 This is the SF Productions podcast network The tape shows. Let me see. There's a tape already in here. Let me hook this up here and let me see what we got. Oh, damn right. Come back with us to the 60s and 70s, the dwelling place of the lost generation. An era whose heroes, role models, and very lives were molded and formed by weekly installments of favorite television programs. Welcome to the place your parents didn't understand. Welcome to the Vast Wasteland. Welcome home. Oh, and welcome to another exciting episode of Vast Wasteland. I'm your host, Mark Schmidbar, along with Wilbur, Neil, and Marty Wiley here to talk about 60s and 70s television. Before we jump into the big extravaganza tonight, I just want to tell you we're on Tuesdays at 6, Wednesdays at 10, and Thursdays at 3 p.m. here on ACTV Cable 21. Well, the mailbag certainly seems to have emptied out a little bit from last time. In fact, we have absolutely nothing in the mailbag, which is fortunate because right now our PO box is changing and we don't know what it is yet. So don't run into the old mailbox. When I'm going to say what it is on the air so we don't get confused, we'll have a brand new mailbox by next episode. So just write the letters and have them ready to go. So as soon as you hear the new post office box number, you can send them in. I was sitting at home wondering, why don't they write? Now I know. It is no address. So let's move into tonight's big topic, which is Movies of the Week. Certainly television movies started as a kind of really third-rate B-movie stuff because the movie industry hated television. Exactly. Back in the 50s and 60s, but finally they decided, hey, we can make some money off this. The studios decided and so we started to see tons of made for television films. That's what we're talking about tonight. So what do we got on this, Mark? Well, by golly, there were probably some made for TV movies back in the 60s, but I couldn't really say. If you want to go back, you can look at the Playhouse 90 thing. Those were almost kind of like made for TV movies. Those were more live. They were plays, they were live, but it was still like they're on TV. So it's kind of, I mean it stretches it, but you actually got to the point in the 70s, I'm going to say the 70s because I don't remember any in the 60s, where they did actually make movies for TV, specifically for TV, for the TV audience. They were made specifically to be two hours with the commercials and everything in there. So it would just be for TV. Actually they cut them down so they were 90 minutes, most of them. Most of them were 90 minutes. So you had your ABC movies of the week and you had your NBC movies of the week, where they had your NBC mystery movie. You had all these different shows. Well, I can look at the NBC mystery movie because you started off there. You had a concept where you had three different detective shows. And each week you would see one of those detectives. Right. And you started off, we had McLeod. McLeod. And McMillan and White. And Colombo. And you had Colombo, exactly. What channel was Huck Ramsey on? Well, he was a little later. Yeah, they were, there was Amy Prentice, there was a stoop sister. They had several different ones after that. There was a whole tin of fly. Tin of fly. Yeah, all those. There were a bunch of them. I even think that, I almost think that Longstreet even started on a kind of a movie of the week deal. Maybe on ABC. I know that Longstreet was on ABC. Okay. But before we really jump into that, I wanted to say about the early films, about the ones in the 60s. I don't remember them any more than you do, but the only ones I can, the ones I have down here, the first one that considered the first television movie is See How They Run, starring John Forsythe and Centa Berger. Ooh. And she really got into fame and fortune. And that was telecast October 7th, 1964. Okay. But what was supposed to be the first one was The Killers with Lee Marvin, Angie Dickinson and Ronald Reagan. Hey. But because it was so violent, it was so violent they wouldn't show it on TV so he got sent into theatrical release. I could watch it at 3 p.m. in the afternoon. Right. You know why we probably don't remember them in the 60s? We had to go to bed. That's right. It was too late for us. The movie is coming on. Go to bed. Or even earlier than that. But you used to be able to tell that something was made for a television movie. I never said that on the air. It was always a world premiere television event. You could tell because of the wonders of video tape. Right. Which just had that interesting, that interesting feel, that interesting soap opera feel, if you will. That's the way I always felt about them because it was, well, this looks like it's feeling like a soap opera. And so many of them had, weren't so much to entertain but to educate. They had a cause. Well, quite a few did. Foreign Innocence. Quite a few. Little Miss Spinhead. Farrah T. Linda Blair. Teenage Alcoholics. You got into those. And they got into also the ABC Afternoon movies. After School Specials. After School Specials. Exactly. Those were, a lot of those had a cause there. They had meaning. There was always some underlying thing there. Mom, the Wolfman and me. Yeah. Something's always going on there. Which, Mom, the Wolfman and me. That was based on a, on a novel actually. But they put it into the After School Special because it's like a, a teenage novel. It's the teenage time to watch TV instead of watching those cartoons. Let's watch a movie. Yeah. So you got, you've got that, you've got that aspect. Then there were the, a lot of horror movies. Exactly. But I mean, really, I mean, based on today, it was always, it was all, you know, suspense and not gore at all. So there was no gore. Yeah. The ABC did a lot of them. And I remember. Exactly. My favorite one was, smile, Jenny, you're dead. Yeah. Smile, Jenny, you're dead. Tell us about that. Well, I don't even remember anything about it, but I always remember the title. The title doesn't go away. Wow, Jenny, you're dead. Well, let me see. Gosh, there were, there were just so many. They did several about werewolves. Like, goodness, when it's like Harvest Moon or something. I can't remember the specific title. Death Moon, I think that was one. Because there were ones where they would, they would allude to the fact that there's a werewolf and then it would just turn out to be some crazy person. But then there was really one, a death moon, I think was the one that actually had a werewolf. It was like Robert Foxworth, they were in Hawaii. And he actually, you actually do seem to transform into a werewolf, and it was just great. And there was another one where, goodness, there were just a bunch of them. Then they had your devil worshiper kind of things. You had your light supernatural things with the Amish or somebody. It was one of the great ones. The Amish supernatural movies. I think it was an NBC one. Don't be afraid of it, don't be afraid of the dark. Anyway, you have Kim Darby, she gets into this new house and you keep hearing these noises and it turns out to be these little dudes that are living in her fireplace. These little wrinkled up dudes, little furry bodies in there. Living in her fireplace and she's like afraid of them then by the end of it, she's actually learning to live with these little guys. I mean they're in there and she accepts the fact that they're in there and they're not evil, they're just little dudes that are living in her fireplace. It was a cute little movie. Let's see, what else? Well, certainly a lot of them and the trend now is what we're seeing is, before we had movies that they said, hey, this movie did really well and it really lends itself to a series format. And so you saw it move that way. But now, of course, what you're seeing are things that are already series or are going to be series the next week. And the first episode is a two-hour episode where they say it's a movie. It's a movie. Look at some good shows from Fantasy Island. Fantasy Island? The movies are actually better than the series. The spelling Goldberg, pretty much the whole universe came off of ABC movies a week. Movies of the week, exactly. I think, probably Charlie's Angels. Charlie's Angels probably started. I know for a fact that... Yeah, I know. Okay, you've got, like you had your theatrical movie, you had Super Cops, which was based on the antics of this Batman and Robin police tune. Right, I remember that. And they did a movie of that. And then ABC says, well, hey, let's take that Super Cops idea and turn it into a movie of the week. And you end up with Starsky and Hutch. Yeah. Which becomes a series. That's right. It lasts for quite a few seasons there. And the same thing... I feel like you can see the original Fantasy Island again. Yeah, well, you can kind of catch them. You used to be able to. I know they did them at late night. Yeah, late night TV is where you see all the movies of the week from the 70s. Quite a few of those things. Of course the night out. Something like that. It was like Fantasy Island, Fantasy Island 2, Fantasy Island 3. Yeah. They did the same way with Love Boat. It was like Love Boat. Love Boat 2. And there's Love Boat 3. And then it became the series. And let's see, what a... But Love Boat always sucked. Well, it did really after a bit. It became the... From the beginning. It became the Love American style of the 70s. Of the 80s. Well, yeah, because it went all the way to the 80s. 86, yeah. Yeah, because it was... It should have wouldn't have slicked. Right, exactly. You don't know why. It was just kind of every week. People would come on and it'd be the three stories and you'd have the funny story and you'd have the romantic story and then you'd have the kind of serious... Serious... Once in a while. Yeah, the serious story. The two amnesiacs find each other on the Love Boat or some sort of deal. Yeah, something like that. I really did that a couple of times. You have your standard crew even though they change crew members for one reason or another in there. I don't necessarily have to go into that. But it's like somebody would disappear, somebody else would show up who's like a long lost relative, somebody else on there. So instantly, boom, new crew member. That's right. Well, it was fairly stable, though. I mean, when you look at... Basically, you kept everybody other than, of course, Lauren Tweedz, or Tweedz. Yeah. How do you ever announce that? I thought it was Tweedz. Tweedz. Well, in any case, Tweedz, Tweedz, whatever it is. She went into a drug stupor or something that was in treatment. Yeah, she moved into the... Boom, she's gone, and Pat Klaus comes on as crew's director, Judy McCoy. What was that? Stubing's kid was on there too. Yeah, she became a... What was her name? Jill Whelan. Jill. Vicki. After they found out that she existed, you know... Right, yeah. Like she got this terrible... Oh, I left one in a port! Oh! Oh, she better come work on the boat with your dad now. Oh, Captain Stubing. He's doing the Captain Cut. And so here we... Well, in every port, that's kind of it, you know. They hit... What was the... What were they always talking at? Puerto Vallarta. Puerto Vallarta. Puerto Vallarta. Puerto Vallarta. Welcome. Welcome. Oh, they spent his the island. They spent his the island. He must be playing. Good morning. We'll be docking at Puerto Vallarta, and you can get on, and then often have another subplot out there. Maybe they totally missed. They totally missed having the love boats sail to Fantasy Island, didn't they? That would have been wild. Well, they did. Didn't they have Charlie's Angels on the love boat at one point? They might have. I'm sure they did. I'm sure there was. It was like... It was only like Captain Stubing was the only other. Everybody else was on, I don't know, shore leave or something. It was only Captain Stubing. If you get too many characters, you'll end up like one of the... the crisis in Infinite Universe. It couldn't... It couldn't... It couldn't do that. They just... They just... The idea was just scared of them, I guess. Yeah. But let me see. What are their... Well, one of my favorite, one of my truly favorite series that launched off of there was the Night Stalker thing, because that started off as the Night Stalker, the original movie where Colchak is in Las Vegas investigating this vampire thing, who ended up being Yano Scorsini, who was actually a vampire, and he was actually out there killing people, but they couldn't prove it because when the police finally show up, here's Colchak driving a stake into the guy's heart, so he gets in trouble for it. And then he has to move away. I didn't want that to happen. He tried to help people. It's like he has to leave town. So he end up... Next time you see him, he's in Seattle, Washington. Boom. And it's the Night Strangler this time. There's a guy who's lived down in underground Washington for years and years and years, and he comes up every, oh, I'll say, 50 years, and he kills people to get this stuff out of the back of their neck that he mixes up to drink to last for another 50 years. And by the way, that was Richard Anderson, who just went on to do the $6 million man, was another one that grew off of... But anyway, I won't go into that yet, so he ends up... He has to leave Seattle, and he takes his boss Vincenzo and his girl with him. They end up in Chicago, and that's where the series starts. That's where the series goes on, and he just covered several different and supernatural things from there. Okay, we did have a trend, too, where they started making made-for-TV movies from series. Harlem Glove Trotters on Killigan's Island and weird stuff like that. Well, and Love Boat ended up as the Love Boat Valentine's Day special movie thing, or whatever that was called. And so it started as a movie and ended up as a movie. So it's like its own self-fulfilling, full-circle kind of series, prophecy kind of thing. Actually, it's... And really, I mean, in ABC, especially in the 70s, probably 80% of all its one-hour dramas or one-hour shows came off of movies. Movies of the week. I mentioned the... $6 million man? $6 million man. That started off as... Well, it was based on a book called... Cyborg. Cyborg by... Martin Caden. Okay. And... No, just Cyborg. It was Cyborg, I think. Maybe it was I Cyborg. No? I'm a robot. Okay, and then there's Cyborg. Okay, but anyway, it started off and basically, I mean, it's the same story. Steve Austin, Astronaut, he's up there, he crashes and they put him back together for $6 million, hey! What a title. It was a deal. Excellent. And he starts off and he's... I remember in the movie, the thing that got me was the fact that, okay, he's out there and they show him testing and everything. When he actually goes to do whatever the mission is, he's really running. Yeah. And by the time they do the series, they just say, well, he's running, but we'll slow it down because he's going so fast, we have to slow it down so you can see him. So... And then the original one, Darin McGavin was the guy that was in control of the organization because they put him into cryogenic sleep at the end of the first, at the end of the movie. That's right, that's right. And it was Darin McGavin who was there and then Darin McGavin goes on to be the nice stalker and it's like a full circle. Richard Anderson, Darin McGavin goes on to be the nice stalker. Richard Anderson comes away from being a nice strangler to be Oscar Goldman. And he was in charge of it and it's just wow, it's something. And then you've got... People are getting a job. That's right. And so they just kind of switched things there and when they started up with the Bionic Woman, I think they actually... They didn't introduce her on his show. I think she had her own special movie. Oh, yeah. No, I think they... I think it started on his show. I'm pretty sure it did. I think she just... But then wasn't it? But there were Bionic Woman movies. Yeah. And then there were the Bionic Family or... The Bionic Reunion movies we had in the 80s. Whatever happened there. I think it was pretty much every single Bionic thing that they could have... Yeah. The Bionic Russian agent versus the Bionic American agent. That's your Bionic Bigfoot. Yeah. It's a Bionic dog. Yeah. Which I thought was real nice. It's Ted Cassidy. Ted Cassidy. Ted Cassidy. It was the Bionic Bigfoot. The first time. Well, no. Andre the Giant was the first time. Right. And then it got to be Ted Cassidy. But... What about Berna Benning? Well, Berna Benning was... That golly, he was okay. He got your city because a May for TV movie. Right. But it was kind of spun off the whole Erwin Allen thing there. Yeah. Spun off of the... That was where that tunnel went to. It went to the Erwin Allen universe. Exactly. A whole other thing. That weird tunnel that Steve had run down. Boom. He's in the Erwin Allen universe. Oh, they've heard Benning. He's in that. And then he comes over to the man from Atlantis, which I think also was my favorite movie. Oh, that was a movie. Yeah. Yeah. May for TV movie. And some sort of movie. And then you've got your movies that were just movies that were based on theatrical movies, like I already mentioned. Well, it starts being based on the Supercop. Right. Okay, you had your Superco movie, which branched into... Tomah. Tomah, which branched into Berna. And I think, well, they even had a Superco series there for a little while. So you had that, which branched off of there. Then you had another one, which was really a favorite of mine, which loosely came off the inner of the dragon thing and had... Well, it was right there in the Kung Fu era, which had a... They had a big... It was really great movie. And then speaking of Kung Fu, you've got Kung Fu, which did come off of a May for TV movie. They made another one, too, later on. Yeah. They did a reunion one there in the 80s where he came back years later, finds out he's got a son. Whoa. And who's his son? Why? His son is Brandon Lee. It's just Bruce Lee's son. I mean, while he's playing his son, but it was actually Bruce Lee's son. We haven't really done anything else since. But, well, that's another... Who was a great show? It was. It was truly a great show. Really, really wonderful show. A wonderful show. It has a show. And you had... Let me see another one you've had. Well, Night Gallery actually started off as a three-episode made for TV movie thing. Right. And then it went on into a series for a couple of seasons, which was really great. It was... I remember in the movie, the thing was they would... They showed the fact that there were three pictures here, but you didn't get to see what they were until after they did the story. They were all covered. And he would come up and he'd pull the cover off and they'd tell the story and then at the end of it you'd actually see the picture. Which was like an interesting picture. It was a lot more interesting than the way they actually did it later. Well, I mean... Some things they should have just left in the movie as the movie, you know. As a movie. As a movie and not gone on with... Well, how are you going to convince some TV executives of this? They won't listen. They're like movie executives. They see something that works and they want to get... They want to milk that thing for all it's worth. That's right. We're looking at sequels. We're looking at series. We're looking at... It looks like a series. We're looking at books. We're looking at lunchboxes, t-shirts, everything. Toys. We want to... I think it freaked me out the first time. I saw a book based on a made for TV movies. Right. I was like, hello, can you go? You've already watched the movie. Right. Why would you want to read the book? Unless you, of course, need to do it for a book report and you don't want to read the book and you've already seen the movie. Right. There was a series in the 60s I want to mention. This was the first made for TV movie that spawned what was very popular in the... Like we mentioned NBC Mystery Movie. The rotating segment concept of somebody knew every week and that was the made for TV movie Fame is the name of the game which spawned the name of the game. Okay. With the three with James Franciscus. Let me see if I can look this up here. I got Lawrence and Glamret and it would be you know here we go Jean Berry, Tony Franciscus and Robert Stack there we go and then that's kind of the same idea that they went on with to probe or search which that was kind of a futuristic one because they had that futuristic thing in there but that started off as a made for TV kind of movie also. Right. So that was and then let me see. I just want to mention a couple from we don't want to stray too much into the 80s but a couple well first in the 70s we saw the kind of the end of the TV movie to be replaced by the miniseries there for a while to the point that you know TV movies they would like pad material on it to make it four hours and make it into a two part miniseries or padded TV movie. Some miniseries were really good like the roots thing but by the end two hour movie by the end they were just like they were just like really kind of King of the miniseries Richard Chamberlain oh yeah true he's done more than anybody in the whole wide entire world although now I will admit Shogan was a very good novel I was very good I think novels lend themselves well didn't they do the John Jake series miniseries oh man why they did at least two or three of them those were all on that operation prime time though or something like that they weren't on the network it was on the syndicated ad hoc syndicated network they put the chronicles of just the Adams Chronicles or just something like that but the bastard ooh that was like a big breakthrough for TV Andrew Stevens asked the bastard I remember that commercial and then let me say I don't know how many of those there's just several of those John Jake things you can pick them up at your local library but there's several of them and they just did two or three two or three and then also no Mitchner they did Centennial which was like a big a maxi series hardly a miniseries oh yeah I mean Centennial was just like oh well it was like for about a season NBC was like well the baseball game got rained out put it on the episode of Centennial the movie of the week to the that's a miniseries a movie of the week to the highest power right then you got your Erwin Shaw with Rich Man Poor Man was another one that was like a real a real big win where everybody watched that and got a watch there Rich Man Poor Man what's that Nick Nolte going to do this week hey Bill Bixby was in that that's right oh man you look at Mr. Mr. TV Robert Conrad was in that Centennial everybody was Ed Astner was in that William Shatner in there oh yeah I had to find some place you've got to you have Robert Conrad and William Shatner they're like they one thing Chamberlain was in it probably he was everybody was in it one thing I wanted to list here was this list the highest rated movies on television and I just want to list the ones from the 70s the TV movies there's hardly any really in here little ladies of the night 1977 okay Helder Skelter yeah and and and the Night Stalker that's basically it and the only other ones are really in the 80s which we got into the more really the last few miniseries like The Day After and V and your your Battlestar Galactica did start off in the 70s right that was another one to start off as a well that one actually was going to be a movie but they did the Maverick TV thing first and then it got to be the series and then they finally released it was actually the first episode where they actually do have the big the big fight and break up and what started on their way to another series science fiction series Buck Rogers the 70s Gilder Art Series it started they were going to put it out as a pilot to our movie TV movie and then they put it out theatrical release that summer and then they went boom it's a series so they did that well I found something I gotta say this I found something on the new comedy network yes I found Captain Nice Captain Nice on Saturdays oh yeah they have like a Buck Henry hour they show quark quark they show wow Captain Nice Nido I'll have to tune into that Nido and we hope you tune into the next episode of ass wasteland in two weeks we don't know what the heck we're doing we don't know