Summer television programs are a dime a dozen, but one quality drama will sadly be missing from the line-up this upcoming season – TNT’s The Closer. After it ended its stellar seven year run last summer, the show’s principal cast has been exceptionally busy including fan favorite Corey Reynolds, the cool Tony Award nominated actor who played Kyra Sedgwick’s right-hand man Detective David Gabriel. So, what has Reynolds been up to lately? You’d be surprised. I was blessed to be able to catch up with him to ask him about life after The Closer, the state of minorities in Hollywood and – drum roll please – what it feels like to be a new father.

Ah, Corey! So nice of you to speak with me.

Jaylen Christie! It is I, Corey Reynolds! How are you?

I’m good, dude. So, let’s get this thing started. You made a name for yourself as the actor that originated the role of Seaweed in Broadway’s Hairspray. How does it feel to be both a master of stage and screen?

I don’t know if I’d call myself a master. When I think of a master, I think of the old Chinese sensei that’s 90 years old and kicks every young guy’s ass. Before I moved to L.A. in 2003, every job that I’ve taken in my life, as far as performance goes, has involved singing and dancing. I miss live theatre. There’s nothing that is quite on par with the instant gratification that you get from a live audience. You know, when you’re playing a scene on a stage in front of 25,000 people, you can tell when you have them in the palm of your hand. Sometimes, when it comes to filming, if you say something funny in a scene, no one is really allowed to laugh, so it comes down to trusting the director, trusting your performance and trusting that the camera is capturing what you need because you don’t have an audience that gives you the instant response.

So, I’ve heard. Was it challenging making the transition from Broadway to Hollywood?

Yes, it was tough. I had a nice leg up though. [During] one of my final performances in Hairspray, I got a note from the stage manager that said someone wanted to meet me. I came backstage and it was Steven Spielberg. He was like, “Hey, I’m Steven.” And I swear, the very first thing I said to him was, “Motherf#%er, I know who you are.” He sat me down and he told me he felt I had that ‘it-thing’ and that when I finished doing Hairspray, he was going to find something for me. I wrapped the show on July 13, 2003, and July 14, Debra Zane called about a small role in The Terminal opposite Tom Hanks and Catherine Zeta-Jones. I packed up everything I knew in New York and came out [to Los Angeles,] a city I never really knew before. It was a leap of faith.

Oh, I bet it was. But hey, you found work in one my favorite shows — The Closer! How was that experience?

It was a good time, Jaylen. It was a great run. It was the first pilot that I had ever done. To have it picked up, and run for seven years was an amazing blessing and also an incredible opportunity for me to learn screen-work. There’s a subtlety to camera performance. When you’re on the stage, you have to play to the back of the room so everything you’re doing is exaggerated. Kyra [Sedgwick] was really great in mentoring me. A lot of people always tell me that they loved our relationship in the show, and a lot of that was really reflected in real life. I’ve been exchanging text messages with her.

Tell Kyra I said what’s up!

(Chuckles) I will. [The Closer] was a great opportunity to learn how production works. I had never had a character that evolved and changed, and had different opinions from where he started. Seaweed didn’t have that. It was a huge learning experience, and Kyra was great to work with. She always kept the energy up and made things fun. That’s why when I knew she was going to be finishing up, I figured I should finish up too.

Which brings me to my next question – is there any chance that we’ll be seeing you on Major Crimes, the spin-off of The Closer?

Um, I don’t know. I would be open to that. I think if the story was interesting and they wanted to bring some of us to do guest stuff, that would be cool. But I think they’re focused on building their own brand, and bringing some of the old characters back might make people miss The Closer.

Well, people do miss The Closer, Corey. Look, if I can be honest, I’m not trying to downplay Major Crimes, but I’m just sayin’ it ain’t the same. You don’t have to respond if you don’t want to.

(Laughs.) Different doesn’t always dictate better or worse. It just means different.

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With Halloween upon us, what better time to remember three undisputed masters of horror — Vincent Price, Christopher Lee and Boris Karloff. With so many great films between them, and most of them available on home video for your annual enjoyment, there couldn’t possibly be more “lost” films out there, right?

Well, the folks at the Warner Archive Collection have really scraped the bottom of the barrel to bring three forgotten films back to life via their Manufacture on Demand service for Halloween. Unfortunately, neither the Price or Lee films can really be considered “horror,” but the Karloff film does become a bit more shocking and horrific as it barrels towards its conclusion. But are any of these films worthy of becoming Halloween perennials?

Unfortunately, the answer is no.

Vincent Price stars as Gilbert de Quincey, a 19th century adventurer, in Confessions of an Opium Eater. I’ve never really been familiar with this film except for the title, and it really bears little resemblance to the lurid poster artwork featured on the DVD sleeve. In the film, de Quincey arrives in San Francisco in the midst of a Tong war and somehow gets involved with trying to stop the Chinese slave trade, as young women are brought into the country and sold to the highest bidder (and for all the resistance the women put up before going on the block, they sure do put on a good show for the bidders). De Quincey only indulges in smoking — not eating! — opium once during the film, and that is pretty much forced on him while he’s being held prisoner. The film’s most “horrific” moment comes during his opium induced trip … but is it a trip, or did everything he see or do at the time really happen? You’re not really going to care by the time the movie ends because it’s all quite unsettling to witness Price as an action hero, the racial stereotypes and even the self-proclaimed “Chinese midget” (who actually gains viewer sympathy by the end). The film’s biggest sin is that it’s boring and at times unintentionally hilarious, especially the opening scene of women being tossed into a fishing net and transferred to a waiting fishing boat. The best thing that can be said about the film is that the black and white cinematography looks very nice on the DVD, and it’s probably the best looking film overall in the collection. But a Halloween film it is not.

Christopher Lee had a five film run as the diabolical Fu Manchu beginning with 1965’s The Face of Fu Manchu, and again I have no knowledge of any of the films in the series except for Lee’s iconic facial hair. In the first film, Lee barely appears for the bulk of the film, leaving his daughter to do all of his dirty work. The story is actually more about Fu Manchu’s adversary Nayland Smith (Nigel Green) as he tracks down information about the disappearance of a scientist and his daughter, as well as some other crimes that seem to lead back to Fu Manchu … except he witnessed Fu Manchu’s execution at the top of the film, so how can he be behind the plot to destroy the world with a potion so powerful that one drop could kill thousands? Nayland puts all of the pieces together, of course, but without Lee making a bigger impact with his plotting and scheming, the film drags quite a bit. The film fails to make an impression, and it’s a wonder there were four more movies in the series but it must have been much more thrilling at the time. The Archive Collection DVD looks fine, if a little color-faded.

The best film of the three is Michael Reeves‘ The Sorcerers, starring Karloff and Catherine Lacey. Karloff stars as Professor Marcus Monserret, a disgraced hypnotist who, with the help of his wife, sets out to prove he can not only hypnotize someone, but completely control them and experience the feelings of the subject at the same time. The Monserret’s find a young man, Mike (Ian Ogilvy), to use as their subject. When the test is a success, Monserret wants to go public with his findings, and the device they used to hypnotize the man, so that they can help older people like themselves live vicariously through others. Unfortunately, once Mrs. Monserret gets a taste of the exhilaration that comes with controlling Mike, she is consumed with power, forcing Mike to do more and more dangerous and horrific deeds while her husband sits by helplessly. With Karloff in the lead, you expect him to be the one in control so it’s a bit shocking to see him take a back seat as Ogilvy and Lacey take center stage, especially as she turns Mike into a kind of Jack the Ripper in the film’s final act.

Even as The Sorcerers looks the worst for wear of the three with a lot of dust speckles, scratches and color shifting in the film, it’s still more watchable than the other two because you just don’t know where Mike is going to be taken next, and how his friends or the police will solve what is basically a mind crime. Having read about this movie for years, I finally know the source of the one iconic image I’ve always seen of Karloff and Lacey in various books about horror movies. The Sorcerers really isn’t a straight horror film, but it does fit in with the thrillers of the time like Psycho, Peeping Tom, and Frenzy. With this being the second of the three horror films Reeves directed before his untimely death from a drug overdose, one is left wondering what he could have done for the genre as his career flourished.

This review is based on retail copies of the three DVDs provided to CliqueClack by the Warner Archive Collection.

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Late this summer, TNT’s The Closer took its final bow, making way for spinoff Major Crimes. The Kyra Sedgwick lead drama ran for seven seasons, premiering in a time where basic cable was not known as a destination for quality dramatic television. Battlestar Galactica debuted earlier that year on Sci-Fi, but the landscape certainly isn’t what it is today, with shows like Mad Men, Breaking Bad and Sons of Anarchy ruling the roost.

The wave of basic cable quality coincided with the rash of established film stars moving to television. Sedgwick definitely increased the show’s visibility early on; she was on the main reasons I watched in the first place. The Closer quickly established that it was more than simply a Sedgwick vehicle. The ensemble cast, full of kinda-recognizable faces, proved to be a sum that was greater than its parts. Several members of the cast – specifically Corey Reynolds and the Police Academy movie’s G.W. Bailey – stood out, but the show’s success was borne out of a group effort.

All good things, as they say, come to an end, and when TNT announced that the show’s seventh season would be its last, I was far from surprised. Rumors of a spinoff built up, and the pick-up announcement for Major Crimes happened several months later. I’d always enjoyed Mary McDonnell’s Sharon Raydor, and was intrigued by the idea of her character leading Major Crimes – the division and the show. Sadly, though, in execution, Major Crimes doesn’t live up to the legacy of its predecessor.

In the last season and a half, while I have grown to like Sharon Raydor – and Sedgwick’s Brenda Leigh Johnson found a grudging respect – the rest of the Major Crimes squad does not. Long time fans of The Closer will remember this plotline; it defined the entire first season (remember how the first and final episodes were bookended by rifling through a pile of transfer requests and later threats to resign on Johnson’s behalf). It makes sense for a new leader – especially one who was so recently seen to be at odds with the team – to have to prove themselves. Unfortunately we’ve seen it all before, and I don’t have a big desire to see it again.

In the first episode, Asst. Chief Taylor talked about a new focus for Major Crimes. Where the Johnson-lead team focused on closing cases with an emphasis on her skills as an interrogator, Raydor’s Major Crimes will look to following cases to conviction and – knowing the new boss – following the rules. I don’t watch Law and Order for a reason, and I’ve never thought that following the rules made for good television.

Seven seasons has become an unofficial standard length for TV shows to aspire to. To be sure, some are lucky enough to last longer – the aforementioned Law and Order and ER immediately spring to mind – but many shows lose steam at the seven-season mark. One of the primary reasons has to do with the cast; many actors seem to want to move on and find a new challenge. Most of the cast carried over from The Closer; how long will it be, though, before they want to move on? Some already have: Reynolds’ Det. David Gabriel left Major Crimes to follow Johnson to her new job. Reynolds truly shined in his dynamic with Sedgwick, so there’s some logic to his departure. Sadly, though, he’s one of my – and Jaylen’s – favorite characters on the show. Major Crimes is a lessor show because of that.

Finally, while I like Sharon Raydor, the show has done very little to develop a reason to care about her home life. Rusty, introduced in The Closer finale, is easily one of the most obnoxious and annoying characters introduced on television since Smash’s Ellis. He adds very little other than a reason to see Raydor’s home life, and other than Rusty, there’s nothing there.

Through the first couple of episodes, Major Crimes isn’t a bad show. But with The Closer as a very real legacy – and a major part of the show going forward – I had much higher hopes. If we’re lucky, producers can course correct in a hypothetical second season. First off is dumping Rusty like yesterday’s news; I’d also expect the awkwardness of Raydor leading the team to be worked out by then, Provenza’s stubbornness aside. There is probably enough left over fans from The Closer to shepherd the show into season two, but it will be on it’s own after that. If things don’t change, though, I don’t have much faith beyond that.