Formatted To Fit Your Television
"Has anyone here said or done anything that offended you?" Shelley Winters screams in "The Devil's Daughter," so stoned on her own emotions that she's vibrating. "Your mother wants you to stay!" she brays through her circus orange lipstick, her hair dyed radioactive orange, her fingernails painted into orange claws, orange eyebrows plucked into Cruella de Ville arcs, black Ming the Merciless collar aquiver, and pogoes in place as she prepares for a method acting liftoff. Forget the Lifetime Network, this is what a real made-for-TV movie should be.
With their expectations lowered by an endless stream of disease-of-the-week specials, bodice-ripper miniseries, and bad Sci Fi Channel titles like "Boa vs. Python," audiences don't expect much from their TV movies. But Wild Eye Releasing is doing its best to remind us that old fashioned made-for-TV movies had rich, red blood flowing in their veins. The company's new DVD release of the 1973 Tuesday Movie of the Week "The Devil's Daughter" brings the noise like a hurricane of histrionics.
The titular devil's daughter is Diane (Belinda Montgomery, better known as Doogie Howser's mother) the product of a hook-up between a reformed Satanist, Alice (Diane Ladd), and the Prince of Darkness. Hidden away for 21 years, Diane bumps into some of her mother's old cult buddies at a funeral and is unofficially adopted by Lilith (Winters), who is now running the cult with Alikhine (Abe Vigoda). Longing to chant "Hail, Diane, Princess of Darkness" they try to trick her into erotic Indian folk dances, fob off her queries about the enormous portrait of Satan over the mantelpiece, and plan her wedding to the demon of Endor.
Orson Welles regular Joseph Cotten and Jonathan Frid from "Dark Shadows" are on hand, but it's Winters who owns the show. A creature so evil that she owns a black Princess phone and has her cigarillos rolled in hell, she's obviously wearing her own movie star wardrobe while the rest of the cast is stuffed into drab little frocks and cheap rayon smocks. She chews the sitcom scenery in a purple fur stole and matching hat, then picks the splinters out of her teeth while wearing a black devil-worshipping ensemble. The true horror in this movie is the thought that her performance might be so crazed she'll smash through the screen, crawl into your living room, and start breaking all your furniture.
But made-for-TV movies warning of the dangers of adoption aren't always campy. There's a legacy of TV movies that came out of well-written, low budget shows like "The Twilight Zone," and are preserved today mostly on HBO. Wild Eye's other TV movie release on DVD, "Crawlspace," belongs to this classier tradition. With only a handful of actors and a single setting, it manages to wring maximum tension out of everyone's fear of growing old alone.
Mr. and Mrs. Graves (character actor stalwarts Arthur Kennedy and Teresa Wright) live all alone in their Connecticut house until a young boiler repairman goes feral and starts living in the crawlspace beneath their kitchen floor. With more close-ups of heating vents than a David Lynch film, what's creepiest here isn't the long-haired repairman, whose lips are constantly quivering, but the speed at which the two lonely retirees make him the center of their fantasy lives. "What the hell are we doing with a boy in a hole in our cellar?" Mr. Kennedy bellows, but, after watching him and his wife munch on shrimp cocktails one lonely Christmas Eve, it's obvious. By the end of the movie they've fed him, clothed him, lied for him, and given him money; in return, all he's done is make their lives a living hell. Just like a real son would.
"Crawlspace" may not feature Shelley Winters finding exotic ways to pronounce the word "gazebo," but it's the kind of damp little picture that drags itself into your brain and refuses to leave. And when's the last time you remembered a TV movie for more than five seconds after you changed the channel?
