Wise Watch: Three Secrets (1950)

Watched:  03/01/2026

Format:  YouTube

Viewing:  First

Director:  Robert Wise

Apparently 1950 was the year Robert Wise made the jump from RKO and into more prestigious pictures, apparently handed a melodrama and what I'd loosely call as "women's picture" at Warner Bros.  

Why he was tapped for this movie, I don't know.  Maybe the complexity of a multi-pronged story and everything that would need to be included meant WB decided that an ex-editor like Wise was a good fit?  I can't say.  But for what the movie is - he makes it work.

The story is more than half flashback.  The inciting incident is that a family has crashed their plane on top of a mountain, and only the five year old son has survived.  No one knows his true condition, but a rescue effort is mounted to retrieve him.  A bit like the 1980's incident with Baby Jessica or the soccer team trapped in the cave, the world is watching, with bated breath.  

Happy Birthday Cara Buono

 

Happy birthday to Cara Buono, who today's kids will, in about five years, figure out was why their dads were watching Stranger Things with them.

Buono has appeared in Mad Men, Sopranos, and in a truncated (thanks to COVID) season of Supergirl.  

Rhonda Watch: Lionheart (1990)

Watched:  02/28/2026

Format:  YouTube/ Up All Night

Viewing:  First

Director:  Sheldon Lettich

Well, I'd made it to 2026 without caring if I ever saw Lionheart (1990), but this was the movie programmed on Rhonda Shear's Up All Night.  

Y'all, it's possible Lionheart isn't a great movie.

Jean-Claude Van Damme is a member of the French Foreign Legion hanging out in Djibouti who hears his brother was injured in Los Angeles, so he asks to leave, but is refused.  So he - being JCVD - fights his way out, jumps a ship and winds up in Los Angeles doubling for New York.

Back in the 1990's, Bum Fights became a thing.  Because exploiting people hadn't been refined into reality TV quite yet.  Anyway, Leon (JCVD) enters a bum fight and wins some money.  He pairs up with actual actor Harrison Page as a former fighter named Joshua who kind of does all the acting in this movie.

Anyway - they get more fights including one for rich people's amusement organized by a sexy but shady lady, Cynthia (Deborah Rennard).  She decides she wants to kind of own JCVD, but he just needs to get to Los Angeles where he learns his brother has died.  He goes and finds his brother's widow (Lisa Pelikan) who has amazing red hair, and he moppet of a daughter.  She rejects him and his help, so he uses Joshua to slip her money as is it's insurance money. 

 Eventually he has to fight a much larger guy and the French Foreign Legion guys find him, and that's our movie.

Chabert Watch Bonus: She Said/He Said - a 2006 Unaired TV Pilot

Well, every once in a while I'll hit the internet to see if I can turn up one of the remaining items on the 'ol Chabert-a-Tron 3000, and this time we came up yahtzee, finding the unaired TV Pilot for a little show called She Said/ He Said - a title sure to plague any SEO and likely made IT folks very sad if this got aired.

Fortunately, they were never in any danger of that.  This pilot is so bad, it's absolutely stunning anyone wanted to make it based on the script alone.  

But here it is (until it gets pulled down):