Mel Novak Movies

A recently released mental patient may well wonder who the looney ones are in this drama that chronicles his strange homecoming. He has been gone many years and during that time, his father has married a very young woman. He then discovers that the maid is a full-blown witch, the cat has disappeared and finally the chauffeur is busily chasing after his newest mistress. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In a variation of Evan Hunter's famous novel King's Ransom (previously filmed by no less than Akira Kurosawa), outlaws Thorn and Bryan Hazard (Tom Skerritt, Fabian Forte) kidnap a girl whom they believe to be wealthy young Laura Singer (Susannah Darrow). Instead, they have abducted Karen Oliver (Sherry Boucher), the daughter of poverty-stricken Harry Oliver (Woodrow Parfrey). Will Oliver lose everything he owns trying to raise the $100,000 ransom, or will Laura's millionaire father Owen Singer (John Lasell) come through in a pinch? ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This sexy farce stars Dan Aykroyd and Rosie O'Donnell as Fred Lavery and Sheila Kingston, a pair of cynical detectives investigating the disappearance of a key witness in a diamond-smuggling case. The case leads them to a Club Med-styled S&M resort where dog collars and cat o' nine tails abound; further complicating matters, the smugglers end up on the island as well. The missing witness, photographer Elliot Slater (Paul Mercurio), takes a job as a bondage boy, and he falls in love with the resort manager, Mistress Lisa (Dana Delany. Adapted from Anne Rice's novel of the same name. ~ Jeremy Beday, All Movie Guide

In this low-budget but inventive teen kung-fu melodrama, the diminutive, karate-chopping Lovely (Lucinda Dooling) is out to wreak vengeance on the drug thugs who killed her younger brother, and fortunately she is not alone. Her female karate class and the instructor (Susan Mechsner) are behind her all the way, most notably in the final scenes when a showdown between the kicking teen women and the heavy-duty gangsters almost brings down the docks. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Star Bruce Lee died before this film was completed, thus the producers were forced to pad out the running time with outtakes and alternate shots. They also lifted chunks of footage from Enter the Dragon and Return of the Dragon. The finished product finally hit the screens in 1978, five years after Lee's death. The film's finale pits Lee against such formidable opposition as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Chuck Norris. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Isaac Hayes puts his gun where his groove is in his role as hard-case bounty hunter Mack "Truck" Turner, three years after composing the legendary score for Shaft (1971). Ex-football star turned skip-tracer, Turner specializes in bringing in the criminals police are too scared to chase, and when he's hired to capture sociopathic pimp Gator (Paul Harris), he finds himself confronted by the most vicious killers in the underground scene. Little does Turner know that Gator's woman, Dorinda (Nichelle Nichols), has a deep-running cold streak of vengeance, and has hired ruthless hit man Harvard Blue (Yaphet Kotto), as well as a legion of other like-minded and equally determined assassins, to snuff out Truck's supercharged motor once and for all. It's now up to Truck to keep his cool long enough to get to the source of the seemingly endless stream of bullets that come at increasingly unsettling intervals. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

To say that Chuck Norris is the star of Force of One may smack of redundancy. Norris is cast as Vietnam vet Matt Logan, assigned to instruct a big-city narcotics squad in the intricacies of martial arts. His star pupil turns out to be Detective Mandy Rust (Jennifer O'Neill). Initially disinterested in law enforcement, Logan is galvanized into action when his adopted son is killed by the villains. Force of One was designed as a follow-up of (though not a sequel to) the money-spinning Norris vehicle Good Guys Wear Black. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide