Although known for movies with overgrown critters (i.e. Empire of the Ants, Food of the Gods, Earth vs. the Spider and so many more), writer/director/producer Bert I. Gordon flirted with reality — comparatively, at least — in 1973’s The Mad Bomber.

Also known by the nonsensical and inaccurate title of The Police Connection, the film casts Chuck Connors (Tourist Trap) as William Dorn, a bespectacled man with a strong moral code when it comes to keeping the city clean, showing respect for others and honoring sales in grocery circulars, yet has no problem blowing innocent strangers to kibbles and bits with his homemade bombs of dynamite sticks and alarm clocks. Placed into unassuming brown bags and dropped off at such locales as a high school, a mental hospital and a women’s lib meeting (!), the contraptions wreak terror throughout L.A.

At that middle spot, Dorn unknowingly gains an eyewitness to his crimes: serial rapist George Fromley (Neville Brand, Eaten Alive), whose M.O. is taping shut the mouths of his victims, then ripping off their tops to let their breasts fly free. For Lt. Minneli (Vince Edwards, Cellar Dweller), the key to identifying the bomber is nabbing Fromley. Pleads the lieutenant to the police chief, “Let me blanket the city with policewomen just asking to be raped! I’ll bring him in!” (Cue a montage of handsy, horny men going hormonally insane on various ladies strutting their stuff in the dead of night.)

Even with such cuckoo elements as Dorn trying to kill Minneli with a sidecar-equipped motorcycle, and Fromley masturbating to nudie loops of his own wife, The Mad Bomber is played more or less straight, especially by Gordon’s unrestrained standards. Its mix of crime-story grit and exploitation-film sleaze works exceedingly well on such low expectations. Yep, it’s dynamite. —Rod Lott

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Are You in the House Alone?! is the question posed over the phone to straight-A student Gail Osborne (Kathleen Beller, The Sword and the Sorcerer) while babysitting. While anonymous and unsettling, the connection is not as iconic as the one a year later When a Stranger Calls, asking Carol Kane if she’s checked the children.

The tele-terror is merely one piece of a multitiered plan of harassment from an unknown admirer/stalker who also places threatening notes in Gail’s school locker. It puts the damper on a burgeoning romance between her and new beau Steve (Scott Colomby, the Porky’s saga), who is disliked by Gail’s high-strung mother (Blythe Danner, Meet the Parents) for breaking curfew. Worse, the badgering escalates into rape. I didn’t spoil anything, either; director Walter Grauman (Paper Man) does that in the first scene before segueing into an hour-long flashback.

This being the late 1970s, it’s suggested that Gail’s case against her attacker is a losing proposition due to her not being a virgin — an attitude every bit as dated as the atrocious hairstyles and fashions on display.

For being made for television, Are You in the House Alone?! does a fair job of building some suspense, but once the narrative circles back to the beginning, it makes a complete tonal shift from thriller to drama — and not just a drama, but one with an overly moralizing Afterschool Special feel. Viewers practically can see the seeds of many of a Lifetime movie being planted before their eyes; ultimately, the pic is most notable for giving Dennis Quaid one of his earliest roles. —Rod Lott

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