Mickey Fox Movies

Metalstorm was a courageous if unsuccessful attempt to renew the 3-D craze of the 1950s. Jeffrey Byron heads the cast as space ranger Dogen, who is bound and determined to stem the activities of integallactic looney-tune Jared-Syn (Mike Preston). We then segue into a plotline that is more Western than Science-Fiction in nature. The special effects aren't going to give the producers of Star Wars any sleepless nights, though there is some ingenuity in the variety of asteroids, spaceships and stuff that are thrust stereoptically at the audience. The supporting cast of Metalstorm boasts some interesting names, including Tim Thomerson, Richard Moll and Larry Pennell. The film was produced by Albert Band and directed by Albert's son Charles. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This is a crazy horror-film spoof in which the enthusiastic leads provide laughs just by the strength of their characterizations alone -- and because they are obviously having fun. Oliver Reed is Dr. Heckyl whose lumpy face is so ugly it has kept women away in droves. He works at a podiatrist's clinic and one day attempts suicide by quaffing a whole bottle of a weight-loss elixir. The result? Dr. Heckyl becomes Mr. Hype, the suave ladies man. The only problem is that Mr. Hype is evil incarnate, his urge to kill is greater than any other urge, and so he remains as virginal as ever as he leaves a trail of victims behind. When he goes after the woman he has loved as Dr. Heckyl, serious confusion is in store -- she prefers the good-hearted beast over the rotten charmer. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

The Big Bus is set aboard a nonstop, nuclear-powered luxury bus commandeered by Joseph Bologna. Naturally, Bologna is a tortured hero with a deep dark secret (he keeps insisting he didn't eat all those passengers on his last disastrous drive). Stockard Channing and Harold Gould play the designers of the big bus, and of course they have a few skeletons in their closet. In fact, there isn't a passenger on the all-star manifest that isn't hiding something. The supporting cast features contributions by René Auberjonois (parodying his M*A*S*H role), Ned Beatty, José Ferrer, Ruth Gordon (doing a devastating send-up of Airport's Helen Hayes), Sally Kellerman, Richard Mulligan, and many others; Murphy Dunne contributes a memorable bit as a smarmy cocktail pianist. Unfortunately, The Big Bus was dumped onto the summer 1976 release schedule without fanfare by Paramount, and it sank without a trace. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Cloris Leachman stars as Melba, a woman with whom violence is a way of life, in Jonathan Demme's high-pitched "B"-movie Crazy Mama. The film spans three decades in the violent life of Melba, beginning in Jerusalem, Arkansas in 1932, when law enforcers kill her father (Clint Kimbrough), turning her mother Sheba (Ann Sothern) into a bitter widow. Mother and daughter take off to Long Beach, California, and the time jumps to 1958, when the two are thrown out of their beauty salon for non-payment of back rent. Melba now has an attractive (and pregnant) teenage daughter Cheryl (Linda Purl). The three generations take to the road, stealing cars and creating general mayhem across the United States, robbing a motorcycle racetrack box office and a bank. But in 1959, Melba and Cheryl are picked up again, running a Miami Beach snack bar, their lives wasted in free-living terror. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Considered the quintessential "girls in prison" flick of the 1970s, novice director Jonathan Demme's Caged Heat is set in a hellish American woman's penitentiary run by vicious, wheelchair-bound Barbara Steele. Statuesque convict Erica Gavin is forced to undergo horrible (but legal) tortures when she is falsely accused of trying to escape. Gavin and fellow con Juanita Brown decide to make a real break, but return to prison to rescue a friend who is about to be lobotomized by the sadistic prison doctor. Then they stage a robbery, only to find a group of male robbers at the bank ahead of them. A final shootout in the prison yards brings the film to a bloody climax. Caged Heat was also released under the title Renegade Girls. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This Italian movie is as much a love song to a place as a story. The place is the bohemian quarter in Rome known as the Trastevere. It is been compared to the Left Bank in Paris. This film features highly professional actors, a colorful setting, and very salty Italian dialogue. Actor/director Fausto Tozzi takes a tour of the neighborhood and its inhabitants in a series of colorful vignettes. Traveling between the Tiber river and the hill called Gianicolo, Vittorio De Sica searches for a lost pet, encountering along the way the difficulties faced by a gay nobleman, a suicidal American, the local prostitutes, and the intrigues and gossip that pass back and forth in a small square. The main dramatic issue seems to be how the slightly more conservative locals are dealing with an onslaught of hippie tourists. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

California McKinney (John Furlong) is hitchhiking to the state he was named for after serving a five-year sentence for manslaughter. He runs out of money in Spooner, MO, and finds work at a farm run by Lute Wade (Stuart Lancaster) and his niece, Hannah Brenshaw (Antoinette Christiani). All Calif wants is to do is work quietly until he can save enough money to keep on moving, but Hannah's drunken husband, Sidney (Hal Hopper), takes it upon himself to verbally and physically abuse him, as he does his own wife and any one else who crosses his path. Sidney spends most of his time drinking corn liquor at the local whorehouse and bragging about his plans to sell the farm after the sickly Uncle Lute dies. However, the goodhearted Calif and the long-suffering Hannah are falling in love, and Lute arranges his will so that Sidney can't lay claim to the estate after his death. The desperate Sidney plots with the local preacher (Franklin Bolger) to exploit the small town's gossipy nature with lies about Hannah's virtue, though his conniving is undone when he commits an insane, jealous crime and finds himself the target of a bloodthirsty vigilante group. ~ Fred Beldin, All Movie Guide