Made for TV

Due to Mature Subject Matter Parental Discretion is Advised: a common disclaimer in '70s' network television, particularly in the made for TV movies that popped up four or five times a week on a prime time schedule, and one that drew impressionable youngsters (like me) like the proverbial flies to dung. While '70s cinema was wild and wooly in the theaters and the drive-ins, that no-holds-barred sensibility was also mirrored (although toned down considerably) in the "World Premiere" productions that were broadcast.

While nostalgia can be a rosy colored thing, there was a certain quality to these films that warms the memories of those of us who lived through that era. I cannot forget the crazy surrealistic shock I felt watching Frankenstein: The True Story back on NBC in the fall of '73, when the Monster (played by Michael Sarrazin) pulls off the head of Jane Seymour (playing the Elsa Lanchester part), or the evil Polidori (James Mason), in the middle of a tempestuous storm, being hoisted onto the top of a ship's mast whimpering "I'm afraid! I'm afraid!" and then being struck by a bolt of lightning and turned into a skeleton! Or the slow-motion thumping and moans of the living Gargoyles. Or the voluptuous horror of the fantastic Zuni fetish doll that dogged Karen Black throughout her house in Trilogy of Terror. Or classic Shatner as a drunken ex-priest who regains his faith as he confronts a ancient Druid demon and is sent spinning into the glorious sunrise in The Horror at 37,000 Feet (a mash of possession/occult horror and Airport style disaster drama --both of which genres were extraordinarily popular in 1974, when this little shocker was done).

Certainly horror was a popular TV movie genre. Indeed, one can make the argument that TV movies were merely tamed exploitation films, and that the TV screen was just a surrogate drive-in screen. One can point to the panoply of teenage alcoholics, runaways, prostitutes, rentboys, dope fiends and bulimics that crawled and staggered across American TV screens in the mid-seventies. There was even a Women-in-Prison (WIP) entry in 1974's Born Innocent in which a post Exorcist Linda Blair (who was only 14) is subjected to all sorts of degradations including a graphic toilet plunger rape. Try making a film like that for television nowadays (not that anyone should).

But even in the harshness of the subject matter, they were not necessarily cynical. On the contrary, these films were quite earnest in their twisted way. These were "problem films", movies that dealt with social issues and tried to call attention to them as a call to action. The political climate in the '70s was such that such an undertaking seemed almost noble. Today, in our cynical and selfish age, taking such a tact seems quaint, even naive, wrongheaded, and foolish.

As an aside to this sketchy discussion of TV movies, it's interesting to note that the opening to ABC's The Movie of the Week (which you can see in real media in TV Party along with some vintage promos) was designed by none other than Douglas Trumbull, who designed the slit-scan process utilized in the stargate sequence in 2001: A Space Odyssey. It's quite easy to see the similarities.