All posts by Louis Fowler

Sci-Fi & Fantasy

The Martian Chronicles (1980)

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“What the hell is this?”

That’s probably what acclaimed author Ray Bradbury said, concurrently spitting grape soda out of his nose, when watching a cowboy-suited Darren McGavin on the run from a group of Man Who Fell to Earth rejects, as I did, too.

Taking a handful of stories from Bradbury’s collection of the same name was a highly ambitious project, one that was probably a little too big for the dreams of director Michael Anderson (Millennium) and star Rock Hudson (Avalanche), but they gave it their made-for-TV all and delivered The Martian Chronicles, a cinematic oddity which includes, yes, Darren McGavin (Billy Madison) running around Mars while dressed as a flashy cowboy.

Originally broadcast in three long, excruciating parts, the first night’s section deals with the landing and subsequent explorations of Mars and how Martians, for really no good reason at all, like to elaborately screw with our puny human brains. Examples of this include astronaut Nicholas Hammond (The Black Cobra 2) finding his Illinois childhood home on the red planet and astro-nut Bernie Casey (Never Say Never Again) grabbing an alien gun (for lack of a better term) and proclaiming himself as the second coming of the Martians. Or something to that effect.

Meanwhile, Hudson looks on coolly as the greatest astronaut who’s ever lived.

In part two, we find former astronaut McGavin opening up a Wild West-themed diner, promising to serve hot dogs and chili at 1970s prices to all the future immigrants. (Where and how he got these wieners and sauce is never explained, but I would’ve liked an explanation.) Sadly, no one ever comes to said eatery except for an alien offering him a deed to a portion of Martian land, whom McGavin promptly shoots. All this is done in a sparkly, spangly cowboy outfit, mind you.

Meanwhile, Hudson looks on coolly as the planet Earth explodes into nothingness.

You’d think that after such a dark revelation, things would get a little more entertaining, but instead we find an old man and his robot wife and daughter making dinner and looking to the stars while a lovelorn Christopher Connolly (Hawmps!) flies a foot-pedaled aircraft around the planet, only to find an insanely grating Bernadette Peters, practicing for her upcoming role in Heartbeeps, no doubt.

Meanwhile, Hudson looks on coolly as the temporal gates collide and time becomes a figment of our imaginations.

With workmanlike direction from Anderson, he seemed to forget all the tenuous life lessons he learned on Logan’s Run and made the most by-the-book miniseries possible, all the while barely covering the book. Well, except for that one scene where Darren McGavin goes bonkers dressed a cowboy, which is kind of the worst story in the book, but hilarious on the screen. He should have gotten his own series after that.  —Louis Fowler

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Western

Those Redheads from Seattle (1953)

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Hubba-hubba! The carpetbaggers match the drapes when Agnes Moorehead takes her four single and ready to mingle (mostly) carrot-topped daughters (Rhonda Fleming, Teresa Brewer, Cynthia Bell, Kay Bell) from the titular city of Seattle to Gold Rush-era Alaska for some snowbound romance and minor Klondike mystery-solving, as the gals try to find their newspaper publisher father’s murderer whilst pitchin’ woo with the fool’s gold worth of lonely prospectors that permeate the Arctic climate.

In between the absolute roster of wonderfully misplaced musical numbers by the likes of Hoagy Carmichael, Johnny Mercer and Ray Evans, these flame-maned fillies are a vivacious trio of backtalkin’ spitfires that are always sampling scandalous cosmetics like “rouge” and high-kickin’ them glammy gams to tunes that uses words like “Alabammy” and “honeylamb,” with momentarily blonde sister (and all-around pesky tomboy) Nellie the constant brunt of gender-fluid ribbings because, even at 12 years old, she’s not a hot-to-trot redhead ready for marriage like her flame-retardant hermanas.

