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^ opened, *first viewed

Intro—and we get to the N’s, the night letter… you’ll see what I mean. The M’s took longer to get through than anticipated. This letter should be less so. The letter took between January 18th and March 25th of 2022 to watch. And it took about 2 years (to the day) to post. I apologize.

Naked Gun Gift Set – a box set consisting of all three Naked Gun movies. I haven’t watched these in years, but I have watched them many many times. Usually, I would keep heavily seen movies like these in the background, but for these specific movies, I wanted to give them my full attention; there are many side things hidden in the background that I may not have noticed the first hundred times watching them. The Naked Gun Movies are the gold standard of screwball parodies. They also fall into the Neo-Noir genre, as much as a parody can fall into its target genre. There is plenty of slang to keep hard-boiled interested.

The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad [1/18/2022] – In this movie, Leslie Neilson as Frank Drebbin (a parody of Bulldog Drummond – I think) is tracking an attempted murder of Lieutenant Nordberg (OJ Simpson… a different kind of celebrity when these movies were made), which leads him to Priscilla Presley as Jane and a villain who is planning to kill the queen. There is a great scene near the end with a baseball blooper, and the rest of the movie is just about as screwball and funny. 4/5 stars.

The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear [1/22] – Probably the best of the three movies, set several years after the first movie. Frank and Jane split up after the wedding was called off. Yet stumble on each other. Jane’s New boyfriend has kiddenapped her employer and replaced him with a doppelganger to secure federal funding into toxic energy resources. The film’s creators were (maybe are) big environmentalists and were right-wing in their political leanings. Despite President George H. W. Bush being a character in the movie, it’s not all that political. And there are some great one liners and background gages throughout this movie. Weird Al is in all three movies; however, he plays a character (very briefly) instead of himself in this one. I can’t give this movie the full five stars because the best Zucker/Neilson parody is Airplane, covered many years ago, but it is still an easy 4/5 stars

The Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult [2/4] – Again, several years after the previous film chronologically. Frank is now retired and a stay-at-home husband. Jane is the breadwinner as a fairly high-powered lawyer whose biological clock is going off and wants to have a baby, leading to marital problems. She leaves Frank while he goes undercover to foil a plot to stop a terrorist attack at the Oscars. There is a hilarious scene where, in the background, there is a rock-a-billy rendition of “99 Bottles of Bear.” I’ve tried to find the full version of that song, but the closest I can get to it is this. About a third of the movie occurs at the Oscars, with much room for humorous shots at Hollywood. 4/5 stars

The Net* [2/5] – with that girl from the bus, that was almost my entire knowledge of this movie, and it was an early internet cyber-thriller. I was interested because I am nostalgic for the 90s (though not as much as the 80s) and the Windows 95 era of computers. This is at the tail end of an era when technology was just a curiosity and not nearly the obligation it would become. It’s a good thriller about identity theft, but I think it takes a lot of liberties with how much damage a hacker can do to someone, even by today’s standards, far less so in the mid-90s. For nostalgia and entertainment, I give it a generous 4/5.

Night Court Season 1 [2/6 – 2/12] – I mentioned in the introduction that this is “the Night Letter,” well this is the reason, the following 6 DVDs in this letter start with the word “Night” and will be. I watch them (and the entire letter) at night, although most DVDs I watch are at night as they are, so that’s nothing genuinely significant. Night Court was a sitcom from the 80s that takes place in a courtroom. Judge Harry Stone (played by Harry Anderson, RIP – 2018) is a young, quirky, unorthodox judge, and the cases are unusual, making for funny and possibly unique situations for comedy. John Larroquette plays a pipe-smoking Republican assistant DA, Selma Diamond, and Richard Mull (RIP – 2023) as a mixed-matched pair of bailiffs. It’s a great show in what I call “Dirty New York” that doesn’t seem well remembered. There are only 14 episodes in the first season. The best episode, in my opinion (and not widely shared) is the second episode, which is called “Santa Goes Down Town,” which has a magical realist twist ending (a feature the show would occasionally use later on) and a very young Michael J. Fox, it’s as heavy as it is funny and falls into what would be called in that era “a very special episode,” though most of the other episodes lean toward funny over heavy.

Night Court Season 2 [2/13 – 2/20] – this season has Charles Robinson (Mac) and Ellen Foley (Billie Young) join the cast. Robinson ( RIP – 2021) was also a side character in Home Improvement. Foley was a singer and is perhaps best known as the female voice in Meatloaf’s (RIP – 2023) “Paradise by the Dash Board Lights”. We also get the first episode of Markie Post (RIP – 2023), though she won’t be a regular until the following season. Some of the better episodes (though they are all good) are The Computer Kid (which is very dated but an interesting look at historical technology), Bull Gets a Kid (which I remembered from watching the show in reruns in the late 90s), Take My Wife Please (which has Mac marrying a Vietnamese refugee – in later seasons they would have a kid being one of the earliest inter-racial couples in sitcom), Dan’s Parents (where we find that Fielding’s parents are very rural), and World War III (the second Yakov Schmirnov episode).

Night Court Season 3^ [2/21 – 2/26] – I did open this DVD for the first time; however, I have watched the season before. I picked it up about a year before for my friend for Christmas (the one who got me the first season), and that was a used copy that I watched before giving it to him. But I had no problem watching it again. This season, Selma Diamond (who passed away) is replaced by Florence Halop, a similar character. And Markie Post becomes a regular. Some of the good episodes in this season are The Hostage (which has a good sci-fi twist ending), Dad’s First Date (featuring a cameo by Estelle Harris – Mrs. Costanza), Dan’s Boss (where Fielding has a new boss who is a little person and who he makes fun of in-jokes that even at the time we’re in poor taste, though they were meant to be part of a more significant message – honestly no pun intended there, but there’s no other way to say it), Wheels of Justice (a very heavy 2 parter, where Harry quits being a judge because he can’t help some people who need it), Dan’s Escort (where a broke Fielding becomes a Jiggalo), Leon We Hardly Knew You (another heavy episode with a cameo by Mel Tormey – Harry’s Idol in the show and real life, though the two never meat in the episode). The last episode, another two-parter called “The Hurricane,” is one of the worst in the series, everyone gets stuck in the court, and 4 women go into labor; Dick Bupkiss is in the episode, but the whole thing is rather annoying and saccharine… they can’t all be winners. Unfortunately, I may not get any more night court seasons; their asking price is higher than I like to spend, but if I come across one somewhere, I’ll pick it up quickly and gladly.

Quick Note on Night Court from the Future: two years after writing this, I came across the entire series of Night Court on DVD for a reasonable price, and I had to pick it up. I’ve been watching it for the past 8 months, and I think I have 2 DVDs left. I’ll be covering seasons 4 to 9 in the Leftovers Episodes. Additionally, I should mention that the show has recently been restarted (not rebooted), and although I like the show more than my Dad likes it, I’m not seeking it out. It’s too modern, and the only returning actor/character is John Larraquette as Fielding. The show is 40+ years old, and most of the original cast is dead. Okay, so this is not as quick as I was planning. Still, I should mention one other thing: I had a thought in the shower the other day that anytime they try to restart or reboot any TV show, they should find and hire someone who is a massive fan of the source material, who gets veto power or at least a vote on writing decisions. Maybe I should write a longer article about the concept; I think it would significantly improve these reboots.

The Nightmare Before Christmas [3/11] – this is the “Night Letter.” We still have two more DVDs to go, starting with the word “Night” and then one more creatively filed because I wanted to see it sooner rather than waiting for the leftovers. I usually watch this movie twice yearly, once for Halloween and once for Christmas. However, last year, I didn’t watch it either. It’s such a great film; I have it both on VHS and DVD, and I saw it in the theaters and had no problem picking it up when it became available in the Disney Movie Club. I know every song in this movie and feel I will wake up tomorrow with one of the songs stuck in my head. There is an excellent sequence in the movie where Jack finds the doorways to other holidays; as we know, he goes through the Christmas door, while it is implied that Oggie Boogies boys go through the Easter door at some point. But I’d like to see what Burton/Selick could do with the St. Patty’s Day or the Thanksgiving (my favorite holiday) Door. The spiritual sequel to this movie, Corpse Bride, wasn’t nearly as good. Like many people, my age (or probably altogether), this was my first experience with a goth/horror Christmas movie, and I love it; it just simply has such a tremendous dark fall ambiance, and automation is probably my favorite medium of animation (outside of traditional ink and pen). I could go on and on about this movie, but I’ll save that for a post sometime in the future. I’m going to give it the rare 6/5 stars.

Nightwish: The End of Innocence^ [3/20-22] – although I’ve already covered a lot of DVDs in this marathon through the years, two types of DVDs that I have not covered much or are Documentaries and Concerts, well… this one is both: a 160-minute documentary, a 30-minute concert, and a couple of music videos. The documentary is primarily based around an interview with Tuomas Holopainen (the keyboard player and founder of Nightwish), telling the story of the band’s inception in a small shack on a small island in rural Finland, interspersed with concert footage and behind-the-scenes shenanigans. Tarja Turnenen is there but never interviewed, as this was the end of her era with the band. It’s exciting but a bit hard to follow, as it is in Finnish, and Finnish is a quick language (like Russian), and it’s hard to keep up with the subtitles. The MVs are “Over the Hills and Far Away” and “End of All Hope”. The documentary highlights the duality of Finnishness, which is at once both extremely quiet and extremely loud. There are also a lot of landscape shots of driving along endless Finnish roads, but it was during the rainy season. It’s still beautiful but dreary. I never watched the documentary before, though I definitely should have. It would make me appreciate the band even more (at one point, they were my favorite band). If you’re a big fan of the band, especially the Tarja era, I would recommend checking it out; if you’re only a mild fan (or have never heard of the band), you could probably skip it. In my case, 4/5 stars.

Nightwish – From Wishes to Eternity [3/24] – This particular DVD has an interesting backstory. I got heavily into power metal (of which Nightwish is adjacent; they’re technically “Melodic Symphonic Metal.” There is a difference, and if you listen to enough metal, you would understand) not long after I got my first DVD player. I sent 20$ to Finland to get this DVD, which was a complicated process, and it was advertised as a region-free DVD. However, in the fine print, it was a PAL DVD so that it wouldn’t work on my DVD player. It would work in a computer DVD player, and it would also work on special DVD players. I got both a few months after getting this DVD back in 2002. And I watched it several times since then. I don’t think my DVD player would support the format today, but I watched it on my laptop, which did. It was a great concert with my favorite Nightwish song, “Pharaoh Sails to Orion”, and an instrumental, “Crimson Tide/Deep Blue Sea”, of which this is the only official recording. Bonus features are MVs of “The Carpenter” and “Sleeping Sun”, though I had seen both of these before I got the DVD. At the end of the concert, the band is presented (in Finnish, I believe) their official platinum records for two of their singles, “Sacrament of Wilderness” and “Deep Silent Complete.” They perform both of these songs in the concert. In a later era, when Nightwish would perform “Sacrament of Wilderness”, they would cover (briefly) the song “Moscow” by Dshingish Kahn, and it’s worth checking out both pieces. A few years later, I believe this DVD was released in an American format. Unlike “End of Innocence,” this DVD is worth watching even for mediocre Nightwish fans. Being a concert, though, I can’t rate it like a movie.

Chuck Norris Karate Komandos^* [3/25 – 26] – I had to creatively file this movie under N for Norris, mostly because I wasn’t going to wait until the leftovers to review it (that review will be very long). Maybe you’ve never heard of this show; I never had until I got the “Saturday Morning Cartoons of the 80s” DVD. What is the show? It’s a lot like GI Joe but way campier. This is worth checking out if you like GI Joe and other 80s campy action comedy cartoons. Or if you’re a Norris fan. Some people will see/hear that title and be interested; if you are one of these people, you should watch the show. It’s only 5 episodes long, the length of an average movie, in fact, a shorter movie by today’s standard.

Overview—I ran through the night letter in a little over two months. The O’s will be a bit longer. Overall letter rating: 4.3/5 (I should calculate the average score per letter and present it. I know I wasn’t scoring stuff at first.