A while back, I got caught up in a movie-themed stream of consciousness that brought to mind several movies that would not be considered classics. Like a good blogger, I wrote a post about it. A few days ago that same movie-themed stream of consciousness hit me again as I was flipping through the guide.
It was late. Necole was asleep, but I wasn’t at that point yet. That’s when I came upon The Philadelphia Experiment, a 1984 movie starring Michael Pare. There is supposed to be one of those lines over the E in his last name, but I can’t figure out how to do that. Anyway, Pare is a sailor during World War II, and his ship is being put through an experiment. That navy is trying to make it invisible to radar. Instead, they make it completely invisible. When the ship returns, all sorts of strangeness has taken place. Some people have become part of the ship. Pare and this other guy are luckier. They get thrown into the 1980s.
It’s typical of a 1980s time travel movie except for one thing. A lot of people think this really happened. There are a lot of famous conspiracy theories out there, but this is one that flies under the radar. I suppose that’s a pun. Anyway, there is this idea that a World War II experiment made a ship vanish into thin air and return with all kinds of messed up stuff, and the government has been keeping it a secret all of these years.
I watched the beginning of the movie, but my mind drifting to best of all Michael Pare movies, Eddie and the Cruisers.
Made in 1983, this movie follows a reporter who is doing a story about a long dead singer from the 1950s. She interviews the members of his band and learns some interesting things. There is a recording that has never been released, and someone claiming to be Eddie is trying to get that recording. Is Eddie alive? Is Eddie dead? It’s a mystery. Wait, it’s a conspiracy.
That’s went it hit me. Did the navy make a ship disappear? Did a singer survive a wreck and live the rest of his life in obscurity? Michael Pare was the king of conspiracy movies, and that answers a question for which I have always wanted to know the answer. Why did Houston Knights, Pare’s television series, not make it?
This show had it all. There was a Chicago cop working in a city that is strange to him. His partner is a local boy who knows his way around Houston.
They fight crime while one tries to figure out where he is and the other one laughs at him about it. How could a show like that misfire? It has to be a conspiracy. Hell, Michael Pare’s career is filled with conspiracies.
There’s more. An actor named John Hancock also appeared in the series, and there has to be a lot of conspiracy theories involving the original John Hancock. After all, he was a Founding Father, and everyone knows they were up to their eyeballs in the Freemasons.
There’s also this. Michael Beck, who was the second part of the cop buddy system, starred in Megaforce, a 1982 movie about a secret group of elite soldiers who fight evil around the world. These guys have it all. Flying motorcycles. Cool spandex uniforms. A giant cave hideout in the middle of the desert. They have names like Ace, Dallas and Sixkiller. What else can you ask for in a movie?
I’ll tell you what else you could ask for – Michael Pare. He should have been in it. That would have been three years in a row of conspiracy movies and made him the super king of the genre. Think about it.
Megaforce in 1982.
Eddie and the Cruisers in 1983.
The Philadelphia Experiment in 1984.
With that under his belt, Houston Knights would have made it past two seasons and become a classic. Instead, it fell victim to its own conspiracy. If a Michael Pare vehicle doesn’t involve a conspiracy, then no one will accept it.
Anyway, that’s the kind of stuff that runs through my mind while flipping through the television guide late at night.
SBI: A Thinning Crowd 