By Erin Free
In this regular column, we drag forgotten made-for-TV movies out of the vault and into the light. This week: the James Brolin double feature of Short Walk To Daylight (1972) and Trapped (1973).
A big, strapping, impossibly handsome American man, James Brolin has always enjoyed greater success on television than the big screen, despite his towering frame and considerable charisma. Though he has a decent-sized list of strong feature film credits on his resume – Westworld (1973), The Car (1977), Capricorn One (1977), The Amityville Horror (1979), Night Of The Juggler (1980), Gas Food Lodging (1992), Traffic (2000) and more – Brolin is perhaps best known for his leading turn on the popular 1980s TV series Hotel; his decades-long relationship with Barbra Streisand; his siring of Thanos himself, Josh Brolin; and his very impressive slate of TV series and telemovie appearances. There’s plenty of good stuff in there (including 1983’s Cowboy and 1991’s And The Sea Will Tell), but two of Brolin’s most impressive small screen flicks also happen to mark two of his earliest leading roles: the 1972 disaster thriller Short Walk To Daylight (1972) and the claustrophobic suspenser Trapped (1973).
With a decent-looking TV budget and instant cache in the form of director Barry Shear (who helmed the 1968 cult classic Wild In The Streets and the 1972 crime drama Across 110th Street) and co-writer Gerald Di Pego (who would later pen the 1981 Burt Reynolds belter Sharky’s Machine, along with the notorious Linda Blair-behind-bars 1974 telemovie Born Innocent), Short Walk To Daylight begins like a typical 1970s “urban panic” flick, as a selection of disparate, nervous travellers wait for a train on a graffiti-smeared, rubbish-strewn New York City subway platform straight out of Walter Hill’s The Warriors.
As uptown party girls Joanne and Sylvia (Brooke Bundy, Suzanne Charny) check their safety whistle and fret over the icy glare of vaguely threatening African-American man Alvin (the super-cool Ed Mitchell), two hippies (Lazaro Perez and future Battlestar Galactica star Laurette Spang) hang noisily, while hard-working African-American woman Dorella (the commanding Abbey Lincoln, also a singer of note) just wants to get home to her kids. Tensions ease in some parties and bristle further in others with the appearance of young NYPD beat cop Tom Phelan (James Brolin). The relationships flex and twist a little more once this potentially volatile group finally boards the train, and that’s when things take an even more intense and explosive turn. After an earthquake rips through New York above, the hard-barrelling train is thrown off the tracks, and the group is left stranded amongst the twisted wreckage and scattered debris of the subway tunnel in which it lies hopelessly derailed.
Tensions hit boiling point when the group begins to battle over what to do next. Officer Phelan takes charge, but his leadership is challenged first by the cop-hating Alvin, and also by experienced African-American railway engineer Ed (character actor James McEachin gives a terrifically authoritative and engaging performance), the man driving the derailed train. Racial unease comes into play as the group decides to leave the train carriage and forge onward in an effort to return to the surface. From there, Short Walk To Daylight plays out almost like a slimmed-down version of that same year’s disaster movie classic The Poseidon Adventure, as the varied group of characters is forced to work together in order to survive. Tensions thaw as the group battles through fallen concrete and underground floods, but an air of existential dread hangs dark and heavy over proceedings, as nobody really knows what awaits them above in the aftermath of the earthquake.
In just a tight 73 minutes of screen time, director Barry Shear expertly and imaginatively packs Short Walk To Daylight with action and incident. The obstacles that our unlikely team of survivors have to surmount are both thrilling and heartbreaking, while the slow easing of prejudices between the white and African-American characters gives the film a richness that also provides a real sense of light in the darkness. James Brolin is excellent as the initially cocky Tom Phelan, who tries desperately and heroically to remain in control even while he slowly admits to himself that he is hopelessly out of his depth. Phelan’s exchanges with the streetwise Alvin and no-nonsense railway engineer Ed (who emerges as a particularly compelling character) crackle with energy as the three men spar verbally while the world falls down around them.
For a film of its era, Short Walk To Daylight also enjoyably offers up a collection of great female characters too, with Joanne and Sylvia eventually established as much more than just vapid party girls, while Dorella’s desperate need to reunite with her children gives the film a real sense of emotional heft. With characters you really care about, a string of memorable set-pieces, and an abundance of white-knuckle excitement, Short Walk To Daylight is a highly impressive small screen disaster flick imbued with grit, and effectively grounded in the social realities of its era.
The following year, James Brolin found himself imperiled once again, this time in 1973’s Trapped, another taut thriller. This smart, canny, claustrophobic little thriller was the work of writer/director Frank De Felitta, who later achieved fame as the author of the supernatural-themed novels Audrey Rose and The Entity, for which he also wrote the screenplays for their eventual big screen adaptations. After the exciting Trapped, De Felitta went on to direct 1979’s impressive telemovie The Two Worlds Of Jennie Logan and 1981’s Dark Knight Of The Scarecrow, without question one of the best horror-genre telemovies of all time. The premise of Trapped is almost ridiculously simple – James Brolin is menaced by a pack of guard dogs after getting stuck in a department store overnight – but it’s what happens around the central plot that really makes the film interesting.
When Trapped kicks off, Brolin’s Chuck Brenner is introduced as something of a swaggering 1970s macho man: he’s dressed in urban cowboy chic, he smokes (indoors!) with a cigarette holder, and his ex-wife Elaine (Susan Clark) hurls a few lightly barbed insults about him being an unfaithful cad with a fondness for alcohol. Chuck, however, is much loved by his young daughter, who he’s shopping for when he’s mugged in the rest room of a large department store. Left unconscious in a stall by his two attackers, Chuck isn’t noticed by store security, and awakes to find a pack of ferocious guard dogs of various terrifying breeds roaming the aisles. As Chuck fends off the vicious canines and searches desperately for a safe way out, Elaine’s new husband David (Earl Holliman) surprisingly emerges as Chuck’s most likely saviour. Nice guy David knows that Chuck wouldn’t miss his pre-arranged visit with his daughter, and he pushes Elaine into going to the police, where David convinces the doubtful, by-the-book Sergeant Connaught (Robert Hooks) to mount an early investigation into Chuck’s disappearance.
Though in most suspense films, this kind of domestic drama would slow things down, it’s written with such flair by Frank De Felitta and played with such assurance by all of the players that it actually creates real ballast for the film’s main thrust, which is how Brolin’s Chuck must dig dip to survive. The guard dogs that chase, gnaw and violently gnash at him are in fact so horrendously ferocious that the viewer begins to wonder if there are safes full of gold or state secrets hidden somewhere in this seemingly standard-looking department store. At a tight, early-1970s-standard-telemovie-running-time of 74 minutes, Trapped (which was theatrically released in Europe under the erroneous title of Doberman Patrol…there are also Alsatians and other canines in the vicious mix, thank you very much!) never flags for a moment, gripping the audience tight and standing as a cynophobic nightmare rivalled only by the likes of Stephen King’s Cujo and Samuel Fuller’s White Dog.
As well as being excellent examples of the early 1970s telemovie form, Short Walk To Daylight and Trapped are also interesting entries in the James Brolin canon, showcasing this confident, towering, charismatic, profoundly masculine, and most American (and most underrated) of actors at a more youthful, uncertain time, with his brash cockiness hotly and compellingly tested by two very different but equally arresting forms of small screen adversity.
Availability: Short Walk To Daylight and Trapped are both out there online, in slightly ropy but certainly watchable form.
If you enjoyed this review, check out our other vintage telemovies Hotline, Killdozer, The Jericho Mile, Death Car On The Freeway, Mongo’s Back In Town, Tribes and And The Band Played On.
