The Night Strangler (1973 TVM)

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“Around the necks of both victims there was a residue of rotted flesh as if they’d been strangled by . . . a dead man!”
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US / originally aired cut to 74 minutes; later releases have full 90 minutes / color / ABC Circle Dir & Pr: Dan Curtis Scr: Richard Matheson Cine: Robert Hauser Cast: Darren McGavin, Jo Ann Pflug, Simon Oakland, Scott Brady, Wally Cox, Richard Anderson, Margaret Hamilton, John Carradine, Nina Wayne, Al Lewis, Virginia Peters, Ivor Francis, Kate Murtagh, Diane Shalet, Anne Randall, Francoise Birnheim, Regina Parton.

“This is the story behind the most incredible series of murders to ever occur in the city of Seattle, Washington . . .”

It all begins with a belly dancer. A belly dancer who calls herself Merissa (Parton) when she gyrates on the stage of Seattle niterie Omar’s Tent but whose given name is Ethel Parker.

Regina Parton as Merissa.

But such niceties don’t matter to her any longer because she’s dead—dead in a Seattle back alley, her throat crushed by

The Night Stalker (1972 TVM)

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“The story may be apocryphal, but I believe it.”
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vt Kolchak: The Night Stalker; vt The Kolchak Papers; vt The Kolchak Tapes
US / 75 minutes / color / Curtis, ABC Dir: John Llewellyn Moxey Pr: Dan Curtis Scr: Richard Matheson Story: Jeff Rice Cine: Michel Hugo Cast: Darren McGavin, Carol Lynley, Simon Oakland, Ralph Meeker, Claude Akins, Charles McGraw, Kent Smith, Barry Atwater, Larry Linville, Jordan Rhodes, Elisha Cook Jr., Stanley Adams, Virginia Gregg, Peggy Rea, Helen O’Brien.

The Night Stalker was the first of two TV movies—the other being The Night Strangler (1973 TVM), which I’ll be covering here soon—that heralded a TV series, Kolchak: The Night Stalker (1974–5). The series ran for just a single season of 20 episodes, which were aired at somewhat irregular intervals, so can hardly have been regarded as especially successful in its day. Even so, it has maintained a cult following ever since . . . as I’ll be pointing out when I write about it shortly for the Wonders in the Dark site’s current TV Countdown.

In the meantime, though, this movie:

Las Vegas, and the authorities are alarmed that there seems to be a serial killer on the list—not so much because he’s killing people as because,

Repeat Performance (1947)

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Can we change the past by reliving it?
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US / 92 minutes / bw / Bryan Foy Productions, Eagle–Lion Dir: Alfred Werker Pr: Aubrey Schenck Scr: Walter Bullock Story: Repeat Performance (1942) by William O’Farrell Cine: Lew W. O’Connell Cast: Louis Hayward, Joan Leslie, Virginia Field, Tom Conway, Richard Basehart, Natalie Schafer, Benay Venuta, Ilka Gruning.

Every now and then one comes across a movie that ought to have the status of at the very least a minor classic yet has somehow been largely forgotten. Repeat Performance is such a movie. It tells a highly intriguing, emotionally involving story and, in so doing, hardly puts a foot wrong.

It’s a few minutes before the start of 1947 and the streets of New York are full of merry celebrants. In her luxury apartment nearby, however, famous Broadway actress Sheila Page (Leslie) stands over the corpse of husband Barney (Hayward); in her hand is the gun with which she’s just shot him. What could have brought her to this pass?

There’s a thunder of fists on the apartment door and a chorus of shouts from beyond it. Casting the gun aside, Sheila flees—out into the streets and to a club where her friend, the poet William Williams (Basehart, whose first screen role this was) is drinking with actress Bess Michaels (Venuta) and English playwright Paula Costello (Field). Sheila tells the sympathetic William what she’s done, and he suggests they go ask the advice of Broadway producer John Friday (Conway), a kind and generous man who’s an angel in more senses than one . . . especially to Sheila, whom he clearly adores from, figuratively speaking at least, afar.

Paula (Virginia Field) tries to pretend she and Sheila are all pals together.

However, as Sheila and William approach the door of Friday’s apartment, she wishes aloud that 1946 had never happened at all, that she could relive it avoiding all the pitfalls that made it such a rotten year for her—and, in fact, for William. She turns on the stairs to discover that William is no longer with her.

