So, this is what happened to Angel Eyes?

Picking up taped-off-television VHS at garage sales is always a dicey move if the tapes are unlabeled, but it sometimes proves to be a more than worthwhile pastime when you find 70s and 80s TV movies (perhaps by reputed former features director and later tele-auteur Paul Wendkos, which I have found in the past) that haven’t been commercially released.

This past weekend, after picking up more than a dozen of such tapes from the home of a WW II veteran (meaning innumerable war films, particularly those with military aircraft, leading me to believe that he was a pilot), I came across a number of Canadian television commercials for the Midas Muffler chain, featuring Lee Van Cleef in a caricature of his iconic Spaghetti Western persona. These date from the early 1980s, and although I haven’t uploaded this one myself to youtube, I may add the others later in the week. This ad is also noteworthy for co-starring George Kennedy, around the time of the Canadian co-produced DEATH SHIP (Alvin Rakoff, 1980, from a story by Jack Hill).