"The Bondsman": Kevin Bacon fights demons, sings country-western music, trunks Tater. With Bacon's d*ck and Will Robinson's muscle

A bail bond service will pay your bail, so you can stay out of jail while awaiting your trial.  If you don't show up, the service loses that money, so they hire a bail bondsman to track you down.  Regulations differ from state to state, but generally bail bondsmen cannot carry guns, enter property without permission, or use force to arrest the bail jumper.

But not this Bondsman, played by Kevin Bacon in the new paranormal drama on Amazon Prime.

Left: Kevin  bulging in 1980

Scene 1: Night.  A pick-up truck drives down a desolate highway in rural Georgia and stops at the Holiday Hotel -- the kind where the rooms open right onto the parking spots, where you used to stay before the Holiday Inns took over. 

The Bondsman looks at a photo of his target, - wraps his gun belt around his waist (nice crotch shot) -- and bangs on the hotel room door.  

Left: Kevin's cock in 2005. 

The guy inside yells for him to "F*ck off," so he he puts a hornet's nest in the air conditioning duct, and when the guy rushes out, nabs him.  

But he's not the target, he's Billy Earle (Daniel Norris), who's supposed to be in prison. 

The tip was a fake, to lure him to the hotel!  Billy's brother appears out of nowhere and shoots the Bondsman across the parking lot, then slits his throat.  He dies a very bloody death.  Wait -- if it was a set up, why did Billy hide out inside the hotel room?  Shouldn't he be waiting to ambush the Bondsman the moment he gets out of his car?

Left: Kevin's buns.

Scene 2: The extremely dead Bondsman comes back to life, interred behind the dry wall in a hotel room.  He pushes through and examines the gaping hole in his neck.   Better start wearing ascots, buddy.

Tater (Mike Kaye) comes in, talking on the phone about how hardcore the Earle Brothers are, and his parents are starting to charge him rent.  He screams; the Bondsman knocks him to the ground.

He explains that the Earle Brothers hired him to burn down the hotel for the insurance money, but he didn't know there was an undead body inside.  

The Bondsman handcuffs him, shoves him in the trunk of his car, covers his neck hole with duct tape, and drives away.

Scene 3: The Bondsman driving recklessly down a two-lane highway.  I guess if you're dead, it doesn't matter.   He arrives at Halloran Bail Bonds, located in a gas station in Landry, "a fictional town brimming with cases of demonic possession"

Phone message: He' s joined the Pot o'Gold Corporate Family.  Pot o'Gold is the title of the episode, so it must be important.

Leaving the whimpering Tater in the trunk, the Bondsman goes to the bathroom and checks his neck hole -- it's healed.  

Scene 3: He rushes over to the house across the street and tells his Mama that he needs to find the Earle Brothers right away -- "Ugh, what's he doing here?" It's Pastor Ron (Dave Macomber), who kicked Mama out of the church.  She can come back, if the Bondsman stops detaining skips during the services.  Are there a lot of bail jumpers who go to Sunday services in Landry?

Mama: The Earle Brothers got out of jail; their bail was posted by Lucky Callahan, who is dating the Bondsman's ex-wife.  Mama hates the "damn Yankee"; she won't have her grandson raised by a Boston Red Socks fan!   So Lucky posted the Earle Brothers' bail and hired them to kill the Bondsman just so he wouldn't get back together with his ex?  That's a big grudge.

Scene 4: Dang it, let Tater out of that trunk!    The Bondsman forges Lucky's name on an arrest warrant.  Another robocall from Pot o"Gold!  He unplugs his phone, but they are calling all of his cell phones, too.

Next the Bondsman puts some murder and body-disposal tools in the trunk with Tater and drives to a nightclub, The Boxcar ("Hog Roast Hoe Down Next Week!").   Lucky's car is outside: "Boston Red Sox Fans."  

The joint is huge on the inside.  Ex-Wife Maryanne (Jennifer Nettles) is singing "When Will I Be Loved," by Linda Ronstadt:

I've been cheated, been mistreated.  When will I be loved?

I've been put down, I've been pushed 'round. When will I be loved?

She sings the entire song -- the high point of the episode.

Suddenly Hub spots Red Sox Fan Lucky, and follows him through the kitchen, past the line cook (Brandon Alston, left) into the back:

More after the break

Ethan Wacker: The former teen spy, Bizaardvark manager, and Vanderbilt fratboy looks good in a suit. And out of a suit.

I only knew three things about Ethan Wacker before beginning the research: 

1. At 5'7", he's a member of the Short Guy Brigade

2. He has an amazing physique.

3. He has a lot of male friends.  

A lot of male friends.

Actually, I'm getting tired of posting photos of Ethan and his male friends.  Let's check his biography.

Born in Connecticut in 2002, moved to South Korea and then to Hawaii.

His acting credits begin in 2006 (at the age of four!) with a video game called Papa Louie: When Pizza Attacks

More video games and animation followed, plus two episodes of the teencom KC Undercover (2015-18), a Disney Channel teencom about "an outspoken and confident technology whiz and skilled black belt" who becomes a spy.   Ethan played the son of the Vice President of the U.S. 

Then he appeared in Hawaii Five-0, See Plum Run, Tour of Mythicality, and 63 episodes of Bizaardvark (2016-2019).  

More after the break. Caution: Explicit.

Jeff East: Tom Sawyer's boyfriend, Disney teen, young Superman, naked fratboy, Pumpkinhead prey.

If you were young in the 1970s, Sunday night meant either church or The Wonderful World of Disney, countless movies set in the wilderness chopped up into 40-minute segments.  It was dreadful, but at least you got to see a cadre of teenagers personally selected by Walt or Roy Disney to represent "youthful masculinity":  Tommy Kirk, Kurt Russell, Tim Considine, James MacArthur.  

And if you could tell your fundamentalist, "movies are sinful" parents that you were going to the library downtown and sneak into a matinee, you could see Jeff East and Johnny Whitaker playng boyfriends.

Born in 1957 in Kansas City, Jeff had virtually no acting experience when he was chosen from among 1,000 hopefuls in open auditions to play Huckleberry Finn in Tom Sawyer (1973), with Johnny Whitaker as Tom.

They appeared together again in Huckleberry Finn (1974), with a romance that would be impossibly overt today.

Plus they both showed bare chests and bare butts, which would never be permitted today.  

Jeff went on three Wonderful World of Disney movies about big animals.  Disney loved animal stars.

Return of the Big Cat (1974): he has to save his sister from a cougar.

The Flight of the Grey Wolf (1975): he tries to re-introduce a wolf into the wild.  Nobody flies.

The Ghost of Cypress Swamp (1977): he has to save his dog from a panther, and runs afoul of a crazy guy.

This was the era of the big name teen idols like Shawn Cassidy, and a guy who fought panthers couldn't compete.  Jeff got very little attention in the teen magazines.

Jeff moved on to his first "adult" role as a college student who participates in a deadly hazing in The Hazing (1977),  also released as The Case of the Campus Corpse to make it seem like a comedy.  

Again he takes everything off -- he spends about half the movie in nothing but a revealing jockstrap.

Displaying his butt again.

And he has a painfully intense, gay-subtext romance with his costar, fellow college student Charles Martin Smith.

 

Charles Martin Smith's butt in Never Cry Wolf (1983), about a government researcher living with wolves.  

What's with these guys and their wildlife?

More butts after the break

Bobby Diamond: A horse's costar, a non-DIckensian Pip, Dunky Gillis, gymnast, nude flower child, and the Mighty Mightor

 

Dig this vintage commercial from the 1950s.  Bobby is trying to chop wood, but he's too weak, causing him to lose the respect of his friend, dad, and horse.  Then his other dad calls them to lunch.  They burst with excitement: they're having Borden's Cottage Cheese!!!!

The cooking-and-cleaning dad plops on "any kind of fruit."  Yuck!

The friend pours syrup on an enormous pile of the gunk.  Yuck again!

Bobby makes a cottage cheese-and-jelly sandwich.  Triple yuck!  

But shoveling the vile stuff into his face gives Bobby the energy to chop that wood and earn his gay dads' love.

And he takes his shirt off, causing conniption fits among the gay boys of the era.

During the 1950s, television characters commonly sold the product during the story ("Let's take a break for some Maxwell House Coffee -- It's so incredibly delicious!"), so this commercial was probably shown during Fury (1955-60), a modern-day Western: The orphaned Joey (Bobby Diamond) is adopted by Jim (Peter Graves), a rancher with a horse named Fury.  His friend might be Packy (Roger Mobley), and the dad who does the cooking Pete (William Fawcett).

Born in 1943, Bobby was discovered by a talent scout and put to work in 1952, with uncredited roles in The Silver Whip, The Lady Wants Mink, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Half a Hero, and many other movies,, plus one tv show, Father Knows Best. 

In 1955, he was cast as the lead in Fury, and achieved the greatest stardom of his career. 

Though Bobby was an adolescent during the course of the series, he was generally excused from expressing heterosexual interest (he gets a crush on a girl in one episode).  The producers did give him a series of best friends to get into scrapes with: after Packy, Pee Wee (Jimmy Baird), and then Buzz (Stuffy Singer), but they didn't express any heterosexual interest, either.  The episode "Pee Wee Grows Up" would today mean getting a girlfriend, but in 1956 it meant signing up for a bodybuilding course.

After Fury, Bobby was offered My Three Sons, which became a mega-hit, but instead he decided to play to his strengths, and become the adopted son of newlywed Nannette Fabray on Westinghouse Playhouse.  It lasted for only 25 episodes. (He did score three My Three Sons guest spots)

During the Swinging Sixties, the Westerns of yesteryear seemed old-fashioned and obsolete, and the former cowboy star had trouble finding roles, in spite of his willingness to take off his shirt.

And, reputedly, his pants, as this art photo from around 1965 suggests.  Notice the penis in the mirror, very rare in the 1960s.