Based on pre-feminist science fiction writer Zenna Henderson’s story Pottage, as well as some of her other pieces like Ararat, Gilead and Captivity, this movie stars two of the top stars of made for TV movies: William Shatner (The Horror at 37,000 Feet, Go Ask Alice) and Kim Darby (Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark). This movie also draws on the love Trekkies had for Shatner and Darby together after “Miri,” an episode of the original series.
He’s there to be a doctor and she a teacher for a commune of Amish-like people who — surprise, it’s 1972 and Erich Von Daniken is everywhere — are space aliens whose origins sound suspiciously like Battlestar Galactica years before that became a movie and TV show.
Diane Varsi from Wild In the Streets, Laurie Walters from Warlock Moon and Dan O’Herlihy — Conal Cochran, Andrew Packard, The Old Man and Grig! — are all in this.
This was the directoral debut of John Korty, who also would make Go Ask Alice, and was produced by Francis Ford Coppola.
There’s a rumor that this was a pilot for a series that never got picked up. What’s an even bigger shame is that there’s never been an official release of this film. I sound like a broken record, hoping that old made for TV movies that I only I care about will someday come out on blu ray.
Gus Trikonis — yes, the same man that brought you Nashville Girl, The Evil, Supercock and Take This Job and Shove It — directed this made for TV movie, which originally aired on NBC on December 10, 1979.
Also known as Someone’s Killing the World’s GreatestModels, it’s pretty much a giallo made for late seventies TV audiences.
Jessica Walter — star of this era’s made for TV fare and the future Lucille Bluth — stars along with Joana Cassidy, “Woman of a Thousand Faces” Eleanor Parker, Corinne Calvet (a one-time starlet who was sued by an ex-husband of using voodoo to control him), Ripley’s Believe It or Not! co-host Catherine Shirriff, Barbara Cason (Exorcist II: The Heretic), Clive Revill, Jim McMullan and Connie Sellecca. They’re all trapped at a fashionable party in the mountains as one by one they’re killed with no way to escape.
1979 was a magical year. Drink it in and watch this on YouTube:
Originally airing on October 2, 1971 on ABC, this movie is a hidden pilot for the series The Sixth Sense. The role of Dr. Lucas Darrow would be replaced by the younger, handsomer Gary Collins and then, in syndication, that series would be spliced into Night Gallery, infuriating a young Sam who only wanted to see Rod Serling stories.
Here, Darrow is played by Alex Dreier, who is in The Boston Strangler and was well-known for his voice. He’s backed up by a blind man whose ESP voice connected him to the other world, as he’s left his surgical life behind to investigate the unknown.
Rachel Stanton (Stefanie Powers) comes home just in time to watch her husband crash through a window like Oliver Reed in Burnt Offerings. He soon recieves a phone call that has a woman’s voice that matches the ESP cards on the table in front of him. What an awesome open!
On a slight TV budget and with the morals of the time, this is as close as a made for TV movie is going to feel to a giallo. That’s a good thing. This has so many red herrings and people who could have killed Stanton’s husband. It could be Rachel. It could be cousin Nora (Brenda Scott, Simon King of the Witches), who claims that he loved her and wanted out of the marriage. Is it psychic Aunt Lillian (Louise Latham, Marnie). Or is it Uncle Arthur (Pay Hingle, who would one day be Commissioner Gordon)?
71 minutes worth of seventies occult psychobabble. You should be so lucky to watch this. Actually, you can do that on YouTube:
Here’s how you can tell there’s a big age difference between my wife and me. I know Patrick Duffy as the Man from Atlantis and Bobby Ewing. She knows him as the dad from Step by Step.
Here. he plays John Dillman, the real-life investigator who continually pursued a doctor (Michael O’Keefe) and a minister (Charles Durning, great in this) who have been killing massage girls.
Lisa Blount from Prince of Darkness is in this, as is Jacqueline Brooks (The Good Son), actor/politician Fred Dalton Thompson, Michael C. Gwynne (who played the Duke of Rock in Private Parts) and Richard Cox (Cruising).
