Dennis Cole Movies

Fed up with crime around Los Angeles, one person decides to form a vigilante group to fight the gangs with a bit of their own medicine. ~ John Bush, Rovi

In this adolescent-oriented drama, a young woman is forced to attend a posh finishing school in the Mediterranean. She vents her anger by rebelling against the cruel and sicko headmaster. When she discovers that he has been secretly photographing them naked and profiting from the pictures, she rallies the other girls and gets revenge. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

While playing the monster in the low-budget horror flick "Gatorella", Hannibal (George Peppard) scouts around for appropriate South American locations on behalf of his producer friend Jerry Isaacson (Michael Lerner). With the help of fellow A-Teamer Face (Dirk Benedict)--who is promised a leading role in the film for his efforts--the ideal location is found near the Argentinian estate of Ramon De Jarro (Walter Gotell). Unfortunately, the minute the A-Team arrives on the scene, De Jarro betrays them to Col. Decker (Lance LeGault). But De Jarro isn't the villain of the piece: he has taken this action to save the women and children of a local village from the wrath of a fugitive gangster (who, of course, soon becomes the A-Team's prime target!) ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

An amateur Mad Max copycat hoping to cash in on that trend, this weakly scripted actioner is set in a degenerate future time when a group of low-lifes terrorize everyone around. Led by a baddie named Scourge, the men kidnap and regularly rape the sister of the hero Trace (Gary Watkins). Trace gathers up some allies in Stinger (Laura Banks), a distaff bounty hunter and Spike (Linda Grovenor) a young clairvoyant girl, so he can charge in and rescue his sister. Between the three of them, the Scourge by any name is sure to be conquered. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

You'd think that Irwin Allen had exhausted the "disaster" genre by 1979. Think again: 1979 was the year that Allen put together the made-for-TV movie Cave-In. Once again, a diverse group is trapped in a perilous situation; this time they're caught in an underground cave-in in an anonymous national park. The dramatis personae includes park ranger Dennis Cole, Cole's ex-lover (and state senator) Susan Sullivan, and fugitive convict James Olson. Also ensconsed in the subterranean tomb are Leslie Nielsen, Julie Sommars and Ray Milland. Cave-In was shelved for nearly four years after its completion: it was finally given a network showing on June 19, 1983. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The made-for-TV Barbary Coast is a tongue-in-cheek western in the Maverick tradition, produced by a former writer-director of that series, Douglas Heyes. Dennis Cole plays Cash Conover, a San Francisco saloonkeeper of the 1870s. William Shatner co-stars as Jeff Cable, an undercover policeman who works hand in glove with Conover to fight crime on the Coast. Conover and Cable team up with the lovely Cleo (Lynda Day George) to tackle a vicious mob, headed by one Diamond Jack Bannister (Michael Ansara). Throwing a bit of Wild Wild West into the stew, Cable pops up from time to time wearing disguises and sporting outrageous accents. First telecast May 4, 1975, Barbary Coast was the pilot for the short-lived TV series of the same name. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Originally made for television, the story concerns an unemployed journalist (Charles Durning) who mediates a deal between jewel thieves and an insurance company. ~ John Bush, Rovi

Michael Curtiz's The Comancheros was a deceptively complex movie -- so enjoyable, that it masked some of the best character development seen in a John Wayne vehicle that was not directed by John Ford or Howard Hawks, and so well made that it got by with some of the most violent action seen in a major studio release of the era. It also bridged the gap between Ford's The Searchers and the upbeat buddy movies of the late '60s and '70s (The Sting, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, etc.). It's 1843 in the Republic of Texas, and Jake Cutter (John Wayne) is a two-fisted Texas Ranger who runs across a gang of white renegades, called the Comancheros, who are trading guns and other contraband with marauding Comanches from a secret hideout in Mexico. Substituting for a repentant gun-runner, he goes undercover as a partner with Crow (Lee Marvin), a vicious half-breed who is a contact man with the Comancheros and knows the whereabouts of their hideout in Mexico. But Crow manages to get himself killed, and Cutter is forced to throw in with Paul Regret (Stuart Whitman), a bystander who also happens to be an itinerant gambler wanted for killing a man in a duel in New Orleans, to complete his mission. It turns out that Regret is a more decent man than most, and he and Cutter, despite some different outlooks on right and wrong, take a liking to each other. Their quest eventually takes them south of the border, where they find the Comancheros and their leader, Graile (Nehemiah Persoff), a bitter, brilliant cripple -- think of The Sea Wolf's Wolf Larsen in a wheelchair -- who has established a landlocked pirate society, and his daughter Pilar (Ina Balin). The only thing that keeps Cutter and Regret alive when they enter the camp is that Pilar and Regret have a history, and she still has feelings for him, enough so that she won't tell what she knows about Cutter and who he is. The two men must play on Graile's greed and Pilar's love in the explosive surroundings of the Comancheros' camp, while figuring out a way to stay alive long enough to get word to the rangers about where they are -- and to survive the attack that must inevitably follow.

Director Michael Curtiz was ill for part of the shoot, and Wayne took up the slack, but The Comancheros displays some of the same freewheeling charm and deep passions that informed classic films of his such as Captain Blood, The Adventures of Robin Hood, and The Sea Hawk. Wayne and Whitman between them manage to evoke some of the rambunctiousness of Errol Flynn, and when Balin (one of the sexiest leading ladies ever to grace a John Wayne movie) arrives onscreen, the testosterone level shoots up even higher and the sexual sparks fly. The film's 105 minutes go by very fast, and this is a movie whose ending comes almost too soon. Curtiz's final film is one that leaves audiences with a smile, but also wanting more, which was a pretty good way to go out. John Wayne's daughter, Aissa Wayne (who subsequently went into a law career) appears in a small role. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi