Category Archives: Made for TV Movie

CBS LATE MOVIE: The Plutonium Incident (1980)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: The Plutonium Incident was on the CBS Late Movie on January 21, 1983.

If you see the German poster for this, you may think it’s an Italian post-apocalyptic movie. No, it’s not. It’s very much we have Silkwood and The China Syndrome at home.

Directed by Richard Michaels (who directed a movie I’m obsessed with finding, Death Is Not the End) and written by Thomas B. Allen and Darlene Young, this has Judith Longden (Janet Margolin) working at a plant in Oregon where she finds some shocking safety problems, but also finds time to hook up with Art Reeves (Bo Hopkins). Good for her. Anyways, she and Harry Skirvan (Joseph Campanella) try to inform the world about all of these issues, which leads to The Crazies suit-wearing maniacs busting into her house, tons of harassment and — spoiler — her death by the end of the movie.

Powers Boothe is Dick Hawkins, the boss, and man, more movies with evil Powers Boothe. I say that as a yinzer who watched him hold my hockey team hostage.

You can watch this at the Cave of Forgotten Films.

Perversions of Science E1: Dream of Doom (1997)

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From June 7 to July 23, 1997, HBO attempted something similar to Tales from the Crypt, adapting the science fiction books of EC Comics for pay cable. But where the Crypt Keeper had bad puns about horror and death, sexy robot Chrome (Maureen Teefy) seems DTF years before we knew what that meant, constantly hitting us with sexual innuendo.

In “Dream of Doom,” Arthur Bristol (Robert Carradine) is trapped in a dream that turns into another dream, an art film like way of kicking off a dirty science fiction anthology TV show. Lolita Davidovich appears as a doctor, Adam Arkin is a therapist, Lin Shaye is a nurse, and Peter Jason is a priest.

Descartes gets name dropped and this gets weird. It’s a good start, directed by one of the shows producers, Walter Hill, and written by David S. Goyer.

This story is based on “Dream of Doom” from Weird Science #12, which was written by William Gaines and Al Feldstein and drawn by Wally Wood. In that story, just like this one,  Aman experiences a sequence of dreams occurring after dream after dream. He’s also a comic book artist who works for Gill Baines. What’s the company, CE Comics?

You can download all of the episodes here or watch this episode on YouTube.

CBS LATE MOVIE: Visions of Death (1972)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Visions of Death was on the CBS Late Movie on September 15, 1976 and October 27, 1977.

Telly Savalas plays Lt. Phil Keegan, a cop before Kojak, and he’s dealing with the visions of Prof. Mark Lowell (Monte Markham), who can see the future. He tells the police that someone is about to plant a bomb, which makes him the prime suspect.

Directed by Lee H. Katjin (Death Ray 2000) and written by Paul Playdon, one wonders if a young Steve King watched this and thought, “Hey, that idea of a psychic being able to touch people and see their future seems pretty neat.” Except that Mark is a professor and Johnny in The Dead Zone was a teacher and…yeah.

They also brought in a real-life psychic — cold reader, more like it — James Van Pragh.  Barb Anderson, Eve Whitfield from Ironside, is also in this.

You can watch this on YouTube.

CBS LATE MOVIE: The 11th Victim (1979)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: The 11th Victim was on the CBS Late Movie on August 27, 1982.

Airing on November 6, 1979 as the CBS Tuesday Night Movie, The 11th Victim — released on VHS as The Lakeside Killer — has Jill Kelso (Bess Armstrong) coming from Des Moints to Los Angeles, looking for the killer of her younger sister, Cindy Lee (Marilyn Jones), who was trying to be an actress and ended up a sex worker. She refuses to believe that, however, even as cop Andrew Spencer (Max Gail) tries to keep her safe when she investigates on her own.

The bad influence on her sister was Sally Taylor (Pamela Ludwig), who got Cindy Lee to pose nude for a German calendar. She barely knows Jill and soon she’s taking her to a “video disco” and getting her to do drugs. Then Jill gets the idea to become a girl fresh off the bus named Kelly and follows in her sister’s footsteps, meeting this movie’s version of Jim South, Spider (Eric Burdon, yes from The Animals), whose secretary Cathy (Annazette Chase) seems so lovely, then tells Jill/Kelly to take off her clothes, right there in the office. And before you know it, Jill/Kelly is agreeing to do hardcore with megastar Red Brody (David Hayward), who she believes is a killer, the very person who killed her sister.

Dick Miller appears as a cop, and this was the last film for Tara Strohmeier, whose career is marked by a list of notable movies, including Hollywood Boulevard, Truck Turner, The Kentucky Fried Movie, The Student Teachers, and more.

