Making a list of Made for TV movies. Most of them seem to be from the mid-70's. Can you think of any others or Websites devoted to TV Movies?
Dr Jekyl and Mr. Hyde
Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (This was a scary one when I was a kid)
Dracula (Jack Palance)
The Night Stalker
The Night Strangler
Duel (memorable film for me.)
Trilogy of Terrors
Ok - that's a tough list since many basic cable and movie stations are doing their own movies. I rarely ever liked the made for tv stuff so I can't really add to your list.
The Stand
Pirates of Silicon Valley (this wasn't the main networks..i think it was TNT)
When a stranger calls back (heh)
And nominee for the best made for tv movie title:
"Mother may I sleep with Danger?"
I'm not sure I think I'm thinking of only the 70's made for TV movies. They seem to have a different style. I've only seen 2 of the movies that I've listed. That Dan Curtis guy sure knows how to make a movie.
I seen THE STAND and liked the beginning, but it dragged out and the end wasn't what I was looking for in a movie at the time.
>I'm not sure I think I'm thinking of only the 70's made for TV movies. They seem
>to have a different style.
I think I know what you mean, although some of the newer movies aren't bad.
>That Dan Curtis guy sure knows how to make a movie.
He made some of the ones listed below.
Ok, here's all the ones that I could think of at the moment, plus a couple that I haven't seen but found while searching for the titles of other films (*). I'll let you decide where the cutoff date is. Also, I tried to only include real made for TV films and not the kind of crap that SciFi passes off as its own.
Horror/Supernatural
------------------------------
Daughter of the Mind (1969)
Gargoyles (1972)
Baffled! (1973)
Horror at 37,000 Feet (1973)
Norliss Tapes, The (1973)
Satan's School for Girls (1973 & 2000)
The Strange and Deadly Occurrence (1974)
The Dead Don't Die (1975) *
Satan's Triangle (1975)
Burnt Offerings (1976)
Look What's Happened to Rosemary's Baby (1976) *
The Spell (1977)
Spectre (1977)
The Uncanny (1977)
Child of Glass (1978)
Cruise Into Terror (1978)
Dark Secret of Harvest Home (1978) Miniseries
Dr. Strange (1978)
The Initiation of Sarah (1978)
Salem's Lot (1979) Miniseries
The Darker Side of Terror (1979) *
Revenge of the Stepford Wives (1980)
Dark Night of the Scarecrow (1981)
Midnight Offerings (1981)
Invitation to Hell (1984)
The Midnight Hour (1985)
Bay Coven (1987)
The Stepford Children (1987)
Amityville: The Evil Escapes (1989)
Danger Island (1992)
Buried Secrets (1996)
The Stepford Husbands (1996)
I've Been Waiting for You (1998)
The Triangle (2001)
Science Fiction
-----------------------
Questor Tapes, The (1974)
Exo-Man (1977)
Time Machine, The (1978)
Clone Master, The (1978)
Salvage (1979)
The Aliens Are Coming (1980)
Starflight: The Plane That Couldn't Land (1983)
Timestalkers (1987)
Grand Tour: Disaster in Time (1992)
Doomsday Rock (1997)
Tempting Fate (1998)
The Time Shifters (1999)
There was also a pretty good vampire movie in the late 80's or early 90's, with a guy hunting a female vampire. For the life of me, I can't recall the name or who was in it. Anyone know? I seem to recall the final fight takes place in a penthouse apartment.
JohnL wrote:
> There was also a pretty good vampire movie in the late 80's or
> early 90's, with a guy hunting a female vampire. For the life
> of me, I can't recall the name or who was in it. Anyone know? I
> seem to recall the final fight takes place in a penthouse
> apartment.
Sure it wasn't early 80's?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083821/
"I, desire"(1982) starring David "American Werewolf Cheese" Naughton
It recently played on one of the Encore channels(Encore Mystery). So maybe you can catch it. Don't think it's on video.
I, Desire is scheduled to air on these channels at these dates/times(EST):
Fri, Nov 21 7:50AM Mystery I, Desire
TV14 1h 34min. Horror, Mystery
Fri, Nov 21 8:50AM MOVIEplex I, Desire
TV14 1h 34min. Horror, Mystery
Fri, Nov 21 9:35PM Mystery I, Desire
TV14 1h 34min. Horror, Mystery
Fri, Nov 21 10:35PM MOVIEplex I, Desire
TV14 1h 34min. Horror, Mystery
Thr, Nov 27 3:15AM Mystery I, Desire
TV14 1h 34min. Horror, Mystery
>"I, desire"(1982) starring David "American Werewolf Cheese" Naughton
That sounds like the one I was thinking. Thanks!
