The Babysitter (1980, Peter Medak)

The Babysitter is too technically proficient for its own good. It’s a wannabe prestige lurid TV movie about eighteen-year-old girl with a past (early twenties Stephanie Zimbalist) worming her way into a seemingly perfect family only to reveal all the cracks within.

Except it’s not a seemingly perfect family—and not even by the end, actually—with recovering alcoholic mom Patty Duke, distant dentist dad William Shatner, and chronic affluenza suffering twelve-year-old daughter Quinn Cummings. Cummings was the Oscar-nominated star of The Goodbye Girl at this point, so it makes sense when Babysitter is all about her at the beginning.

Mom Duke got so drunk so often she embarrassed the family out of Chicago, so Shatner’s set them up on a commuter island near Seattle. He’s neglecting Duke and Cummings to further his career—it’s the closest Babysitter comes to a subplot for Shatner, who’s otherwise pursuing or refusing Zimbalist. But Duke’s miserable having to hang out with Cummings, who’s on all sorts of medication for unnamed illnesses (don’t worry, they forget about it by the third scene), especially while having to stay sober.

So when Zimbalist starts hanging out with Cummings, both mooning over dreamy sixteen-year-old neighbor David Wysocki, Duke sees an opportunity. Zimbalist is a poor kid who’d been working as a nanny or something, and she needs a job. Likewise, Duke needs someone to keep Cummings occupied. It’s a win-win.

After a rapid montage for Zimbalist and Cummings, Cummings—Oscar-nominated Cummings—is basically out of the movie. The second act is about Zimbalist becoming Duke’s only confidant, advising Duke about her shitty marriage to Shatner while also trying to seduce Shatner away from Duke. The third act’s all the thriller stuff, mainly with Zimbalist and Shatner, but also John Houseman as the busybody neighbor who decides to investigate Zimbalist.

It also means there’s very little room for Cummings and Duke in the third act—but even Zimbalist starts getting pushed out too. The movie’s never clear whose bad dream it’s supposed to be—director Medak tries to focus on each character to give them a shot on the protagonist stage, but no one takes it. Or can’t take it in time. Medak and writer Jennifer Miller manage to be too quick with character moments while dragging out everything else.

As a result, it’s hard to care for the finale, especially since the main cast stands around to listen to a monologue no one cares about. The movie only realizes in the last few moments Zimbalist might be due some empathy as well, except the character motivation is so erratic it’s not worth the effort.

There’s some good acting from Duke. Houseman’s really bored as the investigating neighbor, but he’s got some charm. Shatner’s better before he’s got to play shitheel. Cummings is grating, but it’s the writing.

Babysitter doesn’t have an original score, and the stock music seems a little out of date—too groovy seventies—which makes the movie feel campy, except no one’s doing camp. Especially not with Redford L. Metz’s genuinely outstanding photography. Medak’s got a real lack of consistent tone, but it’s not Metz’s fault at all. Babysitter’s got swell lighting; Medak just doesn’t know what to do with it.

Maybe a real score would’ve helped since they really leverage montage sequences with music… who knows.

During the second act, while the movie’s about Duke, it seems like it’ll have to have an okay finish. The Babysitter doesn’t deliver, but it seems like it could for a while.

Kingdom of the Spiders (1977, John ‘Bud’ Cardos)

Kingdom of the Spiders opens with some scary music for the title reveal, then an original country song by Dorsey Burnette starts playing over the titles, extolling the virtues of Verde Valley, where Kingdom takes place. It’s a terrible opening titles sequence, followed by the film’s first failed attempt at suspense. Unfortunately, it will not have any successful ones. This first one, involving a bunch of spiders attacking a cow, forecasts the film’s lack of ability for suspense, humor, or anything whatsoever. I mean, there’s good photography from John Arthur Merrill and a handful of affable or inoffensive performances, but otherwise, Kingdom hasn’t got it. It doesn’t even have a kingdom.

After the spider attack—entirely from the spiders’ points of view, so we don’t know it’s spiders yet—the film introduces leading man William Shatner. He’s just a small-town, rural vet, but he carries a lot of sway. He could quarantine the farmers, and wouldn’t it be too bad if he did, what with the County Fair coming up? Shatner’s actually pretty good as the town vet. He and Woody Strode have decent chemistry, even though neither is doing a particularly good (or bad) job. Of course, Shatner’s first scene involves his widowed sister-in-law Marcy Lafferty (married to Shatner in real-life at the time, which ends up being awkward given the love triangle). Shatner gets to ride a horse and do his own stunts, so he’s having fun. Then Lafferty comes on to him because all the ladies love Shatner in Kingdom, only she moans her dead husband’s name (his little brother who died in “‘Nam.”). Shatner tosses her off him—not the last time Shatner tosses a costar violently in the film—and heads off, but not before shaming her a little for her behavior.

Shatner heads off to the state lab to turn in the cow’s blood for testing in what seems the set-up for a scene at a university, but the action just cuts to Strode and wife Altovise Davis having a quiet night at home. Strode and Davis are fine in the movie, but they give off big “Davis married her dad’s best friend Strode” vibes. Or “Davis married Strode in exchange for Strode giving Pa some acreage.” It never feels quite right. But then the movie treats them like they’re living in the thirties, so maybe Strode’s lying to Davis about the state of reality. So it would track, especially for Davis’s frontier woman costumes.

Pretty soon—in time to threaten the County Fair, natch—big city spider scientist Tiffany Bolling comes to town to see what’s happening with these spiders. She’s snooty to Shatner, who mocks her, but then once they’re working together, he just constantly sexually harasses her, sometimes physically, as he makes it clear they need to find the nearest bed or sleeping bag. Bolling manages to churn out endless expository passages while Shatner’s mooning at her, touching her, or otherwise distracting her. Bolling’s not exactly good. The writing on her part’s lousy and director Cardos doesn’t do anything for his actors, but Bolling’s got great timing. Up until she falls for Shatner’s macho charm, anyway. Until then, which is when he starts bossing her around like a possession, Bolling’s the only one who seems to know how to keep Kingdom moving.

Because, otherwise, it’s a slog. An intentional one. Cardos and editors Igo Kantor (the film’s producer) and Steven Zaillian (Oscar-winning screenwriter of Schindler’s List) belabor every action beat, drag out every shot, and just generally pace Kingdom like a slow roll through a rock pile.

There are some other surprises. Bolling and Lieux Dressler pass Bechdel in their first scene. They never do in any other scenes, quite the opposite, but it’s initially pretty cool.

Did I say “surprises” plural? It’s the only surprise. Except when Shatner flaunts Bolling to Lafferty almost immediately after telling Lafferty he’d eventually get horny enough he doesn’t care she’s his dead little brother’s wife, so he’d knock on her door. The longer the movie goes on, the less likable Shatner becomes. By the third act, you’re just waiting for a spider to get him.

Or for anything to happen, which it doesn’t. Except for a bewilderingly inept town panic scene.

With a better director, better script, better editors but the same cinematographer, and maybe even Shatner, Kingdom could be a fun homage to fifties sci-fi. Instead, it’s a dull, joyless turd.

A Whale of a Tale (1976, Ewing Miles Brown)

A Whale of a Tale is very much not a “whale” of a tale. The film’s about a little kid (Scott C. Kolden) who spends a summer working at Marineland of the Pacific. While Marineland clearly let the film production shoot on location, it also feels very much like the whole venture is Marineland-produced. At its best, Tale feels like an extended commercial for the park, complete with lengthy sequences showcasing its attractions.

It’s also not very animals’ rights. At one point, Kolden chastises Orky the Orca (a real-life Marineland attraction) for not wanting to perform even though people paid good money to see a show. Marineland’s the bestest oceanarium in the world… or at least America (inside joke you hopefully don’t get), and it’s really neat they let Kolden work there, even though his evil aunt Nancy O’Connor thinks it’s too dangerous a place. Kolden lives with aunt O’Connor and mom Abby Dalton. Dalton’s a recent-ish widow, and they’ve moved close enough Kolden can walk to the park from home, sneaking out so O’Connor doesn’t know.

For a while, the film’s biggest drama is whether or not Dalton’s going to let Kolden work at the park, but once Dalton meets handsome and single marine biologist William Shatner, the writing’s on the wall. Despite Shatner initially considering Kolden a pest, he soon comes to like the kid. And especially like the mom.

Sort of. Just like everyone else in the film, Shatner’s utterly lacking in character. All of his character’s busy work throughout is nonsense. Someone’s training the dolphins to do some kind of Navy rescue thing or something. The details don’t matter because they’re nonsense. Shatner and the other actors deliver their lines like someone’s feeding them off-screen. And then there are the times there’s obvious looping, like when Shatner and park fisherman Marty Allen are around the real animals and clearly trying not to get whacked by a killer whale. Shatner does better than Allen, which isn’t saying much, but there aren’t any good performances in Whale. Director Brown’s not capable of directing good performances or writing good parts.

