Biff McGuire Movies

Elizabeth Montgomery stars in this made-for-television movie about a liberal reporter whose views are challenged after she becomes the victim of random crime. Montgomery stars as Katherine McSweeney, a divorced, single-mother news reporter assigned to cover crime in her lower-middle-class neighborhood. After being mugged in her hallway, Katherine finds little sympathy from her colleagues or the police who feel her left-wing tendencies left her wide open for crime. The film shows how she transforms from a tolerant woman into a frightened and judgmental citizen, who is angry at her loss of innocence, but determined not to give in to her fear. ~ Bernadette McCallion, Rovi

While the train he is riding on is temporarily stalled by a blizzard, effusive old rancher Mr. Kilmer (Chill Wills) regales the other passengers with one of his tall tales. Throughout Kilmer's monologue, he is constantly interrupted by an obnoxious eight-year-old boy named Johnny (Peter Lazer). Finally, Kilmer offers Johnny a silver dollar if he can remain quiet for ten minutes. Dutifully, Johnny shuts up -- while outside, the blizzard rages on, and the search for an escaped mental patient continues. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Grieving over the death of his fiancé who was killed by a hit-and-run driver, Dana Edwards (Biff McGuire) is approached by a curious gentleman named Hurley (Robert H. Harris). Explaining that he too has lost a loved one in a hit-and-run accident, Hurley offers to help Dana remember the license number of the death car, utilizing a unique form of self-hypnosis. The fact that this method works brilliantly is not nearly as astonishing as Dana's ultimate discovery of Hurley's true identity. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The second and last TV pilot film to bear the Crime Club title, the 1975 Crime Club once again involves a state-of-the-art crime solving organization whose members are professional investigators from various public and private sectors. The principal characters are a detective (Scott Thomas), a reporter (Eugene Roche) and a criminal lawyer (Robert Lansing). The crime in question in this pilot concerned a social outcast who seeks public notoriety by confessing to a series of grisly ice pick murders. The three protagonists combine their brain power to solve the case, but their efforts failed to convince any network to pick up the project. Crime Club joined its 1973 predecessor in Universal's syndicated package of made-for-TV movies. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In this futuristic film, an extreme shortage of gasoline drives the government to deny citizens the right to own vehicles. A special force is put together to destroy these illegal cars, but one unbalanced member of the force (Alex Diakun) doesn't bother to remove the drivers before he torches the vehicles. ~ Iotis Erlewine, Rovi

Yes, it's a day in May, and a very busy one for the Frasier gang. First off, Daphne (Jane Leeves) befriends a dog lover named Jim (Tom Verica), which makes Niles (David Hyde Pierce) jealous. Second, the caustic Lana (Jean Smart) suddenly warms up to Frasier (David Hyde Pierce). And finally, Martin (John Mahoney) is unexpectedly reunited with the person who brought about the injury that caused him to retire from the Force. This episode originally aired back-to-back with "Cranes Go Caribbean" as Frasier's eighth-season finale. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Maggie (Joanna Kerns) begins spending every evening at the newspaper working on a toxic-waste story with fellow reporter Fred (Tom O'Rourke). This makes Jason (Alan Thicke) angry, not so much because he'd rather spend time with Maggie, but because Fred is so darned good-looking. Meanwhile, youngest Seaver son Ben (Jeremy Miller) focues on a school science project that seems deliberately contrived to irritate his older siblings. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

A clever murderer manages to dig up a legal loophole that allows him a new trial. Meanwhile, the prosecution's main witness against the criminal turns up dead. Kojak (Telly Savalas) must find the witness' killer and extract a confession before the swaggering defendant is set free for keeps. This episode marks an early TV appearance by Sharon Gless, who at the time was the last remaining contract starlet at Universal Pictures; also seen in a villainous role is Martin Kove, perennial "heavy" in the Karate Kid films of the 1980s. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

