Category Archives: Movie reviews

CBS LATE MOVIE MONTH: Murder at the World Series (1977)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Murder at the World Series was on the CBS Late Movie on November 25, 1982 and April 5, 1985.

Cisco (Bruce Boxleitner) once tried out for the Houston Astros and didn’t make the team. But now that they’re in the World Series — this wouldn’t really happen until 2005 and they wouldn’t win until 2017 — he’s decided to make things murderous.

Directed by Andrew V. McLaglen (who not only directed Sahara for Cannon, he also made The Wild Geese) and written by Cy Chermak (the writer of 4D Man and producer for Kolchak: The Night Stalker), this is filled with big stars — well, for me — all being pulled into this disaster.

This movie really has enough plot for an entire series, much less a TV movie. Lynda Day George is troubled actress Margot Mannering! Tamara Dobson (Cleopatra Jones) is her friend Lisa! Karen Valentine is news reporter Lois Marshall! Maggie Wellman is Kathy, a groupie who Cisco thinks is an Astro wife and he abducts, only to strap a bomb to her! It’s also the last movie of Nancy Kelly, the mother of The Bad Seed! Even better, you get Murray Hamilton, Michael Parks, Hugh O’Brian, Dr. No Joseph Wiseman, rodeo cowboy Larry Mahan, Dick Enberg as a radio announcer and Lisa Hartman as a stewardess! And how could I forget! Monica Gayle, my beloved Patch from Switchblade Sisters, is in this!

“The motion picture you are about to see is a work of fiction. It does not reflect the opinions, attitudes or policies of the Houston Astros to whom we are deeply grateful.” I love this credit. I loved this movie, as well. It’s just so silly, but I’m so into both TV movies and disaster spectacles.

This is not the Roy Scheider-starring Night Game, which also has the Astros involved in a murder plot, not is it New York Met pitcher Tom Seaver’s book, Beanball: Murder at the World Series.

You can watch this on YouTube.

CBS LATE MOVIE MONTH: The Hustler of Muscle Beach (1980)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: The Hustler of Muscle Beach was on the CBS Late Movie on September 19 and October 10, 1986.

Jonathan Kaplan started with movies like Night Call Nurses and The Student Teachers before eventually making The Accused. Along the way, he made a few TV movies like this one, written by Tim Maschler and David Smilow.

Nick Demec (Richard Hatch) is a con artist who decides to get in on the bodybuilding scene on Muscle Beach, taking the mentally challenged bodybuilder Todd Nash (Tim Kimber, who now co-owns Gold’s Gym) as his client. Call girl Jenny O’Rourke (Kay Lenz) sees right through him, but somehow he decides to become a way better person than he was when this movie started.

Bobby Van from Make Me Laugh is the MC, Franco Columbo and Frank Zane play themselves, Paul Bartel and James Hong appear and an alternate title — Shaping Up — which is better than the one they went with. Ah, the magical days of 1980 when Pumping Iron inspired so many TV movies!

You can watch this — with original commericals — on YouTube.

The Sizzlin’ Something Weird Summer Challenge 2024: The Dracula Saga (1973)

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Golden Oldies Week (July 27 – August 3) Something Weird Video have released such a wide range of movies over the last 30 years that trying to categorize them can be tricky. They started out as a gray market mail order distributor (aka a bootlegger) not unlike the Cape Copy Center or Sinister Cinema and eventually moved into the niche se ploit titles that would set them apart. The movies on this list are the kind of cult genre titles that were the bread and butter of many of the bootleg companies of the 90s and most were not exclusive to SWV. If you look in the catalogs or on the website these would be under categories like “Nightmare Theatre’s Late Night Chill-O-Rama Horror Show,” “Jaws of the Jungle,” “Sci-fi Late Night Creature Feature Show,” or “Spies, Thighs & Private Eyes.” Many of these are currently available as downloads from the SWV site (until the end of 2024)!

The problem with being Count Dracula is that your family line will eventually have to deal with in-breeding, which means that your lone male heir is a one-eyed, furry-faced boy Oh yeah — and your daughters may appear to be highly cultured musicians by day, but by night, they seduce any man — or woman — in their path, even priests. Actually, if Leon Klimovsky’s La Saga de los Draculas taught me anything, it’s that I don’t want to be Count Dracula.

If you’ve encountered any Spanish vampire films, you know that for every moment of sheer surrealist glee or breast baring blood blasting scene, you have to deal with long stretches where not much happens. Then again, we kind of specialize in movies where not much happens until the insane end of the film around here.

Berta is the long-lost relative of the Dracula clan who has returned home to the family castle, where all hopes of a male heir are pinned upon her. By the end of the film, she’s full-on bonkers, dispatching her cheating husband who has already consorted with all of her nubile relatives, then wipes them all out while they sleep in their coffins with an axe. Of course, that’s never worked on vampires before, but this film also features blood drinkers walking around in broad daylight.

By the end, she’s delivered her own baby and lied to the Count, who doesn’t struggle when she attacks him. That said, her blood gets all over the baby, who eagerly laps it up, ensuring that the Dracula bloodline will go on.

The print that played at the Drive-In Super Monster Rama was afflicted with a nasty case of vinegar syndrome, meaning that it would run for ten minutes and then fall apart, with credits that weren’t even worth running. That didn’t matter at all — by 2:30 AM I had ingested several strong ciders, some moonshine, some blazing hot slices of Buffalo chicken pizza and perhaps some other things that we can’t legally discuss. As the windows of our car fogged up and my wife slept by my side, I was pulled into the family dalliances of the Draculas.

It has everything you want from a European 1970’s vampire film: Helga Line leading an attractive cast of female blood suckers, some fine gore and even some cinematography that approaches art, mixed with — you guessed it — long stretches where people just talk and listen to some Bach. It’s certainly unlike any vampire film I’ve seen before. That — and the environment in which I watched it for the first time — added to my enjoyment.

The Sizzlin’ Something Weird Summer Challenge 2024: Curse of the Doll People (1961)

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Golden Oldies Week (July 27 – August 3) Something Weird Video have released such a wide range of movies over the last 30 years that trying to categorize them can be tricky. They started out as a gray market mail order distributor (aka a bootlegger) not unlike the Cape Copy Center or Sinister Cinema and eventually moved into the niche se ploit titles that would set them apart. The movies on this list are the kind of cult genre titles that were the bread and butter of many of the bootleg companies of the 90s and most were not exclusive to SWV. If you look in the catalogs or on the website these would be under categories like “Nightmare Theatre’s Late Night Chill-O-Rama Horror Show,” “Jaws of the Jungle,” “Sci-fi Late Night Creature Feature Show,” or “Spies, Thighs & Private Eyes.” Many of these are currently available as downloads from the SWV site (until the end of 2024)!

Known in Mexico as Munecos Infernales, this movie was directed by Benito Alazraki, who also was behind Santo contra Los Zombies and Espiritismo, both made the same year as this film.

Four men have stolen an idol from a voodoo priest. I don’t have to tell you what a bad idea that is in any country. Soon, evil dolls begin killing their family members years before we even heard of Puppet Master. It’s actually based on the book Burn Witch Burn! by A. Merritt, which has nothing to do with the movie of the same name. That British-American film was originally called Night of the Eagle and based on the Fritz Leiber novel Conjure Wife.

Speaking of that movie, it had a Paul Frees-narrated prologue in which he read a protective spell for the audience, who were also given further occult defenses via a special pack of salt and the words to an ancient incantation.

This movie has no such assurances.

K. Gordon Murray, who brought The Brainiac and Santa Claus up north, as well as the writer of Shanty Tramp, also brought this movie to America, but not before adding some new scenes.

Ramon Gay, who was in all of the Aztec Mummy films, stars. He was one of the brightest lights in Mexican cinema when a dispute over the affections of the actress Evangelina Elizondo ended with her estranged husband shooting Gay dead.

You can watch this on Tubi.

CBS LATE MOVIE MONTH: Dracula (1973)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Dracula was on the CBS Late Movie on July 21, 1976.

Written by Richard Matheson and directed by Dan Curtis, this would be the second collaboration between Curtis and Jack Palance after 1968’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

This movie has a big impact on Dracula lore: Francis Ford Coppola’s version seems to take two cues from this film, which had never appeared in any other version of Stoker’s story: Dracula is Vlad the Impaler and that he is convinced that Mina is the reincarnation of his dead wife.

Also — Gene Colan based his Dracula in the comic book Tomb of Dracula on Palance years before this movie was made.

Palance is an incredibly convincing Dracula. He battles a Van Helsing played by Nigel Davenport, who is also in the oddball 70’s insect film Phase IV.

Playing Lucy — and Dracula’s dead wife Maria — is Fiona Lewis, whose genre credits are plentiful, from The Fearless Vampire Killers, Dr. Phibes Rises Again and Tintorera to The Fury, Strange Behavior/Dead Kids, Strange Invaders and Innerspace.

Mina is played by Penelope Horner and one of the vampire brides is played by Sarah Douglas, Ursa from the Superman movies, Queen Taramis in Conan the Destroyer, Lyranna in the second Beastmaster movie and Elsa Toulon in the third Puppet Master movie. Man — this is full of people with full-on horror pedigrees!

Don’t believe me? Dracula’s other brides are played by Hammer actress Virginia Wetherell (Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde, Demons of the Mind) and Barbara Lindley, who appeared in Benny Hill and Monty Python sketches.

As for inventing that Dracula looking for his reincarnated wife plot, Curtis merely laughed and said that he was stealing from himself. Indeed, Dark Shadows and its vampire folklore informs this movie quite a bit.

You can watch this on Tubi.

CBS LATE MOVIE MONTH: It! (1967)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: It! was on the CBS Late Movie on April 11 and August 8, 1975.

This movie is one crazy mix-up of a bunch of other movies that you may love, all in one easy to gulp down cocktail. Take some Hammer mood, squeeze in some modern gothic, a pinch of Psycho, rip off the motorcycle scene from The Great Escape, throw in some nukes and boom — you have It!

After a London museum warehouse burns down leaving behind the Golem of Judah Loew and the dead body of the museum’s curator. His assistant, Arthur Pimm (Roddy McDowall), takes a big interest in the golem, figuring out that it’s the key to getting what he wants out of life.

That Arthur — what a character. He keeps his mom’s dead body in his apartment and steals jewels from the museum for her to wear. And he learns how to use the golem for murder, when all it wants to do is defend its Jewish community.

After the catastrophic destruction of Hammersmith Bridge, which Pimm has already told his love interest, Ellen Grove, that he could do, he tries to destroy the golem. Guess he didn’t read any of the fine print inscribed into the clay monster that says that it can’t be destroyed by fire, water, force or anything man has created.

Ellen eventually falls for another man, Jim Perkins of the New York Museum, who also wants to take the golem away. He turns in Pimm to the police, who then commit him to a sanitarium. He breaks out with the help of the golem and kidnaps Ellen. Luckily, the hero saves the day just before a nuclear explosion wipes Pimm out of existence (let’s be fair, everybody within a few thousand miles is going to get radiation poisoning, but this was the 1960’s and horror movie science). The golem? He’s fine. He just walks into the sea to go away from awhile, Godzilla style.

Man, I love the way the golem looks in this movie. Pre-CGI monsters are always awesome. Just look at this guy! He looks scary as heck!

Even though it was shot in color, the U.S. version is in black and white! Say what? It’s also the screen debut of Ian McCulloch, who always pleases the couch audience in our house in films like Zombie and Contamination.

CBS LATE MOVIE MONTH: The Vengeance of Fu Manchu (1967)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: The Vengeance of Fu Manchu was on the CBS Late Movie on November 30, 1972 and August 6, 1974.

Directed by Jeremy Summers (The House of 1,000 Dolls) and written by Peter Welbeck — hey, that’s Harry Alan Towers — this is the third of five movies that would feature Christopher Lee as Sax Rohmer’s supervillain Fu Manchu.

Playing double features with The Million Eyes of Sumuru, this time Fu Manchu replaces his arch enemy Nayland Smith (Douglas Wilmer) with a clone. If you’re wondering, “Will this be whitewashing and somewhat offensive?”, perhaps the scene where an Asian man gets facial and eye surgery to look like a Western man will answer you.

This does start off strong with Fu Manchu executing nearly every one of his crime lords for failing him. There’s also Ingrid (Maria Rohm, Venus In Furs), an Interpol agent who becomes a nightclub singer in her disguise, which one assumes will help her as Fu Manchu replaces world leaders with his plastic surgery made army.

Also: Maria Rohm was Tower’s wife. In all the wildness of his career, I’d consider that one of his biggest accomplishments.

