Tag Archives: 1978

Orson Welles at The Magic Castle (1978)

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As a kid, Orson Welles was, to me, someone who showed up on talk shows. I had no idea why he was famous, that he was a genius, that Hollywood had taken him down, and he kept on making movies. 

This show would have made me think he was a magician. 

Originally airing on Showtime in 1978, this was conceived by Abb Dickson. A former President of IBM, he also had tons of Houdini’s original props. The son of a funeral home owner father and a personal secretary to Presidents Roosevelt and Truman mother, Dickson loved the trick The Disembodied Princess, which he first saw Orson Welles perform with his then-wife, Rita Hayworth, on a USO show. When Welles was making a TV special—unfinished—The Magic Show, he reached out to Dickson to get his Disembodied Princess prop. This led to a friendship that would last the rest of Welles’ life. There was one rule: “… the parameters of Welles’ friendship with Dickson included the unspoken rule that they were never to discuss his film career or, indeed, movies in general. It seems obvious that one of the reasons Welles surrounded himself with so many magicians late in his life is because their company provided a respite from the struggles he encountered in trying to put together film projects.”

I wish The Magic Show would be finished, as it has Welles performing a bullet trick that killed its original magician, and Welles does it alongside Angie Dickinson. You can learn more in this article. You can watch some of it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TdKiH4_xhs&msockid=08a1089ad1a511f08d57a41bbcc532ca

As for Dickson, he also shows up in two Andy Sidaris movies, Malibu Express and Picasso Trigger. When it came to this show — you know, the one I started writing about several hundred words back there — the producers wanted a star to introduce it. Dickson said, “Well, how about Orson Welles?” He said, “You couldn’t get Orson Welles to do this!” I said, “Give me your phone.” I picked up the phone, I called Orson, I said, “Look, I’ve written this Magic Castle special…” Joe Butt is standing there with his mouth open. I said, “I need for you to do the introduction and the in-and-out. It will probably be one day of shooting, at the most two, and I’ve only got, I think, $25,000. Will you shoot this?” And he said, “Sure! But I get the extra film.” I said, “Okay, great.” I hung up the phone and said, “Okay, we got him.” Joe Butt was truly amazed.”

In the Senses of Cinema article I’ve referenced, the main reason Orson did this was to get tails of film to make his own movies. 

Disckson said, “One of Orson’s jobs – as he said – was making nickel and dime money doing all these commercials and little things so he could get the tail footage from the films. In other words, if you’re going to shoot a commercial and you order 500 feet of stock, he could do it in 100 feet. Then he would have 400 feet to deal with on his own.”

This special, directed by Tom Trbovich (who also directed the “We Are the World” video and Playboy’s Roller Disco & Pajama Party), features the following magicians:

Kuda Bux: Also known as Professor K.B. Duke, he was known for fire walking and the trick he does here: seeing with his eyes covered with paste and wrapped with cloth. Sadly, he eventually lost his eyesight to glaucoma.

Albert Goshman: A bagel baker from Brooklyn, he eventually became one of the world’s foremost makers of foam balls for magic. His coins-in-the-purse routine in this is incredible.

Peter Pit: This Dutch magician was a consultant to Siegfried and Roy and the booker of talent at the Magic Castle.

Ger Copper: The founder of the Dutch School of Magic.

Jay Marshall: The Dean of American Magicians and the first person to open for Frank Sinatra in Vegas.

As for The Magic Castle itself, it’s a performance venue, restaurant and clubhouse for the Academy of Magical Arts for magicians and magic enthusiasts.  Today, we may think of magic as silly, but as a kid, I dreamed of going there. Specials like this and TV movies like A Night at the Magic Castle are why. 70s TV culture was a different, less cynical thing for me, a place where I’d love to get to meet Dai Vernon and explore the secret areas of the Magic Castle.

You can watch this on YouTube.

2025 Scarecrow Psychotronic Challenge Day 21: The Boys from Brazil (1978)

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21. TWINNERS CIRCLE: Scientists rejoice! Human cloning has been achieved.

Barry Kohler (Steve Guttenberg) died so that Ezra Lieberman (Laurence Olivier) could learn that Dr. Josef Mengele (Gregory Peck) lives and plans on killing 94 civil servants near retirement. Despite being exhausted by the world, Ezra forms a team with his sister Esther (Lilli Palmer), journalist Sidney Beynon (Denholm Elliot) and vigilante David Bennett (John Rubinstein) to stop the murders.

Directed by Franklin J. Schaffner (Planet of the Apes) and written by Heywood Gould (Rolling Thunder) from the book by Ira Levin, this is about the children — clones! — of Adolf Hitler, who have been placed all over the world.

Two years before this, Olivier would play a Nazi in Marathon Man. Here, he seems way more kindly than the character is in the book that inspired it.

Oddly, this is a movie that my wife’s family watched and quoted all of the time. Maybe they just like watching dogs maul evil German doctors. Who can say? Even today, long after this was made, just saying the title of the movie suggests a vast conspiracy.

Ira Levin had to be the richest man ever. Just look at the movies of his books: A Kiss Before Dying, Critic’s Choice, Rosemary’s Baby, The Stepford Wives, Deathtrap, Sliver and more. Several were filmed more than once and had sequels.

September Drive-In Super Monster-Rama 2025: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)

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September Drive-In Super Monster-Rama is back at The Riverside Drive-In Theatre, September 19 and 20, 2025. Two big nights with four feature films each night include:

  • Friday, September 19: Mark of the Devil, The Sentinel, The Devil’s Rain and Devil Times Five
  • September 20: The Omega Man, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the Grindhouse Releasing 4K restoration drive-in premiere of S.F. Brownrigg’s Scum of the Earth and Eaten Alive

Admission is $15 per person each night (children 12 and under – accompanied by an adult guardian – are admitted free). Overnight camping is available (breakfast included) for an additional $20 a person per night. Advance online tickets (highly recommended) for both movies and camping here: https://www.riversidedrivein.com/shop/

 

Every generation gets the Invasion of the Body Snatchers it deserves.

The fifties got the McCarthy referencing pod people.

The nineties got alienation and a bleak final scene.

And I guess the 2000s got The Invasion.

But the seventies?

The pre-millennial tension and end of the world coming soon seventies got director Phillip Kaufman’s blast of pure dread, working with talents like cinematographer Michael Chapman (who ran the camera on The Godfather and Jaws before creating the look of movies like Raging Bull, The Fugitive and directing All the Right Moves and The Clan of the Cave Bear) and sound designer Ben Burtt, the man who gave Star Wars all its well-remembered noises. As for the effects, as many of them as possible were done in camera.

A species has made its way to Earth and one of the first people to notice is Elizabeth Driscoll (Brooke Adams), who wakes to find her husband Dr. Geoffrey Howell (Art Hindle) is no longer the man that she’s spent so many days and nights with. The species — do I have to spoil it for you — takes over humans and assimilates them.

A co-worker, Matthew Bennell (Donald Sutherland), wants to introduce Elizabeth to self-help author Dr. David Kibner (Leonard Nimoy) as a way of helping her handle this strange situation. Still, on the way, a man runs through the street screaming, “They’re coming! You’ll be next!” before being chased by a crowd and killed by a car.

That mystery man is Kevin McCarthy, the star of the original film, who, one supposes, has been running through America since the end of the last film. Even before the movie was finished, McCarthy told Kaufman that this movie was better than the one he was in. You can also see original director Don Siegel as a taxi driver later in the film.

The seventies were the me decade. So David believes that people behaving so differently is their response to stress, while Elizabeth just thinks this is how she’s being told her relationship is over. The truth is so much weirder as people begin to find partially formed doppelgangers of themselves and their friends.

By the end of the film, children are being taken for duplication, strange priests (Robert Duvall) swing as the world ends, dogs appear with human heads, women disintegrate in their lovers’ arms — the film takes the basic ideas of the original and makes them as horrifyingly real and unreal as they can be at the very same time.

Plus, there’s Jeff Goldblum and Veronica Cartwright, who, between this and Alien, really were at the forefront of late 20th-century science fiction movies.

While Pauline Kael said that this “may be the best film of its kind ever made” and Variety wrote that it “validates the entire concept of remake,” Roger Ebert derided Kael’s love for the remake. However, over time, this has become the epitome of a sequel that surpasses the original in so many ways.

The true terror of this movie lies in its ending, which upset me utterly as a child. I’d never seen a movie end this way. Only Kaufman, writer W.D. Richter and Donald Sutherland knew how the film was going to end, so when Sutherland screams at Veronica Cartwright, her reaction is genuine. The hopeful ending that was scripted was never shot because Kaufman knew that if the studio had the option, they’d pick that, just like they did with the first version of this story.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Death Dimension (1978)

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Also known as Death Dimensions, Freeze Bomb, Icy Death, The Kill Factor, and Black Eliminator, this Al Adamson movie features a cast that gets me excited, as well as Gary Graver’s direction.

Dr. Mason (T.E. Foreman) has created a weather control device. As smart as he is, he’s dumb enough to miss the clues that he’s working for a crime boss known as Santo “The Pig” Massino (Harold Sakata). Instead of saving the world, The Pig plans on blackmailing the world. Dr. Mason deals with this by killing himself. And if you were him, how would you protect the plans? Would you send them to another scientist? A reporter? No, you would save them on a microchip and seal them in the forehead of your assistant, Felicia’s (Patch Mackenzie) forehead.

Felicia is on the run, and soon, the bad guys must battle Detective Ash (Jim Kelly) and Captain Gallagher (George Lazenby).

Does Harold Sakata’s voice sound familiar to you? It should. It’s actually James Hong. Think about that during the scene where he uses a snapping turtle to threaten a woman’s breasts.

There’s also a little bit of Hollywood’s past here, as Terry Moore from Mighty Joe Young and Aldo Ray are in the cast.

VINEGAR SYNDROME BOX SET RELEASE: Bloodstained Italy

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From Vinegar Syndrome: “Italian horror in the 1960s and 70s went through several popular tonal and thematic phases. From Gothic thrillers in the early to mid-1960s, psychedelia and monster mayhem in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and, of course, all manner of gialli and other assorted murder thrillers. But what of those films that offer a form of narrative bait and switch, luring the viewer in with the pretense of one genre while slowly revealing themselves to be something else entirely? Presented here are a trio of 70s Italian horror features which play with, combine, subvert, and surprise with their genre leanings, all newly and exclusively restored from their 35mm original negatives and all presented on English-friendly home video for the very first time, from Vinegar Syndrome.”

Obscene Desire (L’osceno desiderio) (1978): Obscene Desire is the story of Amanda (Marisa Mell, a goddess if there ever were one and someone who immediately changes any movie from maybe to definitely; my favorite of her films are Marta, Danger: Diabolik and Perversion Story, a movie in which she has one of the most fabulous outfits not only in the history of Italian film but perhaps all movies ever), an American woman ready to marry the rich Andrea (Chris Avram, Enter the Devil) and move into his vast mansion.

Within the walls of that gothic expanse lies something evil, something that has possessed Amanda’s soon-to-be husband to indulge in black magic and ritual murder. In fact, the only way that he can keep his soul from being taken by his domicile is to keep killing prostitutes.

This movie should teach you to never trust a gardener (Victor Israel) and that the Italian film industry would keep on making Rosemary’s Baby rip-offs ten years after that movie was unleashed. Or The Exorcist five years later. Or The Omen two years later.

Look, I’m a simple man. Marisa Mell, with short, dark hair, looking not unlike Mariska Hargitay, is possessed by the devil and writhes on a bed, revealing that her tongue is superhumanly long. Do I even care that this movie has no real story and really goes nowhere?

No, not at all.

What were we talking about?

Laura Trotter (Dr. Anna Miller from Nightmare City) and Paola Maiolini (Cuginetta, amore mio!) are also in the cast for this film directed by Giulio Petroni (Death Rides a Horse) and written by Joaquín Domínguez and Piero Regnoli (the director of The Playgirls and the Vampire and writer of 117 movies including Demonia, Voices from Beyond, Burial Ground and Patrick Still Lives).

Extras on the Vinegar Syndrome release include a commentary track with film historians Eugenio Ercolani and Troy Howarth, interviews with director/writer Giulio Petroni, daughter of Giulio Petroni and script supervisor Silvia Petroni, grandson of Giulio Petroni and film historian Eugenio Ercolani, censorship expert Alessio Di Rocco and director Pupi Avati, as well as alternate and extended scenes from the Spanish version and the original Italian trailer.

The Bloodstained Lawn (Il prato macchiato di rosso) (1973): The Red-Stained Lawn, also known as The Bloodstained Lawn, was initially titled Vampiro 2000 and combines science fiction, Gothic horror, and giallo genres in a wacky package with a bloodsucking robotic twist.

The film takes place in Emilia-Romagna, Italy. There, a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization agent finds a bottle of wine containing blood. How could this happen to such a well-known vintage from Michelino Croci? What if the winery is a front for a blood smuggling scheme? And how would blood stay good in bottles? So many mysteries!

