Night Slaves (1970)
You may notice that all week I’ve talked about how great 70s TV movies are. That’s because they have great pedigrees. Take a look at Night Slaves, which was based on a book written by Jerry Sohl (Die, Monster, Die!; The Crimson Cult and episodes of The Outer Limits, Twilight Zone and Star Trek) and directed by Ted Post, who […]
Escape (1971)
A feel like a broken record saying this, but John Llewellyn Moxey made so many different styles of movies and I really love every single one. Take this failed pilot, in which Cameron Steele (Christopher George!) is a former escape artist turned private investigator into the unknown. The unknown in this case being the secret […]
The Last Child (1971)
In the future, overpopulation has created a world in which people are allowed to have only one child and are denied all medical care when they turn 65. So, you know, it’s pretty much halfway close to the world we live in. Another film in the storied career of John Llewellyn Moxey, this was written […]
Isn’t It Shocking? (1973)
John Badham would one day make Stakeout, Short Circuit, Bird on a Wire, WarGames, Saturday Night Fever and the 1979 Dracula, but early on in his career he made this made-for-TV movie. Dan Barnes (Alan Alda) is the police chief of Mt. Angel, Oregon. He’s trying to live a quiet life and all the senior citizen deaths and a motel owner […]
Mortal Kombat (2021)
I’ve seen so many reviews of this movie that seem to take great enjoyment making fun of it and saying things like, “Who cares about a Mortal Kombat movie?” Well, I do. I’m the exact audience for this movie, someone who fell in love with the game, saw both of the original films in the theater […]
The Stranger Within (1974)
Richard Matheson took his novelette Trespass, threw in a little science-fiction twist and added no small part of Rosemary’s Baby to make a completely downbeat 70s exploration of the terrors of pregnancy. Ann and David Collins (Barbara Eden and George Grizzard) didn’t expect to have a baby. After all, she’d had so many issues when they […]
Five Desperate Women (1971)
The line between the giallo and 70s made-for-TV movies is a very thin one and this is one film that easily could be defined as an American cousin of that native Italian — by way of Germany and England — form. Five young women have their five-year college reunion only to discover that life hasn’t worked […]
The Last Dinosaur (1977)
Also known as Polar Probe Ship: Polar Borer, this film was a co-production of Rankin/Bass and Tsuburaya Productions. It was directed by Tsununobu “Tom” Kotani and Alex Grasshoff, who also made The Wave, a TV movie we watched repeatedly in high school classes. This movie was intended for theatrical release, but failed to find a distributor. […]
Into Thin Air (1985)
Ellen Burstyn has no luck with her movie children, let me tell you. In this movie, she stars as the Canadian mother of a college student who drives a beat up van from Canada to the United States and then disappears. The police barely help, so she hires her own detective (Robert Prosky, Christine, Grandpa Fred […]
The Bermuda Depths (1978)
When Rankin/Bass and Tsuburaya Productions, two powerhouses in the film industry, join forces, they create something truly unique. Their collaborations are always a bit off the beaten path, but none are quite as intriguing as this one. This film, with its ghost girl, childhood trauma, and the iconic kaiju turtle, is a testament to their […]
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