MY NAME IS SCOTT FOY AND I PAID TO SEE THE CRUSH

Another month, another Foyeurism, another installment of my unhealthy obsession with failed television pilots. Actually, this will more than likely be the final installment of the PILOT ERROR series for the foreseeable future. Personally, I thought last month's PILOT ERROR 2 Foyeurism was one of my lesser articles, not just because the two pilots in question were stinkers, but also because I was feeling burned out big time. I was still feeling it up until about the middle of June when I saw a film that relit my pilot light.

That film was THE 13TH ALLEY. If you haven't heard of this film then you clearly haven't been paying attention to the message board (major makeover coming very soon - DEATH TO THE SPAMBOTS~!) or my blog or Dread Central where you'll find the review. A very limited theatrical release, this mind-blowing bad slasher flick somehow parlayed a theatrical release. My review of that howlingly bad film got the record-breaking Dread Central rating of "ONE BILLION KNIVES!" After which I received a "thank you" email from the film's writer/director/co-star. Two days after that the same guy turned around and sent an angry email to the Dread Central editors demanding my review be pulled because... It's kind of a long story. Heck, even my getting to see the film turned into an ordeal. You can hear that story in the new installment of the Foycast that went up on the "Foyth" of July.

For over an hour yours truly and Uncle Creepy wax poetic about a wide range of topics: why it's taken months to get around to another doing another installment of the Foycast, THE 13TH ALLEY situation, more Asylum wackiness, the remakes of PROM NIGHT and ONE MISSED CALL, funny tales of my days as a casino employee, the addictiveness of playing Uno on Xbox Live, Johnny Butane's oriental fashion sense, certain "classic" movies airing on TCM and AMC, my dramatic recounting of the motion picture NEVER BACK DOWN, Creepy declaring his love for a little seen zombie flick called THE CHILLING, my strained attempt to explain the surreal badness of an equally little seen slasher flick called FREEWAY MANAIC, swapping stories about the horror that is Waffle House, and MASTER CONTROL~!

Not convinced this is worth 70-minutes of your time yet? You'll also hear my singing debut! And the biggest news of all: how a joke I made led to the retitling of an upcoming Sci-Fi Channel original movie. That's right; not only am I constantly reviewing Sci-Fi Channel original movies, now I've moved up to naming them!

You can download the MP3 or listen to it streaming by CLICKING HERE.

Now onto the third and (for now) last installment of the PILOT ERROR series featuring four goofball pilots, two of which SHOULD have been given the shot at being weekly TV shows. I personally think this is the best installment yet.

 

PILOT ERROR 3: FAILURE TO LAUNCH

 

We begin with a simple pilot with a simple formula: the wacky antics of a straight-laced young cop paired with a rowdy police dog. Except… The dog is possessed with the spirit of his rambunctious dead partner. And the dog can talk. And most of the time the talking dog is a talking dog puppet. I give you POOCHINSKI.

"This pilot is great... for me to poop on!"

In 1990 when this potential series was conceived Hollywood was for some reason enamored with buddy cop comedies about average Joe cops paired with mischievous police dogs. Just a year earlier saw the release of both Jim Belushi's K-9 and Tom Hanks' TURNER & HOOCH; the POOCHINKI pilot even aired back-to-back with the pilot for a TURNER & HOOCH series that NBC also put the kibosh to. A year later would see another failed TV movie pilot called K-9000 that paired an uptight cop with the cybernetically-enhanced lovechild of Rin Tin Tin and K.I.T.T.

A robo-dog that could double as a cell phone still wasn't anywhere near as far fetched as POOCHINSKI's premise of a cop getting killed, his soul ending up in the body of his pet bulldog, and the talking dog teaming up with his partner to catch his killer while still finding time to help the partner score with the merry widow living upstairs. At least it was meant to be comedy. Still, it must be asked, how much glue has to be sniffed to come up with a premise like this?

A lot of movie length pilots have left me complaining about the material being stretched too thin to fill out an hour-and-a-half. POOCHINSKI is the opposite. A full-length movie could have easily been made given how much plot the makers of POOCHINSKI tried cramming into its lone half-hour pilot. You see how Poochinski came about getting the bulldog, Poochinski's antics annoying his partner, how Poochinski got killed, now a dog Poochinski reintroducing himself to his partner, the two of them engaging in wacky buddy cop antics at work and wacky ODD COUPLE antics at home, Poochinski trying to help his partner score with the pretty widow upstairs, Poochinski coming to the realization that he's now a dog, and, finally, the two of them going after Poochinski's killer. All that story, all that character development, all of it has been smushed down to 22-minutes (minus commercials and credits). The pilot is very choppy, jumping around, jumping forward, breezing along, and never stopping long enough to focus on any one of those particular aspects before rushing off to the next. You get the feeling that everything is in fast forward but you'll never call it dull.

The late, great Peter Boyle appears briefly in the flesh at the outset as Stanley Poochinski: decorated vice cop, dog lover, and well meaning lout. The pilot opens with Poochinski rescuing a bulldog being terrorized by some punk kids. Poochinski partner, Ray, is already perpetually aggravated by his partner's frequently boorish behavior and bringing that bulldog with him everywhere doesn't help matters. An ATM mugger makes his getaway in a speeding car; Poochinski saves his bulldog from getting run over only to get himself run over by the fleeing felon. Dying; Poochinski's soul somehow ends up in the bulldog's body.

How is this? The writers had more important things to deal with than trivial matters like explaining the show's premise.

Give your life saving a bulldog's life and the bulldog will reward you by giving you its body as a vessel for your soul. Don't believe me? Find a bulldog, go stand in front of a speeding train with it, and throw it out of the way at the last second. If I'm wrong you can... Well, you can't really do anything at that point.

Commercial break. Quick funeral scene. Poochinski the bulldog reveals himself to a stunned Ray.

George Newbern starred as rookie detective Ray. Newbern's a TV actor who, ironically, may be better known for his voice acting work than actually appearing on camera. He's voiced Superman for the JUSTICE LEAGUE cartoon and five years after POOCHINSKI would provide the voice of the title character in the disastrous THEODORE REX, an infamously bad buddy cop comedy that paired policewoman Whoopi Goldberg with a ridiculous-looking, humanoid dinosaur policeman. That atrocious film and its behind the scenes turmoil could be a Foyeurism unto itself.

How bad is THEODORE REX? Joe Bob Briggs once had to host the film on TNT's "Monstervision". His introduction of it consisted of him staring blankly into the camera and saying, "My momma always said if you can't say anything nice don't say anything at all." After a long, expressionless pause, he told them to just roll the movie.

Poochinski seems to be taking the whole reborn-as-a-bulldog thing in stride and doesn't seem too fazed by how few people attended his funeral when you consider he was a decorated cop. Poochinski bemoans sometimes doing certain doggy things that he feels an uncontrollable urge to do, such as ripping things up and howling on the window sill. But otherwise, only thing on his mind is catching his killer.

Although, a little later when another cop takes a potshot at Poochinski, a certain dog takes offense and pees on the guy’s foot. The urine stain looks like lemon dishwashing liquid. Not surprising given it came out of a dog made of foam.

A real live bulldog is used whenever we needed to see a dog just walking along or being picked up by Ray. Whenever Poochinski would talk or be needed to do something specific that a dog probably couldn't be trained to do on cue, such as singing along to a Dean Martin tune or making a sexually aroused face when in the arms of a well endowed woman with exposed cleavage, they'd break out the dog puppet. It was pretty believable looking for a dog muppet, but as something we're supposed to believe is a real live dog it still looked quite artificial and the face never moved in a realistic manner. I'm not stating this as a negative either; this is one of the aspects that made POOCHINSKI a riot to watch. Peter Boyle's voice is perfect coming out of a bulldog muppet and that high quality phoniness made just looking at it funny regardless of whether or not anything remotely funny was coming out of his mouth.

And nobody finds it at all odd that Ray tells everyone the previously nameless bulldog's name is Stanley Poochinski, the same name as his dead partner.

Like all roommates on an NBC series, the sexual tension between the two was undeniable

Back at Ray's apartment, the two of them will begin their mismatched roommates routine. Poochinski will get a look at himself in the mirror and suddenly have it dawn on him that he's a dog. Then it's right back to tearing up furniture and trying to help Ray score with the merry widow who lives upstairs by luring her and her young daughter to the apartment and secretly serenading them with a Dean Martin song. It's every bit as goofy as that sounds.

