A Night of Mario Van Peebles

I am a new dad, and as such I have been spending more time watching television between the hours of 1 and 5am than I have since... well ever.  My infant daughter hardly wakes for her 3 feedings/diaper changes during my shift, and I'm left holding the bottle and staring at the screen (which is muted) in the dark.  Last night was a rare treat - a Mario Van Peebles double feature.  This event was not planned either by myself or the networks who aired an old episode of the Outer Limits (staring Mario) and the early 80’s film “Exterminator II” (in which Peebles plays a well-muscled villain who leads an evil street gang that leaves a big ‘X’ on all their victims).  This type of fortune cannot occur through the planning of executive bigwigs but rather is the perfect concordance of luck, sleep deprivation, and the fact that Mr. Van Peebles had to pay the bills somehow at both ends of his carrer.

Now, my knowledge of the plot of either of these delicacies is going to be very limited since the volume was muted and for some reason no one thought either of these gems was worth closed captioning.  The first feature I saw was the Outer Limits episode (the 90’s remake, not the black and white original although I have the option of viewing that every night as well).  I learned through Google that this was titled “Bodies of Evidence” and first aired in June of 1997.  Jennifer Beals costars as a lawyer charged with defending Peebles who is accused of murdering three of his subordinates while serving on the space station Meridian.  Peebles was already a bit past his prime at this point, and the contrast between old 90’s Peebles and early 80’s Peebles had me wondering at first if they could really be the same guy (thanks again Google).

Anyhoo, I really dig the 90’s Outer Limits.  There’s always a bit of a mystery to unravel, even if it’s ineptly presented more often than not, and I’m a sucker for all things fantasy and sci-fi.  The mystery in this episode (and the unfolding of events aboard the Meridian in reverse throughout the trial) is whether or not Peebles was driven crazy by ‘space psychosis’ (I’m going to go out on a limb and guess this is not a real disease) and killed the crew himself, or if, in fact he is telling the truth when he states that a shape-shifting alien with psychic abilities tricked them all into killing themselves.  I’m going to go ahead and spoil everything for you because unless you are an insomniac who just had their cable shut off you are never, ever going to see this episode.  If you bet on shape-shifting alien being the whodunit, you win a kewpie doll.  This is not revealed until after Peebles is exonerated of all crimes but then committed to a mental institution for his insistence on the existence of aliens when the alien in question shows up at his cell to give him the raspberry as Peebles is dragged away in a straight jacket.

The second film (the silent version on my TV) got all of one and a half stars in the IMDb database (and worthy of every half-star in my opinion) and stars John Eastland (never heard of him, not going to Google him) as a garbage man or possibly and out-of-work steel worker who confronts a New York drug lord (Peebles).   Peebles has one expression throughout the film, which I interpreted as wide-eyed and crazed contempt for anyone watching network television this late at night.  Eastland is a blue collar type who's had enough and welds a bulldozer blade and several machine guns onto a garbage truck to turn a street gang into an instant barbecue.  If I am any judge of a film from which I never heard a single syllable of dialogue, the writers drew heavily from Taxi Driver and Mad Max.  De Nero and Gibson could only wish for the body count Eastland achieves with grit, a little elbow grease, and lots and lots of flamethrowers and bazookas.  (Another spoiler ahead, so please avert your eyes if you are masochistic enough to still want to view this film in its entirety.)  Peebles finally gets his wide-eyed come-uppance in the form of a booby-trapped bag of stolen loot that explodes, sets him aflame, and then impales him on a steel girder.  My daughter was actually asleep for the thrilling climax, but even sleep deprived as I was I couldn’t tear myself away.

I’m told this phase in a baby’s development is over quickly.  I can only assume that persons with experience are also victims of ‘baby psychosis’ – a condition that causes parents to forget what having a newborn was actually like for the sake of duping them into furthering their own gene pool with additional progeny after the first.

Now if you will excuse me, I need to change into a shirt that has no spit-up on it for work.