"A Taste of Evil" (1971) d/ John Llewellyn Moxey

Tonight's review, another made-for-tv horror movie as directed by John Llewellyn Moxey, made its small screen debut seven days after my second birthday way back in 1971. Though I've managed to catch it a couple of times over the years, it's pretty safe to say that I probably missed it that first time around, on playpen lockdown or something. Standard genre fare boosted by the presence of the late Barbara Stanwyck, who I became familiar with during my teenage years while timer recording kung fu movies one late night, and accidentally ending up with Double Indemnity (1944) at the end of a video tape, and coming away pleasantly surprised. Also aboard here are Barbara Parkins, of Peyton Place (1964) fame, who was in the middle of a nice run of genre roles at the time, with Mephisto Waltz (1971), tonight's production, and an episode of the short-lived Circle of Fear series, and let's not forget seventies horror staple, Roddy McDowall.


"Three Oscar nominations?? Sorry, wrong number.", snaps Miriam (Barbara Stanwyck).
Susan (Barbara Parkins) returns home as an adult to her sizable estate in the country, after being raped in her playhouse in the woods as a child by a shadowy stranger had left her on a seven year mental institution bed. Though her mother, Miriam (Barbara Stanwyck), still dotes over her adoringly, and the old caretaker, John (Arthur O'Connell), seems nice enough, if not a little simple-minded, Susan is convinced that somebody is watching her from the property, and to make matters worse, she keeps seeing Miriam's booze-adled beau, Harold (William Windom),  dead everywhere...in the limousine, drowned in the bathtub. A local doctor named Lomas (Roddy McDowall) examines the distraught woman, and suggests that perhaps her visions are all a product of her subconscious, brought on by her return to the scene of the earlier unsolved sex crime.


"Smoke a couple of hog's legs, listen to your Sugarloaf eight track, and call me in the morning..."
After being ankle-grabbed by Harold's waterlogged corpse in the woods, Susan retreats to her playhouse, where John has precariously left his shotgun while hunting a pesky fox. Huddled in the shadows with the loaded gun, she blasts the menacing silhouette in the doorway, only to find that she has accidentally killed Harold, and has just bought herself a one way ticket back to the squirrel farm, permanent-ish. Back at the estate, Miriam, decked out in her best jewelry, haughtily celebrates with John, as he prepares to dispose of the Harold mannequin they've used to keep Susan teetering on the brink of sanity. Miriam reveals that John was the rapist all those years ago, and she was glad he had done it(!) and has always hated her. Except that Harold has started phoning her from beyond the grave...


"Oh, but love grows where my rosemary goes, and nobody knows like me.", remarks John (Arthur O'Connell).
Jimmy Sangster, who directed The Horror of Frankenstein (1970) and Lust For a Vampire (1971) for Hammer Studios, wrote the screenplay for tonight's movie, a near carbon copy of his earlier script for Scream of Fear (1961), save for the characters and locations, which he simply Americanized for the Aaron Spelling production. The first half plods along rather slowly, despite a brisk running time of just over an hour, but then Stanwyck takes over and carries the film on her shoulders towards a satisfying climax, though the plot twists may have aged less gracefully and lack the punch they might have packed back in 1971. Still, pretty enjoyable stuff, especially if made-for-tv horror is your bag. Two solid wops on the scale. Score yourself a copy.


"Susan, would you like a quaalude? Uncle Roman brought you one..."

"Home for the Holidays" (1972) d/ John Llewellyn Moxey

Tonight we'll take a look at another lost made-for-tv gem from the man who directed enough of them in his day, like The Strange and Deadly Occurrence (1974), The Night Stalker (1972), and  A Taste of Evil (1971), to name just a few. Add to the mix a cast that includes a post-Gidget/Flying Nun Sally Field, chunky caboose and barrettes variant, Jill Haworth in a prissy, but posh outing, Jessica "Play Misty For Me"(1971) Walter, and Julie Harris of The Haunting (1963) fame, among others. I've heard a lot of people call it the first Christmas-based slasher around the ether-toobz, but let's not forget that Amicus' Tales From the Crypt (1972) had a killer Santa and was released in March of that year, while tonight's review had it's television debut in November of the same year. Facts are facts, me hearties!


"It's the best time of year to get unglued on booze and scripts!"
At the appeal of their dying father, Benjamin (Walter Brennan), the Morgan sisters have reluctantly all come home for Christmas. Posh, jaded swinger Jo (Jill Haworth) burned through enough failed marriages that she only uses men for sex now, while innocent Christine (Sally Field)'s sweet naivete' may prove her undoing in the end. Then there's Federica (Jessica Walter) who drowns the sorrows of her mother's earlier suicide in pills and booze, and the eldest sister, Alex (Eleanor Parker), who keeps the family together during crises and rocks an ugly 70's floral pattern pantsuit/jumpsuit without one iota of style or shame. Benjamin's sure that his  new wife, Elizabeth (Julie Harris), has been slowly poisoning him over the past few months, and beseeches his daughters to kill her before she can further suppress his life force to the point of acute coffin-age. She seems nice enough, but then somebody makes easy prey of Jo with a pitchfork before she can check out of the rainy downer that she's clearly got no time to waste upon.
 

Put petite little pretties Christine (Sally Field) and Jo (Jill Haworth) under my mistletoe anytime.
Next, somebody submerges a soused Freddie in the bubble bath, leaving her waterlogged carcass for her sisters to stumble upon, Christine's ear-piercers falling upon Benjamin's ears, deaf to reason, since he refuses to see the local doctor, who's taken a shine to Chris now that she's grown up, and displays her perky puppies properly in studious-looking sweater vests, or call the police in on such scandalous family matters. A fatal character flaw for him, in the end, as he's added to the mounting body count, sending a hysterical Christine off into the woods to the nearest neighbor for help, during a torrential downpour, since the telephone is out, and the road to town is washed out, you know the drill. You'll be guessing the psychopath right up to the final reel, which I'm not nearly gonna spoil for you here. See it!


"Kill my wife, please!" begs Ben Morgan (Walter Brennan).
I can't even look at Walter Brennan without hearing my father talking about heading bad guys off at the pass in his voice. My old man, a western nut of the highest order, used to lay his Walter Brennan impersonation on us all the time, as kids. He probably stands as my main inspiration to attempt people's voices myself. He had a couple regulars that weren't bad at all, and Walter was one of them. My Eastwood, Bronson, and Van Cleef are among his favorites in my repertoire, he tells me. I don't do Brennan, simply because nobody'd have any idea who the hell he is these days. The dainty Haworth also appeared in Horror of Snape Island the same year, and showed up in 1974's The Mutations, having scored earlier genre credits in It! (1967) and Horror House (1969). The only other one of those that equally petite Sally Field has earned to date, came in an episode of Rod Serling's Night Gallery series the following year. Too bad, really, she's got a great bloodcurdling scream. Unless I suddenly entertain the urge to cover the Smokey and the Bandit movies (sorry, not gonna be able to do.)here, Sally and company earn themselves a respectable pair of Wops for this enjoyable vintage small screen romp. Give it a look.


"I'm fucking great at playing disturbed broads! Gaaaaaaaahhh!!!", clamors Freddie (Jessica Walter).

"City of the Dead" (1960) d/ John Moxey

Tonight's entry is a beauteous little British number, an early atmospheric Psycho-esque horror piece known as 'Horror Hotel' in America; boiling over with artificial fog, witches' covens, and human sacrifice set in New England, as evidenced by the odd forced regional dialects affected by the British actors, with iconic genre baddie Christopher Frank Carandini Lee providing the most serviceable of the lot. As Lee has always been tops among my favorite actors, I've always gotten special satisfaction from repeated screenings of this one, whether it was on late night cable in the seventies or recently on the big plasma screen , with much more dialog than he was afforded later in his career once he'd been typecast as that Count fellow. In addition,  British television staple Patricia Jessel is memorable as Newless/Selwyn, and sexy blonde Venetia Stevenson  is an eyeful during her scenes. Vulcan Productions would later become Amicus, probably the steepest competition for British genre giants Hammer during their heyday.


This look means you're failing Witchcraft class. I know, I had him for French in college.
After we see a witch named Elizabeth Selwyn(Jessel) burned at the stake for witchery in 1692, we fast forward to present day and a young coed named Nan (Venetia Stevenson) who ditches her winter vacation to research her senior paper on witchcraft in a creepy little burg named Whitewood, upon the suggestion of her professor(Lee), and against the wishes of her boyfriend, Bill (Tom Maitland). C'mon, what's the worst that could happen, old man? It's not like she's gonna get marked by a coven of ancient witches for sacrifice on Candlemas Eve or anything. Well, actually, yeah, it is exactly like that. Among the hooded cultists at the altar are Mrs. Newless(Jessel) from the Raven's Inn (Newless... Selwyn, don't you ever watch vampire movies, chick?) and Professor Driscoll himself! Hopefully he'll give her posthumous extra credit towards her final grade for her troubles, eh.


"Kookie, lend me your comb. Kookie, Kookie?"
When Nan is a no-show at the party held at her her brother Richard's (Dennis Lotis), he and Bill decide to investigate her puzzling disappearance, leading them both inevitably to Whitewood, where the blind reverend's daughter(Betta St. John) has been marked for sacrifice on the witches' Sabbath. The soupy fog proves too much for Bill, who wrecks his wheels on the drive into town, while Richard gets snatched up by hooded cultists in the graveyard as they wait for the thirteenth toll of the clock's bell to plunge the hulking dagger into the chest of their unwilling offering. A busted up Bill finally makes the scene, and gets said dagger thrown into his back for the effort, but he manages to loosen a cross from one of the graves and set the witches aflame with it's shadow, as per required. Selwyn escapes the righteous judgment only to age hundreds of years and slump dead underneath the plaque commemorating her burning at the stake on the Raven's Inn, to the dismay and horror of our surviving protagonists...

 

"Watch me dissect this hooker, Driscoll. Her blood is well groovy."

Moxey also helmed 'The Night Stalker' (1972), genre-wise, during a long career in television, while it would be another seventeen years before Lee would turn down the role of Sam Loomis in John Carpenter's Halloween and take his place in horror history as the narrator in the unforgettable Meatcleaver Massacre(1977). While you're laughing at that, try to remember that the immutable 91 year old has only appeared in over two hundred movies to date, and counting. You can't expect farcical cgi light saber battles with Yoda, every time outta the gate, y'know. Three wops.

"No, no, of course I don't fault you, seeing how 'pail of water' sounds like 'oversized cross' when you think about it, old chap..."