I get that Janet Leigh’s Sandra Latham was an attractive platinum blonde prone to wearing short tight dresses and high heels. I also understand that she appeared to need help with a difficult situation and required a sympathetic ear to bend with her troubles. For a lonely, middle-aged man, there’s really almost no defense to all of that. But when she starts talking about how her daddy used to lock her in a closet and wouldn’t let her out, you’ve got to at least consider pumping the humping brakes! Especially when she’s in the middle of a missing husband mystery! And you are the police captain investigating it! Continue reading “Honeymoon with a Stranger (1969)”
Category: ABC Movie of the Week
Satan’s Triangle (1975)
I’m not saying that you don’t pick up the priest found drifting by himself in the ocean, but when you do, you need to be smart about it. At a minimum, you probably shouldn’t keep fishing for that big marlin and the captain of the boat should be court-martialed or keelhauled or whatever it is they do to them when they are absurdly derelict in their seafaring duties.
You’d have to be suffering a bout of scurvy to think that letting a priest who looks like the crazed padre that killed himself and opened the gates of hell in City of the Living Dead taking the helm of you boat during a mysterious storm that has broken out while you are in the middle of the Devil’s Triangle is anything other than sheer lunacy! Continue reading “Satan’s Triangle (1975)”
The Day the Earth Moved (1974)
The Big One hits the viewer early on in the small scale earthquake drama The Day the Earth Moved, followed by an hour of aftershocks that easily measure a 9.0 of stupid on the Richter Scale.
From the beginning of the movie when Jackie Cooper’s pilot Steve Barker finds himself a virtual prisoner of a small town’s bizarre system of dealing with speeders to the revelation that somehow he knows an earthquake is about to hit that small town to him having to hijack his own airplane to airlift the disbelieving townspeople to safety, the only thing constructed in more slipshod fashion than the dilapidated town of Bates is the script. Continue reading “The Day the Earth Moved (1974)”
Heatwave! (1974)
Since this ABC Movie of the Week uses an exclamation mark in its title, it’s safe to assume that this is no ordinary heatwave. If it was your routine heatwave, people would simply be sweating, short tempered, whining about their air conditioning not working and moaning about water restrictions. In short, it would be summer. Assigning the heatwave the dreaded Category 5 of punctuation though takes things to next level sizzle! Continue reading “Heatwave! (1974)”
The Last Child (1971)
Much like other long since faded fads like pet rocks, mood rings, pogs and Sniglets, doom and gloom scams come and go with the amazing regularity that only obsessive anti-freedom big government advocates can muster.
Acid rain, nuclear winter, crop failure, Y2K, 2012, asteroids, dirty bombs, pandemics, mega quakes, super volcanoes, smog, global warming, global cooling and every temperature in between are all trotted out from time to time as an excuse to trample on the rights of regular people and increase the power of a highly centralized authority. With such an ever evolving Chicken Little laundry list, it’s tough to keep up with what we are supposed to be scared of in any given month.
Satan’s School for Girls (1973)
Even Satan himself would have to grudgingly admit that the whole sordid affair he was spearheading at the Salem Academy for Women turned into one of the more embarrassing episodes of his foul existence.
From having to take a job as an art teacher, being unable to convince at least 4 vulnerable women to pledge their souls to him (though he does mesmerize future Charlie’s Angels star Kate Jackson which is nothing to sneeze at) to being defeated by a woman posing as a student who kills almost twice as many people as he does, he doesn’t resemble so much the all powerful ruler of hell as a cool teacher turned failed cult leader. Continue reading “Satan’s School for Girls (1973)”
The Stranger Within (1974)
You know your pregnancy has gone off the rails when Bosley from Charlie’s Angels is hypnotizing you and demanding to know who the real father of your child is! But what else is your husband supposed to do when he’s had a vasectomy, but you somehow go and turn up all preggers despite swearing up and down that you’ve always been faithful? Do you want to save your marriage or not? Then keep your eye on the swinging pendant and try not to claw your ears out listening to David Doyle’s gravelly voice interrogating you about your sex life! Continue reading “The Stranger Within (1974)”