Recently, I finished watching a limited-run series on Max called, Full Circle. In it, a kidnapping plot results in the abduction of the wrong person. How coincidental, then, when my favorite plot point in the 1977 TV-movie, Murder at the World Series, happened when a disgruntled young man named Cisco (Bruce Boxleitner) abducted the wrong…

Changing the name to Snowblind on subsequent releases of this 1970s TV Movie was probably a good idea. On its initial airdate, it was called Ski Lift to Death. That was a more enticing name; however, it misrepresents the effort as a disaster film and describes only one nearly irrelevant part of the story. Other…

Maneaters Are Loose! (1978) is an example of the limitations faced when adapting a novel into a movie. I haven’t read Manhunter by Ted Willis; however, I imagine it has parts in which escaped tigers actually pose a physical threat, not just roll around on the ground with each other in scenes that look like…

The first revelation about The Time Machine (1978) was that it was made under the brand of Classics Illustrated, the timeless comic book series adapting literary stories. I never knew there was a television “version” of the comic, much less that there were seven other movies in the series, including The Legend of Sleepy Hollow…

Strategically airing two months before Moonraker was released in theaters, The Billion Dollar Threat (1979) is an Americanized version of James Bond that could be considered either an homage or a rip-off. It has the women and the innuendo, the lab and the gadgets, and a villain’s henchman with not metal teeth, but a metal…

In the summer of 1937, Topper was a huge hit with moviegoers. It spawned two sequels (Topper Takes a Trip, 1938, and Topper Returns, 1941) and a television series in 1953 that ran for two seasons (78 episodes.) In 1973, a pilot was produced for a new series, Topper Returns. It didn’t make it to…

Even though it has a compelling title, The Night the City Screamed (1980) doesn’t really belong in this series. I watched it because it was about a blackout and I thought it’d have a little bit of a disaster movie vibe to it. The closest it comes is a handful of people trapped in an…

Note: This was a first-time viewing for me. I received the Blu-ray I ordered on the day it was featured on The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs. I watched the Blu-ray and, as you will read, I don’t regret my purchase. Wow, this is one movie that not only lives up to its reputation,…

Maybe it’s because I’m comparing it to Halloween with the New Addams Family (1977), but I enjoyed The Munsters’ Revenge (1981.) I mean, I really enjoyed it, surprising myself by the number of times I laughed. Even with running gags that repeat too many times, predictable punch lines, and recurring patterns of wordplay followed by…

Individually and collectively, Stephen J. Cannell, Rod Holcomb, and Juanita Bartlett have worked on classic televised entertainment such as The Rockford Files, The Six Million Dollar Man, Fantasy Island, Battlestar Galactica, The Greatest American Hero, Scarecrow & Mrs. King, The A-Team, and Wiseguy, to name only a few. Their combined forces on Midnight Offerings (1981)…