I was surprised to find that someone had posted the entire 1973 TV movie Linda on YouTube. Here are the first ten minutes; if you're interested, you can easily find the rest.
This is a fine example of a typical seventies Movie Of The Week. It wasn't a "prestige" effort, and unlike some telefilms from the era (Duel, most obviously, but also such well-remembered gems as Dying Room Only or Night Chase), it has been almost completely forgotten even by hardcore cultists. Still, it is efficiently made, has a reasonably involving plot and is overall a worthwhile sampling of the much-missed workmanlike qualities of the era's TV product.
Yeah, yeah, which is great and all, but who am I trying to kid? I remember this movie very well, not because I watched it, but because its original broadcast was heralded by a full-page ad in TV Guide featuring a bikini-clad Stella Stevens smiling knowingly at the viewer. Since it was the sight of Stella traipsing through the otherwise dire comedy Arnold in her underwear earlier that year that caused my previously-inactive seven-year-old loins to, uh, do what they do, that ad prompted a similar warm feeling in my pants. And, by the next week, that particular TV Guide had been spirited away to a secret location (a long-abandoned chicken coop, and dear Lord, that sounds positively Ed Gein-like) where I used it to, shall we say, explore my nascent libido.
What's interesting--to me, at least--is, given that my first stirrings of lust were entirely due to Stella Stevens (and seriously, I sat through a lot of bad TV movies just because she was in them), in subsequent years, I've never had a thing for blondes. Since my initial concept of feminine allure were formed by a platinum-tressed goddess, you'd think there'd be some trace amounts of that long-ago longing in what I've been attracted to since, but that hasn't been the case.
Or maybe my feelings for Stella Stevens had nothing to do with her hair...
