Episode 012: Podcast Feedback and Topics, Then a Review of "The Seniors"

In this week's episode, Frank talks some about the podcast's status while asking for your feedback as well as suggestions.  In particular, he was having some trouble coming up with a good pre-topic this week prior to doing the review.  Then he talks about two minor topics before mentioning some things he's looking at doing to improve the show.

This week's Priscilla Barnes review is from a movie early in her career called The Seniors.  She plays a quiet nymph named Sylvia while four college guys conduct a sex experiment (but not with her).  He goes in to some detail about the time it was made and what was going on then, where it was filmed, as well as actors, plot, and observations of the non-so-good film.

The theme song is called Retro Funk by SoulProdMusic and can be found at pixabay.com.

The Seniors is available for streaming on Tubi, and can also be viewed on Blu-Ray and DVD.

--The best way to contact is:
Twitter: @frankwebertx
Web:  frankwebertx.com
Email:  frankoweber@hotmail.com

Transcript

Frank: 0:01

Well, in this episode, I just went into some podcast feedback. And potential future topics before discussing a couple of. Recent topics of interest to me. Then we go into a review of an early Priscilla Barnes work. Called the seniors. Which is not a great movie, but could be kind of fun in some other ways. And we'll get into that right after this. Hello and welcome once again to Frank Weber's party. This is your host, Frank Weber, speaking with you again, and so glad that you could be here, and so glad that you're listening to the podcast in whatever way you happen to be listening to it. I'm so grateful for you I don't want to beat a dead horse or anything, but I'm kind of. Wandering in the desert, if you will, regarding, this podcast and where to take it. And I've asked you the fans a lot for feedback. I have received a little bit, but not a ton, and I would certainly appreciate hearing some more. But this week I had some trouble deciding on a pre topic before we get into the. Priscilla Barnes Review of the week couldn't think of a topic. And the weird thing is that there's a ton of things out there to talk about. you could even call it a plethora, if you will. They use that word prominently in the movie Three Amigos, which depending on who you ask is, either a good movie or not so good movie, but, there is a lot to talk about, but I would really. Really implore you to contact me with things that you would like to hear about, and I actually would kind of segue that into kind of an ask me anything segment, you know? Email me emails, the most direct way, things that you would like me to discuss or questions that you would like to ask me and things that I could discuss on here. it's all about having a conversation of sorts. there's a lot of things, as I've said before on this show in our world now and our country that people don't have a conversation and I'm open to most things. I try not to temper my answers too much, I can be open and perhaps even controversial a little bit, but I really, really just want to hear from you. Uh, Topic that you might want to talk about or hear me, talk about and discuss on the show. I thought about a lot of things potentially that I could speak of. I don't really like to get into politics or anything, but I have opinions about politics on the. Local, state and federal level, which I hope everybody else does. I know one of the things on the federal level lately is that there's already a republican presidential debate this Wednesday, which is August 23rd. This episode won't air until probably September 1st. but it pains me to think that we're. On the verge of another presidential election. 2020 was very rough on me in so many different ways, and I wish that we could get it down to two or three months before the actual general election next year. So August or September next year would be really nice. I mean, you could still have a primary about March or so. but 15 months or 14 and a half months is just too much for all that, I don't know why it has to be that way. I think maybe it has something to do with corporate media brings in good ratings and they know that they can't do it for four years straight, but they still managed to do it for over a year, which doesn't make a lot of sense to me. one other topic that I thought about a little bit last week that's not too controversial. I hope what I just said wasn't too bad either, but in terms of a local issue, so I live here in Canyon and I generally vote against bond elections. especially when it relates to the school district. I don't have any kids, so it's hard to support those. For obvious reasons. I did vote for one, one time from the city, regarding putting in a new swimming pool, which is now called the Cap, or the Canyon Aqua Park. I. I decided to do it because the old swimming pool was falling apart and everybody has to update their stuff every so often. I think the old pool had been around since the forties and the election for this was like 2015 or 16, something like that. so they built this nice new pool and it's got a water slide and a lazy river and all that. And I don't go there very much. The only times that I have really, are for lap swimming and that's, been a few times over the years, but I never go during a regular session. And I just wanted to make a quick commentary because. it's August 21st today. School started on the 16th, and I could tell you a lot of stuff about, the cap and its policies, but I'm probably gonna focus on its calendar. you may not care, but this is an example of some of the things I think about. It's still August and it's just hotter than hell outside. and these kids are already in school, but they closed the cap for the season on August 12th, before starting school on the 16th. So now there's not really any place to swim publicly in Canyon through Labor Day or possibly even beyond that if the weather stays warm enough and they also close down the lap swim. What I'm saying is we passed this bond election that cost quite a bit of money and we're going to be paying it back in our taxes, and yet somehow the pool is already closed. it opens for two and a half months a year, and now it's closed until next May, but we still have a lot of hot weather and. It'd be nice for me to go out there and do a lap swim or too, and I know that they'll, say well, school started and we have staffing issues and whatnot. But I think there's still a market there. There would be for me, but I don't know a lot of times about parents and the kids. I said last week that starting school is a pretty strange time around here. that also relates to the, way early start time that a lot of these schools have now instead of the old September 1st or day after Labor Day. But, my point is that, we passed this bond election, we're going to pay that back I think they could be open a little bit longer and I think that we could probably talk about. Some of the policies there at the CAP as well, as to why they, they have a lazy river, but they haven't allowed the tubes since Covid, that's, three, four summers ago now I. So I don't get that. If you know something about that that I don't, I would appreciate your feedback on that as well. But that's just my conversation there. if we're gonna pay a lot of money for a facility, we should try to have it as open as long as we can during the year. That's the opinion I'm getting at. But even if that's a boring topic to you or not interesting to you in some way, then please, by all means, ask me questions, drop me a line, tell me what you would like to hear about. I don't wanna say that I'm desperate or begging or anything, but I'm really waiting for you to contact me Something that I can discuss on here. And I'll also tell you in the meantime, I don't. Want to talk too much about the podcast but I'm always thinking about how I can make it better or possibly change it. I've looked into doing, a video version of the podcast. I could do a video version. I'm not sure that I can do clips for a lot of these shows. And a lot of the problem is because most of them are streaming and streaming, you can't download very easily. other pros and cons to using video. personally, I think that my webcam and my phone cam put the weight on me. I don't think I look as big as those pictures oftentimes turn out to be. that's just one of those other deals there. I'm also looking at doing interviews. I'm still trying to figure out how to do it with my genre and niche, which is very important in podcasting. there's a lot of different opinions out there on all topics. Podcasting here are a lot of different stories regarding interviews. so I'm still trying to figure out how to work all that out and, make a show. that's optimal and is going to get a lot of attention. And, I'm obviously very thankful for your attention here. I would say that if we went to interviews, most likely I would start doing video. I don't know if that would be a solo interview show or mixed in with these other things that we're doing here, but, Thank you for spending that little bit of time with me and just giving you a little bit of update. please, by all means, contact me. I have, information at the end of the show notes every week, things you'd like me to answer, questions you'd like to ask, topics you might like to address, or if you think I need to go a different direction in this podcast, any kind of constructive criticism and advice is welcome. So, with that in mind, we're gonna review a very early work of Priscilla's, a movie called The Seniors. And, uh, it's not really a great movie, but, I'll try to give you a little perspective of that. As soon as we come back. All right, I'm back. I wanted to talk about a movie, again with Priscilla, Priscilla Barnes playing someone called Sylvia in this movie called The Seniors. It was released on June 30th, 1978. I first watched this movie about a year and a half ago. And on the second viewing, it's a lot worse. it's basically a college age, sex comedy, I guess you could call it. rated our, has a lot of naked breasts, boobs in it. I think one scene. There's a, but, a lot of adult situations. And some bad language. The reason that I picked this one this week, there's actually several reasons, but it's a time capsule to an earlier time, the late seventies, it's pre aids. they didn't really discover name aids until I think it was 1981. And so if you're on a college campus, there's a fairly libertine attitude towards sex. there is, college women the feminist movement and whatever. They're liberated now, supposedly by that point And without moralizing or anything like that, it was just a freer time. I'm not here to judge it, whether it's right or wrong, it's just the way it was back then. Obviously a lot of things have changed. And, we'll get into that more with the plot, which in this movie, it's pretty razor thin. there's not a lot of plot, not a lot of story. You really have to use your imagination as fantasy here. I don't think it was even realistic for 1978, but it was a different era and different things going on. But they filmed this movie, in and around Dallas and other places in North Texas, and it's a time capsule in that regard as well. You can recognize, an earlier skyline from the city even when I compare it to a modern skyline now, I said, oh, that looks a little bit like Dallas. And it turns out it was Dallas. There's a little bit of a scene along the old Central Expressway, US 75, which for some of you who are really young, may not know. I live there briefly in early nineties. for about a year and, central Expressway from downtown Dallas to. L B J Freeway was pretty much just two lanes in each direction, which is not gonna work in a big city like that. So it took them about a decade or more to get that widen to where it's four lanes in each direction. And, it was done by the time I went to dental school a decade later. And then you also see the campus that they're at is S M U, and you also have a scene where they're at Love Field before they redid it or redesigned it. You can see the old, Southwest Plains, the original logo. so the next thing is the cast. We had talked on a couple of shows previously about Dennis Quaid, who along with Priscilla Barnes in his movie is, very young and one of his earliest works. he and his brother Randy, are from the Houston area and Dennis has been in. a lot of movies over the years. probably more so a movie star than a TV star or a theater star, just to name a few of'em. He was in the Right stuff, which was a big space astronaut movie, and I'm trying to remember exactly what mission or what that was about. that was a movie that was on in the early days of cable. And it was over three hours long. They had an intermission for it. And I don't know if that was part of the movie or if it was, something that H B O did at the time, but you don't see a lot of movies with intermissions anymore. And from roughly the same time, he was also in JAWS three, which when it came out was known as Jaws three D. not one of the better entries in that franchise. he was also an inner space, and a remake of the Parent Trap and then a retelling of the Alamo in 2004. I got to see that at no charge of viewing with my friend. We were down in San Antonio one day and got invited to a free screening and, unfortunately we didn't really like it very much. something about the way it was told, Dennis of course is still acting today. And as I mentioned previously, he's also seeing. Country gospel. Dennis also has a new movie coming out called the hill. Which looks like a baseball movie. I saw a commercial of it. Priscilla's in it, plays a girl named Sylvia. Very, unique and kind of bizarre role. it also stars a guy named Alan Reed who plays Professor Hegner. he was the original voice of the cartoon, Fred Flintstone from many years before. We also get another, I guess you could call it cameo from David Rupert. we just saw him a few weeks ago in the Rockford Files episode, and of course he would be with Priscilla again in the last three's company episode. We also have an older gentleman named Edward Andrews, who would make an appearance in Three's company, in 81 or two. Can't remember what year it was, but it was Priscilla's first season, and he played Jack's grandfather who was under the mistaken notion that Jack had become a physician. Kind of tells you how close Jack really was with him, there is, a few other actors, young guys, in addition to Dennis Quaid. There's actually a troop of four of'em. I think I've seen a lot of them before. Somewhere. One of the guys, I can't remember what his name was in the movie, but he was like their leader and had a lot of ideas, has a really great voice. He could really do a lot of radio and podcasting like this. And, I want to mention that a guy named Rod Amato directed this movie. He directed a number of episodes of Dukes of Hazard. And had small acting roles in them. Now this movie opens and I'm gonna tell you it's not a great movie. as you go through it time-wise, it declines a lot. but at the very beginning you have a cartoon professor who looks over these names of some big Hollywood actors at the time, a lot of leading men. People like Burt Reynolds and Robert Redford, Paul Newman, Clint Eastwood, several others. Steve McQueen He basically comes on and says, none of these actors are in this movie, which implies to me that, Hey, this isn't the best movie out there. Take it for what it is and don't take it too seriously. So that's good advice for me and probably for you I don't really know if they view this movie now, how people will actually take it. I don't think it's offensive. There's really one main plot and there develops this other second plot, I guess you could say as it moves along. But these four guys, they're attending an unnamed college. It's obviously, shot at SS m u though in Dallas. And they live in this house together, and they live with, a lady named Sylvia, She apparently cooks and cleans for them and, they all take turns having sex with her. So she's kind of their, I think the word is, fuck, buddy. I don't use that term a lot, but they are enjoying their college time. They have this great arrangement at home, but they're driving around one day and there's great seventies van, which they can get a bed into the back, into and out of the back, which, was not unusual actually for any van, especially the custom vans, multicolored vans from back in the day. But they're driving around and they see people working and they're a little depressed because they're going to have to find jobs pretty soon and go into the real world. And it's sad for them to have to leave this life that they have. And so they, have a friend, kind of a nerdy guy named Arnold who works for this professor, this very reclusive professor who's doing. Research on the mating habits of mosquitoes, and some genetics based on the research that he's doing, and they come up with this idea of. Forging a letter and getting this professor's signature so that they can get a$50,000 grant to do, basically studies on human sexuality and college females and, it's a very weak premise, but, this professor, he isn't really paying attention to a lot of details. He signs it, they get the money. And they start doing this thing where college girls are wanted for this experiment, which is basically to have sex with these guys and they get paid$20 an hour, usually in two hour sessions. So the women in a way, are becoming prostitutes early on in this movie. but of course it's a movie. They don't get in trouble for that. They don't get in trouble with the professor over this ever. Nor do they get in trouble with the administration or anything. There's really no, authority to speak of in this movie, which may be part of the reason why it's so outlandish. But, they do that for a little while. They don't seem like they ever have to go to class. And I'll talk about that a little bit later. but they do this for a little while and their expenses are climbing and they're not taking any money in. And so they decide to start bringing in businessmen who are going to supposedly charitably, donate to them$50 an hour. So for two hour session, it's a hundred bucks. And they come in and they have sex with these women. So they wound up making a lot of income and they're actually doing a business now. They're actually pimping. Like I said, this movie really goes downhill quickly. So thank you for bearing with me here. But, they start making a lot of money and, probably the best quote in this movie at this time, as the guy with a nice radio voice says, Americans will buy bullshit. put it in a aerosol container and have John Wayne sell it. and they have these guys come over and do this stuff. The only data that they're collecting the entire time is how to match up one person with another. They actually have no results data at the end to analyze and make a conclusion, and then publish as a typical research paper. So they're really running, what you might say is a prostitution ring of sorts. But again, they don't get in any trouble because this is the movies. Now, while all this is going on, of course it was Arnold who works for the professor. He's the one who got the signature on the grant and everything. his reward is that he gets to have sex with Sylvia, over and over and over again. And he's progressively becoming incapacitated because of this. that's one of the examples of this movie, going downhill pretty quickly, but They start making a lot of money doing what they're doing, these college guys. And they go to the bank and they see the banker who's, Edward Andrews and he and his board'cause he's on the board, which includes, oh, it gets really crazy. a lawyer and a police commissioner and, even a bishop who of an unknown denomination. probably Catholic because they actually bring in nuns to work for them and it's charitable thing. Now I know that's pretty outlandish, but they get these guys to invest$500,000 in their business and they keep having to move out of old places and into bigger ones. I think one time they even bought a hotel and then they even bought an office building. And then at some point, as partnerships often go, they get into a disagreement and these big money partners decide that they want to off the college students and they take'em out to an overpass on the river and mistakenly there's a magnetic crane that actually picks up the car with These crazy investors and puts them into the river instead of the young men. While this is going on, the professor who is very reclusive and antisocial and always keeps to himself and his research in his house. He's having to deal with this lady who, uh, the head of the group, the foundation that signed off on the grant. She continues to pursue him for sexual reasons. she believes that he's actually doing this supposed researcher experiment and, she's pursuing him, reads his mosquito research and thinks it's about human beings and whatnot, but eventually they wind up having sex and they get married briefly. They even go out to Las Vegas to get married And for some reason or another, I think there had something to do with. Erections or something like that, she winds up leaving him right there from the hotel room in Las Vegas I didn't quite understand that scene. and then ultimately Arnold, eventually dies and, Sylvia winds up flying back home, they said, I believe to Iowa. And at the end of the movie, the guys, of course, still don't wanna leave college. And, at the very end, they get involved in, doing experiments with these widows of these guys who died. So again, very thin plot and it really goes downhill the further you get into the movie. like I said, you shouldn't take it too seriously. I am going to point out really quickly a few scenes, or actually just observations here, things that didn't add up in the movie. You could call them plot holes if you want to. I mentioned some of these things I have listed earlier, the three other actors besides Dennis Quaid who were living in this house. And then I also talked about, the conflict between these four guys and their investors as well as the conflict between, the professor and his very short marriage. some things that didn't make a lot of sense to me. Probably artistic license, which a show like this would do a lot of, as you can imagine. But, the only data these guys take, and I have some experience, you know, I was a biology major in college and of course was around the sciences as well in dental school. And the only data that they really take. Is a photo and a survey of each, candidate, male and female, pre six to try to match people up. But as far as actually having results of the research, as far as providing data and then analyzing the data, coming to a conclusion and something that they could potentially publish in a research journal, they had absolutely none of that. And if you're going to do research, you have to have something empirical and something that you can, put in so that other people can replicate your experiment. I think that was one of the things we learned from science classes. They have none of that, and as far as I can tell, we also never see any of these four guys in class. But we see them in a yearbook at the end of the movie and presumably they all graduated. Something that I thought was also pretty odd is that Sylvia, Priscilla's character, she has absolutely no lines in the movie. because of her sexual experiences with Arnold, she slowly incapacitates him, up to his death eventually, while these other guys are working in what is a business of some kind, an illegal one. But these guys are apparently not going to school, and they don't seem to be spending a lot of time at their house. So they're not, having sex with her and enjoying their final months with her. And she goes off to Iowa at the end of the movie and marries her fiance. The professor, he's very reclusive for being a guy who apparently has won three Nobel prizes, and he's not in any kind of biology department. Or anything like that where there are other colleagues that they can potentially collaborate with or discuss research over. that seems to me very out of character. he just seemed very odd. I don't know how else to say it. played by a guy named Alan Reed and he had a bit of a German accent. if you're on a big college campus or even a smaller one, that, if you're gonna be a well-known professor Nobel Prize winner, that you're gonna be around a lot of people and interact with a lot of people. But it was pretty much just Arnold and the woman who, was chasing him for, sexual research that he himself had no idea of. He had no idea that these four guys were using his name to do that. that was never resolved in the film either. kind of an important point. And then lastly, I didn't quite understand the conflict between, the four guys and, their investors. other than, the four guys decided that they had to get out of it because they were essentially working as pimps. and so that was the nature of the conflict. I don't know how there was a mix up. They were supposed to, magnetically crane the van that these guys were in and dump it into the river there. and they wound up getting these investors limo instead. Don't know how that happened, particularly. I also don't know how that was near Las Vegas because that was the last scene before the professor and his, brief wife. went to Las Vegas, They don't tell you the name of the college and they don't tell you the name of the town they were in, but they were mostly in Dallas and maybe a little bit in Fort Worth in the movie. And, I didn't really quite understand the breakup between the professor and his wife. I think it had something, some weird joke to do with, erections and not being able to have one again or something like that. But anyway. It's not a great movie. I admit that to you, but you can't take it too seriously and don't get offended by it. Priscilla and a lot of actors, Dennis Qua, is in this as well. they've all been in duds. if they're honest with you, they'll tell you they were all in duds and they. Don't make a hell of a lot of sense. And why did I do that? well I did that because I needed the work and I was available that week when they asked me. And so, I was able to get a paycheck there. I'd probably give it a C minus, probably give Priscilla a c plus. I didn't say this before, she has one of the topless scenes where she's, standing at the top of the stairs, And I think that's about it here. It's not a great movie, but like I said, if you can suspend fantasy for about an hour and a half, you can probably enjoy that movie. called the Seniors from 1978 Rated R. Definitely a comedy, that's the way it is, especially in young actors' careers. gotta do what you gotta do. Anyway, that's all I'm gonna say for today. Hope you enjoyed the party. looking forward to seeing you again next week. take care and continue to tell your family and friends about me and continue to communicate with me, or start communicating with me'cause I really want to hear from you. with that in mind, this is Frank Weber signing off from Frank Weber's party. The theme song is called retro funk. Bye soul prod music and can be found@pixabay.com.