Category Archives: Made for TV Movie

Murder, She Wrote S4 E6: It Runs in the Family (1987)

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Jessica’s British cousin, Emma MacGill (Angela Lansbury!), is charged with an old flame’s murder.

Season 4, Episode 5: It Runs In the Family (November 1, 1987)

You see, most folks know Angela Lansbury as Jessica Fletcher, the Cabot Cove death-magnet who publishes paperbacks and stumbles over more corpses than the entire Corleone family. But the real heads know that the producers occasionally let Lansbury completely cut loose and play her own identical British cousin, Emma McGill. When Emma’s on the screen, the show stops being a cozy New England procedural and transforms into a full-blown British melodrama. We’re talking gothic manor houses, inheritance disputes and family members who hate each other.

Who’s in it, outside of Angela Lansbury?

  • Richard Johnson (Lord Geoffrey Constable): The doomed love interest in a smoking jacket here, but genre fans worship him as the desperate Dr. Menard from Lucio Fulci’s legendary, eye-gouging, shark-fighting gore-fest Zombie, as well as Sergio Martino’s The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail.
  • Carolyn Seymour (Pauline Constable): The insecure, overcompensating villainess of the manor, but genre fans know her as the resilient Abby Grant from the bleak, post-apocalyptic BBC cult series Survivors and a beautifully icy Romulan Commander in Star Trek: The Next Generation.
  • Anthony Newley (Insp. Frost): The baffled local inspector, but genre fans know him as the avant-garde mastermind who directed, scored and starred in the unhinged, deeply surrealist 1969 psychedelic comedy-drama Can Heironymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness?
  • Ian Abercrombie (Dr. Blandings): The stuffy aristocratic physician, but you know him as the robed, Necronomicon-guarding Wise Man from Sam Raimi’s medieval-slapstick horror masterpiece Army of Darkness.
  • Mark Lindsay Chapman (Johnny Constable): The unpleasant nephew who sneaks poisoned chocolates, but he was also the mutated, maniacal arch-nemesis Dr. Anton Arcane from the USA Network’s beloved ’90s Swamp Thing TV series.
  • Jane Leeves (Gwen Petrie): The bit-part housemaid way before her Frasier fame, but she was also one of the high-kicking dancers in the legendary “Every Sperm is Sacred” musical extravaganza from Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life.
  • Christopher Hewett (Humphrey Defoe): The family lawyer looking over the will, but genre fans know him way before his Mr. Belvedere sitcom days as the flamboyant, dress-wearing theatrical assistant Roger De Bris in Mel Brooks’s comedy classic The Producers.
  • John Standing (Arthur Constable): The only sane member of the family heritage, but genre fans know him from Peter Greenaway’s visually obsessive arthouse drama The Belly of an Architect and the gritty, star-studded WWII thriller The Eagle Has Landed.
  • John David Bland (Derek Constable): The spoiled brat kid who gets shot in the arm for a frame-up, but genre fans know him as the ultimate, leather-jacket-wearing ’90s television hunk from the syndicated, high-camp action explosion Acapulco H.E.A.T.
  • Rosemary Murphy (Sybil Constable): The legendary, icy matriarch who drives her daughter-in-law to commit double homicide just by turning up her nose. She played Sara Delano Roosevelt in Eleanor and Franklin, but you may have also seen her in To Kill a Mockingbird and A Case of Rape. 
  • Lester Fletcher (Rev. Twilley): The pious man of God trying to keep the peace. He was also the dramatic, silk-scarf-wearing elite art critic from the high-camp, neon-soaked ’80s detective classic Remington Steele.
  • Pamela Kosh (Mrs. Dexter-Hundley): The ultimate disapproving upper-crust aristocrat, but genre fans know her as the deeply eccentric, bird-brained substitute teacher Miss Davis who tried to bring British discipline to Bayside High in Saved by the Bell.
  • Peter Browne (Butler): The stiff-lipped servant carrying the poisoned herring on a silver platter. He also has a career in stunt-adjacent, blink-and-you-miss-him background work across high-concept ’80s action cheese like Knight Rider and Airwolf.
  • Peter Ashton (Burt): The local working-class bloke hanging around the edges of the estate. He was a certified background legend of British television, having spent years playing various soldiers, sailors and sketchy dockworkers in everything from Doctor Who to The Twilight Zone.
  • D.J. Sullivan (Pru): The gossiping village local keeping tabs on the manor house. You may recognize her as Mrs. Williams from the Killer Tomatoes movies.

What happens?

We open at a lavish family dinner at Blackraven Manor. The atmosphere is so thick with snobbery you could cut it with a silver butter knife. Sybil and Pauline are treating Emma like she’s a stray dog that wandered into the dining room. They think she’s a gold digger after Geoffrey’s fortune.

But Geoffrey? He’s glowing. The doctor said he was a goner, but The Power of Love is real, folks. Emma gets up, winks at the piano player, and launches into a lively rendition of “Spoon With Me” (a total actor allusion to Lansbury’s 1946 flick Till the Clouds Roll By). Geoffrey is captivated. Pauline looks like she swallowed a lemon.

Later, in the library, Geoffrey pours his heart out to Emma, mentioning his old friends Oliver and Kitty Trumbull. He tells her he’s rewriting his will.

The next afternoon, the family gathers for high tea and snacks. Geoffrey enjoys his favorite treat: pickled herring. Ten minutes later, he’s clutching his throat and collapsing onto the Persian rug. The local inspector arrives, and because the family points their manicured fingers right at Emma, she becomes the prime suspect. But Emma isn’t Jessica Fletcher’s cousin for nothing. 

Emma starts snooping. She realizes something fishy. Geoffrey’s ninety-year-old father died a month ago. Everyone blamed old age, but Emma realizes both men were poisoned. Meanwhile, family drama boils over. Derek demands money from his dad for a ski trip. Arthur, stepping up as the new Viscount, finally grows a backbone.

To throw the cops off the scent, Pauline does the unthinkable: she shoots her own son, Derek, in the arm, trying to frame Johnny (who was already a suspect because he sneaked grandfather those poisoned chocolates). But Emma pieces it all together. The snobbery, the timing, the inheritance. She gathers everyone in the grand drawing room for the classic Fletcher-style reveal.

Emma lays it out: Pauline killed the old Viscount, then killed Geoffrey, all so Arthur would inherit the title immediately, making Pauline the new Viscountess Blackraven. Then, she produces the evidence, as she’s found the poison trace in Pauline’s vanity.

Pauline collapses into a sobbing, pathetic heap on the floor as Sybil realizes that her snobbery literally killed her father and her brother.

Who made it?

Another episode by TV vet Walter Grauman, written by series creator Peter S. Fischer.

Does Jessica dress up and act stupid? Does she get some?

Yes. A whole episode of Emma! 

Was it any good?

Yes! A classic episode even without J.B.

Any trivia?

Jessica Fletcher never appears in person. This is the only time in the entire series where this happens. 

Richard Johnson revealed that while he was on set getting poisoned by pickled herring for this episode, it was his long-time partner-in-crime, Angela Lansbury, who staged a full-blown career intervention. The two of them went way back. They’d shared the screen two decades earlier in Terence Young’s costume-comedy romp The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders. By the time 1987 rolled around, Johnson had largely stepped away from the camera to play the suit, running his own outfit called United British Artists. He was busy producing heavy-hitting arthouse fare like Harold Pinter’s Turtle Diary, Nicolas Roeg’s desert-island drama Castaway, and the utterly devastating Jack Clayton flick The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne. But Lansbury wasn’t having any of it. She looked her old pal dead in the eye and laid down the law, telling him: “Anybody can be a producer, Richard. You actually have talent as an actor, and you are completely wasting it!” Do you think she saw Island of the Fishmen?

Give me a reasonable quote:

Emma: “Well, Jessica always said mystery has a way of finding our family. I suppose it really does run in the blood.”

What’s next?

The night deputy, who has been paying attention to various Cabot Cove ladies, needs Jessica’s help when he becomes the prime suspect in his wife’s murder.

Sizzlin’ Summer of Subterranean Psychotronica 2026: Poor Devil (1973)

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Week 1 (June 21 – 27) – Welcome to HELL

The summer’s here, so get ready to broil!

Sammy Davis Jr. was a fascinating, walking contradiction of a man. He was an absolute dynamo who could smoke four packs of cigarettes a day, draw and fire a Colt Single Action Army Revolver in a quarter of a second and effortlessly balance being a parody of himself while simultaneously parodying himself. But beneath the Mr. Show Business grin was a life of unbelievable grit and complexity.

Davis battled rampant racism his entire career, even from the wings of the stage where his own Rat Pack cohorts would casually toss racial slurs like “smokey” at him. In a searing interview with Roots author Alex Haley in Playboy, Sammy talked about the first time he truly collided with American racism: in the Army. He was brutally beaten just for looking at a white female commanding officer while she gave him orders. He woke up with his body covered in anti-Black graffiti and doused in turpentine. Yet that very night, and every night after, he was still expected to perform for the troops. That’s where Sammy learned he’d have to fight just to be respected. Once he broke into Hollywood, he stayed in by any means necessary, even if it meant putting on a grin that sometimes came off as insincere.

Despite his massive fame, he was never allowed full membership in the Hollywood elite. His romances with white actresses like Kim Novak rubbed the establishment the wrong way. And while he was a massive financial engine for the Civil Rights Movement, his relationship with the Black community was incredibly complex. He earned plenty of ire when he publicly hugged and supported Richard Nixon in 1972. But look at the context: Sammy was originally a Democrat who campaigned heavily for JFK in 1960 and RFK in 1968. Yet, John F. Kennedy notoriously revoked Sammy’s invitation to the presidential inauguration because he had married white actress May Britt. Nixon, on the other hand, invited Sammy to be the first Black guest to ever sleep at the White House. You can see why his allegiances shifted.

Once, Jack Benny asked Sammy about his handicap on the golf course. Sammy didn’t miss a beat: “Handicap? Talk about a handicap. I’m a one-eyed Negro Jew.”

That brings us to the 1970s, where Sammy fully embraced the free-swinging sex scene of the era. He reportedly learned how to deep throat from porn star Linda Lovelace herself and it’s widely believed he was first introduced to Anton LaVey’s Church of Satan during an orgy at his own star-studded nightclub, The Factory.

It makes a weird kind of sense. And it all perfectly aligned with a bizarre NBC television pilot Sammy starred in, one that actually led to him accepting an honorary second-degree membership in the Church of Satan.

Originally airing on February 14, 1973, Poor Devil stars Sammy Davis Jr. as, well, Sammy. He’s a low-level bumbling demon who has completely screwed up his job for the last thousand or so years. Now, he’s desperate to succeed and prove his worth to his big boss in Hell: Lucifer, played by the towering, majestic Christopher Lee. Honestly, if you don’t immediately go hunt this up on YouTube, just stop and appreciate the sheer madness of Dracula himself playing Satan opposite a Rat Pack icon.

To finally win over the dark lord, Sammy is given a seemingly simple task: he has to convince a miserable, downtrodden accountant named Burnett J. Emerson—played by the great Jack Klugman!—to sell his soul.

What does Klugman get in return? Oh, just total wealth for seven years and the chance to get sweet, petty revenge on his insufferable boss, who happens to be played by none other than Adam West! It’s a television fanatic’s dream. The catch, of course, is that after those seven years are up, Klugman is headed straight to Hell for eternity. As Sammy describes it, Hell is “a lot like Miami, only less humid.”

Sammy flirted with the Church of Satan heavily around the production of this flick. He painted one fingernail blood-red, wore a heavy Baphomet medallion and flashed the horns from time to time on stage before finally dropping out of the scene by the mid-1970s (right around the time Anton LaVey went into seclusion).

You really have to wonder where this show would have gone if NBC had picked it up as a weekly series. Would Sammy tempt a different guest-star celebrity every week? Would Klugman have stayed on as a regular? Would LaVey have made a cameo in the sweeps episode?

Instead, all we are left with is this 1973 pilot. It’s a wonderful artifact of early-70s network strangeness, completely devoid of a laugh track and dripping with overt occult imagery. It was a wild, lawless time to be alive, and it’s a era of television we will never truly see again. But hey, if the only thing that ultimately came out of this bizarre experiment was the infamous, real-life photo of Sammy Davis Jr. hanging out with Anton LaVey and future Temple of Set leader Michael Aquino, I’m calling Poor Devil an absolute, unholy success.

You can watch this on YouTube.

JUNESPLOITATION: Twilight Theater (1982)

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DAY 21. Free Space!

Aired on February 13, 1982, this 90-minute bizarro sketch comedy pilot was co-executive produced by Steve Martin. NBC was trying to figure out what to do to relieve the pressure on Saturday Night Live‘s grueling production schedule, so they preempted SNL for a week to give Steve’s brain-child a test drive. What we got was a head-on collision between old-school variety show cheese and the new-wave, cocaine-fueled, anarchic comedy of the early 80s.

The framing device is honestly the best part. It plays like a parody of Masterpiece Theatre, celebrating the show’s 25th season. The legendary Roddy McDowall hosts from a plush wingback chair, wearing a tuxedo and cape, seated beneath oil portraits of the cast members (women included), all in formal wear, holding pipes. It sets you up for some high-concept satire. Instead, you get greeted by a black guy in drag humming the theme from Gone With the Wind and then things get really weird.

Like any pilot, this thing throws everything at the wall to see what sticks. Some of it is pure late-night genius; some of it makes you wonder if the writers’ room was just a pile of loose scripts and paranoia.

  • Playhouse Minus-One: This is the absolute crown jewel of the special. It’s a Civil War melodrama where the camera is the main character, a Southern belle named Mary Lou. You play Mary Lou, and your dialogue flashes on the screen with stage directions, and actors like George Peppard, Michael York and Steve Martin wait patiently for you to deliver your lines at home. It culminates in Steve Martin aggressively making out with the camera lens.
  • Auto Interruptus: Steve Martin plays a guy driving a carpool of three dudes to work. He turns on a radio talk show only to hear his own wife blabbing to the host about his terrible sexual performance. The punchline? She’s sleeping with all three guys in his carpool. It’s a dark, cynical take on the mockery of 80s machismo.
  • Women Who Have Made It With Me: Martin Mull hosts a talk show where he interviews three of his ex-lovers, only for them to systematically dissect how completely unmemorable he was in bed.
  • The No-Arms Bandits: Martin Mull plays a bank robber with no arms. He holds up a couple with a gun in his mouth, but the victims can’t understand his muffled orders, and he steals their wallets out of their pockets using his teeth.
  • Party in My Pants: A literal interpretation of the phrase in a song written by Robert Haimer and Billy Mumy, better known as Barnes & Barnes. You watch well-dressed people shrink down and disappear into the giant pant cuff of a derelict’s trousers to dance to disco music. It’s a classic Steve Martin concept—absurd merely for the sake of being absurd.

Plus, you get Harry Anderson (right before Night Court fame) playing an overage grade-school pervert and a hidden-camera sketch where Steve Martin tries to romance a girl using a series of terrible visual puns (she asks for flowers, he brings her cooking flour; she tells him to “stuff it,” so he slam-dunks a basketball in his bedroom).

Because it’s 1982, the musical interludes are delightfully all over the place. You get a performance by the legendary Devo, some cowboy yodeling from Riders in the Sky and the Temple City Kazoo Band playing Strauss.

The critics at the time absolutely hated this. They complained about the obtrusive, unconvincing laugh track that sounded like a drunk guy guffawing at his own jokes. They called it tedious, juvenile and a pale imitation of Fridays or SNL.

But looking back at it now through the lens of obscure television history? It’s a fascinating time capsule. It sits right in that awkward transitional phase where comedy was trying to evolve past the Carol Burnett Show format but hadn’t quite figured out how to sustain that new-wave, anarchic energy for a full 90 minutes.

The cast includes Candy Clark, Rosemary Clooney (singing on a show called “Common Nightmares”), Pam Dawber, Shelley Duvall, Bill Murray, Carl Reiner, Rick Moranis, Mr. T, Leslie Neilsen, Betty Thomas and even Pee-wee Herman, fresh off his Groundlings days and his 1981 HBO special, performing a bit of The Pee-wee Herman Show on network TV before the world even knew what hit ’em. This was written by Jim Fisher and Jim Staahl from SCTV; Carmen Finestra, the writer and executive producer who guided The Cosby Show and co-created Home Improvement; Gary Jacobs, who would go on to write for Newhart and create Empty Nest; SNL writer Kevin Kelton and sitcom vet Jeffrey Barron. They were joined in the writer’s room by executive producer Neal Israel, who, along with Pat Proft, pretty much shaped 80s movie humor. Or they made Police Academy. Director Perry Rosemond worked on a variety of shows and directed episodes of Bizarre.

It ends with Steve Martin doing his classic stand-up routine in front of a giant American flag, reciting the ridiculous things he believes in. There’s a second one of these with Leslie Nielsen hosting, and you better believe I’m looking for it now.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Tales from the Darkside S3 E1: The Circus (1986)

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“The Circus” is directed by Michael Gornick and penned by the master himself, George A. Romero. A cynical, muckraking journalist named Bragg (Kevin O’Connor) happens upon a ramshackle traveling freak show after a car wreck. He’s looking for his next big headline, and he thinks he’s found it in Dr. Nis (William Hickey), the eccentric proprietor of this nomadic carnival. Nis is only too happy to pull back the curtain, treating Bragg to a private tour of his performers, a collection of creatures that seem a little too real to be simple sideshow illusions.

Let’s talk about the creature design, because it’s the real star here. Forget suave, cape-swishing Lugosi. This vampire—brought to life with some gnarly, creature-feature practical effects—is all Nosferatu nightmare fuel. It’s animalistic, twitchy and genuinely unsettling, especially when it decides to make a snack out of a lamb right in front of our disgusted protagonist.

Then there’s the cast. Watching William Hickey and Kevin O’Connor go toe-to-toe is like watching a masterclass in genre acting. Hickey, in particular, carries a gravitas that grounds the ridiculous premise. The chemistry between the two is palpable; they are two sides of the same coin, each driven by their own rigid moral code, even if that puts them on a collision course.

The atmosphere here is thick with decay—that smell of sawdust, old canvas, and bad decisions. It’s a perfect example of what Romero could do when he was given a constrained set and a handful of talented character actors. It’s violent, it’s short and it’s devoid of a traditional villain  , which gives the whole affair a weirdly noble, melancholic edge that sticks with you long after the credits roll.

It’s not just a vampire episode; it’s a love letter to the dying art of the traveling freak show, wrapped in the dark, cynical bow of an 80s anthology classic.

JUNESPLOITATION: Ringo (1978)

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DAY 16: Free space!

Eight years after the biggest band in the world broke up, their least loved member Ringo Starr — “Ringo wasn’t even the best drummer in The Beatles” is a quote often attributed to John Lennon, but it actually comes from British comedian Jasper Carrott, who said it on Radio Live, a British talk show; John actually said that Ringo was “a damn good drummer” — was probably wondering what to do.

Most of the time, that was to party. He said of his friends and fellow Hollywood Vampires Nilsson and Keith Moon, “We weren’t musicians dabbling in drugs and alcohol; now we were junkies dabbling in music.”

Yet Ringo still had enough cachet in 1978 to turn that existential dread into a prime-time NBC special.

By the time of the filming,  he was miserable and depressed. He’d divorced Maureen Cox three years earlier, and in his outtakes, it’s said that he’s “testy, short-tempered and disinterested in working on the special.”

What a start, huh?

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Welcome to Ringo, a TV movie that sits comfortably in that sweet, strange spot between classic rock vanity project and absolute late-70s insanity. If you ever wondered what happened when the guys behind Police Academy got their hands on a Beatle and a copy of Mark Twain, well, here you go.

The premise is classic Prince and the Pauper, but instead of jolly old England, we’ve got Hollywood grime. Ringo plays himself—bored, pampered and totally over being famous—and he also plays his doppelgänger, Ognir Rrats, which is totally the Alucard trick. Then again, Ringo was in Son of Dracula.

While Ringo is being chauffeured around in limos and dealing with his horrid agent Marty Flesh (John Ritter), Ognir is out there selling maps to the stars’ homes, getting his bike pulverized by city buses and dodging an abusive father, played by Art Carney.

Let’s take a moment and talk about Art Carney. Perhaps best known for being Ed Norton on The Honeymooners, he also has some wild movies in his history. How about St. Helens, an HBO-TV movie with a Goblin soundtrack? Or being in Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson’s video for “Say Say Say?” Or playing Steeler’s owner Art Rooney in Fighting Back: The Story of Rocky Bleier? In 1978 alone, Carney played himself on Alice and was in Ringo and the Star Wars Holiday Special. 

As Norton would say, “Like we say in the sewer, time and tide wait for no man.” 

Anyway, Ringo and Ognir decide to swap lives for a few hours. Because, hey, why not? What could possibly go wrong?

Starr, now masquerading as Rrats, runs into a few 50s greasers (Greg Evigan of TV’s BJ and the Bear and possibly Steve De Jarnatt, who went on to direct Cherry 2000 and Miracle Mile, as well as write Strange Brew) who want to beat him up. But now that he’s Ringo, he has so much money that he can buy their fancy car and drive home instead of taking the bus. That’s when he met Rrats’ girlfriend Marquine (Carrie Fisher), and let me tell you, I broke the third commandment by exclaiming at the screen. 1978 dressed normal, hair down, casual California girl Carrie Fisher may be one of the biggest reasons I’ve found for believing in the Divine and now, I’ve said Her name in vain.

The real problem? Rrats’ father, who beats Ringo as Rrats into submission, right in front of his woman. Also: We’re to believe that Marquine is underage, as Ringo sings “You’re Sixteen” to her. 

Be better, Ringo. Or Rrats.

As for Rrats as Starr, he’s screwing everything up, even passing out before an appearance on The Mike Douglas Show and destroying his drum set, basically showing that he can’t play. Ringo gets so mad that he escapes and is arrested by Sgt. Suzanne “Pepper” Anderson and yes, that’s TV’s favorite police lady, Angie Dickinson. He gets out of jail thanks to Marquine, who takes him to the Ringo Starr concert.

Did I mention that this is narrated by George Harrison, and that he mentions The Ruttles?

Marty enlists the help of Dr. Nancy (that is his first name; he’s Vincent Price), who puts Rrats into a trance to remember that he’s really Ringo. Or Billy Shears, opening this all up to my “Paul Is Dead” belief system when George tries to convince the world that Ognir isn’t Ringo. It all wraps up and Ringo makes Ognir his road manager, but before a Ringo concert with his band, including Elton John’s bassist Dee Murray, Doctor John, Paul Revere and the Raiders member Keith Allison and Lon Van Eaton (who was on Apple Records along with his brother Derrek).

Throughout, Ringo keeps mentioning that “Yesterday” isn’t his song. But he does play versions of “Yellow Submarine,” “With a Little Help from My Friends” (complete with a tripped out ending), “Act Naturally,” “I’m the Greatest,” “A Man Like Me,” “Hard Times” and “Heart’s on My Sleeve.” Ringo comes across as a goofy guy who just happened to spend a long time with the world’s greatest songwriting duo and got to do some cool stuff, leaving him with tons of money to do, well, whatever he wanted.

I don’t think Ringo is untalented or a bad drummer, either. He’s also cool enough to write “Early 1970,” in which he fired back at Paul for flipping out on him, attacking the messenger over trying to figure out the dates that Paul’s solo album and Let It Be would be released after the band’s breakup. 

“Lives on a farm, got plenty of charm, beep, beep,

He’s got no cows, but he’s sure got a whole lotta sheep,

A brand new wife and a family, And when he comes to town I wonder if he’ll play with me.”

Later in the song, when he mentions John, Ringo sings, “And when he comes to town, I know he’s gonna play with me.”

The solo is by Harrison and follows the line, “‘Cause he’s always in town playing for you with me.”

Ringo being Ringo, he ends the song saying, “And when they come to town, I wanna see all three.”

Screenshot

Ringo is the kind of mid-tier network weirdness that could only come from 1978 and would only be fueled by cocaine. It was once a film broadcast only once, and then buried by time—only to be rescued by YouTube. The fact that Neal Israel and Pat Proft add just one more cherry on a cherry-rich top.

Then the credits.

After everyone’s name was said, the announcer said, “And a special thank-you to dialogue coach Seymour Cassel.” 

What?!? And that announcer? Peter Cullen. Optimus Prime.

This was all directed by Jeff Margolis, whose career includes tons of award shows and weird-out TV experiences like Twilight Time II, in which Leslie Nielsen hosts this, there’s a debate between G. Gordon Liddy and Moon Unit Zappa, and cast members include Dave Thomas, Fred Willard, Don Novello and Mr. T while the Go-Go’s and Toni Basil perform; the Mr. T educational video Be Somebody… or Be Somebody’s Fool!; an episode of Presenting Susan Anton; special for Olivia Newton-John, Perry Como, Captain & Tenille, Beatrice Arthur, Jaleel White and Frank Sinatra; and of course, being second-unit for 46 episodes of The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour.

Peace and love. Peace and love.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Murder, She Wrote S4 E5: The Way to Dusty Death (1987)

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A business tyrant’s sudden death puts Jessica on the trail of several of his suspicious company executives.

Season 4, Episode 4: The Way to Dusty Death (October 25, 1987)

When Jessica and the rest of the corporate bigwigs get the invite to a chairman’s secluded country estate, they think they’re there to fight for the throne. Instead, they find their host stone-cold dead. Turns out, he didn’t just invite them over for cocktails; he brought them all together to reveal he was playing them against each other and just as the knives were coming out, someone decided to stop talking and start killing.

Who’s in it, outside of Angela Lansbury?

  • Joanna Barnes (Lydia Barnett): A classic face of the 60s and 70s who was in everything from Spartacus to The War Wagon.
  • Richard Beymer (Morgan McCormack): Tony from West Side Story, but genre fans know him from his chilling turn in David Lynch’s Twin Peaks.
  • Lynn Carlin (Nicole): Best known for John Cassavetes’ Faces.
  • Nancy Dussault (Kate Dutton): A sitcom staple who brought a lot of charm to the screen during the golden age of TV guest spots. Muriel from Too Close for Comfort!
  • Jenilee Harrison (Serena): She was on Three’s Company and Dallas, but she’s logged enough appearances in TV mysteries to be considered part of the “we’ve seen you die in everything” club.
  • Richard Jaeckel (Dr. Leon Chatsworth): Now here’s a guy. A true character actor who showed up in everything from The Dirty Dozen to the horror-inflected Mako: The Jaws of Death and Grizzly. He fought nature throughout the drive-in era.
  • Andrea Marcovicci (Anne Hathaway): She’s got a resume that spans from high-brow drama to the Larry Cohen classic The Stuff.
  • Sandy McPeak (Spruce Osborne): A reliable heavy in countless 70s and 80s procedurals.
  • Joanna Pettet (Virginia McCormack): Total cult royalty. She was in the Bond spoof Casino Royale, but we know her for her roles in the horror flicks Welcome to Arrow Beach and the killer-house movie The Evil.
  • Lawrence Pressman (Tom Dutton): A veteran of the screen who turned up in The Hellstrom Chronicle and The Man in the Glass Booth.
  • Ray Walston (Q. L. Frubson): A legend. From the alien My Favorite Martian to the ultimate cool-but-mean teacher, Mr. Hand, in Fast Times at Ridgemont High.
  • Cornel Wilde (Duncan Barnett): A swashbuckling star of the 40s and 50s who turned into a real master of exploitation and survival horror later in his career. He directed and starred in the gritty, intense The Naked Prey.
  • Jay Robinson (Paddock): He was Caligula in The Robe, but he’s also in The Sword and the Sorcerer, Transylvania Twist and the mutant-mosquito disaster flick Skeeter.

Smaller roles are played by Hank Brandt, Bob Snead, E.R. Davies, Larry Carr, Dotty Ertel, Ben Pollock, Walter Smith and Flo Di Re.

What happens?

Jessica finds herself in the concrete jungle of New York City, trading her quiet life in Cabot Cove for the cold, hard world of high finance. She’s been roped into the board of directors for Barnett Industries, mostly because the chairman, Duncan Barnett, thinks having her name on the letterhead adds some class.

She just wants to make sure her local paper-mill stays open.

Duncan calls for a special weekend retreat at his townhouse on 63rd Street, and the air is thick with ambition. Everyone in the room is sweating, waiting for the news that he’s finally stepping down and handing over the keys to the kingdom.

When Duncan stands up and drops the bombshell—that he’s not going anywhere—the room turns toxic. It’s full-on Macbeth. We’ve got Morgan McCormack and his wife Virginia playing the power-couple, fueled by a cryptic reading from a psychic named Paddock that promises them the crown.

Then, someone decides that waiting for the natural order of succession is for suckers.

The next morning, the board realizes their beloved boss is dead. At first, it looks like a botched poisoning attempt. Morgan and Ginny had already spiked his brandy with digitalis and they scramble to cover their tracks when they realize he didn’t drink it. But J.B. isn’t buying the easy answer. She starts digging, realizing that in a house full of vipers, the person who actually pulled the trigger (or in this case, pushed the appliance) was the one nobody suspected.

Who did it?

The killer is Kate Dutton (was she tired of Cosmic Cow?). While the McCormacks were busy plotting and planting fake evidence, Kate went to Duncan to plead her husband’s case. When Duncan laughed in her face, she didn’t walk away. She pushed the television set right into his bathtub, killing him with a high-voltage jolt.

At the risk of being on a government watch list, this is my favorite way people get murdered in movies.

Kate was caught because she claimed to have heard a noise from another room that, given the layout of the townhouse, would have been physically impossible to hear.

Who made it?

It was directed by Nick Havinga, who directed episodes of Cliffhangers! and the TV movie made from one of the unfinished stories, The Girl Who Saved the World. This was written by Philip Gerson.

Does Jessica dress up and act stupid? Does she get some?

No. Come on! Jessica doesn’t even have a groove yet, much less is ready to get it back.

Was it any good?

It’s a nice change of pace from small town to big city.

Any trivia?

This was Cornel Wilde’s last role.

The title of this episode is quote from Macbeth:

“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”

The victims’ names are the same as the play and the character of Anne Hathaway is possibly named for Shakespeare’s wife.

Mrs. McCormack threatens Jessica with libel for something she said. Maybe she means slander.

Give me a reasonable quote:

Paddock: There are times when the forces of life combine to create a power where all things are possible, where a strong man can act with speed and decisiveness. For the timid, a moment never realized. For the bold, a moment that can catapult him to undreamed-of plateaus of personal wealth and power. Your will is extremely powerful, Mr. McCormack. It shall overpower those with whom you compete. And I can tell you, that will be soon, very soon.

What’s next?

Jessica’s British cousin, Emma MacGill is charged with an old flame’s murder. Get ready. This is where the show has her dressing up and acting like an idiot! This is also a British actor from American TV episode, with Christopher Hewett (Mr. Belvedere) and Jane Leeves (tossed salad and scrambled eggs) showing upo. Will Lynn Belvedere get killed or — even better — show Jessica a bit of the business? Or dare I dream of a sapphic tryst with Niles Crane’s love? Hurry back next week!

The Carpenters…Space Encounters (1978)

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Welcome to the weird, wild and at times absolutely inexplicable 1970s variety show era. It’s a place where the cocaine budget was likely higher than the GDP of a small nation, and someone in a boardroom said, “You know what goes great with soft rock? Aliens.” Today we’re talking about the 1978 television special The Carpenters…Space Encounters.

If you’ve ever sat back and wondered, “What if Close Encounters of the Third Kind was directed by someone — Bob Henry, who took his skills at directing and producing variety shows and ended up making variety specials for most of his career, including Leif, Feliciano! Very Special, Flip Wilson… Of course, and several specials for the Carpenters — who had only ever heard of sci-fi through a haze of mood lighting and easy-listening radio?”

Well, you’ve found your holy grail.

Richard and Karen Carpenter, that loveable brother and sister duo — are just minding their own business in the studio, cutting tracks and hanging out with legendary comedian Charlie Callas, who plays their agent. Soon — Wam! Bam! Thank you, spaceman! —they’re being scouted by extraterrestrials. Not scary, we’re here to harvest your organs, aliens, but John Davidson and Suzanne Somers, dressed like they’re about to host a space-disco on Saturn.

Yes, of all the people in the world who would portray the most perfect creatures in the universe, they picked the star of TV’s That’s Incredible! and a year into Three’s Company, Somers, who somehow looks better than she ever has before. Seriously, whoever did the makeup on this — great work, Sandy Holland (The Carpenters’ regular hairstylist), Rudy Horvatich and Katherine Kotarakos — earned their money.

It turns out that John and his fellow space-travelers have a major problem: their planet cannot make music. Obviously, the only logical solution to a universal cultural crisis is to kidnap The Carpenters. John teleports into the studio, whip-cracks a hi-tech pocket video screen to show them clips of “Fun Fun Fun,” and proceeds to perform a rendition of “Just the Way You Are” that makes you realize just how far we’ve strayed from the light.

I once saw Davidson star in Oklahoma, and the play was so bad that the entire audience booed the show when Jud, the villain, died. That’s how bad it was.

At this stage, the film then descends into a fitful blend of madness and mid-70s production value. We get a stroll through an old garage for a performance of “Goofus;” Richard sitting at a piano in front of a full orchestra, hammering out a medley of the Close Encounters and Star Wars themes while surrounded by laser lights and chroma key effects. Who gave Richard a phaser pedal?

Then, we achieve the grand finale, where the cast takes the party to the ship’s own nightclub. Karen and Suzanne Somers team up for “Man Smart, Woman Smarter,” followed by a disco-medley that includes “The Hustle” and “Boogie Nights.” If you’ve ever wanted to see the epitome of soft-rock royalty getting down to disco, stop reading and start watching.

The whole thing wraps up with the inevitable performance of “Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft”—the song that was practically written for this exact brand of madness—and an instrumental playout of “We’ve Only Just Begun.”

It’s saccharine, it’s bizarre, it’s a time capsule of a network television machine that had a nearly captive audience. Somehow, this had four writers: Bill Larkin, Joseph Neustein (a member of the Match Game staff for 700 episodes), Tom Sawyer and Stephen Spears.

“Calling occupants of interplanetary, quite extraordinary craft / And please come in peace, we beseech you / (Only our love we will teach them) / Our Earth may never survive / (So do come, we beg you).”

May 17, 1978 was a weird time.

Also: I love The Carpenters unironically. I want that to be perfectly clear.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Tales from the Darkside S2 E24: The Casavin Curse (1986)

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Serving as the Season 2 finale, “The Casavin Curse” is a whirlwind of campy melodrama, incestuous undertones and a twist that manages to be both completely predictable and utterly absurd. It all starts with the kind of scene that makes you wonder how the cleaning staff handles the turnover rate at the Casavin Estate. Gina Casavin (Catherine Parks, Vera from Friday the 13th Part III) wakes up in a trance, surrounded by champagne, pills and the butchered remains of her lover, Tyler. The local police, led by the ever-stymied Lt. Wright, are baffled by the crime scene, even though there’s a literal dagger involved.

Enter Dr. Jeffrey Webster (Scott Lincoln), a criminal psychiatrist who seems less interested in medical ethics and more interested in becoming a secondary lead. He spends the hour trying to convince Gina that her family’s legendary curse, which supposedly dates back to a jilted gypsy named Mirabel, is just a psychological crutch used by her cousin, Nicholas (Joe Cortese), to control her.

The dynamic between Nicholas and Gina is, frankly, skin-crawling. Nicholas is the quintessential “I have half the town in my pocket” villain, complete with thinly veiled threats and a disturbing obsession with keeping the Casavin bloodline pure by moving back to Corsica.

The episode leans heavily into the “he’s the killer” red herring, with the maid, Miranda (Julie Ariola), playing the classic role of the disgruntled employee who knows too much. When the police finally bust in to arrest Nicholas, it feels like the natural, albeit boring, conclusion.

But wait! In the final act, the show stops pretending to be a grounded mystery and leans into the supernatural nonsense. Gina undergoes a physical transformation — presumably achieved through some very affordable prosthetic makeup — and goes on a rampage. The final reveal, where the maid confirms she’s the descendant of the original victim, is the exact brand of “wait, what?” storytelling that keeps this show from being a total slog.

If you’re looking for a serious exploration of mental illness or a tight, suspenseful murder mystery, steer clear. But if you want to watch a show that goes from zero to demon-possessed heiress and still has time for commercials, watch it.

Murder, She Wrote S4 E4: Old Habits Die Hard (1987)

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Jessica visits a convent to see a former sorority sister and winds up searching for a nun’s killer.

Season 4, Episode 4: Old Habits Die Hard (October 11, 1987)

Jessica arrives at a convent to visit an old college friend who is now a nun. As you’d expect, they soon discover that the convent’s unofficial record keeper has killed herself. At her friend’s request, Jessica promises to figure out how this death is connected to a young woman who sought refuge at the convent years ago, her dying father and the city’s mayor and his wife.

Who’s in it, outside of Angela Lansbury?

Eileen Brennan (Marian Simpson): You know her as Captain Lewis in Private Benjamin and Mrs. Peacock in Clue. Perhaps you always know her for her uncredited turn in The New Adventures of Pippi Longstocking.

Cindy Fisher (Nancy Bates): Best known as Rebecca Miller on The Waltons, but she scored her permanent genre pass by starring in the 1982 killer-computer exploitation classic The Hideous Sun Demon reimagining, Hideous Sun Demon: The Special Edition and the sci-fi horror flick The Outing (aka The Lamp).

Clu Gulager (Ray Carter): A literal god of genre cinema. When he wasn’t playing Burt in The Return of the Living Dead, he was getting his face split open in A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge, battling subterranean monsters in Tremors or starring in the absolute masterpiece of 80s neon-slasher sleaze, The Initiation.

Evelyn Keyes (Sister Emily): Golden Age royalty who played Suellen O’Hara in Gone with the Wind. But she cemented her place in our hearts decades later as Mrs. Gordon in Larry Cohen’s A Return to Salem’s Lot.

Mark Keyloun (Mike Phelps): Best known for playing physical roles in 80s dramas like Mike’s Murder and Sudden Impact. He also popped up in the cult favorite TV movie The Midnight Hour, which is basically the ultimate 80s Halloween party captured on film.

Ed Nelson (Mayor Albert Simpson): The ultimate B-movie workhorse. He was the lead in Roger Corman’s A Bucket of Blood, battled giant leeches in Attack of the Giant Leeches and popped up in The Brain Eaters. If a movie had rubber monsters or cheap corn syrup in the 1950s, Ed was usually there trying to shoot it.

Scott Paulin (Dr. Marshall): He was Deke Slayton in The Right Stuff, but comic book geeks know him as the villainous Red Skull in Albert Pyun’s wonderfully unhinged 1990 Captain America. He also brought the creepiness to the 80s psychological horror-thriller The Unholy.

Jane Powell (Rev. Mother Claire): A massive MGM musical star from Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. She was mostly way above the movies we like, but she did step into the world of TV-terror for the mystery-horror movie The Letters.

Robert Prosky (Bishop Patrick Shea): An incredible character actor from Thief, Mrs. Doubtfire and Broadcast News. Horror freaks know him best as Will Darnell, the cranky garage owner who gets crushed to death by a possessed 1958 Plymouth Fury in John Carpenter’s Christine.

Audrey Totter (Sister Paul): A legendary film noir femme fatale from The Set-Up and High Wall. She spent her later years doing TV, but she did her time in the psychological thriller trenches with William Castle’s The Chunky and The Carpetbaggers.

Sherri Stoner (Sarah Martino): She was the literal physical animation model for Ariel in The Little Mermaid and Belle in Beauty and the Beast. But before she became Disney royalty, she was in Reform School Girls.

Wendy Brainard (Amy): A steady 80s TV face seen on Family Ties. Her major contribution to cult was playing one of the teenagers in The Midnight Hour.

Fay DeWitt (Sister Mary-Margaret): A comedy legend from the theater scene who later popped up on Mork & Mindy. She also lent her comedic timing to the weirdo 1970s sex comedy The Great Sex War.

Carol Swarbrick (Sister Margaret-Marie): A regular procedural guest star who showed up in The Jeffersons and Matlock.

M’el Dowd (Sister Margaret-Mary): A Broadway powerhouse who played Guenevere in Camelot. Genre fans know her as the classy but sinister presence in the psychological thriller The Wrong Man and the oddball 70s drama The Third Cry.

Hunter Mackenzie Austin (Sister Anne): Credited here as Caroline Gilshian. She mostly did high-octane 80s television guest spots, appearing in The A-Team and Riptide.

Len Felber (Garden Party Guest): Keep your eyes peeled for Len in the background. He is a legendary uncredited Hollywood background staple who has put on a tuxedo for everything from Die Hard to Ghostbusters.

Linda Harmon (Nun): An uncredited background sister who also popped up doing vocal work and background scenes across a dozen 80s sitcoms.

What happens?

Jessica takes a break from the mean streets of Cabot Cove to visit her old Kappa Delta sorority sister, Claire, who has traded college mixers for a habit, now serving as the Reverend Mother at the Immaculate Heart Convent. Where is this convent, you ask? Well, the script says Bergen Falls, Louisiana, which doesn’t exist. The character’s name-drop Shreveport, Blanchard and Grand Bayou, pinning it to the northwest corner of the state. But then the Mother Superior complains about having the scrawniest tomatoes east of the Mississippi, which means the writers completely forgot how geography works, or they accidentally set the episode in a tiny, swampy slice of southeastern Louisiana. Either way, it was actually filmed at the Ramona Convent Secondary School in Alhambra, California, which was tragically wrecked by the Whittier Narrows earthquake just ten days before this episode aired.

Naturally, because J.B.  is a walking harbinger of doom, she barely gets her bags unpacked before a young novice named Sarah (Sherri Stoner, the actual physical model for Disney’s Ariel!) finds elderly Sister Emily dead in her room. Novice Sarah didn’t just get the calling. She’s hiding from a pathologically obsessed ex-boyfriend who stalks the perimeter daily and even stole her Celtic cross.

She’s safe, or as safe as someone on Murder She Wrote can be. The convent locks down tighter than a maximum-security prison from 6:00 PM until morning. No one could get in. Or could they? Jessica spots the psycho boyfriend wearing Sarah’s stolen cross and realizes there’s a secret, unmapped entrance into the cloister. Jessica and the local Bishop walk in on Dr. Marshall aggressively tossing Sister Emily’s filing cabinet. Turns out he’s not a ghoul; he just knew her raised pill dosage couldn’t have killed her and was looking for the bottle to prove it wasn’t a suicide.

The twist? Enter the local political machine. Mayor Albert Simpson and his high-speed, mile-a-minute-talking wife, Marian, get involved. She seems more invested in her husband’s career than he is. But the second a sleazy private eye starts snooping around, asking about a mysterious girl named Linda Stone, Marian completely shuts up. It turns out Linda Stone had a son she claimed was fathered by a soldier killed in Vietnam. Well, that kid was actually the product of a secret affair with the mayor 15 years ago. Sister Emily knew the truth and knew where the mother was hiding. If that gets out, Simpson’s political future is headed for the garbage disposal.

Who did it?

When the cops try to write it off as a tragic suicide, Jessica knows that the water pitcher in Sister Emily’s room was completely full. If the poor nun had swallowed a fatal dose of Metholityl (side effects include sudden-onset 80s hair expansion, fictional organ failure, swelling of the perenium, wimple lust, knee pain, throat pain and pain), she would have needed a glass of water to wash it down. Sister Emily didn’t drink a thing. She was held down and given a lethal injection.

The killer? Marian Simpson murdered to keep her husband’s skeleton in the closet. She slipped into the convent, injected the ailing nun, stole a photo of the illegitimate child’s mother to destroy the evidence and then stole an extra nun’s habit to disguise herself and sneak back out through the locked gates.

Who made it?

Welcome back, director John Llewellyn Moxey. This episode was written by Chris Manheim, who worked on Xena: Warrior Princess.

Does Jessica dress up and act stupid? Does she get some?

No. If this episode were a few seasons later, she’d be in the habit.

Was it any good?

Yes, even if, in the end, we have no idea what happened to anyone else.

Any trivia?

Eileen Brennan and Clu Gulager were in The Last Picture Show together.

Give me a reasonable quote:

Jessica Fletcher: Bishop Shea, we couldn’t have done it without your blessing.

Bishop Patrick Shea: Well, yes, that, that’s true, isn’t it? Oh. There’s one more thing that you can do for me before you go.

Jessica Fletcher: Oh, what’s that?

Bishop Patrick Shea: Try to impress on your dear old friend here the obligation of obedience. She is a troublemaker, you know.

Jessica Fletcher: I’m afraid that is your problem. And a delightful one you’re going to have to deal with for a long, long time.

What’s next?

A business tyrant’s sudden death puts Jessica on the trail of several of his suspicious company executives. Richard Jaekel! Joanne Pettet! Nancy Dussault!

Tales from the Darkside S2 E23: Fear of Floating (1986)

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If you were a kid glued to the UHF channels late at night, the Tales from the Darkside intro, with that ominous, synthesized Donald Rubinstein theme and those bleak, sepia-toned shots of the Pennsylvania countryside, was enough to give you chills before the episode even started. But Darkside wasn’t always trying to terrify you. Sometimes, it just wanted to tell a bizarre, EC Comics-style morality tale with a pitch-black punchline. Enter “The Floating Man.“

Corporal Marcia Smith (a pre-Simpsons Yeardley Smith, sporting her unmistakable voice and effortless comedic timing) and Sergeant Buzz Caldwell (the great Sherman Howard, whom you know as Bub the Zombie from Day of the Dead) are rotting away in a dusty, middle-of-nowhere Army recruiting office. It’s hot, it’s boring, and they haven’t seen a fresh piece of cannon fodder in three weeks.

Then walks in Arnold Barker (John Kasir, who would later become the iconic voice of the Crypt Keeper in Tales from the Crypt — talk about a small horror world!). He’s wearing lead-soled shoes and claims he’s being hunted by a circus troupe. Buzz wants to kick him out, but then Arnold takes off his shoes and literally floats to the ceiling. Buzz immediately smells a promotion. An infantryman who can defy gravity? Take that, Air Force!

Of course, because this is the Darkside, nothing is what it seems. Soon enough, a car pulls up outside, and Arnold claims his pursuers are Hugo the Fat Man and Olga the Killer Dwarf Lady. Instead, it’s just a shotgun-toting dad (Bill Nunn) and his very pregnant, very normal-sized daughter, Betty Ann. Turns out Arnold isn’t a circus performer at all. He’s a sleazy, smooth-talking pharmacist who knocked Betty Ann up and left her at the altar. Whenever he tells a massive, reality-bending lie, his guilt makes him lighter than air. When he gives a passionate, tear-filled apology and promises to marry Betty Ann, his weight returns, and he crashes to the floor. The crisis is solved, right?

Not quite. The second the family walks out to the car, the utterly slimy Arnold instantly turns on Marcia, hitting on her and ripping her shirt. He admits his whole speech was a total sham. The second the lie leaves his mouth, gravity loses its grip. Arnold starts floating upward again. Marcia, totally disgusted, tells him to float straight to hell and walks out. Buzz walks back in just in time to see his star recruit drifting toward the ceiling. Unfortunately for Arnold, they never turned off that heavy-duty, metal-bladed industrial ceiling fan.

What starts as a goofy, dialogue-heavy sitcom episode suddenly pivots into splatter, ending with Howard being absolutely drenched in gore. 

This episode was directed by John Lewis, who did three episodes of the show. It was written by Donald Wollner and based on a story by Scott Edelman. You have to love that the IMDb goofs page has military trivia: “The uniforms of the two Army recruiters are completely out of regulation. They are wearing no name tags or insignia of any kind other than their rank, one of which isn’t even an Army rank. Also, the Corporal has her sleeves rolled up.“

Thank you for your service.