Have you ever stopped to think about just how important the element of surprise is to Halloween? Of course, there’s the “surprise” that comes from someone jumping out of the shadows to approaching trick-or-treaters or some yard prop waiting to light up and make spooky sounds as we walk bye. However, there are small surprises that are just as important. As kids, there’s also the surprise that comes with seeing what costumes your friends will be wearing or, more importantly, the surprise of finding that one house that’s giving out full-sized candy bars.

As we all know, horror is no different. We’re all familiar with many of the “surprises” that the genre regularly tries to fool us with, such as when we discover that the killer is not actually dead (okay, that one’s never all that surprising) or that the killer was someone that we never expected. Today’s Halloween Horrors 2024 topic deals with the concept of having its villain be someone that most people would never expect, albeit through its casting.

Our good friend and frequent series contributor Sam Panico returns to the Halloween series today with a look at a film that stands out from the other films being covered during this year’s series in that it is the only made-for-TV film on the list. However, as Sam points out, that in no way makes it lesser than or inferior to the theatrical releases on our list.

Although Sam provided us with a brief list of his projects and accomplishments, I felt obligated to add to it as I personally feel it may be selling him a little short. As anyone who has ever joined us for the Drive-In Asylum Double Features or read any of the umpteen reviews that he makes to produce each and every day can tell you, the man is a walking encyclopedia of cult film knowledge which, luckily for us, he is always ready to share.

Savages (1974)

 

Sam Panico is the writer of B&S About Movies (www.bandsaboutmovies.com), as well as the host of the podcast of the same name and the co-host of the Drive-In Asylum Double Feature, a weekly videocast with Bill Van Ryn. His commentaries have been featured in several releases from Visual Vengeance, and when he isn’t watching movies, he’s watching movies.

 The novel Deathwatch won writer Robb White the 1973 Edgar Award for Best Juvenile Mystery from the Mystery Writers of America and was recognized as an Outstanding Book of the Year by The New York Times. The son of Episcopal missionaries, after a career in the Navy and as an engineer, White originally wrote from the island of Tortola, a locale so beset with insects that he would lug his typewriter onto his boat and sail out to get away from them. He also served time in the Navy during World War II as a pilot before getting back to a full-time writing career, during which he wrote for numerous magazines under several names (and even wrote stories for women under female pen names), as well as 24 novels, innumerable TV shows, and contributing to the William Castle movies Macabre, 13 Ghosts, Homicidal, The Tingler and House on Haunted Hill.

The majority of his fame – although his books are out of print today – comes from his books being sold during Scholastic book fairs. Up Periscope comes from one of his novels, as does Virgin Island, based on his memoir of when he and his wife owned an eight-acre island, Marina Cay.

While I’m uncertain if you appreciate the history lesson of this film’s writer, I wanted to share with you that this comes from a place of establishment, a known entity. In the same way, the star of this film, Andy Griffith, is also of that expected quantity. By 1974, when this was made, America saw him as a father figure, a gentle policeman who always made the right decisions in Mayberry. Perhaps they forgot his dark turn in A Face In the Crowd, but six years after the end of The Andy Griffith Show, the actor was able to stretch himself in roles in TV movies. The same year this was made, Pray for the Wildcats saw him play Sam Farragut, a businessman who makes three ad agencies compete for his business while manipulating them in the wildness of the desert. The success of this film led to Griffith exploring darker roles.

By playing against type, Savages puts you on edge by twenty minutes into its runtime.

Los Angeles lawyer Horton Madec (Griffith) – “That’s my business, making people say yes” – has been working for years to get a permit to hunt bighorn sheep in the Mojave Desert. Gas station attendant Ben (Sam Bottoms) is hired to take this cosmopolitan hunter out to where the sheep congregate and help him score his trophy. Seeing as how Ben is studying to be a geologist and grew up in the region, he knows the desert quite well.

Madec shoots a female ewe instead of his prey and the two agree that while this is a major error and against hunting laws, they can just bury the body and move on, as they are completely alone. As Ben prepares to dig a hole for the animal, he’s horrified to learn that Madec has shot a human being. Even worse, it’s his mentor, a prospector named Winnie Haas.

Ben is idealized in this tale, much as Madec is presented as an archetype of villainy. He puts his case forward that they need to go into town and share their mistake. The older man informs him that he has too much to live for and is too important for jail time. Therefore, if Ben won’t take a payoff, he can take a bullet. He makes his guide strip while informing him that he’s going to tell the authorities that Ben went crazy from the heat and killed Winnie.

However, Ben knows the desert better than Madec and runs for it. What he doesn’t know is that Madec is using this as an opportunity to hunt the world’s most dangerous game, man. Every time Ben feels like he’s gotten away, the lawyer blasts away at him.

The body of this movie is spent learning how a shirtless and shoeless Ben can make it through the desert, using the survival skills that the old prospector taught him to defeat the much better-equipped and more cunning Madec.

Speaking of typecasting, James Best plays one of the police officers in this, Sheriff Bert Hamilton. Beyond acting in several films and being a noted acting teacher (Quentin Tarantino is one of his pupils), he became best known as “Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane” on The Dukes of Hazzard. He’s joined by Noah Beery Jr., Jim Antonio and Randy Boone, all TV vets who played the rest of the lawmen in this effort.

Director Lee H. Katzin was another small screen vet, though he also helmed What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice, The Phynx and World Gone Wild. He has a strong script here from William Wood (Death Car On the Freeway, Haunts of the Very Rich) to work from.

It’s jarring to see Sheriff Andy/Matlock playing such a cold-blooded killer in this. He casually makes a cocktail while his young prey can barely keep his head together, hallucinating in the desert. And when they arrive back in civilization, he quickly turns the table on his adversary, using the power of money, seniority and, yes, expected character to nearly get Ben jailed for the rest of his life. While I applaud the conclusion of this film, the cynical side of me knows that when Madec is informed that he needs a lawyer and replies “I am a lawyer,” that same entrenched position he remains in will allow him to probably never be penalized for his crimes.

Savages is one of two films made from Deathwatch, with the other being 2014’s Beyond the Reach, with Michael Douglas as Madec and Jeremy Irvine as Ben. Yet my heart remains in the TV movies of the 70s as storytelling devices, cheap yet fully realized bursts of stereotype-defying tales that ran in-between commercials for dish soap and laundry detergent. I’m certain that for many who worked on these made for TV movies, it was just a job, yet even workmanlike efforts can yield diamonds when mined properly. Savages, while not horror, is perhaps more frightening, as it shows the depth of casual cruelty that man can often deliver onto one another.

EDITOR’S NOTE: As Savages was a made-for-TV film, there is no trailer for the film, nor was I able to find any television ads for the film. That said, I was able to find a link to watch the film in its entirety and have decided to post that in lieu of a trailer. Enjoy!