Hammer

CRESCENDO-1970-Susan Roberts (Stephanie Powers) goes to France and lives in the house of a dead composer to do research on his life. The place is overseen by the composer's strange mother Daneille (Margaretta Scott from the 1936 version of THINGS TO COME) and her wheelchair bound son Georges (James Olsen; in THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN the next year), a drug addict who has nightmares about making love to a mannequin. Their maid (Kristen Lindholm) gives him drugs and has sex with him. Meanwhile the family butler Carter (Joss Ackland) hangs around and calls the maid a slut. Later she's stab to death while taking a nude swim. Georges has another dream that he and Susan are shot while having sex. They kind of fall in love but it becomes apparent he can walk. There's another big twist in the insane mother's plan to get an heir. At the end, Susan just runs away.

Although this oddball mystery almost seems like an above average made for TV movie, it was actually made (in England) by Hammer studios and played on a double bill with DRACULA AD 1972. The original script was written years before and was a project Michael Reeves planned to make before his untimely death. Producer James Carreras tried unsuccessfully to get Joan Crawford in the role of the mother and later had Jimmy Sangster re-write it. Director Alan Gibson also made DRACULA AD 1972 and many BBC programs. It's a decent psychological thriller but the ending is a little abrupt. However the biggest surprise to me was that Powers who has a brief topless scene was in the Disney production THE BOATNIKS the same year! 

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All For A Dollar!

INCIDENT ON A DARK STREET-1973-Here's a DVD I got at a Dollar Tree Store in NJ for, what else but a dollar! 

It's a typical routine story (maybe a pilot) about lawyers battling organized crime and corruption. The best part about it is the cast. Once popular TV actor (and star of Robert Wise's THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN) James (don't call me Jimmy) Olsen is Joe Dubbs, the hard ass district attorney. David Canary is his assistant. Robert Pine is the newest member of the staff. They investigate mobster Dominic Leopold (Gilbert Roland) who has some dirty dealings with a greedy contractor Deaver Wallace (William Shatner). Rotund Richard Castellano (THE GODFATHER) is a mob connected government witness who the mean producers make run around and climb a fence. There's another story involving a dying woman and her husband who's being prosecuted for selling drugs. It's boring and ends rather abruptly without the main story coming to a conclusion. 

Others in the cast include David Doyle, Murray Hamilton, John Kerr, Gordon Pinsett (he was in BLACULA the year before) and Marlene Clark (some year as GANJA AND HESS) as Dubbs' secretary. Don “Red” Barry and Eddie Quillan also have small roles. Shatner was in two more memorable TV movies the same year as this: GO ASK ALICE and THE HORROR AT 37,000 FEET. 

Director Buzz Kulik began his career in TV in the very early '50's staying there almost his entire life doing TV series and movies (his most famous was BRIAN'S SONG) and only occasionally directing a big screen film (VILLA RIDES AGAIN, SHAMUS and Steve McQueens's last film THE HUNTER).

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