13. MAD(E) FOR TV: Any 70’s feature length that was made specifically for television.
Amanda Hilton (Shelley Winters) is lost. Her daughter committed suicide after an affair come wrong and the only happiness she can find lies in torturing Frank Klaner (Bradford Dillman), a man who she thinks is behind the death of her child, a man who she now has inside a cage in her basement.
Based on the novel There Was an Old Woman by Elizabeth Davis, this made for TV movie was directed by Jud Taylor and written by Joseph Stefano, who wrote the screenplay for Psycho. The same novel was made into Inn of the Frightened People, which has Joan Collins in it.
Frank’s wife Dianne (Carol Eve Rossen)has hired Mark Hembric (Stuart Whitman), who may be a psychic. He may not. Hey, Frank may be guilty of the crime, too. You know how the 70s work. Things are quite ambiguous. But guess what? Dianne really does have mental powers!
Look — the world needs more movies where Shelley Winters serves drug-filled peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and threatens businessmen with an axe while screaming at the highest of registers.
It’s 71 minutes long. It would have been three hours on the CBS Late Night Movie.
12. IT’S A REAL FREAK SCENE, JACK: A groovy 60’s grinder.
Tobe Hooper’s first movie, which he co-wrote with Kim Henkel, is a story about a weird house in Texas, which is definitely a theme Hooper would come back to, but this one has a strange presence in the basement that starts influencing the hippies who have decided to live there.
Until the 2009 South by Southwest Festival, this movie was thought lost. What people saw was aJean-Luc Godard-influenced film that those in Austin in 1969 said was, well, Austin in 1969. It’s also a shambling, shaggy narrative where time doesn’t matter, where you take a long tour of the city, where things go fast, go slow, go weird, go introspective. Two couples, one established, one new, have to navigate a tumultuous time.
People take baths. Have psychedelic love scenes. Drive cars into fields, attack them, blow them up. Balloons appear in the woods. A man swordfights himself. It’s just what you’d expect from a movie made in 1969 that doesn’t want to be a Hollywood tale of hippies but one made by and for.
It starts with a woman coming to Texas on the back of a truck, wishing for big dreams. His next film would end with a woman leaving Texas on the back of a truck, escaping from a nightmare.
11. GOLDEN OLDIES: Post-war/50’s movies, from the schlock to the awes.
Robert Breer, who created this, said “In all my work I tried to amaze myself with something, and the only way you can amaze yourself is to create a situation in which an accident can happen.” His father, Carl, was an automotive engineer who designed the Chrysler Airflow and also created a 3-D camera that he used to take photos on vacations. Breer went to Stanford, hoping to follow his father as an engineer, when he discovered Mondrian and became an artist. Moving to Paris in 1949 and staying for a decade, he returned to America to work within pop art and teach film at Cooper Union.
Eyewash is a combination of geometric shapes and photography, all hand colored by the artist. It moves way faster than you can imagine, seeing as this came sixy years ago, and is over before you know it. It’s a study in movement and color that you may want to watch more than once. I know that I did.
10. THE FIRST WAVE: One made by an indigenous filmmaker or has indigenous cast members.
Directed and written by Rodrick Pocowatchit, who also plays Dax Wildhorse, The Dead Can’t Dance is a zombie movie about three Native Americans — Guy Ray Pocowatchit is Ray Wildhorse and T.J. Williams is his son Eddie — who run out of gas and walk into there being no room in hell, as the line is read.
Eddie has really been raised by Dax, his uncle, while his father Ray drinks away his days. On their way to Eddie’s college, everything falls apart. Now, this is a horror movie, but not a great one. But the fact that the Native American leads are so convincingly being themselves while also not being the finest of actors give this a lot of charm. Their identity doesn’t feel forced. It feels authentic.
It looks like the lowest of low budgets.
Yet I love the concept: an airborne disease turns everyone into zombies except for those with Native American blood, which makes them immune. I wish Pocowatchit had the money and crew to make this a high end production but maybe it would lose the charm that it has now. He’s also made a time travel film called Red Hand, a drama called Sleepdancer and Dancing On the Moon, which has three Native Americans also getting stranged yet in this story we’re more concerned with characters learning who they are and not at all about zombie end of the world horror.
Gary Screams for You (2022): Gary (Cody McGlashan), a campus security guard, discovers his animalistic side when his obsession with a viral video leads him down a very dark path. The filmmakers have said that it’s “a cry for help, a love letter, a Greek tragedy, a superhero origin story, an ode to madness.” It’s also the spec for a potential full length movie as well.
Gary is an undiagnosed and unmedicated bipolar guy experiencing his first manicandpsychoticepisode. It’s also based on the creator’s real life experience. And I love the kind of hype that says that this movie is “a story about infinite realities, eternal life, total anarchy, becoming a god and what it means to be both human and inhuman.”
