Chelsea Brown Movies

Debuting in May 1989, the Australian TV soap opera E Street was designed as a "hip," youth-oriented variation of the long-running continuing drama A Country Practice, featuring one of the stars of the earlier series, Penny Cook. Set in the inner-city community of Westside, the daily 50-minute series cast Cook as dedicated general practitioner Dr. Ellie Fielding. Other regulars included beat cop George Sullivan (Les Dayman); George's rebellious teenaged daughter Alice (Marianne Howard); feisty legal-aid lawyer Sarah McKillop (Katrina Sedgwick), who was abruptly killed off six months into the series; Sarah's rather sexier replacement, Jennifer St. James (Virginia Hey); social worker Martha O'Dare (Cecily Polson); pub keeper Ernie Patchett (Vic Rooney) and his hotheaded son Chris (Paul Kelman), who was forced via an unwanted pregnancy to wed snooty socialite Megan Bromley (Lisabeth Kennaly); and the series' most popular character, "cool" Reverend Bob Brown (Tony Martin), who like most of the adults on the program was saddled with a contentious offspring, namely his son Harley (Malcolm Kennard). Whenever the ratings flagged -- as they did when Ellie Fielding was written off the series -- the producers hauled in another Country Practice alumnus, notably Kate Raison as rich-bitch dowager Sheridan Sturges and Joan Sydney as Ernie Patchett's sister Mary. The series also indulged in the time-honored practice of sweeping the boards clean by having several characters killed off at once in a single tragedy (an explosion, an auto accident, etc.) so that a whole new flock of younger, prettier regulars could be introduced. By the time the series entered the home stretch, most of the stories focused on a crippled rock singer named Wheels (Marcus Graham) and his entourage. Created by Forrest Redlich, E Street chalked up 404 episodes before its cancellation in 1993. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

This patchy, uneven combination of fantasy and musical comedy is hilarious in parts and embarrassing in others, though the premise has great potential in itself -- a screwball Captain Invincible is out to save the world from his nemesis, Mr. Midnight, the white supremacist. Captain Invincible (Alan Arkin) is wallowing in his cups in the Australian outback when he receives an unusual call from the American President asking for his help. Unusual because the Captain had no choice but to go into exile after Joseph McCarthy's Un-American Activities Committee became suspicious of his red cape, and he has never been sober enough to recover from the shock. This history is given in a mock newsreel at the beginning of the film. But now Mr. Midnight is threatening to dismember New York City by convincing all the ethnic groups to live along the seashore. Once they are situated on beachfront property, he will blast out a crack in the earth behind them, cut their connection to the mainland, and send them drifting off into the Atlantic. It seems the dastardly Midnight has stolen the ultra-secret hypno-ray and can slice off New Jersey whenever he wants. Weakened by depression and alcohol, Captain Invincible is nursed back to full throttle by Patty Patria (Kate Fitzpatrick) and is soon ready to zoom over Sydney to the far side of the globe -- after practicing in harness in front of rear-projected scenes. Meanwhile, Mr. Midnight and his sidekick are all set to defend their turf, and their ability to slice it up -- though the (American) patriotic sentimentality that prevails in the end, after several other songs have come and gone, is summarized in a rendition of "God Bless America" that conflicts with the opening scenes and may leave foreign audiences cold. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

In this sci-fi horror movie with comedic elements, a racist transplant surgeon (Ray Milland) learns that he's dying of cancer. He's recently performed some revolutionary experiments with a gorilla (special effects guru Rick Baker), by attaching a second head to the gorilla's body and removing the first one after the second has grown firmly into place. Now he wants to replicate the experiment with a human body, by grafting his head onto another person's frame. This way, he reasons, he'll be able to continue his medical and scientific work unabated. When he comes to after surgery, however, he's horrified to find out that his head has been stitched onto the body (and next to the head) of a large black man (former football player Roosevelt 'Rosey' Grier) due for a murder sentence. Enormous complications then ensue, as the two headed person runs about, with the convict intent on proving his innocence to the cops, and the scientist intent on having the convict's head removed. Director Frost formerly worked on stag films such as 1964's Love is a Four-Letter Word.
~ Nathan Southern, Rovi

Vincent Edwards, four years removed from Ben Casey, enters another branch of the healing profession in the made-for-TV Dial Hot Line. Edwards plays Matt Lincoln, a community psychiatrist who is patched into a "hot line" telephone for those troubled souls unable to afford therapy. This TV movie involves three of Lincoln's call-in patients, including one potential suicide. Also featured was future Laugh-In regular Chelsea Brown as Tag, a member of Lincoln's staff. Dial Hot Line later matriculated into the brief Matt Lincoln TV series, with both Vincent Edwards and Chelsea Brown retained from the pilot. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi