George DiCenzo Movies
In films from 1970, George DiCenzo is best known for his portrayals of scowling urban authority types. DiCenzo's TV and movie characterizations have included Vincent Bugliosi in Helter Skelter (1976), Major Benchley in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1978), Arnold Rothstein in The Gangster Chronicles (1981), and Sam Baines in Back to the Future (1984). Numbering among his series-TV assignments are McClain's Law (1981; as Lt. Edward DeNisco), Dynasty (1984-1985 season; as Charles), Equal Justice (1990, top-billed as Pittsburgh D.A. Arnold Bach), and Joe's Life (1993; as Stan Gennaro). George DiCenzo has also kept busy behind the scenes as an associate producer. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
This sword-and-sorcery animated feature basically stars two "toys" -- She-Ra (voice of Melanie Britt) and He-Man (voice of John Erwin). Princess Adora has a special destiny -- to manifest as She-Ra and save Etheria from the really nasty Horde -- but she is not aware of her power-to-be. When Prince Adam (who is really He-Man) goes to Etheria to find the future She-Ra, his job is cut out for him -- or at least drawn out in standard animation but with added visual tricks that entertain the eye. He and She-Ra wreak havoc on the nasties, so violence is not absent -- just concentrated on the enemies. This feature was quickly followed by She-Ra: Princess of Power in 1986. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- John Erwin, Melendy Britt, (more)
- 1984
As a personal favor, Deputy DA Carol Baldwin (Kathleen Lloyd) asks Magnum (Tom Selleck) to investigate the alleged murder of a young mother, a death witnessed by the victim's little daughter. It is highly possible that the woman committed suicide and that the main suspect may be guilty of an even worse crime, but Carol hopes to spare the youthful witness the trauma of testifying. But how can Magnum get his job done now that he has been deprived the use of Robin Masters' Ferrari? ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1984
The duplicitous owner (James Coco) of a popular theme park engages Jessica (Angela Lansbury) to design a "house of horror". Shortly, thereafter, the owner is murdered in his underground office--an "impossible" crime, inasmuch as the office was securely locked from the inside. Inasmuch as the wife of investigating detective Lt. Donovan (James Stephens) is Jessica's niece Carol , it is perhaps a "given" that our heroine will take a hand in solving the murder. Incidentally, the two Donovan children are played by a very young Joaquin Phoenix (here billed as "Leaf") and his sister Summer Phoenix. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1983
In this taut, futuristic drama, the maiden voyage of a hypersonic passenger jet becomes a disaster when something goes terribly wrong and it gets stuck in orbit. The film is also known as Starflight: The Plane That Couldn't Land. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1982
- R
Released to cable TV in 1985, Breach of Contract was completed at least three years earlier. Starring in this domestic drama are Michael Margotta, Cindy Pickett, and George DiCenzo. Margotta and Pickett play a husband and wife, both of whom are career-oriented and want to continue pursuing their pre-nuptual jobs. They agree never to step on the other's ambitions. Unfortunately, both become too ambitious for their own good, and, true to the film's title, their verbal "contract" is shattered. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1981
This action film follows the childhood alliances of "Lucky" Luciano, Meyer Lansky, and "Bugsy" Siegel and their reign as the kings of the 1920s crime scene. ~ Iotis Erlewine, All Movie Guide
The Filmation cartoon series Blackstar was originally telecast September 12, 1981, through September 11, 1982, on CBS. The hero is astronaut John Blackstar, who finds himself on the sword-and-sorcery planet of Sagar after falling through a time warp. Predictably, the series borrowed heavily from other fantasy sources (notably Star Wars and The Hobbit). The character's name derived from the fact that, as conceived, he was supposed to be African-American. However, CBS got cold feet, and John Blackstar was redrawn as Caucasian (though he looked like he had a very deep suntan). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1981
In this telemovie, Ron Leibman plays Stan Rivkin, who, sure enough, is bounty hunter, though he operates in Manhattan rather than the wild west. Rivkin has a physically handicapped 12 year old son (Glenn Scarpelli), who is frequently left in the care of a kindly retired priest (Harry Morgan). The film follows Rivkin around as he takes on several low-paying and death-defying assignments. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1981
In this made-for-television thriller, a pair of couples, a U.S. senator among them, are stalked by backwoods snipers while on a white-water rafting trip. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide
- 1980
