Richard D. Zanuck Movies

Compulsion is a compelling, stylish thriller, loosely based on the famous 1924 murder trial of thrill-killers Loeb and Leopold, two homosexual students who murdered a young boy to demonstrate their intellectual superiority. Artie Straus (Bradford Dillman) is a sadistic, mother-dominated bully. Judd Steiner (Dean Stockwell) is a submissive, introverted sissy. Having been raised by wealthy, arrogant families, both Artie and Judd consider themselves above conventional morality. Unfeeling and conceited, the boys, after the killing, take delight in offering to aid in finding the culprits. It is this arrogance which leads to their capture and prosecution for the murders. Jonathan Wilk (Orson Welles), playing a Clarence Darrow-like criminal defense attorney, takes on the case, and puts on a defense, without the cooperation of his clients, who will offer no explanation for what they have done. Bradford Dillman gives an outstanding performance, as does Dean Stockwell as the utterly unsympathetic murderers. Orson Welles is flamboyantly imposing as Wilk, who must use all his wits to try to save the boys from execution. Compulsion is a suspenseful courtroom drama, even though most viewers will know the outcome. Tautly directed by Richard Fleischer, the film is an outstanding, believable courtroom drama. ~ Linda Rasmussen, All Movie Guide

George Cukor directed this sanitized version of Irving Wallace's tawdry best-seller concerning a survey of the sexual habits of American women. Psychologist George C. Chapman (Andrew Duggan) arrives in a Los Angeles suburb with his assistant Paul Radford (Efrem Zimbalist Jr.) in tow. They are looking for volunteers for their sex survey, and four women raise their hands: Sarah Garnell (Shelley Winters) is a middle-aged woman who is having an affair with young theater director Fred Linden (Ray Danton); Teresa Harnish (Glynis Johns) is a happily married woman who becomes attracted to brawny football player Ed Kraski (Ty Hardin); Naomi Shields (Claire Bloom) is an alcoholic nymphomaniac who takes up with an unsavory jazz musician; and Kathleen Barclay (Jane Fonda) is a young widow who thinks she is frigid -- that is, until Radford makes her his personal project. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Willie Dynamite (Roscoe Orman) is a Manhattan pimp whose life and career are documented in this blaxploitation flick. Willie makes it to the top of his precarious profession, only to hit rock bottom again in record time. In her last movie role, Diana Sands plays an ex-hooker who becomes a social worker. She tries to get Willie to clean up his act before it's too late. Willie Dynamite was produced by Richard Zanuck and David Brown, who shortly afterward collaborated on a more upbeat project, The Sting. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Based on an actual incident, Steven Spielberg's first theatrical feature follows the adventures of a Texas outlaw couple striving to keep their family together by any means necessary. Determined not to lose her child to the authorities, Lou Jean Poplin (Goldie Hawn) gets her obedient convict husband Clovis (William Atherton) to break out of jail and help her kidnap their baby from its foster parents. With hostage Officer Slide (Michael Sacks) in tow, the fugitives head across the plains to Sugarland, Texas, pursued by a flotilla of cop cars. Even though Slide becomes the couple's friend, the Law is bent on capturing its criminal quarry. Even though it was greeted with strong reviews, and Hal Barwood, Matthew Robbins, and Spielberg won the screenplay prize at the Cannes Film Festival, The Sugarland Express flopped. The young audience that had embraced the challenging tonal shifts of Bonnie and Clyde and Easy Rider in the late 1960s was no longer so reliably drawn to narrative uncertainties in 1974. The massive success of Spielberg's next picture, the popcorn thriller Jaws (1975), would confirm his suspicion that downbeat films were no longer the way to popular approval. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

A graceful Russian ballerina falls in love with an American news correspondent in this comedy-drama. The KGB is most displeased and does everything it can to break them up and eventually, tragically, they succeed. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Based on Peter Benchley's best-selling novel, Steven Spielberg's 1975 shark saga set the standard for the New Hollywood popcorn blockbuster while frightening millions of moviegoers out of the water. One early summer night on fictional Atlantic resort Amity Island, Chrissie decides to take a moonlight skinny dip while her friends party on the beach. Yanked suddenly below the ocean surface, she never returns. When pieces of her wash ashore, Police Chief Brody (Roy Scheider) suspects the worst, but Mayor Vaughn (Murray Hamilton), mindful of the lucrative tourist trade and the approaching July 4th holiday, refuses to put the island on a business-killing shark alert. After the shark dines on a few more victims, the Mayor orders the local fishermen to catch the culprit. Satisfied with the shark they find, the greedy Mayor reopens the beaches, despite the warning from visiting ichthyologist Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) that the attacks were probably caused by a far more formidable Great White. One more fatality later, Brody and Hooper join forces with flinty old salt Quint (Robert Shaw), the only local fisherman willing to take on a Great White--especially since the price is right. The three ride off on Quint's boat "The Orca," soon coming face to teeth with the enemy. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

Despite being a less well-regarded virtual remake of the original film, Jaws 2 earned a tidy sum at the box office by combining its predecessor's winning formula with the popular teen horror craze, helping to spawn the era of blockbuster sequels. Roy Scheider returns as Sheriff Martin Brody, whose small resort town of Amity is poised to bounce back from the economic hardship it encountered after becoming widely known as the site of vicious shark attacks. But at the same time that Mayor Vaughn (Murray Hamilton) is welcoming a real estate developer to Amity, two divers disappear and a party of waterskiers is consumed by a shark. The incidents are explained away as accidents, but Brody knows better, tipping his bullets with cyanide and forbidding his sons Mike (Mark Gruner) and Sean (Marc Gilpin) to participate in a teen sailing regatta. Everyone foolishly chalks up Brody's fears to trauma-induced paranoia, and the regatta goes forward, with a hungry great white trailing the youthful contestants and hungrily picking them off one by one. Director Jeannot Szwarc would later helm another sequel, Supergirl (1984). ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

No one knows what evil lurks with the folks next door in this black comedy. Earl Keese (John Belushi) is a middle-aged suburbanite whose life is dull and uneventful, and that's just the way he likes it, though his wife, Enid (Kathryn Walker), isn't quite so happy. Earl soon learns that a new couple has just moved into the house next door, loudly leisure-suited Vic (Dan Aykroyd) and sexy Ramona (Cathy Moriarty). Earl is at once thrilled and terrified when Ramona unexpectedly attempts to seduce him, and he is quite puzzled when Vic and Ramona stop by for dinner the following evening and Ramona angrily accuses Earl of trying to take advantage of her. After an argument, Vic offers to make peace by buying dinner from a take-out restaurant. When Earl spies Vic cooking the meal in his kitchen a few minutes later, he realizes that his new neighbors are playing some sort of game with him, though he's not sure what or why. Neighbors marked the third and final screen pairing of Saturday Night Live stars John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd; Belushi died of a drug overdose three months after the film's release. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Cocoon is a warm-hearted science-fiction fable that avoids becoming overly corny thanks to the performances of its mostly senior cast. Wilford Brimley, Don Ameche, and Hume Cronyn are three old-timers who sneak out of their retirement home a few days a week to swim in the large pool on an abandoned estate next door. When the threesome begins to feel curiously younger, they discover strange pods on the floor of the pool. These pods are alien cocoons, which are being pulled from the ocean by a team of extra-terrestrials in human form led by Walter (Brian Dennehy), who has hired a local charter operator (Steve Guttenberg) to assist him. Walter explains to the seniors that energy from the cocoons is restoring youth and vigor to the older men every time they go for a dip. The aliens agree to let the men continue to swim in secret, but of course they can't keep their discovery to themselves. Soon the pool is swarming with retirees, with the notable exception of Bernie (Jack Gilford), who has no interest in prolonging life any longer than necessary. The aliens ultimately prepare to return home and offer the retirees eternal life if they leave Earth behind as well. Director Ron Howard treats his old-timers with care and dignity, and they respond with deeply sympathetic performances (Ameche won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar); the film's science-fiction trappings ably sustain the story's all-too-human ruminations on youth, aging, life, and death. ~ Don Kaye, All Movie Guide

Cocoon 2: The Return, like most sequels, relies a bit too heavily on one's familiarity with the first film. Without dwelling too long on Cocoon #1, we can observe that it ended with a group of senior citizens heading for the distant planet of Antarea, hoping to find a new, rewarding and elongated life. Cocoon 2 picks up the action five years later: The Antareans return to earth to check on the damage caused to their life-regenerating cocoons by earthquakes. Coming along for the ride are the elderly couples whom we met in the first film. Also carried over from the first Cocoon are young ferryboat captain Steve Guttenberg and gorgeous Antarean Tahnee Welch, who resume their interplanetary romance. Oldster Jack Gilford, whose beloved wife died in Cocoon, likewise finds romance in the form of Elaine Stritch. A secondary plot involves an insidious secret government plan to exploit the Antareans, which is foiled by sympathetic researcher Courteney Cox. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Based on a gritty, semi-autobiographical novel by author Kim Wozencraft, this crime thriller was adapted for the screen by noir novelist Pete Dexter and marked the directorial debut of producer Lili Fini Zanuck. Jennifer Jason Leigh stars as Kristen Cates, a rookie police officer recruited to partner with Jim Raynor (Jason Patric), an undercover Texas cop trying to infiltrate the criminal ring of major drug dealer Will Gaines (Gregg Allman) in the 1970s. What Kristen isn't told is that, as part of his deep cover masquerade, Jim must take drugs in order to be convincing and, unsurprisingly, has become an addict. Although this dangerous practice is not acceptable police procedure, Jim and Kristen's zealous superiors Larry Dodd (Sam Elliott) and Donald Nettle (Tony Frank) are obsessed with taking Gaines down because he has corrupted the daughter of a prominent local citizen. Jim and Kristen, who fall in love and move in together, befriend a petty car thief, Walker (Max Perlich), who has ties to Gaines. Since they both become drug addicts, Jim and Kristen's case makes little progress, until they clean up and convince Walker to turn on Gaines. Their investigation becomes tainted, however, when they are pressured from above to manufacture false evidence against their target. The soundtrack for Rushcontained the hit song "Tears in Heaven" by Eric Clapton. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

Dana Carvey plays a private detective who forgets everything when he goes to sleep at night, waking up each morning with a "clean slate," in this hit-and-miss comedy that plays like a companion piece to the much funnier Groundhog Day. Pogue (Carvey) is afflicted with his unique form of amnesia after getting injured in a car explosion. With the aid of a mysterious woman (Valeria Golino) who allegedly died in the bombing, he must find a priceless coin and evade the murderous clutches of the mobster (Michael Gambon) who executed the explosion and who wants to silence Pogue before he can testify against him. Carvey fares reasonably well in his role, but the best moments are provided by Pogue's dog, a one-eyed Jack Russell named Barkley who makes a habit out of running into things headfirst. ~ Don Kaye, All Movie Guide

Four men just barely on the right side of the law step into a web of danger and corruption in this drama. In the early 1950s, Max Hoover (Nick Nolte) is a detective with the Los Angeles Police Department who leads what's been dubbed "the hat squad," a group of sharp-dressed cops who are ordered to stamp out organized crime using any means necessary, with legality and delicacy not much of an issue. Hoover and his partners Ellery Coolidge (Chazz Palminteri), Eddie Hall (Michael Madsen), and Arthur Relyea (Chris Penn) are looking into the brutal murder of a young woman named Allison Pond (Jennifer Connelly). In the course of their investigation, they discover that Allison had a lively sexual history, and she possessed explicit films of herself with her lovers, including Gen. Thomas Timms (John Malkovich), leader of the newly-formed Atomic Energy Commission. Timms becomes a key suspect, and he reveals the first of a long trail of troubling secrets, but Hoover has secrets of his own that he's trying to keep covered in the process -- including the fact that he and Allison were once an item. Popular vocalist Aaron Neville has a cameo as a singer at a night spot. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide