Andy Devine Movies

This rather complex animated adventure concerns the quest of a toy wind-up mouse and his son to become self-winding.The two accidentally fall off a shelf, and are thrown out with the garbage. Then, they must escape from an evil rat who imprisons them. ~ John Bush, Rovi

In this heartwarming children's adventure set in Marineland, a young boy secretly trains a killer whale to appear in the big show. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

After several feature-length documentaries (Elvis: That's The Way It Is, Soul to Soul), filmmaker Denis Sanders returned to the short-length form with The Great American West. This 55-minute film was initially a TV special, titled The Great American West of John Ford. The life story of the fabled film director is depicted via interview sequences with Ford, and lengthy clips from such classics as Stagecoach, My Darling Clementine, the "Cavalry Trilogy", The Searchers and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Sharing hosting duties are Ford collaborator Henry Fonda, James Stewart, and, of course, John Wayne. The Great American West of John Ford was first telecast December 5, 1971. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

This video chronicles the use of sex, violence and death in art through the ages. ~ Rovi

Have you ever longed for the day when James Brown, Martha Raye, and Col. Harland Sanders would appear in a movie together? Well, that's barely the tip of the improbable casting iceberg in this bizarre cold-war spoof. The leaders of the American intelligence organization the S.S.A. ("Super Secret Agency") are becoming increasingly alarmed by the disappearance of a number of B-list celebrities, who are being spirited off to Communist Albania. Eager to bring the fading stars back to the Land of the Free, the S.S.A. come up with a simple plan: They'll find four typical guys in their mid-twenties, have them form a rock group, make them into international stars, and wait until they get invited to play a gig in Albania, which will allow them to find out what's become of Rudy Vallee, Butterfly McQueen, and Huntz Hall, among others. Unemployed philosopher Michael A. Miller, Native-American honor student Ray Chippeway, phys-ed major Dennis Larden, and male model Lonny Stevens are drafted by the S.S.A., and after some intensive training by experts (Trini Lopez shows them a few guitar chords, and Richard Pryor gives them a crash course in soul), they become an overnight sensation as The Phynx (yes, it's pronounced "Finks"). Their album sells 17 million copies on the strength of songs like "What Is Your Sign?," and their groupies have to be cleared away by forklift. But fun and games have to go to the back burner when Albanian ruler Markevitch (George Tobias) and his wife, Ruby (Joan Blondell), invite the Phynx to perform at the behest of their son. Pat O'Brien, Xavier Cugat, Patty Andrews, and Dick Clark are just a few of the other notables who make cameo appearances in The Phynx, which had a very brief theatrical release before being sold to television in the early '70s. Legendary songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller penned the songs performed by The Phynx (and Stoller composed the background score), though for some reason they're not covered nearly as often as "Jailhouse Rock," "Hound Dog," or "Yakkety Yak." ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

The Over the Hill Gang Rides Again is a TV-movie sequel to 1969's ratings-grabbing The Over the Hill Gang, which told of a group of retired Texas Rangers rallying to save their small town from criminals. In the sequel, the gang --Walter Brennan, Edgar Buchanan, Andy Devine, and Chill Wills (Pat O'Brien, seen in the first film, is absent this time around) -- team up to rehabilitate Fred Astaire, cast against type as The Baltimore Kid, a one-time ranger who has become a town drunk. Astaire is restored to the job of marshal of Waco, while the other old-timers end up as his deputies. Harmless fun for an undiscerning audience, Over the Hill Gang Rides Again lacks the easygoing charm of the original film. Both Over the Hill Gang entries, by the way, were designed as pilots for an unsold weekly series. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

One of the better and more diverting of ABC's first full season of made-for-television movies, The Over-the-Hill Gang was a low-budget Western with a gimmick: Get a bunch of elderly actors, known either for their leading roles in the 1930s, or for playing comic sidekicks (and Walter Brennan was a lot of both categories) through the 1950s, and put them together in a plot. The result was this enjoyable oater about a quartet of retired Texas Rangers (Pat O'Brien, Walter Brennan, Chill Wills, Edgar Buchanan) who take on the corrupt mayor (Edward Andrews) of a small Nevada town where O'Brien's daughter (Kris Nelson) and newspaper editor son-in-law (Rick Nelson) live. Jack Elam represents the bad guys' muscle with his usual threatening aplomb, and Andy Devine gets a lot of mileage out of his role as a corrupt, inept judge. The other surprise in the cast is Gypsy Rose Lee, looking radiant as ever, portraying an admirer of the former rangers, in what was her final screen appearance, and such familiar old faces as Myron Healey, William Benedict, and Elmira Sessions in supporting roles. When O'Brien and company realize that they're no longer fast enough to do the job with guns, they decide to use their wits instead, outsmarting and outflanking the villains. The pacing by director Jean Yarbrough (whose own career went back to the 1920s, and whose last film this was) is a little leisurely, but the script is fairly clever and it's a lot of fun watching the veteran actors chewing up the scenery, with Devine having the most fun of all in an unusual role as a villain. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi

Doris Day peers through layers of camera gauze to star in The Ballad of Josie, a second-rate variation of Cat Ballou. For openers, Day is arrested for the billiard-cue bludgeoning of her late husband. Upon her acquittal, she takes up sheep ranching in Wyoming. To prove herself as good as any man, Day organizes the other frontier wives into a woman's suffrage movement. She succeeds in establishing her equality, winning good-guy Peter Graves in the process. Ballad of Josie was produced by Norman MacDonnell, who was on firmer Western ground when he was producer of the radio and TV series Gunsmoke. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

When Chris Carlyle's (Jay North) family leaves their farm for the city, Chris must give his pet puma up to the local zoo. When Chris discovers the terrible conditions that the animals are being kept in, he manages to find a way to set all of the creatures free, much to the dismay of the local residents. ~ Iotis Erlewine, Rovi

Like Pontius Pilate, director John Ford asks "What is truth?" in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance--but unlike Pilate, Ford waits for an answer. The film opens in 1910, with distinguished and influential U.S. senator Ransom Stoddard (James Stewart) and his wife Hallie (Vera Miles) returning to the dusty little frontier town where they met and married twenty-five years earlier. They have come back to attend the funeral of impoverished "nobody" Tom Doniphon (John Wayne). When a reporter asks why, Stoddard relates a film-long flashback. He recalls how, as a greenhorn lawyer, he had run afoul of notorious gunman Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin), who worked for a powerful cartel which had the territory in its clutches. Time and again, "pilgrim" Stoddard had his hide saved by the much-feared but essentially decent Doniphon. It wasn't that Doniphon was particularly fond of Stoddard; it was simply that Hallie was in love with Stoddard, and Doniphon was in love with Hallie and would do anything to assure her happiness, even if it meant giving her up to a greenhorn. When Liberty Valance challenged Stoddard to a showdown, everyone in town was certain that the greenhorn didn't stand a chance. Still, when the smoke cleared, Stoddard was still standing, and Liberty Valance lay dead. On the strength of his reputation as the man who shot Valance, Stoddard was railroaded into a political career, in the hope that he'd rid the territory of corruption. Stoddard balked at the notion of winning an election simply because he killed a man-until Doniphon, in strictest confidence, told Stoddard the truth: It was Doniphon, not Stoddard, who shot down Valance. Stoddard was about to reveal this to the world, but Doniphon told him not to. It was far more important in Doniphon's eyes that a decent, honest man like Stoddard become a major political figure; Stoddard represented the "new" civilized west, while Doniphon knew that he and the West he represented were already anachronisms. Thus Stoddard went on to a spectacular political career, bringing extensive reforms to the state, while Doniphon faded into the woodwork. His story finished, the aged Stoddard asks the reporter if he plans to print the truth. The reporter responds by tearing up his notes. "This is the West, sir, " the reporter explains quietly. "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." Dismissed as just another cowboy opus at the time of its release, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance has since taken its proper place as one of the great Western classics. It questions the role of myth in forging the legends of the West, while setting this theme in the elegiac atmosphere of the West itself, set off by the aging Stewart and Wayne. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Andy Devine stars as Mr. Frisby, the biggest liar in three counties. Despite his constant gas-bagging about his alleged past acts of heroism, no one believes Frisby's tall tales -- no one, that is, except a team of space aliens, who accept Frisby's lies at face value. On the verge of being whisked off to another planet as a zoo specimen, Frisby stumbles upon a method of overpowering his extraterrestial captors (a method, incidentally, that would be expanded upon in the 1997 sci-fi movie spoof Mars Attacks!) Scripted by Rod Serling from a story by Frederic Louis Fox (in which Frisby became an outer-space TV personality), the fitfully funny Twilight Zone installment "Hocus-Pocus and Frisby" first aired April 13, 1962. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

MGM's all-star 1960 filmization of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn surgically removes the sociological subtext of Mark Twain's novel in the interests of "entertainment for the whole family." The emphasis is on the adventuresome escapades of Huck (Eddie Hodges) and fugitive slave Jim (played by boxing champ Archie Moore), and on the comic elements inherent in the characters of the King (Tony Randall) and the Duke (Mickey Shaughnessy). In the manner of Around the World in 80 Days, every role is filled by a "name" actor: featured in the cast are Judy Canova, Andy Devine, Buster Keaton, Sterling Holloway, Finlay Currie, Josephine Hutchinson and John Carradine. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi