What are your favorite "Made for TV" movies? (GLBTQ subplots preferred!)

[+ FrankR]

My favorites include Ron Oliver's Donald Strachey series (based on the books by Richard Stevenson). I mean, Chad Allen AND Sebastian Spence...what more could you want in terms of eye candy??

 

Any other suggestions? Thanks!

[+ poolboy48220]

Some of the old classics from "ABC Movie of the Week". Duel (early Spielberg) and The Night Stalker.

 

"Trilogy of Terror", three independent stories all starring Karen Black. The last bit with the African totem doll chasing her through her apartment has given MANY people nightmares. I watched it with my roommate and his girlfriend, she left the room she was so scared; found out later she'd gone to the bathroom to throw up she was so frightened.

 

Not sure if Made for HBO counts, but I heard the tail end of a scathing review of HBO's Fahrenheit 451 last night. The reviewer concluded saying something like "Bradbury [the author of the novel Fahrenheit 451] was making a point that people should read. People should read the book rather that watch this disappointing movie".

[Gvtire]

Doing Time on Maple Drive

The original Brian Song

Always Remember I Love You

[+ Robster]

Consenting Adult

An Early Frost

 

I love the Donald Strachey films too. I wish they'd made more of them.

 

Rob

[samhexum]

(sorry, not gay themes)

THE MAKING OF A MALE MODEL... starring some guy I vaguely remember.

 

The Girl Most Likely to... is a black comedy with slight psychological thriller elements written by Joan Rivers and Agnes Gallin, and starring Stockyard Channing and Ed Asner. The film was released on November 6, 1973 as a made-for-television film broadcast on the ABC Movie of the Week.

 

"Stoned" is a 1980 ABC Afterschool Special starring Scott Baio which is built around peer pressure and its resultant drug abuse. It was featured as the fourth episode in the program's ninth season. Jack Melon (Baio) is a gangling and awkward teenage freshman who doesn't fit in at his local high school. He winds up becoming a pothead after first resisting offers from friends.

 

I watched this alone in my apt at college my junior year. I had some pot that I'd gotten when a friend came up to visit at the start of the semester, but I'd never smoked alone. Baio was having so much fun as a stoner that I said "hey, why not?" & lit up. Then I listened to music while high for the first time. The rest is history.

 

I blame Scott Baio for my pot habit. He owes me a lot of money (as well as a new set of lungs).

 

 

Here's a gay-themed one:

 

Alexander: The Other Side of Dawn (the sequel to Dawn: Portrait of A Teenage Runaway)

(not to be confused with Sarah T: Portrait of A Teenage Alcoholic) (Or Donny T: Portrait of A Whiny Bitch Orangutan)

 

Cast

• Leigh McCloskey as Alexander Duncan
  
• Eve Plumb as Dawn Wetherby
  
• Juliet Mills as Myra
  
• Jean Hagen as Landlady
  
• Lonny Chapman as Eddie Duncan
  
• Earl Holliman as Ray Church
  
• Alan Feinstein as Charles Selby
  

Alexander Duncan (McCloskey), a country-boy-turned-Hollywood-hustler, tries to find legitimate work in order to marry a teenaged prostitute (Plumb) he had hoped to rehabilitate, but he gets involved with a gay football pro (Feinstein).

Edited May 19, 2018 by samhexum

[+ Avalon]

"Maurice" with pretty Rupert Graves

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_(film)

[samhexum]

"Maurice" with pretty Rupert Graves

 

That wasn't a made for TV movie.

[+ Avalon]

That wasn't a made for TV movie.

 

My apologies; I wasn't thinking. Again sorry.

 

Here's one that starred Brendan Fraser

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Twilight_of_the_Golds_(film)

[+ WmClarke]

The Girl Most Likely to... is a black comedy with slight psychological thriller elements written by Joan Rivers and Agnes Gallin, and starring Stockyard Channing and Ed Asner. The film was released on November 6, 1973 as a made-for-television film broadcast on the ABC Movie of the Week.

Loved this movie as a kid when it first aired. Bought it on dvd a while ago.

[+ WilliamM]

Here's one that starred Brendan Fraser

 

I saw Brendan Fraser in a Tennessee Williams play in London in 2001. I know I am off-topic. Just wonder why he did so little theater.

[+ Avalon]

I saw Brendan Fraser in a Tennessee Williams play in London in 2001. I know I am off-topic. Just wonder why he did so little theater.

 

No idea. His Wiki bio says that he was sexually assaulted in 2003.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Fraser#Personal_life

[Mo Mason]

"Prayers for Bobby" ripped my heart out and stomped it into the floor. Sigourney Weaver was so terrific in it.

 

If HBO stuff counts I'd add "The Normal Heart" and "And the Band Played On."

[+ WilliamM]

• 
   
  

 

 

 

Concerning Brendan Fraser:

 

Theatre

The gothic laughter of Tennessee Williams

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Lyric Shaftesbury, London

Rating ****

Michael Billington

 

@billicritic

Wed 19 Sep 200119.00 EDTFirst published on Wed 19 Sep 2001 19.00 EDT

 

 

 

Which is better? The consoling lie or the unpalatable truth? This is the enduring theme of American drama from O'Neill onwards, and it's certainly what animates Tennessee Williams's once-banned, emotional pile-driver of a play now getting one of its rare but welcome London revivals.

 

Seeing it again, I'm struck by how close Williams skates to melodrama. What is at stake here is Big Daddy's Mississippi Delta inheritance, which consists of "28,000 acres of the richest land this side of the valley Nile". He desperately wants the land to pass to his son, Brick, an alcoholic ex-football player plagued by self-disgust. In the first act we see Brick taunted and provoked by his sexually desperate, childless wife, Maggie. And in the second, even more powerful act we see Brick forced to confront his sexual ambivalence, while Big Daddy comes face to face with his own impending death.

 

If I invoke melodrama it's because Brick is obviously a damaged idealist, while Gooper, his fraternal rival for the estate, is a grasping lawyer. This is good guys versus bad guys. The qualities that lift the play into another sphere are Williams's gift for gothic comedy and the supple, sinuous nature of his prose. Williams was always a humourist, and Maggie's sexual rage is made all the sharper by her detestation of her sister-in-law's children, whom she accurately categorises as "no-neck monsters". And his language, even if it sometimes strives for poetry, has a deadly accuracy - as when Maggie tells Brick that "We're not living together, we're occupying the same cage."

 

Anthony Page's new production does not efface memories of Howard Davies's at the National in 1988, but it gets across Williams's barbed comedy and emotional fervour, and it has the advantage of three American actors in the lead roles. Frances O'Connor's Maggie the cat has exactly the right feline sexiness, lust for territory and frantic restlessness. Brendan Fraser, in the more difficult role of Brick, strongly suggests a man whose senses are dulled by his prodigious alcohol intake but who has an acute sense of the corruption and mendacity that surrounds him.

 

Ned Beatty may not be as earth-larding as some Big Daddies, but he gives us all the character's chauvinist coarseness, savage humour and apprehension of death. And more than holding her own against her American colleagues, Gemma Jones memorably turns Big Mamma into a frightened and pathetic vulgarian who shows a bit too much bosom and totters around like an ambulatory rose garden. This is a production that captures well the passion and power of the state of Tennessee

[Boink]

There was a great, campy TV Movie in the early 1970s called WOMEN IN CHAINS, with Ida Lupino as a sadistic warden of a women's prison. It uses absolutely every women's prison cliche in the book - with a straight face. It probably even includes a GLBTQ subplot. Great fun.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067996/

[N13]

Loved this movie as a kid when it first aired. Bought it on dvd a while ago.

 

Had it on Video Tape, Was thrilled when the DVD came out. Watch it at least every two years. A Favorite!

[N13]

There was a great, campy TV Movie in the early 1970s called WOMEN IN CHAINS, with Ida Lupino as a sadistic warden of a women's prison. It uses absolutely every women's prison cliche in the book - with a straight face. It probably even includes a GLBTQ subplot. Great fun.

 

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067996/

 

A poor imitation of Eleonor Parker's "Caged".

[JayCeeKy]

Not really gay, but with Jan Michael Vincent in the lead role, it certainly had gay appeal. I'm speaking of "Tribes" an ABC Movie of the Week back in 1970.

 

[+ Avalon]

Not really gay, but with Jan Michael Vincent in the lead role, it certainly had gay appeal. I'm speaking of "Tribes" an ABC Movie of the Week back in 1970.

 

 

I remember that movie and also this one

 

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069217/ Sandcastles

 

I first saw Jan Michael Vincent in an episode of Dragnet. And he was in an episode of Marcus Welby where he played a gymnast.

 

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001821/ his IMDB info

[Youngmilkman]

The French tele-movie Just a Question of Love (Juste une question d'amour) is an unusually touching gay romance - realistic acting and plot, and not a sad ending.

[Guest InthePines]

Our Sons was unquestionably a cut above the standard made for television fair for the early nineties. Ann Margret and Julie Andrews were brilliant playing mothers of a gay couple, one of which is dying of AIDS. Hugh Grant was an unknown at the time, but also excellent in the film.

 

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102613/?ref_=nm_flmg_dr_13

 

Directed by John Erman, who also directed An Early Frost and Alexander: The Other Side of Dawn, (both gay themed made for television films), worked repeatedly with Margret and was considered a great actor's director.

[+ Avalon]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consenting_Adult_(film)

 

Stars Barry Tubb