Rod Taylor Movies

Hosted by the American Film Institute, this video is a tribute to Alfred Hitchcock's filmmaking career. Included are scenes from Psycho, The 39 Steps and Vertigo. ~ Tana Hobart, All Movie Guide

Bette Davis goes the "kitchen sink drama" route in The Catered Affair. As the frowsy wife of Bronx cabdriver Ernest Borgnine, Davis insists that her daughter Debbie Reynolds have a high-class wedding--caterers and all. Reynolds and future hubby Rod Taylor want a simple ceremony, but Davis' mind is made up. The wedding snowballs into an unwieldy affair as Davis and Borgnine find that they must invite everyone they know or risk incurring the wrath of their neighborhood. When the cost of the affair exceeds the family's bank account, Davis rails at Borgnine for failing to be a good provider. It takes her till the very end of the film to realize what a fool she's been. Gore Vidal, of all people, adapted The Catered Affair from a TV drama written by Paddy Chayefsky; the original telecast had starred Thelma Ritter. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The works of "Puppetoon" creator and special effects wizard George Pal are perhaps best seen separately and in toto rather than lumped together in fragmentary form. The Fantasy Film Worlds of George Pal contains an abundance of enjoyable film clips, but most are far too short for the audience to fully appreciate Pal's cinematic contributions. The narration suffers from banality, while the overall pacing of the documentary is lumpy. Still, for those who've never seen Pal's Puppetoon shorts, or his early features The Great Rupert (1950) and Destination Moon, this compilation serves as a tantalizing teaser. Paul Frees narrates The Fantasy Film Worlds of George Pal, while several Pal associates and admirers, including Ray Bradbury, Roy Disney, Ray Harryhausen and Walter Lantz, are interviewed. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Two former World War II pilots take to running an air-freight company in South Africa after the war. They get mixed up with Lee Harris (Harry Guardino), the dangerous black-market crime boss who flaunts his beautiful mistress Elana (Claudia Cardinale). Brynie (Rod Taylor) and Mike (Peter Deuel) are the former ace flyboys who get on the wrong side of Harris and his henchmen. The action starts at Al Poland's (William Marshall), a favorite watering hole where everyone has one ear on the live music as the other listens to the next sordid smuggling plan hatched by shadowy underworld types. Harris and his gun-wielding thugs mean to bring down the high-flying operation. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

This James Bond parody brings a new sort of jet-set secret agent to the screen -- one who hates flying, is afraid to shoot people, and would rather stay at home! Col. Mostyn (Trevor Howard) is the head of a special branch of British intelligence who is appalled to discover that a number of his best agents are either leaving the force or have turned out to be traitors. It is decided that Mostyn and his men need a special agent to ferret out those who leave his employ while knowing too much and silence them permanently. Mostyn decides the right man for the job is his old army buddy Boysie Oakes (Rod Taylor), but there's a bit of a problem -- while the job requires a globe-trotting assassin who can stare calmly into the face of death, Oakes is a mild-mannered fun seeker who is terrified of airplanes and faints at the sight of blood. None of this dissuades Mostyn, who still gives Oakes the assignment, but when he finds out that flying and guns are a big part of his new job, he hires someone else to do the dirty work for him. Oakes eventually develops a taste for the cars, women, gadgets, and danger of his new career, but the real acid test comes when he actually has to go on an assignment himself. The Liquidator was directed by Jack Cardiff, who along with a respected career as a director was one of the most distinguished cinematographers in the British cinema, lensing such classics as The Red Shoes, The African Queen, and Black Narcissus. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Curry (Rod Taylor) is a veteran soldier-of-fortune hired by the president of the Congo for a three day mission. He and native Congoan Ruffo (Jim Brown) are to oversee the safe passage of a train through hostile enemy territory and bring back some uncut diamonds and a human cargo of fugitives loyal to the Congo cause. The two employ the drunken Doctor Wreid (Kenneth More) and a suspicious ex-Nazi named Henlein (Peter Carsten). The quartet, along with 40 of the Congo's best soldiers, try to maneuver the train against the rebel forces and save the beautiful missionary Claire (Yvette Mimieux) at no extra charge. The action takes place in the wake of the political unrest that swept the Congo in the 1950s. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

This easygoing drama offers a look back at the early days of the Australian movie business, and it was based on the real-life adventures of pioneering Aussie exhibitor Lyle Penn. Maurice "Pop" Pym (John Meillon) loves motion pictures, and he wants to open a cinema of his own. But shortly after the turn of the century, financial support for such a venture is hard to come by, so Pop does the next best thing; with his young son and a piano player in tow, Pop carts his collection of silent films and a portable projection system from one small town to another across the continent, showing his pictures wherever and whenever he can. However, Pop quickly learns that he already has a rival; Mr. Palmer (Rod Taylor) has decided to go into the movie business as well, and with deeper pockets, he's able to afford better equipment than Pop's shoestring budget can provide. Ironically, Rod Taylor plays a character who was born in Texas but emigrated to Australia; Taylor was in fact born in Australia and became a film star when he moved to the U.S. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

In George Pal's version of the H.G. Wells classic, Rod Taylor stars as George, a young scientist fascinated with the concept of time travel. On December 31, 1899, George seats himself in his jerry-built time machine and thrusts himself forward into 1917. A dyed-in-the-wool pacifist, George is distressed to see that World War I is raging all about him. He moves past the 1920s and 1930s into the 1940s, only to be confronted by another, even more terrible war. Next he stops in 1966, just as London is destroyed in a nuclear explosion. Retreating to his Time Machine, George is sealed in his cellar by molten lava. By the time he and his machine manage to escape their tomb, the year is 802,701. Looking around, George observes a seemingly idyllic world populated by gentle people. But he also notices that the citizens of the future, known as "Elois," behave more like mindless sheep than human beings. Befriending the lovely Weena (Yvette Mimieux), George learns to his dismay that humankind has forgotten all that it has learned through the centuries, preferring instead to frolic endlessly under the sun. Plot holes and inconsistencies abound in The Time Machine, but the film's true selling points was its Oscar-winning special effects; in this respect, producer-director Pal succeeded beyond anyone's wildest dreams. Another plus: the haunting musical score by Russell Garcia. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Four disparate scuba divers go to the Caribbean in search of lost treasure. ~ Kristie Hassen, All Movie Guide

Terrence Rattigan, the playwright who brought us the multicharactered, multistoried Separate Tables, again offers us an episodic cross-section of humanity in The V.I.P.'s. When a heavy London fog paralyzes all air traffic, the lives of several people are profoundly affected. As indicated by the title, most of the characters in this portmanteau film are of the social and/or financial elite. Elizabeth Taylor wishes to leave her enormously wealthy husband Richard Burton in favor of playboy Louis Jourdan. Peripatetic European film producer Orson Welles is hoping to escape London with his newest protegee Elsa Martinelli in order to avoid paying his income tax. Australian businessman Rod Taylor, accompanied by his devoted (and adoring) secretary Maggie Smith, is anxious to head to New York to stave off a hostile takeover of his firm. And impoverished aristocrat Margaret Rutherford (who won an Oscar for her performance) would rather not go to Florida to accept a job as a social arbiter, but the wolf must be kept from the door. Before the fog disperses, you can be sure that at least one of the many plotlines will intersect with another. David Frost, in a tiny part as a reporter, was fond of recalling in later years that, while the major stars of The VIPS were introduced in the opening titles with animated limousines, he was consigned a tiny Volkswagen; alas, no such cartoon joke appears in the film, though on occasion the actors-particularly Mr. Welles-behave as though they were cartoons. Mercilessly skewered by the critics, The VIPS was a winner at the box-office, due in great part to the Cleopatra-inspired publicity concerning the top-billed Liz Taylor and Dick Burton. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Gunman Sterling Hayden rides into a small frontier town in search of his mother's killer. William Bishop is a wealthy ranch owner who has married Karin Booth, Hayden's former girl friend. Hayden has reason to suspect that Bishop is the man he is gunning for. When the town marshal is shot down, Hayden takes his place, which establishes once and for all who the real hero is in this film. It is superfluous to add that this 1955 Top Gun bears no relationship to the 1985 stud-in-the-skies adventure film of the same name. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this suspenseful drama, a UN official tries to warn the world that a newly developed weapon is going to be misappropriated by international terrorists. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

The first spaceship to Mars rounds the Red Planet and heads back toward Earth but runs into an unexplained phenomenon in space that accelerates the craft to such a high speed that all four men aboard black out. When they awake, they've crash-landed on a planet that they only gradually realize is Earth -- of the distant future: they have crashed through the time barrier. After they are chased by ugly "Mutates," they are taken in by the declining remnants of human civilization who live underground. It's now 2508 A.D, almost 400 years after an atomic war almost wiped out the human race. John Borden (Hugh Marlowe) falls in love with Garnet (Nancy Gates), daughter of Timmek (Everett Glass), leader of the underground people -- a fact that enrages Mories (Booth Colman), who's always assumed she would someday be his. The scheming Mories tries to turn his people against the space/time travelers, but falls victim to his own nefarious plans. Learning from Deena (Lisa Montell), a servant girl from the surface of Earth, that most people up there are normal though cruelly ruled by the deformed ones, Borden and his friends take on the mutates with modern weaponry and reclaim the Earth for normal humanity.

Although this is (surprisingly) the first American feature film to deal with scientific time travel, World Without End is really just another lost-civilization plot, complete with princess, evil grand vizier, and lots of skulking in corridors. There are few imaginative touches -- the giant spiders in particular are pathetic -- and some of the cast isn't very good. But for the period, this is slightly above-average science fiction; the exteriors, shot at the famous Iverson Ranch, have an open, fresh feeling, but the interior sets are unimaginative and routine. The plotline owes more than a little to H.G. Wells' The Time Machine (a lawsuit was filed), which makes the presence of Rod Taylor in the cast (as the hunk from our time) a little ironic, as just a few years later, he starred in George Pal's much-loved movie version of the Wells novel. ~ Bill Warren, All Movie Guide