Tag Archives: 1970s horror movies

Made for TV Horror 3: Spectre (1977)

Dan Curtis, Dark Shadows, Gene Roddenberry, Gig Young, Gothic, Halloween, Horror films, horror television, horror tv, Majel Barrett, Robert Culp, Samuel Peebles, Spectre (1977), Star Trek, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Spectre (1977)

Spectre (1977) is a made-for-Television film that I had read about but was not able to catch for many years.  The premise of two investigators of the supernatural, one a wealthy and erudite believer (Robert Culp) and one a disgraced doctor and skeptic (Gig Young) ,  investigating the paranormal had piqued my interest – something of an ancestor of The X-Files duo – except Scully wasn’t a heavy drinker, though working with Mulder certainly could have pushed her in that direction.  About 20 years ago, I caught the last ten or fifteen minutes of it and was intrigued, hungry for more, which I finally got some years later.  At the time, I was pretty well satisfied with what I saw; however, watching the movie again, this month, my approval dropped precipitously.  There are some good things about the film.  The early interactions between Culp and Young, as Culp tries to convince the latter that he is the victim of voodoo, do raise mystery and suspense.  Clever is Culp’s figuring out that the unexpectedly arriving sister of a fellow expert is a succubus via her subtle avoidance of a chair he offers her to rest, a chair with a cross design on the back, and his disposal of her/it by pressing an arcane sacred text against her.  Lilith, the laconic, knowing housekeeper who guides Young’s character through Culp’s moderne abode further establishes an air of mystery and eeriness.  Then, there is the inexplicable rough weather that nearly downs the investigating duo’s trip to England, piloted by Culp’s British fellow expert in the supernatural (John Hurt!).  Equally good is Culp and Young’s arrival in London, searching for another expert to help them, taking them through a London rain-slicked and shadowy like a noir metropolis.  There, the tension grows as they enter a mansion where something demonic has horribly mangled the man they seek and only a pentagram can keep them safe.  Produced by Gene Roddenberry and cowritten by him and Sam Peebles, the movie led me to expect good things – even if the film does fall into the ’70s trap of assuming an over abundance of harpsichord music is always scary.

But things fall apart, especially when we get to the orgy/satanic celebration and sacrifice toward the end.  Like too many 1970s films, even horror ones, there’s just too much filler light.  The final sacrifice, as it were, actually looks pretty damned (so to speak) cheery with lighting as full and bright as you see in most sitcoms.  And don’t forget the artificial rocks of the cavern walls, all nice and shiny.  Director Clive Donner and Cinematographer Arthur Ibbetson really ought to have taken a gander at Edgar Ulmer’s work in The Black Cat, where impossible angles on stairs, altars, crosses, and doors in chiaroscuro  unsettle with an unnatural, Expressionist vision of reality.  Then there is also the fine example of disquieting cinematography in the use of shadow and darkness in Tourneur’s Night of the Demon.  In the ’70s,  even Dan Curtis gets the lighting right with his use of blue filters and eerily obscuring (dark) shadows  (I couldn’t resist) in the Norliss Tapes.  Click here for my review of that made-for-tv movie) 

It gets bit creepier when Culp goes up against demon Asmodeus, but the monster is till a rubber-mask dinosaur-type.

Furthermore Spectre’s demonic festivities look more like a lascivious New Year’s Eve Party.  We are supposed to be shocked by all that sexuality, especially the repeated  shots of ladies’ boobs  escaping their flimsy scarlet costumes and jiggling around.  My pearls remained unclutched. All I could think of was that one shot in Airplane mocking gratuitous nudity where, amidst the panic of the passengers, a topless woman suddenly jumps in front of the camera, shakes her girls, then disappears.  Apparently, this material was added for a theatrical release of Spectre.  Obviously, 1970s television wouldn’t have been ready for such hot stuff.

In all fairness, it does get a bit creepier when Culp goes up against the demon Asmodeus, but the monster is still a rubber-mask dinosaur-type.

The one gem in this movie was Majel Barrett as the housekeeper Lilith.  Tall, stately, beautiful, and commanding in a long black dress reminiscent of a chi pao, she was also a wry breath of fresh air.  Barrett’s Lilith was fully in charge of Culp and Young through her practical magic, guiding characters with a wonderfully wry, subtle sense of humor.  What a breath of fresh air.  This made-for-TV movie was a pilot for a proposed series by Roddenberry that didn’t get accepted.  Still, with some fine-tuning and more of Majel Barrett (aka Mrs. Roddenberry), we might have had something here.  Anyway, it’s still worth a watch. 

For more background on the film click on the IMDB link and the Wikkipedia link.

All images screen shots from Spectre (1977, Twentieth Century Fox), author’s collection)

No copyright infringement intended by use of the properly attributed photos.  If you feel there is a problem, contact me about removing the images.

10/28/26

 

 

 

 

 

 

Made for TV Horror 1: The Norliss Tapes

Dan Curtis, David Duchovny, Gothic, Halloween, Norliss Tapes, supernatiral films, suspense, Uncategorized, , , , , , , ,

The Norliss Tapes (1973)

In some ways, the 1970s were a golden age for horror on network TV.  Series such as Ghost Story, Night Gallery, The Sixth Sense, and The Night Stalker chilled us back then, though the over-plus of poster-vision, superimposition, electronic music, and a dizzying tracking in and out may seem a little cheesy now.  And why did everyone think harpsichord music was so scary?  The horror genre also heavily populated another 1970s television trend, the made-for-TV movie.  One of the most prolific purveyors of  ’70s TV horror in a series or a one-off film was Dan Curtis, the guy who brought us Dark Shadows, the first gothic soap opera, in the 1960s.  Many people know Curtis for Darren McGavin’s  The Night Stalker series, which actually started out with two TV movies:  The Nigh Stalker and The Night Strangler. Dan Curtis, quite the busy beaver, also wrote, produced, and/or directed quite a few other telefilms, including Trilogy of Terror, Dracula, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and The Picture of Dorian Grey.  One film he wrote/directed/produced that was not based on a classic horror tale was The Norliss Tapes.  A pilot that never  made it to a series, The Norliss Tapes is a kind of upscale Night Stalker, based on the premise of writer David Norliss investigating  supernatural incidents in order to debunk them.  Kind of a Scully and Mulder in one.  It could have made an interesting series.

The movie starts with a tense David Norliss (Roy Thinnes) brooding over a foggy San Francisco landscape from the balcony of his apartment, then calling up his editor (Don Porter) to pressure him into a meeting about a book he was supposed to have completed on his investigations of the supernatural, with an aim to debunk.  He cryptically alludes to threats that have kept him from writing, which he now fears may even take his life.  When Norliss misses the meeting, the publisher seeks the writer at his apartment only to comes across a note telling him to play a set of numbered tapes (in the right order!) to understand what’s really going down.  After putting the tape in a handy cassette player/recorder (Now there’s a trip down memory lane!), the publisher and audience hear David’s voice narrating us to his first adventure into darkness — dissolve back into the past and away we go!  The tale unfolds with a recently widowed woman (Angie Dickinson) encountering a gruesome being in her late husband’s art studio, which of course she and her German Shepherd have to cross a hill and some woods in the middle of the night to access.  The creature whips the dog across the room and takes blasts from her shotgun as if it’s only a tackle from a linebacker.  Still, he’s down long enough for the woman to get away so she can tell her sister, a pal of David’s, that this thing is a creepy version of her husband.  He shows up to investigate, but for a skeptic he comes to believe the woman right quick — dazzled by Angie’s charms?  Before you can say Necronomicon (which actually is a long word), victims are being strangled and drained of blood, a new sculpture of something demonic in reddish clay appears to be gradually being finished in the studio, reports emerge of the husband’s prior involvement in dark arts once he learned he was dying, and creepy caverns and crypts reveal horrible secrets. All of which David pieces together, despite the local sheriff’s skepticism not his own.

Despite some of those annoying trackings in and out and a little too much screeching with the electronic music (Robert Colbert did his job much better on Dark Shadows), the movie has some genuinely creepy and suspenseful moments as victims are stalked on dark, lonely nights; in a dank mausoleum; or to a lonely motel room.  The film even makes effective use of the traditional “We’ve got to find the monster  in this forbidding underground passage before he stirs.”  Roy Thinnes, no stranger to the eerie (The Invaders, Horror at 30,000 Feet), makes an interesting and capable investigator:  discovering the right people to interview and asking the right questions, as well as effectively using the library.  Still, Thinnes plays the guy a little too much on the low-key side; he could make Duchovny’s Mulder look peripatetic.  In all fairness, though, didn’t an ambiance of low grade, indefinable anxiety predominate many films of the era, especially mystery and horror? After tale number one ends, the film returns to the editor, ending with him selecting tape number two.  So, one wonders what new adventure in horror David Norliss would have faced had this pilot led to a series.  Though Chris Carter credits The Night Stalker as an inspiration for The X-Files, the sophistication and the detecting skills of Norliss suggest this film is a much closer match.  How might Carter have developed his series if The Norliss Tapes had become a series?  Thinnes did reappear on The X-Files as Jeremiah Smith, ironically, an alien, though one with good intentions for us benighted earthlings.

No copyright infringement intended by use of the properly attributed photos.  If you feel there is a problem, contact me about removing the images.

Image One – author’s collection

Image 2 – https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/the-norliss-tapes

Image3 – http://thebloodypitofhorror.blogspot.com/2013/10/norliss-tapes-1973-tv.html

Image 4 – https://cleigh6.tripod.com/CTP/CTP-grotesque.html

Image 5 – https://moviebuffsforever.com/products/the-norliss-tapes-dvd-1973