In Search Of Historic Jesus

Sunn Classics made a ton of money in the 1970s by producing and distributing cheaply made dramas and “documentaries” aimed at a family audience. By jumping on fads like UFOs and Bigfoot, four-walling the pictures in small-town theaters, and drenching each market’s airwaves with urgent advertising aimed at the lowest common denominator, the Sunn Classics team were as much conmen as they were filmmakers.

Based in Park City, Utah, Sunn Classics produced and distributed big hits, such as THE LINCOLN CONSPIRACY (which posited that, among other things, John Wilkes Booth’s death was faked by anti-Reconstruction government forces) and IN SEARCH OF NOAH’S ARK. Certainly it was that movie’s success and the then-trendy Shroud of Turin controversy that spurred the production of 1980's IN SEARCH OF HISTORIC JESUS, a corny, cheap-looking laugh riot that nonetheless earned big box office.

John Rubinstein (CRAZY LIKE A FOX) portrays Jesus wearing a comically fake beard, who looks to a cloudy blue sky to receive marching orders from God (voiced by Peter Mark Richman!). He wanders about, placing his hands on the faces of lepers (wearing atrocious makeup), which makes their faces glow with cartoon animation. He calls for the resurrected Lazarus, who emerges from a cave looking fresh as the morning dew. He walks on water and makes storms go away just by placing his palms together. After his crucifixion, he appears to his disciples in an animated starburst like a sitcom genie.

Brad Crandall, whose deep voice is instantly recognizable as the narrator of the studio’s trailers and films, hosts this “documentary” with pomposity, dressed alternately in a three-piece suit or V-neck sweater and showing off impressions of the Shroud of Turin in his wood-paneled library. His “evidence” consists of passing off gospel and random musings as fact. One “expert” claims Jesus’ corpse released a burst of radiation to scorch the Shroud. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls by a goatherder in 1947 is re-enacted as truth without explaining why we should believe their authenticity.

Sunn Classics snared some recognizable character actors for HISTORIC JESUS, including John Anderson, Walter Brooke, David Opatoshu, Morgan Brittany, Anthony DeLongis, Lawrence Dobkin, Al Ruscio, Britt Leach, and Stanley Kamel. If you need any convincing that Sunn Classics is full of bull, watch no further than the scene in which Crandall visits an astronomer named Robert McLean at his observatory to get his theories on the Star of Bethlehem. “McLean” is played by actor H.M. Wynant.

Hotline

Who can resist a Lynda Carter slasher movie? Unfortunately, HOTLINE was made for CBS in 1982, which eliminates any chance of nudity or bloody violence (even if the writer’s last name is Peckinpah—David Peckinpah, Bloody Sam’s nephew). It does contain other standard elements of the genre, such as a shower scene (I reiterate—no boobs), killer POV shots, and several guys acting creepy for no other reason than to be red herrings.

Less believable than anything else is the former Wonder Woman as an artist, a student, a bartender, and a telephone counselor working a crisis hotline for psychiatrist Justin Price (Granville Van Dusen, probably the busiest 1970s television leading man whom nobody has heard of). She also drives a cool vintage convertible and lives in a lavish beach house, so bartending four nights a week must pay great (she says she’s house-sitting for someone, but Peckinpah and director Jameson fail to elaborate).

Carter’s fab Brianne (pronounced “Brian”—who knew?) starts getting weird phone calls at work from a whispering maniac calling himself “the Barber” who may be a serial killer with victims dating back twelve years. Justin seems sketchy to us, but not to Brianne, who strikes up a romance with him.

Two other suspects are Tom Hunter (S.W.A.T.'s Steve Forrest), an Oscar-winning cowboy star, and Kyle Durham (Monte Markham), who used to be Tom’s stunt double until suffering a crippling injury. The two men are supposed to be best friends, but they clearly hate one another, which may or may not be part of the mystery.

There’s nothing particularly special about HOTLINE, except that it gives Carter a chance to play sleuth, stalkee, and Final Girl opposite what turns out to be a really weird (but unsurprising) killer. She’s up to the task, even if the simple script and routine direction aren’t.

The Rainmaker

An enjoyable adaptation of John Grisham’s novel THE RAINMAKER, this crackling legal thriller boasts an excellent supporting cast, assured direction by THE GODFATHER’s Francis Ford Coppola, and a nice sense of humor. Coppola also wrote the screenplay and packs a lot of twists and turns into its 135-minute running time by ditching a few minor characters and subplots.

Matt Damon, who filmed this just before GOOD WILL HUNTING was released, plays young attorney Rudy Baylor as a moral man—one who knows all the lawyer jokes and wants to clear the profession’s good name—and one who’s a little nervous to be playing with the big boys, even though they aren’t as big as he thinks they are.

Rudy’s first job out of law school is with a shady Memphis law firm owned by Bruiser Stone (Mickey Rourke), who’s under indictment on racketeering charges. Bruiser teams him with the middle-aged Deck Shifflet (Danny DeVito in the film’s most enjoyable performance), a slick talker who hasn’t passed the bar exam after six tries, but doesn’t let that stop him from chasing ambulances.

Rudy’s case is a lawsuit against an insurance company on behalf of a decent but poor family whose son is dying of leukemia, but whose life may have been saved if the company had made good his claim. Damon and DeVito are likable enough to root for to begin with, but Coppola gives the duo a strong villain to compete with: Jon Voight (COMING HOME) in a delightful turn as Leo Drummond, a slick lawyer defending the insurance company—a guy who not only swims with sharks, but loves the challenge and the danger of it.

Claire Danes (HOMELAND) co-stars as a sweet teenager being abused by her softball-player husband. She and Damon make a nice couple, but this violent subplot adds a tinge of ugliness to what is otherwise a slick old-fashioned courtroom drama. It’s fun to spot the familiar faces ham it up in support: Dean Stockwell, Danny Glover, Virginia Madsen, Mary Kay Place, Red West, Teresa Wright, Randy Travis, Sonny Shroyer, and Roy Scheider.

Pier 5, Havana

Edward L. Cahn was known for cranking out features quickly, but he and producer/writer Robert E. Kent may have challenged some landspeed records getting PIER 5, HAVANA into theaters so quickly after Bautista’s fall from grace in Cuba. Castro gained control of the Cuban government in January 1959. Cahn began shooting Kent’s script the following month, and PIER 5 was in theaters before the end of the year.

Missing since the Cuban revolution began is Hank Miller, an alcoholic airplane mechanic and best friend of Steve Daggett (Cameron Mitchell), who flies from Miami to Havana to find him. He immediately suspects aristocrat Fernando Ricardo (Eduardo Noriega), who shows more than just a friendly attraction toward Miller’s estranged wife Monica (Allison Hayes, just off ATTACK OF THE 50 FOOT WOMAN).

Police lieutenant Garcia (Michael Granger) seems disinterested in the case, so Daggett investigates on his own and discovers a boatmaker named Schluss (Otto Waldis) who appears involved in a plot to bomb Havana and recapture the Cuban government for Bautista’s forces. But how does Miller’s disappearance tie into it?

More plot-heavy than Cahn’s other B-movies for United Artists, PIER 5 is less a political thriller than a private-eye movie with Mitchell’s air freight owner narrating in classic style. Cam and Cahn made three films together in less than two years (also THREE CAME TO KILL and INSIDE THE MAFIA), and it appears as though Cahn was a good influence on his star, who had a tendency to ham it up when not directed with a firm hand. Hayes does nice work as a woman torn between the husband she likes and the man she loves (Daggett).

Seven Cahn films were released in 1959—not an unusual pace for him, and one wonders whether it contributed to his 1963 death at age 64.

Tarzan Goes To India

Former stuntman Jock Mahoney, who played western hero Yancy Derringer on television and main heavy Coy Banton opposite Gordon Scott in TARZAN THE MAGNIFICENT, stepped into Scott’s loincloth for this exciting adventure shot in India. Also back to keep some semblance of continuity were producer Sy Weintraub and director John Guillermin (KING KONG), who had earlier helmed TARZAN’S GREATEST ADVENTURE.

Mahoney is leaner, more agile, and—at age 42—older than earlier screen Tarzans. I think he’s miscast as the Jungle King, but his natural charm and athleticism, as well as the stellar work turned in by Guillermin and the picturesque locations, more than balance it out. Jocko gets on our good side right after the credits by leaping out of a biplane into a lake—what an entrance! A Tarzan who can do his own stunts is a real boon to the movie, although shots of Mahoney fighting a stuffed leopard look just as phony as they did in 1932.

There is a human villain—Leo Gordon’s Bryce, a sadistic engineer who could care less about the lives of humans and animals—but it’s nice to have a plot based around a rescue, rather than crime. And a rescue of animals too, as Tarzan is summoned from Africa to rescue three hundred elephants trapped in a valley that will soon be flooded by the new dam being built by O’Hara (Mark Dana) and Bryce.

As mentioned above, Mahoney is lither than previous Tarzans, which takes getting used to. On the other hand, his physical dexterity allowed Guillermin to put him right into the action, so when you see Tarzan dodging a rogue elephant or getting caught in a noose trap, you can see it’s Mahoney. Weintraub’s decision to shoot completely on location on rather large sets packed with hundreds of extras (and elephants) gives the film a visual scale that makes every frame a joy to look at. Mahoney played Tarzan only twice and also guest-starred in two episodes of Ron Ely’s TARZAN TV series.

Border Incident

The wonderful Ricardo Montalban—then 28 years old and not yet a star, certainly not the household name of TV’s FANTASY ISLAND and Chrysler commercials—commands the big screen as the leading man of BORDER INCIDENT, filmed and released by MGM in 1949.

This hard-hitting procedural was the fourth collaboration (if you include THEY WALKED BY NIGHT, which gives Alfred Werker the directing credit, but Mann worked on it) between director Anthony Mann, screenwriter John Higgins, and the great cinematographer John Alton, a master at realistic lighting for black-and-white film. Their previous films, T-MEN and RAW DEAL (as well as THEY WALKED BY NIGHT), are terrific crime dramas, tackling then-contemporary issues with a toughness and grit unusual for the 1940s, and BORDER INCIDENT deserves to be mentioned in the same breath with them.

BORDER INCIDENT delves into the illegal immigration of Mexicans across the American border—a hot-button issue to this day. In keeping with their earlier films, Mann and Alton tell Higgins’ story in semi-documentary style that gives it the immediacy of a newsreel and add edge-of-the-seat suspense for extra impact in scenes involving quicksand, a deadly tractor, and a stalking on a water tower. Anchoring the film are Latin lover Montalban and musical-comedy star George Murphy (THIS IS THE ARMY) as border patrol agents just doing a job—a dangerous job.

Mexican federale Pablo Rodriguez (Montalban) goes undercover as a bracero—a manual laborer—to crack the human smuggling ring from the inside. Meanwhile, his partner, American agent Jack Bearnes (Murphy), poses as a crook with counterfeit work permits to sell. Both paths lead to cruel California rancher Parkson (Howard da Silva) and his equally nasty foreman Amboy (Charles McGraw), both of whom use ethnic slurs to cow their meek braceros and could care less about murdering them if it means avoiding capture.

Adding to the realism is the casting of real Mexicans in Mexican roles, one exception being Arnold Moss (Kodos the Executioner in STAR TREK’s “Conscience of the King”), who is quite believable as a baddie. The sadistic violence, including Bearnes’ torture by car battery and especially the heartbreaking murder by tractor mentioned above, must have certainly raised eyebrows in 1949, but for Mann to have flinched at showing the brutality of the human trafficking world would have diluted the power of BORDER INCIDENT.

Both Montalban and Murphy are up to their unconventional casting and make a nice team, even though they spend most of the film apart. Murphy retired from acting just a few years later to go into politics, including six years as a U.S. Senator from California. Montalban, of course, became one of Hollywood’s most popular leading men, hitting his height as FANTASY ISLAND’s mysterious Mr. Rourke and as Captain Kirk’s vengeful rival in STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN.

Rage (1995)

In terms of pure action, RAGE stacks up well next to many other films in its genre, even those made on (literally) one hundred times its budget.

Under the steady hand of director Joseph Merhi, who also produced the film and owned the studio, PM Entertainment, with his partner Richard Pepin, and stunt coordinator Spiro Razatos (THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2), RAGE bumps from one incredibly energetic and well-staged action sequence to the next.

Chases, fights, crashes, explosions, and stunts galore, RAGE not only offers a lot of excitement, but also mystery—as in, how did they pull that off without anyone getting killed?

In the logic department, well, the screenplay by PM regulars Jacobsen Hart (EXECUTIVE TARGET) and Joseph John Barmettler (SKYSCRAPER) falls a little short, but not any further than other (better) action movies. It’s the kind of movie where participants in a gunfight stand in the open with no effort to take cover, and the “medical experiments” that enable the hero to perform impossible physical feats are never fully explained. It’s likely Merhi figured you’d be too breathless from the action to think, and he was probably right.

British-born kickboxer Gary Daniels—a busy direct-to-video leading man in the 1990s—stars as Alex Gainer, a regular Joe and second grade teacher with a beautiful wife (Fiona Hutchison), a lovely suburban house, and a cute daughter. He also becomes a fugitive from justice after he’s kidnapped by corrupt government agents and a fat redneck cop who use him to test a new serum intended to breed a new line of super-soldiers with super-strength and super-stamina.

Unfortunately, the serum has serious side effects. One is that it kills its subject in just a few days. Another is that it sometimes pops its subject into berserker mode, which is what happens as Alex makes his escape, killing a lot of his captors and instigating a police manhunt.

Where RAGE stretches its muscles more than it has to is in its portrayal of the media. Alex isn’t just targeted by the la, but also yellow journalists who favor style over substance and sound bites over truth and fairness. While most audiences will be fixated on Gary Daniels kicking people and cars leaping through fireballs, the true heart of RAGE is Harry Johansen, played sensitively by familiar character actor Kenneth Tigar. Harry is a veteran television reporter whose old-fashioned style and sense of fairness has caused him to be considered a laughing-stock by his blow-dried colleagues.

Vengeance Is Mine (1978) aka Death Force aka Fighting Mad

Big James Iglehart, who had previously starred in SAVAGE! and BAMBOO GODS AND IRON MEN, wrapped up his shortlived exploitation-film career with yet another cheap action movie shot in the Philippines titled, originally, VENGEANCE IS MINE.

Well, cheap it is, yet it also appears to be one of Cirio Santiago’s most accomplished directing achievements. Clocking in at a whopping 110 minutes, VENGEANCE IS MINE offers several crowd-pleasing action sequences, cheesy gore, a coherent (if simple) plot, a good score by Jaime Mendoza-Nava, and a memorable shock ending that was cut from some earlier theatrical and video releases. It’s too long with a middle section that relies on repetitive violence to kill time, and VENGEANCE IS MINE would play much better if these scenes had been trimmed

Iglehart, Carmen Argenziano (THE HOT BOX), and Leon Isaac Kennedy (PENITENTIARY) are Vietnam vets planning to take over Los Angeles using the moolah they made smuggling overseas. Kennedy, who’s still in love with Iglehart’s wife (Jayne Kennedy, who was starring on THE NFL TODAY while this was in theaters; I can’t resist imagining Brent Musberger and Jimmy the Greek queuing up for a matinee of this), and Argenziano doublecross their old pal by slicing him and dumping him into the Pacific Ocean.

He washes up on a deserted island manned only by two Japanese soldiers (one of whom is Santiago repertory player Joe Mari Avellana with a Mifune topknot) who don’t know about the surrender in 1945. While Avellana trains Iglehart to be a samurai, Kennedy and Argenziano run roughshod over the L.A. rackets. Santiago and his editors crosscut between Iglehart’s more progressive learning and his former friends shooting random hoods in L.A. This stuff goes on forever and should have been shortened; however, it does provide a steady stream of squib work for the bloodthirsty viewer.

Eventually, Iglehart makes it home, where he finds gorgeous wife Jayne with bruises, courtesy of her real-life husband Leon, and goes to town with his twin swords, slicing, dicing, and creating hasty chores for the special effects crew in charge of building fake-looking headless corpses. Once James gets down to brass tacks and starts eliminating the anonymous hoods assigned to protect Argenziano and Kennedy, that’s when VENGEANCE IS MINE really starts cooking.

Let’s give Santiago his due in wanting to make a revenge movie with more meat to it than his usual fare. He isn’t entirely up to it—the stuff he probably considered arty just isn’t relevant to a tight action picture—but he still managed to complete one of his richer pictures. Shot on location with Manila posing as L.A., though a Century 21 sign in the background of one shot leads me to believe someone may have directed some reshoots in California. Film saw theatrical action stateside as DEATH FORCE and later as FIGHTING MAD with ads playing up Jayne Kennedy’s (clothed) layout in Playboy.

Italian Connection

Henry Silva (SHARKY’S MACHINE) and Woody Strode (SPARTACUS) are impressively badass as Mafia hitmen Dave and Frank, respectively, who are sent from the New York office (ludicrously personified by effete Irishman Cyril Cusack) to Milan to rub out a small-time pimp.

The real star, however, is Mario Adorf, who plays said pimp, Luca Canali, as a lovable teddy bear with an estranged wife (HERCULES’ Sylva Koscina) he still loves and a little daughter he adores.

Also after Luca is Milan crime boss Don Vito Tressoldi (THUNDERBALL villain Adolfo Celi), and the hell of it is that Luca has no idea why everyone wants to kill him. He smashes through the city like a barrel-chested bull in a china shop, and Adorf bring enough intensity to the role to almost make you forget that the charismatic Silva and Strode vanish from the movie for a long stretch in the middle.

An excellent chase scene that caps the second act and a pretty good junkyard shootout at the end constitute the bulk of the action. Armando Trovajoli’s pumping score adds much to director Fernando DiLeo’s atmosphere and deft navigation of the crime plot.

THE ITALIAN CONNECTION was probably its best-known title during its original U.S. release by AIP, but it also been seen, particularly on home video, as MANHUNT, MANHUNT IN MILAN, HIT MEN, HIRED TO KILL, BLACK KINGPIN (playing up Strode on the video box), MANHUNT IN THE CITY, and in its original language as LA MALA ORDINA.

More Dead Than Alive

A rare role in a western for Vincent Price, who shot WITCHFINDER GENERAL and THE OBLONG BOX around the same time. CHEYENNE star Clint Walker takes top billing though as the same genial oaf he usually played. This one is Cain, who once was a steely-eyed killer with twelve notches on his Colt .45, but it’s hard to see it in Walker’s soft-spoken performance.

Granted, MORE DEAD THAN ALIVE picks up Cain eighteen years later after a long prison stint. Unable to find a job, he hooks up  as a sideshow attraction with a traveling Wild West show operated by Dan Ruffalo (Price), despite his pledge never to touch a gun again.

After the violent prison break that opens the picture, not much happens for a long time. Cain meanders with Ruffalo’s show for awhile, where he butts heads with jealous young Billy (folk singer Paul Hampton, a little hammy), Ruffalo’s hot-headed former star, and he meets cute with artist Monica (Anne Francis), who invites Cain to give up trick-shooting and raise cattle on her land.

Will you care about any of this? Not likely. Sure, there is novelty in seeing Price do something a bit different, and the M rating allows the actors to get squibbed up for the shootouts. But the script by George Schenck (still producing and writing NCIS episodes!) just isn’t interesting, and the late television director Robert Sparr (with eleven CHEYENNE episodes under his belt) hasn’t enough style to compete with the Italian westerns that were changing the genre.

Add to those deficits the disappointing ending and the awful music composed by Philip Springer, and you get a film that matches its title. Locations include Vasquez Rocks (Sparr can’t hide that two different sets were built there) and Bronson Canyon. The busy Sparr, who directed only two other features, died in a plane crash in 1969.

The Carpenter

Wings Hauser (the murderous pimp Ramrod in 1982’s VICE SQUAD) is perfectly cast as a raving psychopath in the Canadian horror film THE CARPENTER. Playing, what else, a carpenter.

College professor Martin Jarett (Pierre Lenoir) comes home to find his wife Alice (Lynne Adams) cutting up his suits. So he tosses her in the looney bin, eh, and when she gets out, they move into a big fixer-upper in the country. One night, she awakens to find a man (Hauser) hammering-and-sawing away in the basement. He seems nice enough, and she goes back to bed. She sees this carpenter on other nights too—always when they’re alone—and it doesn’t bother her much when he uses his power tools to kill jerks just as nonchalantly as his regular duties.

Ron Lea, a terrible actor, pops by the house as the local sheriff in law enforcement’s worst fitting uniform to deliver exposition about the house’s backstory, and Alice determines that the mysterious carpenter is the ghost of Ed, the house’s former owner who committed mass murder in it. And she and the spirit—if it exists—start to fall in love.

I don’t know—this is a weird movie, but not an entertaining kind of weird. It’s kinda boring, to tell you the truth, and I think part of the problem is that director David Wellington wanted to tell a classy love story about a woman in a loveless marriage who falls for a ghost, and either the money men or the marketplace demanded a slasher movie with gore. So he halfasses the murder scenes so they don’t make much sense.

Marked For Murder (1989)

1989's MARKED FOR MURDER is a terrible direct-to-video thriller that is every bit as sloppy and stupid as you would expect from the director of HOBGOBLINS and six VICE ACADEMY movies. It’s ridiculously cheap-looking—a television news set is literally an ordinary desk and a blue sheet—and the worst car chase ever runs red with obvious continuity errors and an actor, screaming in terror while his runaway car is supposed to be in midair, being filmed with the car on the ground and the road clearly visible in its back window.

Pacing is insanely slow, the actors thoroughly unappealing, and the writing wretchedly amateurish. All blame goes to Rick Sloane, who not only directed the film, but also produced, wrote, and edited it. Somehow he managed to enlist a few name actors to pick up some scratch for a few days work, and even Martin Sheen (APOCALYPSE NOW) dropped by for a bewildering, wordless cameo as a guy reading a newspaper. I hope it’s on his reel.

The star of MARKED FOR MURDER is Renee Estevez, Sheen’s daughter (who played a White House staffer in several WEST WING episodes). She plays Justine, a production assistant at a TV station owned by Emerson (Wings Hauser), who sends her and gofer Corey (Ken Abraham) to recover a videotape from a co-worker’s apartment. The corpse of Kent (Scott Pearson) is later found dead there, and guess who is blamed.

Jim Mitchum (TRACKDOWN) mumbles his part as some kind of cop (the film isn’t really clear), and Ross Hagen (WONDER WOMEN) shows up at the end as a drug dealer. The only fun in this movie is Hauser, who acts totally unhinged and eccentric and is mostly likely ad-libbing many of his scenes that don’t impact the storyline. You may derive some laughter from Hauser’s weirdo performance and Sloane’s ineptness on the set and in the cutting room. I wouldn’t advise finding out.

Prison Girls

If you’re looking to recapture the 1970s grindhouse experience, director Tom DeSimone’s X-rated sex flick PRISON GIRLS is the right place to start. Even if you’re unable to see it in its original 3D (exhibitors claimed it was the first 3D adult feature), it will still send you straight to the nearest shower as the end credits flash to get the grime off of you.

DeSimone’s background was in gay pornography, so maybe he considered a picture about men and women getting it on with each other something of a lurch toward the mainstream. It wasn’t until the late 1980s that he was able to escape the sex field for good, although I’ll leave it to you to determine whether directing bad TV shows like SUPER FORCE and SWAMP THING is considered an upward move.

You know you’re looking at a high-class production when you can hear the rattle of the 16mm camera filming during dialogue sequences. Despite the X rating, PRISON GIRLS is strictly softcore, but it jams so much nudity and groping into the frame that DeSimone is really pushing the limits of what he can get away with (I suspect some performers refused to simulate the sex). The wall-to-wall coupling is neither romantic nor erotic, and the hideous period furnishings display more personality than the performers do. So do DeSimone’s playful nods to the 3D gimmick—watch out for that soap!

The screenplay is credited to Lee Walters, which is probably a pseudonym for DeSimone (who hates this film). After six female inmates get into a wet catfight in the prison shower, they each are given two-day furloughs from the joint, which they use to get into sexual shenanigans. Some of them look like fun, but Maria Arnold’s gangrape by bikers is scored with groovy music, so the audience understands it’s supposed to be fun too. Uncool, Tom. Uschi Digard is the only actress who looks like she’s having a good time, but then the Swedish sex bomb always did, even in the direst of films.

Fear In The Night

Based on Cornell Woolrich’s novel NIGHTMARE, this low-budget noir, released in 1947, is most notable as DeForest Kelley’s first feature, almost twenty years before he joined the STAR TREK cast as Dr. “Bones” McCoy. Maxwell Shane, who wrote and directed FEAR IN THE NIGHT, must have loved the Woolrich story, because he made it again in 1956 as NIGHTMARE with Kevin McCarthy (INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS) in Kelley’s role.

The future U.S.S. Enterprise sawbones plays Vince, a bank teller who has a crazy dream about stabbing a man and stuffing the body in a closet (Shane uses some funky psychedelic visuals unusual to ‘40s thrillers). He freaks out when he wakes up and finds evidence in his room that the events in his dream actually happened. He seeks advice from his sister’s husband, Cliff (Paul Kelly), a policeman, who tells him to forget it. Through some frankly farfetched plotting, Vince begins to believe he really did commit murder and so does Cliff, who tries to find some explanation, if only for the sake of his pregnant wife Lil (Doran).

Not really a good movie, FEAR IN THE NIGHT suffers from not only a ludicrous story, but also a laughably overwrought performance by Kelley, whose Vince is too much of a milquetoast to earn the audience’s sympathy. The role seems beyond the range of Kelley, who went on to earn a nice living as a character actor and western heavy before landing STAR TREK. If you can buy Woolrich’s premise, FEAR IN THE NIGHT may be easier to take, and even though the film is pretty silly, it doesn’t bore, even if the entertainment comes from its campy elements.

Give My Regards to Broad Street

20th Century Fox released this Paul McCartney vanity project in the United States, but it didn’t get much traction, even though the soundtrack spawned a hit single in “No More Lonely Nights.”

Designed as a typical day in Paul’s life, McCartney’s screenplay (his first and only) for 1984's GIVE MY REGARDS TO BROAD STREET follows the singer from recording studio to film studio to rehearsal hall, where he performs Beatles favorites like “Yesterday” and “Good Day Sunshine,” Wings hits like “Silly Love Songs,” recent obscurities like “Ballroom Dancing” and “So Bad,” and new songs “Not Such a Bad Boy” and “No Values.”

The songs are great, though their impact is blunted by McCartney and director Peter Webb’s self-indulgent staging, such as the bizarre disco-punk “Silly Love Songs” in whiteface and a long dream sequence involving “Eleanor Rigby.” As a film, BROAD STREET can best be described as inert. The plot involves the disappearance of the master tapes of Paul’s new album and the takeover of his company unless they’re retrieved by midnight. He doesn’t seem too worried about it though, and the day goes ahead as usual while unseen McCartney forces presumably search London.

As a McCartney fan, I have a soft spot for BROAD STREET while still recognizing it isn’t a very good film. It’s fun to see Paul's Beatle buddy Ringo Starr playing drums on the new tunes (he refused to play on the re-recording of Beatles songs) and the two ex-Beatles hanging out with their wives and friends. It was probably more fun for them than for us, but that’s okay. Sir Ralph Richardson made his last film appearance as a man with a monkey.

Endgame

Busy Eurotrash star Al Cliver (2020 TEXAS GLADIATORS) stars in the 1983 Italian production ENDGAME as Shannon, the champion of a violent game show called Endgame in which he plays prey to three murderous hunters. Yes, it’s like THE RUNNING MAN, complete with a smarmy emcee.

Who’s watching Endgame is a mystery, because the only people we see in this post-apocalyptic world are mutants and survivors hiding in alleys. All the Endgame contestants wear garish face makeup, and are monitored by automatic cameras (that are miraculously not vandalized by the street people).

After Shannon wastes predators Alberto Dell’Acqua (BATTLE OF THE AMAZONS), Bobby Rhodes (DEMONS), and George Eastman (1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS) during the first half-hour, director Joe D’Amato (ATOR THE FIGHTING EAGLE) and his co-writer Aldo Florio get to the real story.

Psychic Lilith (Laura Gemser) and neurosurgeon Levin (Dino Conti) hire Shannon and his team of warriors to lead them and their group of mutants to a safe place two hundred miles outside the city. Obstacles on their journey include an army of blind killer monks, bare-breasted Amazons, monkey men, and a drooling fish-man that rapes Lilith (I figured there was no way softcore icon Gemser was going to make it to the end without going nude).

ENDGAME is pretty impressive for a cheap Italian post-apoc action movie. It doesn’t do anything new or spectacular (well, the mutant makeup is interesting), but it moves quickly, looks more expensive that it probably was, has nice costumes, and features a ton of action sure to keep you from becoming bored. The ending is fairly silly, but, hey, I’ll take it.

Cliver, who looks a little like a young Chuck Norris, is a rather dense hero, blessed with not a lick of charisma, but most of what he does is punch and shoot, and he’s functional at that.

Great TV Episodes: The Deadly Silence

TARZAN
“The Deadly Silence”
October 28 & November 4, 1966
NBC
Writer: Lee Erwin and Jack H. Robinson (Part I); John Considine and Tim Considine (Part II)
Director: Robert L. Friend (Part I); Lawrence Dobkin (Part II)

Sy Weintraub deserves credit for bringing adults back to Tarzan.

Before the Production Code went into effect, Johnny Weissmuller and Maureen O’Sullivan were a Tarzan and Jane that you knew were definitely getting it on when MGM’s cameras were pointed the other way. They steamed up the screen in TARZAN THE APE MAN (1932) and the way-ahead-of-its-time TARZAN AND HIS MATE (1933), films that poured on as much sex and sadism as the studio thought it could get by with.

But as time went by, and MGM sold off the cinema rights to Edgar Rice Burroughs’ stories and characters to RKO, Tarzan became just another matinee hero like Roy Rogers and Flash Gordon, catering to kiddie audiences that enjoyed the buffoonish comic relief of Cheeta the chimp as much as the cheap sets, stock villains, and serial-type action. Always a consistent moneymaker, the Tarzan series even survived the loss of Weissmuller, who jumped to Columbia to make Jungle Jim programmers. Lex Barker took over as the Jungle King in five tepid adventures, and then hotel lifeguard Gordon Scott, a bodybuilder with no acting credits, swung into Barker’s loincloth for a couple more.

Even though Tarzan movies had become more juvenile, some of them were still entertaining, since the character and premise are so strong, it’s difficult to completely mess it up. But the films were becoming repetitive, and it seemed that something needed to be done to get audiences thrilled again about seeing Tarzan on the big screen.

Sy Weintraub had the answer. When he bought the screen rights from Sol Lesser, he seized on the idea of making Tarzan for mature audiences again. The result was 1959’s TARZAN’S GREATEST ADVENTURE, a tough, intelligent action picture for adults pitting a nasty gang of diamond thieves, including Anthony Quayle and a pre-007 Sean Connery, against Tarzan, still played by Scott, who was now allowed to be the silver screen’s first fully articulate Tarzan. No more “Me Tarzan.” Burroughs’ original concept of an Ape Man who was educated in civilization was finally being played on film.

Scott next starred in another terrific adventure, TARZAN THE MAGNIFICENT, before going to Europe to make movies. Legendary stuntman Jock Mahoney, who played Yancy Derringer on television, as well as the main heavy in TARZAN THE MAGNIFICENT, was tagged by Weintraub to play a slightly older and leaner King of the Jungle in two films.

Then television came calling. Weintraub served as executive producer of TARZAN, which premiered on NBC on September 8, 1966 (the same night as STAR TREK). His new leading man was Ron Ely, a lanky Texan who had bounced around television for years, including the co-lead in the shortlived THE AQUANAUTS. Handsome, athletic, and brave enough to tackle most of his own stunts, Ely was a natural Tarzan, and his square-jawed likeability and sense of fair play made him popular with both kids and adults.

Facing tough competition on Friday night against THE WILD WILD WEST on CBS and THE GREEN HORNET on ABC—both fantasy series competing for the same young viewers—TARZAN went to South America in search of natural production values no other network series could equal (except I SPY, which filmed all over the world). Weintraub took Ely and his crew to Brazil, where he could capture jungle terrain, roaring rivers, waterfalls, and animal life that couldn’t be duplicated on a Burbank backlot.

Unfortunately, after five months of production in Brazil, TARZAN could only complete five one-hour episodes, thanks to torrential rains that interrupted filming, crude shooting conditions, and Ely’s penchant to get hurt on the job while doing stunts (he performed one episode wearing a sling after he fell several feet from a swinging vine—footage captured on-camera and used in the episode).

TARZAN relocated to Mexico with Leon Benson (SEA HUNT) replacing Jon Epstein (THE RAT PATROL) and Don Brinkley (MEDICAL CENTER) as producer. Not only did Mexico offer similar terrain as Brazil, but the move also allowed TARZAN to film interiors at Churubusco Studios to help speed production along. Benson produced only five episodes there, but one happened to be a two-parter that also provided Ely with perhaps his finest hour(s) as Tarzan.

Aired early in TARZAN’s first season, “The Deadly Silence” benefits mightily from a terrific guest cast, particularly none other than Jock Mahoney, who had already appeared in one of the Brazil episodes, as one of the jungle king’s most intimidating and sadistic rivals. Lee Erwin (FLIPPER) and Jack H. Robinson (HOGAN’S HEROES) wrote Part I, which plops Mahoney’s The Colonel into an African village that he holds in sway with his bullwhip and total lack of morality. The Colonel and his two men storm into villages and demand all their grain and cattle. Communities that don’t pay up are burned to the ground. By the time Tarzan catches up to the Colonel, he is holding hostage a village led by Metusa (Robert DoQui, later in NASHVILLE, COFFY, and ROBOCOP), who fears the Colonel will do to his people what he has already done to Metusa’s father and brother. Despite pleas from his wife Ruana (Nichelle Nichols, who filmed this before joining the cast of STAR TREK as Lieutenant Uhura) and from Tarzan, Metusa refuses to fight back against the Colonel.

Even though the Colonel is only one man, Mahoney’s performance sells the idea that an entire tribe would be hesitant to rise up against him. A veteran of two wars who claims to know “a thousand ways to kill a man,” including a two-finger jab that supposedly brought down a sumo wrestler, the Colonel is a sadist and a sociopath, played by Mahoney without a hint of camp. Dressed in a blue suit with a red shirt collar that makes him stand out among the browns and the greens of Mexico, Mahoney was one of the few actors doing television at the time who could conceivably be a physical match for Ron Ely, who never appeared wearing anything more than a tiny loincloth.

Tarzan does manage to capture the Colonel after a fracas decently directed by Robert L. Friend (RAWHIDE), but victory is shortlived after the killer escapes on his way to jail with the aid of Sgt. Marshak, who served under the Colonel in wartime and remains loyal to him. Marshak is another casting coup: the great Woody Strode, who had not only guest-starred in a previous TARZAN episode, but played a memorable villain opposite Mahoney in the fun TARZAN’S THREE CHALLENGES. So Weintraub and Benson not only assembled two great guest stars in Strode and Mahoney, but also men with ties to the Tarzan franchise.

Part I ends on an anxious cliffhanger with Tarzan left deaf after being bombarded while underwater by grenades tossed by the Colonel and Marshak. The scene where Tarzan desperately claps his hands together and is unable to hear the sound is played by Ely with the perfect level of panic and fear—two emotions we aren’t accustomed to seeing in our jungle king, not to mention the lead in a 1960s action/adventure TV show. Some scenes are sloppily directed by Friend—for instance, the noticeably wobbly rubber spear tips and explosions that blow several inches away from where the grenades are tossed—but he and Ely nail this one.

It’s unusual for each half of a two-parter to carry different writer and director credits, but Lawrence Dobkin (STAR TREK’s “Charlie X”), a busy actor as well as director, sat in Friend’s chair for “The Deadly Silence, Part II.” Interestingly, the teleplay is credited to brothers John and Tim Considine, both better known as actors who had previously penned a script for COMBAT! and two for MY THREE SONS, on which younger brother Tim was starring as Fred MacMurray’s oldest son Mike Douglas.

Part II is basically a riff on THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME with the Colonel, Marshak, and a second confederate named Chico (Gregory Acosta) chasing a hearing-impaired Tarzan through the jungle. Sparks fly among them after Chico is killed in quicksand and the Colonel orders a hesitant Marshak to leave behind Jai (Manuel Padilla Jr.), Tarzan’s young friend who is wounded by a ricocheting bullet. Marshak, who has followed the Colonel unblinkingly through one war and who-knows-how-many killings, feels a tinge of conscience about leaving an unconscious Jai to be eaten by animals, but reluctantly acquiesces to the Colonel’s commands.

Dobkin was a good choice to handle an episode that’s mostly action, and he really earned his stripes with a knockdown dragout fight between Mahoney and Strode, two of the most physical actors ever to work in Hollywood. Comfortable with one another from their on-screen skirmishes in TARZAN’S THREE CHALLENGES, the two men really go at it, though it is something of a disappointment that Tarzan isn’t allowed to finish off the villain himself.

More than three years later, audiences got the chance to pay admission to see the episode again when National General Pictures released TARZAN’S DEADLY SILENCE to theaters with a G rating—a not-uncommon practice of the day. DEADLY SILENCE was one of four Tarzan “features” to star Ely, although I believe only DEADLY SILENCE and TARZAN’S JUNGLE REBELLION (comprised of the two-part episode “The Blue Stone of Heaven”) played in American theaters.

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Cutting Class

Despite a genre-friendly cast that includes Martin Mull (SERIAL), Roddy McDowall (PLANET OF THE APES), and Jill Schoelen (POPCORN), the real draw of 1989's CUTTING CLASS is 25-year-old Brad Pitt, getting third billing behind Schoelen and rock-star-son Donovan Leitch two years before his breakout role in THELMA AND LOUISE.

As arrogant basketball star Dwight, Pitt is one of many suspects in the serial killings taking place around the local high school. He’s also one-third of the film’s central love triangle involving his girlfriend, nice cheerleader Paula (Schoelen, adorable as always), and his former friend Brian (Leitch), just released from a mental hospital after he was accused of killing his father.

Rospo Pallenberg, a former colleague of John Boorman (EXCALIBUR) directing his one and only film, and writer Steve Slavkin, who went on to pen a lot of kiddie television, have a tough time finding a consistent tone. CUTTING CLASS isn’t a spoof or a parody, but it’s littered with a lot of silly comedy that meshes horribly with the scary stuff. For instance, Mull, playing Schoelen’s father, the local district attorney, is shot with an arrow early in the film and spends the rest of the running time comically stumbling around the swamp looking for help.

McDowall is very amusing as the school’s pervy principal, seen at one point sneaking around backstage trying on flowery theatrical costumes, but, again, it’s a performance that belongs in a different film. Slasher films were well out of vogue by the time CUTTING CLASS was released, and Republic bypassed a theatrical release for VHS. It’s a rather bloodless film with a couple of ingenious kills and one excellent sense of suspense in Schoelen’s bathroom. Also with Brenda Lynn Klemme, Mark Barnet, Robert Glaudini (red herring), Nancy Fish, Norman Alden, Eric Boles, and BROOKLYN NINE-NINE's Dirk Blocker (hilarious on a trampoline).

Carrie (1976)

Director Brian DePalma (PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE) and writer Lawrence Cohen (GHOST STORY) adapted Stephen King’s first novel for the big screen. It was a smash hit that garnered rave reviews and earned two Academy Award nominations.

Sissy Spacek (COAL MINER'S DAUGHTER) is moving as high school wallflower Carrie White—a stirring performance that imbues the scares with sympathy. Abused at home by her religious-fanatic mother (Piper Laurie, who hadn’t acted in a feature since THE HUSTLER in 1961) and at school by her cruel classmates (notably Nancy Allen’s bitchy Chris Hargensen), Carrie finally cracks under the strain and uses telekinetic powers at the senior prom to enact bloody revenge.

One of DePalma’s most sensitive films—gory special effects aside—CARRIE is a horror classic from the traumatic event during the opening credits that drives Carrie to tears clear through to its startling final shock that wasn’t yet the genre cliché it would become. Both Spacek and Laurie were nominated for Oscars.

DePalma also coaxed good performances from Allen (who became DePalma’s wife), John Travolta (then on WELCOME BACK, KOTTER), and the curly-locked William Katt (THE GREATEST AMERICAN HERO) as Carrie’s All-American prom date. Also with P.J. Soles (HALLOWEEN), the sensitive Betty Buckley (later the stepmom on EIGHT IS ENOUGH), Edie McClurg, Stefan Gierasch, Michael Talbott, Priscilla Pointer, and Sydney Lassick. Wonderful score by Pino Donaggio, the first of his seven collaborations with DePalma.

Dr. Giggles

Larry Drake, then known for winning two Emmys as intellectually disabled Benny on L.A. LAW and playing supervillain Durant in DARKMAN, finally starred in his own feature, 1992's DR. GIGGLES, a slasher film influenced by the silly NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET sequels. There’s little doubt director Manny Coto (24) and Universal intended Drake to star in a series of Dr. Giggles horrors, but the box office for this one just wasn’t there.

Drake plays the eponymous killer, who escapes from an insane asylum (how, we don’t know, and I guess Coto believed we wouldn’t care) and returns to his hometown to wreak vengeance upon the people he blames for his physician father’s death.

Everything in the screenplay by Coto and Graeme Whifler (SONNY BOY) is way over the top, including the telegraphed Kruegeresque one-liners that punctuate all the bad doctor’s kills. Drake’s performance is pitched as far as it can go without teetering over to the other side, and Coto Dutches the camera in a frenzy to accentuate Giggles’ madness (a shot looking out at Giggles from inside his victim’s throat is absurd).

Is the movie funny or scary? Eh, not really. The jokes are corny and obvious, and the horror is based on every cliché you can think of. The doc’s first victims are a black couple and a couple preparing to have sex, and since none of them have anything to do with the people who killed his father, the killer’s rampage lacks a point. Holly Marie Combs, later on PICKET FENCES, CHARMED, and PRETTY LITTLE LIARS, is fine as the teenage Final Girl.

Lovelace

26-year-old Amanda Seyfried (LES MISERABLES) plays the iconic Linda Lovelace, the DEEP THROAT star who became the first adult-movie actress to achieve household-name status. Any hope that LOVELACE would be more than a standard biopic flew out the window the minute the overplayed “Spirit in the Sky” popped onto the soundtrack.

Co-directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman (THE CELLULOID CLOSET) follow the dotted line without coloring outside of it, accompanying Linda on a superficial journey from life with her martinet parents in Florida to a quickie marriage to strip-club owner Chuck Traynor (Peter Sarsgaard) to a starring role in director Gerard Damiano’s (Hank Azaria) groundbreaking porno.

None of it has any flavor, and no attempt is made to understand how Linda ended up the most celebrated porn star of the 1970s. Hell, she didn’t even know how to perform fellatio, and ten minutes after Traynor teaches her to breathe while blowing, she’s in New York City auditioning for Damiano and producer Butch Peraino (Bobby Cannavale). What made her decide on such a radical career move? Dunno. LOVELACE doesn’t say, nor does it pry too heavily into her marriage to Traynor beyond his cartoonish spiral into drugs and spousal abuse.

Have fun spotting the silly celebrity cameos: Chris Noth (THE GOOD WIFE) as DEEP THROAT’s deep pockets, Adam Brody (THE O.C.) playing Harry Reems as a himbo, Chloe Sevigny for two seconds, Wes Bentley, Lisa Gay Hamilton (THE PRACTICE), Debi Mazar, Eric Roberts, and a miscast James Franco as Hugh Hefner. Stone and Patrick actually give wonderfully understated performances as Linda’s folks, and they made me wonder whether this story told from their point of view would be more interesting. Lovelace’s drug addiction and LINDA LOVELACE FOR PRESIDENT go unmentioned.

The Americans, "The Guerrillas"

THE AMERICANS
“The Guerrillas”
March 20, 1961
Starring Darryl Hickman and Dick Davalos
Guest starring Robert Culp, Berry Kroeger, Sonya Wilde, Strother Martin, Norman Alden, Cyril Delevanti, Gertrude Flynn, Pauline Myers, Peggy Stewart, George Kennedy, James Seay, Ken Mayer, Patrick Waltz, Terry Ann Ross, Paul Lambert
Music by Van Alexander
Produced by Frank Telford
Written by Andy Lewis
Directed by John Florea

One of the most unusual television westerns was set during the Civil War. THE AMERICANS starred former child star Darryl Hickman (THE GRAPES OF WRATH) and Dick Davalos (EAST OF EDEN) as brothers from Harpers Ferry who fought on opposite sides. Like MAVERICK, most episodes featured either one brother or the other, and rarely did Hickman and Davalos appear together.

“The Guerrillas” features Davalos as Jeff Canfield, the brother who joined the Virginia Militia, but the best part in the script by Andy Lewis (KLUTE) goes to the great Robert Culp (I SPY). It wasn’t unusual for dramas during this era to act as disguised anthologies, crafting stories around colorful guest actors and leaving room for the stars to just drop in.

Culp plays Finletter, a sensitive sort who joins up with a band of deserters, creeps, and thieves from both sides of the Conflict that use the war as cover for their criminal mischief. He doesn’t seem into it, though; one of the guerrillas calls him a “right peculiar fella.” He got tired of killing for the Union and deserted, joining up with the guerrillas a few days later.

Led by the stuttering Keezer (Berry Kroeger), the cutthroats lay siege to the town where Jeff’s grandfather (Cyril Delevanti) lives, burning homes and hassling the womenfolk. Jeff, on leave from the Confederate Army, doesn’t meet up with them until the end of the second act. Indeed, Lewis and director John Florea are more interested in the bad guys and their internal politics. Paine (Norman Alden) tries to organize an overthrow of Keezer’s leadership, but when it fails, he frames Finletter.

In addition to the actors already mentioned, “The Guerrillas” is of interest because of supporting roles taken by Strother Martin and George Kennedy, whose Internet Movie Database profile neglects his part as a friendly deaf-mute who helps Jeff rescue the town from Keezer’s men. A friendship of sorts begins to develop between Jeff and Finletter, who call each other “Yankee” and “Reb,” as they band together, but one feels that it isn’t destined to be a long relationship.

THE AMERICANS premiered on Monday night in RIVERBOAT’s old timeslot against ABC’s CHEYENNE and CBS’ combo of TO TELL THE TRUTH and PETE AND GLADYS. The ratings weren’t there for either brother, and NBC cancelled the series after seventeen episodes.

Death Follows A Psycho

It used to be common for television studios to squeeze extra revenue out of their failed series by cutting together two disparate episodes and selling the new “movie” into syndication. Usually, the only overhead was a new title sequence, some clumsy inserts and voiceover to tie the episodes together, and an editor (who was probably already on salary) to do the splicing.

And that’s why the obscure DEATH FOLLOWS A PSYCHO doesn’t appear in film reference guides or the Internet Movie Database.

Just nine months after BONANZA aired its 430th and final episode, Lorne Greene returned to series television as the star of GRIFF, in which he played Wade Griffin, a veteran Los Angeles policeman who quit the force after thirty years to become a private eye. Ben Murphy, whose ALIAS SMITH AND JONES ended the same week as BONANZA, joined GRIFF as Griff’s partner and legman, young Mike Murdock.

At least one of DEATH FOLLOWS A PSYCHO’s creators was displeased with the film’s cobbled nature, as the writing is credited to Peter S. Fischer, Steven Bochco (who produced GRIFF), and Victor Laszlo—an obvious pseudonym, it being the name of Paul Henreid’s character in CASABLANCA. True to the “genre,” DEATH FOLLOWS A PSYCHO (great title, by the way) is typical 1970s cop-show fare interrupted by bonzo narration and editing that fails to disguise the fact that the stories don’t have anything to do with one another.

In “Elephant in a Cage,” Griff tries to clear an old friend, an honest but hot-headed cop named Aaron Steiner (Harold J. Stone), who is accused to murdering a crooked restaurant owner (Jack Donner). Usually these movies just bump one episode up against the other—one story ends, the next one begins—but the editor here got clever and wove the two plots together. So while Griff is working the Steiner case, he also goes up against a “Countdown to Terror,” in which terminally ill Aldo Karabian (Ricardo Montalban, great as usual) takes hostages in a bank vault and demands that Griff and Murdock bring him the man who killed his son six years earlier.

Vic Tayback (ALICE) co-stars as Captain Barney Marcus, Griff’s police contact, and Patricia Stich is Griff’s secretary Grace. GRIFF got killed on Saturday nights opposite THE CAROL BURNETT SHOW and was cancelled after twelve episodes. Murphy moved on to GEMINI MAN, and Greene soon returned to weekly TV on BATTLESTAR GALACTICA.

Jack Reacher

Paramount released this adaptation of a Lee Child novel to underwhelming box office, probably because of its dull title (what the hell is a Jack Reacher?) and the miscasting of diminutive Tom Cruise as the title character, described by Child as close to six-and-a-half feet tall and a total badass with his fists or pretty much any weaponry.

Despite Cruise being unbelievable as a man who can kill with one punch, JACK REACHER is quite a good mystery, directed by Christopher McQuarrie (THE WAY OF THE GUN) in a lean, tough manner.

Reacher is a nomad, a former military policeman who lives off the grid with his only possessions literally the clothes he’s wearing. An ex-Army sniper named James Barr (Joseph Sikora) is accused of shooting five random victims from a parking garage near Pittsburgh’s PNC Park, and the district attorney (THE VISITOR's Richard Jenkins) and the detective (David Oyelowo) investigating the case are convinced it’s a slamdunk. So is the idealistic attorney defending Barr, Helen Rodin (Rosamund Pike), the D.A.’s daughter, until Reacher starts poking his nose into the case and discovers a conspiracy involving an elderly Russian supercriminal called The Zec (FITZCARRALDO director Werner Herzog).

As the screenwriter, McQuarrie (an Oscar winner for THE USUAL SUSPECTS) does a good job adapting Child’s ONE SHOT (such a better title), except for a few unnecessary scenes that bloat the running time to 130 minutes (Helen visiting one shooting victim’s family adds nothing to the drama, for instance). Mostly eschewing CGI and fancy editing trickery to cover for directorial shortcomings, as most contemporary directors do, McQuarrie shoots the action head-on with Cruise and the other actors up to the physical challenge. A mid-film car chase hits the spot, and Reacher’s final assault on The Zec’s base during a rainstorm is as thrilling as it is old-fashioned.

Aspen

NBC gave six hours of prime time to this glossy adaptation of two soapy bestsellers: Burt Hirschfeld’s ASPEN and THE ADVERSARY by Bart Spicer. Producers Roy Huggins (MAVERICK) and Jo Swerling Jr. (THE ROCKFORD FILES) and writer/director Douglas Heyes (TWILIGHT ZONE) had collaborated on THE CAPTAINS AND THE KINGS, a critical and popular NBC series one year earlier.

The sprawling plot is spread over three decades, but nobody makes any attempt to make any scene look or sound like any other year than 1977 (unless “turkey” was a popular insult in 1965). Heyes’ teleplay centers around the messy murder trial of Lee Bishop (Perry King, later the star of RIPTIDE), a reckless tennis pro accused of raping, killing, and mutilating a promiscuous 15-year-old girl (Debi Richter). To add meat to the dish, Heyes interlaces a second story involving millionaire land developer Carl Osborne’s (BURKE'S LAW's Gene Barry) plan to buy out the local ranchers and build a massive ski resort.

Told in flashback (and flashback within flashback) form by Bishop’s attorney, ambitious cowboy Tom Keating (the excellent Sam Elliott, who was in the miniseries ONCE AN EAGLE the year before), ASPEN introduces a colorful slate of characters: sexy, irresponsible Gloria Osborne (Michelle Phillips), Carl’s daughter and the woman whom Bishop came to Aspen to marry; Max Kendrick (Roger Davis), Keating’s best friend and the son of the wealthy Miles Kendrick (William Prince), the judge at Bishop’s trial; Kit (Jessica Harper), with whom both Max and Tom are in love; Alex Budde (Tony Franciosa), local business owner with Mob ties; the dangerous Budd Townsend (Bo Hopkins), Lee’s old Army buddy; sheriff Sam Dinehart (Lee de Broux); and prosecuting attorney Abe Singer (George DiCenzo, previously prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi in HELTER SKELTER).

Dripping with empty calories and produced on a shoestring (most of Aspen is represented by Hollywood soundstages), ASPEN is undeniably entertaining. Elliott is great as a principled, centered young attorney who butts heads with the good ol’ boy network of lawyers and judges more concerned with protecting their backdoor deals than applying justice. At least, Keating starts out that way, and his growth over the eight years of the main storyline is an unheralded highlight of Elliott's career. Originally aired November 5¬-7, 1977, the miniseries was retitled THE INNOCENT AND THE DAMNED when NBC reran it in 1979.

Destination Inner Space

Low-budget monster movie is basically an underwater riff on IT! THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE. Scott Brady, who looks uncomfortable in a wet suit, leads the cast as Wayne, a Naval commander who is summoned to an undersea base to investigate a mysterious craft. He takes crew members Hugh (Mike Road, whose voice is immediately recognizable from Hanna-Barbera cartoons like JONNY QUEST) and Sandra (the gorgeous Wende Wagner, a regular on THE GREEN HORNET) over to investigate the spaceship, where they find some small cylinders about the size of scuba tanks.

Of course the dingbats bring one back to the sealab, of course it breaks open, and of course a man-sized amphibian that walks on two legs bursts out of it. From then on, Wayne and the others, who also include Dr. Peron (Sheree North) and Dr. LaSatier (Gary Merrill), run around sealing off compartments and scrounging for spear guns to protect themselves from the murderous monster.

Considering the participation of normally staid director Francis D. Lyon (CASTLE OF EVIL, also with Brady) and writer Arthur C. Pierce, who penned such bad sci-fi as WOMEN OF THE PREHISTORIC PLANET and CYBORG 2087, DESTINATION INNER SPACE is better than I expected. Granted, it looks cheap (the miniatures of the sealab and the spacecraft aren’t fooling anybody), and the opening reels really drag.

However, Pierce makes an effort to give the main characters some sort of characterization for the actors to play. Nothing original or groundbreaking—for instance, Wayne and Hugh have an adversarial backstory involving an earlier mission that they work out—but at least the film attempts to make them people.

Lyon isn’t shy about showing the monster—no atmospheric shadows or quick cuts to hint at its menace—and while it looks exactly like what it is—a man in a rubber suit—it’s imaginatively designed with a bit of a hunchback and a large orange head-to-butt fin (this is to hide the stuntman’s air tanks in the underwater scenes). Paul Dunlap (SHOCK CORRIDOR) composed the score, and a young James Hong runs around as a Chinese cook.

The Time Travelers

Ib Melchior, a science fiction author and screenwriter (his SPACE FAMILY ROBINSON concept became a Gold Key comic book and the basis for LOST IN SPACE, not that Irwin Allen ever acknowledged it), wrote and directed THE TIME TRAVELERS using more ambition than bucks, thanks to the clever special effects work of co-writer David L. Hewitt. It seems possible that Allen may have cribbed this idea too for his TIME TUNNEL TV series.

The acting is stilted, the sets cheap and unconvincing, Richard LaSalle’s score obnoxious, and Hewitt and Melchior’s screenplay clunky and badly paced. No, THE TIME TRAVELERS isn’t a good movie, but it’s loaded with low-budget charm and clever ideas. Hewitt created many of the special effects “in camera” without opticals. By using ordinary stage magic, he achieves an amazing shot of an actor playing an android walking into the shot, laying on a table, and having his head removed and reattached by technicians before standing up and walking away. The shot serves no purpose except to show off, but it’s fun.

On an unnamed college campus, four scientists—stern older Dr. von Steiner (a soporific Preston Foster), who wears a monocle so we’ll remember he’s German; hot-headed Dr. Connors (Philip Carey); blonde Carol (the appealing Merry Anders); and youthful comic relief Danny (Steve Franken), who annoyingly exclaims “Holy McKee!” to express astonishment—accidentally open a time portal to the not-too-distant future—the year 2071, to be exact.

Stumbling through, the party is shocked to discover the Earth is a burnt-out wasteland—the result of a nuclear holocaust. Unable to return to 1964 while chased by mutants (played by various Los Angeles Lakers), the scientists are rescued by Gadra (Joan Woodbury) and a gaggle of faceless androids, who take them to their leader Varno (John Hoyt). Varno explains that the Earth is becoming completely uninhabitable and shows off his spaceship, which will take the remaining humans to a new colony on Alpha Centauri IV.

One of Melchior’s most ingenious ideas is THE TIME TRAVELERS’ downbeat twist ending, which was innovative in 1964—so much so that Hewitt copied it in his uncredited 1967 remake JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF TIME. Overall, despite the rough patches mainly caused by not enough money to spend (I guess Preston Foster came cheaply), Melchior does a nice job getting his imaginative vision on the screen. It helps that he had two terrific young cameramen helping—Vilmos Zsigmond (CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND) and Laszlo Kovacs (GHOSTBUSTERS)—who enliven the dully dressed cave sets with bright colors.

Forbidden Noir, Volume 9

Hammer and Robert Lippert joined forces on 1952's SCOTLAND YARD INSPECTOR, a British crime drama produced by Anthony Hinds and cast by Michael Carreras (he can also be seen as an extra). It has hardly anything to do with a Scotland Yard inspector, though one does appear (played by stuffy Campbell Singer).

Cesar Romero (best known as BATMAN’s Joker) stars as dashing American journalist Phil O’Dell, whose plane is grounded by fog and is killing time inventing crazy drinks at an empty saloon for the bartender’s entertainment. Ending his boredom is Heather McMara (Bernadette O’Farrell), whose brother was just killed in a nearby hit-and-run. She has no evidence to back it up, but she believes Danny was deliberately murdered and enlists Phil to investigate. A clue is discovered on a wire recording that Phil accidentally erases (“Why don’t they perfect these things?!”).

Director Sam Newfield shoots most of it on small soundstages with two walls and not much furniture, which makes viewing a tad claustrophobic. Writer Orville H. Hampton adapts a BBC radio serial by Lester Powell called LADY IN THE FOG (a much better title), and Romero, who had just wrapped THE JUNGLE in India for director William Berke (THE MUGGER), breezes through it with his usual charm. Most of the comic relief is heavyhanded and unfunny, but everything Cesar does is spot on. You should recognize second-billed Lois Maxwell as 007’s Moneypenny. You won’t recognize a before-he-was-famous Richard Johnson (KHARTOUM) as Danny, because of all the fog and shadows.

Hugh Beaumont, later to become one of America’s favorite dads on LEAVE IT TO BEAVER, starred in three films as San Francisco troubleshooter Denny O’Brien. All three were directed in 1951 by William Berke, a veteran of Jungle Jim quickies, and each consisted of two separate half-hour plots cut together to form a one-hour feature—as if they were intended as six episodes of a half-hour Denny O’Brien TV series.

In PIER 23, O'Brien works from his boat shop base on San Francisco’s titular pier, where he also lives with the loquacious Professor Shicker (Edward Brophy). He investigates the murder of a man posing as an escaped cop killer and the death of a pro wrestler killed in the ring. The screenplay with ridiculously simile-stuffed O’Brien narration is based on radio scripts from PAT NOVAK FOR HIRE or, more likely, JOHNNY MODERO, PIER 23. Why the writers changed the main character’s name is a mystery and a more involving one than the two presented here.

Beaumont is solid enough, and PIER 23’s supporting cast is of interest: DETOUR’s Ann Savage, Richard Travis (THE MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER) as O’Brien’s rival on the force, Margia Dean (THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT), big Mike Mazurki (MURDER, MY SWEET), and voomy Joi Lansing in sexy cocktail waitress duds. DANGER ZONE and ROARING CITY were Beaumont’s other two Dennis O’Brien films for Lippert Films.

Tom Neal (DETOUR) and Allen Jenkins (SH! THE OCTOPUS) starred in two 1947 quickies as private detectives named Russ Ashton and Harvard, respectively. One was THE HAT BOX MYSTERY. This one is THE CASE OF THE BABY SITTER, and it’s played as much for comedy as for thrills. Carl Hittleman and Andy Lamb’s plot is rather busy for a film that runs a mere 39 minutes!

Jewel thieves posing as a Duke and Duchess hire Russ’ detective agency to watch their baby (Joseph de la Cruz, who gets his own special credit, despite the fact that he’s, well, a baby). The fake royals doublecrossed the gang they pulled the La Paz Diamond heist with, and those mugs are hot after the shiny stone too. A fake La Paz gets switched for the real one, and Harvard spills milk on his borrowed suit. The writers and director Lambert Hillyer (the 1943 BATMAN serial) get confused and have characters call Harvard by two different last names: Quinlan and Herkimer.

I imagine Hillyer made this picture in a big hurry, probably back-to-back with THE HAT BOX MYSTERY. For what it is, it’s okay, I guess, but it’s not easy to create a good mystery in less than forty minutes. Neal gets top billing, but really doesn’t do a whole lot, as Jenkins does much of the sleuthing and most of the comedy. Pamela Blake as Russ’ girlfriend and secretary gets second billing and does almost nothing.

Bosch, "Pilot"

BOSCH
“Pilot”
February 6, 2014
Starring Titus Welliver, Jamie Hector, Lance Reddick, Amy Aquino, Amy Price-Francis, Annie Wersching, Scott Wilson
Music: Jesse Voccia
Producer: Tara Duncan
Teleplay: Michael Connelly & Eric Overmyer
Director: Jim McKay

One of ten pilots for original series created by Amazon for 2014—five dramas and five comedies—BOSCH is based on the successful series of detective novels written by Michael Connelly, who served as an executive producer and wrote the script with Eric Overmyer (TREME). Playing the title role of Los Angeles police detective Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch is Titus Welliver, a good actor who has bounced around television since the early 1990s in series like NYPD BLUE, MURDER ONE, BIG APPLE, DEADWOOD, LOST, SONS OF ANARCHY, and more recently as corrupt Cook County State’s Attorney Glenn Childs on THE GOOD WIFE.

Welliver doesn’t look like Connelly’s Harry Bosch—nobody does (though I’ve always pictured him as resembling schlock film producer Harry Novak)—and he doesn’t precisely act like him, which may be to the show’s advantage. In the seventeen Bosch novels to date (as well as appearances in short stories and other Connelly novels), Harry is, quite frankly, a pain in the ass to everyone around him. Short on patience and even shorter with people he deems lazy or incompetent, even his partners and especially his one-time boss, martinet Chief Irvin Irving, Bosch is a loner (though he seems to do surprisingly okay in the ladyfriend department).

Despite the changes from book to screen—Irving is now black and well-cast with FRINGE’s Lance Riddick, and Jamie Hector’s character of Bosch’s partner Jerry Edgar is a more competent detective—everything works extremely well. Welliver, an intense, internalized actor, nails Bosch’s singlemindedness, his bullish humor, and his passion for victims of violence. BOSCH’s plot is based on Connelly’s 2002 novel CITY OF BONES, in which Bosch plunges headlong into the case of a child murdered two decades earlier. Discovery that the child was daily brutalized and beaten brings up memories of Bosch’s own abusive childhood.

While Bosch digs into the case, against orders from his superiors (of course), he’s also dealing with a civil suit brought against him by the widow of a suspected serial killer he shot to death two years earlier. The department declared it a “clean shoot,” but there’s no denying there are many boys in blue, primarily Internal Affairs and probably Irving, who would like to see Bosch nailed and ruined.

But that’s Harry Bosch—his life wouldn’t be normal unless he was smack in the middle of a shitstorm, even if he has to brew one up himself. Excellently directed by LAW & ORDER alum Jim McKay in Los Angeles (no Harry Bosch production could be accurately filmed anywhere else) in thirteen days, BOSCH is a remarkably strong crime drama with an absorbing mystery and a strong star turn by Welliver.

Probe

Leslie Stevens, the creator of THE OUTER LIMITS, was the creator, producer, and writer of this feature-length pilot for SEARCH, an adventure series with science fiction overtones. Hugh O’Brian, once the star of THE LIFE AND LEGEND OF WYATT EARP, plays Hugh Lockwood, an operative of a high-tech spy/detective agency that uses futuristic gadgetry to aid its agents in the field.

A team of technicians led by Cameron (Burgess Meredith) works with computers and monitors to guide Lockwood through his mission. He wears an implant behind his left ear to hear Cameron’s relayed instructions, carries a miniaturized and magnetized television camera on his ring or pendant (it also serves as a lie detector), and relays non-verbal information back to Probe Central by clicking a special filling in his tooth.

While Stevens had the germ of a good idea here, saddling the hero with a permanent babysitter that can feed him pertinent info at any given time takes some of the danger out of his mission. It also makes Lockwood seem more like a good-looking puppet rather than a smart, independent adventurer who can think for himself. Whenever he does make a decision, he’s usually overruled by Cameron. In the pilot, Cameron even sticks Lockwood with a sidekick played by, of all people, Sir John Gielgud in a rare American television appearance.

Directed by journeyman Russ Mayberry (THE REBELS), Stevens’ plot sends Lockwood to Austria to track down nine diamonds that were stolen during World War II by a Nazi war criminal and never recovered. Along with diamond expert Harold Streeter (Gielgud), who can identify the gems, Lockwood starts his investigation with the Nazi’s widow (Lilia Skala) and daughter (Elke Sommer). Albert Popwell (DIRTY HARRY), A Martinez (SANTA BARBARA), and Angel Tompkins (THE TEACHER) play some of the young technicians spinning dials and pushing buttons back at Probe Central.

PROBE’s ratings were good enough for NBC to buy Stevens’ series. SEARCH could be accurately described as MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE meets THE NAME OF THE GAME, and like the later series, it features a trio of rotating leads. O’Brian’s Lockwood appeared in approximately every third episode with Doug McClure (THE VIRGINIAN) as C.R. Grover and Tony Franciosa (THE NAME OF THE GAME) as Nick Bianco taking up the slack. Scheduled against CBS powerhouse CANNON and saddled with grumbling stars Franciosa and O’Brian, SEARCH netted terrible ratings and was cancelled after one season.

Quinn Martin's Tales Of The Unexpected, "The Force Of Evil"

QUINN MARTIN'S TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
"The Force of Evil"
March 13, 1977
Starring Lloyd Bridges, Pat Crowley, Eve Plumb, William Watson, John Anderson, Cindy Eilbacher, William Kirby Cullen
Theme: David Shire
Executive Producer: Quinn Martin
Produced by William Robert Yates
Written by Robert Malcolm Young
Directed by Richard Lang

By 1977, television producer Quinn Martin had amassed enough hits (THE UNTOUCHABLES, THE FUGITIVE, BARNABY JONES, THE STREETS OF SAN FRANCISCO, THE FBI…) to get his name above the title, and so QUINN MARTIN’S TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED premiered on NBC that February. The hour-long horror/suspense anthology was cancelled after just six episodes, despite notable guest-star turns by Roy Thinnes, Rick Nelson, David Birney, and Ronny Cox. The last episode aired before NBC dropped the axe (the network burned off two more during the summer) was a special two-hour suspenser penned by Robert Malcolm Young, who had penned many Quinn Martin shows, as well as three segments of ROD SERLING’S NIGHT GALLERY.

Directed by Richard Lang (HARRY O), “The Force of Evil” is, quite frankly, a blatant ripoff of CAPE FEAR with William Watson a suitably nasty substitute for Robert Mitchum. Paroled after serving seven years for rape and murder, Teddy Jakes (Watson) begins stalking and terrorizing the family of Yale Carrington (Lloyd Bridges), a successful surgeon he blames for his incarceration. Jakes blows up the family barn, runs down Yale’s daughter’s friend (Cindy Eilbacher) with a motorboat, makes suggestive remarks to Yale’s wife Maggie (Pat Crowley). Yale’s brother, the local sheriff (John Anderson), can’t touch him, and Yale’s offer of $25,000 to lay off is ignored.

The material is derivative, but Martin and producer William Robert Yates jazz it up with first-rate production values, shooting almost entirely on location and assembling a strong cast. It can be tough to find an opponent who can realistically threaten the macho Bridges (SEA HUNT), and Watson is up to the task. Instead of scowling and acting menacing, Watson makes the more interesting decision to play Jakes as happy-go-lucky, grinning and laughing even while getting socked in the jaw. Laying on the charm makes Jakes an even scarier force.

TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED normally aired on Wednesdays (where it was hammered in the ratings by CHARLIE’S ANGELS), but “The Force of Evil” landed a special Sunday timeslot. It was NBC’s idea to have Martin produce the series and put his name above the title. He was also originally supposed to introduce the episodes, but CANNON star William Conrad ended up narrating them. David Shire composed the driving theme.