Tag Archives: Lee Purcell

Retro Television Review: Summer of Fear (dir by Wes Craven)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

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 1978’s Summer of Fear.  It  can be viewed on YouTube!

In this made-for-TV movie from 1978, Linda Blair (fresh from the first two Exorcist films) plays Rachel. Rachel is a teenager who lives on a ranch in California. She loves horses and she loves her boyfriend and she’s especially happy that her cousin, Julia (Lee Purcell) is coming to live with her. Julia recently lost both of her parents in a tragic auto accident. Though neither Rachel nor her parents have ever met Julia before, they’re all planning on welcoming her into their very nice home.

The only problem is that, once Julia arrives, she seems to be a little bit strange. She speaks with a strange accent that no one on the ranch has ever heard before. The horses all seems to be terrified of her. After Rachel discovers that Julia has stolen minor personal possessions from her new family, Rachel starts to suspect that Julia might be witch and that she might be casting spells! Of course, by this point, Julia is no longer as shy and awkward as she seemed when she first showed up. Instead, she’s now glamorous and every man who meets her becomes intrigued, including Rachel’s boyfriend!

Based on a best-selling novel, Summer of Fear originally aired on NBC. If it were made today, it would probably air on something like Lifetime and it would have a title like, “Deadly Spell” or “Dangerous Seductress.” Seen today, it’s a bit of a slow movie and Linda Blair occasionally seems to be trying too hard to come across as being wide-eyed and innocent in her role but it’s entertaining as long as Lee Purcell is giving people strange looks and chewing up the scenery. The more out-of-control Pucell becomes, the more entertaining the film. Summer of Fear does build to a satisfying conclusion but it’s still hard not to wish that the story itself had moved just a bit quicker.  Jaded audiences in 2022 are no longer as shocked at the idea of witch coming to visit as audiences in 1978 may have been.  In the end, probably the most interesting thing about Summer of Fear is that it was an early credit for horror master, Wes Craven. This was his third film and his first “major” production, one that he made in order to show that, after directing two independent films, he could be trusted with a mainstream, studio production.  As such, you can argue that, without this film, Craven never would have gone on to do Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream.  Modern horror would be very different without Summer of Fear.

Ultimately. the film’s a bit too slowly paced to really be successful but if you’re a fan of Wes Craven’s or even Linda Blair’s, you’ll probably want to watch it at least once.

The Incredible Hulk Returns (1988, directed by Nicholas Corea)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Scientist David Banyon (Bill Bixby) has a secret.  His real name is David Banner and he has spent the last ten years in hiding, traveling up and down the highway and searching for a cure to a very strange condition.  As the result of getting dosed with gamma rays, David Banner sometimes transforms into an angry green monster known as the Hulk (Lou Ferrigno).  The world believes that David Banner is dead and Banner must let them continue to believe that until he can find a cure for the monster within.

The Incredible Hulk Returns is a continuation of the old Incredible Hulk television series, which was the first (and, until the MCU came along, only) successful attempt to build a live action show around a Marvel super hero.  Premiering in 1978, The Incredible Hulk ran for 5 seasons and got good ratings and, for a comic book series, surprisingly decent reviews.  However, it was also expensive to produce and it was abruptly cancelled in 1982, before the show got a chance to wrap up David’s story.  When The Incredible Hulk ended, David Banner was still alone and hitchhiking from town to town.  Six years later, The Incredible Hulk Returns caught up with David and tried to sell viewers on a “new” Marvel hero as well.

David “Banyon” is now living in California and working at the Joshua-Lambert Research Institute.  It’s been two years since he last turned into the Hulk.  He controls his rage by being careful not to get involved in any dangerous situations.  He also has a girlfriend, Dr. Maggie Shaw (Lee Purcell).  David is designing the Gamma Transponder, which he thinks will cure him of his condition.  Life’s good until Donald Blake (Steve Levitt) shows up.

A student of Banner’s, Blake recognizes his former teacher and approaches him with a crazy story.  When Blake was in Norway, he stumbled across a tomb that contained a hammer that contained the spirit of Thor, a Viking warrior who was banished to Earth by Odin.  To prove that he’s telling the truth, Blake commands Thor to emerge from the hammer.  When Thor (played by Eric Kramer) does, he makes such a mess in the laboratory that David transforms into the Hulk.

Thor is not Banner’s only problem.  Jack LeBeau (Tim Thomerson!) and Mike Fouche (Charles Napier!!) want to steal the Gamma Transponder and turn it into a weapon.  Also, reporter Jack McGee (Jack Colvin) s back in town and still obsessed with proving that the Hulk exists.

The Incredible Hulk Returns may be a continuation of David Banner’s story but the main reason it was filmed was so it could serve as a backdoor pilot for a Thor television series.  The Thor TV series never happened and, for those who are used to Chris Hemsworth’s comedic take on Thor, it’s jarring to see Eric Kramer playing the role like a third-tier professional wrestler.  For fans of The Incredible Hulk TV series, it’s even more jarring to see the Hulk fighting alongside a viking.  Unlike the comic book, the TV series usually tried to ground its stories in reality, with Banner’s transformations into the Hulk serving as the show’s only concession to its comic book origins.  The villains played by Thomerson and Napier both seem like typical bad guys from the show’s heyday but Thor just doesn’t belong.  Fans of the show will resent Thor taking the spotlight away from David Banner and the Hulk while fans of Thor will notice that this version of Thor is apparently not the god of thunder but instead just an egotistical viking who got on Odin’s nerves.

Bill Bixby was always The Incredible Hulk‘s not-so-secret weapon, taking and playing his role very seriously.  He continues to do that in The Incredible Hulk Returns but how seriously can anyone come across when they’re speaking to Thor?  By the end of the movie, Thor and Blake head off on their own adventures while Banner resumes hitchhiking.  Thor and Blake would not be seen again but David Banner’s adventures would continue in The Trial of the Incredible Hulk.

Hijack! (1973, directed by Leonard Horn)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Jake (David Janssen) is a down-on-his-luck trucker who is offered job by a mysterious man named Kleiner (WIlliam Schallert).  If Jake agrees to transport a cargo across the country, he will get not only $6,000 but Kleiner will also pull some strings get Jake back in the good graces of the trucking company.  If Jake takes the job, he will be given a slip of paper with a phone number on it and, according to Kleiner, that piece of paper will get him out of any trouble that he runs into along the way.  The only condition is that Jake is not allowed to know what he’ll be transporting.  Jake agrees and soon, he and his partner Donny (Keenan Wynn) are driving the truck through the desert.  They are also being followed by a group of men who will stop at nothing to steal the cargo.

This made-for-TV movie is called Hijack! but no one ever gets hijacked.  Instead, with the exception of a brief romantic interlude between Jake and a truck stop waitress (Lee Purcell), this is a nonstop chase movie but the chase itself is never exciting enough to justify that exclamation mark in the title.  It was probably made to capitalize on the success of Steven Spielberg’s made-for-TV classic, Duel, but it never come close to capturing the nerve or intensity of that film.  There’s one good scene where the bad guys come after the truck in a helicopter but otherwise, this is a pretty anemic stuff.  Even the eventual reveal of what Jake and Donny are hauling across the desert is a let down.

David Janssen specialized in playing grizzled loners and Keenan Wynn specialized in playing eccentric old coots so both of them are adequate in the main roles.  The bad guys are largely forgettable and, as she did in so many other TV movies in the 70s, Lee Purcell brings what life that she can to an underwritten role.

A Movie A Day #165: Big Wednesday (1978, directed by John Milius)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

If there is a male bonding hall of fame, Big Wednesday has to be front and center.

This episodic movie follows three legendary surfers over twelve years of change and turmoil.  Jack Barlowe (William Katt) is the straight arrow who keeps the peace.  Leroy “The Masochist” Smith (Gary Busey) is the wild man.  Matt Johnson (Jan-Michael Vincent) is the best surfer of them all but he resents both his fame and the expectation that he should be some sort of role model for the younger kids on the beach.  From 1962 until 1974, the three of them learn about love and responsibility while dealing with cultural turmoil (including, of course, the Vietnam War) and waiting for that one legendary wave.

After writing the screenplays for Dirty Harry and Apocalypse Now and directing The Wind and The Lion and Dillinger, John Milius finally got to make his dream project.  Big Wednesday was based on Milius’s own youth as a California surfer and he has said that all three of the main characters were based on different aspects of his own personality.  Expectations for Big Wednesday were so high that Milius’s friends, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, exchanged percentages points for Star Wars and Close Encounters of  The Third Kind for a point of Big Wednesday.  The deal turned out to be worth millions to Milius but nothing to Lucas and Spielberg because Big Wednesday was a notorious box office flop.  Warner Bros. sold the film as a raunchy comedy, leaving audiences surprised to discover that Big Wednesday was actually, in Milius’s words, a “coming-of-age story with Arthurian overtones.”

I can understand why Big Wednesday may not be for everyone but it is one of my favorite movies.  It is one of the ultimate guy films.  Some of the dialogue and the narration may be overwrought but so are most guys, especially when they’re the same age as the surfers in Big Wednesday.  We all like to imagine that we are heroes in some sort of epic adventure.  The surfing footage is amazing but it is not necessary to be a surfer to relate to the film’s coming-of-age story or its celebration of the enduring bonds of friendship.  Katt, Vincent, and Busey all give great performances.  Considering their later careers, it is good that Big Wednesday is around to remind us of what Gary Busey and Jan-Michael Vincent were capable of at their best, before their promising careers were derailed by drugs and mental illness.  Be sure to also keep an eye out for infamous 70s character actor Joe Spinell as an army psychiatrist, a pre-Nightmare on Elm Street Robert Englund, playing a fellow surfer and providing the film’s narration, and Barbara Hale, playing the patient mother of her real-life son, William Katt.

One final note: At a time when the shameful stereotype of the psycho Vietnam vet was becoming popular and unfairly tarnishing the reputation of real-life vets, Big Wednesday was unique for featuring a character who not only joins the Army but who appears to return as a better person as a result.

More Of Bronson’s Best: Mr. Majestyk (1974, directed by Richard Fleischer)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Mr_Majestyk_movie_posterWhat happens when you combine the great tough guy writer Elmore Leonard with the great tough guy actor Charles Bronson?

You get Mr. Majestyk, one of Bronson’s finest films.

Vince Majestyk (Bronson) may be a former U.S. Army Ranger instructor and a decorated Vietnam vet but now that he has returned home to Colorado, all he cares about is running his watermelon farm.  With a lucrative harvest approaching, Majestyk hires a group of unionized Mexican migrant workers, led by the fiery Linda Chavez (Linda Cristal), to pick his crops.  When a local criminal named Bobby Kopas (Paul Koslo) shows up and demands that Majestyk hire his drunken crew instead, Majestyk does what Bronson does best.  He gives Kopas an ass-kickin’ beat down.

After Kopas charges him with assault, the local police arrest Majestyk and, despite his request that he be allowed three days to finish harvesting his crop, Majestyk is thrown in jail.  Also in the jail is a Mafia hitman named Frank Renda (Al Lettieri).  Renda may be a tough guy but nobody’s tougher than Vince Majestyk.  When Renda’s associates attempt to hijack a prison bus, Majestyk ends up hijacking it instead.  Majestyk plans to hold Renda hostage until the police agree to give him his three days of freedom so he can get back to his farm.  Renda even offers to pay him off but Majestyk doesn’t care about his money.  He just cares about melons.

Because he was the only 1970s action star who could be believable as both a decorated combat veteran and a no-nonsense watermelon farmer, Charles Bronson is the only actor who could have brought Mr. Majestyk to life.  Before he became an actor, Bronson worked for a living.  From the age of ten until he enlisted in the Army, Bronson worked in the Pennsylvania coal mines, earning one dollar for each ton of coal that he mined.  Though Bronson was never a great actor, his legitimately working class background allowed him to bring an authenticity to a role like Vince Majestyk that most other actors would have lacked.  When Bronson says that all he cares about is bringing in the harvest on time, you believe him just as much as you believe him when he’s beating up Paul Koslo or hijacking a prison bus.

The rest of the cast is full of good 1970s actors who have never really been given their due.  Al Lettieri may be best known for playing Sollozzo in The Godfather but he also does a good job as Frank Renda.  Paul Koslo plays another one his sleazy villains here and does a great job as Bobby Kopas.

Mr. Majestyk was directed by Richard Fleischer but, with its colorful characters, working class hero, and modernized brand of frontier justice, the film is clearly the work of Elmore Leonard. Though Mr. Majestyk is credited as being based on a novel by Leonard, Leonard actually wrote the screenplay before the novel.

The combination of Elmore Leonard and Charles Bronson makes Mr. Majestyk one of the best action films of the 1970s.

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Film Review: Kid Blue (1973, directed by James Frawley)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

KidBlueFor the past week and a half, I have been on a major Warren Oates kick.  The latest Oates film that I watched was Kid Blue, a quirky western comedy that features Warren in a small but key supporting role.

Bickford Warner (Dennis Hopper) is a long-haired and spaced-out train robber who, after one failed robbery too many, decides to go straight and live a conventional life.  He settles in the town of Dime Box, Texas.  He starts out sweeping the floor of a barber shop before getting a better job wringing the necks of chickens.  Eventually, he ends up working at the Great American Ceramic Novelty Company, where he helps to make ashtrays for tourists.

He also meets Molly and Reese Ford (Lee Purcell and Warren Oates), a married couple who both end up taking an interest in Bickford.  Reese, who ignores his beautiful wife, constantly praised Greek culture and insists that Bickford take a bath with him.  Meanwhile, Molly and Bickford end up having an affair.

Bickford also meets the local preacher, Bob (Peter Boyle).  Bob is enthusiastic about peyote and has built a primitive flying machine that he keeps in a field.  The town’s fascist sheriff, Mean John (Ben Johnson), comes across Bob performing a river baptism and angrily admonishes him for using “white man’s water” to baptize an Indian.

Bickford attempts to live a straight life but is constantly hassled by Mean John, who suspects that Bickford might actually be Kid Blue.  When Bickford’s former criminal partner (Janice Rule) shows up in town and Molly announces that she’s pregnant, Bickford has to decide whether or not to return to his old ways.

Kid Blue is one of a handful of counterculture westerns that were released in the early 70s.  The film’s biggest problem is that, at the time he was playing “Kid” Blue, Dennis Hopper was 37 and looked several years older.  It’s hard to buy him as a naïve naif when he looks older than everyone else in the cast.  As for Warren Oates, his role was small but he did great work as usual.  Gay characters were rarely presented sympathetically in the early 70s and counter-culture films were often the worst offenders.  As written, Reese is a one-note (and one-joke) character but Warren played him with a lot of empathy and gave him a wounded dignity that was probably not present in the film’s script.

Kid Blue plays out at its own stoned pace, an uneven mix of quirky comedy and dippy philosophy.  Still, the film is worth seeing for the only-in-the-70s cast and the curiosity factor of seeing Dennis Hopper in full counterculture mode, before he detoxed and became Hollywood’s favorite super villain.

