Review of Homicidal (1961) by Laura . — 01 Sep 2007

Lately I've been catiching up on a TV mini-series I vaguely remembered from the earlt 90's called "The Wild Palms". I haven't made up my mind about it yet. It's a science fiction piece with cyberpunk themes set in 2007 that deals with things like Virtual reaility and the so-called Japanese takeover of Western culture that either didn't happen in the way pictured here or didn't happen at all. The setting looks distressingly clean and aniseptic compared to the real 2007 and there are some obvious homages to David Lynch and the then-current Twin Peaks, like Robert Morse as a lounge singer who looks like he's about to morph into Dean Stockwell singing "A candy-colored clown they call the Sandman..." at any time. It generally has a good cast with people like Dana Delany, Robert Loggia, Kim Cattrall, Brad Dourif, David Warner and Bebe Neuwirth but I don't know about Jim Belushi of all people as the hero. There's a reason why his career has boiled down to starring on a "fat slob" TV sitcom. I haven't decided if I'll bother with the second disc of this thing or not.

I've also dug out my collection of The Phil Silvers Show to finish watching and it's fun to watch how that show evolved. In the early episodes it's just Sgt. Bilko as the archetypal con man fleecing everyone with impunity but later episodes get weirder and weirder starting I guess with the famous one where a monkey gets enlisted into the Army and has to be court-martialed to get him out. From there it's out to shows about Doberman being hypnotized to think he's in love with Colonel Hall's wife and Bilko trying to get some phenom pitcher a tryout with the Yankees. The supporting cast is fascinating to watch historically. This set includes appearances from Joe E. Ross, Fred Gwynne and Al Lewis alll of whom, of course, were important parts of Nat Hiken's next show, Car 54, Where Are You? There are also very early TV appearances by Dick Van Dyke and Alan Alda.

The funniest thing is the makeup of the platoon. To the the credit of the producers Bilko's platoon always seemed to include one black soldier but for "Doberman's Sister", where the plot called for the soldiers to all take each other's sisters on dates, a secomd black soldier mysteriously showed up because no way back then could the black soldier have dated one of his white buddies' sisters. Then again they simply could have had no black actors on that episode, so it was cool they did it that way.