This article needs additional citations for verification .(May 2019) |
Isn't It Shocking? | |
---|---|
Genre | Comedy Mystery |
Written by | Lane Slate |
Directed by | John Badham |
Starring | Alan Alda Louise Lasser Edmond O'Brien Ruth Gordon Lloyd Nolan |
Music by | David Shire |
Country of origin | United States |
Original language | English |
Production | |
Producers | Ron Bernstein Howard Rosenman |
Production locations | Mount Angel, Oregon Universal Studios - 100 Universal City Plaza, Universal City, California |
Cinematography | Jack Woolf |
Editor | Henry Berman |
Running time | 73 minutes |
Production company | ABC Circle Films |
Original release | |
Network | ABC |
Release | October 2, 1973 |
Isn't It Shocking? is a made-for-television comedy-mystery film that aired on the ABC network in 1973 as an ABC Movie of the Week . Written by Lane Slate, it stars Alan Alda, Louise Lasser and Edmond O'Brien, and was directed by John Badham.
Daniel Barnes (Alan Alda) is a small-town New England police chief. His life is complicated by a romance with local motel owner Mrs. Tate (Patricia Quinn). She is eager for him to move in with her and her children; Barnes is equally eager to keep their affair secret. Meanwhile, the village is beset by a killer preying on the town's elderly citizens. A few deaths later, the victims are all found to have one thing in common—they all graduated from the local high school in 1928. Working with police receptionist Blanche (Louise Lasser), Barnes pores through the 1928 yearbook and identifies another couple, the Yettas, as potential victims. When Barnes drives to the couple's isolated house, his police cruiser is rammed and disabled by another automobile, which turns around to finish him off. Barnes escapes into the woods. Circling around to the isolated house, he finds the Yettas already dead.
After another member of the class is killed, the coroner Lemuel Lovell (Will Geer) and his daughter Doc Lovell (Dorothy Tristan) theorize that a modified defibrillator machine is being used by the murderer to induce heart attacks. Because the Class of '28 was small, the process of elimination leads Barnes to focus on a surviving member of the class, Justin Oates (Edmond O'Brien). Until recently, Oates had been a guest at Mrs. Tate's motel. Daniel sets a trap for him. Oates takes the bait. When he is caught, it is revealed that he was traumatically humiliated by his classmates at a surprise birthday party for his 17-year-old fiancée. There, his beloved was discovered frolicking naked with another classmate. After Oates' arrest, Daniel surmises he will likely be remanded to the care of a mental health facility for the criminally insane.
A subplot woven throughout has Barnes considering a lucrative job offer from a nearby town. The pay raise would make it easier for him to settle down with Mrs. Tate and the kids. But Barnes ultimately turns down the offer and decides to stay put. He also considers marriage to Blanche.
The movie is a series pilot and sequel to Lane Slate's 1973 movie They Only Kill Their Masters . In that film, set in a beach community, James Garner portrayed Police Chief Abel Marsh. In 1974, Andy Griffith starred in Slate's Winter Kill , a television movie, a series pilot that renamed the character (Sheriff Sam MacNeill) and changed the setting to a mountain town. When it failed to sell, the main character was renamed "Sheriff Sam Adams" for the series Adams of Eagle Lake , which lasted a mere two episodes. [1] But that failure wasn't the end of the road. In 1977, Griffith appeared in two additional television movies ( The Girl in the Empty Grave and Deadly Game ), which restored the name of Griffith's character back to Abel Marsh, though he was still a lawman in a mountain town. With the exception of They Only Kill Their Masters, all the movies and the short-lived series, were filmed in Big Bear Lake, California. [2]
Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman is an American Western drama television series created and executive produced by Beth Sullivan and starring Jane Seymour, who plays Dr. Michaela Quinn, a physician who leaves Boston in search of adventure in the Old West and settles in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Eamon Joseph O'Brien was an American actor of stage, screen, and television, and film director. His career spanned almost 40 years, and he won one Academy Award, two Golden Globe Awards, and two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Joanna Pettet is a British-born Canadian former actress.
The Spiral Staircase is a 1946 American psychological horror film directed by Robert Siodmak and starring Dorothy McGuire, George Brent, and Ethel Barrymore. Set over the course of one evening, the film follows a mute young woman in an early-20th century Vermont town who is stalked and terrorized in a rural mansion by a serial killer targeting women with disabilities. Gordon Oliver, Rhonda Fleming, and Elsa Lanchester appear in supporting roles. It was adapted for the screen by Mel Dinelli from the novel Some Must Watch (1933) by Ethel Lina White.
