EDITOR’S NOTE: Topper was on the CBS Late Movie on February 16, 1983 and January 5, 1984.

Seven-year-old Sam was not upset when things were remade. He loved watching Topper on WPGH’s Sunday Morning Movie, and he was pleased that it was back. Old Sam is the grumpy one.

Old Sam would also like you to know that Andrews Stevens and Kate Jackson are the cutest of couples and are sad that they divorced.

This was the third time a Topper series was attempted — yes, another failed pilot — as there was a 78-episode show starring Anne Jeffreys and Robert Sterling from 1953 to 1956, and another failed pilot in 1973 with Stefanie Powers and John Fink. There was also a 1992 pilot with Tim Curry as Cosmo, Courtney Cox as Marion and Ben Cross as George.

Marion  (Jackson) and George (Stevens) swerve to avoid a bunny and end up as ghosts, stuck on Earth until they earn their way into Heaven. One of those ways they try to help others is to improve the marriage between Cosmo Topper (Jack Warden) and his wife Clara (Rue McClanahan), as well as keep him from being screwed by his unscrupulous business partner Fred Korbell (James Karen).

Charles E. Dubin directed this, along with more than 110 other TV productions. It was written by the husband-and-wife duo of Michael Scheff and Mary Ann Kasica, with George Kirgo. It was based on the original novel by Thorne Smith.

Did you ever want to see Topper in a disco? This is your movie.

You can watch this on The Cave of Forgotten Films or on YouTube.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Cover Girls was on the CBS Late Movie on March 2 and August 1, 1983, March 21, 1984, December 30, 1986 and June 1, 1987.

Two models, Linda Allen (Cornelia Sharpe) and Monique Lawrence (Jayne Kennedy), are really spies, sent on a mission by James Andrews (Don Galloway) to track down both an embezzler, Bradner (Vince Edwards), and a criminal named Michael (George Lazenby).

This is a failed pilot made in the wake of the success of Charlie’s Angels. You get Don Johnson as an undercover agent posing as a rock star, Ellen Travolta as a photographer and an appearance by Ray Dennis Steckler’s wife Carolyn Brandt!

Directed by TV vet Jerry London and written by Mark Rodgers, this is enjoyable silliness that I wish had become a series, but I say that about every failed pilot.

You can watch this at The Cave of Forgotten Films or on YouTube.

EDITOR’S NOTE: See China and Die was on the CBS Late Movie on March 4, 1984 and June 6, 1985.

Larry Cohen can really do no wrong.

Even with a TV movie budget, he turned this pilot for the TV show Momma the Detective into something great.

Momma Sykes (Esther Rolle) is the momma — you see, right? — of a cop, Sgt. Alvin Sykers (Kene Holliday) and she can’t help but get mixed up in his cases. She reads detective novels all the time and soon finds herself in one, as one of her employers — she’s a maid — was killed soon after coming back to China. Seeing as how she always figures out the killer in her books, she thinks she can do the same now.

She makes her way through the building, getting fired when she pries too much and then getting hired right next door, because finding a cleaning lady as good as her is hard in New York City.

I loved Ames Prescott (Paul Dooley), a cowboy singer in New York who was also a juggler, a magician and anything that would get him on the stage. There’s also a villain of sorts in former NYPD chief Edwin Forbes (Andrew Duggan), who threatens Alvin’s job.

Also: Laurence Luckinbill shows up and he was Sybok, so you should be pretty excited about that. And Estelle Evans and Rosanna Carter also show up as maids; they’re the real-life sisters of Rolle.

You can watch this on YouTube.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Fantastic Seven was on the CBS Late Movie on January 5 and September 9, 1983 and May 16, 1984.

Directed by John Peyser (The Centerfold Girls) and written by David Shaw, this starts with actress Rebecca Wayne (Elke Sommer) being kidnapped by Boudreau (Patrick Macnee) and taken to Finland, where she’ll be killed in 72 hours if the ransom isn’t paid. The studio won’t pay it; her last two films were failures. That means stuntman Hill Singleton (Christopher Connelly, so many Italian movies) must recruit, well, six more people, like his friend Horatio (Brian Brodsky), swimmers Elena Sweet (Morgan Brittany) and Dinah Latimore (Juanin Clay), explosives lover Skip Hartman (Christopher Lloyd), weaponer Wally Ditweiler (Bob Seagren) and bartender and (because he’s Asian) martial arts expert Kenny Uto (Soon-Tek Oh). Of course, they’re successful, even if this pilot wasn’t picked up for a series. I mean, I still watched it on the CBS Late Movie and wrote so many episodes for it. Ah, if only — I mean, a weekly show about stuntmen solving crimes? I mean, that would never work. Oh, The Fall Guy?

This has stunts by a Swamp Thing (Dick Durock) and two Michael Meyers (Dick Warlock and George Wilbur), as well as “Judo” Gene LaBelle.

You can watch this on YouTube.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Plutonium Incident was on the CBS Late Movie on January 21, 1983.

If you see the German poster for this, you may think it’s an Italian post-apocalyptic movie. No, it’s not. It’s very much we have Silkwood and The China Syndrome at home.

Directed by Richard Michaels (who directed a movie I’m obsessed with finding, Death Is Not the End) and written by Thomas B. Allen and Darlene Young, this has Judith Longden (Janet Margolin) working at a plant in Oregon where she finds some shocking safety problems, but also finds time to hook up with Art Reeves (Bo Hopkins). Good for her. Anyways, she and Harry Skirvan (Joseph Campanella) try to inform the world about all of these issues, which leads to The Crazies suit-wearing maniacs busting into her house, tons of harassment and — spoiler — her death by the end of the movie.

Powers Boothe is Dick Hawkins, the boss, and man, more movies with evil Powers Boothe. I say that as a yinzer who watched him hold my hockey team hostage.

You can watch this at the Cave of Forgotten Films.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Visions of Death was on the CBS Late Movie on September 15, 1976 and October 27, 1977.

Telly Savalas plays Lt. Phil Keegan, a cop before Kojak, and he’s dealing with the visions of Prof. Mark Lowell (Monte Markham), who can see the future. He tells the police that someone is about to plant a bomb, which makes him the prime suspect.

Directed by Lee H. Katjin (Death Ray 2000) and written by Paul Playdon, one wonders if a young Steve King watched this and thought, “Hey, that idea of a psychic being able to touch people and see their future seems pretty neat.” Except that Mark is a professor and Johnny in The Dead Zone was a teacher and…yeah.

They also brought in a real-life psychic — cold reader, more like it — James Van Pragh.  Barb Anderson, Eve Whitfield from Ironside, is also in this.

You can watch this on YouTube.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The 11th Victim was on the CBS Late Movie on August 27, 1982.

Airing on November 6, 1979 as the CBS Tuesday Night Movie, The 11th Victim — released on VHS as The Lakeside Killer — has Jill Kelso (Bess Armstrong) coming from Des Moints to Los Angeles, looking for the killer of her younger sister, Cindy Lee (Marilyn Jones), who was trying to be an actress and ended up a sex worker. She refuses to believe that, however, even as cop Andrew Spencer (Max Gail) tries to keep her safe when she investigates on her own.

The bad influence on her sister was Sally Taylor (Pamela Ludwig), who got Cindy Lee to pose nude for a German calendar. She barely knows Jill and soon she’s taking her to a “video disco” and getting her to do drugs. Then Jill gets the idea to become a girl fresh off the bus named Kelly and follows in her sister’s footsteps, meeting this movie’s version of Jim South, Spider (Eric Burdon, yes from The Animals), whose secretary Cathy (Annazette Chase) seems so lovely, then tells Jill/Kelly to take off her clothes, right there in the office. And before you know it, Jill/Kelly is agreeing to do hardcore with megastar Red Brody (David Hayward), who she believes is a killer, the very person who killed her sister.

Dick Miller appears as a cop, and this was the last film for Tara Strohmeier, whose career is marked by a list of notable movies, including Hollywood Boulevard, Truck Turner, The Kentucky Fried Movie, The Student Teachers, and more.

After Mr. Billion and Over the Edge flopped, director Jonathan Kaplan found himself working in TV. He also made The Gentleman Bandit and Girls of the White Orchid, which is much better and nearly the same movie, before achieving success with Heart Like a Wheel. This was written by Ken Friedman, who also wrote Death by Invitation, White Line Fever and Cadillac Man.

This movie is definitely “We have Hardcore at home.”

You can watch this on YouTube.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Once Upon a Spy was on the CBS Late Movie on January 22 and October 15, 1987 and March 8 and August 2, 1988.

Jack Chenault is a computer genius whom the government wants to be a spy. You and I recognize that he’s Ted Danson and that seems silly to make him James Bond. Maybe with the help of Agent Paige Tannehill (Mandy Pepperidge), he can defeat mad scientist Marcus Valorium (Christopher Lee never says no), who has a motorized wheelchair of death, complete with rocket launchers. He also has a shrinking ray.

Director Ivan Nagy may be best known for his association with Heidi Fleiss. Still, he also directed Mind Over Murder, Captain America II: Death Too Soon , and Skinner, which is a notable achievement. He later, after the scandal, moved on to make nearly adult films, including All Nude Athena, Trailer Trash Teri, Izzy Sleeze’s Casting Couch Cuties, Touch Me, and Wild Desire.

This was written by Jimmy Sangster, so it has that going for it.

There is a universe where Dansen is not known as Sam Malone, but as Jack Chenault.

You can watch this on YouTube.