The Doomsday Flight (1966)

How can you pass up a TV Movie written by Rod Serling?

You can’t.

Not when Rod brings along Jack Lord, Edmond O’Brien, Van Johnson (The Concorde Affaire), Richard Carlson (Creature from the Black Lagoon), Ed Asner, and the always awesome John Saxon (which is why we posted our “Exploring: John Saxon” featurette) in his first TV movie.

Courtesy of the Rod Serling Archive.com

Premiering on NBC-TV on December 13, 1966, thanks to the man behind the pen and that cast, it became the most watched made-for-TV movie to date. As was typical of most TV movies — especially with TV movies that served as a series pilot — The Doomsday Flight was also an overseas theatrical hit.

And wouldn’t you know it: the movie’s hit status gave the cracked and the desperate ideas, as airports across the world — not just in the U.S. — seen an increase of called-in bomb threats. In 1971, the hijack threats became so commonplace, the FAA requested U.S TV station no longer air the film.

Now you know why you may not have heard of or seen this airliner classic, since it’s been off the air since then.

You know this one is an oldie (but a goodie) when the plane hijacked via bomb threat and ransom demand, is an Douglas DC-8. The reason that Edmund O’Brien is so adept at keeping one step ahead of the FAA: he’s a former cop, oops, I mean, a disgruntled aviation engineer.

Yes, much like the later Speed, this time we have DC-8 — instead of a bus — circling around the Los Angeles Airport until Dennis Hopper, uh, I mean Edmund O’Brien, is found. Oh, and if the airliner drops below 50 miles per hour, oops, I mean 4,000 feet, BOOM! And, if you’re following along: Jack Lord is in the Keanu Reeves role, as Special Agent Frank Thompson.

It’s a smart, taunt little thriller brought to you by TV stalwart William Graham, who bought us everything, from episodes of Batman in the ’60s to The X-Files in the ’80s, along with an Elvis movie, Change of Habit (1969), in between. Oh, and . . . ugh, Return to the Blue Lagoon (1991).

You can watch this now public domain film on various DVD box sets, which has been ripped to You Tube.

About the Author: You can read the music and film reviews of R.D Francis on Medium and learn more about his work on Facebook. He also writes for B&S Movies.

Terror in the Sky (1971)

CBS-TV got its start in the airline disaster sweepstakes in September 1971 with this tale about transcontinental flight struck with food poisoning. To save the aircraft, the cabin crew locate a passenger with enough flying experience so that he can be coached by an experience pilot on the ground. Doug McClure, it goes without saying, is very good in his role as a Vietnam war ex-chopper pilot who’s called into action to safe the day.

While many write this off as a rip-off of ’70s airline disaster flicks — and, in a way, it is (which we will get to) — Terror in the Sky has it roots in an Alex Haley-written Canadian telefilm starring James “Scotty” Doohan, Flight Into Danger (1956). The CBC-TV screenplay was quickly rebooted as the Paramount Pictures features film Zero Hour! (1957) starring Dana Andrews — each deal with a “food poisoning” premise. Haley then took the premise and retooled n’ tweaked it again for the novel Runway Zero-Eight (1958), then again as novel Airport (1968), which, in turn, became the Burt Lancaster-starring Airport (1970). So, officially, Terror in the Sky is a bigger-budget TV remake of Zero Hour! and a loose cousin to Runway Zero-Eight. which aired on CBS-TV in September 1971.

As for Zero Hour!: Interest in the film was renewed in the ’80s when it was revealed that the Abrahams-Zucker Brothers’ (The Kentucky Fried Movie) Airplane!, which spoofed the Airport series of movies of the ’70s, was actually an almost verbatim comedy-remake of the film.

Yeah, you know why we love this, as it’s another airline disaster TV movie with bonkers casting: assisting Doug McClure are Roddy McDowall and Kennan Wynn, along with ’50s gents Kenneth Tobey (The Thing) and Leif Erickson (On the Waterfront).

Is the name of director Bernard Kowalski ringing any bells? It should. He gave us the Alien precursor Night of the Blood Beast, The Fast and the Furious precursor Hot Car Girl, and the giant monster mash classic Attack of the Giant Leeches, and the mad scientist romp Sssssss. Oh, and the western-horror about devil worshiping voodoo cowpokes, the most awesome TV movie ever, Black Noon (1971). And let’s not forget he closed out his career with TV’s Colombo, Airwolf, Knight Rider, and Jake and the Fatman.

You can watch this on You Tube.

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.

Mayday at 40,000 Feet (1976)

David Janessen is Captain Pete Douglas . . . and his life is in a talespin: his wife is in the hospital for a life-saving operation and he can’t get out of flight duty . . . and he ends up piloting an airline through a storm. Complicating matters is Marjoe Gortner (Star Crash), in his full-crazed mode that we love (aka, The Survivalist), as a prisoner-transfer who escapes his shackles and skyjacks the plane.

Yeah, if this sounds a lot like Charlton Heston’s Skyjacked (1972; reviewed this week) with its tale of a crazed Vietnam vet with a bomb hijacking a Boeing, then it probably is. Yeah, this is purely unabashed in its Airport series airline disaster rip-offery. But you know what? With this project’s director and the cast he brings to the table, this is a lot of fun. And since we’re mentioning Charlton Heston and his disaster movieness within the context of a David Janessen movie: they both starred in the “Dirty Harry”-inspired football disaster movie, Two-Minute Warning (1976).

Director Robert Butler’s career as a writer, director, and executive creative consultant in TV drama and movies is extensive. His 100-plus credits that began in the early ’60s culminated with Hogan’s Heroes, The Fugitive, and Batman; his moves into theatrical work gave us Kurt Russell in Disney’s The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes and The Barefoot Executive. He began his TV Movie career with the admittedly odd (for television, that is) Death Takes a Holiday (1971), a fantasy-romance where death visits earth and falls in love with Yvette Mimieux; he also gave us Gene Roddenberry’s post-Star Trek effort Strange New World. Do we want to mention the summer camper rip-off with the Cheap Trick theme song, Up the Creek (1980)? Oops, we just did.

And look at the rest of that cast! No need to even mention their movies, for you know ’em well: Don Meredith, Christopher George’s wife Linda Day George, Ray Milland, Hari Rhodes, and Broderick Crawford . . . just wow, it’s all the actors we know and love ’round ‘ere and have written about many, many times in our reviews.

You can watch this on You Tube.

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.

The World Beyond (1978)

If you don’t get your pilot greenlit the first time — I’m looking at you, The World of Darkness — try again with another take at sports writer Paul Taylor (Granville Van Dusen), who died for 2 minutes and 37 seconds, which gives him the power to hear the voices of ghosts.

This has brought him to New England, where a golem has been attacking people. A golem of all things!

JoBeth Williams is somehow in this, but try as they may, CBS could not get anyone to want this to be a full-time series. If they had, it would have aired on Friday or Saturday and died a quick death. Such was the way of pre-The X-Files series. I can name so many — The Man From AtlantisMisfits of ScienceAutomanManimalThe Powers of Matthew StarThe PhoenixBattlestar GalacticaGalactica ’80The HighwaymanGemini Man and many, many more. I watched them all and would bemoan the fact that they never could last.

This was created and written by Art Wallace, who developed Dark Shadows with Dan Curtis. He also wrote the TV movie She Waits and episodes of the Planet of the Apes series that were made into the European films Forgotten City of the Planet of the Apes and Back to the Planet of the Apes.It was directed by Noel Black, who made Pretty Poison and Private School, yet mostly directed television programs.

Speaking of TV Guide, Barnard Hughes — grandpa from The Lost Boys — is in this!

Flight 90: Disaster on the Potomac (1984)

This is another fact-based TV drama about an aircrash, this one concerning the January 1982 disaster of Air Florida Flight 90 from Washingon D.C. to Fort Lauderdale. The Boeing 737-222 crashed into the 14th Street Bridge over the Potomac River in Washington, D.C., resulting in 78 fatalities.

Courtesy of moviemem.com

Jeannetta Arnette (yep, of The Redeemer), Barry Corbin (WarGames), Stephen Macht (most recently of the USA Network’s Suits, but since this is B&S About Movies, we’ll mention Nightwing, Galaxina, The Monster Squad), Dinah Manoff (Grease and Child’s Play; the daughter of Lee Grant of Airport ’77), Richard Masur (the sled dog guy in John Carpenter’s The Thing), and Donnelly Rhodes (of the SyFy Channel’s Battlestar Galactica reboot and The Neptune Factor). The rest of the familiar TV actors and film-character actor cast includes Ken Olin, Jane Kaczmarek, Chad Low, Kate Vernon, K Callan, and Kathleen Wilhoite (the sassy waitress Carrie Ann from Road House). Donnelly Rhodes and Dinah Manoff also appeared together in the TV-sitcom Soap.

Director Robert Michael Lewis gave us the successful TV Movie one-two punch of The Astronaut (1972; produced by Herve Bennett of Crash Landing: The Rescue of Flight 232; reviewed this week), and Pray for the Wildcats (1974); at that point, Lewis continued almost exclusively in the TV Movie realms, venturing into the theatrical world only once: with one of Sam’s favorite films S*H*E: Security Hazards Expert. Screenwriter John McGreevy 120-plus resume also started in ’50s TV series, but he also gave us the Fast and Furious precursor, drive-in classic, Hot Rod Girl. By the late ’60s he worked on TV’s Family Affair and Mayberry R.F.D. Among his 30-plus TV movie credits, he gave us one of the best juvenile delinquent TV drama of the ’70s, The Death of Richie (1977).

Needless to say, with the team of Lewis and McGreevy — and regardless of the up-against-it TV budget — this is a well-research docudrama that sticks to the facts and doesn’t go off into composite characters or “fact-based” situations. True, because of the budget, you may see a few “flaws” in the realism of the crash scene, but with this familiar pro-cast selling the material, it’s easily forgiven.

You can watch this movie on You Tube HERE and HERE.

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.

Crash Landing: The Rescue of Flight 232 (1992)

Well, the VCR and the accompanying VHS tape was still hanging on and not all movies were yet released to DVD. There was no Amazon Prime or Netflix. No streaming and the onslaught of 80-minute direct-to-DVD movies were not yet the norm. Cable Superstations like USA and TNT were not yet in the TV Movie business, but the TV movie death knell was ringing in the “Big Three” networks’ village square: “Reality TV” was on the horizon.

Courtesy of VPRO Cinema Netherlands — watch the trailer.

It’s hard to believe a U.S TV movie — known it in initial broadcast as A Thousand Heroes — would star Charlton Heston (who’s been in the cockpit before with Airport 1975 and Skyjacked) and James Coburn. However, while this aired as a TV movie in the states — and as most, if not all U.S. TV Movies did — it was broadcast overseas with the Crash Landing alternate title, which also carried over into its home video store shelf life (it also ran on HBO throughout the ’90s).

Instead of a big studio, like Paramount or Universal (see The Crash of Flight 401 and The Ghost of Flight 401), Bob Banner Associates — known for CBS-TV’s long-running The Carol Burnett Show and the daytime Dinah Shore talk show, along with the talent show precursor Star Search (1983 to 2004) and the premiere disco show Solid Gold (1980 to 1988) — bankrolled this Harve Bennett production for broadcast on ABC-TV. Now, if that pairing of Harve Bennett and ABC seems familiar, that’s because the network broadcast Bennett’s TV Movie-to-series adventures of a junkman’s moon rocket, Salvage I. Bennett also provided the network with the sci-fi TV movie classic (before there was a Capricorn One), The Astronaut (1972). But his greatest success with ABC-TV was The Six Million Dollar Man, which aired as a 1973 TV movie, then as a 1973 to 1978 series on ABC — then yes, with episodes packaged into overseas theatricals.

As with Crash of Flight 401, broadcast on ABC-TV in 1978, this Lamont Johnson-directed (1970’s The McKenzie Break, 1972’s The Groundstar Conspiracy, 1983’s Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone) is a fact-based drama regarding the crash of United Airlines Flight 232 from Denver to Chicago that crashed in Sioux City, Iowa, in July 1989. The fifth deadliest crash involving a DC-10, of the 296 passengers and crew, 112 died and 184 survived. Despite the mass causalities, the accident and rescue continues to serve as a text book example in crew resource management and emergency response.

The support cast on this — as with all TV movies up until the mid-90s — is expertly cast with Carmen Argenziano (Jacob Carter on Stargate SG-1, but since this is B&S About Movies: we’ll mention Sharks’ Treasure, Graduation Day, and Clint Eastwood’s Sudden Impact), Bruce McGill (yep, D-Day from Animal House and Timecop), character actor Tom Everett (Air Force One and too many TV series to mention, and Richard Thomas (The Waltons and Battle Beyond the Stars). Needless to say, with Herve Bennett in the producer’s chair and this cast, this film is a well-done, gripping action flick about the human fight-or-flight response.

The events from the Sioux City crash also served in the plotting of the fictitious, Jeff Bridges-starring Fearless. You can steam the film on You Tube.

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.

The Crash of Flight 401 (1978) and The Ghost of Flight 401 (1978)

We’re reviewing both of these TV movies side-by-side as result of their basis in the December 1972 crash in the Florida Everglades near the Miami International Airport of Eastern Flight 401 scheduled from New York JFK to Miami. The flight ended with 101 fatalities: the pilots and flight engineer, two of the 10 flight attendants, and 96 of 163 passengers; 75 passengers and crew survived. The crash was documented in the national best-selling paperback Crash (1977) by Rob and Sarah Elder. The supernatural aftermath of the crash was documented in the equally popular The Ghost of Flight 401 (1976) by John G. Fuller.

Paramount and Universal Studios quickly adapted the properties into TV movies: Paramount Television produced Crash (1978), aka The Crash of Flight 401 in its video shelf life, for ABC-TV. Universal Studios optioned the supernatural tales and retained Fuller’s book title for their NBC-TV movie.

Barry Shear (Madam Sin) directs The Crash of Flight 401 with William Shatner starring as National Transportation Safety Board Investigator Carl Tobias (purely narrative; not a factual character), under pressure to exonerate Lockheed, the manufacturer of the wide-body L-1011. Eddie Albert (TV’s Green Acres, the POTUS in Dreamscape) and Lane Smith (District Attorney Jim Trotter in My Cousin Vinnie) star as the surviving Eastern Airlines’ captain and flight engineer under investigation for causing the crash. The passengers and FAA personnel read as a who’s who of ’70s television: Adrienne Barbeau (who returned to the passenger cabin in the 2020 horror-parody Exorcism at 60,000 Feet), Lorraine Gary (Jaws), Christopher Connelly (Raiders of Atlantis), Ron Glass (TV’s Barney Miller), Ed Nelson (Roger Corman’s Rock All Night and Night of the Blood Beast), and Joe Silver (Rabid).

The late Steven Hilliard Stern (This Park is Mine) directs The Ghost of Flight 401, a tale concerned with the ethereal sightings of pilots Robert Loft and Don Repo on other planes that had salvage parts from the wreckage. Ernest Borgnine stars as flight engineer Dom Cimoli alongside Russell Johnson (TV’s Gilligan’s Island) as Captain Loft; Gary Lockwood (of the TV Movie Earth II) is the FAA investigator on the case. The rest of the cast features a young Kim Basinger with a when-you-see-’em-you-know-’em TV and feature-film character actor feast of Robert F. Lyons, Allan Miller, Alan Oppehheimer (a quickly gone-and-replaced Six Million Dollar Man TV movie cast member), Eugene Roche, and Hal Holbrook’s then wife, Carol Eve Rosen.

As is the case with all TV movies of the ’70s, while they’re up against the budget, the production values are high and — according to the comments of IMBb users involved in and experienced both incidents as airline industry workers — are technically accurate. The acting, of course, is excellent across all quarters.

Barry Shears’s 80-plus credits, which began in the early ’50s, were mostly in episodic TV, Tarzan and Police Woman in particular. His dozen-plus TV Movies include Power (1980; Joe Don Baker as Jimmy Hoffa), Undercover with the KKK (1979; a true story about an FBI infiltrator), and Strike Force (1975; with an early Richard Gere in a cop vs. drug dealer drama).

Other works in Stern’s superior TV movie oeuvre (on U.S. TV and cable; in Canada, they ran as theatrical features) are the James Brolin-starring The Ambush Murders (1982), the pre-stardom Tom Hanks-starring Mazes and Monsters (1982), and the Ned Beatty-starring (Ed and His Dead Mother) Hostage Flight (1982).

You can watch The Crash of Flight 401 and The Ghost of Flight 401 courtesy of You Tube. In addition to ABC and NBC airing both of these fact-based airline movies, ABC also broadcast the adventure-drama SST Death Flight, while NBC took the subject matter into a sci-fi turn with The Disappearance of Flight 412; CBS-TV broadcast the horror-fantasy The Horror at 37.000 Feet, which also starred William Shatner. We’ve also reviewed all of the theatrical forefathers that inspired the “Big Three” TV Networks’ airline telefilms with our “Airport: Watch the Series” featurette.

And don’t forget: We’re TV movie crazy around here, so be sure to catch up with a wide-array of TV movies from the ’70s and ’80s with our tributes “Lost TV Week,” “Week of Made for TV Movies,” and “Sons of Made for TV Movies Week,” and “Grandson of Made for TV Movie Week.” And here we are, with another “TV Week” because, well, TV Movies rock. And there will be another one: that’s bank.

We reviewed a gaggle of airline disaster TV movies this week, so be sure to check out our “Airline Disasters TV Movie Round Up” feature with links to all of the reviews.

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.

The Disappearance of Flight 412 (1974)

Before there was The Asylum Studios. Before there were mockbusters. Before there were an endless stream of direct-to-DVD and direct-to-streaming variants of popular movies, there were the “Big Three” networks’ (ABC, CBS, and NBC) endless stream of TV movies that knocked-off popular theatrical films. In the case of this Jud Taylor-directed (TV’s Star Trek and Man from U.N.C.L.E.) airline thriller, it was made by NBC in the midst of the Airport disaster flick series of films made between 1970 and 1979 (read out “Airport: Watch the Series” featurette), which also included ABC’s SST Death Flight and CBS’s The Horror at 37.000 Feet. While ABC’s offering was an adventure-drama and CBS’s a horror-fantasy, NBC’s offering took a sci-fi turn.

Ugh. Cheap-jack DVD cover available at your local retail “impluse buy” end caps and electronic retail dust-bin barrels.

Glenn Ford (Jonathan Kent in Superman ’78, but since this is B&S About Movies, we remember him best for The Visitor and Happy Birthday to Me) is an Air Force Colonel in investigating an Air Force base’s rash of electrical disturbances aboard its aircraft. To pinpoint the in-flight problem, he dispatches the four-man crew of Flight 412 piloted by Captain Bishop (David Soul of Salem’s Lot). Shortly into the flight, the flight makes radar contact with three unidentified craft and reports them as U.F.Os; two fighter jets are dispatched and force Flight 412 to land at a remote, abandoned military airfield in the American Southwest desert. Sequestered in a barracks and their craft hidden away in a dilapidated hangar, government officials begin to interrogate and convince the crew they did not see flying saucers. Meanwhile, Ford’s Colonel — and Bradford Dillman — refuse to accept Flight 412 simply vanished — and that it has anything to do with alien contact.

At the time of this NBC-TV production, Peter Hyams had not yet scripted the conspiracy-similar Capricorn One; he came up with the idea back in 1969 while working on the Apollo broadcasts for CBS-TV. Completing the script in 1972, no production company wanted to make it; that is until ITC Entertainment (Space: 1999, Saturn 3) put Capricorn One into pre-production in late 1975 and commenced filming in late 1976. In a coincidence: Capricorn One was — based on its casting of the then popular James Brolin and O.J Simpson — pre-sold to NBC to secure its TV rights, which assisted in augmenting the production’s budget.

While a ratings success during its initial October 1974 broadcast on NBC, contemporary critics decry Flight 412 for its overuse of stock footage (which leads to the boondoggling jets switching from U.S. Marine McDonnell Douglas F-4B Phantom II fighters to Grumman F9F Panthers; the latter didn’t fly in the ’70s as they were retired after the ’50s, this according to aeronautical critics), recycling newsreels of individuals speaking of their “close encounters,” and voice-over narration to advance the plot. But those critics seem to miss the point: that the “plot” was based on “fact” and made to resemble a documentary about a “real event” involving a military U.F.O encounter. Flight 412 became a frequently-ran film on NBC’s late night programming blocks and UHF-TV syndication until the mid-’80s, at which time it was given a VHS release.

Courtesy of its casting of Glenn Ford, David Soul, and Bradford Dillman, the film is easily available as a still-in-print DVD and streams on Amazon Prime. But we found You Tube freebies HERE and HERE and on Daily Motion. You can also enjoy it as part of Mill Creek’s Nightmare Worlds 50-film pack, which afford us to do another take on this film.

Image courtesy of JohnGrit/Unisquare.

Other network TV movies parked at the Hollywood hangers are Paramount Studios-ABC’s The Crash of Flight 401 and Universal Studios-NBC’s The Ghost of Flight 401; both are concerned with a real-life, 1972 Eastern Airlines crash and its supernatural aftermath. Don’t forget that we wrapped up our week of airline flicks with our “Airline Disasters Round Up” feature.

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.

Vanishing Point (1997): John Doe Week

Editor’s Desk: This review originally ran on August 7, 2020, as part of our “Fast and Furious Week I” week of reviews and we’ve brought it back for “John Doe Week.


Did you know their was a remake of Vanishing Point? It’s okay. No one does.

The FOX-TV Network—back when they were in the business of creating original content, in lieu of reality programming and weirdo-dorky Seinfeld (sorry, Sam) wanna-be shitcoms—retooled this 1971 classic made by their sister film studio. Ack! No one should be poking around Richard C. Sarafian’s classic. And how did Sarafian go from this, to Farrah Fawcett’s Sunburn (1979), to become “Alan Smithee” on Solar Crisis (1990)? And so it goes in the B&S About Movies universe. (See? Too many movies, so little time. So many reviews to write!)

Of course, since this is a TV film, the vague existentialism and “thinking road flick” gibberish of the original is excised, thus transforming Barry Newman’s Kowalski into an action hero. Luckily: it features the same model 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T as the original film. Sadly: the messages regarding religious cults, racism, drug abuse, homophobia, and police entrapment are lost . . . and we’re stuck with a Challenger-driven Bonnie and Clyde redux.

And if you thought Sarafian’s transition from Vanishing Point ’71 to Farrah was odd: The director, Charles Robert Carner, wrote Gymkata (1985)* for Robert Clouse. Yes. The film starring American Olympic gymnast Kurt Thomas—as if no one learned their lessons from trying to turn Olympian Mitch Gaylord into a film star with American Anthem* and American Tiger.

Watch the trailer.

