Lee Patterson Movies

A hectic caper flick with farcical overtones, Bullseye! doesn't quite hit the....oh, you know. Government scientist Michael Caine and his titled pal Roger Moore plan to auction off a cold fusion formula to the highest bidder. Meanwhile, a pair of con artists-also played by Caine and Moore-impersonate the scientist and his friends in hopes of getting a piece of the action. This leads to an unending supply of comic complications, deadly encounters, wacky recurring characters and Sennett-style chases. Is louder and faster really funnier? You be the judge (but you'll have to catch the film on home video, since it never received a US theatrical release). Roger Moore's real-life daughter Deborah Barrymore shows up as a CIA agent. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Michael Winner ups the ante once again in Death Wish 3. Any pretense of Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson) having a career in architecture is completely gone. Kersey's new career appears to be as a professional vigilante, blowing away muggers, rapists and thieves off the mean streets -- or as he terms it "thinning the herd." Back in New York City, Kersey, with his usual luck, arrives just in time to find an old friend dying after a vicious beating by a multi-cultural gang of thugs. The cops arrest Kersey, but it just so happens that police chief Richard S. Shriker (Ed Lauter) is like Kersey with a badge: "I'm the law, and that means I get to violate your civil rights." He makes a deal with Kersey: he can go free as long as he keeps the cops informed of his death counts. Kersey grunts in agreement and proceeds to move into a decaying tenement building in the middle of a bombed out gang war zone. The building is populated by a group of elderly tenants who are terrified by the neighborhood gang warfare. Kersey declares his own personal war on the neighborhood gang, led by a frenzied leader named Fraker (Gavan O'Herilhy), who wears a reverse Mohawk hair-style. As Kersey devises booby traps and trip-wire bombs to confound the gang, the senior citizens gleefully take pot shots at the wounded gang members from their windows. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

With the Jerry Zucker-Jim Abrahams-David Zucker team absent, this sequel to the cash-cow 1980 spoof Airplane once again finds garrulous man-with-a-past Ted Striker (Robert Hays) compelled to take over the controls of crippled aircraft, all the while trying to patch up his relationship with stewardess Elaine (Julie Hagerty). This time, the first passenger space shuttle is launched into orbit -- and takes off for the moon - but the on-board computer malfunctions and sends the craft hurtling toward the sun, threatening the lives of everyone on board. Lloyd Bridges and Peter Graves return from the first Airplane, while William Shatner, Chad Everett, Sonny Bono, Raymond Burr and Chuck Conners join the cast, as they too lampoon their established images. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Noah Beery Jr. guest-stars as Johnny Mule, on trial for the murder of David Lowdon. Typically, Hoss Cartwright casts the vote which deadlocks the jury, convinced that there is reasonable doubt regarding Johnny's guilt. But when Johnny breaks out of jail rather than face a retrial, Hoss must come to grips with the possibility that his instincts were wrong. Also in the cast are such powerhouse performers as Coleen Gray, Lee Patterson, Jack Ging and John Archer. Originally titled "The Trial of Johnny Mule", this episode was written by Joel Murcott, and first aired on February 25, 1968. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In this adventure, a commercial plane crashes in a remote South American jungle. All but one of the passengers survive. Unfortunately, he was the sheriff in charge of taking a dangerous criminal to the executioner. During the excitement of the crash, the prisoner killed the lawman. Among the other survivors is a famous singer, a washed-up funnyman, a mentally ill teacher, and a writer looking for his sister who married a missionary and is now living in the jungle. Amazingly, she is rumored to live fairly close to the crash sight. The survivors manage to make it to the isolated village where she resides. There the writer learns that his sister's husband has gone insane and that she is dead. The megalomaniacal missionary now believes himself king of the natives and is preparing the author and a few others to become human sacrifices when a neighboring tribe intervenes and saves them. The amiable natives then take the survivors back to the wreckage where navy rescue helicopters are preparing to land. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

With his commanding officer killed and his subordinates disabled by a mine explosion, Lt. Hanley (Rick Jason) is forced to complete his latest assignment alone. Entering a German-held village, Hanley is to locate and rescue a wounded OSS officer. His mission is complicated by a local youngster named Jacques Duval (Patrick Michenaud)--who has an entirely different agenda in mind. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Actor Lawrence Harvey made his debut as a writer and director with this downbeat drama. Sean McKenna (Harvey) is awaiting execution in a prison in Tangiers after being convicted of murder. McKenna was trying to prevent the crime in question but was instead made the scapegoat. With his life hanging in the balance, McKenna's girlfriend Catherine (Sarah Miles) and his brother Dominic (Robert Walker Jr.) engineer an escape plan, and McKenna is able to beat his date with the hangman. However, McKenna's reunion with Dominic and Catherine proves not to be as joyous as he had expected when he discovers that they have been having an affair. Harvey was to direct only two more films, the second of which, Welcome to Arrow Beach, would prove to be his final work. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

The Three Worlds of Gulliver is perhaps the least known of the Charles H. Schneer-Ray Harryhausen collaborations of the 1960s, perhaps because it was withdrawn from circulation so soon after its initial release. Kerwin Mathews, star of the Schneer-Harryhausen classic Seventh Voyage of Sinbad (1957), stars as Jonathan Swift's globetrotting adventurer Lemuel Gulliver. The first "world" is Lilliput, populated with teeny-tiny people who are about to go to war because they can't agree over which end of an egg to crack. Gulliver's second stop is Brobdignag, where our hero is surrounded by giants. The third world is England, where Gulliver is thrown into a lunatic asylum when he tries to relate his astonishing adventures. Jo Morrow plays the thoroughly dispensable love interest. The script, by director Jack Sher and Arthur Ross, manages to retain a great deal of Swift's trenchant satire without detracting from the film's "fun for all ages" entertainment value. As always, Harryhausen's Dynamation special effects are superb. A lilting, semihumorous musical score by Bernard Herrmann is the icing on this cinematic cake. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Promoted as an in-depth study of the art of mountain climbing, this episode of Walt Disney Presents is actually an extended advertisement for the upcoming Disney theatrical feature Third Man on the Mountain. Although the stars of that film (including James MacArthur and Michael Rennie), the real hero of the proceedings is French mountain climber Gaston Rebufatt, who functioned as Third Man on the Mountain's guide and second-unit director while the company was on location in Switzerland. The highlight finds Rebufatt instructing a novice on the intricacies of scaling a particular precipitious precipice. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Suspenseful, interesting, and macabre, this period piece by Robert S. Baker overcomes a weakness in characterization by sheer dint of storyline and action. Jack the Ripper still remains the unidentified killer of at least three, probably five, and possibly even eight prostitutes living or working in London's East End in 1888. The murders occurred in August, September, and November of that year and were never solved. Because various internal organs of the dead victims (their throats were cut after they were strangled into unconsciousness) were removed rapidly and with an accurate surgical technique, investigators have postulated that the demented serial killer was a surgeon. In this cinematic version, the murders are shown as they happened while Inspector O'Neill (Eddie Byrne), along with an American detective Sam Lowry (Lee Patterson) try to track down suspects and prevent the next killing. The theory put forward here is that Jack the Ripper was looking for one particular woman. As the tension mounts, his suggested identity -- and what happened to him -- is revealed. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Filmed on location in Switzerland, Walt Disney's Third Man on the Mountain was based on Banner in the Sky, a book by James Ramsey Ullman. James MacArthur plays a Swiss youth who vows to be the first to scale a formidable Matterhorn-like mountain called the Citadel. The fact that MacArthur's father was killed attempting a similar climb only strengthens the boy's resolve. Though discouraged by his mother and uncle, MacArthur prepares for his ascent by taking practice climbs with his friends, learning vital lessons about safety and cooperation along the way. Finally, MacArthur begins making his way up the Citadel in the company of four other hardy souls. The title is a giveaway as to who doesn't reach the top of the mountain first; even so, there's a happy, satisfying ending for the so-called "loser." The film's breathtaking full-color shots of the Matterhorn are brilliantly augmented by the matte work of the legendary Peter Ellenshaw. Watch for Helen Hayes, the mother of Third Man on the Mountain star James MacArthur, in an amusing cameo role. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In this melodrama, the daughter of a convicted, and executed killer finds herself held captive by AWOL soldiers seeking the diamonds her father swiped before he died. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi