Based on the 1968 Barbara Mackle kidnapping by Gary Steven Krist, this was the ABC Movie of the Week, airing on September 12, 1972.
Karen Chambers has been kidnapped and placed in an underground coffin with an air supply and water while the criminals try and get the money. Karen is played by Sallie Shockley, which is kind of interesting because The Candy Snatchers is pretty much the same movie — well, this is made for TV and doesn’t get quite so rough — and the female protagonist of that movie was played by another alliteratively named actress, Susan Sennett.
The cast is great. There’s David Janssen as the father, Phyllis Thaxter (Ma Kent from the Superman movies) as the mother, James Farentino as the lead kidnapper, Skye Aubrey as his partner and Mike Farrell as an FBI agent.
Beyond being referenced in the aforementioned The Candy Snatchers, this was also filmed in 1990 as 83 Hours ‘Til Dawn. There’s also an episode of Quincy M.E., “Tissue of Truth,” that is ripped from these headlines. This movie only aired once, as there were issues with who owned the rights to the story.
The fourteenth Ultra series, Ultraman Gaia ran from September 5, 1998 until August 28, 1999, with a total of 51 episodes. It doesn’t take place in the same continuity* as the Showa era Ultramen (Ultraman to Ultraman 80), the animated world of The Ultraman or Ultraman Tiga and Ultraman Dyna. There are also two Ultraman characters and neither can agree how exactly to defend the Earth.
Ultraman Gaia and Ultraman Agul have so many issues that by the middle point of the series they end up battling one another, eventually reconciling so that they can do what they’re here to do: save the Earth. Those same issues extend to the humans that control these Ultras, as Gamu Takayama (Ultraman Gaia) believes that he is here to save Earth and humanity. Fujimiya Hiroya (Ultraman Agul) thinks that he is Earth’s natural defence mechanism and protects the planet itself, even at the expense of humanity.
They’re brought together by Chrisis, a supercomputer developed by a group of science student geniuses named the Alchemy Stars, which has predicted that by 1997 Earth will be destroyed by the Radical Destruction Bringer. To stop this, the Stars have created a secret defense known as GUARD (Geocentric Universal Alliance against the Radical Destruction) that stands ready to save the world.
I really liked how Gama found his Ultra while doing a virtual reality experiment to discover the will of the Earth, which showed him a vision of Ultraman Gaia battling monsters non-stop. This series looks like it has some level of budget behind it — it looks like a higher end sentai show — and it’s interesting that it puts science at odds with the magic of the Earth. I’m kind of wondering if Agul is right and that our planet is better off without humans sometimes.
You can find out for yourself by grabbing the Ultraman Gaia box set from Mill Creek, which has all 51 episodes, plus Ultraman Tiga & Ultraman Dyna & Ultraman Gaia: Battle in Hyperspaceand Ultraman Gaia: Gaia Once Again. There’s also a colorful guide that shows the different Ultra forms in this series and the team logos and vehicles of GUARD and the eXpanded Interceptive Guardians, their top elite defense squad.
*Gaia does appear in Ultraman Tiga & Ultraman Dyna & Ultraman Gaia: Battle in Hyperspace, alongside Tiga, Dyna, Mebius and the Showa-era Ultras in Superior Ultraman 8 Brothers, teams up with the Heisei-era Ultras in Ultraman Ginga S: Showdown! Ultra 10 Warriors!! and brings along Agul to save an Earth that is not their own in Ultraman Orb: The Origin Saga.
World of Wonder Productions, founded in 1991 by filmmakers Randy Barbato and Fenton Baile — who both directed this movie — got their start managing RuPaul and producing RuPaul’s DragRace, as well as Inside Deep Throat, Party Monster, The Eyes of Tammy Fayeand, well, whatever this is.
Because sure, you may know the story of Lyle and Eric Menendez. You may have seen movies about them. But have you seen Courtney Love — yes, Hole frontwoman Courtney Love — play Kitty, their mother?
No, you have not.
Their father Jose Menendez worked at both LIVE Home Entertainment and Carolco Pictures — and who may allegedly have been the Menudo manager who abused Rikcy Martin — and supposedly pushed the boys hard. And maybe he also allegedly did things to them as well. But man, 1996 was their year. It was everywhere — not just tabloids and Inside Edition either.
So when you have a plastic surgery fabulous Courtney saying things like, “I can’t believe Lucille Ball died. I really did love Lucy,” well you’ve got me front and center for your movie.
Also, as you can imagine, her character dies pretty early on in the story. What you may not guess is that Courtney then plays a ghost for the resy of the movie, which is something that I endorse beyond endorsement.
Why were we not told that Courtney Love is in a Lifetime movie? This feels like the kind of information that people would get excited about. Why did it take me nearly three years to find this movie when I should have been having a premiere party complete with cupcakes, festive dips and a signature cocktail?
The movie is horrible when Courtney isn’t it, but you knew that. I just wish that the Italian exploitation industry was still around, because she’d be awesome in a remake of So Sweet…So Perverse.
A rich couple — self-claimed master chef Dave and inexperienced writer Irene — is planning an amazing meal for their friends, but as the evening goes on, the meal keeps getting delayed. As more guests arrive, personality conflicts start to pile up and the dinner part of the dinner party seems like it’s never going to get on the table.
This over an hour dialogue-heavy film is the first full-length feature by Robert Bruce Carter. It’s a lot to solve in its short running time and as a first-time project, but give him credit for aiming for the moon.
The official site for this film claims that it’s “A dark comedy arthouse thriller western satire.” Sure, I guess. It also name drops Yorgos Lanthimos and Buñuel, so you can see just how lofty its aims are.
That said — this captures the feeling of being trapped at a fancy — and perhaps too rich for its own blood — dinner party, so if you’ve been missing that dread since we all live in our houses and eat take out instead of seeing other human beings, perhaps this will scratch that itch.
An Exquisite Meal is available On Demand and Digital from Gravitas Ventures.
Yeah, Sam reviewed this one for a previous “TV Week” back in August, but after my this week’s watching and reviewing Janssen’s radio station helicopter pilot going “Dirty Harry” on murderous bank robbers in Birds of Prey, well, my UHF-TV pumpin’ heart drifted back to this highly-rated, TV movie knock off of Chartlon Heston’s cop vs. football stadium romp, Two-Minute Warning. (Dig into that 1976-made, Heston movie: There’s two different cuts: the theatrical and the TV movie version: the cuts turned the TV movie version into an art heist movie vs. the theatre’s crazed sniper movie — and Heston transforms from a leading to support character!)
In an unprecedented history!A new, crappier version of a mediocre movie.
Also known in overseas quarters and VHS reissues domains as The Super Bowl Story and Countdown to the Super Bowl, ABC-TV actually used this “Monday Night Movie” entry as a promotional ramp-up for their broadcast of Super Bowl XII. And to make sure we watched: the cast is all here: Ken Howard (then of TV’s hit basketball series, The White Shadow), Michael Pataki (Grave of the Vampire and so many B&S favorites from the ’70s), Donna Mills (hubba-hubba and thumpy-whumpy), and a pre-Magnum Tom Selleck (still career building with things like Daughters of Satan), along with pro-players-turned-actors Dick Butkus and Bubba Smith.
As with Heston’s stadium romp — and later, with Oliver Stone’s dark look at professional football with Any Given Sunday (and toss in the Keanu Reeves-starring The Replacements) — we have another ersatz-professional football league . . . as someone has bone to pick with the hailing world champion, New Orleans Cougars.
Oh, the drama!
Ken Howard’s Dave Wolecki’s has martial issues and a bum knee, Tom Selleck’s Jim McCauley is a star quaterback making bad business choices, and Donna Mills is between it all, as a “who’s who” TV cast of then-hot soap actress Robin Mattson, ’50s and ’60s TV stalwarts Jane Wyatt, Van Johnson, Peter Haskell, and Edie Adams, as well as ’70s everywhere-man Clifton Davis caterwaul about life’s problems as sniper is on the loose. Turns out the Mafia isn’t keen on the odds-favored Cougars for the win, which jeopardizes their $10,000,000 bet on the game for the Rangers to win: when the Cougar’s trainer won’t dope-up the players, he’s murdered. Don’t worry: David Janssen’s team manager will get to the bottom of the mayhem.
Yeah, this is a nostalgia-miles-may-vary flick that’s a disaster-flick-on-the-cheap that plays more as an extended, three-part episode arc of a U.S. soap opera, excuse me, “daytime drama,” with very little football (that’s all stock shots of who knows what semi-pro teams’ game). Is it all Superbad? Superdumb? Superboring? Eh, yeah. Rewatching it all these years later, I see the point. Oh, to be a UHF kid, again, when movies like this were a “wow” experience and movies like this tore it up on the weekly ratings.
You can get your restored DVDs from Kino Lorber. You can watch the three-part highlights from the real Superbowl between the 1978 New Orleans Saints at San Francisco 49’ers on You Tube. The Mystery Science Theatre 3000-spoofed version is on You Tube, but we found a very nice, clean rip on the Euro F-Share streaming platform.
Oh, yes. We LOVE our ’70s TV Movies — even ones from the ’80s and the ones from the early-cable ’90s — and our “Lost TV Week” exposes you to many more TV flick delights.
More David Janssen!
That other football thriller, Black Sunday, was reissued on Blu-ray in 2024 on the Arrow imprint.
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(links to a truncated teaser-listing of his reviews).
Ellen Hailey (Barbara Bain) is going through a divorce, so she takes her daughter Ruth (Kay Lenz) to a summer lodge sort of like Dirty Dancing, except they both want to get horizontal with the handyman (Michael Moriarty) who has a bad leg that keeps him out of the war. Man, divorce and world wars and Michael Moriarty pounding it out with a mother and daughter? Loving it.
You know, sometimes I just let these TV movies roll all day and pretend that it’s the early 80s and I’m home sick from school and that I’m allowed to watch as many TV movies as I want which I do believe is the perfect day.
Then I have to do some work because life isn’t as good anymore.
The line between TV movie and giallo is always so close.
While on a honeymoon with her husband Ernesto in Spain, Sandra (Janet Leigh) wakes up one morning to discover that he’s gone. When she reports it to the police, Ernesto comes back, except that he’s not the same man. Then, his attorney (Eric Braeden, Victor from The Young and the Restless) and sister (Barbara Steele!) claim that nothing is wrong and that perhaps Sandra is deranged.
This has to be a giallo, because the cops are just the worst at their jobs.
This movie is based on the French play Piège pour un Homme Seul (Trap for a Single Man), which was based on the Indian movies Sesh Anka and Puthita Paravai, which were — following all this? — based on the British movie Chase A Crooked Shadow. And it wouldn’t be the last TV movie based on this story, as it was also turned into One of My Wives Is Missing and Vanishing Act.
Lisa McVey (Katie Douglas) left a bad home situation with her mother to live in Tampa with her grandmother, but within a few weeks she was being abused by Morris, her grandmother’s boyfriend, and then abducted by Bobby Joe Long. Even worse, her grandmother just assumed that she ran away and wasn’t in any danger.
Bobby (Russif Sutherland, the half brother of Keifer) holds Lisa bound and blindfolded — much like the nine other women he’d already killed — continually assaulting her while she gains his trust by asking him about other women and then leaving behind as much evidence as she can, touching everything in his apartment and even pulling out her hair and hiding it all over the place. She also begins memorizing everything she can.
Finally, when she escapes — pleading for her life when Bobby wants to shoot her in the head in the woods — Morris and her grandmother beat her for five hours before calling the police. Luckily, her case is assigned to Sergeant Larry Pinkerton (David James Elliot, who made your grandmother and aunts feel all tingly when he was on JAG), who is one of the few people who believes in her.
Amazingly, this true story ends with McVey becoming a deputy sergeant in Sex Crimes, working to protect children from the terror that she survived. As for Bobby, he was arrested outside a movie theater and was executed in prison via lethal injection in 2019.
Airing on Showcase in Canada and Lifetime in the U.S., this is a pretty frightening story even in TV movie format. I can’t believe that McVey made it and was able to lead such a positive life after.
Director William A. Graham, who worked with Elvis Presley on Change of Habit (1969) — and too many TV series to mention (but we’ll mention Trapped Beneath the Sea (1974) and Beyond the Bermuda Triangle (1975) and the excellent, 1977 Frank Sinatra-starrer, Contract on Cherry Street) knocks it out of the park . . . er, sky, as it were . . . with a stellar debut script by Robert Boris (who nailed it with his second script, 1973’s Electra Glide in Blue) in a tale about a troubled, ex-war helicopter pilot who fights his person demons by stopping a bank robbery.
Overseas theatrical for the 1976 release/courtesy Worthpoint.
The always likable and reliable and David Janssen (Moon of the Wolf, the must-see submarine romp Fer-de-lance) stars as Harry “Smiling Jack” Walker: a highly regarded pilot and traffic reporter for Salt Lake City, Utah’s KBEX Radio. As part of his celebrity, Walker will display his fully restored P-40 Warhawk — the same plane he flew during WW II as a member of the Flying Tigers — to promote his station’s “throwback weekend” of playing WW II era big band standards of the 1940s. (Janssen, a skilled pilot in his own right, did most of his own flying, which only adds to the film thrilling realism.)
As the film opens, we see Walker’s “war flashback” (courtesy of the 1942 war film, The Flying Tigers) as he tows the plane — causing his own, ironic traffic jam — to the station. Courtesy of a smart script by Robert Boris (who also gave us the 1982 Richard Pryor entry Some Kind of Hero and the 1983 Dan Aykroyd vehicle, Doctor Detroit), the plane serves as a metaphor: Walker is as outdated as his plane. To that end, his old war pilot buddy, Jim McAndrew (the always on-point Ralph Meeker), now himself an outdated and desked cop, urges Walker to quit the bitching about the “glory days” and live in the now.
The “Dirty Harry” catalyst (if not made by CBS-TV, this would have made for a great Clint Eastwood theatrical vehicle) for Walker to get off his duff is a daylight bank robbery by two ex-Vietnam Marines using weapons stolen from Salt Lake City’s National Guard Armory. Warning the highway denizens below of the police pursuit, Walker takes it upon himself to begin an aerial pursuit of the robbers, communicating with McAndrew the details about the car — and their female teller hostage.
Now, you’d think a helicopter following a car would be boring . . . think again. Thanks to Walker’s ex-war piloting skills, our ersatz Harry Callahan pilots the chopper just over the getaway car’s roof, ripping between buildings, down city streets and under underpasses.
Now, just when you think the helicopter chasing the car gets boring . . . the robbers have their own “getaway” helicopter perched on top of a parking garage. Now, the chase takes to the skies over the Utah deserts and mountain ranges. And Walker’s running out of gas . . . living life by the seat of his flying pants, as he recaptures his “glory days” one last time.
A rating winner when it aired on January 30, 1973, CBS-TV, in conjunction with Warner Bros. (Clint’s old studio; so why didn’t Eastwood do this?), successfully marketed the $400,000 film throughout Europe and the Pacific Rim to box office gold. Of course, when the home video era arrived, Prism Entertainment released it in 1985, while VCI Entertainment picked it up for its 2007 DVD release.
Go VHS retro. Get the DVD. Stream it. However you do it: Watch this movie. Team it up with the car-on-car chase flick Vanishing Point (1971) for a great double feature. Want to go for a triple (or a TV movie double): check out another Vietnam war ex-chopper pilot who’s called into action to safe the day with Bernard Kowalski’s Terror in the Sky (1971).
Sure, David Janssen was no Clint Eastwood or Charlton Heston (I watched Chuck in Two Minute Warning (1976) this week; Janssen would have been great in that film, as Chuck, here) meant for leading man roles U.S. big screens, but when it came to carrying films on the small screen, no one did it better than David Janssen. Nobody. There’s no better Dirty Harry TV movie knockoff than Birds of Prey.
Be sure to check out our last “TV Week” of reviews concerned with action and terror in the skies with our “Airline Disasters TV Movie Round-Up” featurette.
Another great, David Janssen TV movie knockoff of popular films, in this case: Charlton Heston’s Two-Minute Warning crossed with the Bruce Dern-fronted Black Sunday.
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 (links to a truncated teaser-listing of his reviews).
The January 14, 1975 ABC TV Movie of the Week totally had the zeitgeist of the country pegged, because the Bermuda Triangle was all I could remember kids talking about. How could this little section of the ocean keep stealing all these planes and ships? And now, in 2021, no one talks about it at all.
USCG pilot and his winchman Haig (Doug McClure) rescues Eva (Kim Novak), the lone survivor of a wreck who claims that it was all caused by the evil Father Peter Martin (Alejandro Ray, Mr. Majestyk*). Yet all is not what it seems to be.
Sutton Roley directed tons of TV but also did Chosen Survivors and The Loners. He’s working from a script by William Read Woodfield, who started his career as a photographer, shooting Elizabeth Taylor and Jayne Mansfield, as well as nudes of Marilyn Monroe on the set of Something’s Got to Give. He was also the magic consultant on Mission: Impossible.
This movie is a tight 74 minutes and an atmosphere of doom. It’s one of the better Bermuda Triangle movies you’ll find. Other examples are Beyond the Bermuda Triangle, Death Ship, The Triangle, Triangle, The Fantastic Journey, the 1979 documentary The BermudaTriangle, Rene Cardonna’s Jr.’s The Bermuda Triangle, The Bermuda Depths, the lucha film Mystery in the Bermuda Triangle, the 27th dimension threat of Secrets of the Bermuda Triangle, Escape from Atlantis, Lost Voyage, Lost in the Bermuda Triangle and, inevitably, David DeCoteau’s 1313: Bermuda Triangle.
As for Doug McClure, he’s learned nothing about the evils of the ocean and battled it again in movies like Warlords of Atlantis and Humanoids from the Deep.
*This is a movie of Bronson co-stars, as Ed Lauter (Breakheart Pass, Death Wish 3) and Jim Davis (The Magnificent Seven) also appear.
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