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.
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 Duelon 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 Jesusand 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.
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.
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.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Cry Panicwas on the CBS Late Movie on January 6, 1976; April 7, 1977 and May 18, 1978.
Jack B. Sowards created perhaps one of the most interesting parts of Star Trek: the Kobayashi Maru, a no-win scenario for new Starfleet captains that was first brought up in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. He also wrote this TV movie which was directed by James Gladstone, whose tie to Star Trek is directing the classic episode “Where No Man Has Gone Before.” He also was behind the films Rollercoaster and When Time Ran Out…
Dennis Ryder (John Forsythe, who is astounding in this movie) is driving to San Francisco for a job interview when he hits a man who no one will admit is dead. No one — the sheriff (Earl Holliman from Police Woman), Ralph Meeker from The Alpha Incident, the town doctor (Noman Alden, Kansas City Bomber) and certainly not Anne Francis.
Jason Wingreen, who is in this, was also the voice of Boba Fett.
Seriously, this entire town is against Ryder. It’s a taunt 74 minutes and gets more out of that time than three movies today. I’ve heard people say it has a David Lynch vibe, which I can see. It’s intriguing when a man knows that he’s killed somebody and begs the police to charge him.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Bimini Code was on the CBS Late Movie on May 8, June 4 and November 20, 1986.
Stacey (Vickie Benson, Cheerleader Camp) and Cheryl (Kristal Richardson) own a scuba shop, but also decide to help save a missing boy along with their friends Rick and Fuji. They end up being kidnapped themselves and taken to the undersea base of Madame X, AKA Countess Magda von Cress (Rosanna Simanaitis), a totally mean, totally eyepatched super villainess who of course is my favorite person in this movie. She even has a small dog!
Madame X is after the Power Stone — “The secret of the ancient Mayans! The secret of nuclear fusion!” — but she didn’t count on two women who can swim underwater and ride motorcycles. Not even a tarantula can stop them. And then in the last half of this movie, it becomes Raiders of the Lost Ark!
The bad guys in this work for the Scorpio Peanut Company. Let that set in.
This movie taught me that people can speak underwater, that if you’re a bad guy you can dress however you want no matter how hot the jungle is, that a film can have tons of action and locations and still drag, that women in bikinis are our last line of defense and that you should always screen your henchmen.
Director Barry Clark and writer Gabrielle Rivera have made a movie that feels like if Andy Sidaris didn’t care at all about showing naked women. It has the feel of his movies, but none of the sheer wildness of them and no one remembers that you’re supposed to have several hot tub scenes.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The Devil and Miss Sarahwas on the CBS Late Movie on February 24 and April 4, 1974.
Directed by Michael Caffey (who did a lot of TV, including the “Horror In the Heights” episode of Kolchak the Night Stalker) and written by Calvin Clements Jr. (whose career was also mostly in TV), The Devil and Miss Sarah has Gil Turner (James Drury), a farmer, escorting a criminal named Rankin (Gene Barry) to prison. Turner is bringing his wife Sarah (Janice Rule) along with him, which is a bad idea, because Rankin has occult powers and wants her.
Shot in the Utah desert, this has some great natural scenery and keeps the idea if the supernatural is real a mystery until the end. Sarah may or may not also have psychic powers, which means that she may see Rankin as a better partner than her husband. Or perhaps Gene Barry is so incredible in this it seems like he can dominate anyone.
A Manson-influenced Western about a Western outlaw who might be Satan. TV movies were bringing it in 1971.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The Brotherhood of the Bell was on the CBS Late Movie on August 11 and December 5, 1972 and November 27, 1973.
Director Paul Wendkos (The Mephisto Waltz) was nominated by the Directors Guild of America for “outstanding directorial achievement in television” because of this film. It was written by David Karp, who also wrote the original novel. It had been made once before as an episode of Studio One in 1958.
A world premiere CBS Thursday Night Movie on September 17, 1970, this arrived just as the seventies began, a decade packed with conspiracy. Professor Andrew Patterson (Glenn Ford) is back at the College of St. George in San Francisco to watch a young man be initiated into the secret society that he joined there, the Brotherhood of the Bell.
After the ritual, one of the leaders — Chad Harmon (Dean Jagger) — gives Patterson an assignment. Stop Dr. Konstantin Horvathy (Eduard Franz) from accepting a deanship at a college of linguistics so that a brother can take that position. Harmon is to blackmail Horvathy with the names of the people who helped him defect. Patterson wonders if this is legal. He’s told that he should be happy this is all they’re asking of him.
The professor does what he is supposed to do and it causes Horvathy to kill himself. Patterson then does exactly what no brother should do and reveals the truth to his wife Vivian (Rosemary Forsyth) and his father-in-law Harry Masters (Maurice Evans). This causes the Federal Security Services (as conspiracy-filled as this movie is, it doesn’t name the FBI; the agent is played by Dabney Coleman) to get involved and his father-in-law to turn him into the Brotherhood and Patterson’s father Mike (Will Geer) gets ruined in the process, then has a stroke and dies. Patterson also loses his job, gets humiliated on a talk show by Bart Harris (William Conrad) and is at rock bottom when his former boss Dr. Jerry Fielder (William Smithers) and the man he saw initiated Philip Dunning (Robert Pine) both stand up for him.
Obviously, the makers of The Skulls watched this movie.
Doris Wishman week (July 21 – 27) Doris made the loopiest of movies. A self-proclaimed prude who made nudist camp movies, her filmography is filled with contradictions. When she tried to be mean spirited with something like Bad Girls Go To Hell there was always an undercurrent of silliness and fun, but when she tried to be silly and fun in things like Keyholes Are For Peeping there was an underlying seediness and grime that couldn’t be wiped off. It’s hard not to love her!
Jane Tennay (Chesty Morgan) is Agent 73, given her name because of her, well, large bust. Her agency has sent her to kill heroin dealers one by one. After each murder, she has to take a photo as proof, using the camera that been inserted inside her left breast. And like Snake Plissken with bodacious ta tas, Agent 73’s sweater meat will explode if she doesn’t get her job done in time.
If that all makes sense to you, welcome to the cinematic universe of Doris Wishman, as this is the second appearance of Chesty Morgan, who might even be playing the same character she was in Deadly Weapons.
As she looks for the crime boss Toplar, she starts to fall for a fellow agent named Tim (Frank Silvano). But hmm…could Toplar be someone she’s already close to?
In 2002, Doris Wishman was on Conan with Roger Ebert — which had to be a thrill for him — and let the world know she was still making movies like Dildo Heaven. We should all be praising the woman who said, “After I die I will be making movies in hell!”
The furniture in this didn’t come from the past. It came from a place beyond , a world where everyone has fake eyelashes and too much makeup and is barely able to walk on the highest of high heels, where giant breasts can make a flash so huge it fills the entire screen. We’ll never live in this world but we can visit for a few moments at a time and watch a secret agent cover those boobs with poison so a guy licks them off and dies, never mind that she’s so much bigger in the chest than his girlfriend.
Also, in keeping with my theory that Doris has a lot of Bruno Mattei in her, this takes nudist footage from Blaze Starr Goes Nudist and has the same surgery scene from The Amazing Transplant. Unlike Bruno, Doris made those movies, so I guess she can take from her own work. Maybe that makes her closer to Jess Franco.
Jane’s boss in this, Bill, is played by Peter Savage. He was a boxer that grew up with Jake La Motta and wrote the book Raging Bull. He also made the movie Cauliflower Cupids, which has Jane Russell, Alan Dale and several boxers, including La Motta, Rocky Graziano, Willie Pep, Paddy DeMarco, Tony Zale and Petey Scalzo. Savage wrote, directed and stars, so this is a vanity production, but one very low on cost.
This is probably one of the more coherent of Wishman’s movies and it still makes no sense. And by that, I mean it’s incredible.
Doris Wishman week (July 21 – 27) Doris made the loopiest of movies. A self-proclaimed prude who made nudist camp movies, her filmography is filled with contradictions. When she tried to be mean spirited with something like Bad Girls Go To Hell there was always an undercurrent of silliness and fun, but when she tried to be silly and fun in things like Keyholes Are For Peeping there was an underlying seediness and grime that couldn’t be wiped off. It’s hard not to love her!
Liliana Wilczkowska was born in Poland and was orphaned by the Nazis. She grew up in Israel, moving to the U.S. in 1957 to marry Josef Wilczkowski ten days after they met. Her husband and one of his meat market employees died in a robbery in 1965 and by the 70s, she was using her 73-32-36 body as an exotic dancer, going by the name of Zsa Zsa “Chesty” Gabborr, dancing mainly to pay for her two young daughters.
She made it to the “Combat Zone” of Boston red light clubs and took on the name Chesty Moore. Dancing to Tom Jones’ “Delilah,” she would often allow men to touch her breasts to prove they were real. You have to understand that her body defies imagination.
Wearing bras specially made by Texas company Command Performance, she would often appear with two little people, each carrying a breast. She married — and quickly divorced — National League umpire Dick Stello, and then she appeared in two of Doris Wishman’s films. I’ll get to one of them in a moment. She’s also the only person I can think of that is in a Wishman movie and a Fellini film, as she was cut from Casanova.
Morgan kept dancing four months a year — she made $8,000 a week — and doing real estate in the off season until 1991, when she was 54 years old. Tired of the constant legal battles, she became a landlady just as she became famous all over again when John Waters featured a scene from Deadly Weapons in his movie Serial Mom.
In this film, she plays Crystal, an ad exec whose lover Larry (Richard Towers) has just been killed. To get revenge, she drugs and smothers man after man with, well, her mams. There’s Tony (Harry Reems), Captain Hook and by the end, even her own father in her way. Chesty also seems always just on the verge of falling asleep.
Do you need any more reasons to watch this? Well, the soundtrack, made up of library cuts from KPM Music’s KPM 1055 Dramatic Background, is incredible. That song “Hippy?” That’s the trailer music for Torso. You’ll fall in love with the theme, “Hard Selling Woman” by Mike Lease with The Studio G’s Beat Group. And despite how grimy this may all feel at times, you may fall for this film, too. There’s nothing else like it and somehow, the sequel is even weirder.
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