YouTube Finds :: Rainy Days and Mondays Always Gets Me Down: Todd Haynes' Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (1988)

Karen Carpenter had always considered herself a drummer who sang. And despite decades worth of jokes on this notion, apparently her skills with the sticks were bona fide -- I mean if Buddy Rich says so, then that's good enough for me. And after a move from New Haven, Connecticut, to Downey, California, in 1964 14-year old Karen managed to earn her way into her brother’s band, The Richard Carpenter Trio, as a drummer. Thereafter, the group managed to win a Battle of the Bands at the Hollywood Bowl in 1966 with a cover of “The Girl from Ipanema” which got them signed by RCA, but that went nowhere when their instrumental demo didn’t pass muster.

According to legend, it was at a late night jam-session at the garage studio of John Bettis, where brother Richard was set to accompany an auditioning trumpet player, when Bettis encouraged Karen, who had tagged along on a lark, to take a turn at the mic. And when she finished her song, Bettis was blown away by her contralto voice, said, “Never mind the trumpet player, this chubby little girl can sing!” Richard agreed and began arranging music to highlight his sister’s soulful vocals, which she sang from behind her drums and soon became the centerpiece of their performances for gigs at the Whisky a Go Go and several local televised specials. For while Richard wrote and arranged their music, it was Karen’s voice that would be The Carpenter’s sonic signature that fueled their rocket to stardom as their easy listening muzak helped ease the country into the 1970s.

This mellow-ization began when the duo was signed by Herb Alpert for A&M Records, who released their first album as The Carpenters in 1969, which subsequently flopped. Their second album, however, buoyed by the hit singles “Close to You” and “We’ve Only Just Begun”, was a smashing success, earned the siblings two Grammy Awards, and made them millionaires. But just as things started to click for the Carpenters, the tragic end was already beginning.

At a petite 5’4” Karen was often obscured by her drum-kit, and so, with her brother and their management’s encouragement, the reluctant singer abandoned her drums and moved to the front of the stage and the glaring spotlight. And while some critics were savage over the easy-listening, anesthetizing music they produced, others loved them (-- Tricky Dick Nixon included). But even with the praise came comments about the chubby and cherubic lead singer with the voice that sounded like hot caramel melting ice cream if such a thing made a sound because that is what Karen Carpenter sounded like. Wait … What? No. Really. She did.

Anyhoo, these kinds of comments took their toll on the singer. And between them, her well-meaning but overbearing parents (the singer lived at home until she was 26), and her micro-managing (and Quaalude-addicted) brother, Karen took control of the only thing she could: her food intake. Carpenter had begun a rigorous diet regimen in 1966 after Bettis’ remarks that sowed the seeds for her anorexia nervosa -- that included the clandestine use of laxatives, thyroid medications, and ipecacs, which eventually saw her weight drop to dangerous levels by 1975, in a sense reducing herself by half, going from 145 to 77 pounds. Audiences hardly recognized the skeletal husk that now took the stage. And things got so bad several tour dates had to be cancelled, and then The Carpenters stopped touring altogether when an obviously ill Karen swooned during a performance at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas in 1978.

After, reeling from a disastrous marriage and an experimental solo album, an attempt to break out of the cookie-cutter mold her family insisted she maintain, was shelved by the studio at the insistence of her brother, Karen sought out medical help for what turned out to be a then very little heard of form of mental illness and was officially diagnosed with an eating disorder. But despite her attempts at therapy, the singer only lost more weight and was eventually hospitalized in 1982 with an irregular heartbeat due to her abuse of purging medications. Force fed through an intravenous drip, Carpenter rapidly put on weight, putting more strain on her malfunctioning heart. And this over-simplified telling of this tale reached its tragic conclusion in February, 1983, when her mother found Karen collapsed in her bedroom. She was taken to the hospital in full cardiac arrest and was pronounced dead 20 minutes later.

Coming five years after her death, fledgling filmmaker Todd Haynes released Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (1988), an experimental short-film he made as a grad-student that has garnered itself quite the dubious reputation since its debut, earning itself a lofty perch on the Cult Movie status board. I’d heard and read about this kooky docudrama for years but had yet to see it, which is next to impossible (-- we’ll get to why that is in a second). And so, I wasn’t sure what to expect when I finally sat down and watched the 43-minute treatise on the rise and fall of a mega-musician as interpreted by Barbie and Ken dolls; something flippant, maybe; perhaps a mean-spirited poke-in-the-eye on the vanilla muzak pop-star. I can tell you what I didn’t expect was a sobering, empathetic, and sometimes moving indictment on the horrors of body image dysfunction and the mental fragmentation that leads to self-destruction – or in this case, a disturbing act of self-consumption.

To make this point, the use of dolls seems rather silly on the surface but you don’t have to dig very far to see what Haynes was trying to do with them – and he succeeds more often than not as he pokes holes in celebrity deification and mass-consumerism. On the technical side, the dolls, the hand-crafted props, and the dollhouse settings they inhabit are absolutely mesmerizing in scale and in the execution of the story credited to Haynes and Cynthia Schneider. “It is a Lifetime movie on lithium, a short film that slips between dreamy clarity and nightmarish surreality, which confronts us with the superficiality of pop culture and the commoditization of women's bodies.” [Britt Hayes, Birth. Movies. Death.] And it’s unnerving to watch as Karen’s worsening condition is brought across by the subtle whittling away of the face and arms of the doll used to represent her. And how her disease made Karen “a fascist to her own body; both the dictator and the emaciated victim of this internal governance."

Admittedly, some of the sympathy for Karen is due to the truly brutal portrayal of the rest of her family. Her parents, Harold and Agnes, aren’t necessarily bad people in a classic sense, more misguided, blind-eyed and enabling without really realizing it. Thus, Haynes saves most of the venom for Richard, portrayed as a self-righteous control-freak of the highest order and more concerned about “their” career than his sister’s health, epitomized by a scene where he berates Karen for, essentially, ruining everything after her declining health costs them several gigs.

The film itself begins at the end, with the discovery of Karen in her bedroom, dead, while the haunting chords of “Superstar” virally enters your eardrums, a mix of live action material and puppeteering that comes off as an ersatz and morbidly brain-damaged Sesame Street sketch. It then flashes back to the beginning to tell this tale of woe in a series of vignettes that covers the meteoric rise of the Carpenters and the cost it wrought over the years. "I'm great," "I'm fine," "No really, I'm okay," says our Karen surrogate, a haunting refrain as she’s slowly whittled away, trapped in these tiny, sterile and claustrophobic surroundings. And while the film is sympathetic to the plight of our protagonist, it’s still very, very exploitative.

As it plays out, I cannot even begin to comment on the authenticity of the tale the filmmaker is telling. The line between what is true and what is a dramatic liberty is definitely blurred. His medium also comes dangerously close to fetishizing things. Also, Haynes employs a ton of bizarre, Luis Buñuel-inspired subliminal cuts between his set-pieces to shots of empty Ex-Lax boxes, dolls spanking each other, and war atrocity footage, including several terrifying flashes of skeletal corpses being heaped into a mass grave at a concentration camp. There's also some spectacular montage sequences with images of Vietnam war protesters and pop culture Armageddon played under the Carpenter's muzak.

One of the most effective moments are a set of transition sequences involving a bathroom scale, spinning like the world’s most ruthless roulette wheel, landing on an even deadlier lower number with each cut and spin. The least effective is the constant use of text-boxes with black type that often gets lost in the background, which is doubly frustrating because I was really interested in what the movie was trying to say. As is, Haynes is walking a fine line between satire and a very sick joke but, somehow, manages to accomplish both. It’s like a lot of the Carpenter’s music, really: bubblegum pop on the surface, but emotionally jagged and raw underneath that is strangely addictive.

Upon its release, Superstar: The Karen Carpenter story was a minor art-house hit, was shown at several film festivals, and even earned a spot in the Museum of Modern Art’s film archive. Other parties, however, were less enthused. Rumor has it that Mattel, the makers of Barbie, were contemplating a lawsuit against Haynes but Richard Carpenter beat them to the punch. After seeing the film, Richard was furious over the portrayal of his family – and in particular, a heated scene where Karen lays a veiled threat to expose that he was a homo-sexual. (If you listen to the tracks where Richard sings, there is a very pronounced lisp, and being married with five children one would hope Haynes had more evidence than that to make such an accusation.) 

Carpenter eventually sued Haynes over copyright infringement for the use of several of The Carpenter’s songs that the filmmaker never bothered to get the license for. And after Carpenter won the lawsuit, all copies of the film were to be recalled and destroyed, making it illegal to buy, sell, or own a copy of the movie. But the film lived on, via bootlegs and would occasionally pop up on streaming sites, where I finally caught it on YouTube.

But this dark and twisted tale wasn’t done yet. Apparently, a legitimate bio-pic on Carpenter had been kicking around since her untimely passing in 1983 but it had never been made because no script could meet Richard Carpenter’s approval. And when he finally signed off on the tele-film, The Karen Carpenter Story (1989), his demands of constant rewrites to de-villainize their parents resulted in a whitewashed piece of fluff that teetered on the brink of full-blown incestual necrophilia. For according to star Cythia Gibb, who played Karen, Richard insisted she wear Karen’s original clothing and use her make-up, which he supplied, and that she lose the required weight in order to fit into them. 

And once the transformation was complete, he essentially stalked her throughout the production. And when he wasn’t doing that, he was off in some corner, on his knees, praying for Karen to forgive him. Forgive him for what? Who can say. Richard, meanwhile, claims the film was a disaster and regrets ever agreeing to it. There was even talk that Richard would play himself in the film, but this was thankfully nixed according to the production crew, who claimed the surviving musician was an over-sensitive, pain in the ass. And this inability to let go skewed the film, robbing it of any real dramatic punch.

___  ___  ___  ___  ___  ___  ___  ___  ___  ___  ___  ___  ___  ___  ___  ___ 

 
“Karen Carpenter died in 1983. She remains frozen in time, as unreal and haunting now as she was then. She cannot get worse, but she cannot get better; her death allows her to remain in arrested development, just as her family wanted, in a state of suspended animation just like a plastic doll.”

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx – Britt Hayes, Birth. Movies. Death. 

___  ___  ___  ___  ___  ___  ___  ___  ___  ___  ___  ___  ___  ___  ___  ___  

Now, I’ve seen both bio-films, and I honestly think Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story is the more ingenious; a true mind-f@ck of a movie that is definitely worth a spin. And while Haynes would go on to make fictionalized big-screen adaptations of glam-rock icon David Bowie [Velvet Goldmine (1998)] and a multiple-personality take on Bob Dylan [I’m Not There (2007)], neither can hold a candle to his first Superstar bio-pic.

Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (1988) Iced Tea Productions / P: Todd Haynes, Cynthia Schneider / D: Todd Haynes / W: Todd Haynes, Cynthia Schneider / C: Barry Ellsworth / E: Todd Haynes, Cynthia Schneider / S: Merrill Gruver, Michael Edwards, Melissa Brown, Rob LaBelle, Gwen Kraus

Favorites :: Vintage Newspaper Adverts :: "Holy Mackeral, What a Show!" : King Kong Premieres at Grauman's Chinese Theater (1933).

Oh, man, please tell me that out there, somewhere, there's some newsreel footage of this calvacade. And though not quite the blowout, here's a bonus look at the ads for King Kong's premiere at Radio City Music Hall, New York, New York. 

And around these here parts, the ads looked like this. 

Other Points of Interest: 

The rest of the King Kong ads at the Morgue. 

Full review of King Kong at the 3B Theater. 

Poster campaign for King Kong at the Archive.

King Kong (1933) RKO Radio Pictures / EP: David O. Selznick / P: Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack / D: Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack / W: James Creelman, Ruth Rose, Edgar Wallace (story) / C: Eddie Linden, Vernon Walker, J.O. Taylor / E: Ted Cheesman / M: Max Steiner / S: Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong, Bruce Cabot, Frank Reicher, Noble Johnson

The Celluloid Zeroes Proudly Present: Dirty Hex Appeal, A Vengeful Witch Roundtable :: It's Erin vs. Mary in an Eldritch Smackdown for the Ages in Rod Holcomb's Midnight Offerings (1981)

In a darkened bedroom somewhere in suburban southern California, a cloaked figure confidentially works her way through some arcane ritual; an easy assumption judging by the décor and ephemera that definitely leans toward the 'eye of newt' and 'toe of frog' – not to mention the attentive black cat and the pentagram with the goat’s head at the center hanging prominently on the wall that she beseeches to. At the center of this spell are a plea to Hecate (an ancient moon goddess and the patron saint of magic, witchcraft and necromancy) and a photo of a man that she chants over and then places in a metal bowl, which then bursts into flame. 

