THE FORCE OF EVIL 1977

Creepy 70's Made For T.V. Version of CAPE FEAR with Lloyd Bridges & Family (including Eve "Jan Brady" Plumb) Stalked by a Supernatural Psycho Ex- Con !! 

    Originally shown as an episode of TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED this was the eighth (and last) episode of this short-lived 1977 Quinn Martin produced TV series. Premiering on the 13th of March this two hour episode (the others being 1 hour) is a pretty blatant knock-off of the 1962's CAPE FEAR with no credit given to original author John D. MacDonald or screenwriter James Webb. THE FORCE OF EVIL moves the main action to the Arizona desert but as in the original works a houseboat into the finale and being a Quinn Martin production we get the ominous William Conrad opening and closing narration.
   Except for the setting and changing the family dynamics around a bit this sticks pretty closely to the original story with Lloyd Bridges playing doctor and family man Yale Carrington who along with wife Maggie (Pat Crowley -who was on about every TV show during the 70's), daughter Cindy (Eve Plumb - with between this and DAWN : PORTRAIT OF A TEENAGE RUNWAY was still trying to free herself from the shackles of THE BRADY BUNCH) and son John (William Cullen) are being terrorized by recently paroled murder/rapist Teddy Jakes (William Watson) whom Dr. Carrington had informed on to the police. The blond curly haired Watson was a regular heavy and /or bad-ass in bunches of westerns along just with about every cop/detective TV show in the 70's and brings a truly evil presence to the proceedings here and is the main reason for watching this.

   Because this being a TV movie Jake's end plans for his reign of terror over Carrington's family (especially toward the wife & daughter) is perhaps not as explicitly hinted at as was Robert Mitchum's in the 1952 version, although its still fairly obvious what his plans are - in particular toward the daughter Cindy. THE FORCE OF EVIL mixes in some supernatural elements with Jakes seeming to be an almost unstoppable (and unkillable) force hellbent on destroying Carrington's family. Also in the plot is the ineffectual local sheriff (who happens to be Dr. Carrington's brother) and is played by veteran character actor John Anderson. The two brothers have a bit of a tense relationship and although Jakes breaks the law at several points the sheriff seems unable to do anything and when an ambush is set up at one point by the two brothers its almost laughably easily how their over powered & outwitted.

    The whole movie is structured rather oddly (intentionally or not) with everybody who attempts to confront Jakes failing with Wile E. Coyote like ineptness including the son and his football buddies attempting to beat the crap out of him. This reaches its height with Carrington seemingly killing Jakes at one point (by slipping him some poisoned insulin) and then with the help of his wife dumping his body down a rat infested well, whereupon he reappears later giving credence to maybe he is some kind of force from beyond the grave.
   Along with the pre- slasher movie/Jason like resurrecting powers, the horror elements are played up here a bit more as in the 1952 version the family dog is killed by the revenged minded ex-con while in this version Jake's burns down the family's entire horse barn at night killing the horses and at one point he even mails a disembodied arm to the misses disguised as a box flowers. Jakes seemingly invariability combined with the police & families helplessness all add to the strange atmosphere of the film and at times its hard to figure if its intentional or just an oddly written script. At 100 minutes sometimes it does appear to be an hour long TV show script expanded out to feature length (as well it might have been) as there's lots of driving around.

   The movie is helped immensely by the presence of Watson as the psychotic stalker. Most times wearing a pair of mirrored sunglasses while constantly grinning and chewing gum he brings a aura of true evil without ever resorting to histrionics or scenery chewing.  There's a very creepy & uncomfortable scene with him and two young bikini clad girls and a later there's a fairly brutal episode where he runs over a young water skiing girl with a speedboat while the rest of the violence is pretty much limited to him and Bridges engaging in some good ol' fistfights. The desert setting helps with the eeriness and it always fun to watch the Brady girls in somewhat more grimier & exploitative scenarios (along with sister "Marcia" Maureen McCormick in TEXAS LIGHTNING or MOONSHINE COUNTY EXPRESS
    Appearing here a bit before his second career wind in AIRPLANE ("Guess I picked the wrong day to quit sniffing glue") Bridges looks to be doing most of his own stunts, although it is kind of weird seeing him as a somewhat slow to action presence (you keep waiting for Lloyd to start kicking some ass) and he seems to leave up to his family or the police (specifically his brother) to handle the threat until his daughters immediate danger kicks him into gear. Plumb who was eighteen at the time is refereed to as 14 years old in the movie (and as to be expected looks a bit mature for 14), but this was probably done to add some more salacious aspects of Jakes stalking of her.

I love telephone shots in movies (John Frankenheimer was the master of these)

Pray For The Wildcats T.V. 1974

    Mid 70's made for TV madness with Capt. Kirk, Mr. Brady and a former child evangelist taking a motorcycle trip to hell & back down Baja, Mexico with a demented Sheriff Taylor (who's a LONG way from Mayberry here).  Originally premiering on ABC on Jan.23 1974 and featuring William Shatner in one of his first roles post Star Trek, Robert Reed fresh off The Brady Bunch and Marjoe ("Mary" + "Joesph") Gortner who was an ordained minister at age four. Last but not least (and best of all) is Andy Griffith in a really wild-eyed scary psycho role.
   Griffith plays Sam Farragut who runs some sort of heavy equipment company while Shatner, Reed and Gortner play the groveling ad execs trying to land him as an account for the agency where they all work. Of course everybody's got problems at home so all the soap opera stuff can get ratcheted up in the plot. Reed is having marital problems with wife Angie Dickinson  and in addition Shatner is losing his job, contemplating suicide and having an affair with Angie (Yeah ! Go Captain Kirk!) while married to Lorianne Grey (Jaws). Marjoe, playing the token hippie at the ad outfit (we can tell he's a hippie because he wears a bola tie, lives with his girlfriend and says "Man" & "Right On" about every other sentence) has to deal with the unwanted pregnancy of his girlfriend while ass kissing his way up the corporate ladder.

   TV movies in the 70's are a fascinating genre. For all the tons of pure junk there is some really great stuff that came out - The Night Stalker (1972) & The Night Strangler (1973), Duel (1971) and A Cold Nights Death (1973) among them. Pray For The Wildcats is kinda hard to categorize - its poorly written in a lot of spots and some of the characters are pretty one dimensional (Reed's role really suffers from this), but there is something going on here that holds your interest - mostly seeing Andy Griffith leering away and chewing tons of scenery (plus, Angie looking gorgeous).

   Farragut talks the gang into taking a motorcycle trip down in Baja, Mexico (with their clothing eerily similar to Star Trek uniforms) and things go from bad to worse after he gets a little carried away with a hippie girl in a bar, gets in a fight with her boyfriend and later goes all homicidal on their van leaving them stranded to die in the desert (the way he snarls " "DIRTY HIPPIES" makes you wonder if there would've been a summer of love if he'd been there in '67). The other three guys then spend the rest of movie wrestling with their conscience on whether or not to drop a dime on psycho Sam to the local straight outta central casting Mexican Federales which in the end leads to the expected motorcycle duel with an Evel Knievel like climax.

   According to Shatner, Gortner spent much of the time on location getting stoned and trying to get Shatner to take LSD while Griffith went on tequila fueled rampages that had him running naked thru the set.

Hicksploitation Movie Night # 4 - Texas Lightning 1981

   
    A pretty deranged performance from Cameron Mitchell is the main feature of this Gary Graver directed (which he also wrote  & shot) effort from 1981. Graver was a pretty busy guy in the 70's & 80's , serving as DP on tons of low budget exploitation fare while at the same time directing bunches of porn movies (right in the midst of making this) - which makes you wonder if this kinda mainstream cast was aware of that.  After making Moonshine Express in 1977 (see earlier post) , it looks like Maureen McCormick wanted to to  break out even more from The Brady Bunch - so she here she is in a slightly more sleazier role.
   Cameron Mitchell plays Karl Stover who believing that his son Buddy Owen (played by Mitchell's real life son Cameron Jr.) isn't turning out to be quite the man he should be decides to take him out for a weekend of hunting. After a rather awkward good bye to Mrs. Stover (Hope Holiday), where its not too subtly referenced that maybe there's something more to Buddy and Moms relationship, the guys head out.  Along for the ride are Karl's buddies Frank Whitman (veteran character actor Peter Jason) and Leonard Simpson (J.L. Clark). On the way there in Leonard's monster truck they throw empty beer cans out the window and chew twinkies with their mouth open.

    After arriving and a drunken day of hunting rabbits & squirrels (and insulting a black policeman) the men don their satin cowboy shirts and head off to local country & western bar for some fun and urban cowboy action. This bar sequence lasts WAY too long and might be the result of the producers making Graver go back and shot more scenes to make the movie a little funnier (and to lose the downbeat ending - more on that later).  At the bar there is a wet t-shirt contest (with Graver playing the MC), which also features a cameo appearance by veteran porn actress Lisa De Leeuw (who not surprisingly wins the contest). At the bar Buddy meets a waitress named Fay (McCormick) and later they head back to Buddy's motel room. Turns out Fay's a kind of hustler as she cons Buddy out of $20.00 before they hit the hay. Their bliss is soon interrupted by the two drunken idiots Frank & Leonard who attack Fay, while Buddy runs off to his dad.

   They then head to the wild for more drunken hunting (Frank throws beans all over Leonard for a bit of comic relief). Buddy now starts acting strangely - silently glaring, loading his gun, strapping on a knife and looking likes he's all ready to go Lord of the Flies on the rest of the group.  Its at this point that movie loses whatever tension it was building toward. Graver had filmed this sequence originally with Buddy finally snapping and blasting one (or more) Dad's redneck buddies, instead this entire sequence was re-shot and other scenes added to lighten the movie up a little bit - as can be seen in the poster design. In this the released ending Buddy fires a few shots into the ground to scare everybody, confronts his dad and then heads back to the bar to apologize to Fay (who's sitting alone on the stage sing a C&W song - shades of The Brady Bunch Variety Hour).

   Even with the compromised ending the whole movie still has a slightly grimy vibe to it. There was a fair amount of publicity around this at the time for McCormick's alleged nude scene (which never really happens - thanks to a strategically placed hand).  Graver's original version has been rumored to have appeared on video in Europe, but all we have for now is the "happy" version on an OOP DVD (which I think was just a copy of the old Media VHS).

Hicksploitation Movie Night # 1 - Moonshine County Express (1977)

(Plus Claudia Jennings Movie Night # 1 !)

Marcia..Marcia..Marcia !

   I've recently picked up some pretty cool movies among them a bunch of 1970's southern drive in"Hicksploitation"stuff. The first one I fired up was Moonshine County Express from 1977, co-starring Maureen McCormick (The Brady Bunch) as Sissy Hammer. Sissy is one of three sisters who vow to avenge their moonshiner daddy's death by evil town boss Jack Starkey played by William Conrad (Cannon). The other two sisters Dot & Betty are played by Claudia Jennings (Gator Bait & The Great Texas Dynamite Chase) and Susan Howard (Dallas).  Also helping out is stock car racer and "shine runner" J.B. Johnson played by John Saxon (Enter the Dragon). The wonderful thing about John Saxon is that no matter how low budget and/or crappy the movie is (and ol' John did a bunch of them) he always seems to bring his "A" game to it.
   Director Gus Trikonis did bunches of exploitation stuff in the 70's (The Student Body & Five The Hard Way among others), before moving on to TV in the 90's.

  I have to admit McCormick's presence in this was one of main reasons for being curious about this. Her southern accent does come and go, but she does look pretty darn good in cut-off shorts and a halter top.  One of the best things about these movies is that they always seem to have great supporting casts and Moonshine County Express has Jeff Cory, Albert Salmi, Morgan Woodward, Len Lesser and drive-in favorite Candice Rialson. All the usual stuff is here - tires squealing on dirt roads, Calif. locations standing in for the south and of course car chases (and crashes). A pretty decent way to spend 95 minutes and plus any movie with Maureen McCormick, Claudia Jennings and Susan Howard as redneck sisters can't be all bad - can it ??