Don Franklin

Lindsay Felton stars as Anna Morgan, a teenaged gymnast left paralyzed and wheelchair-bound after a fall. Anna's efforts to adjust to her situation are almost as painful as the accident which brought it about, no small thanks to the well-meaning but rather clumsy efforts by her friends and family to "help" her. As Anna slowly triumphs over tragedy, her parents and siblings also manage to overcome the many day-to-day crises which have caused them to drift apart over the years. The presence of Richard Thomas in the cast was evidence enough that Anna's Dream was produced on behalf of the PAX TV network. The film originally aired on October 4, 2002. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Marilu Henner stars as a stalking victim in this made-for-TV movie based on a true story. Henner stars as Nancy Conn, a woman who becomes the obsession of stalker Richard Mark Ellard (Doug Savant). After she and her cousin are targeted by Ellard, both are savagely attacked and left for dead. Conn survives, Ellard is jailed, and over time Conn slowly puts her life back together and begins to heal physically and mentally. Astonishingly though, Ellard comes up for early parole and Conn makes it her mission to keep Ellard locked up for his crimes. ~ Bernadette McCallion, All Movie Guide

Season Two of The Young Riders finds a few changes of personnel around and about the Pony Express station run by crusty old Teaspoon Hunter (Anthony Zerbe in pre-Civil War Sweetwater, Wyoming. Youthful riders The Kid (Ty Miller, Billy Cody (Stephen Baldwin, Jimmy Hickok (Josh Brolin, Ike McSawain (Travis Fine), and Buck Cross (Gregg Rainwater) are still delivering the mail despite obstacles far more daunting that sleet, snow and hail; likewise, the service's sole female member Lou McCloud (Yvonne Suhor) is still disguising herself as a boy for the sake of convenience, though by this time The Kid has tumbled to her secret and has fallen in love with her. New to the service is a freeborn black teenager named Noah Dixon (Don Franklin); also joining the cast is the station's enigmatic new cook Rachel Dunn (Claire Wren), replacing the previous season's Emma Shannon, who has run off with amorous Marshal Sam Cain. Highlight this season include revelations about Teaspoon's unsavory past; the Riders' efforts to fight a cholera epidemic, and to save an innocent man from lynching in the process; Jimmy Hickok's brief tenure as sheriff in a wide-open town, where he half-hopes to be killed for accidentally causing the death of a young woman; and the end of the trail for local storekeeper William Tompkins' (Don Collier) search for his wife and child, kidnapped years earlier by the Sioux. In an intriguing bit of casting, onetime Bonanza regular Pernell Roberts appears as the burned-out idol of the impressionable Billy Cody; and later on, Richard Roundtree of Shaft fame shows up as the mentor of Noah Dixon, determined to save his former pupil from being sold into slavery. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The Nasty Boys refers not to a rock group but an elite corps of law enforcement officers. This fact-based TV movie is set in August, 1986. The place is drug-ridden North Las Vegas, Nevada. Unable to stem the drug trade by orthodox means, the police department organizes a group of "commando cops", who swoop down on the narcotics kingpins while garbed in identification-obscuring ski masks. These guerilla tactics worked beautifully in 1986, though the hooded vigilantism inherent in so extreme a police procedure has subsequently triggered racial tensions in some large cities. In 1989, however, The Nasty Boys was regarded as a merely a slam-bang piece of entertainment. It was designed as the pilot for a potential TV series, and was given a "sure-fire" network lead-in with the premiere episode of Baywatch (Baywatch clicked; The Nasty Boys clunked). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A transit engineer and his family must face the gargantuan task of moving from New Jersey to Boise, Idaho in this lively comedy starring Richard Pryor. It all begins after he gets a really great job out West. Unfortunately, his family is less than thrilled with the prospect. The furniture movers, who prove to be crooks, and their crazy neighbors conspire to make matters all the worse. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

The serious problems in romancing young women are held up against the realities of a normal teen existence in this standard sex comedy without sex (as in graphic or nude). After meeting three new young women in one week, Danny (Kevin Anderson) ends up trying to handle all of them at once, and quite by accident. He invites Esme (Peri Kaczmarek) home while his mother is away on vacation, but Terry (Shaun Allen) and Marcy (Jessica Vitkus) come barging in, needing a place to stay. Danny only loves one of them, but his mother and everyone else has trouble believing that when they see the Arabian tent in his bedroom. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Christopher Reeve got away from Superman and related costume roles in this dramatic fantasy film, adapted from Richard Matheson's 1960s vintage novel Bid Time Return. A young playwright, Richard Collier (Reeve), is approached by an elderly woman on the occasion of his first triumph in 1972 -- all she says to him is "Come back to me" and leaves him with a watch that contains a picture of a ravishing young woman. Eight years later, he visits the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island and comes upon a photograph of the same woman, whom he discovers was an actress who made an appearance at the hotel in 1912. He becomes obsessed with the image and what the woman -- who died the night she approached him in 1972 -- meant by what she said. In a manner somewhat reminiscent of the film Laura, he falls in love with her and her image as he learns more about her life and career. Then he comes upon the suggestion of a professor at his former college that time travel may, in fact, be possible, using an extreme form of self-hypnosis to free the person from the place they occupy in the time-stream. Collier's feelings for the woman are so strong that he succeeds, bringing himself back to the hotel in 1912 on the eve of her triumph. He meets the actress, Elise McKenna (Jane Seymour), and the two fall in love despite the machinations of her obsessive, autocratic manager (Christopher Plummer), who feels threatened by Collier's presence. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide