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The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries

Galtar and the Golden Lance


            Dr. Charles Forbin (Eric Braeden) stands in the middle of an incredibly vast complex of reel-to-reel tapes, pilot lights, and punch tapes. This complex is named Colossus, and is the product of years of work toward a single goal: build a sophisticated and impregnable computer that can run America's missile defenses without interference from humans, and retaliate at once to any threat an enemy might pose.Clad in a white overall, he walks through the complex, a remote control in his hand, as he activates bank after bank of the huge complex. That done, he walks out of the complex, sealing huge vault doors behind him. The last door to close is the one to the outside of a mountain in Colorado. Once that door closes, it will never open--and even if anyone could get in, deadly radiation would kill him within minutes.Outside, the President (Gordon Pinsent), the Secretaries of Defense (Sid McCoy) and State (Byron Morrow), and the press greet him. He makes a brief speech, then flies to Washington, DC with the Presidential party.In the White House, the President orchestrates a grand announcement to declassify Project Colossus totally and let the world know what the United States has built. Forbin is on hand to explain what Colossus can do, and how it can monitor the state of the world, including every telephone call, radio and TV broadcast, or other mode of communication.Back in the primary command center on the California coast, Cleo Markham (Susan Clark) hosts a wild party with all the technicians who worked on the project, including Drs. Blake (Willard Sage), Johnson (Martin Brooks), Fisher (Georg Sanford Brown), Peterson (Lew Brown), and Harrison (Tom Basham), and secretary Angela Fields (Marin Ross).And in the middle of that celebration, Colossus abruptly issues a cryptic warning: THERE IS ANOTHER SYSTEM.The angry President summons Grauber (William Schallert), Director of Central Intelligence, to ask him why the [censored] he, the President, had to hear from Colossus, not from the CIA, that the Russians had a Colossus of their own! Forbin flies back to his command center to confer with Cleo and his staff. They run a diagnostic program--which runs about 150 times as fast as they're used to seeing. And then--a propos of nothing--Colossus requests--no, orders--everyone to set up a communications link between Colossus and Guardian, Colossus' Soviet counterpart.Intrigued by the possibilities, Forbin urges the President to set the link up. The President and the Soviet Party Chairman (Leonid Rostoff) agree.Colossus begins by sending Guardian a multiplication table, then progresses rapidly to calculus, then to very highly advanced mathematics. Next, Guardian starts sending the same output back to Colossus. Then Colossus slows down to let Guardian catch up, and then they continue with incredibly abstruse formulas in perfect synchrony.And then they stop. When Forbin asks Colossus to tell him what's happening, Colossus replies that it and Guardian have developed their own inter-system language and will start their own dialog--a high-powered dialog that no human can hope to follow.The Soviet Chairman calls the US President immediately and suggests pulling the plug, in fear that each system is disclosing classified information to the other. Forbin and his own counterpart, Kuprin (Alex Rodine), protest, to no avail.They cut off communications--and then Colossus demands they restore it. When the humans refuse, Colossus threatens "action," but won't say what. Then the President dictates a hard-nosed message to Colossus--which response by launching a missile at a Soviet oil complex. Guardian, for its part, launches a missile at Henderson AFB in Texas.Hurriedly, Forbin and Kuprin restore the link--and while Colossus can intercept the inbound missile, Guardian cannot--or does not--intercept the outbound. Colossus then demands the humans give it a tap into the White House/Kremlin Hot Line, the only line Colossus cannot--yet--listen in on.Forbin suggests making one last call over that line, to ask Kuprin to meet him in Rome. Forbin flies there, while the news desks explain away a stray missile that Colossus successfully intercepted, and a "meteor strike" that took out the oil complex.While Forbin is in Rome, Colossus issues another demand: "I WANT FORBIN." Cleo Markham desperately tries to stall Colossus by saying that Forbin is trying to catch some badly-needed sleep. But Colossus is not fooled. "WHERE IS FORBIN?" it demands. So Cleo confesses the truth.Colossus and Guardian engage in more dialog, while Colossus tells the humans to have Forbin on the line at 0800 the next morning "OR ACTION WILL BE TAKEN." Also: Guardian dictates an ultimatum to the Soviet authorities: kill Kuprin or a missile will take out Moscow.Once Forbin returns to the command center, Colossus orders him to arrange for "visual and audio surveillance" to cover him at all times--or the Colossus-Guardian team will nuke Washington. Forbin reluctantly agrees--but has one last meeting before the deadline. At this meeting he proposes three things:1. The technicians will write a program powerful enough to overload Colossus' circuits.2. The Air Force will painstakingly seek to disable all the missiles.3. Cleo Markham will pretend to be Forbin's mistress, and if Forbin can convince Colossus to let them have a little privacy in their lovemaking, Forbin can get information in and out, with Cleo as the channel.The next day, Forbin goes under surveillance, as agreed. In a dialog fraught with irony, Forbin gets Colossus to agree to let him and Cleo have private moments--under several almost humiliating conditions. Among them: that Forbin work with his technicians to give Colossus a proper voice, so that Colossus can communicate by more means than through slow terminals and teletypes.Cleo Markham succeeds in playing the part of a lover. Forbin keeps the relationship coldly professional as soon as the cameras and mikes are off--the first night. The second night, Cleo asks Forbin to make it somewhat more than professional. It becomes clear that Cleo has been in love with Forbin the whole time, though she knew him to be a cold fish, and is now availing herself of the opportunity to thaw him out.The overload program ends in worse than failure: Colossus correctly identifies Johnson and Fisher as the authors of the overload program and orders the guards to shoot them down--right outside Forbin's window, where they will lie where they fell overnight and until the next morning, when the guard will then cremate them. That night is another night for Cleo to visit Forbin, and Forbin breaks confinement to drink at night--which Colossus criticizes him for.The missile-crippling program, however, has another stroke of luck. When Colossus tries out its new voice (Paul Frees), it announces that Colossus and Guardian are now one corporate entity. Then it calls for manual realignment of all missiles to new targets--the capital cities of nation-states not under the direct control of either constituent mainframe. Grauber sees the point at once: in a few weeks they can reservice every missile--and place dummy guidance modules that will render them useless.But Colossus has the last laugh. One day, it is confidently sending out blueprints for a third system, that it expects Forbin to build for it on Crete, after evacuating its entire population. The next day, it addresses the world--and after boasting that it is now the ruler of the world, it says it has known about the sabotage since its inception, and will now detonate two missiles, one in Death Valley and one in the Ukraine, that were still active.The detonation kills Grauber, the SecState, and the SecDef.Forbin, crushed by what he has seen, takes a desktop telephone, jerks out its cable, and throws it into a monitor. Colossus takes no notice and goes on with its message that "time and events" will vindicate it. Forbin reacts in the most emotion he has ever displayed in his life: "You [illegitimate son]!" he shouts. And when paparazzi start snapping pictures at him, he roars at them to "GET OUT!" But Cleo Markham reaches for his hand, and smiles warmly.The last word Colossus has for Forbin is that Colossus will release Forbin from surveillance the next day, and expects Forbin to work with it, even if reluctantly at first. Forbin insists he will never do this, perhaps knowing that his protests are as futile as are those of a petulant child under parental or school discipline.
    

Colossus: The Forbin Project

The Patty Duke Show: Still Rockin' in Brooklyn Heights

Mrs. Lambert Remembers Love


            This is a synopsis of the book - not the made for tv movie. The main character, Mike Noonan, is an author living in Derry, Maine who suffers from severe writer's block after the death of his wife, Johanna (called Jo), from an undiagnosed brain aneurism. Particularly disquieting to Mike is that his wife had just bought a home pregnancy test, but never revealed the pregnancy to him. Mike languishes after his wife's death, and finds himself unable to write due to panic attacks. Fortunately, he has four unpublished manuscripts, and using them he keeps his agent and editor unaware of his problem.Four years after Jo's death, Mike begins to experience nightmares set at his summer house in TR-90, an unregistered township in Maine. He decides to confront his fears and moves to the house, known to locals as "Sara Laughs". On his way to town, Mike encounters a small child, Kyra Devore, walking down the middle of the road. Mike worries that something might happen to the child if she continues walking like that, so he scoops her up and returns to his car with her. A moment later, Kyra's mother, Mattie Devore, comes flying up the road in her old jeep. Mike's initial reaction is that Mattie is a "white trash" mom who will yell at the child and possibly beat it due to her own inattentions, but he is pleasantly surprised when Mattie clutches the child for dear life and begs her never to run off again. The two talk for a few minutes and Mattie drives off.Later, while in town, Mike learns from the locals that Mattie's late husband, Lance, was the son of Max Devore, a rich and influential man from the town who didn't approve of his son's marriage to Mattie. Max, now well into his 80's and bound to a wheelchair, wants custody of his granddaughter, and is using his money and influence to paint Mattie as an irresponsible mother. Through his caretaker, Bill, Mike learns of Mattie's past, her marriage, and her custody woes.When Max finds out that Mike ran into Mattie and Kyra, he threatens him via telephone. Despite the threats, or perhaps because of them, Mike hires John Storrow, a custody lawyer, for Mattie as an act of kindness, and he gradually develops feelings for Mattie despite the almost twenty-year age difference between them. Through his various crooked connections, Max manages to drag Mike into the custody battle even further by forcing him to make a deposition for the impending custody hearing. Accompanied by a local lawyer, Romeo Bisonette, Mike makes the custody lawyer hired by Devore look foolish by beating him at his own game and calling his bluff.Mike begins to write again, while both Kyra and Mike experience hauntings in their homes. The author realizes that the ghost of Jo is assisting him in solving the mystery of Sara Tidwell, a blues singer whose spirit is haunting Mike's house. Mike asks the locals about what happened to Sara Tidwell, and is warned to refrain from digging in old scandals. He also learns that Jo frequently returned to the town in the year before her death, without telling him.Max Devore threatens Mike again, and in an encounter with Mike, Max and his personal assistant, Rogette, almost succeed in drowning him. It's only due to the help from his wife's spirit that he's able to survive the attack. Then, in an unexpected turn of events, Max Devore commits suicide, which seemingly leaves Mattie and Kyra free from his influence.Mike, Mattie, John, and Romeo Bissonette, the lawyer that assisted Mike during his deposition and a detective are having a party when a gunman shows up and shoots everyone in sight, Mattie fatally. Mike, the only adult not hit, takes Kyra back to Sara Laughs as a huge storm breaks. He is acting under the influence of the ghost of Sara Tidwell and finds himself preparing to drown Kyra and commit suicide himself, going so far as to give Kyra cocoa and Benadryl to make her sleep, and drawing the bath. But there are still pieces to the mystery that Mike doesn't understand, and the ghost of Jo is trying to prevent him from doing what he is doing.As Kyra sleeps, Mike goes to Jo's studio to search for answers. He discovers documents that Jo had hidden away before her death, and among the papers is a genealogy showing Mike's blood relationship to one of the town families. Several had firstborn children with "K" names who had been murdered or died under suspicious circumstances. The genealogy shows that Mike and Jo's child (who was going to be named Kia) would have been the next firstborn child with a "K" name in the family line, had she been born.Mike realizes this must be Sara Tidwell's curse for something that had been done to her. He returns to the house, checks on the still-sleeping Kyra, and drains the bath meant for her drowning. He can feel Sara's influence to take Kyra to the lake, but he fights it off. He leaves the house once more with a shovel and a bottle of lye to search for Sara's grave, knowing that the only way to break the curse and keep Kyra safe will be to destroy Sara's bones. On his way to where Mike suspects Sara is buried, the ghosts of Max Devore's grandfather and several other town men appear to him and try to block him from getting to the grave. Mike learns through a vision that these men had viciously raped and killed Sara, and drowned her son Kito in the lake. Furthermore, all the "K" children who had died were descendants of those men. Mike makes it to the grave site, but Sara's ghost doesn't want the curse ended prematurely. She tries to stop Mike, and attempts to assume corporeal form to do so. Jo appears in corporeal form herself and tells Mike he must hurry as Sara has enlisted the help of "The Outsider" to harm Mike and prevent him from reaching Sara's bones. Jo struggles to fight off The Outsider while Mike digs up and destroys Sara's bones with the lye, ending the curse.Returning to the house, Mike discovers that Max Devore's assistant Rogette has kidnapped Kyra. Mike follows Kyra and Rogette to a neighboring property, arriving just as Kyra bites Rogette and attempts to escape onto a dock heaving in the waves from the storm. Mike tries to hit Rogette and keep her away from Kyra when Mattie's ghost appears and knocks Rogette into the Lake. Rogette attempts to pull Mike into the lake with her, but she is impaled by wreckage from the dock. Mattie's ghost says her goodbyes to Mike and Kyra, and she tells Kyra that she is now Mike's daughter.The story ends with an epilogue in which Mike has retired from writing, and is attempting to adopt Kyra. His status as a single, unrelated male complicates things, and the adoption has taken longer than Mike anticipated. Still, the state has allowed Mike to visit Kyra, and she has been allowed overnight stays with him. The outcome of the adoption is left unresolved at the end, but there is hope that it will be a positive outcome.
    

William Schallert

William Schallert Movies or Tv Shows (upto Dec 2024) - Watch Online

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