zardoz-13 The late Lee H. Katzin specialized in directing episodic television as well as made-for-television features during his 38-year career in Hollywood. He helmed a handful of big-screen features, including "Heaven with a Gun," "What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice," "Le Mans," "Restraining Order," "The Phynx," "The Break," "World Gone Wild," and "The Salzburg Connection." A suspenseful saga about survival in the desert, "Savages" qualifies as one of Katzin's more memorable made-for-television movies. Writer William Wood adapted Robb White's award-winning novel "Deathwatch" that received the 1973 Edgar Award for Best Juvenile Mystery from the Mystery Writers of America. Casting is everything in this taut, 74-minute, ABC-TV melodrama about a wealthy lawyer out to bag himself a bighorn sheep. Affable Andy Griffith is surprising as this mendacious killer whose impetuosity lands him between a rock and a hard place. Co-star Sam Bottoms is a twentysomething gas station attendant who serves as his guide and helps him find his quarry. Somewhere along the way, Griffith shoots a man quite by accident, and then he struggles to clear himself of manslaughter by framing his guide for the man's unfortunate demise.After Griffith gave up playing a widowed North Carolina sheriff with a son in "The Andy Griffith Show" between 1960 and 1968, he broadened his repertoire and played villains. The first time he portrayed a criminal was on "Hawaii 5-0" when he was cast as a con artist. Later, he played unsavory roles in at least five made-for-television outings: "Crime of Innocence," "Under the Influence," "Savages," "Pray for the Wildcats," and "Murder in Coweta County." In "Savages," Griffith plays the Machiavellian Horten Madec who wears spectacles and walks with a slight limp. Madec boasts about his wealth and influence, and he has fooled himself into thinking he knows everything about everything. He hires a young nature lover, Ben Campbell (Sam Bottoms of "Apocalypse Now"), who knows something about desert survival, as a guide to take him into the desert. As it turns out, before they become adversaries, Ben and Horten spot bighorn sheep. The reckless Horten shoots on impulse, misses the sheep, but winds up killing a desert vagrant. The sympathetic Campbell is willing to report the death as an accident. This accident, Madec realizes grimly, may exert harsh repercussions on his career. He shoots the vagrant with Campbell's rifle to implicate the youth, and then he orders Campbell at gunpoint strip down to his jockey shorts and wander in the desert. Madec keeps track of Campbell's every move by stalking him in a Campbell's own jeep. The attorney relies his high-powered rifle to prevent Campbell from drinking or hiding out from the sun. Madec hopes that Campbell will perish from dire exposure to the sun before he can reach town.Shrewdly, Campbell exploits his knowledge of the desert and his ability to conceal himself and gets the drop on Madec. He wields a sling-shot and disarms the murderous Madec. When he escorts Madec to the local sheriff's office, the wily lawyer manages to appropriate the one piece of evidence that anchors Campbell's improbable story about what happened in the desert. Sheriff Bert Hamilton (James Best of "The Killer Shrews") seems to believe the slick-tongued Madec over the sincere Campbell. For a while, it appears like Madec will give Hamilton and the others the slip. Fortunately, things don't work out entirely as Madec has planned it. A piece of incriminating evidence—a slingshot--is recovered, and Madec's studiously orchestrated alibi collapses. "Savages" ranks as an above-average, unpretentious, tale of tension. Griffith looks like he relished playing a sleazy dastard. During his screen debut back in the 1950s, Griffith played an unscrupulous personality in director Eli Kazan's "A Face in the Crowd," but afterward, he went on to play sugar-coated heroes. The game of cat and mouse that ensues between Madec and Campbell is memorably handled on a small budget. Although "Savages" lacks the budget of director Jean-Baptiste Léonetti's film "Beyond the Reach," ostensibly a big-screen remake of "Savages," with money to blow, it emerges as superior to its polished remake that cast Michael Douglas as the big-game villain.

bob_meg Why aren't the TV networks open to fresh, compelling stuff like they were forty years ago? Who knows? You'd think it would be a tremendous benefit to both burgeoning filmmakers and the networks alike."Savages" is another one of those gems that graced the Movie of the Week time slot (usually on ABC) and is now, sadly, unavailable. You can still find kind souls willing to sell you home tapes of it on eBay, though, and this one is worth the hunting.The comparisons to Spielberg's "Duel" here on IMDb are not unwarranted in the least. In a way, this movie, while not being as well-made (what could be?) is more brutal and hard to watch mostly because of Andy Griffith's no-holds-barred performance, which amounts to nothing less than evil incarnate.I saw this on TV as a child, and back then, I saw only similarities to "The Most Dangerous Game." But after a few more viewings, I think it's quite different. The key to this puzzle is: "Did Maddock set the entire scenario up with the Sam Bottoms character from the start? Did he really intend to hunt him?" I'm not completely sure he did, now that I've seen it a few more times. I think it really did start as a legitimate hunting accident, and then Maddock's sadistic nature just took over. And does it ever...Griffith howls hysterically as he forces the bare-chested, bare-footed guide to tumble down rocky ravines; gleefully blows holes in his canteen; and waves iced martinis under his nose as he's dying of thirst. He cold be the most hateful baddie in all of TV movie-dom, and Griffith eats the role up with a spoon.Even when they're out of the desert, the tension doesn't quit, and there's good supporting work here from Noah Beery and Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane himself, James Best, looking extremely young and fit.The only thing that mars it is the horrendous music, which is as bad as anything on TV ever got, and the fact that it's difficult if not impossible to find a print of this that's not deteriorating in some manner.We need a best of TV movie box....with "Dying Room Only," "Bad Ronald," "Shattered Silence," "The Girl Most Likely To...," "Terror on the Beach," "Outrage," "Night Cries," "A Case of Rape," etc. We'll likely never see the likes of them again.

Christopher T. Chase This is one of those movies I really wish was available on DVD, as many of the early Aaron Spelling classics should be. It was years before I would see A FACE IN THE CROWD, but when I first saw this excellent TV thriller, I imagine it must've dropped a lot of jaws to see amiable Sheriff Andy Taylor cast against type as one mean 'sumbitch' - not only doing a great job at it, but having fun as well!Griffith glowers with gleeful menace as a rich lawyer whose hobby is big-game hunting. Sam Bottoms (THE LAST PICTURE SHOW) co-starred as an unsuspecting local from the town Griffith visits to bag his latest prey. He enlists Bottoms as a helper/guide, with the young man having no idea that Griffith's character is bored with the usual game, and has his (literal) sights set on bagging the ultimate trophy...MAN. Think of it as "DUEL" on-foot, as Bottoms, witness to a cold-blooded murder committed by Griffith, must make it back to town without food, water or most of his clothes, the deranged hunter dogging his every step. This story has been told in many forms, (the most well- known being THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME), but rarely has it been told this well or suspensefully since.

dtucker86 This movie must have shocked a lot of people when it first came out because it was Andy Griffith's first villain role. He has since played several other "baddies" (such as in Murder In Coweta County his best). There was a story I read in high school called The Most Dangerous Game about a mad hunter with a taste for human prey. This grim chase thriller follows Andy as he hunts his young guide through the desert after an accidental shooting. Griffith must have had a ball shedding his image. This is one of those 70s films that is hard to catch today, but its worth your watch.