Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Sundays, I will be reviewing the made-for-television movies that used to be a primetime mainstay.  Today’s film is 1971’s Death Takes A Holiday!  It  can be viewed on YouTube.

For a few days in 1971, no one dies.

The Vietnam War continues but there are no casualties.  There are natural disasters but no one loses their life.  Doctors are stunned.  World leaders start to panic.  An emergency session of the UN is called to debate what to do about living in a world where no one is dying.  One gets the feeling that the world’s leaders prefer it when people are dying in wars and disasters.

Death has taken a holiday.

Death (Monte Markham) has become confused as to why humans so desperately want to live despite the fact that the world in which they exist is not always a happy one.  He is particularly confused by the elderly Judge Earl Chapman (Melvyn Douglas), who has suffered multiple strokes and other ailments and yet has always resisted whenever Death has come for him.  Death decides to take his holiday on the isolated beach where the Judge and his family are spending their weekend.  Though Death introduces himself as being David Smith, the Judge recognizes him.  It turns out that the Judge was always aware of death lingering around him and his family.

Death, for his part, has fallen in love with the Judge’s headstrong and rebellious daughter, Peggy (Yvette Mimieux).  In fact, Peggy was meant to die on the beach but, as soon as Death saw her drowning, he decided not to take her and instead allowed her to wash up back on the beach.  Death explains to the Judge that he can only spend so much time on vacation and that soon, people will start dying again.  Death says that he’ll be taking Peggy to the afterlife after the weekend ends.  The Judge tries to change his mind but Death is in love and he wants Peggy to be with him.

An adaptation of a play that inspired both 1934’s Death Takes A Holiday and 1998’s Meet Joe Black, the 1971 version of Death Takes A Holiday is a well-acted and intelligent made-for-television movie, one that eschews heavy-handed drama in favor of being a rather low-key meditation on what it means to both live and to die.  Melvyn Douglas and, as his wife, Myrna Loy both give poignant performances and Douglas even manages to sell the potentially maudlin moment where he explains why he has always clinged to life.  Monte Markham may not be the first actor who comes to mind when you think of someone to cast as the human form of Death but he does a good job in the role and he and Yvette Mimieux have a wonderful chemistry together.  The beach scenery is lovely and the story is an interesting one.  Clocking in at just 73 minutes, this version of Death Takes A Holiday is the best of all of them.