Though there is an okay enough cameo from Andy Devine, who doesn’t have the lung capacity he did as a younger man, but occasionally still sounds familiar. Richard Arlen’s the other big cameo, as the park owner. Even more than Devine, Arlen’s just there for a familiar name in the credits.

The film was shot in the early seventies, then sat around for a few years. Then, in the interim, Jaws came out, and the lethargic tiger shark capture sequence—which seems to go on for ten minutes—ends with similar but not too similar music to John Williams. What’s more amusing is the first half of the sequence, when you wish they’d have some Jaws music just so it wouldn’t be boring, only for it to come in later and still be boring.

The animal showcases don’t feature composer Jonathan Cain’s songs, which are inane and from the perspective of Kolden. School and aunt O’Connor suck, and life’s so much better at Marineland. It’s also unclear why Marineland okayed the plot, which has Kolden become the most invaluable employee in the park. Literally. Can’t run without him. You go see Whale of a Tale and go to Marineland; if Kolden weren’t there, the place couldn’t run.

But then putting any thought whatsoever into Whale is way too much.

Director Brown and editor Ronald V. Ashcroft also endeavor to push the audience throughout, constantly repeating the same thirty seconds of carnival music in the park scenes.

Whale could be worse. It’s an absolute bore, but it’s just a bloated, inept industrial film with a mostly slumming cast. While Kolden’s bad—but he can’t be good with Brown’s writing and directing—he’s far from the worst kid actor in the world–or even America.

But Whale’s not even worth it for the curiosity factor. Especially not since Marineland of the Pacific showed up in lots of popular entertainment. If you want to see the park in its heyday, you might even be able to find a movie or show you can stay awake during.

Impulse (1974, William Grefé)

It’s an insult to hacks to describe Impulse director Grefé as such. There are very few directors with less sense of how to direct a movie (or anything) than Grefé. But then he’s simpatico with cinematographer Edmund Gibson at least in terms of skill. Grefé’s got terrible shots, Gibson shoots them terribly. But Gibson’s credited as Edwin, so apparently, at some point, he realized maybe he was impulsive working on Impulse.

Grefé kind of—and only because every other option is exhausted—but he reminds of a TV commercial director. Like, a seventies TV commercial director. He’s got way too much headroom, and he never does close-ups during the protracted expository scenes. Outside a handful of action sequences and field trips, it’s primarily people standing or sitting inside talking to one another. Impulse filmed in Tampa, Florida, but it’s supposed to be in a much smaller place. Maybe. Maybe Shatner just drove from one side of town to the other, looking for his next mark.

More on Shatner in a bit, I promise. But there aren’t any real exteriors. Either the producers couldn’t figure out how to get permits, couldn’t afford them but then also couldn’t just guerilla the shots. Impulse is artless low-budget filmmaking. If the whole thing was about getting Shatner to wear a bunch of silly, silly, silly seventies outfits—silly—to embarrass him later, it might make sense. Except in 1974, the producers wouldn’t have known Shatner can survive anything–even seventies Florida fashion.

So it doesn’t look anywhere near as good even a TV movie from the same period. Impulse is unpleasant to view. But it’s surprisingly well-edited. Editor Julio C. Chávez initially seems as unimpressive as everyone else involved, then there’s a long shot beach scene, and it’s ADR, but it’s not bad. And then there’s some sound work where it ends, kind of breaking the third wall. Like, someone’s not hearing a conversation, then the conversation directly addresses them, and they hear.

It’s wild. It’s not good; it’s bad, but it’s at least something different.

Then the last half hour, which has Shatner’s mentally unwell gigolo conman breaking down and attacking the entire supporting cast… the editing’s really good. The scenes are still crap—especially Gibson’s day-for-night, which is ghastly—but the cutting’s nice. So, kudos to Chávez.

Otherwise, there’s Ruth Roman.

Impulse is just degrees of bad performance and how close the needle gets to embarrassing. Shatner’s spins around the whole time occasionally slows down a little, but then reliably zooms. For terrible camp Shatner, Impulse delivers.

But Roman’s all right. She’s the local rich lady whose mansion gets the only establishing shot, and her best friend is young widow Jennifer Bishop. Bishop has a late tween daughter, Kim Nicholas, who cuts school to go moon over her father’s gravestone. She even projectile cries on it. She’s very sad.

So Bishop doesn’t date.

At least not until stud Shatner arrives. Of course, he neglects to tell everyone he first met Nicholas, giving her a ride to the graveyard one day. But don’t worry, Shatner’s got no further designs on Nicholas than killing her for being a tattle rat.

Nicholas is bad, Bishop’s bad. Harold Sakata—Odd Job from Goldfinger—cameos as Shatner’s former partner-in-crime who wants in on the take. He drives around an RV with a giant “Karate Pete” sign on it; like on the crime job. It’s silly.

Sakata just embarrasses himself. He’s at least having fun. Or what amounts to it in Impulse.

For the Shatner-inclined, Impulse is required viewing, like Portrait of the Artist at a Low Point. It’s also early-to-mid-seventies-low budget Shatner, so it’s hard to be too upset at the film. It’s always bad, it’s always strange, it’s always problematic. From the start—the flashback where young Shatner (Chad Walker, in his only credit) kills his mom’s violent john, defending them, but she resents him because women are awful. Only they won’t be later; they’ll do everything Shatner says; except Nicholas because kids are terrible. Anyway.

It’s poorly shot, but it’s also exceptionally mean to Walker.

Then the opening titles are actually incompetent. The title cards pause the action, but they’re not in line with the current action. They’re mini-flashbacks. It’s inane, in addition to incompetent. Another reason Chávez is an unexpected boon.

Impulse is awful. Of course, it’s awful. It exists just to be awful.

Except for Roman and Chávez, obviously.

The Intruder (1962, Roger Corman)

The Intruder has third act problems of the deus ex machina nature, and they’re actually welcome. If the film figured out how to finish better, it’d be more challenging to talk about. It’s already an exceptionally unpleasant experience.

William Shatner gets top-billing as the title character. He’s a slick, charming, clean-cut Northern (well, Western—he’s originally from California) white supremacist who heads to a Southern town to stir up trouble thanks to a recent integration ruling.

Director Corman and writer Charles Beaumont (adapting his novel and co-starring as the pro-integration school principal) never humanize Shatner’s character. They initially make a joke about it—he helps a little girl off the bus—but then they immediately establish he’s an evil person in search of stupid evil people who need a leader.

He’s in luck; the town’s full of stupid evil people. So Shatner works out a deal to organize the white trash for Southern blue blood Robert Emhardt, who’d never, and do something about the impending integration.

Unfortunately for everyone, Shatner doesn’t realize how dangerous stupid makes evil people, even the respectable ones like Emhardt.

The film juxtaposes Shatner’s story with local newspaperman Frank Maxwell. Maxwell starts the film believing you follow the law even if it says to integrate. Seeing how Shatner affects his fellow townsfolk, Maxwell becomes an integrationist himself. Even though it might lose him wife Katherine Smith. They have a particularly painful scene together where Smith says she’ll stop being so racist because she has to do what her husband says. Intruder’s solution for racism is always patriarchy and some toxic masculinity for effect. But only for those who need it. Otherwise, just patriarchy.

When the film’s heading towards some kind of showdown between Shatner and Maxwell, it’s on solid ground. The juxtaposition works. But Shatner can’t leave well enough alone—he’s already done some heavy petting with Maxwell’s teenage daughter, Beverly Lunsford, if not more, but he also decides he needs to rape Jeanne Cooper. She’s married to traveling salesman Leo Gordon, and since Gordon’s machismo threatens Shatner, he needs to assault Cooper when Gordon’s a way to prove he’s a man.

It’s an exceptionally unpleasant scene in a film with nothing but unpleasant scenes.

But it puts Shatner and Gordon on a collision course, which changes the dynamics. It’s not about Shatner being a racist piece of shit and Maxwell realizing racist pieces of shit are bad; it’s about Gordon and Shatner’s sales styles. And, of course, Shatner assaulting Cooper. But more the sales styles.

There’s also the story of Black high school student Charles Barnes, who gets caught up in the hostilities. The film avoids putting a face on the white students or their parents (outside Lunsford). It’s too busy implying the racist white people aren’t the white school parents. They’re the barely employed white trash who have time to drop everything and make racist picket signs to threaten children.

The third act problems save the film from an unsuccessful scene where Maxwell appeals to the good whites because Corman and Beaumont know it’d play hollow. The resolution they do find, however, plays contrived. Even if there’s a lot of good acting in it.

Obviously, completing the performances is tricky because they’re primarily mundane villains. Terrifying ordinary white guy racists. Maybe they’ve got bad teeth, but nobody in the movie, save Shatner probably, has good teeth.

Gordon’s good, Cooper’s good, Maxwell and Lunsford are good. Lunsford gets a weak part, however. Though she does at least get to have a showdown with her mom’s racist dad, Walter Kurtz, who berates son-in-law Maxwell for not being racist enough.

It’s all distressingly realistic.

Shatner’s performance is exceptional. He’s got maybe one iffy scene—a rally—but only because you can’t believe anyone would fall for such loud stupidity. Or at least you didn’t used to be able to believe it. Reality hasn’t let The Intruder age. It just kept making it more and more true to life.

Corman’s direction’s good. He and cinematographer Taylor Byars do a lot with focus and contrast. There are some weird things—lack of high school establishing shots, for example—but they always seem like they’re probably budget-related.

Good music from Herman Stein.

The Intruder’s pretty good—with that incredible Shatner performance—but it’s got a lot of problems, so it’s almost better it’s not indispensable overall.

This post is part of the Corman-Verse Blogathon hosted by Gill of Realweegiemidget Reviews and Barry of Cinematic Catharsis.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979, Robert Wise), the restored director’s edition

Star Trek: The Motion Picture: The Restored Director’s Edition occasionally feels like a fan project. Or at least a temp project. Like the new opening titles, set in gold. They look like they were done using an iPhone app. Then there are shots where they couldn’t find the original materials, so the picture suddenly looks terrible, like a hacky up-convert to 4K. There are plenty of spectacular restored shots, but when they’re bad, they’re really bad. And they’re usually during effects sequences.

The reason for restoring the director’s edition is because it was made for DVD, and they didn’t do the new special effects in high definition. It took the restoration team a while to convince the studio. The end credits break out the first and second teams, and some of the names are the same; they came back twenty years later to do the same work again, just with eight million more pixels.

The result’s… okay?

In addition to the bad titles and the damaged original footage or whatever, there are a few times the changed special effects don’t work in high definition. Only once is it distracting, when William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, and DeForest Kelley all lose the edges of their bodies in front of a starfield because portrait mode choked on their pajama costumes.

Some of the CGI is good, some of it is middling, and a couple shots are lousy. It’s sometimes annoying but usually forgivable; they’re well-intentioned.

Content-wise, the narrative is unchanged from the last director’s edition (as far as I remember it). A space cloud of enormous power invades the galaxy, headed straight toward Earth, and the only starship in intercept range is the Enterprise. Except they’re undergoing a massive retrofit to make the ship movie-ready in 1979, not impressive for TV in 1966; plus, they’ve got a new captain, Stephen Collins, leading the same old crew.

But not Shatner, who’s a desk jockeying admiral now, or Kelley, who’s retired to take up some weird future New Age thing if his gold medallion is any indication, or Nimoy, who’s retired to his home planet Vulcan to give up all emotion and… get a more blinged-out gold medallion as a reward. They really missed the chance for Kelley and Nimoy to compare bling.

When Star Trek: The Motion Picture isn’t meandering through its sci-fi thriller plot, it’s vaguely about Shatner desperately wanting to relive his glory days and using catastrophe to do it, dragging Kelley along because Shatner can’t do it without him. There’s actually maybe the argument Admiral Kirk’s going through some depression and saving the known universe is just the way to get out of that funk. So long as he gets some help from his friends.

Shatner and Kelley act that arc, which is occasionally in the script. Nimoy shows up later and sort of figures in, but not really. Shatner’s arc stops when he and Kelley get to worry about Nimoy instead. But more significant than either of those arcs is Collins’s G-rated romance with Persis Khambatta. They used to know each other when he was stationed on her free love planet. They’ve got a bunch of unresolved feelings—not to mention Shatner assuming command of Collins’s ship and everyone on the crew being thrilled—and it gets more runtime than any of the other arcs. Also, it figures into the A-plot of the alien spaceship out to destroy Earth.

There is lots of good acting from Shatner, but Kelley’s an absolute deadpan riot throughout. Nimoy’s okay once he gets over his “logical means rude” bit. Collins is bland but affable. Wise directs the heck out of Shatner and Khambatta in entirely different ways but to similarly strong effect. Even as the finale plods—before racing too quick to the finish—Khambatta’s mesmerizing.

Sturdy support from the rest of the crew—Walter Koenig gets the most fun, George Takei and Nichelle Nichols get lots of background busywork, James Doohan’s around in the first act, then relegated to occasional “dannae ken if she can take any more” scenes. Unfortunately, Motion Picture’s got a clunky story, something the director’s editions improve but can’t fix.

Still, the special effects are glorious, the Jerry Goldsmith’s music’s peerless, and the movie’s generally great looking. Except for the pajama costumes, of course. Wise and the very large cast do wonders even with those silly, silly costumes. There are lots of people around at all times; even if they don’t get lines, they do have to react to the dire circumstances, all while in onesies.

I do wish they didn’t have that really bad footage in this version, but otherwise, all drive systems are good to go.

Visiting Hours (1982, Jean-Claude Lord)

At the beginning, Visiting Hours pretends it will be about network news commentator Lee Grant. Despite being openly Canadian, the film also pretends it takes place in Washington D.C., based on the hate mail responses protagonist Michael Ironside frames on his wall. They never specify, so maybe he did write Grant when she worked in D.C., before she up and moved to somewhere else. Still not Canada, as her news program is called “America Today.”

And while her boss and seeming boyfriend William Shatner has some flexes throughout—particularly in wardrobe, Shatner’s baby blue suit is a look—he doesn’t seem to be running a Canadians mock Americans TV show. Bummer.

The movie opens with Grant interviewing some prosecutor about a case. A woman killed her abusive husband in self-defense, and the prosecutor is very much “that’s not allowed,” a position Grant takes issue with. Bad guy, but lead of the movie Ironside has snuck into the studio to watch her record this interview, and it really pisses him off. Ironside’s character motivation is pretty simple—his dad, who molested him, tried raping his mom once, and the mom defended herself. Hence, kill all women. At least the ones who talk.

Ironside also hates every marginalized group, something potential love interest Lenore Zann notices right before their already awkward date turns into an assault. That scene is where I realized even though she’s top-billed in the opening titles, Grant is not the lead of Visiting Hours, because there’s no reason to have it except to track Ironside’s creep. Zann comes back a couple times later on, first to meet hospital nurse Linda Purl when Purl’s out at the community clinic, then, later on, to try to save the day.

The day needs saving because the cops in Visiting Hours, may they be the Washington D.C. cops or the Quebecois mais angalis cops, are some of the most incompetent cops in movie history. They’ve encamped at the hospital for much of the film because Ironside keeps trying to kill Grant but only manages to kill other patients or staff. The cops can’t figure out how he’s getting in, possibly because they don’t ever figure anything out. Or even try. Visiting Hours lacks doctors and hospital administrators in the story, presumably because their presence would break the movie’s too thin logic.

There are a series of suspense sequences, primarily for Grant or Purl (who Ironside starts targeting because she’s a single mom; her ex-husband was apparently abusive, but the movie speeds through it), and none of them are ever suspenseful. The film’s got shockingly little going for it technically—Lord’s directing is bad, but René Verzier’s blue-tinting photography is worse. The scenes all look bad; it doesn’t matter how Lord or co-editor Lise Thouin cut them. The sound is particularly poorly done in the film, not the actual sound design or editing, but whatever Lord told them to do with it. Or not do with it.

Jonathan Goldsmith’s music is probably the best technical element. It’s usually acceptable, briefly good, rarely terrible.

I’m not sure how you’d write Visiting Hours well, but Brian Taggert doesn’t know either. It’s probably impossible given the movie doesn’t want to sympathize or empathize with Ironside, which is fine, but given most of the film is spent hanging out with him, it’s a problem. It’s also unclear if Ironside could be any better. He’s awful, but how could he be any better. He’s a stone-faced slasher movie villain with boring subplots.

Grant, Purl, and Shatner all do okay given the circumstances, though it’s a blatant waste of Grant. It’s not an obvious waste of Purl (or Shatner), which isn’t exactly a compliment. However, there should’ve been more Shatner and Grant—he gets a kick out of their scenes—whereas there’s probably too much Purl. Terrorizing her little kids is a little much.

Visiting Hours is probably too competent for its own good—there’s no schlock value—but it’s a complete waste of time.

Other than Shatner’s phenomenal wardrobe. At one point, he’s got what appears to be a combination dressing gown trench coat. It’s unreal.

My Life Is Murder (2019) s02e06 – Sleep No More

Lucy Lawless gets an arc to herself with brother Martin Henderson this episode, and it's almost enough to make up for a lackluster murder. It seems like it'll be enough, but the epilogue is a weird whiff and reminds of the show's inability to land certain things, like jokes at Lawless's expense from Ebony Vagulans. They fall flat, Lawless looks at Vagulans to acknowledge they fall flat, then the show just pretends they work. It's a very weird fail, and one "Murder" can't stop making.

The mystery this episode is a suspicious death at a resort hotel. Bruce Hopkins was locked in the freezer overnight, and copper Rawiri Jobe suspects foul play but can't prove it. So he sends Lawless and Vagulans on holiday to figure it out. Except Henderson's up for parole, so Lawless has to bounce between home and work all episode, allowing for her to look at computer intel because Vagulans apparently doesn't bring a laptop with her to the resort.

There are a handful of suspects. Son-in-law Ryan O'Kane, presumably daughter-in-law (presumably suspect not presumably daughter-in-law) Grace Palmer, and American real estate mogul William Shatner. The widow, Carmel McGlone, was out of the country at the time, which is good because she's super suspicious all the time. Shatner's only it to give Lawless a banter partner she doesn't immediately shut down before she and McGlone can bond over being widows.

It just takes a while because everyone at the hotel assumes Lawless and Vagulans are "dark tourists"—vacationers who go to murder scenes and snoop around—and not there in any official or even consulting capacity. Eventually, McGlone gets better material (while getting more suspicious), and she and Lawless can chill out and pass Bechdel, even with dead husbands to talk about.

McGlone and Palmer give good supporting performances, and then Lawless might give her best performance of the season—it's a muted personal—but it's too bad Vagulans isn't better. Some of it's obviously the material.

Also, O'Kane is a little bit too thin. You keep assuming he will have substance because they treat him like an actual suspect, but he never delivers any. Kate McDermott's script has herky-jerky pacing to it, without ever following through on event consequences, just hopping to Lawless's next interaction with the guest stars.

Despite the insubstantial mystery plot, there's still room for Lawless to deliver on the character front. But it's the flimsiest episode in a while.

The Horror at 37,000 Feet (1973, David Lowell Rich)

I should’ve realized there was no hope for The Horror at 37,000 Feet when Paul Winfield shows up the first time and he’s got an English accent but it’s probably supposed to be somewhere from previously colonial Africa. 37,000 is a TV movie from 1973; there’s a cultural context to the only Black person in the movie doing a really silly English accent and being a doctor. Winfield’s there to be a cartoon character more than a caricature. It’s Winfield, of course, so he at least manages to make it seem legit but… he’s not supposed to get to actually do anything. William Shatner, on the other hand, he gets to do something. Nothing really good, but some things. There are a couple moments when it seems like he’s actually engaged with his performance and not just on auto-pilot. No pun intended.

37,000 is a haunted house story set on an airplane. Roy Thinnes plays a rich guy architect—they were a thing in seventy-three, no doubt—who has rented out the commercial airplane to transport a bunch of English ruins back to the United States. The ruins are from wife Jane Merrow’s estate. Thinnes is just trying to be a good guy and bring them back. Because he cares about his wife’s family history even as he tries to make time with fellow passenger France Nuyen while away Merrow.

So Thinnes is a bit of a prick. Eventually he stands up for Merrow when it counts, even though it’s not particularly memorable. Maybe because most of the supporting cast is plotting to destroy Merrow; see, haunted airplane, they’ve got to make a human sacrifice.

How 37,000 isn’t more amusing after it turns Buddy Epsen into a would-be human sacrificer….

What’s weird about 37,000 is at least one of the writers—Ronald Austin and James D. Buchanan—gets the whole “people in intense situations lose their grip” thing. Professional mansplainer Epsen, Spaghetti Western star Will Hutchins, Shatner groupie Lynn Loring, and supermodel France Nuyen all deciding the only rational response to the haunted airplane is to sacrifice someone? It works. Narratively speaking. Sadly the script’s crap, so it doesn’t matter if it’s got sound character development. The acting’s also crap and Rich’s direction is drab; it’s not all the script’s fault. There’s lots of fault to go around.

Though you can’t really get mad at whatever effects person said the onscreen personification of the haunting was going to be shit coming up from the floor. Bubbling shit. It’s really gross. Unfortunately, it’s a tick in the more frequently ticked narratively unsound column of the movie’s details: no one get sick seeing the bubbling shit.

