William Theiss Movies

Made for television, Follow Your Heart was first telecast April 2, 1990. Ex-marine David Larson (Patrick Cassidy) is tooling along aimlessly in the middle of Wyoming when his jeep breaks down. Awaiting the verdict from the local repair shop, Larson takes a part-time job as a rest-stop attendant. Not the most outgoing of men, Larson is brought out of his shell when he befriends peppery widow Cloe Sixbury (Frances Sternhagen), her developmentally delayed son (Jace Alexander), and an orphaned Vietnamese girl (Nicole Francois). Deftly blending warmth, humor, and unexpected melodrama, Follow Your Heart is a winner all the way. The film has been rereleased as Walk Me to the Distance. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this rather routine adaptation of the French hit, The Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe, Richard (Tom Hanks) is a bicycling violinist who is innocently drawn into a nasty struggle for control of the CIA. Cooper (Dabney Coleman) is the unscrupulous current head honcho of the notorious U.S. agency, Ross (Charles Durning) is his nemesis, and Maddy (Lori Singer) works for Cooper. After Richard the violinist is forced into the picture, Maddy fights off an attraction to the rather dull man, and complications introduce enough gadgetry to fill a James Bond movie, almost. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Only Kelly Reno and Teri Garr from the cast of the original Black Stallion make appearances in The Black Stallion Returns. In the first film, young Reno rescued his beloved stallion from its cruel Arab owner. This time around, the stallion is abducted by Moroccan henchmen and bundled back to Africa. This paves the way for a repeat of all the salient action from the first Black Stallion. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this drama, a Yugoslavian native leaves the US and returns home after a 20-year absence. Back in his home fishing village, he begins caring for his grandchildren so their parents can go to West Germany and work. The grandfather makes the children work very hard, despite the fact that a local teacher begs him to ease up on the boy so he can attend school. The grandfather eventually dies, but by that time, the children have become determined to keep caring for the farm. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Also known as Moritorium and Georgia's Friends, Four Friends follows the titular quartet from high school to young adulthood. The film is set during the tumultuous 1960s, an era when everyone's values were turned inside out, shaken around, and reassembled. The central character is first-generation American Craig Wasson, who confounds his Yugoslavian father (Miklos Simon) by pursuing his own let-it-all-hang-out lifestyle. Wasson's best friends are athlete Jim Metzler and chubby Michael Huddleston; all pursue the affections of bewitching Jodi Thelan. Though they are obviously deeply in love with one another, Wasson and Thelan continue to foolishly avoid a long-term commitment as the sixties unfold around them. Four Friends calls for a fresher approach than the one offered by director Arthur Penn, whose handling of the material is much too pat and old-fashioned. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This "prequel" to the Newman/Redford vehicle Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was written by TV sitcom veteran Allan Burns and stars Tom Berenger as Butch and William Katt as Sundance. The film, per its title, traces the formative days of Butch and Sundance's careers as soft-hearted western outlaws, and their creation of the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang. There's no Etta Place this time around; the fictional heroine, named Mary, is played by Jill Eikenberry. Only Jeff Corey, as Sheriff Ray Bledsoe, repeats his role from the original film. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Thoroughly disillusioned by the Vietnam War, John, a journalist (Michael Moriarty), turns to heroin smuggling. Acting as John's go-between is the equally burnt-out Ray (Nick Nolte), who delivers the narcotics stateside to the journalist's wife, Marge (Tuesday Weld). Soon, however, Ray and Marge are on the lam, chased down by the minions of crooked narcotics agent Antheil (Anthony Zerbe). Who'll Stop the Rain? was based on Robert Stone's award-winning novel Dog Soldiers. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Planet Earth was the second of three look-alike attempts by Star Trek maven Gene Roddenberry to launch a futuristic TV series for the 1970s (the first was 1973's Genesis II, and the third was 1975's Strange New World). John Saxon stars as Dylan Hunt, who awakens from suspended animation in the year 2133. The "big war" has come and gone; one of the few surviving pockets of 20th-century civilization is the city of PAX. This 2-hour pilot film details Hunt's adventures in this Brave New World when he is captured and enslaved by a society run by women. He is rescued by the scientists of PAX, presumably as a means of getting Roddenberry's series off the ground. But except for this film, first aired April 23, 1974, Planet Earth never got into orbit. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Ocean View High is an upscale suburban school in an otherwise unidentified community. It's 1971, the point when the sexual revolution started moving into full swing and even a lot of Middle America, at least on the two coasts, admitted the existence of same revolution. It seems like the guys and girls at Ocean View are all loving pretty freely, and that extends to the school's resident faculty hero, football coach/guidance counselor "Tiger" McDrew (Rock Hudson), who -- despite his being married, with a child -- has been bedding many of the prettiest girls at the school. The only kid seemingly not "getting any" is Ponce de Leon Harper (John David Carson), who is starting to get neurotic and suffer academically, so much so that he seeks advice from McDrew, especially where his new substitute teacher, Miss Smith (Angie Dickinson), is concerned. But then various girls start turning up at the school dead, in various states of undress, with cryptic notes pinned to intimate parts of their anatomy. The lunkhead county sheriff (Keenan Wynn) is forced to defer to a state police investigator (Telly Savalas), who starts nosing around the school and uncovers more than he bargained for in terms of libidinous students, among other problems. Meanwhile, Ponce finds his problem taken care of by Miss Smith, at McDrew's request. But there's still a killer stalking the school.

If the plot and ambience of this movie seems shocking today, that's because it would be. Made at the outset of the sexual revolution, this was MGM's desperate attempt to run with the times, in terms of depicting a high school where sexual relations between students are considered routine and even those between faculty and students are accepted as long as they're kept quiet. Anyone trying to make such a movie in 2006 would face threats of prosecution, investigation, etc., and probably find it impossible to get the movie booked into theaters; MGM didn't have that easy a time in 1971, though (amazingly) the movie has been shown on television. Precisely what director Roger Vadim brought to Gene Roddenberry's screenplay (based on a novel by Francis Pollini) is difficult to tell, though he at least makes the sleazy and tawdry, smirky sex scenes and leering camera shots flow smoothly -- screenplay, director, and cameraman alike are fixated on the female anatomy throughout, though not in as distinctive a manner as Russ Meyer and his attachment to breasts. The presence of a couple of Star Trek co-stars and supporting villains, James Doohan and William Campbell, also makes this especially weird to watch. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

In the first in a series of detective comedies from director Blake Edwards starring Peter Sellers as bumbling French Inspector Jacques Clouseau, the mishap-prone snoop is actually a supporting player. David Niven stars as Sir Charles Litton, a suave jewel thief known as "The Phantom." Vacationing in a deluxe Alpine resort, Litton's real purpose is to purloin the Pink Panther, a gem of enormous worth owned by a princess (Claudia Cardinale). On his trail for years, Inspector Clouseau keeps losing his quarry, perhaps because his wife Simone (Capucine) is Litton's lover and alerts him every time her husband draws near. Also after the Panther is Litton's American nephew, George (Robert Wagner). At a posh costume ball at the princess' villa, the bauble is stolen and Clouseau, still trying to determine the bandit's identity, is framed for the crime himself. The Pink Panther made Sellers and his Clouseau act so popular that the character moved to center stage in a series of farcical sequels. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide