Patrick Williams Movies

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

Dennis Christopher stars as a recent high school graduate in Bloomington, Indiana, who is caught with his friends -- Dennis Quaid, Daniel Stern, Jackie Earle Haley -- coasting between high school and deciding what to do with the rest of their lives. The four friends are snobbishly looked down upon by the college students of the town as "cutters," since they were born in Bloomington and their parents worked in the local limestone quarries that built the university. Dennis Christopher's character Dave wants to be a champion bicycle racer and he idolizes the Italian racing team -- so much so that he speaks, thinks, and acts Italian, all to his father's (Paul Dooley) forlorn exasperation. Dave falls for a college girl (Robyn Douglass), but is ashamed to admit he is a cutter and poses as an Italian exchange student to impress her. Dave is particularly excited when his heroes -- the Italian racers -- come to town for a race. But they are even more snobbish than the college students and rely on dirty tricks to keep Dave from winning a race against them. After that ordeal, Dave throws away his false identity and convinces his friends to enter the university's "Little 500" bicycle race against the college students. This light-hearted and heartwarming tale was a surprising word-of-mouth success at the box-office and won several awards, including an Academy Award for "Best Screenplay." ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

When faced with graduation, four seniors plot to prolong their college experience for fear of steady employment, but they're also loathe to leave behind their accommodating housemate Sylvia (played with mute, topless allure by a pre-Three's Company Priscilla Barnes), who functions as a live-in maid and concubine ("Where else are we going to find a nympho who loves to cook and clean house?"). In between sumptuous meals and bouts in the sack, the boys pester their parents to pay for post-graduate studies, without success. Luckily, a Poindexter science major named Arnold is desperate to lose his virginity to Sylvia, so the guys trade her sexual favors for his complicity in an elaborate scam. He's the only trusted assistant of reclusive genius Professor Heigner (Alan Reed, the voice of Fred Flintstone), a three-time Nobel Prize winner studying the mating habits of mosquitoes. Foundations are eager to fund the professor's work with generous grants, and since Heigner signs anything Arnold hands him without question, the seniors draft their own letter of request for cash and claim to be studying the sexual habits of college-age girls. It works, and with a 50,000-dollar-grant they offer coeds a 20-dollar honorarium to participate in the study by engaging in any kind of sex they like with our four heroes as the only male volunteers. Eventually, exhaustion and avarice lead them to expand the study and allow local businessmen to take part for a 50-dollar fee, which leads to huge profits. Only the intervention of "the establishment" will show the seniors the folly of their ways, when they enter into partnership with a feminine hygiene corporation and find themselves targeted for murder. The female head of the foundation that funds the seniors' project mistakenly believes that Professor Heigner is some sort of sexual dynamo and pursues him endlessly, leading the misanthropic scientist to chase her away by firing a rifle at her, spraying her with sticky white fire extinguisher foam, and setting a blaze beneath her while she frantically climbs up a chimney. Endless lines of co-eds wait breathlessly for the chance to copulate with strangers for a double sawbuck (it's all in the name of science, after all, and why not earn money for something they'd be "giving away" otherwise?). ~ Fred Beldin, All Movie Guide

Cajun quarter-horse trainer Lloyd Bourdelle (Walter Matthau) struggles to eke out a decent living for himself and his three sons Buddy, Randy and Casey (Andrew A. Rubin, Stephen Burns and Michael Hershewe). Their prize horse is thoroughbred foal Casey's Shadow, named after the youngest son (Hershewe). The question is whether or not Lloyd, a life-long loser, can take advantage of the opportunity for bettering his lot afforded by Casey's Shadow. Alexis Smith co-stars as Sarah Blue, a wealthy woman who becomes Matthau's strongest ally when she offers to buy the horse rather than allow the vindictive Mike Marsh (Robert Webber) to destroy it. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Barbara Eden, who's had more pilots than series to her name, goes the Police Woman route here as she plays the widow of a cop shot down while on duty. Honoring the memory of her husband, she becomes a private eye, devoted to tracking down those miscreants who've slipped through the long fingers of the Law. Her present case involves a missing porno stars, blackmail and murder. As a tip of the hat to her I Dream of Jeannie fans, Eden dons the revealing garb of an X-rated actress, then begins frequenting the adult-movie houses of LA in search of her missing quarry. Stonestreet: Who Killed the Centerfold Model? toted up impressive ratings when first shown on January 16, 1977, but a weekly series was not in the cards. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this made-for-TV film later adapted into a TV series, a special detective (Robert Stack) and his unit investigate a series of attacks involving the rape and murder of nuns. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide

Director Phil Karlson harks back to the no-nonsense, no-thrills directness of his 1950s "B" pictures in Framed. Joe Don Baker, Karlson's star in Walking Tall, plays Ron, a high-rolling gambler with a streak of integrity. Framed by the film's villains--including a cartel of corrupt cops--Ron is carted off to prison. Upon his release, he embarks upon a carefully calculated campaign of revenge. The film's stylistic ties to the enormously successful Walking Tall include the screenwriting contributions of Mort Briskin. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The made-for-TV Stowaway to the Moon may be regarded by some as an excellent argument for birth control. Michael Link plays E.J., an 11-year-old boy fascinated by manned space travel. While visiting Cape Canaveral, E. J. accidentally finds himself on board a space missile. By and by, he is accidentally launched to the moon. But don't despair--this is a kiddie movie. Also in the cast is Lloyd Bridges, Jeremy Slate, and, in the role of a TV commentator, real-life former astronaut Pete Conrad. Curiously, the full-color Stowaway to the Moon was often telecast in black and white when it went into local syndication. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The sequel to The Harrad Experiment focuses on the students of a sexually-progressive college who spend the summer finding a practical application for what they've learned. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide

This TV movie stars Bill Bixby as a professional magician who is wrongly accused of a crime and sent to prison. Upon his release, Bixby swears to fight criminals and wrongdoers and to champion the underdog, using his prestidigitory skills to accomplish this. The film proudly states in its prologue that all the illusions seen during the story are actual magic tricks, minus special camera effects--though it strains credibility to assume that Bixby carries a prop for every occasion to confound the crooks at a moment's notice. The Magician was transformed into a weekly 60-minute series in the fall of 1973. The series lasted only one season, the victim of executive indecision over whether to play the series straight or with tongue in cheek. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Fresh from her eight-season run on Bewitched, Elizabeth Montgomery embarked upon a whole new career as everyone's favorite TV-movie star in the ABC production Mrs. Sundance. Shamelessly promoted as a sequel to the movie megahit Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the film cast Montgomery as Sundance's schoolteacher widow Etta Place, the role played in the earlier movie by Katherine Ross. Like her outlaw husband, Etta finds herself on the lam from the law, with a $10,000 bounty on her head. Resigned to spending the rest of her life in hiding, Etta is ultimately flushed out by the rumor that Sundance is still very much alive (In truth, the authorities never found Etta Place, and even the date of her death is shrouded in mystery). Lensed on location near Lone Pine, California, the film represented the first on-screen teaming of Elizabeth Montgomery and her real-life future husband Robert Foxworth. Mrs. Sundance premiered January 15, 1974. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this dark drama, filmed in the Mojave Desert, a conniving wife and her lover leave her husband, who broke his leg, alone in the desert to die. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

A young man finds himself trapped in a cycle of reincarnation, reliving the same twenty five years over and over, in this strange drama that was the master's thesis at USC for filmmaker Alan Gadney. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide