Tag Archives: Robert Conrad

Sudden Death (1977, directed by Eddie Romero)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Ed Neilson (Ken Metcalf) is a business executive who just wants to spend the weekend grilling with his family but then a bunch of gunmen show up and, in a surprisingly violent sequence that even shows children being shot in slow motion, massacre his entire family.

Ed barely survives and begs his old friend, a former CIA agent named Duke Smith (Robert Conrad), to find out who murdered his family.  Duke would rather hang out on the beach with his wife (Aline Samson) and daughter (Nancy Conrad) and he refuses to help Ed.  But then Ed gets blown up in his car and Duke and his former partner (Felton Perry) come out of retirement to get justice.  Duke’s investigation leads to a corrupt businessman (Thayer David), a murderous government official (John Ashley, who also produced), and a ruthless hitman (Don Stroud).

Filmed in The Philippines and directed by Eddie Romero, Sudden Death is a violent and brutal thriller with a twisty the plot that is nearly impossible to follow.  It seems like a lot of killing for no particular reason.  The thing that sets Sudden Death apart from other action films is its willingness to violently kill off anyone, regardless of age, gender, or relative innocence.  The 70s was a decade known for downbeat endings but, even by the standards of that decade, Sudden Death‘s ending is shockingly abrupt and bleak.  In the lead role, Robert Conrad shows off the ruthless intensity that made him the most feared of all of the coaches on Battle of the Network Stars.

Originally, the sidekick role was offered to Jim Kelly.  When Kelly dropped out, the role was given to the far more laid back Felton Perry.  I think if Kelly had stayed with the film, it would probably be a cult classic today.  Instead, it’s an obscurity that reminds us of how bleak even exploitation films were in the 70s.

Retro Television Reviews: Five Desperate Women (dir by Ted Post)

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 1971’s Five Desperate Women!  It  can be viewed on YouTube!

Five women, who all went to college together, reunite for the first time in five years.  They’re planning on spending a weekend at a cabin on a private island.  Lucy (Anjanette Comer) is the alcoholic who talks too much.  Dorian (Joan Hackett) is the pill popper who lies about having a handsome husband and two beautiful children.  Joy (Denise Nicholas) is the former activist turned trashy model.  Gloria (Stefanie Powers) is bitchy and self-centered.  And Mary Grace (Julie Sommars) is the one with the mentally ill mother who refuses to speak to her.  Upon reuniting on the dock, the five women all immediately gather in a circle sing an old sorority song.  It’s going to be one of those weekends!

The private island is lovely and the women believe that they have it to themselves, with the exception of the two men who are also on the island.  Wylie (Robert Conrad) is the caretaker and he seems to be a trustworthy gentleman and exactly the type of guy who you would want to be stranded on an island with.  And then there’s Meeker (Bradford Dillman), who drove the boat to the island and who is the type of overbearing jerk who has to be specifically told not to bother the women.  While the women stay in the main house, the men stay in the nearby caretaker’s cottage.

From the start, it proves to be a stressful weekend.  All of the women have secrets and long-buried resentments that come out at the slightest provocation.  Not helping the fact is that there’s a murderer on the island, one that goes from killing a dog to strangling Dorian while the rest of the women are at the beach.  The woman, figuring that the murderer has to be either Meeker or Wylie, lock themselves into their house for the night but it turns out that it’s going to take more than a locked door to defeat a killer.

Five Desperate Women has an intriguing premise but it also has an extremely short running time.  With only 70 minutes to tell its story and 7 major characters to deal with, the film doesn’t leave much room for character development and, as a result, each woman is only given one personality trait and each actress ends up portraying that trait as broadly as possible.  As a result, it doesn’t take long for the movie to go from being Five Desperate Women to Five Annoying Women.  As for Robert Conrad and Bradford Dillman, the two of them give effective performances but anyone with a hint of genre savvy will be able to guess who the killer is going to turn out to be.  There is one unintentionally funny moment where the desperate women attempt to fight off the killer by throwing rocks at him and none of the rocks come close to reaching their target but otherwise, Five Desperate Women is not particularly memorable.

Coach of the Year (1980, directed by Don Medford)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Jim Brandon (Robert Conrad) used to be a member of the Chicago Bears, until he was drafted and sent to Vietnam.  While Jim was serving his country, he was wounded in battle and when he returns to the United States, he’s now in a wheelchair.  With his playing days over, Jim still wants to put his athletic abilities to good use.  When the Bears front office tells him that they want to place him in the PR department as a glorified mascot, Jim tells them to forget about it and then starts to search for any opportunity to work as a coach.  Unfortunately, no one is willing to take a chance on a coach who can’t walk across the field.

While he looks for a job, Jim is living with his sister (Erin Gray) and her son, Andy (Ricky Paull Goldin).  When Andy gets caught (not for the first time) breaking the law, he is sent to the local reform school.  It’s while Jim is visiting his nephew that he notices that the students at the Illinois State Training School for Boys like to play football.  Jim suggests that the school needs an official team and that he would be the perfect person to coach them.

At first, the boys are rebellious and refuse to show Jim any respect but Jim slowly wins them over.  When a prep school’s football team visits the reform school and makes some snide remarks, Jim challenges them to a game.  If Jim’s team wins, it will not only prove that Jim can coach but it will also give the members of the team a needed boost of self-respect.  If Jim loses, he’ll get fired and his team will probably try to escape before boarding the bus back to reform school.

Coach of the Year was a TV movie and there’s nothing surprising about it.  It’s a typical example of an “inspiring” sports film, where an underdog team is led to victory by an underdog coach.  The two teams play each other twice in the movie and, just as surely as you’ll be able to guess who wins the first game, you’ll also be able to guess who manages to beat the odds and win the second game.  The film’s main selling point is that Robert Conrad gives a good performance as Jim Brandon.  Conrad is believable as both a coach, a former star athlete, and a man who is not yet prepared to surrender his pride.  Though Jim’s clearly the hero, the movie doesn’t idealize him.  Sometimes, Jim can be too stubborn for his own good.  Supposedly, in real life, Conrad was always the celebrity who ended up taking his appearances on Battle Of The Network Stars too seriously and that’s the way that Conrad plays Jim.  It doesn’t matter if his team is made up of a bunch of juvenile delinquents or that their games are just for exhibition.  Jim’s determined to win.

Coach of the Year is on Amazon Prime.  Unfortunately, Battle Of The Network Stars is not.

 

Smash-Up On Interstate 5 (1976, directed by John Llewellyn Moxey)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Smash-Up On Interstate 5 begins with ominous shots of a crowded California interstate.  It’s the 4th of July weekend and old people are returning home, young people are looking for a party, and Sergeant Sam Marcum (Robert Conrad) of the California Highway Patrol is looking for a killer.  When one car swerves into the next lane and hits another, it leads to a chain reaction as hundreds of cars, trucks, and one motorcycle crash into each other.  While the vehicles crash, we see the people inside of them.  There’s Buddy Ebsen!  There’s Vera Miles!  There’s Sue Lyon (of Lolita fame) on the back of a motorcycle!  In a voice-over, Sam tells us that the accident will be classified as being due to “mechanical failure” and that 14 people are going to die as a result.  He might be one of them.

Smash-Up On Interstate 5 is a 70s disaster film so, after the pile-up, the movie flashed back 48 hours and we get to know everyone whose lives are going to eventually collide on Interstate 5.  Erica (Vera Miles) is recently divorced and trying to get back into the dating scene.  Albert (Buddy Ebsen) is trying to bring some joy to his terminally ill wife’s final days.  Lee (Scott Jacoby) and Penny (Bonnie Ebsen) are the hippies who are trying to get to Big Sur without getting arrested.  Burnsey (Sue Lyon) loves her biker boyfriend.  Some of them will survive the pile-up.  Some of them will not.

Smash-Up On Interstate 5 is an above average made-for-TV movie.  It’s got a notable cast and the movie does a good job of mixing together’s everyone’s subplots.  For instance, Burnsey and a group of bikers show up in the background of several scenes and harass Erica at one point long before the crash on the interstate.  It’s only a 100-minute film so the film doesn’t go into too much detail about everyone’s past but we learn just enough to make everyone stand out.  The crash itself is intense, even when seen today.  Made before the days of CGI, this is a film where the stunt crew definitely earned their paycheck.

Tommy Lee Jones plays a patrolman who is also Sam’s brother-in-law.  I was surprised when I first saw him but as soon as I saw the strained smile and heard the accent, I knew it was him.  Jones’s role is small and probably could have been played by anyone but the mere presence of Tommy Lee Jones definitely makes this film cooler than it would have been otherwise.

One final note: This film was directed by the made-for-TV horror specialist, John Llewellyn Moxey.  Be sure to read Gary Loggins’s tribute to this often underrated director.

Film Review: Palm Springs Weekend (dir by Norman Taurog)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1963 film Palm Springs Weekend asks the question, “When is a beach film not a beach film?”

When it takes place in the freaking desert!

That’s right, Palm Springs Weekend takes place in the middle of the California desert.  There’s no ocean in sight nor are there any beaches on which to frolic.  Instead, there’s just a cheap motel and a swimming pool.  That said, Palm Springs Weekend pretty much follows the same formula as all of the beach films that were released in the early 60s.  A group of college students hop on a bus and head off for the weekend.  One student is wacky.  One student is rich, wild, and dangerous to know.  And, of course, one student is clean-cut, responsible, boring, asexual, and studious and all about doing the right thing.

Troy Donahue, the blandest teen idol of all time, plays the clean-cut student.  His name is Jim and he’s a college basketball star.  Even when he’s on the bus traveling to Palm Springs, he’s still got a book to study.  Jim’s the type who wears a suit and a tie to the pool.  He ends up falling in love with Bunny Dixon (Stefanie Powers) and the two of them spend a lot of time talking about sex in the most chaste way possible.  Bunny’s father (played by Andrew Duggan) is the chief of police and he doesn’t want any crazy college kids causing trouble in his town!  Well, it’s a pretty good thing that all he has to worry about is Troy Donaue asking his daughter if she wants to take a moonlight stroll in the middle of the desert.

(Trust me.  I’ve spent enough time in the desert to know that the last thing you want to do when you live near rattlesnakes is take a moonlight stroll.)

Jim’s best friend is Biff (Jerry Van Dyke).  Biff is the wacky college student, which means that he plays the ukulele and he gets all the comedic moments.  In this film, that amounts to getting babysitting an annoying boy and, at one point, falling into an extremely sudsy pool.  Luckily, Jim’s there to deliver CPR, which leads to soap bubbles floating out of Biff’s mouth and …. you know what?  I’m tired of writing about Biff.

Anyway, Biff and Jim really aren’t that important.  The entire film pretty much belongs to Robert Conrad and Connie Stevens, largely because they’re the only two actors who are allowed to break out of the trap of always either being bumbling and innocent or dramatic and self-righteous.  Robert Conrad plays Eric Dean, who is a spoiled rich kid who owns an expensive and fast car and who is basically a fun-loving sociopath.  Meanwhile, Connie Stevens plays Gail, who is a high senior and who is pretending to be a college student.  And while the film insists that we should somehow be disappointed in Gail because she’s acting wild and breaking curfew and doing more than just talking about whether or not it’s appropriate to kiss on the first date, she’s actually the most compelling character in the film because, at the very least, she’s actually setting her own rules and making her own decisions.  Since Palm Springs Weekend was made in 1963, it ultimately feels the need to try to punish Gail for thinking for herself but that doesn’t change the fact that she’s still a far more interesting character than the blandly innocent Bunny.  Gail’s a rebel.  Gail’s the future.  All hail Gail!

Anyway, Palm Springs Weekend is pretty forgettable and it’s never as much fun as any of AIP’s old Beach Party films.  That said, I’d still recommend it if you’re a history nerd like me.  It’s definitely a film of its time, a time capsule of an era.

A Blast From The Past: Red Nightmare (directed by George Waggner)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Hi there!  Happy Labor Day!

Now, I have to be honest.  I’m not really sure what the point of Labor Day is.  I have no idea what we’re supposed to be celebrating today.  I’ve got the day off, which seems kind of unfair when you consider that people who have far worse jobs than me — i.e., the actual laborers — are having to work.

Like many Americans, I spent this weekend hanging out with my extended family.  On Sunday, I did a poll of every cousin, aunt, uncle, sister, niece, and nephew that I could find and almost every single one of them agreed with me that Labor Day sounded like something tedious that Jesse Myerson would come up with and then demand that everyone celebrate.  In short, it sounded communistic.

So, with that in mind, I think the best way to start out Labor Day would be by watching this educational film from 1962.  In Red Nightmare, Jerry Donavon (Jack Kelly) takes his freedom for granted.  So, Jack Webb shows up and casts a magic spell, which causes Jerry to have a dream about what it would be like to live in a communist society.  In fact, you could even say that Jack Webb gives Jerry a red nightmare!

So, there’s two ways to review a film like Red Nightmare.  We can either debate the film’s politics and get into a big discussion about economics and policy and all that crap and OH MY GOD, doesn’t that just sound perfectly tedious?  Or, we can simply enjoy Red Nightmare for what it is, a histrionic but sincere time capsule of what was going on in the psyche of 1962 America.

Red Nightmare!  Watch it before getting brainwashed by Labor Day!