Eric Christmas Movies

In this third entry in the raunchy, sophomoric comedy series, the riotous students of Angel Beach High endeavor to get even with their old nemesis Porky who is trying to force the basketball coach into throwing the championship game. It seems Coach has been on a losing streak at Porky's newest establishment, a riverboat converted into a casino. Plenty of slapstick mayhem ensues when his team rallies to save him and the big game. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

This science fiction thriller was inspired by a mythical real-life event, the WWII era disappearance of an entire naval vessel during a radar-cloaking test. In 1943, David Herdeg Michael Pare and Jim Parker Bobby DiCicco are sailors stationed aboard a Virginia battleship. Their vessel is undergoing an experiment conducted by brilliant scientist Dr. Longstreeet (Eric Christmas), who is attempting to render Allied craft invisible to radar. The ship becomes briefly invisible, but the test is a disaster and most of the crew are horribly killed. However, two crewmen are missing. In 1984, Herdeg and Parker emerge in the Nevada desert, having somehow traveled through time. Longstreet, still trying to perfect the device after 40 years, is running another experiment that pulls the missing sailors into the present. Realizing what's occurred, Herdeg and Parker flee, fearing for their lives. Fugitives, they befriend a skeptical modern woman, Alison Hayes (Nancy Allen). An effect of time pulls Parker back into 1943, leading to a bizarre reunion between Herdeg, still trapped in the future, and Parker, now a senior citizen. The film was followed by a sequel nine years later. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

Love it or loathe it (and there are a goodly number of people on either side), Porky's was one of the most successful comedies of its day, spawning two direct sequels and inspiring an incalculable number of lowbrow teen comedies, most recently including American Pie (1999). Pee Wee (Dan Monahan), Billy (Mark Herrier), Tommy (Wyatt Knight), and Mickey (Roger Wilson) are four painfully horny high school kids growing up in South Florida in the 1950's. Desperate to rid themselves of their cumbersome virginity, they head out to a sleazy bar near the swamps called Porky's, where local legend has it that the owner will fix you up with a prostitute for a reasonable fee. After Porky takes their money and dumps them in the swamp, the guys vow to get revenge. Meanwhile, Pee Wee has to deal with his shrinking penis, someone drills a hole in the wall of the girl's shower, the guys encounter a prostitute named Cherry Forever, and anti-Semitism rears its ugly head. Cheerfully rude in a manner few mainstream films had achieved at that time, Porky's, for better or worse, changed the standard of what was acceptable in a screen comedy. Remarkably enough, two years later director Bob Clark made the holiday favorite A Christmas Story, which displayed his considerable range, if nothing else. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Peter Medak's The Changeling is among a handful of films, including The Haunting (1963), Ghost Story (1981), and Lady in White (1988), that have successfully recreated the intimate, drawing-room atmosphere of supernatural horror fiction. After his wife and daughter are killed in a snowbound car accident, classical composer John Russell (George C. Scott) relocates from New York to Seattle to teach at his alma mater. Looking for a quiet place to rest and continue writing music, he is referred Claire Norman (Trish Van Devere) at the Seattle Historical Preservation Society. Claire shows John a large, sparsely furnished estate in the outlying countryside. He takes the house, appreciating its remoteness and the solitude it might afford, and diverts himself by renovating and settling in. He even starts to compose, putting aside his older work in favor of a new, sentimental piece for the piano. It is not long, however, before he begins having nightmares about the accident that killed his wife and daughter. Possibly because of this trauma, he is open to communications from the house's ghostly occupants. Pursuing a loud, repetitive pounding noise in an upper room, he stumbles on the apparition of a young boy drowning in a tub. Working together with Claire, John discovers frightening parallels between this vision and buried events from the house's past. Horror writer M.R. James once said that his goal as a writer was to make the reader feel "pleasantly uncomfortable." Those looking for a similar experience in movies will appreciate The Changeling as a gem in the horror genre. ~ Anthony Reed, All Movie Guide

Steve McQueen served as both star and executive producer for this film version of the drama by Henrik Ibsen, which was adapted by Arthur Miller. When Dr. Thomas Stockmann (McQueen) discovers that a tannery has dangerously polluted a hot spring in his community, he feels that it is his duty to share this information with the people. However, a number of prominent citizens (including Stockmann) intended to use the hot springs as the centerpiece of a health spa, and Tom's brother Peter (Charles Durning), the town's mayor, contends that a clean-up of the spring would be impractical, expensive, and would scare off potential customers. Stockmann is still eager to share his story with the community, but the town council is determined to silence him, and in time they turn public opinion against him. The outcry against Stockmann's activism eventually ruins his medical practice and drives a wedge between Stockmann and his wife Catherine (Bibi Andersson). While An Enemy of the People became a pet project for McQueen, it received indifferent reviews and poor distribution, opening in only a few scattered American cities several years after it was completed. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Elia Kazan directed this curiously constipated film adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's unfinished final novel, about Monroe Starr, a brilliant and efficient studio executive (based upon Fitzgerald's experiences with MGM wunderkind Irving Thalberg). Robert De Niro plays Monroe Starr in a cool and detached manner, and as Kazan pans around the Hollywood Dream Factory of the 1930s, Starr juggles several productions, deals with nervous actors and recalcitrant directors, stays afloat in the Hollywood corporate battlefields, and secretly carries on a love affair with an even cooler and more detached English girl, Kathleen Moore (Ingrid Boulting). ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Azure Dee (Denyce Liston), a former prostitute who has struck it rich, is found hanging from the chandelier in the living room of her lavish home. Curiously affected by this death, Kojak begins to investigate Azure's friends, family members and customers, hoping to determine if the woman committed suicide or was murdered--and in either case, why it happened. Series star Telly Savalas is heard singing the episode's theme song in the final scenes. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Inspector Erskine (Stuart Whitman) is determined to put a Communist spy ring headed by Damian Howards (Stuart Whitman) out of commission for keeps. Meanwhile, Howards concocts a scheme to get his hands on some top-secret information. Essential to the spy's success is his former girl friend Kate Waller (Sharon Acker)--but can he convince her that the flame of romance still burns? ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The "Andromeda Strain" is a deadly extraterrestrial virus. It is brought to Earth when a research satellite crashes near a tiny Arizona town. Everyone in the community dies within days, except for a baby and an "insulated" drunkard. Recruited from labs all over North America, doctors Charles Dutton (David Wayne), Jeremy Stone (Arthur Hill), Ruth Leavitt (Kate Reid), and Mark Hall (James Olson) don radiation suits and race against time to isolate and destroy the virus. The film is based on a novel by Michael Crichton. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In desperate need of money to square a debt, Neil Stryker (Bradford Dillman) enters into an unholy alliance with Communist spy Bryan Carlson (Wayne Rogers). Stryker agrees to steal top-secret information from the Boston research firm where he works. A discarded cellophane cigar wrapper puts FBI inspector Erskine (Efrem Zimbalist Jr.) on the trail of the spies, with dire consequences for Stryker and his wife Elaine (Antoinette Bower). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide