The Old Man Who Cried Werewolf
Stars: Edward G. Robinson, Martin Balsam, Diane Baker, Percy Rodriques, Ruth Roman, Ed Asner
Stars: Edward G. Robinson, Martin Balsam, Diane Baker, Percy Rodriques, Ruth Roman, Ed Asner
An unusually popular ABC Movie of the Week, The Old
Man Who Cried Wolf stars Edward G. Robinson as an elderly shopkeeper who
witnesses the killing of his oldest friend (Sam Jaffee). Unfortunately Robinson
can convince no one--not the police, his own family nor even those closest to
Jaffee--that his friend was murdered. Though enfeebled by age and illness,
Robinson sets about to prove that he's telling the truth. He does so, but at
the cost of his own life. Edward G. Robinson was proud of his performance, as
were his many fans (judging by the onslaught of fan mail); it's a pity that the
pedestrian Old Man Who Cried Wolf wasn't worthy of his talent.
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The Ice House - 1997 / PBS
Stars: Penny Downie, Kitty Aldridge,Frances Barber, Daniel Craig
Three women who are viewed with suspicion by their neighbors become the center of an investigation with deadly consequences in this made-for-TV drama. Anne (Kitty Aldridge), Diana (Frances Barber), and Phoebe (Penny Downie) share a large old estate in a quiet rural community. The women are reclusive and are shunned by many of the townspeople -- partially because they're believed to be lesbians, and partly because the husband of one of the women disappeared under mysterious circumstances ten years ago. When a dead body is found in the ice house on the women's property, the same police detective who investigated the decade old missing-persons case is sent in to see if foul play is afoot; he was certain that the wife was responsible for her husband's disappearance before, and this time he's determined to put her behind bars. Based on the novel by Minette Walters, The Ice House was originally produced by the BBC and first aired in the United States on the PBS series Mystery!
Three women who are viewed with suspicion by their neighbors become the center of an investigation with deadly consequences in this made-for-TV drama. Anne (Kitty Aldridge), Diana (Frances Barber), and Phoebe (Penny Downie) share a large old estate in a quiet rural community. The women are reclusive and are shunned by many of the townspeople -- partially because they're believed to be lesbians, and partly because the husband of one of the women disappeared under mysterious circumstances ten years ago. When a dead body is found in the ice house on the women's property, the same police detective who investigated the decade old missing-persons case is sent in to see if foul play is afoot; he was certain that the wife was responsible for her husband's disappearance before, and this time he's determined to put her behind bars. Based on the novel by Minette Walters, The Ice House was originally produced by the BBC and first aired in the United States on the PBS series Mystery!
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The Women in Black - 1989
When a friendless old widow dies in the seaside town of Crythin, a young solicitor is sent by his firm to settle the estate. The lawyer finds the townspeople reluctant to talk about or go near the woman's dreary home and no one will explain or even acknowledge the menacing woman in black he keeps seeing. Ignoring the towns-people's cryptic warnings, he goes to the house where he discovers its horrible history and becomes ensnared in its even more horrible legacy`
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Incident at Deception Ridge
In this made-for-TV action adventure, some criminals terrorize a Seattle-bound bus filled with innocent passengers after a kidnapping goes awry. Michael O'Keefe stars as Jack Boulder, a just-released ex-con who, along with some resourceful characters, helps his fellow bus passengers defend themselves against kidnappers who have been duped out of their ransom money.
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If Tomorrow Comes
The ABC network chose to recognize the thirtieth anniversary of Pearl Harbor with the "revisionist" TV movie If Tomorrow Comes. Patty Duke Astin is a California girl who in 1941 falls in love with Japanese-American Frank Liu. Upon the occasion of the "Day of Infamy," Liu is rounded up along with other Californians of Japanese descent and interred in a relocation camp. At this point the film becomes a mufti Romeo and Juliet, with Astin and Liu entering into a suicide pact. While the film rightly condemns the wartime imprisonment of Japanese Americans, it also misguidedly suggests that virtually all Caucasians in 1941 were pigheaded bigots with no rational reason whatsoever to mistrust the Japanese. If Tomorrow Comes was filmed on location in Pasadena.
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Advice To The Lovelorn
The made-for-TV Advice to the Lovelorn stars Cloris Leachman as a "Dear Abby" type newspaper advice columnist. Walter Brooke costars as her editor, who discourages her efforts to follow up her advice in person. But follow she does, trying to untangle the problems of guest stars Melissa Sue Anderson, Lance Kerwin, Desi Arnaz Jr. and Donna Pescow. She even finds time for a romantic episode with special guest star Paul Burke. Intended as the pilot for a weekly series, the 2-hour Advice to the Lovelorn was telecast November 30, 1981.
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The Care and Handling of Roses
Jean Townsend (Ann Jillian) is happily married to the dull but dependable Roger (Garrett M. Brown), who does not object to her evenings out to attend various classic-film festivals. On one of these occasions, Jean befriends Tom Doster (Lee Horsley), a fellow film enthusiast likewise mired in a comfortable, conformist marriage. Over the next several weeks, Jean begins socializing with Tom, and it isn't long before the couple is toying with notion of an extramarital affair. But how far will things go--or, to be more specific, how far are Jean and Tom willing to go beyond their own deeply ingrained middle-class values? Essentially a Brief Encounter for the 1990s, the made-for-TV The Care and Handling of Roses was first broadcast by CBS on October 8, 1996.
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The Great Houdini
Made for television, The Great Houdinis tells the life story of famed American illusionist/escape-artist Harry Houdini and his wife Bess. Studiously avoiding covering the same ground as the 1953 Houdini theatrical-film biopic, director Mel Shavelson's script for Great Houdinis spends a great deal of time on the conflict between Harry's Catholic wife Bess and his Jewish mother. The spiritualism angle so important to the Houdini story allows the 1976 film to recreate Houdini's meetings with "true believer" Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Again departing from the 1953 Houdini, this later film does not end with Houdini's death from peritonitis in 1926; instead, we watch as the widowed Bess desperately tries to make contact with her husband in the "other world," all the while debunking phony mediums, just as her husband had done. Paul Michael Glaser and Sally Struthers star as the Houdinis, with Ruth Gordon as Harry's mother Mrs. Weiss, Peter Cushing as Conan Doyle, Jack Carter as Houdini's brother, Adrienne Barbeau as his mistress, Nina Foch as a medium, and Vivian Vance as the all-around best friend/severest critic, who narrates the film. The Great Houdinis first aired on October 8, 1976.
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Curse of The Black Widow
the trail of a murderer whose mutilated and predominantly male victims are found encased in silken cocoons. He eventually tracks the killer's path to Los Angeles, where he discovers her true identity -- a woman who was bitten by black widow spiders as a child, who has developed the ability to transform herself into a gigantic spider-monster (as portrayed by a not-too-convincing rubber puppet). An odd diversion for director Dan Curtis, with a 1950's monster-movie mentality incongruous with his earlier TV features. The cast -- comprised of many familiar TV faces -- try to play their roles straight, despite the overall impression that the whole thing is a silly put-on.
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Failing of Raymond, The
Stars: Dean Stockwell, Jane Wyman
Stars: Dean Stockwell, Jane Wyman
Jane Wyman makes her TV-movie debut in The Failing of Raymond.
She plays a middle-aged schoolteacher on the verge of retirement. Just
before packing up and heading out, she is terrorized by former student
Dean Stockwell. Having flunked out of her class ten years earlier, the
demented man intends to kill his ex-teacher unless she changes his
grade. Talk about your "permanent record"! The Failing of Raymond debuted November 27, 1971
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The Girls In The Office
Filmed in and around Houston, Girls in the Office is an easily digested TV movie with an all-video-star cast. The office is in a large Houston department store. The girls are four in number: Susan Saint James, Barbara Eden, Penny Peyser and Robyn Douglass. The film follows the quartet as they try to balance their jobs with their love lives. Some of the ladies opt for business, others for pleasure; look at the cast and figure out who does which. The viewer's interest in Girls in the Office is entirely dependent upon how appealing one finds its stars. The film couldn't help but do well when it was first telecast in February of 1979: its competition was the McLean Stevenson sitcom Hello, Larry. 1979.
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Crash
Stars: Eddie Albert, William Shatner, Sharon Gless, Adrienne Barbeau, Brooke Bundy, Lorraine Gary, Ron Glass, George Maharis, Ed Nelson. 1978.
Stars: Eddie Albert, William Shatner, Sharon Gless, Adrienne Barbeau, Brooke Bundy, Lorraine Gary, Ron Glass, George Maharis, Ed Nelson. 1978.
True story recounting the crash of Eastern Airlines flight 401, which crashed in the Everglades while on approach to Miami in December 1972 and the courageous adventures of the 73 survivors. Accurate in many respects, the movie goes through the events leading up to the crash, the crash itself, and the rescue effort afterwards.
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Five Desperate Women
Five Desperate Women debuted as an ABC Movie of the Week on September 28, 1971. Anjanette Comer, Joan Hackett, Denise Nicholas and Stefanie Powers are four of five graduates of an exclusive girl's college, meeting together for a reunion on a remote island. The fifth girl (whose name we'll withhold for suspense purposes) is the one that's murdered first. It appears that an unknown assailant plans to pick off the girls one by one. The survivors must figure out who's doing them in and why before fade-out time. Aaron Spelling was the producer of this middling clichefest. Rel/1971
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The Defiant Ones
In this faithful remake of the Stanley Kramer classic buddy film, two members of a chain gang, one black and the other white, escape. They are chained together. At first they hate each other, but as time passes they begin to develop a grudging friendship. Stars: Robert Urich, Carl Weathers. 1986.
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The Guardian / HBO
The Guardian is set in an upper-class New York apartment building, recently plagued by a series of break-ins and murders. The tenants eagerly enlist the services of former military officer John Mack (Louis Gossett Jr.) as the building's head of security. Slowly but surely, the tenants give up their freedom of movement to Mack, who runs the place like his own private fiefdom. Bristling over this infringement upon his rights, liberal-minded tenant Charles Hyatt (Martin Sheen) begins to suspect that the killings were orchestrated by Mack himself as a means of gaining power over his employers. Stirring up a respectable amount of suspense, the made-for-cable The Guardian debuted October 20, 1984, over the HBO service. 1984.
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Love Hate Love
Seldom has a TV-movie title been more appropriate than Love Hate Love. Ryan O'Neal, Lesley Ann Warren and Peter Haskell comprise the three points of an unfortunate love triangle. Ms. Warren is a fashion model engaged to engineer O'Neal; she falls in love on a whim with charismatic playboy Haskell. Unfortunately, Haskell is off in the coop, given to sudden, unexplained spurts of hatred and violence. When Warren tumbles to this and leaves for California with O'Neal, Haskell utilizes his seemingly unlimited transportation resource to stalk the couple. He's careful to stay within the law, but any moment...he'll...SNAP! Eric Ambler wrote the original story upon which the satisfactorily suspenseful Love Hate Love is based. 1970
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My Sweet Charlie
Having tried and failed to produce the David Westheimer novel and play My Sweet Charlie as a theatrical film, Richard Levinson and William Link had to be content with making the property as a TV movie-which turned out to be one of the very best of its kind. Al Freeman, Jr. plays Charlie, a black New York lawyer falsely accused of a crime in a rural Texas town. Escaping from his tormentors, Charlie takes refuge in a boarded-up farmhouse. Here he meets another fugitive: unmarried, pregnant Marlene Chambers (Patty Duke). Hostile towards each other at first, Charlie and Marlene become friends. The story's tragic ending nonetheless holds a glimmer of hope. Emmy Awards went to star Patty Duke (the first ever given to a TV-movie actress) and to the script by Levinson and Link. First telecast January 20, 1970, My Sweet Charlie was later given a brief theatrical release. 1970
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Scream Pretty Peggy
Bette Davis stars in the TV movie Scream, Pretty Peggy. She isn't Peggy, but instead the secretive matriarch of a spooky household. Peggy, played by Sian Barbara Allen, is a goggle-eyed college student hired by Davis as a housekeeper. Ted Bessell plays Davis's son, a crazed sculptor; but no one ever sees Bessell's maniacal sister (where's Anthony Perkins when you need him?). Be assured that pretty Peggy takes up the invitation proposed by the film's title and screams loud and often. 1973.
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She Waits
She Waits, directed by Delbert Mann, an above average, frightening made-for-TV horror film tells the very familiar story of a young couple who move into a old house only to find out that they are being haunted by the ghost of the man's ex-wife, who gradually takes possession of the young wife. Laura (Patty Duke) must fight for her life and her happy marriage to Mark (David McCallum) despite great odds and family secrets. There is nothing new or different about this story, but the veteran casts including Beulah Bondi, Lew Ayres and Dorothy McGuire all give good performances in this good, plausible horror film which covers very old territory with skill and energy. 1971
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Skyway To Death
Skyway to Death is still another TV-guest-stars-in-jeopardy opus. This time, everyone is packed into an aerial tramway. As the assorted characters hang some 8500 feet in the air, their car breaks down and threatens to plummet earthward. The special guest victims include Ross Martin (sometimes erroniously listed as the film's director), Stefanie Powers, Bobby Sherman, Tige Andrews, Nancy Malone, John Astin and Joseph Campanella. Skyway to Death first dropped onto American's TV screens on January 19, 1974.
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A Howling In The Woods
Although advertised as a "reunion" of former I Dream of Jeannie stars Barbara Eden and Larry Hagman, the made-for-TV A Howling in the Woods is actually a vehicle for Eden, with Hagman contributing a glorified cameo role. The scene is a remote wooded area in Nevada, where disillusioned housewife Liza Crocker (Eden) has arrived for a solitary camping trip. It so happens that Liza's "sanctuary" is located near the small and cloistered town where she was born — a town that does not necessarily want to have her back. As Liza's husband, Eddie (Larry Hagman), searches for her in hopes of a reconciliation, the heroine is terrorized by the mournful sound of a howling dog, which triggers painful and frightening memories that she had hoped were long, long buried. Based on a novel by Velda Johnston, the underrated and almost unbearably suspenseful A Howling in the Woods debuted November 11, 1971, on NBC.
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Along Came A Spider
Seeking justice, she conceals her identity and goes after the professor (Ed Nelson) she holds responsible for her husband's "accidental" death. Pleshette launches an affair with the professor in order to get the goods on him, but she genuinely falls in love and comes to believe in his innocence. But the professor knows all too well that her husband's demise was no accident. Adapted from a novel by Leonard Lee, Along Came a Spider ran 73 minutes when it was first telecast in February of 1970; it was expanded to 92 minutes when released theatrically abroad.
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The Alpha Caper
Henry Fonda stars in this TV movie as a worn-out probation officer who decides to heist a $30,000,000 gold shipment, using three ex-convicts as his "mob". Fonda's cohorts include Leonard Nimoy, James McEachin and Larry Hagman. The plan is meticulous (due in part to Fonda's inside knowledge), the crime itself letter-perfect. But none of the participants count upon the "Murphy's Law" factor—which in this case is a stalled getaway truck. Alpha Caper was intended as the pilot for a TV series called Crime, which would have explored one "foolproof" crime per week, from conception to execution.
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