Co-directed by Nolan Sordyl and Cody McGlashan, who also wrote the movie, this movie has more than one moment of absolute strangeness, which I completely endorse. Well made, too.
Godspeed (2021): Directed and written by Teddy Padilla (The Party Slasher, Ultra Violence) this has a man (Logan Miller, Escape Room) blackmailing a woman (Olivia Scott Welch, Fear Street) into teaching him her bank robbing secret. Well, he learns it, to his detriment. This is a really good looking film that, unlike so many shorts I’ve seen lately, has a beginning/middle/end and tells an incredibly rich and complete story in just ten minutes.
Where so many shorts are just test runs for longer movies that go on and on and never expand the feeling of the original, this is the perfect length and honestly couldn’t be improved with more time.
Good Boy (2022): Eros Vlahos has made a movie that I completely understand: a woman is hired to be a dog watcher and must deal with a Pomeranian who wants to kill everyone. Seriously, his tag says “A Normal Dog on one side and “Run” scrawled into the other. This film has some amazing angles, including one dog POV shot where he keeps nodding to the bowl of food that must be filled. You know, I live with a long haired chihuahua pomeranian chupacabra mix that I fear might kill me at any moment. So yeah, this movie reached me on a level that went beyond anything else I’ve seen in so long. This is what it’s like every day when my wife leaves, as a small dog stares at me and shakes and makes noises that sound straight out of a 70s Satanic movie.
Hairsucker (2022): Directed and written by Paddy Jessop and Michael Jones, this movie has somehow exceeded how disgusting I thought it would be and now, if I even think about it for a little more than a few seconds, I get physically sick which is a major accomplishment for a movie to make these days. Then again, I have to snake the shower every few months and man, I could use the creature from this, as long as I don’t wake up and it’s scalping me and getting blood all over the place.
This is really simple but man. It lives up to the title. Hair sucking. Who knew? And great, now I feel like I’m going to vomit again. Consider it high praise.
Hell Gig (2022): A struggling comedian tries to win a local standup competition, which sounds normal, but then we learn that she’s been infected by a demon who eats anyone she envies. And her best friend is also in the competition.
Gale is also a stand up, so obviously, she gets what this feels like in the real world. And hopefully she doesn’t have a demon in her.
Bruce Bundy, who plays Maeve, was Octavia in The Hunger Games movies, while Jamie Loftus, who has done a lot of comedy work, is Eli. Both work really well together and I love the idea of a demonic figure standing in for the natural feelings when our friends become successful.
Huella (2021): Directed and written by Gabriela Ortega, this gorgeous short has Daniela (Shakila Barrera) escaping from the drudgery of her work-from-home customer service agent job when the ghost of her grandmother (Denise Blasor) who makes her consider if the fleeting moments of dancing she does upon her rooftop are enough.
Generally, ghosts come to us in films to shock or attempt to hurt us. Not so here, in a movie whose name means “fingerprint.” Ghosts can hopefully shock us from our set lives and help us change the path of our lives. This movie only has fourteen minutes and yet does so much with them.
Kickstart My Heart (2022): Director and writer Kelsey Bollig survived a near-death experience to tell this story of, well, a near-death experience. Lilly (Emma Pasarow) must survive three levels of living hell to return from the near-dead which ends up looking like scenes from horror movies and Mortal Kombat, which I can totally endorse.
You have to love when someone tells an incredibly personal story and does it with fight scenes involving ninjas and demons. More people should follow the model that this film has set, but then again, this is so original and well-done, they’ll find themselves wanting in comparison.
The Last Queen of Earth (2020): In this world, Y2K really happened, so a farmer named Zebediah (Travis Farris) gets to live out his dream of wearing women’s clothes, which yeah, it’s going to upset everyone on every side and not win, but that’s the way the world works. I’ve seen people upset that it pretty much leans into everything people laugh at about guys dressing up like women and kind of makes it a joke, so yeah. Look, I write about Jess Franco movies so I’m not going to solve this issue. This movie looks really nice, has a good pace and Y2K actually ending humanity is a good idea.
Director Michael Shumway also composes music for films, while writer Lex Hogan has worked as a script supervisor. I’d like the see what else they can both create.
Last Request (2022): Greg (Michael Greene) is on his death bed and requests that Even (Tim Casper), his high school bully who has turned his life around and become a man of God, comes and fulfills a very specific request: to listen to the angel that lives inside his rectum.
Yeah, this is a simple joke that you can see coming, but you have to admit that it’s pretty funny. The talent is great and director Daniel Thomas King, who co-wrote the script with Ryan Kindhal, has added the right tension to make it even more hilarious.
9. FULL MOON FEVER: Since the “heavenly body” is out tonight, a lycanthrope story seems just right.
Richard Daninsky (Jay Richardson) is the latest in the line of the Daninsky family, a bloodline that also includes noted werewolf Waldemar (Paul Naschy). He’s just inherited a castle filled with hidden treasure, so he brings a reality show into the home and you guessed it, Elizabeth Bathory (Michele Bauer!) shows up to pull the silver dagger out of Waldemar’s body just in time for him to be unleashed on a bevy of sex scene having individuals — and couples — like Evan Stone, Monique Alexander, Beverly Lynn, Jacy Andrews, Stephanie Bentley and Danielle Petty.
Directed and written by Fred Olen Ray, this was made at the same time as Countess Dracula’s Orgy of Blood, also shot in America and starring Naschy.
Re-released as The Unliving, this was shot by Gary Graver. And come on, if you have to make a softcore horror movie and could get Naschy in it, wouldn’t you? But still, it’s a Cinemax-style sex movie with long scenes with no genitals and people dry humping while Paul Naschy is in full makeup, just waiting to go on and do his werewolf thing. His wife was in the hospital sick in America while they made this, he barely spoke the language and he had to be confronted by all this U.S.A. softcore and how disconcerting is that? And it’s his last werewolf movie? I mean, that’s either jubilant that he went out in a movie with so much balling or sad and it’s late on a Saturday and I’ve taken too many edibles so I think it makes me wistful.
I am all for Michelle Bauer being Bathory and doing a Black Sabbath opening. More of that.
8. THE MONSTER MASH: Multiple monsters in one movie? That’s a graveyard smash!
Dr. Lawrence Orlofski (Allan Berendt) has just bought a new house and moved his wife Regina (Hope Stansbury, who wrote Vapors and also appears in Milligans’s Depraved!, The Degenerates and The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here!) — “My wife doesn’t like the daylight hours. Rather, I should say daylight doesn’t agree with her.” — in along with their three servants, Orlando (Michael Fischetti), Carrie (Patricia Gaul) and Carlotta (Pichulina Hempi).
If this is your first Milligan movie, you may be wondering why everyone is screaming at one another. If you’re a fan of his work, you instantly get excited as soon as people start raising their voices.
Regina is a corpse but as soon as she’s injected with blood, she becomes young again. She’s angry that she can no longer be in the sunlight, all while the servants hold umbrellas over her and prepare her meals. She and the doctor seem to despise one another with her saying, “Go to hell,” and him answering, “We’re there already.”
Meanwhile, there are carniverous plants in the basement that need to be fed with blood from Carlotta’s brain. Also, the doctor’s name is really Lawrence Talbot, but this movie doesn’t need to explain that to you and you better get the reference yourself. Also also, Carrie’s brother visits, which allows her to give the audience at least some background: “There is an abnormal distribution of tissue and blood cells which makes up her physical structure. These plants which Dr. Orlofski and I have found are the only things that will bring a normal balance.” Then she makes a move on her brother, who runs right into Regina’s room and immediately gets a meat cleaver to the brain and acid poured all over himself. Also also also — this movie has a lot going on while also seeming glacial which is a totally Milligan balance — Dr. Orlofski is having an affair with Prudence (Pamela Adams), the secretary of Carl Root (John Wallowitch), the lawyer in charge of his father’s estate who is stealing money and oh I forgot to tell you, the doctor is also a werewolf.
Regina eats a mouse in one cut, I mean, literally chopping it in half and gulping it down as if this was made in Italy. And then there’s Petra, Keeper of Graves (Eve Crosby), an old woman who watches the doctor rut around with that secretary in her cemetery and fills in Regina on that secret; she’s was also the mistress of Orlofski’s father. Well, now she’s dealing with the daughter of Dracula.
Shot in Milligan’s St. George mansion located in Staten Island — I wonder how much that inspired the TV series version of What We Do In the Shadows — this movie is a period film and under seventy minutes and an abrupt marital fight into a flaming finale, capped by Dr. Frankenstein moving in next.
This movie is not of our world. It’s not of our reality. It did, however, play double features with Legacy of Blood and with Chinese Hercules under the alternate title Black Nightmare in Blood.
7. THE 7TH OFFERING: Watch the 7th film in a franchise in honor of the 7th year of the challenge.
Even at 59 years old and in bad health, Peter Cushing insisted upon performing a stunt where he jumped from a table onto a monster’s back, getting spun all over the place and then stabbing it with a needle filled with sedatives. He also designed his own wig for this, but later said that it made him look like Helen Hayes.
Released as a double feature with Captain Kronos – Vampire Hunter, this is the last gasp era of Hammer. Who cares? I love how all of their Frankenstein movies realize that the doctor himself is the main character and the monsters are interchangeable.
Dr. Carl Victor is really Frankenstein, who survived the fire at the end of The Horror of Frankenstein and now works in an insane asylum thanks to his blackmail of director Adolf Klauss (John Stratton). Dr. Simon Helder (Shane Briant) has been arrested as a sorcerer yet he is the exact spark that the old doctor needs to keep making his creations. The young man doesn’t need to know people are getting killed for their parts.
Frankenstein has made a new beast: the ape-like Herr Schneider (David Prowse, who would make another movie with Cushing the very next year that may be better known than this) who has been kept alive after trying to kill himself. The doctor has given him the hands of a recently deceased sculptor, sewn on by Angel (Madeline Smith), the mute daughter of Klauss who has not spoken since her father tried to touch her. Seeing as how the fire destroyed Frankenstein’s hands, she is incredibly important to him.
The end of this movie is near comical. Simon and Angel are shocked when the creature is destroyed by inmates, torn to shreds. Frankenstein just starts cleaning up and getting ready to make another living dead thing; he’s been through this so many times that it’s basically old hat at this point.
Directed by Terence FIsher and written by Anthony Hinds, this movie also has a scene where Baron Frankenstein bites down on the severed artery of the monster. All that blood? It’s real. Blood that could no longer be used for transfusions was sourced from the blood bank and that’s what’s getting all over the place.
DAY 6. BEE AFRAID, BEE VERY AFRAID: Buzz through a bee picture, there’s a whole swarm to choose from.
Based on Arthur Herzog’s novel, this is from a time when our greatest fear was bees. Killer bees. So many bees that there was movie after movie reminding young me that I was going to be killed by bees. It was not a fun time to be a neurotic child.
Dr. Bradford Crane (Michael Caine) is our only defense from the black mass that is formed by tons of enraged African bees. He has help from the military, which doesn’t believe the danger posed by bees, and another scientist, Helena Anderson (Katherine Ross). The bees that have taken over the military base have spread to a small town in the middle of a summer festival, which means that the bees are about to sting everyone to death.
This is the kind of movie where bees swarm into a nuclear reaction and wipe out an entire town, including scientists Dr. Hubbard (Richard Chamberlain) and Dr. Andrews (Jose Ferrer). Where Dr. Walter Krim (Henry Fonda) injects anti-bee serum into his bloodstream and instantly dies. A place that has Lee Grant, Olivia de Havilland, Ben Johnson (also in The Savage Bees), Patty Duke, Slim Pickins, Bradford Dillman, Fred McMurray and yes, Cameron Mitchell all up against those little stingers.
There were approximately 22 million bees in this movie, 800,000 of them surgically altered to not be able to sting. There was so much talent making this, like Jerry Goldsmith scoring (the score uses the notes B-E-E), Sterling Silliphant scripting (how does one man go from In the Heat of the Night to Village of the Damned, The Towering Inferno to Over the Top?) and disaster king Irwin Allen directing. All for a really dumb and kinda way too long movie about bees. This was such a disaster at the box office that it ended disaster movies. But let me tell you that six-year-old me couldn’t even watch the trailers for this, as I was convinced that the bees would fly out of the TV and murder me.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Thanks to Craig Edwards for reminding me this was Irwin Allen and not Bert I. Gordon.
Director and writer Amanda Kramer (Ladyworld, Please Baby Please) has created this exploration of the first ever television special for Sissy St. Claire (Sophie von Haselberg. It’s an evening full of music and laughter, glamour and entertainment, as the ad copy goes, but Sissy’s live event quickly begins to become a nightmare thanks to a mysterious masked man.
Sissy is determined to make it no matter the cost and in the past world of entertainment, let’s say late 70s to mid 80s, that meant getting your own variety special on TV. Well, she sure does, but as each song plays, the lighting gets stranger, the mood gets more ominous, the hair gets just a bit more out of control.
This was the world where performers could compare themselves to God’s favorite Son — where’s Bobby Bittman, Sammy Maudlin and William B. Williams to hype her show? — and say things like, “I’m just dying to be known.” Her psychic guest refuses to even make physical contact with her, claiming that she’s demonic. Yet through it all, the video effects distorting the screen, the masked man silently judging and just Sissy all alone on stage, even doing a two-woman sketch all by herself, she remains what they call a trooper.
The only downside I can say of this is that I wished it stuck to the format of TV shows and was under an hour — with commercials trimmed — and not as long as it is. The idea comes through early, the rest feels like endless riffing on the same notes. But what it does play is strange and wonderful enough to keep you watching.
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