There are no good performances, though there are terrible ones. Loring in particular, followed by Hutchins and Epsen. Thinnes seems like he’s going to be good, but then isn’t (he and Merrow have marital problems caused by Thinnes’s constant gaslighting and implied infidelity; it’s the early seventies so he’s also trying to have her labeled insane because she doesn’t like those behaviors). Merrow’s bad. Tammy Grimes is almost good, but not. It’s not the script, it’s Grimes. She can’t layer her performance.

Shatner’s kind of fun. When he’s not, it’s not his fault. It’s the script. As the captain, Chuck Conners gets some terrible expository lines and doesn’t really react to his plane being immobilized at 37,000 feet by ghosts realistically, but he escapes mostly unscathed. Flight attendants Brenda Benet and Darleen Carr are fine.

Again, Winfield also gets through it with some dignity, which is probably the most successful thing in the film considering how much malarky the film lobs at him.

The Horror at 37,000 Feet is most interesting as an example of when a bad movie isn’t bad in the right ways to be amusing.

Incubus (1966, Leslie Stevens)

Incubus is the day in the life of a dissatisfied succubus (Allyson Ames) who, after killing three men in the ocean and condemning their souls to hell, decides she wants a challenge. Her sister, also a succubus (and played by Eloise Hardt), counsels her against the impulse. But Ames won’t be dissuaded. She wants to condemn a clean soul to hell. How hard can it be.

Well, given the clean soul she comes across is recovering war hero William Shatner, turns out it’s going to be quite hard. Because Shatner has the one weapon Ames can’t defend herself against–love.

So Hardt decides to pay back Shatner for defiling her little sister with love by bringing up an incubus (Milos Milos) to assault Shatner’s little sister. Ann Atmar plays the little sister. While Shatner’s supposed to be this great guy–and he’s reasonably likable (everyone’s speaking Esperanto poorly so it’s a little hard to get attached)–he’s always abandoning Atmar for Ames. And since the film takes place over about a day, it’s a lot of abandoning. And bad things always happen to Atmar when Shatner’s gone, which he never acknowledges.

Shatner doesn’t speak a lot. He’s got a lot of lines, but they’re short. Director Stevens has some tricks to hide the Esperanto–Ames and Hardt have one scene where their mouths are blocked from view during what must have been difficult Esperanto passages. None of the actors are “native” Esperanto speakers; often acting and the actors getting their lines spoken are mutually exclusive activities. Ames is the best. She’s at least sympathetic.

Atmar ought to be really sympathetic but she’s not. Though it’s more Stevens’s script’s fault than anything Atmar does or doesn’t do with her performance. It’s a lousy part.

Great photography from Conrad L. Hall–at least when it’s not day-for-night–and terrible music from Dominic Frontiere.

Incubus’s greatest strength is its straightforward plotting at the beginning–Ames kills a guy, wants a better soul, argues with Hardt, goes for a better soul. Sure, there are a lot of scenes with Ames walking by herself around Big Sur, but Stevens has earned some goodwill after the frankly vicious killing of that first guy. It’s not really disturbing, but it implies Incubus isn’t messing around. At least, not entirely. After the demonic symbol opening titles and, you know, the freaking Esperanto, the film’s already a little goofy. For a while, it seems like it might not end up goofy.

But it’s a story about a succubus who wants to condemn a clean soul so she can become a demon–she needs to show off to Satan, who’s a giant bat in a fog machine–it’d be hard for Incubus not to be goofy.

Stevens’s script runs out of ideas fast. His direction doesn’t. While he does ignore Atmar a little too often, Stevens is otherwise high energy. It’s not always good direction, but Hall shoots most of it well so it at least looks great. And during the bumpier periods, Incubus gets by on the strange factor, which wouldn’t have been present in the same way on release. Even when things start to get real bad in the third act, there’s a pre-Captain Kirk Shatner fight scene. Unfortunately, he’s fighting Milos Milos, who doesn’t get anything to do when he first arrives, then does. Once he does, Incubus starts getting worse fast.

Milos looks like a beatnik doing a Karloff Frankenstein Monster impression. Just the walking and stature, but doing it exaggerated. Everyone in Incubus except Milos can keep a straight-face–including Hardt, who keeps one so long it ends up hurting her performance.

Again, terrible music. It’s hard to say how Incubus might’ve worked without the Esperanto, the Milos Milos, the Dominic Frontiere music. It might not even have needed better day-for-night photography.

Actually, without the Esperanto, Incubus’s script would be way too slight. Even with the Esperanto, there are those long dialogue-free passages… Sed kiu scias?