EDITOR’S NOTE: Visions of Death was on the CBS Late Movie on September 15, 1976 and October 27, 1977.
Telly Savalas plays Lt. Phil Keegan, a cop before Kojak, and he’s dealing with the visions of Prof. Mark Lowell (Monte Markham), who can see the future. He tells the police that someone is about to plant a bomb, which makes him the prime suspect.
Directed by Lee H. Katjin (Death Ray 2000) and written by Paul Playdon, one wonders if a young Steve King watched this and thought, “Hey, that idea of a psychic being able to touch people and see their future seems pretty neat.” Except that Mark is a professor and Johnny in The Dead Zone was a teacher and…yeah.
They also brought in a real-life psychic — cold reader, more like it — James Van Pragh. Barb Anderson, Eve Whitfield from Ironside, is also in this.
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.
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.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: Night of Terror was on the CBS Late Movie on September 15, 1975 and August 3, 1977.
Linda Daniel (a super young Donna Mills, years before she was a star on Knots Landing and had her own eye makeup video, The Eyes Have It) is in the crosshairs of Brian (Chuck Connors), a killer who wants something that Manning (John Karlen) has but has no idea what it is. So instead, he’s coming after Linda and her roommate Celeste (Catherine Burns). He causes a car accident that kills Celeste — spoiler — and puts Linda in a wheelcahir and that’s still not enough.
Capt. Caleb Sark (Martin Balsam) puts her up in a beach safehouse, but if we know anything about killers after Wait Until Dark, we understand that there’s no stopping Brian from getting what he wants.
Director Jeannot Szwarc started his career on episodes of Ironside, It Takes a Thief and Alias Smith and Jones. His career would expand into TV movies and finally theatrical features like Bug, Jaws 2, Supergirl and Santa Claus: The Movie. He kept directing all the way to 2019, at the age of 82, working on episodes of Gray’s Anatomy, Castle and Bones. This was written by TV vet Cliff Gould and shot by Howard Schwartz, who won an Emmy for his work. He was the director of photography on shows like Cliffhangers!, The Incredible Hulk TV movie and theatrical releases including Futureworld and Batman: The Movie.
Shout out to Night Killer star Peter Hooten and Agnes Moorehead for showing up as Bronsky!
EDITOR’S NOTE: Dr. Phibes Rises Again was on the CBS Late Movie on January 31, 1975 and January 2, 1976.
The fact that this movie exists gives me hope. There are moments when life gets me down, when I wonder about my place in this world and if humanity is essentially horrible. Then I remember that great films like this exist and it makes me feel a lot better. You should do the same thing if you ever find yourself in an existential crisis.
Dr. Phibes is back, three years after he lay down in the darkness next to the corpse of his beloved wife. Now, however, he has learned that the secret of eternal life, held by a centuries-old man, is in Egypt. I don’t care why he’s back. I’d watch Dr. Phibes go grocery shopping!
Dr. Anton Phibes (Vincent Price) has been in suspended animation in a sarcophagus alongside his wife Victoria Regina Phibes (Caroline Munro). When the moon aligns with the planets in a way not seen for two millennia, he returns, summoning the silent Vulnavia (thus confirming to me, at least, that she’s really one of his robots as she died in the last film; furthermore, she’s played by Valli Kemp, who took over for the pregnant Virginia North) to his side.
Phibes plans on taking his wife’s body with him to Egypt, where the River of Life promises her resurrection. As he emerges from his tomb, his house has been demolished and the safe that contained the map to the river lies empty. That’s because the map has been stolen by Darius Biederbeck, a man who is hundreds of years old thanks to a special elixir. He may also be every bit Phibes’ equal.
Darius is played by Robert Quarry, who American International Pictures was grooming to be Price’s replacement. There were tensions between the two on set, including a moment where Quarry was singing in his dressing room and challenged Price by saying, “You didn’t know I could sing, did you?” Ever the wit, Vincent Price replied, “Well, I knew you couldn’t act.” Quarry would have already played Count Yorga in two films for AIP and would go on to appear in The Deathmaster, where he played the hippie vampire Khorda; however, the AIP style had already fallen out of fashion. He’s also in numerous Fred Olen Ray films, such as Evil Toons, where he provides the uncredited voice of the demon.
Biederbeck wants eternal life for himself and his lover Diana (Fiona Lewis, Tintorera…Tiger Shark). Phibes and Vulnavia are on his trail, immediately entering his home, murdering his butler and stealing back the map. Everyone connected with Biederbeck comes to an ill end — Phibes places one inside a giant bottle and throws him overboard. That murder brings Inspector Trout back on the case, as he instantly recognizes that only one man could do something like that.
The rest of the film’s murders are based on Egyptian mythology versus Biblical plagues. Hawks and scorpions, rather than his weapons, along with gusts of wind and bursts of sand. Phibes has also brought an army of clockwork men with him the desert to do his bidding.
Phibes finally exchanges Diana’s life for the key to the River of Life. As he floats the coffin containing his wife down the water, he beckons Vulnavia to join them. As his lover tries to comfort him, Biederbeck begs Phibes to take him with them. He begins to rapidly age and dies as Phibes loudly sings “Over the Rainbow,” which might be the best ending of any movie ever made.
There were plans for many more of these films, and the fact that they were never made saddens me to this day. I’ve heard that a third film would Phibes fighting Nazis. I’ve also heard that it’d be about the key to Olympus. Or Phibes is Dr. Vesalius’ son. Or Victoria Phibes herself coming back, just as sinister as her husband. There have been titles thrown around like Phibes Resurrectus, The Seven Fates of Dr. Phibes and The Brides of Dr. Phibes. There was even a thought of Count Yorga facing off with Dr. Phibes, a fact which delights me to no end.
There was also a pitch for a TV series and what appeared to be an animated version, with Jack Kirby himself providing the pitch artwork.
Other ideas included Dr. Phibes in the Holy Land, The Son of Dr. Phibes (which would have pitted the doctor and his son against ecological terrorists), Phibes Resurrectus (which would have David Carradine as Phibes battling against Paul Williams, Orson Welles, Roddy McDowall, John Carradine and Donald Pleasence. The mind boggles at the thought, let me tell you!), a 1981 Dr. Phibes film where the WormwooInstitutete would have destroyed his wife’s body and then their strange members, including transvestite twins obsessed with economics and nuclear weaponry, fail to match wits with Phibes) And finally, Phibes was almost a role for Peter Sellers in a Pink Panther film where he’d also play Clouseau and Fu Manchu. You can learn more about these at the Vincent Price Exhibit site.
There was also a story in 2013 that Johnny Depp was going to star in a Tim Burton directed remake. That obviously Burton-directed film fits into the same Satanic themes as the original. However, you can add in a few new wrinkles. One of the Eleven Satanic Rules of the Earth states, “When walking in open territory, bother no one. If someone bothers you, ask him to stop. If he does not stop, destroy him.” All Phibes wished to do was take his wife to Egypt and bring her back to life. Once Biederbeck stole from him, his fate was sealed.
Ellie (Tiffany Bolling, The Candy Snatchers) and Myra Thomas (Robin Mattson, Candy Stripe Nurses) leave behind their abusive stepfather with a shotgun blast and make their way to Los Angeles and the home of their Uncle Ben (Scott Brady), who involves the two of them in a moey-laundering scheme. But Ellie knows the score and soon takes the money for herself, instructing her sister to meet her and Larry (Steven Sandor), the mark she’s conned, in El Paso. But things aren’t going to work out for them.
Director and writer Arthur Marks’ father was an assistant director on The Wizard of Oz and spent thirty years at MGM, which is where Arthur worked in the production department. His films, The Roommates, Detroit 9000, Bucktown, J.D.’s Revenge, Friday Foster, The Monkey Hu$tle, The Centerfold Girls and Linda Lovelace for President all filled a need big studios could care less about: drive-in programmers.
Every man in this movie is scum. There’s a moment in the beginning where a whole bunch of old men get drunk, sweaty and strange, sexually harassing Ellie who responds with sheer hatred. Was I in love? You know it. This also has Eddy (Alex Rocco) and Digger (Tim Brown) as two killers who in no way were totally taken by Tarantino in Pulp Fiction. Oh, he titled a chapter “The Bonnie Situation?” Well, at least he admits it.
Directed and written by Ralph Bakshi, and based on Robert Crumb’s comic, this was an attempt by Bakshi to expand cartoons beyond just being for kids, while creating an independent alternative to Disney for animated movies. Crumb and Bakshi met, during which time the animator showed Crumb drawings that had been created as a result of his learning the cartoonist’s style. Crumb gave him a sketchboard for reference. A good start, but by the end, Crumb felt this movie was making fun of hippies and Bakshi would call the comic artist “one of the slickest hustlers you’ll ever see in your life.”
Crumb said of the movie that it was “really a reflection of Ralph Bakshi’s confusion, you know. There’s something real repressed about it. In a way, it’s more twisted than my stuff. It’s really twisted in some kind of weird, unfunny way. … I didn’t like that sex attitude in it very much. It’s like real repressed horniness; he’s kind of letting it out compulsively.”
Animated by several Terrytunes artists and the first cartoon to be rated X, this finds Fritz (Skip Hinnant) on several adventures, from making love to three female cats in a bathtub to a raid by cops, starting a riot, surviving the carpet bombing of Harlem and then getting blown up real good, somehow surviving that to make love to even more ladies on what should be his death bed.
Ralph’s voice is Phil Seuling, who started some of New York City’s first comic conventions and ran an early comic book distributor, Sea Gate.
Crumb killed off Fritz in a comic called Fritz the Cat Superstar to prevent further films from being made, but The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat was still produced, even without Bakshi and Crumb being involved.
June 22: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Teenagers!
Stephanie Fondue, who stars in this as Jeannie, had an even more incredible real name. Enid Finnbogason. She was in Hollywood from Winnipeg, got hit up at lunch to try out for this movie and got it. She’d never been a cheerleader. She was twenty. Also: A nude model, so disrobing during the audition was no big whoop.
In the film, Amarosa High School is the kind of high stakes place where lives depend on football games. Along with Jeannie, Bonnie (Jovita Bush), Debbie (Brandy Woods) and head cheerleader Claudia (Denise Dillaway, who eventually did the makeup for 2000s reality specials Exposed! Pro Wrestling’s Greatest Secrets and Breaking the Magician’s Code: Magic’s Biggest Secrets as well as the VHS release of Party Games for Adults Only), the girls try and help the men win. Except that Claudia is catty and is trying to get Jeannie deflowered by the end of the season. It’s a backward teen sex comedy bet.
But hey, everyone goes to see I Drink Your Blood at one point. So there’s that.
Director and co-writer Paul Glicker also made Running Scared (the one with Ken Wahl) and adult movies Parlor Games and Hot Circuit. Other writers were Richard Lerner, Tad Richards and Ace Baandige, a name for someone who claims to have been a Presidential scriptwriter named David. David Gergen seems too clean for this, David Shipley is too young and David Frum was 11 when this came out. I am looking at Presidential writers and comparing them to someone who made a sex film.
Speaking of sex films, Suzie is played by Sandy Evans, but that’s Clair Dia, who was in Lucifer’s Women and 3 A.M. — the only porn with an Orson Welles-edited scene — and directed Screwples and The Health Spa. Patty, played by Kim Stanton, who is also Kimberly Hyde, was also in The Young Nurses and Candy Stripe Nurses. There were a lot of nurse movies. There are even sequels to this one: The Swinging Cheerleaders, Revenge of the Cheerleaders and Cheerleaders’ Wild Weekend.
June 8: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Heists!
Dillinger, Bonnie, Clyde, Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson and Ma Barker are the Doberman Gang, six Dobermans who join the gang of Eddie Newton (Byron Mabe), Sammy (Simmy Bow), June (Julie Parrish) and former Air Force dog trainer Barney Greer (Hal Reed). Oh yes — there’s also a bulldog named J. Edgar.
Eddie and June have been a couple, but she soon sees that he could throw her away at any time. She starts getting close to Barney, who soon learns that this is a criminal plan to train these dogs. He’s told that he’ll be killed if he tries to get away, so he works with them in the hopes that he can save the dogs and June. But he soon has second thoughts when he learns that the dogs will be killed.
Good boys. J. Edgar gets them to run off with the money. The bad news is that one of the dogs was hit by a car, and I could have done without that part. Except that in the sequel, The Daring Dobermans, that dog is fine. Whew.
There are also two more movies in the series, The Amazing Dobermans and Alex and the Doberman Gang.
I didn’t have to worry so much, as this was the first movie to have the “No Animals Were Harmed” onscreen credit from the American Humane Association.
This was directed by Byron Ross Chudnow and written by Louis Garfinkle, who also wrote I Bury the Living, Face of Fire, The Hellbenders, Little Cigars and The Deer Hunter—yeah, I know, wow—and Frank Ray Perilli, who wrote Mansion of the Doomed, the Michael Pataki adult Cinderella, End of the World, Dracula’s Dog, the adult Fairy Tales, Laserblast, The Best of Sex and Violence and co-wrote Alligator with John Sayles.
Dimension Pictures played this as a double feature with The Twilight People. I love that!
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 into 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, and then his wife, Marianne (Marlene Clark). 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 the 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!”
B&S About Movies 
You must be logged in to post a comment.