. I still have more seasons watching or listening to 2-3 episodes each night, before I have to find another show. Already did all of Criminal Minds. I suppose I'll try some of the NCIS spinoffs next.
This episode could have been a lot better even using the same situation.
And to law enforcement officers everywhere: don't give up your weapon!
Mannix: Return to Summer Grove (1969)
Classic Mannix, Inspiration for Star Trek Family?
This episode must have been very popular with viewers back when. As I recall it was re-run over the Christmas break when it was still the current season, again in the summer, and often re-run in summers during later seasons. Has everyone seen it?
First there's Mannix's crazy rental car, with some kind of customized trim on the side. Like many of Joe's temporary cars, it buys it but the stock footage is not of the same car. It's actually a 1967 Plymouth Belvedere 2 door sedan, probably a small block, you can see under the hood. The sheriff shows Joe a picture of the wreck and it has miraculously aged 10 more years and switch families - it has become a 57 Ford. Owning both an old Ford and an old Chrysler, I'd stake my life on the Chrysler's brakes.
When I first saw Star Trek TNG's episode "Family", where Jean Luc Picard goes home to visit his brother in his vinyard in France after the events of the Borg invasion, I immediately thought of this episode from many years earlier. Mannix visits Summer Grove in California and deals with his grouchy old father, in his vinyard, and disapproves of Joe's career. The dynamic is exactly the same. And the ending is, to some extent.
This is not a typical Mannix episode. Oh sure, there are bad guys and car chases and car crashes and a case, but this allows Krekor Ohanion to play to his heritage, and a genuine setting in California's Central Valley. If I had to recommend only 5 episodes of Mannix out of 194 to watch, this would be one of them.
Star Trek: Voyager: Tinker Tenor Doctor Spy (1999)
The opening pre-credits scene alone is worth a 10.
Star Trek humor requires a vested interest in characters, and characters of the past, and episodes of the past. This one references all the way back to TOS S2E1 Amok Time. Enjoy!
Star Trek: By Any Other Name (1968)
Everybody Remembers This One
Star Trek had 80 episodes counting the first pilot, but the majority of fans or just casual viewers only remember a few. And not always the best ones.
BY ANY OTHER NAME is so iconic, such a boilerplate second season episode, that it has been parodied or evoked three times on Saturday Night Live, and most of the audience got it. Because everybody remembers. Everybody remembers the crushed dodecahedron and the little brunette yeoman is dead. The paralysis rays. Scotty getting his mark drunk, while Bones gets his target wired on speed - meanwhile Kirk hits on the female. Of course. To make the boss man jealous.
A word about Barbara Bouchet as Kelinda. One of those times when Bill Theiss's standard treatment revealed much, but didn't flatter the actress. Her hair and makeup are severe. Youtube has a video of her platform dancing (Shake It All Over) in a bikini. She's absolutely stunning. Very unusual for any actress that Bill Theiss and Star Trek did not show her at her sexiest. Reference: Mariette Hartley.
Anyway, everybody knows this episode. I remember seeing the trailer for it the week before and it looked scary. This guy (Warren Stevens) strutting around asserting his authority while Kirk and his crew are paralyzed. I have to admit at the age of 10, the whole crushed cube bit was scary.
The first season SNL episode where Elliott Gould appears as an NBC executive coming to cancel Star Trek (via a deep space Chevy Nova) is reminiscent of By Any Other Name but not sure if it's directly referenced. Taking over the Enterprise is a pretty common theme in seaons 2-3. But it was comedian Franklin Ajaye's legendary line, directly referencing this episode, that solidified our memory even among non-Trekkers. Lastly, in the 1985 episode hosted by William Shatner, his Trek-con sketch has an appearance by Julie Cobb (not actually her but an SNL cast member) as "the yeoman crushed into dust" or soemething like that. Interestingly, that was Ms. Cobb's acting debut, and started a long career as a TV guess actor, active until very recently. She even guested with Shatner on an episode of TJ Hooker, although I don't know what her fate might have been. Hopefully the musical score wasn't playing Kansas's "Dust In The Wind" for her entrance.
There are many references back to this episode - especially in TNG episode "Relics", when Data as acting bartender serves the aging Scotty something green from under the bar. The tactics the crew uses to defeat the Kelvans, who seem to hold all the cards, remind me of how the "underdog" Cincinnati Reds beat the "superior" Oakland Athletics in the 1990 World Series. By playing National League style baseball... bunt, squeeze, steal, don't sit back and wait for the home run.
I doubt that anyone involved with the show at the time realized they were printing a standard. BAON is not the best Trek episode, a long way from the worst... but perhaps it's the most typical - the definitive mainstream of the show. And check out that video of Barbara Bouchet.
Mannix: A Button for General D. (1971)
Not Bad
Hey those E Jags were a dime a dozen at the time. Of course today, Joe's Cuda would be worth a lot more than the Jag.
Look for "Croaker" from SUNBURST in a more active role showcasing that voice.
I always wonder how the girl(s) on the run for their lives manage to dress in gorgeous stuff with perfect nails and makeup.
Birds of Prey (1973)
Three Little Fishies and the Mama Fishie Too!
After reading the other reviews about the songs being replaced, I wasn't too keen about playing the copy I have. I don't remember if it's on VHS or DVD now, but I bought it off ebay some time ago and never got around to watching it. I saw this movie on TV back in the 70s - on our old family black & white. I've always been a fan of David Janssen, although this movie is probably the first time I really saw him. I probably watched Harry-O a few times, and later I saw Janssen in Jaqueline Susann's Once Is Not Enough, a guilty pleasure piece of trash I remember fondly due to the presence of Deborah Raffin and Mr. David Janssen.
Anyway, after reading the reviews - I clicked on this after one of my usual deviations searching for something else on IMDB, and saw the mention of the music being replaced. Even though it's just a short part of the intro, it's very important in establishing that Janssen's character lives in the past. I know that feeling well - my own father was like that, although not a WWII veteran, his brothers fought in the war. He was too old and too nearsighted at the time Pearl Harbor happened.
Anyway I'm pleased to report that as of this writing, Birds of Prey is available on Amazon Prime streaming for "free", as in no rental charge if you are already a member of Prime. And the opening scenes with the music are there. The picture quality is fairly soft - this appears to be an old print from syndication. But if any "remastered" or "cleaned up" versions are out there, they probably have replaced the music. Toby Halicki's widow utterly ruined the re-release of the original Gone In 60 Seconds - starring Halicki and most of his friends and family - by replacing ALL of the music and car engine sounds with false crap. The opening theme song is even gone, Halicki's friend Phil Katchaturian provided a country-blues style sound track that apparently Denise Halicki didn't want to pay for - she was a bit strapped after paying Nick Cage's salary for the ridiculous sequel. Anyway, this is a review of Birds of Prey.
Janssen's pursuit of bank robbers - in a helicopter with a hostage - is perhaps his best role, although I haven't seen them all. Helicopter stunts like this were not topped until the incredible, insane chase in Capricorn One. Janssen's character is likable and sympathetic - at least for those of us that grew up in a neighborhood of Boomer kids with Greatest Generation parents. I'm going to watch the rest of it now - I hit pause after confirming the music was there.
And they swam and they swam all over the dam!
Mannix: Shadow Play (1971)
Yes confusing and strange
But look out for Paul Mantee - the original Big Doug Thug. Actually not the first, the first was in the very first episode and Joe can be seen punching him in the opening credits.
Mantee has a total of 8 Mannix appearances, including "Tommy Gantt" the guy who the psycho karate guy blows up in the first episode of the season. But Mantee is best known as the lone astronaut stranded on Mars, sharing oxygen with a monkey while his unmanned ship screams overhead every few minutes. Robinson Crusoe on Mars, of course he's not Robinson Crusoe. He isn't alone in the beginning but Batman his companion dies early on.
This episode has the thug squad on Mannix in the cold open. It's fun just because Mannix is always fun. But definitely a 2nd or 3rd tier episode.
Mannix: Round Trip to Nowhere (1971)
There goes the blue Porsche again!
Just to mention it - any time you see a bright blue Porsche Speedster 356, know that it's going to go over a cliff in stock footage I've seen more than once on Mannix - and other shows. At least once, a sedan of some kind magically turns into a Porsche 356 as it dies.
Susan Howard who later was a regular on Dallas plays the widow.
Mannix: To Cage a Seagull (1970)
The disappearing helicopter crash... again!
This was used in the very first episode and I got a kick out of it - helicopter crashes but vanishes behind a hill first then a big explosion. Guess it cost too much money to actually crash a helicopter even with stock footage.
And another friend of Mannix buys it, it doesn't seem like it is a good idea to be a friend of Joe Mannix. They either die, or turn bad and get killed by Mannix himself.
Anyway not that much to say other than the helicopter. Also look out for a light blue Porsche... it's going over a cliff. More stock footage, and at least once some other car like a Dodge Coronet goes over and magically changes into a Porsche as it tumbles down the cliffside.
Can't be too critical of 60s TV. Everything was done on a tight schedule and a limited budget, re-use of crash footage and re-use of character actors is the norm. I always look for Star Trek actors to turn up in Mannix, especially the early episodes when both shows used the Desilu pool of character actors. The character actors often give memorable performances, and it's worth watching all of the episodes. It's re-living my childhood where I saw all these episodes in black and white on an 18" TV that you had to constantly twiddle the vertical hold to keep the picture from flipping. Everything looks great in sharp color on my 39" modest TV.