Charles Cragin Movies

Bullets Over Broadway is a Woody Allen romp that, as the title suggests, combines gangsters with show business at the height of the Roaring Twenties. David Shayne (John Cusack) is a straight-arrow playwright who plans to stand firm against compromising his work, but quickly abandons that stance when his producer (Jack Warden) finds a backer to mount his show on Broadway. There's just one catch, however: the backer is a mobster (Joe Viterelli) who sees Shayne's play as a vehicle for his dizzy, talent-free girlfriend, Olive (Jennifer Tilly). Shayne also has to deal with the demands of veteran theatre diva Helen Sinclair (Dianne Wiest) and is shocked to discover that Olive's hitman bodyguard, Cheech (Chazz Palminteri), is probably a better playwright than he is, as he secretly revises Shayne's work when he sits in on rehearsals. ~ Don Kaye, Rovi

A pointless and ill-advised return to the slasher movie formula -- which had long since worn out its questionable welcome by the mid-'80s. This silly endeavor begins with a hazing stunt perpetrated by pledges of the Phi Delta fraternity, who try to break into a local insane asylum to take a photograph of the homicidal Father Malius (Charles Cragin). Malius, we're told, was responsible for the deaths of several college students nearly 30 years before, and is merely biding his time until he finds the opportunity to kill again. The foolish pledges set off a chain of events allowing Malius to make his escape, whereupon he makes a beeline for his former killing grounds with pickax in hand. From this point forward we're treated to an amalgam of every tired slasher cliche in the book. The only noteworthy element of this dismal production is the brief presence of Darren McGavin, who looks rather disinterested until his lively "surprise" death scene. ~ Cavett Binion, Rovi

Woody Allen's black-and-white curiosity piece is a mixture of influences -- from German silent film expressionism to Franz Kafka's nightmare worlds to the contemporary fables of Wim Wenders. Woody Allen plays the nebbish clerk Kleinman (in a throwback to his characters from Sleeper and Love and Death), who is awakened in the middle of the night by a vigilante group who want him to help capture a serial killer on the loose. Kleinman reluctantly agrees, but when he gets to the street, the vigilantes are gone and Kleinmen spends most of the film wandering the shadowy back alleys in search of the citizen's brigade. Meanwhile, a circus is in town. When sword-swallower Irmy (Mia Farrow) catches her creepy clown husband (John Malkovich) getting familiar with trapeze artist Marie (Madonna), she packs her bags and heads for town, where she meets up with Kleinman. This meeting sets up a number of plot lines that has Irmy befriending a trio of prostitutes (Jodie Foster, Lily Tomlin and Kathy Bates) at the local brothel and accepting $700 from a university student (John Cusack) who wants to sleep with her. She finally meets up with her husband, and they then find an abandoned baby which they decide to raise as their own. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi