Movie of the Week Horrors
by Kristin Battestella
This throwback trio of women-centric network television movies consists of questionable larks at best and inexplicably disturbing at worse. Yet somehow, there remains some bemusing entertainment value – if you overlook a lot.
The Invasion of Carol Enders – TV movie queen Meredith Baxter (Family Ties) wakes up possessed in this unusual 1974 Dan Curtis (Dark Shadows) produced tale that seems more like a soap opera pilot at only sixty-seven minutes. Some acting is laid on thick and the bare production tries its best as blindness, car accidents, an heiress, the suspicious stepson, and more soap opera tropes rely on reused Dark Shadows sets and familiar Robert Cobert music intruding to create more ominous mood. Military men and space engineers can't handle the financial downturns as husbands and boyfriends become angry, violent drunkards and the women suffer for it. The premise is eerie enough thanks to the more subtle chills as a patient claims a man she never met is her husband and he refuses to believe it as nothing more than a demented con. Our dead woman calls her broker like nothing is wrong amid the horror of looking in the mirror and seeing someone different. Of course, the ladies happen to be in the same hospital at the same time for the eponymous switch-a-roo, relying on convenient leaps as even the physician diagnoses one spirit as saving the other. The deceased also magically knows she was murdered when her car went off the road alongside faulty brakes, shady ex-husbands, bank forgeries, and then high-tech copy machine culprits. Baxter spends half the time sitting in a hospital bed with bandages on her eyes – used or removed as needed – before easily leaving for her own investigation. There are compelling one on ones and even some tense action, but the authorities bend to the supernatural or rational just to move the plot along – nonbelievers accepting a possession story that seems intended for Dark Shadows had that series continued. This isn't anything one hasn't seen already, yet I can't lie, I fell for the red herring!
Satan's Triangle – Bermuda Triangle shipwrecks and Coast Guard rescues spell doom for lieutenant Doug McClure (The Virginian) and lone survivor Kim Novak (Vertigo) in this 1975 movie of the week that looks ten years too late. The first twenty minutes could have been skipped – a dry reenactment with hovering helicopters, terrible radio banter, and airlifts that are somehow so plain despite the distress calls and sinking boats. Bodies are impaled and strung up on the mast, however the snail's pace back and forth focuses on the search protocol. Flashbacks to big game fishing and a previously rescued priest suggest that's where our story should be. The messy storytelling constructs interfere with the action at hand while wind, fog, and poor video quality make the schooner tough to see. A supposedly sexy priest and Jock Ewing himself Jim Davis chomping down on his food amid the disaster are inadvertently humorous despite lightning, ominous music, and then saucy bare backs of topless women. Recountings of another person within the flashback mean we never directly see anything as it happens, and nonsensical narrating over dialogue leaves the audience unable to share in the scary experience. The rescuer who wasn't even there repeats the deaths as if everything was a secret in need of explanation before tacked on religion and predictable twists. The devil said to be testing people's mettle could be intriguing without the artificially created constraints, and although we balk at this past bad, today numerous shows do the same deliberate delay and cut up mystery. One can usually forgive these ABC yarns, but in spite of a very chilling ending, this playing at spooky nothing burger obvious would have been much more effective as a half hour anthology entry.
She Waits – The print is understandably poor for this 1972 CBS production featuring newlywed Patty Duke (The Miracle Worker) and mother-in-law Dorothy McGuire (Old Yeller) confronting the spirit of David McCallum's (The Man from U.N.C.L.E) late first wife, and the elegant, romantic music plays up the Rebecca wannabe mood. The ghosts and crazy old ladies jump right into the spooky old home ominous, but the California set piece doesn't have much gothic atmosphere. The deceased's pictures are pulled from the albums amid music boxes, voices in the night, phantom humming, and occult books in the library. However the antique shopping coincidences and contrived relationships skip over any slow burn scares. Claustrophobic rooms, billowing curtains, unseen spirits, and slamming doors are effective with very little, but the haunting is never used to full advantage. Superfluous characters come and go as needed, and it takes a half hour for something scary to happen. Naturally the droll son/husband and old man doctor don't believe the hysterical women and don't want them to frighten one another, but the derivative lack of surprises means there's no real torment for the characters. The hear tell talk of the titular Elaine doesn't create her presence, for we're repeatedly told she will possess and intends to harm her husband – giving away everything that's going to happen as if we've haven't seen Patty Duke play doubles already. Clueless men save themselves by talking their way out of the revenge as the reveals move fast because the seventy-four minutes says so. Instead of a warped battle of wills between the ladies, this merely limps into the same old, same old.