After Mr. Billion and Over the Edge flopped, director Jonathan Kaplan found himself working in TV. He also made The Gentleman Bandit and Girls of the White Orchid, which is much better and nearly the same movie, before achieving success with Heart Like a Wheel. This was written by Ken Friedman, who also wrote Death by Invitation, White Line Fever and Cadillac Man.

This movie is definitely “We have Hardcore at home.”

You can watch this on YouTube.

CBS LATE MOVIE: Once Upon a Spy (1980)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Once Upon a Spy was on the CBS Late Movie on January 22 and October 15, 1987 and March 8 and August 2, 1988.

Jack Chenault is a computer genius whom the government wants to be a spy. You and I recognize that he’s Ted Danson and that seems silly to make him James Bond. Maybe with the help of Agent Paige Tannehill (Mandy Pepperidge), he can defeat mad scientist Marcus Valorium (Christopher Lee never says no), who has a motorized wheelchair of death, complete with rocket launchers. He also has a shrinking ray.

Director Ivan Nagy may be best known for his association with Heidi Fleiss. Still, he also directed Mind Over Murder, Captain America II: Death Too Soon , and Skinner, which is a notable achievement. He later, after the scandal, moved on to make nearly adult films, including All Nude Athena, Trailer Trash Teri, Izzy Sleeze’s Casting Couch Cuties, Touch Me, and Wild Desire.

This was written by Jimmy Sangster, so it has that going for it.

There is a universe where Dansen is not known as Sam Malone, but as Jack Chenault.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Murder, She Wrote S2 E3: Murder in the Afternoon (1985)

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Jessica’s niece, an actress in a daytime drama, becomes a suspect when the head writer for the show is murdered.

Season 2, Episode 3: Murder In the Afternoon (October 13, 1985)

Tonight on Murder, She Wrote…

Jessica goes to visit her niece, Nita Cochran, an actress in a daytime soap opera. Jessica’s family seems to be the most prone to accidents and tragedy, so it’s no surprise what happens.

Who’s in it, outside of Angela Lansbury, and were they in any exploitation movies?

Larry Holleran is played by William Atherton, the main bad guy of the 80s. If you needed someone to be a jerk, you called him.

Herbert Upton is played by Paul Burke, who also portrayed Lyon Burke in Valley of the Dolls.

Nicholas Hammond, who plays Todd Worthy, was the first person to play Spider-Man other than Danny Seagren on The Electric Company.

Gordon LaMonica is played by Terry Kiser, who portrayed Bernie in Weekend at Bernie’s. He’s also in Mannequin Two: On the Move and Tammy and the T-Rex.

Nita Cochran is Alice Krige, who you may know as the Borg Queen. She’s also in Sleepwalkers.

Martin Grattop is played by Robert Lipton.

Julian Tenley? That’s Lloyd Nolan from Hannah and Her Sisters.

Bibi Hartman is Tricia O’Neil, who has been in several Star Trek episodes.

Carol Needom? Mackenzie Phillips!

Agnes Cochran is Lurene Tuttle, Buford Pusser’s grandmother, as well as Mrs. Chambers in Psycho. 

The law in this episode is Lt. Antonelli, played by Robert Walden. There’s also Officer Kaplan, played by George Murdock, who played God in Star Trek V.

Have yourself a Star War! That’s Jessica Walter as Joyce Holleran. You probably know her from Arrested Development. Or as Morgan Le Fay in the Dr. Strange TV movie. No, you know her from Arrested Development or Play Misty for Me.

More minor roles include John Miranda as a prop man, Elven Havard as a guard, Dan Cotter as an executive, and Richard Patrick as a film crew member.

What happens?

Jessica uncovers drama on the set of Our Secret Lives as soon as she gets there. Are you surprised? Actors are being fired, and people say things like they wish studio head Joyce Holleran were dead. Well, she is soon shot by The Avenger, the character from the show. Are you also surprised that Jessica’s niece has been accused of this crime? After all, she’s playing The Avenger on the show.

We get to meet Jessica’s sister, Agnes, in this. I wonder how many people die around her?

Also: How many soap operas have a Giallo killer?

Everyone, as usual on Murder, She Wrote, wants to kill the victim. But this one has a straightforward solution.

Who did it?

Seeing as how Larry Holleran, the sleep-around husband of the murder victim, is played by William Atherton, well, there’s your answer.

Who made it?

It’s directed by Arthur Allan Seidelman and written by Paul Savage and Paul W. Cooper.

Does Jessica get some?

She needs to rest up after all the action last week.

Does Jessica dress up and act stupid?

No. Trust me. It will happen. It will happen so much that you may almost hate the show you love.

Was it any good?

A basic mystery. Not all that bad.

Any trivia?

Lloyd Nolan died two weeks after this aired.

Give me a reasonable quote:

Jessica Fletcher: …if I were you, I’d get him to confess as loudly and as quickly as possible.

What’s next?

A mother and daughter become involved in a murder and only Jessica can figure it out.

Sizzlin’ Summer of Side-Splitters 2025: The World’s Oldest Living Bridesmaid (1990)

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July 14-20  Vanity Project Week: “…it might be said that the specific remedy for vanity is laughter, and that the one failing that is essentially laughter is vanity.” Are these products of passionate and industrious independent filmmakers OR outrageous glimpses into the inner workings of self-obsessed maniacs??

Directed by TV vet Joseph L. Scanlan and written by Janet Kovalcik, this was produced by its star, Donna Mills. She stars as rich and powerful lawyer Brenda Morgan, who falls for her much younger assistant, Alex (Brian Wimmer). And is that Art Hindle? Yes.

She’s sick of all of her assistants getting married and quitting after a year. She’s a career woman and marriage was never in the offering for her — dudes, it’s Donna Mills, I like how this film plays like “Oh, she has glasses, how gross” — so she can’t get anyone who would do such a thing.

This was released on VHS by Action International! That blows my mind. The same company that released Elves, The Devil’s Honey, They Call Me Macho Woman! and Homeboyz II: Crack City.

It’s one of five films produced by Donna Mills Productions. The others? Intimate Encounters, in which “A bored suburban housewife embarks upon a series of affairs seemingly triggered by escapism and fantasy.” Alcoholic drama My Name Is Kate. An Element of Truth, in which Donna is a thief. Finally, The Eyes Have It. “Donna Mills is one of the few actresses in Hollywood who actually applies her own makeup on the set and off. Now, you too can share in all of her beauty secrets in this easy-to-follow visual learning method.”

You can watch this on YouTube.

CBS LATE MOVIE: Arthur the King (1985)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Arthur the King was on the CBS Late Movie on August 13, 1987.

If you were British and didn’t get a role in Excalibur in 1981*, a year later, you could have been in Arthur the King, also known as Merlin and the Sword. It was directed by Clive Donner, the man who brought us The Nude Bomb, Charlie Chan and the Dragon Queen, Old Dracula, Spectre, Luv and What’s New, Pussycat? It was written by David Wyles, who also wrote Treasure: In Search of the Gold Horse.

Katharine (Dyan Cannon) is exploring the caves around Stonehenge — Where a man’s a man and the children dance to the Pipes of Pan — and ends up falling and waking up stuck in the cave where Merlin (Edward Woodward, The Equalizer, which had to be mentioned in the CBS ads) and Niniane (Lucy Gutteridge, Top Secret!) have slept and argued for a thousand years. Oh, what a cast — King Arthur (Malcolm McDowell) is a jerk, so you can figure that Guinevere (Rosalyn Landor) ran away more than that she was kidnapped by MorganLe Fay (Candice Bergen, yes, really). She’s rescued by Lancelot (Rupert Everett) and, as you know from the legend of Arthur, they fall in love.

Filmed in Yugoslavia and sitting on the bench for three years before CBS decided to air it as a three-hour TV movie, this is the kind of movie that if you love the legends, you’ll hate, because it feels like, well, a TV movie shot in Yugoslavia. But if you don’t, you’ll wonder why it’s more about Gawain (Patrick Ryecart) and Ragnell (Ann Thornton) than Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.

In this, Morgan is the aunt of Mordred (Joseph Blatchley), Arthur’s evil bastard son, instead of Arthur’s half-sister, which makes the story even darker. But you know, incest and 1980s TV maybe didn’t mix. This also rewrites the ending with Merlin astral projecting himself back in time, possessing Excalibur and stabbing the life out of Mordred.

Spoilers, sorry.

Teri Tordia from Julia shows up, as does Mary Stavin from Top Line and Strike Commando 2. Yes, I realize she was in A View to a Kill and Octopussy, as well as the videos for “Strip” and “Ant Rap” by Adam Ant, but I know her from what I know her from. Carole Ashby was also in both of those movies and this, too, so maybe they found something to talk about. Perhaps they made fun of Alison Worth because she wasn’t going to get to be in A View to a Kill. I offer this conjecture knowing Octopussy was made a year later and A View to a Kill three years after. More Bond girls? Maryam d’Abo was in this, too! Yes, she’s in The Living Daylights, but don’t we all know her from Xtro?

Michael Gough, the butler for Batman, is also on hand; yes, he was also the villain of  Horrors of the Black Museum.

