EDITOR’S NOTE: Falcon’s Gold was on the CBS Late Movie on May 1 and August 26, 1987.
This played on the CBS Late Movie as Robbers of the Sacred Mountain, which is very much a “we have Raiders of the Lost Ark at home” title. Made for Showtime, this film was the very first TV movie produced for cable TV.
They say it’s based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Challenger’s Gold, but if Indiana Jones hadn’t been a hit, I doubt it would have been made.
Reporter Hank Richards (Simon MacCorkindale, Manimal) and Professor Christopher Falcon (John Marley) learn that a meteorite with cavite in it has crashed to Earth. If the wrong people find it, they could make a laser weapon. Joined by the professor’s granddaughter Tracey (Louise Vallance) and jungle guide B.G. Alvarez (Blanca Guerra, Santa Sangre), they head to South America to find a fertility idol, which ties into this, trust me, and leads to them battling the forces of Ivar Murdoch (George Touliatos).
This is the only movie that Bob Schultz directed, but he was a technical director on several TV shows like Three’s Company, The Ropes and the TV special Telly…Who Loves Ya, Baby? It was written by Olaf Pooley (Crucible of Horror, The Godsend) and Walter Bell.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Lost Continent was on the CBS Late Movie on April 28 and October 25, 1972 and November 22, 1973.
Produced, directed and written by Michael Carreras — based on Dennis Wheatley’s novel Uncharted Seas — this is a rare Hammer that’s an adventure movie and not horror. It taught me if you’re taking a tramp steamer, make sure they’re not carrying white phosphorous to sell. Also: Check out the weather, because if a hurricane is coming, it’s not a good idea to be on a boat. The stolen stuff blows up, the hurricane hits, the boat crashes.
This will bring you to an island with a shipwrecked Spanish galleon and an island ran by the child descendent of Sanish conquistadors. That kid gets stabbed at one point — by a cleric — and a priest with the plague and all of his monks burn inside a church as pipe organ music plays. There’s also a shark attack, a flare gun accident, killer seaweed, weird monsters, barbarians, leprosy, a giant hermit crab, a big scorpion and so many ideas that you’ll wonder if you’re still watching the same movie.
It has a theme song by The Peddlers, so it has that going for it. Hammer girls include Hildegard Knef (who would play the witch in Witchery), Suzanna Leigh (Lust for a Vampire) and Dana Gillespie (who dated Bowie when she was 14) — who plays a native girl named Sarah who uses balloons and snowshoes to walk through the deadly seaweed. Huh? Yeah!
July 14-20 Vanity Project Week: “…it might be said that the specific remedy for vanity is laughter, and that the one failing that is essentially laughter is vanity.” Are these products of passionate and industrious independent filmmakers OR outrageous glimpses into the inner workings of self-obsessed maniacs??
After being kicked out of art school. Greg Pead co-wrote, co-produced, edited and directed at his first film, Coaltown, “with the assistance of the Australian Film Institute.: It explores the social and political history of coal mining and was nothing like the rest of his films, of which he took on the name Yahoo Serious.
His first film, Young Einstein, was a $25 million dollar worldwide success on a $5 million dollar budget. Now, you can scoff at the idea that Einstein invented beer bubbles, rock music and surfing before dating Marie Curie, but it wasn’t a bad film. It did OK in the U.S., enough that his next film, Reckless Kelly, was released here and bombed. It did well enough in his native land of Australia for Mr. Accident to come out seven years later.
Directed, co-written, produced by and starring Serious, this movie has him playing Roger Crumpkin, who works in an egg factory and has learned that his boss is putting nicotine in the eggs. He also is in love with the UFO-loving Sunday Valentine (Helen Dallimore), who has found a rock shaped like a VW hubcap that she is sure came from another world. There’s also Roger’s roommate Lyndon (Grant Piro) and boss Duxton Chevalier (David Field), who is the evilldoer in this and yes, once dated Sunday and wants her back.
Serious’ films are very slapstick and surreal, but there are moments where it feels like the joke won’t land and then it doesn’t. They’re strange, however, and kind of endearing, even if they feel way more dated than 25 years old. It is kind of amazing that at one point, however, he was a hot item and able to take a movie all the way around the world before being nearly forgotten everywhere but where he came from.
Sadly, today Serious is 71, was kicked out of his apartment and hasn’t made a movie since this one. He’s pretty much faded away with random sightings being covered in Australia’s newspapers. His website is still up, but looks like it hasn’t been updated since 2003. He also tried to sue Yahoo in 2000 because they took his name. He lost that.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The Thing With Two Heads was on the CBS Late Movie on August 30, 1974.
Dr. Maxwell Kirshner (Ray Milland) knows that he’s dying but that’s why he’s getting his team of surgeons to do head transplants with gorillas, He’s running out of time and Dr. Philip Desmond (Roger Perry) has hired a black doctor — Dr. Phillip Desmond (Don Marshall) — and Kirshner shows off that he’s totally racist.
The plan has been to have criminals on death row to think they’re going to the chair and instead give their bodies up to be used by Desmond. Imagine his surprise when his death comes faster than he expected and he ends up having his head transplanted onto the same body of innocent man Jack Moss (Rosey Grier). Imagine Jack’s wife Lila’s (Chelsea Brown) surprise when he shows up with an old white man ‘s head on his shoulders.
Coming out a year after The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant, this has a man punching his other head in the face and an old racist’s severed head hooked up to a heart and lung machine. So there’s that.
Ken Swofford plays Leo Kowalski. He was Mayor Farnsworth in Black Roses and Weasel in Annie.
In the smaller roles, Deborah White plays Matty Marsh, Robin Bach is Ellsworth Buffum, Bobby Jacoby is Eric Marsh, Ed Morgan is Austin Bailey, Roger Price is Eli Harris, Barbara Ann Grimes is Sarah Harris, Jody Carter is Olive Newton, Sandra Hawthorne is Mavis Gillam and Bruce Lawrence is an earthmover driver.
What happens?
Sheriff Tupper and Dr. Seth argue over the body found in the grave — is it the Revolutionary War soldier Joshua Peabody. But then Henderson Wheatley, the developer of the new property, is killed. Who could it be? Probably the whole town, like antiques dealer David Marsh, who has been protesting this place. Or reporter Del Scott, who has the eyes of Meg Foster. And different folks who keep making injunctions to keep the new hotel from being built.
Who did it?
Del Scott. Just look at the eyes.
Who made it?
It’s directed by Peter Crane and written by Tom Sawyer, who wrote 24 episodes of this and produced 79.
Does Jessica get some?
No, but she’s back in Cabot Cove and can relax in her bath.
Does Jessica dress up and act stupid?
No. There’s too much that happens.
Was it any good?
Two dead bodies in the same grave! So yes.
Any trivia?
John Astin would play Harry Pierce three times.
Give me a reasonable quote:
Dr. Seth Hazlitt: Well, at least one good thing’s come out of all this… Now that we’ve proved those bones belong to Daniel Martin, we can forget all about this Joshua Peabody nonsense.
Jessica Fletcher: Oh, no, Seth Hazlitt, that’s going a bit too far.
What’s next?
Jessica’s niece, an actress in a daytime drama, becomes a suspect when the head writer for the show is murdered.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Battle Beneath the Earth was on the CBS Late Movie on May 1 and September 26, 1972 and December 21, 1973.
Scientist Arnold Kramer (Peter Arne) really does think if you dig deep enough you’ll make your way to China. He thinks that Chinese General Chan Lu (Martin Benson, not Asian, but Russian/Polish; he was famously in The King and I, playing the gangster who Oddjob kills in Goldfinger and was also Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz on the British TV version of The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) is planting nuclear bombs under the United States but no one believes him. They put him in a mental hospital before Navy Commander Jonathan Shaw (Kerwin Mathews) comes to meet him and reveals that he thinks its true; they head down into tunnels built into Hawaii and go to war.
The last movie directed by Montgomery Tully (The Terrornauts), this was written by Charles F. Vetter.
A bad guy with a falcon, everyone with a British accent and Ken Jones did a great jazz score. Those are the best things I can say for thio, other than if you have to be in a hospital, make sure its one that has slot machines.
July 7-13 Teen Movie Hell Week: From the book description on the Bazillion Points website: All-seeing author Mike “McBeardo” McPadden (Heavy Metal Movies) passes righteous judgment over the entire (teen movie) genre, one boobs-and-boner opus at a time. In more than 350 reviews and sidebars, Teen Movie Hell lays the crucible of coming-of-age comedies bare, from party-hearty farces such as The Pom-Pom Girls, Up the Creek, and Fraternity Vacation to the extreme insanity exploding all over King Frat, Screwballs, The Party Animal, and Surf II: The End of the Trilogy.
Zapped is not a feel-good movie, especially as we realize that Scott Baio and Willie Aames grew up to be right-wing and super religious, respectively. Here, they turn the act of getting mental powers into the chance to torment people, and if not sexually harass, then outright sexually molest women.
Barney Springboro (Baio) wants to do scientific experiments. Peyton Nichols (Aames) wants to ball, starting with school administrator Connie Updike (Hilary Beane). Peyton is asked by yearbook editor Bernadette (Felice Schachter) to take pictures of Barney in front of his GMO orchids — again, evil — an accident causes the mice food to be ingested as a gas, and Barney gets the telekinesis, the ability to move things with his mind.
Everyone has a crush on Jane Mitchell (Heather Thomas), who has a college boyfriend, so when she crushes Barney’s dreams again, he’s able to rip the buttons off her top and show off her bra, which is a crime. He also torments his mother (Marya Small) with a ventriloquist dummy that he can control. Is he the Carrieof this or the bullies who abused her?
More crimes: Causing Jane’s college guy, Robert Wolcott (Greg Bradford), to lose a drinking contest, and then Peyton seducing her, taking photos of her with a hidden camera that he sells at graduation. There’s also Barney scaring away two priests by pulling off Exorcist ripoff tricks.
Principal Walter J. Coolidge (Robert Mandan, Chester Tate on Soap) ends up having public sex with another older person, Rose Burnhart (Sue Ane Langdon, the only actor to return for Zapped Again!), and Scatman Crothers, Eddie Deezen and LaWanda Page all show up.
There wasn’t enough nudity in this, so supposedly they sent the crew back to shoot more nude scenes. The filmmakers used a body-double for Heather Thomas’ nude scenes, but she filed a complaint when they pasted her head on another nude actress. That’s why there’s a disclaimer that says, “A double was used for Miss Thomas in her nude scene and in the photograph.”
Jewel Shepard, a girl in a car in this, had no such complaints after Barney’s mental male gaze power tore her top off.
As if that wasn’t sad enough, Felice Schachter skipped her prom to film the prom scene.
This was directed by Robert J. Rosenthal, who wrote The Pom-Pom Girls, The Vanand Malibu Beach, which he also directed. He co-wrote this movie with Bruce Rubin, who also wrote Blood Rage.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Hound of the Baskervilles was on the CBS Late Movie on Septeber 25, 1974 and December 14, 1976.
Director Barry Crain wasn’t just a TV director. He was also a bridge champion, an ACBL Grand Life Master that won so many points that whoever gets the most points in a year wins a title named for him.
Writer Robert E. Thompson was writing for TV as early as 1956. He also wrote the script for They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?
Using old horror movie sets, this film had Stewart Granger as Sherlock Holmes and Bernard Fox as Dr. Watson. As for the Sir Hugo Baskerville, William Shatner is ready to be Shatner.
This was intended to be part of a revolving door series of literary detectives, as they also made The Adventures of Nick Carter starring Robert Conrad and A Very Missing Person with Eve Arden as Hildegarde Withers. Ratings and reviews were not kind.
The real mystery? On July 5, 1985, Crane was “found bludgeoned shortly before 3 P.M. in the garage of his luxury town home in Studio City.” He had been attacked with a large ceramic statue and strangled with a telephone cord before being found naked and covered in bedsheets. It took 34 years for the killer to be found, as a fingerprint led to Edwin Jerry Hiatt pleading guilty to voluntary manslaughter in 2019, saying “Anything’s possible back then. I was big into drugs.”
July 7-13 Teen Movie Hell Week: From the book description on the Bazillion Points website: All-seeing author Mike “McBeardo” McPadden (Heavy Metal Movies) passes righteous judgment over the entire (teen movie) genre, one boobs-and-boner opus at a time. In more than 350 reviews and sidebars, Teen Movie Hell lays the crucible of coming-of-age comedies bare, from party-hearty farces such as The Pom-Pom Girls, Up the Creek, and Fraternity Vacation to the extreme insanity exploding all over King Frat, Screwballs, The Party Animal, and Surf II: The End of the Trilogy.
This feels like porn without the penetration and by that, I mean it feels like amateur porn and somehow, David Hasselhoff is in it as a character named Boner. There’s a moment where the cafeteria spaghetti is dosed with LSD and the entire school freaks out, ending up in the gym showers as class is cancelled and the orgy begins. There’s also a moment where one of the cheerleaders gives one of the boys a rim job while he works in an ice cream stand, which feels way ahead of its time, seeing as how it was made in 1976.
Yes, there’s a story where the adults want to combine Aloha and Lincoln High to sell the school land and make money. Everyone dances whenever they feel it. Sex solves everything.
Speaking of sex, Cheryl “Rainbeaux” Smith is in this and was actually pregnant while it was being made. This is even worked into the plot, as much as the dinosaur theme park is. She’s holding her real son, Justin Sterling, at the end. His father, John, composed the music for this film.
Directed by Richard Lerner, who was involved in all of the cheerleaders series one way or another, this was written by Ted Greenwald, Nathaniel Dorsky and Ace Baandige, which, as I’ve said before, has to be their real name.
Beyond Rainbeaux, there’s also Penthouse July 1976 Pet Helen Lang, who was also in Tarz and Jane and Cheetah and Hot Nasties, which stars Susan Kiger, the first Playboy Playmate to do porn before she became a Playmate in January 1977; Jerri Woods (Toby from Switchblade Sisters); Patrice Rohmer (Harrad Summer) and Susie Elene.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Seven Golden Men was on the CBS Late Movie on June 19 and December 18, 1974 and July 23, 1975.
7 uomini d’oro was directed and co-written — with Mariano Ozores — by Marco Vicario. Albert the professor (Philippe Leroy) has six men as part of his gang — Adolf (Gastone Moschin), August (Giampiero Albertini), Aldo (Gabriele Tinti), Anthony (Dario De Grassi), Alfonso (Manuel Zarzo) and Alfred (Maurice Poli) — who are all from different counties and each have different skills. He has another secret weapon, his lover Giorgia (Rossana Podestà, who was married to Vicario and was Hera in the Cannon version of Hercules). They team up to rob the Swiss National Bank. Of course, the job goes to plan, but later, the six men are detained for their passports and Giorgia turns on her man, starting an affair with the bank manager in an attempt to make all the spoils for herself.
As for the gold they stole, well, it ends up as part of a truck crash. Everyone has to get over all of the double crosses, because now, it’s time to rob the Bank of Italy. That would be Il grande colpo dei uomini d’oro.
Speaking of crime, it was illegal to film in front of that Swiss bank. So they did it, no permits, and got it before everyone got busted.
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