By 
A Cold Night’s Death is a made-for-TV horror movie that aired January 30, 1973 on ABC.
How does A Cold Night’s Death compare to other made-for-TV horror movies like The Intruder Within, Midnight Offerings, Curse of the Black Widow, Satan’s Triangle, Killdozer, Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell , Invitation to Hell, Summer of Fear, Savages, Moon of the Wolf, The Initiation of Sarah and Crowhaven Farm?
Only one way to find out…
A Cold Night’s Death
The camera flies over an artic landscape. One has little trouble believing A Cold Night’s Death takes place just down the glacier from Outpost 31.
Plinky electronic music irritates the ears. It sounds familiar. Sure enough, this composer, Gil Melle, appeared in this made-for-TV horror series before. He did the music for Killdozer. He also did the score for The Sentinel (1977) and Blood Beach (1980).
Remember when I wrote a twenty-page review of Blood Beach? Some might think that an example of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Not true! I did it for no other reason than to torture Stark, who had to edit it and insert images into it.
Christopher Knopf wrote A Cold Night’s Death. He worked mainly in TV, but he also did the screenplay for the Ray Harryhausen film 20 Million Miles to Earth. Jerrold Freedman directed. His last movie was The O.J. Simpson Story (1995). Aaron Spelling produced.
The cast list is short and sweet. We get the great Robert Culp, and the greater Eli Wallach. We pretty much have to bestow legend status on Wallach for The Good, The Bad And The Ugly alone. His ratty turn as Tuco is an all-time great villain.
A Hard Day’s Cold Night’s Death
A Cold Night’s Death starts with the panicked voice of a man named Vogel emanating from a snowbound Quonset hut.
“Help!” Vogel pleads into the radio. “I tried to warn you, but nobody listened!”
You have an isolated location, a threat, a mystery and you have Chicken Little. From such simple ingredients, a movie grows. Or, maybe I accidentally clicked on the YouTube channel of yet another whistleblower alerting us to yet another corrupt draconian government measure.
Don’t worry about me, Mr. FBI Agent Monitoring My Computer. I will not be swayed by such voices. I will eat my bugs (now with 50 percent more opiate filling!) like a good citizen.
Cut to Culp, Eli and their monkey friend, Geronimo, hopping into a helicopter. A narrator lets us know they have been tasked with investigating what happened at the arctic research station. Apparently, the station is doing studies for the space program, things like stress tests and the effects of zero gravity on Sydney Sweeney. This is important work. We must get her into space as soon as possible. Her talent isn’t going to resist structural sag fatigue forever.
A Cold Night Moves’s Death
The helicopter arrives at the research station. Culp, Eli, Geronimo and the pilot struggle through waist-deep snow. Maybe this story doesn’t take place in the arctic. This environment looks like Minnesota in January. Seeing it onscreen makes me realize why we have the highest rate of caretakers ax-murdering their families, per capita, in the United States.
The interior of the research station is a mess. It’s not as messy as the apartment of college guys who go on Taco Bell, Red Bull and Call of Duty benders, but it’s close.
An exploration of the station reveals little beyond four monkeys in cages. They have names like “Allie” and “Gengi” and are freezing to death. Vogel is found sitting in a chair and covered with paper-mâché. My mistake. That’s not paper-mâché. Vogel is a frozen corpse covered with frost.
Eli immediately starts working on the monkeys. Surely, production roofied these animals. The way they lay there and let Eli pose them in funny positions is exactly how I get after taking too many of my anti-anxiety pills. The colors, man. The colors…
After a brief rundown on how to operate the radio, maintain the generator and make their own water (with snow, not urination), the helicopter pilot takes his leave.
A Cold Night of the Lepus Death
A Cold Night’s Death reveals Vogel left a voice recording of what happened to him. Unfortunately, it is frozen solid, and Culp and Eli need to wait for it to thaw out.
Meanwhile, they start to get comfortable. Eli is clearly the wife of the duo. He cooks and cleans. Culp plays pool and shovels snow.
Whoa, says the feminist in the back row. Do you think women are only good for cooking and cleaning?
Of course not. They are also good for propping up the diet industry with their breadwinner’s dollars.
That night Eli and Robert sleep (separate beds). The thawed-out tape starts playing. Vogel’s voice begins to tell what happened to him. Before too much is revealed, the tape stops and erases.
The next morning a radio call comes in. The autopsy on Vogel is complete. He didn’t die of a heart attack. He simply sat in a chair until he froze to death. I can relate. If my furnace died while I was binge watching Breaking Bad, I’d sit there watching the saga of Walter White until I gradually turned into a meatcicle.
A Cold Night of the Comet’s Death
Eli and Culp slop up chow. Eli says he eats too much and will cut down, proving his house-husband status once more. Culp can’t figure out how Vogel froze to death. A person who freezes to death should have a peaceful look on their face. Vogel looked like he was about to be bludgeoned.
Eli says that is unscientific. Then he asks, “How come you never tell me I’m pretty anymore?”
That night Culp wakes up to the sound of agitated monkeys. He gets up to investigate. The monkeys nervously screech in their cages. Culp looks at them thoughtfully. The camera follows Culp’s stocking feet creep around the facility for roughly seventeen minutes.
Culp enters a room and finds several pieces of electronic equipment on. He switches them off and notices the window is open. Culp closes it, goes back to check the caged monkeys and returns to bed. He tries to wake up Eli. Eli does not respond.
The camera reveals Eli is awake but chose not to answer.
Yeesh, he really has the PMS.
A Cold Night of the Living Dead’s Death
A Cold Night’s Death isn’t afraid to go to the sound-effect well. When no music plays, the sound of a cold wind is nearly omnipresent. It is similar to the negative voices in my head.
Stark’s take on James Bond movies are better than yours, Wrenage.
You’ll never look as good as DrunkenYoda in a two-piece bathing suit, Wrenage.
Boba makes more on his OnlyFans page in a day than you make in a decade of writing, Wrenage.
Culp and Eli wake up to discover the generator stopped in the night, and the research station is on the verge of turning into a literal approximation of my cold, dead heart.
Eli thinks Culp is losing it and blames him for the generator malfunction. Culp protests and accuses Eli of ignoring the fact that strange things are happening that make no scientific sense. The camera holds on Culp’s face by framing it through a monkey cage. This makes Culp look like he is in a cage.
Very artistic on the part of the director.
Later on, Eli gets excited about the monkey test results. The tests are designed to mimic stress astronauts may encounter in space, such as cold, lack of food and the like. It appears the monkeys are developing an immunity to stress.
I wish I had an immunity to stress. On the other hand, when I get that burning, acidic pressure in my chest as the latest problem ascends from the depths of the abyss to make me weep in my pillow – that’s the only time I feel alive. Would hate to lose that.
A Cold Color of Night’s Death
Culp wakes up in the middle of the night and gets out of bed to discover Eli watching Geronimo walk on a treadmill. Geronimo is also tied to the treadmill with multiple ropes.
I don’t know what is going on here exactly, but I want in.
Eli reveals he knows what is happening. The monkeys are not the experiment. Eli believes that he is the experiment. He believes Culp is deliberately doing all of these weird things to see how a human reacts, and Eli is the unknowing test subject.
Culp gets a look on his face all men will recognize. It is the look of a man who is confronted by a crazy spouse. Culp wisely retreats and says they will hash it out in the morning.
This plan does not come to fruition, however. The next morning Culp and Eli have bigger problems. Their food has been ransacked. Geronimo is blamed. Eli apologizes for letting him run loose.
Culp and Eli go back to their routine. Culp shovels snow. Eli showers. Culp shovels snow. Eli showers. Culp shovels snow. Eli showers. The movie is back in full-on padding mode.
A Cold Nightrider’s Death
The movie hits its endgame. Culp has a realization while scooping snow. It is about the names of the monkeys. He heads back inside but finds the door locked.
Meanwhile, Eli finds Geronimo dead and stuffed into a cupboard. He assumes Culp did it, stands over Geronimo’s corpse and intones, “By Grabthar’s hammer, you will be avenged…”
Culp gets back inside the station by squirming through the hatch he shovels snow into for water. He looks like an iced cinnamon bun. He staggers through the station for approximately twenty-nine minutes.
Eli pulls a gun on Culp and accuses him of murdering Geronimo.
Culp protests and info dumps. The monkeys are named after conquerors. “Allie” is short for Alexander the Great. “Gengi” is short for Genghis Khan, etc.
“We took food from the monkeys. Food got taken from us. We subjected the monkeys to fear. Fear was subjected to us. The monkeys were put in isolation. We become isolated. We subjected them to cold. Cold was subjected to us. Everything that happened here to us happened before to them.”
Eli is having none of that. The two men struggle, a shot rings out and Culp falls dead. Eli hears his voice on tape and goes to investigate. He ends up in the same room Vogel was found dead in. The window is open. The door shuts and locks behind him. A monkey looks in through the door’s window. The end.
A Cold Night’s Death to Smoochy
So, it was the monkeys the whole time. It is similar to Link (1986) in that regard. Overall, A Cold Night’s Death has a killer concept. The only thing to ding the movie for is pace. A Cold Night’s Death clocks in at only 75 minutes, but it could still be about 15 minutes shorter. This type of story is more suited to an episode of an anthology show like The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits rather than a full TV movie.
Still, at the end of the day you have Eli, Culp, an isolated research station and killer monkeys. Add in a beer and some popcorn and there are worse ways to spend the evening while a blizzard rages outside.
The post Retro-Review: A COLD NIGHT’S DEATH (1973) appeared first on Last Movie Outpost.