Of the top of my head....The Last Dinosaur, The Beast, The Creature, On Deadly Ground, just to name a few. Oh, yeah, and the recent Red Water.
Most of them are B movies, and are made fast, with big commercializing plans, just to get people to watch it. Hey, its free. And most people have nothing better to do on Sunday nights.
Thanks JohnL great list !
Wow, I didn't know that Gargoyles (1972) was made for TV. Always loved this film and know that I think of it. It has some of those older TV movies.
>Thanks JohnL great list !
No problem. :)
I just thought of another one;
The Intruder Within (1981) (horror)
>Wow, I didn't know that Gargoyles (1972) was made for TV. Always loved this
>film and know that I think of it.
Me too. I forget how old I was when I first saw this, but it really creeped me out.
Does anybody remember the TV movie {est. '72-'75} with James Brolin accidentally locked in a department store with guard dogs (Doberman's)? He was either pased out or knocked out in public bathroom in something about the size of J.C. Penny's.
Tough movie. I really want to see it again.
>Does anybody remember the TV movie {est. '72-'75} with James Brolin
>accidentally locked in a department store with guard dogs (Doberman's)?
I've never seen this myself, but a quick check of the IMDB says it was called Trapped (http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0070828/combined).
Thanks for saving the ultimate made for TV movie for me:
D A M N A T I O N . A L L E Y
Oh, yeah, being the one to bring that one up makes me feel real big. These movies seem to have been more guy oriented in the halcyon days of yore that we're hearkening back to. That doberman thing sounds a little like a Denis Weaver situation, was he in something similar, or am a combining Trapped with Duel in my mind? How about The Amazing Dobermans, was that a mini-series or what?
No one seems to have mentioned "The Bermuda Depths" from 1978. It seems to have stuck in the minds of lots of people who saw it as children (like myself). Seems to have been one of Rankin-Bass' few attempts at live action. I was a creepy stort revoving around a mysterious beautiful girl, a young man who first encountered her as children, and a giant turtle with their initials carved in its shell. Co-stars Carl Weathers. Some folks look to be trying to use an on-line petition to get a DVD release. I admit I'm curious to see if it would hold up to my memories, probably not.
The guy at The Unknown Movies site has a soft spot for TV movies, especially ones from the 70s and reviews them frequently. The current/recent review is of a suspense movie called "Night Terror" starring Valerie Harper and Richard Romanus from 1976.
Sorry Dave, but Damnation Alley was a theatrical release. You are thinking of the post nuclear war movie with Jan-Michael Vincent, George Peppard, and Paul Winfield?
This movie featured the Landmaster vehicle that had the tri-mounted wheels and turned by flexing in the middle. It was the one really cool thing about this movie. They showed two of them, but only one was built.
Check it out here, it's still around: Damnation Alley Landmaster Page (http://www.snowcrest.net/fox/landmaster/)
Post Edited (09-04-04 09:13)
i don't know if anyone mentioned this one scott, but what about...
MAZES AND MONSTERS with tom hanks???
self-promo: i have a review for it at my site www.310am.com
how about after school specials? i remember several, the one that really sticks out is the one about angel dust when that actress from MAD ABOUT YOU jumps out of her school's second story window...bad trip...
stay cool,
mr. henry
www.310am.com
>No one seems to have mentioned "The Bermuda Depths" from 1978.
I forgot about that one.
I think what misleads people about "Damnation Alley" is that many people (including me) first saw it on network TV in the early 80s, having never heard of it before then or were too young to remember it being in theaters. Plus after "Star Wars" and other films, the effects of DA looked very dated and even cheaper than they probably were. Also George Peppard and Jan-Michael Vincent were best know around that time as TV stars. When I first saw it on NBC as a kid, it was all we talked about the next day at school, and we all thought it was a TV movie.
Does anyone else remember "Special Bulletin", the TV movie from 1983 done "War of the Worlds"-style as a fake newscast? It involved terrorists who claim to have a nuke on a tugboat in the harbor of Charleston , SC, and the news crew they take as hostages. The network ran disclaimers that it was fake during commercial breaks. Caught when it first aired and years later on TBS during the afternoon movie, can't rmember if they had disclaimers when they showed it, but I don't remember them showing it again. Pretty gripping for its time. I'd love to see it again. Between its age and subject matter I can't see it turning up on TV anytime soon.
Funny you mention it, now I don't have to start a new post.
I saw "Terminal Invasion" yesterday- it's a 'made for Sci--Fi Channel' movie starring Bruce Campbell (and nobody else).
The basic story is that Bruce Campbell is a murderer on his way to a prison to be executed. During transport, they hit a snow storm and have to hole up at a small charter airport in a podunk town. They're stuck in this building with a bunch of other people, some of which are murdering aliens that want to take over the world and use humans as slaves.
Anyways,
"A made for Sci Fi Original" should have been my first clue, but I figured if The Bruce was in it, it might have some redeeming qualities. I was wrong. The Bruce made me chuckle a few times, but the movie was so FREAKING HORRIBLE that Bruce alone couldn't save it. Terrible movie.
Would I watch it again?
Yep.
He he, last night's entertainment was night really "Made for TV" but coming from U.F.O productions well...you can guess at the quality.
I refer to Silent Warnngs (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0348031/), a crop circles/aliens tale probably trying to prey off "Signs" . Starring an apparently desperate-for-money Stephen Baldwin getting top billing but very little screen time, Billy Zane as Billy Zane, and a host of unknowns.
Pretty decent minute-to-minute, but don't stop to think about it because in the end, nothing that happened made sense.
Post Edited (09-05-04 20:18)
Thanks alot John. Trapped was indeed one of my favorites along with A Cold Night's Death.
Man, I was sure Damnation Alley was made for TV. Positive. Weird. I think it's mainly because the actors in it are TV types. I had a book by the same author, Roger Zelazny, that had a picture on the front of it of a robot kicking a door down. I thought it made quite a statement - I'm the kind of guy who reads books with robots on the cover kicking doors down.
The Bermuda Depths and Rona Jaffe's Mazes And Monsters were both movies I was about to bring up because I like them, didn't realize they were made for TV. Don't see a lot of Chris Makepeace anymore, do you? Speaking of him, I should probably mention The Last Run with him and Lee Majors. No idea if it was made for TV, but I actually liked it (few do). Lee Majors was a race car driver, cars were illegal. He has one stashed and makes a run for Free California in it, taking Makepeace the hacker nerd kid for some reason. They send Burgess Meredeth, the last fighter jet pilot, after them. I always think of this when I mention the 80s cliche that computers are magic. At one part, the kid starts hacking away while some bad guy's are next to a Coke truck, and he makes the Coke cans explode somehow (???).
I seriously didn't intend to go of on The Last Run like that. Anyway, the mysterious beautiful girl in The Bermuda Depths (my favorite Devil's Triangle movie ever) is Connie Seleca, the bride of Tesh. I just thought of it the other day because I saw a busted umbrella that reminded me of the Horror.
Bad Ronald
It
V
Parker Stevenson was in one about a computer controlled house that fell in love with some woman and tried to kill anyone that got near her. Can't recall the name but I saw it sometime in the late 70's.
Sound's like Demon Seed, althoght I'd be surprised if that was made for TV, with all the roborape implications. I think Dean Koontz did the novelization of the screenplay. It started to sell well, then the movie came out and hurt the book (by being way less good).
Nope, not Demon Seed but close. I did a search on Parker Stevenson and came up with: This House Possessed, a made for tv movie in '81. Memory didn't serve too well as it is the movie I was thinking of but there may be more involved than a computer being stuck on the woman. According to what I just read, it's a modern, fully automated house but the house itself and not a computer is what winds up being in love with a nurse.
Also, how about this one. Hopefully someone saw this piece of crap and can tell me what the name of it was. Shortly after Star Wars turned out to be so popular, everyone was trying to cash in, even tv. I saw a made for tv "western" that was almost a rip off of Star Wars set in the old west. I seem to remember some old, mystical gunfighter teaching a young guy to be a gun fighter. They even had a special gun that they made...a 7 shooter with that extra bullet being for an emergency. They used something similar to the "force" to be great gunfighters. Oh yeah, of course they were good guys and there was this ultra bad guy that had similar powers. Anyone?
"The Amazing Dobermans" was also a theatrical film. It was the second sequel to 1972's "Doberman Gang," which I saw, and was also preceded by 1973's "The Daring Dobermans."
This has already been done. While sadly out of date, there needs to be an update, , Alvin Marill's "Movies Made for Television" lists every made for television move up to 1986, and at that time there were 2069 of them, in alphabetical order.
There is also indexes for producers, directors, writers, actors, and perhaps most interestingly, in the back, the films are listed in chronological order.
October 7, 1964, televsion history was made. The first made for television movie, "See How They Run," appeared on NBC.
