MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE

A rogue comet causes every machine on the planet to revolt against Mankind. ATMs can only display insulting messages, but tractor-trailers are capable of doing a lot more than calling surprised bank customers bad names.

Review Snippet:
I would much rather run into a murderous can opener than a psychopathic self-propelled lawnmower, while any variety of mobile woodchipper means that my butt would be heading for the closest vertical rock formation. Granted, once I climbed to the top of that, my next problem might well be a swarm of RC helicopters. I’d still rather my last moments recreate the epic finale of “King Kong,” vice a random scene from “Woodchipper Massacre.”

Lesson Learned:
Whoever said that the pen was mightier than the sword was never on the wrong end of a machinegun.

Man, I just could not find a bad ABC Movie of the Week. (Well, OK, there was The Last Dinosaur, which is actually a cousin to this movie. But I reviewed that years ago.) So instead, let us don our breathing gear and flippers, whereupon we may witness the bizarre melange of elements to be found in the Bermuda Depth.

Now, here’s a peculiar thing: two films with an almost identical premise; but as they must have been in production at almost the same time, and debuted within weeks of one another, it seems unlikely that one could have ripped the other off – even though one of them is an Italian horror movie. Both were produced within the long shadow cast by The Exorcist, but owe almost as much to Rosemary’s Baby. Both feature a happy marriage experiencing an improbable pregnancy; a pregnancy that is unnaturally accelerated, and accompanied by revolting eating habits and violent personality changes in the mother-to-be. Both mothers contemplate an abortion, only to have the baby itself fight back. So far, so similar. Then we hit a T-junction. One film blames it all on the aliens; the other blames it all on the devil.

THE STRANGER WITHIN (1974)

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CHI SEI? (1974)

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That’ll have to wait ’til next time.  Until then, you may busy yourselves reading about:

Conan the Destroyer (1984), in which the franchise that started it all decides that things like quality and ambition just aren’t worth the trouble…

The Good Son (1993), in which that kid from Home Alone takes his game up a couple of notches…

The Phantom Planet (1961), in which a really boring American astronaut finds himself boringly stranded on a boring planet whose boring people are at boring war with crummy rubber monsters who thankfully are not boring…

and…

The Stepford Wives (1975), in which the masterminds of a conspiracy to create the perfect woman suffer from a truly astonishing lack of imagination.
 
 
 

Vincent Price isn’t exactly the everyman that the protagonist of the novel I Am Legend was, but as the star of The Last Man on Earth (1964) he still gives a wonderfully weary as the last uninfected man in a world of vampires.  Staking is his business, and business is a bit too good to be good.

It may be hard to believe, but August 23 marks Barbara Eden’s 76th birthday. And what better way to celebrate the occasion than with a brief look at of one of her most interesting — and least typical — screen appearances?

A Howling in the Woods (1971)

If you only know Eden as the vivacious star of “I Dream of Jeannie” or Harper Valley PTA, this TV movie may surprise you. It’s a murder mystery with some astonishingly lurid plot twists.

Also, it’s tempting to see the movie as a gift to Eden from NBC, for accidentally killing her TV show the year before…

Murder On Flight 502 was one of the first made-for-TV movies I ever saw. I remember seeing it as a small child one weekend afternoon, and I remember being sure I’d be entertained because of the movie’s colorful all-star case (including Robert Stack, Farrah Fawcett, Sonny Bono, and Fernando Lamas.) Also, the movie promised it would be a murder mystery, so I remember gleefully warming up my deducing skills. However, I was sorely let down by the movie’s mystery – if you can even call it a mystery. That’s because I correctly guessed who among the airplane’s passengers was the guilty party when that person was first seen in the movie’s first few minutes. It went downhill from there.

A Cold Night’s Death (1973)

This is an unusual made-for-TV movie: it’s more Strindberg than Spielberg. Robert Culp and Eli Wallach star in a virtual two-man show, as scientists stuck in a snowbound research station performing stress experiments on monkeys and chimpanzees. Soon it becomes apparent that someone — or some thing — is experimenting with them. Or is it all in their heads? And even if it is, will it make any difference to the outcome?

The Screaming Woman (1972)

What do you call a thriller that reveals not only the killer’s identity, but also its major plot points, all within the first ten minutes? I call it brilliant. Based on a story by Ray Bradbury (who turns 90 this week), The Screaming Woman also shows a good TV movie can make substantial changes to its source material without ruining it.

TARANTULAS: THE DEADLY CARGO

Remember how the mayor in “Jaws” was worried about the shark scaring off the tourists? This is the same movie. Just substitute “tarantulas” for “shark” and “oranges” for “tourists,” and…well I guess that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, does it?

Review Snippet:
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. Genius! The problem with this plan is that they don’t have any equipment to record the buzzing bees. Somebody has to shake the bees in front of a microphone the whole time that the spider removal operation is going on.

Lesson Learned:
Spider fangs cannot penetrate flannel.