A Cold Night's Death

A Cold Night’s Death (1973)

Runtime: 74 minutes

Directed by: Jerrold Freedman

Starring: Robert Culp, Eli Wallach, Michael C. Gwynne

From: This was made for ABC Television

This proved to be a CHILLING made for television movie. For most of the 21st century, when many in the United States think of made for TV films they think of either the dreck on the SyFy Channel or now on the Lifetime Network or the schmaltz on the Hallmark Channel. However, those began in the middle of the 1960’s and from then until about 2000 they were a regular staple on all the major broadcast networks; they were treated seriously and some were even noteworthy, such as Carpenter’s Elvis, The Day After or Spielberg’s Duel. Horror-wise, of course there’s Salem’s Lot, It and Dark Night of the Scarecrow, which are musts for genre fans. Scariest of all was the Star Wars Holiday Special, but anyhow…

This film (originally broadcast on ABC) in particular I’ve known of for years yet it wasn’t until last night that I gave it a whirl. A big reason is that most of the copies floating out there are either in horrible quality, are not the full 74 minutes in length or are dubbed in another language. How I saw this: archive.org. There’s a service I hope stays around forever… probably won’t but that’s another topic for another time. The plot was simple: a scientist named Vogel doing research on monkeys in a lab on top of a snow-covered mountain apparently goes bonkers so Robert Culp and Eli Wallach fly in via helicopter to complete the project. Of course weird events occur and the viewer isn’t sure if there’s something supernatural or one of our two stars is experiencing a mental health crisis like Vogel did.

After the first twenty minutes, it is just Culp and Wallach on screen and it was a treat seeing those two old pros play off of each other; as characters who have opposing viewpoints, conflict in such a frozen tundra was natural. The howling wind outside is nearly ever-present so that element plus an awesome early 70’s Moog score from Gil Melle from The Andromeda Strain fame set the mood. To address the chimpanzee in the room, comparisons to Carpenter’s The Thing are obvious and while this of course doesn’t rise to those heights, it would still work as the B-movie you watch after The Thing if you want a full night as both are built around mysteries and paranoia.

Reviews have been seen elsewhere where not everyone appreciated the ending; their opinion won’t be slighted yet I did like the direction the filmmakers chose. Once in awhile I’ll see more TV movies and perhaps even a miniseries or two. I’ll return tomorrow a few hours earlier than normal due to my schedule.