Terror Among Us is a 1981 made-for-television action crime film directed by Paul Krasny and starring Don Meredith, Sarah Purcell, and Jennifer Salt. It first aired January 14, 1981. The script was co-written by Dallas and JoAnne Barnes.
The film originally aired as a CBS 9:30pm "Wednesday Night Movie". It was released on DVD on August 16, 2010.
Contents
Plot
A police sergeant and a parole officer endeavor to stop a rapist-on-parole before he can follow through his threats on five women who testified against him years earlier.
Cast
Don Meredith as Sergeant Tom Stockwell
Sarah Purcell as Jennifer
Jennifer Salt as Connie Paxton
Kim Lankford as Vickie Stevens
Sharon Spelman as Sara Kates
Rod McCary as Gates
Elta Blake as Beth
Pat Klous as Cathy
Jim Antonio as Doctor
Virginia Paris as Mrs. Quinn
Tracy Reed as Barbara
Ted Shackelford as Delbert Ramsey
Stephen Keep as Roger Shiel
Reception
Sarah Purcell, who appears in the film, hoped Terror Among Us would help in teaching women how to protect themselves from attack, describing of her character: "I'm the one who does something, at the risk of my own life. I'm about a goner anyway and I really would be a goner if I just sat there and didn't do anything." In a scathing review for Fort Lauderdale News, Bill Kelley accused the film of "trivializing the volatile subject it covers" in favor of a B-movie approach, writing how the character Ted finds "not one, not two, but five comely flight attendants" in the apartment complex, "and, if not for Meredith and the CBS Standards and Practices censorship code, he'd make out like a fox in a henhouse." Kelley also dismissed Purcell's charge that the film was a relevant piece rather than exploitative. Similarly, Allen J. Hubbin of The Armchair Detective felt the film only purported to examine a relevant issue, writing: "Terror Among Us was supposedly about the evils of a 'revolving-door' probation system. Instead, it was about a rapist who terrorizes a roomful of bound and gagged stewardesses for half an hour." The climax of the film is popular with fans of damsel in distress scenarios, being found on websites that list female bondage scenes in mainstream media. In 1990, readers of Bondage Life voted it the best bondage scene in television history; the magazine said that "network TV has a long way to go to top this one." In 2001, Carl McGuire of Bondage Life, in his Bound for Hollywood column, named it the best group bondage scene in film and television history.