Due to Mature Theme, Parental Discretion is Advised for Paul Krasny's Made for TV Movie, Terror Among Us (1981)

The cautionary ballad of Delbert Ramsey begins with a police lineup. Seems this Ramsey (Shackleford) is a convicted rapist recently let out on parole but, unable to control his deviant urges, he’s been on the creep again and managed to get nabbed by the cops when two elderly ladies reported someone was peeping on them. Unfortunately, the victims cannot make a positive ID and pick the wrong person, much to the disappointment of Sgt. Tom Stockwell (Meredith), who is well aware of Ramsey’s lengthy rap-sheet and escalating proclivities, meaning in his mind it’s only a matter of time before he rapes someone else.

Thinking he still might have enough to violate the felon’s parole and force him to at least finish serving his original sentence, Stockwell’s request is adamantly refused by Connie Paxton (Salt), Ramsey’s parole officer, whom the film rather deliberately (and bluntly) paints with a soiled brush as a naive, college-educated, bleeding-heart liberal when it comes to rehabilitating her parolees who constantly game the legal system, which seems to favor them over victims these days, as she buys Ramsey’s excuse for his lurking presence near the scene. Saying he has met every requirement, holds a steady job, and has a place to live, Paxton claims Ramsey is a role model and on the right path. Thus, Ramsey is free to go.

Now, this job Ramsey holds is for a dry cleaners, a driver, who both drops off and picks up laundry for certain clients -- and one particular group of clients just happens to be a quartet of stewardesses who share a condo together. Again, Ramsey cannot contain his impulses and nearly gets caught sniffing some panties after sneaking into their empty seaside abode while they lounge around the pool, but he is able to make a blustering excuse for his intrusion and vacates. Later, one of the stewardesses fails to find one of her bras, meaning Ramsey didn’t get away empty-handed, giving him another piece for his growing collection of creeped contraband back home. Soon infatuated with this group of women, and one blonde in particular, like a ticking time-bomb, Ramsey decides to press his luck and tries to sneak in again, setting off a drastic and deadly chain of events, which has terrible consequences for these women -- consequences that, according to the film, could’ve been easily prevented...

A contemporary of Joseph Wambaugh as both a cop and a writer, Dallas Barnes served in the Los Angeles Police department for ten years; three years on patrol before making detective, serving on the narcotics squad before spending a few years in homicide. And while he never garnered the same notoriety as Wambaugh, Barnes did get three novels published, which he leveraged into a screenwriting gig for the TV-series, Kojak, after a producer read one of his books and sent out feelers to see if he’d be interested. Liking the job and the money, Barnes soon retired from the force and took up writing full time. “I'm not a cop who became a writer,” said Barnes in an interview with the Chicago Tribune, "I'm a writer who became a cop."

Three more novels would follow, along with episodic scripts for shows like Beretta, Eischeid, T.J. Hooker and Hunter as well as several made for TV movies, including Terror Among Us (1981), which was loosely based on Barnes’ novel, Yesterday Is Dead. In the novel, detectives Lee Hollister and Virgil Fox are on the hunt for a homicidal serial rapist who likes to urinate on his victims. They’re pretty sure Edward Branch is their man after he sets his sights on his next victim, Yesterday Phillips, a 22-year old trying to make it in Hollywood. And they almost get him, several times, but through numerous legal loopholes and some devious lawyering, compounded by red tape and budget woes, Branch keeps slipping through their fingers, leaving him free to rape and kill again -- I mean, the title already gave it away, right?

As written, the novel comes off very procedural and reads like an old, just the facts, ma’am, episode of Dragnet. (I know I read the whole thing with Jack Webb narrating in my mind’s ear.) In the telefilm, which is co-credited to Barnes’ wife, Joanne, this is tempered somewhat with a lot of melodrama, which mostly focused on the victims to be. And in this effort to flesh them out, we get to spend some quality time with these stewardesses: the eldest, Connie (Purcell), is about to age out of her job and isn’t sure what the future holds after her impending forced retirement; Barbara (Reed) is about to leave the airline, too, only on purpose as she’s about to get married; Beth (Blake), meanwhile, is [-this-] close to finishing her steamy romance novel; and the youngest, Cathy (Klous), has just started another torrid affair -- only this time it’s with a married man.

