The 1956 film has been interpreted variously as reflecting fears (and paranoia) regarding Communism, and also a critique of social conformity as in the McCarthyism of the time. But Don Siegel, the director of the Fifties film, has offered a very different interpretation:

“Many of my associates are pods, people who have no feelings of love or emotion, who simply exist, breathe and sleep … To be a pod means that you have no passion, no anger, that you talk automatically, that the spark of life has left you … The pods in my picture and in the world believe they are doing good when they convert people into pods. They get rid of pain, ill health, mental anguish. It leaves you with a dull world, but that, my dear friends, is the world in which most of us live.”

Moving to the very different cultural context of the late 1970s, the Philip Kaufman directed version still retains a concern for paranoia and conspiracy, but it does so by interweaving the concerns of people two decades after the original film aired. The location for the 1978 film shifts from a small city to the major metropolitan area of San Francisco, and the concerns of the “me generation” are evident throughout the film. This is especially evident in the depiction of the significance of psychoanalysis as a means of sorting out all of life’s troubles, and (ineffectually) explaining away the growing fears of many in the city by the bay that loved ones and friends just aren’t the same on the inside anymore.

But in viewing the film I wonder if another element might be present that reflects some of the concerns of the time. In the late 1970s the Christian right was a significant force in the culture, particularly but not solely in politics. The general Christian background of America, coupled with the prominence of the religious right, may have contributed to a general background of religious conceptions of the body and the afterlife. It is here that I suggest that Invasion of the Body Snatchers may provide some kind of interaction if not critique.

In one scene near the end of the film, two of the main characters who are still human, Matthew Bennell (Donald Sutherland) and Elizabeth Driscoll (Brooke Adams) are confronted by the alien forms simulating what was once Dr. David Kibner (Leonard Nimoy) and Jack Bellicec (Jeff Goldblum). Kibner encourages them not to resist, and along with Belliceck, describes the benefits of leaving their humanity, and their bodies behind as the pods assume their current identities:

David Kibner: “You will be born again into an untroubled world, free of anxiety, fear, hate…

Matthew Bennell: “David, you’re killing us!”

Jack Bellicec: “That’s not true. David’s right. Your minds and memories will be totally absorbed. Everything remains intact.”

I suggest that this segment of dialogue raises philosophical and religious questions about the nature of identity, consciousness and the body, and also Christian conceptions of the afterlife. Some may question my religious reading of this scene, but it would seem that the use of the phrase “born again,” a popular one in the religious right of the time where even President Jimmy Carter claimed to be a “born again Christian,” as well as the the immediate context for the term in reference to the type of world that Bennell and Driscoll are about to enter, permit a reading of religious implications in the scene. In addition, later in the film, after Bennell and Driscoll escape and find a moment of refuge from their alien pursuers, Bennell leaves Driscoll momentarily to track down the source of music he hears in the background. The music is coming from a radio found on a ship at a loading dock putting thousands of pods on board for exporting around the world, and the tune is “Amazing Grace” played on bagpipes. Of course, “Amazing grace” is a very popular Christian hymn, and a variation of this music is found later in the film at its pessimistic climax. The reader can watch the trailer for the film below and hear this music played at the conclusion of the promotional material. It is interesting to read some of the comments from YouTube where one individual shares that this is “an unusual song” to include in this kind of film. Indeed, unless some kind of commentary and critique were being offered of a theological nature related to the cultural context of the time.

Regardless of whether a direct reference is made to critique of aspects of the religious right, this film does provide an opportunity for theological reflection. Two items are in view in the dialogue reproduced above. First, the alien pods offer entrance into a trouble-free world without the struggles and pains connected with our present existence. While this may sound appealing, it also involves a life free of positive emotions as well, including love. The alien earth presented in this film echoes Siegel’s “dull world” that he critiqued in the 1956 version of the film, and it may also reflect the lack of appeal for bland depictions of the afterlife found in the religious right of the 1970s, and perhaps in the present time in less-than-robust presentations in Christian fundamentalism and evangelicalism.

Beyond this, the film may also provide for reflection on other aspects of eschatology, in terms of personal identity as it relates to life after death, and specifically the Christian idea of the resurrection of the body. In the dialogue above the human characters are concerned that as the alien pods assume their identities that in essence the aliens are killing them. Not so, argues one of the aliens: “our minds and memories will be totally absorbed. Everything remains intact.” This raises questions about personal identity in relation to the creation of another body, identical to the original in every way, complete with the mind and memories. Scholars of various stripes, including not only theologians, but philosophers and those in religious studies, have wrestled with this issue asking questions that are echoed in this film: “Is it rational to hope for life after death in bodily form? Will it truly be “we” who are raised again or will it be post-mortem duplicates of us? How can personal identity be secured??

Here in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, I believe we have yet another example of a slice of the fantastic in popular culture that can be mined more deeply to provide us not only with entertainment in the externalization of our fears, but also an expression of something more, the concerns and questions about personal identity and the shape of the afterlife from the perspective of a particular religious tradition.

I have an entrepreneurial mind, but unfortunately I don’t have the entrepreneurial funds to go with it. When I first heard of the sale of the Amityville Horror home I thought that if I had the investment funds I’d buy the house and during the Halloween season it could be turned into a haunted house. In the off season it could be used as a paranormal tour/ghost hunting location. Regardless of whether paranormal events took place in the house, given its reputation over the years there’s gold to be made in its timbers.