In the Challenger cockpit is the always welcomed Viggo Mortensen (who starred in the rock-religious flick Salvation with his then wife, Exene Cervenka of X (we are reviewing it this week; look for it) ; and yes, he’s Aragorn from Lord of the Rings) as Kowalski; he’s still employed by a car delivery service, but now he’s a Desert Storm veteran pining for his glory days as a stock car racer. This Kowalski’s “need for speed” isn’t the result of drugs, bets or personal demons: he’s a clean, faithful husband desperate to get home to his pregnant wife who’s suddenly hospitalized. While the ‘70s Kowalski didn’t need a reason to say “Fuck the Man!” to earn his folk hero status, the ‘90s Kowalski becomes an Americana hero as result of being mislabeled as a “terrorist” by an overzealous government abusing new anti-terror laws. 

Helping out on the radio front is a politically outspoken DJ simply known as “The Voice,” (Jason “Beverly Hills 90210” Priestly, a FOX-TV series, natch) on KBHX 106.5, “The Voice of the Rocky Mountains.” At least Priestly’s DJ is hip enough to spin tunes such as “Volunteers” by the John Doe Thing. Not helping matters is a hard-edged, ex-stock racer turned Utah State Trooper (the always welcomed Steve Railsback of Lifeforce) in hot pursuit with a Hemi of his own and a catch-Kowalski-at-all-costs attitude (if this sounds a lot like the Marjoe Gortner-Railsback persuit in The Survivalist, it probably is.) And in with the desert-dwelling assist is rocker John Doe (A Matter of Degrees) as an anti-government tax evader with a knack for repairing Hemis. (And rock trivia buffs take note: This is only time you’ll see the ex-husbands of X vocalist Exene Cervenka—Viggo and John Doe—together in the same film.)

It’s interesting to note that while a TV movie, Vanishing Point ’97 has a 90-minute, theatrical-running time. Movies shot-for-TV run 80 minutes, then 40 minutes of commercials are added to fill a two-hour programming block. Thus, 10 minutes of advertising are lost to fit the film into that 120-minute programming block. That’s bad business. So, considering Viggo’s status at the time, was this intended as a theatrical feature, and 20th Century Fox realized their production faux-pas and dumped it on TV?

What do you think, Eric?

“Jesus. Even the poster for this sucks. What the f**k was Viggo thinking.”
— Eric, purveyor of film quality and Seinfeld hater

Indeed, Eric. Indeed.

You can watch Vanishing Point ’97 on You Tube.

* Sam? Bossman? How many times must I lay down the American Anthem/Gymkata gauntlet? At the very least, all I want for Christmas is a Sam Panico review of Gymkata. Amen.

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.

L.A. Macabre (Amazon Prime Series, started in 2013)

Fifteen episodes of the series L.A. Macabre are now available on Amazon Prime (season one, season two) and we were lucky enough to get a sneak peek.

Originally starting as a found footage web series on YouTube. the second season of the show turned it into a single camera drama with more locations throughout Los Angeles, as well as expanded characters, stunts and scares. Now, the Amazon Prime version has been cut into fifteen 30-minute episodes.

The series starts with three filmmakers — show host Ryan (Ryan Hellquist), director Colin (Aidan Bristow) and Ryan’s younger sister Jamie (Ryan Bartley) — getting the opportunity to interview Callie (Corsica Wilson), a former member of a cult called The New Family. After the first episode of L.A. Macabre with her in it airs, Callie begins to get stalked by someone or something who just could be from her old life. Or is she everything that she seems?

If you’re a true crime fan or someone missing Supernatural, this show has something to offer you. It starts off smart and quick before somehow picking up steam from there. I really like that the show moves away from found footage and becomes more of an action-adventure by the second season, while concentrating on the romance between Ryan and Callie, as well as the worry that she may be brainwashing him with the techniques that were once used against her.

You can learn more about this series by visiting its offical Facebook and Twitter pages. You can also watch the show on YouTube.