Scott Stevens Movies

Set in British Columbia, Canada shortly after Pearl Harbor, this thought-provoking made for television drama chronicles the fate of the Kawashima family, who are forcibly uprooted from their lovely Vancouver home and successful business by the Canadian government and sent to a backwater mining camp deep in the province's interior to live until the war ended. Both Mr. and Mrs. Kawashima were Japanese immigrants, but their two children were born in Canada. Mr. Kawashima is also a WWI veteran who fought with the Canadian army so the government's suspicious and insensitive treatment of his family comes as quite a shock. They, and the 400 other "enemy" guests of the mining town, are all city dwellers are also shocked by the primitive living conditions. The townsfolk are uniformly ignorant and unsophisticated. They too have trouble adjusting to their visitors and for a while racial tensions run high. Aya Kawashima, the eldest child, gets a job working as a housekeeper for her neighbors Peg and Ed Parnham. She also helps out with their two daughters. Ed is pretty friendly and open minded about the Japanese, but Peg is at first nervous around Aya and treats her like a maid. Eventually they become real friends and this is an important part of the story. As time passes the Japanese and the townsfolk begin to intermingle and young romances bloom. Things are looking up until the Kawashima's learn that the government they have supported and staunchly believed in, sold their house and business without consulting them. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

This made-for-TV drama, adapted from a book by Vincent Bugliosi, is based on a true story about an ex-cop who deceives and murders a number of women for their life insurance benefits. The video release includes scenes not shown in the original. ~ Kristie Hassen, All Movie Guide

Corbin Bernsen plays a hard-boiled 1940s private eye operating in the 1990s in the made-for-TV Love Can Be Murder. No, he's not a senior citizen: he's dead. It is the ghost of Bernsen who teams with the very much alive Jaclyn Smith, a contemporary PI. She's trying to solve the decades-old homicide case which Bernsen was working on when he was sent into the Big Sleep by persons unknown. Topper Returns, anyone? Love Can Be Murder was originally telecast December 14, 1992. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

One by-product of two consecutive Oscar wins is that Tom Hanks no longer has to appear in such potboilers as Turner and Hooch. Hanks plays Turner, a meticulously groomed, excruciatingly well-organized detective working in a small California coastal town. When local "character" John McIntyre is murdered by drug smugglers, the only witness is McIntyre's slobbery, smelly mutt Hootch. You're way ahead of us, folks: Turner, who despises dogs in general and Hooch in particular, is compelled to put the cantankerous dog up as his house guest. Also easily predictable is the fact that Turner and Hooch will, by the next-to-last reel, become boon companions. To its credit, the film has an abundance of laughs and thrills...but, gee, that ending! Neither terrific nor terrible, Turner and Hooch is a pleasant time-filler; we do wish, however, that more time had been spent on the budding romance between Turner and veterinarian Emily Carson (Mare Winningham). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This undistinguished "country-punk" version of teens apparently maturing into what passes for adulthood may not quite have made the transition itself, since it seems geared to a young teen audience. When Tina (Laura Hunt) from the big city of Atlanta goes to spend the summer with her grandparents in the middle of nowhere in North Carolina, she unexpectedly meets a kindred spirit (Johnson West), but is caught in a seamy underworld. The veneer of this bucolic farmland hides rapists, murderers, fetishists, voyeurs, and suicides -- it is a wonder that Tina has any chance at all of safely making it back to the streets of Atlanta. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide