Also known as Beyond This Place There Be Dragons and wow, what a high minded title for a TV movie — this movie is all about Fred MacMurray as a yacht sailing daddy who falls for a gold digger who actually loves him, including a long speech about the first time they made love and how he finally knew what it was like to be a man and you know, all the negative reviews of this movie can go jump in a Bermuda Triangle because this movie is all about old man loss and yearning, including a professor whose wife disappeared and he was afraid to go into the door into another dimension to find her.

There’s also a great speech about being a dreamer, as well as Donna Mills showing up and a young Dana Plato, which also makes me wistful and sad. This was her first acting job.

Sure, it’s languidly paced, but we all live inside now and maybe we need time to reflect on a place that used to take trophy wives from would-be sea captains and men of industry.

Director William A. Graham started in TV back in 1958, so he probably made something you’ve seen, like Birds of Prey, Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones, The Last Ninja, Calendar Girl Murders, Elvis and the Colonel: The Untold Story (he also directed Change of Habit, Elvis’ last fictional movie), The Hunt for the Unicorn Killer and Death of A Cheerleader.

This movie was produced by Playboy Productions, which brought 76 productions to large and small screens, including And Now for Something Completely Different, the Oliver Reed version of Fanny Hill, Saint Jack, Young Lady Chatterley II (I have so much to say about that one), the mind-destroying Playboy’s Roller Disco & Pajama Party, A Summer Without Boys and so much more.

This YouTube link is amazing, because not only does it have the movie, but it’s a CBS Late Night Movie complete with commericals for Shirley Jones steaming hot dogs and The Manitou!

This movie knows my weaknesses and exploits them.

TV movies. Summer camp romps. Movies with stars of network television.

Marvin Schector (Cheers star John Ratzenberger) has opened up a new summer camp, a place where his daughter Ava (Jennifer Aniston) has a job for the summer and meets cut with a tough kid named Roger played by Brian Robbins from Head of the Class. His wife is played by Dorothy Lyman, Naomi from Mama’s Family and man, this article is going to turn into me geeking out over what shows each of these people come from.

Well, let’s see:

Chad Allen is from My Two Dads.

Candace Cameron Bure is from Full House and I once had a job ghostwriting her tweets about tuna, so I have that going for me.

Josh Saviano (Marilyn Manson) and Danica McKellar are from The Wonder Years.

Jaleel White is Urkel.

And Sherman Helmsley is from Amen and The Jeffersons.

I can see why Breckin Meyer is in this and why Mr. Dewey from Saved by the Bell (Patrick Thomas O’Brien) and Playboy February 1988 Playmate of the Month Kari Kennell and Melanie Shatner — who is in Bloodstone: Subspecies II and III — were in this, but G. Gordon Liddy?

Director Roger Duchowny also made episodes of That Girl, The Brady Bunch and The Love Boat, which probably helped in the filming of this movie. It was written by Bennett Tramer (Kidco, Without Warning, many Saved by the Bell episodes and yes, the inspiration behind the name Ben Tramer in Halloween) and Rich Melcombe, the creator of the Grudge Match syndicated series.

I mean, if you want a great summer camp comedy, there’s always Meatballs. If you want to spend some time with your favorite TV characters, there’s Camp Cucamonga.

Jeff and Barbara Hamilton (Bill Bixby and Paula Prentiss) lose their maid and decide that if they’re both so busy, they should just get another wife because it’s 1972. And yet in the midst of porno chic, their new wife Susan Silver (Valerie Perrine) is only shown to be fleetingly romantic with Jeff and not interested at all in the benefits of a true triad relationship. But hey — it was on TV in 1972, so why am I wondering these things? Too many Joe D’Amato movies, that’s why.

Throw in appearances by Myrna Loy, Robert Goulet, Nanette Fabray, Larry Storch and Penny Marshall and yes, you have a TV movie.

Somehow, this is my second Jerry Paris-directed movie in two days, so that means I’ll have to seek out his movies What’s a Nice Girl Like You…?, Evil Roy Slade and How Sweet It Is!, which somehow has both Terry-Thomas and Paul Lynde in the same movie.

Seriously, why didn’t Barbara and Susan just run off and leave Jeff — who is a real cad for the entire movie — all on his own?

Based on the book Pandora’s Clock by John J. Nance, this movie draws on the author’s experiences as a Braniff Airlines pilot by telling the story of a deadly virus on a Boeing 747-200. The governments of the world have left the passengers — including Ambassador Lee Lancaster (Robert Guillaume) — to die, but Captain James Holland (Richard Dean Anderson) and his crew are struggling to save them all.

Nance shows up as a high-ranking Air Force official, plus there’s Daphne Zuniga, Jane Leeves, Robert Loggia and Stephen Root on hand.

One could argue my smarts in watching a movie about quarantines and pandemics and viruses while the Omnicron variant is in the news. There are so many disease of the week movies that now are not as much fun to watch as they once were.

You can watch this on YouTube if you feel like dealing with some dread.

The adult side of Archie isn’t new — despite what series like Riverdale would have us think — as this movie has the comic book hero coming back home fifteen years after graduation. In England, where they’d have no context for the comic, it was called Weekend Reunion.

Dick Lowry also directed several of the Kenny Rogers Gambler movies and The Jayne Mansfield Story so you know the quality that you’re getting into here.

Archie (Christopher Rich) is now a lawyer about to marry his fiancee, while Veronica (Karen Kopins) has been married four times, Betty (Lauren Holly) has become a school teacher, Jughead (Sam Whipple) is a psychiatrist that fears women and Reggie (Gary Kroeger) is still a jerk.

While this pilot for a series wasn’t picked up, Archie Comics published an adaptation of that had Stan Goldberg and Mike Esposito art in the flashbacks to look like the classic comics and Gene Colan drawing the modern versions of the characters. It also has a cover by John Byrne, who didn’t often draw comedy characters like Archie and his friends.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Gene Levitt wrote and directed The Phantom of Hollywood as well as creating Fantasy Island. Here, he’s making a kinda sorta pre-Argento giallo in which Paul Dennison (Stewart Granger) tries to kill his wife Nancy (Lois Nettleton) but ends up giving her amenesia instead.

The problem? The amnesia she gets could go away at any time and then she’ll remember that he was cheating on her, that she was going to cut off his cash and that he set her up to die. But until then, he’s going to try and ride this out.

This isn’t a classic of the small screen. That said, it has some nice locations and moves along quickly. It’s innocuous and sometimes, you just need some old made for TV movies to get you through the day.

Jackie and Matt Lawrence (Portia de Rossi and Dean Cain) have moved into a fancy apartment with a view of Central Park thanks to the generosity of some older folks like the Januszes (Hal Linden and Dina Merill) and the Goodsteins (Joseph Campanella and Grace Zabriskie).

If we’ve learned anything from occult movies, it’s that you never trust old Hollywood. This applies to TV movies, so don’t trust Barney Miller, the evil socialite from Caddyshack II, a soap star and Sarah Palmer all that much either, because they’ll take your young body, suck out all the energy and keep themselves young.

This was directed by Craig R. Baxley, who also helmed Action Jackson, Stone Cold and I Come In Peace. He’s working from the words of Gary Sherman. Yeah — the very same director who made Poltergeist III, Death Line, Dead & Buried, Wanted: Dead or Alive, Vice Squad and Lisa.

Hal Linden should be in more horror movies where he plays evil old men who steal souls. Someone has to say it.

A six-year-old Sam watched The Clone Master and wished it’d been a TV series, as he already knew what a backdoor pilot was at that young age and maybe he was a chubby kid with Coke bottle glasses, but he grew into, well, a chubby adult with Coke bottle glasses and a movie addiction.

Art Hindle (Black Christmas) is Dr. Simon Shane, a biochemist who has cloned himself multiple times and sent his selves out into the world to have adventures. So you can totally see how this was destined to be more than just a one and done.

Writer John D.F. Black scripted Shaft, Trouble Man, the TV movie Thief and the Wonder Woman TV movie. And director Don Medford’s directing credits stretch from a 1951 episode of Tales of Tomorrow all the way to a 1989 True Blue series installment.

The kids of today will never know the joy — and potential frustration — of a pilot being burned off as a summer TV movie. Sure, you get to see something new, but you’ll never see the entire series it sets up.

There was a time in the mid 70s when we were going to be killed by insects. Maybe they would be ants. Perhaps they could be killer bees. Or locusts. Always locusts.

Richard T. Heffron — the director who took over I, The Jury which made Larry Cohen so mad that he got Q done before their movie — as well as the cheaper choice over Kenneth Johnson to make V the Final Battle, as well as man who made I Will Fight No More Forever, Death Scream, Futureworld and lots of TV movies — made this from a script by Robert Malcolm Young, who wrote the Witch Mountain movies, along with The Ghost of Flight 401, Starflight: The Plane that Couldn’t Land, The Crawling Hand and Trauma, a movie he also directed.

Ron Howard is our hero and he’s a kid always battling with his dad, Ben Johnson, who we all know and love from Terror Train. This isn’t really horror as much as it’s a family drama, with Ron’s dad Rance, Katherine Helmond and Belinda Balaski as notable castmates.

If you ever wanted the high action of men spraying down bugs, well — here’s where you find it.

Based on the novel Come to Mother by David Sale, the ABC Movie of the Week for February 16, 1974 tells the story of Caroline Carmichael (Donna Mills), who is frozen when her heart condition can’t be cured. She wakes up a few decades later only to learn that her husband Thomas (Walter Pidgeon) is now an elder gentleman. Even worse, her kids are now Vera Miles from Psycho and Mike Farrell, who are much older than her.

This is kind of a reunion for Miles, as screenwriter Joseph Stefano wrote the aforementioned Psycho, as well as The Naked Edge, Eye of the Cat and The Kindred. Director Richard A. Colla made The Questor Tapes, The UFO Incident, Battlestar Galactica and Something Is Out There.

Back in 1974, everyone was getting frozen. Remember when Walt Disney was supposedly lying all frosty in Cinderella’s castle?