Shawn Carson Movies

Though notorious as a flamboyant TV game show staple, stage and screen icon Charles Nelson Reilly qualified early in the game as one of the most accomplished performers in all of show business. In addition to early dramatic training under the aegis of Uta Hagen (alongside Hal Holbrook and Jason Robards), Reilly received a Tony nomination for his 1997 direction of Julie Harris in a critically-acclaimed revival of The Gin Game and - as a dramatic coach - honed the acting chops of many a well-respected contemporary. Reilly also launched a critically praised one-man stage show, The Life of Reilly, that involved the actor-director relaying colorful monologues about his long life in show business before a live audience. That production forms the basis of the film of the same name by Barry Poltermann and Frank Anderson. The motion picture, shot as a "theater piece" without being opened up for the screen, (and thus, a film relatively free of visual gimmicks) finds Reilly expostulating, wittily, on such topics as: his homosexuality (and the early discrimination it wrought when he wanted to make it as an actor); his dysfunctional family and troubled childhood; his brush with death in a 1944 circus fire; his stint on the small screen; and his experiences on the Great White Way. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi

After a carnival comes to Green Town, the good citizens are compelled to follow their deepest desires, caught under the spell of the malevolent Dr. Dark (Jonathan Pryce) who can grant those desires on one condition: that the grantees will forever join his freak show. Dr. Dark is after two young boys from the town in particular, while others in the town would certainly be easy marks. The sour-faced, older schoolteacher (Mary Grace Canfield) wants to be a seductive young woman, Ed the bartender (James Stacy) would like to regain his lost left arm and leg, and the librarian (Jason Robards) worries about a wasted life spent only in books. As Dr. Dark works his own brand of voodoo, the citizens and the two boys -- as well as the whole carnival itself -- approach a final reckoning. Something Wicked This Way Comes was based on a Ray Bradbury novel. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

This low-budget horror film about teenagers trapped in a carnival funhouse with a freakish monster is pretty standard stuff. Director Tobe Hooper manages a few shocks and includes some typically peculiar supporting characters, but this film is less entertaining than either of his previous excursions into such territory. Not as scary as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) nor as bizarre as Eaten Alive (1976), The Funhouse may as well have been directed by an anonymous hack as one of the foremost names in the genre. The movie tie-in novel, penned by Dean R. Koontz under the pseudonym "Owen West," is actually far more frightening than the film on which it was based. ~ Robert Firsching, Rovi