Amy Yasbeck is the merry widow. Sadly, Amy Yasbeck would go on to become a merry widow in real life. Her late husband John Ritter is also listed as a producer of this potential series. Seeing Ritter's name listed a producer kind of surprised me; this show screamed "Henry Winkler" to me.

After a few minutes of zany hijinks (and with only minutes left in the show), it’s time to very quickly catch the killer, a virtual entity in the show. A foot chase culminates with Ray fighting the guy and Poochinski violently biting the downed man's crotch, his ultimate revenge against the criminal who killed him, though he lets it be known afterwards that he did not enjoy it. Personally, I think it would have been even funnier if Poochinski had beat up the killer and Ray bit the guy's crotch.

POOCHINSKI is one that you'd have to see for yourself to fully appreciate its hokey charm. Not good in the conventional sense by any stretch of the imagination, but stretching the imagination is what even gave life to this one and out pilot. The premise is preposterous. The pilot is even more preposterous. This show deserved a shot just to see what silliness they could have pulled out of their keesters with this one.

A buddy cop show where one half of the duo is a talking bulldog (puppet) voiced by Peter Boyle and those bastards at NBC rejected it? This is the network that put MY MOTHER THE CAR, THE POWERS OF MATTHEW STAR, SUPERTRAIN, BAYWATCH, THE 100 LIVES OF BLACKJACK SAVAGE, and frickin' MANIMAL on the air yet they drew the line at POOCHINSKI? NBC can bite me!

IN LOVING MEMORY OF POOCHINSKI
JULY 9, 1990
8:30/7:30 CST – 9:00/8:00 CST

While I'm still in the process of cursing NBC, let me tell you about WHERE'S RODNEY?, an pilot NBC passed on from the same year as POOCHINSKI. In this case, good call. I recall watching it the one and only time NBC dared to broadcast it and my most vivid memory of it was how dreadful it was. I'm working from my fuzzy memories on this one since WHERE'S RODNEY? is now beyond rare - and rightly forgotten about. Good luck ever tracking down a copy of it, not that there's any reason to ever do so unless you're as obsessed with Rodney Dangerfield as the lead kid in the program was. Before he died Dangerfield probably had the master tape burned and then snorted the ashes.

This premise was pretty much the same as every 1980's sitcom based around young teen facing typically young teen foibles, but with a very peculiar, incredibly stupid twist. You know how obsessed with Krusty the Klown Bart Simpson is and how his room is often shown as being a shrine to Krusty merchandise? Same thing with this kid - who I think was also named Rodney - only replace Krusty with Rodney Dangerfield. I forget exactly how old the kid was - 13 or 14, I believe. However old he was it was still too young to believe this teen would be that obsessed with Rodney Dangerfield. Hard to buy when you consider the majority of Dangerfield's movies and stand-up act were R-rated and Dangerfield's peak was when this kid was still in elementary school.

Sure, BACK TO SCHOOL was PG-13, but that was still several years prior, and Dangerfield's brief attempt to reinvent himself in a more family friendly image with films like LADYBUGS and the animated ROVER DANGERFIELD came after this pilot. Must have been that Rappin' Rodney video that started this kid's obsession.

A barely teenage boy being obsessed with a raunchy comedian isn't even the weirdest aspect of the WHERE'S RODNEY? premise. No; the really weird part was that this teen had a psychic power that allowed him to summon Rodney Dangerfield to appear before him - regardless of where the comedian was at the time or what he was doing - so that the kid could ask him for sage advice when faced with teen life's OZZIE & HARRIET-type problems, such as the kid's budding romance with Punky Brewster. Dangerfield would materialize via chintzy special effects in the kid's bedroom, bathroom, or a school hallway two or three times an episode to do a little "no respect" shtick and then offer some words of wisdom to the teen, occasionally even remarking that this whole scenario is freaky, before getting teleported back from whence he came.

