Steven Spielberg worked his way up to directing features by making short films and episodes of TV shows like Columbo and Night Gallery. His earliest movies were also made for television – and the first feature-length TV movie he made that wasn’t part of a series was the classic 1971 thriller Duel (watch it Here). Forty-two years after Duel first aired, Universal Pictures Home Entertainment is now set to give the film a 4K release on November 14th!
Based on a short story by Richard Matheson, who also wrote the screenplay, Duel centers on a motorist terrorized by an evil truck. Dennis Weaver stars as the traveling salesman waging a desperate battle for survival after he is mysteriously singled out.
Jacqueline Scott, Eddie Firestone, Lou Frizzell, and Gene Dynarski are also in the cast.
A press release on Blu-ray.com notes, “Praised for its deft use of relentlessly mounting psychological tension,...
Based on a short story by Richard Matheson, who also wrote the screenplay, Duel centers on a motorist terrorized by an evil truck. Dennis Weaver stars as the traveling salesman waging a desperate battle for survival after he is mysteriously singled out.
Jacqueline Scott, Eddie Firestone, Lou Frizzell, and Gene Dynarski are also in the cast.
A press release on Blu-ray.com notes, “Praised for its deft use of relentlessly mounting psychological tension,...
- 9/20/2023
- by Cody Hamman
- JoBlo.com
Made-for-tv movies have developed from their Hallmark stereotype in recent years, thanks to the rise of companies such as HBO. Although these films feature lower budgets and smaller casts than larger productions, they offer directors and actors greater freedom – leading them toward more successful results.
Related: Top 10 Best TV Series of All Time, Ranked by Viewers
Despite this shift away from melodrama for sensationalism’s sake, made-for-tv movies remain a viable alternative to seeing stories on screen without spending too much cash or time in cinemas.
10 Highest-Ranked TV Movies on IMDb Duel (1971) – 7.6 You Don’t Know Jack (2010) – 7.6 Battlestar Galactica: Razor (2007) – 7.6 Conspiracy (2001) – 7.6 61* (2001) – 7.7 A Christmas Carol (1984) – 7.8 The Normal Heart (2014) – 7.9 Prayers for Bobby (2009) – 8.0 Threads (1984) – 8.0 Temple Grandin (2010) – 8.2 10 ‘Duel’ (1971)
Genre: Action, Thriller
Director: Steven Spielberg
Stars: Dennis Weaver, Jacqueline Scott, Eddie Firestone, Lou Frizzell
IMDb: 7.6/10 74K | Popularity: 1,865 | Metascore: 81 | Awards: 3 (1 Primetime Emmy Award)
“Duel,” a 1971 suspense thriller from the mind of acclaimed director Steven Spielberg, follows...
Related: Top 10 Best TV Series of All Time, Ranked by Viewers
Despite this shift away from melodrama for sensationalism’s sake, made-for-tv movies remain a viable alternative to seeing stories on screen without spending too much cash or time in cinemas.
10 Highest-Ranked TV Movies on IMDb Duel (1971) – 7.6 You Don’t Know Jack (2010) – 7.6 Battlestar Galactica: Razor (2007) – 7.6 Conspiracy (2001) – 7.6 61* (2001) – 7.7 A Christmas Carol (1984) – 7.8 The Normal Heart (2014) – 7.9 Prayers for Bobby (2009) – 8.0 Threads (1984) – 8.0 Temple Grandin (2010) – 8.2 10 ‘Duel’ (1971)
Genre: Action, Thriller
Director: Steven Spielberg
Stars: Dennis Weaver, Jacqueline Scott, Eddie Firestone, Lou Frizzell
IMDb: 7.6/10 74K | Popularity: 1,865 | Metascore: 81 | Awards: 3 (1 Primetime Emmy Award)
“Duel,” a 1971 suspense thriller from the mind of acclaimed director Steven Spielberg, follows...
- 4/5/2023
- by Buddy TV
- buddytv.com
Richard Widmark reportedly used his clout to amp up this revisionist western, but the result seems forced at best, and hampered by Universal’s TV-grade production values. The sober screenplay brings in good ideas but the execution can’t quite hold its own with the more progressive westerns of the genre-changing years 1968-’69. A cast of familiar faces makes much of it look fresh: Carroll O’Connor’s venal saloon keeper steals the show, while interesting casting gives us Lena Horne as Widmark’s romantic partner.
Death of a Gunfighter
Region B Blu-ray
Powerhouse Indicator
1969 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 94 min. / working title Patch / Street Date February 27, 2023 / available from Powerhouse Films UK / £15.99
Starring: Richard Widmark, Lena Horne, Carroll O’Connor, David Opatashu, Kent Smith, Jacqueline Scott, Morgan Woodward, Larry Gates, Dub Taylor, John Saxon, Darleen Carr, Michael McGreevey, Royal Dano, James (Jimmy) Lydon, Kathleen Freeman, Harry Carey Jr., Walter Sande, Victor French.
Cinematography:...
Death of a Gunfighter
Region B Blu-ray
Powerhouse Indicator
1969 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 94 min. / working title Patch / Street Date February 27, 2023 / available from Powerhouse Films UK / £15.99
Starring: Richard Widmark, Lena Horne, Carroll O’Connor, David Opatashu, Kent Smith, Jacqueline Scott, Morgan Woodward, Larry Gates, Dub Taylor, John Saxon, Darleen Carr, Michael McGreevey, Royal Dano, James (Jimmy) Lydon, Kathleen Freeman, Harry Carey Jr., Walter Sande, Victor French.
Cinematography:...
- 3/7/2023
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Jacqueline Scott, who played the sister of David Janssen's man on the run in The Fugitive and the wife of Walter Matthau's bank robber in Charley Varrick, has died. She was 89.
Scott died Thursday at her home in Los Angeles after a battle with lung cancer, her son, Andrew, told The Hollywood Reporter.
Scott's characters also were married to small-town sheriff Jimmy Stewart in Firecreek (1968) and Dennis Weaver's salesman in Steven Spielberg's Duel (1971), and on the 1963 Twilight Zone episode "The Parallel," she was the wife of an astronaut (Steve Forrest) ...
Scott died Thursday at her home in Los Angeles after a battle with lung cancer, her son, Andrew, told The Hollywood Reporter.
Scott's characters also were married to small-town sheriff Jimmy Stewart in Firecreek (1968) and Dennis Weaver's salesman in Steven Spielberg's Duel (1971), and on the 1963 Twilight Zone episode "The Parallel," she was the wife of an astronaut (Steve Forrest) ...
- 7/28/2020
- The Hollywood Reporter - Film + TV
Jacqueline Scott, who played the sister of David Janssen's man on the run in The Fugitive and the wife of Walter Matthau's bank robber in Charley Varrick, has died. She was 89.
Scott died Thursday at her home in Los Angeles after a battle with lung cancer, her son, Andrew, told The Hollywood Reporter.
Scott's characters also were married to small-town sheriff Jimmy Stewart in Firecreek (1968) and Dennis Weaver's salesman in Steven Spielberg's Duel (1971), and on the 1963 Twilight Zone episode "The Parallel," she was the wife of an astronaut (Steve Forrest) ...
Scott died Thursday at her home in Los Angeles after a battle with lung cancer, her son, Andrew, told The Hollywood Reporter.
Scott's characters also were married to small-town sheriff Jimmy Stewart in Firecreek (1968) and Dennis Weaver's salesman in Steven Spielberg's Duel (1971), and on the 1963 Twilight Zone episode "The Parallel," she was the wife of an astronaut (Steve Forrest) ...
- 7/28/2020
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Had I not recently revisited Don Siegel’s dusty, nail-hard crime thriller Charley Varrick, in fact just the night before seeing Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Three Times, it stands to reason that I probably would not have found myself thinking about the Walter Matthau-starring crime thriller midway through the Taiwanese director’s film. After all, Siegel’s tale of morally ambivalent “heroes,” scabrous, misanthropic villains, and the various levels of grime and corruption to be waded through and scraped off on the way toward accidentally absconding with three-quarters of a million dollars in laundered mob money would seem to have little in common with Hou’s deliberately paced, exquisitely mounted collection of three love stories, each from a different time, each told in a manner most rewardingly compared to the elliptical style of a short story on the page.
And yet, as the first episode of Three Times, “A Time of Love,...
And yet, as the first episode of Three Times, “A Time of Love,...
- 8/11/2018
- by Dennis Cozzalio
- Trailers from Hell
Wow — somebody took their sweet time about it, but we finally have a quality Blu-ray set of an entire generation’s favorite Sci-fi / monster TV show, an attraction that lit up our humdrum lives with anticipation in the Fall of ’63. Respected stars and good writers contributed to a weird-oh winner that can boast at least fifteen classic hours of Sci-fi delight, in velvety black and white. With informative new audio commentaries.
The Outer Limits Season One
Blu-ray
Kl Studio Classics
1963-64 / B&W / 1:33 flat full frame / 1632 min. (32 episodes) / Street Date March 27, 2018 / available through Kino Lorber / 99.95
Created and produced by Leslie Stevens & Joseph Stefano
Talk about a release that should need no introduction: when MGM Home Video released its first DVD sets of Outer Limits sixteen years ago, we saw the pale transfers and the feeble encoding (eight hours per disc!) and immediately wished for a reissue. Syndicated TV broadcasts looked better.
The Outer Limits Season One
Blu-ray
Kl Studio Classics
1963-64 / B&W / 1:33 flat full frame / 1632 min. (32 episodes) / Street Date March 27, 2018 / available through Kino Lorber / 99.95
Created and produced by Leslie Stevens & Joseph Stefano
Talk about a release that should need no introduction: when MGM Home Video released its first DVD sets of Outer Limits sixteen years ago, we saw the pale transfers and the feeble encoding (eight hours per disc!) and immediately wished for a reissue. Syndicated TV broadcasts looked better.
- 3/13/2018
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
It’s the loose-censored early 1970s, and screen bandits shootin’ up the American movie landscape are no longer suffering the once-mandated automatic moral retribution. Walter Matthau launched himself into the genre with this excellent Don Siegel on-the-run epic, about an old-fashioned independent bandit who accidentally rips off the mob for a million. It’s great, wicked fun.
Charley Varrick
Region B Blu-ray
Indicator
1973 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 111 min. / Charley Varrick the Last of the Independents; Kill Charley Varrick / Street Date January 22, 2018 / available from Powerhouse Films UK / £14.99
Starring: Walter Matthau, Joe Don Baker, Andrew Robinson, John Vernon, Felicia Farr, Sheree North, Jacqueline Scott, William Schallert, Norman Fell, Benson Fong, Woodrow Parfrey, Rudy Diaz, Charles Matthau, Tom Tully, Albert Popwell
Cinematography: Michael Butler
Film Editor: Frank Morriss
Original Music: Lalo Schifrin
Written by Dean Riesner, Howard Rodman from the novel The Looters by John Reese
Produced by Jennings Lang, Don Siegel
Directed by...
Charley Varrick
Region B Blu-ray
Indicator
1973 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 111 min. / Charley Varrick the Last of the Independents; Kill Charley Varrick / Street Date January 22, 2018 / available from Powerhouse Films UK / £14.99
Starring: Walter Matthau, Joe Don Baker, Andrew Robinson, John Vernon, Felicia Farr, Sheree North, Jacqueline Scott, William Schallert, Norman Fell, Benson Fong, Woodrow Parfrey, Rudy Diaz, Charles Matthau, Tom Tully, Albert Popwell
Cinematography: Michael Butler
Film Editor: Frank Morriss
Original Music: Lalo Schifrin
Written by Dean Riesner, Howard Rodman from the novel The Looters by John Reese
Produced by Jennings Lang, Don Siegel
Directed by...
- 1/20/2018
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Sad news this morning as Stuart Scott, one of Espn’s signature SportsCenter anchors, has died after his battle with cancer. He was just 49.Scott is survived by his two daughters, Taelor, 19, and Sydni, 15; his parents, O. Ray and Jacqueline Scott; and his three siblings Stephen Scott, Synthia Kearney, Susan Scott and their families. His girlfriend, Kristin Spodobalski, was with Stuart and cared for him every step of the way and along with support from his loving family, close friends and colleagues, he went through several surgeries, chemotherapy, radiation and clinical trials to stay strong and ward off cancer […]...
- 1/4/2015
- by April Neale
- Monsters and Critics
Stuart Scott, the longtime SportsCenter anchor and Espn personality known for his enthusiasm and ubiquity, died Sunday. He was 49. Scott had fought cancer since a diagnosis in late 2007, the network said, but remained dedicated to his craft even as he underwent chemotherapy, radiation and surgery. Espn President John Skipper said in a statement that Scott was "a true friend and a uniquely inspirational figure" and that his "energetic and unwavering devotion to his family and to his work while fighting the battle of his life left us in awe, and he leaves a void that can never be replaced." Longtime...
- 1/4/2015
- by Associated Press
- PEOPLE.com
Stuart Scott, the longtime SportsCenter anchor and Espn personality known for his enthusiasm and ubiquity, died Sunday. He was 49. Scott had fought cancer since a diagnosis in late 2007, the network said, but remained dedicated to his craft even as he underwent chemotherapy, radiation and surgery. Espn President John Skipper said in a statement that Scott was "a true friend and a uniquely inspirational figure" and that his "energetic and unwavering devotion to his family and to his work while fighting the battle of his life left us in awe, and he leaves a void that can never be replaced." Scott...
- 1/4/2015
- by Associated Press
- PEOPLE.com
Earlier this week, Scream Factory revealed they are releasing The Food of the Gods and Frogs next summer, and now the distributor has horror hounds looking forward to a creature feature season when school lets out, as four more titles have been brought onto the Blu-ray docket, pitting humans against a prehistoric reptile, a mutated octopus, killer ants, and a devilish king cobra.
From Scream Factory: “Since our announcement earlier this week of our double-bill of Food Of The Gods & Frogs went over so well with the majority, we thought it would be exciting/surprising if we followed it up and revealed Four more “Animal-Creature attack” films coming sometime next Summer for the first time on the blu-ray format! So without further ado…
– Bert I Gordon’s Empire Of The Ants (with “Dynasty’s” Joan Collins battling radioactive insects) will be paired with 1982’s devil-possessed cobra film Jaws Of Satan...
From Scream Factory: “Since our announcement earlier this week of our double-bill of Food Of The Gods & Frogs went over so well with the majority, we thought it would be exciting/surprising if we followed it up and revealed Four more “Animal-Creature attack” films coming sometime next Summer for the first time on the blu-ray format! So without further ado…
– Bert I Gordon’s Empire Of The Ants (with “Dynasty’s” Joan Collins battling radioactive insects) will be paired with 1982’s devil-possessed cobra film Jaws Of Satan...
- 10/16/2014
- by Derek Anderson
- DailyDead
by Nick Schager
What's new is always old, and in this recurring column, I'll be taking a look at the classic genre movies that have influenced today's new releases. In honor of the all-star Tower Heist, this week it's Don Siegel's Walter Matthau-headlined 1973 crime saga Charley Varrick.
"The Last of the Independents" is the tagline for Charley Varrick's (Walter Matthau) failed crop-dusting business—which was driven into the ground by big combine competition—and it's a description that aptly applies to the protagonist of Don Siegel's 1973 heist film Charley Varrick. Varrick is a man for whom the archaic ways—as both an entrepreneur and a stick-up artist—are threatened by a burgeoning corporate America defined by corruption and criminality. Based on John H. Reese's novel The Looters, Siegel's first post-Dirty Harry effort is a white-knuckle thriller equally indebted to film noir (in its fatalistic...
What's new is always old, and in this recurring column, I'll be taking a look at the classic genre movies that have influenced today's new releases. In honor of the all-star Tower Heist, this week it's Don Siegel's Walter Matthau-headlined 1973 crime saga Charley Varrick.
"The Last of the Independents" is the tagline for Charley Varrick's (Walter Matthau) failed crop-dusting business—which was driven into the ground by big combine competition—and it's a description that aptly applies to the protagonist of Don Siegel's 1973 heist film Charley Varrick. Varrick is a man for whom the archaic ways—as both an entrepreneur and a stick-up artist—are threatened by a burgeoning corporate America defined by corruption and criminality. Based on John H. Reese's novel The Looters, Siegel's first post-Dirty Harry effort is a white-knuckle thriller equally indebted to film noir (in its fatalistic...
- 11/4/2011
- GreenCine Daily
I long for the days when Women in Prison flicks were a dime a dozen, and although they will never be made as often as they used to, Sugar Boxx is here to bring back that sleazy goodness from long ago! Francesca ‘Kitten’ Natividad has gone back to her roots after working with Russ Meyer in the 70′s on the skinsploitation movie Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens.
Sugar Boxx hits DVD on March 15, 2011.
Sugar State Women’s Prison. An Everglades hellhole where innocent girls are forced to slave in the swamps by day then turn tricks for the warden by night. A prison camp where corruption, brutality, and sexual abuse are all part of the daily routine. But when reporter Valerie March goes undercover inside Sugar State, that’s when the powder keg really explodes! Follow Valerie through prison life – catfights, knife fights, rape, whippings, prostitution, and the “hot...
Sugar Boxx hits DVD on March 15, 2011.
Sugar State Women’s Prison. An Everglades hellhole where innocent girls are forced to slave in the swamps by day then turn tricks for the warden by night. A prison camp where corruption, brutality, and sexual abuse are all part of the daily routine. But when reporter Valerie March goes undercover inside Sugar State, that’s when the powder keg really explodes! Follow Valerie through prison life – catfights, knife fights, rape, whippings, prostitution, and the “hot...
- 1/16/2011
- by Jason Bene
- Killer Films
The new Captain Kirk’s real Dad, Robert Pine, has a “cocktail conversation” about battling Empire Of The Ants.
Audiences are getting accustomed to Chris Pine as the newJames T. Kirk in J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek, but not many people know that he comes from an acting family, including his grandmother (the late Anne Gwynne, seen in House Of Frankenstein and 1941’s The Black Cat), his Mom (Masters Of The Universe’s Gwynne Gilford) and his Dad, Robert Pine—who’s best known as the boss on TV’s CHiPs and the Mayor on Black Scorpion. And, of course, the elder Pine was also part of the anti-insect ensemble in Empire Of The Ants.
Robert Pine offers his testimony on the experience: “My agent told me, ‘I’ve got a film for you. It’s called Empire Of The Ants.’ I thought about it for a moment and said, ‘You know…...
Audiences are getting accustomed to Chris Pine as the newJames T. Kirk in J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek, but not many people know that he comes from an acting family, including his grandmother (the late Anne Gwynne, seen in House Of Frankenstein and 1941’s The Black Cat), his Mom (Masters Of The Universe’s Gwynne Gilford) and his Dad, Robert Pine—who’s best known as the boss on TV’s CHiPs and the Mayor on Black Scorpion. And, of course, the elder Pine was also part of the anti-insect ensemble in Empire Of The Ants.
Robert Pine offers his testimony on the experience: “My agent told me, ‘I’ve got a film for you. It’s called Empire Of The Ants.’ I thought about it for a moment and said, ‘You know…...
- 6/3/2009
- by no-reply@starlog.com (TOM WEAVER)
- Starlog
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