Journey to the Unknown (1969 TV Movie)
5/10
I must go now. Matakitas is coming.
8 July 2022
Warning: Spoilers
Yep. You heard that right. In the first segment of this two part British TV movie, Vera Miles says to Gay Wallace, "My names June. What's yours?" Instant camp alert, added to the fact that Joan Crawford hosted each segment in a glamorous but hysterically "cute" manner. The first part of the film has Miles as a librarian researching the case of a young girl murdered in the library years before and learning that a devil worshiper named Matakitas was responsible, and when she's walking the library, she learns that she's somehow back in time to the night of that murder. It's obvious who the victim is, with Leon Lissek completely over-the-top as an evil being. Considering that Miles is by herself for the majority of the segment and speaks the dialog as a monologue, she does quite a good job.

For the second half of the film, Patty Duke leads, playing a working girl in need of a rest who goes to a quiet bed and breakfast and doesn't find any rest thanks to an intruder in her room and her certainly that the kindly owner (a hysterically funny Joan Newell) is hiding something. But the owner and maid insists that there is no one else there which leads Duke to explore the inn and discovers a locked room with footsteps coming from inside. It's not as campy as the first half, and the mystery isn't as intriguing. But the mixture of supernatural horror (popular on TV in the 1970's) and mystery does result in a decent time filler of two episodes of this British TV series that didn't give Crawford much to do, at least not here, except play hostess with the mostest, especially with that big hair extension she's wearing.
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