Norman Rose Movies

In a sequel to the superior movie entitled The Incident, a small-town lawyer goes against the State of Maryland, suing on behalf of an institutionalized mental patient for release. ~ Tana Hobart, All Movie Guide

How Hitler Lost the War is a provocative account that challenges certain conventional theories surrounding the defeat of Germany in World War II. The program argues that Allied victory was due to strategic mistakes on the part of the Germans. Told from the fictional perspective of a high-ranking Reich military officer, the documentary features animated maps, documentary footage, and interview footage. Each source offers eye-opening information. ~ Betsy Boyd, All Movie Guide

Professor and sociologist James Ault and film documentarian Michael Camerini combine forces to tell the story of five families from a fundamental Baptist church in a small town in central Massachusetts. Pastor John preaches that the world is only 10,000 years old and warns his flock about the corrupting sexual influence of "that Devil television." Rock music, ice skating, and commercial television are all depicted as evil. The church has set up a school for classes K through 12 to teach the importance of the Bible and the Constitution. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

The McCarthy-era "witch hunts" in the entertainment industry set the stage for this comedy drama set in the 1950s. Howard Prince (Woody Allen) is a cashier at a corner bar who works as a small-time bookie on the side, with little success. One day, Howard's old friend Alfred Miller (Michael Murphy), a successful television writer, makes a business proposal to him; Alfred's leftist political views have resulted in him being blacklisted from the major television networks, and he can no longer get work. Alfred asks Howard to act as a "front" -- Howard puts his name on Alfred's scripts, sells them, and takes a cut of the payment for his trouble. Howard's new career as a "writer" is an instant success, and soon Howard is fronting for a handful of blacklisted scribes while earning a healthy income and becoming the toast of the television industry; another fringe benefit is a romance with beautiful network employee Florence Barrett (Andrea Marcovicci). However, comic Hecky Brown (Zero Mostel), who had a brief fling with socialism years before, now finds his past catching up with him, and he's told in order to save his job as host of a weekly television show, he has to get the goods on some suspicious figures, among them Howard Prince, whose background looks a little too clean for comfort. The Front was written by Walter Bernstein, who was himself blacklisted during the 1950s, as were co-stars Zero Mostel, Herschel Bernardi, and Lloyd Gough. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Death of a Hooker was the spell-it-out alternate title for Ernest Pintoff's unorthodox murder mystery Who Killed Mary Whats'ername. At first, Red Buttons seems an illogical choice for a hero, especially since he plays a diabetic ex-boxer who isn't all that quick on the uptake. But Buttons gradually grows on the audience as he investigates the murder of a Greenwich Village prostitute whom he barely knew. With the help of his daughter Alice Playten, Buttons unearths a great many clues that we either overlooked or ignored by the cops. The film ends abruptly and somewhat tragically, which may have resulted in poor word of mouth when it was first released. Only after it became a Late Late Show perennial did Who Killed Mary Whats'ername? finally find its audience. The largely New York-based cast includes Sylvia Miles, Sam Waterston, Conrad Bain and, in an uncharacteristically repulsive "heavy" role, David Doyle. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Chester Jump (Tom Ligon) grew up hard, in a family as grim as the rural Southern countryside they lived in. His passion for automobiles transformed into a passion to run them, drive them, and race them. He took advantage of any chance to enter a drag race, or a demolition derby. This fierce ambition has not gone unnoticed by race promoter Babe Duggers (Logan Ramsey), who sees to it that Chester gets a few chances. However, when Chester begins to get really successful, there are plenty of people (including Duggers) who are willing to bring him down a notch or two. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Russian director Sergei Bondarchuk's epic version of Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace (Voyna i Mir) was the most expensive European film ever made for many years. It certainly had one of the longest gestation periods, with Bondarchuk spending seven years filming the project (the actors noticeably age from scene to scene). In relating Tolstoy's complex tale of Napoleon's invasion of Russia, Bondarchuk helmed some of the most graphic battle scenes ever seen, one of which runs nearly 45 minutes. So many horses were killed in these sequences that the film was loudly boycotted in some American cities by the ASPCA. While Bondarchuk is slavish to the source material, he does make a few Hollywood-like concessions to popular appeal; his leading lady Lyudmila Savelyeva looks exactly like Audrey Hepburn, the star of King Vidor's 1956 filmization of the Tolstoy novel. Originally clocking in at 507 minutes, War and Peace was pared down to 373 minutes for American consumption. It became a surprise theatrical hit, and a ratings bonanza when it was telecast on the ABC network in four parts from August 12 through 15, 1972. A big film, to be sure -- but few modern critics consider Bondarchuk's War and Peace a great film, citing its many deadly dull passages and its sappy, operatic finale. The dubbed American version is narrated by Norman Rose. The full Russian-language version with English subtitles is now available on video. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Pinocchio meets Nurtle the Twurtle after Gepetto changes the boy back into a puppet for insubordinate behavior in this animated sci-fi children's story. Nurtle and Pinocchio embark on a trip to Mars and battle the alien white whale Astro in hopes of saving the Earth from attack by the menacing space-mammal. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

Produced by Himan Brown (of radio's Inner Sanctum) and directed by John Newland (of TV's One Step Beyond), The Violators stars Arthur O'Connell as a rule-bound probation officer. When O'Connell refuses to loan $500 to his prospective son-in-law Fred Beir, the latter cooks up a swindling scheme to raise the money. This rash act causes O'Connell to realign his thinking insofar as his strained relationship with daughter Nancy Malone is concerned. The plight of the central character is subjugated to the film's central "juvenile delinquent" storyline, involving Beir and his youthful cohorts. Produced by RKO Radio, The Violators was distributed by Universal-International. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide