Deborah Brown Movies

In the second episode of the series, Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and friends Xander Harris (Nicholas Brendon), Willow Rosenberg (Alyson Hannigan), and Watcher Rupert Giles (Anthony Stewart Head) band together to stop a group of vampires from fulfilling an ancient prophecy called "The Harvest." The Harvest will allow Luke (Brian Thompson), a vampire supernaturally connected to The Master (Mark Metcalf) -- a very old, powerful, and angry vampire -- to feed on humans and thereby give him strength. The Master, viewers learn, was imprisoned in catacombs underneath Sunnydale 60 years earlier by an earthquake while attempting to open the Hellmouth, and is trapped underground until The Harvest is complete. When Luke sends some vampires out for food, they subsequently capture Xander's buddy Jesse and use him as bait to lure Buffy into a trap. Buffy, who now understands her destiny to be the Slayer, dutifully chases after Jesse. Buffy and Xander find Jesse in the catacombs only to realize that he has already been turned into a vampire. Meanwhile, Luke and his vampires are attacking all the club-going teens at The Bronze to fulfill The Harvest prophecy. Buffy and her cohorts come to the rescue just in time to stop them, during which Xander accidentally kills Jesse. Most of the vampires (including Luke) are killed, but Darla (Julie Benz), a vampire who figures heavily in future episodes, gets away. Originally aired on March 10, 1996, "The Harvest" is the second half of the two-part pilot episode. ~ All Movie Guide

Pittsburgh Penguins owner Howard Baldwin was the producer of Sudden Death, and the action is set in his hockey arena, in which the Penguins are playing the Chicago Blackhawks. Pittsburgh fire inspector Darren McCord (Jean-Claude Van Damme) is attending the game with his two children. He's quit fighting fires because of a tragedy a few years earlier involving a child he couldn't save. Also at the game is the vice-president of the United States (Raymond Barry), who is the target of a terrorist plot. The terrorist leader, an insane ex-CIA agent named Joshua Foss (Powers Boothe), has masterminded a scheme to hold the vice-president hostage in his luxury suite while demanding that payments be transferred to his account electronically at the end of each period of the game. If he doesn't get his money, he will kill one member of the vice-president's party at the end of each period, and at game's end he will order ten bombs hidden in the arena to be detonated with all 17,000 fans present. McCord discovers the plot while his daughter Emily (Whittni Wright) is kidnapped by the terrorists too. McCord must dispatch the villains and find the bombs, while saving all the hostages. Luckily, he is adept at martial arts. He fights one henchman dressed in a Penguins mascot outfit in the arena's kitchen, and another terrorist on the arena's retracting dome. At one point, McCord switches identities with a player, is sent into the game, and scores a goal. Director Peter Hyams also directed Van Damme in the blockbuster Timecop. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide

Ever since the 1960s, Alice has been trying to make a documentary film about...the '60s. Since its now nearly thirty years later, her project has become a running joke among her friends and family. Her heart still beats to the tune the student radicals played all those years ago, and she is more than usually upset by such events as the Tienanmen Square massacre, and the unpleasant fate of Abbie Hoffman. She finds a kindred spirit in an angry twenty-four-year old who's working on independent shows at a local access cable outlet, and through his influence she gradually emerges into the 1990s, with its concerns about AIDS and corporate power. Not only that, but she makes real progress on finishing her previously unworkable documentary. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Liebestraum is a moody, stylish suspense thriller written and directed by British director Mike Figgis. Nick (Kevin Anderson) is an architectural writer who goes home to be with his dying mother, Mrs. Anderssen (Kim Novak) from whom he was separated as a baby. There he meets an old friend and has an affair with the friend's wife, who was herself adopted after her mother went insane. Through a series of coincidences and a good deal of investigation Nick learns some terrible truths concerning everyone. The film, while beautiful to look at, and with a wonderful score composed by Figgis, is more interested in style and emotion rather than cogent explanations for the actions of the characters, however, taken for what it is, a mood piece, Liebestraum succeeds beautifully. Figgis has beautiful technique and is greatly aided by Juan Ruiz-Anchia's stark and evocative images. ~ Linda Rasmussen, All Movie Guide

Stormy Monday is a four-person character study in which style is all that matters. This tautly constructed, deftly executed crime thriller is set in economically depressed Newcastle England. Sting plays Finney, a relatively honest Newcastle jazz-club owner who crosses the path of crass American gangster Cosmo (Tommy Lee Jones). Flaunting his wealth at every opportunity, Cosmo wants to involve Finney in a land development deal -- if only he'll give up his club. Both men are enamored of Kate (Melanie Griffith), who becomes a pawn in their ongoing one-upsmanship. Kate and her lover (Sean Bean) try to prevent Finney from corrupting his own sense of values by wallowing in the gutter with Cosmo. Stormy Monday, the first feature-length directorial effort of former jazz musician Mike Figgis, who also wrote the script and composed the score, tells its story using subtle shadings of character and a vivid evocation of its Newcastle setting rather than through violent action. Figgis's moody direction of his excellent screenplay is quietly effective and brimming with visual nuance and irony -- particularly in its perceptive take on love, money, jazz, and economic necessity. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Larry Cohen wrote the screenplay to this updating of Mickey Spillane's notorious 1947 novel. Cohen was originally engaged to direct the film as well but was pulled from the director's chair after a week's worth of shooting because he had already run up the budget by $100,000; he was replaced by television director Richard T. Heffron. In this 1982 I, the Jury, Mike Hammer (Armand Assante) is a Vietnam veteran who wears hip duds and drives around in a bronze Trans Am in much the same way as Robert Mitchum's Philip Marlowe was refurbished for Michael Winner's re-make of The Big Sleep. After a cheesy rip-off of a James Bond-style credit sequence, the story kicks in. One-armed detective Jack Williams (Frederick Downs) is murdered. Jack was Hammer's best friend, and Hammer decides that he will become a one-man vigilante squad and seek vengeance on the person responsible for his death. He enlists the aid of his vivacious secretary Velda (Laurene Landon) and is also helped and hindered by police-chief Pat Chambers (Paul Sorvino). Hammer latches on to the killer's trail, then the film veers in a radically different direction from the book, introducing government conspiracies and mind-control techniques by the CIA and the Mafia. Also introduced is Hammer's love interest Charlotte Bennett (Barbara Carrera), an administrator of a kinky sex clinic (depicted as a psychiatrist in the original novel). ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide