“Anatomy Lesson” is directed by Gilbert Adler and written by Kevin Rock. Billy Rabe (Jeremy London) is the son of a small-town coroner (Jim Metzler) who keeps wanting to kill things. However, he’s stopped over and over again by The Bearded Man (Jeff Fahey). When he turns 18, Billy decides to kill that person so that he can finally be the murderer he’s dreamed of becoming. There’s also Linda (Devon Odessa), a girl who is in love with him, but he just wants to watch her die.
Want to know what happens? The Bearded Man and Billy’s mom (Joanna Gleason) are robots who keep watch over killers on Earth. They’ve already taken out Jack the Ripper and the Zodiac, so now it’s Billy’s turn.
This episode isn’t based on an E.C. Comic story. However, the story “A Lesson in Anatomy!!” was in Weird Fantasy #12. The plot is sort of close. “Chased away from his father’s lab while he dissects a body, Stevey finds a stranger in the forest. Wanting to brag, Stevey tells the man all sorts of falsehoods, which he believes; But Stevey soon learns a secret about the stranger he doesn’t expect to discover.” It was written by William Gaines and Al Feldstein and drawn by Jack Kamen.
You can download all of the episodes here or watch this episode on YouTube.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The Cartier Affair was on the CBS Late Movie on May 5, 1988.
Curt Taylor (David Hasselhoff) is released from California State Prison, and to settle a debt to Phillip Drexler (Telly Savalas), he pretends that he’s gay and becomes the secretary for soap opera star Cartier Rand (Joan Collins). The goal? Steal her jewelry. But then he falls in love.
Rod Holcomb only made two theatrical films: Stitches, for which he used the pseudonym Alan Smithee instead of his name, and Chains of Gold, the only thing that John Travolta ever wrote. The rest of his career was spent in TV. The writer crew included Scarecrow & King creators Eugenie Ross-Leming and Brad Buckner, who wrote the script from a story by Michael Devereaux.
What a guest cast! Ed Lauter, Randi Brooks as the Hoff’s girlfriend, Rita Taggart as the maid who wants to basically sodomize Hasselhoff, Charles Napier and Harry Reems as a cop! As for the film, well, it’s as good as a 1984 TV movie with Hasselhoff and Joan Collins should be. There’s one great scene where the Hoff is trying to run from mob henchman David (John Bloom, The Reaper from The Hills Have Eyes Part II, The Dark from The Dark, Frankenstein’s Monster in Al Adamson’s Dracula vs. Frankenstein). He keeps trying to talk his way out of it, while the hitman keeps telling him that he has to shoot him. Bloom was more than seven feet tall but had some great comic timing.
EDITOR’S NOTE: All the Kind Strangers was on the CBS Late Movie on October 9, 1979 and November 25, 1980.
Let’s not judge Burt Kennedy for directing the Hulk Hogan vehicle Suburban Commando. Let’s remember him for something much better — All the Kind Strangers.
Written by Clyde Ware — a writer/director/producer who worked on shows like Airwolf and Gunsmoke, as well as TV movies like The Hatfields and the McCoys and The Story of Pretty Boy Floyd— this film reeks of backwoods menace. No wonder — Ware was born in West Virginia and his second novel, The Eden Tree, was a semi-biographical read which scandalized his hometown.
Jimmy Wheeler (Stacy Keach, Butterfly, Mountain of the Cannibal God) is a photojournalist traveling by car to Los Angeles. He runs through a small Southern town where he sees Gilbert, an adorable child, walking on the side of the road. Seeing that the kid is hefting some heavy groceries, Jimmy offers him a ride. As the road goes deeper into the woods, the rain increases. Soon, he realizes he’s trapped in a house of seven children.
The oldest, Peter (John Savage, Hair, The Deer Hunter), has hidden the fate of his mother and father from the town, using various resources to keep their power on and training vicious dogs to protect the children. Their father was a bootlegger and their mother a schoolteacher (what a match!); when she died, he drank until he fell from the roof.
The rest of the children — John (Robby Benson, who sings two songs on the soundtrack), Martha, Rita, James and Baby (named because their mother died before they could name him) — need guidance, so Peter sends the younger ones out to lure people to their home. Then, they evaluate whether or not they’ll be good parents. If they’re fit, they stay. If not, they’re free to go. Or that’s what the kids think. Evidence points to another, more grisly fate.
There’s a new mother already in the house. Carol Ann (Samantha Eggar, The Brood, Demonoid, Curtains) has been taking care of the children for some time. She has seen plenty of other father figures, and while she asks for help, she also knows that everything seems pointless.
Jimmy has to convince the kids that he’d make a good dad while trying to find a way to escape. But between the multitude of kids and dogs, as well as his car being sunk in the swamp, he starts losing hope as well.
I have two issues with this film. Things get wrapped up with way too neat of a bow. Jimmy gives a speech to the kids, which saves his life, and Peter asks him to walk him into town so that they can get some help. Jimmy doesn’t even talk about the police, and when you know that these kids have murdered numerous “kind strangers,” you have to wonder if he traded his freedom in for some complicity in the crimes. Second, as a photojournalist, Jimmy’s only camera is a Polaroid, which would not be good enough to be printed in the 1970s. I know that it makes good theater to have him show Gilbert the photo as it develops, but it’s a stretch.
All the Kind Strangers is a small-screen Deliverance, yet it has some fine acting from Keach and Eggar. It’s restrained, but there is more not seen than seen that makes this movie slightly scary.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The Toughest Man In the World was on the CBS Late Movie on February 25 and September 14, 1988.
Mr. T’s first starring made-for-TV movie role has him playing, well, himself. Or Bruise Brubaker, a tough and scowling secret softy nightclub bouncer who is in charge of a neighborhood center. He’s a Vietnam vet, he has a mohawk to honor his roots, and he’s illiterate. And he’s gonna help kids, fool!
As he’s helping kids, he’s also trying to keep Billy (John P. Navin Jr.) from being part of the crime that rules the streets. He gets Tanker Weams (Tom Milanovich) to show up at the center but also screws up and promises everyone will be a winner in a fake charity giveaway, so he has no idea how to keep working people, kind of like Mr. T’s buddy Hulk Hogan and no, I won’t let death stop me from sharing stories of the Hulkster’s lies when they’re as funny as him being in Metallica or not getting the Foreman Grill deal because he missed one phone call.
Mr. T is a little like the Hulkster. Born Laurence Tureaud, he grew up in a family with twelve kids in Chicago, calling himself Mr. T so no one would call him boy. A city wrestling champion, he went to Prairie View A&M University on a scholarship but was kicked out in the first year. Then, he was in the army and tried out for the Green Bay Packers before inventing himself as he bounced at Dingbats Discotheque. He claimed that he was in more than 200 fights and that his chains were from the people he beat in fistfights. This turned into being a bodyguard for Steve McQueen, Michael Jackson, LeVar Burton, Diana Ross, Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier and Leon Spinks — to Wiki name just a few — as well as whispered assassination and runaway tracking deals.
Then, ABC aired two of the World’s Toughest Bouncer contests, with Mr. T bloodying huge Tongan fighter Tutefano Tufi and defeating someone in the second in under a minute after saying, “I just feel sorry for the guy who I have to box. I just feel real sorry for him.” Sylvester Stallone saw this, cast him as Clubber Lang, and the rest was history.
After a role in Penitentiary 2, he was on The A-Team, had a cartoon, a cereal, was in D.C. Cab and even had a motivational video, Be Somebody… or Be Somebody’s Fool! Also: an action figure that told you to always respect your mother and a rap album, Mr. T’s Commandments. Also, he became a wrestler, backing up the Hulkster, and this is where it gets funny. Despite being in all those toughman fights, T was freaked out about the idea that his image would be destroyed by a wrestler going off script. Maybe the rumor that Bruiser Brody was getting paid big money to hurt him — this would have never happened, Brody knew that at some point in his career, he would work for McMahon — got to him. He kept no-showing almost until the day of the event.
