Whatever

 

 (imdb)

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO AUNT ALICE?-1969-Already loony Claire Marrable (Geraldine Page) goes off the deep end when she finds out her recently dead husband left her nothing in his will so she decides to kill her female servants. Relocating to Arizona, she gets rid of Mrs. Tinsley (Mildred Dunnock) and hires Mrs. Dimmock (Ruth Gordon). Her new next-door neighbor is Helen Vaughan (Rosemary Forsyth) and her young nephew Jim (Michael Barbera). She has an affair with Mike Darrah (Robert Fuller), a mechanic who is working with Dimmock to find out what happened to Miss Tinsley. 

It has a little twisting end and it's really not much but the score by Gerald Fried and photography by Joseph Biroc are a plus. It's based on a novel by Ursula Curtiss who also wrote “I Saw What You Did” which William Castle had made into a movie in 1965. Director Lee Katzin, besides his TV work, went to make the bizarre THE PHYNX (1970) and the pretty good LE MANS (1971). He also made the failed Sci-Fi TV movie THE STRANGER (1973). He replaced original director Bernard Girard on this after a week of filming. Right before the movie's release Ruth Gordon won a best supporting actress Academy Award for ROSEMARY'S BABY.

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Williamson/Arnold

BLACK EYE-1974-A former cop named Stone (Fred Williamson) who was kicked off the force for killing a pusher after his sister died from an overdose, gets involved in the search for the cane of a dead old actor (it kind of looks like the one in THE WOLFMAN). After a hooker is killed his ex-boss (Richard X Slattery) puts him on the case. Meanwhile his kind of girlfriend Cynthia (Teresa Graves; also in THAT MAN BOLT with Williamson) is having an affair with a female fashion designer (Rosemary Forsyth). While helping a father (Richard Anderson) rescue his daughter from Jesus freaks, a search leads to porno flicks and drug dealing. Stone (who frequently eats while talking) is usually hostile to whites (good or bad) and is actually res-ponsible for the death of an old man (Cyril Delevanti). It all has to do with heroin hidden in the cane and using old actors as drug mules! 

It's pretty sub-standard but Jack Arnold though a busy TV director at the time managed to direct Williamson the next year in BOSS NIGGER.

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