EDITOR’S NOTE: A Black Ribbon for Deborah was first on Chiller Theater on Saturday, February 3, 1979 at 1:00 a.m. It also aired on October 4, 1980 and October 2, 1982.

Marcello Andrei directed this movie  wrote the script with Alvaro Fabrizio, Giuseppe Pulieri and Piero Regnoli — who wrote the original idea of a woman passing her child to someone else before they “all the usual bullshit: the witches, the sorcerer, the special effects.” It was released as The Torment in the UK.

Deborah (Marina Malfatti) wants a child of her own more than anything anyone could ever want. She’s told that only a miracle will make her pregnant. This fact has destroyed her marriage to Michel (Bradford Dillman). Deborah is also a powerful psychic, even if she doesn’t know it, and when she and her husband find a car crash with a dying pregnant woman named Mira (Delia Boccardo),  those skills are used to solve the mystery in this movie.

Marina Malfatti is rocking the short Mia Farrow hair here and is finally getting the chance to be the lead in a giallo after supporting Barbara Bouchet in The Red Queen Kills Seven Times and Edwige Fenech in All the Colors of the Dark. She’s also up front in The Red-Stained Lawn.

Sure, this is more supernatural than straight up giallo, but it aspires to f-giallo, as Deborah tries to be a mother in any way that she can, whether that’s doting on her dog Igor or giving toys to every kid she meets.

This also has some more American star power with Gig Young (in a role that Jose Ferrer was supposed to play) as a parapsychologist named Ofenbauer who is friends with Michel and debates him the difference between science and religion. There’s also a dinner party where he demonstrates his skills as a psychic but the feedback between Deborah and him is nearly a tragedy for everyone.

Soon, Deborah begins to feel that she is pregnant and starts to have a psychic proxy pregnancy, if you will and if that’s a thing, while also occasionally being hysterical and destroying all of her artwork. And as you can imagine, this is all heading toward a shock ending.

I love that Un Fioggo Nero per Deborah played on Pittsburgh’s Chiller Theater. What a strange lineup that show played over its decades of being on the air, going from American 1950s science fiction to Japanese monsters, Hammer horror and odd Italian psycho affairs like this. I can only imagine what the talk at the mill or school was the next day about this movie.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Dear Dead Delilah was first on Chiller Theater on Saturday, November 12, 1977 at 11:30 p.m. It also aired on March 1, 1980; February 14, 1981 and July 24, 1982.

Director and writer John Farris had three of his books made into movies: Because They’re Young, When Michael Calls and The Fury. 

In 1943, a pregnant Luddy Dublin (Patricia Carmichael) murdered her mother with an axe. When she gets out of jail years later, she’s walking through a college when she’s knocked over by Richard (Robert Gentry) as he plays football. His wife Ellen (Elizabeth Eis) is a nurse and invites her to heal at their plantation home where they live with her elderly aunt Delilah (Agnes Moorehead).

As you can imagine, rich people have wild problems. Ellen finds out that Luddy killed her mother and holds it over her head while everyone wants to get at Delilah’s money. Richard is also cheating on her with Grace Charles (Anne Meachum), Delilah’s brother Doctor Alonzo Charles (Dennis Patrick) is a heroin addict and oh yeah, people start getting killed, starting with family attorney Roy (Will Greer) as Luddy finds an axe in her bed and wanders outside where she finds his body, which makes it seem like she killed him. Morgan (Michael Ansara) and his girlfriend Buffy (Ruth Baker) are next and Delilah soon goes missing.

Grace decides to roll around in Delilah’s wheelchair and gets her head cut off with Richard revealing himself as the killer. Working with Ellen, they’ve found the rumored money buried on the property and are taking care of everyone else in the family, starting by overdosing Alonzo. They make love to celebrate and Richard killss her. He plans on making it seem like Luddy did it. But not everyone is as dead as they appear.

Shot in Nashville, Tennessee — which is the home of producer “Cowboy” Jack Clement, the writer of “Ballad of a Teenager Queen” and “Guess Things Happen That Way.” He also discovered and recorded Jerry Lee Lewis. This was the only movie that he produced and its a weird piece of psychobiddy exploitation.

It’s also a gory soap opera mixed with regional horror. There’s not much else like it, a dialogue heavy trip through the strange world of a wealthy family. Everyone is going for it with their performances and I ended up loving every minute of it.

This is one of the Nightmare Theater movies. That collection of movies also has Damiano Damiani’s The Witch, José Antonio Nieves Conde’s Marta, Raúl Artigot’s The Witches Mountain, José María Zabalza’s The Fury of the Wolfman, Mario Bava’s Hatchet for the Honeymoon, Peter Sadsy’s Doomwatch, Francisco Lara Polop’s Murder Mansion, Carlos Aured’s Horror Rises from the Tomb and The Mummy’s Revenge, Joe D’Amato’s Death Smiles on a Murderer, Claudio Guerí’s The Bell from Hell and Amando de Ossorio’s The Night of the Sorcerers. They all aired on Chiller Theater. I’m obsessed by each of them.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Doomwatch was first on Chiller Theater on Saturday, January 5, 1980 at 1 a.m. It also aired on May 29, 1982.

Doomwatch was originally a TV series that was on between 1970 and 1972. It was so big that it became this movie, which was released in the U.S. as Island of the Ghouls.

Dr. Spencer Quist (John Paul) and the Doomwatch (Department for the Observation and Measurement of Scientific Work) team — Doctor Del Shaw (Ian Bannen), Dr. John Ridge (Simon Oates), Dr. Fay Chantry (Jean Trend) — visit a village on the island of Balfe that is cut off from the rest of civilization. That’s because pollution has led to many of their people becoming mutated and violent.

Del Shaw was a new character who became the lead in this, which hurt the popularity of this movie with the fans of the show. Judy Geeson also gets more time than any of the show’s cast.

Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis, who created that show, have writing credits, but Clive Exton (The House In Nightmare Park, The Awakening) did most of the story. It’s kind of folk horror mixed with ecology, which is a weird mix.

That said, I love director Peter Sasdy. His movies are all over the place. He made everything from Taste the Blood of Dracula, Countess Dracula and Hands of the Ripper to The Stone Tape, Nothing But the Night, I Don’t Want to Be Born, Welcome to Blood City and The Lonely Lady.

Paul Wilson (Ben Gavin) is a vet who has settled down in Iowa where he’s running a farm. When his wife is killed and his diabetic daughter is kidnapped in Kansas City, he reveals to his friends that he’s way more than the man they believed as he unleashes all of his mercenary skills on those who took his girl.

Also: a former friend from Iraq, Randall Johnson (Robert Coppage), is the grandson of Robert Johnson, whose deal at the crossroads didn’t just take his soul, but the souls of every male child in his family afterward. Of course, they all get superpowers because the Devil (Kirk Fox) has a weird sense of humor. He also likes to play cards against John Wayne and John Wayne Gacy.

Directed and written by Michael P. Blevins, this is a movie that’s never really sure of its tone and if we should get behind Paul or be afraid of him. Even by the end of the movie,. he’s proved that he’s pretty much an idiot and for all his military skills has no idea how to plan things.

My wife walked in and saw some of this and said that I should tell all of you that “This looks like the movie that a bunch of indy pro wrestlers would make.”

Obviously, this is the vision of its creator and as such, way cooler to watch than a formula film. I’ll always choose not the best acting and quick changes in tone over boring.

Also: How did they get Jerry from Parks and Rec to play Paul’s dad? And how happy is Kevin Porter to be in two Tubi originals — this and Dante’s Hotel — in the same weekend?

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Assignment: Outer Space was first on Chiller Theater on Saturday, April 24, 1965 at 11:20 p.m. It also aired on May 21, 1966 and June 1, 1968.

Known as Space-Men in Italy, this was Antonio Margheriti’s first full directorial effort. How magical is it that at the same time that this was being filmed, Mario Bava was filming Black Sunday in the next sound stage over.

This takes place in 2116, as Interplanetary Chronicle of New York reporter Ray Peterson (Rik Van Nutter, Uncle Was a Vampire) is writing a story about the infra-radiation flux in Galaxy M12. The space station commander thinks that he’s in the way, which doesn’t help when they both fall for the station’s botanist Lucy (Gabriella Farinon, Blood and Roses).

Then the out of control Spaceship Alpha Two appears, headed straight to Earth with enough radiation to destroy it. Lives are lost, including Al, who is played by Archie Savage. He’s probably the first black man to play an astronaut on film, first in First Spaceship On Venus and then in this movie.

Peterson becomes a hero and uses Space Taxi B91 to fly out to the death ship and shut down its power. He’s rescued by the commander, gets the girl and all is well in the world of Italian science fiction.

Using the name Anthony Dawson, Margheriti would make more science fiction films, including Battle of the Worlds; Wild, Wild Planet; War of the Planets and, late in his career, Treasure Island In Outer Space.

You can watch this on Tubi.