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My favorite decade for film and
television is the 1970’s. Like me, many
other genre fans share my love of this period of 10 years wherein Hollywood churned out
some of the most entertaining films ever made.
This also goes for TV-movies, or made-for-TV movies, or
movies-of-the-week as some call them. It’s
interesting to note that movies made for television sort of began in the late
1950’s as the tug of war between television and movie theaters battled it out
for audience viewing. First movies came around, then television
followed and resulted in lower theater attendance. Movies fired back with drive-ins and
wide-screen processes such as Cinemascope and Cinerama to woo movie lovers back. Likewise, television fired back with movies
of the week and later on with the mini-series.
The success of theatrical
releases such as ROSEMARY’S
BABY and THE
EXORCIST (and later on THE OMEN) made religion
and the devil popular at the box office.
Consequently, television rose to the occasion with movies that followed Satanic
themes. Not to be confused with the
American title of the Michele Soavi film
of the same name, one of them is a nifty TV-movie called THE DEVIL’S DAUGHTER, originally
aired on ABC on January 9, 1973, and it was most definitely “inspired” by Roman
Polanski’s aforementioned hit film about a young woman living among a coven of
witches. Shelley Winters, who had just
been in WHO SLEW AUNTIE ROO?
and WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH
HELEN?, stars as Lilith Malone, a woman who tries to befriend the daughter
of her murdered friend Alice Shaw (Diane Ladd).
Diane Shaw (Belinda Montgomery) is an independent woman who is persuaded
to stay with Lilith and her mute servant Mr. Howard (Jonathan Frid) in her Pacific Grove, CA
mansion. During her stay, she is
introduced to other friends of Lilith’s who all behave in a rather peculiar
manner – they appear to be too overly cheerful as to border on phoniness. When Diane decides to move in with a friend
and pay her own rent, Lilith practically throws a tantrum demanding to know why
Diane would leave Lilith’s gift-given hospitality. Diane is taken aback, and Lilith
apologizes. Without giving away too
much, you can pretty much figure out how the story is going to end. But, that’s not to say that the film is not
worth seeing. The film represents this sort of genre tale from its heyday and I
truly miss these movies.
The DVD is not a stellar-looking transfer, but it’s much
improved over SHARK
KILL, the first DVD release from Wild
Eye Releasing. I really hope that
they continue releasing these TV-movies.
In fact, I like that the film looks the way it does, because although
these films were shot on 35mm, they were then transferred to 16mm and shown on
network affiliates in this format. And,
this is the way we all remember these movies looking when we were kids! This is the one time that I prefer to see a
non-super-duper transfer of a movie. Definitely
worth seeing. You can pick it up at Amazon.com.
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