Truth told Terror Among Us also spends just as much time, if not more, getting under the skin of Delbert Ramsey, as each chronic lie and misstep he makes is then compounded with the consequences of his actions, leading to more lies and more missteps, adding even more pressure to this already volatile cocktail of pent-up rage. His constant run-ins with the law have him on thin ice at work and with Sara (Spelman), the alcoholic shrew he claims is his girlfriend, who berates him constantly and owns the home he’s currently shacked up in. She has him over a barrel, they both know it, and she exploits this constantly. And so it’s easy to see how and why the only time Ramsey feels in control of his life is when he’s sneaking into other people’s homes, rifling through their things, and taking souvenirs as reminders of that certain liberated feeling. But his luck runs out when he creeps into the apartment of Vickie Stevens (Lankford), an ex-stewardess and former roommate of the others, and gets caught by her husband, Alex (Milligan), is beaten to a pulp, and then turned over to the cops.

But things hit a snag at the arraignment, when the key witness, Alex, a flight engineer, is stuck out of town due to inclement weather. And while the prosecution is granted a stay, the defense, with Paxton’s help, manages to get Ramsey released without bail until the new court date, leaving Stockwell to deal with an extremely upset Vickie, whom the defense attorney smeared, claiming she had led his client on and into the apartment with the promise of sex.

Despite this victory, things really start to unravel for Ramsey. He’s finally lost his job, and Sara tries to kick him out but she rides him too hard and pushes too far this time as Ramsey winds up strangling her to death. Now on the run, Ramsey misses his court date, which officially puts the kibosh on his parole. And in an effort to track him down, Stockwell and Paxton find Sara’s body and Ramsey’s stash of stolen goods -- including several items belonging to Paxton. Mortified, she redoubles her efforts to help Stockwell track Ramsey down. 

Meanwhile, Ramsey has turned his attention back on those stewardesses, especially Connie, who was nice to him. But when he stops by, looking for her, only Cathy is home. And then, in the worst timing of ever, Vickie stops by for a visit, recognizes Ramsey, who pulls a knife, grabs the woman, and threatens to kill her unless they both keep quiet and cooperate.

From there, Terror Among Us appears to be partially influenced by the notorious case of Richard Speck, who restrained, raped and murdered a group of nursing students in Chicago back in 1966. Here, the film follows the same pattern as he ties up Cathy and Vickie and is then interrupted as the other roommates keep stumbling onto the scene. And once Connie and Barbara are subdued, he starts taking them into the bedroom, one at a time, starting with Cathy, who is beaten and raped; and then Vickie, who he blames for this (-- and project much, asshole?), and savagely beats her before they’re interrupted again by Beth, who is also severely beaten. And with the situation pretty near hopeless, a trussed up Connie valiantly throws herself out a plate glass window and onto the balcony, which alerts some neighbors and scares Ramsey off, luckily -- and I use that term loosely, before he kills somebody.

Now, Terror Among Us was executive produced by David Gerber, who had helmed five seasons and assorted spin-offs of Police Story (1973-1978), an anthology series for NBC which focused on a rotating cast of cops and cases and curbing the criminal element in the streets of Los Angeles. And there are times when Terror Among Us kinda feels like an extended episode of that series. Former NFL quarterback Don Meredith was a regular on Police Story, appearing in eight episodes, which adds even more gas to this notion. And yet the film spends most of its time focusing on the criminal, not the cops, which short-circuits this whole notion.

As written, Terror Among Us actually manages to generate a little sympathy -- no, that’s not the right word. Make that, some understanding for Delbert Ramsey, fleshing him out considerably as he is caught up in a perfect storm of events, which he instigated, that leads to the climax, making him more than the usual psycho-of-the-week. Ted Shackleford really brings this home and turns in a fairly arresting performance, here. The lost alcoholic Ewing brother who left Dallas and wound up on Knots Landing, Shackleford brings an oddly haunted quality to Ramsey; and the parts where he is cornered and manic are even better. Add it all up and he’s probably the best thing in the movie. His character is by no means an innocent, far from it -- he is a rapist, a prowler, and a peeping tom, but we do get to see the mounting circumstances that got us here, which does lead to some form of understanding before his final outburst. And if all these characters were given this kind of three-dimensional crafting, we really might’ve had something here.

As is, then, Terror Among Us feels both too long and not long enough -- it might’ve been better served as a two-night movie event to give everyone a little more room to breath. The stewardess subplots just weren’t all that interesting -- well, at least not as interesting as Ramsey’s scenes. They tried hard to add some weight to Connie's arc, the den mother of the group, getting into the unfairness of her job, where it doesn’t matter how good or competent you are, once you hit a certain age threshold you are out -- compounded by the fact that she isn’t THAT old.

And Sarah Purcell is the main reason I tracked this film down, having seen the very end of it on one of the superstations back in the day, and have spent decades hence trying to find that one movie where that gal from Real People threw herself out a window. The rest are just perfunctory but all of the actresses involved do help to flesh things out and liven things up considerably, as you easily buy their camaraderie and friendship. There is also a bit of skeevy moralizing to deal with as Cathy, the home-wrecker, is the only one to take the full brunt of Ramsey’s wrath.

Perhaps the film might’ve been better served spending less time with them and little more with Stockwell and Paxton, as there is pretty good chemistry between Meredith and Jennifer Salt and their constant bickering and barbing. And while Terror Among Us is ultimately slanted toward Stockwell’s side of the argument of erring on the side of incarceration vs. rehabilitation, Paxton holds her own, playing by the rules of a broken system because it’s all they have. (She's’ got spunk, and I adore spunk.) And I was kinda surprised during the aftermath of the attack, at the hospital, as Stockwell and Paxton try to interview the battered and traumatized victims, thinking the film had set it up so the older cop could rightfully rip the younger parole officer a new one, knowing full well she could have saved a life and prevented this attack if she’d only listened to him earlier. But this Stockwell does not do, and instead, paternally reinforces that she was only doing her job, and he should have done his job better, and to learn from this experience or it will only compound the tragedy.

Gluing all of this together, veteran episodic TV director Paul Krasny (Mission: Impossible, Mannix) keeps things moving forward well enough, and actually excels in a few spots despite being handcuffed by the constraints of the medium given the subject matter. (We actually get to watch some pervert rifle and fondle a series of bras and panties on network TV during the Reagan administration. Wow.) The final rampage is very well staged, making things entertaining and harrowing enough, resulting in a terse and overall serviceable thriller. I mean, the only place Terror Among Us trips and fails is the ending after Ramsey escapes into the night and Stockwell throws out a dragnet to hopefully catch him. In Barnes’ novel, to add insult to injury, despite some solid forensic evidence, it appears the killer is once again about to get away scot free until it ends on the last page and the last paragraph with the sound of Branch’s own testicles being severed and his penis being sawed off by an unknown vigilante. (Trust me. He deserved it.)

The telefilm’s ultimate conclusion is nowhere near that dramatic (or grisly) as Stockwell gets lucky and Ramsey is quietly nabbed at the airport as he tries to skip town on a stolen credit card right before the end credits roll. It feels a bit of cheat and totally anticlimactic, especially since they blew a golden opportunity to have the dad from Land of the Lost catching and beating the shit out of a Richard Speck surrogate not once, but twice.

Terror Among Us debuted on January 14th, 1981, as the CBS Wednesday Night Movie and is a good example that, as a genre, after reaching its apex in the 1970s, the Made for TV Movie was still a viable source of entertainment. Since its initial broadcast it looks like it garnered a limited home video release on VHS but had been long out of print until a few years ago, when it was made available as a MOD DVD-R through Sony Home Entertainment and digitally through several streaming platforms. Always grateful when one of these old gonzo tele-flicks finally makes the digital leap, and to whoever is listening out there, more of the same, please, and thank you.

Terror Among Us (1981) David Gerber Productions :: Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) / EP: David Gerber / P: James H. Brown / D: Paul Krasny / W: Dallas Barnes, JoAnne Barnes / C: Robert B. Hauser / E: Richard Freeman / M: Allyn Ferguson / S: Don Meredith, Sarah Purcell, Jennifer Salt, Ted Shackelford, Kim Lankford, Sharon Spelman, Elta Blake, Pat Klous, Tracy Reed, Spencer Milligan

Hubrisween 2015 :: G is for Gargoyles (1972)

We kick off with an animated preamble illustrating Lucifer's fall from grace and his banishment to Hell. Undaunted, the Devil himself conspires to regain what was lost by declaring his offspring will one day rule the Earth and subjugate God's chosen ones. These offspring, the Gargoyles, have been trying to accomplish this ever since but have thus far been beaten back into the darkness only to reappear and try again once every six hundred years or so (in alliance with their breeding cycle). Cut to modern day (circa 1972), which is about 599 years and 364 days since the last uprising, meaning the demonic revolution is about to happen again. Only it has been so long since the last one humankind has basically forgotten about this ancient adversary, relegating them to the stuff of myths and lawn ornaments.

Enter Dr. Mercer Boley (Wilde), a cultural anthropologist, currently collecting artifacts and research for his new book, Five Thousand Years of Demonology, which will cover all forms of traceable evil since man started documenting such things. Having just finished off a publicity tour, Boley is presently in New Mexico with his daughter, Diana (Salt), heading south to old Mexico where an archaeological dig awaits -- but he needs to make a pit-stop along the way first. Seems he's been contacted by a mystery party who has an ancient Indian exorcism totem to sell but demanded Boley come for it in person. And turns out this meeting place is a ramshackle tourist trap in the middle of nowhere called Uncle Willie's Desert Museum and Reptile Emporium.

Though his daughter feels they've been had, a shrugging Boley says might as well check it out after coming all this way. Now picture a grizzled and sun-baked desert hermit who’s gone a little light-happy and what you've envisioned probably looks a lot like Willie Levitt (Woody Chambliss). Turns out he's a big fan of Dr. Boley and has something even more impressive to show him -- for a cut of the profits on ‘their’ new book. When Boley asks to see what he's selling first, Willie nervously takes them to a separate shed and reveals a ginormous humanoid skeleton complete with wings, a beak and a horned skull.

Again, the Boleys scoff, figuring the old coot has pieced this monstrous fake out of scavenged animal bones. Well, Willie scavenged it alright, claiming to have found the intact skeleton in a desert canyon nearby as he slowly seals the shed up tight as the sun goes down. His palpable fear of the thing and insistence on its authenticity brings out Boley's tape recorder to document the old man's tale; but he barely gets started about a Native American legend concerning "devils" that lived in the rocks when the shed is suddenly besieged from all sides by something powerful enough its claws can slash through corrugated metal as if it were tissue paper!

And as the building collapses, catches fire, and burns all around them, with Willie being killed in the process, Boley manages to retrieve the skull and makes it to their car with Diana and they speed away -- only not fast enough as Willie's legend proves all too real as an honest to god monster latches onto their car and tries to force them off the road! But the attacker is given the slip and the Boleys limp into the nearest fly-speck of a town, leave the car at a service station for repairs, and hole up in a motel -- all under the suspicious bourbon-soaked eye of the manager, Mrs. Parks (Hall). Inside, Boley listens to the last words on tape uttered by poor Willie, which is quickly drowned out by a terrible roar followed by Diana screaming. The next morning, they report the death but leave out the monster part, which leads to a tricky situation when several dirt bikers, led by Reeger (Glenn), get railroaded and hauled in for the crime by the Sheriff (Stevens). 

Then things really hit the fan when the Boleys are attacked in their motel room by two more monsters that make off with the skull, but one of them is hit by a truck as it tried to escape. Realizing this was a living and breathing gargoyle -- stress on the 'was', and much better proof of the same than the skull, Boley hides the body in their room over the protests of Diana, who feels these creatures were not trying to hurt anyone but just wanted the bones of their dead back. Boley doesn't disagree, which means they will most definitely return for the corpse, too. And so, he bullies Diana into helping haul the body to the gas station, where it is quickly loaded into the repaired vehicle. But before they can make an escape, a whole pack of gargoyles attack the station wagon and overturn it, rendering the passengers unconscious. And while his minions retrieve the corpse, a large winged gargoyle becomes fascinated by the prone Diana -- so fascinated he scoops her up after a little *ahem* ‘tinkering’ and carries her off into the desert, destination unknown...

I remember watching Gargoyles (1972) on the CBS Late Movie when I was around eight years old and it had always stuck with me as being both creepy and highly entertaining. What I remembered most is the scene in the motel when the gargoyles’ clawed hands appear over the bed to pull itself out from underneath and then attacked the Boleys to get the skull. Believe me, I checked under my own bed for months after that just to be sure. Though it should be pointed out that, technically, the creatures we’re watching are Grotesques as Gargoyles are, essentially, rain-gutters and downspouts. And how awesome would that have been if these monsters vomited out cones of water as a means of self-defense? Survey says: Pretty damned awesome.

Producers Robert Christiansen and Rick Rosenberg had originally wanted Jud Taylor to direct their telefilm for CBS but he pulled out when they stubbornly refused to expand the budget and shooting schedule. Gargoyles would be just the second film directed by the replacement, Bill Norton, who, together with cinematographer Earl Rath, did an excellent job of maximizing their budget and pulling plenty of chills from Steven and Elinor Karpf’s ambitious script. Not since the heyday of Jack Arnold [It Came from Outer Space (1954), Tarantula (1955)] has the desert been utilized so well. How anything that wide open can feel so isolating is impressive. And with some deft camerawork and superb lighting, the viewer gets the sense that someone is always watching the protagonist from above during the day and that something is ever lurking just out of the minimal pools of light at night -- Diana’s not so lonely late-night walk back from the police station to the motel is ah-mazingly well executed.

The film is also anchored by an outstanding cast with some hardened veterans on one end and some brand new faces on the other. Vintage actor Cornell Wilde was just coming of his eco-disaster flick, No Blade of Grass (1970), and adds some old-school gravitas to the proceedings. Jennifer Salt did this sandwiched between a Woody Allen and a Brian de Palma flick but wouldn’t find true success until she got hooked up with the TV spoof Soap. After a few TV episodes I believe this was Scott Glenn’s first feature. And according to several sources, it was Dark Shadows alum Grayson Hall’s idea to have a liquor bottle permanently attached to one hand of her character and an ever present tumbler stuck to the other.

But the production’s biggest asset is the gargoyles themselves, designed and provided by Ellis Burman, Del Armstrong, Stan Winston and (according to Norton’s director commentary) an uncredited Rick Baker. (The skeleton was provided by the legendary Bischoff’s Taxidermy of Los Angeles.) I counted at least a dozen different and unique gargoyles. The head sculpts are what really set each apart (notice how the designs allows the natural eye to show through, blink, and emote), while the bodies look like descendants of Sid and Marty Kroft’s Sleestaks. But the suits only real failings are the wings on the dominant “breeders”. 

The Alpha gargoyle that kidnaps Diana and wants ‘to play house’ was played by Bernie Casey and voiced by a distorted Vic Perrin. (And spare a moment of pity for Casey and the poor stuntmen who had to wear those costumes in the 100 degree heat as they filmed in and around Carlsbad, New Mexico.) And though I think they hold up remarkably well some forty years later – well, that final flying sequence is pretty hilarious, even in the crisp, restored light of a digital DVD, Norton wasn’t so sure and tried to use the less is more approach and suggestion and shadows until the attacks on the motel. And from there, he used a process called step-printing to slow the creatures’ motions to give them an unnatural feel.

And as creepy and effective as Gargoyles has been thus far, it gets even better as we flap and claw toward the climax with even more creepy and more effective shock moments. It begins when Boley rallies the Sheriff to form a posse, including those exonerated off-road bikers, to head into the desert to rescue Diana, who is teaching the curious Alpha what is to be human. Held in a large cave filled with thousands of gargoyle eggs, some of which are starting to hatch, these two broach the subject of peaceful co-existence but the conversation is cut short when a scout reports that a caravan of humans with guns are headed their way. Meantime, that posse comes across the gas station attendant’s pick-up, meandering in a slow circle. He and Mrs. Cross had been sent to contact the State Police after the gargoyles tore down the phone and power lines. They didn’t make it. The empty cab is filled with blood, and though his body is never found her body is discovered hanging upside down from a power pole, which scares off over half the search party.

As night falls, the gargoyles attack the remaining humans and quickly rout them. Boley is captured and taken to the cave, where the Alpha gloats that the era of man is over. But while he turns his attention back on Diana, who reads gothic nun porn to distract him, her father escapes. He finds the Sheriff and warns the end is nigh unless they take out the egg chamber, which they manage to do when Reeger sacrifices himself to blow the cave up. Meanwhile, with only the two winged gargoyles left, Boley confronts the Alpha, who was trying to escape with Diana to start a new colony. With rock in hand, Boley attacks the female gargoyle, destroying a wing, forcing the Alpha to leave Diana behind and fly away with the injured female to try again in another 600 years.

Considering when it was filmed, an argument could be made that Gargoyles was less a biblical allegory and more a treatise on the prickly racial undercurrents dividing America at the time. (Technically, and sadly, they still kinda do.) An even bigger argument could be made tying it to the treatment of Native Americans, whose graves are robbed in the name of science and who were nearly and systematically eliminated from existence for being sub-human savages. And either approach starts to get really sticky when you plug in the Alpha coming down with Ro-Man’s Syndrome over Diana and the implications of that makes my head hurt. And so, that is why I like to take Gargoyles at face-value as nothing more than a genuine throwback monster movie. No more. No less. And a huge thanks to Hen’s Tooth Video for releasing this on DVD. Hopefully, many more MFTV movies of this vintage will be getting the same treatment soon.

What is Hubrisween? This is Hubrisween. And now, Boils and Ghouls, be sure to follow this linkage to keep track of the whole conglomeration of reviews for Hubrisween right here. Or you can always follow we collective head of knuckle on Letterboxd.

Gargoyles (1972) Tomorrow Entertainment :: Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS)/ EP: Roger Gimbel / P: Robert W. Christiansen, Rick Rosenberg / D: Bill L. Norton / W: Steven Karpf, Elinor Karpf / C: Earl Rath / E: Frank P. Keller / M: Robert Prince / S: Cornel Wilde, Jennifer Salt, Grayson Hall, Scott Glenn, Woody Chambliss, William Stevens, Bernie Casey