René Cardona Jr. gave us Tintorera, a Susan George star vehicle about the Mexican version of Jaws and Guyana: Crime of the Century, which somehow included Stuart Whitman as Reverend James Johnson leading Johnstown, along with Gene Barry and Joseph Cotten. If these things warm your heart, you’re reading the right website.

Based on Charles Berlitz’s best-selling book, this one has it all. Atlantis. A possessed doll. Black characters dubbed to sound like they’re coming straight out of Amos ‘n Andy. John Huston.

The Black Whale III has set sail for the Bermuda Triangle with the Marvin family leading the way. Sure, they’re looking for Atlantis, but mostly they just argue with one another. Finding a doll in the water, the family’s young daughter Diana becomes possessed, telling people how they’ll die and locking the cook in the freezer.

Oh yeah — there’s also a scuba diving expedition that leads to the oldest daughter getting her legs crushed and her father just can’t decide whether or not to cut her legs off. Such is the drama of this film.

People start getting killed off until the desperate captain tries to call other ships for help. They end up hearing multiple distress calls, including their own being played back to them. When they finally reach someone, they learn that everyone on board died ten years ago. All that’s left is the doll floating in the water.

Claudine Auger (Black Belly of the Tarantula) shows up here, livening things up somewhat. This film is strange, as it wants to be about so many things while struggling to be about anything. And as mentioned before, the near minstrel show dubbing of the black cook is quite troubling at worst or hilariously inappropriate at best.

Let me reiterate: Hollywood legend John Huston is somehow in this piece of shit. Oh the 1970’s, when once big time talent would show up in the strangest of films!

I found this for free on Amazon Prime, so I recommend you do the same. The doll parts are at least somewhat cool, as is the atonal soundtrack and poor dubbing.

It’s been six years since Nick Cooper has recorded an album. He left the UK behind for Los Angeles and his wife, but now, divorce has landed him back home and back behind the mic. Retiring to the English countryside to record what he hopes will be his return to the limelight, he finds himself haunted by screams and visions of death.

Pete Walker’s filmography is filled with sex and murder and little, if any, subtext. From House of Whipchord and Frightmare to Schizo and House of the Long Shadows, which united Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and John Carradine, his films are quickly made and easily digested.

The opening of the film has Gail Cooper (Holly Palance, daughter of Jack and the doomed nanny from The Omen) is going through her ex-husband’s London apartment one more time. She’s not bitter, but almost wistful, remembering their love. Nick isn’t home, but she isn’t alone. Someone is there, watching her answer a reporter about her upcoming divorce and field questions about her husband’s comeback. Moments after she finishes a phone call, someone in an old lady mask kills her in graphic detail, even chopping her hand off. As graphic as this scene is, it gets worse as we return to the scene of the crime multiple times as the camera watches her decompose. And this is one of Walker’s restrained movies!

Gail’s ex-husband Nick (Jack Jones) has no idea that any of this has happened. He’s just trying to get through the recording sessions and make his manager Webster (David Doyle, TV’s Charlie’s Angels) happy. He’s moved into the Surrey countryside where Mr. and Mrs. B (Bill Owen and Sheila Keith, who appeared in four of Walker’s films) take care of his every need. Yet all is not well. At night, he hears screaming and sees visions of his ex-wife’s decaying face. At least he’s hooking up with Webster’s secretary Linda (Pamela Stephenson, an SNL cast member for season 10 of the show, which was the year Lorne Michaels came back, as well as Superman III).

Nick has all sorts of shady people around him, including his right-hand man from the old days, Harry. At one point, Nick ran with a druggy crowd, but now tries to avoid everything, even cigarettes. After discovering that Webster and Linda used to be a couple and the disappearance of Harry, Nick goes crazy. He searches for the voice in the house and only finds Gail’s severed head, which sends him into a catatonic state. He’s admitted to the hospital for exhaustion and they put him into five days of medical sleep (which sounds wonderful).

Nick and Linda finally have sex, but she disappears the next day. This makes Nick even crazier and we start to wonder who is behind all of this. There’s a red herring thrown when we discover Webster likes to dress up as an old woman. He also paid off Gail and got her to divorce our hero.

When Nick goes back to his old apartment, he learns that it’s been cleaned and all the carpeting has been replaced.

As Mrs. B tells him not to worry, the old woman attacks. He ducks an axe blow and the old woman is killed, revealing the killer as her husband! It turns out that their beloved daughter was an obsessed fan who committed suicide once Nick married Gail. All of this psychological torture has been their attempt to drive him to suicide.

Webster and the police arrive, just as Nick discovers that Linda has been walled inside the house, along with the body of the B’s dead daughter, who is clutching a photo of Nick as her body lies in state within a shrine to the singer.

As the police arrest Mr. B, Nick looks to the window of the house and sees his ex-wife waving goodbye to him. It seems that all of the psychological turmoil he had been put through wasn’t all in his head or in the hands of his would-be murderers.

Initially, Walker wanted Bryan Ferry from Roxy Music to play the lead, but Jack Jones chose this as his film debut. A legitimate pop singer who performed nightly concerts while acting daily in this film, he’s probably best known for singing the Love Boat theme song. He’s had a long career with several Grammy awards and acting roles to his name, including Top Secret and American Hustle.

He’s really great in this film, a rare example of a man in peril. This British giallo-style shocker is centered by his performance, as his sanity slowly slips. Also, he has the most chest hair I’ve ever seen on a man, a veritable forest of fluff that freaked out Becca.

Redemption put this film out several years ago and you should be able to find it at an affordable used price. It’s worth looking for. Diabolik DVD has it at a great price, too.

Slithis is a lot like Godzilla. He comes from radiation, he’s green and he wants to make humanity pay. But really, the comparisons stop there.

Shot over twelve fifteen-hour days, Slithis seems like it was hell for the actor who portrayed the monster, Win Condict. He had to be sewn into the rubber Slithis costume at the beginning of every day and stay in it until shooting was done. There were no buttons. No zippers. Only Slithis.

The monster’s rage starts with dogs, who frankly had nothing to do with his condition. Please join our dog Angelo in his protest of movies that use threatening and murdering dogs to cheaply draw our attention.

My biggest question is why is Wayne Connors’ (the hero of the film) wife named Jeff (Judy Motulsky from the little known Idaho Transfer)?

The entire first hour of this movie concerns the boring research and tracking of the creature. By the time they find him, it’s shocking just how well done the costume is. It doesn’t need hidden, so why did we have to wait so long to see it?

No, instead the film forces us to watch a turtle race. I shit you not. You know what? That’s actually kind of awesome that instead of telling a gripping, horror-filled tale, the directorial choice was to show the entirety of a race between animals that are classically known as the slowest around.

How do you survive a Slithis attack? Simple. Join his fan club. He’ll remember you when he’s in your neighborhood.

If you’d like to watch this film, Code Red has just released it. You can grab it at Ronin Flix on blu ray, complete with some great new art.

Also known as La Montagna del Dio Cannibale, Slave of the Cannibal God and Prisoner of the Cannibal God, don’t be fooled by the pedigree of having big stars like Ursula Andress and Stacy Keach. This film may seem restrained at first, but it goes absolutely insane by the final ten minutes. I mean, when has Sergio Martino (All the Colors of the Dark, Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key) ever steered us wrong?

Susan Stevenson (Andress, the original Bond girl) is looking for her husband Henry, an anthropologist who has gone missing in the jungles of New Guinea. Along with her brother Arthur and Professor Edward Foster (Keach), they travel to the mountain Ra Ra Me, a cursed place where the authorities will not allow expeditions.

Of course, they go there. What did you expect? They’re stupid white people. The jungle thanks them with attacks from spiders, snakes and alligators. And then Manolo (Claudio Cassinelli, What Have They Done to Your Daughters?), a jungle guide, joins their party.

Bad idea. Arthur has sex with one of the native girls, who is already married, but a cannibal attacks and kills both the husband and wife. A missionary makes them leave, as they have brought nothing but sin, adultery and death to his village. Don’t fuck in the woods. And don’t bring your Western values to the jungle.

It turns out that none of their reasons for coming to the island are altruistic. Susan and Arthur have no interest in finding her husband, but are instead looking for uranium deposits. Foster is there just to find the tribe of cannibals who had taken him captive in the past so he can wipe them off the face of the earth.

On the way, a waterfall takes Foster after Arthur doesn’t save him. And they reach the mountain, which isn’t just a uranium mine. It’s made from uranium. And how do we know that? Well, Susan’s husband’s body is being worshipped as a god because the Geiger counter he had keeps ticking, like a heartbeat.

At this point, the film rewards you by going completely off the rails, descending into chaos. A native attacks Susan, but is stopped by the tribe and castrated, then his penis is cooked and eaten. Another villager has sex with a giant pig. Meanwhile, the drums build in a hypnotic rhythm as another female villager masturbates (this is from the “director’s special selection” version, there are several cuts of the film). As this happens, Susan is stripped and smeared with orange honey by two naked female cannibals before being fed her own brother. Manolo is tortured. It feels like a nightmare you can’t wake up from, one of the only moments where the Martino who delivered a quick succession of giallo a decade or so before rears his artistic head.

Then, it’s over, with Manolo and Susan escaping. I mean, one would think that there would be years of therapy after this. But I don’t know. Perhaps she can get over this easier than most.

This isn’t a great movie. It might not even be good. It is entertaining for the last section, but there’s also the problematic issue of animal torture in the film — a monkey is slowly eaten by a snake and lizard being cut apart. Martino claims he tacked on these scenes at the distributor’s insistence. I guess the cannibal audience — an outgrowth of the audience for mondo films — needed more than just Ursula’s breasts and a dummy of Keach getting killed for their kicks.

If you have Shudder, you can watch this movie right now. But don’t say I didn’t warn you!

A young boy rises from a lake, fully clothed, and travels to church where a priest delivers a fire and brimstone speech about the sins of the world, in particular, six people.

Afterward, the other choir members bully the boy, even putting a knife to his throat.

Those six people have been invited to a ten-year class reunion: John, a lawyer who doesn’t care if his clients are guilty. Cindy, a promiscuous party girl. Terry, an overweight ne’er-do-well. Jane, a wealthy and immoral heiress. Roger, a vain actor. And Kirsten, a lesbian.

The event will be at their old high school, where a mysterious man arrives to kill the janitor and make a mask of his face.

None of the six people really knew one another. Yet they enjoy a room appointed with plenty of room and drink. It’s all fun and games until they find the dead body of the janitor filled with maggots and that the school is locked.

Am I really spoiling anything if I tell you that everyone dies? Terry gets his crotch set on fire with a flamethrower. Jane meets a hunter in disguise who recites poetry to her before killing her with a shotgun. Roger is killed by a magician and his deadly trick. Cindy is attacked by a clown and drowned in a sink, an attack that seems to take forever.

John meets the killer face to unmasked face. He reveals that he has lured them to the school to punish them for lives of sin, such as John being a criminal lawyer who helps guilty criminals go free. The killer is a Redeemer, one who has decided to rid the world of the wicked starting with a few sinners. They fight and John shoots the killer in the side, but he recovers and graphically shoots John in the head.

Kirsten is chased through the school and even gets the gun, but a giant puppet stabs her.

The Redeemer is revealed to be the priest, who returns to the church to finish his sermon, claiming that the six sinners will be given redemption. He then meets with the boy, who reveals that he has killed one of the boys who bullied him, as well as a Bible salesman. The boy tells him that all will be right.

The priest goes home to tend to his wounds and we notice he has an extra thumb, which disappears. The boy goes back to the lake, where he walks into the water and disappears.

The movie closes with this: “From out of the darkness the hand of the Redeemer shall appear to punish those who have lived in sin… and return to the watery depths of Hell.”

Shot in July 1976 and also known as Class Reunion Massacre, this movie is way ahead of its time. And it also seems like it wasn’t created by human beings. It’s legitimately unsettling at times and raises plenty of questions. Who is behind everything? The kid or the priest? Why are they really doing it? Why pick these exact people and this exact school? Why the masks and deathtraps?

Why ask why? This film is closer to a surrealist art film than a horror movie. Just watch the scene with the Grim Reaper costume and the Redeemer screaming and yelling, but locked outside the gates. It’s just…off. And I loved it.

