Dick Bakalyan Movies
- 1988
It has been nearly a year since drug kingpin Bogota was killed in the episode "Love, Hate, and Sporty James", but the million dollars that Bogota had on him when he died is still missing. Hunter (Fred Dryer) and McCall (Stepfanie Kramer) suspect that the money was stolen by street hustler Sporty James (Garret Morris), the man who helped them mete out justice to the drug lord. Trouble is, a bunch of Colombian tough guys also think that Sporty has the dough, and they're willing to kill him to get it back. In an ironic turn of events, Sporty ends up being charged with the murder of one of the Colombians, prompting Hunter to call in a number of favors from the Underworld to find the real trigger man. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1987
Hunter (Fred Dryer) is reunited with his Vietnam-war buddy Randall Fain (Dirk Blocker), who is awaiting the arrival of his Oriental mail-order bride Rose Chin (Clare Nono). Unfortunately, the girl has been kidnapped by minions of the drug-smuggling ring with which she is peripherally involved. The case takes a unexpected twist when the crooked marriage broker who brought Rose to America is murdered--leaving Hunter with nary a lead to work with! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1987
Actress-activistTheresa Saldana, who after surviving a brutal knife attack by a deranged fan founded the organization Victims for Victims, plays a semi-autobiographical role in this episode. Seven years after being jailed for attempting to murder famed pianist Jenny Hartman (Saldana), demented "number one fan" Ralph Flager (Andy Wood) is paroled--and once he's back on the street, he makes no secret of his intention to finish the job on Jenny. Since there is no real proof against Flager, the police can do nothing officially: unofficially, however, Hunter (Fred Dryer) vows to shield Jenny from harm during his off-hours--prompting Flager to add Hunter's partner McCall (Stepfanie Kramer) to his list of potential victims! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1985
The career of boxer Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini is the subject of the made-for-TV biopic. Doug McKeon plays Mancini, while Robert Blake co-stars as his father, Lenny Mancini. An excellent pugilist in his own right, Lenny's career is cut short by his wartime service. Son Ray carries on the tradition into the 1980s, battling his way towards the WBA crown. Heart of a Champion's executive producer was Rocky star Sylvester Stallone, who (it says here) staged the boxing sequences. This heartwarming "do it for the old man" effort was first telecast May 1, 1985. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Robert Blake, Doug McKeon, (more)
- 1984
In this standard, slightly maudlin drama developed by Mick Jagger and director Gene Taft, Charles (Nick Mancuso) is a rock 'n roll star forced to take on his 13-year-old son Job (Byron Thames) when the boy's mother dies, and a clash of cultures, generations, and backgrounds results. Job was the result of a one-night stand and had never really known his father. That fact coupled with his training in the military academy he attends leaves him unprepared for the world of touring rock musicians. He and his father have a lot to work out together -- and they do so quite predictably, in-between music sets and concerts. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Nick Mancuso, Byron Thames, (more)
The Disney animated feature The Fox and the Hound tells the story of a friendship between traditional enemies. Tod is a fox whose parents have died. His best friend is a hunting dog named Copper. As Copper grows up, he learns that it is his job to hunt foxes. Tod's caretaker Widow Tweed takes Tod to live in a game preserve where he falls madly in love with Vixey. Copper and his owner eventually enter the preserve to hunt Tod, and eventually Copper must decide between duty and friendship. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Mickey Rooney, Kurt Russell, (more)
- 1978
Having published absolutely nothing since his bestseller "Freefall to Destiny", hard-drinking writer Jack Skowran (Anthony Zerbe) pins his future career hopes on his next book, which he claims will be a "Where Are They Now?" tome about a group of high schoolers who used to hang around the same drive-in back in the early 1960s. Asked to help Jack research the book, Jim is unaware that the author is actually endeavoring to solve a 17-year-old murder which took place on the yacht of a prominent publisher. Not surprisingly, there are some very powerful people who don't want the murder case reopened--and they hire a professional hit man to throw Jim off the trail for keeps. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1977
Richard Bakalyan returns as Charlie, Squad 51's trouble-prone mechanic. The paramedics decides to purchase a boat from Charlie, intendig to sail it on their days off and rent it to others when they're on duty. Of course, things don't quite go as planned, thanks to a wide variety of emergency calls, including the rescue of two boaters from a particularly treacherous stretch of water off Catalina Island, a bookie suffering from a coronary in a locked office, and an explosion in the hospital lab. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1977
Dick Bakalyan makes his first series appearance as Charlie, the redoubtable ambulance mechanic. Advised to give Charley a wide berth when he shows up to fix an electrical short in Squad 51's emergency vehicle, John (Randolph Mantooth) and Roy (Kevin Tighe) soon discover that the eccentric mechanic is far more trouble than he's worth. The caseload in this episode includes a pair of "nature lovers" who contact a virulent case of anthrax, and a man stranded on an amusement-park tower ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1976
Renee Taylor and Joseph Bologna cowrote as well as starred in this 1976 TV remake of the 1941 Tracy-Hepburn vehicle Woman of the Year. Except for a handful of updated details, the storyline is substantially the same in both versions: A down-to-earth male sportswriter (Bologna, in the Spencer Tracy part) marries a high-profile female international news commentator (Taylor, in the Katharine Hepburn part). In fine "golden age" tradition, the stars are complemented with an excellent supporting cast, including Richard Bakalyan as a punch-drunk bartender, Leon Belasco as a refugee Russian musician and John Fiedler as a justice of the peace. Only Anthony Holland's swishy male secretary strikes a discordant note. The remake's "reconciliation" finale wisely avoids the ponderous, sexist slapstick setpiece at the end of the original film, wherein Katharine Hepburn nearly destroys her kitchen by cooking her first breakfast. A surefire audience pleaser, Woman of the Year was curiously premiered in July of 1976, a time when most potential viewers were out of the house. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1975
Elaine Heilveil guest stars as Karen Overstreet, a female paramedic trainee with a hostile attitude who feels she must continually prove her worth to her all-male colleagues. On the job, it is Roy (Kevin Tighe) who ends up needing emergency medical attention after trying to save an invalid from a fire. Elsewhere, an attempted suicide changes his mind a shade too late, and the paramedics struggle to revive the victim of a pulmonary embolism, and a freeway construction crew accidentally imperils an elderly couple. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1975
Hoping to someday own their own farm, three Puerto Rican street kids hijack a truck--fatally injuring a priest in the process. But this is hardly the thieves' biggest worry: in pulling off the heist, they have run afoul of a big-time hoodlum. While Kojak (Telly Savalas) tracks down the young hijackers, his fellow detective Crocker (Kevin Dobson) faces an a different sort of professional challenge as he prepares to deliver a lecture on rape to an audience of Catholic schoolgirls. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1958
This over-the-top '50s juvenile delinquency melodrama has developed a cult following for its rabid anti-marijuana message and a thoroughly enjoyable performance by teen-pic icon Dick Bakalyan as one of the teenagers gone bad. A reform-school graduate turns some long-in-the-tooth high schoolers onto the loco weed; before long, they're hopelessly addicted, with crime, insanity, and death the inevitable results. The Cool and the Crazy was shot on location in Kansas City, where Dick Bakalyan actually spent a few hours in jail when local cops thought he was a for-real bad guy and not just acting. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Scott Marlowe, Dick Bakalyan, (more)
- 1954
Italian director Pietro Francisci directed this 1954 drama about the fifth-century invasion of Rome by Attila the Hun. Anthony Quinn stars as the legendary barbaric King of the Huns who wreaked havoc upon Rome, threatening to topple the entire empire. Sophia Loren costars as Honoria, the beautiful young woman whose help is enlisted by Pope Leo I and may be the only person who can end Attila's rampage. Also starring Henri Vidal and Irene Papas, Attila, il flagello di Dio was released in the United States as Attila. ~ Matthew Tobey, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Anthony Quinn, Sophia Loren, (more)
A standard, mindless teen comedy that is patently geared toward the pre-teen set, H.O.T.S. involves a lot of bouncy females, in this case, sisters in the H.O.T.S. sorority, in hot-blooded competition with the women in another mythical sorority on campus. The objective seems to be to show as many cruel practical jokes, lame-brain jocks, non-stop action, wild orgies, and exaggerated characters as can fit into a 95-minute running time. Added to the pile are the requisite idiot adults who are never able to see what is going on around them, and it becomes apparent (if it was not from the beginning), which age group is meant to be the target audience here. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Susan Kiger, Lisa London, (more)
"You may think you know what you're dealing with, but believe me, you don't," warns water baron Noah Cross (John Huston), when smooth cop-turned-private eye J.J. "Jake" Gittes (Jack Nicholson) starts nosing around Cross's water diversion scheme. That proves to be the ominous lesson of Chinatown, Roman Polanski's critically lauded 1974 revision of 1940s film noir detective movies. In 1930s Los Angeles, "matrimonial work" specialist Gittes is hired by Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) to tail her husband, Water Department engineer Hollis Mulwray (Darrell Zwerling). Gittes photographs him in the company of a young blonde and figures the case is closed, only to discover that the real Mrs. Mulwray had nothing to do with hiring Gittes in the first place. When Hollis turns up dead, Gittes decides to investigate further, encountering a shady old-age home, corrupt