Burr de Benning Movies

Jonathan Kaplan directs this drama which grafts a nostalgic mood piece with a race-to-the-finish road movie. Lurene Hallett (Michelle Pfeiffer) is an insulated middle-class wife living in Texas in the early 1960s who adores the Kennedys, particularly Jackie, whom she feels is a kindred soul. When she finds out the President and First Lady will be in Dallas on November 22, 1963, she races to the airport to greet the couple. Just missing them, she drives through the Dallas streets and notices a quiet chaos developing. When she finds out John Kennedy has been assassinated, Lureen is determined to get to Washington to be with Jackie for the funeral. When her redneck husband Ray (Brian Kerwin) refuses to give her the car, she gets on a bus, where she meets a black man named Johnson (Dennis Haysbert), with his five-year-old daughter Jonell (Stephanie McFadden). Lureen speaks continually about Kennedy and the rest of the black occupants of the bus roll their eyes. But after an accident with the bus, Lureen uncovers the fact that Mr. Johnson's real name is Cater, and he has kidnapped his daughter from an orphanage and is heading to Philadelphia. With the cops on their tail, the trio steals a car and race northward with the police in pursuit, Lureen hoping to make to Washington in time for Kennedy's funeral. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

A gang of rich, sadistic killers captures people and then sets them loose so they can be hunted down and killed. Joseph Campanella stars as a man who infiltrates the gang to avenge the murders of his family. This film is a variation of The Most Dangerous Game, which has been filmed as Hard Target, The Hounds of Zaroff and numerous other titles. ~ Brian Gusse, All Movie Guide

Magnum (Tom Selleck) is reunited with journalist Kate Sullivan (Tyne Daly), whom he'd met while she was covering the Vietnam war. At the moment, Kate has been assigned to interview a visiting dignitary from the Jororo Islands. . .or at least that's what she claims. As the story unfolds, it becomes obvious that Kate is more interested in securing the "inside story" on cross-dressing international assassin David Bannister (Christopher Morley)--whose own current assignment is to assassinate the man from Jororo! This episode was deemed strong enough to warrant a followup, "Jororo Farewell," which aired two seasons later. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this action film, firefighters fight a series of arson fires and try to figure out who set them and why. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

New York City detective Steve Burns Al Pacino receives orders from Captain Edelson Paul Sorvino to solve a series of brutal murders in the gay community. Steve scours the gay bars that caters to same-sex sadomasochism in a desperate attempt to solve the crime. As he infiltrates the scene, he slowly comes loose from the moorings of his own reality, and an innocent victim is tortured by the cops in an effort to exact a confession. The story is based on actual murders that took place between 1962 and 1979. The film gained considerable publicity because of the controversial subject matter while censor argued between an X and R rating for the feature. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

Quincy (Jack Klugman) is a member of the medical/legal team investigating the crash of an airliner which occurred some 40 miles away from LAX. All 121 passengers and crew members were killed, and Quincy and his staff must perform autopsies on all of them. During this grim assignment, Quincy discovers that one of the victims was travelling under an assumed name--and that this may somehow be linked to the doctor's discovery that the plane was carrying a highly combustible freight. The challenge now is to find out why the dead man was posing as someone else, while simultaneously convincing the airline to cease transporting dangerous fuels. George Gaynes, onetime Broadway musical headliner and future stalwart of the popular Police Academy films, appears as a chemical-company executive. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

We'll confess not to having seen The Amazing Captain Nemo, principally because we can't find it anywhere. It's our loss, because it certainly sounds fascinating. Jose Ferrer stars as Nemo, the demented but essentially well-meaning technological genius created by Jules Verne in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. In what seems to have been a one-time-only occasion, Ferrer costars with his namesake Mel Ferrer. Also in the star-heavy cast is Burgess Meredith as an eccentric professor and Lynda Day George as the all-around heroine. The film was largely photographed by Lamar Boren, the undersea expert responsible for the soggy cinematography of Creature from the Black Lagoon and Flipper. Given the cast and the director (Alex March), we suspect that The Amazing Captain Nemo was filmed for television, then deflected to theaters to make back its cost. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Essentially a seedy '70s version of The Quatermass Experiment, this painfully cheap production from writer/director William Sachs involves the horrific plight of returning astronaut Steve West (Alex Rebar), the sole survivor of a disastrous expedition to the rings of Saturn. The fatal outcome of the mission apparently involved the discovery of a space-borne virus, or radiation, or something (it's never made quite clear) that killed the rest of the crew and is causing West's flesh to melt and slough off his body. For reasons unexplained, the only relief from the pain of his condition can be found by consuming live human cells. After munching on a few bystanders, West escapes into the surrounding woods, pursued by NASA researcher Dr. Nelson (Burr DeBenning) and a disorganized posse of military monster-hunters. Unable to stop his rapid dissolution or resist his cannibalistic urges, West agonizes over his dilemma (as indicated by laughable scenes of Rebar trying to register emotional anguish through layers of goop), but he still finds time to terrorize a few locals, including the topless Rainbeaux Smith and a pair of comic-relief oldsters trying to score some lemons. The film's notorious ad campaign rallied the makeup FX work of Rick Baker, but his talents are largely wasted thanks to AIP's frantic cost-cutting and a truncated shooting schedule that forewent many of Baker's elaborate prosthetics in favor of a cheap latex mask covered with gallons of syrup. Future Silence of the Lambs director Jonathan Demme contributes a brief cameo. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide

Ex-crime reporter turned novelist Raymond St. Ives (Charles Bronson) is drawn back into the world of his former profession by wealthy Abner Procane (John Houseman). St. Ives is hired to locate a stolen set of ledgers that, if made public, could trigger an all-out mob war. Amazingly, St. Ives fails to recognize who his real friends and enemies are in the course of his investigation, and it takes all his mental and physical resources to keep from being exterminated. One of the characters who isn't all that she seems is sexy Janet Whistler (Jacqueline Bisset). While the "main" cast is serviceable, the lineup of future stars in minor roles (Daniel J. Travanti, Jeff Goldblum, Robert Englund, Michael Lerner) is fascinating. Based on The Procane Chronicle, a novel by Oliver Bleeck. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The Queen is a luxury cruise ship, "played" by the Queen Mary in this made-for-TV thriller. The villain has it in for one of the ship's millionaire passengers. Accordingly, he (or she-we're not telling) plans to destroy the vessel and everyone on board. The producer of this all-star disasterfest was-drum roll, please-Irwin Allen. TV movie "regulars" John Gay and David Lowell Rich served as scripter and director, respectively, for Adventures of the Queen, which first sailed into American homes on February 14, 1975. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Murray Hamilton guest stars as Barney Lujack, former partner of SFPD detective Mike Stone (Karl Malden). Barney returns to San Francisco after a long absence, but not for a reunion with his old pal Mike. Instead, Lujack intends to kill the hired gun (Burr DeBanning) who murdered his son--and he isn't about to let anyone, not even Mike, get in his way. Featured in the supporting cast is onetime child actor Tommy Cook. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In his efforts to capture a narcotics thief who has killed a cop, Kojak (Telly Savalas) clashes with Federal agents who want the fugitive for themselves. What follows is a jurisdictional turf battle, with neither side yielding an inch. Finally, Kojak decides to defy both the Feds and his own superiors, and launch a personal pursuit of the killer--a chase that leads the detective all the way to California. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A genuine DC-9 was used in this episode to simulate a wrecked aircraft. The purpose for this crash is to set up a tense situation, wherein convicted murderer John Stahl (Vic Morrow) is set loose in the Lake Tahoe area. Meanwhile, Stahl's captors Erskine (Efrem Zimbalist Jr.) and Colby (William Reynolds), seriously injured in the plane crash, must fend for themselves in the treacherous wilderness--and also avoid being picked off like sitting ducks by the deranged Stahl. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide