Susan Tolsky Movies

Although the concept of a children's cartoon series starring a cast of flying insects was hardly original to The Buzz on Maggie, this weekly, half-hour Disney Channel series set itself apart from such earlier endeavors as Honeybee Hutch and Maya the Bee by relying upon computer-generated imagery rather than traditional cel animation. The series was set in Stickyfeet, a city largely populated by flies. Heroine Maggie, who in "anime" tradition boasted an oversized head and enormous eyes (with lashes!), was fun-loving and adventurous. Her efforts to buck convention and explore the world beyond Maggie drove her friends and family crazy and often placed herself in jeopardy, but in general her strong, forceful attitude proved a positive role model for the kids at home. Other characters included Maggie's older brother Aldrin, her kid brother Pupert, Aldrin's girlfriend Dawn, and Maggie's best friend Rayna. After debuted over the Disney Channel on June 17, 2005, The Buzz on Maggie was picked up by sister network ABC in the fall of that same year. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

It's plate-carriers vs. plungers when Alice (Linda Lavin), Vera (Beth Howland) and Jolene (Celia Weston) participate in a TV quiz show. The category is "musical trivia", and the girls' competition consists of a trio of plumbers, led by peppery oldster Louie (Cliff Norton). For a while, it looks like the waitresses are going to win--but that's when the competition starts flushing up the dirty tricks. This episode was codirected by series regular Vic Tayback (Mel). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Mel (Vic Tayback) must undergo minor surgery for a deviated septum. While at the hospital, Mel wonders if it might be worth it to have a full-scale nose job--an idea which gives pause not only to the doctor (Kenneth Mars), but also to Mel's waitresses. And by the way, take a close look at that old picture of Mel's "father". ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Tommy (Philip McKeon) is bedevilled by a bully at school, but Alice (Linda Lavin) refuses to let him fight back. Taking matters in hand, Mel (Vic Tayback) goes over Alice's head and teaches Tommy a few fast moves with his fists. The result: Tommy knocks the bully on his keester--and ends up getting suspended. Somehow all this leads to a bizarre denoument in which Mel poses as Alice's husband! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

George Hamilton confounded his detractors by turning in a first-rate comic performance in Love at First Bite. Hamilton plays Count Dracula, who is evicted from his Transylvanian domicile when the Communist government decides to nationalize his castle. With faithful toady Renfield (Arte Johnson) at his side, Dracula heads for the Big Apple, where he finds the vampire pickings radically different from those on his home turf: for example, ol' Drac suffers the mother of all hangovers when his sinks his fangs into the neck of a wino. Klutzy Cindy Sondheim (Susan Saint James) falls in love with Dracula, not fully aware of his colorful background. But Cindy's stuffy fiance Dr. Jeff Rosenberg (Richard Benjamin), a descendant of Dracula's perennial foe Professor Van Helsing, knows what Dracula's up to and does his best to thwart the vampire's plan. This proves very difficult, since such time-honored remedies as the stake through the heart are frowned upon by the New York City authorities. So successful was Love at First Bite that Hamilton was encouraged to have a satiric go at another literary icon in 1982's Zorro, the Gay Blade. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Season Three of Quincy M.E. gets off to a running start when Quincy (Jack Klugman) is interrupted during a nocturnal romantic rendezvous by the sudden arrival of his old friend Carl Hopwood, an investigative reporter. It is obvious that Hopwood has been beaten and mutilated, but before Quincy can find out what has happened, his friend dies. Rushing the body to the police morgue, Quincy performs an autopsy without witnesses and personally records the vital lab data. The next morning, Quincy returns to the morgue to find that the body has disappeared...and with it all evidence that an autopsy ever occurred. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Ocean View High is an upscale suburban school in an otherwise unidentified community. It's 1971, the point when the sexual revolution started moving into full swing and even a lot of Middle America, at least on the two coasts, admitted the existence of same revolution. It seems like the guys and girls at Ocean View are all loving pretty freely, and that extends to the school's resident faculty hero, football coach/guidance counselor "Tiger" McDrew (Rock Hudson), who -- despite his being married, with a child -- has been bedding many of the prettiest girls at the school. The only kid seemingly not "getting any" is Ponce de Leon Harper (John David Carson), who is starting to get neurotic and suffer academically, so much so that he seeks advice from McDrew, especially where his new substitute teacher, Miss Smith (Angie Dickinson), is concerned. But then various girls start turning up at the school dead, in various states of undress, with cryptic notes pinned to intimate parts of their anatomy. The lunkhead county sheriff (Keenan Wynn) is forced to defer to a state police investigator (Telly Savalas), who starts nosing around the school and uncovers more than he bargained for in terms of libidinous students, among other problems. Meanwhile, Ponce finds his problem taken care of by Miss Smith, at McDrew's request. But there's still a killer stalking the school.

If the plot and ambience of this movie seems shocking today, that's because it would be. Made at the outset of the sexual revolution, this was MGM's desperate attempt to run with the times, in terms of depicting a high school where sexual relations between students are considered routine and even those between faculty and students are accepted as long as they're kept quiet. Anyone trying to make such a movie in 2006 would face threats of prosecution, investigation, etc., and probably find it impossible to get the movie booked into theaters; MGM didn't have that easy a time in 1971, though (amazingly) the movie has been shown on television. Precisely what director Roger Vadim brought to Gene Roddenberry's screenplay (based on a novel by Francis Pollini) is difficult to tell, though he at least makes the sleazy and tawdry, smirky sex scenes and leering camera shots flow smoothly -- screenplay, director, and cameraman alike are fixated on the female anatomy throughout, though not in as distinctive a manner as Russ Meyer and his attachment to breasts. The presence of a couple of Star Trek co-stars and supporting villains, James Doohan and William Campbell, also makes this especially weird to watch. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Robert Brown, David Soul, and Bobby Sherman were the stars of Here Come The Brides, which ran on ABC from September of 1968 until April of 1970, portraying Jason, Joshua, and Jeremy Bolt, respectively. The three brothers, living in Seattle in the year 1865, own nearby Bridal Veil Mountain. Left to them by their parents, who died some years before -- while Joshua and Jeremy were very young boys -- the mountain is a potentially vast source of timber, and provides employment for much of the area. But in the opening episode, the Bolts are about to lose all of their loggers because of the sheer remoteness of the Pacific Northwest, and the lack of one thing that the men regard as essential: Women -- more specifically, young, respectable, marriageable women. Jason Bolt (Robert Brown) strikes a bargain with the loggers: He'll bring 100 women to Seattle, all of marriageable age and seeking husbands, who will stay at least a year, if the men will keep working. In order to raise the money for the voyage east, the Bolts are forced to take a loan from Aaron Stempel (Mark Lenard), the owner of the local sawmill, which comes with one pre-condition -- if any of the women leaves in less than a year, the Bolts will default on the loan and ownership of the mountain will pass to Stempel. Jason, Joshua, and Jeremy head to New Bedford, Massachusetts, a city left largely bereft of younger men in the wake of the ravages of the Civil War, and find women doing all sorts of jobs usually done by men -- the first time they meet Candy Pruitt (Bridget Hanley), she's doing maintenance on a fire engine. It requires some selling (and conning) by Jason to get 100 women to go west, on a broken-down mule boat commanded by Captain Roland Francis Clancy (Henry Beckman). They're disenchanted with the boat and the town that they find at the end of their journey, but Candy Pruitt, who becomes they're de facto leader, is persuaded to stay on and persuades the rest of the women to try it for a year. She also develops the beginnings of a romantic attraction to Jeremy Bolt (Bobby Sherman). The youngest and most sensitive of the brothers, Jeremy talks with a stutter, which tends to make him sound even less sure of himself than he really is. Joshua Bolt (David Soul), the middle brother, is often caught between Jeremy and oldest brother Jason, acting as an intermediary between the two. The series' conflicts are often resolved with help from Lottie Hatfield (Joan Blondell), the owner of the local saloon, who becomes something of a mother hen to the New Bedford women. The other key characters on the show included Aaron Stempel, the sawmill owner who, in the first season, often played the role of villain in his attempts to maneuver the Bolts into losing their bet and their mountain. Also prominent in many episodes was Big Swede (Bo Svenson), the strongest of the loggers, Biddie Cloom (Susan Tolsky), Candy Pruitt's closest friend, and Captain Clancy, the mule boat captain, whose interest in Miss Lottie brings him back to Seattle on a regular basis. Most of the episodes dealt with the Bolts struggling to meet quotas and keep the women happy, or the romantic conflicts that inevitably resulted from men and women living in relatively spartan conditions amid competing relationships, although there were also episodes that focused on the complex relationship between the Bolt brothers, and Jason's dual-role as sibling/patriarch; and other episodes that addressed issues of racism and other prejudices, amid the rapidly changing post-Civil War world. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide