SWEET SWEET RACHEL (1971)
TV-Movie
Article 3436 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 12-2-2010
Posting Date: 1-20-2011
Directed by Sutton Roley
Featuring Alex Dreier, Pat Hingle, Louise Latham
Country: USA
What it is: Psychic investigator TV pilot

A psychic investigator helps a woman who wants to make sure she didn’t psychically cause the death of her husband. He discovers the death was caused psychically… but by whom?

Here’s a TV-Movie pilot that did eventually end up as a series; with some casting changes it emerged as the syndicated TV show “The Sixth Sense”. The story is quite interesting and is fairly suspenseful, and I liked Pat Dreier’s character enough that I regret that he didn’t make the final series. Nonetheless, I do have some problems with the movie. There are a few times where the movie gets strident and hysterical, and I can’t help but notice that the female characters all tend to overacting whereas all the male ones underplay. There are some very clever moments; my favorite is how the psychic investigator gets the police to exhume a body and perform an autopsy on it when he has no hard evidence that they should do so. Apparently, the TV show that arose from this would eventually re-enter syndication; it’s episodes were cut to thirty minutes and added to the syndicated runs of “Night Gallery”.

THE STRANGER WITHIN (1974)
TV-Movie
Article 3434 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 11-29-2010
Posting Date: 1-8-2011
Directed by Lee Philips
Featuring Barbara Eden, George Grizzard, Joyce Van Patten
Country: USA
What it is: Mysterious pregnancy movie

Ann Collins is pregnant, but her husband David has had a vasectomy and cannot be the father. Ann wishes to keep the child despite the fact that her last attempt to have one ended tragically. When Ann’s personality begins to change radically, the question as to the child’s real parentage becomes critical…

I was really impressed with the opening scenes of this movie; there seemed to be an impressive amount of intelligence and honesty in the script’s portrayal of a marriage in crisis, and the performances by both George Grizzard and Barbara Eden are outstanding. It was making for such an interesting human drama that I was almost disappointed when the shifts in the wife’s personality manifest themselves, and the sudden sicknesses and healings point to an otherworldly origin for the child. The reason the shift from drama to fantastically-themed mystery disappointed me is that it made the movie far less complex; I could think of two explanations for the child’s origin, and one of them turned out to be right, and that doesn’t really make for much of a mystery. The movie is a bit too long for the story as well; the middle of the movie gets bogged down in scenes that constantly reiterate the wife’s odd behavior. I mean, just how often does the movie need to establish that she’s putting way to much salt on all of her food. Still, since the beginning of the movie made us care for the characters, we remain involved during the second half, and though the ending isn’t a surprise, it’s still acceptable. All in all, this is a very good TV-Movie.

STAR TREK IV: THE VOYAGE HOME (1986)
Article 3433 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 11-28-2010
Posting Date: 1-7-2011
Directed by Leonard Nimoy
Featuring William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley
Country: USA
What it is: Star Trek movie

A mysterious space probe is sending untranslatable messages into the oceans of the Earth, threatening in the process to destroy the planet. Captain Kirk and his crew discover that the probe is trying to communicate with humpback whales, a species extinct since the 21st century. They decide to go back in time and bring some whales to the future in order to save the Earth.

I’ve covered the first two movies in the series, and now I find myself skipping the third and hitting the fourth. Since the common belief is that the even-numbered movies in the “Star Trek” series are the superior ones, this might be interpreted as jumping to the next good one, though I myself don’t have any major problems with THE SEARCH FOR SPOCK, though I haven’t seen it in years. Nonetheless, this is a very good one in the series; it roughly completes a trilogy that began with the second movie in that there’s a certain flow of the story line to all three movies that finally comes to a conclusion here. It steps away from the heavy action emphasis of the previous two movies and relies primarily on character and wit; the scenes of Kirk’s crew alternately struggling with and feeling superior to the technology and mores of the late twentieth century are very amusing. I particularly like watching Spock struggling in an attempt to use profanity, McCoy grousing about the barbarous state of medicine, and watching what develops with the tactical mistake of sending Chekov on the mission to acquire nuclear materials. And, having been an old fan of the series, I always like those neat character moments when the characters react just as we’ve grown to know they would. And, of course, the scene I most remember most is here, too; you know, the one with the punk rocker on the bus.