October 7, 1979 This discussion is updated from one first published on March 17, 2023 In 1981, Steven Bochco and Michael Kozoll created the classic television series, Hill Street Blues. Throughout the 1980s, Bochco was an Emmy-winning golden child, creating Doogie Howser, M.D. and L.A. Law. Would fate have treated him differently if the 1979…

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…