Mel Stuart Movies

Mel Stuart's documentary The Hobart Shakespeareans shows how one talented teacher is changing the lives of his at-risk students by exposing them to great literature and mathematics. Rafe Esquith teaches fifth-grade in a dangerous section of Los Angeles. In addition to engaging the children in Shakespeare, he makes sure his students understand the importance of self-respect and hard work. The film builds to a climax that fins the students performing Hamlet with the assistance of such famous actors as Ian McKellen and Michael York. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide

In this episode of AFI's 100 Years. . .100 movies, viewers look at American film's treatment of crime, including a loving investigation of that most American of genres, film noir. From Double Indemnity to Pulp Fiction many of the classic films of the genre are investigated. This is the second episode in the AFI's 100 Years. . .100 Movies series. ~ Rob Ferrier, All Movie Guide

Man Ray, famed Dada artist, expatriate, and innovator, is the subject of this PBS American Masters Series episode. Stockard Channing hosts this in-depth documentary. Several interviews with the artist himself and other archival footage aptly covers and describes one of the 20th Century's most influential artists. ~ Ed Atkinson, All Movie Guide

Documentary filmmaker Mel Stuart, whose previous subjects have ranged from JFK to Mao Tse-Tung, focuses his attention on everyone's favorite dinner-jacketed spy in Happy Anniversary 007: 25 Years of James Bond. Roger Moore, who'd played Bond from 1973 through 1985, hosts this roundup of filmclips and interviews. Scriptwriter Richard Schickel calls upon his film-history expertise to place Bond in context with his fellow cinematic secret agents. The best moments include a montage of 007 gadgetry and a pageant of such Bond girls as Ursula Andress, Honor Blackman and Barbara Bach. Happy Anniversary 007 closes with preview clips for the then-latest Bond flick The Living Daylights (1987), starring Timothy Dalton as the indomitable Bond...James Bond. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This easy-going television movie is about Chris McBride (Michael York), a real-life naturalist who brings his wife and daughter to an African wildlife preserve to join him in a research project. The area has a special meaning to him because he was born there. His wife is not as enthusiastic as he is about leaving their familiar and comfortable world behind but changes her mind when she starts getting involved in the photography part of the project. A chance discovery of a pair of white-hued lion cubs (not albinos) raises disagreements on whether the family should do everything to help them survive, or just leave them alone. Eventually a compromise is reached that bodes well for the family and the fledgling lions and strengthens the family's resolve to fight off a poacher who wants to use the unusual cubs for his own profit. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

The Chisholms was a three-part miniseries adapted by Evan Hunter from his own novel. Covering the years 1842 through 1844, the dramatization follows the westward trek of the Chisholm family. Patriarch Robert Preston is driven from his midwestern homestead by a feud. Starting down the Ohio river, Preston and his family head for the greener pastures of Oregon. In Part Two, a romantic angle is introduced thanks to young lovers Stacey Nelkin and Charles Frank, while the Chisholms' safety is threatened by thieves and hostile lawmen. Several deaths impede the family's progress in Part Three, which brings the pilgrims to Wyoming. Spread out over four weeks (from March 29 through April 19, 1979), this miniseries version of The Chisholms served as the precursor to a weekly TV series, which did without the services of Robert Preston (who was unceremoniously knocked off in the first episode). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Producer/director Mel Stuart, who'd previously worked with David L. Wolper on the historical-recreation series Appointment with Destiny, applies the same docudrama techniques to the feature length Ruby and Oswald. Framed in the form of a documentary, the film recounts the days just prior to the Kennedy assassination, then traces the events leading to the fatal confrontation between Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald. There is a smattering of "conspiracy" speculation, but the script generally sticks to the known facts. The dramatized recreations are interspersed with actual footage of the dark days in November, including JFK's funeral. Made for TV, Ruby and Oswald has been rereleased as Four Days in Dallas. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Dale Messick's inexplicably popular Brenda Starr has to be one of the lamest comic strips ever perpetrated on an unsuspecting public; thus, any filmed version of the strip had nowhere to go but up. Jill St. John stars in this feature-length TV pilot film as plucky girl reporter Brenda Starr. While searching for a Howard Hughesish recluse, Brenda ends up in the wilds of Brazil at the mercy of voodoo-practicing natives. Happily, both St. John and special guest villain Victor Buono recognize the material for what it is, and make no effort to take things seriously. Brenda Starr debuted on May 8, 1976; no series of any kind followed. Other cinemadaptations of Brenda Starr include a 1945 Columbia serial starring Joan Woodbury, and a much-delayed (though not long-awaited) theatrical feature of the 1990s starring Brooke Shields. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This is a filmed documentary of a black music festival held on August 20, 1972 at the Los Angeles Coliseum, sponsored by Stax Records and Schlitz Beer. The L.A./Watts riots demonstrated the community's urgent needs to the black show-business community. All the proceeds from the concert and this movie went to charity. Among the better-known performers were Isaac Hayes, The Emotions, The Staple Singers, Little Milton and Luther Ingram. Richard Pryor, at the peak of his form, hosts and provides scatological and satiric comic relief. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Promoted as a family musical by Paramount Pictures, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is more of a black comedy, perversely faithful to the spirit of Roald Dahl's original book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Enigmatic candy manufacturer Willy Wonka (Gene Wilder) stages a contest by hiding five golden tickets in five of his scrumptious candy bars. Whoever comes up with these tickets will win a free tour of the Wonka factory, as well as a lifetime supply of candy. Four of the five winning children are insufferable brats: the fifth is a likeable young lad named Charlie Bucket (Peter Ostrum), who takes the tour in the company of his equally amiable grandfather (Jack Albertson). In the course of the tour, Willy Wonka punishes the four nastier children in various diabolical methods -- one kid is inflated and covered with blueberry dye, another ends up as a principal ingredient of the chocolate, and so on -- because these kids have violated the ethics of Wonka's factory. In the end, only Charlie and his grandfather are left. Ostensibly set in England, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory was lensed in Germany (as revealed by the film's final overhead shot). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A mid-1960s TV documentary special (and a New Yorker cartoon before that) was the inspiration for If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium. The film is a likeable satire of "packaged" European tours, where the nonplused tourists are expected to rush from one landmark to another in a breathless 18 days. Ian McShane stars as the amorous tour guide, with Suzanne Pleshette as the American department store buyer he falls for; their romance ends when Pleshette decides that the supposedly worldly McShane is too immature for her. An all-star cast, including Murray Hamilton, Peggy Cass, Pamela Britton, Marty Ingels, John Cassavetes and Vittorio De Sica, pops up in comic cameo roles. Our favorite bit: an American and German tourist, simultaneously regaling their respective wives with wildly divergent accounts of the same wartime confrontation. If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium was reworked in 1987 as a made-for-TV movie, cleverly title If It's Tuesday, It Still Must be Belgium. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide