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"Lily Tomlin plays a middle-aged, married Malibu homemaker who meets a significantly younger, handsome man (John Travolta) on the beach. Bored with her upscale Southern California routine and her marriage, Trisha (Tomlin) pursues an affair with sexy "Strip" (Travolta)."

--AMC's own description of "Moment By Moment," (http://us.imdb.com/Title?0077942) airing MONDAY. YES. TODAY. Catch it now...if you DARE! It may never show again! Warning: Tomlin + Travolta + 1978 + Nude In A Hottub = Projectile Nasal Vomiting. Songs include "Sometimes When We Touch" by Dan Hill; soundtrack by Lee "Riding With Death" Holdridge.

Say what you will about AMC, they'll show the truly awful, unwatchable crap not even Cinemax will foist on the world. "Can't Stop The Music," "Six Weeks," "Mommie Dearest," and now...this...THING. (Oh, and "Death Race 2000" is on this week, too. You're welcome.)

You gotta remember: this was released one year after "Saturday Night Fever." Travolta was a hot property. And people still stayed away in droves! This was the '70s' own version of Madonna's "Swept Away." "Sextette" was released the same year. Why isn't 1978 a year that will live in infamy?

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Meanwhile, our good friends at PAX TV (http://www.paxtv.com/movies/) continue to scrape the bottom of the disaster-movie barrel. After serving up "Tornado Warning!," "Wildfire 7: The Inferno," "Lightning: Fire From The Sky," and "Killer Bees!," here comes..."Frozen Impact." If you thought "On Hostile Ground"'s sinkhole-scenario was silly, how about a killer hailstorm? PAX turns on the ice machines Friday evening.

Coming soon on PAX will be "Trapped," yet another avalanche movie. (I'm sorry, you just can't top Dan Cortese in "Volcano: Fire On The Mountain" (http://us.imdb.com/Title?0120462) for stupid snow-related disaster movies. And Roger Corman's "Avalanche" (http://us.imdb.com/Title?0077189) and "Escape From Alaska" (http://us.imdb.com/Title?0181299)--the special effects of which have to been seen to be believed--easily have second and third place sewn up tight. But keep trying, PAX. I'm lovin' it.)

PAX's upcoming non-disaster movies include--I am not making this up--"Ghost Dog." (http://us.imdb.com/Title?0338061) No, not the Jim Jarmusch/Forrest Whittaker movie--this is PAX.  No, this is a fun and whimiscal movie combining the best elements of "Ghost Dad" and "K-9" (baaaaaaaaaarf). Too bad it's been done before. (http://us.imdb.com/Title?0119193)

                  Thanks for the much needed warning,Squishy,for I've been heavily waiting for that career destroying(at least in the late 70s)John Travolta fiasco to arrive on video and DVD,and might have to settle for its AMC showing.

Hope you caught it...

Oh, Lord. I hope some of you caught "Frozen Impact." Astonishing. Poor Stacy Keach, I know he did wrong but he doesn't deserve this...

The thing follows the standard idiot PAX script rules--

(1) family conflict resolved through deadly catastrophe;
(2) the "Jaws" ripoff involving an event that goes on despite the threat, with disasterous results;
(3) single professional women are all arrogant coldblooded whores.

--but this time the mess is so low-budget, the "event" is a used car auction. A USED CAR AUCTION. The effects generally involve brief, unconvincing flurries of CGI and styrofoam "snowballs" plopping about and wiping out sodas and birdbaths. The hailstorms (yes, plural, although it's a single storm) strike At The Worst Possible Moment (a la "Meteorites!") revolving around a liver transplant. Other cheesy effects involve a plane crash and an overturned truck. It's just as stupid as it sounds, and if PAX runs it again, I highly recommend it. Suffer!

OK, I don't know if anyone's reading this anymore, but you really have to start keeping an eye on PAX. "Killer Bees" was awful. "Lightning" was worse. "Tornado Warning!" was screamingly stupid. "Frozen Impact" was jawdroppingly idiotic.

"Trapped: Buried Alive" defies description.

It's basically Roger Corman's "Avalanche" without the smattering of drugs and sex and suicide, and it follows all the SIPSRs (Stupid Idiot PAX Script Rules) listed above, although it takes it easy on #3. It also takes the "Poseidon Adventure" route, with a group of plucky survivors ironing out their character conflicts as they claw their way toward salvation from one impossible situation to another. This time, everyone good lives, everyone bad dies (horribly)--it's what PAX calls "Feel Good TV."

There are (at least) three things that will make your lungs ache with laughter:

(1) The whole plot revolves around a stepmother-stepdaughter conflict. Oy.

(2) In a room full of dangling live wires, every batch of them is generating a post-production electrical arc like something out of a "Frankenstein" lab set. Except for the wires that the heroine is clearly brushing up against, of course.

(3) Saving the best for last: (a) The menfolk on the outside dig a tunnel in the snow to rescue the trapped people, then SET OFF DYNAMITE inside it, then RUSH RIGHT BACK INSIDE before the smoke even clears. OMFG. (b) There is more fun with explosives and a climactic second avalance that just cannot be described. It involves the worst special effects ever captured on video; scripting that makes approximately one hundred people vanish, then reappear, as is convenient; it is contradicted by events seen about a half-hour before, and it makes no f***ing sense whatsoever.

It could be the stupidest thing, ever. Well, at least until next week...no, that's a repeat of "Killer Bees." It's a tight contest, but "Trapped" comes out a little ahead.

"Trapped: Buried Alive," like "Killer Bees," will probably re-run on PAX in a few weeks. If you love bad disaster movies, you have to start watching PAX.

Oh, I read this . . .
PAX apparently is also going to air a killer flood movie (again -- it's a rerun(!?!)) with Richard Thomas.
I do appreciate PAX.
peter johnson