John Rubinstein Movies

Capitalizing on her sudden Three's Company-engendered superstardom, Suzanne Somers topped the cast of this innocuous made-for-TV comedy. Somers is cast as Mattie, a backwoods girl with big-city ambitions. Mattie is in love with fellow mountaineer Jack (Bruce Boxleitner), but she also craves stardom as a country-western singer. Things come to a head when Mattie is given her big showbiz chance in Las Vegas. In the course of things, Somers belts out a duet with co-star John Rubinstein, "You Made a Believer Out of Me." Happily Ever After first aired September 5, 1978. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

This film of Ira Levin's novel The Boys from Brazil wastes no time in establishing the fact that several seemingly unrelated men have been mysteriously murdered. Elderly Jewish Nazi hunter Ezra Lieberman (Laurence Olivier), brought into the case when the clues seem to point to a neo-fascist plot, traces the trail of evidence to Paraguay. Here he finds an unregenerate Auschwitz doctor, patterned on Joseph Mengele and played by -- of all people -- Gregory Peck. Lieberman discovers that the murdered men had all fathered sons who were identical -- the results of a cloning experiment, designed to create a race of incipient Hitlers. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

John Rubinstein steals the focus in this episode as Walter J. Young, a prison inmate enrolled in a special college study program. When a coed turns up murdered on the campus, suspicion immediate falls upon Walter. Detectives Stone (Karl Malden) and Robbins (Richard Hatch) try to cut through all the negative vibes to solve the murder--and to prevent Walter from ruining the rest of his life by taking desperate action to escape his accusers. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Stacy Keach plays Lou Ford, a deputy sheriff whose brutal childhood experiences have left him emotionally warped. Ford is prized by his community for his no-mercy treatment of criminals. But the danger that he will snap and begin killing indiscriminately is ever-present. Based on the novel by Jim Thompson, in this adaptation Ford's psychotic breaks are signalled by lightning flashes. Director Burt Kennedy handles his material in the manner of his earlier Welcome to Hard Times: nothing is quite of this earth, and everything is painted in broad, violent morality-play strokes. Despite Kennedy's predilection for "cutting in the camera" (that is, filming each scene with only one or two different camera angles, so that his directorial vision will survive the editing room), Killer Inside Me gives evidence of having been severely tampered with in the post-production process. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

An Americanized version of Truffaut's The Wild Child, this drama centers on the attempts of a behavioral psychologist to educate a boy, raised in the wilds by dogs, and teach him how to function in society. This film spawned a brief television series, Lucan. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

On December 16, 1975, ABC's Wide World Mystery unveiled the first of two videotaped pilots for a never-sold detective series. Mr. & Mrs. and the Magic Studio Mystery stars John Rubinstein as David, a crimesolving attorney, and Lee Kroeger as Mandy, his overly inquisitive wife. The plot of this 90-minute effort concerned a murder committed in full view of a theatre audience. A woman steps into a magician's "iron maiden", but does not emerge alive as planned. In the grand tradition, Lt. Selzer (Milton Selzer) nabs the wrong suspect; it's up to Mr. & Ms. to set things right. Possibly inspired by the 1945 comedy/mystery film Having Wonderful Crime, Mr. & Mrs. and the Magic Studio Mystery was followed one week later by the second and last TV outing for David and Mandy, Mr. & Ms. and the Bandstand Mystery (see entry 127559). ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

A hapless outlaw discovers he isn't any better off on the right side of the law in this offbeat western comedy set at the turn of the century. While Bickford Waner (Dennis Hopper) is known to lawmen as notorious bandit Kid Blue, his reputation far outstrips his actual success as a crook, and after a train robbery falls apart moments after it began, Bick decides it's time to go straight. Bick settles in Dime Box, Texas, a shabby little town dominated by a ceramics factory that makes novelty ashtrays, and manages to find a lose a series of odd jobs through his innate clumsiness and his short temper. Bick moves into a rooming house where he's befriended by Reese Ford (Warren Oates), a good natured man fascinated with the ancient Greeks and their ideals of male friendship, and his wife Molly (Lee Purcell), who doesn't believe their relationship need be platonic. Bick also finds a friend in pill-popping Preacher Bob (Peter Boyle) and makes an especially fierce enemy in foul-tempered sheriff "Mean John" Simpson (Ben Johnson). After his personal and professional lives take unexpected turns for the worse, Bick decides he needs to go back to a life of crime, though he hasn't gotten much better at armed robbery than he was before. Also starring Janice Rule, Ralph Waite and Clifton James, Kid Blue was shot in 1971, but not released until 1973, after the box-office failure of Dennis Hopper's The Last Movie sent his career into a tailspin; it would be his last role in an American feature until 1979's Apocalypse Now. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

"What do we do now?" Director Michael Ritchie and executive producer/star Robert Redford satirically explore the machinations and manipulations of media-age political campaigns in this cynical political drama. Rumpled left-wing California lawyer Bill McKay (Redford), the son of a former governor (Melvyn Douglas), is enlisted by campaign maestro Marvin Lucas (Peter Boyle) to challenge Republican incumbent Crocker Jarmon (Don Porter) for his Senate seat. McKay agrees, but only if he can say exactly what he thinks. That approach is all well and good when McKay does not seem to have a chance, but things change when his honesty unexpectedly captivates the electorate. As McKay inches up in the polls, Lucas and company start to do what it takes to win, leaving McKay to ponder the consequences of his political seduction. Working without studio interference from a script by Jeremy Larner, a speechwriter for 1968 Presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy, Ritchie enhanced the behind-the-scenes realism of Larner's insights with a realistic, cinéma vérité approach. He orchestrated a campaign parade for "candidate" Redford that drew such a considerable unstaged audience that local politicians wanted to draft Redford for a real election. Redford's resemblance to the telegenic Kennedys, and his character's resonance with the future career of California governor Jerry Brown, only emphasized how close to the bone The Candidate was (and is). Released the fateful year of Richard Nixon's reelection, the film garnered accolades, if not substantial box office; Larner won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay and thanked the "politicians of our time" for inspiration. Creating a documentary fiction about the semi-truths manufactured to market a candidate, The Candidate shrewdly exposed the effects of the media on the increasingly cynical political process, posing unanswerable questions that have become all the more pressing with every soundbite-ruled election. ~ Lucia Bozzola, Rovi

Although advertised as a "reunion" of former I Dream of Jeannie stars Barbara Eden and Larry Hagman, the made-for-TV A Howling in the Woods is actually a vehicle for Eden, with Hagman contributing a glorified cameo role. The scene is a remote wooded area in Nevada, where disillusioned housewife Liza Crocker (Eden) has arrived for a solitary camping trip. It so happens that Liza's "sanctuary" is located near the small and cloistered town where she was born -- a town that does not necessarily want to have her back. As Liza's husband, Eddie (Larry Hagman), searches for her in hopes of a reconciliation, the heroine is terrorized by the mournful sound of a howling dog, which triggers painful and frightening memories that she had hoped were long, long buried. Based on a novel by Velda Johnston, the underrated and almost unbearably suspenseful A Howling in the Woods debuted November 11, 1971, on NBC. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

A young Steven Spielberg helmed the made-for-TV Something Evil. Johnny Whitaker (Family Affair) is cast as Stevie Worden, an angelic child whose parents move into a foreboding Pennsylvania mansion. It isn't long before Stevie is possessed with the house's resident demonic spirit. In anticipation of The Exorcist and The Omen, the spirit within Stevie never lets anyone know when it's going to strike -- but everyone knows full well when it does. Spielberg evokes horror throughout by contrasting the most terrifying events with the plodding commonplace of day-to-day life. Something Evil was Spielberg's last TV-movie assignment. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

This western is permeated with the culture of the early '70s; it features contributions by writers for the Firesign Theatre, a counter-culture comedy troupe of the period, as well as music from groups such as The James Gang, Doug Kershaw, White Lightening and others--a rock/folk/country fusion. With highly stylized sets, music and story, this movie is full of surprises. Don Johnson as Matthew and John Rubinstein as Zachariah are two friends who go on the run. Together and separately they explore life as outlaws, at first enjoying and later being repelled by the reckless violence involved in gunfighting, bank robbing, and the other kinds of mayhem which come from the outlaw life. Along the way, they meet up with guides and gangs of various kinds, from a troupe of traveling, bank-robbing musicians (Country Joe and the Fish), to the greatest gunfighter in the world. Their paths diverge until Matthew comes gunning for Zachariah in a dramatic final confrontation. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi