Ben Piazza Movies
Leading man Ben Piazza spent most of his Hollywood career just a step or so short of stardom. He was brought to Tinseltown on the strength of his performance in the Canada-filmed A Dangerous Age (1958), subsequently appearing in support of Gary Cooper in the A-western The Hanging Tree. His leading-man period peaked in the early '60s, though he was constantly in demand for supporting and character roles, often playing an uptight suburbanite. Possibly Piazza's best showing in the latter stages of his career was as the father of schizophrenic Kathleen Quinlan in 1971's I Never Promised You a Rose Garden. On television, Piazza had regular roles as Jonas Falk on the daytime drama Love of Life and as teacher George Benton in the 1978 sitcom The Waverly Wonders. Ben Piazza died at the age of 57, shortly after appearing in Guilty By Suspicion (1990). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
A gang of ruthless but inept kidnappers pull off a crime with startling and unexpected consequences in this tough, nervy thriller which has won a cult following. Candy Phillips (Susan Sennett) is a sixteen-year-old student at an exclusive private Catholic school who, while walking home from school, is suddenly dragged into a waiting van that quickly speeds away. Candy has been kidnapped by an unlikely team of criminals -- pretty but hard-edged Jessie (Tiffany Bolling), her psychopathic brother Alan (Brad David), and Eddy (Vincent Martorano), a misfit Army veteran who only wants to own his own bowling alley. Jessie and her cohorts have learned that Candy's father Avery Phillips (Ben Piazza) is the manager of an upscale jewelry store, and after burying Candy in a coffin-like box on the outskirts of the desert (with a pipe for ventilation), they send Avery a message informing him they'll release Candy in exchange for 500,000 dollars in jewels. However, come the next morning, Avery has failed to respond to their demands, and an attempt to coerce payment from him leads to the discovery he has no intention of rescuing Candy. The Candy Snatchers was the only directorial credit for television writer Guerdon Trueblood; his young son Christopher Trueblood (billed as Christophe) appears in the film as an autistic child who happens upon Candy and tries to help. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- 1974
In this s-s-suspenseful drama, a submarine carrying a load of poisonous snakes accidentally wedges itself amidst the rocks near the bottom of the sea. Now the crew must somehow avoid the unwanted slitherers and manage to extricate themselves. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1974
Feeling sorry for travelling book salesman George Reed (Ben Piazza), Olivia (Michael Learned) makes a sizeable deposit on the "Five-Foot Shelf" collection, consisting of fifty "Harvard Classics." When he finds out that Reed has spent the money to buy his little girl a doll, John (Ralph Waite) is outraged and orders the peddler off Walton's Mountain, never to return. But this doesn't answer the episode's burning question: Will Olivia pony up a second deposit when those fifty books are delivered to the Walton doorstep? ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1973
This French-produced thriller was shot entirely in English. Jean-Louis Tritignant stars as Lucien, a hit man who goes to Los Angeles to end the life of an important local mobster. The mobster's heirs, who hired Lucien, had already hired yet another hit man (Roy Scheider) to kill him. He speaks very little English, and the lifestyles and customs of Los Angelenos puzzle him completely. One of the films highlights is its use of many unusual decayed and shabby sites in the Los Angeles area, such as Venice Beach. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jean-Louis Trintignant, Ann-Margret, (more)
- 1970
Upon completing Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon, a tearful Liza Minnelli declared publicly that she would never, ever work with tyrannical director Otto Preminger again. Worse luck for her: Junie Moon contains what may well be Minnelli's best non-musical performance. Based on the novel by Marjorie Kellogg, the film surprisingly manages to evoke humor and pathos from some of the least promising material in movie history. Minnelli plays an emotionally imbalanced young girl whose face is horribly disfigured by her psycho boy friend Ben Piazza. Ken Howard is cast as an epileptic who has wrongly been diagnosed as mentally retarded. And Robert Moore (future director of such films as The Cheap Detective and Murder by Death) portrays a homosexual, confined to a wheelchair after a hunting accident. After meeting one another in a hospital, these three social outcasts decide to move in together, forming a united front against a cold, judgmental world. The devastating events that follow might have lapsed into the grotesque and exploitational, but director Preminger is extremely careful to depict his protagonists as three-dimensional human beings rather than "freaks." Unfortunately, some filmgoers, assuming that any film with a title like Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon just had to be a campy laff riot, were turned off by the repellant aspects of the early scenes and refused to give the rest of this fascinating film a chance. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Liza Minnelli, Ken Howard, (more)
- 1964
Working as a fruit picker for wealthy citrus grower Leland Hagerman (Byron Morrow), Kimble (David Janssen)--alias "Jim Wallace"--promises his dying boss that he'll look after Hagerman's ne'er-do-well son Blaine (Ben Piazza). This proves difficult when, upon Blaine's return home, he turns out to be an arrogant leech who is universally despised by his late father's employees. Ultimately, Kimble sides with Blaine's stepmother Flo (Celeste Holm) to prevent the wastrel from illegally gaining full control of the family business. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1962
Perhaps the most stunning moment in this interesting adaptation of the famous play by Jean-Paul Sartre is the last scene itself when the finality of three antagonist people being doomed to spend an eternity together hits home hard. The three are a journalist who betrayed members of the resistance movement in World War II, a lesbian who tempted a married woman to leave her husband, and a social-climber who killed her son and drove her husband to suicide. The trio are led into their "hotel" room by a bellboy (Ben Piazza) and when they try to leave, they quickly discover there is literally no exit. Thus trapped like rats in a cage, they reveal their sins of the past in flashbacks and soon find that the hell of being forced to spend an eternity together is much worse than fire and brimstone. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Viveca Lindfors, Rita Gam, (more)
- 1960
In this romance, a young girl runs away from boarding school with the hope that her boyfriend will marry her. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1959
Gary Cooper plays a frontier doctor with a checkered past who works in a rowdy Montana mining camp. Cooper falls in love with Maria Schell, a young Swiss girl whom he has treated for shock after she was the victim of a holdup. He finances Schell's grubstake, which makes her rich. When Schell's unscrupulous partner Karl Malden tries to have his way with the girl, Cooper kills Malden. Sentenced to an immediate hanging, Cooper is saved when Schell offers to give the town her valuable mine. A surprise hit in 1959, The Hanging Tree was based on an award-winning novel by Dorothy M. Johnson. The film not only yielded a hit theme song by Mack David and Jerry Livingston, but also served as the film debut of George C. Scott, who plays Cooper's doctor predecessor. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Gary Cooper, Maria Schell, (more)
