Max Ehrlich Movies

When a man becomes aware, through repeated nightmares, that the ghost of a murdered man dwells within him, he travels to the scene of the murder to help sort things out and discovers terrors that have yet to unfold in this Columbia Pictures adaptation of Max Ehrlich's novel. David Fincher directs from a script by his Seven screenwriter, Andrew Kevin Walker. The book was brought to the screen once by director J. Lee Thompson in 1975, with a cast headed by Margot Kidder and Jennifer O'Neill. ~ Jeremy Wheeler, All Movie Guide

George C. Scott produced, directed and distributed this offbeat drama. Near the turn of the century, John (Scott), his wife Maidi (Trish VanDevere) and their young son David (Lee Montgomery) are shipwrecked on a remote island. Resigned to the fact they may never be rescued, John teaches David how to survive on his own, and instills in him a macho philosophy that the strong will always defeat the weak. As the years pass, David (now played by John Carson) grows to adulthood, and he begins formulating his own interpretation of his father's teachings -- as the stronger man, he is now ruler of the island, and that the island's only woman should rightfully be his. The Savage Is Loose was the second and last theatrical feature George C. Scott would direct, though he would later helm a made-for-TV movie about the life of baseball great Satchel Paige. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

When the producers of The Untouchables bowed to the pressure of the Italian-American Anti-Defamation league and began focusing on non-Italian villains, they decided to drop one of the series' most popular characters, gangster Frank "The Enforcer" Nitti (Bruce Gordon). But with the series' ratings in rapid decline, it was decided to bring Nitti back--and here he is, up to his old tricks. On this occasion, Nitti has formed a partnership with mob bookkeeper Leo Stazek (a definitely pre-Kojak Telly Savalas), who has come up with a brilliant plan to increase the profits of "The Enforcer"'s bootlegging racket. Stazek's scheme involves heavy speculation in the stock market, and for a while the grateful Nitti is rolling in dough. What Frank doesn't realize is that Stazek is planning to double-cross him and grab all the profits (and "The Enforcer"'s power) for himself. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

John Forsythe plays a successful television writer, Don Newell, who works on the "Crime of the Week" anthology series. Newell is being blackmailed by one of the program's actresses (Kathleen Hughes), who threatens to tell his wife of their clandestine affair. Arriving at the actress' apartment for a showdown, Newell discovers that the woman has been murdered. Though the writer is the principal suspect, the real killer is Henry Hayes (Edward G. Robinson), "Crime of the Week"'s research expert, who was also a blackmail victim. The inability of the police to solve the murder becomes the subject of the next "Crime of the Week" program. Hayes tries to deflect attention from himself by building up evidence against Newell, which the writer is compelled to use in his script. But Newelltumbles to Hayes' guilt, and includes this fatal clue in his "Crime of the Week" playlet. Hayes tries to kill Newell during the live broadcast, but the police arrive on the scene and shoot down Hayes. Although The Glass Web was originally released in 3-D, it is surprisingly light on "stereoptic" special effects. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The plot of this German slapstick comedy can be summed up by its English-language title, The Stork Strikes. The humor is predicated on pregnancy, both imagined and actual, both planned and unexpected. The characters run around in helter-skelter fashion for nearly an hour and a half, but all problems are straightened out by fadeout time. Siegfried Arno, a splendid comic actor who later became a much-in-demand Hollywood bit player, heads the cast. Der Storch Streikt cost only about $70,000, but raked in nearly twenty times that amount at the box office. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Anny Ahlers stars as the notorious 18th-century courtesan Madame Pompadour, here "Germanized" as the Marquise von Pompadour. Once she's presented at the Court of Versailles, Pompadour twists French King Louis XV (Kurt Gerron) around her little finger, all the while setting fashion standards for the aristocracy. She compromises her status with the King when she falls in love with Gaston de Meville (Walter Jankuhn), the mischievous composer of anti-royalist poems. The typically Germanic emphasis on the corruption and debauchery of the French nobility tends to weigh down the sparkling musical score. Conversely, the stagey direction of Dr. Willi Wolf actually adds to the film's charm. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Oscar Karlweis enacts the title role in the German operetta Der Tanzhusar (The Dancing Hussar). The hero is a none-too-bright military man who wriggles in and out of one scrape after another. He also pitches woo in the general direction of the film's two leading ladies, Friedl Haerlin and Gretl Theimer. Ernst Verebes and Oscar Sims provide comic relief, though they're not quite as funny as the corpulent Karlweis' efforts to portray The Great Lover. The inherent humor of Der Tanzhusar can be summed up in a sentence: Everything the hero and his fellow Hussars do, they do wrong. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Der Greifer translates as The Copper -- and, yes, this is a detective yarn. Hero Hans Albers, representing Scotland Yard, mingles with the cream of British society to bring a murderer to justice. Greeting everyone, friend and foe alike, with the same off-handed cheerfulness, Albers is able to put the culprit "at ease" long enough to tighten the noose. And, of course, he wins the girl, fetchingly played by Charlotte Susa. As often happened in German films of this period, the depiction of British aristocrats in Der Greifer is too broad and stereotyped to be believable -- though to be fair, German characters were treated in much the same manner in British films. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide