Now Playing: QUINCY, M.E.
I finished watching Universal’s QUINCY, M.E.: SEASONS 1 & 2 this afternoon, and one of the things I found so entertaining about it was its neat array of ubiquitous 1970’s guest stars. I don’t notice it so much in today’s television landscape--maybe there are more actors or maybe just more uninteresting ones--but you used to always be able to recognize several familiar faces as you spun the television dial. “Hey, look, there’s Monte Markham on GEMINI MAN, he was just on THE STREETS OF SAN FRANCISCO three weeks ago.” I think using recognizable actors is an asset in an episodic television show. For example, with only 44 minutes to play with in today’s commercial-jammed landscape and maybe 50 minutes 30 years ago, the script has to take a few shortcuts in characterization. There’s no time to establish backstories for all the supporting players, but the moment you see Monte Markham’s face, you immediately know what his character is all about, because you’ve already seen him as similar characters in a dozen other shows. So when John Saxon pops up as a pornographer named DeCassa on a QUINCY episode--especially wearing the ghastly (but accurate to the period) wardrobe Universal dug out for him--the audience knows exactly who this DeCassa is and what he’s all about. I’m not saying that characterization, motivation and backstory are not important elements, but in a one-hour mystery series where the plot and the clues and the puzzles are the draw, shortcuts have to be taken.
This weekend, I caught the final two episodes of QUINCY’s second season: “”Valleyview” and “Let Me Light the Way”. “Valleyview” is a cornucopia of ‘70s guest stars: Robert Webber, Jason Evers, Carolyn Jones, Christopher Connelly, Anthony Eisley (and a young Ed Begley, Jr. thrown in at no extra charge). Universal must have blessed QUINCY with a decent budget for guest actors, because usually a show would get one or two of these names, but to get all five… Something else that hit me is that, with the exception of Eisley, all of those actors are deceased. “Valleyview” aired in 1977, which doesn’t seem so long ago, but I suppose it is.
“Let Me Light the Way” is interesting to watch in the light of what we now know about evidence collection and forensics in the wake of the O.J. Simpson murder trial and all the police procedurals now on TV, especially LAW & ORDER: SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT. Quincy (Jack Klugman) is working with a rape counselor (Adrienne Barbeau, just coming off the MAUDE series) to capture a serial rapist (Luke Askew, another familiar face) who has killed his latest victim. Quincy breaks into a rage when he learns that the doctor and the nurse who treated the dead woman in the ER washed off her body and threw her clothing onto the floor, virtually ruining any opportunity to collect evidence. He has been trying to raise money for a seminar that would train medical and legal personnel proper procedures for collecting, bagging and tagging evidence from rape victims. This is pretty common in today’s crime dramas, and it’s fascinating to see how far law enforcement has come in 30 years. It seems hard to believe that, not so long ago, at least according to this episode, rapists were ten times more likely to get away with their crime than be convicted of it, mostly due to poor evidence gathering and courtroom procedures that allowed defense attorneys to cruelly badger the victims. Also in this episode is Kim Cattrall, long before SEX AND THE CITY. Long before PORKY’S, for that matter.
It’s a pretty quiet weekend around here. Taking some of my time is a new toy I acquired, inexpensive software called exPressit which allows me to create labels for my DVDs and their jewel cases. The instructions are pretty useless, so I doubt I’m using it to its full potential, but so far I’ve been able to download images from the Internet or scan in my own, and then use this graphic design program to slap it into a template, print them out, and stick them onto the DVD or into the case. Unfortunately, the software may have some kind of a bug, because it will occasionally freeze or slow down the computer to virtually a dead halt, closing other applications like my Thunderbird email or Firefox window and not letting me do much of anything for 8-9 minutes or so. Still, I have some pretty nice-looking DVDs on the shelf now, but it’ll be a big job doing them all.
The trailer for Michael Bay’s upcoming blockbuster, THE ISLAND, reminded me of a movie I saw ages ago on MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000. It’s a low-budget picture with an interesting premise, and now that Mondo Macabro has released it on a Special Edition DVD, I put it on my Netflix queue. PARTS: THE CLONUS HORROR is about Clonus, a Utopian society populated by beautiful, bland white people and a bunch of doctors, technicians and security types who keep an eye on them. All of the young people have spent their entire lives isolated in Clonus and know of no other existence. They all have the same goal: to advance in their physical training enough to be allowed to leave the community and go to “America”. To be chosen to go to America is the ultimate reward. One of the citizens, Richard (played by Tim Donnelly, a regular on EMERGENCY! who also appeared in THE TOOLBOX MURDERS), begins to question authority, something none of them has ever done before. Using his newfound curiosity to snoop around Clonus, he discovers “America” is nothing more than a glorified meat locker where his colleagues are murdered, stripped and kept in cold storage. He escapes to the outside world and eventually discovers that Clonus is a clone farm, where human beings are bred scientifically to use as organ banks for the wealthy. Peter Graves (MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE), Dick Sargent (BEWITCHED) and Keenan Wynn add name value to this independent production, which was made in 1979 in 18 days for $257,000 by a former documentary filmmaker named Robert Fiveson. The story has a few holes in it, but there’s no faulting its ambition, and it was unusual in the immediate post-STAR WARS years to see science fiction films that relied more on ideas than visual effects. It was not a hit--the clunky title and the relative lack of exploitable material in the R-rated feature probably contributed to its anemic box office--but it is an interesting little film.
I bring up PARTS because THE ISLAND, judging from the trailer, appears to be the exact same movie. Young man grows up in an isolated community, falls in love with a beautiful woman, begins to question his surroundings, learns the ugly truth about his world--that he was conceived and nurtured to be used to harvest organs from--and escapes. Knowing Bay, THE ISLAND will probably be bigger, more expensive, louder…and dumber. And it’s unlikely the makers of PARTS: THE CLONUS HORROR will receive any kind of credit--not on-screen, not remunerable, and certainly not from the mainstream critics who will review it. So let me give the proper props at this time, granted that I haven’t yet seen THE ISLAND. THE ISLAND is a ripoff of PARTS: THE CLONUS HORROR.
I feel better now.
