tv movies

recently i was told by a co-worker that i was the most nostalgic man she ever met. that might be true, i admit, but rather than getting worked up over being the most nostalgic man in california, maybe even planet earth [if that ain't a big stretch] i'm happy enough to still have a mind working well enough to remember the past. i don't think i live in the past but i do make frequent visits.

encouraged by anna who recently found a childhood flick she watched as a little girl in class on the internet with just two clicks of a mouse i fired up the laptop to search for a movie that has haunted my memory for as long as i can remember. back in the day the three television networks, abc, nbc and cbs, would create their own full-length features. the networks promos would get me salivating like pavlov's dogs.



not that most, or even any, of the movies broadcast were any good. still, there's a kind of innocent cheesiness missing in current broadcast media. often the movies made by the big three networks were heavy on exploitation and horror yet because they were subject to strict censorship the sex and gore were most often implied rather than made explicit.

and so but good, there's a movie i remembered that aired either in the late '70s or early '80s about a computerized house that tries to kill a couple. images of the movie have haunted me since first seeing it. and i've seen the film perhaps only twice. i had developed a massive crush on the woman lead. yet, i couldn't remember much about the film except for a backyard swimming pool that boils someone alive and cameras positioned around the house with closed-circuit tv monitors that the house used as eyes.

i fired up the computer and with a couple of clicks i found the flick. the movie, this house possessed [1981], starring parker stevenson as a rock star recovering from a nervous breakdown and lisa eilbacher as his nurse who has a mysterious tie with the house. now, i've not seen this flick since the early '80s and i'm guessing it is pretty cheesy indeed. and yet, i lovingly remember the movie. so far as i know there's not been either a vhs or dvd release of the film.

there is a pretty good synopsis of the movie here and soon as i read that i knew it i knew it was the same film that i recall. the last i read the big three networks are still reeling from the competition of cable channels and the internet. they seem to have fixated solely upon reality programming of which, for the time being, is a huge money-maker. it's not that i'm nostalgic or nothing. but i do have good memories of holing up on a friday night to watch movies like this house possessed or smash-up on interstate 5 with a pizza and the long night ahead of me. but on second consideration, if that makes me the most nostalgic man in california, then okay, then.