TELEVISED TERROR VOLUME 1: ARE YOU IN THE HOUSE ALONE? (1977)/CALENDAR GIRL MURDERS (1984)/CHILD IN THE NIGHT (1990) Limited Edition Blu-ray
Director(s): Walter Grauman/William A. Graham/Mike Robe
Vinegar Syndrome

Vinegar Syndrome mines the small screen for their three-film Blu-ray boxed set TELEVISED TERROR VOLUME 1.

Terrorized suburban women were TV movie gold throughout the seventies and eighties, but ARE YOU IN THE HOUSE ALONE? (1978) had more in mind than the usual stalker scenario. Just as high school student Gail (Kathleen Beller, THE SWORD AND THE SORCERER) feels that she is falling in love for the first time, she becomes the subject of obscene phone calls and threatening notes in her locker. Her stalker can even reach her at her babysitting job, and she starts to become paranoid about every male around her, including working-class straight A student Steve (CADDYSHACK's Scott Colomby) , jealous ex-boyfriend E.K. (Randy Stumpf, SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT), photography teacher Mr. Elden (Alan Fudge, BRAINSTORM), Phil Lawver (Dennis Quaid, DREAMSCAPE) – the handsome but surprisingly prudish, boorish rich kid beau of her best friend Allison (Robin Mattson, TV's GENERAL HOSPITAL) – and even her father Neil (Tony Bill, THE INITIATION OF SARAH) who she learns was laid off from his job as an architect a month ago despite still apparently traveling to San Francisco for business meetings.

The school principal (Ellen Travolta, GREASE) proves unhelpful – suggesting that her stalker must be someone she lead on, even inadvertently – her mother Anne (Blythe Danner, FUTUREWORLD) is too busy with her new job to provide much emotional support, while Steve thinks her stalker is just trying to frighten her and probably picked her at random. When her stalker does indeed turn out to be someone she knows and he rapes her, Gail at first pretends to not know her assailant because she does not think anyone will believe her. She turns out to be right, and it looks like his family connections will keep him from even being charged due to lack of evidence (and the fact that Gail was not a virgin before the assault). Gail returns to school, persisting with the rape case and determined to endure the whisperings of her classmates; however, when she sees that her assailant has started his pattern of stalking with another girl, she takes it upon herself to get evidence against him.

Based on the novel by Richard Peck, ARE YOU IN THE HOUSE ALONE? is a more of a "movie-of-the-week" drama in the guise of a thriller. A remake would surely give more screentime to the blame-the-victim aspect as well as a campaign of bullying from the attacker's cronies; but the bulk of the running time here is devoted to Gail's growing unease, with the aftermath of the rape and her decision to go after her attacker taking up the twenty-odd minutes of the ninety-six minute running time. Rather than a police interrogation and court hearings, we get a smattering of awkward interactions between Gail and her classmates (including one that blames her for the attack), and more of her supportive parents – well-played by Danner, Bill, and Beller – a scene in which lawyer neighbor (Tricia O'Neil, PIRANHA II) reminds us of what is wrong with the justice system when it comes to rape cases, and some empowering words from quirky Russian English teacher Mrs. Malevich (Magda Harout, TRANSYLVANIA TWIST). Charles Bernstein (A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET) contributes an elegant score, and TV cameraman Jack Swain creates a tense atmosphere with a number of handheld shots POV shots (as well as some non-POV shots that still stalk Beller as she rushes around locking doors and windows); but for better "Kathleen Beller" in peril TV movies, check out NO PLACE TO HIDE (1981) and DEADLY MESSAGES (1985).

With various television movies about the pitfalls of fame than can befall starstruck innocents who quit home for the city, it was only a matter of time before the formula was reworked into the police procedural thriller format with CALENDAR GIRL MURDERS (1984). Dissatisfied with an increasing number of trivial assignments like providing security to "playboy" Richard Trainor (Robert Culp, A NAME FOR EVIL) and his empire of centerfold "angels" who are making the transition from the magazine pages to network television, Lieutenant Dan Stoner (Tom Skerritt, ALIEN) is on the verge of quitting the force to spend more time with photographer wife Nancy (Barbara Bossom) and hormonal teenage son Todd (Jonathan Aluzas, MONSTER IN THE CLOSET) when Miss January (Victoria Tucker) takes a fatal fall off a hotel balcony that is later determined to be a murder. When Miss February (Claudia Christian, THE HIDDEN) is knifed in her own beach house and someone tries to drown Miss March (Pamela West) in the middle of Trainor's party during a swimming pool volleyball game, Stoner believes that someone is targeting the magazine. When he meets former model Cassie Bascomb (Sharon Stone, DEADLY BLESSING), he learns that she quit the magazine after she was stalked by Krell (Michael C. Gwynne, CHERRY 2000), the assistant to photographer Alan Conti (GROWING PAINS' Alan Thicke) who took credit for discovering Cassie. Stoner is not sure what to think when seemingly down-to-Earth Cassie steps in front of the cameras again, seeming to enjoy her return to fame in spite of a deadly threat; but there are plenty of other suspects: Trainor himself who seems to be the least please about Cassie's return, Trainor's imperious longtime partner Cleo (Barbara Parkins, THE MEPHISTO WALTZ), alcoholic Master of Ceremonies Nat Couray (Richard Morse, HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS WITHOUT REALLY TRYING) who may have a financial motive in the failure of Trainor's latest venture, the father (Donald Hotton, THE HEARSE) of Miss April (NORTH AND SOUTH's Wendy Kilbourne) who feels that modeling is no better than prostitution, and maybe even Cassie who may be stepping into Miss March's wings while she is convalescing in the hospital.

In spite of the novel setup of a finite body count, an order in which they are to be killed, and different means of carrying out the deeds, CALENDER GIRL MURDERS is not really the TV movie equivalent of an Italian giallo. After Miss March's close call, it is pretty much police procedural, moving away from glitz and glamor to Stoner at home and at work – with supporting cast players Robert Beltran (LONE WOLF McQUADE), Silvana Gallardo (DEATH WISH II), and Pat Corley (THE HAND) – and the ambiguous relationship between Stoner and Cassie which is at times paternal and at other times possibly romantic. The plotting is diverting enough and there is the potential of a grisly comeuppance for the exposed killer, the film instead goes for a more emotional ending in keeping with the film's more dramatic contemporaries. Skerritt and Stone are charismatic leads – with the latter showing hints of what she would bring to the later humdrum thriller SCISSORS and the steamy noir homage BASIC INSTINCT – while Culp and Bossom get just enough screen time and material to work with; however, Parkins and Thicke are really not given much beyond the red herring setup while Peter Brown (RAPE SQUAD), Meredith McRae (PETTICOAT JUNCTION), and Rip Taylor are given the most bewildering of cameos. Brad Fiedel (FRIGHT NIGHT) contributes a largely unmemorable score.

CHILD IN THE NIGHT (1990) gives us another TV movie mainstay with threatened children. When shipping executive Scott Winfield (Stephen Godwin) is murdered by a hook-wielding hooded assailant outside of his office on the docks one night, the only witness is his young son Luke (Elijah Wood, THE WAR). In spite of claiming that he hid when his father told him to and saw nothing, detective Bass (Skerritt again) finds physical evidence to the contrary. When psychologist Hollis (JoBeth Williams, POLTERGEIST) is called in to talk to the child, she seems eager to take what he tells her at face value, but Bass presses her to continue helping even though she has reasons for not wanting to work with children. When Luke tells them that his father was killed by Captain Hook, Hollis explains that the delusion is the child's way of processing what he has seen; but who among the list of suspects is Captain Hook: one of Winfield's business partners – DEF-CON 4's Tim Choate, Mike Pniewski (A TIME TO KILL), and Karen Trumbo (HEAR NO EVIL) – who are not as tightknit as they claim to be, Winfield's former secretary/possible mistress (Laura Langwell), violent union rep Decker (J.R. Knotts, MYSTERY MANSION) or possibly even Winfield's trophy wife (Season Hubley, VICE SQUAD) or his own father (Darren McGavin, THE NIGHT STALKER).

While the identify of CHILD IN THE NIGHT's killer is not hard to guess, overall characterization and plotting make the film possibly the best in this set. While the novel use of the Peter Pan story as a child's way of processing disturbing and traumatic sights is a nice way to keep the viewer guessing not just about the identity of the killer but also the real reason for the crime, the script goes the extra mile of giving Skerritt's detective and Williams' psychologist more to do than just fall into bed. Hollis is the one who wants to avoid intimacy and just have sex while Bass is the romantic, and their interactions provide as much drama as humor. The other suspects are pretty much red herring territory not so much because of the amount of screen time as the lack of compelling motives (compelling in the sense of a thriller with psychological undertones rather than something as banal as money). Thom Bray (PRINCE OF DARKNESS) appears as Hollis' business partner who badgers her into cooperating with the police in the interest of keeping a contract with the state. Although not extravagantly visual, the film does have a slick sheen courtesy of industry vet Gerard Hirschfield (YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN) while composer Mark Snow would become better known just a year or two later for THE X-FILES.

Extras are rather sparse but informative. ARE YOU IN THE HOUSE ALONE? has the only video interview in "Creating Musical Themes" (19:42) with composer Bernstein who recalls his working methods on short schedule TV projects, noting that he usually worked with directors on film projects but on TV movies they often had gone onto another project in post, and he worked here mainly with producer Jay Benson (THE STEPFATHER). Of the film, he discusses the film's primary music themes, as well as some of his other genre efforts. The disc also includes an audio essay by Amanda Reyes, author of "Are You In The House Alone?: A TV Movie Compendium 1964-1999" who notes that TV movies were often female-centric because they were aimed at women in the home, and that the lower stakes of non-theatrical films allowed for the examination of pervading social issues on an intimate scope, usually within the framework of the family unit threatened and altered for better or worse on the other side of conflict. She also discusses the social context in which the Richard Peck novel came out when sexual assault was just beginning to be talked about rather than hushed up, and the novel and film's depiction of the attack on the reputation of the victim and the failings of the system.

CALENDAR GIRL MURDERS is accompanied by an audio essay by Reyes and podcaster Sam Pancake (83:00) that is feature-length but not presented as an alternate audio track for the film because it only touches upon the feature in the context of its TV movie genre contemporaries, not the slasher aspect of the hybrid but that of industry satire from the theatrical STAR 80 and its television equivalent DEATH OF A CENTERFOLD that explored the "cracks" in the glamorous lives of its characters, as well as the critical response to the film describes as "ABC's softcore sinning." Reyes goes it alone for her audio essay on CHILD IN THE NIGHT (14:39) in which she makes the case for the film as a film noir homage – with conventions of gumshoe and femme fatale subverted in the relationship between Hollis and Bass – as well as noting parallels between Luke's imaginary world and the plot of Bernard Rose's PAPERHOUSE and its literary source. All three discs are house in a separate cases with somewhat iffy artwork when one would have preferred reproductions of the newspaper or TV guide artwork, and the individual cases are packaged together in one of Vinegar Syndrome's thick boxes designed by John Sloboda and limited to 5,000 copies (available directly from Vinegar Syndrome). (Eric Cotenas)

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