Category Archives: Made for TV Movie

CBS LATE MOVIE MONTH: Evil Stalks This House (1981)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Evil Stalks This House was on the CBS Late Movie on January 8, April 29 and August 4, 1987.

This was a pilot for a horror anthology that would be called Tales of the Haunted. According to IMDB, this series was broadcast in syndication as 30-minute episodes shown over five consecutive nights. That means that each story would be a five-parter and then edited down to a 96-minute film.

Sadly, the initial syndicated run of this episode didn’t get great ratings.

Who knows if whatever would have emerged if this had become a series and if it would have been as deliriously weird as this movie, but one could hope, because wow — this one really goes for it.

Hosted by Christopher Lee — that part doesn’t appear on many of the roughly taped YouTube videos that are all the evidence that remains of this show — this tells the story of Stokes (Jack Palance), who drifts into two with two kids in tow who may or may not be his. After their car breaks down in a downpour, they make their way to the home of Maggie and Dody (Helen Hughes and Frances Hyland), who seem to be two easily conned older ladies taking care of a mentally handicapped man.

Stokes learns that there are valuables all over the house, so despite promising to leave, he never does, even stealing the ladies’ heart medicine to keep them enslaved to him. They’re not so helpless, however, and the house is filled with horrifying traps like a quicksand pit in the basement, a deadly spider and a witch coven in the attic that bedevils Stokes and another grifter who also comes to take advantage.

The end of this movie totally steals the shock ending from The Baby and I could not love it any stronger.

Nearly a stage play that’s been shot on video, this was directed by Gordon Hessler (Cry of the Banshee, Pray for Death, The Woman Who Wouldn’t Die) and written by Louis D. Heyward (Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine, Planet of the Vampires, The Crimson Cult), I’ve seen this written up quite dismissively in reviews. But why? This is such a lost moment of strangeness with Palance absolutely snarling and hissing out every line with so many nightmare moments for impressionable kids who stayed up way to late to watch it on the CBS Late Movie.

You can watch this on YouTube.

CBS LATE MOVIE MONTH: Kolchak: The Night Stalker recap

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After The Night Stalker and The Night Strangler, Carl Kolchak was so popular with TV viewers that a TV series had to follow. Over the last few weeks, I’ve been going through those episodes as part of CBS Late Movie Month. I can’t even explain the sheer excitement that would happen every time Kolchak would be part of the late night series. Sure, McCloud is good, but a newspaper writer battling a lizardman in the sewers? That’s the kind of thing that made my kid brain explode in sheer mania.

Here are the episodes:

Sadly, the third TV movie about android duplicates — The Night Killers — was canceled in favor of the series.

There were also originally twenty-six episodes in the show — only twenty were filmed — and a few of the unproduced scripts include “Eve of Terror,” written by Stephen Lord (Kolchak says in this story, “What if I told you that a deranged feminist murdered a Casanova lab technician, a sex goddess, and her purveyor?”); “The Get of Belial,” written by Donn Mullally (Kolchak covers a miner’s strike in West Virginia and meets a family that has an inbred monster) and “The Executioners,” written by Max Hodge (Kolchak is demoted to the arts section and discovers that a series of murders are tied to a painting).

In 2005, a new Night Stalker series aired on ABC. Although creator Jeff Rice has the rights to any written Kolchak stories and Universal Studios owns the rights to the TV series, ABC owned the dramatic rights to the character and two TV movies. That’s how this show got made, with Carl Kolchak portrayed by Stuart Townsend. Despite a digital cameo by McGavin and the episode “Timeless” being a remake of The Night Strangler, the new show felt joyless and only lasted six episodes while ten were filmed. 

Author Mark Dawidziak was authorized by Rice to write a new novel, Grave Secrets, in which Kolchak moves to Los Angeles to work for the Hollywood Dispatch and investigates a ghost that is killing people who are destroying the cemetery where its body is interred. His book on the show, Night Stalking, details the show and as part of the Night Stalker Companion: A 30th Anniversary Tribute, the scripts for The Night Stalker, The Night Strangler and the unfilmed The Night Killers were published.

Moonstone Comics also published Moonstone published several Night Stalker books, such as The Lovecraftian Horror, The Lovecraftian Damnation, The Lovecraftian Gambit, A Black and Evil Truth, The Lost World and adaptions of two of the unfilmed episodes, “The Get of Belial” and “Eve of Terror” amongst many others.

Kino Lorber released the two films on blu ray, but they are out of print. However, the complete series is available from them. It’s packed with extras, including 21 commentary tracks and 14 original TV commercials for the show.

You can also watch the episodes on NBC or their Peacock app. They’re also available on Apple TV and Amazon Prime.

While there have been rumors of a movie, nothing has ever happened. Perhaps that’s for the best. We’ll always have two TV movies and twenty episodes of a show that everyone was exhausted of while making and no one watched while it was on the air, yet I am still writing Kolchak fifty years later.

Sometimes, as a writer today, I wonder how much of my life was inspired by Carl. I think it was a whole hell of a lot, as I always saw him as a lonely man pounding on the keys trying to get the world to see a truth that they would never truly be able to view.

There’s something beautiful and sad in that.

CBS LATE MOVIE MONTH: Kolchak: The Night Stalker: The Sentry (1975)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: This episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker was on the CBS Late Movie on November 23, 1979 and February 12, 1988.

This episode of Kolchak is very special to me.

As a kid — who am I kidding, as an adult — I have a tendency to read way too long in the bathroom. Once, while my family was eating at Red Hot in my hometown of Ellwood City — I would have been three or so at this point — my dad decided to get me out of the bathroom faster by knocking on the walls of the bathroom just like the monster in this episode, which sent a young me screaming out of the toilet with my pants around my ankles in public.

The last episode of Kolchak — star Darren McGavin called Universal and ABC and asked to be let out of his contract — this one has a lizard rampaging in the tunnels under Chicago after a researcher steals some of its eggs. So, while a monster, it’s a misunderstood lizard.

This installment also allows Carl the opportunity to flirt with an attractive female officer, Lieutenant Irene Lamont (Kathie Browne, McGavin’s real-life wife) instead of fighting with another cop. There are also roles for Lance Hoyt, Tom Bosley and Margaret Avery (you know her from her fine acting career, I know her from Terror at the Red Wolf Inn).

Directed by TV vet Seymour Robbie (who directed 17 episodes of Remington Steele, 21 of Murder, She Wrote, 12 of F Troop and was also the director of the infamous Jackie Gleason show You’re In the Picture) and written by L. Ford Neale and John Huff, I still love this episode, no matter how silly it is to see a stuntman running around with an alligator head. As a child and, yes, an adult I am quite easy to please.

CBS LATE MOVIE MONTH: The Poppy Is Also a Flower (1966)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: The Poppy Is Also a Flower was on the CBS Late Movie on November 10, 1972; May 23 and December 6, 1973 and June 9, 1975.

You know how I’ve discussed how Eurospy films often feel like the United Nations, what with so many countries working together to make these movies? This American/French/Austrian made-for-television spy and anti-drug film — also known as Danger Grows Wild — was made with the United Nations themselves as part of a series of television specials designed to promote the organization’s work. It was produced by Xerox.

So how does it tie-in to Bond? Well, 007 director Terence Young is at the helm — he passed up Thunderball to direct this — and it’s based on a story by Ian Fleming.

In an attempt to stop the heroin traffic at the Afghanistan–Iran border, some United Nations operatives inject a trackable radioactive compound into a seized shipment of opium and let it go go back into the wild to try and find Europe’s top heroin distributor.

German-born Sente Berger — who is also in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. film The Spy with My Face and The Ambushers — is here, as is Stephen Boyd (Ben-Hur), Yul Brynner, Angie Dickinson, Georges Geret, Hugh Griffith (another Ben-Hur alumnus), Jack Hawkins (who took as many roles as he could late in his career before his three-pack-a-day habit stole his voice), Rita Hayworth (!), E.G. Marshell, “If I Had a Hammer” singer Trini Lopez as himself, Marcello Mastroianni, Amedeo Nazzari (a huge Italian star from before World War II and well afterward), Omar Sharif, Barry Sullivan, Nadja Tiller (Death Knocks Twice), Eli Wallach (who won an Emmy for his role), Grace Kelly (this is the only movie she made after retiring from acting in 1957) and Harold “Oddjob” Sakata. Truly, this is the very definition of a star-studded affair.

All of them were paid $1 each to be in this film, with Young working for free.

One of the producers, Edgar Rosenberg, was of course the husband of Joan Rivers. This is the movie where Joan would meet Hayworth and write that she was demanding and incoherent, yet still glamorous. That said, it’s possible that Hayworth was already beginning to suffer from the effects of Alzheimer’s Disease.

You can watch this on Tubi.

CBS LATE MOVIE MONTH: Hotline (1982)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Hotline was on the CBS Late Movie on October 30, 1986 and March 10, 1987.

Originally airing on CBS on October 16, 1982, this made-for-TV movie was directed by Jerry Jameson, who also was the in the director’s chair for movies like The Bat People, Airport ’77 and the Gunsmoke and Bonanza reunion movies. Lynda Carter (TV’s Wonder Woman as well as Miss World USA 1972) plays Brianne O’Neill, an art student who is getting stalked by The Barber, a man who claims to be behind several killings in the paper.

Who is The Barber? Is it Justin Price (Granville Van Dusen, who was the voice of Race Bannon on The New Adventures of Jonny Quest)? Deranged killer Charlie Jackson (James Booth, Airport ’77)? Former actor Tom Hunter (Steve Forrest, Mommie Dearest), who has been in love with Brianne for a long time? Her boss Kyle Durham (Monte Markham, Jake Speed, We Are Still Here)? Or her co-worker Barnie (Frank Stallone!, Ground Rules)?

Look for Harry Waters, Jr. in this movie. He played Marvin Berry in Back to the Future, the guy that Marty McFly used to steal rock ‘n roll from black people. There’s a death by harpoon gun, so this movie has that going for it. Consider it an early 80’s American low budget made for TV giallo and you’ll be fine.

CBS LATE MOVIE MONTH: Kolchak: The Night Stalker: The Knightly Murders (1975)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: This episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker was on the CBS Late Movie on November 16, 1979; August 28, 1981 and December 18, 1987.

As in so many episodes of Kolchak, there are murders throughout Chicago and they have a supernatural feeling about them, as all of the murders were committed with medieval weapons. The big difference is that Captain Rausch (John Dehner) is the first cop who seems like he actually wants to deal with Kolchak.

It also has Minerva Musso (Lieux Dressler), a decorator who has David Bowie lined up as her next client. For now, she’s renovating a home into a disco club and that’s why the knight has come back from the grave, enraged that his ancestral home is being used in such a way and destroying anyone who gets in his way.

Director Vincent McEveety was a TV veteran, directing eight episodes of Star Trek, 11 of Diagnosis Murder, 28 installments of Murder, She Wrote, 18 visits to In the Heat of the Night and movies like Herbie Goes Bananas, The Watcher In the Woods, The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again, Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo, Gus, The Strongest Man In the World, the original Wonder Woman TV movie, Superdad and The Million Dollar Duck. This episode was written by David Chase, his eighth script for the series, and Michael Kozoll, who went on to write First Blood and one of my favorite TV movies, Vampire.

Night Gallery Season 3 Episode 8: The Other Way Out (1972)

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Directed by Gene R. Kearney, who wrote the script based on a story by Kurt van Elting, “The Other Way Out” starts with businessman Bradley Meredith (Ross Martin) returning home from a long vacation with his wife Estelle (Peggy Feury) just in time for his secretary to show him that a go-go dancer that he had some relationship with has died. Even worse, he soon learns that he’s being blackmailed.

He goes the whole way to an abandoned house in the middle of nowhere, having to walk most of the way after crashing his car. There, he meets the grandfather of the dead dancer, Old Man Doubleday (Burl Ives), who puts him through hell to pay for the murder.

That said, if you’re expecting any real twists or turns, there really aren’t any in this story. There are dogs attacking the man and the promised Sonny, instead of being a brutal older brother ends up being a ten year old, but this feels like a ton of putting the pieces on the table and then not a single thing happens with them. Sure, it has a dark tone, but that’s really all it has.

CBS LATE MOVIE MONTH: The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1987)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: The Return of Sherlock Holmes was on the CBS Late Movie on November 28, 1988; November 10, 1989 and April 20, 1990.

Directed by Kevin Conner (Motel Hell, The House Where Evil Dwells) and written by Bob Shayne, this made for TV movie feels a little bit like Adam Adamant Lives! Or for those that don’t obsess over 1960s British TV shows Austin Powers.

Sherlock Holmes (Michael Pennington) has been taken out of cryogenic sleep by Watson’s ancestor Jane Watson (Margaret Colin), who is a private detective in Boston.  He was infected by the bubonic plague by his enemy Moriarty and frozen until a cure could be found.

Using the alias Holmes Sigerson, the detective works with Watson to help her solve her cases. Holmes falls for Violet (Connie Booth), the daughter of a man killed in an FBI robbery, while Watson and an agent named Tobias (Nicholas Guest) have some glances between each other. This was a pilot for a series that was never picked up, so one assumes that Holmes and Watson would have ended up together if the show was ever a longer series. There’s a fun little Murder, She Wrote cameo as one of the characters is reading a book by Jessica Fletcher.

Shayne also wrote the TV movies Sherlock Holmes and the Leading Lady, which starred Christopher Lee as Holmes and Patrick Macnee as Watson, along with Morgan Fairchild and Engelbert Humperdinck, as well as a sequel to that TV movie, Sherlock Holmes: Incident at Victoria Falls. He also created the show Whiz Kids and wrote episodes of the show Legend, in which author Ernest Pratt (Richard Dean Anderson) plays the hero of his books, Nicodemus Legend, with the help of his friend Professor Janos Bartok (John de Lancie).

CBS LATE MOVIE MONTH: Kolchak: The Night Stalker: Legacy of Terror (1975)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: This episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker didn’t air on the CBS Late Movie because ABC packaged “it with “Demon In Lace” as the TV movie The Demon and the Mummy.

“Among the philosophers, the great thinks and the common Joes of this world, no question is more controversial than truth. Remarkable as it may seem, I can attest that the following events did occur, whether you believe them to be true or not.”

Despite this great starting line from Carl Kolchak, this is sadly near the end of the series. Ramon Bieri returns as a cop, but no one realized that in “Bad Medicine” he was Captain Joe Baker, not Captain Webster. It also has the future Boss Hogg, Sorrell Booke, as a taxidermist named Mr. Eddy.

The story revolves around a 500-year-old Aztec warrior rising every 52 years to claim five victims. The mummified form of this monster of the week is played by Mickey Gilbert, who was also the villain in “The Ripper.” But the real reason to tune in is to see Erik Estrada, just a few years away from superstardom as Ponch on CHiPs, playing Pepe Torres. Estrada dressed as an Aztec priest? I’m here for it. He also has on a pink disco suit and plays the flute in a scene, so this is prime Estrada gold for you to mine.

The cast also includes Dorrie Thomson (Policewomen, Operation Petticoat), Merrie Lynn Ross (Class of 1984) and Sondra Currie (who played Zach Galifianakis’ mom in The Hangover movies).

Basically, this episode is very similar to the aforementioned “The Ripper” while giving us Kolchak versus the Aztec Mummy.

CBS LATE MOVIE MONTH: Prototype (1983)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Prototype was on the CBS Late Movie on June 5, 1987 and January 28 and May 12, 1988.

Directed by David Greene (The People Next Door, Madame Sin) and written by the team of William Link and Richard Levinson, who wrote and created Columbo, Mannix, Blacke’s Magic, Scene of the Crime and Murder, She Wrote. They also wrote the movie Rollercoaster and the Doug Henning stage play Merlin.

Michael (David Morse) is a government experiment created by Dr. Carl Forrester (Christopher Plummer) and his team to be more human than human. The doctor sneaks Michael home over the holidays and even takes him shopping, which enrages his bosses. When it becomes clear that the military is planning on using creations like Michael to become killers, Forrester goes on the run, taking Michael back to the college he used to teach at. Michael learns that he has self-determination, which leads him to be the one who makes the final decision about his fate, which is setting himself ablaze like a monk or Richard Lynch.

Don’t be fooled by the artwork that appeared on the VHS boxes for this movie. Those make it seem like this is a Terminator remake remix rip-off. This is as far from that as you can get, a thoughtful movie about what would happen when an artificial human comes to life and self-awareness.