Meanwhile, the man in question falls victim to a horrible car accident and dies when his vehicle suddenly explodes for no explicable reason. Well, save one reason. As the cloaked figure pulls the hood back to reveal a young teenager with smug, self-serving smile smeared all over her face.

Cut to the next morning, at the local high school, where we find out the girl in question is a senior named Vivian Sotherland (Anderson) and the person who died was her science teacher, Mr. Hildebrandt, who was apparently on his way to meet with the school’s principal for cryptic reasons concerning Vivian when his car exploded. But Vivian easily charms and sways the principal when asked why, swearing she had no idea what the problem could’ve been and offers to take up a collection for the poor teacher’s family.

But we in the audience know this is all for show and a load of crap. And as the morning progresses, we get all kinds of hints that this isn’t the first preternatural incident that Vivian ‘wouldn’t know anything about’, including a bus crash that knocked out half the cheerleading squad, suddenly promoting Vivian to team captain, convincing them to adopt a goat as a mascot as well. (And not just any goat but an EVIL goat.) And believe me; you don’t wanna know how she got to be class president. And then there’s her estranged boyfriend, David Sterling (Cassiday), recently readmitted to school through more of Vivian’s machinations after a drunk driving incident, where he parked his boss van inside a sporting goods store. Seems David had some suspicions about his girlfriend, what with the football team’s starting quarterback having a massive coronary, moving him to number one on the depth chart. (No second-stringers for our girl, Viv. No sir.) That, on top of all the weird and creepy crap she carries around, and the vague threats to Mr. Hildebrant, who was ready to flunk the floundering David, getting him kicked off the team, again, causing David to try and warn his teacher about her, which, alas, was all for naught and kinda backfired on him.

Thus, David’s downward spiral accelerates, in spite of Vivian’s dire warnings to get his act together. And while everyone else thinks the spaced-out (and now tight-lipped) David is on drugs, he has no idea who to turn to next. But luckily for him there’s a new girl in school, who gladly lends a sympathetic ear. Turns out Robin Prentiss (McDonough) is blessed (or cursed) with her own empathetic ability to read people just by touching them, and after a friendly handshake she knows David is harboring a terrible secret. But as these two get acquainted, Vivian has been spying on them the whole time and is bound and determined to nip this relationship in the bud.

Once more turning on the charm, she tries to recruit Robin for the spirit squad (which already includes Vanna White and future Friday the 13th alum, Dana Kimmel), casting a spell that injures a girl to make an open spot, netting herself a snip of Robin’s hair in the process, that I’m sure will be used for some nefarious purpose later. But this incidental contact gives Robin a terrifying read on Vivian as death incarnate. Then, David intervenes and pulls Robin away, warning her to stay away from Vivian. And once they’re safely away, after a little more coaxing, David finally reveals the true scope of Vivian’s supernatural and sociopathic reign of terror. But, as it turns out, Robin has been harboring some sinister secrets of her own… 

I’ve gushed at length elsewhere about my love for Made for TV movies of the 1970s, where sentient homicidal bulldozers ran amok, horked off ancient spirits of evil hijacked airplanes, were-spiders spun webs of death, and whole towns came under alien control. There were also quite a few concerning witchcraft and devil worship in the suburbs, and from there sprung a lucrative niche concerning teenage witches coming to terms with their powers and getting vengeance on those who tormented them. 

It began with The Spell (1977), which saw a constantly teased overweight tweener take her eldritch wrath out on everybody, including her estranged family. Stranger in Our House (1978) saw Wes Craven directing Linda Blair, who was dealing with an intruding orphan who tries to supernaturally squeeze her out and replace her.

Obviously, a lot of these telefilms were inspired by Brian de Palma’s Carrie (1976), adapted from the novel by Stephen King, and by The Initiation of Sarah (1978) it had really become less about spell-casting and more about emulating the telekinetic cat-fights and temper tantrums of Carrie White, where an unpopular sister in an unpopular sorority uses her powers to take out her more popular sister’s rival house. Of course, then, it was inevitable that someone, somewhere, finally asked the question -- What if instead of only one witch we had two witches? One good, one bad, and they fought to the death? -- and put pen to paper. But it wasn’t until the next decade when this notion finally reached the small screen with Midnight Offerings (1981).

For you see, Robin’s abilities go far beyond her internal mood-ring-o-meter, manifesting themselves telekinetically as well, which gives her a natural defense against some of Vivian’s more blatant attacks. (Unfortunately, one of these spells ricocheted off her and struck her father with another one of those mystery coronaries.) These powers had started to haphazardly manifest themselves back in Connecticut, which prompted her father to move them way out west to put some distance between his daughter and the suspicions of others when these abilities sparked off, often dangerously, with no rational explanation except his daughter was a freak. In fact, at first, while Vivian keeps hexing her, trying to cause bodily harm, as things start flying around her house, Robin thinks it’s just her own out-of-control powers going haywire again.

But when her father gets knocked out of commission, Robin finally sees that the threat of Vivian is dangerously real and she must be stopped. Having read up on witches in an effort to derail his now ex-girlfriend, David knows a witch when he sees one and does his best to help Robin hone these abilities but soon realizes they need professional help. And so, they turn to Emily Moore (Ross), another self-proclaimed witch, who learns that Robin was the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter, which, apparently, has a lot more meaning than a ton of hand-me-downs and a long wait for the bathroom as it is a pretty big deal in witchcraft; but her mother died giving birth to her, leaving Robin with no one to help her get control of these natural abilities. And after a decade of her father’s browbeating of ignoring it and maybe it will just go away, the best advice Emily can give is to convince Robin to stop resisting her power and embrace it or she will have no chance against Vivian. To do this, Robin and David head to the park where she stretches her powers a bit and the romantic spark that had been flickering between them bursts into flame – just like the bush Robin mentally sets on fire as the world’s goofiest Mentos ad comes to a close.

Meantime, we also get a glimpse of Vivian’s busted home life, where we find out she is also a seven of seven. Her father, Sherman (Jump), is blissfully unaware of what his daughter is cooking up in her bedroom, thinking it a science experiment, but he, too, has unwittingly benefited from her power when a sole rival for a big promotion met with an untimely accident, which will net Vivian a new car once the higher salary kicks in. Her mother, meanwhile, is fully aware of what her daughter has been up to. A witch herself, Diane (Damon) is constantly chastised by Vivian for squandering her power by abandoning it and settling for the lumpy potato parked in front of the TV in the other room. Wanting it all, and willing to do anything to get it, Vivian ignores her mother’s warnings about the price of such things, and judging by her expression, she knows of what she speaks. And when Diane threatens to stop her, her calcified skills prove no match for Vivian and she is easily and thoroughly defeated.

Thus free of any repercussions, Vivian’s supernatural assault on Robin continues unabated, including a nocturnal visit from her familiar, which quietly pads its four-legged way into her house and knocks an oil lamp over. (Was the cat doing this by command or, like my cat, is it just an asshole who likes to knock crap over.) Luckily, David took it upon himself to keep a vigil, spots the flames, and manages to get Robin out before the fire and smoke consume her. Then a flock of compelled crows attack the couple inside the van nearly causing another horrendous crash.

When all of her efforts fail, and realizing she’s about to lose David for good, Vivian confronts her arch-nemesis at the school and drags Robin off to the deserted shop classroom to deliver an ultimatum, giving her two days to clear out or the consequences will be lethal. Undaunted, Robin tells Vivian to go screw herself, triggering a nifty psychic brawl of flying lumber and power tools. And while Robin valiantly holds her own, this match ends in a draw when the shop teacher blunders in just as the sawdust settles. And once Vivian sends him packing with some conjured evidence of statutory rape in the parking lot, she reminds Robin that she has two days to leave or she won’t be alive on the third.

Knowing she is well-outclassed and needing an edge, Robin and David set out to raid Vivian’s house, looking for some hair and personal items they can use with Emily’s help to divine a spell against her. But this backfires when Emily discerns that Vivian is a rare Hectite, a disciple of Hecate, whose powers increase during the full moon, destined to rise the next night. Encouraged to get out of town until the moon cycle is over, Robin refuses to abandon her father, recently released from the hospital. Told in no uncertain terms to meet with Vivian, Robin and David hole up at her house, determined to wait out Vivian’s threat – until the phone rings. It’s Vivian, who threatens to kill her father and David if Robin reveals who the caller is and to meet with her in secret at the high school, alone, or else.

Thus, with the full moon hanging fat in the sky, Robin sneaks out of the house and enters the football stadium as instructed. From out of the shadows she hears the approach of cloven hooves, which turns out to be Vivian’s pet mascot, whose impact sends her tumbling down the stairs. Knocked for a loop, Robin tries to get her bearings, but Emily’s talismans and charms prove worthless, and with a wave of her hand Vivian renders Robin unconscious. And when she comes to, Robin finds herself stuck to the mooring pole in the middle of the wood-pile gathered for the upcoming homecoming bonfire. The irony of this is not lost as Vivian gloats over her classic choice to dispose of her rival. And with another wave of her hand, the fire ignites. And as the flames lick ever closer to our heroine, she appears to be doomed until help arrives from a most unexpected source.

Midnight Offerings was first broadcast on February 27, 1981, on ABC. And as it plays out, the telefilm really comes off as a Halloween-tinged After School Special from the very same network. Personally, I find it to be a highly entertaining low-budget romp for a number of reasons, one of them being a huge childhood crush on one of the stars. 

I honestly think the key ingredient as to why people even remember this particular telefilm at all is The Little House on the Prairie vs. The Waltons angle of our dueling witches. In spite of coming from rival shows on rival networks, the two actresses got along splendidly and had a ball during the shoot. (Apparently they both kept cracking up during the showdown in the shop.) And while my heart will always belong to Mary Beth, who does a pretty good job with a pretty vanilla role, the film belongs to Melissa Sue, who gleefully steals the show with the meatier part as the bitch-witch Vivian. Both actresses would also make a splash in a couple of early slasher films, too, with McDonough showing up in Mortuary (1983) and Anderson taking the cake in Happy Birthday to Me (1981).

Also making a lot of hay out of a small part is another TV veteran, Marion Ross, as Glenda the Good Witch, taking a break from her role as the matriarchal Mrs. Cunningham on Happy Days. And then there’s Cathryn Damon, who adds a lot of weight as Vivian’s doomed mother, who makes the ultimate sacrifice in the end to stop her daughter once and for all.

The telefilm also packed a lot of TV clout behind the camera as well. It was produced by Stephen J. Cannell and written by Juanita Bartlett, who had just wrapped up The Rockford Files (1975-1980) and were about to debut The Greatest American Hero (1981-1986). Director Ron Holcomb and his F/X crew do the best they can with their limited means and actually manage some pretty spectacular stunts and manifestations. Credit also to director of photography, Héctor Figueroa, who came up with a few dazzling set-ups. (I’m specifically thinking of several shots of Cassiday getting out his van in a hurry to save Robin.) Again, the fight in the shop class is handled rather deftly, and while the climax kinda fizzles as far as confrontations go what we get is very well executed and extremely dangerous considering all the open flames.

Still, the film’s biggest asset is Bartlett’s script and its attention to detail in the mystical accouterments, spell-casting and the subtle way it conveys Vivian’s trail of destruction and her lineage. Also, Vivian's complete lack of concern for the welfare of others is downright disturbing. Sure, it still all boils down to essentially dueling Carrie Whites, but I found it interesting that the new girl doesn’t have to convince the locals that the most popular cheerleader in school is a really a witch out to kill them all but vice versa. And with a game cast who played it straight (between those giggling fits, natch’), I’m telling ya, Midnight Offerings is a lot better than it probably deserves to be.

This post is just one part of The Celluloid Zeroes' Vengeful Witch Roundtable. And to complete the spell of Dirty Hex Appeal, Boils and Ghouls, please follow the linkage below to my fellow collective head 'o' knuckle's entries as they are woven and cast over the weekend, please and thank you:

Checkpoint Telstar: The Witchfinder General  //  Cinemasochist Apocalypse: Black Magic // The Terrible Claw Reviews: The Haunted Palace // Tomb of Anubis: TBD  // Web of the Big-Damned Spider: Ator: The Flying Eagle // Psychoplasmics: Don't Torture a Duckling  // Las películas de terror: Asmodexia.

Midnight Offerings (1981) Stephen J. Cannell Productions :: American Broadcasting Company (ABC) / EP: Stephen J. Cannell, Juanita Bartlett / P: Alex Beaton / AP: Christopher Nelson / D: Rod Holcomb / W: Juanita Bartlett / C: Héctor R. Figueroa / E: Christopher Nelson / M: Walter Scharf / S: Melissa Sue Anderson, Mary Beth McDonough, Patrick Cassidy, Marion Ross, Cathryn Damon, Gordon Jump