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…

There’s no love to be found for Look What’s Happened to Rosemary’s Baby (1976), the TV-movie sequel to the classic film, Rosemary’s Baby, even though those who have seen it and read Ira Levin’s sequel novel, Son of Rosemary, claim the film is better than the book. I can understand not liking it, but I’m…

In many ways, Death at Love House (1976) reminds me of a previous 70’s TV movie that we’ve discussed here: The Dead Don’t Die (1975.) Unfortunately, one of the ways is that I didn’t like it very much. In their own ways, both deal with the golden age of Hollywood and feature glorified cameo appearances…

For a film about Charles Manson that avoids most of the gory visual details, Helter Skelter (1976) maintains for three-plus hours a style and pace that keeps its murder investigation and courtroom drama compelling, engaging, and terrifying. It originally aired as two parts on television. Viewers must have liked part one, because its ratings were…