This movie was directed by Robert Butler, who also directed the pilots for Star Trek, Hogan’s Heroes, Batman and Hill Street Blues as well as four Kurt Russell Disney movies — Guns in the Heather, The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes, The Barefoot Executive and Now You See Him, Now You Don’t — and also Night of the Juggler and Turbulence. What a career!

It was written by William Bast, who had already written about his five-year relationship with James Dean in his book James Dean: a Biography and The Myth Makers, a drama about what Bast saw as the publicity-mad funeral of Dean and the damage it did to his family and hometown of Fairmount, Indiana. It was a TV movie in England and an episode of NBC’s Dupont Show of the Month as The Movie Star. He also wrote The Legend of Lizzie Borden, The Valley of Gwangi and The Betsy as well as creating The Colbys.

Bast is played by Michael Brandon in this movie. Strangely enough, in the 50s, Butler worked at CBS Television in charge of the studio audience ushers. James Dean got a job there through Bast but was soon fired by Butler. The movie also has someone else who knew Dean. Christine White, who plays a secretary, met Dean when she was his agent’s typist. She was his girlfriend from 1951 to 1954 and the two successfully auditioned for the Actors Studio. In the movie itself, White is played by Candy Clark.

There’s an interesting cast here. Amy Irving is a young Marilyn Monroe, Meg Foster plays another of Dean’s rumored lovers, Dizzy Sheridan (who went on to write Dizzy & Jimmy: My Life with James Dean: A Love Story, play next door neighbor Raquel on ALF and Jerry’s mom on Seinfeld) and strangely in the way that movies are, she was married to Stephen McHattie at the time, the actor who plays Dean.

Plus you get Jayne Meadows as Reva Randall, Katherine Helmond as Dean’s agent Claire Forger, Brooke Adams as Beverly and Julian Burton as Ray.

Don’t have the box set? You can watch this on Tubi.

Along with What’s the Matter With Helen?, this movie is one of the two collaborations between writer Henry Farrell and director Curtis Harrington.  It was the ABC Movie of the Week on September 22, 1970 and has stood the test of time as one of the better TV movies. And there’s some stiff competition for that.

Shot in just 12 days, it stars Anthony Perkins as Allan Colleigh, who has psychosomatic blindness after an accident — he left paint cans too close to a fire — that killed his abusive father and scarred his sister Katharine (Julie Harris from the 1963 version of The Haunting).

After Allan returns to their home after time in a mental hospital, he’s convinced that everyone is out to get him, including a new boarder with speaks in a hoarse whisper and one of his sister’s ex-boyfriends on the phone.

Joan Hackett — who was in two great TV movies, Dead of Night and The Possessed — appears as Allan’s former girlfriend. She gets caught up in his mania as rooms of the house explode into flames and he’s kidnapped by that mysterious ex.

How Awful About Allan has plenty of actors as comfortable on the stage as they were on the big or small screen. Perkins agreed to wear special contacts that completely made him blind so that his performance would be more realistic.

This didn’t get great reviews when it came out, but do the movie we love ever do?

Don’t have the box set? You can download this on the Internet Archive.

James Devlin (Steve Forrest, Mommie Dearest) survives his own hanging and decides to become a hero, defending Carrie Gault (Sharon Acker) from Lew Halleck (Cameron Mitchell). There are some fun supernatural elements in this, as this is nearly the TV version of High Plains Drifter and was intended to be a series that would follow Devlin across the West as he tried to make up for his past sins.

Director Michael Caffey had a long career directing TV and even did an episode of The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. Writer Andrew J. Fenady wrote Black Noon, Terror In the Wax Museum and Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus, which has Charles Bronson play Francis Church, the publisher who wrote to a young girl named Virginia to explain Santa Claus. He also developed the TV shows Hondo and The Rebel.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Based on the book The Fastest Gun in the Pulpit by Jack Ehrlich, this ABC TV movie has Ernie Parsons (Marjoe Gortner) escaping the noose and taking the identity of a murderer holy man. He heads off to take over that man’s church, a job he really knows nothing about, but it’ll keep him alive hiding out for a while.

While there, he finds himself standing up to the man who has taken over the town, Mr. Ross (David Huddleston). It’s not totally noble, as he falls for the daughter of a man Ross has murdered, Sally Underwood (Pamela Sue Martin).

Jeff Corey is in the lynch mob at the beginning and Slim Pickens plays Billy One-Eye, who helps Ernie. Plus, Geoffrey Lewis is a hired killer named Jason McCoy who comes in to take out Ernie and they end up missing each other at close range and then decide to just go their own way.

Directed by Daniel Petrie (Moon of the Wolf, A Howling In the Woods) and written by William Bowers (Support Your Local Sheriff!), this isn’t the finest ride into the West you’ve seen, but it’s pleasant and I always love Gortner.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Originally airing on May 22, 1977, this attempt at a weekly series comes from director Paul Wendkos (The Mephisto Waltz, Secrets, Haunts of the Very Rich) and Hammer veteran Jimmy Sangster (The Legacy; Scream, Pretty Peggy; Horror of Dracula; The Revenge of Frankenstein).

I was really excited about the potential of this one, which promises from its Amazon listing that writer Andy Stuart (Dack Rambo) teams up with an exorcist named Father Kemschler (Dan O’Herlihy!) to battle Satan and a group of devil worshipers led by Mr. Rimmin (Richard Lynch!).

Seems like Rimmin has been after a girl named Jessica from the moment she was born, as her mother was drugged and attended to by nuns who took her baby away the moment it was born. Her mom was then killed by a black cat and Jessica is raised by his people, with her origins kept a secret.

When Andy and Jessica hook up and decide to get married, she’s unable to even get near the altar. That’s because she’s been promised to the demon Astaroth and must be kept a virgin until the beast comes back and puts a devil baby in her womb. Now, the cult that has been behind every moment of her life must keep her a virgin by cockblocking Andy at every turn.

I was totally prepared for pure 1970’s Satanic bliss, only to find myself in the midst of a relationship drama for much of the films first half. Sure, there was a flashback where a woman imagined a nearly nude and totally burned up Lynch — he came by those scars the hard way — attacking her. I was thinking — is this the TV movie version of Enter the Devil — only for cruel reality to make me learn differently.

That said, there are some good moments here, like a woman being killed by her own housecats under Rimmin’s command. And Elyssa Davalos as Jessica has plenty of great qualities that make her a wonderful horror heroine in distress. And while she’s top billed when you look this film up, Kim Cattrall makes a short appearance.

I wanted to love this. It has all the elements that you would think would lead to magic. Yet it can’t put them all together. Sometimes when you deal with the devil, you don’t get what you wanted.

Directed by William Graham (Return to the Blue Lagoon) and written by George Kirgo, this is the pilot movie for the eventual series that starred Teresa Graves as Christie Love. Graves was the second African-American woman to star in her own television series after Diahann Carroll in Julia.

Based on the novel The Ledger by Dorothy Uhnak, this movie has the book’s lead Christie Opara — a white NYPD detective — become black detective Christie Love. Obviously finding some inspiration from Coffy, Foxy Brown and Cleopatra Jones, Love even had her own catchphrase: “You’re under arrest, sugah!”

Between the pilot and series, Graves became a Jehovah’s Witness and demanded that the show not be as sexual as the movie, which had Christie having an affair with her captain. She’s on the case of an informant, Helena Varga (Louise Sorel), who is about to testify against her boyfriend. There’s also a serial killer that Christie goes undercover to catch.

It’s nowhere near as exciting as the movies it wants to be. Graves is pretty good, however. The series lasted 22 episodes, which was a full first season. She would retire from acting and become really involved in her religion. Sadly, she died in 2002 after an accident in her apartment with a space heater.

The same year this was made, Graves also played Countess Vampira in Old Dracula.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Thomas Thompson wrote Richie, all about the death of George Richard “Richie” Diener Jr. at the hands of his father, who was not charged with the shooting death of his son. The TV movie is directed by Paul Wendkos, who also made another great drug movie, Cocaine: One Man’s Seduction. He also directed the remake of The Bad Seed and The Mephisto Waltz, among many more movies.

Richie Werner (Robby Benson) and his friends only care about getting high, which means more than school, work or anything else. That’s something his father George (Ben Gazzara) can’t understand, that his mother Carol (Eileen Brennan) attempts to and that he himself tries to shield his brother Russell (Lance Kerwin) from.

Richie and his dad do at times get along, like when he gets a job working at a fast food place and when he’s trying to win the heart of Sheila (Cynthia Eilbacher). Yet their relationship is often one of near violence and constant arguments. By the end, Richie is taking handfuls of Secobarbital and threatening his dad with a pair of scissors, telling him he doesn’t have it in him to shoot him. He does, cut to a funeral.

I’m maddest at Sheila, who went from a cute date to telling Richie she already had a guy to finally reading Psalm 23 at his gravesite. You know when he needed you, Sheila? When he was taking handfuls of pills and smoking that reefer.

The sound of Richie yelling and the loud gun blast upset so many people that it was edited from future showings of this on TV. Speaking of being out of control, Richie’s thug friend Brick grew up to be Roger Rabbit. Yeah, Charles Fleischer. And his friend Peanuts? Clint Howard. No wonder his dad was worried, those are some insane friends.

Don’t have the box set? You can watch this on Tubi.

Delbert Mann won the Academy Award for Best Director for the film Marty as well as the infamous NBC TV movie Heidi, Which interrupted the upset of the Oakland Raiders beating the New York Jets. The adaption was by Jack Pulman, who was also the writer for I, Claudius.

It stars Robin Phillips (who I know as the rich guy who kills Arthur Edward Grimsdyke in Tales from the Crypt) as David Copperfield. The cast is packed with stars, including Richard Attenborough as Mr. Tungay, three-time Academy Award nominee Edith Evans as Betsy Trotwood, Cyril Cusack as Barkis, Pamela Franklin (The Legend of Hell House) as Dora Spenlow, Susan Hampshire (The Trygon Factor) as Agnes Wickfield, Wendy Hiller as Emma Micawber, Ron Moody (Dominique) as Uriah Heep, Laurence Olivier (do I have to tell you?) as Mr. Creakle, Vanessa and Lynn’s father Michael Redgrave as Daniel Peggotty, Ralph Richardson as Wilkins Micawber, Emlyn Williams as Mr. Dick, Sinéad Cusack (Cyril’s daughter) as Emily, James Donald (Quatermass and the Pit) as Edward Murdstone, James Hayter (The Blood On Satan’s Claw) as Porter, Megs Jenkins as Clara Peggotty, Anna Massey (The Vault of Horror) as Jane Murdstone, Andrew McCulloch as Ham Peggotty, Nicholas Pennell as Thomas Traddles, Corin Redgrave as James Steerforth, Isobel Black (Twins of Evil) as Clara Copperfield and Liam Redmond (23 Paces to Baker Street) as Mr. Quinion.

This was on NBC in the U.S. but was in theaters everywhere else.

I think it proves how cultured I am that I went through everyone in a movie based on a classic and told you what British horror movies they were in.

Directed by William A. Graham (Return to the Blue Lagoon, Change of Habit) and written by Stanley Z. Cherry, this movie finds Johnny Gaines (Bill Bixby) learning that he has a son named B.J. (Darrell Larson) whom he’s never known, all while he’s still sleeping with 16-year-olds. Or nearly sleeping with them, as his kid shows up right before his initials happen to his dad.

Johnny is still a boy, protected by his father Al (Jack Albertson) and mother Ethel (Ann Sothern) who are starting to wonder why their son doesn’t want to settle down with Edye (Diane Baker). Can Johnny settle down and become a father to the son he never knew while maybe not being someone who double books dates and tries to get his son drunk to go out with someone as his replacement?

Plus: Tom Bosley as Edye’s dad and Judy Strangis in the cast (she was Dyna Girl!).

Don’t have the box set? You can watch this on Tubi.