Mother Moorehead, years away from her role as the shrewish Endora on TV’s Bewitched, tries to keep a tight leash on the foursome, but those 1950s-era hormones are running wild and free in 1900s Yukon Territory. With a liberal amount of ankle skin and hand-holdings, all gloriously filmed in 3-D, you actually feel like you’re right there in the parlor, courtin’ one of those interchangeably gorgeous sisters to a badly timed and ill-fitting Jerry Livingston and Mack David tune! If only IMAX had been around then …

At 90 minutes, director Lewis R. Foster’s effervescently buoyant Those Redheads from Seattle is a fun Technicolor throwback where two-fisted men engaged in fisticuffs over the ownership of women in general, and these dames not only like it, they fall madly in love with the big galoots and/or palookas because of it, with a finale full of comically ribald weddings to back it up. If we walk away from Seattle with any lessons learned, it’s that gentleman might prefer blondes, but everyone loves a redhead.  —Louis Fowler

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Thriller

The Firm (1993)

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If you’ve ever wanted to see someone kick the ever-lovin’ crap out of Wilford Brimley while he’s down on the ground — and let’s face it, we all have at one point in our lives — then why don’t you just go right ahead and move The Firm to the top of your queue.

We tend to forget there was a time when legal thrillers were actually Academy Award-chasing, taut courtroom explorations of a usually broken legal system, stylistically told in such a legalese-driven, attention-demanding way where viewers, no matter how bored, collectively waited on the edge of their bench for a jury-read verdict in the last 15 minutes so nerve-wracking you’d think it was their mama up for murder one; TL;DR, remember movies like The Verdict, … And Justice for All or From the Hip?

In the early 1990s, however, much like a young Michael Bay with LegalZoom gift certificate, that all changed when along came best-selling wunderkind John Grisham, an author whose works of idealist first-year Southern lawyers taking on a judicial system for dummies in very stupid (but thoroughly entertaining) works like The Pelican Brief, The Client, A Time to Kill and Christmas with the Kranks were adapted for films in a rapid succession not seen since the great Stephen King boom of the mid-’80s, dumbing down a subgenre that has never since recovered.

The best of these cinematic legal briefs, in my opinion, was the 1993 adaptation of The Firm — not to be confused with the best-selling series of booty-enhancement exercise videos, unfortunately — starring Tom Cruise as a super-driven hotshot fresh out of law school (and harnessing unexplained Olympic-level gymnastic abilities for reasons never offered) as he takes a job with a shadowy law firm made up of some of the most aged Caucasian actors Hollywood had to offer, including Gene Hackman, Hal Holbrook and the aforementioned Brimley as the oatmeal-lovin’ head of security. I’m pretty sure I saw Statler and Waldorf in one of the sweeping long shots, but that could just be the Mandela Effect.

When a well-meaning business trip to the Cayman Islands leads to Cruise seeing some clearly marked and easy-to-read files he apparently wasn’t meant to see, things get pretty complicated as he tries to figure out a way to turn everything over to the feds without being disbarred or have the mafia (obligatory Paul Sorvino cameo) cap him. When a short-lived, mostly cognizant Gary Busey enters the picture, things get mildly confusing, what with all the switcheroos and double-dealing and subplots about overbilling, many scenes of which are still parodied today, as of late by an extremely irritating M&M’s ad that plays before most movie trailers.

With a very strong cast, including the mannish-jawed, Southern-style bold ’n’ saucy combo of Holly Hunter and Jeanne Tripplehorn, Ed Harris as an impatient spook and an out-of-place David Strathairn as a supposedly hardened convict, perhaps the most memorable character is Saw’s Tobin Bell as the law firm’s hitman, a role made even creepier by him sporting an albino mullet, apparently from the Rutger Hauer for Men signature hairpiece collection.

Director Sydney Pollack (Tootsie) does a great job of crafting a tense, paranoid thriller based around the dumbest of conceits, but with a smirking Cruise in control and a cast of fermented gravitas, it surprisingly still holds up almost 25 years later, with enough turns and twists to keep anyone from yelling “Objection!” to their television, no one in particular listening. Apparently they made a sequel to this, in the form of a TV series, but I’ll be damned if I ever heard about it. Case closed. — Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.

Action

South Bronx Heroes (1985)

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With all the low-budget panache of an unauthorized ABC Afterschool Special made on spec by the assistant to the second assistant director of Exterminator 2, the perennial dollar-bin favorite South Bronx Heroes both looks and feels like the cinematic equivalent of a missing child’s last known photo, one that happened to be photobombed by a breakdancing Mario Van Peebles (Rappin’).

Somewhere in the suburbs — we reckon it’s the suburbs, as the set is comprised of a wood-paneled rumpus room, and that’s a pretty suburban thing, right? — a child pornographer (complete with a script supervisor, boom mic operator and an intern to slate the scene) is berating some kids, so much so that they get the gumption to finally run away, an act which seems to encompass crossing over a mountain range that leads directly to the hellish landscape that is the Bronx. South Bronx, to be exact.

At this is all happening, a Naval-hatted Mario Van Peebles, complete with a rambunctious pet ferret, arrives in the South Bronx, fresh out of the Navy Mexican prison. He’s immediately accosted by a trio of multiethnic toughs armed with nunchucks, but Mario is quick to pull out a pistol, dub them the “faggot Mod Squad” and take all of their clothes.

As our pair of runaways find an abandoned building to squat in, they make the most of their days, eating garbage, avoiding area ruffians and sitting on rocks, staring off into the sun, dreaming of a better life as a brutally maudlin song about believing in yourself and fighting for what’s right Casiotones in the background.

Meanwhile, over at the Peebles place, Mario’s no-nonsense sister wants him to get a job and go straight, but he’d rather hang out at underpasses with his ferret, occasionally chilling with a breakdancing crew as (courtesy of Mario himself) a brutally maudlin rap about believing in yourself and fighting for what’s right Casiotones in the background.

When said orphans are busted taking a shower in his crib, after asking many inappropriate questions about the kiddie-porn biz in what I’m sure was director William Szarka’s idea of comic relief, Mario slaps on a 1940s suit and fedora, and goes undercover to help bring those suburban scumbags to justice. Wonder Years block of clay Dan Lauria shows up as an FBI agent for 30 seconds to offer his reluctant thanks in cracking the case.

About 10 minutes after, they called a wrap on filming, the always prolific Mario walked right up the block and started shooting the similarly themed DVD dollar-bin favorite Children of the Night, co-starring Kathleen Quinlan (Breakdown) as a sociology student undercover in the world of teenage prostitution. —Louis Fowler

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Kitchen Sink

Salsa (1988)

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WTFSalsa, sadly, isn’t a film about the ins-and-outs of the breakneck world of competitive hot sauce divining — for that, Hollywood producers, please email me to take a look at my unproduced screenplay, Días de Salsa Caliente, Noches de Salsa Más Calientes — but instead a semi-musical based around the steamy art of competitive salsa dancing, made years before this beloved activity became co-opted by middle-aged gringos in an attempt to inject some hot Latin flava into their limp Caucasian marriages.

Former Menudo heartthrob Draco “Robby” Rosa — who always looks like he’s about one step away from turning into a werewolf — stars as Rico, a Puerto Rican mechanic in East L.A. with a burning, salsa-based fire in his Latino loins that, in the first five minutes of film, are thrusted directly in our faces, not only via an awkward, opening-credits dance in his neon-lit, DayGlo garage, but later and even more awkwardly, while he is fresh out of the shower performing Elvis’ “Blue Suede Shoes” clad only in a washcloth. It’s more queso than salsa, but still delicious!

Of course, Rico loves to salsa dance and spends most of his time in a hot nightclub that regularly is host to such big-name, big-ticket guests as Celia Cruz, Willie Colon and Tito Puente. Aye Dios mio! Either way, once you get past the hour and a half’s worth of concert footage and dance numbers, we’re left with about five minutes’ worth of a simplistic-enough plot lifted from any random telenovela, one where Rico’s loyalty to his friends and family is tested when his ego overtakes him in an effort to win the big dance-off (a plot thread left strangely unanswered, mind you) when the sultry cougar club owner Luna (Miranda Garrison, The Forbidden Dance) uses his skills as her attempt to reclaim her throne as the Queen of Salsa.

Subtitled “It’s Hot!” — and boy is it! — the barely remembered Salsa was directed by Boaz Davidson (The Last American Virgin), choreographed by Kenny Ortega (that video that ruined Billy Squire’s career) and made on the muy barato by the Cannon Group. It was also another entry into the action mavens’ niche of jumping on any ethnic dance craze that came their way, including Breakin’ (Break it to make it!), Lambada (Set the night on fire!) and Kinjite (Forbidden subjects!) — something which I appreciated in the ’80s and still appreciate today.

And by the way: If anyone can find a copy of the soundtrack, please send it and a bag of Tostitos my way! ¡Cómpralo ya! —Louis Fowler 

Get it at Amazon.