A remake of 1970’s Bigfoot, this is a Sci-Fi and Asylum co-production that first aired on June 30, 2012. Throughout the film, depending on how you’ll feel about the way these guys make movies, you’ll hate the humor and bad CGI. Or you’ll love it. Most people aren’t in the middle.

Harley Henderson (Danny Bonaduce) is a DJ in Deadwood, South Dakota who is planning an 80’s reunion concert, which features his old bandmate Simon Quint (Brady Bunch star Barry Williams), Alice Cooper and Sting (who is stuck at the airport). The loud music awakens the beast, who is much larger than you’ve ever expected him to be, as well as looking like a boss from a PS2-era video game.

Bigfoot decides to go wild on the show, killing numerous people including, presumably, Alice Cooper and the kid wearing a Bigfoot costume.

In the days following the attack, Harley wants to kill Bigfoot and get the body to make money for the town while Quint wants to rescue the creature. After battling back and forth, the two rivals come together to battle Bigfoot on Mount Rushmore, along with the help of Sheriff Alvarez (Twin Peaks star Sherilyn Fenn) and her partner Anderson (Bruce Davison, who also directed this).

Can Bigfoot be stopped? Will anyone survive? Will Mount Rushmore be decimated? Will you be surprised that Howard Hesseman is in this as the mayor? I can’t answer all of these questions for you. But I can point you to Amazon Prime, where you can watch this with a subscription.

Our frustration with so-called “elevated horror” and television tripe like American Horror Story made us really tentative toward even giving this series a try. Luckily, we overcame our fears of it being pablum and discovered something truly unsettling.

The beauty of Channel Zero is that each season is short — six episodes with the same cast — and only shares thematic elements with one another. So far, the three seasons have explored the dangers of clinging too strongly to the past and whether your blood kin or adopted network of friends makes for the healthier family unit. Oh yeah — they also share the simple fact that the world as we know it is not the reality that actually exists.

The first season, Candle Cove, is based on a creepypasta written by Kris Straub. The title refers to a TV series that could only be seen by certain children while others would only see static. The more the series was watched, the more it began intruding into the real world. As the children grew up, they wondered if they were the only ones who knew about Candle Cove, like the episode that just consisted of the main characters screaming in fear.

Within the show, famous child psychologist Mike Painter (Paul Schneider, Parks and Recreation) has been having intense nightmares about the show, which may have only lasted for two months, but ended in the abduction and murder of several of his brother and several of their friends. Now that he’s returned to Iron Hill, the show has started attempting to return. And oh yeah — there’s a creature called the Tooth Child that is a sentient being made completely of he teeth that have been sacrificed by possessed children.

That’s what I meant when I said that this is an unsettling show. It’s surreal at turns, but it’s not afraid to be ominous and doom-laden with little to no escape valve. Even the cute puppets of the show become brutal when the Jawbone the pirate crosses over into the real world. And as the children of the town become more malevolent, Mike’s sanity — already frayed a psychotic break — slips and the children he grew up with begin to suspect that he’s behind the madness that has returned to their town.

That said — I’ve heard talk that people think the performances weren’t great for the first season. I disagree — it never took me out of the show. And I absolutely adored the art direction, as the show within a show reminds me of the Krofft shows of my youth.

I don’t want to reveal much more. This is too delicious to spoil. The reveal of the true killer — and true evil — of the story surprised me. We’ve been on board for Channel Zero for every season now, buying the box sets and watching them in a day or less. Now, Shudder has picked up the entire series, playing one season each month for the next few months. It’s exciting that a bigger audience can now see this show and I’m excited to discuss each season! Feel free to treat the comments below as a spoiler-laden zone where we can freely talk about this awesome show!

Can you keep a good stepfather down, despite him being shot and stabbed in the heart multiple times? Of course not. That’s why even if Terry O’Quinn isn’t coming back, his character definitely will in this made for HBO movie.

Yes, Gene Clifford has survived being stabbed with a clawhammer in the heart and went right back into the same mental institution in Puget Sound. And he escapes it all over again, finding a back alley surgeon to change his appearance, all with no anesthesia, before killing that very same doctor.

Oh yeah — now the stepfather is played by Robert Wightman, who is best known for taking over the role of John-Boy Walton from Richard Thomas.

Now, he’s Keith Grant, a gardener who dresses up as the Easter Bunny for a church party. There, he meets Christine Davis (Priscilla Barnes from TV’s Three’s Company) and her son Andy, who has been in a wheelchair since an accident. He even takes care of Christine’s psycho ex, Mark, by killing him with a shovel. Once that body is buried in the garden, Keith is free to marry Christine and Andy goes away to stay with his dad, Steve.

It turns out that Christine can’t have children any longer, so Keith begins courting another woman, Jennifer (Season Hubley, Vice Squad) and her son Nicholas. His boss totally picks up on this, so that guy has to die.

Andy is back home and he’s well versed in true crime. So he starts researching Keith and his history. He’s surprised when his new dad misidentifies him as Nicholas, so the typical stepfather behavior has started as he begins forgetting his identity and killing anyone who learns the truth, like that troublemaking priest!

Will the stepfather find true love? Will Andy walk again? Can even the stepfather survive falling into a woodchipper? All of these questions and probably a few more will be answered by the end of this movie.

If you watch this movie without looking at the screen, you may think that Terry O’Quinn is still in it. The voice is very close. But once you watch it, the acting isn’t as good. In fact, Wightman is quite wooden, particularly in a sex scene with Barnes where she’s sweaty and super into it. I don’t mean that as a pun. But sure, you can take it that way.

Andy is also the exact opposite — overacted to the extreme and given to fits of screaming. There’s a near hilarious scene where they attempt to play football together that had me laughing in a completely inappropriate way. At least there’s plenty of gore to make up for all the cheese.

Actually, I liked this way more than I thought I would. Want to see it for yourself? Check it out on Amazon Prime or grab the grey market DVD at Rare DVDs.

While known primarily as a horror writer, the novel The Tommyknockers was a rare science fiction novel from Stephen King. However, the novel was written while King was struggling with addiction and is packed with metaphors for dealing with substance abuse. The writer said, “The Tommyknockers is an awful book. That was the last one I wrote before I cleaned up my act.” Hey, what better movie to review, right?

Originally airing on May 9 and 10, 1993 on ABC, this mini-series is all about the town of Haven, Maine. That’s where Bobbi Anderson (Marg Helgenberger, TV’s CSI) and her boyfriend, Jim “Gard” Gardner (Jimmy Smits, Prince Leia’s adopted dad) live with their dog Petey. They’re both writers — I know you’re shocked, King protagonists who are writers and live in New England — and both suffering. Bobbi has writer’s block and Gard is an alcoholic. One day, they find a stone object connected to a series of cubes.

Meanwhile, Haven is packed with all manner of quirky folks. There’s postal worker Joe Paulson (Cliff Young, The Hunger, Shock Treatment) who delivers the mail and the goods to his mistress, Nancy Voss (Tracy Lords!) instead of his wife, Deputy Becka Paulson (Allyce Beasley from TV’s Moonlighting). Then there’s Bryant Brown (Robert Carradine, Revenge of the Nerds), his wife Marie, their two kids and her father Ev Hillman (E.G. Marshall, who battled bugs in Creepshow). Then there’s small-town sheriff and doll collector Ruth Merrill (Joanna Cassidy, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?), who has to deal with state trooper Butch Duggan, who comes from Derry (which we all know is from It).

As Bobbi and Gard find more of the object, everyone in town begins to invent things while suffering from insomnia. Basically, they’re all on alien cocaine, making all manner of stuff that you’d never really need, like letter sorters, a BLT sandwich maker and more, which all glow green when used. Bobbi beats her writer’s block with a machine that telepathically lets her write and the results astound Gard, who thinks that he’s immune to all of this because of the plate in his head.

One of the kids, Hilly, makes a magic machine that makes his brother Davey disappear. Everyone looks for a little while before becoming distracted by their machines. I mean, a BLT maker? That’s a little more important than a child.

Joe Paulson’s wife finally catches him after her favorite TV show talks directly to him. She electrocutes him and starts babbling about the tommyknockers before being sent away. That same phrase is repeated by Hilly before he has a seizure, gets a massive brain tumor and loses most of his teeth.

Ev Hillman learns that the town of Haven is cursed. I can hear your surprise now, a New England town in a Stephen King novel being cursed. But yes, it’s true. Meanwhile, Nancy Voss has seemingly taken on a supervillain air, everyone is busy inventing more things and the town glows green.

Gard gets drunk — because that’s how you deal with these kinds of things — and sees the town gather in a green glow. His wife is seemingly leading them and he manages to convince her that he is part of this whole alien cocaine inventing stuff and then joining the becoming thing. After having sex with her — because again, this is how you deal with things — he sneaks out to their garage where he finds alien technology powered by townspeople and their dog. Ev, still alive, tells him he must find Davey, who is with the tommyknockers.

Digging all night long, Gard finds a UFO filled with mummified aliens and Davey, encased in a green crystal. Gard forces his wife to realize what is going on, which is when an alien attacks them before Gard decapitates it. This, of course, causes all hell to break loose. Nancy Voss tries to get everyone still under alien control to stop the destruction of the ship, but Gard is able to stop them thanks to the sacrifice of Ev, who chokes Nancy out while Bobbi saves Petey’s life. Speaking of sacrifices, Gard makes the ultimate one to save the whole town.

Whew. And ugh. The Tommyknockers is a rough watch but not nearly as rough as the book’s ending, which ends with Gard taking the ship into space, killing nearly all of the changed townspeople and then agents from the FBI, CIA, and more Black Ops groups killing most of the survivors and destroying their inventions. One of those groups, The Shop, shows up in many of King’s books, such as Firestarter, Golden Years, The Lawnmower Man and The Langoliers. It’s also hinted that they may have caused The Mist and they fail to learn what Captain Trips is all about in The Stand.

Originally, the film was directed by Lewis Teague (Alligator, Cat’s Eye, Cujo), but he was replaced two days into filming by John Power. It was written by Lawrence Cohen, who did much better with the It mini-series.

Many have compared this novel to Quatermass and the Pit. This Nigel Kneale (John Carpenter recruited him to write Halloween 3: Season of the Witch) written BBC TV also was about a long-buried spaceship that had a negative impact on anyone around it.

Speaking of negative impacts, that what this movie had on me. It dragged and just seemed ridiculous, but I think that’s the result of its source material. No one has learned anything, though, because James Wan is talking about remaking this in 2019.

Tommy Lee Wallace has made many lasting contributions to genre filmmaking, first on John Carpenter’s Dark Star and Assault on Precinct 13 before appearing as The Shape/Michael Myers in the original Halloween, writing Amityville 2: The Possession, co-writing and directing the original Fright Night Part II and acting and being part of the effects team for The Fog. But this film cements his legacy, with a great build and plenty of scares within the limitations of television.

Originally airing from November 18 to 20, 1990, screenwriter Lawrence Cohen turned 1,138 pages of King into a two-part, three-hour TV movie. Wallace — and others — have commented that the first night is near perfect story-wise, but it falls apart on night two.

The story concerns The Lucky Seven, or The Losers Club, a group of outcasts who learn that the shapeshifting creature named  Pennywise has taking and killing children in their hometown of Derry, Maine. They first battle him in 1960 as teenagers before coming back to battle him again in 1990.

This might sound like a broken record when it comes to King movies, George Romero had originally been signed on to direct the project when ABC had planned for an eight-to-ten-hour series that would play over four nights. He left the project due to scheduling conflicts, but he would finally direct a King adaptation, The Dark Half. This is considered one of the most faithful treatments of the author’s work.

That said, we’re here to talk about It, which begins with Georgie Denbrough playing with the paper sailboat that his brother Bill (Becca fave Jonathan Brandis) has made for him. As it sails down the sewer, he encounters Pennywise (Tim Curry, whose work in this movie led to thousands of nightmares of 90’s kids), who gnaws his arm off and leaves him to die.

The Losers Club comes together when Bill and Eddie Kaspbrak welcome the new kid, overweight Ben Hanscom. They’re soon joined by Beverly Marsh (Emily Perkins from the Ginger Snaps series of films), Richie Tozier (Seth Green), Stan Uris and Mike Hanlon. They all have two things in common: they’re bullied by Henry Bowers’ gang and they’re all encountered the evil of Pennywise. They soon learn that every thirty years, the shapeshifter comes back to town to claim the lives of children.

When Stan is ambushed by the gang, Pennywise (or It) emerges and kills two of the gang members. Henry is left traumatized and left with white hair. He eventually confesses to all of the murders, although he didn’t commit them. Stanley and the rest of the Losers learn how to use their imagination to stop the creature and drive it into the sewers before making a vow to come back to Derry if it ever comes back.

Thirty years later, Mike (Tim Reid from TV’s WKRP in Cincinnati) is the only member of the Losers Club to stay in Derry. When It returns and begins killing again, he brings everyone back together. Bill (Richard Thomas, Battle Beyond the Stars) is now a famous horror writer married to Audra, a gorgeous British actress (Olivia Hussey, Black Christmas). Ben (John Ritter) is an architect. Beverly (Annette O’Toole) has grown up to be a fashion designer but has transitioned from being abused by her father to being beaten by her husband. Richie (the late, great Harry Anderson) is a comedian. Eddie (Dennis Christopher, Fade to Black) runs a limo service. And Stan is a real estate broker who decides to kill himself rather than come back home to face It.

Meanwhile, Henry has escaped from the mental institution with the help of It. His goal? Kill the rest of the Losers. The shapeshifting monster also draws Bill’s wife to town.

Mike is hospitalized after being stabbed by Henry and the five remaining Losers head to the sewer for a final battle. That’s when the movie falls apart, as the monster can never live up to King’s words. If you ask nearly anyone, they always bring this up. That’s because it’s true.

All of the Losers but Eddie make it out, with Beverly and Ben reconnecting and Bill saving his wife. But at this point, most people have been scorned by the spider that Pennywise becomes.

That’s because it’s hard to beat just how scary Tim Curry is in this movie. Supposedly, he unnerved the cast so much that many avoided him during the production.

The movie eliminates some of the problematic parts of the book for me, such as Beverly taking the virginity of all the male characters in the sewer, but retains Audra becoming a victim who needs to be rescued. Tommy Lee Wallace has noted that he doesn’t think that it works dramatically in the movie or novel.

Of course, It was remade in 2017, with a second part coming soon. But the first night of this miniseries more than holds up. Understandably, the budget issues and unfilmable nature of the second night’s big reveal hurt this film, but that doesn’t mean that it’s bad. I’m a big fan of Wallace as a director and feel that he brought a ton of talent to this adaption.

After years of being hard to find, you can now get the blu-ray of this miniseries in Wal-Mart discount bins for a great price. Or you can turn to Shudder, which has added this movie as part of the King of Horror May promotion.

The unabridged version of the stand is 1,152 pages. How do you film that? How do you capture everything? This 1994 miniseries — originally airing from May 8 – 12 of that year — made a valiant effort.

It’s nearly impossible to get in every character from the book, but that doesn’t mean that these guys didn’t try. With a screenplay by King, Mick Garris stepped into the director’s chair, armed with a huge cast that does a great job of capturing their roles.

The hard part of The Stand is that there’s more than one hero and multiple casts to follow. I guess Stu Redman (Gary Sinise) would be the main hero, but you could also argue that the deaf and mute Nick Andros (Rob Lowe, who is deaf in his right ear) is the hero. Or maybe singer Larry Underwood is. When you’re reading the book, you can determine who the protagonist you like best is, you can also see them as you want in your mind. With a film, it’s not so simple.

