EDITOR’S NOTE: Beware the Blob! was on the CBS Late Movie on November 14, 1974 and March 16, 1976.

Beware! The Blob or Son of the Blob is a big idea to get your head around. While the original was presented as horror, this film pretty much leans in to how ridiculous it all is. Written by Anthony Harris and Jack Woods from a story by Richard Clair and Jack H. Harris, a lot of this was improvised on set and the script — even though it took all those people — was mostly ignored.

Harris was also the producer and Anthony was his college graduate son. They were next door neighbors with Larry Hagman — who had previously directed episodes of I Dream of Jeannie and The Good Life — who had never seen The Blob. Harris screened his print for the actor/director, who loved it and said that he could get a lot of his Hollywood friends to show up and get blobbed, as long as he could direct.

Fifteen years after the original Blob destroyed parts of Pennsylvania, Chester (Godfrey Cambridge) has brought a piece of that creature from its frozen grave in the North Pole, where he does the sensible thing and puts it in the fridge. It grows in size as it eats a fly, a kitten, then his wife Marianne (Marlene Clark) and finally, while Chester watches The Blob on TV, it eats him too just in time for Lisa (Gwynne Gilford) to watch him get claimed by the creature.

As she tries to get her boyfriend Bobby (Robert Walker Jr.). to believe what she’s seen, the red jelly eats its way through Los Angeles, claiming the lives of two hippies (Randy Stonehill and Cindy Williams) in a storm drain — were they looking for Simon? — as well as officer Sid Haig, chickens, horses, a bar, a gas station, Scoutmaster Dick Van Patten, a barber (Shelley Berman) and even some home-displaced folks (Hagman, Burgess Meredith and Del Close, who is wearing an eyepatch as his cornea was scratched by a cat previous to filming; he’d return with a similar look as Reverend Meeker in perhaps the best horror remake of all time, 1988’s The Blob).

It takes an ice rink — which was torn down shortly after filming — to stop the monster — maybe — this time. As for the bowling alley in this movie, it’s Jack Rabbit Slims from Pulp Fiction.

In the first movie, the Blob was made of silicone and dyed red. It had to be stirred throughout the movie to keep its color. This Blob was made from a red-dyed powder blended with water, as well as a big red plastic balloon, red plastic sheeting and a red drum of hard red silicone spun in front of the camera. Tim Baar and Conrad Rothmann created these effects and beyond working on second unit camera, Dean Cundey helped, years before he’d become such a force in filmmaking.

In 1982, when Hagman was on Dallas and the shooting of his character J.R. Ewing was the biggest moment in pop culture, this was re-released with the headline “The film that J.R. shot!”

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Wrecking Crew was on the CBS Late Movie on November 17, 1977 and November 10, 1978.

Directed by Phil Carlson (Walking Tall, Ben), the last of the Matt Helm movies dispenses with screenwriter Herbert Baker, James Gregory as MacDonald and Beverly Adams as Lovey Kravesit.

Thanks to Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood, this is probably the best known of the four Matt Helm movies (not to mention the Tony Franciosa-starring TV series).

Matt Helm is assigned by ICE to bring down Count Contini (Nigel Green, Countess Dracula), who is trying to Auric Goldfinger the world economy. Matt’s assistant is now Freya Carlson (Sharon Tate), a gorgeous but goofball Danish tourism bureau agent.

Elke Sommer (Baron Blood, Lisa and the Devil) and Nancy Kwan (Wonder Women) play the women out to kill Matt. It turns out that Freya is actually a deadly British agent who, of course, ends up in Matt’s bed. It’s kind of funny that Sommer and Green play pretty much the exact characters as they did in Deadlier then the Male.

Matt’s boss is played by John Larch (Bad Ronald, The Amityville Horror) this time and Tina Louise — Ginger Grant herself! — also makes an appearance.

While The Ravagers was revealed as the next Matt Helm movie in the credits, it was not to be. Martin had no interest in returning after the death of Sharon Tate. So when he refused to make the film, Columbia held up his share of the profits on the second Matt Helm film, Murderers’ Row. As we learned from Airport, Dean was about to be rich and no longer care. Man, I wish the proposed Martin and Sinatra double bill of Matt Helm Meets Tony Rome had been made.

This movie is packed with pro wrestlers and karate experts. That makes sense, as Bruce Lee was the karate advisor for the film. Some examples include:

• Karate champion Mike Stone was Dean Martin’s fight double. You may know him better as Elvis’ karate instructor who ran away with his wife Priscilla.
• Prince Wilhelm von Homburg, who is perhaps better known as Vigo the Carpathian in Ghostbusters II.
• Pepper Martin, a pro wrestler who was friends with Woody Strode; he also appears in the 1981s slasher Scream.
• Boxer, stuntman and friend of Henry Miller, Joe Gray.
• Joe Lewis, considered the best American karate fighter in the 1970’s.
• Ed Parker, founder of American Kenpo karate.
• And in his first movie ever, Chuck Norris.

I’m sad to see the Matt Helm movies end. Hollywood has been discussing remaking them, but I’ll always have my four DVD box set to go back to.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Excalibur was on the CBS Late Movie on June 6, 1986.

Shot entirely on location in Ireland, employing mostly Irish actors and crew, Excalibur was an important film for the Irish filmmaking industry and helped start the careers of Liam Neeson, Patrick Stewart, Gabriel Byrne and Ciarán Hinds.

It was also known as the Boorman Family Project, as several members of director Jonathan Boorman’s family appear, with his daughter Katrine Boorman playing Igrayne — Arthur’s mother — as well as his daughter Telsche as the Lady of the Lake and his son Charley acting in the role of Mordred as a boy. It was shot a mile from his home, so he was able to be at home for the entire making of the movie.

Boorman has been wanting to make the movie since 1969, yet the three-hour script was seen as too costly by United Artists and instead, he was offered The Lord of the Rings, which he did not make yet did develop. He ended up using some of the work that went into that adaption here, as well as potentially being inspired by Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

He’d worked with Rospo Pallenberg on that canceled film (as well as Exorcist II: The Heretic and The Emerald Forest; Pallenberg would also direct Cutting Class), so he worked with him here to bring Malory’s Morte d’Arthur to theaters. Boorman said that his film was about “the coming of Christian man and the disappearance of the old religions which are represented by Merlin. The forces of superstition and magic are swallowed up into the unconscious.”

I love Roger Ebert’s review of this movie, in which he said that the film was both a wondrous vision and a mess, “a record of the comings and goings of arbitrary, inconsistent, shadowy figures who are not heroes but simply giants run amok. Still, it’s wonderful to look at.”

It’s beyond gorgeous, actually, a movie that combines shocking gore with artistic flourishes, like the three ladies in white who attend Arthur to Avalon at the close. Boorman was also smart enough to cast Nicol Williamson as Merlin and Helen Mirren as Morgana Le Fay, two actors who had had a conflict when they acted in Macbeth together. He felt that tension would be seen on screen and it certainly is. That said, Mirren claimed that the two become friends while making Excalibur.

It rained every single day of the shoot, which adds to the foggy look of the film. It had many issues, as the first fight scene had to be filmed three times. It was filmed at night and the exposure meter was broken, leading to two different scenes of underexposed film.

Boorman’s career is pretty great. Sure, there are the big movies like Deliverance, but I love that he shoots for the fences and makes off the wall stuff like Zardoz and Exorcist II: The Heretic. Here’s to less playing it safe for directors, even if the misses end up being spectacular losses. I don’t think that that can happen any longer in entertainment.

My initial exposure to this film came from Mad Magazine. Often as a kid, we wouldn’t see an R-rated movie until it was on HBO, so many of the films I’ve had to find as an adult were first seen through the eyes of Mad’s Usual Gang of Idiots. This time, Don Martin did the movie adaption. I’m happy to share a few panels with you thanks to Jesse Hamm on Twitter.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Shadow of Chikara was on the CBS Late Movie on May 25 and August 12, 1983. It played as Wishbone Cutter. 

Earl A. Smith was the writer of The Legend of Boggy Creek and The Town That Dreaded Sundown, but he only directed this one movie.

It’s a Western horror, which is rare, and one that places Confederate soldier Wishbone Cutter (Joe Don Baker, who yes, was a 70s lead and near sex symbol) into a treasure hunt after he learns of a cave filled with diamonds from dying soldier Virgil Caine (Slim Pickens).