This is directed by Jerrold Freedman. who made the Bronson film Borderline and Kansas City Bomber with Racquel Welch. That’s what we in the busines refer to as quality.
You can watch this early true crime entry on YouTube:
Sam and I got to talking about the web traffic at B&S About Movies and we’re astounded by the hits—over 6,300—and not a day passes without at least one hit—for J. David Miles’s disturbing, 2013 true crime documentary Goodnight, Sugar Babe: The Killing of Vera Joe Reigle (Caveat: It’s Rob Zombie’s House of 1000 Corpses . . . in real life.)
Now we tell you this, not to brag, but to bring attention to J. David Miles’s feature film debut as a screenwriter: Dead Silence. No, not the 1997 made-for-HBO thriller starring James Garner (TV’s The Rockford Files) and Marlee Matlin. No, not the 2007 James Wan’s supernatural puppet romp, either. The Dead Silence we’re reviewing comes from the days of the Estevez-Sheen acting dynasty, when not only Emilo and Charlie perpetually appeared on our TV and theatre screens, but their sister, Renée, got the big push to stardom (she’s since retired from the business after a seven-year run on NBC-TV’s The West Wing).
It was that acting-dynasty connection that quickly moved Renée through the ranks from her supporting roles on TV’s Growing Pains (1987), Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers, Heathers, and Moon 44 (she’s one of the mining executives alongside Roscoe Lee Brown; you’ll notice her) to booking her first leading-lady role as “Zanna Young” in Dead Silence.
In a plot that recalls 1997’s later-more popular I Know What You Did Last Summer (itself derived from the superior 1965 William Castle chiller I Saw What You Did), Zanna, Joan, and Sunnie (Renée Estevez, Lisanne Falk, Carrie Mitchum) are college seniors on the cusp of graduation. And their holiday turns to horror when they hit-and-run a lonely hitchhiker in the desert during a spring break vaycay in Palm Springs—and they decide to keep the accident a secret.
The three little hotties went to the desert. Renee Estevez, Lisanne Falk, and Carrie Mitchum; courtesy of Historical Images.com.
Miles’s script has a nice meta-noir prologue and epilog touch (before meta-film became cinema-vogue; see our reviews for Greenlight and For Jennifer) with Sunnie as a broadcasting major who’s scored a Palm Springs TV newscaster gig* and is finishing her thesis project: a documentary about the trio’s friendship-college years in their rental home dubbed “The Pink House.”
The ubiquitous night of drinking at their hotel leads to a cute guy inviting them to a desert party—and they accept, as all devil-may-care, bad boy-seeking rich college girls do. As Sunnie loses sight of the cute boy’s car and they’re lost on a desert road, she strikes a roadside hitchhiker.
Initially, they move the “homeless man” to the roadside and agree they’ll call the police. But as Zanna points out: Sunnie already has one DUI on her license and, with alcohol on her breath, she’ll be charged with murder—and goodbye newscaster job. Zanna, the law school-bound ringleader of the deception, starts her career off right: she runs their crime through a car wash. Then, when Zanna and Joan take the car to have the windshield replaced, Zanna cleverly pays cash—then five-fingers the garage’s paperwork. Oh, and Joan’s credit card is missing: she returns to the scene of the crime to find it—and a deputy-on-patrol shows up. Later, the deputy finds the card in the desert sands, while a further investigation uncovers a university logo water bottle.
And who’s sent to cover a breaking news story about the body of a man found in the desert: the-first-day-on-her-job Sunnie. Then Joan cracks under pressure and drowns herself in the hotel’s pool. And the ever cold-and-calculating Zanna decides that’s the “out” for her and Sunnie. Ah, but in the finest film-noir fashion: Zanna, whose nefarious legalese created this mess in the first place, makes a deal in exchange for immunity—and hangs Sunnie out-to-dry in the arid desert sands.
While we’re on the subject of acting-dynasties: Renée’s co-star, Carrie Mitchum, is the granddaughter of Robert Mitchum (Night of the Hunter, Thunder Road) and, oh, and she was married to the ever-reliable direct-to-video star Casper Van Dien (she’s since retired from the industry after a fourteen year run on daytime TV’s The Bold and the Beautiful). Uncle James starred in The Dukes of Hazzard precursor Moonrunners, while her dad, Chris, starred in Aftershock, The Serpent Warriors, and SFX Retaliator.
Ah, you got bamboozled, too: I also assumed that fellow leading lady Lisanne Falk would be related to Peter “Columbo” Falk: nope. But for you classic rock dogs: she was the girl on the cover of Foreigner’s 1979 album Head Games** erasing her phone number from the bathroom wall. And for you movie hounds: she was in Heathers, Less Than Zero, and Night on Earth. (Yep: like Estevez and Mitchum, Falk retired from the business, in the late ‘90s).
And since we’re rattling off actors names in the “Everyone Has to Start Somewhere Department”: Bryan Cranston appears as Professor Harris and Beau Starr as Detective Barron. Do we have to mention Breaking Bad and Halloween 4 and 5 and Goodfellas? Well, we’ll mention that another of Beau’s early roles was the TV-cable radio-noir Dead Air, since that’s an obscurity. (And, since we’re talking about films with the same title: not the 2009 Dead Air, but the 1994 Dead Air.) Oh, and for the Trekkies: Tim “Lt. Tuvok” Russ from Star Trek: Voyager is the deputy on the case.
Directing J. David Miles’s smart writing debut is writer/director/show runner Peter O’Fallon—making his feature film directing debut. Known for his extensive network and cable TV resume, O’Fallon followed the direct-to-video/cable-released Dead Silence with the theatrically released—then de rigueur mafia flick—Suicide Kings (1997) starring Christopher Walken and Dennis Leary (back when the SNL’er made his “feature film” move). Ironically, O’Fallon also worked with a post-Goodfellas Ray Liotta in the drama A Rumor of Angels (2000).
Dead Silence is one of those oldies that hasn’t run on TV in ages, the VHS tapes have expired to the blue screen of death, and it’s never been released on DVD—and never will be. So our only choice to watch are these two pretty clean VHS rips from its Lifetime Movie Network run on You Tube HERE and HERE. This lone feature film effort from J. David Miles is an under-the-radar TV movie gem where a great script, directing, and acting hum along in perfect harmony. It’s a highly recommended watch in these now silent, viral lockdown days.
About the Author: You can read the music and film reviews of R.D Francis on Medium and learn more about his work on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.
* If the lead character had been a radio broadcaster instead of a TV newscaster, we would have included Dead Silence in last month’s “Radio Week” of reviews. You can catch up on those reviews with our “Exploring: Radio Stations on Film” featurette.
Arthur Allan Seidelman made his directing debut creating the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie Hercules in New York. Somehow, they allowed him to keep making movies, including this TV movie all about a family dealing with schizophrenia.
Nancy McKeon is Nicole, a college student who suddenly goes off the rails due to the disease. Her family — Valerie Harper, Stephen Macht and Tricia Leigh Fisher — don’t understand.
Marta Kristen — June Robinson! — and Millie Perkins, who was in The Diary of Anne Frank, are also on hand.
If you ever wanted to see Jo from Faces of Life yell things like, “I am turning to stone. Every time I start to feel something, you give me another pill and I turn into stone!” then I advise you watch this.
If you’re looking for someone to direct a made for TV movie, always go with John Llewellyn Moxey. He was behind great films like Where Have All the People Gone, Home for the Holidays, The Night Stalker and A Taste of Evil amongst others.
Here, he’s making a Mary Higgins Clark film all about attorney Kathy DeMaio (Lauren Hutton, Once Bitten), a widow who keeps passing out at the worst moments. As a child, she watched her father die in a hospital and now she’s phobic about even being there. It gets worse when she has to stay in a hospital, has a nightmare and wakes to spy a doctor (James Farentino, Dead and Buried) stuffing a body into the trunk of his car.
Look for a young William H. Macy — billed as WH Macy.
The weirdest thing is that Ben Murphy, who plays Hutton’s love interest, did a three-episode cameo on the soap opera Guiding Light — thanks Made for TV Mayhem — and characters from that show crossed over into this TV movie!
This was remade in 2004 with Angie Everhart in the lead role.
Tinieblas — wearing an awesome brown suit — buys an ancient painting of a dead woman, despite the warning that it is haunted, because he thinks it’ll help him with the ladies.
After a trios match with his partners El Fantasma Blanco (The White Ghost) and Mil Mascaras, they head off to a party with two ladies. Soon, that painting has taken them back in time and they’re battling a witch played by Lorena Velazquez, who was Thorina queen of the vampires in Santo Contra las Mujeres Vampiros. Her mother is the woman in the haunted painting and she’s a living dead woman who demands human sacrifices in her unholy name. She also has an army of conquistadors (no, not Jose Estrada and Jose Luis Rivera) and Aztec warriors who end up coming to our time to wrestle a trios match against our heroes. And oh yeah — she claims to be La Llorona!
I learned from this movie that while Mil has many, many masks, he is no master of history. As they go back in time, he says that they are sometime between 1512 and 1520. The Spanish have already conquered Mexico in this timeline, but that didn’t happen in our reality for many years aftward. Oh that Mil.
Your life is not complete until you watch Mexican wrestlers in all their finery battle rubber suited demonic soldiers.
This insanity comes from Arturo Martinez, who also had another film of Spanish zombies called The Mummies of San Angel. This one has a much better title, which translates as Macabre Legends of the Colony.
Jouko Ahola, who was the World’s Strongest Man for 1997 and 1999, is Jacob van Oppen, a pro wrestler who is filled with unending rage that can only be sated by the song “Lili Mateen.” He’s managed by Prince Orsini, who has been taking him on a tour of small South American towns, doing shoot matches against local toughmen. Now, their journey has taken them to Santa Maria.
This town is starved for entertainment and strangely ready for this match, working with the duo to find a suitable opponent. The town’s newspaper thinks they know the secret to defeating this unbeatable pair, however.
This is an odd film, as it’s hard to place where the story takes place and even what year it’s happening in. I love the days of carnival wrestling, when worked and non-worked matches made money for fighters.
Whatever fighter can last three rounds with Oppen will win a thousand dollars. Yet he’s flat broke, seems sick and can’t stop coughing. How will he be able to defeat a local hero at this rate?
Santo has battled everyone from his fellow wrestlers to zombies, vampires, vampire women, the King of Crime, evil wax figures, a Hotel of Death, the Strangler, the Ghost of the Strangler and Satanic Power at this point. So yes, it was time to put Martians into the camel clutch.
Santo battles Wolf Ruvinskis, who also played Neutron, and who was also a luchador. He also goes up against Maura Monti, who played The Batwoman. Yes, Martian women have come here and they’re ready to take all our masked wrestlers.
The Martians have Astral Eyes on the top of their heads, which allow them to disintegrate human beings. Luckily, they can’t last long in our atmosphere. And even their most comely interstellar lasses can’t seduce El Enmascarado de Plata.
There’s also a bad guy named Hercules who unmasks Santo, played by Spanish wrestler Benny Galant, who for some reason acted as a Frenchman while in Mexico. Santo pulls a Mil Mascaras years before that was a thing and has another mask underneath, screwing over that red planet rudo. Hurricane Ramirez — a wrestler who started as a movie character before becoming the real thing played by Eduardo Bonada — is in this, if you’re interested in 1960’s luchadors.
I mean, Mexican wrestlers fight aliens. Life can be perfect, if you allow it to be.
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