Monthly Archives: December 2020

ABC Afterschool Special: Blind Sunday (1976)

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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 a starring role as Jan Brady on TV’s The Brady Bunch . . . then Sherwood Schwartz — who made a bundle in TV syndication with all of his ’60s and ’70s series, but “legally” wasn’t obligated to share the bounty because there were no residuals clauses back in the day — decides he wants a cast of “all blonde girls.”

But as you mature into a young adult, you end up in — of all things — The Brotherhood of Satan, a movie we love so much in the B&S About Movies offices, we reviewed it three times. Then you’re cast as the female lead in one of the ’70s most iconic and influential horror films of all time: William Freidkin’s The Exorcist*. And one of the actresses that also auditioned and was seriously considered as Regan MacNeil was Anissa Jones — and you worked alongside Buffy on a couple of episodes of TV’s Family Affair. And your parents — as did Denise Nickerson’s, who portrayed Violet Beauregarde in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, and was in the running — made you drop out of the project because of the troubling, controversial subject matter.

Eventually Sherwood Schwartz tosses you a bone to work on the show he fired you from — over hair issues, mind you (there was no Clairol or wigs, Woody?) — with a guest-starring role as the homely-to-hot Molly Webber in “My Fair Opponent,” a 1972 episode of The Brady Bunch. And, at the mercy of channel surfing the retro-channels Cozi or Antenna TV, you can still be seen in the still-in-reruns Adam 12, Green Acres, and Emergency! — sans residuals, natch.

Actress Debi Storm as Molly in The Brady Bunch.

Meanwhile, Leigh McCloskey (later of Hamburger: The Motion Picture) is climbing his way up the network TV ladder with roles on The Streets of San Francisco (that’s sadly absent from reruns) and the miniseries ratings juggernaut that was Rich Man, Poor Man (1976; that starred Peter Strauss of The Jericho Mile), while on his way to star with the very actress that got Debi Storm’s job in The Brady Bunch — Eve Plumb — in another ’70s ratings juggernaut: Dawn: Portrait of a Teenage Runaway. Then, Leigh gets a leading man gig in the post-Exorcist marketplace with Dario Argento’s Inferno. (Do we need to mention that Karl Malden (Meteor) from Streets also worked for Dario in his early Giallo, Cat o’ Nine Tales?)

And the six degrees of Debi Storm stops here, since she did not work with Maestro Argento or Karl Malden, but it does bring us to this lost TV movie for the young adult crowd** starring Leigh McCloskey and Debi Storm. The poster says it all: In an effort to understand his blind girlfriend, a teenage boy decides to spend an entire Sunday blindfolded. It’s simple. It’s heartfelt. And a great lesson is learned. And teen love in the ’70s was a beautiful thing, indeed. And is that my teenage crush Cindy Eilbacher from The Death of Richie and Bad Ronald alongside a pre-L.A. Law Corbin Bernsen (The Dentist, Major League) as a lifeguard?

Director Larry Elikann, who did 18 ABC Afterschool Specials and 5 CBS Playhouses (that became Schoolbreak), also gave us a slew of network TV movies, including the The Big One: The Great Los Angeles Earthquake (1990). So if you’re in the market for a disaster flick starring ’80s TV mom Maggie Seaver and TV dad Jack Arnold, then that’s your movie.

I remember Blind Sunday — as with most of these young adult network TV movies (via reruns into the mid-80s) — as if it was yesterday (thanks to my McCloskey fandom*˟). But wouldn’t you know it: with all of the various network teen flicks uploaded, there’s not a copy of Blind Sunday to share. But we did find this nifty You Tube playlist of other ABC Afterschool Specials to enjoy. Ah, but get this! We also found a clip from 2014 of Debi singing at a Brady Bunch convention . . . and she’s BLONDE!

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies and publish music reviews and short stories on Medium.

* Speaking of The Exorcist: We explore its everlasting influence with our “Exploring: Ten Possession Movies (and more) that Aren’t The Exorcist” featurette.

** Be sure to visit our reviews of these ’70s “Big Three” network daytime TV movies for young adults:

ABC Afterschool Special: The Amazing Cosmic Awareness of Duffy Moon
ABC Afterschool Special: Hewitt’s Just Different
CBS Schoolbreak Special: Portrait of a Teenage Shoplifter
NBC Special Treat: New York City to Far From Tampa Bay Blues

Then, when we got a little bit older, we watched “after dark” troubled-teen TV movies:

Angel Dusted
The Death of Richie
The Killing of Randy Webster
Police Story: A Chance to Live

*˟ No, I really am. Come on, you have to remember Leigh’s work in The Bermuda Depths, Fraternity Vacation, Just One of the Guys, Dirty Laundry, Cameron’s Closet, Double Revenge, and Lucky Stiffs.

The ’90s Alt-Rock We Miss MTV’s 120 Minutes Sidebar: If Eve Plumb didn’t get the job on the Brady Bunch . . . would this ’90s alt-rock band have called themselves Debi’s Storm? No, they didn’t do “Don’t Crash the Car Tonight” — that was another “female food” band, Mary’s Danish. No, they didn’t do “Love Crushing” — that was Fetchin’ Bones.

Airline Disasters TV Movie Round-Up

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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 (1975)
Mayday at 40,000 (1976)
SST Death Flight (1977)
The Crash of Flight 401 (1978)
The Ghost of Flight 401 (1978)
Concorde Affaire ’79 (1979)
Flight 90: Disaster on the Potomac (1984)
Fire and Rain: The True Story of Flight 191 (1989)
Crash: The Mystery of Flight 1501 (1990)
The Tragedy of Flight 103 (1990)
Crash Landing: The Rescue of Flight 232 (1992)
Mercy Mission: The Rescue of Flight 771 (1993)
Skyjacked (1972)

Watch the Series: Airport
Airport (1970)
Airport 1975 (1974)
Airport ’77 (1977)
The Concorde . . . Airport ’79 (1979)

And the retro-flicks!
Exorcism at 60,000 Feet (2020)
Airline Sky Battle (2020)

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.

Skyjacked (1972)

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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 causes. As a June 2013 Wired investigative article written by Brendan I. Koerner tells us, between 1961 and 1973, nearly 160 of hijacks occurred in American airspace.

As this week’s reviews of “airline disaster” TV movies has shown, the “Big Three” TV networks, along with cable channels like USA and HBO — as well as the film studios — knew plot fodder when they saw it. And when Universal discovered box office gold with Airport — and ignited the ’70s disaster movie genre — with their 1970 adaption of Arthur Hailey’s 1968 novel of the same name, you’d knew there be more of the same.

While Paramount Studios’ television division was first out of the gate with their 1971 CBS-TV broadcast movie Terror in the Sky (which is a cousin to Airport by way of Arthur Hailey’s airline-plotted tales), Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios wasted no time getting into business with producer Walter Seltzer; Seltzer optioned David Harper’s late-’60s best-seller Hijacked and began working the material under the titles Hijacked and Airborne.

At the time, Seltzer made four movies with Charlton Heston: The War Lord (1965), Will Penny (1967), Number One (1969), and The Omega Man (1971), so Seltzer had his leading man. (The duo would also make Soylent Green and The Last Hard Men in 1973 and 1976, respectively.) For Heston’s leading lady-lead stewardess, Seltzer brought on three-time lifetime Golden Globe-nominee (also of The Neptune Factor and Jackson County Jail) Yvette Mimieux, who co-starred with Heston in Diamond Head (1962).

During a routine Global Airways Minneapolis-bound flight, a passenger (Susan Dey of The Partridge Family) discovers a lipsticked-scrawl bomb threat on a first-class bathroom mirror urging the flight divert to Anchorage, Alaska. A jazz cellist (ex-NFL’er Rosey Grier) believes his jittery military seatmate (James Brolin of The Amityville Horror) is responsible. The rest of the cast of passengers features Walter Pidgeon as a U.S. Senator and Mariette Hartley as a pregnant woman in crisis-induced labor (Earth II), along with Ken Swofford (Black Roses) and Claude Akins (General Aldo from Battle for the Planet of the Apes). And a suspenseful, Murphy’s Law-thriller mix of failed hijacker subduing, radio and radar snafus, fuel loss, near air collisions, and violation of Soviet airspace — as we say around the Allegheny wilds of B&S’ offices — ensues.

Say what you will about these old, ’70s airline disaster flicks, but Skyjacked cleaned up at the box office, becoming one of MGM’s biggest hits of 1972 alongside Shaft and Kansas City Bomber. And Heston knew a hit genre when he saw one: he jumped back in the cockpit for Airport 1975. And he stuck with the disaster-thriller genre with Earthquake (1974) and Two-Minute Warning (1976) — and they also cleaned up at the box office. Oh, and Chuck hit the cockpit for a one-more-third time with ABC-TV’s Crash Landing: The Rescue of Flight 232 (1992).

You can watch the trailer for Skyjacked and watch the film on You Tube HERE and HERE.

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.

Climate of the Hunter (2019)

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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 romantic feelings for. He’s definitely a writer, but he may also be a vampire.

Alma (Ginger Gilmartin) and Elizabeth (Mary Buss) can barely be in the same room with one another, but now they’re staying at their family’s cabin together, right next to the aforementioned — and very mysterious — Wesley (Ben Hall). His strange behavior has led one of the locals — the wonderfully named BJ Beavers (Jacob Snovel) — to determine that this man of letters is really a count of blood, so to speak. And as for Alma, well, she can barely stay attuned to this reality, much less be able to deal with a bloodsucker.

Of course, even vampires have families today, which include a son (Sheridan McMichael) who spikes dinner with garlic and a wife (Laurie Cummings) who must rely upon facelifts to appear as youthful as her vampiric paramour when she isn’t in an institution.

Further complicating matters is the short visit from Alma’s daughter Rose (Danielle Evon Ploeger), whose youth and beauty take Wesley’s attention away from our protagonists.

This is a film that sparkles with modern dialogue while calling to mind the cinema of the 70’s,  particularly ones that set up dark spaces where female characters slowly lose their minds. Most strikingly, one scene borrows liberally from Daughters of Darkness.

You can learn more about this film on its official Twitter page.

Fire and Rain: The True Story of Flight 191 (1989)

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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 believe us. You’ve got the Hoff, along with Robert Guillaume, Charles Haid, Angie Dickinson, and Tom Bosley. And you get Lawrence Pressman, Dean Jones, and John Beck in the bargain. So, yeah, basically all of the familiar, dependable actors we know and love around here at B&S About Movies.

Based on Fire and Rain: A Tragedy in American Aviation, a novel by Jerome Greer Chandler, the film investigates — with the usual artistic licenses of events and composite characters — the tragic flight of Delta 191 at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport in 1985.

Taking off from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, the flight crew (John Beck) is warned of a pending storm as it prepares to land in Texas. The crew jokes the plane will “get a wash” and decide to go ahead with a landing. Then, without warning, the storm slams the L-1001 into the ground a mile short of the runway. FAA agents Dean Jones and Angie Dickinson are dispatched to investigate the crash.

You can watch the full movie on You Tube.

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 Movies.

Cast A Deadly Spell (1991)

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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 magic. He relies on his fists, his smarts and his gun. He’s been hired by Amos Hackshaw (David Warner, as always absolutely perfect) to find chauffeur Larry Willis, who has stolen a book called the Necronomicon.

You know that it can’t be that simple, right?

There’s also the virginal Olivia Hackshaw (Alexandra Powers, who played Tonya Harding in a TV movie but is now part of Scientology’s Sea Org), who is the key to a much greater scheme, plus Lovecraft’s old flame Connie Stone (Moore) has an angle, too. Look for appearances by Clancy Brown (the Kurgan from Highlander), Charles Hallahan, Arnetia Walker as a witch who aids our hero and Curt Sobel, who in addition to playing the band leader, won an Emmy for his song from this movie, “Who Do I Lie?”

Director Martin Campbell would go on to make GoldenEye and Casino Royale. This looks way bigger and better than a TV movie and would have made a great series for HBO, back in the days before they actually did that as often as they do today. The special FX are also perfect, making this feel like a lost 90’s direct to video movie.

HBO did make a spiritual sequel, Witch Hunt, which had Dennis Hopper take over for Ward and the story move to 1953 and magic take the place of Communism.

By the way, the Owl Wagon Cook is George Wilbur, who played the Shape in Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers and Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers.

Murder on Flight 502 (1975)

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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 advertising front as it placed in the Top 10 shows during the week of November 21, 1975.

Courtesy of RetroNewsNow/Twitter

The DC-8 from The Doomsday Flight (reviewed this week) is out, as the industry had upgraded to the Boeing 747. This time, instead of bomb threats and ransom tomfoolery, this airline fest’s resident nutjob takes the serial killer route: he’s left behind a letter with the airport Head of Security proclaiming that a “series of murders” will occur of Flight 502.

As you can see, this is pure 1970s TV, courtesy of Robert Stack — who did a gunnysack load of TV movies back in the day, along with Spelling’s soon-to-be favorite blonde angel, Farrah Fawcett-Majors, and . . . Sonny Bono and Danny “Partridge” Bonaduce? Wow! And there’s Walter Pidgeon (The Neptune Factor)!

Courtesy of RetroNewsNow/Twitter

This one is quite easy to find on DVD — with Farrah to the forefront, of course, even though she’s a minor character (as a stewardess) amid the aeronautical chaos. Needless to say, the acting royalty of Robert Stack, Ralph Bellamy, Hugh O’Brian, and ‘ol Walter rise to the occasion and make it all work against the budget.

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 Movies.

The Tragedy of Flight 103: The Inside Story (1990)

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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 in numerous overseas markets courtesy of its all-star international cast headed by Ned Beatty, Peter Boyle, Vincent Gardenia, and Sean “Dr. Who” Pertwee. Keen eyes of the B&S About Movies variety will also notice Andrew Robinson and Micheal Wincott — both of too many TV series, theatrical and direct-to-video features to mention (okay, Robinson was in Hellraiser and Wincott was in The Crow).

Courtesy of Amazon

This one is the hardest of all of the airline disaster flicks we’ve watched this week, as it is based on the events that led up to — but little on the aftermath — the 1988 terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 from Frankfurt, Germany to Detroit, USA, over Lockerbie, Scotland.

With a total of 270 fatalities — 243 passengers and 16 crew, along with 11 Lockerbie residents in the Sherwood Crescent neighborhood where Flight 103 crashed — the incident was classified as the deadliest terrorist attack in the history of the United Kingdom.

You can watch this on You Tube HERE and HERE.

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 Movies.

Mercy Mission: The Rescue of Flight 771 (1993)

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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 (less than $3 million in tickets against $20 million) The Squeeze. Then Keaton was cast as you know who.

So that takes care of the Batman minutiae to amaze your friends in the DC Universe. Now let’s unpack this flick.

Courtesy of Fly Leaping Terminal/Angelfire (Quantum Leap Fan Site)

Yep. Thanks to Scott Bakula on the marquee, this TV movie made bank courtesy of its additional income as a successful overseas theatrical feature — known as Flight from Hell. And, yes. Like most other TV movie airline disasters, the special effects are mostly stock and not very special, and — according to airline buffs — the against-the-budget film is rife with technical flubs and details about the Australian airline industry. And even if this isn’t a good as most of the classic, Big Three network TV flicks of the ’70s, we have still have Scott Bakula and he never-ever-sucks-in-anything Robert Loggia selling the goods, so who cares about flubs and glitches?

Film on location in Australia, it tells of the real-life, 1978 rescue of a distressed Cessna pilot (Bakula), lost and low on fuel somewhere in the Tasman Sea between Oz and New Zealand. Loggia, as a commercial airline pilot on his last flight, leads the by-air search and rescue.

You can watch this on You Tube HERE and HERE.

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 Movies.

No Other Love (1979)

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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 as a couple with Charles Nelson Reilly) and Robert Loggia.

To confirm that yes, this is a TV movie, there is an appearance by Scott Jacoby. Billy Drago also shows up, which pleases me to no end.

Director Richard Pierce would go on to direct Steve Martin in Leap of Faith and, perhaps infamously, Richard Gere and Kim Basinger in No Mercy.

This is a film from another era, a time when people with mental handicaps were kept hidden and lived sheltered existences that supposed that they were barely human beings. Thankfully, times have changed.

You can watch this on Amazon Prime.

*Fans of The Waltons will be interested to know that both versions of John-Boy are in this. Thomas played the role from 1972-1977, while Robert Wightman — who took over the role of the titular slasher in Stepfather 3 — assumed the part from 1979 to 1981.