ABC Afterschool Special: Blind Sunday (1976)
You’re a young acting hopeful, in the business since 1965, who has worked alongside Tommy Kirk and a young Ron Howard in Burt I. Gordon’s Village of the Giants, and alongside Bob Hope in Eight on the Lam. Then you hit pay dirt, the dream of every actor: a steady acting gig. You just booked […]
Airline Disasters TV Movie Round-Up
Here’s our round up of all the network TV, cable, and theatrical airline disaster movies of the ’70s — and beyond — that we’ve reviewed during this end of the year “TV Movie Week.” The Doomsday Flight (1966)Terror in the Sky (1971)The Horror at 37,000 Feet (1973)The Disappearance of Flight 412 (1974)Murder of Flight 502 […]
Skyjacked (1972)
Back in the pre-Internet and pre-cable analog days of the “Big Three” networks, it seemed as if it was a weekly occurrence, as we watch the nightly news on ABC, CBS, and NBC, that yet another airline skyjacking, aka hijacking, occurred. It was ’70s de rigueur for criminals to make buck or advance their political-personal […]
Climate of the Hunter (2019)
Mickey Reece — who co-wrote this film with John Selvidge, has made two movies a year since 2008 and I haven’t seen a single one of them. After watching Climate of the Hunter, that will definitely change. It’s all about two older sisters awaiting the return of a childhood friend named Wes, one they both have […]
Fire and Rain: The True Story of Flight 191 (1989)
When the “Big Three” over-the-air networks began expressing a disinterest in the TV movie business, the USA Network — in the early days before they were swallowed by the NBC-Universal behemoth and turned into an NBC series aftermarket shill — took the torch with aplomb. Just look at that overseas theatrical one-sheet, if you don’t […]
Cast A Deadly Spell (1991)
A HBO TV movie that combines film noir, late 40’s Hollywood, H.P. Lovecraft’s Ancient Ones, magic and monsters, as well as turns by Fred Ward and Julianne Moore? Why isn’t this movie not discussed all the time? Let’s change that. Unlike the rest of 1948 Los Angeles, private detective H. Philip Lovecraft (Ward) doesn’t use […]
Murder on Flight 502 (1975)
ABC-TV wasn’t letting those Airport (“Exploring: Airport, Watch the Series“) theatrical blockbusters slip by them without a TV movie knockoff, this one by the ’70s production dynamic duo of Leonard Goldberg and Aaron Spelling. Critics pounced on the film’s special effects, sets, and stock footage ineptitude on a low budget, but it cleaned up on […]
The Tragedy of Flight 103: The Inside Story (1990)
This time out, instead of a Big Three TV network or upper-tier cable network, HBO rebroadcast this ITV production that premiered in the United Kingdom on November 26, 1990 — then in the United States on December 9, 1990. As with most of these TV movies, this was cross-marketed as a theatrical and TV film […]
Mercy Mission: The Rescue of Flight 771 (1993)
NBC-TV is back with another airline disaster flick, this one directed by TV movie warhorse Roger Young. I’ll always remember Young for his debut tearjerker, Something for Joey, a highly-rated TV movie sports drama starring Marc Singer, that aired on CBS-TV in 1977. In the theatrical realms, Young directed the 1987 Micheal Keaton box-office bomb […]
No Other Love (1979)
Before The Other Sister, there was this movie, which has Richard Thomas (John-Boy from The Waltons* to some, Shad in Battle Beyond the Stars to me) and Julie Kavner (Marge Simpson!) as mentally challenged adults who want to get married, despite the protests of her parents, who are played by Elizabeth Allen (who often played in game shows […]
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