Pat Corley Movies
Bulky, blustery American actor Pat Corley came to films in the early '70s after several years of stage character parts. He appeared conspicously (it was hard for a man his size to be inconspicuous) in such films as The Super Cops (1973), The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training (1977), Coming Home (1978), True Confessions (1982) and Against All Odds (1984), often cast as an antagonistic athlete or a law enforcement officer. He also showed up on episodic television, co-starring as shifty baseball-team owner Ray Holtz on Bay City Blues (1983) and bumbling police chief Walter Padgett on He's the Mayor (1986). Since 1989, Pat Corley has been on duty as Phil, the affable bar owner on the Candice Bergen sitcom Murphy Brown. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
A remake of Jacques Tourneur's noir classic Out of the Past (1947), in this version a labyrinthine web of corruption touches on the world of pro football. When an injury-riddled body causes pro football player Terry Brogan (Jeff Bridges) to be cut by his team, Jake Wise (James Woods), a shady gambler friend, hires him to locate his spoiled, erratic girlfriend Jessie (Rachel Ward). Terry's attempt to glean Jessie's whereabouts from the girl's coldly aristocratic mother (Jane Greer) leads to a lucrative counteroffer to keep Jessie away from Jake if he finds her. After refusing, Terry heads for scenic Cozumel, where he eventually runs down the stunning young woman. A mutual attraction quickly develops and the pair are less than eager to return to California. Painfully, Terry tells Jessie about his involvement in a betting scandal which has put him under Jake's control. Meanwhile Jake, who is angered by the delay, senses that something is going on, and sends Terry's conditioning coach, Sully (Alex Karras), to find the couple. When he finally locates them, sweatily making love in a Mayan temple, tragedy ensues, spinning the ill-fated Terry into a world of boundless deceit and corruption. ~ Michael Costello, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Rachel Ward, Jeff Bridges, (more)
- 1984
In this crime drama, an antique dealer falls and marries a seemingly successful businessman who ends up conning her out of every penny and leaving her. Unlike the many others he has conned, this plucky lady decides to stop him once and for all. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Tuesday Weld, Peter Coyote, (more)
Just guess what this TV movie is about. Yes, that's right, someone is killing the centerfolds of a certain prominent girlie mag. Poor Miss March went out like a lion and now cops are trying to keep disaster from raining down on Miss April. One of the glamour girls in Calendar Girl Murders is none other than Sharon Stone, billed second in the film (but not at all in the print ads!) ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Curse of the Pink Panther was released just after Trail of the Pink Panther with a script that has someone looking for the inept Inspector Clousseau and the fabulous stolen Pink Panther diamond at the same time. In Curse, Clifton Sleigh (Ted Wass) is a New York retread of the bumbling Inspector, chosen to look for him by Clousseau's former boss because Sleigh most certainly will never find him. Although peppered with a few inventive stunts, Curse still falls short of the Sellers classics. In a bizarre side note, David Niven was himself terminally ill at the time of his appearance in Trail of the Pink Panther and unable to speak adequately. His voice was dubbed in by impressionist Rich Little. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ted Wass, David Niven, (more)
- 1983
This drama is adapted from the true story of Barbara Graham, a woman sentenced to die in the mid-1950s after she allegedly committed a murder during a robbery. Graham pleaded innocent until the day she died in the San Quentin gas chamber. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1983
In this taut, futuristic drama, the maiden voyage of a hypersonic passenger jet becomes a disaster when something goes terribly wrong and it gets stuck in orbit. The film is also known as Starflight: The Plane That Couldn't Land. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
Straight-laced Henry Winkler takes a night-shift job as a morgue attendant. Winkler falls under the spell of wheeler-dealer coworker Michael Keaton, whose catchphrase "Is this a great country or what?" is the clarion call for his many get-rich-quick schemes. His latest plan is to turn the morgue into a nocturnal brothel, for the benefit of anything-goes hooker Shelley Long-and incidentally, to line their own pockets. Director Ron Howard and his frequent scripters Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel turn the potentially lurid story material of Night Shift into an endearing comedy, with winning performances from its three often miscast stars. Keep an eye out during one of the party sequences for Kevin Costner as a carousing college boy. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Henry Winkler, Michael Keaton, (more)
