Michael Dudikoff Movies
Though few familiar with buff skull cracker Michael Dudikoff would be shocked to hear that the handsome action star got his start in modeling, the fact that he previously studied child psychology might come as a surprise to those who think brawn overpowers brain. The Redondo Beach, CA, native was born to a Russian father in early October of 1954, and although Dudikoff isn't fluent in his native tongue, his father did teach him to speak a little Russian. Studies in child psychology preceded work as a model for the handsome young hopeful, and in 1978, he got his big break when cast in a supporting role on the wildly popular television drama Dallas. In the years that followed, Dudikoff appeared in both Happy Days and Gimme a Break!, and in 1980 the young rising star made his feature debut in The Black Marble. Small roles in Tron (1982) and Uncommon Valor (1983) found his action chops developing nicely, and after having a wild time in Bachelor Party (1984), Dudikoff had his breakthrough role in the 1985 martial arts action film American Ninja. Though the part was originally intended for film star Chuck Norris, Dudikoff made the role his own, to the delight of action fans worldwide. Though the requisite sequels came fast and furious, it was roles in such small-scale actioners as Platoon Leader (1988, directed by Chuck Norris' brother Aaron) and Midnight Ride (1990) that kept his name alive in the lucrative low-budget action market. Though Dudikoff's 1993 series Cobra would only hold out for one season, his average of two films per year would find him doling out the punches well into the new millennium. The late '90s found Dudikoff teaming with B-movie maestro Fred Olen Ray for a series of small-scale punishers, and in 2002, Dudikoff appeared opposite Treat Williams in Jim Wynorski's Gale Force. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide- 1991
She sure did. Susan Lucci brings her daytime-drama flailing gestures to the prime time TV-movie scene in this melodramatic farrago. She plays a married woman who for the first and only time in her life succumbs to the charms of another man. Accused of murder, Lucci's only alibi is her adulterous liaison. Trouble is, she can provide no proof that the affair--or her lover--ever existed. The publicity people did their best to suggest that The Woman Who Sinned was reminiscent of Fatal Attraction, simply because both films involved a clandestine love affair and a psycho killer. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Susan Lucci, Tim Matheson, (more)
- 1990
- R
This jungle adventure features an extremely complicated plot that involves a megalomaniacal Nazi doctor who continues to perform inhuman experiments in the Amazon jungle and helms the Lost City of the Nazis, a mecca for war criminals and new followers. He is pursued by three vengeful people: a former colleague whom he double-crossed near the end of the war, a young woman who saw him murder her father, and an angry American physician, whose daughter the doctor kidnapped after they came to the jungle to help the ailing Indians who are dying from a mysterious disease. In addition to coping with each other, the searchers must also deal with the usual Amazon dangers, including ferocious cannibals, before they can make it to the hidden city and get their revenge. The plot is an adaptation of an Alistair McLean novel. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Michael Dudikoff, Robert Vaughn, (more)
- 1990
Filmed in 1985 but not released until 1990, this film tells of a woman who flees from her husband and hitches a ride with a passing stranger. It turns out that the stranger (Mark Hamill) is a psychotic serial killer who likes to take Polaroids of his victims and then keep their eyeballs. The woman's husband, a cop, realizes who the stranger really is and sets out to rescue his wife. ~ Brian Gusse, All Movie Guide
- 1987
American Ninja 2: The Confrontation spotlights Michael Dudikoff and Steve James as a pair of combustible U.S. Army Rangers. Dudikoff and James are ordered to find out why so many Marine guards have been disappearing from their posts at the US Embassy in a mythical Carribean country. Turns out that villain Gary Conway has been kidnapping the Marines and forcing an abducted engineer to reprogram the captive Leathernecks so that they'll join Conway's army of zombielike assassins. Naturally, the scientist has a beautiful daughter (Michelle Botes) whom Conway uses as leverage. Battling not only Conway's minions but the corrupt local authorities, martial arts experts Dudikoff and James effectively lay waste to the villain's previously impenetrable stronghold. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Michael Dudikoff, Steve James, (more)
- 1987
- R
Lieutenant Jeff Knight (Michael Dudikoff) is an idealistic young officer who arrives in Vietnam to lead a group of fighters from the 103rd Airborne division in jungle combat. Sergeant Michael McNamara (Robert F. Lyons) is a combat veteran who helps Jeff after most of the platoon is wiped out. George S. Clinton provides the music for this low-budget war film that features plenty of gratuitous violence. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Michael Dudikoff, Robert F. Lyons, (more)
- 1986
- R
This comedy is set 15 years after the final nuclear holocaust and centers upon two fellows who have been stuck in their fathers' elaborate bomb shelter since the bombs began to fall. They had plenty of food, clothing (from the 1940s), and necessities, but their only entertainment was a huge set of pulp mystery novels by such writers as Dashiel Hammett and Raymond Chandler. By the time the two young men, Phillip and Marlowe finally emerge from the shelter in 2010, they have become "hard-boiled" detectives. They manage to find an old car and head off down the ruined roads looking for action. Along the way, they see beautiful, but hard-as-nails blonde Miles Archer and pick her up. She ends up robbing them and abandoning them. In her haste, she drops a set of keys--the keys to the last nuclear warhead. Whoever holds them, holds the world in their hands and suddenly the young men find themselves pursued by assorted weirdos, including man-eating hippies, looking for the ultimate power. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- John Stockwell, Michael Dudikoff, (more)
- 1986
Produced in the Autumn of the Golan-Globus collaboration, Avenging Force serves as a vehicle for American Ninja costar Michael Dudikoff. Cast as a retired secret service agent, Dudikoff runs up against a sinister right-wing political organization called the Pentangle. He comes to the aid of his best friend Steve James, a black political candidate who has become a target for the Pentangle's henchmen. Impressed by Dudikoff's martial arts skills, the Pentangle leaders try to convince him to join their cause-and to ensure his cooperation, they kidnap his little sister Alison Gereighty. Avenging Force concludes with a violent Enter the Dragon-style mano y mano squareoff between Dudikoff and the Pentangle flunkeys. The film's finale is "open" enough to allow for a sequel, which has yet to appear. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Michael Dudikoff, Steve James, (more)
In American Ninja, Michael Dudikoff plays American "GI Joe" who, based in the Philippines, gets hip to a crooked arms racket involving none other than the military itself. There's no end to the rib-cracking opportunities Dudikoff encounters as he knee-knocks his way through a host of bad guys as he rescues a lady in distress and ventures to thwart the thieving arms vendors. ~ All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Michael Dudikoff, Steve James, (more)
Tom Hanks stars in this raunchy teen comedy from veteran screenwriters Pat Proft and Neil Israel, who had previously collaborated on the amusing sketch film Tunnelvision (1976) and the disappointing Americathon (1980). Bus-driver Rick Gasko (Hanks) is engaged to wealthy Debbie Thompson (Tawny Kitaen), much to the chagrin of her father (George Grizzard), who considers Rick a loser. To keep an eye on her future groom, Debbie and her friends dress as prostitutes to attend his bachelor party, which quickly turns into a bacchanal of smutty debauchery. Familiar faces in the cast include action stars Michael Dudikoff and Ji-Tu Cimbuka, pin-ups Monique Gabrielle and Rosanne Katon, and teen-movie regulars Adrian Zmed and Wendie Jo Sperber. It's an occasionally hilarious excursion into bad taste, although one which two-time Oscar winner Hanks would probably like to forget. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Tom Hanks, Tawny Kitaen, (more)
Ted Kotcheff continues his First Blood fervor with Uncommon Valor. Gene Hackman stars as Cal Rhodes, a former Marine Colonel who has been getting the run-around for ten years from the government concerning the disappearance of his son and his buddies - all Marines who enlisted years prior and served in Vietnam. Rhodes' son was last seen in Laos, where he was fighting in the war and captured as a POW. When word gets back to Rhodes that the men may still be alive and held in prison camps, but the government still has the men listed as missing in action, Rhodes decides to take matters into his own hands. Contacting an old friend, oil baron MacGregor (Robert Stack), Rhodes is granted financial backing to form his own incursion force. He assembles a crack team of men, puts them through an intensive period of training. and heads back with them into the Laotian jungles to search for the MIAs. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Gene Hackman, Robert Stack, (more)
One of the earliest feature films to reflect the video-game craze of the 1980s, Disney's Tron stars Jeff Bridges as computer programmer Kevin Flynn, who becomes part of the very game that he's programming. Flynn's principal antagonist is his glory-grabbing boss, Ed Dillinger (David Warner), who likewise metamorphoses into a video-game character. The title character, a computer-generated superhero, is played by Bruce Boxleitner. Though antiquated by 1990s standards, Tron represented the last word in special effects back in 1982. Surprisingly, despite its long-range influence on the movie industry, the film was a box-office disappointment when first released. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jeff Bridges, Bruce Boxleitner, (more)
Arthur Hiller directed this drama exploring the disintegration of an ideal marriage after the husband discovers he is gay. Kate Jackson is Claire, a successful television producer, and Michael Ontkean is her husband Zack, an equally successful doctor. They enjoy eight years of married bliss until homosexual writer Bart McGuire (Harry Hamlin) appears at Zack's office. As Zack gets to know Bart, he discovers he is attracted to him. He asks Bart out to dinner, one thing leads to another, and soon Zack announces to Claire that he wants to explore his new-found sexuality with Bart. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Michael Ontkean, Kate Jackson, (more)
- 1982
- PG
Neil Simon based his screenplay for I Ought to Be in Pictures on one of his more serious theatrical pieces. Walter Matthau is top-billed as Herbert Tucker, a struggling screenwriter who suddenly finds his 19-year-old daughter, Libby(Dinah Manoff), on his Hollywood doorstep. Having deserted his family years earlier, Herbert isn't keen on having his daughter around to cramp his lifestyle, which at this point consists of drinking his meals and telling lies to his faithful girlfriend, Stephanie (Ann-Margret). Libby takes it upon herself to put Herbert's life in order. There are plenty of angry outbursts and recriminations between father and daughter before the tearful, upbeat conclusion. Incidentally, Dinah Manoff is the daughter of actress Lee Grant, who'd previously co-starred with Walter Matthau in Neil Simon's Plaza Suite -- which, like I Ought to be in Pictures, was directed by Herbert Ross. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Walter Matthau, Ann-Margret, (more)
Sort of a triple-threat Bad Seed with a more overtly violent streak, this film tells the tale of trio of cherubic youngsters whose births all coincided with a solar eclipse, which somehow initiated a kind of time-release evil reaction that reaches its climax on the kids' tenth birthday, causing them to transform into miniature homicidal psychopaths. These darling little tykes then proceed to beat dad's brains out with a baseball bat, gun down their teacher, and otherwise beat, stab and strangle anyone who even looks cross-eyed at them. They also seem to be strangely fond of leering at naked teenage girls... or maybe that's just the director's favorite pastime. Produced in 1980, this proto-slasher opus was shelved for six years, then released to video to capitalize on the already-waning trend of Friday the 13th sequels and their hellish offspring. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Susan Strasberg, José Ferrer, (more)
- 1981
A young girl's dangerous dance with dieting leads to near disaster in this exceptional made-for-television drama. In one of the earliest treatments of the subject, Jennifer Jason Leigh stars as Casey Powell, the quiet daughter of an overbearing mother and milquetoast father. Feeling pressure to be the good girl of the family after her troublesome older sister gets pregnant, Casey retreats into her secretive world of self-starvation. When arguing fails to produce results, her parents (Charles Durning and Eva Marie Saint) send her to a hospital where she meets a spunky fellow patient (Melanie Mayron) and a caring therapist (Jason Miller). Casey's road to recovery is not as simple as merely eating though, and she and her family realize that together they must confront the deeply-rooted familial issues that lay at the heart of Casey's affliction. Jennifer Jason Leigh is utterly compelling in the lead role. ~ Bernadette McCallion, All Movie Guide
Adapted for the screen by novelist Joseph Wambaugh himself, The Black Marble stars Robert Foxworth as a burned-out, hard-drinking cop who is teamed with idealistic lady officer Paula Prentiss. These two polar opposites wade their way through a seamy urban world of corruption and hopelessness. The film is peppered with supporting players, of which include Harry Dean Stanton, James Woods, John Hancock and Barbara Babcock. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Robert Foxworth, Paula Prentiss, (more)
