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Tag: '70s Movies Page 1 of 2

Teen Runaways Fall Prey to a Pimp in Little Ladies of the Night

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On July 6, 2023

In TV Movies

Linda Purl in Little Ladies of the Night.

Paul Schrader, the Taxi Driver scribe who later wrote and directed Hardcore, wasn’t the only 1970s auteur preoccupied with sexually exploited minors. “Jiggle TV” mega-producer Aaron Spelling threw his feathered fedora into the ring with Little Ladies of the Night in 1977, scoring a ratings blockbuster for ABC with a tonally confused production that regards teenage prostitution—and all the physical and sexual violence it entails—as a gig worse than the average fast food shift but better than Yves Montand’s trucking assignment in The Wages of Fear.

Its opening narration is our first clue that Little Ladies, scripted by Hal Sitowitz and directed by Marvin J. Chomsky (The Deliberate Stranger), is an unserious film about a serious topic. Calling the teen runaway crisis “a major social issue,” it warns parents of the dangers that await children on the street. “You don’t want to find your kids here,” we’re told, and of course that’s true. But we also knew by 1977 that life with one’s parents wasn’t necessarily safer than harsh alternatives. That idea is paid some lip service here, until Sitowitz and Chomsky pull a potent punch that arguably undermines the rest of the story.

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Death at Love House: An Odd ’70s Mix of Old Hollywood and the Occult

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On April 24, 2023

In TV Movies

Kate Jackson and Robert Wagner in Death at Love House.

For a few fun years in the 1970s, Kate Jackson was the queen of the humdinger ending. From Killer Bees to Death Cruise and Satan’s School for Girls, she delivered morbid laughs with a winsome smile. Unlike those offerings, director E.W. Swackhamer’s Death at Love House (1976) isn’t particularly humorous—at least not intentionally—but its overwrought ending might remind you of the flaming baby scene from Susan Slade, which puts it in a league of its own.

Jackson’s Donna Gregory is the newly pregnant wife and writing partner of Joel Gregory, Jr. (Robert Wagner). Together they’re probing the history of Joel Sr., the father Junior barely knew, and his turbulent Hollywood romance with the late Lorna Love (Marianna Hill), a legendary bombshell actress. If the actors aren’t entirely convincing as Didion and Dunne knockoffs, modern audiences would have to uncomfortably concede that Wagner (who also plays Joel Sr.) is right at home in a story about the sordid circumstances surrounding the premature death of a beloved actress.

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Have I Got a Christmas for You: A Very ’70s Hallmark Take on Jewish-Christian Relations

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On December 24, 2022

In TV Movies

Herb Edelman and Don Chastain pray in Have I Got a Christmas for You.

On the count of three, readers, let us sing in unison: “We wish you a Jewish Christmas, we wish you a Jewish Christmas. We wish you a Jewish Christmas and a goyish New Year.”

That’s all I could think of at the start of Hallmark’s unusual 1977 holiday television presentation, Have I Got a Christmas for You, which opens with Milton Berle tossing a few bucks to a bell ringer dressed as Santa Claus. Directly approaching the camera afterward, he begins his narration: “As you may have guessed, our story has to do with Christmas. Which, in itself, is not exactly unusual this time of the year. Except for one thing—it began some weeks ago in Temple Beth Shalom, at a board of trustees meeting.”

By then I was already nervous, I’ll confess, and half-expected a cut to an assembly of shadowy money lenders, even though Uncle Miltie grew up as Mendel Berlinger and was unlikely to lead us astray. “I was convinced it would end in disaster,” he admits, as we join a contentious meeting already in progress, with Sydney Weinberg (Jack Carter) making an unusual proposal: That the synagogue perform “a gesture of goodwill and thanks to our Christian neighbors” by covering for essential workers on Christmas Eve, as an Italian coworker did for him ahead of Yom Kippur.

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In Flood!, a Schlock Deluge

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On November 17, 2022

In TV Movies

Robert Culp and Martin Milner (with Eric Olson) fight water with fire in Flood!

There are scares to be found in disaster impresario Irwin Allen’s sloppy, schlocky made-for-television production of Flood! (1976), but few involve water, which is mostly shrouded in darkness when it’s shown at all. You might instead scream at a closeup of Francine York’s false eyelashes, probably the only structure in town strong enough to withstand the rushing currents.

Or perhaps you’ll shriek in fright as Robert Culp tries, and miserably fails, to emote during a dramatic revelation scene that screenwriter Don Ingalls (Fantasy Island) mangled almost beyond comprehension. Others might fear they’re losing their grip on sanity at all the age-mismatched couples. My favorite was baby-faced Abbie (Carol Lynley, enormously pregnant with a pillow) and Sam Adams (Cameron Mitchell, enormously pregnant with a bad toupee, his face pulled back so tightly it’s uncertain whether he could see).

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All Aboard a Star-Studded ’70s Death Cruise

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On October 31, 2022

In TV Movies

The cast of Death Cruise.

Depending on how you look at Death Cruise, a 1974 made-for-TV movie produced by Aaron Spelling, it’s either about the horrors of matrimony or the nightmare of traveling with one’s spouse. Either way, it’s one of the more unexpectedly delightful entries in Kate Jackson’s oeuvre, with wardrobe changes galore and the revelation of an unexpected, and somewhat butch, talent—she plays a crack skeet-shooter.

A year removed from her devilishly amusing performance in Satan’s School for Girls, Jackson stars as Mary Frances Radney, the luminous bride of Jimmy (Edward Albert), a boyish attorney. They’re on a second honeymoon, having won an all-expense-paid Caribbean cruise vacation. They’re assigned to dinner table 24 with two other couples, also winners: staid suburbanites David and Elizabeth Mason (Tom Bosley and Celeste Holm) and the quarrelsome Carters, Jerry and Sylvia (Richard Long and Polly Bergen).

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The Victim: Soggy Suspense with Elizabeth Montgomery

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On October 28, 2022

In TV Movies

Elizabeth Montgomery in The Victim.

“When something’s dead, the only decent thing to do is bury it,” Elizabeth Montgomery’s younger sister tells her in the made-for-TV thriller The Victim (1972). Susan Chappel (Jess Walton) is referring to her marriage to Ben (George Maharis); she recently retained a divorce lawyer. But in a macabre twist, she’s soon dead herself—and certainly not buried.

As Kate Wainwright (Montgomery) inches closer to that horrifying discovery, we’re treated to 75 minutes of thunder and lightning and close calls with a corpse. Hitchcock’s Rope it ain’t, but The Victim (adapted by Merwin Gerard from a story by McKnight Malmar) derives its more twisted suspense from a body in a trunk. And this time it’s wicker and not entirely closed, allowing viewers to notice what escapes Kate’s attention in Ben and Susan’s dark basement.

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Kate Jackson Makes the Grade in Satan’s School for Girls

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On October 21, 2022

In TV Movies

Kate Jackson leads a campus recruitment effort in Satan’s School for Girls.

Nearly 50 years after its television debut, Satan’s School for Girls (1973) owes much of its timelessness to Kate Jackson’s devious smile. But it’s strikingly modern in other ways as well, containing portents of the #MeToo movement and alluding to the continued (and comically one-sided) political debate about the merits of a liberal arts education.

We join the action as Martha (Terry Lumley), paranoid in the manner of an Afterschool Special character lost in a bad trip, races to her sister Elizabeth’s place. There she encounters an offscreen menace and is soon found hanging from the rafters. Elizabeth (Pamela Franklin) knows it wasn’t a suicide, despite police labeling Martha “a melancholy girl,” and enrolls at Martha’s alma mater, the Salem Academy for Women, to conduct an undercover investigation.

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The Cat Creature Pussyfoots Around Lesbianism

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On September 21, 2022

In TV Movies

Gale Sondergaard has designs on Renne Jarrett in The Cat Creature.

Where to begin with all of the metaphorical lesbian double-entendre that director Curtis Harrington cheekily supplies in The Cat Creature (1973)? And how to explain that some of it was purely unintentional, as the openly gay Harrington had no way of knowing then that Meredith Baxter was not quite the woman that networks — and viewers — imagined her to be. (And then there’s the smaller matter of her hunky love interest, David Hedison, whose lookalike daughter Alexandra became one of Hollywood’s most visible A-list lesbians in a time when there were few.)

This pulpy tale, adapted by Psycho author Robert Bloch from his own material, is thin on story and long on atmosphere. It begins with appraiser Frank Lucas (Kent Smith) recording a voice memo for the attorney that hired him to inventory a wealthy and secretive dead man’s estate. “This place gives me the shivers,” he says of the darkened mansion before descending into its cellar, which contains a priceless collection of ancient artifacts. Prying open a sarcophagus, he finds a mummy wearing a striking gold amulet with emerald eyes.

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Laughter is Contagious in Someone I Touched

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On August 23, 2022

In TV Movies

Cloris Leachman and James Olson have trust issues in Someone I Touched.

The 1970s were a complicated time for telefilm husbands, whether it was Robert Reed making obscene phone calls and assaulting his wife in The Secret Night Caller, or Patty Duke’s dipshit spouse justifying his serial infidelity in Before and After by telling her “You see, when you were fat, I felt betrayed.” And so you may feel a familiar sense of dread from the opening moments of Someone I Touched (1975), largely due to its opening ballad.

That treacly theme, warbled by Leachman herself, appears to lay it all out, allowing us to mentally prepare for the inevitable moment when a woman accepts at least partial blame for her husband’s transgressions. Here is but a sampling of its lyrical treasures, which begin normally enough: “Someone I touched/You’re someone I touched/And right away, I knew/I was in love with you.” Things get slightly weirder as we enter “Forget the others I touched/Those others I touched” territory, which includes a cold, abrupt reminder: “Yes, everything dies.”

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Before and After: Patty Duke’s Diet Mania

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On August 8, 2022

In TV Movies

“I am so f*cking sick of salad.”

If you’ve ever longed to watch Patty Duke eat depressing amounts of cottage cheese and engage in comic pratfalls while exercising, rejoice! (Hey, it’s preferable to the child abuse in Please Don’t Hit Me, Mom.) Before and After, a 1979 telefilm about a woman who had the audacity to gain 20 pounds, delivers all that and more. First, you’ll want to prepare yourself mentally—I found it helpful to take a deep breath and contemplate how much worse it might’ve been if not written and directed by women.

Once you’ve done that (and perhaps hidden any sharp objects that normally rest nearby), grab a cake pop, as I did, and gather ’round the TV. If you’re open to the experience, you might laugh as Duke pays homage to Rocky by training in gray sweats and punching dead chickens. You may cry as her mother sabotages her progress and her smarmy husband calls her fat. And you’ll definitely check your pulse to make sure you haven’t died when special guest star Betty White heaps scorn and humiliation on underperforming weight-loss group participants.

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