1972. TV movies. Celebrities. The occult. Oh man, when I add up all the elements of the stew that makes up Haunts of the Very Rich and the broth tastes succulent!
Director by Paul Wendkos, who also was behind the supernaturally tinged The Brotherhood of the Bell, Good Against Evil and The Mephisto Waltz, not to mention the 1985 remake of The Bad Seed, the legendary 1975 TV movie The Legend of Lizzie Borden and the Gidget film series (whew!), this is a tasty slab of cathode ray goodness.
Predating Lost by 32 years, the film begins on an airplane where we learn that our cast of characters has all been lured to the Portals of Eden tropical resort for many different reasons. When they arrive, their host Seacrist (Moses Gunn, Detective Turner in Amityville II: The Possession) helps them enjoy paradise. A snake might show up, of course, but no one should be all that worried.
However, a storm breaks out that night and the staff goes away, the food goes bad and the mood goes sour. David and Ellen (Llyod Bridges and Cloris Leachman) think everyone is already dead and in hell. Al (Ed Asner) refuses to believe in anything. Annette (Anne Francis) goes from manic state to manic state before trying to kill herself. Lyle and Laurie (Tony Bill and Donna Mills) just stay in the background. And the priest (Robert Reed)? He abandons everyone for a peyote ceremony with a tribe of natives that bury birth defected children alive.
Originally airing on September 20, 1972, this film is very much of its time. It was shot on the grounds of the Vizcaya Museum and Gardens, which was the winter home of International Harvester vice president James Deering. You can also see this house in the films Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, Airport ’77 and Iron Man 3.
If you enjoyed Fantasy Island but always wondered, “What if this show fucked with people instead of rewarded them?” then this is the movie for you. The double rug pull at the end surprised even me. And the acting is great. You know how you always heard how trapped Robert Reed felt on The Brady Bunch and how he yearned to be a real actor? Watch his final speech in this film and you’ll realize that he was probably right.
This has never been released on DVD, but aired a lot in the 1970’s and was released on VHS. That said, YouTube — and the TV TERRORLAND channel — are your friend. Check it out and let me know what you think.
Vivian Sotherland (Melissa Sue Anderson, Happy Birthday to Me) starts this movie in front of a pentagram, conducting a ritual that will send one of her teachers up in flames and keep her boyfriend David (Patrick Cassidy, brother of Shaun and half-brother of David). Light the black candles, it’s time for witchcraft in the 1980’s suburbs!
Originally airing on February 27, 1981, Rod Holcomb (the Captain America TV movie, as well as episodes of E.R., China Beach and more) directed this occult themed effort that mines the same territory as The Craft, albeit 15 years earlier.
Despite all that Vivian has done for David, he’s bored with her. Or maybe afraid of her. She’s the most popular girl in school with everything she wants. When new girl in school Robin (Mary Beth McDonough from TV’s The Waltons) arrives, David — and Vivian — are both fascinated by her.
Vivian’s parents (Gordon Jump from WKRP in Cincincati and Cathryn Damon from Soap and She’s Having a Baby) live in denial of their daughter’s power. Meanwhile, Robin’s father (Peter MacLean, Squirm) has already moved her far away from her last school as her powers made her an outsider.
Vivian gets her powers from sacrifices to Hecate, whereas former witch Emily Moore (Marion Ross from Happy Days) believes that Robin comes from a long line of witches. There’s an awesome scene here where Vivian’s mom reminds her that she was once a witch and her daughter basically decimates her psyche. There’s also a lot of dark eyeliner and poutiness, so if Vivian her been a student at my high school, I would have totally asked to do her homework and made her mixtapes with lots of Sisters of Mercy, The Cure and Ministry (back when they were a synth band) on them.
I wouldn’t mind that Vivian put Robin’s dad in the hospital or tried to set her house on fire. It’d be a pure teenage love. I mean, I fell head over heels for mean girls all the time who couldn’t set crows loose on their enemies. All they could do was talk down to me!
Basically, this film descends into Little House on the Prarie (Anderson starred on that show as Mary Ingalls) vs. The Waltons (as mentioned above, McDonough was Erin Walton). A wood shop becomes a war zone as the two young women battle one another to the death.
I really love the dichotomy that is set up between the two witches, one who has her power from trickery who only wants corruption and who hates her mother versus a good witch who lost her mother when she was young and who comes from a lineage of witches, with a name that is even filled with strength. The fact that all of this craziness is happening within the soul-crushing boredom of the California suburbs is even better.
The ending — with the burn witch burn line being shouted — is awesome. And dark. And doomy. And perfect.
Plus, stars like Vanna White, Dana Kimmell (Friday the 13th Part 3), Jeff Mackay (Lt. McReynolds from Magnum P.I.), Gary Dubin (Jaws 2) and Jack Garner (who is also in the TV movies This House Possessed and Fantasies) show up.
This movie has never been released on DVD, but you can find it through gray market sources and on YouTube. You should totally check it out!
If you ever wonder why I love my wife so much, I watched this movie, and she walked into the room, sat on the couch and excitedly remarked, “That’s Eileen Heckart!” Yes, Becca loves The Bad Seed, a classic psychological thriller where Heckart’s performance as the mother of a sociopathic child is unforgettable. And she isn’t shy about it.
Director Herschel Daugherty’s directorial efforts run the gamut of TV classics, from Star Trek to Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Thriller and The Six Million Dollar Man. He was even the dialogue director for Mildred Pierce!
Kate Wainwright (Elizabeth Montogomery, who you may know from Bewitched, but around here we celebrate her for her role in The Legend of Lizzie Borden) is coming to visit her sister, but unbeknownst to her, her sister is already dead. She has to deal with the increasingly crazy attention of her sister’s maid, Mrs. Hawkes (Heckart), power outages, and an increasingly frightening storm. We soon learn that her sister already fired the maid and plans to divorce her husband, Ben.
While the film opens with the murder of the sister, the identity of the killer remains a mystery. As we witness Kate’s growing fear, Montgomery’s performance is nothing short of superb, keeping us on the edge of our seats.
The McKnight Malmar story this was based on was first filmed for a 1962 episode of Boris Karloff’s Thriller, ‘The Storm,’ also directed by Herschel Daugherty. The Victim was rewritten by Merwin Gerard and doesn’t stick as close to the original story, but it retains the core elements of the original, including the intense psychological suspense and the theme of a woman in peril.
The ending of this movie is bound to stir up some strong emotions. It might leave you feeling frustrated, or you might find it enjoyable, as it maintains a consistent level of suspense and creepiness throughout.
This is part three of our interview with Amanda from Made for TV Mayhem. In this installment, we asked for some of her recommendations and thoughts on TV movies!
B&S About Movies: Do you have any recommendations?
AR: Sure. In the first episode of the Made for TV Mayhem Show, I go into why I love This House Possessed, Fantasies and Dark Night of the Scarecrow, so I’ll just say check that out if you’re interested. Other titles I don’t mention as much but absolutely adore would probably be Secret Night Caller, which features Robert Reed in a really dark turn as an obscene phone caller! I also love Night Terror with Valerie Harper, which is a bit of a riff on Duel and really suspenseful. Midnight Offerings is one of the best telefilms ever made. I fall more in love with it with each viewing, and sit down with it a few times a year!
Other movies I love are The House that Wouldn’t Die, The Stranger Within, the small screen remake of I Saw What You Did, and the pilot for Nick Knight. Those are the ones that come to mind. Ummm… I also really dig The Haunted, Outrage, Sandcastles (that’s a supernatural romance), and Scream, Pretty Peggy is a favorite from my childhood. There’s dozens I’m forgetting! And that’s just the horror stuff. I love all the small screen genres!
B&S: Which film is most ripe to be remade?
AR: I’m one of those people who isn’t really up on remakes. I mean, some are quite good and I really liked The Woman in Black remake. I do think remakes often shine a spotlight on the originals so I tend to be more open to TVM remakes, and there are some good ones. The Initiation of Sarah remake (which was also made for television) is a lot of fun. So was Satan’s School for Girls, which is like a feature-length episode of Charmed, basically. Hmmm… I think something like She’s Dressed to Kill would be fun because it’s basically a giallo set in the fashion world and could be pretty fabulous on a larger scale. Plus, it’s fun but flawed, so it might be worth revisiting. In an old article I wrote about telefilms that would potentially make for a decent reboot I said I thought Crawlspace’s exploration of our disconnect with society might be relevant if put into a sort of Web 2.0 space. So, I’ll go with that!
B&S: Who would be your dream team if you could film your own made for TV movie?
AR: Oh gosh! I am hoping you mean living or dead? I would love to bring on Aaron Spelling as a producer because he understood how to mainstream hot button topics, and many of his films and TV shows have an interesting subtext to them. I’d get John Llewellyn Moxey to direct, and I’d either hire Rita Lakin or Paul Playdon to write the script. Or, maybe Juanita Bartlett, because Midnight Offerings is everything. As for the cast… that’s hard. I guess Stephanie Powers, Barbara Eden, Suzanne Pleshette and Joan Hackett could lead the cast, because I love female-driven films. For their co-stars? Robert Reed, Robert Culp and maybe John Ritter. What would the story be? Who cares!
What is it about 1970s TV movies that are so doom laden? So many of the storylines — and the endings — are downbeat, even as Hollywood made the transition to blockbusters with happy endings.
I would argue that most genre films of the 1970s were downbeat, whether they be theatrical or made for television. Look at Deathdream, Let’s Scare Jessica to Death, Massacre at Central High, Don’t Look Now, and even big films like The Omen embraced a sort of nihilism or pessimism that was fairly prevalent during the decade. And moving out of the horror genre, what about the disaster movies of that era? I remember Earthquake’s ending is a little shocking! That was sort of the joy though of movies from that decade. You never knew who’d make it out alive! It was just an edgier time in terms of the willingness to go there.
Is there more? Of course! Come back for part 4 tomorrow!
A rock star has a nervous breakdown and decides to recuperate in a remote house. Yet he finds himself asking, “Am I insane? Or is this house haunted?” Just by reading the title of this movie, I think you know the answer.
Gary Straihorn (Parker Stevenson, former husband to Kirsty Alley and one of TV’s Hardy Boys) has hired a nurse named Sheila (Lisa Eilbacher, Bad Ronald) to help him. The house they settle in seems way too familiar to her, but she can’t remember a lot of her life. Like the fact that she may be named Margaret. But everyone who either screws with her — like Gary’s girlfriend Tanya — or tries to help her, like a woman who gives her some newspaper clippings, all get killed by the house. Can a house fall in love with someone? After you see this, you’ll answer: YES.
There’s a great cast in this as well, including Slim Whitman (The Howling), Joan Bennett (Suspiria and TV’s Dark Shadows), character actor David Paymer, Amanda Wyss (the first person Freddy kills in A Nightmare on Elm Street) and even Philip Baker Hall (Magnolia) shows up in a blink and you’ll miss him role.
This movie was directed by William Wiard (his 1980 TV movie The Girl, The Gold Watch and Everything was a big deal when it came out) and was written by TV writing and producing vet David Levinson. They’d also work together on another TV movie, Fantasies.
This has never been released on DVD. You’re at the mercy of the grey market and YouTube. Trust me, it’s worth it.
We’re excited to bring you the second part of our interview with Amanda from Made for TV Mayhem. In this installment, she shared her thoughts on some of the made for TV films we’ve covered here at B&S About Movies.
B&S About Movies: Here are some of the films we’ve covered. Do you mind sharing your thoughts on them?
AR: I really enjoy this one. It’s surprisingly subversive. It didn’t occur to me that this was a film with really deep feminist undertones until I read the review that Jennifer Wallis submitted for Are You in the House Alone? I mean, I got it, but not to the level she did. It’s a fascinating film. Also, it has great car stunts, so you can watch it for that too!
AR: Here’s Gordon Hessler. He told me he directed this film in five days! It’s wonderful. So creepy. The artwork is amazing. And I don’t mean just the sculptures the male protagonist creates, but all of the artwork throughout the house is stunning. It’s almost distracting! This one is also pretty feminist, but it’s more overt. It’s also a lot of fun. Bette Davis is wonderful in it as well.
AR: One of my favorites. This film really digs deep into the anxiety of the changing family unit in the 1970s. The childless couple and Richard, the man they take in, are both so desperate to create a traditional family unit that they end up destroying each other. It’s not a horror film in the conventional sense, but it’s extremely unsettling. The novel is just as good.
AR: Speaking of trying to maintain a traditional family unit! All the Kind Strangers does have some issues. Mostly with how it portrays the South as an unforgiving space clinging to a conservative ideology, which is a stereotype, but ultimately, it’s very effective. Also, John Savage is just amazing in it.
AR: This is an oddball one. I think it’s a little too slow for its own good, but there’s something really interesting at play with the ghost. So, for me this movie is about how houses absorb our memories, but everyone in the house will remember events differently. There are so many versions surrounding the death of a young woman in the house that the ghost itself can’t actually remember who murdered her. It’s really a pretty interesting idea wrapped up in a slightly misguided film. But it is thought-provoking.
Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark
AR: Absolutely one of the best films ever, and one of the first TV movies I ever saw. I love how quietly creepy it is, and those little monsters are terrifying! Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark is a classic for a reason. The ending is… oh man, I’ve never gotten over it.
AR: Oh gosh, Satan’s School for Girls is so much fun. There’s not a lot going on here, it’s just a straightforward devil worship kind of thing, and I love it. The female ensemble is amazing, and it’s so cool to see Kate Jackson and Cheryl Ladd in a movie before they were both Angels. Also, Roy Thinnes is my husband.
AR: Another favorite. Gargoyles is the first movie I can remember where I wasn’t scared by the monster. I was drawn to them, and I wanted to see them survive. Those feelings of fascination and empathy would carry over when I started watching Godzilla films, but this was the first time I remember rooting for the beast. It’s a wonderful little movie. It does so much with so little, and Bernie Casey as the head Gargoyle is everything to me. This was one of those game changers I mentioned earlier. Such a gateway into horror and creature features for me.
AR: Oh my gosh, another classic! It’s all about that crazy Zuni Fetish doll, and it also gives Karen Black a really great arena as an actress. I think that the Millicent and Therese segment is predictable, but she’s so much fun in those roles! Still, I just go nuts for that dang doll!
AR: Such a favorite. I think Bad Ronald really goes to interesting places. It’s dark, and creepy. Plus, Scott Jacoby is amazing. He’s sympathetic but also scary. The novel makes Ronald much darker, and I appreciate the balancing act in this version, although I think the novel is really fantastic too!
AR: Confession: While I love the Night Stalker, I’m a bigger fan of The Night Strangler (and I love The Norliss Tapes even more than those two films!). I realize that The Night Stalker and its sequel are basically the same film, but there’s just something about the characters in Strangler that I’m drawn to. That said The Night Stalker is fantastic, and Skorzeny is absolutely terrifying. One of the great monsters of the small screen!
AR: I’m on a bit of a James Franciosa kick. I just sat down with Fame is the Name of the Game, and I got to see Tenebre on the big screen last year. Curse is one of my escapist go-tos. James is always wonderful, and he shares the screen with some great small screen faces, including Patty Duke, Donna Mills and one of my favorite character actresses, Roz Kelly. This one just has oodles of energy. And the spider-cam is a hoot!
Believe it or not, we have even more questions for Amanda! Come back and see what she has to say tomorrow. Make sure to visit her on Twitter and Facebook, too! And you can see all of the B&S About Movies TV movies reviews right here!
Originally airing on February 6, 1978, this movie reminds me of a very important lesson: the occult was everywhere in the 1970’s and it was ready to fuck your life up.
The film opens with Sarah (Kay Lenz, House) who joins her stepsister Patty (Morgan Brittany, who was in Death Car on the Freeway and was Katherine Wentworth on Dallas, who was Bobby’s killer before the shower scene retcon) going to the beach. A young man forces himself on Patty and Sarah saves her with telekinesis.
The movie tries to set things up with Sarah as some ugly duckling, but in every other movie I’ve seen Kay Lenz in, she is portrayed as being attractive. That’s the only hollow note in this movie.
The girls go off to college, where they both plan on joining Alpha Nu Sigma. Their mother is even the head of the alumni committee, so it’s a big deal for her to get her biological daughter, Patty, in. For some reason, Patty is welcomed with open arms while Sarah is directed to joining Phi Epsilon Delta.
All of the PED girls are rude and ill-tempered other than Mouse (Tisa Farrow, Zombi 2, Anthropophagus), a shy girl who everyone else is mean to. Mouse just wants to play her violin because otherwise she gets nuts!
Jennifer (80’s sex symbol Morgan Fairchild), the head of ANS, forbids her sisterhood from fraternizing with the PED girls, which tears the sisters apart. Meanwhile, Sarah starts to fall for Paul (Tony Bill, Are You in the House Alone?) while staying wary of den mother Mrs. Hunter (Shelley Winters in an unhinged performance).
Even after she uses her powers to shove Jennifer into a fountain, Sarah doesn’t want to give in to her powers. But once the ANS girls retaliate and throw food and mud at her, she gives in to Mrs. Hunter’s call to hatred and gives in to an initiation ceremony.
That ceremony? It involves blowing off the evil girl’s dresses, permanently ruining Jennifer’s face and killing Mouse, but Sarah decides at the last second to kill both herself and Mrs. Hunter to stop the sacrifice.
As the film ends, Patty joins PED and becomes friends with Mouse. They both mourn the loss of Sarah.
These are the kind of movies that made me glad that I went to art school and a downtown college instead of a real university. That said, I would not be eligible for a sorority, so I guess the point is moot.
This movie also has appearances by Michael Talbott (Freddy from Carrie), Robert Hayes (Airplane!), Deborah Ryan (Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park), Talia Balsam (The Supernaturals) and Kathryn Grant (The Night the World Exploded).
Unlike a lot of TV movies, Scream Factory released this on a double blu-ray called TV Terrors, along with Are You in the House Alone? You can get it at a pretty affordable price and I’d recommend it for this movie alone.
We’re really excited for the chance to share this interview with Amanda Reyes, who was a major inspiration in our decision to do multiple made for TV movie weeks! She was good enough to do an extended interview and shared her feelings on several of the films we’ve already covered!
Reyes has been a guest speaker at international film festivals, TV movie screenings, and academic conferences in such places as England, Australia, and stateside in Austin, TX, where she currently resides. She also contributed the commentary tracks for the Blu Ray release of the 1977 telefilm The Spell (Shout Factory, 2017) and the upcoming release of Last House on the Left (Arrow, 2018). And, she is the curator and co-presenter of the Alamo Drafthouse’s Made for Television Mystery Movie series, which runs quarterly as part of Terror Tuesday. She also loves slashers and soap operas, and is completely obsessed (and slightly disappointed) by how much she relates to Alison on Melrose Place.
B&S About Movies: How did you get into TV movies?
Amanda Reyes: When I was pretty young our local channel used to run a lot of telefilms as part of their weekend afternoon programming. It was such a gateway into horror because I was only four or five when I saw movies like Gargoyles, Horror at 37,000 Feet, etc. Those were game changers for me! I also saw some great dramatic telefilms like Circle of Children, and dark comedies like The Girl Most Likely To… So even though I didn’t recognize them as TV movies at the time, I was heavily exposed to several amazing small screen films at a young age.
B&S: And how did this lead to Made for TV Mayhem?
AR: As I got older, and these films began to air less and less, I got really nostalgic for them. I started buying bootlegs off of eBay, back when they allowed that. Then I wrote an article about TV movies for a fanzine called Debaser. As a lover of odd films, I found myself wanting to write more about these films, many of which seemed truly lost. That got me into blogging. I started Made for TV Mayhem about a decade ago on Livejournal! I’m still a bit of an idiot with technology, but the blog, which is now on Blogger, is popular and people don’t seem to mind the typos or sometimes hinky coding! Anyway, while I was working on the book, I wanted to expand my audience and branched out into podcasting, which is just an extension of my blog but with an even more casual vibe. I really enjoy doing both, and wish I had more time to blog!
B&S: Have you talked to any of the talents that worked on these films?
AR: I have. I guess the most important person I’ve met and spent real time with was the late director Gordon Hessler. I got to spend a day with him in his amazing home in the hills of Los Angeles. We drank cosmopolitans and talked film with the friend who brought me over to Gordon’s house! That was so exciting. Hessler is a bit of an underrated figure in the telefilm world. He’s got an amazing filmography, and his thrillers are always heavy with atmosphere. Anyway, he was a really wonderful and talented man.
Other people I’ve met are Richard Matheson, William F. Nolan, and Parker Stevenson, who was kind of blown away by how much I loved This House Possessed. He loved to tell funny stories about his work in the TV movie and was just as charming as you’d expect. I’ve also talked with John Carpenter about making Someone’s Watching Me! I’ve met several others as well, but those are the biggest names that come to mind.
I interviewed Lance Guest for my blog. It was mostly about his work in the Afterschool Special, but we did discuss some of his TV movie work. Most people that I’ve met who have some work experience with the telefilm hold it in very high regard. It’s a tough gig – short shooting schedules, little money, and lots of restrictions. They have to create these little worlds without a ton of resources, and are generally really wonderful at doing it. They really respect the work and the medium, and so I like to give that respect back.
B&S: Why do you think so few of these films have been released to DVD or are streaming?
AR: I don’t know for sure, but think it’s partially because there are rights issues. Some of these movies were co-produced between networks and studios and I think the licensing might be a little complex. Also, the people who have the rights don’t often think there’s a market for TV movies. There’s some truth to that. A lot of TV movies don’t really profit in their home video releases. That’s why the Warner Archives model is so important for the TV movie. The print on demand service is a great way to sell DVDs. They don’t have to worry about paying for thousands of copies of something that won’t sell. I was hoping more companies would take that route, but since Warner Bros. owns those films, and most companies only license titles to distribute for a finite period of time, I can see where it’s not as feasible.
Come back tomorrow to hear what Amanda had to say about the made for TV movies that we’ve recently featured! Make sure to visit her on Twitter and Facebook, too!
Dan Curtis was responsible for delivering a number of memorable genre productions. Cult TV series “Dark Shadows” is definitely his most successful and enduring endeavor, but he got a couple of other major lobbies into his lengthy career as well. Including being a producer of the original TV film The Night Stalker, he directed the sequel himself, The Night Strangler. Although he wasn’t involved the weekly series that followed, titled “Kolchak: The Night Stalker”, it’s interesting that the rest of the output Curtis was involved in took a similar direction. While “Kolchak” came up with a series of diverse supernatural monsters and threats for its hero to encounter every week, Curtis also gave us a bizarre menagerie of villains and creatures that his characters faced. Perhaps feeling he had exhausted the typical canon of vampires (“Dark Shadows”, House of Dark Shadows, and the TV production of “Dracula” starring Jack Palance) and werewolves (Scream of the Wolf), Curtis relied more and more on invented myths and legends, such as the killer hunting fetish doll that terrorizes Karen Black in TV anthology film Trilogy of Terror.
Curtis didn’t get around to today’s subject at hand, Curse of the Black Widow, until 1977, and even for Dan Curtis, it’s way out there. Just like his other films and programs, Curtis approaches the far-fetched material with great seriousness and realism that could be construed as camp, although this writer would never say that’s a bad thing. The creature that the creators have summoned in this film is a woman who can shape shift into the form of a giant spider. The structure of the movie presents this as a mystery, going through the motions and hoping you don’t notice that Patty Duke is playing a dual role. Duke plays Laura Lockwood, one of two twin sisters who were born when their father crashed his private plane in the desert. They and their mother survived for two days in the wilderness until they were rescued by a Native American. One of the babies had been bitten repeatedly by spiders, which apparently caused her to turn into a giant spider whenever there’s a full moon.
The script has a little fun making it seem as if the spider baby is going to turn out to be Laura’s sister, Leigh (Donna Mills), who also happens to be a romantic interest to the male lead, a private investigator played by Anthony Franciosa. Franciosa gets help with his investigation from a young hopeful he calls “Flaps”, played by Roz Kelly, who apparently could not play any role without her exaggerated New York accent. Franciosa tracks down the guy who discovered the plane crash when Leigh and Laura were babies, now living as a caretaker in one of the family’s abandoned vineyard properties, and there’s some suggestion of Native American mysticism that explains the spider transformation. I did a little research myself, and although there is indeed a spider woman myth, she’s a godlike creature and not a murderous monster that transforms during the full moon.
I don’t feel bad spoiling the fact that Laura is our trans-species mutation, because the film doesn’t do that great of a job disguising it. The script can’t really decide if Laura does or does not know she’s a spider lady; she has mental flashes that reveal snippets of the deaths of her unfortunate victims, but she also seems genuinely bewildered by them, and also of the existence of “Valerie”, an alter-ego she creates by putting on makeup and a wig and speaking with an accent. “Valerie” serves the purpose of frequenting bars and picking up men to serve are victims. The script suggests that she does this as a form of vengeance against men in general, having been victimized by a male rapist in her past. One of the best scenes occurs at the climax, where Donna Mills comes face to face with “Valerie” and somehow does not immediately recognize her as her sister wearing a wig. It seems one of Laura’s transformations had been witnessed by their mother, played by June Lockhart from “Lost In Space”. Lockhart went insane, and for some reason Laura decided to fake the woman’s death and keep her confined to an attic apartment in the family mansion. Leigh is stunned to discover their mother still alive, although once “Valerie” turns into a giant spider again, their mother isn’t alive for much longer.
The weird climax of the film is when we get most of the spider action on camera, and it’s none too convincing. Most shots reveal it to be a motionless prop dangling from wires, although some clever editing almost makes it passable. There’s a lot of creepy atmosphere in this sequence though, which includes Franciosa discovering the spider’s lair with tons of cobwebs and the skeletons of its victims hanging in cocoons.
Curse of the Black Widow plays like an episode of “Kolchak: The Night Stalker” with a different actor as Kolchak. The last film I commented on here was another TV movie, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, which was filmed partially at the Piru Mansion in California. Curse of the Black Widow also uses the same house one of the main locations, proving that once a mansion has been cursed with such things as demonic imps, cannibalism (Folks At Red Wolf Inn/Terror House), sexual slavery (Pets), or Robert Wagner (“Hart to Hart”), nothing will ever change that.
Want to hear what Bill, Sam and Becca had to say about Folks at Red Wolf Inn? Listen here: part one and part two
When it comes to the biggest TV movies of all time, you have to include Steven Spielberg’s Duel on the list. A battle between Dennis Weaver and an 18 wheeler for a taunt 74 minutes that stayed in viewer’s minds for way longer.
That leads us to this film, which originally aired on CBS on September 25, 1979.
Janette Clausen (Shelley Hack, TV’s Charlies Angels, plus Troll and The Stepfather) is a crusading reporter who has moved up from writing feature stories to being on the air herself. She sinks her teeth into a story about a van driver who she feels has been targeting and killing only female motorists, taking on not only the male establishment but even Detroit auto manufacturers and advertising itself!
If you’re a 1970’s TV star buff like myself, you’ll have a field day with this film. You’ve got Peter Graves (Mission: Impossible) as Lieutenant Haller, the main cop on the case. There’s George Hamilton as Jan’s ex-husband who keeps trying to control her. And hey look — that’s Dinah Shore as a tennis pro who may have faced off with the villain of this piece, the Freeway Fiddler, before!
As Billy Mays used to say before he died from doing too much blow, “But wait, there’s more!”
The Riddler, Frank Gorshin, is here! Is that Ozzy’s wife, Harriet Nelson? Why yes, it is! Do I spy Barbara Rush from It Came from Outer Space and Peyton Place? I do! Abe Vigoda! You’re here too! I feel like I’m on Romper Room using my Magic Mirror to see all my friends!
Tara Buckman! You got your throat slashed in Silent Night, Deadly Night and here you are in this TV movie! Even better, you drove the Lamborghini with Adrienne Barbeau in Cannonball Run and even appeared in Never Too Young to Die!
Morgan Brittany! Sure, you were in Dallas, but you also started your career in Gypsy but found the time to be in movies I care way more about, like being the Virgin Mary in Sunn Pictures’ In Search of Historic Jesus and the TV movie The Initiation of Sarah!
Nancy Stephens! We love you! She’s probably best known as Nurse Marion Chambers from the Halloween series of films. But did you know she’s married to Halloween 2 director Rick Rosenthal? Now you do!
Is that Hal Needham as the driving instructor? It is! Hal formed Stunts Unlimited, which did all the stuntwork for Burt Reynolds’ biggest films, but he also directed Megaforce! And guess what? He also directed this movie and did a ton of the stunts, too.
Death Car on the Freeway sets up a slasher who kills targeted women with his evil black van, particularly strong women who excel beyond men. And while he does it, he plays fiddle music! We never see him or learn more about him than that, but if this reminds you a bit of Death Proof, Quentin Tarantino’s part of Grindhouse, you’re not alone.
The best part — for me — was when Jan goes to meet a gang of street racers and Sid Haig shows up! I ran around the house screaming, “SID HAIG!” so many times that Becca had to tell me to settle down and covered me with a blanket until I calmed myself.
When Jan ends a report by saying, “This is Janette Claussen for KXLA from the scene of the Freeway Fiddler’s latest attack, and not at all anxious to leave the scene, horrible as it is. Because when I do, I’m going to be like thousands of other women, in a car on Los Angeles’ 491 miles of freeway… all alone.” you’ll be riveted, wondering when the killer will strike next. Seriously, maybe it’s because I’ve spent the majority of a Sunday just allowing YouTube to randomly reward me with TV movies while I rest up and enjoy some magical napping, but I love this movie.
Of course, it’s not available on DVD. But you know, if you can get to this site, you can probably figure out YouTube? Am I right? I am!
B&S About Movies 
You must be logged in to post a comment.