An aside. A few weeks before Mania, Mr. T and Hogan were on the USA Network show Hot Properties. According to Remind Magazine, “After some encouragement from Mr. T, Hogan agreed to demonstrate a chokehold on host Richard Beltzer, but ended up applying too much pressure and rendering him temporarily unconscious. Belzer recovered quickly enough to send the show to a commercial break, but he officially filed a $5 million lawsuit against both guests in 1987. The case was settled quietly in 1990.”
They also hosted Saturday Night Live the night before the show, a last-moment replacement for Steve Landesberg.
Roddy Piper, Bob Orton and Paul Orndorff, Mr. T’s opponents at Mania, may not have liked this outsider and made him nervous, but they knew where their money was coming from. That’s why the stories — Hogan wrote that “security at Madison Square Garden resisted letting Mr. T’s entourage into the building the day of the show. He was distraught by the confrontation and declared that he would just leave. The Hulkster, however, took credit for finding the actor and talking him down, getting him to see through the planned main event attraction. Paul Roma claimed that he even no-showed a few years later, as Mr. T was to manage the Young Stallions — started.
OK, another aside. Wrestlers are notoriously full of shit. There’s no way a big payday guy like Mr T was going to be with enhancement talent like the Young Stallions. And Hogan’s book isn’t non-fiction.
Then again, comedian Chris Burns once said, “I can – again, inside baseball – tell you Piper was not a fan of Hulk Hogan, moreso, Mr. T. I mean, rest in peace, Roddy, I don’t think he’d have a problem with me telling this story. He legitimately was going to kill Mr. T. I’m not kidding around. He said, he thought, “You know what? If I just back suplex him and arch it a certain way, he lands on his neck, they can’t tell me that I did it on purpose.” Piper had that thought several times, and then was like, “I’m not gonna mess up WrestleMania like that.”
Roddy Piper, also a wrestler, was probably full of shit a lot of times.
Anyways, back to Mr. T in a TV movie.
He falls for Leslie (Lynne Moody), beats gangsters and ends up knocking everyone out, including running through a wall like he’s on Takeshi’s Castle. It’s as stupid as you want it to be, and I wanted it to be really stupid.
This was directed by Dick Lowry. Yes, the same man who made Smokey and the Bandit 3. It was written by Vincent Bono, Dick Guttman and, of all people, Hammer writer Jimmy Sangster. How did that happen?
EDITOR’S NOTE: The Stepford Children was on the CBS Late Movie on June 29, 1988.
The second of three TV movie sequels — there was also Revenge of the Stepford Wives, directed by Robert Fuest, and The Stepford Husbands — The Stepford Children is based on the Ira Levin novel The Stepford Wives and the films that came after.
Laura and Steven Harding (Barbara Eden and Don Murray) have brought their kids, David (Randall Batinkoff) and Mary (Tammy Lauren), to Stepford, Connecticut, the same place where Steven’s first wife died. Laura just wants to become a lawyer, but Steven joins the Men’s Association, which is still turning wives into robots. It’s also turning the kids into homework-obsessed drones.
David and neighbor girl Lois (Debbie Barker) start hanging out, as they both love motorcycles. Laura becomes friends with Lois’ mom, Sandy (Sharon Spelman). And she soon learns that while she lets her kids be who they want to be, her husband seems obsessed with making them perfect.
During a school dance, everyone starts to dance to big band standards and when David and Mary switch it up to some rock and roll, they do more than lose control. They freak out and the cops have to come, as the Stepford Children have not been programmed for 80s music. All the men of Stepford chase Lois, causing a motorcycle crash and then David sees them removing her arms at the hospital. The next day, she shows up brand new and dumps him.
A movie that somehow has “replacement Ginger” Judith Baldwin, James Coco, Dick Butkis and Hedwig and the Angry Inch star John Cameron Mitchell all in it? Yes, and it ends in the most astounding of ways, as the entire town must die for the humans to live.
Directed by Alan J. Levi and written by William Bleich, this is way more entertaining than you’d expect. Usually, I say fuck those kids, but this time I rooted for them.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Topper was on the CBS Late Movie on February 16, 1983 and January 5, 1984.
Seven-year-old Sam was not upset when things were remade. He loved watching Topper on WPGH’s Sunday Morning Movie, and he was pleased that it was back. Old Sam is the grumpy one.
Old Sam would also like you to know that Andrews Stevens and Kate Jackson are the cutest of couples and are sad that they divorced.
This was the third time a Topper series was attempted — yes, another failed pilot — as there was a 78-episode show starring Anne Jeffreys and Robert Sterling from 1953 to 1956, and another failed pilot in 1973 with Stefanie Powers and John Fink. There was also a 1992 pilot with Tim Curry as Cosmo, Courtney Cox as Marion and Ben Cross as George.
Marion (Jackson) and George (Stevens) swerve to avoid a bunny and end up as ghosts, stuck on Earth until they earn their way into Heaven. One of those ways they try to help others is to improve the marriage between Cosmo Topper (Jack Warden) and his wife Clara (Rue McClanahan), as well as keep him from being screwed by his unscrupulous business partner Fred Korbell (James Karen).
Charles E. Dubin directed this, along with more than 110 other TV productions. It was written by the husband-and-wife duo of Michael Scheff and Mary Ann Kasica, with George Kirgo. It was based on the original novel by Thorne Smith.
Did you ever want to see Topper in a disco? This is your movie.
A mother and daughter become involved in a murder. Jessica must look between the lines to discover the truth and the murderer.
Season 2, Episode 3: Murder In the Afternoon (October 13, 1985)
Tonight on Murder, She Wrote…
Jessica accepts an offer to deliver the commencement ceremony at a university graduation, but as you can imagine, moments after she arrives, someone dies.
Who’s in it, outside of Angela Lansbury, and were they in any exploitation movies?
Polly Bergen is Dr. Jocelyn Laird. She was in the original Cape Fear and Cry-Baby.
Darleen Carr is Trish Mercer. She appeared in The Beguiled and has done numerous voiceover projects.
Jack Kehoe plays Chief James Griffin. He was in Serpico.
June Lockhart shows up as Beryl Hayward. She was on Lost In Space and also in She-Wolf of London.
Dr. Alger Kenyon is Roddy McDowall. Do I have to tell you who he is?
Mary Kate McGeehan is Daphne Clover. She was Linda Caproni on Falcon Crest.
Morgan Stevens is Nick Fulton. He was Mr. Reardon on Fame.
James Sutorius is Ron Mercer. He mainly has worked in theater.
More minor roles include Gary Bisig as Will Small, John C. Bechnet as a station master, Dean Dittman and Grace Simmons as teachers, Larry Carr as a party guest, Bob Harks as a detective, Paul LeClair as a photographer and Ron Asher, Kerry Noonan, Bill Baker and James Marshall (James Hurley from Twin Peaks) as students.
What happens?
Professor Jocelyn Laird, head of the English department, throws a party and Jessica attends. Then, her wild child, Daphne, and her boyfriend, Nick Fulton, show up and swim naked; the next day, Nick is dead.
What no one knew is that Daphne, a writer of trashy novels, is merely the front for her mother’s writing. After all, being a teacher, she could never also write smut. Nick has been blackmailing her, which makes it seem like she could be the killer. Maybe Daphne is the killer. Nick did slap her around. Jocelyn and Daphne both confess, thinking that they’re saving one another. Neither did it.
Who did it?
Dr. Alger Kenyon, PHD, has been in love with Jocelyn for years. He suspected her daughter was involved in the crime, so he set her up.
Who made it?