And, speaking moments later with a bewildered Friday, she slowly begins to cotton on to the fact that the new year that’s just beginning isn’t 1947 after all: it’s 1946. Just as she wished for, she’s been given the chance to relive the year.

John Friday (Tom Conway) is bewildered by Sheila’s claims that it’s 1947.

What errors will she avoid making? For one, she’ll

Millie (1931)

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Helen Twelvetrees in a melodrama for the ages!
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US / 85 minutes / bw / RKO Dir: John Francis Dillon Pr: Chas. R. Rogers Scr: Chas. Kenyon, Ralph Murphy (i.e., Ralph Morgan) Story: Millie (1930) by Donald Henderson Clarke Cine: Ernest Haller Cast: Helen Twelvetrees, Lilyan Tashman, Robert Ames, James Hall, John Halliday, Joan Blondell, Anita Louise, Edmund Breese, Frank McHugh, Charlotte Walker, Franklin Parker, Charles Delaney, Harry Stubbs, Louise Beavers, Harvey Clark, Aggie Herring, Geneva Mitchell, Hooper Atchley, Lillian Harmer.

Willows University student Jack Maitland (Hall) captures the heart of poor but lovely redhead Millicent “Millie” Blake (Twelvetrees) and persuades her to elope with him. Three years later they’re installed in a luxury New York apartment with Jack’s mother (Walker) and the couple’s infant daughter Connie (uncredited). In theory Millie should be content that she has all the good things in life, but in reality Jack is neglecting her—being frequently away “on business”—and she’s much of the time forced to relinquish her child to the cares of a governess (Harmer). So she’s delighted when one day, out of the blue, she gets a phone call from her childhood friend Angie Wickerstaff (Blondell).

Angie (Joan Blondell) and Helen (Lilyan Tashman) are cutting corners.

Angie has come to NYC to live with her pal Helen Reilly (Tashman), and suggests the three of them meet up at a local café; what she doesn’t mention on the phone is that

Groundstar Conspiracy, The (1972)

Canada, US / 95 minutes / color / Universal, Hal Roach Productions Dir: Lamont Johnson Pr: Trevor Wallace Scr: Matthew Howard (i.e., Douglas Heyes) Story: The Alien (1968) by L.P. Davies Cine: Michael Reed Cast: George Peppard, Michael Sarrazin, Christine Belford, Cliff Potts, James Olson, Tim O’Connor, James McEachin, Alan Oppenheimer, Roger Dressler, Ty Haller, Anna Hagen.

There’s a surprising number of good science-fiction neonoirs around—you only have to think as far as BLADE RUNNER (1982), STRANGE DAYS (1995) and The TERMINATOR (1984), and you might at a stretch even put The USUAL SUSPECTS (1995) in there because of its fantastication—but there are some that have a great sf plot, one that could have been used as the basis for a tremendous Philip K. Dick-style paranoia-fueled sf-neonoir classic … but

Insanitarium (2008)

US / 89 minutes / color / Stage 6, Larande, Benderspink Dir & Scr: Jeff Bühler Pr: Chris Bender, J.C. Spink, Andrew Golov, Larry Schapiro Cine: Rob Hauer Cast: Jesse Metcalfe, Kiele Sanchez, Kevin Sussman, Evan Parke, Olivia Munn, Kurt Caceres, Carla Gallo, Armin Shimerman, Molly Bryant, Lisa Arturo, Peter Stormare.

The first half of this movie riffs on the occasional noir theme—examples include BEHIND LOCKED DOORS (1948) and SHOCK CORRIDOR (1963)—of a sane person mimicking insanity in order to get inside a mental hospital. In this case the man is Jack (Metcalfe), intent on rescuing his suicidal sister Lily (Sanchez) from the clutches of the mental-health professionals. As one might expect, the staff of the institution, headed by Dr. Paul Gianetti (Stormare), are if anything even battier than the patients; only the corrupt and brutal orderly Charles (Parke) and two of the nurses, Nancy Chen (Munn) and Vera Downing (Gallo), seem sane, although the latter assists the completely crazy Gianetti in the human tests of his great invention, a nanotechnological “drug” called Orpheum.

Unfortunately, Orpheum has the side-effect of turning people into cannibalistic psychopaths, so the latter part of the movie throws away the potentially interesting start to degenerate into a mass of standard-issue zombie gore cliché—all a bit of a shambles, you might say.

On Amazon.com: Insanitarium