Two tv movies that I think haven't been mentioned are "The Legend of Lizzie Borden" (1975) starring Elizabeth Montgomery as the alleged ax murderess. Excellent version of the true story. The other tv movie (is in my opinion the greatest made for tv movie ever made) is called "Murder By Natural Causes" (1979) starring Hal Holbrook,Katherine Ross,and Barry Bostwick. This mystery has the most incredible twists I've ever seen in any movie,including theater releases.Many critics have also called it the greatest made for tv movie ever made.
I believe burnt offerings was a theater release.
You mention Gargoyle. I worked on a horror movie show in the late 80's in Springfield MO. We showed Gargoyle. The regular host wasn't on the show that week so I filled in as a gargoyle, who talked like David Letterman. I read a Top 10 too.
I noticed nobody has brought up pilot movies. My favorite two are "Ironside" from 1966 and "Wonder Woman" from 1974 (I think).
Does anyone else remember "She's Dressed to Kill" starring Connie Selleca from 1979? Someone is murdering the world's "top models" who are gathered at the mountaintop home of a fashion designer for a private fashion show. Basically a tame TV version of a slasher movie, but the killer had strange methods of murder. One of the girls is killed when her hairspray is replaced by nerve gas! Used to turn up on TBS late at night a lot along with other TV movies and half-forgotten 80s flicks.
I must be one of the few people who actually hates "Gargoyles". It's not even that the movie is that bad, it's just that it used to turn up on TV so much, it became overkill for me. I used to fread fliping through the channels looking for a late night movie or checking the TV listing and seeing "Gargoyles" was on yet AGAIN.
anyone out there know how to find DOWN IN THE VALLY I aired some tyime ago on PBS can find it anywhere. any help wiuld be appreciated e-mail me cbouy@cox.net
I liked the made for tv movies too and a few of my favorites were:
Bad Ronald
Mad Room
Don't Be Afraid of the Dark
Night Gallery (the pilot)
The Night Stalker
Duel
and one starring Cliff Robertson as an ex military man that goes hunting with his buddies and has a poor day of hunting. They then come across other hunters that have had the same results on the other side of a stream. Bored , a shot rings out and they start a small war between themselves, which ends abruptly. Anyway, sometime in the future, Cliff and his boys want to finish it and plan a military type hunting trip, this time hunting for you know who. Its winter and snow is on the ground. Cliffs bunch are dressed in green fatigues and are ambushed by their prey who were dressed in white, hiding under the snow. I think the ending has Cliff Robertson lying in a hospital while all his buddies lay in the morgue. Does anyone know the name of that movie? Cuz I can't remember.
The Night That Paniced America was a good one. The well made tv movie of Orsen Wells radio broadcast of War of the Worlds.
The Cliff Robertson movie your thinking of is called "shoot" from 1976, however it was not a made for tv movie but a theater release.
Re: Damnation Alley
Some people often confuse Damnation Alley for a 1970's FILMATION TV series called Ark 2 which also featured an almost similar long vehicle & was white in color also.
I remembered the Ark II that way too, but in reality the vehicle aren't really much alike. The Landmaster is still around and running and is a real off road vehicle. It had that weird tri wheel setup.
The front of the Ark II became part of a life size model of space ship on another 70's Saturday morning show called Space Academy.
Thanx, I could have sworn it was a tv movie but now that I think about it you're right.
Here's a small page for Ark II (http://www.70slivekidvid.com/ark.htm).
Can anyone help me remember the western that showed train robbers steeling a freight car from a moving train by means of cables and a spur track? I can't say if it's a tv movie or a series. Perhaps it was from Wild Wild West.
Awakening Land
Looking for Awaking Land With Alizabeth Montgomery
Awakening Land Alizabeth Momtgomery
I'm wondering if anyone remembers a movie from the late 70's or early 80's that had a group of vicious dogs attacking people at night. The only scene I can remember has some people trapped in a cabin with the dogs trying to break their way in and the dogs eye glowed red.
Yes, I loved that movie. The title was "Trapped". I recently found it on ebay when I was doing a search for old tv movies.
There's a website with the Ark II on it: http://www.70slivekidvid.com/ark.htm
If you look at the review here of the movie Hybrid you'll see the Landmaster from Damnation Alley. We were touring universal studios was back in the late 70s / early 80s and the Landmaster was parked in a lot across the street, along with that hovercraft from the Logan's Run TV show. Pretty cool! I took a bunch of pictures of it but they disappeared a long time ago.