This will be the first installment into a look back at all the various ABC TV Movies of the Week that was so prevalent back in the 1970’s. As much as I would like to make the claim that I am charting into new territory, there have been a number of interesting websites that provided interesting information on the history and development of the ABC TV Movie of the Week. TVParty.com has some interesting vintage promos as well as the complete – and awesome – intro that has been etched into the minds of many impressionable people who loved those classic and, in some cases, shocking movies. (Visit it at http://www.tvparty.com/vaultmov.html)

              
Back in the day, television attempted (on the surface) to raise social consciousness with a series of television movies that dealt with a number of controversial topics. Watching Jean Stapleton deal with the horrors of PCP in the quite well written and brilliantly acted 1981 classic ANGEL DUSTED left a strong impression in me as a child. I CERTAINLY did not want to touch drugs after seeing that film.

While the TV movies are often pigeonholed under the moniker of being “disease of the week” films, the variety of TV movies that were made were significantly diverse. There were a number of great mini-series such as ROOTS and SHOGUN. There were classic horror films such as THE NIGHT STALKER and CURSE OF THE BLACK WIDOW. Then, there were the extremely and consistently UNFUNNY “comedies” such as WAIT UNTIL YOUR MOTHER GETS HOME! And WHERE THE HELL IS ALL THAT GOLD?

However, television movies are forever stereotyped as disease of the week ‘classics’ and while some films were exceptionally well made such as the aforementioned ANGEL DUSTED or SOMETHING ABOUT AMELIA, there were also a ton of embarrassingly difficult to watch entries such as the notorious 1974 Linda Blair film BORN INNOCENT.

Don't kid yourself. The purpose of the ABC Movies of the Week was not designed to raise public awareness of specific problems found in society. The purpose of these movies was to make money. The way to make money was to draw in a large audience. The easiest way to draw in a large audience was to create a realm of a circus sideshow/freakshow. Instead of bearded woman and strongmen, a seemingly endless parade of alcoholics and drug addicts were strummed out in front of the public. The films were simply too perverse to ignore and since many of these films hid behind the social consciousness of warning parents about the troubles their children were getting into. Now, it would be insane for anyone to say that there were no inherent problems related t substance abuse and sexual activity in teenagers. It would also be insane to say that raising the conscious awareness of these problems was anything less than a good thing. It would also be insane to say that no one looking to write/direct/produce these films was motivated by anything other than money. Yes, there were vital and important messages present in many of these films. But, there were also a number of exploitation schlockmeisters who were simply airlifting the Drive-In/Grindhouse sleaze mongering from the theaters to the TV screens. 

Then, there was also the flat out incompetent producing that resulted in some embarrassing productions such as the notorius 1971 laugh-fest GO ASK ALICE.



GO ASK ALICE was a famous "diary of a teenage drug addict" book that sold a million or so copies until it was discovered that the book was a total fraud. When the fact that the book was not written by a teenage drug addict it....well...promptly continued to sell millions more copies and is still in print today. Now, the book itself is not all that bad. It is a cautionary tale about the dangers of drug addiction. The TV movie version, however, is a whole other matter. When you have William Shatner wearing thick glasses and a hairpiece horrible even by Shatner standards playing Alice's dad, you know you have a problem. Also, when the book contains a passage were Alice is drugged by a middle aged man and a woman and TV censor standards reduce the scene to a brief two second clip of a man and woman jumping in the air (?) as an attempt to infer the drug party gone awry, you have a problem. If you didn't read the book, you will have no idea why the man and woman are jumping up and down in a two second flashback. Basically, you are to infer jumping off a couch with a weird look on their faces led to PTSD in poor Alice. (Did I neglect to mention this is a BAD, BAD TV movie?)

It was also par for the course when it comes to the style of TV movies of the week of the era. Of course, not all of these films were dreadful. Some of them were quite effecting in their ability to present an unnerving underworld that the youth of America were trapped in.

To be continued.