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AND NOW, A TBS SUPERSTATION ORIGINAL MOVIE...

What would my childhood have been like without TBS? It's a question I often ponder.

Nowadays, the Atlanta based cable network is primarily known for its self-described “Very Funny” programming, consisting of popular recent sitcom re-runs and its own stab at original comedy programming, all anchored by their huge acquisition of Conan O’Brien a few years back.

But when I was a kid, TBS was the Superstation and it was a huge part of my early movie-watching experiences. They still broadcast sitcom re-runs – Lord knows I watched so much Roseanne and Home Improvement that they basically became alternate realities for me - but their primary focus was on movies, thrusting my unformed mind headfirst into the world of Hollywood filmmaking.

TBS Superstation was the king of the movie marathons, running day or weeklong binges of James Bond, John Wayne, Friday the 13th (on every Friday the 13th, natch) and more. They would also sometimes just show the same movie over and over again like A Christmas Story all day on Christmas Day or once when I inexplicably watched A Night at the Roxbury three times in a row because it just kept restarting as soon as the credits rolled like some hellish Möbius strip. Sure, they may have edited the movies for content or time compression, but at the time, I didn’t know any better or really care – I was still overwhelmed with all this cool new stuff. It was a vital place for the burgeoning film lover.

So successful were their movie-programming ways that TBS eventually took their own stab at producing. In 1999, the network debuted TBS Original Movies, homegrown productions that would premiere with a ton of hype every few months. While it was a relatively short-lived foray, a substantial number of films were produced in the ensuing five year period. It was mostly your typical schlocky television movie fare – horror, sci-fi, action thrillers, etc – and while none of them could be considered great films per se, there was an above-average glossiness and straightforward storytelling quality that made them undeniably appealing. Upon reflection, this was probably because they were sandwiched in between actual Hollywood movies with the hopes that the quality wouldn’t be noticeably different.

As big a deal as they were at the time, nobody much remembers the TBS Original Movies anymore. They were just TV movies, after all. So like a paleontologist uncovering rare fossils, I figured I’d take a plunge into my past and revisit some of these movies. And just like the classic Superstation model, I marathoned them over a few days.

Are they still entertaining? Is this just a huge waste of time? Is Harry Hamlin sexy? An important pop culture investigation begins now.

RED WATER

Lou Diamond Phillips plays an ex-natural-gas-driller-turned-homely-fisherman who is tasked with boating his environmentalist ex-wife (Kristy Swanson) and a sniveling corporate nerd up river to a natural gas drilling site in the Louisiana bayou. Once there, he has to contend with a freshwater shark that is wreaking havoc, not to mention a group of criminals (including Coolio and a guy who looks like he’s modeled after Paul Walker from the first couple Fast and Furious movies) who are trying to recover stolen money underwater. Red Water is actually a cut above your typical Z-grade shark attack film though, with some surprisingly decent kills, a couple of big budget explosions, and more plot to chew on than you’d expect. Plus, it was nice to see LDP saving the day again – it’s been a while. A campy, fun way to kick things off.

DISAPPEARANCE

I entered Twilight Zone-y territory next with this story about a family who takes a detour while driving through the Nevada desert to check out an old abandoned mining town and then find that they can’t leave. I remember liking Disappearance the most out of all these movies when I was a kid and it still holds up as a pretty effective and creepy little horror flick. Despite some expected clichés, the plot keeps twisting in interesting ways and you’re never quite sure what it is that’s out to get this family, even right up to the ambiguous ending. Harry Hamlin dorks it up as the dad and Susan Dey (of The Partridge Family fame) plays his new wife who’s trying so hard to get his bratty kids to like her, which adds an interesting family dynamic as well.

I would say this comes the closest to transcending its TV movie trappings (there’s some stylistic flair to the way it’s shot) to be a legitimately good and somewhat unnerving horror flick.

THE TRIANGLE

Maybe it’s because the story was so similar to Disappearance, but boredom started to creep in a little bit during The Triangle (I also wrote an embarrassing short story in high school that was kind of like this). A group of friends decide to take a fishing trip out near the Bermuda Triangle and then promptly become lost at sea – and lost in time apparently, as they eventually board an abandoned luxury liner that has been missing for decades. It’s another creepy premise that’s kind of sabotaged due to sloppy writing and unimaginative direction – which is unfortunate since it’s directed by Lewis Teague, a guy who made Hollywood movies like Cujo and The Jewel of the Nile at one point.

There is pleasure to be taken in some of the casting, however, which includes Luke Perry trying to subvert his 90210 image by playing the douchey friend who goes crazy and pulls a Jack Torrance due to the ghostly spirits on the ship. Note: Luke Perry is not scary. I also recently found out what a bro-tank is and the other guy in the picture above, a TV actor named Dan Cortese, LOVVVVES wearing bro-tanks.