Dr. Antonio Genovese (Enzo Tarascio), his wife Nina (Marina Malfatti, All the Colors of the Dark, The Red Queen Kills Seven Times, Seven Blood-Stained Orchids) and her brother Alfiero (Claudio Biava) look for people with no ties — hippies, drifters, prostitutes and literally gypsies, tramps and thieves — to lure to an all expenses paid getaway at their castle. Folks like freewheeling musician Max (George Willing, Who Saw Her Die?) and his lover (Daniela Caroli), who have accepted an invitation to spend some time in the Genovese estate, along with the alcoholic tramp (Lucio Dalla, who would become a major singing star in the 80s), a gypsy (Barbara Marzano, The Bloodsucker Leads the Dance) and a sex worker (Dominique Boschero, Argoman the Fantastic Superman).

The bloodsucking machine is literally right out in the open, treated like a piece of pop art. You have to admire that level of out in the open when it comes to an Italian film killer. You also have to love that the killers have a shower that sprays wine, and this doesn’t bother Max or his never-named girlfriend, nor does the hall of mirrors bedroom seem strange to anyone else. There’s also a curtain between rooms that resembles female anatomy, and even more so, a scene taken right out of The Laughing Woman.

Director and writer Riccardo Ghione made only four movies: this one, a documentary called Il Limbo, the hippy drama A cuore freddo, and La rivoluzione sessuale, a film in which seven men and seven women perform an experiment inspired by the sexual orgone energy theories of Wilhelm Reich. If that was crazy enough, it was co-written by Dario Argento. He would go on to write several other films, including the Joe D’Amato film Delizia.

I love that this movie stands on the line between arthouse and grindhouse, with every decision it makes leaning away from the artistic and toward the prurient and bloody. Sure, there’s a message about how the rich subjugate the lower classes, but it’s also a film where Malfatti gives speeches about Wagner and how meaningless her victims are, all. At the same time, a gigantic cartoony machine literally sucks young blood.

Extras on the Vinegar Syndrome release include commentary by Rachael Nisbet and interviews with film historian Enzo Latronico and filmmaker/film historian Luca Rea.

Death Falls Lightly (La morte scende leggera) (1972): Death Falls Lightly begins when Georgio Darica (Stello Candelli) comes home from a crime-related business trip only to find that his wife has been killed. So his lawyer suggests that he grab his girlfriend, Liz (Patrizia Viotti, Amuck) and head off to a hotel. Still, when he gets there, the owner (Antonio Anelli) has also killed his wife, so he asks him to help bury her, but then George remembers that the hotel was abandoned. So is he going insane? Are these people real? Did he actually kill his wife?

The next part of this movie gets absolutely ridiculous in the best of ways, as people appear, get murdered and come back to life. At the same time, someone commits suicide on a Satanic altar, invisible killers attack George, prog rock blasts, and a monkey shows up out of nowhere. It also features the most ridiculous of all giallo police, which is saying something. There’s a very low bar for giallo cops, and these ones may be the worst.

Director Leopoldo Savona also made Byleth: The Demon of Incest the same year I was born, which probably means something.

Extras on the Vinegar Syndrome release include commentary with film historians Eugenio Ercolani and Troy Howarth, interviews with actor Alessandro Perrella and filmmaker/film historian Luca Rea, and a then and now location featurette.

This 3-disc region-free Blu-ray set features all the movies newly scanned and restored in 2K from their 35mm original negatives, along with newly translated English subtitles and reversible sleeve artwork. You can get it from Vinegar Syndrome.

The Odd Job (1978)

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joseph Perry writes for the film websites Gruesome Magazine, The Scariest Things, Horror Fuel, The Good, the Bad and the Verdict and Diabolique Magazine; for the film magazines Phantom of the Movies’ VideoScope and Drive-In Asylum; and for the pop culture websites When It Was Cool and Uphill Both Ways. He is also one of the hosts of When It Was Cool’s exclusive Uphill Both Ways podcast and can occasionally be heard as a cohost on Gruesome Magazine’s Decades of Horror: The Classic Era podcast.

Official synopsis: Graham Chapman stars as happily married Arthur Harris, who becomes suicidal when his wife suddenly up and leaves him. Trying and failing miserably to do the deed himself, when a peculiar handyman (BAFTA-winner Sir David Jason) turns up on his doorstep to offer his services, he enlists the help of this strange stranger to kill him instead, with shockingly hilarious results.

As a decades-long fan of Monty Python’s Flying Circus and the various projects with which the members of its troupe have been involved, I was keen on checking out director Peter Medak’s 1978 feature The Odd Job starring Graham Chapman. Cowritten by Chapman and Bernard McKenna, the film is one of those comedies where you can tell what was meant to be funny, but the humor just doesn’t land successfully enough to garner many actual laughs. 

Although the performances are generally fine — Richard O’Brien as the leather queen henchman of a gangster is a scene stealer — characters are often written or portrayed broadly, or seemingly just there for convenience, whether it be for attempts at laughs or to try to make the plot more absurd. Questions abound, such as why Harris would continue to want to commit suicide when a neighbor in his building attempts to seduce him the very night his wife left him, and why, after Harris’s wife returns home, he doesn’t simply try to let his would-be murderer know that the plan is off.

As a curiosity, The Odd Job is certainly worth a watch, as it is interesting to see what Chapman, McKenna, and Medak were attempting to pull off. Monty Python and Graham Chapman completists will definitely want to give it a look.

Chapman and McKenna were a bit more successful with 1983’s Yellowbeard, which saw Peter Cook join the duo as a co-writer.

Severin Films releases The Odd Job in its worldwide Blu-ray premiere on 25 August 2025, and the film will also be available on digital on Amazon Prime on the same date. The film is now scanned in 2K from director Peter Medak’s personal 35mm print and comes complete with a slew of special features. It’s available to pre-order now at https://severinfilms.co.uk/.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Convention Girls (1978)

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Directed and co-written — with T. Gertler — by Joseph Adler, who also made Sex and the College Girl and Scream Baby Scream, Convention Girls is a movie that I can’t find. The Alamo Drafthouse refers to it as a “Florida-shot indie obscurity — a super rare 35mm print of a movie never released on DVD or video!”

They went on to describe this movie as a “Nashville-inspired multi-character drama set in a Miami Beach hotel during a weekend-long toy manufacturers convention. The smart screenplay by Trudy Gertler uses the handful of prostitutes working the convention as a structural device to tie together the various subplots and character arcs. Originally titled Conventions, this offbeat regional indie pic — more slice-of-life than sexploitation — was acquired by producer/distributor M.A. Ripps, the huckster responsible for the notorious ’60s shocker Poor White Trash, who retitled it Convention Girls and gave it a full-blown exploitation makeover. After playing the drive-in circuit for half a dozen years, the film pretty much vanished, rarely (if ever) showing on TV and never receiving a home video release.”

This seems like a sex movie, but from all accounts, it’s actually the story of a toymaker trying to keep from being a sellout. There’s also a sex worker falling into a depression and self-directed death in a bathtub, affairs, horrible male-to-female behavior and the dirty side of the toy industry.

Actors include Nancy Lawson (God’s Bloody Acre), Anne Seward in her debut, Roberta White, Carol Linden, Robert Gallo, Naomi Fink (also in Adler’s Sammy Somebody), Clarence Thomas (not that one) and William Kerwin. I think legally, you couldn’t make a low budget movie in Florida without him.

Does anyone know how I can see this?

Sizzlin’ Summer of Side-Splitters 2025: Mag Wheels (1978)

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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.

Man, the 70s.

Steve (John Laughlin) has a van.

Steve wants Anita (Shelly Horner).

Steve’s girlfriend Donna (Verkina Flower, who was also in The Capture of Bigfoot, The Witch Who Came from the Sea and Drive-In Massacre; she was also the costume designer for Top Dog and worked in the wardrobe department for Midnight, Frightmare, They’re Playing With Fire and Silent Night, Deadly Night) gets angry and tells the cops that Steve is a cocaine dealer and tells his friends that Anita was the one who set him up. They decide to sexually assault her, and she’s saved by lady truckers. Yes, this happens. Anita was also roughed up by her boss at The Boogie Bowl earlier, and she still came to work the next day.

The 70s.

Keep in mind that the rest of the movie features van sploitation, sex comedy hijinks, and a pillow fight war. And then, you get the gang rape and an ending that serves chicken race gloom and doom. Well, it looks like Anita is dead when she drives her dad’s station wagon off a cliff, but Steve yells, “She’s alive!” which is as convincing as when that ADR told us that Duke was going to live in the animated G.I. Joe: The Movie.

This was re-released as Summer School, long after the culture had died out due to gas prices. You know. The 70s. Today, too.

Director and writer Bethel Buckalew was a production manager on Deep Jaws, The Love Butcher, Lady Cocoa, The Black 6, Miss Nymphet’s Zap-In, and The Secret Sex Lives of Romeo and Juliet before directing Southern Comforts, Below the Belt, Country Cuzzins, A Scream In the Streets and Sassy Sue. George Barris, the maker of many custom cars, produced this one and also appears, along with several of his family members. He’s a shop owner; his wife, Shirley, is a housewife. Their son, Brett Barris, did stunts. The other son, Shotzi Barris, is a van driver, and Joji Barris is a van driver’s wife.

The skateboarders? Those are the Z-Boys.

The best character? Kim, played by Lynn Kuratomi, practices martial arts because it’s the 70s — did I say that before — and she’s Asian, but she’s still wonderful, despite this classic Hollywood cliche.

You can watch this on Tubi.

CBS LATE MOVIE: Are You In the House Alone? (1978)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Are You In the House Alone? was on the CBS Late Movie on September 25, 1981, December 9, 1983 and August 10, 1984.

Any time people wonder why women keep pushing harder and harder for their inalienable rights, you should force them to watch this movie, which shows how far our society has come since 1978. There’s a scene in here that literally made us start yelling at the TV set because of how insane it is. Yet forty years ago, this type of thinking was commonplace.

Originally airing on CBS on September 20, 1978, Are You In the House Alone? It is based on the 1976 novel of the same name by Richard Peck.

Gail Osborne (Kathleen Beller, Dynasty) is a high school student dealing with all the pressures of being sixteen, such as discovering her skills as a photographer and dealing with boys who only want sex. Her family has moved away from San Francisco to a new town to escape the dangers of the big city.

She starts dating a guy named Steve (Scott Colomby, Tony from Caddyshack), despite her overprotective parents (Blythe Danner and Tony Bill). Despite this young love blossoming, Gail continues to receive threatening letters and calls from a man who laughs at her. She asks her principal for help and is basically told that it’s probably all her fault for the way she’s treated one of her male classmates.

Gail’s life is pretty much falling apart. Her parents constantly fight, her dad gets back on the wagon, and he gets fired from his job without telling anyone. The letters and calls start to increase, and we have a red herring dangled in our snooping noses in the person of way too involved photography teacher Chris Elden (played by the incredibly named Alan Fudge, who was in Galaxis, My Demon Lover, and Brainstorm).

Surprise — it ends up being her best friend Allison’s (Robin Mattson, who was in Candy Stripe Nurses and a film remarkably similar to this, Secret Night Caller) boyfriend, Phil (Dennis Quaid, who is so young it’ll blow your mind). He attacks her while she’s babysitting the children of Jessica Hirsch (Tricia O’Neil, Piranha II: The Spawning), a lawyer who just happens to be dating the aforementioned Mr. Elden.

The shocking part we mentioned above is that when Jessica becomes Gail’s lawyer, she tells her that there’s a chance no one will put Phil in jail because she’s not a virgin anymore. The world may be a mess these days, but man, in 1978, it was a real mess.

While not technically a slasher — there’s no body count to speak of — the hallmarks of the genre, such as a babysitter being stalked and constantly threatened by a maniac, are all here.

Also, what was it with 1970s made-for-TV movie houses and plants? Every single home in this movie is abundantly lush with vegetation. Every plant is green and thriving, despite the absence of sunlight in any of these homes. How did they do it?

CBS LATE MOVIE: Someone’s Watching Me! (1978)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Someone’s Watching Me! was on the CBS Late Movie on January 21 and June 12, 1981.

John Carpenter was hired by Warner Bros in 1976 to write a script based on the true story of a woman who had been spied on inside her Chicago apartment. The script, High Rise, ultimately became a TV movie that Carpenter was also given the opportunity to direct.

“I thought it was a really, really good idea,” said Carpenter. “So I had my first experience with television. And my first union experience. I got into the Director’s Guild through that. I had a really good time on it, I have to tell you. I met my wife.”

This eighteen-day shoot allowed Carpenter to test many of the techniques that he’d use weeks later when he started work on Halloween.

Originally airing on November 29, 1978 on NBC, this movie concerns Leigh Michaels (Lauren Hutton), who has moved to Los Angeles to escape New York City. As she begins her new career at television station KJHC with new friend Sophie (Barbeau) and a relationship with college professor Paul Winkless (David Birney, who went on to be quite the reader of audiobooks).

However, she’s soon dealing with phone calls and starts receiving unlimited calls. She calls the police, but there’s nothing she can do except wait for the voyeur to come to her.

Fans of Halloween take note: Charlie Cyphers shows up as a cop.