When you see the name John Llewellyn Moxey on the credits of a movie, you know you’re getting into something awesome. Just look at The House That Would Not Die, A Taste of Evil, The Night Stalker, Nightmare In Badham County, Deadly Deception and, well, just about everything he did. I didn’t even mention The City of the Dead and Psycho-Circus!
Originally called I, Desire and airing November 15, 1982 on ABC, who knew this little vampire film would be amongst the best ones I’d find for our vampire week? There’s a great cast — David Naughton from An American Werewolf In London makes for a fine lead, as well as Brad Dourif as a priest, Barbara Stock as the bewitching vampire, Dorian Harewood (he was in Sudden Death!) as a cop, Marilyn Jones as Naughton’s fiancee and even an appearance from Not Necessarily The News‘ Anne Bloom (or Frosty Kimelman in that long-lost HBO program). Oh yeah — and Marc Silver, who was the guitarist in Ivan and the Terribles, the ill-fated band in Motel Hell.
There are some great twists and turns in this one, as well as an incredible vampiric apartment at the end that I wish that I could live in. I’ll assume it’s just a studio set so that I don’t get sad that I can never go back in time and see it for myself.
You can watch this on YouTube and feel the same way.
Daniel Petrie made some pretty much films — Fort Apache the Bronx, A Raisin in the Sun and The Betsy — as well as some memorable made-for-TV movies like Sybil (which ruled mid-70’s bookshelves and viewings) and The Dollmaker.
Here, he’s in Louisiana along with a stellar cast making a movie that honestly could have played drive-ins. That’s how great these made-for-TV films were.
In the Lousiana bayou country of Marsh Island, two farmers (Royal Dano! and John Davis Chandler) find the ripped apart remains of a local woman. Sheriff Aaron Whitaker (David Janssen!) and the victim’s brother Lawrence Burrifors (Geoffrey Lewis!) both show up at the scene, but it’s soon determined that somehow, some way, the girl died from a blow to the head. Lawrence blames her most recent lover. The sheriff things it was wid dogs. And the Burrifors patriarch claims that it was someone named Loug Garog.
That mysterious lover could have been rich boy Andrew Rodanthe (Bradford Dillman!), who along with his sister Louise (Barbara Rush, It Came from Outer Space) lives in an old mansion, the last of a long line.
Based on Les Whitten’s novel, this originally aired as an ABC Movie of the Week on September 26, 1972, then reran as part of ABC’s Wide World of Mystery on May 20, 1974.
Dick Lowry has worked in made-for-TV movies for some time, working on many projects with Kenny Rogers (The Gambler, The Coward of the County) and connected movies like In the Line of Duty and Jessie Stone, as well as the Project ALF TV movie reunion and Archie: To Riverdale and Back Again.
Based on the Martha Saxton book Jayne Mansfield and the American Fifties, this is — at best — a fictionalized accounting of her life. John Wilson’s book The Official Razzie Movie Guide as one of The 100 Most Enjoyably Bad Movies Ever Made.
Arnold Schwarzenegger — four years before The Terminator — plays Mansfield’s second husband Mickey Hargitay, who is telling a reporter the story of her life. Mansfield is played by Loni Anderson, who is perhaps the worst person — outside of bust line — to play her. She just seems wrong, from how she approaches the role to look. Maybe she identified with Jayne, seeing as how she started as a sex symbol and struggled to get her intelligence across. I’m not really sure, but it just doesn’t work.
Ray Buktenica plays her manager Bob Garrett. Buktenica was best known as Benny Goodwin, the rollerskateing toll-booth working boyfriend of Brenda Morgenstern on Rhoda. Also in the cast are Kathleen Lloyd (who memorbaly is killed by The Car as it flies through her kitched window) as Carol Sue Peters and G. D. Spradlin, who mostly plays cops in movies, as Gerald Conway.
Jayne Marie Mansfield is played by Laura Jacoby, who beyond being in Rad is also Scott Jacoby’s sister. The younger version of the character was played by Deirdre Hoffman, Anderson’s daughter.
If you look close enough, Lewis Arquette — the man whose loins gave the world Rosanna, Patricia, Alexis, Richmond and David — shows up as a publicity man.
There were no fact checkers in 1980. After all, how can you explain a movie that purports to tell the life story of Mansfield report that she was 36 when she died when the truth is that she was 34? Or that Jayne is shown making Las Vegas Hillbillys which is supposed to be a Western, which it is not, much less the fact that it was made two years after she and Mickey were actually divorced, yet they are married here? Shouldn’t that be The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw? And while we’re on the matter of facts, how great is it when Jayne is getting a new convertible sometime in the mid-1950’s, you can clearly see a 1980 Honda Civic roll by?
Much like how Jayne is dying to play the lead in The Jean Harlow Story, Valerie Perraine wanted this role. Surely she would have done better than imitating the worst vocal tics of Mansfield and none of the brains behind the glamour. Also, of all people to narrate this movie, Arnold in 1980 would not be the person I’d pick.
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.
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; 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
When I think of Leona Helmsley, who I remember from WOR commercials, I think of Suzanne Pleshette as her. This film is from that near-exploration sub-genre of made-for-TV films: the ripped from the headlines takedown of the fallen.
Somehow, they talked Lloyd Bridges into being in this movie. Don’t ask me how, but man, when he’s all out of it and can barely shave? Magic.
Director Richard Michaels did 55 episodes of Bewitched, which seems to me like the perfect start for a career of making TV movies just like this. It’s filled with so much sleaze
Somehow, no one on Letterboxd has reviewed this except me. This either makes me happy or makes me realize that I will watch anything and everything, then try and tell an uncaring world how the movies make me feel.
Known here as Spectre, this was directed by Mateo Gil, who wrote the 1997 movie Abre De Ojos that was remade here as Vanilla Sky.
Tomás became a success as a writer but has never returned to Spain. But after the death of his wife, a tarot card lures him back to the town where he was born, reminding him of his young days, when he fell for a woman that everyone said was a witch. Now, despite her being burned alive, she is calling him from beyond.
This was part of a Spanish TV movie series, Six Films To Keep You Awake. This is less a horror movie and more doomed romance, a tale of the superstitions of a small village before it became a tourist trap and the lives that were destroyed along the way.
To get away from the city and all its crime — dudes are peeping in on Rhoda while she’s trying to pee! — Chuck Yoman (Gerald McRaney), his wife Rachel (Valerie Harper) and their family move to redneck country where he’s going to make windsurfing boards. Yes, this is the plot. Yes, I watched it.
Everything seems great, you know, until Chuck goes swimming and ends up with a clammy dead body hugging him.
Tammy Lauren from Wishmaster is on hand, as is Dorothy Lyman (Naomi from Mama’s Family). But really, Major Dad in a wetsuit. That’s why you want to watch this movie, which honestly moves at a snail’s pace. And Valerie Harper looks decades older than him, so I made jokes the entire movie to alleviate the ennui.
For years, whenever I’d look through someone’s list of bootlegs, they always had this movie listed. I always wondered why and then I watched this movie.
Rockbitch used to be called Red Abyss and was, like most magic-based things in the UK, part of a matriarchal, polygamous pagan community. The band was called Cat Genetica before that and was started by bassist Amanda Smith-Skinner (“the Bitch”) and guitarist Tony Skinner (“the Beast”).
Somehow along the way, their music got heavier and they decided to start getting nude on stage, then pretty much putting on live BDSM sex shows while performing. Think The Genitorturers in the U.S., because they were also obsessed with female genital mutilation, eating disorders, body dysmorphia and menstruation.
After a notorious series of concerts, TVAmsterdam arranged a concert in Zaandam, recording the experience and adding extra footage to create this documentary. Rockbitch is an acquired taste musically, but if you like NWOBHM-style bands, you’ll probably like them. You may have some difficulty getting past their constant nudity, whipping and on-stage oral sex, but they subscribed to a feminist ideal that stated that women had just as much a right to own their sexuality and make a rock show out of it as the guys did.
While the band never broke any laws in the areas where they performed and often tried to only do private shows, they ceased performing live in 2002.
Amanda and Jo from this band went on to form Syren, who supported Hawkwind on some tours. Julie, the lead singer, still performs under the name Krow, with the majority of her output being “noise terror punk.”
Rockbitch comes off like a more serious, more overtly sexualized Cradle of Filth, but one who also had a message of empowerment at their core, not just titillation. In 2017, a Swedish documentary on witchcraft and its feminist connections became the first to ever get to go inside the still-active Rockbitch commune and their pagan roots.
While most of their audiences may have come to get turned on, I love the audacious in-your-face nature of the band. Rock and roll was once, well, something. And it was dangerous, too.
“That’s part of the problem with being a kid actor. When your show’s over, nobody informs you that your career’s over, too.” — Luke Halpin, aka Sandy Ricks on TV’s Flipper (1964 – 1968)
To become a child actor; a kid star, to paraphrase British modernist poet David Jones: it is both a blessing and a curse.
And for every Leonardo DiCaprio, who got his start as a kid actor on TV’s Growing Pains, receiving the industry’s blessing to transition into adult roles, there’s a Dustin Diamond, from TV’s Saved by the Bell, who’s destined to experience a fateful, Longfellowian rain fall.
Courtesy of Made for TV Movie Fandom Wiki/You Tube trailer.
And in the case of Luke Halpin (Shock Waves), his successful ‘60s doppelganger would be Ron Howard who, as a kid actor, got his start as Opie Taylor on The Andy Griffith Show (1960 -1968). If only Luke Halpin had been noticed by George Lucas and cast in one of the most profitable films in history, American Graffiti (1973; we’re reviewed the sequel, More American Graffiti), or booked a part on ABC-TV’s Happy Days . . . damn the cackling Clotho, Lachesis, Atropos, that trio of witches weaving the looms of fate.
And the witches saw fit to weave Roger Corman into Ron Howard’s tapestry. And the B-Movie King and the strawberry-mop topped sitcom star made a deal: If Howard would star in New World’s hicksploitation romp Eat My Dust (1975), he would give Howard the opportunity pursue his dream of directing a feature film, which became Grand Theft Auto (1977; its theatrical one-sheet appears in Cotton Candy as George and Brenda go on a date to a movie theater). Both films duplicated the insane box office of American Graffiti: Eat My Dust grossed $5 million against $300,000 and Howard’s directing debut grossed $15 million against $600,000.
So with three box office bonanzas and a hit TV series on his resume, NBC-TV wanted a piece of the Howard action. So they gave Ron an opportunity to direct his second film—his first TV movie (the others were 1980’s Skyward, 1981’s Through the Magic Pyramid, and 1983’s Little Shots)—for his newly formed Major H Productions with his father Rance and brother Clint (Ice Cream Man!!!). The idea that Ron and Clint came up with was Cotton Candy: a TV movie-length pilot for a weekly series concerning the rock ‘n’ romance adventures between the rival high school bands (starring 30-year-old teenagers, as is the case with all teen comedies of the ’70s) Cotton Candy (the underdogs) and Rapid Fire (the chick magnets) making the race for stardom in Dallas, Texas. (The high school in the film was called-out-by-name Lake Highlands High School.)
Tad Painter, Morgan Ferguson, actor Mark Wheeler, Mark Ridlen (also a Dallas radio jock), and John Painter, collectively known as Rapid Fire, aka Dallas local band Quad Pi, formerly known as Lithum X-Mas/image courtesy of Clint Howard via Robert Wilonsky and The Dallas Morning News.
For his leading man, Howard cast his old buddy Charles Martin Smith (Toad from American Graffiti; he later directed the “No False Metal” classic, Trick or Treat!!!). Smith is George Smalley: a geeky high school senior who’s dogged by his mother about dating and girls and a dad (Alvy “Hank Kimble” Moore from Green Acres . . . Ack! Stop right there. This is B&S About Movies, buddy! We remember Alvy from Smokey and the Hotwire Gang, The Witchmaker . . . and The Brotherhood of Satan!!) who wants him to stop wasting his time with the guitar (oh, do I relate). So to get chicks and get dad off his back, he joins the school’s football team, but is quickly cut from the squad.
No matter. George hated football and was only doing it to please dad. What he really wants to do is music. So when one of the guitarists of the school’s hottest band (they do all of the school’s dances, mall concerts, hot parties, and get paid gigs!), Rapid Fire, leaves the group as result of a family move, George decides to ask for an audition after a show. And Torbin Bequette (an excellently dickish Mark Wheeler; portrayed Neil Armstrong for Ron in Apollo 13), the band’s popular singer and big man on campus, humiliates George in front of everyone.
So, together with his best friend (ugh, not another clueless, talentless dork with no musical or legal skills “managing” a band, riding his talented friend’s coattails: this is Ricky from American Satan all over again), Corky MacPherson (Clint Howard), they resolve to form a rock band to perform George’s original tunes and take down Rapid Fire at the big “Battle of the Bands” (Oh, the “Battles” at the local skating rink and the city park’s outdoor stage of the ’70s and ’80s!) competition at the real life, Town East Mall (Oh, those teen years of living at the mall! Orange Julius and Spencer Gifts!!) in East Dallas. Together, George and Corky recruit a set of brothers who play keyboards and guitar, a former gang member on bass guitar (Manuel Padilla, Jr., aka Jai from ‘60s TV Tarzan), and a very cute female drummer (Leslie King, she of the 1979 Drive-In T&A classics Gas Pump Girls and The Great American Girl Robbery; as a screenwriter she penned 1988’s To Die For for Deran Sarafin, yes, he of Jean-Claude Van Damme’s Death Warrant!).
The out-of-print paperback tie-in/courtesy of Amazon (this was the best available image).
So, what about the music, you ask?
It is pure ’70s pop bubblegum. But Cotton Candy ain’t the Knack or Sweet. So instead of “Frustrated” or “Good Girls Don’t,” or “Fox on the Run” and “Love Is Like Oxygen,” we get a rocky-upbeat version of the safe n’ sweet sounds of the Carpenters (girl drummer, hatch), with the George Smalley originals “She Rolls,” “Born Rich,” and “Starship” (damn it: not uploaded to You Tube).
As for Rapid Fire’s catalog: And you thought the Sebastians (of Rocktober Blood fame) securing the right to Rod Stewart’s “Maggie May” and Ted Nugent’s “Sweet Sally” for their pirate radio romp On the Air Live with Captain Midnight (1979) was a rock ‘n’ boondoggle? How in the hell did Ron Howard get the rights to Bob Marley’s “I Shot the Sheriff” via Eric Clapton? How did he get the rights to Billy Preston’s (Hammond organist on the Beatles’ albums) “You are So Beautiful” via Joe Cocker?
Clearly, Cotton Candy, while a bunch of clueless dorks who decide playing strip poker with their female drummer is the mature thing to do, is the more talented band. Sure, Rapid Fire has the slick, silk windbreakers, smoldering good looks and feathered hair . . . and can afford snazzy, three-piece suits and fedoras, you know, to carry through that “gangster” theme to go along with that awesome “Tommy Gun” band logo.
“Rapid Fire’s got to reload . . . we’ll be back in five.”
But Torbin and the boys can’t write music; they can only can butcher jukebox-from-hell covers that ’70s sound-alike budget album distributor Pickwick International would reject for release.
Yeah, it’s all very “Pickwick International” with Rapid Fire. If you went on a Sunday “Swap Swap” excursion with the family at the local Drive-In, you know the label. I got burned by Pickwick’s version of Tommy (You Tube) thinking I was buying the Who’s rock opera. Well, that’s Torbin Bequette and Rapid Fire: all the girls, none of the talent, and it ain’t Clapton or Cocker.
Yeah, this is taking me back to those bag-o-dicks from Mad Sire in their silk band jackets and platform shoes and flared jeans churnin’ out their covers of Rick Derringer’s “Rock ‘n’ Roll Hoochie Coo” and Styx “Renegade” at the school dances . . . and taunting Hot Rats, the underdog Ramones-inspired stalwarts as “Hot Rats . . . more like cold crap,” as we ripped out the originals “Rock ‘n’ Roll Stereo Kids” and “Scene Queen” (which later became “Bitch Queen” as we, pathetically, went “metal”) to a garage audience of five fellow lost souls that were a lot like Sam, my boss at B&S About Movies.
Ack! Tagents and non-sequiturs! Back to the movie. . . .
Because Howard’s TV movie debut tanked in the ratings, and both Ron and Clint expressed embarrassment over the years regarding the project, Ron has publically stated the film will never, ever see (a hard or digital) release. And once Ron’s career took off with the likes of the theatrical features Night Shift, Splash, and Cocoon, he didn’t want anyone to remember Cotton Candy; when the ‘80s video boom hit and stores were hungry for product, the film was never released to VHS.
So how bad is it?
Well, in our review of It’s a Complex World, we spoke of how revered it is among the movers and shakers of Providence, Rhode Island, where it was filmed—ditto for Richmond, Virginia’s denizens who remember the making of the failed Rock N’ Roll Hotel. And the rock denizens of Dallas, rightfully, feel the same way about Cotton Candy. It’s all about nostalgia on this one. If you were in middle or high school in 1978 when Cotton Candy aired, you’ll love it. If you never seen it before and, compare it against Howard’s later works, such as Apollo 13 . . . let’s put it this way: it’s not as bad as Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (is any rock movie?), but the proceedings will not be as cool as Eddie and the Cruisers, and not as awesome as Rock Star with Mark Wahlberg (” . . . stand up and shooout!”). Those who love it (moi): we are loading up our TV-to-VHS-ripped copies of Cotton Candy alongside Ladies and Gentleman: The Fabulous Stains and the Dennis Hopper Elvis-Johnny Rotton punk-tale oddity that is Out of the Blue (we’ve got to review that one!).
Cotton Candy recently had an 40th anniversary screening at the Lake Highland Alamo Drafthouse outside of Dallas, put together by Mark Ridlen of the faux Rapid Fire. But do not let that fool you into thinking a DVD restoration is forthcoming. . . .
The bootlegged VHS-ripped-from-TV (regardless of the flashy slip cases) on this one are impossible to find. Cotton Candy has never been officially released on DVD (by Howard or NBC-TV’s corporate parent, Universal) and hasn’t re-aired on TV since the mid ’80s—so watch out for those grey market TV-to-VHS-to-DVD rips in the marketplace. Yes, there are 1985-dated foreign VHS tapes in the marketplace (an image of the Swedish version recently, post-this-review, posted on the IMDb), but it’s doubtful those are from the original negative. Well, perhaps a PPV or VOD stream, Ron? How about a with-ads stream on TubiTV? That’s unlikely. After Howard’s Imagine Entertainment was acquired by Disney, the negative to Cotton Candy has been buried in their vaults ever since. . . .
So the best we’ve got to enjoy Cotton Candy are ’70s UHF-TV rips uploaded to You Tube. And it seems Ron Howard doesn’t mind, since they’ve been there a while. You have three uploads to choose from HERE, HERE, and HERE. Sadly, the ending of the film sticks on all of them before we can see the songwriting credits behind Cotton Candy’s tunes. Ah, but there’s nothing like a B&S About Movies review obscurity (see Arctic Warriors) to inspire those IMDb page updates. Courtesy of those updates, we now know that Joe Renzetti wrote those nifty Cotton Candy tunes with Charles Martin Smith. The Philadelphia-born Renzetti got his start as a film composer and soundtrack consultant alongside Smith in The Buddy Holly Story, teaching Smith and the rest of the cast to sing and play their instruments—live on camera—the first for a theatrical film. Another of Renzetti’s film gigs was instructing Kurt Russell as “The King of Rock ‘n’ Roll” on John Carpenter’s 1979 TV movie, Elvis.
* Our thanks to Advocate Mag and The Dallas News for preserving this beloved rock flick obscurity with interesting trivia bits in the preparation of this review.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook.He also writes for B&S About Movies.
Yes, there is a sequel to Firestarter. No, I didn’t know there was either, much less that I already owned it. Life is full of crazy moments, huh?
Marguerite Moreau, who was in The Mighty Ducks series, plays the grown-up Charlie, who is still being chased by The Shop, represented here by the somehow still alive John Rainbird (now played by Malcolm McDowell). Somehow, he has raised an entire gang of young boys who love to use their powers.
Originally airing on March 10 and 11, 2002 on SciFi (before it was SyFy), I’m as surprised as you are that this exists.
Somehow, they got Dennis Hopper to be in this as well. Man, this is getting odder and odder that I didn’t know that this was a thing.
Also: Deborah Van Valkenburgh is in it. Who, you may ask? Oh, just Mercy from The Warriors and Jackie on Too Close for Comfort and Reva in Streets of Fire.
This was written by Phillip Eisner, who also scripted Event Horizon, and directed by Robert Iscove, who made the “it seems real and yes, people are going to lose their minds” TV movie Without Warning, as well as She’s All That and From Justin to Kelly. Man, what a strange group of films to have made.
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