Airing almost exactly two years after Trilogy of Terror, Dan Curtis and Richard Matheson reunited for another anthology, Dead of Night (1977.) Nothing matches the former’s third story, Amelia, but the latter’s third story, Bobby, might come close. It’s the other two stories of Dead of Night that I like a little bit better than…

Man, oh, man, I wanted to like this movie! The Strange Possession of Mrs. Oliver (1977) stars Karen Black. It was written by Richard Matheson. It was directed by Gordon Hessler. (If you’re unfamiliar with any one of those names, just peruse any number of previous reviews on this website.) Despite its credentials, it commits…

We’ve seen a lot of all-star casts in these 70s TV movies (as well as the big screen disaster films of the 70s.) Truly, I think SST: Death Flight (1977) has the most all-star cast of all of them. The difference is, though, that many of the familiar actors have bit parts. They don’t each…

Against all expectations throughout most of this 70’s TV movie, it ended up casting quite a spell on me. What first seemed like a Carrie rip-off soon turned to family drama, which turned to supernatural horror, which ended in a surprise I didn’t anticipate coming. Yes, The Spell (1977) is unique in several ways. First,…

During The Last Dinosaur (1977), especially since it features more than one prehistoric monster, I kept thinking it was Masten Thrust Jr. (Richard Boone) who was the titular character. He’s a big game hunter and “richest man in the world,” according to Newsworld Magazine, who has run out of challenges. While drilling for oil under…

With Independence Day approaching, it’s coincidental that this week’s 1970’s TV movie is Smash-Up on Interstate 5 (1976.) It depicts a 39-vehicle pile-up on the freeway on July 4. The film is bookended with some decent crash footage; however, as Sergeant Sam Marcum (Robert Conrad) of the California Highway Patrol narrates at the beginning, the…

Granted, the bar is low, but The Savage Bees is the best killer bee movie I’ve seen. It’s far better than one we’ve discussed earlier, the ridiculous Killer Bees (1974.) But it’s also better than two theatrical films, The Deadly Bees (1966) and The Swarm (1978.) It’s the tropes of 1970s disaster movies avoided in…

By late 1976, about the time Mayday at 40,000 Feet! first aired, we’d surely seen all the tropes from airplane disaster films, not just in theaters, but also in television movies. You’d think this one would have attempted to add something new. It doesn’t unless you consider slowing the whole thing down and not even…

Funny story about watching Nightmare in Badham County (1976) the other night on YouTube… When Cathy Phillips (Deborah Raffin) and Diane Emery (Lynne Moody) are arrested on false charges in a small southern town and taken to jail, Sheriff Danen (Chuck Connors) tells the latter to do what he says or he’s going to hurt…