You can catch this for yourself on Amazon Prime and as a with-ads stream on TubiTV and a copy on You Tube. I’m interested to hear what other people think of this one, because I feel that this should be a much bigger cult film than it is.

After the Star Wars became an international sensation, Luigi Cozzi (the batshit insane Hercules movies with Lou Ferrigno, Contamination and more) was able to round up a decent budget to make a film called Empire of the Stars, which eventually became this film. Cozzi battled against food poisoning of the cast and crew and even a Communist worker revolt which led to the movie being held for ransom to deliver a film that doesn’t look anything like Star Wars. Nope, Starcrash is the very definition of what I love in a film, a movie that takes inspiration from one source and then piles on the crazy and weird to bring you something you’ve never quite seen before. Maybe that’s because Cozzi never saw Star Wars and only read the novelization of the film!

In a galaxy far, far…yeah. You know what I mean. Anyways, Count Zarth Ann (Joe Spinell — yes, Frank Zito from Maniac is playing Darth Vader and if that instantly doesn’t tell you why this is such a great movie, not much else will) is taking over the galaxy with his giant fist shaped spaceship. Already, I love this movie more than anything that will come out this year.

Stella Star (Caroline Munro, Faceless, Slaughter High, The Spy Who Loved Me, Dr. Phibes Rises Again, Dracula A.D. 1972, Captain Kronos Vampire Hunter…can you tell that someone likes Ms. Munro?) and Akton (Marjoe fucking Gortner, a former child preacher that exposed the faith healing racket in 1972’s Oscar-winning documentary Marjoe, as well as recording the album “Bad, but not Evil” and appearing in The Food of the Gods and Mausoleum…can you tell someone likes Mr. Gortner?) discover a body in hibernation as they go through some space wreckage, but are caught by the Imperial Space Police’s Sheriff Elle (a robot with a voice straight out of a spaghetti western) and the green-skinned Chief Thor (Robert Tessier, who formed Stunts Unlimited with director Hal Needham) and sentenced to life on separate prison planets.

Stella breaks out of her sentence almost immediately and is recaptured by Elle and Thor, who also have Akton. The Emperor of the Galaxy (Christopher Plummer, who shot all his scenes on a sound stage in a few days, saying “Give me Rome any day. I’ll do porno in Rome, as long as I can get to Rome.”) thanks them for recovering the survivor. He informs them of his battle with Zarth Arn and asks for their help in finding his weapon and two other escape pods — one of which may contain his son.

A quick note — only Marjoe Gortner, David Hasselhoff, Christopher Plummer and Joe Spinell dubbed their voices (Spinell also worked as a dialogue coach on the set) due to budgetary concerns. That’s why Elle is played by one actor (Judd Hamilton) and voiced over by another (Hamilton Camp). And it’s also why the English-speaking Caroline Munro has the voice of Candy Clark (Gortner’s wife at the time)!

The film turns into a series of adventures — much like a movie serial — where our heroine goes from planet to planet, battling all manner of creatures and races. Like a world full of Amazons that have a gigantic female robot — in glorious stop-motion — that fires a giant sword as it menaces Elle and Stella. Or Thor revealing himself to be Zarth Arn’s Prince of Darkness and stranding everyone on a snow planet where Elle sacrifices himself by giving his body temperature to save Stella (Elle’s line “Now, maybe it’s time to use your ancient system of prayer and hope that it works for robots as well” is one of the most poignant I’ve heard in a movie. Forget for a second that this is a low budget space opera and just indulge yourself in the pathos!)!

Actually, Thor never gets the chance, as Akton straight up murders him and then brings Elle and Stella back from the dead.

Finally, our heroes discover the location of the third pod, but are attacked by Zarth Arn’s red field. As they land and inspect the pod, cavemen attack and tear Elle to pieces. However, a man in a gold mask fires laser bolts from his eyes and saves them. That man is the Emperor’s son, Prince Simon (holy shit, it’s David Hasselhoff!) and Akton comes back and uses a laser sword (not a lightsabre) to take out the rest of the cavemen. But there’s bad news — this is the Count’s planet!

Guards capture everyone and the Count reveals his plan to lure the Emperor here and blow up the planet with him on it. He leaves and orders several robots to keep watch. Akton fights and destroys them, but is mortally wounded. Before he dies, he explains that he has accepted his fate, a really strange speech in a movie that is filled with such science fiction action. It’s like a Zen koan inside a box of sugary breakfast cereal.

The Emperor arrives and uses a green ray to stop time, saving everyone, as he says, “You know, my son, I wouldn’t be Emperor of the Galaxy if I didn’t have some powers at my disposal. Imperial Battleship, halt the flow of time!” Yes, Starcrash has some of the most ridiculous dialogue ever and I could not be happier about it.

A huge space battle breaks out, with rockets filled with suicide troopers and explosions and planets being threatened and the Emperor deciding to ram his ship, the Floating City, into the Count’s ship to kill them both. However, Elle has been repaired (“It’s so nice to be turned on again.”), which means he and Stella volunteer to do the suicide mission…which they survive.

Simon picks up our heroes and the Emperor gives this speech, another reminder of Starcrash’s power of language: “Well, it’s done. It’s happened. The stars are clear. The planets shine. We’ve won. Oh. Some dark force, no doubt, will show its face once more. The wheel will always turn; but for now, it’s calm. And for a little time, at least, we can rest.”

Sadly, Cozzi planned a sequel to the film titled Star Riders, which would have starred Klaus Kinski, Nancy Kwan and Jack Rabin. And it’s $12 million dollar budget was to come from Cannon Films! I weep for what has not been! And Escape from Galaxy 3 is also known as Starcrash 2, using tons of footage from the original and it has a heroine named Princess Belle Star.

Starcrash holds fond memories for me, because I saw it on a double bill with tomorrow’s film, Battle Beyond the Stars, at the Spotlite 88 Drive-In Theater. I vividly remember my dad laughing through most of the movie, but really liking the part where the rockets were fired into the Count’s ship and men jumped out of them. For the next several months, I thought more about these two films than Star Wars — we still had another year to go before The Empire Strikes Back as this was in the days before constant Star Wars-related media.

If you’re looking to watch this film — and you totally should be — the Shout! Factory collector’s edition of this film is the perfect package. It’s got liner notes and commentary by Stephen Romano, interviews with Munro and Cozzi, the original script and the trailer, with commentary by Eli Roth and Joe Dante (this was the last trailer Dante cut for Corman). It was also riffed on the last season of Mystery Science Theater 3000 on NetFlix, but you should really watch this with no commentary other than your own shouts of happiness.

Update: You can watch this for free with an Amazon Prime membership.

At nearly half the budget of Star Wars — $6 to $7 million dollars — Message from Space was the most expensive movie in Japanese history up until 1980. At the time, it was routinely panned by the critics. Yet watching it nearly 40 years later, I was struck by just how ambitious, fun and strange it is.

Jillucia was once a planet of peace, but that was before the Gavanas Empire turned it into one of their military bases. Kido, one of the planet’s leaders, sends eight Liabe seeds into space to find soldiers strong enough to liberate the planet from the steel grip — and faces — of the Gavanas. Princess Emeralida (Etsuko Shiomi, Sister Street Fighter) and Urocco follow them into space in a space galleon.

We meet some space racers — Shiro (Hiroyuki Sanada, Shingen from The Wolverine) and Aaron — and a spoiled rich kid named Meia who are chasing one another through some asteroids. These guys mess up the Kessel Run and wreck, but then find some Laibe seeds in their ships.

General Garuda (the name means phoenix and the role is played by Vic Morrow, who graced the screen in films like 1990: The Bronx Warriors and Humanoids from the Deep before dying while making Twilight Zone: The Movie) is a drinking man, embittered by the loss of Beba-1, his robot. He orders that a rocket send the body of his faithful companion into space, which gets him in trouble with his superiors, who see it as a waste. This leads him to retire and take up a bar stool on Milazeria, where he also finds a Liabe seed.

In that very same bar, Jack puts the pressure on Shiro and Aaron to repay their debts, as he himself owes the gangster Big Sam (no relation to Jabba) plenty of dough. Oh — he also finds a seed. To get the cash, they agree to take Meia to a forbidden zone where she can watch fireflies. On the way, the Gavanas attack, destroying the space galleon and a police ship.

All of our heroes battle, but when the seeds — and Garuda, who is sleeping off his drinking — reveal themselves, Emeralida explains that the seeds have chosen them to liberate her planet. Garuda responds by leaving in a huff, but Beba-2 promises to get him to change his mind. There’s supposedly a Chris Isaak cameo as a gambler in the bar scenes, way before he became famous.

What follows next is a confusing mess of double crosses and people trying to get rid of their seeds and ten-year-old Sam would probably be not paying attention, just wishing that some aliens would show up and have a laser battle. Luckily, the Gavanas do show up to declare war on Earth and Garuda realizes his destiny is to defend his home planet. And to make the film a million times more exciting, they meet Prince Hans, the rightful leader of the Gavanas. He doesn’t have their silver skin, but he is played by Sonny Chiba.

Urocco, Jack, Shiro and Aaron fly to Jilutia, with Shiro and Aaron’s ships mounted on Mayah’s ship. As they near their destination, Mayah’s Leyabe seed explodes, causing the ship to crash on a planet in the Bernard system. There they find what appears to be a Gavanas warrior without a metallic skin, and wearing a Leyabe seed around his neck. The warrior introduces himself as Prince Hans, the rightful heir of the Gavanas’ throne. He explains that Rockseia killed his royal parents and took the throne for himself.

The Emperor and Empress of the Gavanas meet with Garuda, who challenges one of their warriors to a duel. After walking less than ten paces, that warrior sneak attacks Garuda, who shrugs off a laser beam to the back (it must have been his snazzy military uniform and phoenix patch). Garuda bests the soldier, yet gives him mercy before the Emperor wipes the disgraced soldier out. The leaders — who had to have inspired Prince Zarkon and Haggar from Voltron — destroy the moon and demand that Earth surrenders.

Garuda, Jack and Beba-2 leave Jilutia but then turn around. All three parachute to the surface. In the meantime Maya’s ship approaches Jilutia, making the ‘chicken run’ approach used earlier by Aaron and Shiro. The pair separate their ships near the surface, and the three ships pull up and fly through a rocky canyon, simulating a meteor impact. The ships then re-connect and land. Urrocco finds the Jilutian survivors hiding in the hull of a space galleon. Urrocco and the others meet Jack, Garuda and Beba-2. They realize there are now six Leyabe warriors, but wonder who the other two might be.

Finally, it’s time for space battles and sword fights. Sonny Chiba goes off slashing everyone with his sword. There are suicide runs — Meia uncomfortably says, “They don’t call me kamikaze for nothing.” — and ships blowing up and planets exploding and all manner of space opera nonsense, ending with all of the heroes being saved from death by the seeds.

Message from Space was popular enough that it became a TV series in Japan. Over here, it didn’t fare as well. It’s a crazy looking movie, with gigantic sets, gorgeous costumes and lunacy aplenty, like people skydiving from space and silver faced aliens doing battle with drunken space captains and a rich girl and dudes who just like to race rockets.

Director Kinji Fukasaku (Battle Royale) really has a great time with the budget he’s been given and wastes none of it. It’s a glitzy, gaudy spectacle that the cynical amongst us would choose to deride and make fun of. I chose to watch it through younger eyes and find a fun and infectious joy at the heart of the film. Sure, it’s no Star Wars, but it’s still a fun Saturday afternoon film.

Thomas Tryon was an actor before he was an author. It nearly ruined him. While his biggest triumph as an actor was his Golden Globes winning role in The Cardinal, he was subject to the abuses of director Otto Preminger. An example? Preminger fired Tryon in front of his parents when they visited the film, only rehiring after he felt that the actor had been humiliated enough.

He vowed to never again be subject to such torture and tried to become a producer (he was the executive producer of Johnny Got His Gun in 1971). According to Grady Hendrix in Paperbacks from Hell (which this week is all about, so if you haven’t read it, you better start ordering now), “Tryon tried to become a producer, but his treatment for a movie about evil twins called The Other wasn’t getting any traction so he borrowed money from his family, locked himself away for 18 months and turned it into a novel. The Other was instantly heralded as a classic and Tryon hit the road, doing interviews and selling his book practically door to door. His reward was massive sales and critics falling all over themselves to proclaim it a masterpiece.”

His next book was called Harvest Home and it’s a sprawling rural horror in the same vein as Blood on Satan’s Claw or The Wicker Man. Both of these books — and the films they inspired — are forgotten. That’s why books like Paperbacks from Hell are so important — there’s a real richness in celebrating these books (and these films, which is why I write so much about them).

Hendrix claims that “you’ll see the DNA of almost everything Stephen King wrote before  The Stand” in the works of Tryon. So why are his books and movies now forgotten? I don’t have the answer.

I can tell you about The Dark Secret of Harvest Home, an NBC TV movie that first aired on January 23–24, 1978.

Directed by Leo Penn (father to Sean, Christoper and Michael, and director of many, many TV shows), the near 5-hour movie moves as slowly as the book at times, but it’s definitely worth watching. Broken into two nights, the real craziness doesn’t really start happening until the second part.

Nick Constantine (David Ackroyd, who played Dr. Nicholas Conrad in the 1970’s TV movie ripoff of Iron Man, Exo-Man), his wife Beth (Joanna Miles, Bug) and their daughter Kate (Rosanna Arquette, Desperately Seeking Susan) are living the kind of dreary life that I imagine everyone in New York City does. Nick cheats on her and drinks away his problems as he struggles in the advertising industry. Beth stays in therapy every day of the week. And their daughter has such a bad case of asthma, she can’t even stay outside for long. Yet they decide to relocate to a Connecticut village called Cornwall Coombe after falling in love with it on a trip.

Sure, the villagers only do things the old ways, not using modern farming equipment or communicating with the outside world. Sure, they celebrate weird festivals all year long and are obsessed with corn. But come on — the couple’s romance is back, Kate is cured and everyone is just so nice!

Kate even has a love interest — Worthy (Michael O’Keefe, Caddyshack), who wants to leave the town behind and go to college.  He’s been saving money so he can escape, but as Kate becomes more and more part of the town, he sees that their love can’t survive.

Then, there’s Robert and Maggie Dodd, their neighbors. They once lived in the modern world and have also decided to come here. Robert is blind and listens to Donald Pleasence reading from several plays. And oh, hello, here’s Justin and Sophie Hook, who will be this year’s Harvest Lord and Corn Maiden in the Corn Play. And most importantly, here’s Bette Davis (if I have to explain who she is, stop reading now) playing Widow Fortune, the town’s herbal healer and most important person. Davis claims that she wanted this role since she read the book and she’s a force in this — perfectly sweet at times and infused with menace at others.

Nick increasingly becomes obsessed with learning the secrets of the town, particularly why one grave — that of a suicide victim — is outside the cemetery. Things get worse when Worthy busts into church and curses the corn and someone called Mother before running away. And then he gets seduced by Tamar, a widow who has a clairvoyant daughter who picks each year’s Harvest Lord (she’s played by Tracey Gold from TV’s Growing Pains).

So what is Harvest Home? Its “who no man may see nor woman tell,” a pagan fertility rite connected to the earth mother. Nick is now obsessed with it and his marriage is falling apart all over again. His wife just wants to get pregnant again and he can’t figure out why.

Worthy is hiding, but a letter to Nick is intercepted. A posse goes to get him and they hang his corpse in a field as a scarecrow before burning it on Kindling Night. At this point, there’s no normal in this town. Nick tries to escape and turns to his blind neighbor Robert, who tells him that Harvest Home is happening. He explains that he was blinded trying to learn the secret and that Nick should just run.

Instead, he goes to save his wife and daughter. The ritual scene that follows is lunacy and worth sitting through this entire movie. To Nick’s horror, he learns that his daughter is the new Corn Maiden. He is forced to watch as the Harvest Lord has sex with her, ending with the man’s throat being cut as he is sacrificed to the earth. Nick is caught, blinded and his tongue is cut out, much like his friend Jack Stump (Rene Auberjonois, The Eyes of Laura Mars and so many other roles). He is trapped in the town now, forever stuck, his virility reduced to being dependant on his pregnant wife and daughter, who are now part of the pagan secret that is Harvest Home.

There’s a cut down commerical release of the film, but there’s no way to get this on DVD without finding a bootleg. It’s worth the search, however. The last ten minutes of the film are perfect.