Lancelot is the real hero of this story, defeating an entire army of bad guys all by himself and a dragon before exiting as a hero. That dragon, well, look, we don’t need to talk about the effects, do we? I’m trying to be nice.

Malcolm McDowell is the kind of actor who can play King Arthur and Merlin. I am referring to Kids of the Round Table. He’s also very Eric Roberts in that if you say his name out loud three times, he shows up in a $2 million budget straight-to-Walmart movie.

I have never seen Candice Bergen throw a fireball, and now I have.

*Unless you’re Liam Neeson. He was Grak in this and Gawain in that.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Tales from the Crypt: Two-Fisted Tales (1992)

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Most folks only know EC Comics for Tales from the Crypt — OK, maybe MAD Magazine — but the truth is, there were a ton of other titles that that venerable publisher released. Just in the horror realm, they also had the Vault of Horror (yes, there was an Amicus film with that title) and Crypt of Terror. But there was also Weird Fantasy, Weird Science, Crime SuspenStories, Shock SuspenStories, Frontline Combat, Piracy, Weird Science-Fantasy and even the New Direction post-Comics Code books Impact, Valor, Extra!, Aces High, Psychoanalysis, M.D. and Incredible Science Fiction.

I was surprised that none of these other EC Comics had ever gotten a movie or series until I learned about Two-Fisted Tales.

Strangely enough, as Harvey Kurtzman was the editor of the book, these war stories didn’t always follow their title and often had a very anti-war prejudice. Kurtzman had been drafted in 1942 and knew the horrors of war firsthand. As he saw the other war comics on the news racks, he was upset by how much they glorified war. He saw no heroes in his stories, only people trapped in situations beyond their control. He would later comment in The Complete EC Library: Two-Fisted Tales Volume 1, “Nobody had done anything on the depressing aspects of war, and this, to me, was such a dumb—it was a terrible disservice to the children.”

I guess no one explained that to anyone who worked on this show.

In 1991, a TV pilot was put together by producers Joel Silver, Richard Donner and Robert Zemeckis. Other than using the logo and some of the art in the opening, that’s pretty much all that feels like the comic. Instead, this is very similar to Tales from the Crypt, with William Sadler played Mr. Rush, a violent man who connects all of the stories.

“Showdown,” written by Frank Darabont and directed by Richard Donner, is the story of a gunfighter’s last stand. “King of the Road,” written by Randall Jahnson and directed by Tom Holland, is about a drag racer’s past coming to haunt him. Brad Pitt appears in the one. And “Yellow,” written by Jim Thomas, John Thomas, A. L. Katz, and Gilbert Adler, and directed by Robert Zemeckis, is about a soldier who keeps letting down his military man father. It’s the best episode in here, with great acting by Kirk and Eric Douglas, Lance Henriksen and Dan Aykroyd.

Of the three, “Yellow” is the only one based on an EC Comics story, as it was taken from the first issue of Shock SuspenStories and was written by Al Feldstein and illustrated by Jack Davis.

Sadly, this was a letdown, and after one airing, the three episodes all appeared as part of Tales from the Crypt. I was always upset when the show didn’t use the material it was based on. This is really no different, but the last tale is tense and brutal, a rare Zemeckis-directed story that isn’t overly dependent on special effects.

CBS LATE MOVIE: Children of the Night (1985)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Children of the Night was on the CBS Late Movie on July 8, 1988.

“Don’t hide what you feel inside
Don’t let anybody stand in your way
Just let the music take you higher
Now are you ready to rock
Children of the night?”

Yes, that may be a Whitesnake song, but this TV movie prefers “Hell Is for Children.”

Kathleen Quinlan plays Dr. Lois Lee, the founder of Children of the Night, a non-profit organization that works to support youth who were involved in prostitution. She started as a college student who started to take sex workers into her home for protection and in the film, she runs into pimp Roy Spanish (Mario Van Peebles)  and they battle over one of his girls,  Valerie (Lar Park-Lincoln in her first movie).

Director Robert Markowitz made plenty of TV movies that played the CBS Late Movie, including the Maximilian Schell-starring The Phantom of the Opera. It was written by William Wood, whose career stretched back to the early 60s, Vickie Park and producer Robert Guenette, who directed some of my favorite BS movies, such as The Mysterious Monsters, The Man Who Saw Tomorrow and The Amazing World of Psychic Phenomena.

Some of the girls in this include Marta Kober (Rad, Friday the 13th Part 2, Neon Maniacs), Sherri Stoner (who went on to write Animaniacs episodes), Helene Udy (My Bloody Valentine, The Incubus), Zoe Trilling (Night of the Demons 2, Amityville: The Evil Escapes) and Valerie Richards (Hard Rock Nightmare).

You can watch this on YouTube.