Wishbone assembles a team that includes Amos Richmond geologist (Ted Neeley, once Jesus Christ), Native American Half Moon O’Brian (John N. Houck Jr.) and eventually Drusilla Wilcox (Sondra Locke), a woman they find after a massacre. The Arkansas mountain is guarded by a demon bird, so of course everything gets strange by the time they get there. Wishbone is already haunted as his wife Rosalie (Linda Dano, who was on more than 1,300 episodes of Another World) has left him for a Yankee soldier.

Wilcox claims that the men that killed her people were silver naked beings and O’Brian claims that they’re being attacked by demons. The movie never gives in and reveals to you what it’s really all about and for that, I like it even more. It’s also got the same crew that Charles B. Pierce used, so it gets the authentic Arkansas rough feel down right. Even the ending makes little to no sense, but hey, I kind of adore that.

The only downer I’ll reveal is that there’s a lot of real animal abuse in this, as several horses plunge off a cliff and I have no idea if any survived. Just know that going in.

On the positive side, somehow, the filmmakers got The Band to let them use “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.”

Also known as The Ballad of Virgil Cane, Thunder Mountain, Wishbone Cutter, The Curse of Demon Mountain, Demon Mountain and Shadow Mountain, this is a movie that combines the end of the Western 70s darkness with occult themes and a relentless downer edge. I’d never seen it before and it’s definitely a film I plan on exploring again.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Premonition was on the CBS Late Movie on January 29, 1982 and January 19, 1983.

A foster mother has The Premonition: her new daughter’s unstable biological mother is going to come and take her away. It comes true, so what happens next? PS – it’s beyond the power of an exorcist in only the way that an exploitation movie poster can promise.

Originally released as part of Arrow Video’s American Horror Project, this film was once titled Turtle Heaven. I watched this movie because of the always dependable Richard Lynch (Bad Dreams, Invasion U.S.A.), who plays the carnival clown boyfriend of Andrea, whose daughter Janie (Danielle Brisebois, TV’s Archie Bunker’s Place) has been adopted by the Bennett family. Oh yeah — Jeff Corey (who would go from being blacklisted to becoming the premier acting coach in Hollywood) shows up as a cop.

Two mothers — connected by the young girl they love and see as their child, as well as a psychic bond — go to war. That’s my best explanation of this very 1970’s film. But back to Richard Lynch — did you know how he got his scarred looking appearance? The hard way. In 1967, high on drugs, he set himself on fire in Central Park, burning more than 70% of his body. But after a year of recovery, he started to act.

You can watch this on Tubi.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jennifer Upton is an American (non-werewolf) writer/editor in London. She currently works as a freelance ghostwriter of personal memoirs and writes for several blogs on topics as diverse as film history, punk rock, women’s issues, and international politics. For links to her work, please visit https://www.jennuptonwriter.com or send her a Tweet @Jennxldn

Longlegs is a like the popular small-town cover band you liked in college.

The songs are passable from a technical standpoint but can’t hold a candle to the originals.

Let’s take a look at the hit parade:

Silence of the Lambs, I Saw the Devil, Cure, Zodiac, Lisa and the Devil, Twin Peaks and Exorcist III.

If you’ve seen those, you’ve seen every scene from this movie done better.

That’s not to say it’s all bad. Longlegs is a movie that looks great and does a decent job of convincing a large segment of the movie going public that it’s better than it is. Plus, you’ve got Nic Cage doing his best Bob from Twin Peaks in Marilyn Manson cosplay which is fine. But we never learn who he is, or where he came from or how he came to be the devil’s dollmaker in the first place. Ultimately, this film’s story as thin as a sheet of cheap toilet roll with unexplained plot points that go nowhere.

For example: How did the FBI track Nic’s character down at the bus stop? Well, that’s just one plot hole you’ll hopefully be drunk enough to ignore when you watch this film.

Don’t even get me started on the lead character, Special Agent Lee Harker. In what universe would a person who can’t make eye contact with anyone get through the rigorous training in Quantico?  No, putting her hair in a ponytail didn’t sell it for me. How did she break the coded letters? Well, she just did, okay? Why did the dollmaker like the band T-Rex? He just did. That’s what this movie is. A series of “She/he just dids.”

The more I think about it, the more this movie downright pisses me off.

There may come a time in the future when I feel bad for being so hard on it, but this is my first reaction.  Scarcely two hours post-credit roll and I’m furious that I bought into Longlegs’ excellent marketing campaign. They got my money. But they won’t get it again. I’d rather rewatch any of the films listed above instead.