As Captain Trips, a weaponized flu virus, sweeps across America, the end of the world takes shape and Mother Abagail Freemantle (Ruby Dee) gathers the forces of good against Randall Flagg and his followers. Flagg, otherwise known as the Walkin’ Dude, the Dark Man, the Ageless Stranger, the Man in Black and the Hardcase (as well as Walter Padick, Nyarlathotep, Rudin Filaro and a ton of other names), is the villain of more than one King story. He shows up in The Dark Tower, Hearts in Atlantis and The Eyes of the Dragon. His character goes all the way back to a poem that King wrote in 1969.

Amongst his forces are the bonkers crazy Nadine Cross (Laura San Giacomo), criminal rat eater Lloyd Henreid (Miguel Ferrer), the explosive loving Trashcan Man (Max Headroom himself, Matt Frewer, who has appeared in more King adaptions than anyone else), the Rat Man and so many more. But the good guys also have Judge Ferris (Ossie Davis), the worst dressed heroine ever in Frannie (Molly Ringwald), her wannabe boyfriend and potential traitor Harold (Parker Lewis Can’t Lose star Corin Nemec), simple-minded Tom Cullen (Bill Fagerbakke, Dauber from TV’s Coach), wise Glen Bateman (TV legend Ray Walston, who was also Mr. Hand in Fast Times at Ridgemont High) and many, many more.

This is a film packed with stars, even in small roles, like Ed Harris as General Starkey, Kathy Bates as Rae Flowers, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as a man proclaiming the end of the world and King, Sam Raimi, Tom Holland and John Landis show up in cameos. Even Joe Bob Briggs is in this!

The four parts, The Plague, The Dreams, The Betrayal and The Stand, tell as much of the story as possible. I was kind of let down by the casting of Flagg, but it’s hard to find anyone to live up to the ultimate evil that he’s presented as in the book.

This is the second King book that George Romero planned to make into a film that ended up as a TV movie (Salem’s Lot is the other).

Interestingly enough, none of the Boulder Free Zone scenes were shot there. Soon before production started, Colorado passed Amendment 2, an amendment to their state Constitution which nullified any existing laws protecting the rights of homosexuals. In protest — and perhaps because King’s daughter Naomi is a lesbian — the production moved to Utah.

The fact that the film was finished is a testament to the production team. With 460 script pages that were shot across 100 days in 6 states, that meant that the final project is nearly 8 hours long. They had to figure out how to dress 95 shooting locations on their budget, including a cornfield and a decimated Las Vegas.

There’s been talk of a digital CBS mini-series, but it seems as if they’ll try to tell the whole story in one movie. Josh Boone, a legitimate Stephen King fan and the director of The Fault In Our Stars, is slated to direct.

I hope however they remake this, they make sure to get better outfits for Frannie. I realize that this mini-series is 24 years old, but her fashion taste has not aged like a fine wine. Every single time she appears, her sartorial splendor — or lack thereof — takes me out of the movie!

That said, the main body of The Stand is quite enjoyable. You can find this film on DVD for a really low price, considering how much movie you get.

By the way, if you’re wondering what my favorite scene is, it’s when Nadine informs everyone that they’re in Hell before she rides up the elevator to be further assaulted by Randall Flagg. I quote this scene way more often than I’d like to. And often, it’s to people who have no idea of the reference.

Originally airing on May 7, 1991 on CBS, this TV movie adaption of King’s short story was originally going to be part of Cat’s Eye. The story was originally published in Cavalier Magazine and is part of the short story collection Night Shift.

Jim Norman (Tim Matheson, Buried Alive) has moved back home to become a teacher, years after he watched his little brother Wayne get killed by a teen gang. Soon after, the murderers were killed by an oncoming train, but the nightmares have stayed with Jim for twenty-seven years.

One by one, his students kill themselves and the greaser gang returns from Hell. All Jim has to do is reenact the murder by killing the last surviving member of the gang Carl (William Sanderson, TV’s Newhart) and they will leave his family alone.

Jim wants to bring his brother back from the dead too and is trying to find a way to make it happen. He and Carl try to fool the gang, but their leader stabs Carl and Jim’s brother Wayne returns. The greasers try to escape again, but their car is struck by a ghost train. Wayne asks Jim to join him in heaven, but he decides to stay alive.

The book and novel differ greatly, with Jim’s wife Sally (Brook Adams, The Dead Zone) being killed by the gang and his brother Wayne being a demon that he calls for revenge.

Two sequels followed, Sometimes They Come Back…Again (which Becca recommends more than this film and I’ve been trying to buy her a copy, but it’s near impossible to find on DVD) and Sometimes They Come Back for More.

This is a decent film, directed by Tom McLoughlin, who also directed Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives. It has all the trademark King tropes and moves quickly.

If you’re a writer in a Stephen King story, never ever go home. Nothing good is waiting for you there. Nothing at all. If your home is in New England, just forget about it. In fact, even if you aren’t a writer, don’t go back home. Don’t reunite with your friends. Just be happy with whatever you’ve got.

Originally airing on November 17 and 24, 1979, Salem’s Lot is considered one of the best Stephen King adaptions and some of Tobe Hooper’s finest directorial work.

We open in Guatemala, where Ben Mears (David Soul, TV’s Starsky and Hutch) and Mark Petrie (Lance Kerwin, Enemy Mine) are filling bottle after bottle with holy water until one glows. Whatever they’re chasing — or running from — has found them.

After that open, we go back in time two years, to when Ben moves back to Salem’s Lot, Maine. He’s come back to his hometown to write about the Marsten House, an old haunted house. He pushes his luck even further, learning nothing from fellow writer Roger Cobb in House, and tries to rent it. However, Richard Straker (the superb James Mason), a stranger in town, has already bought it for his business partner Kurt Barlow.

Instead, Ben moves into Eva Miller’s boarding house. Soon, he’s friends with Dr. Bill Norton (Ed Flanders, the TV movie The Legend of Lizzie Borden and TV’s St. Elsewhere), romantically involved with Bill’s daughter Susan (Bonnie Bedelia, Die Hard, Needful Things) and reconnecting with his old teacher, Jason Burke (Lew Ayers, Battle for the Planet of the Apes).

Soon, Ben remembers a traumatic childhood encounter within the Marsten House and comes up with the theory that the house casts a shadow over all of Salem’s Lot. It gets worse when a crate shows up to the house and people begin to die. Both Ben and Straker are suspects, but it’s really Barlow (Reggie Nalder, Mark of the Devil, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage). He’s a vampire that wants to take over the whole town, starting with local boy Ralphie Glick and realtor Larry Crockett (Fred Willard in a rare non-comedic role and I haven’t even gotten to the scene where he has to put a shotgun in his own mouth!).

That’s when this movie really gets frightening. The scene where Ralphie floats outside his brother Danny’s (Brad Savage, Red Dawn) window is harrowing. And when Danny dies, he comes back to kill gravedigger Mike Ryerson (Geoffrey Lewis, Night of the Comet) and goes after Mark Petrie, who we saw in the opening. Luckily, Mark is a horror movie fan and he uses a cross to chase away the young bloodsucker. The way the vampires fly in this movie is really strange looking and was achieved by floating them off boom cranes instead of wires, then playing that footage backward to for an otherworldly effect.

The town is quickly taken over by vampires, with Ben, Burke and Dr. Norton all trying to stop it. Even Ralph and Danny’s dead mother Marjorie (Clarrisa Kaye, who as, at the time, the wife of James Mason) rises from the dead to try and kill everyone but is stopped with a cross. Mark’s parents are killed by Barlow, but a priest helps him escape. And Burke has a heart attack after Mike Ryerson comes back to drink his blood.

Seeking revenge, Mark breaks into the Marsten House. Susan comes to help him, but they are both taken hostage. Mears and Dr. Norton attempt to save them, but Straker kills the doctor by impaling him on antlers. Ben shoots the vampire’s thrall and then he and Mark stake Barlow. They set the house on fire, driving all of the vampires from their hiding places and purifying the town. However, Susan is nowhere to be found.

That’s when we get back to the opening, as the rest of Salem’s Lot’s vampires are still chasing them. Ben finds Susan in his bed, ready to kill him. Instead of kissing her, he impales her with a stake and our heroes go back on the run — a journey that would take them to a planned NBC series that was to be produced by Richard Korbitz and written by Robert Bloch.

There was a loose sequel made in 1987, A Return to Salem’s Lot, that was written and directed by Larry Cohen (not Lawerence). There was also a remake in 2004 that aired on the TNT channel with Rob Lowe as Ben, Donald Sutherland as Straker and Rutger Hauer as Barlow (I wonder how he feels about Anne Rice typecasting him as a vampire).

While this movie is three hours and seven minutes long, it’s an attempt to capture 400 pages of King’s prose (and this is one of his shorter novels). Paul Monash, who produced Carrie and wrote for TV’s Peyton Place was picked to work the novel into a filmable screenplay. One of the most noticeable tweaks is that Barlow is a cultured, well-spoken man in the novel and a Nosferatu-like bestial killer in the movie.

Originally, George Romero was to direct this when it was to be a theatrical movie. He didn’t feel that he could work within the constraints of television censorship. However, Tobe Hooper really succeeded with this effort, despite much of the book’s violence being trimmed. That said, there is a European theatrical version that contains a longer cut of Cully threatening Larry with the shotgun. It was released in Spain as Phantasma II, a supposed sequel to Phantasm!

This is not just one of my favorite King adaptions, but one of my favorite movies. It’s long running time flies by and there are so many iconic moments of fright that it holds up, nearly four decades after it was filmed.

Shudder is celebrating KIng of Horror month throughout May. You can be part of it just by streaming this movie! No need to search for the link — here it is!

Fred Durant is an IRS agent by day, hen-pecked by his overbearing mother and left frustrated by his sexless marriage. Even his breakfast ritual is sad, as he squeezes an orange and stares out the window, wondering why he goes on. He needs a release and if it has to be calling young women up in the middle of the night and unleashing pure filth on them, then so be it!

Yes, in the 1970’s, we lived in a world without caller ID and cell phones, when we had no idea who was on the other side of the phone. In fact, for years a burglar who had stolen my family’s stereo equipment would call back and tell my mother that he could come back at any time. Years later, he would find religion and call her back, asking for forgiveness.

It’s in that world that we find Fred (played by Robert Reed, who will be forever typecast as the dad from the Brady Bunch, but who knows all about playing a man who is hiding a secret). On his way to work, he dreams about kissing the gorgeous woman next to him in traffic, to the point that he completely loses himself and cars beep their horns at him. If only he could feel that way about his wife (Hope Lange, Bronson’s doomed wife in Death Wish)

Directed by Jerry Jameson (Airport ’77, Raise the Titanic and The Bat People and numerous episodes of Murder, She Wrote), we soon realize that Fred is calling the women from his office, who find him sweet and old-fashioned. And while we never get to hear what he’s saying to them, it’s enough that it leaves them so confused that they can’t hang up.

He can’t even bring himself to tell his therapist what’s really going on. Oh, Fred. Your life is such a mess. At least you can get lost in your world of plants and dote on your teenage daughter (Robin Mattson, Are You in the House Alone?, Candy Stripe Nurses). Or get upset when she shows up in a bikini. And throw in that mother (Sylvia Sidney, Damien: The Omen 2 and God Told Me To) and Fred just keeps giving in to his craziness, even if it leads co-workers to wreck their cars and him getting blackmailed by strippers that he has to choke out!

Between this movie and Haunts of the Very Rich, Robert Reed really could bring the acting to small screen movies.

Producer Charles W. Fries has brought us a wide array of films, from Trashin’ to 1987’s Flowers in the Attic and the Lifetime remakes (we did also all three sequels, Petals in the Wind, If There Be Thorns and Seeds of Yesterday on our podcast), Phantom of the Mall: Eric’s Revenge, Troop Beverly Hills, the Spider-Man TV Movies, The Initiation of Sarah and Amicus’ Tales from the Crypt and The Vault of Horror! What an IMDB page! What an arsenal of films to enjoy!

Sadly, this has never been released on DVD. You’re left to the mercy of the grey market and YouTube if you want to see this for yourself.

Ira Levin’s 1972 novel, The Stepford Wives, and the 1975 movie that was based on it are both cultural phenomena. Even the phrase “Stepford wife” has entered into our lexicon. So why did things have to stop after one movie? Luckily, NBC aired this sequel on October 12, 1980.

Whereas the original Stepford wives were androids, the new ones are controlled by drugs and hypnosis. That’s why the town of Stepford has the lowest divorce and crime rate in the U.S. And it’s also what brings reporter Kaye Foster (Shannon Gless, TV’s Cagney and Lacey) to town.

The town is against outsiders, who enjoy the quiet surroundings they live in. And oh yeah, the fact that others than 4 sirens a day to tell them to take their pills, they don’t have to tell their wives to do anything. They’ve become the perfect wives — complaint in all ways.

Kaye meets two other outsiders, Megan Brady (Julie Kavner, Marge Simpson!) and her policeman husband, the dim-witted Andy (Don Johnson, singer of “Heartbeat.” Oh yeah and Miami Vice, A Boy and His Dog and The Magic Garden of Stanley Sweetheart). Unlike the other women in town, Megan is sarcastic (and near caustic at times) to her husband. She becomes Kay’s research assistant.

The Stepford Men’s Association, run by Dale “Diz” Coba (The Andromeda Strain), is in charge of town. They even send Barbara Parkinson (Audra Lindley, Mrs. Roper from Three’s Company) to run her down with her car. Afterward, all she can do is repeat the same words and appears to be controlled.

Meanwhile, Wally the hotel manager (Mason Adams, God Told Me To) confesses that he wants to leave his wife but can’t. She’s been programmed to be someone he no longer wants her to be.

Meanwhile, Andy gets the job with the Stepford Police and we see his wife got through the Stepford process. Soon, she’s wearing a frilly dress, as well as cooking and cleaning with no complaint. As long as she takes her pills and doesn’t drink, all will be well. Kaye sneaks in to watch their initiation ritual and barely escapes with her life.

Kaye then frees Megan by boozing her up. They try to use Wally to escape town, but even though they had already planned on him betraying them, they are still caught. Kaye manages to get a gun and hold Diz at gunpoint while Megan continually rings the siren. As the Stepford Wives overdose on pills, they become violent and attack their men.

Andy returns to help save the day as the women of the town push Diz off a balcony and tear him to pieces as Kaye leaves.

This was directed by Robert Fuest, who also brought us The Abominable Dr. Phibes, Dr. Phibes Rises Again and The Devil’s Rain! It’s not a bad effort, but a lot of his quirkier touches are absent.  Genre vet James MacKrell also shows up (he played Lew Landers in both Gremlins and The Howling).

One of my issues with this movie — and any of the Stepford stores — is that it’s a really simplistic view on feminism. At the risk of mansplaining, I think that women can choose wherever they want to be — in the workforce, at home raising a family, not raising a family, doing all of the above. Or none! By placing the battle between liberated career women and drones who only exist to cook and clean, these stories simplify the very complicated battle of the sexes.

That doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy this, though! It has some great tension throughout and makes me miss when movies like this would air regularly. This was released on VHS in the 1980’s after Don Johnson’s Miami Vice fame and even retitled Terror in New York when released internationally. In fact, the version I watched on YouTube has a really poor computer graphics title for this that is just dubbed in!

Like most TV movies, this has not been released on DVD. You can find it on the grey market or, as mentioned above, YouTube.

By the way, check out this awesome art for the film by Johnny Pahlsson!