EDITOR’S NOTE: Fast-Walking was on the CBS Late Movie on June 19 and November 16, 1987.
Frank “Fast-Walking” Miniver (James Woods) is a prison guard making money on the side selling drugs and engaging in the transport of sex workers. His cousin, Wasco (Tom McIntire), is in the same jail and gets an entire business turned over to him by Frank after he intimidates Bullet (Timothy Carey).
In return, Wasco has his girl Moke (Kay Lenz) seduce his cousin. But things won’t be perfect forever, as when Frank develops feelings, Wasco becomes enraged. They also come to a head about the murder of Galliot (Robert Hooks), a political prisoner. Galliot pays Frank $50,000 to get him out alive. He didn’t count on how good a shot Moke is.
Director, writer and producer James B. Harris read Ernest Brawley’s The Rap and was inspired to make it into a movie. Shot in the Montana State Prison building in Deer Lodge, Montana, it feels real.
I can’t imagine how much was cut for the CBS Late Movie, as Lenz is volcanic in her nude and love scenes, while this also has M. Emmett Walsh full frontal. Plus, Susan Tyrrell is in it? Wow.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The World According to Garp was on the CBS Late Movie on September 11 and November 27, 1987.
For some reason, my parents let me watch this when I was ten and between someone losing their penis in the mouth of a lover when their car is hit from behind and the tragic ending, I was changed. In fact, the end upset me so much, as it made me realize that I too would die, that I didn’t sleep for days.
Directed by George Roy Hill (Thoroughly Modern Millie, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Sting, The Great Waldo Pepper, Slap Shot, Slaughterhouse-Five, Funny Farm) and written by Steve Tesich (Breaking Away), this was based on the book by Clifford Irving.
T.S. Garp (Robin Williams) was born after his mother, Jenny Fields (Glenn Close), took advantage of a brain-dead tailgunner, injured in combat during World War II. She mounted him, he got her pregnant, he died, Garp was born. Jenny writes Sexual Suspect, the story of her life, and becomes a feminist icon, while Garp marries Helen (Mary Beth Hurt), has two boys named Duncan and Walt, and becomes a fiction writer.
A girl named Ellen James (Amanda Plummer) has been assaulted and her tongue cut out. The women who gather around Garp’s mother all begin to cut out their own tongues, despite Ellen telling them not to. Helen cheats on Garp; he rams into the car where she is going down on one of her students, causing the death of their son, Walt and Duncan to lose an eye. His mother is killed by an assassin, and he can’t even go to her funeral until transgender football player Roberta Muldoon (John Lithgow) sneaks him in.
Speaking of Roberta, she’s why Irving wouldn’t write the script: “It was the early 1980s when George Roy Hill asked me if I would write the screenplay for Garp, but I knew we didn’t see eye to eye about Roberta. George was a World War II guy; he couldn’t see past the comedic part of a transgender woman who’d been an NFL player. A pity, because John Lithgow, who was cast as Roberta in the film, could have played her as I wrote her. Roberta is a force of normality in an otherwise extreme world; she is the only character who loves Garp and his mother equally, the only character who isn’t in a rage about someone or something. I declined to write the Garp script because George wouldn’t do Roberta my way.”
At the end, Garp is shot and is airlifted to the hospital and maybe Heaven as he remembers his mom throwing him in the air as “When I’m 64” plays. I had loved that song as a kid, so hearing it in this way horrified me.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Deathtrap was on the CBS Late Movie on May 29, 1987.
I definitely watched this on HBO and ten-year-old me was scandalized by the plot twist.
Playwright Sidney Bruhl (Michael Caine) has another failed play and tells his wife, Myra (Dyan Cannon), that he plans on inviting over a student, Clifford Anderson (Christopher Reeve), who has a good script. Then, he plans on killing the man and making the story all his own. A few moments after Sidney gets Clifford into Houdini’s Handcuffs, the young man is dead and Sidney is trying to get Myra to help him hide the body. But is it all as it seems? And why is psychic Helga Ten Dorp (Irene Worth) warning about the man in boots?
I’m going spoiler-free for this movie, directed by Sidney Lumet and written by Jay Presson Allen. It was based on Ira Levin’s play, and there’s a twist not in the original: the reveal of a kiss between two of the characters. Some say that scene may have cost the movie money in the homophobic 70s. In fact, the TV version doesn’t have the kiss, and instead, one man rubs another’s face.
Also, Michael Caine already did Sleuth, and here he is, doing it again.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Falcon’s Gold was on the CBS Late Movie on May 1 and August 26, 1987.
This played on the CBS Late Movie as Robbers of the Sacred Mountain, which is very much a “we have Raiders of the Lost Ark at home” title. Made for Showtime, this film was the very first TV movie produced for cable TV.
They say it’s based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Challenger’s Gold, but if Indiana Jones hadn’t been a hit, I doubt it would have been made.
Reporter Hank Richards (Simon MacCorkindale, Manimal) and Professor Christopher Falcon (John Marley) learn that a meteorite with cavite in it has crashed to Earth. If the wrong people find it, they could make a laser weapon. Joined by the professor’s granddaughter Tracey (Louise Vallance) and jungle guide B.G. Alvarez (Blanca Guerra, Santa Sangre), they head to South America to find a fertility idol, which ties into this, trust me, and leads to them battling the forces of Ivar Murdoch (George Touliatos).
This is the only movie that Bob Schultz directed, but he was a technical director on several TV shows like Three’s Company, The Ropes and the TV special Telly…Who Loves Ya, Baby? It was written by Olaf Pooley (Crucible of Horror, The Godsend) and Walter Bell.
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.
Zapped is not a feel-good movie, especially as we realize that Scott Baio and Willie Aames grew up to be right-wing and super religious, respectively. Here, they turn the act of getting mental powers into the chance to torment people, and if not sexually harass, then outright sexually molest women.
Barney Springboro (Baio) wants to do scientific experiments. Peyton Nichols (Aames) wants to ball, starting with school administrator Connie Updike (Hilary Beane). Peyton is asked by yearbook editor Bernadette (Felice Schachter) to take pictures of Barney in front of his GMO orchids — again, evil — an accident causes the mice food to be ingested as a gas, and Barney gets the telekinesis, the ability to move things with his mind.
Everyone has a crush on Jane Mitchell (Heather Thomas), who has a college boyfriend, so when she crushes Barney’s dreams again, he’s able to rip the buttons off her top and show off her bra, which is a crime. He also torments his mother (Marya Small) with a ventriloquist dummy that he can control. Is he the Carrieof this or the bullies who abused her?
More crimes: Causing Jane’s college guy, Robert Wolcott (Greg Bradford), to lose a drinking contest, and then Peyton seducing her, taking photos of her with a hidden camera that he sells at graduation. There’s also Barney scaring away two priests by pulling off Exorcist ripoff tricks.
Principal Walter J. Coolidge (Robert Mandan, Chester Tate on Soap) ends up having public sex with another older person, Rose Burnhart (Sue Ane Langdon, the only actor to return for Zapped Again!), and Scatman Crothers, Eddie Deezen and LaWanda Page all show up.
There wasn’t enough nudity in this, so supposedly they sent the crew back to shoot more nude scenes. The filmmakers used a body-double for Heather Thomas’ nude scenes, but she filed a complaint when they pasted her head on another nude actress. That’s why there’s a disclaimer that says, “A double was used for Miss Thomas in her nude scene and in the photograph.”
Jewel Shepard, a girl in a car in this, had no such complaints after Barney’s mental male gaze power tore her top off.
As if that wasn’t sad enough, Felice Schachter skipped her prom to film the prom scene.
This was directed by Robert J. Rosenthal, who wrote The Pom-Pom Girls, The Vanand Malibu Beach, which he also directed. He co-wrote this movie with Bruce Rubin, who also wrote Blood Rage.
Originally called I, Desire and airing November 15, 1982 on ABC, who knew this little vampire film would be amongst the best ones I’d find for our vampire week? There’s a great cast — David Naughton from An American Werewolf In London makes for a fine lead, as well as Brad Dourif as a priest, Barbara Stock as the bewitching vampire, Dorian Harewood (he was in Sudden Death!) as a cop, Marilyn Jones as Naughton’s fiancee and even an appearance from Not Necessarily The News‘ Anne Bloom (or Frosty Kimelman in that long-lost HBO program). Oh yeah — and Marc Silver, who was the guitarist in Ivan and the Terribles, the ill-fated band in Motel Hell.
There are some great twists and turns in this one, as well as an incredible vampiric apartment at the end that I wish I could live in. I’ll assume it’s just a studio set so that I don’t get sad that I can never go back in time and see it for myself.
The first horror film in history to be shot on video, Boardinghouse is… well, there really isn’t anything else like it. Somehow, this movie seems at once ten minutes and ten hours long, taking you on a journey into — man, I’ve no idea how we got here or where we’ve been, but we really went somewhere.
Back in 1972, Dr. Hoffman and his wife — who one assumes were doctors of the occult — died in their Mulholland Drive home on the night of their anniversary, committing double suicide in front of their daughter Debbie, who had a nervous breakdown. Everyone who has lived in the house since has died. And now, a decade later, the nephew of the last owner of the home, James Royce, puts out an ad looking for single women — beautiful women with no ties — to move in with him — he plans on you know, studying the occult while they’re there — so Sandy, Suzie, Cindy, Gloria, Pam, Terri and — you know it — Debbie all move in.
To say this movie has a disjointed narrative is like saying that you’re reading this on a website.
James is also trying to get with Victoria, a singer, and shows her how she can use her own latent telekinetic powers. After a dream in which she is dragged to the grave of Dr. Hoffman, she begins to grow jealous of the women of the boardinghouse who are all potentially sleeping with the occult master that she has come to love.
Oh man, before you know it, people are throwing cake at one another, women are clawing their eyes out, Debbie revealing herself as the psychic monster who killed both her parents after sleeping with her father, Jim shows up with less clothes in every scene and the end credits look like they came from a Apple 2E.
Directed by, written and starring John Wintergate, this is the kind of movie that defies description, despite my writing so many words about it already. It has a lead actress with one name — Kalassu. And she’s the wife of Wintergate and their children show up. And then there are monsters, hallucinations and bloody showers. And the cut I watched has a running time of 2 hours and 38 minutes.
This movie was also shot in Horror-Vision, which is a swirl of color and a glove, and it’s supposed to warn you when something scary happens, but nothing like that seems to happen, and man, they blew this up on film and played it in theaters, and Wintergate must have quite the thong collection.
When you see the names Brian Trenchard-Smith and Nico Mastorakis listed as producers, you know that you’re probably getting into something good. Also known as Demon Island, this film was directed by Richard Jefferies, who is perhaps better known for the films he wrote, such as Scarecrows and Cold Creek Manor. He has directed only one other film, the 2008 TV movie Living Hell.
It’s funny, when I discussed this movie earlier today with Bill from Groovy Doom, he referred to it as “the monster movie with no monster.” That’s an apt description.
It’s also about a treasure hunter named Frye (James Earl Jones) whose underwater scavenging brings back an ancient sea monster that demands virgin blood.
Meanwhile, Neil and Sherry (Martin Kove and Mary Louise Weller, who appeared in Q The Winged Serpent the same year as this movie) have come to the island looking for his missing sister Madeline (Deborah Shelton, who also sings the song over the end credits with her then-husband Shuki Levy). Plus, Lydia Cornell stops hanging out with Cosmic Cow on Too Close for Comfort and shows up as Jones’ girlfriend.
Inexplicably, Lila Kedrova from Zorba the Greek and Jose Farrar — well, he’s less of a surprise as Jose may have been the first actor to win the National Medal of Arts, but he’s also in spectacular junk like The Sentinel, Bloody Birthday and The Being — both appear.
Arrow’s write-up promised “blood, nudity and beachside aerobics.” This delivered, as well as some great dream sequences and moments where beachfront rituals seem to go on forever. That said, I had a blast with this movie, as any film that features Martin Kove skipping around the waves, showcasing a miniature engine, while the ladies go wild, and James Earl Jones is involved, will hold my attention.
Once, Ator was just a baby, born with the birthmark that prophesied that he’d grow up to destroy the Spider Cult, whose leader Dakar (a pro wrestler who appeared in Titanes en el Ring against Martín Karadagian) tries to kill before he even gets out of his chainmail diapers.
Luckily, Ator is saved and grows up big, strong and weirdly in love with his sister, Sunya. It turns out that, luckily, he’s adopted, so this is only morally and not biologically upsetting. His father allows them to be married, but the Spider Cult attacks the village and takes her, along with several other women.
Ator trains with Griba, the warrior who saved him as a child (he’s played by Edmund Purdom, the dean from Pieces!). What follows are pure shenanigans — Ator is kidnapped by Amazons, almost sleeps with a witch, undertakes a quest to find a shield and meets up with Roon (Sabrina Siani, Ocron from Fulci’s batshit barbarian opus Conquest), a sexy blonde thief who is in love with him.
Oh yeah! Laura Gemser, Black Emanuelle herself, shows up here too.
Ator succeeds in defeating Dakkar, only to learn that the only reason that Griba mentored him was to use him to destroy his enemy. That said, Ator defeats him too, leaving him to be eaten by the Lovecraftian-named Ancient One, a monstrous spider. But hey, Ator isn’t done yet. He kills that beast, too!
Finally, learning that Roon has died, Ator and Sunya go back to their village, ready to make their incestual union a reality. Or maybe not, as she doesn’t show up in the three sequels, The Blade Master, Iron Warrior and Quest for the Magic Sword.
Ator is played by Miles O’Keefe, who started his Hollywood career in the Bo Derek vehicle Tarzan the Ape Man, a movie that Richard Harris would nearly fist fight people over if they dared mention it. He’s in all but the last of these films, and while D’Amato praised his physique and attitude, he felt that his fighting and acting skills left something to be desired.
Ator the Fighting Eagle pretty much flies by. It does what it’s supposed to do — present magic, boobs, sorcery and swordfights — albeit in a PG-rated film.
April 16: Filmirage — Give in to the sleaze and write about a Joe D’Amato produced movie. There’s a list here.
Directed and written by Mino Guerrini (The Third Eye), this is the story of Stefano (Alessandro Freyberger, The Wild Beasts), a mechanic who dreams of being a boxer. It’s also a love story, as he falls for Giulia (Claudia Vegliante).
This is totally Lemon Popsicle in Italy and I love it, because it’s filmed by Aristide Massaccesi and has Michele Soavi as an assistant director. As if that’s not enough, Bob — Giovanni Frezza — is in the cast.
I have no idea of anyone other than me that would care even the least bit about this movie, but such is my love for Filmirage. This obviously never came to America, where its translated title may have been When the Sun Shines…Let’s Go to the Beach but probably would have been given an insane name like Beyond the Sun or The Punch of Love.
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