A big-city blackout galvanizes the plot of the made-for-TV The Night the City Screamed. Recreating recent events in New York City, the film details a crime spree that runs unchecked throughout the darkened metropolis. Mayor Raymond Burr tries to stem the tide of robberies and rapes, even as he labors to becalm the panicky citizens. An all-TV-star cast, including Robert Culp, David Cassidy, Georg Stanford Brown and Don Meredith show up in brief, interlocking vignettes of "fear, panic, greed, hostility, rage and...love" (or so says the film's press kit). The Night the City Screamed was originally telecast December 14, 1980. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Raymond Burr, Robert Culp, (more)
- 1979
Though tenuously based on fact, High Midnight is the sort of TV movie that could only have been made in the fuzzy-headed 70s. David Birney is a blue-collar type whose wife and daughter are killed in a no-knock drug bust. Nasty narcotics officer Michael Connors refuses to admit that he's made a mistake. Connors tries to cover up his own ineptitude, and eventually targets Birney for elimination. With the help of sympathetic cop Christine Belford, Birney avenges his family's murder. It's not likely that a TV movie in which a narcotics cop is the villain will get much play in the 1990s, but High Midnight is a nonetheless fascinating time capsule. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Robert Aldrich returns to the western-spoof genre he'd previously explored in Four for Texas with The Frisco Kid. Gene Wilder plays Polish rabbi Avram Belinsky, who intends to set up a congregation in San Francisco. Eminently unsuited for life in the Old West, poor Avram is victimized by everyone with whom he comes in contact. Salvation arrives in the unlikely form of taciturn bank robber Tommy (Harrison Ford). Incredibly, Tommy takes a liking to the feckless Avram, and together the two men embark on a series of seriocomic adventures. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Gene Wilder, Harrison Ford, (more)
- 1979
In the conclusion of The Waltons' two-part season eight opener (originally telecast as a single two-hour episode), newlyweds Ben (Eric Scott) and Cindy (new series regular Leslie Winston) nearly buckle under the pressure to start a family of their own; Erin (Mary McDonough) bristles at the condescending attitude of her boss J.D. Pickett (Lewis Arquette); and Elizabeth (Kami Cotler) has mixed feelings about the budding romance between her brother Jim-Bob (David W. Harper) and her best friend Aimee (Rachel Longaker). On a more serious note, local draft-board officer John Walton (Ralph Waite) has been threatened with dire consequences by Calvin Satterfield (George DiCenzo), who holds John responsible for the combat death of his son Tommy. The episode ends with more bad news from the battlefields of Europe -- and this time the topic of conversation is John's own son John-Boy. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1979
The Second World War has made quite an impact on Walton's Mountain as the eighth season of The Waltons gets under way. Fired up with patriotic fervor, everyone in the Walton family is involved in the war effort. For example, John Walton (Ralph Waite) is serving on the local draft board, Jason (Jon Walmsley) is an Army corporal, Erin (Mary McDonough) has taken a job at the metals plant owned by J.D. Pickett (Lewis Arquette), and the younger Walton siblings are closely monitoring the activities of the absent John-Boy, now a war correspondent in Europe. The good news in this first episode of a two-part story (originally telecast in a single two-hour slot) is that John's wife Olivia (Michael Learned) has returned from Arizona, where she was being treated for tuberculosis. The bad news is that a certain Calvin Satterfield (George DiCenzo) has threatened to kill John for advising Calvin's AWOL son Tommy (Glenn Withrow) to return to the Army -- advice that turned out to have tragic consequences. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
William Peter Blatty, author of The Exorcist, proved a workmanlike producer/director for 1979's The Ninth Configuration. Army psychiatrist Col. Kane (Stacy Keach) (teetering on the sanity brink himself) tries to minister to the patients in a military mental hospital. The fact that the hospital is located in a brooding old castle is hardly conducive to speedy recoveries. Nor does the mid-film barroom brawl indicate that Kane's approach to mental health is all that workable. Blatty adapted the screenplay for The Ninth Configuration from his own novel Twinkle, Twinkle, "Killer" Kane (which also served as the film's title during one of its many releases). It is hard to tell if what you're going to see is the "director's cut," since there are several versions of this film, running anywhere from 99 to 140 minutes. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Stacy Keach, Scott Wilson, (more)
- 1978
Raymond Burr attempted a return to weekly television in this feature-length pilot for the proposed series The Jordan Chance. Having spent seven years in prison for a crime he didn't commit, attorney Frank Jordan (Burr) dedicates his life to defending others who have been falsely accused. To this end, he sets up "The Jordan Chance," a foundation for those who have been victimized by the imperfections of the American legal system. His first client is Elena Delgado (Maria-Elena Cordero), a young Hispanic woman who has been tried and convicted in the "court of public opinion" for murdering her lover. The Jordan Chance made its CBS debut on December 12, 1978. Unfortunately for Burr, a subsequent series failed to materialize. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1978
Joe Don Baker stars as chief of detectives, Eischeid, in the 4-hour, 2-part TV film To Kill A Cop. Eischeid must contend with a series of seemingly unrelated bank robberies and the vicious murders of two police officers. Eischeid deduces that the culprits are members of a violent African-American revolutionary movement, but he is blocked in his investigation by the politically ambitious chief of police. As time runs out, Eischeid must prevent the planned wholesale slaughter of civilians at the hands of the revolutionaries. Scripted by Ernest Tidyman (The French Connection), To Kill a Cop served as the pilot for the TV series Eischeid, which ran from September 1979 to January 1980. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1978
Broken Badge was one of several 2-hour Police Story specials telecast during the 1977-78 TV season. Claude Akins stars as a no-nonsense cop with a bad rep. A prostitute charges Akins with harassing her; shortly afterward, she turns up dead. The rest of the drama concerns Akins' straw-grasping efforts to exonerate himself from a murder charge. The "official" debut date of Broken Badge is August 27, 1978, though it appears that it was initially scheduled for an earlier telecast. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1977
- PG
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Steven Spielberg followed Jaws (1975), his first major box-office success, with this epic science fiction adventure about a disparate group of people who attempt to contact alien intelligence. Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) is an electrical lineman who, while sent out on emergency repairs, witnesses an unidentified flying object, and even has a "sunburn" from its bright lights to prove it. Neary's wife and children are at first skeptical, then concerned, and eventually fearful, as Roy refuses to accept a "logical" explanation for what he saw and is prepared to give up his job, his home, and his family to pursue the "truth" about UFOs. Neary's obsession eventually puts him in contact with others who've had close encounters with alien spacecraft, including Jillian (Melinda Dillon), a single mother whose son disappeared during her UFO experience, and Claude Lacombe (celebrated French filmmaker François Truffaut), a French researcher who believes that we can use a musical language to communicate with alien visitors. Lacombe's theory is put to the test when a band of government researchers and underground UFO enthusiasts (including Neary) join for an exchange with alien visitors near Devil's Tower, Wyoming. In 1980, a "Special Edition" was released. While its primary selling point was the addition of scenes inside the alien spaceship, Spielberg claimed that he also cleaned up some choppy editing in the second act. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Richard Dreyfuss, François Truffaut, (more)
- 1977
Ostensibly a six-hour miniseries adaptation of Bert Hirschfield's novel Aspen, the program actually used only the title of the Hirschfield work; the plot proper was lifted from another novel by a different author, Bart Spicer's The Adversary. Set in the titular Colorado ski resort in the 1960s, the story line incorporated equal amounts of sex, greed, ambition, and murder, with the trial of accused rapist-killer Lee Bishop (Perry King) at the center of the storm, and the efforts by a gangster to grab up the local land, coupled with the amorous misadventures of a jet-setting glamour girl, taking up the slack whenever the plot threatened to lag. Despite a huge and varied cast, Sam Elliott emerged as the star of the proceedings in the role of straight-arrow attorney Tom Keating. Originally shown by the NBC network from November 5 to 7, 1977, Aspen was rebroadcast under the more lurid title The Innocent and the Damned. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sam Elliott, Perry King, (more)
- 1977
When a billionaire checks into the hospital for a heart operation, he becomes the object of a massive terrorist attack, as they hold him for $10 million ransom. Complicating the problem is his absolute obsession with his privacy, a la Howard Hughes. ~ Tana Hobart, All Movie Guide
- 1977
- R
Loosely based on former policeman Joseph Wambaugh's humorous novel, The Choirboys determinedly explores the stunted interior lives of a large crew of callous, bigoted L.A. policemen. These men get together to lend one another emotional support. However, the means they choose for this do not enhance their sensitivity or their judgement. When one of them has a really bad day, he asks his buddies to come to "choir practice," and they get together for alcoholic benders of fairly epic proportions. When one of them accidentally shoots a homosexual teen cruising a city park, everyone (including higher-ups) gets called on to help with the cover-up. The Choirboys, which was a critical and box-office failure, had an impressive cast list, including such well-known performers as Blair Brown, James Woods, Randy Quaid, Lou Gossett Jr., Perry King and Charles Durning. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Charles Durning, Louis Gossett, Jr., (more)
This heist film stars Stella Stevens as a robber who enlists her friends--a trapeze artist and a magician's aide--to help her make off with $500,000 in casino cash. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Stella Stevens, Stuart Whitman, (more)