Mark has been a theater, film and television critic for thirty years. He has been the TV critic at the Cleveland Plain Dealer since July of 1999. During his fifteen years at the Akron Beacon Journal, he held such posts as TV columnist, movie critic and critic-at-large.

Also an author and playwright, his many books include the 1994 horror novel Grave Secrets and two acclaimed non-fiction studies of the Carl Kolchak character played by Darren McGavin on television: Night Stalking (1991) and The Night Stalker Companion. His 11^th book, published in 2008, is The Bedside, Bathtub, & Armchair Companion to Dracula. His first book, The Barter Theatre Story: Love Made Visible (1982), contains an entire chapter on the ghosts of America’s most haunted theater.

Several of his essays and introductions appear in Richard Matheson’s Kolchak Scripts (2003) and Bloodlines: Richard Matheson’s Dracula, I Am Legend, and Other Vampire Stories (2006), two books he edited for Gauntlet Press. He also contributed the career overview to Produced and Directed by Dan Curtis, a 2004 book about the horror auteur who created Dark Shadows.

His work on the horror side of the street also includes short stories and comic book scripts. He is the creative consultant to Moonstone’s comic book series Kolchak: The Night Stalker. And he has been a featured guest at such gatherings as FrightVision, GhoulardiFest, LaGrangeCon and the Dark Shadows Festival.

Mark and I recently reflected on the Kolchak: The Night Stalker series in a telephone interview.

TheoFantastique: Recently I have been doing some research and reflection on horror and thrillers on television in the 1970s, and during this process I came across your book on The Night Stalker. How did you get involved in writing on horror in general, and specifically, how did you come to focus on a book on The Night Stalker.

Mark Dawidziak: It’s really the collision of two different things. I grew up as a horror fan in the 1960s in the New York area. So I was watching the Universal horror films, and if you remember that era, it really was not a boom time for horror. The 1950s was a boom era where you have Robert Bloch, Ray Bradbury, and Richard Matheson bringing exciting things to print, and you had a horror boom in film between science fiction and drive-ins and 3D. There was a lot going on in the 1950s. You get to the 1960s and there’s kind of this lull between that and the horror boom that hit in the 1970s. You’ve got John Carpenter, Stephen King, and Anne Rice up and running and horror becomes big again in the 1970s. But if you grew up in the 1960s like me there were a few things that kept horror going. And if you talk to someone who grew up as a horror fan in this period you’re going to find the same kinds of influences, because what kept things going, the reason we’re having this conversation now, was Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, Hammer horror films, and to a certain extent on television The Twilight Zone and Dark Shadows. These kept everything going. Today we take this vampire stuff for granted because it’s coming at us from every corner of the pop culture landscape, but back then when something came along it came from one direction and everybody knew about it.

So toward the end of 1971 we started seeing commercials for this thing called The Night Stalker. ABC was going to air it. And the ads for this thing, the commercials were great. They had you hooked. Everybody wanted to see this. It set a ratings record for TV movies. People were, if you’ll excuse the expression, dying to see it. So The Night Stalker came about for me when I was fifteen. It was a very good age. I had already grown up on the Universal horror films, the Famous Monsters of Filmland, Hammer Films and Christopher Lee, so I was primed for this. I was probably fan number one and ready to receive it. Then I got Jeff Rice’s book when it was published by Pocket Books, I watched the sequel The Night Strangler.

I graduated high school in 1974, started journalism school that fall, went to George Washington University majoring in journalism. Journalism school’s were doing boom business at this time because everyone wanted to do expose journalism like in Watergate. My idea of a good reporter was now Woodward or Bernstein, it was Carl Kolchak. He was my idea of what a reporter should be. In many ways he was the reason I got into journalism in the first place. So I had this collision of being a horror fan and my chosen occupation of being a journalist.

But none of this meant I was going to write a book on this. But that happened purely by circumstance. I had written a book in 1989 on the Columbo series. In the 1980s if you had asked me if I could write a book on one television series and what would it be, I would have told you hands down The Twilight Zone, my favorite television series of all time. Unfortunately, Mark Scott Zicree beat me two it. And dang him he did a good job too. He did a brilliant job and in some ways he set the standard for what books about television studies should be with The Twilight Zone Companion. So I went to my second choice in terms of great television and that was Columbo, because I was also a big mystery fan, and I think Columbo was television’s best mystery series. The book was well received. After the book came out a publisher called me who had a publishing house in New York and he said he was a big fan of my Columbo book and he asked if I ever thought of doing that kind of book on The Night Stalker. I said I’d love to that kind of book but I didn’t know there was a publisher crazy enough to do it. I told him I was crazy enough to write it, and so that’s how the first version of the book came about.

I wouldn’t have thought there was enough of an audience, I didn’t think there were enough people like me out there to like The Night Stalker. Columbo was big, it ran, if you count the original television movies, for ten years. It is a chunk of television history that spans from 1968-1978, some of the greatest guest stars of all time, and Peter Falk won three Emmys for playing that part. You’re talking about a big chunk of television history. With The Night Stalker I didn’t think there would be that many people like me where the series had that kind of impact on them. I thought it was kind of a private affection. So when the publisher suggested I do this book I told him I’d do it under one condition: if I can get Darren McGavin, Jeff Rice, Dan Curtis, and Richard Matheson to agree to cooperate with the book I’ll do it. But if I don’t get all four I won’t have the necessary background to write the book. All four said they would do it and so Night Stalking was published in 1991. That did well enough that Jeff Rice asked me to write the first original Kolchak novel in twenty years, which I did, so in 1994 that was published as The Kolchak Papers: Grave Secrets, and then a couple of years later I revised and reworked all The Night Stalker material. I always say if you want to learn about something write a book about it. I don’t mean write a book and learn about it as you research it. I mean after it’s published everybody will come out of the woodwork and tell you what you did wrong. Few writers are lucky enough to go back and write another edition. So I was luck enough to go back and create a new edition, and that’s the one you found, the 1997 book, The Night Stalker Companion.

TheoFantastique: As a kid I don’t know if I saw the first television movie incarnations of this story. I certainly remember the series. How did the series, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, come to be?

Mark Dawidziak: They were going to do a third movie. The original two movies had done very well. The Night Strangler, the second movie, was received almost as well The Night Stalker. The third movie did not come about for two reasons: one was Universal’s desire to do a series, and two, Darren McGavin didn’t like the script. He thought the third script was repetitive of the first two movies. On top of this he and Dan Curtis got into a terrible fight at the end of The Night Strangler, and this is documented in my book and both admitted it as such. They weren’t talking to each other at that point, and they later patched it up. So Universal wanted to do it as a series, and they approached Darren about it in this way. It was quite a mess. Darren wanted to be the executive producer on the series, and acted like he was, but he wasn’t. That created a conflict right from the beginning. As I often point out to people, if everything had gone creatively right on The Night Stalker 1974-75 series, it still probably would have failed, because it was on ABC at a point when it was in the toilet. And on Friday nights they were very competitive on television, and The Night Stalker was up against the number one and two series of that year, Sanford and Son and Chico and the Man. They would have been destroyed anyway. There was no guarantee of success in prime time. Even if every one of these episodes had been a gem they still probably would have gone down in flames.

You had very few people working on The Night Stalker who understood horror. You had Jimmy Sangster who had written for Hammer horror and who wrote “Horror in the Heights,” considered one of the best episodes of the series, you had a couple of people who understood horror, and a lot of young writers like David Chase who would later write for the Sopranos, and Robert Zemeckis worked as a writer for the series. There was a kind of collision between of the Universal establishment and these young writers on the first rung of the Hollywood ladder at that point. It ended up creating some very fine episodes. There are a couple that are really, really good. I always say if the series had to stake its claim on two episodes it would be the “Horror in the Heights” and “The Spanish Moss Murders.” I think these episodes hold up very well today.

TheoFantastique: I noticed on Amazon.com they’ve got the whole collection of episodes on DVD so I’ll have to add that to my Wish List.

Mark Dawidziak: What’s interesting is that these things were never meant to be seen on DVD. The video quality of DVD is so good that you can see things watching it now that you could never have seen watching it on a tinny old television set when it first aired in the 1970s. The episode that everybody goes to in order to demonstrate how silly the series could get, and it’s not really fair, is the episode where Bob Zemeckis and Bob Gale are the co-authors, is “Chopper.” It’s about a headless biker that goes around killing everyone. If you were going to do this story today about supernaturalism you could make this look very good with computer-generated imagery. But back then the only way to do it was to put a stuntman on a motorcycle and lift his leather jacket over his head on a block that you put up to cover his head, and it looked phony as anything. It does look awful, but they were under terrible time and budget constraints, and they were doing monster of the week, one of the hardest forms to do. The very fine mystery writer, John D. McDonald, once said very wisely, and I think I agree with him, the two hardest forms of television to do are humor and horror. Essentially he said that in the wrong hands humor becomes horror and horror becomes humor. He’s exactly right, which is exactly why there are so few people who work in them. The Night Stalker as a series, and the movies to a certain extent, tried to do both. So it tried to be funny and scary at the same time, and sometimes it pulled it off, which is pretty remarkable when you think of it.

TheoFantastique: What was the significance of Darren McGavin for the role of Carl Kolchak and the series?

Mark Dawidziak: You can’t overstate Darren’s significance in all of this. I can’t see anybody else playing that part. He brought a life and vitality. Darren never phoned anything in. He could make any role sit up and dance, and he was a very underestimated actor. He got stuck in the television movie ghetto in the late 1960s and early 1970s, he was the go to go. And at that he managed some sublime performances. If you want to know how good an actor Darren McGavin is watch Tribes, A Christmas Story, and The Night Stalker back to back, and watch those three performances and you’ll see how many arrows this guy’s got in his quiver.

It’s odd that the two books I wrote are on Columbo and The Night Stalker. They are both examples of the ideal marriage of the perfect actor and the character. It’s very difficult to imagine anybody else in that raincoat than Peter Falk, and it’s very difficult to imagine anybody else in the seersucker suit than Darren. Darren also came up with the costume, which is big because it gave Kolchak a uniform. After Darren made the choice of the seersucker suit, the straw hat and sneakers that became Kolchak’s uniform. So Darren brought not only a face, and a vitality, but a costume.

He also had the ability to play someone intensely human. Kolchak is interesting not because he is incredibly courageous, and he shows fear in almost every episode, but it’s always overcoming that panic and fear. That makes him someone we can relate to. We relate more to that than we do the square jawed hero who has an answer for everything, which is what most action movies give us. Kolchak is an intensely human character. The other thing Darren brought to this was that he had a face that looked like it had been kicked in a few times. You believed that more than anything else for Kolchak. Life has not treated Carl very well. Carl is the guy we can count on to track down all the monsters out there for an ungrateful humanity. The reward for that is usually a swift kick in the teeth. So you have to have an actor that looks like he’s had his face punched in a few times. Darren had that. He made you believe he had been roughed up a few times emotionally, psychologically, and physically. All of that came through in his performance.

TheoFantastique: One final question for you, Mark. What’s been the impact and continuing legacy for this series?

Mark Dawidziak: I think the amazing thing about this series is that if you came of age in the 1960s and early 1070s then everybody was watching the same things and everybody was influenced by and warped by the same things. I think because of that the generation of filmmakers that came up after that were strongly influence by The Night Stalker. If you don’t have The Night Stalker you don’t have The X-Files, you don’t have Buffy the Vampire Slayer and therefore you don’t have Angel, you don’t have Men in Black and a lot of the things that acknowledge the influence of The Night Stalker. Probably the biggest of these is The X-Files. This was the very first genre show, the first horror, science fiction, fantasy show which consistently made the top twenty at a time when cable had started to fracture the audience. In order to make the top twenty you had to have a significant part of the population watching. The X-Files is an extremely important show, and Chris Carter has repeated in virtually every interview he has given he has said he created The X-Files because as a kid he was scared by  The Night Stalker and this was an attempt to do the same kind of program for his generation. I don’t know if there has ever been a show that was more visually important to storytelling than The X-Files. This changed a lot of how television was made visually. It doesn’t get the credit for that, but after The X-Files it’s virtually impossible to see a show filmed in the same way again. It changed all the rules. You don’t have that without The Night Stalker.

And this makes the point that The Night Stalker is not so important in and of itself. I hope that people will discover Kolchak and The Night Stalker, and that they will fall under his spell, but he’s not so important in terms of an individual and a franchise so much as what you’re asking me about, the influence he’s had which far outstrips the success of the two television movies and the series. That influence rolls into the 1980s and 1990s and into the new century. It is profound and it is everywhere today. You talk to people who do this and a lot of them were influenced by The Night Stalker.

TheoFantastique: Your passion for the subject matter is clear and that’s fantastic.

Mark Dawidziak: The great thing about The Night Stalker is that it kind of allowed me to pursue my interest in horror as a writer which wasn’t going to happen until that point because I was a journalist, a critic, I did a book of theater history, I did a book on the Columbo series, so I was really on track to be the mystery guy even though I was raised more under the shadow of horror. The Night Stalker allowed me to vent that side and vent that side since 1991 when the first Night Stalker book came out, and since then a frightening number of my books have monster, vampire, Kolchak connections, and happily so. My last book was a history of the Dracula character. I’ve gotten to write horror fiction and comic books. None of that would have been possible if it wasn’t for Carl Kolchak. So I am deeply in his debt. He’s been an awfully good friend to me. So that’s why the passion comes through. So anything I can do for Carl to repay my debt for what he’s done for me I’m going to do.

TheoFantastique: Mark, I appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts and time and expertise.

Mark Dawidziak: It’s my pleasure. If you want to revisit this at any point, or any horror topic that comes your way give me a call.

TheoFantastique: Michael, your book was a trip down memory lane for me. As a child of the 1970s, many of the television films that made up The ABC Movie of the Week were a way to enter into the world of the fantastic and the fearful. Those were the genres that most appealed to me, although the movies covered more ground than that. How did you come to be a fan of these movies, and what led to your writing this book?

Michael Karol: Well, you put it perfectly in the introduction to your question: the movies in this unique series were “a way to enter into the world of the fantastic and the fearful.” Especially for a shy kid very much into the movies thanks to his mother, who’d been taking him along with her since the late 1950s to see the last Golden Age stars on the big screen. Many of those stars, and lots of up-and-comers, were featured in the unique 90 minute classics that were part of The ABC Movie of the Week series.

In 2004, I had just finished writing Lucy A to Z: The Lucille Ball Encyclopedia, and had done most of my research at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts (a fabulous resource for everything entertainment-related). I went back there to look through the files and figure out the topic for my next book. I was hoping to do something a bit less comprehensive than the Lucy encyclopedia, but then I accidentally found a press release from ABC congratulating itself on the broadcast of the 200th Movie of the Week. The two-page trade ad listed every movie in the series up to that time. It was like it fell into my lap — here was a program that I had loved, and here was most of the information I need to begin researching the movies themselves. I hoped there would be others of my generation who’d loved the series like me, and would buy the book…but I never reckoned on the power of baby boomer nostalgia! It just took off, without any publicity.

TheoFantastique: Can you provide a little background on what television was like before cable and satellite? How did ABC come up with the idea of launching a series of mini-movies? When did it debut, and how popular was it with viewers?

Michael Karol: Oh my God, I feel ancient (laughing)! When ABC’s Barry Diller — then vice president of feature films and development — announced the concept for the series, described as “25 original 90-minute movies made especially for ABC-TV,”  it was the most expensive series in network history up to the that time. Movies on television were a special treat for viewers. Many of the Hollywood classics (and not so classic…remember Chiller Theater?) had been run on TV since the 1950s. There were only three networks (after Dumont disappeared in the 1950s), and a few UHF stations, and local stations needed programming to fill the hours. So movies became a TV staple early on.

