ABC Movie of the Week: Tribes, Duel, and The Cat Creature

Tribes

Jan-Michael Vincent and Darren McGavin.

This incisive 1970 film about a tough Marine drill sergeant and a hippy recruit remains one of the best-remembered telecasts on the ABC Movie of the Week. Darren McGavin, in his finest pre-Christmas Story performance, stars as Gunnery Sergeant Drake, who informs his raw recruits: "I will be your father, your mother, your legal guardian, and your sister for the entire period you are here." His biggest challenge is Adrian (Jan-Michael Vincent), a high school drop-out who was drafted. To his surprise, Drake learns that Adrian is in the best physical condition and scored the highest on the aptitude tests of anyone in his platoon. While always respectful, Adrian remains a free spirit and--to Drake's dismay--even teaches meditation to his fellow recruits. Still, Drake sees potential in Adrian while the young Marine begins to struggle with his own identity. Made during the Vietnam War, Tribes straddles the fence politically by portraying both Drake and Adrian in a positive light. Indeed, the film's only misstep is the inclusion of another drill instructor (Earl Holliman), who takes an instant dislike to Adrian and becomes obsessed with "breaking" the young man. Holliman's character provides Tribes with a villain--when the movie doesn't need one. Tracy Keenan Wynn (Ed's grandson) and Marvin Schwartz won an Emmy for their original screenplay. A big ratings hit, Tribes was later released overseas as The Soldier Who Declared Peace.

Duel 

Dennis Weaver (with truck behind him).

This effective, if slightly overrated, 1971 made-for-TV thriller launched Steven Spielberg's career as a feature film director. The bare-bones plot concerns a businessman (Dennis Weaver) who encounters a crazy trucker while driving across the California desert. The trucker reacts angrily when Weaver passes him on the highway. One little retaliation leads to another, escalating to a deadly game of cat-and-mouse. By showing only glimpses of the big rig's driver, Spielberg turns the truck into the villain. In fact, much has been written about the similarities between the truck in Duel and the Great White shark in Jaws. Screenwriter Richard Matheson, who adapted his own short story, has said his inspiration was a real-life incident of "road rage." Weaver is adequate in the lead role; he's pretty much the only human character with any significant screen time. The story is by nature episodic, but the short running time helps hold viewer interest. Ironically, when the film earned critical raves, Universal had Speilberg shoot additional footage so a bloated 90-minute edition could be released overseas. Speilberg's follow-up was another telefilm, a haunted house tale called Something Evil (1972) with Sandy Dennis and Darren McGavin. It's not very good, though still interesting to compare to the later Poltergeist. After directing Savage, a TV pilot with Martin Landau, Spielberg moved to the big screen with Sugarland Express.

The Cat Creature

A shadowy feline presence.

When a thief removes an emerald amulet from an ancient mummy, he unknowingly releases a blood-seeking creature from 450 BC. A follower of Bast, the Egyptian goddess of cats, the creature drains humans of their blood as it seeks the amulet that will ensure immortality. This 1973 telefilm serves as an affectionate homage to the atmospheric Val Lewton thrillers of the 1940s. Director Curtis Harrington opts for subtle shadows instead of outright frights (though the close-ups of the creature's hypnotic cat eyes are rather disconcerting). The proceedings get a boost from the presence of classic-era performers who specialized in mysteries and thrillers: Gale Sondergaard (The Spider Woman); Keye Luke (The Charlie Chan films); John Carradine (House of Dracula); and Kent Smith (The Cat People). Heck, even Peter Lorre, Jr. has a small part. Of the contemporary cast, a brown-haired Meredith Baxter fares best as a young woman hired to replace one of the victims in Sondergaard's creepy store, The Sorcerer's Shop. Prolific author Robert Bloch, perhaps best known for writing the novel Psycho, penned the screenplay. Director Harrington made several interesting films, such as the offbeat Night Tide and What's the Matter With Helen?, but never achieved mainstream success on the screen. The Cat Creature is a modest, but enjoyable, horror film that earns kudos for taking a different approach. Perhaps I was a little sleepy when I watched, but I didn't figure the obvious twist until the final half-hour.

ABC's The Movie of the Week

Made-for-TV movies eventually got a bad rap, which explains why they pretty much faded from network television in the 1990s. But I still fondly recall what I call the "Golden Age of the TV Movie": the early 1970s when ABC began broadcasting its Movie of the Week.

Every Tuesday night, ABC introduced a world premiere telefilm in a ninety-minute time slot (about 72 minutes without commercials). The success of the series can be attributed, in part, to the variety of its films: suspense (The Longest Night), horror (The Night Stalker), science fiction (Night Slaves), World War II action (Death Race), comedy (The Daughters of Joshua Cabe), Western (The Hanged Man), serious drama (That Certain Summer), film noir (Goodnight, My Love) and even kung fu (Men of the Dragon). Many of the telefilms were also pilots for TV series--some of which made it as regular series (The Six Million Dollar Man) and some that didn’t (The Monk with George Maharis as a private eye).



Dennis Weaver in Duel.

Several films earned critical plaudits, such as Brian's Song, Duel, That Certain Summer, Tribes, and The Point. Occasionally, one would be released theatrically in either in the U.S. or Europe--often with additional footage--after its TV broadcast. That was the case with Steven Spielberg's suspenseful chase drama Duel and The Sex Symbol with Connie Stevens playing an actress loosely inspired by Marilyn Monroe.



I'm always surprised by how many of the ABC Movie of Week telefilms are fondly remembered by fellow film buffs. For example, people may not remember the title of Trilogy of Terror--but mention the creepy TV movie with Karen Black about the killer doll and a lot of folks will know it.

The original Movie of the Week debuted on Tuesday night in 1969. It was so successful that ABC launched a Movie of the Weekend, which subsequently shifted to mid-week so there were Tuesday and Wednesday Movies of the Week installments. The final Movie of the Week was broadcast in 1976.

The catchy theme to the Movie of the Week opening was written by Burt Bacharach. Its actual title is "Nikki," named after Burt's daughter with Angie Dickinson. Click on the clip below to view the full opening for When Michael Calls, a thriller with Ben Gazzara, Elizabeth Ashley, and Michal Douglas. At the end of the clip is preview for the following week's movie, The Screaming Woman, starring Olivia de Havilland. Unfortunately, the video quality doesn't do justice to the bright, colorful graphics.

In terms of originality, the only network that competed with ABC was CBS, which launched CBS Tuesday Night Movie in 1972. It sent speeding helicopters (Birds of Prey), ancient evil Druids (The Horror at 37,000 Feet), and, most memorably, Gargoyles to battle its TV-movie rival at ABC.

Crosby as Dr. Cook.

Sadly, only a handful of these films are available on DVD (and even then, the prints are usually inferior in quality). I’d love to see TCM get the rights to the Movie of the Week. It’d be great to see Bing Crosby in Dr. Cook’s Garden again and see if the film as good as I remember.

Below is a sampling of the telefilms that played on The Movie of the Week (to include the Tuesday and Wednesay editions and The Movie of the Weekend on Saturday). Note that several movies featured performers from the classic film era:

Seven in Darkness (1969)
Daughter of the Mind (1969) with Gene Tierney & Ray Milland
Gidget Grows Up (1969)
Honeymoon with a Stranger (1969)
The Over-the-Hill Gang (1969) with Walter Brennan & Andy Devine
The Ballad of Andy Crocker (1969)
The Immortal (1969)
Wake Me When the War Is Over (1969)
Along Came a Spider (1970)
Carter's Army (1970)
Crowhaven Farm (1970)
How Awful about Allan (1970) with Anthony Perkins & Julie Harris
Night Slaves (1970)
The Over the Hill Gang Rides Again with Walter Brennan & Fred Astaire
Run, Simon, Run (1970)
The Love War (1970)
Tribes (1970)
Brian's Song (1971)
Do Not Fold, Spindle, or Mutilate (1971) with Helen Hayes, Myrna Loy, Sylvia Sidney
Dr. Cook's Garden (1971)
Duel (1971)
In Broad Daylight (1971)
In Search of America (1971)
Maybe I'll Come Home in the Spring (1971)
The Birdmen (1971)
The Devil and Miss Sarah (1971)
The Feminist and the Fuzz (1971)
The Point! (1971)
The Reluctant Heroes (1971)
A Great American Tragedy (1972)
Goodnight, My Love (1972)
Moon of the Wolf (1972)
That Certain Summer (1972)
The Astronaut (1972)
The Daughters of Joshua Cabe (1972) with Buddy Ebsen & Sandra Dee
The Longest Night (1972)
Madame Sin (1972) with Bette Davis & Robert Wagner
The People (1972)
The Screaming Woman (1972) with Olivia de Havilland
Women in Chains (1972)
A Cold Night's Death (1973)
A Summer Without Boys (1973)
The Cat Creature
Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (1973)
Female Artillery (1973)
Go Ask Alice (1973)
Isn't It Shocking? (1973)
Satan's School for Girls (1973)
Shirts/Skins (1973)
The Girl Most Likely to... (1973)
The Girls of Huntington House (1973)
The Man Without a Country (1973) with Cliff Robertson
The Night Strangler (1973)
The Third Girl from the Left (1973)
Men of the Dragon (1974)
Get Christie Love! (1974)
Hit Lady (1974)
Houston, We've Got a Problem (1974)
Killdozer (1974)
Locusts (1974)
The Mark of Zorro (1974)
The Morning After (1974)
Thursday's Game (1974)
Winter Kill (1974)