Here’s the question.  How can you take a story about Confederate bushwhackers versus Union troops in Missouri in the end of the Civil War, add the plot engine of a forbidden romance between a pretty bushwhacker and a Yankee captain, through in a murderous renegade Cherokee… and still have it come out boring?

For the answer, I present to you Renegade Girl (1946).

To be honest, I am very tired of most animated movies that come out today, filled with characters that SCREAM at the top of their lungs and make endless wisecracks and pop-culture references. That’s why, when I am in the mood for an animated feature, I usually look for something different. I picked up Cat City not that long ago, because the way it presented itself promised that the movie would be different than your typical American animated features. For one thing, it was an animated movie from Hungary, the same country that made Hugo The Hippo. Although that movie was awful, it was at least different, so I was pretty sure I would at least get something like that here. But after watching it and writing my review, I’m now prepared for an avalanche of hate e-mails from Hungarians.

MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE

A rogue comet causes every machine on the planet to revolt against Mankind. ATMs can only display insulting messages, but tractor-trailers are capable of doing a lot more than calling surprised bank customers bad names.

Review Snippet:
I would much rather run into a murderous can opener than a psychopathic self-propelled lawnmower, while any variety of mobile woodchipper means that my butt would be heading for the closest vertical rock formation. Granted, once I climbed to the top of that, my next problem might well be a swarm of RC helicopters. I’d still rather my last moments recreate the epic finale of “King Kong,” vice a random scene from “Woodchipper Massacre.”

Lesson Learned:
Whoever said that the pen was mightier than the sword was never on the wrong end of a machinegun.

Man, I just could not find a bad ABC Movie of the Week. (Well, OK, there was The Last Dinosaur, which is actually a cousin to this movie. But I reviewed that years ago.) So instead, let us don our breathing gear and flippers, whereupon we may witness the bizarre melange of elements to be found in the Bermuda Depth.

Now, here’s a peculiar thing: two films with an almost identical premise; but as they must have been in production at almost the same time, and debuted within weeks of one another, it seems unlikely that one could have ripped the other off – even though one of them is an Italian horror movie. Both were produced within the long shadow cast by The Exorcist, but owe almost as much to Rosemary’s Baby. Both feature a happy marriage experiencing an improbable pregnancy; a pregnancy that is unnaturally accelerated, and accompanied by revolting eating habits and violent personality changes in the mother-to-be. Both mothers contemplate an abortion, only to have the baby itself fight back. So far, so similar. Then we hit a T-junction. One film blames it all on the aliens; the other blames it all on the devil.

THE STRANGER WITHIN (1974)

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CHI SEI? (1974)

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That’ll have to wait ’til next time.  Until then, you may busy yourselves reading about:

Conan the Destroyer (1984), in which the franchise that started it all decides that things like quality and ambition just aren’t worth the trouble…

The Good Son (1993), in which that kid from Home Alone takes his game up a couple of notches…

The Phantom Planet (1961), in which a really boring American astronaut finds himself boringly stranded on a boring planet whose boring people are at boring war with crummy rubber monsters who thankfully are not boring…

and…

The Stepford Wives (1975), in which the masterminds of a conspiracy to create the perfect woman suffer from a truly astonishing lack of imagination.
 
 
 

Vincent Price isn’t exactly the everyman that the protagonist of the novel I Am Legend was, but as the star of The Last Man on Earth (1964) he still gives a wonderfully weary as the last uninfected man in a world of vampires.  Staking is his business, and business is a bit too good to be good.

It may be hard to believe, but August 23 marks Barbara Eden’s 76th birthday. And what better way to celebrate the occasion than with a brief look at of one of her most interesting — and least typical — screen appearances?

A Howling in the Woods (1971)

If you only know Eden as the vivacious star of “I Dream of Jeannie” or Harper Valley PTA, this TV movie may surprise you. It’s a murder mystery with some astonishingly lurid plot twists.

Also, it’s tempting to see the movie as a gift to Eden from NBC, for accidentally killing her TV show the year before…

Murder On Flight 502 was one of the first made-for-TV movies I ever saw. I remember seeing it as a small child one weekend afternoon, and I remember being sure I’d be entertained because of the movie’s colorful all-star case (including Robert Stack, Farrah Fawcett, Sonny Bono, and Fernando Lamas.) Also, the movie promised it would be a murder mystery, so I remember gleefully warming up my deducing skills. However, I was sorely let down by the movie’s mystery – if you can even call it a mystery. That’s because I correctly guessed who among the airplane’s passengers was the guilty party when that person was first seen in the movie’s first few minutes. It went downhill from there.

A Cold Night’s Death (1973)

This is an unusual made-for-TV movie: it’s more Strindberg than Spielberg. Robert Culp and Eli Wallach star in a virtual two-man show, as scientists stuck in a snowbound research station performing stress experiments on monkeys and chimpanzees. Soon it becomes apparent that someone — or some thing — is experimenting with them. Or is it all in their heads? And even if it is, will it make any difference to the outcome?

The Screaming Woman (1972)

What do you call a thriller that reveals not only the killer’s identity, but also its major plot points, all within the first ten minutes? I call it brilliant. Based on a story by Ray Bradbury (who turns 90 this week), The Screaming Woman also shows a good TV movie can make substantial changes to its source material without ruining it.

TARANTULAS: THE DEADLY CARGO

Remember how the mayor in “Jaws” was worried about the shark scaring off the tourists? This is the same movie. Just substitute “tarantulas” for “shark” and “oranges” for “tourists,” and…well I guess that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, does it?

Review Snippet:
With the warehouse infested with tarantulas, the only hope of rescuing the crop without destroying the oranges is to use the sound of the deadly tarantula wasp to put the spiders to sleep. Unfortunately, nobody in Finleyville has a pet tarantula wasp. (Who does?) So they use a hive of bees filtered through a sound mixer and amplifier to mimic the sound of a tarantula wasp. While the spiders are paralyzed with fear, Bert and his cohorts can pick them up and put them in buckets. Genius! The problem with this plan is that they don’t have any equipment to record the buzzing bees. Somebody has to shake the bees in front of a microphone the whole time that the spider removal operation is going on.

Lesson Learned:
Spider fangs cannot penetrate flannel.

The Excalibur Kid (1998)

These Kushner-Locke kidvids shot in Romania need to be assessed the same way that home appraisers assign value to a home; in addition to an objective assessment of the specific movie’s merits, you have to compare it to its comparable surroundings and see where it fits in in the community. In this case, The Excalibur Kid’s nearest neighbors are Teen Knight (1998) and Johnny Mysto: Boy Wizard (1997), produced by the same people under the same conditions, all three of them dealing with modern teens transported back in time to medieval periods. Johnny Mysto and The Excalibur Kid even have an Arthurian flavor in common. Compared with these other likely suspects in a lineup, The Excalibur Kid comes off pretty well. But I would have to say that see The Excalibur Kid after Teen Knight and Johnny Mysto is the only way to make it look good.

Hmm, someone should put those things into one movie.

SEVERED: FOREST OF THE DEAD Severed is a great title for this movie. Not because of anything that it has to do with the movie — honestly, I can think of better titles. No, it’s perfect because it describes the way that it was just tearing me apart inside to watch this film. My frustration stems from the fact that this movie could have been truly excellent, and instead crapped it up with derivative idiocies and poor choices, making it a movie that I can at best offer a neutral recommendation on. “Yeah, sure, I guess you could watch that.”

NIGHT OF THE DEMON

The spirited exchanges between the hero and the villain are a treat, and the atmosphere is great, but what makes this movie special is the demon. It is a truly memorable addition to cinema’s museum of monsters.

Review Snippet:
The key to John’s dilemma is understanding the rules governing Karswell’s demon. Back in 1957 you could not walk into a bookstore and buy a copy of “Summoning Demons for Dummies.” Heck, you still can’t. I even searched Amazon.com for the title. In that same nether vein, John also couldn’t Google “demon parchment Karswell” to look for answers. The Internet had not been invented. 1957 is so incredibly far in the past that Pong hadn’t been invented yet (and we all know how useful Pong is).

Lesson Learned:
80% of England is covered by wallpaper; 95% of which is ugly, 50% hideously so.

Aaron Spelling produced a staggering number of television shows during the course of the 70′s. His productions included iconic TV series, like “Dynasty”, “Charlie’s Angels”, “Fantasy Island” and “The Love Boat”, as well as some of the best-remembered (if not necessarily the best) TV movies, including Crowhaven Farm, The Daughters of Joshua Cabe and The Boy in the Plastic Bubble . Not everything he touched turned to television gold, but even some of his less successful productions are still memorable (does the phrase “Football — you bet!” ring a bell?).

1978′s Cruise Into Terror is one of the misfires. The script seems like somebody stuffed an issue of the National Enquirer in a blender… but the formidable all-star cast makes the resulting mess much more entertaining than it has any right to be.

A Vacation in Hell (1979)

Of course, the ‘70s were a decade frought with Meaning anyway – new wisdom, new paradigms, discovering one’s self, getting in touch with one’s inner child/mystic/mother-in-law/what have you. What could have been (and was surely meant to be originally) a mildly engaging suspense yarn became a pseudo-drama, painting a picture of societal tensions present in the minds and op-ed columns of the sensitive intelligentsia at the time. Not bad for a Monday Night Movie on ABC.

How good is the suspense thriller Venom? Well, actor Klaus Kinski chose to act in this film instead of taking an offer from Steven Spielberg to appear in Raiders Of The Lost Ark. Though on the other hand, I also found out Kinski made this choice not for artistic reasons, but for financial ones – he was offered more money to appear in Venom. Yet Venom manages to be a very good movie, suspenseful and filled with tension. It also regards its audience as being smart instead of dumb. And with Oliver Reed clashing with Kinski throughout the movie, you know you are going to get your money’s worth from that alone.

No, it’s not more sexual harassment at a comic book convention.  Instead, we take a break from TV movies to watch some Saturday morning TV cartoons.  Come see what happens when the Superfriends find themselves projected into books of classic–not to mention public domain–literature, and face being trapped forever in a FAIRY TALE OF DOOM.

There’s also still time to get in on the debate about which Bennet sister would end up marrying Solomon Grundy, by the way, although Mary seems to be running away with it.

I’m taking a break from the obscure and the unsubtitled, to review one of the best-remembered TV movies of all time:

Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (1973)

Sure, there are far scarier things on television these days… for instance, I’d rather be locked in a house with three murderous demon-imps than with the cast of any reality TV show. But when it comes to sheer craftsmanship, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark can withstand comparison to almost any movie on the big or small screen.