Freaky? This should be a horror movie scenario. Some kid who idolizes a celeb can make that celeb teleport through time and space for reasons unknown and appear before him at his beck and call in order to play guidance counselor whenever the teenager isn't sure what to do - it's like SIDEKICKS meets THE TWILIGHT ZONE; yet it was supposed to be the set-up for a sitcom - a really unfunny one at that. The kid never questioned why he had this power and Dangerfield somehow took the hold this child over his very existence in stride. Realistically, whenever Dangerfield got summoned he should have been looking for a way to kill this psychic teenager before the day comes the kid finally decides to wish him into a cornfield.

Good thing this teen had a psychic hold over a male celebrity he sought advice from (not that that isn't also a bit unsettling) and not an actress he lusted after or else we could have easily ended up in creepy psychic stalker territory. Imagine you're Hayden Panettiere and some hormonally-charged 14-year old can make you appear in his bedroom whenever he wants you to. That's going to turn ugly real fast.

And probably become a smash hit in Japan.

Moving on...

On a Saturday night in 1991, the American Broadcasting Company was bold enough to pre-empt an episode of TWIN PEAKS to present the pilot episode for a revolutionary new cop show the network had chosen not to pick-up for series, no doubt because it was just too ahead of its time. Had TAGTEAM gone to series each week audiences would have been thrilled by the antics of a pair of ex-tag team pro wrestlers turned police officers. Now you're probably thinking, "Hey, Foy, what's so revolutionary about that?" Simple, name one other cop show you've ever seen where the cops were ex-pro wrestlers who constantly made pro wrestling references and would use pro wrestling moves to takedown criminals. Drawing a blank now, aren't you?

In order to add a heretofore unrealized level of television realism, ex-pro wrestlers "Rowdy" Roddy Piper and Jesse "The Body" Ventura were cast in the leads. Fresh off THEY LIVE, Piper because "Tricky" Rick McDonald, not to be confused with "Quick" Rick Roberts, his Oscar-caliber role in the 1986 wrestling classic BODY SLAM even though they're practically one in the same. Still riding high after his scene-stealing performances in PREDATOR, THE RUNNING MAN, and the little seen 1989 hobo fist fighting flick THUNDERGROUND, Ventura took on the identity of Billy "The Body" Youngblood who was essentially just Ventura with the volume dialed waaaaaay down.

Piper and Ventura were each looking for someone to blame for TAGTEAM's failure and unfortunately for them there wasn't a steel cage in sight

Sounding the death knell for TAGTEAM was Piper and Ventura, affable as they are in their roles, having their personalities all but completely stifled by the producers. Wrestling fans loved to hate Piper for being a hyperactive motormouth with a caustic wit and an extremely high opinion of himself. Ventura's whole wrestling persona was built around him being a colorful, arrogant trash talker. TAGTEAM gave us an "aww, shucks" Roddy Piper who's only defining personality trait was constant self-doubt and a Jesse Ventura who spoke like a low key motivational speaker. Wrestlers, particularly of this era, were over the top characters of cartoonish proportions, but Billy "The Body" Youngblood and "Tricky" Rick McDonald came across as just two ordinary nice guys who happen to be pro wrestlers. Since they're already typecasting, would it really have killed the people behind this show to let them be a bit more colorful?

TAGTEAM opens with Billy "The Body" Youngblood and "Tricky" Rick McDonald as a tag team preparing to square off with the top villain tag team known as The Samurai Brothers. Shannon Tweed cameos as the wife of the wrestling company owner who for reasons known only to her tells the two underdogs to throw the match - because wrestling is legit, after all - or else she'll tell her husband they've been making advances toward her and they'll never work again. They win the match anyway. She lies about them to her insanely jealous husband, their boss, and he has them barred for life.

USELESS INFORMATION TIME: Roddy Piper co-starred in BODY SLAM which co-starred Tanya Roberts. Tanya Roberts starred in the first NIGHT EYES movie; the following two sequels starred Shannon Tweed who cameos in the TAGTEAM pilot episode. What does this all mean? Nothing.

Also meaning nothing but I'll mention it anyway - Piper complains to the ref when the Samurai Brothers cheat using weapons even though the ring announcer stated before the match began that it would be a "no holds barred" contest.