An expensive war epic, Midway emulates The Longest Day and Tora! Tora! Tora! in attempting to re-create a famous World War II battle from both the American and Japanese viewpoints. The 1942 battle of Midway was the turning point of the War in the Pacific; the Japanese invasion fleet was destroyed, and America's string of humiliating defeats was finally broken. Though the battle itself was sufficiently dramatic to fill two films, Midway also has plotline involving the mixed-race relationship between Ensign Garth (Edward Albert), son of Navy Captain Matt Garth (Charlton Heston), and Haruko Sakura (Christina Kokubo), a Hawaiian girl of Japanese descent. The real-life personages depicted herein include American Admirals Nimitz (Henry Fonda), Halsey (Robert Mitchum) and Spruance (Glenn Ford), and Japanese Admiral Yamamoto (Toshiro Mifune, his voice once again dubbed by Paul Frees, whom Mifune personally selected for the job). For its original road show release, Midway was offered in the "Sensurround" process, which electronically shook and vibrated the audience's chairs during the battle sequences. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Adapted by Waldo Salt and Norman Wexler from Peter Maas's book, Sidney Lumet's drama portrays the real-life struggle of an honest New York City cop against a corrupt system. Neophyte officer Frank Serpico (Al Pacino) is determined not to let his job get in the way of his individuality. Despite his colleagues' leery reactions, he keeps one foot firmly planted in the counterculture, sporting a beard and love beads and living in bohemian Greenwich Village, while he performs his police duties with dispatch. Serpico's peers genuinely ostracize him, however, when he refuses to take bribes like everybody else. Appalled by the extent of police corruption, Serpico goes to his superiors, but when he discovers that they have ignored his charges, he takes the potentially fatal step of breaking the blue wall of silence and going public with his exposé. Serpico's revelations trigger an independent investigation by the Knapp Commission, but they also make him a marked man, permanently changing his life. Shot on location with a gritty emphasis on documentary-style realism, Serpico presents a city in decay both literally and morally, as everybody is in on the take, and the cops and criminals are almost interchangeable. Released in late 1973, after months of revelations of Presidential malfeasance in the breaking Watergate scandal, Serpico's true story of bureaucratic depravity touched a cultural nerve, and the film became a hit with both critics and audiences, particularly for Pacino's complex performance as the honest, long-haired whistleblower. One year after his star-making triumph in The Godfather, Pacino was nominated for an Oscar again, and lost again; Lumet and Pacino would reunite two years later for another true New York story, Dog Day Afternoon. ~ Lucia Bozzola, Rovi

Based on the novel by Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter stars Alan Arkin as John Singer, who is deaf. Singer moves from a small town in order to be close to his institutionalized friend Antonapoulos (Chuck McCann), who is deaf and mentally impaired. Singer rents a room with a family whose father, Mr. Kelly (Biff McGuire), is unable to earn a living due to a serious injury. His teen-aged daughter Mick (Sondra Locke, in her film debut) is at first resentful of Singer's presence, but he ingratiates himself by introducing her to classical music (which he can "feel," if not hear). Singer likewise tries to brighten the lives of such unfortunates as alcoholic Blount (Stacy Keach Jr., also making his first film appearance), dying black doctor Copeland (Percy Rodriguez), and Copeland's poverty-stricken daughter (Cicely Tyson). ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Based on actual events, The Phenix City Story tells the tale of a wide-open "Sin City" in Alabama (across a bridge from Columbus, GA, and just a stone's throw from the Ft. Benning Army base) where gambling, prostitution, and any number of other vices were tolerated openly by the law, most of it centered on the main downtown drag, 14th Street, thanks to the 50-year influence of organized crime on the local government. Reform groups, mostly in the form of vigilantes, had tried to clean up "the wickedest city in the United States" before, even taking the law into their own hands and wrecking some of the establishments, only to be stymied by the courts (which were otherwise indifferent to activities on 14th Street). At the outset of the movie, set in 1954 -- when the actual events took place -- a new reform group is trying to organize and attempting to get the city's most prominent attorney, Albert Patterson (John McIntire) on their side; so are the club owners on 14th Street, led by Rhett Tanner (Edward Andrews), a cheerful, affable sort with a mean streak not far from the surface. But Patterson wants no part of either side's activities -- he's been a reformer, even a successful candidate, only to see his efforts come to little, and has also successfully defended Tanner and the others on 14th Street in an investigation of a murder of which they weren't guilty. Now he's old, and he wants to sit back with his wife and enjoy the return of his army office/lawyer son, John (Richard Kiley), and his family from Germany. But when the 14th Street boys, led by Clem Wilson (John Larch), go too far beating up Patterson's friends, and involve his son John, and then turn to murder and intimidation, it forces the elder Patterson and his son to join the reformers.

The Phenix City Story runs 87 minutes, but most prints also include a 13-minute preface, compiled from newsreel footage and interviews with the original participants, that provides background on the events that inspired the film (and also spoils a few plot points). Ironically, given the negative image that it portrays of Alabama, the movie was surprisingly well-received in the state at the time; residents were simply fascinated by and taken with the notion of a feature film set in their home state and even including a couple of actual local residents in its cast. Director Phil Karlson was to enjoy even greater success 18 years later with a similar story about one man fighting a city turned bad, Walking Tall, which included many similarly staged action scenes amid its somewhat wider plot-canvas. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi

This TV movie was originally aired as John O'Hara's Gibbsville. Based on O'Hara's semi-autobiographical story anthology The Doctor's Son, the film tells the story of Jim Malloy (John Savage) and his youth in his Pennsylvania home town. Aspiring to become a reporter, Malloy goes to work for alcoholic editor Ray Whitehead. Biff McGuire plays Jim's doctor father; other cast members include Kathleen Quinlan, Peggy McCay and Janis Paige. Written and directed by playwright Frank D. Gilroy, Gibbsville: The Turning Point of Jim Malloy was first telecast April 12, 1975; it was the pilot for the Gibbsville TV series, also starring John Savage and Gig Young, which (after several delays) ran briefly in the fall of 1976. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi