#Bob Bralver

[codycawdren]

Rush Week (1989)

Director: Bob Bralver Starring: Pamela Ludwig, Dean Hamilton, Roy Thinnes Toni, a journalism student, transfers to a new college, where several female students begin to disappear under suspicious circumstances. She decides to investigate, which makes her the prime target of a mysterious killer. It’s Rush Week at Tambler College and there’s parties and plenty of pranks going around. Toni…

[marypickfords]

Rush Week (Bob Bralver, 1989)

[pierppasolini]

I’m the only one who seems to think something weird is going on.

Rush Week (1989) // Bob Bralver

[brokehorrorfan]

Blu-ray Review: Rush Week

While nostalgic viewers often look back at '80s horror through rose-colored glasses, audiences at the time became fatigued by the barrage of sequels and failed franchise starters that dominated the decade, largely with diminishing returns. It's easy to understand that mindset when viewing 1989's Rush Week, a generic college slasher from director Bob Bralver (American Ninja 5).

Written by Russell V. Manzatt (Midnight Ride) and Michael W. Leighton (The Genesis Code), the film begins by intercutting a standard cold-open kill with a rowdy frat party. It sets the tone of the film, as the first act plays out like a vapid, low-rent Animal House knockoff, while the midsection goes through the slasher motions. It's not until the rollicking finale, which includes a "Fright Night" costume party, that the film lives up to its potential.

Pamela Ludwig (Over the Edge) stars as a plucky young journalist investigating a rash of recent missing students for the college newspaper. The cast notably includes the Allman Brothers Band vocalist Gregg Allman as a hippie faculty member that runs the newspaper, Kathleen Kinmont (Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers) in a small role as the cheekily named Julie Ann McGuffin, and a performance from The Dickies (best known to genre fans for the Killer Klowns from Outer Space theme).

Until the reveal at the end, the double-edged axe-wielding killer's identity is concealed by an old man mask and a robe. Perhaps Bralver was preempting the MPAA's neutering of violence, or it was merely a cost-saving measure, but there is little gore on display. Despite Bralver's background as a stunt performer - with credits ranging from Star Trek: The Motion Picture to Darkman to NCIS: Los Angeles - action is minimal as well. Bralver seemingly an abundance of nudity would distract from the lack of excitement.

Rush Week's new 2K restoration from its 35mm interpositive for Vinegar Syndrome's Blu-ray release brings perfect clarity to Jeff Mart's colorful cinematography. The Hysteria Continues podcast provides an informal audio commentary with several stretches of silence and only one fun fact (the frat house also appeared in the likes of Elvira: Mistress of the Dark, Waxwork, and Witchboard). The disc also includes interviews with actors Dean Hamilton and Courtney Gebhart. Hamilton is rather dry while Gebhart is exuberant, but both share fond memories.

Rush Week is available now Blu-ray via Vinegar Syndrome.

[rhetthammersmithhorror]

Rush Week | 1989 

[redshirtgal]

Poor Lt. Grant. He was the sole redshirt sent down as security for Kirk, Spock and Bones in “Friday’s Child.” You wonder why any security chief would have sent down such a young and inexperienced (Kirk’s own words) crewman to protect The Big Three. Starfleet already knew the Capellans were experts with bladed weapons and had extremely fast reflexes. You can watch Grant’s facial expressions here as events unfold and you just know he’s doomed.  Grant was played by Bob Bralver, an actor who appeared in a few TOS episodes. He appeared in this episode as well as “For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky” and “The Tholian Web.”

You wouldn’t have known he was also considered to be an expert stuntman in “Friday’s Child.”  (although he admitted in a  Starlog magazine article that he did get a $25 stunt differential on top of the standard $129 for a day’s work for that episode). But in “The Tholian Web,” he and fellow stuntman Jay Jones have an excellent scene together. Take a look at Bralver’s leap from the the catwalk in Engineering, landing exactly on top of Jones’s back. That took some good timing, you must admit. Even the fight scene was well done. It did indeed appear he was possessed by so much inner rage that two other crewmen had a hard time pulling him off Jones. 

Not only did Bralver appear in two episodes as an extra, he was McCoy’s stunt double in the episode “For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky.” And he also did stunt work in one episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation and in eight episodes of Deep Space Nine as well as in Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

Bralver began his career a few short years before his appearance in TOS. Here he is in the first episode of The Bionic Woman. During his early period, he also did stunt work for I Spy, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and Gunsmoke. After Bralver had honed his craft, he was hired on a regular basis by series such as Adam-12, Cannon, and Emergency!

Like Charles Picerni, Bralver eventually worked his way into being a stunt coordinator. He helped hire the talent and plan the stunt work for Kojak, Battlestar Galactica and Galactia 80 (that is Bob in the photo demonstrating a fall during rehearsals for G80 ), and The Fall Guy.

He appeared as an actor and stunt worker in Knight Rider as well as being their stunt coordinator for several seasons (above photo from his appearance in “Brother’s Keeper”). Bralver’s longest gig as a stunt coordinator was for the series Murder She Wrote - 136 episodes.

He has also served as second unit director, full director and a writer for many of those shows. Bob Bralver’s record as a redshirt in TOS may have been short-lived but his actual Hollywood career has lasted over fifty years and is still going strong today.

He still seems to be active in the convention circuit as well and often makes appearances in car shows. Here is one cute video of him with a Wonder Woman cosplayer. https://youtu.be/4bpsdXrRPyM

And the usual piece o’trivia at the end. While Bob Bralver was earning his Masters in Physical Education, he wrote a research paper on the physics behind the speed of a professional baseball player’s swing. When he first began working as a stuntman on television shows, he was teaching junior high P.E. classes. His son Stephen Bralver played college and professional baseball but eventually followed his father into stunt work.

[trashvideofinland]

Keskiyön pako / Midnight Ride (1990) Warner Home Video / Warner Bros. Entertainment (leikattu 03 MIN 17) https://www.videospace.fi/release/midnight_ride_nauha_warner_home_video_warner_bros_entertainment_finland

[bens-things]

American Ninja 5 (1993) dir. Bob Bralver

The American Ninja has to rescue a cute girl who gets kidnapped when her father makes a poison for a bad guy.  Rather simplistic.

[theactioneer]

Midnight Ride (Bob Bralver, 1990)

[nitrateglow]

Halloween 2017 movie marathon: Midnight Ride (dir. Bob Bralver, 1990)

“Cut the crap, doc-- I’m still killing people!”

Russian immigrant Laura (Savina Gersak) takes off in the middle of the night to leave her workaholic cop husband Lawson (Michael Dudikoff), much to his chagrin. She plans on bunking with a friend until she can come to a final decision as to what to do about her miserable marriage, but unwisely picks up a seemingly innocuous hitch-hiker. His name is Justin McKay (Mark Hamill) and it turns out he’s recently escaped from a mental hospital where he was being treated for his erratic behavior and homicidal urges. Enamored with Laura because she reminds him of his dead sister, he kidnaps her and plans on taking her to his shrink Dr. Hardy (Robert Mitchum—yes THAT Robert Mitchum) so she can be “made better” via frying her brains out with electroshock equipment. However, Lawson is in pursuit of them all the while, intent on getting his wife back. Knife murders, car chases, bad dialogue, synthesizer music, and explosions ensue.

Why isn’t Midnight Ride a cult movie? I always ask myself this question when I watch this 1990 masterpiece of action-horror schlock. Goodness knows it has everything a so-bad-it’s-good cult classic should possess: over-the-top action scenes, cheesy but quotable dialogue, mostly terrible acting, and none other than Mark Hamill at his Mark Hammi-est playing a gleefully homicidal slasher villain on the lookout for love. How can you read that sentence and remain able to resist seeing this movie? HOW?

Midnight Ride can be viewed either as a genre-mash-up or as suffering from an identity crisis. Several action scenes are peppered throughout the movie, particularly car chases since the primary setting is the night road. Some might question my classification of Midnight Ride as a horror film, considering how enamored it is with action set-pieces, but there are tons of classic slasher elements at play here: the stalking, the murder sprees, the fact that no matter how many mortal blows you deal him Justin just won’t freaking die! To be fair, the horror scenes are far less scary than anything you could find in a darker Disney film like Pinocchio because they are so ineptly handled, but hell, you can tell the filmmakers were trying to frighten the audience. Take for example that glorious moment Justin kills a woman with a fake eye and steals said fake eye to give to Laura as a present. This should be pretty grisly, but all the murders are kept offscreen. And that is a trend here. For a slasher movie, we sure don’t get that much blood or gore or much explicit nastiness at all.

Don’t get me wrong: a movie does not need to have eye-gouging or much onscreen violence in order to be frightening: The Night of the Hunter never shows anyone being murdered onscreen, yet it is one of the scariest movies I have ever seen! The same could be said of several of the movies I’m reviewing this month, which often suggest the nastiness of their killings without showing much outright. But the thing is, in a slasher film, you expect a bit more, well, slashing. Or at the very least for the murders to appear like they were nasty or horrifying. But the thing is, a lot of the suspense should come from us fearing for Laura’s life, which might have happened were she likable and not a dim-witted non-entity with all the charisma of that plastic eyeball Justin pilfers. The only scary scene in the movie doesn’t involve Laura at all, but a young woman who hitches a ride with Laura and Justin after Justin defends her from an abusive boyfriend. When they drop her off at her house, Justin follows her inside, toys around with her, and then kills her in what is truly an uncomfortable scene. In the ten minutes or less this minor character is onscreen, we feel more sympathy for her and sorrier to see her get knifed than we ever feel for Laura. I imagine this has a lot to do with this scene perhaps feeling more realistic and less comic-book-ish than much of the other horror and action set pieces in the movie. Hamill is also truly frightening here, lending a disturbing sexual touch to the murder; after he flicks open his knife, Justin seems overcome with an agitated ecstasy.

Let’s be real, this movie is the Mark Hamill Show as the other characters are mostly morons, especially Laura and Dr. Hardy. At least Lawson has some enjoyably cheese-ball lines, like when he reprimands a trash-talking trucker by shouting, “Look man, I’m tired, I’m pissed, and I’m ready to kill!” in the most gloriously hammtastic manner. Dudikoff was a B-movie icon of the 1980s; however, I haven’t seen the American Ninja movies or other projects he was involved with, so I cannot comment if this is one of his better moments as a thespian. As it is, he makes the character more charming than he probably deserves. Lawson is ostensibly the hero of the piece, but he comes off as slightly less creepy than Justin. At the beginning of the movie, his wife is unhappy and begs him to leave her alone, at least to give her time to cool down, but nope! Lawson cares not a bit about her boundaries and appears insensitive as hell. Then again, if he wasn’t following her around, I guess no one would have saved Laura from certain death. Hooray?

Needless to say, Dudikoff and Hamill are Olivier and DeNiro compared to everyone else in the cast list. Poor Laura can’t seem to make a rational decision to save her life (literally); her demeanor is that of a total ditz. Her dialogue recitation straddles this strange gap between flat and laughably melodramatic, making an act as simple as tearfully begging for her life unintentionally funny since she seems to not care that much whether she gets away from crazy old Justin or not. She is so annoying that this is one case where you root for the heroine to get blown up.

And what can I say about Dr. Hardy? Oh man, does Robert Mitchum not give a damn in this movie. He looks bored and like he wants to pass out. Not a single line of his is read with even an ounce of what you might call conviction or enthusiasm. Case in point, when Justin ties Hardy to a chair and tries frying Laura in front of him, he looks at the horrific turn of events the way one might look at a screening of The Last Airbender: slightly surprised at how terrible it all is, but mostly bored and wondering when it’ll be over. If the characters in a movie don’t seem that affected by the crazy horror stuff, then why should the audience be?

Midnight Ride is saved from being an irritating experience by Mark Hamill as Justin McKay, the sociopathic photographer with sister issues. I once came across a review that claimed Hamill’s performance isn’t that wonderful because “playing a crazy person isn’t hard.” What inane logic! While I’m not so sure if Hamill’s performance is “realistic,” it is very entertaining and a lot of that entertainment value comes from Hamill. Some of the time, he feels like he’s doing a campy impersonation of Norman Bates with his puppy-dog look and incestuous fixation on a female family member. The other part of the time, he’s straight-up Joker, cackling madly and enjoying the mischief he causes. Hamill’s line readings of choice dialogue like the sing-songy, “I’m not goin’ till I get a pic-ture!” when he insists Laura let him take photos of her while she drives or “Don’t you ever run away from me!” are so deliciously over-the-top that if you re-watch this movie as I do, you’ll be reciting them as they come up. (My favorite Mark moment is when Laura offers herself to Justin in exchange for her freedom and Hamill just says in the most disappointed tone possible, “You’re acting like a slut!”) And as I mentioned previously, there is that one fleeting scene in which he is allowed to be scary. So, Hamill definitely wasn’t phoning this one in and he is a joy to watch throughout.

And in no scene is Hamill a greater joy to watch than in the film’s insane climax. I cannot do this climax justice with mere words and I won’t dare give any of its pleasures away to those who have not experienced this classic. Let’s just say Justin somehow gets hold of a four-wheeler and chases Lawson around. In a hospital. There is much punching and appropriation of scary surgical instruments. And the film’s final scare is pure magic. Also notice how seconds after that last horrific moment, the credits come up accompanied by smooth, cheesy jazz music.

Since the film is only available on VHS, the image quality isn’t so good. Everything is smudgy and the already dark look of the movie can sometimes make it hard to see what’s happening. Even with a better transfer, I’m not so sure this movie’s look would rank among the likes of Kubrick or Kurosawa. Being that deadly combination of extremely low budget and incompetent on a technical level, Midnight Ride is not exactly a cinematic feast. The editing in particular is BAD, particularly during the action scenes, where the editor chose to cut to things that only disrupt the kinetic energy that should be building, like when Justin has Lawson tied down to the front of a vehicle and he’s driving like hell. On more than one occasion, the editing is so amateurish that you have to wonder if the editor was trying to sabotage the movie. It’s kind of impressive.

If this movie sounds like your idea of a good time, then I want you to do something: watch it with as many people as possible. Share it with your family. Tell all your friends too! Among my admittedly limited social circle are people with varying tastes in cinema; they do not always dig the movies I recommend and vice versa. But Midnight Ride is one movie that unites people regardless of taste, creed, race, sexual orientation, gender, or where you fall on the Marvel versus DC debate. You might not laugh at Some Like It Hot or Blazing Saddles, but you will laugh your ass off at Midnight Ride. Forrest Gump or Brokeback Mountain might not make you cry, but you’ll cry with laughter at Midnight Ride. This movie unites us, binds us, could be the path to world peace. No one will fight any longer, because we can all agree that Mark Hamill chasing Michael Dudikoff on a four-wheeler while Robert Mitchum in a doctor’s coat looks on with disinterest is the height of cinematic absurdism. God bless all the people involved in the making of this gem.

[marypickfords]

Rush Week (Bob Bralver, 1989)

[moviesandmania]

Rush Week (1988)

‘It’s a picture perfect college with a perfectly terrifying secret.’

Rush Week is a 1988 American slasher horror film directed by Bob Bralver (Midnight Ride) based on a screenplay by Russell V. Manzatt and Michael W. Leighton (producer of Pale Blood). It was released on 1 January 1989.

Main cast:

Pamela Ludwig (Pale Blood), Dean Hamilton, Roy Thinnes (The Norliss Tapes; The Horror at 37,000 Feet

[brokehorrorfan]

Rush Week will be released on Blu-ray on April 27 via Vinegar Syndrome. Direct orders ($27.99) come with an embossed slipcover designed by Earl Kessler Jr, limited to 4,000.

The 1989 slasher film is directed Bob Bralver (American Ninja 5) and written by Russell V. Manzatt (Midnight Ride) and Michael W. Leighton (The Genesis Code). Pamela Ludwig, Dean Hamilton, and Roy Thinnes star.

Rush Week has been newly restored in 2K from its 35mm interpositive. It features reversible artwork. Special features are listed below.

Special features:

Audio commentary by The Hysteria Continues podcast

Interview with actor Dean Hamilton

Interview with actress Courtney Gebhart

Toni Daniels is an ambitious young journalist working for her college newspaper. Tired of covering the same boring stories as her peers, Toni becomes intrigued by the recent disappearances of several female students and believes that they may be linked to an on-campus murder that happened the previous year during the college's raucous Rush Week. Despite being certain that something terrible has been happening on campus, no one she talks to is willing to admit that the disappearances are cause for concern. Undeterred, Tori decides to investigate the mystery on her own, but before long finds herself becoming embroiled in a twist filled saga of deeply buried, and bloody secrets which attract the attention of a sadistic killer who will stop at nothing to hide the truth...

Pre-order Rush Week on Blu-ray from Vinegar Syndrome.

[rhetthammersmithhorror]

Rush Week | 1989 

[redshirtgal]

Most of the time, the actors, extras, stunt workers, and other behind the scenes people featured on this Page are named. Their claims to “Unknown Redshirt” status are based mainly on the fact that their contributions to Star Trek are rarely recognized.  Now THESE guys are the true unknown redshirts. They have been in more than one episode but their names have yet to be discovered. Yet here they are, attacking the space probe Nomad, a very dangerous adversary. Neither was credited. In fact, the one on the left whose face is visible appeared in five episodes. And he usually runs into trouble whenever he is in a redshirt. So let’s refer to him as Lt. Unlucky. 

His first sighting is in “Charlie X” where we see him first as he walks down the corridor just as Charlie is giving Janice Rand the bottle of perfume. From there, he goes to the ....

Recreation Room and is standing to the far right as he and the others enjoy Uhura’s singing. 

Later, he and and fellow female crewman were working together when Charlie angrily strides by after losing a chess match to Spock. Lt. Unlucky actually is pretty lucky here. Usually when Charlie was in this mood, someone lost her face or turned into a reptile. Or disappeared.  But after this episode, he decides to trade in his blue uniform for a different color. That’s when his luck begins to change for the worse.

Lt. Unlucky makes his first redshirt appearance in “The Changeling.” He and his fellow redshirt helped guard sickbay when Nomad arrives to bring Scotty back to life. All is well as long as they remain in sickbay. But then, Captain Kirk cannot leave well enough alone. 

He has to assign Lt. Unlucky and friend to stand guard outside the room where Nomad was being detained. This makes the two the first pair of redshirts to be vaporized by Nomad at the same time. Because, if you remember, there is a second set who meet the same fate later. This thing evidently had it in for redshirts. But this is not the last we see of Lt. Unlucky.

It appears he has a counterpart in the Mirror Universe. This lieutenant’s assignment is standing guard over the area of Engineering that holds the manual override. However, he doesn’t get any respect there either. 

At least not from Dr. McCoy and Mr. Scott. The poor unlucky lieutenant is drugged and dragged into Jefferies Tube. But back in the main universe, his life is quiet. We assumed that is because this guy is dead. 

But no, the bad luck for this character returns (and miraculously, so did he) in “Is There No Truth in Beauty?”  When Mr. Spock goes mad from seeing Ambassador Kollos without a visor, he plows through Kirk, Bones, Sulu, and Chekov in short order. Our brave lieutenant begins moving forward during the melee and reaches Spock just in time to get hammered. And just lies there looking pitiful while Kirk manages to save the day, as always. Maybe it’s time for a change.

A while later, Lt. Unlucky has wised up and transferred over to command. We last see him as part of the crew attending the memorial service being held for Captain Kirk in “The Tholian Web.”  Hopefully, he survives the rest of the mission with no more run-ins with bad luck.  Naturally, we know this actor is not portraying the same character in every episode he appears in. At the very best, it’s possible he is portraying the same redshirt in the second and fourth episode as well as his mirror counterpart in “Mirror, Mirror.” Even that may not be true.  However, despite being unknown, he does get to be part of those who have worn all three colors in the Original Series. And not many uncredited actors in the show could say that.  Think about it. He appears five times on TOS. That’s three more times than Kevin Riley. Two times more than Lt. DeSalle. The only clue to his identity - and that is not a big one - is that he most likely was a stuntman, just not one who ever reached big-time status like Charles Picerni or Bob Bralver. But five appearances on Star Trek? That’s not bad for an unknown actor or stuntman, either way. 

[vhs-ninja]

Midnight Ride (1990) by Bob Bralver.