Deborah Raffin Movies

A young father endures to learn that parenthood can be a rewarding venture despite the weight responsibilities that go hand-in-hand with the job in this heartfelt tale of fatherhood starring Brian Austin Green and featuring music by Mark Mothersbaugh. A typical teenage who divides his free time evenly between his band and chasing girls, Jason Kempler (Green) is shocked when a one night stand with Melanie (Nicholle Tom) suddenly leaves him an expectant father. Despite his desperate attempts to distance himself from both the mother of the child and the newborn baby itself, reality comes crashing down when Melanie leaves the child on his doorstep and disappears without a trace. Subsequently kicked out of his home by his father and stepmother in hopes that he will finally be willing to take responsibility for his actions, Jason soon discovers that he can't imagine a life without his baby. When Melanie re-appears demanding that Jason give up the child he has grown so close to, the prospect of losing his child deals a devastating blow to the now loving father. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

The first of two CBS TV movies based on the novels of LaVyrle Spencer, Home Song stars Lee Horsley as school principal Tom Gardner. Happily married to wife Claire (Polly Draper), and the father of two children, Tom is taken aback when student Kent Arins (Stan Kirsch) transfers to his school. It seems that, two decades earlier at his bachelor party, Tom had slept with Kent's mother Monica (Deborah Raffin). Kent is aware of this untidy little secret as well; he happens to be Tom's illegitimate son. The situation becomes even dicier when Kent begins dating Tom and Claire's daughter Chelsea (Ari Meyers), who is blissfully unaware that she is being squired by her own half-brother! LaVyrle Spencer's Home Song premiered March 20, 1996. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Actress Deborah Raffin had a hand in the screenplay of this Southern melodrama, set in the Depression. Christopher Reeve plays ex-con Will Parker, who is looking for work in a small Georgia town. The pregnant Elly Dinsmore (Deborah Raffin) has placed an ad looking for a husband to tend her farm and look after her children. Will applies for the job, and proceeds to work as a handy man for Elly. He is anxious to appear respectable, since the local sheriff, Reese Goodloe (J.T. Walsh), is breathing down his neck, anxious for him to break parole. But Will gives him no cause for concern and, as he works Elly's farm, the two slowly fall in love and agree to marry. Will gets a job as a custodian in the library and his life appears to be heading back to normal. But one night in the library, Lula Peaks (Helen Shaver), the local waitress, throws herself at him, kissing him passionately. The following morning, Lula's body is found and Goodloe arrests Will for murder. Out of her love for Will, Elly seeks out a lawyer to defend him at his trial. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Picking up where Scanners left off, this sequel has good and evil scanners combatting when a crooked politician schemes to gain control of a major city. Scanners are people who, because their mothers had taken a certain drug during pregnancy, have acquired telepathic powers. Here, a "bad-guy" scanner escapes from a mental center and is hired by the politician to use his powers to gain control of others' minds, and then, their actions. A "good-guy" scanner teams with his sister to thwart these plans. ~ All Movie Guide

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, All Movie Guide

Eager to escape her high-society life among the English elite, a woman falls in love with a young musician. Her husband, however, has other plans for her. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide

In this drama, a man from the Midwest moves to the Big Apple after he separates from his wife. While in the big city an old college buddy gets him involved in a complicated love triangle. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Scriptwriters Robert Malcolm Young, Sue Grafton and Stephen Humphrey transposed the Agatha Christie story Sparkling Cyanide from its veddy British locale to the plush environs of Pasadena for this 1983 TV-movie adaptation. Leading character Anthony Andrews is still a Briton, mingling with the rich and famous. Seeking glamour, Andrews finds only depravity and death as several of the glitterati drop dead due to poisoned champagne. The motives are the oldest and most reliable: avarice and jealousy. Sparkling Cyanide was filmed at the same time as Caribbean Mystery, another Christie adaptation utilizing the same producer, director and scenarists. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This low-budget jungle adventure tale stars Deborah Raffin as a dedicated anthropologist who hires boozy, woman-hating helicopter pilot Peter Fonda to fly her into the dark inner depths of the Philippine jungle in search of one of her colleagues, who disappeared while searching for the legendary lost tribe of winged dwarf creatures. Re-titled Jungle Heat for video release and packaged like an Indiana Jones-style adventure, this plays like a low-rent, horror-tinged update of The African Queen, focusing more on the constant verbal sparring between the cultured Raffin and the coarse, hard-drinking Fonda than on the weird, gargoyle-like pygmies. The script -- based on the novel by Geoffrey Household -- sacrifices too many potential thrills for plodding exposition and half-baked humor. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide

In this made-for-television thriller, a pair of couples, a U.S. senator among them, are stalked by backwoods snipers while on a white-water rafting trip. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide

Touched by Love was not only filmed in Canada, but had a leading character named Canada (it had to; the film is based on the reminisces of a real-life person). Deborah Raffin portrays Lena Canada, a therapist in charge of handicapped Diane Lane. A wheelchair-bound cerebral palsy victim, Lane also shows signs of autism. Determined to bring Lane back into the world, Ms. Canada suggests that the girl start a pen-pal relationship with her favorite celebrity--Elvis Presley. Based on the real Lena Canada's book "To Elvis With Love," the low-key but emotionally supercharged Touched By Love costars Michael Learned as Lena's superior, Dr. Bell; also in the cast are sixteen genuine "special" children from a school in Calgary, Alberta. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this made-for-TV drama, a spunky waitress (Deborah Raffin) is left to support herself, her two small children, and her unborn baby when her no-good husband runs off. Determined not to spend her life in a dead-end job, the woman quits waitressing and sets out to become a truck driver. ~ Iotis Erlewine, All Movie Guide