Turner & Hooch is a 1989 American buddy cop comedy film starring Tom Hanks and Beasley the Dog as the eponymous characters respectively. The film also co-stars Mare Winningham, Craig T. Nelson and Reginald VelJohnson. It was directed by Roger Spottiswoode and co-written by Daniel Petrie Jr., who also served as an executive producer. Touchstone Pictures acquired the screenplay for Turner & Hooch for $1 million, which was the highest amount ever paid by Touchstone for any script at the time.
Winter Kill is a 1974 American made-for-television mystery-thriller film directed by Jud Taylor and written by John Michael Hayes and David Karp. It stars Andy Griffith as Sam McNeill, the police chief in a small resort town in the mountains of northern California. The film is mystery-suspense drama about McNeill's attempts to solve a string of local serial killings linked by messages left at the scenes of the crimes. Nick Nolte played the role of Dave Michaels.
Kim Darby is an American actress best known for her roles as Mattie Ross in True Grit (1969) and Jenny Meyer in Better Off Dead (1985).
The Saint Meets the Tiger is a 1941 British mystery thriller film directed by Paul L. Stein and starring Hugh Sinclair, Jean Gillie and Clifford Evans. It was made by the British unit of RKO Pictures and released the same year, but was not distributed until 1943 in America. This was to be the last of the eight films in RKO's film series about the crimefighter the Saint. It was shot at Denham Studios outside London with sets designed by the art director Paul Sheriff. The previous entries in the series had all been made in Hollywood except The Saint's Vacation.
Orphans of the Storm is a 1921 American silent drama film by D. W. Griffith set in late-18th-century France, before and during the French Revolution.
Dan August is an American drama series that aired on ABC from September 23, 1970, to April 8, 1971. Burt Reynolds played the title character. Reruns of the series aired in prime time on CBS from May to October 1973 and from April to June 1975.
They Only Kill Their Masters is a 1972 American mystery film directed by James Goldstone, written by Lane Slate, and starring James Garner and Katharine Ross, with a supporting cast featuring Hal Holbrook, June Allyson, Tom Ewell, Peter Lawford, Edmond O'Brien, and Arthur O'Connell. The title refers to Doberman dogs that might have been responsible for a woman's murder currently under investigation by the local police chief (Garner).
The Over-the-Hill Gang is a 1969 American made-for-television Western comedy film about a group of aging Texas Rangers, starring Walter Brennan and Pat O'Brien. Chill Wills, Edgar Buchanan, Andy Devine, and Jack Elam play supporting roles. The film was written by Richard Carr and directed by Jean Yarbrough.
Yuki Shimoda was an American actor best known for his starring role as Ko Wakatsuki in the NBC movie of the week Farewell to Manzanar in 1976. He also co-starred in the 1960s television series Johnny Midnight, with Edmond O'Brien. He was a star of movies, early television, and the stage. His Broadway stage credits include Auntie Mame with Rosalind Russell, and Pacific Overtures, a musical written by Stephen Sondheim and directed by Harold Prince.
Norma Bates is a fictional character created by American author Robert Bloch in his 1959 thriller novel Psycho. She is the deceased mother and victim of serial killer Norman Bates, who had recreated her in his mind as a murderous alternate personality.
Adams of Eagle Lake is an American hour-long police series that aired on ABC in 1975. Andy Griffith starred as Chief of Police Sam Adams and the episodes presented his attempts to maintain the law in a small resort town. The show lasted for two episodes.
The Women's Air Derby was the first official women-only air race in the United States, taking place during the 1929 National Air Races. Humorist Will Rogers referred to it as the Powder Puff Derby, the name by which the race is most commonly known. Nineteen pilots took off from Clover Field, Santa Monica, California, on August 18, 1929. Marvel Crosson died in a crash apparently caused by carbon monoxide poisoning, but fifteen completed the race in Cleveland, Ohio, nine days later.
The Restless and the Damned is a 1959 French-Australian film co produced by Lee Robinson. It was shot on location in Tahiti and the Tuamotu Islands. There are French and English-language versions.
Between Midnight and Dawn is a 1950 American film noir crime film directed by Gordon Douglas and starring Mark Stevens, Edmond O'Brien and Gale Storm. It is notable as one of the earliest Hollywood policiers to focus on beat cops rather than detectives and other high-ranking officers.
The Doomsday Flight is a 1966 American thriller television film written by Rod Serling and directed by William Graham. The cast includes Jack Lord, Edmond O'Brien, Van Johnson, Katherine Crawford, John Saxon, Richard Carlson and Ed Asner. It aired on NBC on 13 December 1966.
Stonestreet: Who Killed the Centerfold Model? is a 1977 American made-for-television mystery-crime drama film starring Barbara Eden, directed by Russ Mayberry from a teleplay written by Leslie Stevens and produced as a pilot for a proposed television series that was not picked up by the network. The film originally premiered as the NBC Movie of the Week on January 16, 1977.