The first movie made specifically to air on TV was 1964’s See How They Run, with John Forsythe. Then, in 1966, NBC (which debuted its popular NBC Saturday Night at the Movies in September 1961; it was the first weekly prime-time network show that showcased fairly current color Hollywood movies) came up with the concept for the series Fame Is the Name of the Game. It was a 90-minute anthology series, rotating three plot-connected 90-minute shows that each starred a strong male star: Tony Franciosa, Robert Stack, and Gene Barry.

Diller noted the (ratings) success of Fame Is the Name of the Game, and decided the anthology series concept from the 1950s needed an update. He scheduled The ABC Movie of the Week to debut in 1969, and made the films 90-minutes for budgetary reasons (as it is, they each cost $400,000-$450,000 each to produce, a tidy sum in those days). But there was a group of hungry independent producers (including Aaron Spelling, Quinn Martin and David Wolper) who eagerly jumped in and supplied product for the show.

With commercials, the movies ran anywhere from 72-77 minutes, but they were longer than your typical hour show, and gave the producers a bit more time to explore grander themes. The groovy era (late 1960s to mid-1970s) led to a less restrictive attitude on television that made it possible for the Movie of the Week to present original films on subjects such as drug abuse (Go Ask Alice), homosexuality (That Certain Summer), aging, the aftermath of nuclear war, the existence of life on other planets, and other previously untouchable topics for the small screen, that have since become landmarks in TV history. Other films in the series presented traditional genres like comedy and horror with amazing casts that were an amalgam of Golden Age Hollywood stars and newcomers, many of whom would make their mark on the big screen, like Sally Field, Burt Reynolds and Jeff Bridges. Some of the movies were cheesy (Killdozer, about a killer bulldozer inhabited by an alien presence, comes to mind), but almost every one was memorable.

The series was an immediate hit, and by November 1969, ABC announced it was being renewed for a second season, and the budget for the films increased. I mean, can you imagine ANY network making 26 feature films a season these days? It would be totally cost-prohibitive. But by the The ABC Movie of the Week’s third season (1971-’72), the ratings were so consistently good ABC added a second movie of the week, airing on Saturdays and, occasionally, Wednesdays.

TheoFantastique: One of the most memorable films in this series for fans is Duel, directed by a young Steven Spielberg. You describe this as a “milestone of TV-movie history.” I agree, and think it still holds up as great television today. Please talk a little about this 1971 terror classic.

Michael Karol: Start with a short story by fantasy, horror, and sci-fi master Richard Matheson, and you’ve already got a lot going for you. Duel, which first aired November 13, 1971, starred Dennis Weaver as a businessman simply trying to get to an important appointment. Unfortunately, he runs afoul of a malevolent truck driver (or perhaps the truck itself?) after passing the truck twice on a desert highway. The movie becomes a cat-and-mouse game as an increasingly frightened Weaver tries to avoid the truck, which, for unknown reasons, has targeted him for destruction. The location filming, the handheld camera (used soon after by director Spielberg in a little film called Jaws) and the tight editing make for an agonizingly suspenseful ride. The truck even pursues Weaver outside the car, slamming into a phone booth, for example, when Weaver tries to make a call outside a diner. What makes it work is everyone’s innate fear of the unknown. We only see pieces of the driver, never his face, and we never really know the motive behind his chasing Weaver. These days, with road rage increasing by the hour, Duel might be even more relevant than ever! It was such a hit that in 1983 it was released theatrically, with added footage. Duel’s success made Spielberg’s subsequent career happen.

TheoFantastique: I recognize that in terms of genres the ABC Movie of the Week covered a lot of ground, but as you write in your book, “horror was a major theme of the MOTW,” and the films most relevant to the focus of this blog are sci-fi, horror, and thrillers. I’d like to mention some of these films that readers might remember, or perhaps introduce them to younger viewers altogether, and have you touch on them as to their content and why they were memorable. I’ve commented on a couple of these previously in other posts. One was The Love War from 1970. What was this sci-fi movie about?

Michael Karol: The Love War (aired March 10, 1970) was an ahead-of-its-time sci-fi film with, unfortunately, a rather insipid title. Two alien races bent on destroying each other have picked our planet on which to wage war. The catch: They can only be seen through special sunglasses. It presaged Alien vs. Predator by 34 years. Alien (in human form) Lloyd Bridges gets to know Angie Dickinson on a bus ride to a small California town that is to be ground zero for Armageddon. Can they stop it? Well, they say love conquers all, and Angie falls in love a might too quickly (but don’t forget, they only had 77 minutes!). It’s a perfect example of the MOTW series’ ability to take a grand theme and run with it on a mere fraction of the budget that it takes to make an Alien/Predator film…. Yes, there are some questions left unanswered — but the acting is so divine it doesn’t matter that we only get a short glimpse of the actual aliens at the end.

TheoFantastique: Can you comment on Crowhaven Farm, from November 1970?

Michael Karol: Crowhaven (aired Nov. 24, 1970) was possibly an attempt to cash in on the successful Rosemary’s Baby, released the previous year. Innocent Hope Lange and hubby Paul Burke inherit a farmhouse in Salem, Mass. Now, if that’s not a tip-off to a witchcraft-centric plot, I don’t know what is. They’re trying to save their marriage by having a child, but are forced to deal with strange things happening to Hope, as a result of some bad juju perpetrated by her, um, witchy relative and the coven she belonged to hundreds of years before. Crowhaven Farm took its cues from the classic ghost movie The Haunting (1963) in that it only showed fleeting glimpses or sounds of the evil spirits haunting Lange (a young girl’s cries in the forest that turn into maniacal laughter once Lange investigates) — the audience is mostly left to fill in the gore with its imagination, and it works.

TheoFantastique: You had positive comments about A Taste of Evil from October 1971. What was that about?

Michael Karol: After a violent attack when she was younger, Barbara Parkins goes all catatonic and is put away in an institution. The movie follows the adult (gorgeous) Parkins as she returns home to mama Barbara Stanwyck, playing a controlling mom from hell. There’s a handyman (Arthur O’Connell) who knows too much; and strange things begin happening that terrorize Parkins from the minute she arrives home. Was there really someone standing on the lawn, watching her during a storm? Is she going crazy again, or is someone gaslighting her? Perhaps Roddy McDowell or William Windom? Or mommy dearest? I’ll never tell, though you’ll probably have to search long and hard to find the film anywhere, as with most of these classic TV films. (See the last question.) A Taste of Evil was directed by John Llewellyn Moxey, who also helmed one of the best-remembered MOTWs, The Night Stalker.

TheoFantastique: Horror fans may be familiar with The Night Stalker television series with Darren McGavin, but may not recall that it finds its origins in the television movies The Night Stalker from 1972 and The Night Strangler from 1973. How did this concept arise in two movies and then make the jump to a series? And how inspirational has it been on subsequent television?

Michael Karol: Many of the movies in The ABC Movie of the Week were pilots for projected television series. If the ratings were high enough, they’d go into production the following season, often using the cast from the movie. The Night Stalker (with a teleplay also written by Richard Matheson) was one of the highest-rated MOTWs, and remained one of the Top 25 highest-rated movies shown on television for many years. So it was only a matter of time before it became a series. First came a sequel, The Night Strangler, as you noted. The Dan Curtis (Dark Shadows) productions starred the wonderfully cynical Darren McGavin as a tough reporter out to find the truth about a vampire stalking Los Angeles (Stalker), and then going after a madman killing women in Seattle (Strangler). Curtis and Matheson were both asked to so the TV series (called Kolchak: The Night Stalker), but declined, which meant the series lacked Curtis’s trademark atmospheric touches, and Matheson’s deft writing. The series lasted only a year and became steadily more silly than scary. Still, McGavin’s convincing performance made it memorable. Night Stalker was revived starring Stuart Townsend in 2005, but only lasted for 12 episodes. For fans of the original, the best moment came in the pilot, when Townsend enters his newsroom and acknowledges a digitally inserted McGavin. The Night Stalker movies and series have impacted supernatural-themed movies and TV in the sense that any film or series featuring investigators or reporters, or even teens, facing a horror scenario, owes The Night Stalker a debt. The most current example I can think of is the hit TV show Supernatural.

TheoFantastique: You gave A Cold Night’s Death (a.k.a. The Chill Factor) from January 1973 high praise as “one of the best MOTW thrillers.” Unfortunately, I don’t remember seeing it. What was this frightening feature about?

Michael Karol: I am a sucker for thrillers/horror movies with a wintry setting — the more ice and snow, the better. So this one was right up my alley. Two arctic researchers (Eli Wallach and Robert Culp) have their research interrupted by mysterious things like windows opening by themselves and their food disappearing. Wallach, the older, more pragmatic soul, tends to believe these are just manifestations of their isolation and loneliness, but Culp isn’t so sure. And, by the way, the previous researcher vanished without a trace. It’s a great two-character study — the tension, and the effects of the isolation and severely cold weather, are palpable. This one is right up there with John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982) and two more recent films I love, 2006’s The Last Winter and Wind Chill (2007).

TheoFantastique: Another Movie of the Week I’ve commented on here previously is Satan’s Triangle from January 1975. What is this memorable supernatural at sea movie about?

Michael Karol: Satan’s Triangle is a neat thriller, one of the best movies ever made about The Bermuda Triangle. Kim Novak is (apparently) the lone survivor of a shipwreck. Doug McClure is one of two Coast Guard rescuers who pick her up (in McClure’s case, it’s literally a pickup!). Things get dicey when they try to figure out what happened to Novak and her husband on their yacht in the Devil’s Triangle. Novak is very helpful, if frightened out of her mind. Revealing much more would be a disservice, since there’s a juicy twist ending that everyone who’s seen this film never forgets. Let’s just say…some people may not be who you think they are, and the devil gets his due.

TheoFantastique: Perhaps the most memorable of all the Movies of the Week is Trilogy of Terror (a.k.a. Tales of Terror) from March of 1975. The Zuni fetish doll in the film’s third segment occupies the cover of your book nicely. What was this film about, why was it effective, and how has it influenced subsequent horror films?

Michael Karol: By the way, the cover photo is an actual still of the doll from the movie; Jim Pierson and Dan Curtis Productions generously gave me permission to use it. … TOT was directed by Dan Curtis and written by Richard Matheson (seeing a pattern here?!); there are three segments, and the most popular one, featuring the Zuni fetish doll, was based on Matheson’s story Prey. Karen Black — you either love her or hate her; I’m a lover — stars in all three segments, each of which has a horror twist. The first has her as a timid teacher being pursued by a handsome student…who’s in for a surprise; in the second she’s twins, one goody-goody, one evil, who want to get rid of each other; but it’s the third that made this one a classic of the horror genre. In “Prey,” Black’s character Amelia buys a strange doll that, unfortunately for her, is inhabited by an evil spirit — one that wants to inhabit a person, not the doll. Once the scroll around the doll’s neck accidentally (or is it?) falls off, the evil spirit is released, resulting in a knock-down, drag-out fight between the doll and Amelia. The movie moves us due to the excellent editing and camerawork, stop-motion animation, and especially Black’s all-out performance. Keep in mind all was done before the days of CGI, so basically you’ve got Karen Black and a small doll (scary looking, but not real), plus director Curtis, the cameraman and and the sound man, scaring the hell of the viewer. Anyone who’s seen “Prey” will never forget that evil doll, its primal, guttural growling, and the ending. It’s been a major influence on any “possessed” doll, person, or item in any horror film that came after. There’s Chuckie, of course, and The Puppet Master film franchise, but also films as varied as 1995’s Tales From the Hood (the segment “KKK Comeuppance”), 1998’s Small Soldiers, and the two Night at the Museum films (2006 and 2009).

TheoFantastique: Are these Movies of the Week available on DVD? If not, how else might interested fans track them down?

Michael Karol: Some of the better-known ones are (Brian’s Song, Duel, and Trilogy of Terror), but the majority are not. As I wrote in the book’s Afterword, rights issues (especially music rights and performing rights) are probably what’s been preventing most of these movies from being released on DVD. The only advice I have is keep looking: start with collectors you know and collector sites online; check out the user comments section on the IMDb page for the movie — some of the users note they have copies on VHS, and you might be able to trade or purchase copies; troll eBay searching for titles; flea markets might prove fruitful; and try writing to the production companies or producers who made them.

TheoFantastique: Michael, thank you again for this great book.

Michael Karol: And thank you, John for the opportunity to talk about one of my favorite subjects…movies.

Those fascinated by the fantastic don’t know how easy they have it these days. There are any number of films and television programs, DVDs, books, and thousands of websites, not to mention various conventions that can be explored to enjoy whatever aspect of the fantastic that is desired. Growing up in the 1970s, on the tale end of the monster kid phenomenon that had begun a decade or two prior, it wasn’t quite so easy. We had to work hard at it in order to satisfy our monstrous fetish. One way this was done was to secure whatever toys became available that connected to the fantastic. I have a soft spot in my heart for one such toy, Milton Bradley’s Shrunken Head Apple Sculpture kit with Vincent Price on the box cover, a favorite of mine growing up, who also did the television advertisements for the kit. Although you supplied the apples, the kit included beads, glue, paint, hair, string, and a plastic apparatus that was put on a lamp and which was designed to hold the carved apple as it dehydrated into a form resembling a shrunken human head. I know know if my mom was very happy with my grotesque art project connected to her living room lamp for a few days, but I sure had fun in the process. I only wish I had held onto this and other monster toys from the period. Those interested in learning more about the kit can Google it and visit sites like X-Entertainment, and can even order this retro toy at eBay.

Update: Another item from my childhood came to mind the other day, a model that I built in the early 1970s, and I was able to track it down on the Internet. It was the “Dead Man’s Raft” by MPC based upon Walt Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean ride. One of the interesting features was its “zap action”, a rubber band providing tension on the skeleton in the chest who would pop out when the chest was opened and slam the knife in his hand into a treasure map. I found this on eBay listed from a seller in an unopened, sealed box with an asking price of $495! An only slightly more reasonable copy of the complete model is available at The Pop Top Shop for $295. That page also includes examples of the other Pirates models available in the 1970s, and a 1968 AMT model of the USS Enterprise from the original Star Trek that I also remember building. For background information and photos of various monster toys from the 1970s and other decades visit The Gallery of Monster Toys.

The other day a memory of 1970s television came to mind in the form of a science fiction tale, but I couldn’t remember the name of the program. Thank goodness for the Internet and Google. A quick search under “Angie Dickinson” and “Lloyd Bridges,” connected to “1970s television” produced the result I was hoping for. My search parameters brought back The Love War, a program which aired on March 10, 1970 (which would mean I was two days past my sixth birthday when I saw the program), as part of the ABC Movie of the Week.

This forum for television movies was signicant in entertainment for the period, at times launching what would become regular series such as The Night Stalker (January 1972), and the Six Million Dollar Man (March 1973), and it also included a number of noteable television movies in their own right, including Steven Spielberg’s Duel (November 1971), Satan’s School for Girls (September 1973), The Stranger Within (October 1974), Satan’s Triangle (January 1975) which I have posted on previously, and Trilogy of Terror (March 1975).

The Love War was one of the interesting offerings of sci fi, suspense, and horror that surfaced from time to time as part of ABC’s lineup. The story surrounded two planets at war which make the decision to send a small fighting force to planet earth as a neutral planet and the battleground for intergalactic conflict. On the surface the alien combatants look fully human. The only way in which the warring aliens can detect each other is through small electronic devices, as well as special visors which show the true alien nature underneath the human visage. Lloyd Bridges plays one of the aliens sent to do battle with his enemy. During the course of his mission he eventually befriends Angie Dickinson’s character, a woman he presumes to be human. Their relationship and trust builds to the point of romance, and Bridges reveals his true identity. At the conclusion of the movie Bridges believes he has killed the last of the enemy and his planet victorious, but the vicotry is short lived as Dickinson shoots him. With his dying gaze he looks at her with great surprise and confusion, and as he gasps his last she reveals that she truly did love him. Why then did she kill him? Bridges’s visor lays on the ground next to his body, and the camera now takes this perspective and we see Dickinson’s true nature revealed as an alien for the opposing planet, sent in violation of the interplanetary rules for warfare. Her weapons of femininity and romance have become the undoing for Bridges, and for his planet.