Gene Wilder stars as Michael Jordon, an architect on the run from false murder charges, who hooks up with Kate Hellman (Gilda Radner), the sister of a recent suicide victim. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Gene Wilder, Gilda Radner, (more)
Tommy Lee Jones won an Emmy for his searing performance as wanton killer Gary Gilmore in The Executioner's Song. The film covers the last nine months of Gilmore's life, beginning with his release from prison in 1976. Linking up with teen-age divorcee Nicole Baker (Rosanna Arquette), Gilmore makes a half-hearted effort to go straight, but ends up embarking on a robbery spree that culminates in two cold-blooded murders. Arrested and sentenced to be executed, Gilmore insists upon being put to death (Utah law required a firing squad for this); he spends his final days as a poster boy for anti-death penalty activists and as a "client" for an entrepreneur (Steven Keats) who wants to make a film of Gilmore's life. Adapted by Norman Mailer from his own book, The Executioner's Song originally aired in two parts on November 28 and 29, 1982. It has since been boiled down to a 97-minute theatrical film for European consumption, with additional scenes of violence and nudity. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Tommy Lee Jones, Rosanna Arquette, (more)
Oliver Stone's first directorial effort for a major studio (and his second horror film after the 1974 Seizure) came shortly after the phenomenal success of Midnight Express, which was based on Stone's Oscar-winning screenplay. The director turned to Mark Brandel's obscure thriller "The Lizard's Tail" as source material for what is essentially a silly psychosexual variant on low-budget horror films like The Crawling Hand. The title appendage belongs (for a while, anyway) to smug, conceited artist Joe Lansdale (Michael Caine), who owes his success to a popular comic strip featuring a macho, Conan-type hero. After Lansdale's drawing hand is sheared off in a grisly car accident, his career, dignity, self-control and even his sanity soon begin to abandon him as well. His tenuous relationship with his wife Anne (Andrea Marcovicci) falls apart as she takes steps to improve her own self-worth -- something she had never had the strength to do before the accident. Bitter and paranoid, Joe begins to lash out in anger at everyone around him ... and becomes convinced that his severed hand has come back, wandering in fields and dark alleys and squeezing the life out of everyone it comes in contact with. The question of whether the hand is real or merely a manifestation of Lansdale's rage is never answered, even in the film's "shock" coda. At any rate, it's impossible to take the film seriously -- the crawling-hand effects are laughably shoddy for a major studio production, reflecting none of the skills of effects wizard Carlo Rambaldi, and Caine's sweaty, pop-eyed histrionics are too goofy to be convincing. On the plus side, James Horner's score is remarkably chilling, contributing a great deal to a few effective suspense scenes -- but it belongs in a better film than this. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Michael Caine, Andrea Marcovicci, (more)
- 1981
Lindsay Wagner stars as Callie, who battles her way up the ladder from waitress to fabulously wealthy Texas socialite. The price for her success is her son Randy, played by Jameson Parker. Though wielding great power, Callie is nearly powerless in her efforts to keep Randy away from beautiful young schemer Michelle Pfeiffer. The film's many intrigues result in a sensational murder trial. Made for TV, Callie and Son was originally seen October 13, 1981. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1981
- R
Adapted by John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion from Dunne's novel, True Confessions uses the still-unsolved "Black Dahlia" murder as the foundation for a devastating attack on big-city corruption -- in which it appears that many of the perpetrators wear clerical collars. In, 1948 Los Angeles detective Tom Spellacy (Robert Duvall) is assigned to investigate the death of a priest, who apparently suffered a heart attack while being serviced by a prostitute. Meanwhile, Tom's brother, young Catholic monsignor Des Spellacy (Robert De Niro), is reluctantly currying favor with crooked contractor Jack Amsterdam (Charles Durning), the better to finance an expansion of Des' church. The unifying factor between Tom and Des, beyond their sibling relationship, turns out to be the grisly murder of a hooker. The key words in the labyrinthine proceedings are power, ambition, and hypocrisy. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Robert De Niro, Robert Duvall, (more)
- 1981
This TV movie adaptation of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men was a labor of love for producer-star Robert Blake, who utilized the screenplay from the 1939 Hollywood version as his guide--a screenplay personally presented to Blake by the original film's director, Lewis Milestone. Blake and Randy Quaid play George and Lennie, a pair of itinerant workers who share a dream of saving up enough money for their own ranch. George is smart, resourceful and slight-statured; Lennie has the mind of a child and the strength of Hercules. The two lifelong friends are hired on as hands at a large Salinas Valley spread. Their "best laid schemes" for a place of their own dissolve into a tragic denouement, sparked by the boss' pugnacious son Curley (Ted Neeley) and Curley's bored, faithless wife Mae (Cassie Yates). The 1939 Of Mice and Men is regarded as a masterpiece, though it suffers from the censorship restrictions of the time; curiously, this 1981 film, adapted for television by E. Nick Alexander, makes no attempt to restore the "chancy" elements that had been excised from the earlier film. Of Mice and Men was first telecast on November 29, 1981; a third filmization of the Steinbeck work, starring Gary Sinise and John Malkovich, was released theatrically in 1993. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1981
A young girl's dangerous dance with dieting leads to near disaster in this exceptional made-for-television drama. In one of the earliest treatments of the subject, Jennifer Jason Leigh stars as Casey Powell, the quiet daughter of an overbearing mother and milquetoast father. Feeling pressure to be the good girl of the family after her troublesome older sister gets pregnant, Casey retreats into her secretive world of self-starvation. When arguing fails to produce results, her parents (Charles Durning and Eva Marie Saint) send her to a hospital where she meets a spunky fellow patient (Melanie Mayron) and a caring therapist (Jason Miller). Casey's road to recovery is not as simple as merely eating though, and she and her family realize that together they must confront the deeply-rooted familial issues that lay at the heart of Casey's affliction. Jennifer Jason Leigh is utterly compelling in the lead role. ~ Bernadette McCallion, All Movie Guide
- 1980
Based on Hal W. Painter's autobiography, Mark, I Love You stars Kevin Dobson as Painter. Recently and suddenly widowed, Painter is so emotionally distraught that he permits his in-laws (James Whitmore and Peggy McCay) to gain custody of his son Mark (Justin Dana). Now that he has recovered, found a good job, and entered into a serious relationship with a young woman (Cassie Yates), Painter wants his son back. But his in-laws refuse, and the whole unfortunate affair ends up with an emotional court battle. While it could have been dismissed as yet another TV-movie variation of Kramer vs. Kramer, Mark, I Love You stands up admirably on its own merits. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1980
The always-touchy issue of euthanasia has provided source material for films since the silent era. 1980's Act of Love stars Ron Howard as the brother of Mickey Rourke, who has been left paralyzed by a motorcycle accident. Howard kills Rourke with a shotgun, claiming his brother begged him to do it. He willingly gives himself up to the authorities and stands trial, hoping more for understanding than exoneration. Made for television, Act of Love was based on a true story, chronicled by author Paige Mitchell. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1980
- PG
Susan Sarandon gives a sprightly performance in this sex farce involving couples swapping mates. Shirley MacLaine is Evelyn, a doctor, who is spending some quality time horseback riding when she is spotted by Greg (Stephen Collins), who is driving his sports car. Greg looks at her a bit too long and crashes the car, and since Evelyn is a doctor, she feels free to ride up to the prone Greg and rip off his pants. Soon the two are having an affair behind the backs of Greg's TV weather-girl lover Stephanie (Susan Sarandon) and Evelyn's workaholic husband, Walter (James Coburn). When Walter finds out about the affair from Stephanie, the two decide to reciprocate and engage in an affair of their own. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Shirley MacLaine, James Coburn, (more)
- 1980
Elizabeth (Kami Cotler) finds a kindred spirit in the form of the Mountain's new schoolteacher, a brilliant young woman named Hazel (Susan Krebs). Conversely, Corabeth (Ronnie Claire Edwards) is shocked by Hazel's "progressive" ideas, especially her plans to conduct a sex-education class. As it turns out, however, Hazel has a lot more to worry about than Corabeth's outrage. Elsewhere, Ben (Eric Scott) becomes so terrified at the prospect of becoming a father that he goes out and gets roaring drunk -- just when his pregnant wife Cindy (Leslie Winston) needs him most! Virginia Walton, the newest member of the family, makes her first appearance in this episode. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1980
In his last appearance before the cameras, David Janssen plays an alcoholic journalist desperate for a comeback. Janssen hitches his star to ruthless publisher Robert Vaughn, who is exploiting a rash of brutal murders to sell papers. The danger here is that the unknown serial killer, who preys upon beautiful young women, is rapidly becoming a media celebrity--and may be prompted to continue killing just to see his name in print. Beyond its own potential for sensationalism, City in Fear raises several provocative questions about the responsibility (and culpability) of the press. For its March 30, 1980 premiere, City in Fear was given a two hour and fifty minute timeslot. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Joseph Wambaugh's The Onion Field is based on an actual 1963 case. L.A. plainclothesmen Karl Hattinger (John Savage) and Ian Campbell (Ted Danson) routinely investigate a pair of suspicious types, Greg Powell (James Woods) and Jimmy Smith (Franklin Seales). Unexpectedly, Powell pulls a gun on the cops, then forces them into a deserted onion field, where he kills Campbell in cold blood. Hattinger manages to escape, and through his eyewitness account, Powell and Smith are arrested. But that is not that. Thanks to their knowledge and manipulation of the quicksilver legal system, Powell and Smith manage to evade prosecution for years. Meanwhile, Hattinger goes through hell on earth, tortured with guilt over the fact that he lived while Campbell died so ignominiously. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- John Savage, James Woods, (more)
- 1979
- PG
In this chiller, a trio of heroes must enter a black Southwestern cave and destroy an entire colony of plague-bearing bats, vampire bats. The story is based on a novel by Martin Cruz Smith. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Nick Mancuso, David Warner, (more)
Bette Midler stars as Rose in this somber drama loosely based on the life of the late Janis Joplin. She plays an ill-fated singer who succumbs to the pressures of performing by indulging in drugs and alcohol. Her sweetheart Dyer (Frederic Forrest) is the former chauffeur who naively tries to save her from self destruction, while her British manager Rudge (Alan Bates) is ultimately blamed for not preventing her inevitable fall. The story mirrors any one of a number of popular singers who have fallen victim to the excess of success. Midler and Forrest were nominated for Oscars for their performances, with Best Editing laurels given to Timothy O'Meara and Robert Wolf. The Rose was a box office smash and was the plum role that elevated Midler to star status in the eyes of the public and Hollywood. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bette Midler, Alan Bates, (more)
- 1979
The Gift was a Christmas 1979 TV-movie offering based on the semi-autobiographical book written in 1973 by Pete Hammill. Gary Frank plays the Hammill counterpart, a Brooklyn-born sailor about to be shipped off to the Korean War. Frank decides to use his 3-day pass to discover if his girl friend really loves him, if he can communicate at last with his troublesome parents, and if he can get his own life together before being sent into battle.
Julie Harris plays Frank's mother, while Glenn Ford portrays Frank's pugnacious, one-legged Irish dad. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Julie Harris plays Frank's mother, while Glenn Ford portrays Frank's pugnacious, one-legged Irish dad. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1979
When a woman moves into a Victorian home, she finds a dress that, when worn, delivers her back in time in this made-for-television adventure adapted from David William's novel, Second Sight. ~ Kristie Hassen, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Lindsay Wagner, Marc Singer, (more)
