"Look What's Happened to Rosemary's Baby" (1976) d/ Sam O'Steen

Few productions can boast of being worse than Paul Lynde in a musical trucker sketch with Tim Conway and Roz Kelly, but this nobody-asked-for-but-still-made-for-tv sequel to Polanski's 1969 shocker surely can. In fact, two days before Halloween in 1976, ABC Network rolled out both, as a seasonal double bill. At least Lynde's special had KISS. This scareless, boring mutt had Patty Duke Astin, Ray Milland, Ruth Gordon, Donna Mills, and Tina Louise, all trying to unsuccessfully conjure up safe-for-television holiday scares in successively less and less ominous chapters that start out like this...


"I only enjoy the sights a girl can see from Brooklyn Heights."
In "The Book of Rosemary", the titular Rosemary (now Patty Duke, not Mia Farrow) tries to flee the reach of the coven with her young son Andrew (the Satanists call him Adrian), taking refuge from their black magic in a synagogue, only to lose him to them after he pulls the red eye visuals Satan card on some bullies, forcing them to snap two of the boys' necks in psychokinetic fury. A nearby bewitched mesquite-flavored whore (Tina Louise) snatches the boy after luring Ro' onto a driverless phantom bus to eternity, where she can scream her fool head off in grease paint against the back window forever now, man. "The Book of Adrian" follows, and we see that the boy has grown into an adult (Stephen McHattie) that has yet to realize very much of his dark power, to the chagrin of Minnie and Roman Castevet (Ray Milland and Ruth Gordon), who've done all they can to turn the boy into a devil, Satan knows, why, they keep him in black robed hails, black sports cars, and  electric guitars. They've also influenced Guy (now George Maharis, not John Cassavetes) to do their evil bidding, like matter-of-factly electrocuting Adrian's do-goodnik buddy as he tries to interfere with their coming-of-age ceremony, which looks like this...


You need bigger goggles, Granny, I need more phantom-Patty Duke reflection to offset mime rocker-Stephen McHattie in the foreground.
Adrian gets a pancake makeup mime face, and writhes around awkwardly on a slab, before venturing down into the club and grooving on the dance floor with the other patrons, when his surrogate father jolts his pal to death and spoils the Satanic event. "The Book of Andrew" finds Adrian (now Andrew) locked up in a mental institution for killing his friend, since everyone who participated in the party has disappeared and are believed dead, although a sympathetic nurse (Donna Mills) hears his mixed up plight and decides to help him escape. Ray Milland blathers on about new coven (now "tribe"?) plans since Adrian hasn't exactly lived up to sinister expectations, and leaves Guy hanging when Adrian vows to seek him out over the strange events that occurred that fateful night. Andrew lays down with his nurse, who gets hit by a car driven by Guy and meant for Andrew, but survives to give birth to a daughter, who'll clearly be more Satanically-inclined than her father. Roll credits.


"Like it? Ray Milland did it for me while on S.T.P. at the last Satanic orgy..."
An incoherent phoned in tele-mess that matches it's variety/comedy pairing on number of laughs with scares (both are zero), combining for one of the weaker Halloween entertainment servings in my long, often photographic memory. I was a lot easier to please back then, too,  seeing how I was eight at the time and hadn't even seen the original yet, and probably had to manage a huge candy haul in my Ben Cooper Batman costume through two or three neighborhoods to effectively negate it a couple of nights later. Scary as a brushburned elbow and evil as a Sonny and Cher episode. One woppo.


That's a rather perky-looking end credits devil-baby.

"It Happened at Lakewood Manor" (1977) d/ Robert Scheerer

Even if you missed tonight's review when it was first broadcast back in 1977 (I didn't, so nyah nyah, motherfuckers. You never missed cool shit like this back then, it was forbidden.), you were probably drawn in years later by the USA Home Video big box vhs with Suzanne Somers' ant-engulfed milk wagons depicted on the sleeve, and really, who'd blame you for that? I picked it up myself, back then, for that very reason, only to be reminded that, for heavy on names it was, with the likes of Robert Foxworth, Lynda Day George, Brian Dennehy, and even Suzanne Somers, in a brief cameo capacity, though she receives top billing for it, all on board, it was pretty light on delivery of the genre goods, though it remains a nostalgic stroll back to a time when television networks created their own quickie cash ins on silver screen trends, and with movies like Kingdom of the Spiders (1977), Grizzly (1976), Day of the Animals (1977) all cashing in at the box office, eco-horror proved too lucrative to ignore for their small screen competitors.


Come n' die on the floor (come n' die on the floor) meet the ants and you're through (meet the ants and you're through)...(sung to the tune of "Three's Company"main theme)
Two construction workers stumble into a swarm of ultra-aggressive ants with a toxic bite in a closed section of the Lakewood Hotel, during an extensive renovation, but before they can warn anyone of the impending poison picnic, they get buried alive. Oops. Now, like a hundred minute episode of Love Boat, we get the main cast of characters; there's the elderly proprietor, Mrs. Adams (Myrna Loy) and her sultry daughter, Valerie (Lynda Day George), who's having flesh-pleasure with the foreman, Mike (Robert Foxworth), who discovers the workers' corpses with his buddy Vince (Bernie Casey! Hot damn, that's outta sight.), and then there's real estate mogul Fleming (Gerald Gordon) actively pursuing his dream of turning the place into a casino, and his busty piece of side trim, Gloria (Suzanne Somers), along for the ride, to sit around in next to nothing and look really fucking good, doing it. Meanwhile, the aggro army of ants assaults a young boy, then kills a cook, and nearly adds Vince to its growing list of fatalities, which Mike has a hunch that they just might be responsible for...


"You little bastards! BAAAAAAAAASTARDS!"
Enter two workers from the Board of Health (Anita Gillette, Bruce French) who make the investigative scene, determining that these ants are not only poisonous, but highly resistant to insecticides. A recipe for disaster if ever I've heard one. Meanwhile, Gloria's slumped dead on the floor, with ant-engulfed titties, another health board bloke bites the dust, and a rag tag group of survivors is being driven upstairs to safety by the ants, who've overtaken the hotel from their massive nest in the pit, and number in the millions. The authorities dig a trench to hold the deadly army back, using water and gasoline to fuel their rescue of the trapped patrons and employees inside. Finally, only Mike, Valerie, and Fleming remain, cornered by ants. Fleming miserably fails his attempt at a triple Lindy to safety out the window, and the two trapped lovers are forced to breathe through tubes as they're rescued by workers in white suits who smoke the little bastards out. But could it all happen again? It could've, but thankfully, it didn't.


"Ahhhhh!!! Somebody loose-topped the pepper shaker on me!"
Super soul brother Bernie Casey was still riding a wave of popularity at the time of this tv movie, one that started with 1969's Guns of the Magnificent Seven, and included genre classics like Gargoyles (1972), Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde (1976), and Cleopatra Jones (1973), while Foxworth showed up in Damien :Omen II (1978) and Prophecy (1979). Somers appeared in Bullitt (1968), American Graffiti (1973), Magnum Force (1973), and even Billy Jack Goes to Washington (1977) before scoring the familiar role of Chrissy Snow, really the only reason you'd ever be caught dead watching Three's Company, besides splitting a side at whatever getup Furley has on, and Stanley Roper's zingers at his horny, homely old wife, but you get where I'm coming from. Myrna Loy was an actress who was huge in the twenties and thirties. Like I was getting to earlier, you may want to revisit this one for nostalgia's sake, and truthfully,  seeing it takes me back to grade school, where I was much like the Wop you see before you now, but with more hair, and less tattoos. Still, I've gotta cite it's overall weakness in the delivery of quality seventies eco-horror like many of it's counterparts managed to achieve. On the scale, Manor merits a measly single Wop, worth a look for hardcore horror addicts, perhaps.


"You mean we're smoking dog shit, man?" 

"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).

"The Devil's Daughter" (1973) d/ Jeannot Szwarc

By 1973, devils, demons, and diabolical dealings had become all the rage in Hollywood, thanks in part, to the success of Roman Polanski's occult shocker, Rosemary's Baby (1968). Of course, I was three years old when they first broadcast tonight's review, so Sesame Street, Electric Company, and Let's All Sing with Tony Saletan all had my minimal attention span on lockdown back then. It's a shame, too, because only a year or so later I'd have grooved on such a made-for-tv effort, starring Canadian brunette Belinda Montgomery, who was no stranger to the genre, having appeared in Ritual of Evil for the networks three years earlier. Of course, Shelley Winters is at the top of her early seventies hamminess here, and you've also got to factor in a cast of supporting names like Joseph Cotten, Robert Foxworth, Dianne Ladd, Lucille Benson, Abe "Fish" Vigoda, and a post-Dark Shadows Barnabus Collins himself, Jonathan Frid.


"Marry a demon? I'd sooner play the mother of a licensed fourteen year old doctor...for ninety-seven episodes."
Diane's (Belinda Montgomery) mom prearranges a marriage between her daughter and the son of Satan in exchange for some folding money, eventually backing out on the deal when she tries to assassinate the Devil with a bullet, fatally shooting herself in the process, like the foolish mortal that she is. When Diane comes out of her sheltered existence of private schools and convents to attend her mother's funeral, she's approached by an obnoxious redheaded Satanist named Lilith (Shelley Winters) and her mute chauffeur, Mr. Howard (Jonathan Frid), and asked to be a guest at her luxurious mansion, where a strange seal bearing intersected crosses seems to be everywhere.


"Before any Satanic orgies commence, I always like to consult my painting of Hugh Jackman."
Creeped out by Lilith's Pan-born pushiness, Diane breaks out like viral conjunctivitis and scores herself an apartment of her own, makes new less-black arts inclined acquaintances in a girl named Alice Shaw (Dianne Ladd), but Lilith and her associates are as resourceful as they are diligent, and the theft of a small glass horse figurine spells a deadly horse riding accident for Alice. Naturally, Diane hooks up with her newly deceased pal's boyfriend, Steve (Robert Foxworth). There's a big party at Lilith's pad, where Diane drinks a little too much, shakes it loose, and is hailed as the "Princess of Darkness" by a guest list that includes Abe Vigoda, ferchrissakes. She later meets with a judge (Joseph Cotten) who informs her of a trust fund she's entitled to, as set up by her father, and even volunteers to give the bride away at her upcoming spur-of-the-moment wedding to Steve. Cue: Trick ending, and one worthy of the pages of a seventies D.C. horror anthology.


"Have you seen me in 'A Double Life'? Errrr... I've got an Academy Award I can show you, too..."
If the director's name sounds familiar to you, it's probably because he was responsible for genre fodder like the made-for-tv Night of Terror (1972), Bug (1975), and Jaws 2 (1978), as well as no less than nineteen episodes of the excellent television horror anthology, Night Gallery. We'll try to erase his credits on Supergirl (1984) and Santa Claus (1985) from our collective memory if we can. Jonathan Frid would turn up the following year in Ollie Stone's feature-length debut, Seizure, his only role thereafter, save for in a cameo in Tim Burton's Dark Shadows (2012) the same year he passed away. On the scale, Daughter ties the infernal knot with a couple of cloven Wops, a devilishly enjoyable time to be had, for sure. Hunt it down!


"....set my Little Orphan Annie decoder ring to B2 to find out the secret message..."

"Stranger in Our House"(1978) d/ Wes Craven

On Halloween night back in 1978, a nine year old you-know-who was faced with two seasonal telly options after having exhausted his trick or treat/ neighborhood vandalism options for the evening. CBS offered up Richard Crenna, Yvette Mimieux, and a Satanic puppy in Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell, while over at NBC came the debut of tonight's feature; a made-for-tv adaption of a Lois Duncan novel called Summer of Fear directed by Wes Craven {fresh off the cult classic, The Hills Have Eyes (1977)}, that stars a curvalicious Linda Blair (who looks to have tried to balance out her bountiful bobblers with some seriously Brobdingnagian hair for this one), fresh off of some serious coke charges, and the lovely Lee Purcell, who you might recall from things like Mr. Majestyk (1974) and Valley Girl (1983). In the end, it's Purcell who'll stick with you here...


"Only Deep Purple understands me!" pouts Rachael (Linda Blair).
Life is awkward-looking horse rides, boyfriends, and clothes shopping for teenage Rachael Bryant (Blair), until her distant cousin, Julia (Purcell) comes to stay with her family, after a mysterious car crash at the outset leaves her sans folks. Soon, Rachael's roses are all showing their thorns, as her father, brother (Jeff East), and even boyfriend all instantly turn pheromone-induced sycophant at the sight of Julia, who's been leaving matches on her cousin's nightstand, spilling red paint on her bikini shots, and keeping graven wax images of her horse, Buttercup, who doesn't happen to like Julia one bit, Wilbur. No siree. After Rach breaks out in hives just before the big dance, she's forced to send Mike (Jeff McCracken) with Julia, decked in the pink number she'd crafted for herself and looking better in it, instead.


"Whattaya mean, my face is super freakiiiiiing out, Rick?"
By the time Rachael's grill clears up, it's already too late. Mike and Jules are an item, and Pop(Jeremy Slate) is also enchanted by the young woman's ample charms, himself, too much so, in fact, to do much about his daughter's equestrian accident that sees Buttercup prepped for an Alpo can with a bullet. And when resident witchcraft expert, Professor Jarvis (Macdonald Carey) is suddenly struck gravely ill, Rach's suspicions grow into a full-scale Nancy Drew-with-34C's style investigation, after spirited pouty whining for half the film's run time doesn't seem to get her anywhere. It soon becomes apparent that the Ozark Jezebel has set her homicidal sights on Rachael's mom (Carol Lawrence), which leads to the inevitable cat fight we'd all been waiting for, followed by a typical seventies made-for-tv twist ending that you probably could have laid money on, five minutes in.


"Me? Oh, I was just burning some Exorcist II: The Heretic reviews for you, honey..."
In those dark pre-technological days before video cassette recorders and Tivo, when a guy couldn't have his cake and bite at it, too, I remember choosing Crenna and his Devil Dog over tonight's witchery, as did most others, according to the Nielsen's, though if I could step through some portal into the past and do it all over again, I'd probably go with Stranger, instead. Ms. Blair's always been one of my favorites, and she's appropriately cute-as-a-button, as usual,  but she's so over-the-top whiny about it all here, you'd have to be certifiable to not be plugging for Purcell's comely witch to prevail. On the scale, this Stranger earns a pair of Wops, an average score that director Craven is no stranger to, his fourth thus far here. Obviously, still worth a look or two.


Have you been spleefing off the Hippie Crippler again, Julia (Lee Purcell)?

"The Stranger Within" (1974) d/Lee Philips

Normally, the notion of a made-for-television horror movie from the seventies that was written by the late, great Richard Matheson and stars Barbara Eden, still well within the realm of "Jeannie"-level sexy,  and I'd be front row and center for the next hour and a half, glued to the screen like two-sided tape on a toupee. Except, in this particular case, the end result is a lot less stiffie-inducing than one might envision; light on terror, and heavy on unintentional laughs. In Matheson's defense (and I'll always defend my favorite writers, the list of which he is no doubt very high upon), he was probably creatively nudged in the direction of a Rosemary's Baby rip-off by the TV execs, and his material might have inspired a few chills had they cast someone other than Babs to pull it off here. Less miscast is David Doyle as a hypnotist, as his scenes in Charlie's Angels would always leave me in a deep sleep that only a vision of sopping wet Cheryl Ladd climbing out of a pool could snap me out of.


"Come down to dinner, sweetheart, I made your favorite... extra salty coffee grounds."
Despite her husband David (George Grizzard) having undergone a vasectomy three years earlier, Ann (Eden) is suddenly surprised to find herself pregnant and forced to detour her successful career as a painter. David juggles feelings of jealousy and mistrust before accepting that his wife has indeed been faithful to him the entire time, and it's then that her detour takes her down Oddball Blvd, as she finds herself obsessively pouring salt over her food, chugging hot coffee, speed-reading books on sociology, and wandering off into the cold night with barely a stitch on, leaving all of the windows wide open when she is home, slapping her next painting together only to mood-swing off the handle and lash out at David in unknown languages before apologetically cuddling up next to him a few moments later. You readers of the female persuasion are snickering to yourselves, right about now...


"The baby wants to know how 'disaster movies' became so popular..."
As time passes, the titular stranger within Ann's womb grows more demanding, forcing her to eat raw coffee grounds, making her body more adept to handle cold temperatures, and leading all involved parties, including maternity doctors (Nehemiah Persoff), hypnotists (Doyle), and best friends (Joyce Van Patten), to express growing concern over her far-out schitzy condition. Eventually, the unborn is forced to possess her spirit, talking through her, to spell it all out for the dense humans in his mother's life: he is not of this world. As David finally sees her finished painting, an alien landscape as Ann described to him under the will of the infant, she carries her newborn out to a waiting army of women with infants, and they descend in blank unison towards a light in the woods, and onward to worlds unknown...


Can't blink yourself outta this one, huh, Barb?
Pregnancy often brings on a slew of irrational behavior in both parents-to-be, even if the fetus is from the same star system. I've even had a few non-preggo girlfriends over the years who went Margot Kidder-in-the-bushes nuts on a pretty regular basis, so maybe I'm not the right guy to cast the judgmental stone here, but tiptoeing into the California woods at night in a lace negligee isn't scary. Hell, that's not even TV scary. On the other hand, Ms. Eden's erratic mood swings do make for a pretty entertaining look-see if you're in the right frame of mind, but I can't help thinking I'd rather be watching her blink Major Healy into the eye of a hurricane or something. Scale-wise, a single seems like a good fit here, so approach with caution.


Not something I'd be particularly overjoyed to see outside my front door in the morning...

"Killdozer!"(1974)d/Jerry London

For the sake of made-for-television horror movies of the seventies, should an unknown alien intelligence possess a man-made instrument for diabolical purposes towards wiping out humankind on the planet Earth, it only stands to reason that it would inhabit the nearest diesel-powered D-9 bulldozer, capable of speeds upwards of twelve miles per hour...I'm guessing the producers of said entry had probably gone through several bottles of 1974 Cristal Brut Millesime and quaaludes by the handful to arrive at the idea of transforming a thirty year old Theodore Sturgeon novella into the 'Saturday Suspense Movie' on ABC, hoping modern audiences would stay glued to the wood grain floor model Zenith, buying into the idea that tv's macho types like Clint Walker and Robert Urich could be terrorized by a killer bulldozer.Yeah, a bulldozer, the bulky, immobile piece of machinery most people should be able to briskly power walk away from, only a damned fool would be unable to see the immeasurable genre potential here.Alan Alda and Randolph Mantooth simply didn't measure up against this blockbuster in the 8:30 pm timeslot.In all honesty, I probably appreciated the production more as a four year old in footie pajamas watching with my parents from the living room rug.In fact, I know I did, having christened my Tonka 'Killdozer' directly afterwards and forevermore.I don't think I even bothered with it much before I realized I could play-kill everyone in my imaginatively dark adventures with the damned thing.If you're currently laughing at how retarded the premise sounds, but thought nothing of buying a ticket to Stephen King's Maximum Overdrive twelve years later, give yourself a crackin' headbutt in the face from me, would you.

The plummetting meteor hurled towards the prop globe at breakneck speed...
...it's destination, a remote island in the Pacific where some caterwauling hardhats attempt to shift it with their D9, awakening an alien intelligence inside the hunk of space rock, which then possesses the excavator as evidenced by the blue glow of each.Mack(Robert Urich) screams in terror, but for him, it's already too late, as his hardhat and ironic working-class name are no match for the radiation poisoning he's been fatally dosed with.He sputteringly manages to warn Kelly(Clint Walker), the foreman, about the bulldozer before his curtain drops.Naturally, Kelly initially scoffs at the notion that he and his crew are currently being systematically stalked by an evil bulldozer...or killdozer, if you will, but that's exactly what's happenin', Jackson.Forget that the earthmover's already slow traction is further prohibited by the island's sand, or that diesel fuel evaporates with usage, or that the loud-assed engine doesn't really allow for stealthy ops, these guys are effed with a capital F and there ain't no two ways about it.In the workers' favor, is the fact that when the killdozer is on the hunt, it's twin headlights eerily flash like animate eyes and an appropriately wacky synth-based Killdozer theme is played.Now, how could you miss something like that, I ask you.It's virtually impossible to fall prey to a big, clunky machine, right?Right??

Paying the bills isn't all Judy Landers' sequined mam-missiles and red '57 T-Birds afterall, eh, Urich?
The black dude, Al(James Watson, Jr.), unwittingly finds himself hiding from Killdozer inside some metal piping directly in the evil earthmover's bloody path.Nice one, homeboy.Never to be outdone, Clyde stalls his car out, and instead of bailing out and making a run for it, he remains in the vehicle(right in front of the bulldozer) and repeatedly tries to turn the engine over.Gonna miss you guys.Finally, with just Kelly and Holvig(Carl Betz) still breathing, the men put aside their differences and combine their vast intellects in combatting the big 'dozer together, after an uninspiring square-off with the crane proves fruitless, with dialogue like:"Heeeey, wait a minute.Of course ya can't kill a machine! Don'tcha see our mistake??""Yeaaaaah."They decide that electrocution is the ticket for ol' Killy, then lure it into the generator-rigged trap, flicking the switch and watching it burst into flames as its devilish headlights finally flicker out for the last time.Got 'im!Afterwards, Holvig suggests that they tell the authorities their co-workers perished in a landslide, but Kelly nixes that idea."Nope.", he says."You gotta tell the truth."The truth of the matter is, I'm pretty relieved that this whole affair is finally over.Roll credits.

The bulldozer turns in the best performance here.Just look at the grim pathos on it's face.
Director London helmed episodes of Kojak, Marcus Welby, Baretta, Six Million Dollar Man, Harry O, Police Woman, Hawaii Five-O, and any other seventies shows worth mentioning, as well as the Shogun miniseries, which he bagged Emmys for.Killdozer remains unrecognized to this day.Walker would turn up in the made-for-tv Scream of the Wolf the same year, as well as 1977's Snowbeast, also a tv production.Urich went on to marry Heather Menzies of Sssssss(1974) and Piranha(1978) fame, and had a lengthy television career on shows like Vega$ and Spenser:For Hire before succumbing to cancer in 2002.Let's just hope everyone involved with this production moved on to bigger and better things.Of course, everybody knows there's nothing to be afraid of where construction equipment is concerned, unless you happen to be operating it under the influence of potentially deadly lithium crystals, or something.Emptyheaded(To call a Caterpillar sneaking up on somebody a stretch is an understatement, for sure) and lethargic in delivering the grainy VHS-ripped goods, 'dozer's brisk running time(just 74 minutes) allows for a singular stomp down memory lane, if nothing else.On the scale, it earns just one Wop from your favorite Terex Titan of genre reviews.Late!

"Die from cigarettes?There's more chance of a bulldozer sneaking up on me..."

"Frankenstein:The True Story"(1973)d/Jack Smight

Tonight's entry is another plate of clammy made-for-tv leftovers one might mistake for a twenty-eight hundred dollar Wagyu ribeye at first glance, due to the ensemble cast assembled for the production.The venerable James Mason heads the list that includes a pre-Sir John Gielgud, the always lovely Jane Seymour, Ralph Richardson, Agnes Moorehead, and even Tom "Dr. Who" Baker, and all are game faced for this interesting variation(in the most politcally correct of terms) on the Shelley novel that has more in common with the modern Hammer Frankenstein series than the classic book.In fact, the special makeups are even provided by Hammer vet Roy Ashton, and to his credit, they're appropriately Hammer-y-looking, if that makes any sense at all to you.Originally broadcast in ninety minute-long halves, the production begins with an introduction sequence that features Mason stepping through the tombstones in St. John's Wood cemetery in London, incorrectly whiffing on the suggestion that Shelley was buried there, despite standing in front of a headstone that might lead you to think he was actually telling the truth.The author is actually buried in Dorset, where rumor has it, her remains can be heard ever-spinning on a flaming spit since Hollywood had the moose balls to market this long-winded take a 'true story'.Michael Sarrazin plays the monster, who starts off looking dandy then decays into what looks like a late stage terminal AIDS patient more than a superhuman creature assembled from parts of various corpses as the plot unravels(slowly.).Definitely worth a look if hearing Mason speaking Chinese or seeing some gratuitous dummy violence(and one fuck of a rotten severed head) sounds like a good time to you.

Hope you were ambidexterous...
Enter Victor Frankenstein(Leonard Whiting), an affluent, and brilliant, young surgeon-to-be who's engaged to Elizabeth Fanshawe(Nicola Pagett), studying anatomy from an unorthodox, spastic scientist named Clerval(David McCallum) in London after having lost his younger brother to a tragic boat accident and vowing that he'd work with the devil himself if he could restore life to his perished sibling.When Clerval isn't dramatically grasping at his heart, he's working on logic-defying experiments that preserve human tissue long after death, using electricity and the sun as a catalyst for ushering in a new super-race of indestructible beings from the body parts of cadavers.After constructing a nifty, isolated 40's style mad scientist laboratory in an abandoned chateau, the two scientific groundbreakers luck upon a local mine collapse which provides peasant parts a' plenty for their weird experiments, but on the night before their historic attempt to resurrect the dead, Clerval discovers that a disembodied arm he'd been keeping alive has begun to "reverse the process", or "turns hella ugly" as the screenwriters must have meant.The unsightly mitt causes Clerval's heart to cash its chips in, before he can complete the entry in his diary.Frankenstein, oblivious to the reversal, not only carries on without his partner, but also lends the dead man's grey matter for the final ingredient in their voltage-driven god-play.Lo and behold, when the cheap visual effects subside, a flawless, handsome, and articulate creature(Michael Sarrazin) has been created, with nary a mismatched section or even a stitching scar, ferchrissakes.After grooming the monster for entry into English high society and passing him off as a foreign relative of few words, Frankenstein discovers the ugly-arm-in-the-cupboard, realizing that his new patchwork pal is probably doomed to suffer the same fate, judging by the sudden appearance of sores behind his ears(yeah, bleech.).The monster, being something of an attention whore, has issues dealing with his sudden unpopularity, and after his brutal puss scares the landlady(Agnes Moorehead) to death, he repeatedly shanks himself in the labonza and swan dives off of the white cliffs of Dover to a watery end...of part one.

Get out from under those carriage wheels, you fuckin' dummy.
The resilient creature wanders off into the woods only to befriend a blind violinist, but in true Herman Munster fashion, manages to kill the old man's grandson and drive his granddaughter into the path of an oncoming carriage.Darn!Darn!Darn!The monster, smitten with the dead granddaughter's beauty, carries her broken frame back to the laboratory, only to find it currently occupied by Dr. Polidori(James Mason), Clerval's former mentor, who's whipped up some ressurrection experiments of his own, sans electricity(which he's frightened of...pussy.), but with far more colored liquids, sparklers, and Chinese coolie assistants.Polidori convinces Frankenstein, who's been trying to get the bitter taste of his prior failure out of his mouth through hum drum domestic tedium with his new bride, to assist him in creating a perfect woman(he needs the young surgeon since an earlier lab accident has left both of his paws looking like beef jerky)during the young man's honeymoon(!!)."I'll be back in a few short months, baby, and you're in for it then..."Of course, the experiment is successful, with the result, a stunningly beautiful female that Polidori has dubbed "Prima"(Jane Seymour), a decorative choker camoflaging the creature's lone stitching scar upon her throat.Polidori then looks to Frankenstein's wife's family to educate and prepare his ward for entry into high society, and here she proves mischievous and amorous towards Victor whenever his suspicious wife has her head turned.On the eve of Polidori's successful unveiling, the male creature drops into a splendid ball uninvited and proceeds to pull Prima's head from her shoulders in front of a throng of screaming partygoers.Victor and Elizabeth leave the police inquiry behind for American shores, unaware that not only is Polidori on board, but the murderous creature has stowed away, as well.The creature rips Polidori's gloves off revealing his meaty claw before hanging his screaming ass up from the crow's nest during a violent electrical storm.The mittless old fool soon eats lightning-singed death, while the creature does away with the ship's crew and Victor's pregnant wife, setting a new course for the North Pole.Victor awakens to find his bride frozen solid on the deck and his creation standing in a nearby ice cavern, where Victor shouts for forgiveness from the makeshift man, and causes an avalanche to abruptly bury both sorry bastards.Roll credits.

There's something sexy about Jane's elegant neck so close to such a dirty pair of chick-chokers.
Though I remember being a pissed-off little kid having to invest three sugar-driven hours in tonight's review(remember, I was never all that big a Frankie fan to begin with), I'd always give it a look these days, if just for Mason, Gielgud, and Seymour, who's especially young and delicious here, all favorites of mine.Still, it's an interesting idea, adding Polidori, a real-life acquaintance of Shelley's who partook in the famous literary competition that Frankenstein was born out of in the first place, as a character to the story, utilized Hammer-style as an older scientist that the younger Frankenstein reluctantly works with.Most modern viewers will find the gaps between the sparse thrills wider than a three finger Aerosmith 'Walk This Way' gap, I think.If Frankie's your bag, or you're a relic like me who's into impressive acting performances, you'll wanna queue this one up on your 'to see' list of movies.On the scale, it merits two Wops.Check it out.

Skip the Valtrex, homepiss.You're gonna need to spackle that facepiece once.