Dir - Burt Brinckerhoff/Dan Curtis
Overall: MEH
A SOV, soap opera-styled supernatural thriller from producer Dan Curtis, (who also co-directed with Burt Brinckerhoff in an uncredited capacity), The Invasion of Carol Enders gets in and out in only an hour and seven minutes, plus it features TV mainstay Meredith Baxter in the lead. Playing a woman who is possessed by another woman, it has a unique enough plot where Baxter wakes up in a hospital after being on the brink of death, miraculously inheriting the spirit of another woman who actually died at the same time. Cue every character getting aggravated and confused, least of all Baxter who runs the gamut of emotions and turns in a properly heavy performance as she ends up being the only person who can solve her own death, be it while stuck in another body. The twist should be easy to see coming several minutes before the characters figure it out and because of its neutered, chatty, and small-screen presentation, the movie is lacking in cinematic flair and macabre atmosphere. All of the pressure therefor falls on the actors who do a decent enough job even if they cannot elevate this above just being a pedestrian melodrama.
(1977)
Dir - Herb Wallerstein
Overall: WOOF
The only full-length from exclusive television director Herb Wallerstein, Snowbeast was authored by Joseph Stefano of Psycho and The Outer Limits fame. An NBC Thursday Night Movie, it is one of many pieces of 1970s celluloid to use a Bigfoot/Sasquatch/Yeti/Abominable Snowman as its monster. It is also one of the many to feature as little Bigfoot/Sasquatch/Yeti/Abominable Snowman shots as possible. For this one, we have to wait forty-eight goddamn minutes to get our first "blink and you'll miss it" look at the creature, and such lightning-flash glimpses of it remain all that we are allowed. It is a shame that Stefano's script spends such an ungodly time fleshing out its slew of characters, including two of them who used to date, one of them being a former Olympic athlete, and the usual Jaws nonsense of the people who run the ski resort ignoring all of the accusations of a murderous beast on the rampage in order to keep their place of business open for tourists. If such "white people problems" melodrama was balanced better with killer snow monster scenes and any semblance of suspense, then we could have at least had a chance to give a shit about anything that happens to anyone on screen.
(1979)
Dir - Bartell LaRue
Overall: WOOF
Six years after wrapping up his voice acting career, Bartell LaRue made his only feature as writer, director, and producer; the quasi-mockumentary-by-way-of-haunted-house head-scratcher Satan War. Bizarrely inept, it is bookended by Satanic mass and voodoo footage, with voice narration giving us the rundown of their shenanigans, as well as dishing out alleged factoids about how many hundreds of thousands of people practice human sacrifice and various other Lucifer-pleasing deeds. We eventually settle into our story about a married couple who move into a house that they got at a bargain, (never a good sign), and it is at this point that LaRue adorably attempts his own version of The Amityville Horror except with a sixty-five cent budget. No sound was recorded so all of the dialog is ADRed and frequently does not match the actor's mouths, two pieces of music that borrow "The Immigrant Song" hook are played almost uninterrupted throughout, and the scary bits include a cross that slowly, (slowly), turns upside down over and over again, plus various masses of goo that erupt in the kitchen. We also get dialog like, "I'm not gonna be molested day and night just so you don't have to take out the garbage", followed by "Just tell him that rape, sex, molestation is my department", cue both people lovingly smiling at each other. Odd, cheap, embarrassing, boring, obnoxious, hilarious, and extraordinary terrible stuff.
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