EDITOR’S NOTE: Hotline was on the CBS Late Movie on October 30, 1986 and March 10, 1987.
Originally airing on CBS on October 16, 1982, this made-for-TV movie was directed by Jerry Jameson, who also was the in the director’s chair for movies like The Bat People, Airport ’77 and the Gunsmoke and Bonanza reunion movies. Lynda Carter (TV’s Wonder Woman as well as Miss World USA 1972) plays Brianne O’Neill, an art student who is getting stalked by The Barber, a man who claims to be behind several killings in the paper.
Who is The Barber? Is it Justin Price (Granville Van Dusen, who was the voice of Race Bannon on The New Adventures of Jonny Quest)? Deranged killer Charlie Jackson (James Booth, Airport ’77)? Former actor Tom Hunter (Steve Forrest, Mommie Dearest), who has been in love with Brianne for a long time? Her boss Kyle Durham (Monte Markham, Jake Speed, We Are Still Here)? Or her co-worker Barnie (Frank Stallone!, Ground Rules)?
Look for Harry Waters, Jr. in this movie. He played Marvin Berry in Back to the Future, the guy that Marty McFly used to steal rock ‘n roll from black people. There’s a death by harpoon gun, so this movie has that going for it. Consider it an early 80’s American low budget made for TV giallo and you’ll be fine.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The Legend of Billie Jean was on the CBS Late Movie on October 7, 1988.
This movie was a big deal when I was 13 and somehow, I never saw it.
Billie Jean Davy (Helen Slater) and her brother Binx (Christian Slater, the two stars are not related) spend their days in Corpus Christi, Texas swimming in the lake and riding on Binx’s Honda Elite Scooter. As they talk about running away someday to Vermont, you may wonder if they are boyfriend and girlfriend rather than brother and sister, but this movie never goes there. I’ve just seen too many Joe D’Amato movies.
The Davy family have to deal with some bullies led by Hubie Pyatt (Barry Tubb), who steals the scooter and does damage to it. Billie Jean demands money for the repairs from Hubie’s father (Richard Bradford), who ends up trying to use the money to get sex out of her. He ends up getting shot by Binx and the two go on the run, along with their friends Ophelia (Martha Gehman) and Putter (Yeardley Smith, who refused to cut her hair for this movie and is wearing a wig; she was also twenty when this was made and is playing a fourteen-year-old. She strapped her breasts down with Ace bandages to look younger.).
While the shop owner survives, this puts Lieutenant Ringwald (Peter Coyote) on the hunt for the escaped kids while they become folk heroes. Pyatt starts selling merch with Billie Jean on it after the kids become even more famous for kidnapping Lloyd (Keith Gordon), the son of a politician named Muldaur (Dean Stockwell). Kidnapped is what they want the world to think, as she wants to use her new fame to get back the money she’s owed and be forgiven for their crimes. She also decides to shave her head, wear combat boots and be a militant heroine to young girls all over Texas, kind of like Connie Burns without a guitar.
This movie was called Fair Is Fair and man, they sure say that a lot in this. I kind of love it though and for everyone who complains about movies that have strong female heroines, well, guess what? This did it back in 1985. It also has a theme song — “Invincible” by Pat Benatar — and a great soundtrack with Billy Idol, Divinyls and Wendy O. Williams.
Director Matthew Robbins has had an amazing career. In addition to writing The Sugarland Express, The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings and MacArthur, he wrote and directed Corvette Summer, Dragonslayer and *Batteries Not Included. He was an uncredited writer on THX-1138, Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which he worked on as a second unit director. As if that wasn’t enough, he also wrote Mimic,Crimson Peak and Pinocchio for Guillermo del Toro and even wrote several Bollywood films, including 7 Khoon Maaf and Rangoon.
The Partridge Inn in Augusta, Georgia is listed as a three-star hotel online. Part of the Curio Collection by Hilton, it’s one of the only hotels in Georgia to be a member of Historic Hotels of America and is the closest golf course to the famous Augusta National Golf Course. Built in 1890 as a modest two-story private residence, it was converted to an inn in 1910. In 1978, it was saved from demolition and reopened in 1987, then was renovated again in 2014.
As for the flooded basement in this movie, that’s actually the Family Y of Greater Augusta.
In Five Star Murder, the Patridge Inn is the five-star Libertine Grand Hotel, where we first meet some strange guests: Caroline (Damaris Lewis), who received a letter telling her who her father is and plans on flying to Spain the very next day; Harold (Ted Ferguson) and Joan Steele (Jill Jane Clements), an argumentative older couple; influencer Rose (Kimberly Blake) and her boyfriend Dylan (Darrell Snedeger), who are celebrating their one week anniversary and homeless by choice Quinn (Quinn Bozza), who just sold his shoes for some coffee.
Checking them in are the head of the hotel, Brianna (Rachel G. Whittle) and her assisted Marcos (Adam Ignacio). These guests would be bad enough if it wasn’t for the major storm coming in. As the hotel is buffeted by wind and heavy rains, everyone is evacuated, except for the above guests — who refuse to leave — and the two staff members.
And then the murders start.
The Libertine Grand Hotel was built by Louis Laurent, a genius who was inspired by “D’où venons-nous? Que sommes-nous? Où allons-nous?” (“Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?”), a painting by Paul Gauguin. Filled with themes such as the “contrast between enlightenment and superstitious, irrational, even barbaric traditions” and the cycle of birth and death, as well as what Gauguin called “The Beyond” — alert Fulci — this was a controversial work that upset people because of how obscure it was.
According to Vanity Fair, “When Gauguin embarked on this, his climactic work, in 1897, he was in pathetic shape, suffering from syphilis and such a serious case of suppurating eczema that the locals took him for a leper. This once prosperous part-Peruvian Parisian had ended up a penniless outcast; worse, his eyesight was beginning to fail. After being unable to paint for six months, he vowed to commit suicide. Before doing so, however, Gauguin was determined to create one last masterwork, into which, as he said, “I wanted to put … all my energy.””
The film says that he tried to kill himself after the painting, which is true. Or was he trying to get attention? As that same article says, “After finishing Where Do We Come From?, Gauguin decided to carry out his vow to kill himself. He claimed to have climbed up into the mountains, taken a huge dose of arsenic, and lain down to die in the hope that his body would be devoured by ants. Supposedly, the arsenic didn’t work; more likely, he never took any.”
As the film starts, Laurent takes arsenic in front of that painting — claimed to be the actual painting — and dies. That’s when we discover that people come to the hotel in the hopes of solving the puzzle box that its creator has made, hiding his fortune inside the penthouse.
Everyone is connected. Rose is Laurent’s niece, who wanted to get away from his rich shadow. Dylan, Quinn, Harold and Joan are all hunters. Brianna was dating Laurent and lost her marriage as a result. Even the heroine of the film, Caroline, ends up being the man’s daughter.
Directed by Jose Montesinos (The Soulmate Search, 5 Headed Shark Attack) and written by Chris Retts (Wade In the Water), Five Star Murder sets up a great storytelling engine and way of getting all of these characters into one place and then killing them off, one by one. It’s pretty entertaining and not just for a Tubi original.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker was on the CBS Late Movie on November 16, 1979; August 28, 1981 and December 18, 1987.
As in so many episodes of Kolchak, there are murders throughout Chicago and they have a supernatural feeling about them, as all of the murders were committed with medieval weapons. The big difference is that Captain Rausch (John Dehner) is the first cop who seems like he actually wants to deal with Kolchak.
It also has Minerva Musso (Lieux Dressler), a decorator who has David Bowie lined up as her next client. For now, she’s renovating a home into a disco club and that’s why the knight has come back from the grave, enraged that his ancestral home is being used in such a way and destroying anyone who gets in his way.
Directed by Gene R. Kearney, who wrote the script based on a story by Kurt van Elting, “The Other Way Out” starts with businessman Bradley Meredith (Ross Martin) returning home from a long vacation with his wife Estelle (Peggy Feury) just in time for his secretary to show him that a go-go dancer that he had some relationship with has died. Even worse, he soon learns that he’s being blackmailed.
He goes the whole way to an abandoned house in the middle of nowhere, having to walk most of the way after crashing his car. There, he meets the grandfather of the dead dancer, Old Man Doubleday (Burl Ives), who puts him through hell to pay for the murder.
That said, if you’re expecting any real twists or turns, there really aren’t any in this story. There are dogs attacking the man and the promised Sonny, instead of being a brutal older brother ends up being a ten year old, but this feels like a ton of putting the pieces on the table and then not a single thing happens with them. Sure, it has a dark tone, but that’s really all it has.
Sherlock Holmes (Michael Pennington) has been taken out of cryogenic sleep by Watson’s ancestor Jane Watson (Margaret Colin), who is a private detective in Boston. He was infected by the bubonic plague by his enemy Moriarty and frozen until a cure could be found.
Using the alias Holmes Sigerson, the detective works with Watson to help her solve her cases. Holmes falls for Violet (Connie Booth), the daughter of a man killed in an FBI robbery, while Watson and an agent named Tobias (Nicholas Guest) have some glances between each other. This was a pilot for a series that was never picked up, so one assumes that Holmes and Watson would have ended up together if the show was ever a longer series. There’s a fun little Murder, She Wrote cameo as one of the characters is reading a book by Jessica Fletcher.
Shayne also wrote the TV movies Sherlock Holmes and the Leading Lady, which starred Christopher Lee as Holmes and Patrick Macnee as Watson, along with Morgan Fairchild and Engelbert Humperdinck, as well as a sequel to that TV movie, Sherlock Holmes: Incident at Victoria Falls. He also created the show Whiz Kids and wrote episodes of the show Legend, in which author Ernest Pratt (Richard Dean Anderson) plays the hero of his books, Nicodemus Legend, with the help of his friend Professor Janos Bartok (John de Lancie).
EDITOR’S NOTE: The Awakening was on the CBS Late Movie on October 31, 1986 and February 25, 1987.
Based on Bram Stoker’s The Jewel of Seven Stars — which was also filmed as an episode of Mystery and Imagination as “The Curse of the Mummy,” Hammer’s Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb and the 90s movie Bram Stoker’s The Mummy — this movie places Matthew Corbeck (Charlton Heston), his pregnant wife Anne (Jill Townsend) and his assistant Jane Turner (Susannah York) in Egypt searching for the tomb of Queen Kara. One could argue that the most exploring Matthew is doing is between the thighs of Jane, but there you go.
When you see a sign that says “Do Not Approach the Nameless One Lest Your Soul Be Withered,” you may want to turn back. Nope, Matthew goes in hard — again, much like with his assistant — while his wife goes into labor. She’s dropped off at a hospital so he can get back to digging and their stillborn child comes back to life once he unearths and opens a sarcophagus.
Eighteen years later and that daughter, Margaret (Stephanie Zimbalist) is looking for her father, who is now married to Jane and still obsessed with the mummy that he found. It’s being destroyed by bacteria, so he gets it sent to England so that he can save it. Of course, the mummy queen wants to be reincarnated inside his daughter, who starts to believe that she really is Queen Kara.
Directed by Mike Newell (who went on to direct Four Weddings and a Funeral and Donnie Brasco) and written by Clive Exton, Chris Bryant and Allan Scott, The Awakening is a big dumb mess, but I kind of like that sometimes. It was recut by Monte Hellman after Newell lost final cut.
The best thing I can say is that this was shot in Egypt with actual locations.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Matilda was on the CBS Late Movie on December 23, 1985.
When Melvin Simon Productions out up half the cash for this movie, they made nearly half a million in profit by selling the TV rights to CBS for $2.5 million, foreign sales which went around $1.6 million and American-International Pictures paid an advance of $1.8 million on the movie.
The fact that anyone made any money on this upsets me to no end, because this is amongst the most terrifying movies I’ve ever seen. The decision to not use a real kangaroo and instead spend thirty grand on a suit with Gary Morgan in it will give me nightmares for the rest of my life.
At one point, my wife walked in as the kangaroo had been hit for the first time and started loudly screaming and she said, “Why would anyone watch this?”
I just sheepishly looked at her and she left the room.
Clive Revill plays Billy Baker, the Irish pub owner who somehow gets the ownership of the boxing kangaroo Matilda. He alone has the power to see you in the audience and will speak to you through the fourth wall twice in this movie.
Elliot Gould, who plays Bernie Bonnelli, the man who thinks he can make money off a boxing kangaroo, said of this movie, “When Al Ruddy wanted to buy back my position, my points in the picture, he offered me hundreds of thousands of dollars, which at that point I decided would be bad karma. That was bad judgment on my part.”
I have no idea why Karen Carlson’s character falls in love with him, but I am fascinated by the fact that this movie is filled with so many of my favorite actors: Lionel Stander, Robert Mitchum and even Roberta Collins. Even more amazingly, this came out the same year that Gould made The Silent Partner, so he wasn’t hurting for work.
It also gets Harry Guardino into another animal movie in the same year, as he would also be in Every Which Way But Loose, while Roy Clark takes a break from Hee-Haw to play Wild Bill Wildman.
Directed by Daniel Mann, yes, the same man who made Willard and Our Man Flint, this was written by Timothy Galfas, Paul Gallico and the aforementioned Ruddy. They made a movie that’s supposedly for kids but in which organized crime figures try to cut off the tail of a kangaroo and shameless promoter Gould makes the kangaroo literally do carny shoot boxing against marks in the audience. It’s upsetting, the suit is uncanny valley dead eye nightmare fuel for the rest of your life and, well, at least Mitchum and Gould got to smoke a joint together every day at lunch. I’d make any movie if I got to smoke with Mitchum, the star of one of my favorite movies of all time — The Night of the Hunter — and someone who seemed full of venom and hilarious stories with every interview I’ve ever read. Just don’t get in his way with your camera when he has a basketball in his hands.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker didn’t air on the CBS Late Movie because ABC packaged “it with “Demon In Lace” as the TV movie The Demon and the Mummy.
“Among the philosophers, the great thinks and the common Joes of this world, no question is more controversial than truth. Remarkable as it may seem, I can attest that the following events did occur, whether you believe them to be true or not.”
Despite this great starting line from Carl Kolchak, this is sadly near the end of the series. Ramon Bieri returns as a cop, but no one realized that in “Bad Medicine” he was Captain Joe Baker, not Captain Webster. It also has the future Boss Hogg, Sorrell Booke, as a taxidermist named Mr. Eddy.
The story revolves around a 500-year-old Aztec warrior rising every 52 years to claim five victims. The mummified form of this monster of the week is played by Mickey Gilbert, who was also the villain in “The Ripper.” But the real reason to tune in is to see Erik Estrada, just a few years away from superstardom as Ponch on CHiPs, playing Pepe Torres. Estrada dressed as an Aztec priest? I’m here for it. He also has on a pink disco suit and plays the flute in a scene, so this is prime Estrada gold for you to mine.
The cast also includes Dorrie Thomson (Policewomen, Operation Petticoat), Merrie Lynn Ross (Class of 1984) and Sondra Currie (who played Zach Galifianakis’ mom in The Hangover movies).
Basically, this episode is very similar to the aforementioned “The Ripper” while giving us Kolchak versus the Aztec Mummy.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Prototype was on the CBS Late Movie on June 5, 1987 and January 28 and May 12, 1988.
Directed by David Greene (The People Next Door, Madame Sin) and written by the team of William Link and Richard Levinson, who wrote and created Columbo, Mannix, Blacke’s Magic, Scene of the Crime and Murder, She Wrote. They also wrote the movie Rollercoaster and the Doug Henning stage play Merlin.
Michael (David Morse) is a government experiment created by Dr. Carl Forrester (Christopher Plummer) and his team to be more human than human. The doctor sneaks Michael home over the holidays and even takes him shopping, which enrages his bosses. When it becomes clear that the military is planning on using creations like Michael to become killers, Forrester goes on the run, taking Michael back to the college he used to teach at. Michael learns that he has self-determination, which leads him to be the one who makes the final decision about his fate, which is setting himself ablaze like a monk or Richard Lynch.
Don’t be fooled by the artwork that appeared on the VHS boxes for this movie. Those make it seem like this is a Terminator remake remix rip-off. This is as far from that as you can get, a thoughtful movie about what would happen when an artificial human comes to life and self-awareness.
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