EDITOR’S NOTE: Gamera vs. Barugon was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, April 13, 1968, at 11:20 p.m.; Saturday, March 1, 1969 at 1:00 a.m.; Saturday, June 12, 1971 at 1:00 a.m. and Saturday, April 1, 1972 at 1:00 a.m. as War of the Monsters, the title that American-International Television used when they re-edited it.
The second Gamera film has twice the budget of the first and realizes what they should have known all along: Gamera isn’t the villain. He’s the good guy and ready to defend children against more dangerous kaiju.
Those dumb scientists and their Z Plan rocket didn’t count on a meteorite letting Gamera escape and come back to Earth. Meanwhile, three ex-soldiers invade a cave — a scorpion kills one and treachery another — before bringing an opal to the surface. And that jewel? It’s an egg. And it’s hatching.
It becomes a lizard called Barugon, which can breathe freezing gas and launch rainbow rays from the seven spines on its back. These are all weapons that can do great damage to our turtle protector.
How do you defeat an undefeatable monster that freezes our hero again? Mirrors and drowning. Yes, Gamera straight up holds Barugon’s head under the waters of Lake Biwa.
In Germany, they screwed up the translation and call Gamera Barugon and Barugon Godzilla. Those versions are titled Godzilla, der Drache aus dem Dschungel (Godzilla, the Dragon from the Jungle), Godzilla, Monster des Grauens (Godzilla, the Monster of Horror) and Gamera vs. Godzilla.
27. TRANCING AND HYPNOTISM: Gold watches ain’t just for retirement.
I’ve been obsessed with this movie for years.
My Drive-In Asylum co-host Bill Van Ryn shared an ad for a movie that I’d never heard of on his Groovy DoomFacebook page, and it immediately piqued my curiosity. What could Death Is Not the Endbe?
Kinorium says, “The mystery of life eternal is discussed by a number of purported experts in various fields of metaphysical research, as well as individuals who assert that they’ve lived before.”
The AFI Catalog goes a bit deeper, telling us “Reporter Wanda Sue Parrott and an African American laborer named Jarrett X are put into deep hypnotic trances as part of a psychic experiment in past-lives therapy.”
It played at least a few times, if ads are to be believed. The Phoenix, AZ, premiere was on December 8, 1975 — the ad featured in this article — and it also played a year later in Los Angeles on April 11, 1976.
The July 25, 1974 Hollywood Reporter claimed that the film, then known as 75 IT, would premiere at the Atlanta International Film Festival in Georgia on August 16, 1976. Dona Productions took over distribution in 1976, and the film’s title was changed to ‘Death Is Not the End’, a title that hints at the film’s themes of reincarnation and life after death.
Anyways, these are a lot of facts, but there was no chance I was ever going to see this movie.
Or was I?
Imagine my surprise to open my email and see this:
Hi Sam,
We were given a big binder of family stories for Christmas, and in it was a DVD of 75 IT. We already had one, but it got me and my husband googling the movie and we found your blog.
I watched it years ago but am not sure I ever got to the end as it was pretty bad. I did enjoy the brief shots of my husband as a child at the very beginning.
I’m not sure who has the rights to it now. Wanda used to stay in touch with Ron Libert but I think they fell out over the publishing of her novel.
Are you still looking to watch it?
It took about six months to arrive. And you know how I work. When I get something I’ve been waiting to see, I tend to sit on it. Like gift cards, I like the idea of having something to look forward to. In this case, the anticipation of finally watching this rare and obscure film was too exciting to rush.
But today would be the day that I would watch this.
75 IT or Death Is Not the End was the work of Elroy Schwartz. The brother of Sherwood Schwartz, he and Austin Kalish wrote the original pilot for Gilligan’s Island, which went unaired until TBS showed it in 1992. He would continue to be a writer on the show along with his brother, Al.
In 2000, the Los Angeles Times reported that Schwartz and Kalish were suing Sherwood, saying, “They charge that the older sibling has been cheating them out of Gilligan’s Island credits and royalties for decades. The dispute apparently began in 1963, when Elroy and Kalish say they wrote most of the pilot show. Sherwood was the producer and, as a favor, they honored his request and listed his name as a co-writer on the script, the suit says. Ever since, they charge, Sherwood has tricked them out of their share of royalties and has controlled the rights to the show, which has made him as rich as, say, Thurston Howell III.”
They’re not exaggerating. In Kalish’s obituary in The Hollywood Reporter, it’s reported that “Years after the show ended, Kalish said documents were uncovered that indicated he should have been entitled to one-quarter ownership of the series, worth about $10 million, but he received nothing.”
In addition to being a writer, Schwartz was a licensed hypnotherapist specializing in past-life regressions. He described this movie as such: “There wasn’t any established script. The movie is a ‘happening’ — a spontaneous filming of a hypnotic regression into reincarnation, and ‘procarnation’ — a look into the subject’s next life.”
According to the article (The Tampa Times from April 4, 1977) posted above, “Elroy Schwartz, stocky, cordial, gregarious, doesn’t look like a Svengali, but, he says, he’s “a hell of a hypnotist.” Schwartz is in town from Los Angeles, where he’s a full-time writer and producer (he’s written for such TV shows as I Love Lucy, Gilligan’s Island and Movie of the Week and a sometime hypnotist who’s delved into uncharted areas of the mind. From these explorations have come both a book, The Silent Sin, and a movie, Death Is Not The End, scheduled for showing Monday night at the Tampa Theatre. His book, written six years ago, deals with a hypnosis subject whom he “regressed,” or took backward in time, over a period of several months, eliciting from her unconscious several past lives she felt she had lived in various reincarnations. In one reincarnation, the subject went through a reenactment of labor pains. For Schwartz, “It triggered something in my mind.” He thought, “If we can go backward in time, why can’t we go forward?” He tucked the thought away for a while, but some time later met Wanda Sue Parrot, a newswoman with the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, and “got good vibes from her.” They started work on regressing, and when he felt she was really in touch with her subconscious, Schwartz asked her to go forward in time to her next life.
He was in for a shock. Wanda was “reborn” as a mutant inhabitant of a world recovering from the near-annihilation of an accidental atomic detonation from China. What had been the United States was now “America’s Islands,” fragmented, with whole sections gone from the map. She lived in “Utah County” in the year 75 I.T., which, the hypnotist found, meant International Time, a time system set up by the “World Tribunal,” which governed what was left of Earth.
From the concept of this horror story emerged the movie, which was filmed live as Schwartz repeatedly put his subject into a trance state under the supervision of a medical doctor.
“It’s not edited except for time,” Schwartz said. “Producers have told me it’s not technically a movie, but it has a tremendous impact. Wherever it’s shown, people thank me. They want to see it again.” For himself, Schwartz “knows what we have is real. Maybe this is a warning; maybe we can stop history if we stop and think what we’re doing.” For now, he’s trying to find practical and creative ways to utilize his gift.”
So let’s get to the movie.
It’s wild: this is relatively low quality, but when you have what may be one of the few copies of a movie in the entire world, you don’t complain.
This film is relatively simple. Schwartz sits in a chair, a shirt unbuttoned to reveal a bare chest, speaking with Wanda Sue Parrot, who wrote for the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner and Chicago Tribune. As Schwartz hypnotizes her, she quickly remembers several of her past lives, including being a woman named Akina in an early civilization. Often, she is unable to communicate with Schwartz because there is no translation for her words or for how she sees things.
She starts as a single-cell organism, then gets brothers and sisters as a cavewoman, as Schwartz tries to get her to speak the language she used. The language can’t be identified as a modern language; it’s very rudimentary. It sounds Native American, which makes sense, as Parrot has Chickasaw and Cherokee ancestry in her family tree. She also wrote under the Native American byline Prairie Flower.
Schwartz then hands her the paper and a marker so she can write. Even though she’s a writer by trade, she struggles with the marker, biting down on a pencil as she creates a triangle. Synth music bubbles as she continues her drawing. In her language, she tells him what the drawing is. Then she says it’s a drawing of creation and how it came to our world. She says there are two sides of God, symbolized by two fish. She refuses to take the pencil out of her mouth so that Schwartz can understand her. He then puts her to sleep so he can get the pencil back, and asks her to wake up; he will be her god Ika. He will talk to her and she will understand him.
“You have been a good person, Akina. You may speak to your god.” Schwartz says. She laughs and says that Ika is invisible. He replies by walking out and coming back, saying that he’s Iko. She holds his hands and smiles, studying his watch, which she smells and tries to bite. She’s also interested in his many rings. “Ahh e tu ah,” she replied. Then says, “Snake.”
He puts her back to sleep.
Akina dies when she goes to see the blue people — is this Yor Hunter from the Future? — and she is crushed. She dies far below her people. Schwartz then counts to three and tells her to feel the pain of Akina as she dies on a bed of stones. Wanda begins to move around in pain, just as she’s told to go to sleep.
What about the blue people? Akina describes the geography of the world she lived in. The blue people raised cattle, sheep, and a bird. Their skin is as dark as ashes, but not black like ashes. A deep color blue like the sky. They were being extincted, and their women were unable to reproduce, having only one child each. Any children they had moved into new territories across the ocean, but their color changed to dark, but not blue, except in cases of…she doesn’t know the word. They had blue black skin, brown black skin. Then she discusses other people, like the Unix, who were the work animals.
Schwartz then tries to learn how the electron that she once was became the identity of a new person and how the soul moves through different bodies through time. We hear her be born and make very realistic noises as if she were a crying infant. He then takes her to the 1600s, where she is a French man. Wanda only speaks English and Spanish, not French, so when she starts to say things in French, it’s surprising.
The film cuts to a couch, where Schwartz meets Jarrett X, a black man wearing a dress shirt covered in dots and white flowers. He quickly is able to get Jarrett to go into a hypnotic state and remember being named Jacob Elliot Nash. After the Civil War, he worked on a farm for Master Hearst, a white man he disliked, who often beat him with whatever he could find. Schwartz tries to take on the voice of Jarrett’s master, yelling at him before learning that the young slave stayed behind on the plantation, bound by the fact that his mother would not leave.
This gets pretty harrowing, as Jarrett is asked to sing at one point and says that he refuses to sing as he no longer believes in God, as what God would allow so much suffering? Schwartz counts to three, snaps his fingers and reminds Jacob of when he was a child and did sing. He then relates a few bars of “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child.”
Then, the worst memory comes when Jarrett remembers the owner’s son stabbing him with a pitchfork, ending his life. This gets even harder to watch, as we learn that in the past, Jarrett was accused of fooling around with a white woman, which earned him his death. As Schwartz snaps his finger and wakes him up, he quickly seems like a totally different person.
Schwartz relates to Dr. Kent Dallt, Professor of Psychology at UCLA, how he wrote his book on hypnotherapy and reincarnation. As they sit in a field, they discuss how no one seems to believe in previous or future lives. Schwartz relates that even if he had proof that someone was actually alive —a newspaper article or a tombstone —no one would believe it. Skeptics never open their minds to these things.
Dallt brings up From India to the Planet Mars by Theodore Flournoy and Sonu Shamdasani. The book explores Catherine Müller, also known as the medium Hélène Smith, “who claimed to be the reincarnation of Marie Antoinette, of a Hindu princess from fifteenth-century India, and of a regular visitor to Mars, whose landscapes she painted and whose language she appeared to speak fluently.”
Death Is Not the End moves on to the procarnation exercises, which move Wanda to her next life as a blind mutant newly born in Cold Springs, Utah. Seventy-five years after a nuclear accident, which gives this film the name 75 IT, the United States has been divided into the American and Barbara Islands, which are ruled by the World Tribunal of Africa. As America has been decimated by this nuclear event, its people aren’t allowed to celebrate any religion, experiment with any science or even marry one another.
This is all supposed to be happening in the year 2100 or so, Schwartz thinks. All Wanda can say is that it’s the year 75 IT when Wanda’s mutant future form is twenty. She claims that her father was from Philadelphia. Elroy pushes her for more information on the accident, to which she can only reply, “Horrible. Horrible.” He keeps asking, and she tells them that people burned, their skin came off their bodies, their eyeballs fell out, and they still didn’t die.
No one knows why or how the accident happened, which doesn’t help us much. It wasn’t a war, she knows that much, and that it happened in China. Schwartz goes through several cities and asks if they are still around. Miami and Florida have sunken beneath the waves, but Omaha and St. Louis are safe. Most of the towns he throws out, she can’t remember, although she has heard of Birmingham. England is underwater with piranhas, she says, at one point.
The world is governed by the World Tribunal, which has representatives of every nation on Earth. Elroy then asks if she will always be in Cold Springs, but she will go to the University of Heidelberg when she’s 25. Oh yeah — Phoenix is a port now, too.
Throughout the interview, Wanda seems almost upset and struggles to explain herself. Schwartz even chuckles a few times. This makes me drift and see the room he has set up, which is very 1970s, with green shag carpeting, tons of plants, and comfy couches with afghans. It isn’t a place you’d discuss the end of the world.
She claims Kennedy would win the 1980 election, and Elroy quickly moves on. She then took up a lover, Joseph Martin, her lover from Belgium. He taught her how to see, which landed him in jail for treason. While she was blind, she was taught to see with the center of her brain or her third eye. Joseph showed her how to use transmission to see and how to use telepathy to see through his eyes.
There’s a wild moment here where the mutant wakes up in Wanda’s body and can see. She looks like she’s freaking out and then seems elated that she can see. It’s hard to tell if she’s sending messages back in time or speaking through this body. This moves her to tears.
The mutant dies in the year 106 IT. She goes home to Cold Springs to have her baby, the child of a criminal. She goes up the mountain and doesn’t come back. The baby is born. Schwartz wakes her up with a smile.
The end credits claim that the year IT is 2012. It also says that “Two months after the final edit of this film, Dr. Dallet, finding the film personally distubring, shared the Procarnation description of “the accident” with colleagues at the University’s Astronomy and Science departments. Their “concensus of opinion” theory was that “the accident” was probably a Pole Shift — cause by a weight imbalance at the poles due to a melting of the polar ice caps.”
There’s a producer’s note — which makes me wonder if this was planned to be released in 2005, before the 2012 event and in a time when polar shift theory was at its height — that says “In the thirty years since this documentary was filmed, much of the polar ice has melted — and continues to melt at an increasing rate. Thirty years ago, Earth scientists considered the melting of the polar ice as improbable and without precedent.
Death Is Not the End doesn’t feel fake. It feels like people are being captured in moments of hypnosis. Whether they’re guided to feel this way or they’re really sharing moments of their past and future is up to you, the viewer. It feels way too raw to be either improv or scripted.
I can’t even tell you how overjoyed I am to get this movie, and I am beyond thankful that it was sent to me. I wish it had a bigger potential audience than just movie nerds like me, as I can’t even see this being something a boutique label would release. But in a world where we can find everything within seconds online, the fact that some films remain hard to find — and therefore occult — is something that keeps me alive.
As bas as the world seems like it can be, we also live somewhere that the real creator of Gilligan’s Island can make an unseen movie about past and future lives, as well as an end of the world that never came.
Notes on the people who made this:
Richard Michaels directed the film and began his career as a summer assistant to legendary New York sportscaster Marty Glickman before becoming a script supervisor. He also directed episodes of Mr. Deeds Goes to Town and The Odd Couple, and produced Bewitched, a show he would direct for 55 episodes.
That show would change his life, as he and star Elizabeth Montgomery fell in love during the show’s eighth year, breaking up her marriage to William Asher and his to Kristina Hansen. They were together for two and a half years.
The rest of his career was spent in TV, mostly directing TV movies such as The Plutonium Incident and Scared Straight! Another Story, Heart of a Champion: The Ray Mancini Story, Leona Helmsley: The Queen of Mean and many more.
The music comes from Mort Garson, who wrote the song “Our Day Will Come,” which is on the soundtrack of Grease 2, More American Graffiti, Under the Boardwalk, Shag, Buster, She’s Out of Control, Love Field, The Story of Marie and Julien, You Should Have Left and Role Play. He was part of The Zodiac’s Cosmic Sounds, a 1967 concept album released by Elektra Records that had early use of the Moog synthesizer by Paul Beaver (“a Scientologist, a right-wing Republican, unmarried and a bisexual proponent of sexual liberation” who helped build Keith Emerson’s custom polyphonic Moog modular synthesizer, did the sound effects for The Magnetic Monster and composed the score for The Final Programme) with music written by Garson, words by Jacques Wilson and narration by folk musician and Fireside Theater producer Cyrus Faryar, all with instruments played by members of the Wrecking Crew studio collective, such as Emil Richards, Carol Kaye, Hal Blaine, Bud Shank and Mike Melvoin.
Garson was an early adopter of Moog, which makes me like him even if he wrote the theme song for Dondi. He also wrote the song “Beware! The Blob!” for the Larry Hagman-directed sequel and scored René Cardona Jr.’s Treasure of the Amazon, Paul Leder’s Vultures and Juan López Moctezuma’s To Kill a Stranger.
Plus, his song as The Zodiac, “Taurus – The Voluptuary,” also shows up in several gay adult films of the early 70s, including the Satanic-themed Born to Raise Hell, which also uses his songs “Black Mass,” “The Ride of Aida (Voodoo),” “Incubus” and “Solomon’s Rising.”
Garson was also Lucifer, the electronic artist who released Black Mass — also called Black Mass Lucifer — that AllMusic reviewer Paul Simpson says is “a soundtrack-like set of haunting Moog-based pieces which interpret various supernatural and demonic themes.”
Cinematographer Alan Stensvold also shot Bigfoot and Wildboy for The Astral Factor, Dimension 5, Cyborg 2087, Thunder Road, and the TV show Dusty’s Trail, where he had to have met Elroy Schwartz, who created the show with his brother Sherwood.
This movie was edited by Joan and Larry Heath. While Joan has no other credits, Larry has an extensive portfolio of work on TV, including 106 episodes of Rhoda, 46 of Simon & Simon, the film Billy Jack and episodes of Gilligan’s Island and Dusty’s Trail, where he also met Schwartz.
Notes on the production and distribution companies:
Schwartz’s Writer’s First only lists this movie and episodes of the show Dusty’s Trail as released productions.
Dona Productions seems made just to distribute this film,
Libert Films International was seemingly was a tax shelter used to distribute films like Rum Runners, Angela, Encounter with the Unknown, The Great Masquerade, My Brother Has Bad Dreams, Mario Bava’s Roy Colt & Winchester Jack, The Devil With Seven Faces, Never Too Young to Rock, Willy & Scratch, Charlie Rich: The Silver Fox in Concert, Beyond Belief and Stevie, Samson and Delilah. Ron Libert was the CEO of this company and Apollo Productions and was part of American Pictures Corporation, along with Robert J. Emery, who directed the Claudia Jennings-starring Willy & Scratch.
Cougar Pictures, which picked this up in 1977. also distributed The Flesh of the Orchid, Starbird and Sweet William, Scream, Evelyn, Scream! and another Libert pick-up, Beyond Belief.
Directed by John Fawcett and written by Karen Walton, from a story they jointly developed, Ginger Snaps is the most puberty-referencing horror that I can think of. Brigitte and Ginger Fitzgerald (Emily Perkins and Katharine Isabelle) are death-obsessed teenagers who promise to run away before they turn 16. One night, Ginger’s period attracts a werewolf, which is soon run over by drug dealer Sam (Kris Lemche). As her wounds heal, she refuses to go to the hospital and starts to grow angry, beating up her bully, Trina (Danielle Hampton), and aggressively having sex with classmate Jason (Jesse Moss). Even when she gets a silver piercing, her wolf side keeps getting stronger.
When Ginger kills Trina accidentally, her sister helps her hide the body, but is shocked to learn that she’s killed a counselor and a janitor. However, the cure of monksblood has been created by Sam and is successful at turning Jason back into a human. However, is the bond between sisters stronger than the need to be human?
I’ve watched this several times and am always struck by how different it is than so many wolf movies, which are so often white men dealing with being infected. Fawcett would go on to create Orphan Black.
The strong performances by Katharine Isabelle and Emily Perkins are a major highlight of Ginger Snaps. Their chemistry is palpable, and their dedication to their roles is evident. It’s fascinating to learn that they auditioned on the same day, were born in the same hospital, attended the same schools, and were hired through the same talent agency. It’s almost as if they were destined to be in this film.
By the way, the PA voice that pages the Raimi brothers? That’s Lucy Lawless.
Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year, they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which works to save the lives of cats and dogs across America, giving pets second chances and providing them with happy homes.
Today’s theme: Witches or Warlocks
Kohar (Teddy Purba) accuses Murni (Suzzanna) — who he dated with before his marriage and claims that she ruined the ceremony by creating a storm and convincing his bride Baedah (Siska Widowati) that her husband has become a skeleton — of the crime of witchcraft. The village rises up, burns her house down and tosses her off a cliff, only for her to be saved by an old man (W.D. Mochtar) and taught to become the queen of black magic.
Imagine the surprise of the villagers when she walks among them again, alive despite all they have done. Soon, she’s sending swarms of bees after them, commanding worms to eat their faces and stealing babies from their cribs. If that isn’t enough, she enchants someone into clawing off their own head, which then flies around the room biting people.
How do you become the queen of black magic? You get naked and do backflips under the full moon.
Also: Murni seems way too into her brother.
This is everything I wanted it to be and proves why Suzzanna was such a force in Indonesian horror. I’ve seen some people complain about the cheap effects. Get off your high horse. There are horrible people who need to have acid eggs thrown in their faces in this and maybe they don’t have all the big bucks that you do.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Doctor of Doom was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, August 24, 1968 at 11:20p.m. and Saturday, August 7, 1971 at 1:00 a.m.
You know, Gaby (Regina Torne) is great. Across two movies — Las Luchadoras contra El Medico Asesinoand Las Luchadoras contra La Momia — we’ve watched Gloria Venus and Golden Rubi battle evil doctors and an Aztec mummy, but now we have an evil doctor kidnapping the world’s smartest scientists and also creating a trenchcoat wearing killer who looks like he’s made out of the finest rubber than Senor Benjamin Cooper makes.
Sure, we’ve seen it before as “Return of the Cybernauts” on The Avengers, but have we see it with wrestling women and a half-ape, half-zombie, half-man named Carfax? And then, how about if we put that monsters head into a female wrestler and change her named from Berthe to Black Electra?
As was the custom at the time, there are two cuts of this movie. There was another “sexy” version with nudity that was intended for the U.S. titled El Asesino Loco y el Sexo (Sex and the Mad Killer). The clean and filthy versions both went unreleased up here.
Director René Cardona was on a quest to make the perfect luchadora against scientists movie and damn if he didn’t succeed more than once. If you want the best realitization of his quixotic quest, I would recommend Night of the Bloody Apes, which features a heroine who dresses like a demon, a monkey/human killer that rips off faces and legitimate footage of an open heart surgery.
Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year, they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which works to save the lives of cats and dogs across America, giving pets second chances and providing them with happy homes.
Today’s theme: Witches or Warlocks
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Adam Hursey is a pharmacist specializing in health informatics by day, but his true passion is cinema. His current favorite films are Back to the Future, Stop Making Sense, and In the Mood for Love. He has written articles for Film Eastand The Physical Media Advocate, primarily examining older films through the lens of contemporary perspectives. He is usually found on Letterboxd, where he mainly writes about horror and exploitation films. You can follow him on Letterboxd or Instagram at ashursey.
For some reason, people keep talking to me lately about Little House on the Prairie. I’m not sure why exactly. I am familiar with the show. It was not must see TV for me growing up. Thanks to my mother, I was much more into prime time soap operas like Dallas and Dynasty. The trials and tribulations of the Ingalls family surely could not compare to comings and goings of the Ewings or the Carringtons.
But I have watched more LHOTP in the last year or so. And boy howdy does that show get unhinged in those later years! Albert Ingalls gets addicted to morphine. He also starts a fire that results in the death of a baby. In the infamous Sylvia episode, a teenager gets raped by a guy in a clown mask. The citizens even blow up Walnut Grove rather than let the land fall into some venture capitalist’s hands. Whenever anyone talks about LHOTP and how “they don’t make shows like they used to”, I cannot disagree. But they are talking about wholesomeness, an aspect that did not exactly run through that show.
In contrast, I’ve never seen an episode of The Waltons. I would be willing to watch it though. It seems like maybe this show is the one people should reference when talking about a show you could watch with the entire family. I’ll have to check it out and report back.
Now if there was a competition between the two shows, perhaps it reached full throat in 1981 when the made for television movie Midnight Offerings debuted on ABC (neutral ground I guess). In this movie, we are treated to Melissa Sue Anderson (Mary Ingalls) versus Mary Beth McDonough (Erin Walton) in a supernatural battle over…the high school quarterback? This film is not going to pass the Bechdel test, that’s for sure.
Anderson plays Vivian Sotherland, the most popular girl in school. She also happens to be a witch (the old seventh daughter of a seventh daughter trope) who is not afraid to kill in order for those around her to succeed. Nobody knows her secret, although the aforementioned quarterback/boyfriend David (Patrick Cassidy) is beginning to have his suspicions. When new girl in town Robin Prentiss (McDonough) shows up, Vivian is ready to quickly dispose of her. But Robin is also the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter, and she has powers she could not explain. Can Mrs. Cunningham, I mean, Emily Moore (Marion Ross) help Robin harness the magic inside of her before Vivian reaches the height of her witchcraft?
There is definitely a lot to like about Midnight Offerings. Melissa Sue Anderson is having a ball playing against type. And I love a magic battle. This one has an unexpected ending that would make any Hammer film proud (if you know you know). Made for TV movies has been a bit of a running theme through my picks this year. I just cannot get enough. Talk about they don’t make things like they used to.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The Beach Girls and the Monster was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, June 29, 1968 at 11:20 p.m. It played as Monster from the Surf.
Directed, shot by and edited by Jon Hall, who also plays Dr. Otto Lindsay, The Beach Girls and the Monster is the kind of strange movie that I love so much. The surf footage was shot by Dale Davis — who also is in this as Tom — and he also made the surf documentaries Walk on the Wet Side, Strictly Hot and The Golden Breed. Even better, it has sculptures, the monster’s head,and the Kingsley the Lion, which were all created by Walker Edmiston — who plays Mark — who had a kid’s show in Los Angeles and went on to be the voice of Ernie the Keebler Elf, several characters on Lidsville, Sigmund from Sigmund and the Sea Monster, the Zuni Fetish Doll in Trilogy of Terror and Magneto on the 1980s Spider-Man, as well as playing Professor Crandall on The Dukes of Hazzard.
Can it get even better than that?
Let me introduce you to the The Watusi Dancing Girls from Hollywood’s Whisky a Go Go club on Sunset Boulevard. And how about that soundtrack with appearances by The Hustlers and the theme song “Dance Baby Dance” by Frank Sinatra Jr. and Joan Janis.
Bunny (Gloria Neil, Sarah in The Man from U.N.C.L.E.) is found dead after being attacked by a seawood covered lizard creature. No, not Slithis. Or Zaat. Or one of the Humanoids from the Deep. This, according to Dr. Lindsay, is a fantigua fish that has grown large enough to exist out of the ocean. Did it grow lungs? What kind of scientist is he? And why does he call the kids loafers and little tramps?
Maybe he’s mad that his son Richard Lindsay (Arnold Lessing) is a beach bum, that his best friend Mark (Edmiston) has moved in and sculpts, and that his wife Vicky (Sue Casey, Evilspeak) drinks and flirts all the time, seeming like the kind of woman that John Ashley would certainly sleep with and cuck him were this Blood Island and not Santa Monica. Richard was there when Bunny died, so all he cares about now is his girlfriend Jane (Elaine DuPont) and living life for fun instead of doing research with his old man.
In case you can’t guess, there’s no such thing as the monster. Yes, the doctor is dressing up, all to make his son more serious by killing everyone that he is friends with as well as getting rid of his second wife.
Also known as Monster from the Surf and Surf Terror, this movie is totally The Horror of Party Beach but I don’t care. It’s like a sitcom or Scooby-Doo episode except that all sorts of people die and it ends with a misunderstood father, who is dressed as an undersea monster, driving his car off a cliff and blowing up real good.
I may have run out of Edwige Fenech horror films, but this is the next best thing.
Directed and written by Franco Castellano and Giuseppe Moccia, who together directed 20 films and wrote 70, this stars Edwige as Silvia, who has just married her longtime lover, Asso (Adriano Celentano). An expert card player, he has promised to give up gambling for her, but has one last game in him. He wins, but is killed by Sicario (Gianni Magni).
However, because of how much he loves Silvia, he can come back to Earth and wants to find a man to take care of her so he can go to Heaven. He decides on an old banker named Luigi Morgan (Pippo Santonastaso), but a rival, Bretella (Renato Salvatori), the man who had Asso killed, is trying to take Silvia for himself. However, this caper leads the old man to realize how much he misses his dead wife, Enrichetta (Sylva Koscina).
Alone again, Silvia finally meets a card player who looks just like Asso, who finally does make it to Heaven, where God defeats him in a card game.
This feels a lot like Heaven Can Wait, and it also seems like Ghost took some elements from it.
I took the Lord’s name in vain several times during this movie, including a moment when we see the outline of Ms. Fenech through a stained-glass window. As this movie teaches us that God gambles, I feel that the Supreme Being is fine with me ogling one of His or Her’s finest creations.
Jessica finds herself in a tough spot when one of the auctioneers of a diary is murdered, and she has to rely on Harry McGraw to help her out.
Season 2, Episode 17: One Good Bid Deserves a Murder (February 23, 1986)
At the request of Richard Bennett, a friend and a popular actor, Jessica Fletcher goes to an auction to bid for the diary of a dead woman whose journal was stolen on the night of her death.
Who’s in it, outside of Angela Lansbury?
Dr. Sylvia Dunn is Karen Black, which makes this my favorite episode of the show.
Lt. Casey is played by Ray Girardin.
Sheila Saxon is Nancy Lee Grahn, who has been on General Hospital and Santa Barbara.
Albert Cromwell is played by Robert Gray.
Hurd Hatfield, who was Dorian Gray in the 1945 movie, is William Readford.
Edward Mulhare from Knight Rider! He’s Richard Bennett.
Harry McGraw is back and he’s always Jerry Orbach.
Robert Rhine plays Cotter Smith.
Sal Domino is played by Vic Tayback! Yes!
Background roles are played by Alan Craig, Lyle Howry, Paul King, George Sasaki, Nico Stevens, Leland Sun, Manny Weltman, Marvin Newman, Jean Vander Pul (the voice of Wilma Flintstone!), Howard Murohy, Allysia Sneed, Sterling Swanson, David Ankrum and Rebecca Street.
What happens?
Sorry to all the Edward Mulhare fans, but he’s soon killed because of the diary of Evangeline, the Marilyn Monroe of JB Fletcher’s universe. Who else wanted the diary? Everyone. Producer Sheila Saxon and director Saul Domino, who want to make a sleazy movie I would totally watch. Doctor Sylvia Dunn, Evangeline’s psychiatrist, must have some secrets. Or is it Robert Rhine, a lawyer trying to keep the diary quiet for his client?
Harry McGraw keeps Jessica out of jail, seeing as how her client just fell dead out of a wardrobe. Harry also has a black eye from allergies. She takes him back to her hotel to put the medicine on for him, which we all know is just a story, so that I have a section to fill out about Harry McGraw Dogging Jessica later. But no, someone has broken in and torn the room up more than Harry wants to rip up that Cabot Cove Caboose, but luckily, she has hidden the diary in a chess set she bought for dick in glass Seth back home.
When Jessica goes back to the auction house, the owner is dead, and she gets caught standing over the body. She asks the cops why they think she would want to kill the man, and he answers as any law enforcement should: “Beats me, Mrs Fletcher, but every time I find a dead body, you seem to be in the neighborhood.”
Anyways, between Harry dating the producer, him sneaking out with the diary and multiple suspects, this episode is filled with many a twist, many a turn.
Who did it?
Albert Cromwell, who was Evangeline’s first boyfriend.
Who made it?
This episode was directed by Seymour Robbie and written by J. Miyoko Hensley and Steven Hensley, who wrote Can You Feel Me Dancing? together.
Does Jessica get some?
No. I’d like to think that she and Harry have some September/September coupling, followed by a dinner at a diner, then maybe a furtive handjob in his parked car while she thinks about her dead husband. I’m a romantic.
Was it any good?
It has a scene where Karen Black goes nuts. It’s great.
Any trivia?
Angela Lansbury and Hurd Hatfield were co-stars in The Picture of Dorian Gray and became lifelong friends. She introduced him to Ireland and Hatfield lived in County Cork from the early 1970s.
Jessica spent $300 on that chess set, which is like $900 today. She must want Seth more than we know.
Give me a reasonable quote:
Harry McGraw: I must be nuts.
Jessica Fletcher: Harry, I know that was very difficult for you. But now that you’ve put that diary to rest, honestly, don’t you feel better?
Harry McGraw: Honestly? Jessica, you must be nuts.
What’s next?
Cabot Cove residents gather for a funeral and discover the coffin contains the wrong body.
26. THAR SHE GLOWS: There be a light house in this plot.
Irvin Berwick and Jack Kevan were nobodies at Universal.. Kevan hated working for makeup department boss Bud Westmore, who took all the publicity ahead of the people who actually did the work. They formed Vanwick Productions and became independent producers and seeing as how Kevan had overseen the manufacture of the costumes for Creature from the Black Lagoon, why not make their own version? Using the feet of the mutant from This Island Earth and the hands of The Mole People, the diplovertebron was born.
Universal helped out, believe it or not. As they felt bad about so many of their technical people being laid off, they let them work on this film and gave the production discounts on equipment.
Sturges (John Harmon), the lighthouse keeper, is convinced that his daughter Lucille (Jeanne Carmen, who started dancing at the age of 13 before becoming a trick shot golfer before leaving her husband and hooking up with alleged mobster Johnny Rosselli, who introduced her to Sinatra, who in turn took her to Hollywood. She’s in The Three Outlaws, which has Neville Brand as Butch Cassidy and Alan Hale Jr. as the Sundance Kid. She was also in Untamed Youth and was the reason why Eddie Cochoran covered “Jeannie, Jeannie, Jeannie.” While working as a pin-up, she met R0selli again, who told her to leave Hollywood because of her friendship with the Kennedys and Marilyn Monroe, so she dyed her hair, got married, and had kids in Scottsdale. She is a bad girl, so he keeps losing his mind at everything she does.
He’s a weird dude who leaves food for the monster and keeps telling people that there’s such a thing, which drives the cops nuts. Well, there is a monster —a long-extinct prehistoric man-creature that rips off people’s heads.
How many people does it kill? Enough that diner owner Kochek (Frank Arvidson) has to open up his freezer to Constable George Matson (Forrest Lewis) and let him hang the headless bodies there. As for the town doctor, well, that’s voiceover actor Les Tremayne.
Berwick went on to make Strange Compulsion, The Street Is My Beat, The 7th Commandment, Hitch Hike to Hell, the Christian movie Suddenly the Light and Malibu High. As Darcia, he made the softcore film Ready for Anything! and was also the associate producer of Larry Buchanan’s The Loch Ness Horror. This is the only movie Kevan ever produced, but he would write The Street Is My Beat and The 7th Commandment. Screenwriter H. Haile Chace went on to direct and write the sexploitation movie Paradisio and the scare film V.D.
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