Piper and Ventura’s remake of THE THING WITH TWO HEADS was also a resounding flop

Youngblood and McDonald are not just tag partners; they're also life partners (in a non-gay way), living together, riding together, and working together even after their wrestling careers go kaput. The rent will be due soon and they need an income because, apparently, there's only one wrestling company in the whole world that would pay them even though they just beat the #1 tag team in front of a wildly enthusiastic crowd. Talk of opening a wrestling school is shot down because they decide they were never that good. Again, see the sentence before last.

Their first attempt at a post-wrestling profession: piano movers - the kind of piano movers that move pianos up stairs. This ends with the piano they were moving going flying, crashing down on their pick-up truck. "I think we body slammed the truck." Technically, that was really more of a big splash, but why complain about technicalities like that when we're talking about the wittiest line of the whole show, and, honestly now, was that line really that witty?

After quitting a job getting beat up in a women's self defense class, the hetero life partner who even shop together thwart a supermarket robbery. This will conclude with them causing the thieves getaway car to crash into about a bin containing what appeared to be a million dollars worth of recyclable aluminum cans. They accomplish this by rolling a trash bin into the speeding cars' path. Before doing so, upon coming up with the idea, Youngblood looks to McDonald and says, "Remember The Highflyers?", an obvious reference to a previous tag match they'd had against a team called The Highflyers. They rolled a huge bin in front of a speeding car and caused it to crash; I couldn't help but find myself wondering afterwards what could have possibly occurred in that tag match against The Highflyers that this particular idea would immediately spring to mind? I want to see that match.

The cops on the scene are impressed with the duo's work, planting the seeds for the two ex-wrestlers to join the police force. Some pretty uneventful Police Academy training antics sorely lacking in the wacky side of the antics department follows. By the 30-minute mark they're already graduating. Just in time too - there's a damsel in distress.

Jennifer Runyon, one of the unsung, all-time great, 80's movie/TV babes nearing the end of her run - she'd call it quits two years later after co-starring in CARNOSAUR - turns up as a professional dog walker who witnesses the murder of two undercover cops. The ex-wrestlers first day on the job involves shadowing another cop assigned to protect her from the gangsters determined to keep her from testifying.

Oh, come on, Ms. Runyon. This is hardly that bad. You starred in CARNOSAUR for crying out loud!

Not only do McDonald and Youngblood remain partners even on the force despite both of them being rookies, but because these two in police uniforms would be too boring, they're allowed to operate as plain clothes officers. Piper always looks like he's on his way to the gym and Ventura always looks like he's just come from the ON DEADLY GROUND rummage sale.

In case you ever wondered who Steven Seagal stole some of his fashion sense from

From there - I really don't think there's any point going into details because it's all as predictable a mediocre network cop show of the era could possibly get despite the introduction of some rudimentary tag team wrestling maneuvers as a means by which to beat up bad guys. Just a routine buddy cop show, one that might even have worked had Piper and Ventura been allowed to be more bombastic and the writing been little more than a clichéd script template and limp attempts at humor. TAGTEAM isn't completely terrible. Like I said, it might have even worked under the right circumstances.

Perhaps its all for the best; had TAGTEAM gone to series Jesse Ventura may have never become the Governor of Minnesota and Roddy Piper may not have gone on to bless the world with a plethora of straight-to-video action thrillers of varying degrees of entertainment value. We could have been denied JUNGLEGROUND, people. A world without JUNGLEGROUND is a world I don’t want to live in.

Finally, I saved the best for last. Oh, have I ever.

Screw Tom Cruise! This guy is the true last samurai!

Lee Toshido Cantrell: vigilant lawyer by day, samurai vigilante by night.

Casting Italian-American Joe Penny (RIPTIDE, JAKE AND THE FATMAN) in the lead role of a Japanese-American was a questionable choice. Also questionable, building a show around a samurai crimefighter and having him use his samurai sword for everything except actually cutting, slashing, or stabbing bad guys. He'll use his sword to cut ropes, chop off doorknobs, and even push elevator buttons, and if need be he'll use it defensively to block attacks, but that samurai sword will never ever taste the blood of another human being, even if they deserve it. You know those samurais; they hated to spill blood.