It’s directed by Arthur Allan Seidelman and written by Robert E. Swanson.
Does Jessica get some?
No! Come on!
Does Jessica dress up and act stupid?
She finds the dead body while jogging, so I should add that as a question. Does Jessica find a body while out for a casual walk? But yes, the outfit she wears to the party is… beyond ridiculous.
Was it any good?
Good cast, not a bad episode.
Any trivia?
Lansbury and McDowall were in Bedknobs and Broomsticks.
Give me a reasonable quote:
Daphne Clover: You want the story on Nick? I’ll sum it up in one word… Stud.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Cover Girls was on the CBS Late Movie on March 2 and August 1, 1983, March 21, 1984, December 30, 1986 and June 1, 1987.
Two models, Linda Allen (Cornelia Sharpe) and Monique Lawrence (Jayne Kennedy), are really spies, sent on a mission by James Andrews (Don Galloway) to track down both an embezzler, Bradner (Vince Edwards), and a criminal named Michael (George Lazenby).
This is a failed pilot made in the wake of the success of Charlie’s Angels. You get Don Johnson as an undercover agent posing as a rock star, Ellen Travolta as a photographer and an appearance by Ray Dennis Steckler’s wife Carolyn Brandt!
Directed by TV vet Jerry London and written by Mark Rodgers, this is enjoyable silliness that I wish had become a series, but I say that about every failed pilot.
EDITOR’S NOTE: See China and Die was on the CBS Late Movie on March 4, 1984 and June 6, 1985.
Larry Cohen can really do no wrong.
Even with a TV movie budget, he turned this pilot for the TV show Momma the Detective into something great.
Momma Sykes (Esther Rolle) is the momma — you see, right? — of a cop, Sgt. Alvin Sykers (Kene Holliday) and she can’t help but get mixed up in his cases. She reads detective novels all the time and soon finds herself in one, as one of her employers — she’s a maid — was killed soon after coming back to China. Seeing as how she always figures out the killer in her books, she thinks she can do the same now.
She makes her way through the building, getting fired when she pries too much and then getting hired right next door, because finding a cleaning lady as good as her is hard in New York City.
I loved Ames Prescott (Paul Dooley), a cowboy singer in New York who was also a juggler, a magician and anything that would get him on the stage. There’s also a villain of sorts in former NYPD chief Edwin Forbes (Andrew Duggan), who threatens Alvin’s job.
Also: Laurence Luckinbill shows up and he was Sybok, so you should be pretty excited about that. And Estelle Evans and Rosanna Carter also show up as maids; they’re the real-life sisters of Rolle.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The Fantastic Seven was on the CBS Late Movie on January 5 and September 9, 1983 and May 16, 1984.
Directed by John Peyser (The Centerfold Girls) and written by David Shaw, this starts with actress Rebecca Wayne (Elke Sommer) being kidnapped by Boudreau (Patrick Macnee) and taken to Finland, where she’ll be killed in 72 hours if the ransom isn’t paid. The studio won’t pay it; her last two films were failures. That means stuntman Hill Singleton (Christopher Connelly, so many Italian movies) must recruit, well, six more people, like his friend Horatio (Brian Brodsky), swimmers Elena Sweet (Morgan Brittany) and Dinah Latimore (Juanin Clay), explosives lover Skip Hartman (Christopher Lloyd), weaponer Wally Ditweiler (Bob Seagren) and bartender and (because he’s Asian) martial arts expert Kenny Uto (Soon-Tek Oh). Of course, they’re successful, even if this pilot wasn’t picked up for a series. I mean, I still watched it on the CBS Late Movie and wrote so many episodes for it. Ah, if only — I mean, a weekly show about stuntmen solving crimes? I mean, that would never work. Oh, The Fall Guy?
This has stunts by a Swamp Thing (Dick Durock) and two Michael Meyers (Dick Warlock and George Wilbur), as well as “Judo” Gene LaBelle.
B&S About Movies 
You must be logged in to post a comment.