“The Olivier of Spoofs”…and Don’t Call Him Shirley
Saturday, May 23rd, 2009
I’m not quite sure I know how I would feel to be Leslie Nielsen. On one hand he was once called the Olivier of spoofs by film critic Roger Ebert. But on the other hand, it may seem a bit demeaning that his serious manner of acting which began in such classic films as Forbidden Planet and The Poseidon Adventure has segued into one spoof after another. Surely one can’t discount the hilarious roles that he played in Airplane!, The Naked Gun series, and of course the greatest of all spoof TV shows, the short lived Police Squad. And don’t call him Shirley. Read the rest of this entry »
Angie Dickinson is a legendary performer best noted for her role as Pepper Anderson during four seasons of the TV drama Police Woman. But she had a rather lucrative career both before and after that series which ran from 1974-78. Starting out in a handful of TV dramas and westerns, the first major role which interests me came along in 1959 when she starred in Rio Bravo opposite John Wayne, Rick Nelson, and Dean Martin. She went on to star as a leading lady in numerous films throughout the 60’s, including Ocean’s Eleven. 
Once upon a time there was a curly-headed guy who had virtually no career of note, but had the good fortune to star in one of the most fun pictures ever produced. The movie was called Gremlins and the guy played the role of Billy Peltzer. The guy’s name was Zach Galligan and he was a very lucky guy because he got to make time with a hot princess named Phoebe Cates. After Gremlins, he went on to star in a fun sequel called Gremlins 2: The New Batch, which wasn’t quite as good as the first one, but was still rather fun. Zach has continued to make movies up to the present day, but no one has ever heard of any of them – except for The Love Boat: The Next Wave – but everyone wishes they hadn’t. 
“Just think of the fun I’ll have with good old George over the coming years.” This is one of my favorite lines from the 1979 TV movie Murder By Natural Causes. This line – nor this film – doesn’t mean much to the average Joe, but it was always one of my favorites when I was a kid and I was thrilled to be meeting my second actor within one week from this very film. The script penned by Columbo writers Richard Levinson and William Link had earlier received kudos from actor Barry Bostwick when I met him at the Hollywood Collectors Show on October 4, 2008 (as seen 
I have absolutely zero interest in most of the tripe that Corey Haim has done since the 1980’s – not the reality shows, nor any modern anything involving The Two Coreys, nor the succession of direct-to-video film, nor his drug problems. But what does interest me is his appearance in the 1987 cult classic The Lost Boys and his starring role the next year in License to Drive, which I find remarkably funny and entertaining. Who can forget the lore surrounding ‘the two Coreys’ back in the 1980’s, which sadly lingered on twenty years later?