While the last movie for Douglas Wilmer as Nayland Smith, three of the actors in this would appear in every one of the films: Lee, Tsai Chin as Fu Manchu’s daughter Lin Tang and Howard Marion-Crawford as Dr. Petrie. Jess Franco would direct the next two films in this series, The Blood of Fu Manchu and The Castle of Fu Manchu.

CBS LATE MOVIE MONTH: Death Car on the Freeway (1979)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Death Car on the Freeway was on the CBS Late Movie on February 8 and November 12, 1982; February 3, 1984 and January 11, 1985.

When it comes to the biggest TV movies of all time, you have to include Steven Spielberg’s Duel on the list. A battle between Dennis Weaver and an 18 wheeler for a taunt 74 minutes that stayed in viewer’s minds for way longer.

That leads us to this film, which originally aired on CBS on September 25, 1979.

Janette Clausen (Shelley Hack, TV’s Charlies Angels, plus Troll and The Stepfather) is a crusading reporter who has moved up from writing feature stories to being on the air herself. She sinks her teeth into a story about a van driver who she feels has been targeting and killing only female motorists, taking on not only the male establishment but even Detroit auto manufacturers and advertising itself!

If you’re a 1970’s TV star buff like myself, you’ll have a field day with this film. You’ve got Peter Graves (Mission: Impossible) as Lieutenant Haller, the main cop on the case. There’s George Hamilton as Jan’s ex-husband who keeps trying to control her. And hey look — that’s Dinah Shore as a tennis pro who may have faced off with the villain of this piece, the Freeway Fiddler, before!

As Billy Mays used to say before he died from doing too much blow, “But wait, there’s more!”

The Riddler, Frank Gorshin, is here! Is that Ozzy’s wife, Harriet Nelson? Why yes, it is! Do I spy Barbara Rush from It Came from Outer Space and Peyton Place? I do! Abe Vigoda! You’re here too! I feel like I’m on Romper Room using my Magic Mirror to see all my friends!

Tara Buckman! You got your throat slashed in Silent Night, Deadly Night and here you are in this TV movie! Even better, you drove the Lamborghini with Adrienne Barbeau in Cannonball Run and even appeared in Never Too Young to Die!

Morgan Brittany! Sure, you were in Dallas, but you also started your career in Gypsy but found the time to be in movies I care way more about, like being the Virgin Mary in Sunn Pictures’ In Search of Historic Jesus and the TV movie The Initiation of Sarah!

Nancy Stephens! We love you! She’s probably best known as Nurse Marion Chambers from the Halloween series of films. But did you know she’s married to Halloween 2 director Rick Rosenthal? Now you do!

Is that Hal Needham as the driving instructor? It is! Hal formed Stunts Unlimited, which did all the stuntwork for Burt Reynolds’ biggest films, but he also directed Megaforce! And guess what? He also directed this movie and did a ton of the stunts, too.

Death Car on the Freeway sets up a slasher who kills targeted women with his evil black van, particularly strong women who excel beyond men. And while he does it, he plays fiddle music! We never see him or learn more about him than that, but if this reminds you a bit of Death Proof, Quentin Tarantino’s part of Grindhouse, you’re not alone.

The best part — for me — was when Jan goes to meet a gang of street racers and Sid Haig shows up! I ran around the house screaming, “SID HAIG!” so many times that Becca had to tell me to settle down and covered me with a blanket until I calmed myself.

When Jan ends a report by saying, “This is Janette Claussen for KXLA from the scene of the Freeway Fiddler’s latest attack, and not at all anxious to leave the scene, horrible as it is. Because when I do, I’m going to be like thousands of other women, in a car on Los Angeles’ 491 miles of freeway… all alone.” you’ll be riveted, wondering when the killer will strike next. Seriously, maybe it’s because I’ve spent the majority of a Sunday just allowing YouTube to randomly reward me with TV movies while I rest up and enjoy some magical napping, but I love this movie.

You can watch this on YouTube.

The Sizzlin’ Something Weird Summer Challenge 2024: Carnival of Blood (1970)

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Golden Oldies Week (July 27 – August 3) Something Weird Video have released such a wide range of movies over the last 30 years that trying to categorize them can be tricky. They started out as a gray market mail order distributor (aka a bootlegger) not unlike the Cape Copy Center or Sinister Cinema and eventually moved into the niche se ploit titles that would set them apart. The movies on this list are the kind of cult genre titles that were the bread and butter of many of the bootleg companies of the 90s and most were not exclusive to SWV. If you look in the catalogs or on the website these would be under categories like “Nightmare Theatre’s Late Night Chill-O-Rama Horror Show,” “Jaws of the Jungle,” “Sci-fi Late Night Creature Feature Show,” or “Spies, Thighs & Private Eyes.” Many of these are currently available as downloads from the SWV site (until the end of 2024)!

Leonard Kirtman mostly directed adult, churning out titles like The Seduction of Cindy, Up Desiree Lane and Confessions of a Candy Striper, often using the name Leon Gucci. This is one of the few movies he made without penetration yet it has all the feel of a New York City-made porn from 1970.

Shot in Coney Island — I would not be surprised if there were no permits and no one had any idea they were even filming — this movie revolves around the people who are killed after winning a teddy bear at the booth of Tom (Earle Edgerton) and his hunchback-heaving assistant Gimpy (John Harris, the stage name for Burt Young!).

There’s a district attorney called Dan (Martin Barolsky) who gets called down to investigate, but he’s so dumb that he brings his fiancee Laura (Judith Resnick) along to the carnival and man, defund the slasher police.

No set dialogue. Scuzzy looking footage. Gore from the Herschell Gordon Lewis school of pause on the guts. A great moment where a tunnel of love ends with a screaming survivor and a headless blood spraying victim. So much repetition. Sound effects out of nowhere. Folk music. Cool jazz. A drunken sailor. Bad relationships. Death is everywhere.

You can watch this on Tubi.

The Sizzlin’ Something Weird Summer Challenge 2024: The Invisible Avenger (1958)

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Golden Oldies Week (July 27 – August 3) Something Weird Video have released such a wide range of movies over the last 30 years that trying to categorize them can be tricky. They started out as a gray market mail order distributor (aka a bootlegger) not unlike the Cape Copy Center or Sinister Cinema and eventually moved into the niche se ploit titles that would set them apart. The movies on this list are the kind of cult genre titles that were the bread and butter of many of the bootleg companies of the 90s and most were not exclusive to SWV. If you look in the catalogs or on the website these would be under categories like “Nightmare Theatre’s Late Night Chill-O-Rama Horror Show,” “Jaws of the Jungle,” “Sci-fi Late Night Creature Feature Show,” or “Spies, Thighs & Private Eyes.” Many of these are currently available as downloads from the SWV site (until the end of 2024)!

The Invisible Avenger is a compilation of two television pilot episodes of a planned Republic Pictures TV show called The Shadow. Yes, the very same hero whose radio show had just ended in 1954. The TV show didn’t get picked up and this movie was released, which. is kind of curious as none of the advertizing — or the name — lets you know this is about Lamont Cranston and his alter ego. It had new footage added and was released again as Bourbon Street Shadows, again barely letting you know that this was a movie about The Shadow.

Some of this movie was directed by cinematographer James Wong Howe, whose only other directing credit is for the Harlem Globetrotters movies Go Man Go. He had a strange life in the Hollywood system, as his marriage to Sanora Babb was not recognized by the state of California until 1948, as they banned interracial marriage (she was white). It was the first time he could admit that he was with his wife, as the morals clause prohibited him from saying he was with a white woman. They also lived in separate apartments due to his traditional Chinese views before she moved to Mexico City to protect him from the blacklist. He would go on to be one of the most recognized cinematographers of all time.

Along with Ben Parker (Teen-Age Strangler) and John Sledge, he directed the episodes that make up this TV pilot. It’s very much torn from the headlines, as Pablo Ramirez (Dan Mullins), an expatriate to New Orleans from the Caribbean nation of Santa Cruz, is planning a coup against that country’s leader, the Generalissimo. The secret police of that country are trying to kill him and trumpet player Tony Alcalde (Steve Dano) summons Lamont Cranston (Richard Derr) and his mentor Jogendra (Mark Daniels) to help. They don’t get there in time, as Tony is killed, so they decide to help Ramirez as The Shadow.

Written by George Bellak and Ruth Jeffries, this is the sixth film that features this character. Again, it’s so odd that this is a superhero movie that wants to be sold as horror or anything but The Shadow.

You can watch this on Tubi.