TV shows | Cavalcade of Awesome

Archive for the TV shows Category

AWESOME-tober-fest 2010: Werewolf on Fox

Posted in Halloween, holiday, monsters, nostalgia, pop culture, TV shows, Uncategorized, werewolf, werewolves with tags AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2010, Halloween, holiday, monsters, pop culture, TV shows, werewolf, werewolves on October 19, 2010 by Paxton

So, another day has dawned on this AWESOME-tober-fest 2010. This week, we are discussing werewolf TV shows. Yesterday I looked at Wolf Lake on Sci-Fi. Today, we look at one of the first shows ever on Fox Network, Werewolf.

Here’s a promo for the series:

The story involves graduate student Eric Cord whose best friend reveals that he’s a werewolf and asks Eric to kill him with a silver bullet. Eric is forced to do so but not before his friend transforms and attacks him. Cord kills the werewolf but is now infected with the curse. In order to rid himself of his werewolf affliction, he either must kill himself or find the originator of the bloodline. A man Eric is told is the mysterious and crazy Capt Janos Skorzeny (played by Chuck Connors).

Werewolf pic 1
(Via Werewolftv.com)

So, essentially the episodes involved Eric dodging a bounty hunter while searching for Capt Skorzeny. Eric did manage to face and defeat the Capt, but in doing so found out that he wasn’t the originator of the bloodline. It was another, 500 year old werewolf named Nicholas Remy. So the searching and battling began anew. And the audience would not find out if Eric found him as the show was canceled before that could happen.

fox Werewolf pic 2
(Via Werewolf-news.com)

While the show may have been average to good, the makeup effects were top notch. They were designed by none other than Rick Baker who famously designed the werewolf effects for An American Werewolf in London, The Wolfman (2010) and Wes Craven’s Cursed.

The complete series had been announced to be released on DVD, however it was eventually canceled.

Also, check out the blog Countdown to Halloween for more Halloween-y, bloggy AWESOMEness.

3 Comments »

Awesome-tober-fest 2010: Wolf Lake

Posted in monsters, TV shows, werewolf, werewolves with tags AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2010, Halloween, holiday, monsters, TV shows, werewolf, werewolves on October 18, 2010 by Paxton

Here we are, Day 12 of AWESOME-tober-fest 2010 and no signs of stopping. Two weeks ago I looked at werewolves in comic books. Last week I looked at werewolf novels. This week, we look at TV shows featuring werewolves. Our first entry? Sci-Fi Channel’s’ Wolf Lake.

Wolf Lake was a TV show on CBS in 2007. It was canceled after nine episodes. The show had a pretty nice cast with Tim Matheson (Animal House), Lou Diamond Phillips (Young Guns, La Bamba) and Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Live Free or Die Hard, Scott Pilgrim vs The World). However, the show was a little melodramatic.

Seattle police detective John Kanin (Lou Diamond Phillips as Kanin. Oh, get it? Kanin/Canine? Haha, so clever) proposes to his girlfriend but she suddenly disappears. Kanin’s search for her leads him back to her home town, Wolf Lake, WA. When he starts asking questions from the townspeople, it becomes clear that they are hiding information from him. And that information is that everyone is a werewolf…including his fiance.

I’ve watched bits and pieces of this show. It felt like a cheesy Twin Peaks rip-off. I mean, the first episode is titled Meat the Parents. So, that’s the level of cleverness we are dealing with (that and Kanin/Canine).

The reviews online aren’t that bad, considering, but again, it was canceled with only 9 episodes in the can. Unfortunately, Netflix doesn’t have the DVDs in stock so I’m forced to watched pieces of episodes off YouTube which is really not helpful because the series was filmed so dark that you can’t see a damn thing.

Also, check out the blog Countdown to Halloween for more Halloween-y, bloggy AWESOMEness.

2 Comments »

The Flash TV Special comic book

Posted in comic books, pop culture, The Flash, TV shows with tags comic books, pop culture, The Flash, TV shows on September 22, 2010 by Paxton

Monday was the 20th anniversary of the premiere of CBS’ The Flash TV series which lasted only one season in 1990. Today, I will take a look at the DC Comic The Flash TV Special #1 which was a promotional comic tie-in to the TV series.

This comic was released towards the end of The Flash’s first season. It was intended to pump up interest in the show during its hiatus. It contained two brand new Flash stories set within the TV show universe as well as a behind the scenes section detailing how the TV show was made.

The first story in this special issue was written by the great John Byrne. Byrne wrote The X-Men’s Dark Phoenix Saga and Days of Future Past as well as the 1986 reboot of Superman after Crisis on Infinite Earths. The story is titled The Quick and the Dead and it has very dynamic art by Javier Saltares.

Flash TV Special page 7

In the story, Central City is stalked by a “ghost” who is killing former STAR Labs scientists and Tina is next. The Flash must figure out how to defeat something that he can’t touch and is twice as strong as he is. It’s a pretty good story and something typical you’d see in Season 1 of the show. It literally could have been a script that Byrne either wrote for the show or just re-worked an existing, unused show’s script. And Javier’s artwork is great. You can tell he took his style from the TV show. The Flash suit is directly off the screen with the red boots and stylized cowl. However, for some reason, they didn’t draw Barry Allen to look like John Wesley Shipp. They made him the traditional blonde, like in the comics, but since this is based on the show, it’s weird to see. Here are some panels of the oddly blonde Barry Allen.

See? Looks nothing like Shipp from the show. Despite this, the story is light and fun and, like I said, totally feels like an episode of the TV series.

Continue reading →

The Flash ran onto TV screens 20 years ago today

Posted in comic books, nostalgia, The Flash, TV shows with tags anniversary, comic books, nostalgia, pop culture, The Flash, TV shows on September 20, 2010 by Paxton

The Flash 2 hour premiere

20 years ago today, on September 20, 1990, CBS aired the two hour series premiere of The Flash. The show originally ran on Thursday nights in a very competitive time slot, 8pm. The show starred John Wesley Shipp, best known as Dawson’s dad on Dawson’s Creek, as Barry Allen, police scientist turned super speedster. Also starring was Corbin Bernsen’s wife, Amanda Pays, as Tina McGee.

This new super hero show was directly inspired by the 1989 Batman movie. The same guy that designed the Bat suit for Burton also developed Flash’s suit. Danny Elfman composed the opening music which sounds very similar to his orchestral Batman score. The stories were also similar to Burton’s Batman, at least for the first half of Season 1. Many of those plots involved gangsters, drug dealers and evil corporations, a staple of the first two Burton Batman movies. Also, at the time, thanks to the speedster effects, this was the most expensive show on TV to produce. It cost over $1 million an episode, which is why it was so easy for CBS to pull the plug after poor first season ratings.

I first heard about this show (pre-Internet Age, 1988 or 1989) on a trip to Six Flags Over Atlanta. Warner Brothers/DC owns the park so they were showing a quick 5 minute trailer on monitors all over the park. I was so excited because I had no idea they were even planning it and Flash is my favorite comic book character. So I was completely stoked by the time September, 1990 rolled around.

The Flash would get a prime spot, like most hot new shows, in TV Guide’s Fall Preview. Here is The Flash’s entry in the 1990 Fall Preview issue (you can click it to make it bigger).

Other shows to appear in that issue? Beverly Hills 90210, Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Law and Order and Cop Rock. Maybe Shawn over at Branded in the 80s will do one of his TV Guide Fall Preview posts about this issue (hint, hint, Shawn).

Continue reading →

9 Comments »

Quick Shots: Reviews of some stuff I’ve seen and read…

Posted in movies, reviews, TV shows with tags movies, reviews, TV shows on April 8, 2010 by Paxton

I should do this more often, but I don’t. However, I will try to get an article like this out more often.

Today, I’m going to give a bunch of quick reviews of movies and TV shows I’ve seen and watched the past few weeks.

Hot Tub Time Machine – Saw it two weeks ago. HILARIOUS. It’s every bit as good as I wanted it to be. I will still say that they gave away too many jokes in the trailer and the ridiculous amount of clips they released online. However, this movie is still funny. Rob Corddry nearly steals the whole shebang. Also, look for a VERY covert appearance by none other than the Kobra Kai himself, William Zabka. I swear you won’t recognize him. For me, this movie is NEARLY as good as The Hangover.

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans – Watched this last night. It’s terrible. Nic tries to relive his Leaving Las Vegas performance. He must have succeeded because I hated this movie every bit as much as I hated Leaving Las Vegas. At least LLV had some decent boobie scenes. F**k this movie.

Predator 2 – I’m gearing up for the new Predator movie in July. I watched the first Predator on Blu-Ray and that movie still holds up. It’s awesome. Just listening to Arnold scream “GET TO THA CHOPPA!” gets my adrenaline pumping. So I finally watched the sequel, Predator 2 with Danny Glover. I’m sorry, but there’s no way Murtaugh is gonna kill a Predator. NO F***ING WAY. And you rarely get to see the Predator, which, in this movie is bad because there’s absolutely nothing else going on that is interesting. NOTHING. Instead of Jesse Ventura we get Bill Paxton. Instead of Arnold’s Dutch we get GARY F***ING BUSEY. Yes, Gary Busey’s character was originally written as Dutch. WTF?! I want to cry. For straight up bad ass Predator action, I prefer the first Alien vs Predator movie, even though, as a movie, it’s horrible. HORRIBLE. I love Predator based on the original movie, but there has yet to be another movie anywhere near as good as the first. Hopefully, that gets rectified in July with Rodriguez’s Predators.