EVIL NEVER DIES

Things perked back up quickly due to sheer ridiculousness with this serial killer flick. Thomas Gibson plays a detective who finally catches the killer he’s been after all these years, but only after his wife is murdered by him. Flash-forward several years and the killer is finally executed by lethal injection, while Gibson is transferred to patrolling a university campus because he’s become too unhinged in the intervening years. Coincidentally enough, this university is home to a professor who is performing experiments in trying to bring the dead back to life. Can you guess which corpse end up on his operating table? Things only get increasingly ludicrous from there and yet everything is taken very seriously, particularly by Gibson, who seems to be doing a dry run for his deathly humourless character on Criminal Minds. Wacky fun all around, directed with a Hollywood-level sheen by Uli Edel, who made Last Exit to Brooklyn and the Oscar-nominated The Baader Meinhof Complex. Plus a pre-Grey’s Anatomy Katherine Heigl stars as the love interest.

INVINCIBLE

TBS’s most-hyped original movie at the time was this martial arts action fantasy produced by Mel Gibson and Jet Li and directed by the guy that made S.F.W. Tapping into the wire-fu craze that was everywhere after The Matrix, Invincible concerns an immortal warrior played by Billy Zane who recruits four random people (including a pre-Prison Break Dominic Purcell) to train and fight alongside him to defeat his former ally bent on destroying the world. A lot of effort is put into the ultimately cheesy fight sequences but Zane is far and away the number one reason to watch this. While training the warriors in his secret lair (which looks like a cross between a nightclub and a Roman bathhouse), he pontificates about “fighting with love, not with hate” and teaches them how to use the elements, while also cracking dumb jokes like an embarrassing dad. At one point, he whimsically rides a bicycle around a shallow pool for what seems like ten minutes. For Billy Zane fans (and I know you’re out there), Invincible is a gold mine.

AMERICA'S PRINCE: THE JOHN F. KENNEDY JR. STORY

The Superstation’s one foray into biopic territory was this exploration into the life of the tragically killed playboy and president’s son and it follows all the usual guidelines of these sort of TV movies – meaning it’s cheap, shallow, and instantly forgettable. The exotically named Kristoffer Polaha plays JFK Jr. as vapidly as possible, while Portia de Rossi gets the thankless role of his uninteresting wife. At least Jacqueline Bisset has some fun as Jackie O, but the central thread of poor little John-John just wanting everyone to leave him alone and stop comparing him to his dad is beaten in so hard that the whole movie is a pretty dreary affair. Plus there’s an annoying mockumentary framing device with a bunch of awful actors pretending to be real people commenting on his life. This was definitely the lowest point of the marathon.

SILENT PREDATORS

Things brightened back up with what I decided was going to be the last one of these movies I was going to watch, otherwise I’d start going insane. In Silent Predators, a small town is overrun with a deadly new breed of rattlesnakes and it’s up to the hunky fire chief (Harry Hamlin again, flexing his muscles at every turn) and a perky land developer (Shannon Sturges, who has apparently acted in things) to stop them. It hits all the marks of your typical snake attack movie in a comforting way. Snakes slither and hiss, unwitting suburbanites scream, young kids are put in danger, bureaucracy gets in the way and makes things worse – all that good stuff is here. It’s moves along at a quick pace and just contains the basics, while the script (which is partially credited to John Carpenter, no less) disregards any kind of character development or other introspection of any kind.

And that pretty much sums up my overall feelings as I closed out this obscure free-for-all. What makes the Superstation Original Movies so much fun is that there are no pretensions here. For the most part, it’s basic genre filmmaking and it knows it, unlike say, the recent boom of SyFy movies that aspire to instant cult status without any thought put into making an entertaining film to start with.

A lot of the Superstation titles may be kind of by the book, but there’s a conscious effort made into making the book a consistently enjoyable ride.

FINAL NOTES:

- A lot of these were shot outside of North America, and several were made with Australia standing in for the US.

- The female lead characters are typically tough and physical and take care of business when they need to, but also gradually show more and more cleavage as the film progresses.

- Almost every movie has one or two scenes of pure exposition where the characters tell us exactly who they are. And then the story moves on. And I honestly didn't need any more than that.

- One-time People's Sexiest Man Alive Harry Hamlin is a dad in Disappearance, so he's kind of a loser. But in Silent Predators, when he rocks the tight fire chief uniform and a pair of '90s shades, I can see the sex appeal.

- Best performance in any of these goes to Billy Zane. Billy Zane fucking rules.

#TBS #superstation #red water #silent predators #the triangle #evil never dies #america's prince #disappearance #invincible #harry hamlin