Although ABC’s popular Movie of the Week series had officially ceased in 1976, the “Movie of the Week” appellation stuck as all three networks continued to furiously pump out one-off telefilms, before cable and the late eighties direct-to-video markets became major competitors. The face of the TV movie hadn’t really changed much during this era, but there was an unmistakable shift away from supernatural horror. To be certain, there were still bona fide classics finding their way into living rooms. Movies such as Dark Night of the Scarecrow (1980), This House Possessed (1981), and Don’t Go to Sleep (1982) have deservedly grown into cult items, still loved by a loyal audience. But that sense of supernatural discovery that many a wide-eyed kid felt in the previous decade was quickly fading from the screen.
However, there was a short but interesting flux of “slasher wannabes,” that held back on the things that made the slasher so much fun (i.e. nudity, violence) but still managed to intrigue and even scare audiences (what was up with the ending of Hotline, anyway?). Deadly Lessons (1983) is probably one of the most overt examples of this type of programming, but other pleasantly escapist thrillers like Fantasies (1982) and the remake of I Saw What You Did (1988) were up for the challenge.
Aside from horror, drama, true crime and even reunion movies saw big numbers during the decade of excess. The Return of Perry Mason (1985) was only outdone by A Return to Mayberry (1986) (although Mason was popular enough to spawn a series of made for TV movies that aired until Raymond Burr’s death in 1993), and casts from Gunsmoke (1987, 1990), Eight is Enough (1987, 1989) and even The Munsters (1981) all gathered again, while fans reminisced about the good old days. (See ‘You Can Go Home Again’ for more about the TV reunion telefilm.)
A desire to return to simpler times may have been triggered by some of the headier TV movies and miniseries’ that attempted to tackle the horrors of the Cold War. Films like World War III (1982), the miniseries Amerika (1987), and, most profoundly, The Day After (1983), terrified children who wondered what they would like to become if they grew up.
In short, the eighties present a wildly mixed bag, but while the output was hard to categorize, the product remains uniformly intriguing.
Director: Sandor Stern
Starring: Patty Duke, Jane Wyatt, Fredric Lehne, Peggy McCay
Airdate: May 12, 1999 Network: NBC
A lamp from the infamous Amityville house is snapped up in a yard sale by an unsuspecting buyer, unleashing satanic forces in a new home.
The Evil Escapes is the fourth film in the seemingly never-ending Amityville franchise, and a particularly poor effort too. An exorcism of the original house is declared successful—though not before landing one Father Kibbler (Lehne) in the hospital—and the house contents are sold off in a yard sale. Any horror aficionado knows how the devil loves an electrical appliance, and it transpires (almost instantly) that the evil of Amityville has simply relocated; as one priest declares in an admirably straight-faced manner, “the evil in that house could transmigrate into that lamp!”
One look at the lamp in question would suggest that it might harbor sinister forces, being an elaborate affair of twisted metal in a vaguely human shape (why not “transmigrate” into something less conspicuous, like a toaster?). Nevertheless, it’s snapped up by Helen Royce (McCay) for her sister Alice Leacock (Wyatt) in California, its arrival coinciding with that of Alice’s daughter and grandchildren who are moving in after the death of her son-in-law.
From then on, all the usual horror tropes are played out: black sludge oozes from the taps; the waste disposal unit switches itself on just in time to shred someone’s arm; a family pet dies horribly; all the household electrical equipment develops a fault. The creepy blonde girl is here as well, communing with her dead father through the lamp, Poltergeist style. There’s perhaps one scene that verges on the genuinely creepy, when a man’s arm suddenly embraces mother Nancy (Duke) in bed, but otherwise the whole film is predictable to the point of being mind numbingly boring. Just to remind us of the lamp’s malevolence, we see it switching itself on and off at such regular intervals that it becomes quite hilarious (it’s not plugged in, obviously); IMDb user thekingofplain suggests using this as the basis for a drinking game, but I’d advise this only if you want to get fantastically wasted.
Most of the action happens in the final five minutes, when Father Kibbler arrives in the nick of time to save the souls of everyone in the house— the creepy blonde kid levitates and stabs him, before Grandma Leacock athletically throws the lamp through the attic window to smash onto the cliffs below. (Why this would end the matter when we’ve already seen the evil presence move—sorry, transmigrate—from the lamp to the house is a mystery, but I suppose you need as many avenues as possible left open for all those sequels.) The final scene is by far the least scary of the film, as the family’s overweight tabby cat meows plaintively at the wreckage of the lamp before turning to the camera, its eyes bright red. Be afraid, be very afraid. [Jennifer Wallis]
THE BAD SEED
Director: Paul Wendkos
Starring: Blair Brown, Lynn Redgrave, David Carradine, Carrie Wells
Airdate: February 7, 1985 Network: ABC
A remake of the 1956 psychological thriller; a mother realizes that her young daughter may be a murderer.
Paul Wendkos’ updated adaptation of William March’s 1954 novel has been given an unfair shake in light of its celebrated screen predecessor (directed by Mervyn LeRoy in 1956), but it remains a highly disturbing work in its own right.
Blair Brown stars as Christine Penmark, a single mother (?) who starts to suspect that her picture-perfect nine-year-old daughter Rachel (Wells in one of her few screen roles) is responsible for the “accidental” death of one of her classmates while on a seaside school outing. At first Christine questions whether she’s spoiled the girl too much, but when she finally catches her daughter in the act, and can see the child weaving through the subsequent interrogation with expert manipulative tactics, she realizes that Rachel is a sociopath, with no conscience. When it is revealed that Christine’s long-term night terrors about being chased through a cornfield by a murderess are in fact memories of her biological mother—famed serial murderer Bessie Denker (based on real-life killer Belle Gunness)—she accepts the blame for her daughter’s behavior due to her own tainted genetics.
The update to 1985 brings a wealth of enthusiastic expository dialog about serial killers from David Ogden Stiers (who plays Christine’s friend Emory), with Lynn Redgrave starring as his therapy-obsessed wife, the latter in full-on fabulous eighties self-help mode. Unfortunately, the film suffers due to its two lackluster central performances—Carrie Wells in particular is no Patty McCormack. The real prize in the cast is David Carradine as the deviant, drunken maintenance man Leroy, who finds a kindred spirit in the pint-sized killer. While Leroy was a major component of the story in the previous versions, the lecherous pedophilic aspects of the character are really let loose here—he grabs Rachel’s tights, comments on being able to see her underpants beneath her dress, teases her about going to the electric chair (“Maybe they have a pink one for little girls”). There is something eerily romantic about their secret interplay, partially because it’s the only honest relationship in the film. But ultimately she’s an outwardly cherubic little girl and he’s a drunk, so she easily maintains the upper hand.
The tale’s many layers of challenging subject matter are unfettered by the Hays Code that prevented certain aspects of March’s novel from being addressed in the 1956 version. Aside from the restoration of the novel’s original controversial ending, another hallmark of the update is that the signs of substance abuse as stress relief are ever-present throughout the story. “It’s times like these I wish I were a drinker,” says the father of the young boy Rachel murdered for his penmanship medal. Leroy’s alcoholism is contrasted with Christine’s turn to nicotine and sedatives. Everyone has their means of forgetting.
All versions of The Bad Seed pose their own unique take on the “nature versus nurture” debate, but it’s somehow fitting that the story’s most daring aspects found a welcome platform on the small screen, beamed directly into the living rooms of worried mothers everywhere. [Kier-La Janisse]
BATES MOTEL
Director: Richard Rothstein
Starring: Bud Cort, Lori Petty, Moses Gunn, Gregg Henry
Airdate: July 12, 1987 Network: NBC
Prospective pilot about Norman Bates’ ex-institution roommate who inherits the Bates Motel and reopens it for business.
Now the title of a moderately successful television series, this strange entry in the Psycho legacy, little known as it was anyway, has been swept (and rightly so) even further under the carpet of obscure big screen spin-offs.
Originally conceived as the pilot for a potential TV series exploring odd goings-on in the Bates Motel, it’s easy to see why this incarnation failed to receive the desired greenlight for a full season and, instead, went on to become much better recognized as that hardly witnessed made for TV movie with its confusing “Is it, or is it not, a genuine Psycho film?” VHS cover artwork that could be found (unrented, of course) in most video shops of the eighties. Indeed, it is now quite a rarity.
It begins promisingly enough, with Bud Cort (forever the boy in Harold and Maude) as Alex West, a young man who suddenly inherits the infamous Bates property after his friend, father-figure and fellow inmate at the local mental hospital, Norman (not played by Anthony Perkins, but by his stuntman throughout the Psycho series—Kurt Paul), passes away. On entering the motel, he runs into Willie (Petty), a homeless woman who has taken up residence there and decides to befriend the new owner in a bid to stay on and to help Alex as he struggles to adjust to life outside of the asylum, which isn’t easy, as he begins having disturbing visions, among them—a woman dressed in black that just might be “Mother,” returned from the grave to wreak havoc.
It’s hard to tell what Richard Rothstein, in his capacity as writer, producer and director, was hoping to achieve with this effort that seems specifically designed to turn off fans of the big screen franchise, only to instead, opt for a kind of one-man Abbott and Costello style of comedy and faux boo scares that were charming in the forties, but sort of moronic in the eighties.
The main problem is that it can’t decide what it wants to be. It’s at once a screwball comedy, and then, during the last thirty minutes, goes off on a wild tangent, as we follow the newly re-opened motel’s first guest, a middle aged woman that’s intending to commit suicide, being drawn into joining a frat house party full of teenage ghosts (led by a young Jason Bateman) that are connected in that they all killed themselves. This last part, played fairly straight, is an overly long and depressing sequence, and what’s more, it totally abandons the main cast, whom we only rejoin as the whole Scooby Doo wraparound reaches its predictable climax.
The hero and victim of all this is Bud Cort, who tries in vain to navigate a linear performance throughout all the half-realized nonsense that it seems impossible for one ninety-minute movie to contain. While, surely Lori Petty is the villain, incredibly irritating as the nomadic runaway with a heart of gold who can’t help but run off at the mouth given any opportunity to sound like the whining, petulant child her character is. In short, it’s just plain annoying. [Kevin Hilton]
THE BEST LITTLE GIRL IN THE WORLD
Director: Sam O’Steen
Starring: Jennifer Jason Leigh, Eva Marie Saint, Charles Durning, Jason Miller
Airdate: May 11, 1981 Network: ABC
All-American teenager Casey Powell develops an unhealthy obsession with her weight, leading to anorexia and hospitalization.
Based on the 1978 novel of the same name, this ABC Movie of the Week came at a time when eating disorders were increasingly on the agenda in the American media. That year saw the release of Hilde Bruche’s The Golden Cage, an analysis of anorexia for a general readership, while The Best Little Girl in the World was penned by psychologist Steven Levenkron, whose name is indelibly associated with that of Karen Carpenter, arguably his most famous patient.
As a dramatization of a book penned by a specialist in the subject, the film is unusually thoughtful in its portrayal of eating disorders. The reasons for Casey’s (Jennifer Jason Leigh) descent into anorexia are various, but at the heart of the matter is a volatile family life. Though presenting an outward image of the all-American family, conversations in the house repeatedly turn into shouted rows—significantly, these often occur around the dining table, with Casey left alone as her mother, father, and older sister storm off to continue their argument elsewhere. Subtle details—such as Casey’s arranging of her clothes hangers to leave an equal amount of space between each, or her frantic cracking of her knuckles—point to an underlying obsessive nature without laboring the point.
As the film progresses, subtlety is lost to more graphic illustrations as Casey’s weight drops to dangerously low levels. A shot of her from behind disrobing for a doctor’s examination reveals a startlingly skeletal frame (this looks like a body double or prosthesis, though the jury’s still out on that one), and when admitted to a specialist clinic is subjected to hyperalimentation (the administration of nutrients via injection into a vein), which is presented as an unpleasant and painful process. The clinic doesn’t come out in a particularly good light (a fellow patient manages to hoard pills to commit suicide, and Casey easily escapes through a side door when no one’s looking). Rather, it is kindly psychologist Clay Orlovsky (Jason Miller) who is the guiding influence, though one has to question the wisdom of a psychiatrist declaring to his young female patient, “I love you.”
TV Guide ad for Bates Motel, an early attempt to bring the success of Psycho to the small screen.
It is Orlovsky who forces Casey’s family to face up to their bad behavior, and indeed throughout the film there is a keen awareness of the outside factors to blame for her condition. Her classmates pore over fashion magazines (one mother has promised her daughter a glamorous dress if she loses weight); her ballet teacher suggests she might make a good dancer if she lost “a couple of pounds here and there.” Most explicitly, a doctor pins the blame on fashion magazines with models looking like “cadavers,” linking such images to a national obsession with thinness.
It’s interesting and well thought-out on the whole, but the film’s slow-pace certainly doesn’t help the already downbeat subject matter. [Jennifer Wallis]
THE BOY WHO DRANK TOO MUCH
Director: Jerrold Freedman
Starring: Scott Baio, Lance Kerwin, Ed Lauter, Mariclare Costello
Airdate: February 6, 1980 Network: CBS
A teenage boy finds himself in the middle of his friend’s struggle with alcoholism.
Seventies small screen idol Lance Kerwin plays Billy Carpenter, a high school hockey benchwarmer who takes on a handful when he befriends teammate Kenneth “Buff” Saunders (Baio). Buff lives with his widowed father—a former hockey pro turned alcoholic bartender—and he’s been in five different high schools and has a rep as a troublemaker despite being highly intelligent and a potential star athlete himself. He’s antisocial, and shrugs off Billy’s incessant attempts to make friends with him, but the two are stuck together when Buff loses a couple teeth in a hockey game and Billy is charged with taking him to the hospital for stitches. As the two embark on a delicate friendship, Billy notices that Buff dips into the sauce rather freely for his age, seemingly to spite his father.
Coaxed into attending an intimate house party, Buff brings the beer, gets smashed, punches out a classmate (Dan Shor of TRON and Ghoulies III: Ghoulies Go to College)… and then wets his pants. When he gets enrolled in an AA residential program against his will and his deadbeat dad won’t show for the meetings, Billy volunteers to sit in, much to the chagrin of his own parents (perennial screen grouch Ed Lauter, and Mariclare Costello, the pasty hippie from horror classic Let’s Scare Jessica to Death). A pretty heavy responsibility for a fifteen-year-old kid with an active social life, considering the meetings are five nights a week. Buff and his dad lie to each other about their drinking and the efforts they’re going to curtail it, and Billy is stuck in the middle of two alcoholics who won’t face the truth.
Baio shrugs and grunts through most of the film, his character acting flamboyantly irresponsible and hostile to everyone barring a few moments of genuine enthusiasm related to his ability to memorize facts and statistics. Despite the title, this is really Kerwin’s show and he gives a solid dramatic performance (until the end when the whole thing explodes into overwrought histrionics). That said, while its portrayal of teen alcoholism seems somewhat square at times (see Sarah T.--- Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic for a more believable take on the issue), the Baio/Kerwin dream-team remains a pretty compelling draw for the film. This telefilm was based on a novel of the same name by Shep Greene. [Kier-La Janisse]
BRIDGE ACROSS TIME
Director: E.W. Swackhamer
Starring: David Hasselhoff, Stepfanie Kramer, Randolph Mantooth, Adrienne Barbeau
Airdate: November 22, 1985 Network: NBC
When London Bridge is moved to Lake Havasu, it also brings along the essence of Jack the Ripper, who is reborn and terrorizes the town.
Stranger than fiction: London Bridge was dismantled in the late sixties and shipped off to Lake Havasu, Arizona, where it now serves as an oddball tourist attraction. While several films have used the bridge as part of its background, this telefilm may be the only project to utilize it as an actual plot point. Combining the crazy story behind the bridge with the unsolved Jack the Ripper case is interesting to say the least, and Bridge Across Time probably works best if you let go of logic and reasoning (which, honestly, often needs to happen when watching some of these films).
The true-crime story of Jack the Ripper has been mythologized by many an imaginative writer, and having the cold blooded killer travel through time isn’t all that original either (both the theatrical film Time after Time and the Fantasy Island episode ‘With Affection, Jack the Ripper’ are two wildly varied examples), but despite rehashing the concept, Bridge is a captivating, if completely silly, little TVM that uses its straight face to carry across the preposterous premise.
David Hasselhoff and Stepfanie Kramer (Hunter) are good in their leading roles (with Hasselhoff giving an earnest turn as a guilt-ridden cop), but it is the seasoned supporting cast that carries this film into more watchable territory. Clu Gulager, Ken Swofford, Randolph Mantooth, Adrienne Barbeau (in some seriously shoulder-padded frocks), Rose Marie (!) and Lane Smith are prepared to do battle with a kooky idea, and they bring it home.
Jennifer Jason Leigh doesn’t want to be The Best Little Girl in the World.
TV Guide ad for Bridge Across Time aka Terror at the London Bridge.
Bridge is just one of four films that stalwart small screen director E.W. Swackhamer helmed in 1985! Known mostly for episodic fare, the confident Swackhamer gives this TVM an impressively slick feel, and while the murder scenes obviously lack much in the way of gore and violence, the by-thenumbers stalk and restrained slash is interesting, if not completely suspenseful.
A late-entry horror TVM, screenwriter William F. Nolan ( Logan’s Run) crams a lot of ideas into his thriller, and for the most part, each subplot reaches its full conclusion—although it’s unlikely the audience cares too much about Hasselhoff working through the guilt of killing a young teen by accident while he was a police officer in Chicago. Think about it—who can say no to seeing a Knight Rider vs. Jack the Ripper smackdown? Bridge is available on DVD under its aka Terror at London Bridge. (Another aka is The Arizona Ripper.) [Amanda Reyes]
THE BURNING BED
Director: Robert Greenwald
Starring: Farrah Fawcett, Paul LeMat, Richard Masur, Grace Zabriske
Airdate: October 8, 1984 Network: NBC
An abused wife takes matters into her own hands when she sets the couple’s bed on fire while he sleeps.
Based on the Faith McNulty book about battered wife Francine Hughes’ murder of her abusive husband, The Burning Bed was director Robert Greenwald’s second Emmy-nominated television film (he produced the Olympic massacre drama 21 Hours at Munich in 1976) and a landmark in changing attitudes on the matter of domestic violence.
Charlie’s Angels star Farrah Fawcett surprised critics by turning in a powerful performance as Francine Hughes, who reluctantly marries her moody high school sweetheart Mickey (LeMat) and finds herself at the bottom end of a thirteen-year cycle of physical and emotional abuse. The film begins with Francine’s arrest and is recounted through flashbacks as she details her dire history to her defense lawyer (TV regular Richard Masur).
It was the former Angel’s first such dramatic role, and one that earned her an Emmy nod (she lost out to Joanne Woodward for the CBS movie Do You Remember Love). Paul LeMat is perfectly cast to play the childlike, charismatic lover who relies on his imposing bulk when his ego is threatened, and the frequent scenes of domestic violence are unrelenting and fairly graphic for the time. But it’s the complex character drama that makes the film so watchable. The supporting cast includes character actors James Callahan and Grace Zabriskie as the conflicted parents of Francine’s abuser, who see what is happening but remain loyal to their son. Francine’s own mother encourages her to tough it out, saying, “You make a hard bed, you have to lay in it.” Both maternal figures are complicit in Francine’s ongoing abuse, possibly because they have been acclimatized to such abuse themselves. Only her best friend Gaby, played by the spunky Penelope Milford (Coming Home) urges her to leave, which only results in Francine being further isolated from her one means of emotional support.
Lance Kerwin and Scott Baio take on the message movie in The Boy Who Drank Too Much.
Through over a decade of terror she maintains her resolve, despite a monotonous roster of government employees insisting they can’t help her. Finally she commits the crime that gives the film its title.
Hughes was acquitted after her lawyer’s plea of temporary insanity. It was a monumental decision and case, and the premiere of the film adaptation stirred up a loud response from North American audiences, prompting hundreds of calls to domestic abuse crisis centers (one center in Massachusetts reported 150 calls that night alone), not only by victims of batterers but by batterers themselves.1 It premiered on October 8, the first day of National Domestic Violence Awareness Week.
It drew fifty-two percent of the television audience when it premiered; making it NBC’s highest rated made for TV movie of the season, and the seventeenth most successful to this day. Director Robert Greenwald has since become an outspoken political documentarian (Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism), but all these accomplishments combined may never equal the lingering reputation of his 1980 film, Xanadu. [Kier-La Janisse]
THE CASE OF THE HILLSIDE STRANGLERS
Director: Steven Gethers
Starring: Richard Crenna, Dennis Farina, Billy Zane, Tony Plana
Airdate: April 2, 1989 Network: NBC
A Los Angeles police officer deals with his own problems while in a race against time to stop the Hillside Stranglers before they kill again.
In the brief period between November 1977 and February 1978, forty-threeyear-old car upholsterer Angelo Buono and his younger cousin, Kenneth Bianchi, held the greater community of Los Angeles in the grip of fear, as they embarked on a violent campaign of abduction, rape, torture and murder that left at least ten women dead, their bodies often dumped on the hills above Hollywood, resulting in the press dubbing the killer “The Hillside Strangler” (the plural being added following the couple’s arrest and exposure). While the majority of those killed were streetwalkers, the pair also claimed among their victims a ballet student, two teenaged school kids playing hooky, and an aspiring actress.
Based on a 1985 book by true crime author Darcy O’Brien, The Case of the Hillside Stranglers was one of several telemovies based on infamous serial killer cases that were being produced during the 1980s and early-1990s (the best of which were The Deliberate Stranger in 1986, with Mark Harmon as Ted Bundy, and 1992’s To Catch a Killer, starring Brian Dennehy as John Wayne Gacy).
Told from the point of view of the two killers as well as the lead cop investigating the killings, The Case of the Hillside Stranglers is driven along by the morbid, yet strong and undeniable, fascination which the story holds, as well as a trio of strong performances in the lead roles. Dennis Farina, a former Chicago policeman, seems an unconventional but interesting and ultimately effective choice to play Buono, the self-absorbed “Italian Stallion” (as he liked his women to refer to him), and he has good support from—and chemistry with—Billy Zane as the younger Bianchi. Zane has a quirkiness to him that suits his character, who, after his arrest, tried (and failed) to claim the oft-used multiple personalities defense. The reliable Richard Crenna also brings some strength and presence to the piece, as the investigating sergeant, Bob Grogan. The real Bob Grogan also makes an appearance in the movie, playing the cop who arrests Bianchi in Washington in 1979 (the arrest ultimately led to the solving of the Hillside Strangler killings, which had suddenly stopped a year earlier after the cousins had a falling out in Los Angeles).
Being a telemovie, the violence and some of the more depraved tortures Buono and Bianchi subjected their unfortunate and terrified victims to have been toned down somewhat, but there is still a nice atmosphere of L.A. sleaze that permeates the movie, and it is overall a better and more effective production than the 2004 film on the same case, The Hillside Strangler. There was also a direct-to-DVD movie called Rampage: The Hillside Strangler Murders released in 2006, but the definitive film on this terrifying and gripping case is yet to appear. [John Harrison]
Clockwise from top: Patty Duke and Jane Wyatt looking pensive in Amityville: The Evil Escapes; a brooding Farrah Fawcett in an ad for The Burning Bed; and mob violence is highlighted in a promotional ad for Dark Night of the Scarecrow.
CAVE IN!
Director: Georg Fenady
Starring: Dennis Cole, Susan Sullivan, Leslie Nielsen, Julie Sommars
Airdate: June 19, 1983 Network: NBC
A wanted cop killer hides among a tour group that becomes trapped underground in a cave-in.
Terrible. But recommended. Here’s another classic Movie of the Week from Warner Bros. Television and “Mr. D” himself—Irwin Allen. This time it’s all about the man-made and natural failings at the beautiful underground passageways of the Five Mile Caverns in Yellowstone Park.
Basically there’s only the small matter of a location change separating this feature from Allen’s The Night the Bridge Fell Down (1983), seeing as it, too, mixes a standard disaster scenario with a deranged gunman situation.
With few scenes actually filmed in picturesque Yellowstone, much of the proceedings are shot on crappy, confined, ever-collapsing interior sets built on the WB backlot, that the cast (and what a cast) can never seem to escape from. Opening titles are brief and cursory, so we’re thankfully given a quick character introduction to our players, and then it’s straight into the obviously cheap and fake caves, where—shock horror—the group are imprisoned by a cave in.
Trapped and with a killer among them, Dennis Cole (Fatal Encounter), Susan Sullivan (Killer’s Delight), and Julie Sommars (The Harness) all act scared, while vacationing cop Leslie Nielsen (Surf Ninjas) is soon troubled by laughable flashbacks to a recent shootout that got his partner killed and ancient pebble expert Ray Milland (Frogs) is ignored and left alone to piss and moan about stalactites and hateful relationships in a highly acidic display that makes great use of his apparent ill health and spiteful turn of phrase.
In fact, all the cast supply a generous amount of comedic gold via flashbacks to ridiculous skits which add little to the film overall, but that’s not the main reason you should hunt this down: You should do that just to see the fantastic turns by the very straight-faced Nielsen and Milland—a pair who seem to be involved in a private cut-throat competition to out-gripe, out-bitch and out-bastard each other till one of them has died from it. [DF Dresden]
CONDOR
Director: Virgil W. Vogel
Starring: Ray Wise, Wendy Kilbourne, Vic Polizos, Craig Stevens
Airdate: August 10, 1986 Network: ABC
In a futuristic L.A., Condor agent Ray Wise and his robot partner hunt a villain intent on destroying the city.
Looking way older than 1986, produced by Orion Television and set in a far off, futuristic L.A. of 1999, Ray Wise (Dead End) stars as old school rebel cop Chris Proctor, a dishy, dumb and dozy misanthrope working for an international peace keeping force called Condor—a government department that seems to hire its staff more for their appalling 1980s fashion sense than their criminal detection skills.
Operating from Hampton Towers, wisecracking Ray wears futuristic UGG boots, never buttons his shirt properly and keeps his suit jacket sleeves rolled up as far as they can go. He misses his just-killed partner and moans when his boss, Craig Stevens (God Is My Co-Pilot), assigns him a new, talky partner in the guise of Wendy Kilbourne (Turn Back The Clock)—a “computer in drag” that wins Ray’s acceptance by beating him at arm wrestling.
Before long, the duo are chasing a superterrorist called The Black Widow (Carolyn Seymour), a leather-clad master criminal (with a jet pack) who plans to kill Wise and blow up Hollywood after escaping from jail.
Lazily scripted by Len Janson and Chuck Menville, devoid of any major SFX and little more than a bog-standard cop/buddy movie given a quick wipe with the Bladerunner cloth, it’ll hardly knock anyone’s socks off with its originality, but so what? Much of the fun here is from the off-kilter future society that has robot burger bars, radio watches, laser pistols, mini choppers, in-car computers, exploding models, face punching and a near hysterical Wise who bounces around the set looking for something to stamp on, snort or complain about.
Terrible, but recommended, it’s cheezy junk with a stuffed crust that’s hard to hate, and another chipped gem from director Vogel—a man responsible for classic episodes of Honey West, Knight Rider, Mike Hammer, Wagon Train, Mission: Impossible, Miami Vice and Quantum Leap. [DF Dresden]
DARK NIGHT OF THE SCARECROW
Director: Frank De Felitta
Starring: Charles Durning, Robert F. Lyons, Larry Drake, Jocelyn Brando
Airdate: October 24, 1981 Network: CBS
After the vigilante execution of a small-town mentally challenged man, something comes back for revenge.
In a small Southern farming community, Bubba Ritter—a kindly adult but with the mental development of a child—shocks the entire town when it appears that his playing in secret with Marylee, a little local girl, has resulted in her bloody death. For Otis P. Hazelrigg—a privately tormented man himself but with a strong influence over others—it’s the final straw, and he gathers together a small posse of men to take the law into its own hands.
Chasing Bubba into a field they find him hiding inside the costume of a scarecrow. But the ruse is short-lived and the vigilantes have their justice, shooting him dead. But something is wrong; the girl that Bubba had supposedly killed—is alive—he had in fact been her savior.
Following a brief and unsuccessful trial to lock away those responsible for Bubba’s murder, the town begins to revert back to normal, until a sinister presence begins to reveal itself to the guilty ones and they begin to meet their demise in ever more grisly ways. Are these just accidents—or, as some claim to have witnessed, does a scarecrow walk among them?
Originally conceived as a theatrical feature, but then tailored for television, this is particularly macabre material for the small screen. Presumably greenlit on account that it fed into the hugely popular slasher cycle that was then enjoying its zenith. It does, by necessity, stray away from gory visuals but replaces them with genuinely atmospheric chills that are consistently creepy throughout.
Although Hollywood veteran Strother Martin was intended to play the lead role as the vicious Hazelrigg (but sadly passed away before production), Charles Durning excels in the part, giving a multilayered performance that invites the audience at once to despise him, pity him and by the end, almost sympathize for him. Indeed, as bad guy parts go, Hazelrigg—a postman— is an excellent emanation of the dangerously downtrodden blue collar American worker that lives on the fringes and in the shadows of society; a sort of Travis Bickle by way of Deliverance. He’s frustrated, with no outlet save for violence. In one of the more disturbing elements of the film, it is heavily suggested that his murder of Bubba is motivated less by revenge and more by jealousy, envious of the mentally challenged man’s close relationship with the girl.
Larry Drake as Bubba is also well cast. Despite later achieving cult recognition as a villain in genre-fare such as Darkman (1990), Darkman II (1995) and Dr. Giggles (1992), he has rarely been better than in this, where he plays the scared and confused victim to perfection.
Single-handedly responsible for the scarecrow subgenre of horror films and sharing more than a couple of thematic traits with the much later produced and more popular The Crow (1994), the movie’s influence has a long reach considering it’s still widely unknown.
Boasting a compelling lead performance, a pace that rarely slacks and a hauntingly enigmatic ending, it’s high time it found the audience it deserves. It’s technically efficient, too. Novelist and sometime filmmaker Frank De Felitta brings the goods in what could easily have been forgettable hokum. Of course, that’s not to say it isn’t hokum—because it is—but it’s the very best kind. [Kevin Hilton]
THE DAY AFTER
Director: Nicholas Meyer
Starring: Jason Robards, JoBeth Williams, John Lithgow, Steve Guttenberg
Airdate: November 20, 1983 Network: ABC
The aftermath of nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union as experienced by the residents of Kansas and Missouri.
The Day After holds several distinctions for the TV movie genre that have yet to be surpassed. It remains the most-watched television movie of all time with over one hundred million viewers. For comparison, that number has only been surpassed by the finale of M*A*S*H and airings of the Super Bowl. One of the few households not watching ABC that night was the White House. President Ronald Reagan and the Joint Chiefs of Staff had received private screenings of the film earlier in the month, with the President later remarking that the film left him “greatly depressed.” In addition to unprecedented success, The Day After is one of the only films—television or theatrical—to have had a major effect on American foreign relations. Reagan would go on to remark in his memoirs that The Day After directly lead to the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with the Soviet Union, which was a large step toward easing the nuclear tensions of the Cold War.
As implied by the title, The Day After is post-apocalyptic cinema albeit of a decidedly different stripe, being neither action nor science fiction but a character-driven drama. This is an immediate-post-apocalypse film, and rather than focusing on battle-worn heroes à la The Road Warrior or similar works, The Day After shows a world of universal victimhood. The film specifically focuses on Lawrence, Kansas, and Kansas City, Missouri, and how the lives of individuals are affected by the onset and aftermath of World War III. The Day After spends little time addressing the issues surrounding the conflict, instead only providing the viewer with snippets of information via radio or television broadcasts. The effect is to minimize the emphasis on the US and USSR as nation-states, and to allow the story to be told without the trappings of nationalism typically associated with nuclear war cinema.
The pivotal event occurs at exactly the one-hour mark, bisecting The Day After neatly into equal portions pre- and post-apocalypse. The delaying of the incident allows sufficient time for the audience to know the characters well, specifically Jason Robards’ Dr. Oakes who emerges as the main focus. Oakes’ struggle to treat the wounded in a hospital is one of the three perspectives the film offers; the others being that of an Air Force officer and a rural farmer. Each of the three men’s stories is ultimately the same; a tale of ever-increasing tragedy for those unlucky few who survive the initial blasts. The poignant final scene ends with Oakes being comforted by a fellow survivor; a brief moment of hope that is slyly and effectively undercut by the camera pulling back to reveal the desolation that surrounds the two men.
The Day After is strikingly similar to the more-acclaimed BBC television movie Threads from 1984, which doubtlessly was influenced by its American cousin. Of the two, Threads is distinctly more factually accurate in regards to the effects of nuclear war, but takes a detached, almost clinical approach to its subject matter. The Day After therefore emerges as the more effective of the two works, despite Threads inarguably being the more viscerally horrifying. The Day After’s strength is its moderation; by downplaying the effects of nuclear war, it somehow manages to make the prospect of it all the more terrifying. [David Ray Carter]
DEADLY LESSONS
Director: William Wiard
Starring: Diane Franklin, Donna Reed, Larry Wilcox, Ally Sheedy
Airdate: March 7, 1983 Network: ABC
During a summer session at an all girls’ school, a crazed killer picks off the students one by one.
Released at the tail end of the slasher craze, Deadly Lessons may be the small screen slasher that follows the most tropes of the subgenre (1979’s She’s Dressed to Kill may qualify as well, but that’s another story). Most of the elements—minus the two biggies: violence and nudity—are here and ready to set the stage for a decent stalk and slash flick. We’ve got an all girls’ school set out in desolation and brimming with a group of vivacious but privileged young women, a couple of cute male employees, a priggish headmistress (played by Donna Reed, no less), and a gaggle of red herrings. Unfortunately, despite a game cast and a script that wants to hit the right beats, Deadly Lessons is convoluted and, worst of all, a bit boring.
Director William Wiard brought so much flair to This House Possessed and Kicks but drops the ball on this telefilm. Aside from a great score by Ian Freebairn-Smith, Deadly Lessons is missing Wiard’s slicker savvy, leaving audiences with a rather dry version of a slasher film. What saves the whole affair from becoming a total loss is the bevvy of soon-to-be famous faces (and voices!) that permeate the production. Ally Sheedy, Bill Paxton and the future Bart Simpson (Nancy Cartwright) are featured in important roles, with Sheedy managing to be both likeable and unpleasant at the same time. Other familiar faces include Rick Rossovich, Renée Jones, Krista Errickson, Ellen Geer and Deena Freeman (trivia: Freeman and Cartwright appeared together in the 1981 pilot In Trouble). Fourth billed Final Girl Diane Franklin is plucky and adorable, and despite limited character development, she is easy to root for. Larry Wilcox is also good as the gorgeous but serious cop who is intent on solving the murders.
Playing more like a nighttime soap (which is not a knock), Deadly Lessons gives its older characters the meatier, albeit melodramatic, material. Headmistress Ward’s affair with the equestrian coach (David Ackroyd) tangles itself up with insecurities and jealousies, leading to a plot twist that explains the killer’s motives, and allows ice-cold Ward a chance to not be a total bitch. If only the rest of the telefilm played on that sort of juicy overwrought tension…
Donna Reed came out of a four-year absence to make Deadly Lessons. Unfortunately, the actress was unhappy with the film and basically called it a quickie that had no interest in producing anything good (granted, she claimed to have an equally unhappy time working on the nighttime soap Dallas from 1984–85). But her turn as the puritanical headmistress will certainly surprise fans of The Donna Reed Show.
Deadly Lessons ran against the telefilm Living Proof: The Hank Williams Jr. Story, which came in at #19 in the Nielsen for the week, while this small screen slasher didn’t make a show in the top twenty. However, while Deadly Lessons seems lost thanks to little or no airplay in the 2000s, it remains a much sought after curiosity for slasher completests. [Amanda Reyes]
DEATH OF A SALESMAN
Director: Volker Schlondorff
Starring: Dustin Hoffman, Charles Durning, Kate Reid, Stephen Lang, John Malkovich
Airdate: September 15, 1985 Network: CBS
Traveling salesman Willy Loman is at the end of his career and looks back on his life.
Dustin Hoffman has specialized in playing anxious, desperate and harassed characters in films like The Graduate (1967), Midnight Cowboy (1969) and Straw Dogs (1971), men who are—or feel—marginalized in society, and so the part of Willy Loman in Arthur Miller’s classic play Death of a Salesman is a perfect match for his persona. While Willy is defiant against the world, he is gradually revealed as a weak, pitiable figure who has been worn down by a lifetime of disappointment. The opening scene, with Willy driving a car at night, encapsulates the character’s place in society: he seems cut off from everything, with other cars heard sounding their horns and passing him by, giving the impression that he’s already being left behind by the world around him.
This opening scene, like the rest of the film, is staged entirely on sets. While this is evident in the driving scene, a striking crane shot in the Loman house early on in the film pulls back and up through the ceiling, leaving no doubt of the artifice. This stylized approach is deliberately heightened in the set design and staging of scenes, which lends the film an oddly unreal feel, often seeming like an embodiment of Willy’s fractured mind, where the past frequently intrudes on the present. The film is drained of color and plunged into shadow for a number of Willy’s scenes, with the muted palette feeling almost black and white in places. In a number of scenes, the camera positions Willy as a diminished figure in the frame, most evident in a meeting with his boss, Howard (Jon Polito).
This promo for the small screen slasher Deadly Lessons even mimics its theatrical inspiration in the ad campaign.
Director Volker Schlondorff and his crew—including cinematographer Michael Ballhaus (later a regular collaborator with Martin Scorsese) and composer Alex North—use striking settings, color, music, editing, and lighting and camera techniques to turn the play into a boldly cinematic piece of television. Additionally, the film features a stellar cast. As well as Hoffman, there’s John Malkovich as Willy’s indecisive son Biff, whose conflict with Willy powers much of the drama, Stephen Lang as Willy’s other son, the carefree Happy, Charles Durning as a friendly neighbor, and Kate Reid as Willy’s wife Linda, who conveys both support for Willy but also a subtle weariness about her circumstances, with Willy frequently dismissive of her in front of others. Nevertheless, she is also pragmatic, feeling that their simple life is actually rich enough, even if Willy fails to see it.
The UK DVD of Death of a Salesman by IN2FILM includes the film plus a candid, revealing feature-length documentary, Private Conversations: On the Set of Death of a Salesman (1985), which sheds light on the production process and stands as a memorable piece of filmmaking in its own right. The documentary also shows how this version of Death of a Salesman resulted in one of the most striking and unusual interpretations of a stage play ever created for television, a production that’s big in ambition and outstanding in execution. [Martyn Bamber]
THE DEMON MURDER CASE
Director: William Hale
Starring: Kevin Bacon, Liane Langland, Cloris Leachman, Eddie Albert
Airdate: March 6, 1983 Network: NBC
Terrorized by a demon, an overwhelmed family asks an exorcist to rid their child of the devil inside.
Despite its alternate title, The Rhode Island Murders, this is based on an actual case of the “devil made me do it” murder that occurred in Connecticut, and opens with a written warning explaining that the following feature is a partially accurate re-enactment of a terrible episode of demonic possession that struck a suburban family via its young ward, Brian.
Normally a nice kid, Brian (Charles Fields) flips out one day for no reason and starts hovering around his bedroom talking in a raspy voice (supplied by Harvey Fierstein). A fine mess of bad manners and stained pajamas, he punches his parents and himself, and is soon reduced to just two actions: blowing raspberries and pulling a seizure face. Luckily, evil child specialist Andy Griffith (Fatal Vision) is only a phone call away, and it’s not long before he and many others are waving their arms and loudly invoking God to rid the child of the evil entity.
Also on hand is nosy reporter Cloris Leachman (Beer Fest), who wants to expose the event and publicize the story to boost her own profile, while back at the house, perplexed Liane Langland (The Squeeze), Joyce Van Patten (The Haunted) and Kevin Bacon (Super) take turns shouting “You must fight Satan! You must!” into Brian’s little blank face.
Most fondly remembered for its quite awful psychic battles between a near volcanic Eddie Albert (The Girl From Mars) and the badly dubbed, utterly useless Brian, you’ll be happy to hear that midway through, the movie jumps lanes and takes a soft, unwanted left into a prolonged courtroom murder trial cul-de-sac—a location where Satan himself is called as a witness.
Good for a drunken giggle but not much else. It’s loosely knit, a bit cracked and best watched on a double-bill with the far better Exorcist ripoff, Seytan (1974). [DF Dresden]
DON’T GO TO SLEEP
Director: Richard Lang
Starring: Dennis Weaver, Valerie Harper, Ruth Gordon, Robin Ignico
Airdate: December 10, 1982 Network: ABC
A suburban family is haunted by the ghost of their dead daughter.
Don’t Go to Sleep (1982) unofficially marked the end of an era in terms of scary made for TV movies. Although nearly a dozen more such films were made for all three major networks until the end of 1983, Don’t Go To Sleep was memorable for having a truly frightening ending.
Phillip and Laura (Weaver and Harper), along with their (roughly) twelve-year-old children Mary and Kevin (Ignico and Oliver Robins), move into a new house after Phillip secures a lucrative job. Laura’s mother, Bernice (the incomparable Gordon), moves in against her son-in-law’s wishes, but he acquiesces under pressure from Laura. Bernice, a smoker who lies about kicking the habit, is a firecracker with a will of her own.
Their first few nights in the house are plagued by crazy events. Mary’s four-poster bed is engulfed in flames; strange noises abound; and a creepy, groveling voice emanates from under her bed. Perhaps they should have paid more attention to the house number: 13666. The nocturnal shenanigans force Mary to sleep above her brother in a bunk bed. However, their typically adversarial relationship is further strained when Kevin makes scary sounds on his tape recorder and plays them back to her in the middle of the night.
We come to learn that a third child of theirs, Jennifer (Kristin Cumming), died in an accident. The family struggles to keep it together in their new home, but a key conversation between Phillip and Bernice attempts to lay blame on both of them for Jennifer’s death. Bernice lets it be known that Jennifer was her favorite, so she harbors a great deal of guilt.
Jennifer appears to Mary who carries on several conversations with her, which only occurs when Mary is alone. A series of deliberately planned events leads to the death of several family members, the outcome of which has dark consequences for those remaining alive.
Dennis Weaver and Valerie Harper are admirable as the parents, though I wish that they acted a little more like people who lost a daughter and are grappling with it. Oliver Robins is good as Kevin, the antagonistic brother who has more moxie than his character Robbie Freeling did in Poltergeist (1982). Robin Ignico is also good as the precocious Mary, who puts her psychiatrist (Robert Webber) in his place.
The film’s ending is scary and unexpected, and is one of the most memorable aspects of the film overall. Having not seen the film since the age of fourteen, I wondered what my reaction would be twenty-eight years hence, hesitant that time might have diminished the film’s impact. While some sequences seem a tad like plot devices to my older and (hopefully wiser) eyes, I was delighted that my reaction to the denouement was unchanged. [Todd Garbarini]
ESCAPE FROM SOBIBOR
Director: Jack Gold
Starring: Alan Arkin, Joanna Pacula, Rutger Hauer, Hartmut Becker, Jack Shepherd
Airdate: April 12, 1987 Network: CBS
Poland, 1943. A group of Jewish prisoners in the Sobibor camp plan a seemingly impossible escape from their SS captors.
After an opening voiceover and images explaining the Nazi Second World War camps and introducing Sobibor on a map, the credit scene is deceptive. Things seem benign: people are seen working outside a house; they tend the garden and paint the exterior, all accompanied by classical music. As the credits end, we pan up a pole to reveal a flag adorned with a swastika: this is Sobibor prison camp. When a train brings new arrivals to the camp, classical music plays again, the SS captors presenting the illusion of civility and culture to cover up their horrifying intentions.
Ad for The Demon Murder Case.
Promotional imagery for Escape from Sobibor.
These early moments introduce key characters and show how Sobibor operates, as well as demonstrating the savagery of the sadistic SS who rule the camp. Soon, the terrible secret of the camp—now familiar to viewers—is revealed: the numerous people who were led away to the showers after arriving by train will not be coming back. They have been killed. Sobibor is not a labor camp; it is a death camp. This is suggested earlier on in a nighttime scene, where a glowing light is visible in the distance. Later, though, when a young boy is summoned to where the showers are located to run an errand, the full horror is shown: a dehumanized mass of people, stripped of their clothes and possessions, is forced into the showers and then their screams are heard.
Although much of the violence in Escape from Sobibor is implied, it is no less impactful. A failed escape attempt results in the execution of the thirteen prisoners who tried to flee, along with thirteen people they are forced to select to be killed with them. This is the turning point for other prisoners who have thought of escape, including Leon Feldhendler (played by Alan Arkin, conveying a calm authority in the midst of the misery around him). After this incident, Leon comes to the conclusion that all the prisoners must escape.
Although Leon and other prisoners know the workings of the camp, the arrival of Aleksandr ‘Sasha’ Pechersky (Hauer), a Russian Jewish Lieutenant, along with some of his fellow soldiers, is the catalyst that turns the plan for everybody to escape into a reality. Sasha’s presence (aided by Hauer’s screen charisma) convinces Leon that Polish civilians and Russian soldiers must work together to break free from Sobibor.
The remainder of the film sees the implementation of the plan, which is far from smooth. Among the complications, a manufactured love affair between Sasha and Luka (Pacula), designed to act as cover, blossoms into an unexpected relationship, while the civilians must face the horrifying fact that killing their SS adversaries is the only way to ensure their plan succeeds. While Escape from Sobibor is moving and shocking, it’s also inspirational in its depiction of the prisoners overcoming a sadistic enemy and triumphing over seemingly insurmountable odds; a gripping true story of courage and determination. [Martyn Bamber]
THE EWOK ADVENTURE
Director: John Korty
Starring: Eric Walker, Aubree Miller, Warwick Davis, Fionnula Flanagan
Airdate: November 25, 1984 Network: ABC
Award winning children’s film revives the adorable Ewoks from Return of the Jedi in this small screen adventure tale.
Crash landing on the forest moon of Endor, human siblings Mace and Cindel are discovered and gently revived back to health by Ewoks—pint-sized furry aliens that have their own mysterious ways and wisdom. Meanwhile, the parents of the two kids, having gone out searching for them, are stolen away by a Gorax—a giant monster that has decided to lock them up in a cage suspended deep within his lair.
Lost in this strange and magical world, where danger lurks just around the bend, it’s up to the kids to rescue their parents. But if they are to have any hope of success, they must learn to trust the Ewoks, enlisting their help and setting off on a journey that sees them battling foes and forging friendships along the way.
Nowhere near as bad as the Star Wars Holiday Special, George Lucas’ second attempt at adapting his creation for the small screen is a much more focused production that provides fans of the previous year’s Return of the Jedi (1983) with a further helping of that movie’s unlikely heroes.
Joining them are fresh faces Eric Walker (as teenager Mace) and Aubree Miller (as four-year-old Cindel), both quite watchable, if understandably limited in their performances given that their chief interaction is with small people in costumes speaking a fictional language. It appears that the casting of these two unknowns was quite deliberate—Walker bears more than a passing resemblance to Mark Hamill, whilst Miller looks like she could very well be Drew Barrymore’s twin sister at that time. Facial similarities with the aforementioned notwithstanding, their involvement in the two Ewok movies pretty much remain the sum of their careers in the industry.
As is to be expected with any Lucas production, the special effects are generally top notch. There are some clunky (compared with today’s abundance of CGI) stop-motion sequences, but even these conjure a welcome sense of nostalgia for viewers that appreciate the technical wizardry of pioneers like Ray Harryhausen.
The narrative—which feels suspiciously like John Ford’s The Searchers (1956) if the roles were reversed—sees the characters shuffling onwards against various backdrops that run the full gamut between exquisitely realized matte paintings to some of the most bafflingly transparent location work imaginable. A little too often does the forest moon of Endor share scenery that’s much in common with Earth’s own California, but that being said, younger audiences at which the movie is squarely aimed are unlikely to notice or care.
One’s own investment in the film is understandably predicated on how much one cares about the Ewoks themselves; their introduction in Jedi divided fans of the series much the same way that the character of Jar Jar Binks would in the prequels over a decade later. But on the strength of this outing, and removed from the lofty expectations of the precious mythology, it’s hard to be cynical about the tiny bears and their Native Indian-inspired rituals. Yes, they may be an excuse to sell more action figures, but on-screen, they’re just too harmless to hate.
It’s a decent kids adventure film that still holds up rather well, sprinkled as it is with subtle moral messages interspersed with a number of exciting moments for which the term “scenes of mild peril” must surely have been invented for. [Kevin Hilton]
FALLEN ANGEL
Director: Robert Michael Lewis
Starring: Dana Hill, Melinda Dillon, Richard Masur, Ronny Cox
Airdate: February 24, 1981 Network: CBS
When twelve-year-old Jennifer joins a local girls’ softball team, she falls into the clutches of pedophile and smut-peddler Howie.
If IMDb reviews are to be believed, Fallen Angel was shown to classrooms of American children in the early eighties as a rather hard-hitting warning about the ever-present “stranger danger.” Opening with a shot of a young girl crouched on a bed holding a stuffed toy and surrounded by professional lighting equipment, cameras, and a number of unseemly middle aged men, one imagines they didn’t forget it in a hurry.
The film focuses on Jennifer (Hill) who, instead of being excited about her imminent transition to high school, is afflicted with a painful shyness and passionate hatred of her widowed mother’s (Dillon) new boyfriend, Frank (Cox). After another row with her mother, Jennifer finds herself at Ron’s Video Arcade—permanently populated by teenagers on roller skates— where she meets Howie (Masur). Howie is a talent scout of a singular kind, seeking underage girls for pornographic films. He also coaches the girls’ softball team (inexplicably advertised by handwritten posters announcing “Girls!! Girls!! Pony tail practice”) and Jennifer is quickly recruited into its ranks after Howie brazenly snaps her picture outside the Video Arcade for his casting catalog. It’s all downhill from there, with Jennifer coerced into nude photo shoots and lured to sets where kids pop pills before going home to their apartments paid for by the filmmakers.
However well intended the film may have been in its aim to educate children about the perils of strange men who tell twelve-year-old girls that they look like Farrah Fawcett, Fallen Angel does rely on some rather stereotypical representations of its key characters. Howie is the quintessential pedophile, hanging around video arcades with a camera, plying girls with ice cream, and buying Jennifer a puppy. The limits of credibility are stretched more than once: Howie takes Jennifer to the edge of a park lake for her photo shoots (“Let’s slide the skirt up a little”), snapping away as disinterested rowers glide past in the background, and later photographs her passionately kissing another “child star” while sitting on the swings in a busy playground. Jennifer’s mother fits neatly into the inattentive (and thus culpable) mother category, working nights as a waitress to make ends meet and moving her boyfriend into the family home.
That said, the film is genuinely unsettling. Hill’s portrayal of Jennifer as she tearfully undresses for a photo shoot makes clear why she won a Young Artist Award for the film (she was actually much older than she looks in the film, being seventeen at the time; childhood diabetes caused her to look younger than her years, a point capitalized on in many of her roles). Perhaps surprisingly, the end of the film sees Howie presented as an individual in need of help, as opposed to a more simplistic evil “monster.” The onus still rests with the rest of us, however, as a doom-laden voiceover laments the state of modern society: “… And into this void walks the pedophile, the child lover”. [Jennifer Wallis]
Far-fetched but topical issues are broached in a shocking ad for Fallen Angel.
Director: William Wiard
Starring: Suzanne Pleshette, Barry Newman, Robert Vaughn, Lenora May
Airdate: January 18, 1982 Network: ABC
A nighttime soap opera becomes the setting for several murders when an obsessed fan stalks the cast and crew.
Fantasies was conceived by writer-producer David Levinson as a commentary on the effect of television violence on impressionable minds. The story was inspired by the then-recent court cases of Ronnie Zamora, a teenager who claimed television violence led him to commit murder, and the rape of a nine-year-old that was allegedly triggered by the infamous broom handle assault from Born Innocent. Levinson packages his ideas in a well-acted thriller that cleverly meshes the soap opera and horror genres with real (and reel) life, although the end result is a film that works more as entertainment than critique.
“Middleton, USA” is the name of the successful nighttime soap in Fantasies, and the cast is comprised heavily of real-life daytime players. They work for Carla Webber (Suzanne Pleshette looking divine), who may have been modeled after Gloria Monty, General Hospital’s driven and notoriously strong willed producer. Pleshette is fantastic as the ambitious divorcee who fights to keep “Middleton” on the air, despite the rash of murders. Carla can come across as aggressive, but she’s also funny and sometimes vulnerable. Mostly, she is completely independent and that seems to be what terrifies the killer most. However, the real stars of the film are the daytime actors who appear in both major and minor roles. Using luminaries from the soap world adds an air of authenticity to the film, and they are great fun to watch. Stuart Damon, who is most famous for playing Alan Quatermaine on General Hospital is wonderfully menacing.
The stalk and kill sequences mirror the slasher genre (minus the more visceral violence) while mixing in common melodrama allusions, such as romance, betrayal and intrigue. Combining the soap opera and horror genres is not particularly farfetched. Indeed, they share similar qualities, such as a strong suspension of disbelief. It’s just as unlikely that the unstoppable killing machine Michael Myers actually stalks the streets of Haddonfield as it is that there is an underground city named Eterna beneath the palatial estate of Llanfair. If you know both of these references, this movie is right up your alley.
Fantasies was the second of three telefilms that featured the team of Levinson and director Wiard. The duo, who also made This House Possessed (1981) and Kicks (1985), were masters of the slick, suspenseful made for TV movie, and Fantasies rests nicely alongside the small screen genre films from this era. Unwittingly, Fantasies has also become a time capsule, capturing the intense fervor of soap fandom. In the last few years, and much like the victims in Fantasies, all but a few of the daytime dramas have been laid to rest. This film lovingly recalls those glorious days of love (and death) in the afternoon, and, in the Movie of the Week. [Amanda Reyes]
HOTLINE
Director: Jerry Jameson
Starring: Lynda Carter, Granville Van Dusen, Steve Forrest, Monte Markham
Airdate: October 16, 1982 Network: CBS
A struggling bartender volunteers at a local psychiatric hotline and begins receiving calls from a vicious killer.
Released in October 1982 to capitalize on the Halloween season, Hotline was also televised right at the peak of the slasher craze. It apes many of the genre’s main elements, although it obviously had to play down the more exploitable situations. Despite the lack of gore, Hotline manages to summon up a nice amount of suspense, especially with the creepy phone calls and a cat and mouse chase at the airport. It also makes good use of its Pacific Coast Highway locales, with long and winding roads that lead to Carter’s small ocean side town. And the wood paneled interiors are oh-so-eighties! Those warm tones tend to belie the outrageous final scenes when the killer is revealed. (Hint: it’s a doozy!)
Originally titled Reachout, Hotline was one of Lynda Carter’s many efforts to escape her Wonder Woman persona through television movies. Starting in 1980, the actress made four TV movies back to back and this is the best of the bunch. She attempts to become an everywoman as the mixologist with too much on her plate (she’s a bartender, a hotline assistant and a student!). Lynda is quite good in the part, although it’s difficult to disassociate her from her sexy red, white and blue superhero uniform. The rest of the cast is also recognizable and wonderful, with a special nod going to Steve Forrest who plays the airhead Hollywood stud to perfection (he would roll out a similar performance in the fabulously trashy 1985 miniseries Hollywood Wives).
“Phone terror” à la Black Christmas (1974) and When a Stranger Calls (1979) is an interesting device that many TV horror films of this era made good use of. It was perfect for the small screen because it created a venue for tension and suspense, while also permitting filmmakers to skip the gory visual effects that were so popular on the big screen. When Michael Calls (1972), Secret Night Caller (1975), Someone’s Watching Me! (1978), Are You in the House Alone? (1978) and Hotline all feature the creepy phone caller, a milieu not as readily used today thanks to the advent of the cell phone (although the Scream films make the best of it).
Hotline enjoyed a VHS release and it remains a bit of cult item, most likely because the horror elements allowed younger audiences to enjoy something reminiscent of a slasher without having to sneak into a theater. That sense of nostalgia has carried over, making Hotline one of the better remembered horror telefilms of the early eighties. [Amanda Reyes]
I, DESIRE
Director: John Llewellyn Moxey
Starring: David Naughton, Dorian Harewood, Brad Dourif, Marilyn Jones
Airdate: November 15, 1982 Network: ABC
A female vampire poses as a Hollywood hooker to feed from wayward men; a coroner who has learned of her secret tries to convince others.
David Naughton is probably best known for fighting a losing battle against lycanthropy in the horror classic An American Werewolf in London. Rarely is he given credit for his hard won victory against a seductive female vampire on television later the same year (interestingly enough, in both tales Naughton’s characters share his own name, David). In I, Desire he plays a law student making ends meet as a coroner’s assistant who begins to suspect something supernatural is afoot when corpses show up at his workplace drained of blood. As the bodies pile up, he’s ahead of the police in learning that a powerful female vampire is posing as a Hollywood Boulevard prostitute and singling out men who stray from their marriages as dinner. Soon his fascination with the murders makes him a suspect in the eyes of the police and a perverted obsessive in the eyes of his wholesome girlfriend. It seems the only person taking his suspicions seriously is a shifty eyed ex-priest wonderfully played to the maniacal-hilt by the always-reliable Brad Dourif.
What differentiates I, Desire from your garden-variety vampire story is the clever way in which it presents David’s growing interest in his nemesis as an allegory for his difficulties adjusting to a committed relationship. When the story begins, David’s girlfriend Cheryl (Jones) has just moved into his apartment so they can cohabitate. Several hints are dropped that things have shifted between the two from Cheryl wondering if now they’ll stop kissing when they meet to David wondering why the heck she randomly reorganized everything in the kitchen. Driving around town, David is constantly craning his neck to stare with infatuation at hookers and although we know he’s on the up and up unraveling a mystery, Cheryl only sees a wolf in sheep’s clothing dissatisfied with domesticity. Matters escalate to the boiling point when curious David attempts to interview a lady of the evening and offers to pay for her time; he’s arrested for soliciting a prostitute and it requires Cheryl to pay his bail. He explains his actions but you don’t need to be a couples therapist to recognize that having to spring your partner from the slammer for such a thing rarely strengthens romantic ties. When a well-played twist finally reveals the identity of the vampire named “Desire,” we learn that she has no power over David if he is a “righteous” man unwilling to forsake his commitment to Cheryl.
I, Desire is directed by John Llewellyn Moxey, a TV veteran responsible for what’s easily one of the greatest television vampire movies, The Night Stalker. This is a worthy companion piece updated with neon eighties splashes including a bluesy saxophone score. Its only real substantial flaws are a disappointing blink and you’ll miss it demise for its well-established evil seductress and the poorly chosen canned bobcat growl clumsily pasted over her attacks. Overall, though, this is a surprising, thoughtful and engaging effort that is unquestionably worth sinking your teeth into. [Lance Vaughan]
Lynda Carter tracks down a crank calling psycho in Hotline.
THE INCREDIBLE HULK RETURNS
Director: Nicholas Corea
Starring: Bill Bixby, Lou Ferrigno, Jack Colvin, Steve Levitt, Eric Kramer.
Airdate: May 22, 1988 Network: NBC
David Banner has managed to control his monstrous alter ego, the Hulk, for two years when troubled Dr. Donald Blake arrives on the scene.
The Incredible Hulk Returns catches up with our old, tortured friend Dr. David Banner (Bixby) six years after CBS unceremoniously cancelled the TV series in 1982. He’s over on NBC now, and it seems time has been pretty kind to him. He’s shacked up in a beach house with a WASP-y squeeze half his age, has neat, blow-dried hair, and has found fulfilling work leading a new gamma radiation project at a prestigious research institute. What’s more, his afterhours work with the lab’s Gamma Transponder is close to curing him of those anger management problems that used to turn him into a raging monster on a regular basis. Good for him, I say.
Of course, we don’t expect Banner’s sense of calm to last for long, but that’s all part of the fun. Sadly though, The Incredible Hulk Returns quickly reveals its true colors, and green isn’t one of them. It turns out the movie is not really an attempt to rejuvenate a well-loved show, but a “backdoor pilot” for another Marvel character, Thor (Kramer). Actually it’s two characters, as Thor needs the hapless Dr. Donald Blake (Levitt) to summon him up (in the original comic strips they were one and the same, like Banner and the Hulk). Anyway, Blake shows up desperate for Banner’s help just after the first commercial break and things go steeply downhill from there.
It seems the only way Bixby (whose company co-produced) could get the Hulk back on TV was to hire him out as a platform for another would-be superhero series. The formula would be sadly repeated for the next feature-length Hulk installment—The Trial of the Incredible Hulk (NBC, 1989), which tried to foist Marvel’s Daredevil on us—but none of the piloted characters graduated to their own shows. (For that we can be thankful.) Kramer gamely plays the arrogant Thor for laughs, but he soon becomes tiresome and grates against Bixby’s rock-solid sincerity and the raw power of Lou Ferrigno’s Hulk.
Never mind, it’s almost worth putting up with this Viking chump just to be back, even for a few minutes, in the company of Bixby, Ferrigno and the irrepressible Jack Colvin (in his last appearance as newspaperman McGee, still on Banner’s trail and still not liking him when he’s angry). The American public broadly agreed; The Incredible Hulk Returns garnered surprisingly good ratings, paving the way for two more reunion TVMs (the aforementioned Trial and The Death of the Incredible Hulk [1990]). But the guiding hand of original series’ creator-producer Kenneth Johnson is missing and it shows. [Julian Upton]
I SAW WHAT YOU DID
Director: Fred Walton
Starring: Shawnee Smith, Tammy Lauren, Robert Carradine, David Carradine
Airdate: May 20, 1988 Network: CBS
In this update of a 1965 William Castle thriller, two teen girls (with a younger sister in tow) find themselves in danger after a prank call.
Teens Kim Fielding (Smith) and Lisa Harris (Lauren) are, on the surface, not very much alike. Responsible Kim knows all the answers in class, while unruly Lisa knows all the best ways to meet up with her boyfriend without her mother’s knowledge. When Kim invites Lisa over to keep her company while her father’s out for the evening, Lisa accepts but only for the opportunity to have a clandestine rendezvous with her forbidden beau.
The girls’ contrasting personalities make the evening together at Kim’s remote home awkward at first, but, with some help from Kim’s precocious younger sister Julia (Cameron), they find common ground in a mutual attraction to phone related mischief. The girls egg each other on and their phone pranks become more brazen until Kim dials the ultimate wrong number and connects with Adrian Lancer (Robert Carradine), a dangerous psychopath who has just finished killing the girlfriend who spurned him. “I know what you did and I know who you are!” Kim tells him, unaware she’s making herself his next target. Complicating matters further, the misguided teens pursue Adrian, mistaking him for suitable dating material.
Much of I Saw What You Did’s suspense is earned by the audience knowing more than the likeable protagonists and the fact that Carradine’s Lancer genuinely does come off as mentally ill. Director Fred Walton is a perfect fit for this material having previously helmed the classic jeopardy-by-phone thriller When a Stranger Calls (1979). There is an impressive sleek and shadowy noir feel to many scenes and cinematographer Woody Omens was rightfully awarded an Emmy for his efforts. Most impressive, though, is the attention paid to the teen’s believable relationship. We get to know the girls fairly well and learn as they do that they are not as different as once thought. Kim eventually proves herself to be far from docile and Lisa’s latent reliability saves the day.
Comparing the manners and morals of the time in this late-eighties, made for television offering with that of its mid-sixties theatrical film predecessor— William Castle’s I Know What You Did (1965)—is an added entertainment in and of itself (each based on a 1964 novel by Ursula Curtiss entitled Out of the Dark). In some ways, both resemble cautionary educational films meant to scare the young away from reckless behavior. Naturally, it was the girls’ prank calls that lead them into trouble here but there’s a larger lesson to be learned about not judging a book by its cover. Just as the girls misread unhinged Adrian as harmless, based on his appearance, it turns out that an unkempt vagabond who they instinctively fear comes to their aid in the dramatic, fiery conclusion. The tale’s forced final jolt is cheaper than it deserves but for the most part, I Saw What You Did is mischievous fun and well worth seeking out. [Lance Vaughan]
Stan Lee joins the gang in a promo still for The Incredible Hulk Returns.
David Naughton, vampire hunter, at your service in I, Desire.
KICKS
Director: William Wiard
Starring: Anthony Geary, Shelley Hack, Susan Ruttan, Tom Mason
Airdate: March 11, 1985 Network: ABC
An adrenaline junkie gets more than she bargained for when her thrill seeking lover makes her the prey in a game of cat and mouse.
ABC’s 1984/85 season was one known for ratings so low it grabbed newspaper headlines. Not long before, it had been a network to contend with, but quickly lost its position with new programming that was simply not capturing an audience. In the hopes of finding a quick fix, ABC attempted to revive their popular Movie of the Week programming and put several small screen films into production. The slick thriller Kicks was part of a package designed to resuscitate the fledgling network (along with a remake of The Bad Seed, and an intriguing and strange sci-fi TVM titled Starcrossed, among others), and it employed daytime superstar Anthony Geary, who was bringing millions of fans to the network daily on its wildly popular soap opera General Hospital.
Shelley Hack, probably best known for replacing Kate Jackson in the fourth season of Charlie’s Angels, followed up her jiggle-TV past working mostly in made for TV movies (while also appearing in cult-y theatrical films such as King of Comedy, Troll and The Stepfather), and manages to prove that she may have been unfairly maligned as the “Unpopular Angel.” She holds her own here against Geary, who had already brought home a Daytime Emmy for his work on General Hospital. Despite the critical disdain for the daytime genre, there is no denying that Geary is a formidable talent. He either lifts Hack’s performance, or maybe she just needed to step outside of Spelling’s iconic detective series to find her strength, but both actors are in fine form, and their intense performances lend credence to the outrageous story.
Known in foreign markets as Destination Alcatraz, Kicks also benefits from screenwriter David Levinson’s deadpan dialog and Wiard’s crisp, sometimes dreamy, direction. While the film lacks a sense of humor, it is wild in its extravagance, and becomes a metaphor for finding the ultimate high in a world where everything is at your fingertips (a problem I’m sure most of us would like to be burdened with).
Shot around Los Angeles and San Francisco, Kicks is all about the beautiful and/or rich and bored who need to constantly up their endorphins by executing potentially dangerous acts on a daily basis. Emblematic of the excessiveness of the eighties, this telefilm goes all out in its efforts to make the treacherous look glamorous. High-speed chases in expensive cars, jewelry heists and even exotic cobras add to the flavor of this straight-faced actioner, and to fairly satisfying results. [Amanda Reyes]
L.A. TAKEDOWN
Director: Michael Mann
Starring: Scott Plank, Michael Rooker, Ely Pouget, Vincent Guastaferro
Airdate: August 27, 1987 Network: NBC
After a daring daylight robbery in Los Angeles, a meticulous crook and obsessed investigating cop become embroiled in a battle of attrition.
L.A. Takedown is a notable television movie in that it represents a kind of dry run for Michael Mann’s later crime epic, Heat (1995). L.A. Takedown also shares some of the stylistic traits that have come to typify the director’s films, from the general (cops and criminals being two sides of the same coin) to the specific (a shower sex scene later used for the movie version of Miami Vice in 2006), as well as featuring a soundtrack that mixes moody 1980s rock songs and a synthesizer score.
Despite Mann creating a cinematic feel in the Miami Vice TV show (1984–90), the small screen world of L.A. Takedown feels like it’s restricting his vision, and a comparison with Heat makes this clear. The larger canvas of the cinema screen allows the director to broaden his story with multiple locations and an extended running time, giving greater depth to numerous supporting characters, and the use of pauses in the action help establish mood. While there is nuance and subtlety in Heat, Mann also deals with archetypes, creating an almost mythic battle between the order of law and the chaos of criminality, interestingly represented in both versions by a cop who is flamboyant and a criminal who is restrained. It is better served on the big screen in Heat, becoming a clash between titans, both in terms of the larger than life characters of cop and criminal, and the iconic movie star presence of Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro who essay these respective roles.
A number of famous moments from Heat appear in L.A. Takedown, including the opening robbery, the bank heist and the coffee shop encounter between cop and criminal. Surprisingly, the latter scene feels less contrived in L.A. Takedown. In Heat, Pacino’s cop pulls over DeNiro’s criminal in his car and asks if he wants a cup of coffee, whereas L.A. Takedown has the two characters coincidentally meeting each other and reaching for their holstered guns in a tense standoff. The subsequent coffee shop conversation in L.A. Takedown feels like a naturally unfolding moment, rather than two acting heavyweights being maneuvered into a location in order to share their—admittedly iconic—first scene together. In terms of performances, Scott Plank’s version of cop Vincent Hanna is a little flat, with none of Pacino’s charisma and fireworks, while Alex McArthur’s crook doesn’t match the focus and intensity that DeNiro brought to the part.
While L.A. Takedown lacks the epic scope and star power of Heat, it nevertheless offers viewers an intriguing opportunity to see how a film idea can develop. Most of the time, the early version of a story has its rough edges confined to the page, with numerous revisions done before filming. L.A. Takedown, whatever its limitations, is a rare example of a first draft in film form, offering a fascinating glimpse into Mann’s creative process and artistic evolution. [Martyn Bamber]
Director: Jack Bender
Starring: Lee Montgomery, Shari Belafonte, Peter DeLuise, LeVar Burton
Airdate: November 1, 1985 Network: ABC
A group of teens unwittingly unleash a slew of supernatural entities upon their hometown.
Phil Grenville (Montgomery; whose TV movie pedigree includes playing the title character in a memorable segment of the 1977 Dan Curtis anthology, Dead of Night) is your average American teen sporting an unrequited crush on Mary (DeDee Pfeiffer). The two, along with pals Melissa (Belafonte), Vinnie (Burton) and Mitch (DeLuise), break into a museum to swipe some costumes for a Halloween party at a spooky old house. These aren’t just any costumes, though, they’re artifacts from a time long ago when their quaint little town of Pitchford Cove was the setting for many a nasty witch hunt. The most infamous of these witch hunts involved Phil’s ancestor hanging Melissa’s great-great-great-great-grandmother. The kids throw the stolen garments into an old trunk that also happens to hide a cursed scroll; when read aloud by Melissa in a graveyard, the scroll invokes a menagerie of hellish demons, including Melissa’s vengeful relative, assorted zombies and vampires, at least one rampaging werewolf, and a pretty and rightfully confused fifties era pony-tailed cheerleader named Sandy (Jonna Lee).
Featuring an eclectic soundtrack—everything from Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Bad Moon Rising to The Smiths’ How Soon is Now?, not to mention an original song entitled Get Dead sung by Sheri Belafonte—and boasting occasional radio voiceovers from Wolfman Jack himself, The Midnight Hour is not shy about putting its Halloween party atmosphere front and center. Although I’d guess its foremost inspiration to be Michael Jackson’s seminal music video Thriller, this candy sack is so full of assorted goodies that it’s hard to fit into any one box. Every time you open the door for this slicker-thanusual production, it’s wearing an entirely different mask. Viewers are treated to wholesome small-town nostalgia, over-the-top sight gags, Afterschool Special drunk dad drama, fifties style monster movie mayhem (will cops ever believe teenagers?), eighties style ensemble casting, a fish-out-of-water love story, a random musical number, a surreal nightmare car cruise along main street accompanied by the howl of an undead opera singer, and Dick Van Patten as a demented dentist with vampire fangs. Who’d want to trade in any of that haul?
At least one thing about The Midnight Hour is thoroughly consistent, and that is an unwavering dedication to the holiday it’s celebrating. There’s nary a shot that does not include a Halloween decoration, a floating autumn leaf or a billowing cloud of well-lit smoke (there’s even a bit of an Easter egg for TV movie buffs as a theater marquee gives director Jack Bender’s other 1985 effort Deadly Messages top billing). Overall, I’d say it’s next to impossible not to get swept up in the giddy carnival-like atmosphere or get a bit of a contact high from its rambunctious Halloween house party. This is frothy fun that shouldn’t be missed, will leave you with a few choice songs stuck in your head, and a winking reminder that the excitement of the season is not exclusive to any one generation. [Lance Vaughan]
MIDNIGHT OFFERINGS
Director: Rod Holcomb
Starring: Melissa Sue Anderson, Mary Beth McDonough, Patrick Cassidy
Airdate: February 27, 1981 Network: ABC
When high school domination is at stake, a teenage witch goes to battle with the new girl in town, who possesses her own special powers.
Witches owned the airwaves this Friday night in February 1981. On ABC, Midnight Offerings presented the bewitching casting of Mary Beth McDonough (of The Waltons) and Melissa Sue Anderson (of Little House on the Prairie) as good witch and bad witch. On that same night, CBS offered a similar good vs. evil battle in the classic The Wizard of Oz. Not only was the competitively themed timing clever but so was the casting of Midnight Offerings, as the stars of two wholesome period pieces went toe to toe in an exciting and fun teen thriller, one that also featured the likes of Patrick Cassidy, Cathryn Damon, Gordon Jump and Marion Ross.
Frequent Stephen J. Cannell collaborator, Juanita Bartlett, wrote the script (Cannell was one of her producers) that pits good teenage witch against bad. Anderson, who would soon be making her slasher debut in Happy Birthday to Me is glorious as Vivian, the terrifying bad girl who will do anything to keep her mitts on David (Cassidy), including blowing up a teacher’s car (with the teacher still in it!) if she has to. McDonough does not fare quite as well, but what starts off as a wooden performance relaxes itself throughout the film. Still, she’s hardly a match for crazy Vivian and her black cat, and this is one battle where all bets are on evil winning!
Girl-friendly small screen witch flicks were not an uncommon staple in the seventies, and movies like The Initiation of Sarah and The Spell exploited the metaphor of witchcraft to symbolize the young outcast who uses their power when the “normal” world just won’t let them in. Midnight Offerings utilizes a more tongue-in-cheek approach in handling the issues of the early eighties teen, and these problems are touched on only lightly, as real-life concerns serve simply as a backdrop to some fairly decent sorcery showdowns.
Like many small screen horror flicks from this era, Midnight Offerings does not offer much in the way of fancy special effects, but the snappy dialog and Anderson’s inspired performance move the film along at a brisk pace. And, it never takes itself too seriously, even allowing the put-upon good girl McDonough a few quips, before she has to take on the bitchiest witch in the west.
Finally, if we’re going to explore the metaphor of young girls and witchcraft, this TVM does a credible job of showing the pros and cons of youthful empowerment and agency. All that, and a cameo by Vanna White as a cheerleader? Good times for all! [Amanda Reyes]
MOM, THE WOLFMAN AND ME
Director: Edmond A. Levy
Starring: Patty Duke, Danielle Brisebois, David Birney, Keenan Wynn, Viveca Lindfors
Airdate: October 20, 1980 Network: Syndicated
A busy single mother ignores her lonely heart until she meets a man with a beard and a wolfhound.
A charmless romantic muffin, there’s sadly no hirsute matricide nor any sign of lycanthropy in this gooey pile of inactive daytime love tat starring Patty Duke (Love Finds A Home) as a single mother/photographer not in search of true love and a possible stepfather for her talkative, pushy daughter Danielle Brisebois (As Good As It Gets). Too busy to cook, independent to the max and preoccupied snapping covers for elite New York magazines, Duke ignores her family and is unaware of the loving glances shot her way by goofy admirer John Lithgow (Raising Caine), a man who wants to marry her and make her love again—a topic Duke’s father Keenan Wynn (Hysterical) is keen to discuss during many hospital visits.
Eventually, while photographing a set that requires the presence of an Irish wolfhound dog, Duke notices the dog’s relaxed owner David Birney (Night Fall) also has a lot of fur, and is also single and hungry for love. So, she christens him “The Wolfman” and sits back while he and buffoon Lithgow try to romance, delight and woo her into a Sunday afternoon coma—a place you’ll soon find yourself residing unless you’re kept awake by the ugly interior design, awful beards, rotten jumpers, growing pains and much talked about feelings.
Produced by Time-Life Television and based on a soft novel of the same name by Norma Klein (Young Love, First Love), the small, brash and demanding Brisebois grew up to dodge hot lead with Angie Dickenson in Jim Wynorski’s Big Bad Mama II (1987), while Lithgow (who roller skates in a park in this) went on to fame with TV series 3rd Rock From The Sun (1996–2001); although, he’ll always be regaled in my household for the phone-book/hammer fight in the barely remembered, brilliantly scripted Ricochet (1991). [DF Dresden]
THE NIGHT THE BRIDGE FELL DOWN
Director: George Fenady
Starring: James MacArthur, Desi Arnaz Jr., Char Fontane, Leslie Nielsen
Airdate: February 28, 1983 Network: NBC
After an earthquake destroys a bridge, a crazed gunman defies police and holds the bewildered survivors hostage.
Having possibly grown bored by the predictability of his own well-worn disaster plots, Irwin Allen hired four writers (Alvin Boretz, Arthur Weiss, Michael Robert David and Ray Goldstone) to spice up his jaded formula, and all they could come up with was this—a slight re-working of the disaster/ gunman combination of Allen’s near identical and far funnier Cave In! (1979).
Spanning the Ohio River, the Madison Bridge is the setting for this Warner Bros. Television production starring bridge inspector James MacArthur (Hang ’Em High), a man who is sure the structure is one flood or big wind away from collapse. He wants the bridge closed down and repaired, but city boss Philip Baker Hall (Zodiac) won’t allow it because likely he’s just seen Jaws and that’s what Mayor Murray Hamilton did when told about the shark.
Before long, there’s an earthquake, a partial collapse and a multi-car pileup involving police and fleeing criminal Desi Arnaz Jr. (Billy Two-Hats), an armed psycho who ends up holding the survivors hostage on a teetering section of bridge cut off from both banks.
While Desi fires wild and a cop bleeds out in the backseat of a car, Leslie Nielson (Nuts) worries about his tiny, sick infant (hilarious) and Eve Plumb (The Brady Girls Get Married) and Barbara Rush (Harry Black) look on doe-eyed as the emergency services, the cops and the air force (possibly) back up MacArthur’s heroic attempts to resolve the situation and save the day.
Far from spectacular and not that much fun, you’ll dig it best if you like crappy models, sirens, electrical fires, cut-price peril, shaky cam and the chair rescue scene from Allen’s The Towering Inferno (1974). [DF Dresden]
NO PLACE TO HIDE
Director: John Llewellyn Moxey
Starring: Kathleen Beller, Mariette Hartley, Keir Dullea, Gary Graham
Airdate: March 4, 1981 Network: CBS
A mysterious man stalks a young artist, either in an effort to kill her or drive her crazy.
The hauntingly beautiful Kathleen Beller starred in a few TV movies in the seventies and eighties, but may best be remembered for two: Are You in the House Alone (1978) and this, No Place to Hide. While so many small screen movies linger in some sort of telefilm limbo, both Alone and Hide enjoyed VHS releases, and Alone still finds play on streaming sites like Netflix, and, more recently, found its way to DVD. Place remains a bit of a rarity, however, and that’s too bad because it is a slick and twisty popcorn thriller that still manages to entertain.
The is-she-crazy-or-isn’t-she storyline is not particularly unique and Hide’s screenwriter, Hammer Films legend Jimmy Sangster, used it to great effect in his earlier TVM A Taste of Evil (1971). The prolific John Llewellyn Moxey directed both Evil and Hide, and, indeed, the two telefilms are similar in approach and tone (although Evil is far more gothic). Obviously, this is a tried and true technique for both screenwriter and director, but they one-upped themselves with Hide (which was adapted from an unpublished story by Harriet Steinberg), because their film is brimming with twists and turns that might not always be a wholly unpredictable venture but still throw a few curves and manage to hold viewer’s interest throughout.
Relying on traditional (i.e. restrained) scare tactics, the maybe-killer in Hide is at times reminiscent of the predator in the 1980 slasher Prom Night, a killer wearing a similar ski mask who also had a signature whispering tagline before he dispatched each victim. Here the killer hisses “Soon Amy. Soon,” and in an early scene, he chases Beller though the school halls, much like the killer does with one of his victims in Prom Night. But after Hide finds its footing in familiar slasher territory, it veers from horror into thriller before settling back to more organic scares with its twist (and twisted) ending.
Aside from Moxey’s confident direction, the film also features strong performances. Beller’s doe eyes and small stature make her look like she built the mold for the damsel in distress and that compelling beauty draws you in. In an interview with the Associated Press, Beller, who was twenty-five at the time but still looked like a teenager, remarked that this was the first film that allowed her to portray an adult character. It isn’t much of a break though, and the original script probably saw Amy as a teen anyway, given the very high school like location of the above referenced chase scene.
Mariette Hartley balances out Beller’s anguished presence with a severe hairstyle and uber-sophisticated wardrobe. One may chuckle when she puts on her “grubbies,” which feature a perfectly pressed pair of slacks (granted, she did let her hair down)! She’s a distant character—rich and aloof—but Hartley’s conflicted portrayal gives her depth and adds the right amount of intrigue to the part.
Hide’s production company, Metromedia Producers Corp., dabbled heavily in television, but primarily in episodic fare. They did produce a few noteworthy telefilms, including She Waits (1972), Go Ask Alice (1973) and this fine little film that deserves a wider audience. [Amanda Reyes]
THE PEOPLE ACROSS THE LAKE
Director: Arthur Allan Seidelman
Starring: Valerie Harper, Gerald McRaney, Barry Corbin, Tammy Lauren
Airdate: October 3, 1988 Network: NBC
An upwardly mobile family exchanges dangerous city life for a quiet small town, only to uncover a terrible secret and a few random bodies.
In The People Across the Lake, Valerie Harper is in comfortable mom mode as the city-phobic head of a family that decides to move to a lakefront house in northern New York to get away from it all. Of course, we viewers know there’s something up, not just because we’re watching an ominously-titled TV movie, but because we’ve seen the opening scene in which an unseen man stalks and kills a woman among the greenery, then takes her body to the middle of the lake and, er, avoids dumping it in. We realize that it’s just a matter of time before our most nuclear of nuclear families (The younger son is cheery! The older teenage daughter is bratty! The dad is played by Gerald McRaney!) is going to be involved in a heap of mysterious goings-on.
“Heap” is kind of the operative word here, because The People Across the Lake is a strange, unwieldy movie. The opening scene pegs it as some sort of a horror film, then it moves into being a light domestic drama as we see the family make the decision to move out of the city, then it becomes a mystery as dad stumbles across a body (while skinny dipping!) that disappears and nobody will believe him. At first, it looks as though dad is going to be the lead, but it’s Harper’s mom that ends up taking the initiative to investigate even after everyone else in the family is bored with everything. The killer is eventually revealed to the audience, and that character takes central focus, gleefully chewing scenery in a Psycho-like twist that borders on camp, and then, finally, the whole film becomes Straw Dogs as the family tries to fend off… well, that would be telling, and I’m not going to spoil it for you.
As much of a scattered film as The People Across the Lake is, it’s never dull—you certainly can’t call it “predictable,” even if it’s essentially just cribbing moments from other films. Seidelman’s direction is solid—an insanely prolific filmmaker, he’s an expert at shooting sequences with a sense of menace even when limited by the television medium.
As much as the film has a central figure, the protagonist is Harper, for whom the part feels like a natural fit. She manages the rare feat of being a mother figure that comes off as both realistic yet perfectly in tune with the bizarre plotting of the film, adamant without being bitchy (even when dealing with her actively irritating daughter), and interested in the mystery without delving into obsession. She’s more akin to a woman who’s trying to find a place in this business without losing her sense of “mom” identity.
Granted, it’s doubtful that the script has taken any of these things into consideration, but it does allow for some nice moments of absurdist character development, such as the couple’s nonchalant reaction to a pair of stereotypical country folk berating them for investigating after handing them fried fish(!). The People Across the Lake certainly isn’t the best TV movie Harper headlined, but it gives her a rare chance to act as an aggressive character in a more suspense-based setting. It would make an ideal bottom half of a double-bill with Don’t Go to Sleep, and serves as a reminder of how talented an actress she can be even outside a comedy setting. [Paul Freitag-Fey]
PROTOTYPE
Director: David Greene
Starring: Christopher Plummer, David Morse, Frances Sternhagen, James Sutorius
Airdate: December 7, 1983 Network: CBS
When the military seeks to reprogram a very humanlike robot for war, the “humanoid’s” creator takes him on the run.
The Frankenstein tale (and formula) has enchanted audiences since Mary Shelley unleashed her darkest demons in 1818. Prototype plays on several of Shelly’s tropes, while placing a more positive spin on the father/son relationship. The film makes several overt nods to the novel and the 1931 film, most notably during the heartbreaking finale.
Christopher Plummer plays Dr. Carl Forrester, a man haunted by his childless existence. The audience is never told why Michael (played with exquisite heartbreak by David Morse) was created, but he becomes a military pawn, as well as the son Dr. Forrester has been desperately searching for. Michael serves as the catalyst for a major manhunt, but Prototype isn’t about a search and destroy mission, it is instead an intimate look at blind ambition, missed opportunities and unconditional love.
The screenwriting and producing duo Richard Levinson and William Link are probably best known for their creation of America’s favorite disheveled detective, Columbo. The popular team was, in fact, behind many wonderful television movies and programs, moving effortlessly from popcorn entertainment (Rehearsal for Murder) to striking and important commentaries (That Certain Summer). Prototype uses the entertainment angle to create an intriguing and somewhat distressing comment on our technologically driven society. Levinson and Link set out to make a very human story about an inhuman situation. Military warfare and cyborgs are hefty plot points, but the writers concentrate on the ways people learn about themselves through interaction with others.
Director David Greene was a Levinson and Link go-to guy and he puts the film (set around Christmas, subtly commenting on Forrester’s desire to play God—with Michael fulfilling the Jesus role) in wonderfully familiar and somewhat idyllic locations (aside from the laboratory). It is devoid of special effects and manages to make the viewer see Michael as both human and a robot. Morse, with his overly skinny frame, is physically perfect for the part, and one wonders if his shirt were removed whether only cool metal would be revealed. He becomes a Frankenstein’s Monster for our times; an experiment gone awry, a lost young man in a world where technology separates him from human contact. In today’s social media culture, Michael remains a relevant reminder of our desire for love and our inability to communicate that need.
Although it didn’t receive much fanfare, Trinity Home Entertainment released Prototype on DVD in 2004. Featuring the tagline “The future is not friendly,” the grossly misleading cover art makes the film look like a bad B-movie. It is unfortunate that so few made for TV movies get a shot on the home video market, and this presentation by Trinity only manages to make matters worse by pushing a product that does not exist. Prototype is a thoughtful antidote to the sci-fi movies that prefer big guns and no brains. There is certainly room for it in the genre, and if one can get past the misrepresentative advertising, this film is guaranteed to offer some food for thought. Highly recommended. [Amanda Reyes]
THE RAPE OF RICHARD BECK
Director: Karen Arthur
Starring: Richard Crenna, Meredith Baxter, Pat Hingle, Frances Lee McCain
Airdate: May 27, 1985 Network: ABC
Richard Beck re-examines his own chauvinistic attitude toward sexual assault when he becomes a victim.
Richard Crenna (Wait Until Dark, First Blood) stars as a cocky divorced cop in a long line of alpha males. Unapologetically confrontational, self-assured and frequently pontificating from his made-up “Beck’s Standard Manual of Police Procedure,” he happily scours the streets looking for criminals to bust even when he’s off duty. Beck sees himself as a rule-breaking rogue in the Popeye Doyle mold, but his lack of empathy for victims of sexual assault becomes apparent when he offhandedly refers to rape as a “mickey mouse” crime while letting a rapist walk in exchange for a tip on a murder case. As punishment for this “trade,” Beck is temporarily reassigned to the Sex Crimes unit, which provides no end of jeers from his co-workers—especially since the job requires him to be surrounded by “uppity women” like rape crisis hotline volunteer and activist, Meredith Baxter (fellow eighties TV mom Joanna Kerns also makes an appearance as Beck’s neighbor and sometime lover). But Beck will soon find these jeers turn mean when he is playing “cowboy” off duty and follows some potential drug dealers into Seattle’s famous underground city only to become a victim of sexual violence himself.
The film does not contain a graphic depiction of rape, but we see belt buckles being undone and the subsequent discovery of Beck beaten, bloodied and hysterical. His humiliation is compounded by the fact that he has to suffer the traumatic aftermath of being prodded and interrogated by his peers—in scenes mirroring those that female assault victims have to endure every day—whose own constructed masculinity requires them to reason that Beck must be a closet homosexual. His own boss asserts that Beck was “asking for it” by going into the underground without backup. Even his father—the retired cop from whom he probably got all his macho bad habits—is ashamed that his son would “let” the assailants rape him and “take his gun” (the latter becomes the go-to analogy for all the men afraid to use the word “rape”).
One of the great things about the film is that the humorous tone of the first half works; the audience easily aligns with Richard Beck. Even his misogynistic humor—he describes coaxing a naked rape victim out of a public phone booth with the same sort of punchy narrative detachment one would use in telling an off-color joke—doesn’t come off as foreshadowing; the director allows Beck’s character to work on his own terms. This is especially poignant considering the film was directed by a woman, Karen Arthur—a prolific, award winning TV director whose few feature films include indie psychodrama oddity The Mafu Cage (1978). Crenna’s performance here— for which he won an Emmy—is superb; he transforms brilliantly from cocksure cop to quivering mess, and his subsequent development as a more empathetic person never seems forced (of course, as one contemporary review pointed out, the fact that Beck is a “better person” after being raped was in itself problematic2).
Equally acclaimed and controversial, the film was the first television depiction of the rape of a man by other men (only two months later, the sitcom Too Close for Comfort would release its controversial episode ‘For Every Man, There’s Two Women’ in which the character Monroe gets raped by two large ladies). But its creators were no strangers to tough material; it was written and exec-produced by James Hirsch (who had co-written the previous year’s herpes TV movie Intimate Agony) and produced by Robert Papazian who not only started out with some solid exploitation credits (Coffy, Dillinger) but also produced the highest rated TV movie of all time, The Day After (1983). The film was later released on home video under the title Deadly Justice, branded as a generic cop movie with all references to rape removed from the promotional copy. [Kier-La Janisse]
THE RETURN OF THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN AND THE BIONIC WOMAN
Director: Ray Austin
Starring: Lee Majors, Lindsay Wagner, Richard Anderson, Martin E. Brooks
Airdate: May 17, 1987 Network: NBC
Steve Austin is reunited with the Bionic Woman and his estranged son, Michael. But a terrible accident sees history repeating itself.
This big-haired, eighties sequel to two of the most successful TV shows of the 1970s sees Steve Austin (Majors) long since retired from his role as a secret agent at the high tech Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI). Steve now spends his time deep-sea fishing (and, by the look of it, eating everything he catches). When called upon by Oscar Goldman (Anderson, whose wig also seems to have put on weight) to tackle a dangerous new terrorist group, Steve turns down his former boss, insisting he wants to forget his OSI past. So Goldman arranges an “accidental” meeting between Steve and his former bionic belle Jaime Sommers (Wagner) and the romantic memories come flooding back, courtesy of some Vaseline-smeared footage from the seventies. But Steve still won’t commit to the new mission—that is until fate steps in.
While the handling of Steve and Jaime’s relationship is hamfisted (director Ray Austin was always more at home with stunts than human emotion), Majors and Wagner manage to inject some feeling into their characters. Majors’ chunkier physique and beaten-down demeanor actually work well for his portrayal of a wistful, bruised, middle aged man whose action-hero days are behind him. And although she’s now under half a can of hairspray and a yard of shoulder padding, Wagner’s dynamic allure is undimmed.
The plot takes an interesting turn when it echoes Steve’s dilemma over the original “bionicization” of Jaime. This time he has to call on the OSI— still under the medical supervision of Dr. Rudy Wells (Brooks)—to “rebuild” his trainee pilot son, Michael (Tom Schanley), when the young man sustains horrific injuries in a plane crash. But this is where the backdoor pilot nature of the enterprise becomes clear—it’s all a big pitch for a Son of the Six Million Dollar Man TV series. Austin fils is transformed into a bionic man for a more advanced era, with improved skills and functions such as a laser-equipped eye. But while Schanley is agreeable enough as a “microchip off the old block,” thankfully his presence doesn’t displace the Majors/Wagner focus too much.
No new series was forthcoming, but two more reunion TV movies rolled off the production line: 1989’s Bionic Showdown, in which Steve and Jaime mentor a new bionic woman (a pre-stardom Sandra Bullock), and 1994’s Bionic Ever After?, where Steve and Jaime tie the knot (but can it last?).
Trivia buffs might be interested to spot Bryan Breaking Bad Cranston in an early role as a fresh-faced doctor, as well as Lee Majors’ real-life son Lee Majors II, offering some comic relief as a bumbling OSI lawyer (playing Michael would have been a stretch for the grinning, bouffanted Majors II.) Also adding weight to the cast, and looking more like Bela Lugosi here than when he actually played him seven years later, is the saturnine Martin Landau. [Julian Upton]
REVENGE OF THE STEPFORD WIVES
Director: Robert Fuest
Starring: Sharon Gless, Julie Kavner, Arthur Hill and Don Johnson
Airdate: October 12, 1980 Network: NBC
The town of Stepford is perhaps the most blissful residency in the country. TV personality Kaye Foster wants to know why.
Not just a rare find, but a rare thing—a sequel that gets it right! This is a follow-up that actually evolves the story rather than merely retreading it for the small screen, and it’s a creative decision made all the more admirable for being done so well. In fact, it’s arguably a better, more assuredly paced venture than the original, which suffered from teasing out the reveal of Stepford’s perfect mystery beyond breaking point. Since the twist has already been revealed—at least to the audience, though not to the protagonists— the tone is less on suspense and far more on action. The movie also deals with the long term effects of the small town’s eerily unnatural domestic bliss and the moral implications that the menfolk wrestle with and the decisions that some of them, regrettably, have already made.
Gless, as Kaye Foster, is less of a star than the previous film’s Katherine Ross, but she does assert her character with far more gusto, and is easily a more engaging heroine. Although the rest of the film’s female population may be drones, the town is nevertheless brought to life by the introduction of several familiar character actors that provide a richness, and even a credibility, to the more absurd details of the plot.
A trio of ads promoting the TV sequels to the The Stepford Wives.
Of course, it’s not without its faults, opening as it does with perhaps the most lethargic bumper-to-bumper car chase ever committed to film, so much so that when it climaxes in slow motion, the effect is almost imperceptible! And similar to the original, it loses its way at the halfway mark. A brilliantly whimsical and lush piece of string music that serves to re-enforce the 1950s Rockwellian-nightmare subject matter, ends up playing for so long that it becomes jarringly distracting from the events on-screen. But thankfully, as the film reaches its climax, the director re-asserts control, as do the merry wives of Stepford themselves, when, as the title suggests, they regain their power, though in a nice twist, not necessarily their humanity!
Not a classic of any kind, but a far more entertaining film than its big screen predecessor and worth watching for a couple of early spirited performances from a young Don Johnson, as well as Julie Kavner as his subservient bride, long before The Simpsons would cement her as perhaps the most archetypical TV housewife of all time. [Kevin Hilton]
SHATTERED INNOCENCE
Director: Sandor Stern
Starring: Jonna Lee, Melinda Dillon, John Pleshette, Nadine Van der Velde
Airdate: March 9, 1988 Network: CBS
A film based on the true story of Shauna Grant, a small-town girl drawn into the world of adult movies with tragic consequences.
Shauna Grant, star of a string of adult movies in the 1980s, has become a cause célèbre of the anti-pornography camp since her suicide at the age of twenty. Having left her family home in Minnesota, she had traveled to Los Angeles in search of work and excitement, and quickly found herself immersed in nude modeling, progressing to hardcore pornography. Increasingly dependent on cocaine, she retired from the business within a year, but struggled to cope with her addiction and relationship with her coke-dealer boyfriend; she shot herself in March 1984.
Grant’s is a tragic and complex story, though perhaps less complex if you’re of the opinion that pornography ruins all the lives it touches— unfortunately, this is the simplistic stance that Shattered Innocence takes in its dramatization of Grant’s life. Names are changed—Shauna Grant becomes Lara Dawn—but the basic bones of the story are all there. In L.A., Shauna/Lara answers a small ad requesting models, arriving at the office of agency owner Lou. Swayed by the promise of $200 a day, she quickly agrees to semi-nude modeling, which predictably turns into fully nude shots. Upon her family discovering what she’s doing, she is defiant, going to stay with fellow model and actress Nora Jett (and what a porn star name that is).
The remainder of the film documents Lara’s descent into a seedy underworld populated by sleazy blokes in bad suits, wild parties, and indiscriminate drug use. Despite the clichés, it’s on the whole quite engaging: Jonna Lee, as Lara, is well cast as a loveable but immature small-town girl, and the rest of the cast are interesting enough to keep the viewer’s attention even through several rather too contrived scenes (a row of women gaze into a bathroom mirror, not adjusting their makeup but wiping white powder from their nostrils).
Looking further into the Shauna Grant story, though, the bias of Shattered Innocence comes to the fore (for this, I recommend viewing the PBS documentary, Death of a Porn Queen). Those elements of Grant’s life that might have ruined the film’s “porn will kill you” message have been omitted; there is no reference to Grant’s earlier (pre-film career) suicide attempt, for example. Contrasting Shattered Innocence and the PBS documentary, there is quite a role reversal: in the former, our sympathy is with the parents while Lara is presented as naïve and childish; in the latter, however, it is the parents who come across as blinkered and uncaring. There is no subtlety in Shattered Innocence—the final scene sees Lara’s mother crying “Who did this to you?” as Lara lies unconscious in a hospital bed—and this is what grates most about the film. In mythologizing Grant, Shattered Innocence succeeds in making her as much of a puppet as the adult film industry it tries to accuse. [Jennifer Wallis]
SOMETHING ABOUT AMELIA
Director: Randa Haines
Starring: Roxana Zal, Ted Danson, Glenn Close, Lane Smith
Airdate: January 9, 1984 Network: ABC
A thirteen-year-old girl claims that her father is abusing her. Mother and sister struggle to come to terms with the revelation.
It’s hard to think of a more difficult topic to handle in a film than incest, and this tale of a father abusing his teenage daughter could easily have gone badly wrong. Luckily, Something About Amelia is a carefully crafted and, on the whole, sensitively presented story, aided by some above-average casting.
Roxana Zal is quietly brilliant as Amelia, clearly struggling with the material at hand and injecting just the right amount of emotional authenticity into the role. The scene in her teacher’s office is a heart stopper, as she finally, reluctantly, volunteers that her father has been “messing around” with her. Ted Danson, as said father Steven, also deals well with the subject matter, conveying a subtle air of menace as his overprotectiveness is gradually revealed to be something altogether more sinister. Faced with the prospect of Amelia attending her first school dance with a date, he sulks that this interferes with their usual father/daughter bowling night, telling Amelia, “No one could like you better than I do, princess.” Cheers it is not.
Following Amelia’s disclosure, the film is meticulous in its attention to the details of the legal system, with police coldly explaining the procedures to follow, and social workers gently questioning Amelia about the events of the last few years. Glenn Close, as Amelia’s mother Gail, is engaging to watch, at first disbelieving before gradually accepting the truth of her daughter’s story. Neither she nor Steven are presented particularly sympathetically. She demands to know how Amelia could have “let it happen”; he seems to have no explanation for his actions, and in one presumably meaningful but under-articulated scene we see him slumped on a motel room floor watching an old Shirley Temple movie. It’s in this respect that the film falls down somewhat, with Steven’s motivations never fully explored. There is a rather bizarre underlying suggestion that his abuse of Amelia is a result of problems with his marriage. Early on in the film, Gail notes that they haven’t slept together in four weeks, while he shows a distinct lack of enthusiasm for the subject, and the two bicker about each other’s drinking and smoking habits.
This suggestion, that the abuse has occurred due to an unsatisfactory marriage, makes the film’s lack of resolution even more infuriating. In the final scenes, Steven, Gail and Amelia are reunited in a therapist’s office— an uncomfortable idea, but one that was famously employed by California’s Giarretto Institute in the 1970s. Although the end credits highlight that this is just one of many approaches to incest, the emphasis on the couple’s marriage above Amelia’s experience leaves the viewer with more than a few questions about the practicalities of the American legal system. [Jennifer Wallis]
STARFLIGHT: THE PLANE THAT COULDN’T LAND
Director: Jerry Jameson
Starring: Lee Majors, Hal Linden, Lauren Hutton, Ray Milland
Airdate: February 27, 1983 Network: ABC
Disaster strikes the Starflight, the first hypersonic passenger jet, on its inaugural flight through the stratosphere from Los Angeles to Sydney.
Released theatrically in several countries outside of the US (where it was retitled Starflight One, also the title given on its later American home video release), Starflight: The Plane that Couldn’t Land melds the popular disaster movie genre of the 1970s (in particular, the series of Airport films based on the novel of that name by Arthur Hailey) with the renewed interest in space exploration—triggered by the successful launch of the first space shuttle in April 1981—and its potential as a future mode of express intercontinental travel.
Taking a break from his role in the hit television series The Fall Guy, Lee Majors, the former Bionic Man, toplines Starflight as Captain Cody Briggs, pilot of Starflight One, and, as is typical of these films, a married man who is taking some personal problems onboard with him, chief among which is an affair he is having with the attractive media representative of the aviation company that has built the space-age jetliner. Appearing alongside Majors is the usual mix of familiar television faces, attractive young newcomers and aging Hollywood stars, including Hal Linden (as the designer of Starflight One), Lauren Hutton, a pre-Growing Pains Kirk Cameron, Tess Harper and a pretty frail-looking Ray Milland (in one of his last performances before his death in 1986). Even a deceased body—that of the Australian ambassador— gets to hitch a ride on Starflight One’s inaugural flight, much to the consternation of first officer Del, who recalls the bad luck which struck the last time he flew a plane with a corpse on board.
Director Jerry Jameson was no stranger to the disaster movie, having previously helmed Airport ’77 (1977), the TV movie A Fire in the Sky (1978) and Raise the Titanic (1980). Unlike its title vehicle, Starflight never reaches exceptional heights, but Jameson’s familiarity with the genre, along with his prolific background in episodic television, helps keep the film and its preposterous events reasonably entertaining. Budgets were kept to a minimum thanks to the use of stock footage of the space shuttle Columbia launching and landing, and shots of an old Apollo Saturn V rocket on the launch pad (doubling for the Australian rocket containing the communications satellite). The Australia angle to the film is kind of amusing (at least for me, being an Australian), and was probably thrown in to take advantage of the growing interest that Americans were showing toward things Australian at the time (thanks to the success of Olivia Newton John’s Physical and Men at Work’s Down Under).
Executive produced by the Fonz himself, Henry Winkler, and featuring a nice score by Lalo Schifrin and special model effects by Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica veteran John Dykstra, Starflight: The Plane that Couldn’t Land represents one of the dying gasps in that cycle of disaster cinema that had started a decade earlier with the likes of Airport (1970), The Poseidon Adventure (1972) and Earthquake (1974). The subsequent tragic destructions of the space shuttles Challenger (in 1986) and Columbia (in 2003) give the film a bit more resonance than it would have had when it first aired, especially since the Columbia is the shuttle featured in it. [John Harrison]
THE STEPFORD CHILDREN
Director: Alan J. Levi
Starring: Barbara Eden, Don Murray, Tammy Lauren and Randall Batinkoff
Airdate: March 15, 1987 Network: NBC
A loving father relocates his family to Stepford, the cherished town of his own upbringing, but with disastrous results.
A seemingly safe and idyllic community, Stepford appears to be the perfect environment in which to curb a son and daughter’s rebellious ways. But when ordinary disciplinary action fails to correct their bad attitude, the menfolk of the town have no choice but to employ more cruel and unusual methods to keep their juvenile delinquents under control.
Not half as much fun as its immediate predecessor, The Revenge of the Stepford Wives, and stripped of the underlying mystery and suspense that buoyed the original toward its revelation ending, this offers no new take and no new twists on the now familiar plot.
Barbara Eden stars as the mother of the family. As a veteran of the small screen, she is far too professional to break the fourth wall, but that being said, she looks throughout like an actress somewhat frustrated at how far beneath her this material really is. And she’s right to look that way. None of her co-stars fare much better either, but Tammy Lauren (who would later flirt with leading lady success in the Wes Craven produced horror movie Wishmaster) does prove slightly memorable as the tearaway teen with the biggest eighties hair imaginable!
Directed with pace, but without flair, and readily acknowledging the fact that the audience (thanks to the previous entries) is in on what is happening, the mood of this one is far too complacent with its tired narrative to adequately pass itself off as a thriller in the truest sense. Although one might argue that the central idea of “fixing” disobedient kids as opposed to housewives is at least inspired enough to justify its running time and, therefore, its addition to the franchise.
Fans of the series will no doubt abhor or welcome the detail that there is a little more exposure given to the process the victims undergo in order to be changed into their subservient counterparts; the fact that they are kids naturally means that they do not meet quite the same ill-fated end as the adults in the previous films. It’s a tonal compromise that would make perfect sense if it were not for the fact that its execution is very confusing. It’s quite unclear (and strangely more distressing) not knowing whether the human originals are simply abducted and imprisoned—as is at first shown—or are in fact, stolen and scientifically cloned, which is also offered as a possibility.
Otherwise, predictable and without purpose, this excursion to Stepford is one jaunt too many, and although it does try to ratchet up the excitement in the final act, it remains a no-thrills ride that leaves one impatiently waiting for the credits to roll while asking in a whiney manner—well suited to the brats in the film—“Are we there, yet? Are we there, yet?” [Kevin Hilton]
THIS HOUSE POSSESSED
Director: William Wiard
Starring: Parker Stevenson, Lisa Eilbacher, Shelley Smith, Joan Bennett
Airdate: February 6, 1981 Network: ABC
A convalescing pop star and his nurse discover their dream home is less than perfect when it starts disposing of visitors.
There are actually two love triangles in Possessed. The most prominent one is the one where the house violently fights against Gary’s charms for Shelia’s affection. The second love triangle is more traditional and features Shelia in a battle for Gary with a supermodel named Tanya (Smith in a spirited performance), a woman who wears tacky stoles, pops pills and uses words like “schlep.” She, like the infatuated house, is a big brick wall to break through. Neither will take no for answer, and her persistence is so strong (bordering on annoying) that even the house spits her out for the bad taste she leaves behind.
Tantalizing TV Guide ad for the enigmatic ghost story This House Possessed.
Originally titled American Gothic, This House Possessed remains perched on the ledge of preposterous, but also has a lot going for it, and is surprisingly brutal. Victims are crushed in cars, boiled in pools and showered in blood. The whole set-up remains a mystery—why the house chooses Gary (Stevenson) as a potential love interest for Sheila (Eilbacher) is never answered. And, because the house seems to be the extremely jealous type, the fact that it would even entertain this bizarre love triangle is all the more perplexing.
Possessed takes place in an ultramodern dwelling that comes complete with monitors that follow the protagonists while also allowing for long shots or close ups (ah, the eighties!). The actual house resides near San Diego in a place called Rancho Santa Fe, and was designed by noted architect Fred Briggs. The California Country design gives this telefilm an air of class, and more importantly, atmosphere.
Adding to the ambience is the moody soundtrack composed by the prolific and iconic Billy Goldenberg, who also scored TVMs like Fear No Evil and The Legend of Lizzie Borden. However, the atmospheric soundtrack tends to play second fiddle against the crazy cool lyrics of Gary’s superb pop tunes, which are penned by Carol Connors (Rocky). Choruses that cheer “Sensitive, you’re not / It’s a joke / Your sensitivity” are charmingly delivered by Stevenson, who had not considered singing until he was offered the part in Possessed. (Note: he’s not so bad at it.) He belts out the tunes with a lot of heart, and fulfills all of the adornments needed for a leading romantic interest, which makes him a fine foe in this tale of man vs. house.
Producer/writer Levinson teamed up with accomplished TV director William Wiard for three interesting made for TV movies. They worked together on this haunted house tale, a small screen slasher titled Fantasies (1982), and the thriller Kicks (1985). The duo showcased an attractive knack for stylish settings and confounding tales of dread, and while their films might leave a few questions behind, they are undeniably entertaining, slick and fun. Possessed relies heavily on a suspension of disbelief, but if the viewer is willing to shut their brain off for a while, it is a tremendously enjoyable place to spend an hour and a half. [Amanda Reyes]
Director: Thomas Carter
Starring: Andy Griffith, Season Hubley, Paul Provenza, Keanu Reeves
Airdate: September 28, 1986 Network: CBS
A family tries to cope with an alcoholic father.
Alongside AIDS, cancer, cocaine addiction, spousal abuse, kidnapped children and toddlers trapped down disused mine shafts and wells, alcoholism is a much maligned human condition poked at and utilized as a hot topic by lazy TV screenwriters commissioned to fill ninety sensational minutes of airtime.
Here, we have a serious and sappy cocktail of booze, beatings and standup comedy courtesy of gin-soaked Andy Griffith (The Strangers in 7A) as a pissed up father who destroys himself and his family while viewing them through the blurry end of an empty bottle.
Andy Griffith hits the bottle in Under the Influence.
Andy shouts, drinks in church, drives drunk and gets arrested, much to the ire of pill-popping, co-dependent wife Joyce Van Patten (The Haunted) and disappointed children, young dipso Keanu Reeves ( Dracula), suicidal Season Hubley ( Kiss the Sky), artist Dana Anderson (The Karate Kid) and comedian Paul Provenza (The Shot)—who all reluctantly tolerate and help the sozzled bollox hide his embarrassing secret from the outside world.
Instead of working when he’s supposed to, Andy warms a bar stool and fails to notice the damage his scotch-infused hobby is causing to his loved ones and himself, until it all ends horribly with an exploded liver, sirens, a slapped face and a bullet riddled grave.
Told in “comedic” flashbacks by number one son Provenza (who uses his father’s vodka-fuelled exploits in his nightclub act), it’s a CBS production that is hard to recommend to anyone other than curious winos or hardcore Keanu lovers. [DF Dresden]
VICTIMS FOR VICTIMS: THE THERESA SALDANA STORY
Director: Karen Arthur
Starring: Theresa Saldana, Adrian Zmed, Lelia Goldoni, Lawrence Pressman
Airdate: November 12, 1984 Network: NBC
A dramatization of real-life events, actress Theresa Saldana recreates the attempt on her life and subsequent recovery.
In March 1982, actress Theresa Saldana was attacked and stabbed multiple times by drifter Arthur Jackson, who had come to Hollywood from Scotland for the sole purpose of killing Saldana after seeing her in a film. Having recently starred in Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull (1980), Saldana and her agent were caught off-guard by Jackson, who obtained the actress’ home address by posing as one of Scorsese’s assistants.
Victims for Victims is a faithful account of the attack and its immediate aftermath, made all the more effective by Saldana playing herself. The stabbing occurs within the first fifteen minutes, and the unexpected nature of the incident—taking place in the middle of a residential street in broad daylight—conveys well the inexplicability of Jackson’s behavior. As neighbors gather and ambulances and police cars arrive, we learn that Jackson expressed disappointment upon hearing he had not killed Saldana— apparently obeying the voices of angels, he had planned to kill her and receive the death penalty, imagining the two of them united in Heaven. The scene is graphic, depicting Jackson coldly and determinedly plunging the knife into Saldana’s chest; the following scenes continue in much the same way, as Saldana’s husband and neighbors struggle to stop the bleeding, paramedics arrive, and she is treated in the hospital.
Throughout all of this, viewers have to constantly remind themselves that Saldana is playing herself; flashbacks are alluded to throughout the film, so that the boundaries between fact and fiction, actress and non-actress, are consistently blurred. There is no doubt that the screams of anguish and sobs of pain uttered by Saldana are horrendously heartfelt—her reactions to surgical interventions, for example (“It’s gonna hurt but it’ll help you breathe.”). The bulk of the film charts her struggle to recuperate, and the strain put on her relationship with her husband, part of which is attributed to the spiraling financial costs of her treatment.
The practicalities of Saldana’s care rather abruptly become the focus toward the end of the film, with none-too-subtle railing against a system that is unable to pay the medical bills of victims of crime, but can house and feed their assailants in jail indefinitely. It is at this point that Saldana teams up with two female friends to form the Victims for Victims support group, drawing attention to the problem of both stalking and victim support as Jackson’s trial draws to a close. (Jackson was found guilty and sentenced to twelve years, later extended when he began to send Saldana death threats. He ended his days in a British institution for the criminally insane.)
Victims for Victims makes for compelling if uncomfortable viewing; as part of Saldana’s own coming-to-terms with her ordeal, it is less a film than a therapeutic venture. It’s difficult not to feel a certain degree of voyeurism while watching it, but equally difficult to look away from Saldana’s riveting performance. [Jennifer Wallis]
1Paula Krebs, “Burning Bed Prompts Floods of Calls” in Off Our Backs, Vol. 14, No. 10 (Nov 1984), p.8.
2Jon Anderson, TV Critic, Chicago Tribune, May 27, 1985.