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Horror on the Lens: Summer of Fear (dir by Wes Craven)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today’s horror on the lens is a 1978 made-for-TV movie that was directed by Wes Craven.  Originally entitled Stranger In Our House, it was retitled Summer of Fear when it was released into theaters in Europe.  Personally, I think Summer of Fear is a better title.  It has a fun R.L. Stine feel to it.

As for the film itself, it tells the story of what happens when the recently orphaned Julia (Lee Purcell) moves in with her cousins in California.  At first, Julia fits right in with her new family but, slowly and surely, her cousin Rachel (Linda Blair) comes to suspect that Julia might be a witch.  And hey, who can’t relate to that?  Seriously, everyone has that one cousin…

And, it’s actually pretty good.  Working within the confines of what could and could not be shown on TV in the late 70s, Craven managed to make an effective little thriller.

What Lisa Marie Watched Last Night: Eddie Macon’s Run (dir. by Jeff Kanew)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Last night, as morning slowly approached, I curled up on the couch in my comfy Hello Kitty bathrobe and turned the TV over to the Retro Channel, where I watched a film from 1983.  The name of that film?  Eddie Macon’s Run.

Why Was I Watching It?

The short answer is insomnia.  The long answer is that, when I checked the guide to see what was on TV at 3 in the morning, Eddie Macon’s Run was the only film listed that I had never heard of before.  Since my life’s goal is to see every single film ever made, I knew I would have to watch this mysterious Eddie Macon’s Run at some point so I figured, “Why not tonight?”

What Was It About?

Eddie Macon’s running!  Okay, well, there’s actually a little more to it than that…

Eddie (played by John Schneider, who has appeared in countless SyFy films) is a nice, blue-collar guy who finds himself wrongly imprisoned in Hunstville, Texas.  During the prison rodeo, Eddie manages to escape and soon, he’s running down to Mexico where his wife and son are waiting.  Kirk Douglas plays the cop who chases Eddie across Texas.  Whenever Douglas shows up on screen, we hear a saxophone playing on the soundtrack.  Scenes of Eddie thinking about his family are accompanied by country songs that, the credits reveal, were sung by John Schneider.  Yes, it’s that type of film.

What Worked?

To be honest, the main thing that worked for me about this film is that it was shot on location in rural South Texas.  That’s the same part of Texas that my mom grew up in and whenever I would bug her to tell me a story about when she was “my age,” the stories always took place in South Texas and I always enjoy seeing it in films (even if that film, as in the case of this one, goes out of its way to make South Texas seem like the 9th circle of Hell).

John Schneider, all hot and sexy here, gave a surprisingly good performance.

Kirk Douglas, meanwhile, didn’t really give that good of a performance but my God, that man could grimace with the best of them.

A kind of youngish John Goodman shows up for about 2 minutes and the whole process of going, “Oh my God, is that John Goodman!?  I think that is John Goodman!” provided a nice break from the film’s general monotony.

What Did Not Work?

This is one of those films that, though it was filmed in Texas, was obviously made by Yankees.  As such, the movie is full of actors who were obviously imported from up north and who are painful to listen to as they attempt to recreate the accents of South Texas.   

The film, itself, moved about as slowly as the sun going down over the flat plains in North Texas.  Seriously — for a film that featured nonstop running and Kirk Douglas finding about a hundred different ways to clench his jaw, Eddie Macon’s Run sure was boring.  There’s a scene where Eddie is menaced by two ranchers and I swear to God, it seemed to last for a few hours. 

It also quickly became apparent that the only way for the film’s plot to be believable was for every single character in the film to be a complete idiot. 

“Oh My God!  Just Like Me!” Moment

Eddie eventually meets the niece of the governor of Texas (played by Lee Purcell) and she agrees to help Eddie run because it’s “just a slow Wednesday.”  That’s totally why I would get involved with an escaped fugitive as well.

Lessons Learned

Give me a couch and put me in a Hello Kitty bathrobe and I’ll watch anything.