Tag Archives: Andrew Prine

Made-For-TV Horror Review: Mind Over Murder (dir by Ivan Nagy)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In the 1979 made-for-TV movie, Mind over Murder, Deborah Raffin stars as Suzy.

Suzy is a model and an actress.  She has a nice apartment, which she shares with her football-loving boyfriend, Ben (Bruce Davison).  She has a best friend (Penelope Willis), who is constantly looking to get laid.  Her latest job requires her to dance with a man who is dressed up like a giant hamburger.  It would seem that, by the standards of 1979, Suzy has the perfect life.

However, her life is turned upside down when she suddenly starts having visions.  All of the action around her will either switch to slow motion or stop altogether while Suzy has a vision of a scary-looking bald man (Andrew Prine) stalking her.  Her most disturbing vision involves Suzy hearing the sound of a pilot begging for help while his airplane crashes.  Ben tells her that she’s probably just working too hard but, the next morning, Suzy looks at a newspaper and immediately sees a headline about a plane crash.

With Ben dismissing her concerns, Suzy takes it upon herself to meet with the two detectives (David Ackroyd and Robert Englund — yes, Robert Englund!) investigating the plane crash.  They are surprisingly sympathetic to Suzy’s story of hearing the plane crash before it happened.  They arrange for her to meet a psychic researcher, who explains that Suzy must have some sort of mental connection to whoever was responsible for the crash.  While Ben continues to be skeptical and jealous of all the time that she’s spending with one of the detectives, Suzy keeping having disturbing visions of the bald man….

Considering its origins as a made-for-TV movie, Mind Over Murder is a surprisingly frightening film.  This is a film that proves that slow motion can make just about anything creepy and Deborah Raffin does a good job of showing us just how much Suzy dreads those moments when everything starts to slow down and she realizes that she’s about to get hit with another vision.  That said, what truly makes this film frightening is the performance of Andrew Prine, who plays the bald man as being every woman’s nightmare.  He’s a misogynist, the type who is convinced that every woman should be in love with him and that those who aren’t should be punished.  Whether he’s appearing in Suzy’s visions or stepping into her reality, Andrew Prine is never less than terrifying.

Along with featuring a scary performance from Prine, this film also features a genuinely likable one from Robert Englund.  Englund is playing a nice guy here.  In fact, before he made horror history in A Nightmare in Elm Street, Englund almost always played nice guys.  It’s interesting to watch him here, with his friendly manner and his polite style, and to imagine the roles Englund would have ended up playing if he hadn’t gotten typecast as a horribly scarred serial killer.

The first hour of Mind over Murder is brilliant.  The final 30 minutes, unfortunately, find the film turning into a far more conventional thriller, as Suzy’s visions are replaced by the Bald Man actually coming after her.  That said, this is still an effective horror thriller and one that deserves to be rediscovered this Halloween season.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Freddy’s Nightmares 1.12 “The End of the World”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Fridays, I will be reviewing Freddy’s Nightmares, a horror anthology show which ran in syndication from 1988 to 1990. The entire series can be found on Plex!

This week, dreaming saves the world.

Episode 1.12 “The End of the World”

(Dir by Jonathan R. Betuel, originally aired on January 15th, 1989)

Weird episode.

The first half of the episode featured Mary Kohnert as Amy Collins, a young woman who starts to have dreams about the past and discovers that she can change reality depending on what she does in her dream.  Most of the dreams center around the accidental death of her mother.  Amy sets about to save her mother’s life but she discovers that changing the past will always lead to unforeseen consequences.

Unfortunately, her psychiatrist (George Lazenby) rats her out to the CIA and Amy is soon being forced to work for the U.S. military.  When she senses that a soldier is planning on launching a nuclear attack and plunging the world into war, Amy is forced to do a mind-meld of sorts with him.  She watches as the army manages to break into his bunker and gun him down right before he launches the nukes.

I can’t complain about a show trying something different and I actually found it interesting how the two stories were totally different in style and tone.  The second story featured a dream about a nuclear war that was pretty disturbing.  On TV, Gumby and his horse melted from the atomic heat.  That said, this episode suffered from the same flaw as many of the episode of Freddy’s Nightmares, in that it really didn’t have the budget necessary to achieve what it was hoping to accomplish.

Still, who can forget the image of Freddy Krueger riding a nuclear missile in the style of Slim Pickens at the end of Dr. Strangelove?

Along with having an interesting premise, this one also had some interesting guest stars.  Along with George Lazenby and Gumby, Walter Gotell, Andrew Prine, and Albert Hall all made appearances.  I guess when Freddy Krueger invites you, you don’t say no.

Late Night Retro Television Review: CHiPs 3.1 and 3.2 “Roller Disco”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Mondays, I will be reviewing CHiPs, which ran on NBC from 1977 to 1983.  The entire show is currently streaming on Prime!

This week, season three begins with a classic episode!

Episode 3.1 and 3.2 “Roller Disco”

(Dir by Don Weis, originally aired on September 22nd, 1979)

It’s the roller disco episode!

From the moment that I first announced that I would be watching and reviewing CHiPs for this feature, people have been telling me about the legendary roller disco episode.  Having finally reached it, I can say that it lived up to the hype.  You’re not likely to see anything more 70s than the third season premiere of CHiPs.

Now, this was a two-hour episode so there were actually quite a few subplot going on, all of which were typical CHiPs storylines.  In no particular order:

  1. A kid named Mark (Bobby Rolofson) is roller skating around the beach and idolizing three criminals.  Can Baker show him that the good guys always win?
  2. The three criminals are Lita (Helena Kallianiotes), Ty (Fred Williamson), and Romo (Jim Brown).  Lita sets up the targets.  Ty and Romo steal their purses and their wallets and then escape on roller skates.  Ty and Romo are tired of breaking the law.  Lita demands that they continue to steal.  Eventually, it falls to Baker and Ponch to arrest them.
  3. Carlin (Larry Linville) and Franco (Larry Storch) continually cause accidents on the highway.
  4. Rock star Jimmy Tyler (Leif Garrett) is so tired that he sleeps through one of those accidents.  Looking to break free from his well-meaning but overbearing manager (Bill Daily), Jimmy decides to manage his own affairs while staying at Jon Baker’s apartment.

There’s a lot going on but the main plotline is Ponch trying to find celebrities to take part in the annual highway patrol fund raiser.  Even with his big smile, Ponch struggles to charm the celebs.  He pulls over Ed McMahon at one point but fails to recognize him until McMahon drives off.  Gatraer tells Ponch that police work comes first but also tells him that he has to find celebrities.  Gatraer’s been giving Ponch a hard time ever since the first season.  Some things never change.

Fortunately, Jimmy feels guilty for overstaying his welcome at Baker’s apartment and he makes it up to Baker and Ponch by asking his celebrity friends to take part in the fund raiser.  It’s time for a roller disco with the stars!

It all leads to this classic scene:

I recognized a few of the stars, though certainly not all of them.  I recognized Victor French because I’ve been reviewing Highway to Heaven.  I’ve also seen enough old sitcoms that I immediately recognized Robert Mandan, who was apparently the best roller skater in Hollywood.  Melissa Sue Anderson, I knew from Happy Birthday To Me.  Cindy Williams, who got two shout-outs, I knew from American Graffiti.  Is it just me or did Nancy Kulp look kind of lost?  Neither Melissa Sue Anderson nor Cindy Williams seemed to want to talk to her.

The roller disco actually goes on for fifteen minutes, which I appreciated.  The show promised a roller disco and it delivered.  It was like stepping into a time machine and traveling to the 70s.  It was a great way to start season three!

Because of the holidays, this is going to be my final CHiPs review of 2024.  My reviews of this show will return on January 6th!

The TSL Horror Grindhouse: Simon, King of the Witches (dir by Bruce Kessler)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Simon (Andrew Prine) is a bearded man who lives in a storm drain and who says that he is on a quest to become a god.  He also says that he’s a warlock and he wants to make sure that everyone understands that there’s a huge difference between being a wizard and being a warlock.  Don’t call Simon a wizard!

Simon’s quest for godhood hasn’t led to much success so he makes his living selling trinkets and charms to gullible people.  One night, the police arrest him for vagrancy.  While sitting in jail, Simon meets Turk (George Paulsin), a gay male prostitute who quickly becomes Simon’s first disciple.  With the help of Turk, Simon is introduced to upper class society.  It turns out that Turk’s clients include several very wealthy people.  Simon is a hit on the party circuit.  Slumming hippies view him as a potential guru.  Wealthy people view him as a humorous oddity.  Simon meets other occultists and starts to engage in bizarre rituals.  He finds time to date Linda (Brenda Scott), the daughter of the totally square district attorney.  Some people insist that Simon is a fake and some people say he is the real thing.  For his part, Simon is soon getting revenge on all of his enemies and taking part in all sorts of freaky ceremonies as he continues his quest for supreme power.

Don’t let the supergroovy name fool you.  Like a lot of films about the 60s and 70s counterculture, Simon, King of the Witches is remarkably dull.  The action moves slowly.  The plot never really makes that much sense.  Andrew Prine gives a wonderfully over-the-top performance as Simon but the rest of the cast never really seems to wake up.  The film’s most interesting moments are the ones where Simon effortlessly switches from upper class society to “street” society.  Undoubtedly, this film’s portrait of jaded people looking for the new thing and getting taken advantage of by a sociopathic grifter felt very familiar in the 70s.  And, actually, I guess it still does.  There’s still a lot of wannabe gurus out there and a lot of people who have neither the willpower nor the intelligence to see through them.  But the film itself just too boring to really be effective.  Probably the most interesting thing about the film is that Simon seems to be a mix of Charles Manson and Rasputin.  Like Manson, Simon knows how to take advantage of those who are lost and seeking a place where they can belong.  And, like Rasputin, Simon turns his sordid lifestyle into an asset when he’s trying to thrill the stuffy old folks.

As I mentioned earlier, the film’s saving grace is Andrew Prine’s intense performance as Simon.  Prine himself was an up-and-coming actor with a bright future ahead of him until his girlfriend, Kathryn Kupcinet, was murdered in 1963.  As the boyfriend, Prine was immediately a suspect.  Though the police quickly cleared him, the scandal still derailed his career and he ended up spending the rest of his career in films like The Town That Dreaded Sundown, Amityville II, and Simon, King of the Witches.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Baywatch Nights 1.13 “Payback”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Tuesdays, I will be reviewing Baywatch Nights, a detective show that ran in Syndication from 1995 to 1997.  The entire show is currently streaming on Youtube!

This week …. eh, I don’t know.  This is a messy episode.  Geraldo Rivera is in it for some reason.

Episode 1.13 “Payback”

(Dir by Reza Badiyi, originally aired on February 17th, 1996)

This episode was a mess.  It’s hard to know where to even start.

In a reminder that Baywatch Nights, during the second half of its first season, was trying to be more like the show it was spun off from, this episode begins with an extended sequence featuring a woman in a yellow bikini.  She swims.  She walks along the beach.  She washes the sand out of her hair in one of those beach showers.  And then an unseen person shoots her in the neck and the camera lingers on her body for an uncomfortable amount of time.  The mix of sex and violence doesn’t feel particularly appropriate for a show that, at its best, is essentially just a goofy detective show.

After this opening, we are presented with Ryan and Mitch at some sort of party.  Ryan has just come back from Catalina and, just as I would do, she took some Dramamine so she wouldn’t get car sick.  Unfortunately, she has a little bit too much champagne at the party and is soon in a daze.  Mitch takes her back to his place where Ryan demands to know why he’s never tried to “jump all over” her.  Ryan then strips down to her underwear and ends up in Mitch’s bed.

Mitch, it should be said, is a total gentleman and sleeps on the couch.  But, the next morning, he decides that it would be fun to keep Ryan in suspense as to whether or not they had sex the night before.

To any men reading: DO NOT DO THIS!

Seriously, this joke is totally out of character for Mitch.  For that matter, it’s a bit out of character for Ryan as well.  (Everything we’ve learned about Ryan would suggest that she would be smart enough to know better than to mix Dramamine and champagne.)  David Hasselhoff and Angie Harmon did have a likable chemistry.  It’s a shame that the show tried to rush things with stuff like this instead of letting it develop naturally.

As for the show’s plot, there are actually two cases.  The lesser of the two features Garner helping out a young photographer named Griff Walker (Eddie Cibrian).  Griff accidentally got a picture of a model’s murder and he’s worried that murderers are after him.  Garner confronts the model’s ex and tells him to back off on trying to intimidate Griff.  It’s a weird plotline that was obviously only included to introduce the character of Griff.  (This is the third episode to feature Cibrian in the opening credits but the first to actually feature his character.)

Meanwhile, a reporter named Albert Romero (Geraldo Rivera …. yes, the one and only) comes to Mitch after some mobsters kidnap his wife, Bobbie (Meilani Paul).  Bobbie was previously being used to smuggle drugs.  Now, they want to use her to smuggle a bomb.  Fortunately, the mobsters are pretty dumb and Mitch is easily able to thwart them.  Unfortunately, this storyline features a lot of Geraldo.  As anyone who has ever watched him do anything can tell you, Geraldo Rivera is a person who is incapable of sounding natural or sincere.  Everything about him is calculated and over-rehearsed and that certainly comes through in his performance here.  Only Geraldo Rivera could make overacting boring.

As I said, this was a messy and way too busy episode.  It’s also one that nearly sabotaged the most appealing part of the show, Ryan and Mitch’s friendship.  I can’t wait until the UFOs and the sea monsters and the Vikings show up during the second season.

Southern Fried Slasher: THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN (AIP 1976)

Posted on by gary loggins

gary loggins's avatarcracked rear viewer

In 1946, the town of Texarkana, on the Texas-Arkansas border, was rocked by a series of brutal attacks on its citizens from February to May that left five people dead and three seriously wounded. The psycho, who wore what seemed to be a white pillowcase with eyeholes cut in it, caused quite a panic among the townsfolk, and the local and national press had a field day sensationalizing the gruesome events. The case was dubbed “The Texas Moonlight Murders”, and the mysterious maniac “The Phantom Killer”. Famed Texas Ranger M.T. “Lone Wolf” Gonzaullus was brought in to lead the investigation and rounded up a few suspects, but no one was ever formally charged with the grisly crimes. To this day, the case has never officially been solved.

Forty years later, Texarkana native Charles B. Pierce produced, directed, and costarred in THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN, a film based on those…

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Horror on TV: Kolchak 1.16 “Demon In Lace” (dir by Don Weis)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Tonight, on Kolchak….

Young college students are dying of heart attacks and Carl Kolchak is on the case!  Could it be just a coincidence?  Could it be drugs?  Could it be anything other than a Sumerian demon?  Well, if you know Kolchak, you already know the answer to that question!

This episode originally aired on February 7th, 1975.

Enjoy!

Horror on the Lens: Night Slaves (dir by Ted Post)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

For today’s horror on the lens, we have the 1970 made-for-TV movie, Night Slaves!

In this atmospheric film, an estranged married couple (James Franciscus and Lee Grant) find themselves in a small town.  It seems like a friendly enough place.  I mean, Leslie Nielsen is the sheriff!  How could anything go wrong in a town protected by Leslie Nielsen?

However, at night, the town changes.  Only Franciscus seems to notice all of the townspeople wandering about like zombies.  Is he going crazy or has he stumbled across something sinister?

You’ll have to watch find out!

Enjoy!

The TSL’s Daily Horror Grindhouse: Amityville II: The Possession (dir by Damiano Damiani)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

amityville_ii_the_possession

Agck!

The 1982 “prequel” Amityville II: The Possession is a film that is so grimy and icky and yucky and disgusting that you’ll want to take a shower right after you watch it.  And then you’ll probably end up taking two more showers, just to be sure that you’ve washed the film away.

Seriously, this is an amazingly disturbing film.

Claiming to show how that infamous house in Amityville, New York came to be haunted in the first place, this film opens with The Montelli Family moves into a big house with quarter moon windows.  The family patriarch is Anthony (Burt Young), a former cop who walks with a cane.  Anthony is an angry monster, an abusive husband, and a terrible father.  His wife, Dolores (Rutanya Alda), lives her life in denial, insisting that a new house means a new beginning and continually praying that her family will find peace.  Anthony and Dolores have four children.  The two youngest are at the mercy of their angry father.  Teenagers Patricia (Diane Franklin) and Sonny (Jack Magner) are both looking forward to the day that they can escape their family.

As soon as the Montellis move in, strange things start to happen.  It turns out that there’s a strange tunnel in the basement, one that appears to lead to nowhere.  When obscene messages appear on the walls of the house, Anthony starts to beat the youngest children but, fortunately, Sonny grabs a rifle and points it at his father’s head.  When the local priest, Father Adamsky (James Olson), shows up to bless the house, he ends up getting so disgusted at Anthony that he leaves without finishing.

In fact, Father Adamsy is a remarkable ineffectual priest.  When he attempts to talk to Sonny, he simply assumes that Sonny isn’t talking because he’s rude.  What Adamsky doesn’t suspect is that Sonny’s being rude because he’s been possessed by a demon for the basement!  When Patricia confesses that she and Sonny have been having sex, Adamsky doesn’t do anything about it.  When Patricia tries to call him to let him know that her brother appears to be possessed, Adamsky refuses to answer the phone and instead goes skiing for the weekend.

And, of course, while Adamsky is gone, Sonny grabs that rifle and, in a nightmare-inducing series of scenes, kills everyone in the house…

Of course, when Father Adamsky returns, he feels guilty and he decides to perform an exorcism.  MAYBE HE SHOULD HAVE DONE THAT EARLIER!  But no … he had to go skiing…

Anyway, Amityville II: The Possession is a deeply icky film.  It’s undeniably effective and has a lot of scary moments but it’s not an easy film to sit through.  Between Anthony beating his family and Sonny walking into Patricia’s room and asking her to “play a game,” this is a film that really gets under your skin.  You’ll never forget it but, at the same time, you’ll also never want to watch it again.

Interestingly enough, Amityville II was directed by Damiano Damiani, an Italian director who is probably best known for movies like A Bullet For The General and Confessions of a Police Captain, genre films that often featured a subversive political subtext.  Though Amityvile II is not overly political, the film’s portrait of the suburban Montelli family as a ticking time bomb does definitely fit in with Damiani’s other work.  Damiani reportedly set out to make the most disturbing film that he possibly could and he succeeded.

Horror on the Lens: House of Evil (dir by Gus Trikonis)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today’s horror on the lens in 1978’s House of Evil!

When Richard Crenna buys a new house, he recruits a few friends to help him fix it up.  Unfortunately, it turns out that the house is haunted by the devil himself.  House of Evil — which is also known as The Evil — is an entertaining little time waster.  If the idea of being in a house with the devil doesn’t scare you, just check out some of those the 1970s fashion choices!