This distinctly non-Japanese looking Japanese-American who never uses his deadly weapon as a deadly weapon fancies himself a samurai even though he actually behaves more like a ninja than a samurai. Cantrell mostly uses stealth attacks, lurking in the shadows until it comes time to pounce. Though once he does prepare to pounce he loves to let out a loud "Yeeeee-aaaaaaaaaah!!!!!" battle cry. One can only assume he values the element of startled confusion over the element of absolute surprise. And if he only wore a mask then there'd be no mistaking him for a ninja.

Of course if he only wore a mask we'd all be less likely to wonder how it is these criminals he meets face-to-face in city prosecutor mode fail to recognize him when he's ambushing them in samurai crimefighter mode. Does the head band he wears in samurai mode somehow protect his identity in much the same way Clark Kent's glasses were the only think that kept others from instantly recognizing him as Superman?

Cantrell continued to go unrecognized by all thanks to his continuous use of the ancient samurai "Shhh! Don't tell anybody. It's a secret." technique

I'm speaking of SAMURAI, a 90-minute movie pilot that aired on CBS in the spring of 1979 and then disappeared into the ether of time. I only learned of it was via an ABC TV special from a few year back about infamous failed TV pilots - the show that kicked off my recent obsession with rejected TV pilots - from which I had to grab the SAMURAI stills due to the copy of SAMURAI I managed to find being multiple generations down in quality.

Lee Toshido Cantrell spent much of his life in Japan where he was trained in the ways of the samurai. After his wealthy American father died, Cantrell moved back to his papa's native soil of San Francisco with his socialite Japanese mother (her resemblance to Imelda Marcos is frighteningly comical) and went on to law school in order to master the zen art of ambulance chasing. Now working as one of San Francisco's top prosecutors, Cantrell still finds himself frustrated by corruption and the rich and powerful circumventing their justice due. During one of his daily sparring sessions with his sensei, Takeo, who also came over from Japan, the Japanese-American lawyer with the decidedly Italian features decides to strike back using the ways of the samurai even though his appearance and behavior will be more ninja than samurai. Under cover of darkness he'll sneak up on bad guys only to let out a mighty battle cry alerting villains to his presence. This samurai then brings down the bad guys using his katana sword for everything except a weapon; no one is ever slashed or stabbed. I'm amazed this concept even made it to the pilot stage.

As poorly conceived as SAMURAI is; as poorly executed as most of SAMURAI is; most of SAMURAI's pilot is awesomely bad. Unintended lunacy is afoot here.

Case in point, in order to kick the show off with a bang we're treated to a flash forward of Cantrell in samurai mode taking down some baddies. After startling them with a mighty "Yeeee-aaaaaaaaaah!!!!!” Cantrell proceeds to... Unleash a martial arts butt kicking? No. Cut them to pieces with his samurai sword? Of course not. Knocking them out by spraying them with a high pressure fire hose and then dropping a big net over them? We have a winner. Before anyone laughs, Wikipedia states that legendary Japanese samurai Minamoto no Yoritomo used that same technique to defeat the aristocracy during Gempei War of 1185 and we all know Wikipedia never lies.

But SAMURAI does drag at times due to some dead weight stifling the show's momentum of silliness. Too much time spent with Cantrell and his samurai sensei sparring and waxing philosophical. Too much time spent flirting with the daughter of an old man he's trying to help. Too much time spent bonding with a young boy who factors little into the plot. Too many drawn out conversations with a cop who vaguely resembles Wimpy from the POPEYE cartoons (French fries are this guy's drug of choice, not hamburgers) about the cases they're working on. Nobody cares about Cantrell's attempts at enlightenment or flirtations with women that go nowhere or being the friend of children everywhere or spouting off obvious facts with police detectives. All we want to see is this easily identifiable man dressed in a black gi with a red head band thwarting criminals incapable of recognizing him, yelling "Yeeeee-aaaaaaaaaah!!!!!", and finding new and exciting ways to use his samurai sword for everything except its intended purpose. Nobody slices an apple quite like him.

Joe Penny's samurai sword cutting skills also came in quite handy on the set of JAKE AND THE FATMAN on those days when William Conrad requested a giant-sized ham sandwich

The pilot has Cantrell looking into why some men broke into a warehouse owned by an old man who immediately brought to mind a Yiddish Geppetto. Instead of Pinocchio, he has a smoking hot granddaughter played by Morgan Brittany (a TV babe of the late 70's/early 80's cut from the Charlie's Angels mold) that Cantrell can flirt with even though a cocktail party scene will clearly establish that Cantrell already has a girlfriend - that cad. The old man claims the thugs caught in his warehouse were there to blow it up. They, of course, get off scot free and that pushes Cantrell to go all "Yeee-aaaaaaaaaah!!!!!" for the first time.

The thing that really sets Cantrell off is the injury of a young boy he befriended who liked to hang around the warehouse; smoke inhalation during an attempt to burn down the warehouse hospitalizes the lad, angering our righteous hero. When they first meet the kid tells Cantrell about some of the strange people he'd notice snooping around the neighborhood. That conversation will bring about a bizarre low speed car chase with a hired thug following Cantrell home. I say bizarre because the henchman first tries to remain inconspicuous even as he all but tailgates Cantrell and then he'll repeatedly be shown looking utterly amazed by Cantrell's daredevil driving leaving him in the dust even though neither of them were going all that fast and his driving seemed barely out of the ordinary.

Those blue collar thugs work for untouchable businessman Amory Bryson, an unscrupulous industrialist looking to buy up property all around San Francisco with plans to redevelop it and build a "city of tomorrow" not unlike OCP in ROBOCOP. Bryson sees himself as a visionary building the San Francisco of the future by any means necessary. He reasons that lives were lost building the Golden Gate Bridge but those deaths were necessary for the betterment of the city; and if he has to break a few eggs of his own, such as property owners that won't sellout to him, then so be it.

The ruthless Amory Bryson is brought to life by Charles Cioffi, a veteran actor with a history of playing similar villains. He was the main weapons-manufacturing villain in REMO WILLIAMS: THE ADVENTURE BEGINS, a character not all that dissimilar to the one he plays in SAMURAI.

Amory Bryson is so evil he lives in a lair like a monster. Yes, a lair! Like a monster! Granted his lair was his high rise office, but that office seemed to be where he worked, where he lived, where he lurked, where he did everything in his existence except guard a pot of gold from any would be adventurers. A ruthless businessman by day sitting behind a desk making plans and giving grandiose speeches while showing off the huge 3-D map he has set-up on a table visualizing his intentions for the new San Francisco - it put me in the mood to play Risk; by night it seems Amory Bryson would just sit in his office chair with the lights turned down, enjoying a nice glass of scotch, and no doubt plotting something evil to do tomorrow or reminiscing about the evil he'd already done that day. There's only a scene or two where he actually leaves this lair and even then it's only to go to another part of the building. In fact, the finale is built around our hero having to force this evildoer out of his protective lair.

The first time Cantrell visits Bryson's lair it will be in prosecutor mode questioning Bryson about possibly being involved in the shenanigans going on at the docks where old man Geppetto's warehouse is located.

The second time will be as samurai Cantrell; he'll taunt Bryson ninja-like with veiled threats from the shadows before having to escape the high rise and Bryson's security goons. That escape will involve elevator swapping and using his sword to chop off doorknobs, pushing elevator buttons, propping open elevator shaft doors, smashing out windows, and using his sword in its sheath to repel across a wire to the safety of another rooftop. Before you scoff at any of this, according to Wikipedia, that was the original ending of THE SEVEN SAMURAI. Wikipedia is never wrong.

NOW THAT'S HOW YOU PICK A LOCK!

In case you're wondering, yes, Bryson went face-to-face with Cantrell both times yet didn't recognize the same man he'd just spoken too less than 24 hours ago in his office as the same man who vowed to stop him. Instead he'll refer to this mysterious man in black as "this boogeyman with the ten foot butcher knife". BOOGEYMAN WITH THE TEN FOOT BUTCHER KNIFE is also the title of my favorite slasher flick.

Also of note, Geoffrey Lewis (father of Juliette Lewis and a very recognizable character actor in his own right) appears as Bryson's right-hand man, Mr. Tigner. Almost always standing silently within close proximity to Bryson - often standing behind him - and utterly devoted to his boss' well being, Mr. Tigner is essentially "Waylon Smithers" to Amory Bryson's "Mr. Burns". Minus the homosexual tensions - at least as far we know.

When bribery, harassment, vandalism, and attempted arson fail to scare Yitzhak Geppetto into selling his rickety old dockside warehouse, the diabolical Amory Bryson is left with one last resort. That last resort: AN EARTHQUAKE MACHINE~!

You read that last paragraph correctly. From typical TV cop show criminal to 60's spy movie villainy in less than 75-minutes. An earthquake machine... So determined to acquire this old man's crummy property without which he'll be unable to build the new San Francisco of his dreams...

Far be if from me to possibly defend the bad guy but an argument could be made that that old, warehouse-loving, ethnic caricature is actually being selfish and standing in the way of much needed progress. San Francisco is a progressive city; that means progress. Get out of the way of progress, old man!

Anyway, an earthquake machine... How is this possible? Because Amory happens to have a scientist on staff who has devised a soundwave device that can create controlled man-made earthquakes that can currently shake up a seven or eight block radius. That scientist declares the benefits of this device "incalculable." Yeah, especially if you're an evil billionaire industrialist quickly spiraling into James Bond villain territory. The boss suggests the scientist field test his earthquake machine on an "abandoned" section of the city. You know what that means even if the naive scientist doesn't.

So the multi-gajillion dollar earthquake device with incalculable benefits for mankind is loaded into the back of a plain old deliver truck - swear to God - and driven down to the docks for nefarious field testing. After samurai unleashes heck upon a pathetic band of henchmen in the quaking warehouse, Cantrell rips a page out of the book "Bushido & the Art of Carjacking" by hijacking the truck. The music swells triumphantly as Cantrell drives it back downtown to Bryson's office building. Zen is achieved as we watch this man dressed like an Asian warrior drive a moving van, his signature "Yeeee-aaaaaaaaaah!!!!!" filling the air just before he crashes the truck through the front entrance of the building. This alone should have gotten SAMURAI a six episode order.

THE PASSWORD IS: "YEEEE-AAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!"

He's not done yet. Uh, uh. Cantrell then forces the skittish scientist in the back to set off the earthquake machine on the building itself. This struck me as a bad idea on a multitude of levels, not the least of which being the possibility of bringing a skyscraper down on top of you. You'd also think a powerful, super rich industrialist like Amory Bryson would have more security in his building ready to pounce on anyone that drives a vehicle right through the front door, and by more security I mean any security. Bryson and Mr. Tigner seem to be only people occupying the building at this time. See. I told you it was a lair.

Bryson and Mr. Tigner had been lurking up in his office/lair doing paperwork. Now they're flying around that office like they're on the deck of the Starship Enterprise during a photon torpedo attack.

The two of them will flee down the stairs just in time to be greeted by the cops. Then who should walk up but none other than San Francisco city prosecutor Lee Toshido Cantrell in a business suit that, I guess, he kept in his samurai pants pocket as an emergency in case he ever had to change clothes on a moments notice to keep from being found out. Cantrell produces a set of files that will reveal the truth about Bryson's dirty dealings. We're supposed to believe that Cantrell managed to slip upstairs, find precisely the right incriminating files needed to reveal Bryson's criminal enterprise, change out of his samurai gear back into his regular clothes, and get back downstairs all in approximately 2-3 minutes. I believe it. The man's a samurai after all. They're magic, you know? Wait. No. Ninjas are magic. Samurai are... On second thought this is just bullshit.

Extra points awarded for another earlier samurai encounter where Cantrell used his sword to disarm bad guys and then scare them off before blowing up their van with a traditional samurai mini-time bomb. After which this samurai is shown sheathing his sword like a proud warrior. Any why shouldn't he? The handheld time bomb is the very weapon Miyamoto Musashi, the most famous of all samurai, used to win 60 sword fights before the age of 30, so sayeth Wikipedia, the most reliable source of information on the World Wide Web.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes my PILOT ERROR series of Foyeurisms for this year. That is unless I finally get my hands on a copy of an ultra rare 1983 pilot starring Linda Hamilton about an E.T.-ish creature called WISHMAN. Believe me, if I finally track a copy down that’s going to be a guaranteed Foyeurism. Just take one look at WISHMAN and you’ll know why; we're talking the stuff children’s nightmares are made of.

MY NAME IS SCOTT FOY AND I PAID TO SEE THE JERKY BOYS