While there’s no question that the 1970s were responsible for many, many embarrassing things, one phenomenon for which the decade has no need to apologise is that of the made-for-television movie. In 1969, the ABC network premiered its Tuesday night Movie Of The Week; and so successful did it prove that not only did ABC expand the program to Tuesday and Saturday, but almost forced the other networks to compete by establishing their own MFTV units, as well as prompting an increase in that sort of production by the major motion picture studios.
However, these little films, known for their professionalism and casts of reliable familiar faces, were no mere filler: many of them could boast a remarkable writing pedigree; quite a number dealt seriously with controversial issues, including alcoholism, drug abuse and homosexuality; although at the same time, there is no doubt that fans of genre fare like horror, science fiction and disaster movies were particularly well served.
But then the 80s arrived, and made the 70s seem less embarrasing by comparison. The time of the MFTVM sputtered to a close. It was, indeed, the end of an era; an era that we at the B-Masters intend to spend a full month celebrating. Join us as we relive the memories…and the nightmares.
Site | Movie | Original Broadcast Date | Preview |
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And You Call Yourself a Scientist! | Terror in the Sky | September 17, 1971 | Now, for some people the removal of the unintentional entertainment value of Terror In The Sky might mean there’s no reason to watch it; but it had the opposite effect on me. Having sat and studied Flight Into Danger and Zero Hour! and Flying High!, the perceptiveness of the rewrite and the judgement shown in the film’s direction inspired me with a real affection for it – and besides, I found that the substitute game of “spot the re-touch” made it, in its own quiet way, almost as amusing as its companion-pieces |
And You Call Yourself A Scientist! | The Stranger Within | October 21, 1974 | The best thing about The Stranger Within is how fair it plays. It doesn’t take sides between Ann and David: it simply presents us with an untenable situation – he knows he can’t be the father; she knows nobody else could be – and asks us to feel for both of them. Of course, as viewers, we accept Ann’s version of events, because otherwise we’ve got no story. Besides, if you were a woman cheating on your post-vasectomy husband, would you really announce your pregnancy to him like that? |
Badmovies.org | Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo | December 28, 1977 | With the warehouse infested with tarantulas, the only hope of rescuing the crop without destroying the oranges is to use the sound of the deadly tarantula wasp to put the spiders to sleep. Unfortunately, nobody in Finleyville has a pet tarantula wasp. (Who does?) So they use a hive of bees filtered through a sound mixer and amplifier to mimic the sound of a tarantula wasp. While the spiders are paralyzed with fear, Bert and his cohorts can pick them up and put them in buckets. |
Braineater | Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark | October 10, 1973 | Remarkably, Sally manages to keep her nerves under control. After all, she couldn’t possibly have seen what she thought she saw… could she? She invites the guests into the dining room for dinner, and even manages to keep up the small talk with Alex’s boss… in spite of the fact that something keeps pulling the napkin off her lap. Sally tries her best not to look down, not to see what’s specifically provoking her to look down; but eventually she can’t resist any longer. And there, under the table, she sees… |
Braineater | Cruise Into Terror | February 3, 1978 | It may seem a little strange for a Christian priest to be worried about the wrath of Osiris, but bear with him: he also points out that Bakkun’s papyrus called for the tomb to be opened and inspected every thousand years. And here’s the connection: “A thousand years is a Biblical millennium!” he announces.(This must mean something: by a shocking coincidence, it’s also a millennium in every other tradition in the world!) |
Braineater | The Screaming Woman | January 29, 1972 | I’m not sure how much Bradbury had to do with the television script, if anything, but the changes are certainly Bradburyesque. The tyranny of the family is a recurring theme in his writing, and the humiliating control Caroline Wynant exerts over her husband is mirrored in several of his stories. But another of Bradbury’s themes is that the overlooked — the very young, the very old, the poor, the dead — are not always as helpless as they seem to be. Certainly the core of Bradbury’s story has been translated very well in the TV adaptation, while the changes make for a more satisfying full-length movie than the script of the original half-hour radio program would have done. |
Braineater | A Cold Night’s Death | January 30, 1973 | In an environment like this, small problems lead to enormous consequences. To the movie’s credit, the atmosphere is extremely convincing, since the location shooting was done on an actual mountainside at the White Mountain Research Station in Bishop, California; also, the actors do a good job conveying the sheer exhaustion that comes from working in that kind of cold, at that extreme altitude. |
Cold Fusion Video Reviews | A Vacation in Hell | May 21, 1979 | Alan (Michael Brandon) is already there, scoping out the chicks with a practiced eye under his newsboy hat. He’s there to meet the bus as it brings in a load of fresh meat, including Denise (Priscilla Barnes, before her 72-episode run on Three’s Company), who’s wearing a brunette wig but is definitely a natural blonde, if you know what I mean. Denise’s assigned roommate for her stay is Barbara (Andrea Marcovicci), who as luck would have it has had an abortive relationship with Alan. Barbara might as well be wearing a placard around her neck that reads “The Voice of Feminism,” and we’ll have plenty of opportunity to explore what she has to say. |
Jabootu’s Bad Movie Dimension | Bermuda Depths | May 21, 1979 | Some of these ingredients go together smoothly or even echo one another, like the giant turtle and Oscar winning actor Burl Ives. Others, not so much. Lost loves, madness, shipwrecks, tragic backstories, ghosts (maybe), Lovecraftian-esque elder gods (sort of), underground labs, Apollo Creed playing an Ahab manqué and more are all offered up with occasionally incoherent abandon. |
1000 Misspent Hours and Counting | The Horror at 37,000 Feet | February 13, 1973 | In Hollywood parlance, a “high concept” property is one where the premise itself is the main selling point, and would remain so even with a big star, a prestigious director, or any other obvious marketing angle attached to it. In practice, it tends to mean dizzying combinations of derivativeness and novelty, and on occasion a high concept movie has a concept you’d have to be high to dream up. The Horror at 37,000 Feet is awfully impressive in that regard. It is, for all practical purposes, Airport meets The Exorcist, as a transatlantic overnight flight full of jerks we don’t care about is brought to the brink of disaster by a demonic entity in the cargo hold, and only a faithless ex-priest has the slightest chance of salvaging the situation! And for the “Twilight Zone” fans among us, the folks at CBS have considerately cast William Shatner as that reluctant hero, facing something theoretically much grimmer than a gremlin on the wing— and a further 17,000 feet off the ground than last time, to boot! |
The Unknown Movies | Murder On Flight 502 | November 21, 1975 | Despite all these characters on the airplane, I must mention it wasn’t hard for me to figure out who the murderer was before the revelation towards the end. In fact, when I first saw this movie as a child, and when the character of the murderer first appeared on the screen not long after the movie started, I immediately said to myself, “That person is going to be the killer!” |
#1 by ShifterCat on August 8, 2010 - 12:30 pm
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Re. Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark: I haven’t seen the film myself, but reading the review, I thought: “Small, oddly wizened immortal creatures imprisoned in an iron-bolted chamber? Fairies!”
#2 by sandra on August 14, 2010 - 10:35 am
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I hope someone on the Roundtable has chosen The Norliss Tapes as the movie to review. It’s my favorite 70s MFTV. I’ve seen it a couple of times – once in French 🙂 – and it holds up surprisingly well.
#3 by Braineater on August 15, 2010 - 6:05 pm
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Actually, Sandra, I’d considered doing The Norliss Tapes myself… but it wasn’t just a TV movie: it was a pilot for a series that never materialized. We’ve been purposely avoiding pilots — The Night Stalker, The Six Million Dollar Man, etc. — since they provide a field of choices rich enough for a whole separate Roundtable… (ahem!)… if you get my drift.
#4 by Not-So-Great Cthulhu on August 15, 2010 - 8:48 pm
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I don’t know that The Night Stalker really qualifies as a pilot as there wasn’t an intent to create a series from it (to the best of my knowledge, at least). However, if it’s reviewed in a future Roundtable, I’ll be a happy camper.
Oh, and great reviews so far (from everyone). The Roundtables are always a pleasure for the readers (although maybe not always for the B-Masters viewing the films!).
#5 by sandra on August 17, 2010 - 9:08 am
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Come to that, the original Night Stalker movie was supposed to be a one-shot, not a pilot. There was a sequel called The Night Strangler, and then the series came along several years later.
#6 by Braineater on August 17, 2010 - 9:22 am
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Yes, some movies were intended to launch a series, but failed. Some were supposed to be self-contained, but went on to inspire a series. And from this alone, I think you can see why the whole theme of movies-to-series cries out for its own Roundtable.
#7 by José on August 17, 2010 - 5:19 pm
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I hope some of you, B-Masters, can review “A Cold Night’s Death”, from 1973, a scary little gem with Robert Culp and Eli Wallach, a TV movie with a setting and feeling very close to the more paranoid aspects of The Thing. I know it’s almost impossible to find, but… (and I’m looking forward to that Roundtable with Norliss Tapes, Night Stalker…)
#8 by Braineater on August 17, 2010 - 6:58 pm
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(cough) That could be arranged…
#9 by Gilgamesh on August 17, 2010 - 8:41 pm
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I remember looking forward to the movie of the week as a kid. A movie! In the middle of the week! Wow! But the only one I remember is Killdozer. I liked it, of course, but even at the age of 8 or so I could see how hokey the premise was. Have you ever done a round table about machines that come alive and kill people?
#10 by harsens-rob on August 29, 2010 - 1:12 am
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In her latest review, Lyz mentions the TV Movie, Gargoyles, which I have very vivid memories of. Is this available for a review (if so why isn’t it on HULU yet, darn it).
I would love to see that TV Movie get some love (I remember being impressed by the creature effects and the slower motion whenever the monsters appear – but then I was a kid, so for all I know, they actually looked ridiculous. I also remember the scene where the creatures attack a shack containing a Gargoyle skull and them overturning a station wagon were scary. Of course, the fact that the car was twice the length of a battleship is scary in and of itself, Lord knows what the MPG was on that thing.)
#11 by Matthew Bradley on August 29, 2010 - 11:26 am
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What a pleasure it is to see so much space and attention devoted to one of Matheson’s lesser-known works such as THE STRANGER WITHIN! Your analysis is insightful and well-informed, and the overall discussion of 1970s MFTV films like DON’T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK, A COLD NIGHT’S DEATH and Matheson’s own DUEL and TRILOGY OF TERROR brought back many memories indeed. Despite having written the original story and teleplay himself, Matheson told me he had no idea what the significance was of the smoldering painting at the end of the film, and also said he was bemused by the endless clock shots, although your interpretation of the latter seems valid. My only regeret is that when I approached Barbara Eden through her website to ask if she would offer any recollections for my book RICHARD MATHESON ON SCREEN (http://www.mcfarlandpub.com/book-2.php?id=978-0-7864-4216-4), tentatively due out in early October, I was met with stony silence.
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#12 by George on September 12, 2010 - 8:36 pm
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now, if you WERE going to do a roundtable on made for TV pilots, one I would recomend – which I’ve only seen once – when it was originally aired – so I can’t vouch for its availablility – would be “Dr. Franken”, made in 1980. Robert Vaughn played Dr. Franken, a brilliant experimental surgeon working at a major metropolitan hospital (LA? NYC?I don’t recall if it was specified in the show) who received care of a John Doe case, horribly mangled in some sort of accident, and uses his surgical skill to rebuild the victim from parts from the hospital’s organ bank, in opposition (of course) to the hospital’s administration protests. Soon his reassembled patient is up on his new legs, but is suffering from amnesia, and subsequentlly escapes from Franken’s care, to seek his true identity. As is obvious from Franken’s name, this is an updated version of Frankenstein in a modern setting. But the series hook was (ie how they would crank out a season’s worth of episodes out of the premise) was that each of his donated body parts somehow retained a memory of its former owner, and the show would go Fugitive-style as each episode would follow the “creature” getting entagled in each part’s backstory, with his “creator” Dr. Franken in close pursuit. An interesting twist on the Shelley premise, if perhaps not a great one. Vaughn was great in Amicus’ loose versionofthe Frankenstein story “The Mind of Mister Soames” ten years earlier, it would have been interesting to see how he played a more literal interpretation of the theme. Also interesting is that not only was David Selby (of Dark Shadows fame)in the cast, but so was Addison Powell, who played “Dr. Eric Lang” on Dark Shadows – thats show’s version of Dr. Frankenstein, who assembles the creature Adam from body parts and then brings it to life.
#13 by maggiesmith on February 6, 2024 - 11:14 am
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While we were on the subject of movies that were not meant to inspire a series, but did, once upon a time the writing duo of Levinson and Link wrote a play called Mind Over Murder. ( When it previewed in Toronto, it got an enormous laugh when the killer’s alibi was “I was in a hunting lodge ten miles outside Toronto.” ) In due course, it was made into a tv movie with Gene Barry as the killer and an young ( the actor was 34), strangely tidy Peter Falk as Lt Columbo. His hair was short and neatly combed and his raincoat was clean and pressed. Some years later came another tv movie called Ransom For a Dead Man, and once again the detective who caught the killer was Peter Falk as Lt Columbo, in his familiar form, messy hair, wrinkled raincoat and all. A while after that, came the tv series and the rest is history.