Wee Willie Davis Movies

Chuck Norris stars in this derivative action film (directed by his brother, Aaron Norris) which bears more than a passing similarity to Steven Seagal's Marked for Death. Norris plays Cliff Garret, a Seattle cop who is mortally wounded in a drug bust. Garret's condition is grave but he manages to pull through. However, the Seattle police have plans for him and put out the word that Garret has died. When Garret regains his strength, he is given a new identity as hit man Danny Grogan and is assigned to go undercover and infiltrate the crime family of Marco Luganni (Al Waxman). "Grogan" must bring both Luganni and rival gang-lord Andre Lacombe (Marcel Sabourin) into police custody. But his past comes back to haunt him in the person of Ronny Delany (Michael Parks), a goon from Grogan's Garret days, who threatens to blow his cover. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

Christopher Walken plays a schoolteacher, Johnny Smith, who awakens from a five-year coma. He discovers that he has acquired the ability to foretell a person's future simply by touching his or her hand. After seeing several examples, Smith's doctor (Herbert Lom) becomes convinced that Smith can not only predict the future, but also has the power to change it. This ability is given its severest test when Smith shakes the hand of ruthless political candidate Greg Stillson (Martin Sheen) -- and suddenly has a flash-forward to a nuclear holocaust. The Dead Zone is not only one of the best-ever Stephen King adaptations, but also one of the most consistently successful (and least gory) efforts of director David Cronenberg. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Season Three of "The Flying Nun" was ushered in on September 17, 1969 with the episode titled "The Big Game." On this occasion, Sr. Bertrille takes over the coaching duties for the Convent San Tanco baseball team-and the result is a staggering 43-to-1 loss! Former Los Angeles Dodgers stars Willie Davis and Don Drysdale are cast respectively as the team manager and the opposition umpire. "The Big Giame" was written by Clifford Goldsmith, whose 1939 Broadway play What a Life served to introduce the character of Henry Aldrich. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

A sequel to Bob Hope's 1948 box-office success The Paleface, 1952's Son of Paleface is a superior product in every way, thanks largely to the spirited, creative direction of Frank Tashlin. Hope is cast as Junior Potter, a Harvard-educated dude who heads West to claim the inheritance left him by his gunslinger father. Much to his chagrin, Junior discovers that his dad has left him nothing but debts. To stave off Potter Sr.'s angry creditors, Junior pretends that his father has salted away a fortune somewhere in the hills. This arouses the attention of curvaceous saloon owner Mike (Jane Russell), who doubles as a mysterious masked bandit known as The Torch. Meanwhile, Roy Rogers (playing a federal agent named Roy Rogers) keeps tabs on Junior, hoping that he'll lead him to The Torch and her gang. True to form, ex-cartoonist Tashlin fills the screen with a wealth of inventive sight gags and inside jokes: Cecil B. DeMille shows up as a photographer in one scene, while in another, Hope, about to embark on the film's wild climactic chase sequence, shoos away a couple of vultures wearing bibs, warning them that "You'll make the whole thing look impossible." Our favorite scenes: Hope's Wile E. Coyote-like reaction to a particularly potent drink, and his bedroom scene with Roy Rogers' wonder horse Trigger. And don't forget the film's slightly risque punch line "Let's see them top that on television," (you have to be there). Songs in Son of Paleface include "You Are My Valley of Sunshine," "Four-Legged Friend," "Wing Ding Tonight," "What A Dirty Shame," and a reprise of The Paleface's Oscar-winning "Buttons and Bows," performed by Hope, Russell and Rogers. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Bud Abbott and Lou Costello play wrestling promoters whose star attraction, Wee Willie Davis, skips town to return to his home in Arabia. While scouring the desert in search of Davis, Bud and Lou inadvertently purchase slave girl Patricia Medina, and with equal inadvertence join the Foreign Legion. In their own bumbling, inept fashion, our heroes manage to foil a desert uprising fomented by shiek Douglas Dumbrille and traitorous Legion commandant Walter Slezak. The film's highlights include an opening-scene parody of pre-rehearsed wrestling matches, a "mirage" routine capped by one of the hoariest vaudeville punchlines in history, and a runaway-jeep climax. All in all, however, Abbott & Costello in the Foreign Legion is one of the team's lesser efforts. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The TV-generated popularity of professional wrestling in 1950 inspired a brief cycle of inexpensive films on the subject. Columbia's C-plus Bodyhold borrows the old Kid Galahad formula of a naive young man becoming a wrestler by accident, only to be exploited by crooked promoters. Willard Parker plays a plumber who is forced to subdue a champion grappler. Duplicitous manager Roy Roberts promotes Parker as the successor to the ex-champ, who has been sidelined by a suspicious injury. When Parker refuses to throw a match, Roberts sees to it that Our Hero is incapacitated in the same manner as his predecessor. Thanks to Parker's girlfriend Hillary Brooke, Roberts is caught in the act, and banned from wrestling for life. Of historical interest in Bodyhold is the presence in the cast of real-life wrestlers Henry Kulky, Wee Willie Davis and Ed "Strangler" Lewis. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

One of themost acclaimed films to emerge from Republic studios, The Red Pony is an adaptation of the John Steinbeck story of the same name. Top billing goes to Myrna Loy and Robert Mitchum, but the film's true star is young Peter Miles as Tom. A lonely farm boy, Tom seeks refuge from his troublesome home life and his eternally squabbling parents (Loy and Shepperd Strudwick) through his devotion to a newborn colt. The red pony is the issue of a prize mare owned by ranchhand Billy Buck (Mitchum), whom Tom idolizes. The film's coming-of-age theme cluminates in a poignant denouement. Louis Calhern plays Tom's lovably prevaricating grandfather, while 10-year-old Beau Bridges essays one of his first featured roles. Aaron Copland's score and the rich Technicolor photography of Tony Gaudio contribute to the film's overall mood. The Red Pony was remade for television in 1973. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Frank Yerby's Foxes of Harrow was one of those long historical novels so popular in the 1940s. 20th Century-Fox boiled the novel down into 118 minutes' worth of essentials for this film version. In antebellum New Orleans, roguish Irish gambler Rex Harrison buys his way into society--something he couldn't do in his homeland because he is illegitimate. Sequestering himself in a mansion won in a card game, Harrison courts Southern belle Maureen O'Hara, but their subsequent marriage is befouled by Rex's incessant womanizing. Though tempted to walk out for good, O'Hara stays by her husband's side after he loses his fortune, hoping that the impoverished Harrison will now behave more responsibly. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The second of William Boyd's self-produced "Hopalong Cassidy" films, Fool's Gold maintains the standards set by the first (Devil's Playground), though it's a step down from the vintage Cassidy films of the late 1930s-early 1940s. Once again, Hoppy (Boyd) is teamed with California Carson (Andy Clyde) and Lucky Jenkins (Rand Brooks). Our three heroes try to help Hoppy's old army buddy, whose son has been keeping company with a gang of crooks. Posing as a disgraced army captain, Cassidy infiltrates the gang and tries to save the boy from himself-if he can avoid detective by The Professor (Robert Emmet Keane), erudite leader of the criminals. Originally released at 63 minutes, Fool's Gold was cut to 54 minutes for its TV release, through the simple expedient of lopping off the entire first reel! ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Taking place almost exclusively on a transatlantic ocean liner, this easygoing Sherlock Holmes entry finds Holmes (Basil Rathbone) and Watson (Nigel Bruce) escorting Far Eastern regent Nikolas (Leslie Vincent) on a diplomatic mission. A group of assassins have targeted Nikolas for extermination, and they're not averse to knocking off Holmes and Watson to achieve their goals. In the end, it seems as though the villains have gained the upper hand -- but that's before the cagey Holmes reveals the film's biggest surprise (which, for a change, really is a surprise). Throughout Pursuit to Algiers, it's fun to watch bad guys Martin Kosleck and Rex Evans making like a road-company version of Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet. The film's only disappointment is Watson's recital of the case of the Giant Rat of Sumatra, which we never get to hear in its entirety! ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Wildfire was the first release from Screen Guild Productions, the adventuresome little independent that would eventually metamorphose into Lippert Pictures Inc. The title character is a magnificent wild horse, slated to be destroyed by a group of ranchers. It seems that Wildfire is being held responsible for luring the ranchers' own stock of horses into the hills. Bob Steele and Sterling Holloway play Happy and Alkali, two rambunctious horsetraders who rescue Wildfire from extinction. Apparently they succeed, inasmuch as 1948 brought forth a sequel, Return of Wildfire, which unlike its predecessor was lensed in Sepiatone rather than Cinecolor. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The general perception of the Technicolor costume adventure movies that Maria Montez and Jon Hall made for Universal in the early 1940's is that they were pure escapist entertainment, intended to make people forget for an hour or so about the Second World War and the general world situation. And generally that is true about them -- they were mostly no "about" much more than having fun for 90 minutes or so amid pretty sets with lots of action and some pretty women in exotic outfits. But watching Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, one has to wonder if even here the screenwriter, Edmund L. Hartmann, was able to totally get away from the day-to-day reality around him. The opening Mongol invasion of Bagdad and the murder of the old Caliph (Moroni Olsen) while trying to set up a government-in-exile without thinking of the German and Japanese conquests and occupations of various nations that would have been going on at the time; additionally, the fact that the old Caliph is murdered with the help of a traitor in his own noble ranks -- a "quisling" in the term coined during World War II -- wouldn't have been missed by audiences at the time. Further, the screenplay very specifically paints the forty thieves as heroes who have gone from being criminals to an active resistance force against the occupying Mongols -- indeed, at the denouement, their invasion of the palace is greeted as a day of liberation by the people of Bagdad. The movie walks a strange tightrope, casting about veiled topical references of that sort, even as is otherwise sufficiently tongue-in-cheek to cast Andy Devine as a desert bandit. Obviously, Ali Baba And The Forty Thieves was sold as -- and mostly intended as -- light entertainment, but just below that glitzy Technicolor surface were some fascinating allusions to the real world. None of this stops Ali Baba And The Forty Thieves from being immense fun -- it is, even if the "fun" isn't totally escapist in nature -- and it's great to look at as well, even 60 years on; Universal has apparently kept preservation-quality source materials on this and Hall and Montez's other Technicolor costume romps. And this particular entry in that group of movies also contains one very instructive clue to the morays and censorship of the time in one scene, in which the hero meets the heroine bathing at an oasis -- the makers seem to have been forced to insert a particular shot that is there for no other reason then to make it clear that she is not totally naked when he sees her. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi

If you believe all-American Fred MacMurray as an Oxford don, you'll probably swallow the rest of Above Suspicion. Newly married to Joan Crawford, MacMurray goes on a honeymoon in prewar Germany. Actually it's more business than pleasure: they are secret agents for the British, attempting to smuggle back information about a new superweapon being developed by the Nazis. Evil, mean, cruel and also wicked German officer Basil Rathbone imprisons and tortures Crawford (though she still looks like a million bucks), but McMurray comes to the rescue, paving the way for a suspenseful race-to-the-border climax. The tenor of Above Suspicion can be summed up in a scene in which, after being confronted by a monolingual stormtrooper, Fred MacMurray says in English "Nuts to you, dope!," whereupon the Nazi scratches his head and wonders aloud, "Vass iss das 'dope'?" ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi