Overlooked Movies: Goodnight for Justice: Queen of Hearts (2013)

QUEEN OF HEARTS is the third and final Hallmark Channel movie in which Luke Perry played frontier judge John William Goodnight, a character Perry created. In this one, Goodnight tangles with a beautiful female con artist and a vengeful former colonel discharged from the army because of his brutal methods. As usual, there’s plenty of action with a few heart-warming moments along the way. A lot of the story takes place on a riverboat, one of my favorite settings for Westerns.

I think this is my favorite of the three Goodnight movies. The script, while still pretty predictable, is more focused than the first one (which really meandered around) and less stereotypical than the second one. The production values seem a little higher, and it helped that there weren’t too many scenes in that touristy-looking Western town in Canada where so many Westerns have been filmed in the past 20 years. Also, the villain is a cast-against-type Rick Schroder playing the crazed colonel, and it’s good for Perry (who’s as stalwart as ever) to have somebody stronger to play against. The final slugfest/shootout between the two of them on the riverboat is excellent.

I liked this one enough that I’m sort of disappointed there weren’t more of them. As it is, it’s a worthy conclusion to the Goodnight series and well worth watching for Western fans.

Overlooked TV Movies: Goodnight for Justice - The Measure of a Man (2012)

THE MEASURE OF A MAN is the second of three movies Luke Perry made for the Hallmark Channel in which he played a character he created, frontier judge John William Goodnight. In this one, Goodnight arrives in a small Wyoming settlement to hear some cases, and while he's there he not only meets an old flame of his, he's also on hand when a gang of outlaws that's been plaguing the area shows up to rob the bank. A shootout occurs, leaving one of the outlaws dead in the street and another captured. The prisoner, a young man, insists that the gang leader will come back to rescue him. Instead, we get a not too surprising plot twist that finds Goodnight setting out to hunt down the desperadoes.

This movie has many of the same drawbacks as the first one, GOODNIGHT FOR JUSTICE, such as the overall cheap look of it and that drab Canadian Western town that never looks authentic to me. However, I liked it better because the script is more tightly focused, rather than wandering around all over the place like the first one, and there are some decent lines here and there. Perry again gives a solid performance and seems to be enjoying himself, and there's some effective scenery chewing by an actor named Teach Grant as a despicable villain. One oddity is that the Goodnight character seems to have lost his touch when it comes to handling a gun. He was a crack shot in the first one but can't seem to hit much of anything this time around.

These movies aren't going to make anybody a Western fan who isn't one already, but there are enough nice moments that I enjoy them. I thought the ending of this one worked well, and I'm sure it won't be long before we watch the third and final film in the series.

Overlooked TV Movies: Goodnight for Justice (2011)

We never watched BEVERLY HILLS 90210 (or the remake, for that matter), but I’ve seen Luke Perry in some other things and enjoyed his work. He seems to have liked making Westerns, and in 2011 and 2012 he did three movies for the Hallmark Channel in which he played John William Goodnight, a federal circuit judge in Wyoming Territory. Evidently Perry himself created the character, although he didn’t have a hand in writing any of the movies.

We recently got a DVD set of all three movies and just watched the first one, GOODNIGHT FOR JUSTICE (directed by Perry’s 90210 buddy Jason Priestley). It does a good job of establishing the character: Goodnight is a successful but somewhat disreputable lawyer in Illinois when he’s appointed by the President to take over the Wyoming circuit. Some flashbacks tell us that he’s actually from that part of the country, the son of settlers who were murdered by outlaws, so he’s grown up with a thirst for justice as well as a desire to track down the boss owlhoot responsible for his parents’ death. Becoming a judge in Wyoming will give him the opportunity to do that.

From that point, the story is a little episodic and the script rather heavy-handed and stereotypical as the main plotline involves Goodnight taking on an evil cattle baron who’s trying to run the peaceful Cheyenne Indians off their land. To get my other complaints out of the way, the movie was made on a pretty small budget and shot in Canada, in the same Canadian movie set where so many other made-for-TV Westerns in this century have been shot. The place just never looks authentic to me. It always comes across as a cheap tourist attraction.

On the plus side, though, the action scenes are fairly well done. Perry looks good in the part and seems to be having fun, and that makes up for a lot. There’s even one nice twist in the plot that I wasn’t expecting. Overall, while far from a great Western, GOODNIGHT FOR JUSTICE is reasonably entertaining, and I won’t hesitate to watch the other two movies in the series.

Tuesday's Overlooked TV Movie: Powderkeg

I recently watched this movie again for the first time in more than 40 years, and I'm happy to report that it holds up pretty well. I remember really liking it when I saw it back in 1971. It's one of those sort-of Westerns set in the early 20th Century. Fernando Lamas and Michael Ansara play brothers who start out as revolutionaries in Mexico but wind up as bandits, and when Ansara's character is captured and sentenced to hang, Lamas and his gang take over a whole train full of passengers and hold them hostage, demanding Ansara's release as they run the train back and forth on the same 40 mile stretch of track. They're over the border in Mexico, so U.S. troops can't go in and probably couldn't rescue the hostages without getting them all killed anyway.

So the railroad calls in troubleshooters Hank Brackett (Rod Taylor) and Johnny Reach (Dennis Cole) to do the impossible and save the train. Brackett and Reach are soldiers of fortune who travel around the Southwest in a Stutz Bearcat, having adventures, making wisecracks, and romancing beautiful women. Will they rescue the passengers and bring the bandits to justice? What do you think?

I tell you, when I watched this in 1971, I thought it was one of the coolest movies I'd ever seen. It's still pretty darned entertaining, if a little slow in spots. I don't know if writer/director Douglas Heyes ever read any of Ben Haas's Fargo novels, but this whole set-up would have worked perfectly for one of them. Rod Taylor even wears one of those Smokey the Bear hats like Fargo did on the covers of all those old paperbacks. POWDERKEG spawned a short-lived TV series called BEARCATS!, which I watched faithfully for all 13 episodes. The movie is available on DVD, as is the entire series. I may have to watch it pretty soon, because I really enjoyed revisiting POWDERKEG.

Tuesday's Overlooked Movie: Christmas Twister

I wanted to find an obscure Christmas movie to write about today, and they don't get much more obscure than this one. Actually, one of my daughters saw it last year when it debuted on the Ion television network and told me about it. My reaction at the time: "CHRISTMAS TWISTER? There's no such movie as CHRISTMAS TWISTER!"

Well, there is, and I'm here to tell you about it, if not wholeheartedly recommend it.

First of all, it's set in the area where I live, although it was filmed elsewhere, as quickly becomes obvious to anyone familiar with this part of Texas. In fact, the first scene takes place in Dublin, Texas, which has to be the only time I've ever seen a movie set partially in Dublin. Any movie. Other locales include Stephenville, Granbury, Lake Worth (about five miles from where I'm typing this), and Fort Worth.

The plot is pretty simple. A rare, unseasonal outbreak of killer tornadoes threatens Fort Worth and the surrounding area. Climate scientist Caspar Van Dien (who has certainly been in his share of less than stellar movies) realizes what's coming and tries to warn people, including his news broadcaster wife, but nobody will believe him. Sure enough, the tornadoes hit just before Christmas, chaos and destruction ensue, and the scientist and his wife and kids (who are all in different locations starting out, of course) try to survive and find each other. A few soap operatic sub-plots stretch things out.

Christmas is in December, but that's about the only thing CHRISTMAS TWISTER gets right as far as facts go. The science, the geography, the way people actually talk and act in Texas, all of that is pretty much wrong. One of the guys who wrote the script lives in Austin, but there's still a strong sense that he and his co-author just called up Google Maps and plucked names off of it. It doesn't help that the actors refer to highway numbers with "the" in front of them, as in, "Let's hop on the 1-9-9" or "We'll cut over to the I-30". I don't know how widespread that practice is in other parts of the country, but I've never heard anybody say such a thing around here. I've always thought that was a Southern California thing. County names are mispronounced, too.

Yes, I know I'm being picky about things that I happen to know even though they probably wouldn't bother people in other parts of the country. I'm sure I've made similar mistakes in my own work. You try your best and you go on. So I feel bad about pointing them out, but such things do make it hard for me to take the movie seriously.

That's probably the point, though. Movies like CHRISTMAS TWISTER aren't meant to be taken seriously. And in that respect it does manage some moments of goofy, over-the-top entertainment. Richard Burgi, who's made a career out of playing smarmy lawyers, smarmy doctors, and smarmy businessmen, is a smarmy meteorologist in this one, and one of his scenes is particularly effective. A statuesque blond actress named Kassandra Clementi plays the best friend of the scientist's daughter and actually puts some spark and humor into an underwritten part. The fact that she spends her on-screen time in extremely short cut-off jeans and cowboy boots probably doesn't hurt. She's Australian and currently featured on a soap opera down there, but I wouldn't be surprised to see her turn up again in American productions.

Other than taking place just before Christmas, there's not much holiday spirit in this one. It's cheaply made and for the most part very workman-like, but I stayed awake for the whole thing, which is worth something. Ion has shown it several times already this Christmas season. I don't know if it's scheduled again, but you should be able to look that up if you're interested. And hey, there's always next year, when I'm sure they'll show it again.

Tuesday's Overlooked TV Movie: The Blue Lightning

You've probably figured out by now that I'm a Sam Elliott fan. In this TV movie from 1986, he plays a private eye named Harry Wingate (good name for a PI) who's on the trail of a fabulously valuable opal known as the Blue Lightning. His search leads him to Australia, where he winds up tangling with a villainous former IRA gunman (played by Robert Culp), who has taken over a small settlement in the Outback. So, yeah, it plays a lot like a Western, but you don't think I'm going to complain about that, do you? I haven't seen this movie since it was new, but I remember enjoying it. The whole thing is posted on YouTube, so you can check it out for yourself, if you're of a mind to and have better Internet service than I do.

Tuesday's Overlooked TV Movies: Class of '61

This Civil War drama was a failed series pilot, so it's not surprising that not everything in the plot is wrapped up neatly. Hey, the war's just starting when it's over. The soap opera-ish plot follows several cadets at West Point, some of whom go to fight for the Union, some for the Confederacy. It's fairly well done despite being predictable, and has a good cast that includes Andre Braugher and early roles for Clive Owen and Laura Linney. Worth watching, although on a pretty small scale when it comes to Civil War movies.

There don't seem to be any clips from it available on YouTube, but you can buy a Region 2 DVD or a VHS tape of the movie on Amazon, both of which are pretty pricey.