Hope Lange

Question: It seems like every other movie I see advertised is based on a TV show, like The Dukes of Hazzard. But what about the other way around? I know there was a series based on My Big Fat Greek Wedding, but what other TV series have been based on a movie, and were any of them good?

Answer: There have been a handful of top-notch TV shows based on movies. The flop Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992) was revived as Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003); Robert Altman's acerbic M*A*S*H* (1970) became the long-running M*A*S*H (1972-1983); Neil Simon read more

Question: I had a huge crush on Edward Mulhare before he was on Knight Rider, going way back to The Ghost & Mrs. Muir. My question is: How did Captain Gregg die in order to become a ghost? Thank you for your help.

Answer: A 19th-century sea captain, Daniel Gregg (the late Mulhare, who did indeed appear on Knight Rider, as F.L.A.G. head Devon Miles) was asphyxiated in his sleep when a gas heater was knocked over. As if that weren't enough to make him a grumpy spirit, his death was reported as a suicide, which set him up to be none too welcoming to his greedy nephew's (Charles Nelson Reilly) prospective tenants in contemporary times. (The series ran for a year on NBC, beginning in September 1968, and was then picked up for another season by ABC.)

But as fans of the novel read more

Question: When I was a child in the late 1960s/early '70s, I saw a scary flick that has stayed with me to this day. In it there was a scene in which villagers dressed as Pilgrims were trampling a person underneath a big wooden door of some sort. Do you have any idea which film this is?

Answer: I do. I also saw this movie as a child, and the scene you describe is the one that has stuck with me as well. You're remembering the made-for-TV Crowhaven Farm (1970), with Hope Lange as a young wife who, with her husband, unexpectedly inherits a farm. They move there in hopes of patching up their marriage, to which end she also wants to become pregnant. But she starts hearing strange noises and having dreams about a pregnant 17^th-century woman being pressed to death, a standard way of executing witches in America (contrary to what many people believe, w read more