As mentioned above, The Love War represents one of several examples of good storytelling for the ABC Movie of the Week. From the comments offered at the Internet Movie Database for this television movie it is clear that I am not the only one for whom this program made a continuing impression. With this kind of appreciation, and the growing audience of fantasy fans, it is surprising that someone has not compiled the sci fi, horror, and suspense offerings from the ABC Movie of the Week into DVD form. Perhaps someone needs to let ABC know an audience is waiting.

I’ve been reflecting on science fiction films recently in preparation for a future interview to be posted here. Years ago it was an encounter with science fiction, later fantasy films, and eventually horror, that produced a lifelong interest in the fantastic. For some reason two sci fi films from the 1970s have been on my mind, and with the discovery of a few items related to each on YouTube to spur my memory I thought I’d comment on them.

While the 1950s are usually considered as one of the high points for sci fi films in light of those cinematic gems that addressed American fears of the bomb, communism, and cultural conformity, other decades have much to offer in this genre as well. Some of the highlights of 1970s sci fi include Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970), The Andromeda Strain (1971), A Clockwork Orange (1971), The Omega Man (1971), Soylent Green (1973), The Stepford Wives (1975), Invasion of the Bodysnatchers (remake) (1978), and Altered States (1980). (For those wondering why Alien [1978] is not on my list, although it is highly regarded in my thinking, it is more properly classified as a horror film set in space rather than a sci fi film.) Two additional sci fi films in this genre worthy of mention are Westworld and Logan’s Run. These films  are still rewarding cinematically, and offer fodder for reflection.

Westworld (1973) was the second of Michael Crichton’s novels to be turned into films. The first was The Andromeda Strain, but this second novel adaptation saw the author’s imprints on the screenplay and film direction. The storyline is set in the near future where advances in robotics have permitted the creation of a theme park with three themes of the Old West, medieval Europe, and ancient Rome recreated and available for guests to enjoy and explore in a living fantasy. Think Disneyland for adults with no childlike connotations. Theoretically the robots, which look almost perfectly human with the exception of minor flaws in appearance, are programmed in such a way as to prohibit the harm of humans. However, the robots eventually begin to suffer a series of behavioral problems which eventually expand into a systematic failure resulting in all of the safety features being overridden, and along with it, the injury and death of park vacationers.

As the title indicates, the film focuses on the Old West fantasy scenario, particularly in the form of Richard Benjamin’s character as an urban vacationer, and a robotic Gunslinger played by Yul Brynner. The first few interactions between Benjamin and Brynner are fairly routine in terms of cowboy shootouts resulting in the death of the villain dressed in black. But once the robotic system breaks down, Benjamin is in a fight for his life as he seeks to escape the Gunslinger hunting him with advanced senses of automated sight and hearing.

Although this film does not appear to be discussed much in film criticism that addresses sci fi, it has been influential in popular culture with several episodes of The Simpson’s engaging in parody of the film, and horror and sci fi director John Carpenter claiming the Brynner’s Gunslinger was the inspiration for the Michael Myers character in Halloween.

Westworld is a film worthy of fresh visitation, if not a remake. Like Crichton’s later novel and book, Jurassic Park, it addresses our anxieties over science and technology run amok. With the major advances in robotics and issues surrounding the trans-human, the issues raised by Westworld would seem even more timely in the 21st century.

Logan’s Run (1976), is another significant sci fi film from the decade. This film is based upon a novel authored by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson. It too is set in the future, but unlike Westworld, this film presents a postapocalyptic, dystopian future where life involves living life to its fullest in fulfillment of almost any fantasy but with a serious catch: due to overpopulation lifespans are limited to thirty years. As these citizens of the future near their thirtieth birthday they are to report to authorities, and many do so with the hope of receiving renewal and extension of life beyond year thirty. However, as might be expected, not everyone is pleased with the idea of execution at such an early age, and those who do not report become runners who are hunted by authorities. One of the main characters is one of these authorities, a Sandman, played by Michael York. Although only twenty-six, his lifeclock is changed by the system to appear as if he is thirty, and he is turned into a runner so that he might find the rumored Sanctuary for those runners escaping death.

In my view, Logan’s Run is not as good as Westworld, nevertheless it is still a good film. It too touches on cultural and social themes that are of interest to a twenty-first century audience, even more so than for those of the closing decades of the twentieth century when the film was originally released. The aspects of the story arch that touch on apocalypticism, overpopulation, and the definition of old age are of continued interest in our time, and Logan’s Run provides the “othering” and critical distance necessary for us to reflect upon them.

In 2007 Ridley Scott expressed his dismay at the state of science fiction films and wondered whether they have gone the way of the Western. But is sci fi dead? As the continued relevance of these two classic sci fi films indicate, it is not the genre that has passed into irrelevance, it is the lack of imagination and creativity on the part of filmmakers and storytellers in the late modern period that has contributed to sci fi’s malaise. Perhaps films like these can provide inspiration for new sci fi epics that capture our imagination and challenge our thinking.