Made-For-TV Horror Movies of the Seventies

As noted before, the seventies were undoubtedly the 'golden age' of the US TV movie, with these cheap, frequently generic-looking, productions proliferating in order to meet US network TV's voracious demand for new films to fill slots in their schedules.  While just about every genre of cinematic film was covered by these productions, network content restrictions of the time meant that these TV movies were usually pretty bland and family friendly - no sex, nudity or explicit violence.  It might seem tht such restrictions would preclude their excursion into the horror genre, yet there were a surprising number of horror-themed TV movies.  While many were as bland as their stablemates - Satan's School For Girls (great title but insipid film) or Good Against Evil (generic family friendly Exorcist cash in), for example - others were surprisingly effective.  The best of these usually involved the participation of Dan Curtis, who had already created a cult favourite with the Gothic horror themed soap opera Dark Shadows, which regularly featured vampires, witches and werewolves.  Undoubtedly his best known creation remains The Night Stalker (1972), which spawned a sequel, The Night Strangler (1973), and a TV series, Kolchak The Night Stalker.  But he also gave us The Norliss Tapes (1973) - a failed pilot for a TV series on similar lines to the Kolchak TV series (which Curtis wasn't directly involved with), Scream of the Wolf (1974), Dracula (1974) and Trilogy of Terror (1975).  But his weren't the only TV horror movies out there - David Lowell Rich, who had already contributed Satan's School For Girls to the genre, directed the batshit crazy The Horror at 37,000 Feet (1973), where demonic forces cause mayhem aboard an airliner. Gargoyles (1972) was an effective TV monster movie starring Cornel Wilde, while Gene Roddenberry contributed Spectre (1977), another failed pilot, but nonetheless quite effective and well staged.

Curtis Harrington, who also directed a number of cinematic horror movies, including Night Tide (1961), Queen of Blood (1966) and Ruby (1977), also directed a number of TV horror movies, including How Awful About Alan (1970), The Cat Creature (1973), The Dead Don't Die (1975) and Devil Dog: The Hound From Hell (1978).  The latter of these I recently saw on a streaming service.  It is a curious production that illustrates both the strengths and the weaknesses of the made-for-TV horror genre.  On the one hand, network restrictions mean that the film has to rely upon suspense to deliver scares rather than explicit gore - Harrington is quite effective in regularly delivering a series of suspenseful set-pieces, such as Richard Crenna battling the demonic dog's influence to try and stop himself from thrusting his hand into the spinning blades of a lawn mower, or his discovery of a Satanic shrine in the attic.  The film also makes good use of the sort of generic and bland US suburban setting that TV movies usually employed for budgetary reasons, contrasting the sheer ordinariness of this environment with the devilish goings-on lurking just beneath its surface.  But in the end, the sheer cheapness of the TV production undermines the film at key moments - not only is Crenna's trip to 'Ecuador' in search of a shaman clearly shot in California (probably just around the corner from the studio back lot), but the low budget robs the film's climax of the sort of special effects it needed to have any impact.  The hound finally reveals its true self in a confrontation with Crenna, its true form being the same dog photographically enlarged, sporting horns and a mane, chroma keyed into the action.  (With that ruff of a mane and the stick on horns, I couldn't help but be reminded of those photographically enlarged lizards decked out with horns, spines and the like, which used to masquerade as dinosaurs in old films).

To be fair, as TV movies went, Devil Dog actually looks as if it had a better than average budget. It certainly boasts an above average cast, which includes Richard Crenna, Yvette Mimieux, Ike Eisenmann and Kim Richards (playing brother and sister on film for the third time), veteran character actor Victor Jory as the shaman (he spent quite a lot of his latter career playing medicine men and Native American chiefs, despite being Caucasian) and Martine Beswick (Of Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde fame), as the high priestess presiding over the black mass that invokes the devil dog.   The whole seventies TV horror movie cycle - apart from the Kolchak movies and TV series - is largely forgotten now and when remembered tends to be regarded as a poorer cousin to the 'real' horror movies of the era which received theatrical releases.  Which is somewhat unfair as, at their best, the makers of these TV movies did their best to find ways to surmount the broadcast restrictions placed upon them and sometimes produced some decent shocks and scares for TV audiences.