Ant musing… Empire of the Ants (1977), Eureka Blu-ray out 22nd June

 

Don't tread on an ant He's done nothing to you
There might come a time when he's treading on you…

Adam Ant, Antmusic (1980)

This film has a lowly 5% on Rotten Tomatoes and whilst I had no idea that the ratings could go so low, I don’t think that’s in anyway a fair reflection of its merits. Empire of the Ants is the third and last film released in American International Pictures's H.G. Wells film series, after The Food of the Gods (1976) and The Island of Dr. Moreau (1977) the first two of which were directed by the remarkable Bert I. Gordon. Gordon also co-wrote an managed the whole process in the manner of a true auteur as Kim Newman says in his career overview in the extras. “Mr B.I.G.” as he was known and naturally initialled, was a master of every part of film making from editing, cinematography to the special effects upon which so many relied.

His work in the science fiction/horror exploitation genre went back to the early 1950s and his last credit was in 2015’s Secrets of a Psychopath, made when he was 93 and still full of the passion and energy that would see him beyond his 100^th birthday. It’s fine for some to lump him in with Ed Wood and other low budget dreamers but he was clearly a master of his craft and, on the evidence of this film you can see that despite the limitations of budget. As Chris Cooke says in his introduction, Gordon proved that size does indeed matter and his track record is indeed a large one when it comes to thrillers involving relative dimensions directing such hits as The Amazing Colossal Man (1957), it’s follow-up, War of the Colossal Beast (1958), Village of the Giants (1965) and King Dinosaur (1954) not to mention the other Wells film featuring gigantic rats and hens.

Joan Collins in sales mode for Dreamland Shores

His mastery of double exposure often looks better on the cinema screen as its only preparing film for the small screen that has made the elements of the technique more visible with, as here, the odd ant crawling apparently on thin air although the remastering here is as impeccable as Gordon himself when preparing filmic elements for projection in the pre-digital age. Here the mix of photo-enlarged real ants and larger scale rubber replicants, works well if you suspend disbelief and go with the flow – for those of us born before CGI this is not so hard. As with so many eco-horrors of the seventies “disaster movie” craze, physical props had to be used and the actors had to do their best to make their threat real in the deadliest moments of which there are quite a few.

In terms of the source material, HG Wells short story from 1907 was more about the threat of organised ants of regular size and in the opening section we see ants organising their culture using pheromones and a collective intelligence that is remarkable for any of the 15,000 different species on Earth. Wells just went with that but Gordan has a nuclear spillage following illegal dumping, irradiating the creatures and making them grow to giant size. This was a familiar trope as Newman points out with the same thing happening to Colossal Beast in 1958 and from there to Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s The Incredible Hulk in the Marvel comic starting in 1962.

Having established the threat it’s time to turn to the real monsters of the piece; the people and especially ruthless real estate developer Marilyn Fryser (a marvellously bossy Joan Collins) who is busy lining up a group of punters for a trip to view the potential of her new integrated community at Dreamland Shores, miles from anywhere, on polluted land and with only the pretence of the groundwork having been done. There's a hilarious sign point to the "Future Gold Course", "Future Marina"and "Future Pool Area" and essentially this is a money grabbing exercise for which Marilyn's head of sales, Charlie (Edward Power) admits only a third of the day trippers will invest in, the rest are just there for the free ride. Sadly for them, today there's a huge price to pay...

The group on the boat to nowhere are the usual mix for this period of cowardly sexist husband with a wandering eye, Robert Pine (Larry Graham) and his long-suffering wife Christine (Brooke Palance) who has to face the indignity of his staring at the winsome singleton Coreen (Pamela Shoop) although she doesn’t see his attempt to sexually assault her shortly into the day – she knees him where it hurts much to the cheers of my watching crowd.

There’s a guy on the down, divorced and drinking Joe Morrison (John David Carson) who we hope can be redeemed as well as the disappointed middle-aged Margaret (Jacqueline Scott) who starts to warm up the weathered and worn down boat owner Dan Stokely (Robert Lansing) who takes Marilyn’s money even though he dislikes her and the whole phoney project. There are two pairs of older couples too, one a pair of professional freeloaders and the others too curious for their own good although it’s hardly their fault when they become the first to be killed by the giant ants.

As with all such creature features, there’s an initial period in which the party doesn’t understand the danger the audience knows full well they are in but soon the ants are everywhere and it’s a race into the everglades to find escape after the clever insects have removed the boat, their only means of escape. As the group runs through the dense woods, Gordon capture the action really well and even throws in some horrible jump scares as man proves no match for mandible as heroes arise, cowards are found out and everyday worries are put into sharp relief by the life and death struggle.

The narrative builds as the survivors realise they are being herded and that there’s more to these ants than meets the mind, with the opening segment, voiced by Marvin Miller, explains the remarkable capacity of ant communities to act collectively and intelligently… That was Wells warning, that we might be outsmarted by a seemingly humble but organised creature and it was also a call for humanity to think harder.

That much is implicit in Gordon’s film but very much secondary to the entertaining personal journeys and the fight to live!

 

Pamela Shoop, John David Carson and Jacqueline Scott

Special effects, giant ants and, of course, there are some massive Special Features: 

Limited Edition of 2,000 copies featuring O-card slipcase with original poster artwork and booklet featuring new writing on Empire of the Ants and ecological horror by genre film expert Liam Hathaway

1080p HD presentation on Blu-ray

New introduction to Empire of the Ants by Chris Cooke, filmmaker and co-director of Mayhem Film Festival

The B.I.G. Picture – interview with film historian Kim Newman focused on the life and career of cult filmmaker Bert I. Gordon

Audio commentary by writer, director and producer Bert I. Gordon himself!

Audio commentary by film historian David Del Valle with film historian and filmmaker Michael Varrati

 

It’s the very definition of pulp and B.I.G. should be far from notorious for his skills in making such an enjoyable piece of nonsense on a budget and on location! You can pre-order direct from the Eureka website and watch out for those six-legged insects at this time of year, they’ll do anything for sugar…

This is a guest post from Paul Joyce of IThankYou 

 

Joan Collins has said that the reason she made films based on her sister's books was to avoid having to make any more films getting muddy in disaster movies... She's great value here, it's a very decent cast!

Invaders from Mars (1953), BFI UHD and Blu-ray out 11th May

This is a guest post from Paul Joyce of IThankYou 

Well, this is a blast in more ways than one and if there’s one thing I should stay from the get-go, please do not be mislead by the 73-year-old cover art, this is a sci-fi film with more than a twist or two and it is also a masterful mix of direction and design from William Cameron Menzies. Those of us with the silent film bug – it’s just a film bug really – know his work from early epic sets for blockbusters like Robin Hood (1922) as well as The Thief of Bagdad (1924), which allowed Douglas Fairbanks, to run, jump and climb over almost the entire screen. Menzies helped establish the very language as well as the look of film and was the man with his mind inside the movie camera, meeting the demands of briefs that wee unimaginable to most.

Menzies was the man for whom the phrase "Production designer" was coined specifically for by David O. Selznick when he was working on Gone with the Wind (1939) although this might be apocryphal. Menzies certainly contributed more than mere design and was the director of the burning of Atlanta sequence in that film. Ironically Menzies did not win the Oscar for GWTW – that was Lyle Wheeler, Art Director, although had grabbed the first Academy Awards for Best Art Direction in 1928 (and for two films, The Dove with Norma Talmadge plus The Tempest with John Barrymore). 

Menzies had put HG Wells’ Things to Come (1936) on screen as director and the Yale/Edinburgh alumnus, returned to the genre with Invaders from Mars although this film is more science fantasy than the more scientific projections of Wells and those like Arthur C Clarke and Isaac Asimov who were to follow. The chances of anyone coming from Mars being a million to one, or so they say, it’s not hard to see the film as another expression of American paranoia in the line of so many others. That said, there’s a sense of wonder and childish thrills about the production that makes for a tense and gripping ride.

The film begins with a dark and stormy night and the feverish imagination of young amateur astronomer David MacLean (Jimmy Hunt) who witnesses a flying saucer emerging from the storm to land just over a hill in a nearby film. His father George (Leif Erickson) goes to investigate climbing this hill – a studio set that will feature in so much of the film it feels like a throwback to Weimar cinema. George sees nothing but suddenly the sand beneath his feet swirls and swallows him as he drops down to who knows what.

So much happens on this little hill built on the set...

When he doesn’t return David’s mother Mary calls the police who send two officers to investigate, both of whom suffer the same fate. In the morning George returns home but he is a changed man, cold and distant and, as his son observes, carrying a strange wound on his neck. More and more fall through the sand and re-emerge strangely changed - Janine Perreau is especially weird as Kathy Wilson, David’s young neighbour who goes from being a carefree pre-teen to burning her family’s house down.

David goes to the police station for help and Menzies’ depth of field as the youngster looks up at the front desk with an oppressive long corridor behind him, perfectly encapsulates his emerging nightmare. How can he convince people that someone or something is taking over their friends and neighbours. It rings so many bells with the McCarthy era, The Red Menace right up to the woke mind virus that those lost to deranged Trumpism project… and all this three years before Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Menzies' forced perspective adds a dream-like oppressiveness

But there are good people, something about the boy’s clear minded description persuades the desk officer to call in a child psychiatrist Doctor Pat Blake (Helena Carter) to believe him and, when his father and mother – now also “changed” arrive to collect him she refuses saying that she will have to investigate his “condition” further. Thus begins a race against time to confirm his story in time to help save his parents and everyone else. The army mobilises just as fast as many are taken over and Menzies’ limited budget sees various stock footage inserted to add to the set pieces. He certainly doesn’t disappoint when we finally get to go underground and meet the aliens… 

By the end you can exactly see just why the likes of Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese along with so many other directors value Menzies’ film. Given the budget and the time at his disposal he manages to create a fully convincing fantasy from the point of view of the child at the heart of the story. There’s probably an argument for the director being an auteur with this film as so much was under his control in terms of the visuals, that he was able to get the necessary performances from his players – especially the children – marks him as a skilled people player too!

Martian angles accentuate the minimal design

For this first pressing only there is an excellent illustrated booklet featuring new writing on the film by Dr Deborah Allison and Barry Forshaw, a short piece from Monthly Film Bulletin, November 1954, notes on the special features and film credits 

The film has been restored in 4K from the original camera negative and master positives and looks so crisp and clear and this is the case for both the UHD and Blu-ray presentations. 

There are also many exciting special science fiction features!!

The interview with the grown-up lead in Jimmy Hunt Saves the Planet (2022, 11 mins) is especially interesting as he recalls how being in the fantasy of the film itself was such a formative experience for a 13-year-old.

• Newly recorded audio commentary by Kim Newman (of course!) and Barry Forshaw
• European ending (1953, 3 mins) and European observatory sequence (1953, 9 mins) – clearly the Europeans could handle the hard stuff better than American audiences… This is the ending I prefer! 
• Not Just a Dream: Designing Hope in Invaders from Mars (2026, 16 mins): filmmaker Nic Wassell explores how legendary production designer and director William Cameron Menzies infuses the paranoia of atomic age science fiction with hope for the future
• William Cameron Menzies: Architect of Dreams (2022, 16 mins): Menzies’ biographer James Curtis interviews the director’s granddaughter Pamela Lauesen
• Terror From Above (2022, 22 mins): filmmakers John Landis and Joe Dante, editor Mark Goldblatt, visual effects artist Robert Skotak and preservationist Scott MacQueen discuss the film  
• Restoring the Invasion (2022, 7 mins): before and after clips of the restoration
• TCM Festival Introduction (2022, 7 mins): by John Sayles
• Ernest Dickerson on Invaders from Mars (2022, 5 mins): the award-winning cinematographer introduces a new trailer
• Original 1953 trailer plus 2022 trailer
• Extensive image gallery including posters, press book pages and publicity materials, plus previously unseen images from the BFI National Archive

Invaders from Mars is out on 11^th May and you can – and must – pre-order from the BFI and other reputable retailers.

It’s a highly influential film and it has not looked this good in over 70 years!

Mister, you've just gotta believe me...

 

Danger Man... Danger: Diabolik (1968), Eureka Masters of Cinema 4K UHD + Blu-ray Out 20th April!!

The explosive opening to Mario Bava’s Danger: Diabolik that tells you everything you need to know about the film's mission statement. Our eponymous anti-hero - played with arched-eyebrow cool by John Phillip Law* - returns to his subterranean lair, and speeds through numerous hi-tech corridors in his sleak E-Type Jaguar revealing a secret base – oh how I love a secret base! – far bigger than even that underneath Wayne Manor. Welcome to the underworld of a supervillain with a heart of... who knows, maybe gold but certainly a sense of fun for this man is a likeable rogue as much in the tradition of Dr Mabuse and Goldfinger as Batman or James Bond. Welcome to super psychedelic spy adventures, Italian style!

The origins of the character actually predate all of the above in the form of Fantômas a super criminal created by French writers Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre in 1911 before appearing in Louis Feuillade’s ground-breaking film serial from 1913-14. This was followed by Les Vampires, Judex and other science-driven criminals and detectives which were undergoing a revival in the early 1960s including three Fantômas (1964) films directed by André Hunebelle and featuring with Jean Marais.

John Philip Law and Marisa Mell

In his excellent video extra, Leon Hunt, author of the Cultographies volume on Danger: Diabolik, explains that co-creator Angela Giussani was inspired after finding a Fantômas novel on a train. Adapting the format – a booklet slightly smaller than A5 – she and her sister Luciana began producing Diabolik stories, known as the fumetti neri (“black comics”). Initially derivative of their source these soon developed a style of their own and became very successful.

Hunt then explains the development of the film and its divergence from the comic… there was very little notion of “fan service” back in the pre “Extended Universe” days, and the filmmakers took the concept and made the character the mix we see between a dark version of Batman and James Bond. Diabolik is an amoral adventurer, willing to casually kill anyone getting in the way of his thrills and whilst the film has a pop-psychedelic sheen, he’s counter cultural in the most anarchic way.

As the action explodes, Diabolik has just got the better of some very determined men trying to prevent his latest heist – just the $10,000,000 - and once he parks up next to the unfeasibly mod living quarters, he still has the energy for some play with his partner in crime, the stunning Eva Kant (Marisa Mell). Both shower in glass cubicles that just about hide their dignity before rolling together on a bed covered with their ill-gotten gains – money is sex and their crime is a statement of style and ego. It’s a sequence that is as much substance as style; 1960s Euro-decadence that feels like it comes from an alternative future passed. How could we miss that? 

I have dug through more than a few "dusty video boxes" of Italian genre cinema and Bava was a master of many – absolutely a Master of Cinema as the Eureka badge confirms. Whether he was inventing giallo with Blood and Black Lace, scaring us in new ways with Black Sunday, or producing stylish space gothic opera in Planet of the Vampires he always delivers atmospherics and a high-content style, especially on a limited budget. With Danger: Diabolik, he was reasonably well funded (courtesy of Dino De Laurentiis), and the result is a psychedelic explosion that makes the contemporary James Bond films look staid in comparison.

Eureka’s Masters of Cinema stunning new 4K UHD and Blu-ray edition gives this influential film the UK home media release it deserves. Bava’s comic-book colours pop out of the screen and the clarity of the psychedelic mise-en-scene beats your old import DVD. Diabolik’s Jaguar E-Type has an intense black glean and everything looks as fresh as a Mediterranean spring morning.

Bava strips away the more murderous edges of the comic character and creates a more playful "anti-establishment" rogue, albeit one who still kills. Diabolik doesn't just steal; he makes a show of the forces of order even a they try and entrap him – no trap is too tight for him to evade it, or is it? He makes a mockery of the police led by Inspector Ginko (Michel Piccoli) and the government, here represented by Terry Thomas – boy could we use a leader like him right now – by targeting the tax system leaving the Minister to ask tax payers to tell him what they owe. There’s also knockabout fun with a Government press conference brought laughing to a close by "Exhilaration Gas" that could have come straight out of  Batman’s utility belt (the Adam West TV series started in January 1966, a pop-cultural classic).

Terry Thomas

There are also actual baddies in the form of Ralph Valmont (the great Adolfo Celi), who forces the gang bosses to work together with the police in trying to capture Diabolik. Can the master criminal out-wit them all and save Eva? The beauty of the film is in seeing our anti-hero face every challenge with a swagger and an arched-eyebrowed smirk… like all super-heroes, he is the embodiment of our need for fantasy and some kind of justice. His power is his intelligence and his ability to get ahead of every situation. We can only dream (or read comics).

Underpinning this all is Ennio Morricone’s psychedelic score which features a swooning main theme that reflects the relationship between Diabolik and Eva – it stresses their love and concern as we are all wrapped up in their battle against the forces of law and disorder. There are all the trimmings you’d expect from this period of music – sometimes saccharine sweet whilst hyper dramatic when it needs to be. Like the characters themselves you can’t quite put your finger on it but it serves the whole to pleasing affect.

Special Features:

Limited Edition: The first 2,000 copies are housed in a hardbound slipcase with package design by Nick Wrigley and include a Limited Edition 60-page book featuring new essays on Danger: Diabolik by Italian film historian Roberto Curti and comic book scholar Jochen Ecke, a new introduction to fumetti neri by crime genre expert Sergio Angelini and new writing on the film’s director by Troy Howarth, author of The Haunted World of Mario Bava

Both a 4K UHD and a Blu-ray.

Three audio commentaries:

-          with film historians Troy Howarth and Nathaniel Thompson,

-          Tim Lucas, author of Mario Bava: All the Colors of the Dark

-          actor John Phillip Law and Bava authority Tim Lucas

Features:

Criminal Intent – new discussion of the origins and evolution of Diabolik from page to screen with Leon Hunt, author of the Cultographies volume on Danger: Diabolik

Radical Behaviour – new video essay on Danger: Diabolik as anti-establishment pop culture by Italian genre cinema expert Rachael Nisbet

From Fumetti to Film – archival featurette

Body Movin’ – music video by Beastie Boys, which samples Morricone’s score, with optional commentary by Adam “MCA” Yauch

Dusty Verdict:

Danger: Diabolik is a film of its time and it has never looked or felt fresher to modern eyes after this restoration. As a prime example of a cult film of the mid-60s it has been influential both in terms of the likes of sundry spoofs such as Austin Powers but also in the way action movies and super-heroic films are presented. If there’s any deeper meanings you can find them but it was and remains a lot of fun. It is a comic book movie and pulp distraction just as Louis Feuillade knew Fantômas was in 1913.

The set is available from 20 April 2026 but you can pre-order it now before it vanishes into the night in a shiny e-Type Jaguar…

 

*Barbarella was produced by Dino De Laurentiis at almost the same time so, a busy year in Europe for John Phillip Law

Shakes on a plane… Murder on Flight 502 (1975) Take 2

 

Apparently this was the tenth most highly-rated screening on American TVs from November 17–23 in 1975 and you can well understand why it failed to fly higher although neither did it really dive-bomb… Nowadays it’s almost impossible to watch this film without thinking about other films with Robert Stack in them, as the pilot of a 747 passenger jet and – I swear – playing the role in exactly the same way as he does in Airplane! (1980). People talk about Leslie Nielsen’s way with comedy but Mr Stack had the chops too… or should that be “chocks”? 

This ABC TV Movie of the Week was a Spelling-Goldberg Production and, like so many from that era, I probably experienced it at the time as a young teen watching with my family. It has that familiarity not just because of the sequence of now cliched events and dialogue but also because the pattern of the narrative is perhaps dimly remembered or at least predictable for those of us who lived through the seventies. 

If the venue of choice for classic murder mysteries was the old dark house or English country house then by this stage the giant planes that represented the perfecting of the global travel boom were now the ideal setting: people already nervous of long haul flying could find that extra frisson of fear from the prospect of deadly dealings in First Class… I mean, what could be more disturbing to have the people you had to trust the most be potentially your killer?

So much drama in such a confined space...

Written by David P. Harmon possibly after a sweaty and very brief elevator pitch with Aaron Spelling the film is efficiently directed by George McCowan who had recently finished the third and final iteration of the Magnificent Seven Extended Universe. It’s a moderately tense affair that, in the manner of these things, creates a lot of room for the impressive array of stellar talent to interact and create characters in whom we are invested even if the idea of Sonny Bono chatting up your 15-year-old daughter is a bit “of its time”. 

If you are going to watch this film, and it is in fairly good condition on YouTube, I would recommend watching it with friends or family as it is the kind of artefact that will spark debate amongst young and old…

It begins on a flight from Newark Airport to London – back in the days of the Special Relationship – with a prank from lovable former Partridge Family irritant, Danny Bonaduce as spoilt brat Millard Kensington, who leaves a suspicious package back in the passenger lounge which causes alarm but soon he is chided for his larking by Captain Larkin (Robert Stack) who all but ruffles his hair and =asks him if he’s ever seen wrestling… But, this false alarm is soon followed by genuine concern after Safety official Robert Davenport (George Maharis) receives a letter saying that there is to be a series of murders on the plane.

Walter Pidgeon,Theodore Bikel, Molly Picon and Danny Bonaduce

Whilst Davenport immediately begins a forensic examination of the backgrounds of his passengers, telling his assistant to put their names in alphabetical order – not mean task in the days before Excel and booking software, and a signal that they will be taking every possible measure to find the oddball with a reason to kill. Oddly, for a plane capable of holding 350 passengers, we are limited to the relatively small first class area and the 747’s legendary upstairs bar which seems sadly unoccupied. 

Over the next hour or so a series of nailed on possibles present themselves: the frankly foreign Otto Gruenwaldt (Theodore Bikel) who holds an unfair grudge against Dr. Kenyon Walker (the legendary Ralph Bellamy who worked with both Jean Harlow and Julia Roberts – that is quite some career!) who he blames for his wife’s death. Otto has a cardiac arrest and Captain Larkin must trust him to not kill his potential murderer… 

Then there is the aforementioned pop star Jack Marshall (Sonny Bono) who is being blamed by a couple Ray (Dane Clark) and Claire Garwood (Laraine Day) for the drug death of their daughter. Ray looks fit to burst but is this another high-altitude red herring? Then there’s the shifty Paul Barons (Fernando Lamas) who is engaged in a discussion with his neighbour, Dorothy Saunders (Polly Bergen) a rather tipsy but observant crime novelist who is either trying to woo him or investigate him.

Hugh O'Brian and Farrah Fawcett

There’s more Hollywood royalty as Walter Pidgeon’s Charlie Parkins befriends his seat-mate Molly Picon as Ida Goldman whose career goes even further back than Bellamy’s, her first film being in the silent era in the Austrian film, Lock up Your Daughters (1922) with future Hitchcock blond Anny Ondra (star of Blackmail, the first British talkie). I genuinely love watching them work and they bring out the darker edges and wisdom required for this context.

Thank goodness there’s a policeman on board, as soon the murders do begin and Detective Myerson (Hugh O'Brian, as typecast as Stack…) has to begin the investigation as a false priest is found life-less in the dumb waiter. There’s more to follow and the tension builds as even an air stewardess, Vera Franklin (Brooke Adams) is murdered? What and who is connecting this all together and will anyone make it alive to Heathrow??

Sonny Bono and Elizabeth Stack

Dusty Verdict: Of course Murder on Flight 502 is absolutely worth watching if you’re in the mood. My daughter enjoyed its serious silliness and she wasn’t born until the Jumbo Jets were all but retired from service. But it’s still a fun family experience with a storied cast and a plot that could easily work in a country house, a remote island or even a quiet village in Midsomer.

We also have a Stack family outing with his wife Rosemarie and daughter Elizabeth as Marilyn Stonehurst the teenager being chatted up by Sonny Bono’s musical letch. Then there’s an early Farrah Fawcett as Karen White, a resourceful stewardess who gives an eye-catching performance with the teeth and hair that would establish her as one of the Seventies’ sexual super-powers. She could act and went on to show it more after the Angel years with Emmys to prove it!

Not an essential film but a warm hug of nostalgia from a time when shakes on a plane were less frequent… and not just in Boeing’s case.

Turbulence in First Class... Murder on Flight 502 (1975)

Ah, the 1970s. An era when you could barely move for all-star disaster epics, and even the television networks wanted a piece of the "jumbo jet in peril" pie. Produced by the legendary Aaron Spelling, Murder on Flight 502 is less of a high-altitude thriller and more of a cozy, if slightly blood-stained, whodunit that feels like a dry run for the disaster movie parodies that would follow a few years later.

 

The premise is pure pulp: a 747 departs New York for London, only for a mysterious note to be discovered in the airport lounge warning that a series of murders will occur before the plane touches down at Heathrow. It’s the kind of high-concept hook that Spelling excelled at, even if the budget here clearly didn't extend much further than a few sets of vintage TWA uniforms and a very crowded first-class cabin.

 

The cast is a real "who’s who" of the era’s small-screen royalty:

 

Robert Stack is the ultimate authority figure as Captain Larkin. It’s impossible to watch him here without seeing the blueprint for his role in Airplane!—his delivery is so stiff and serious it almost circles back around to being hilarious. 

 

 

Farrah Fawcett-Majors pops up as a stewardess just before she became a household name. She’s charming enough, though the script gives her a rather peculiar secret that pays off in a late-film twist.

 

Sonny Bono and Danny Bonaduce provide the character "flavor," with Bono in particular proving he was always a more capable actor than people gave him credit for.

 

The film suffers from a bit of "TV movie pacing"—it takes nearly an hour for the actual killing to start—but when it does, the mystery is handled with a certain level of Agatha Christie-style charm. There are red herrings galore, including a "priest" who isn't what he seems and a detective with a very personal vendetta.

 

 

I got you babe... (maybe)

 

Dusty Verdict: It’s a keeper for those who miss the days of the "Movie of the Week." It won't win any awards for suspense, but for a rainy Sunday afternoon, it’s a lovely bit of nostalgic fluff. Watch it for the incredible 70s decor, the glamorous cast, and the joy of seeing Robert Stack treat a smoke bomb like a national emergency.

 

The film is often found on YouTube or budget DVD collections; worth it for the fashion crimes alone!

 

 

This is a guest post from filmologist and Seventies' computer connoisseur, Dr Albert Insteen.

 

 

 

"Surely you could see this coming?" "Yes and don't call me Shirley..."