bureaucrats, angry orange farmers, and a nostril-slicing thug (Polanski) along the way. By the time he confronts Cross, Evelyn's father and Mulwray's former business partner, Jake thinks he knows everything, but an even more sordid truth awaits him. When circumstances force Jake to return to his old beat in Chinatown, he realizes just how impotent he is against the wealthy, depraved Cross. "Forget it, Jake," his old partner tells him. "It's Chinatown." Reworking the somber underpinnings of detective noir along more pessimistic lines, Polanski and screenwriter Robert Towne convey a '70s-inflected critique of capitalist and bureaucratic malevolence in a carefully detailed period piece harkening back to the genre's roots in the 1930s and '40s. Gittes always has a smart comeback like Humphrey Bogart's Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe, but the corruption Gittes finds is too deep for one man to stop. Other noir revisions, such as Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye (1973) and Arthur Penn's Night Moves (1975), also centered on the detective's inefficacy in an uncertain '70s world, but Chinatown's period sheen renders this dilemma at once contemporary and timeless, pointing to larger implications about the effects of corporate rapaciousness on individuals. Polanski and Towne clashed over Chinatown's ending; Polanski won the fight, but Towne won the Oscar for Best Screenplay. Chinatown was nominated for ten other Oscars, including Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, Cinematography, Art Direction, Costumes, and Score. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, (more)
In The Man With Bogart's Face, an affectionate send-up of the Bogart detective films of the 1940s, Robert Sacchi plays a man who idolizes Humphrey Bogart so much he has his features altered to look exactly like his idol. He then opens up a detective agency under the name Sam Marlowe (an amalgam of the names of Bogart's characters from The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep). Sam hires the Duchess (Misty Rowe) as his secretary ("She looked like Marilyn Monroe and made about as much sense as Gracie Allen") and "Sam Marlowe, Private Eye" is in business. Sam gets a meager response until a shooting puts his picture in the paper and business starts to flourish. Particularly attracted to Marlowe's services are a collection of characters -- Gena (Michelle Phillips), an attractive Gene Tierney type; Commodore Anastas (Victor Buono), a Greek shipping tycoon and Sidney Greenstreet lookalike; and the mysterious Mr. Zebra (Herbert Lom doing a Peter Lorre imitation). They are all trying to find the famous Eyes of Alexander -- a priceless set of stones from a statue of Alexander the Great. Also on hand are old Hollywood pros George Raft, Yvonne DeCarlo and Mike Mazurki. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Robert Sacchi, Franco Nero, (more)
The Fury meets The Misadventures of Merlin Jones in this comic-book sequel to Disney's Escape to Witch Mountain. Reprising their roles as the psychic siblings from another world are Kim Richards as Tia and Ike Eisenmann as Tony. Their Uncle Bene (Denver Pyle) gives the kids a treat by letting them vacation on planet Earth, and they make the most of it by immediately getting into hot water. It seems that arch-fiend Dr. Victor Gannon (Christopher Lee) and his Bette Davis-like accomplice, Letha (Bette Davis), are in the process of testing a mind-control device. They want to see if they can mentally save their cohort Sickle (Anthony James) from plunging to his death from atop a building. Tony spots Sickle's plunge and telekinetically saves him. When Dr. Gannon sees Tony's powers, he kidnaps him, hoping to utilize his otherworldly powers for his own nefarious purposes. Enlisting the aid of a collection of low-life youngsters (Christian Juttner, Brad Savage, Poindexter, and Jeffrey Jacquet), Tia uses her powers of telepathy to contact her brother and tries to rescue him from Gannon's clutches. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bette Davis, Christopher Lee, (more)
Robert Stevenson, Walt Disney Productions' house director, cobbled together his 19th family film for the organization with this slapstick sequel to the Disney comedy The Shaggy Dog (produced 17 years after the fact). Dean Jones plays Wilby Daniels, a lawyer running against the villainous John Slade (Keenan Wynn) for district attorney. His campaign is cast into doubt when he comes upon an ancient ring that transforms him into a fat sheepdog. But the campaign progresses on a level playing field when the unscrupulous Slade finds himself also turned into a canine -- a disgruntled bulldog. Another sequel, The Return of the Shaggy Dog, followed. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Dean Jones, Tim Conway, (more)
- 1975
- G
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Kurt Russell returns as Dexter Riley, the dedicated student of Medfield College who just can't stay out of trouble, in this follow-up to The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes and Now You See Him, Now You Don't. In this story, Dexter is trying to devise a formula for a chemistry project that will increase human strength . By accident, he discovers that, when he mixes his concoction with another student's recipe for vitamin-fortified cereal, it gives people super-human strength, but only for a few minutes. Ignoring these drawbacks, Dean Higgins (Joe Flynn) makes a deal to sell the miracle cereal to a leading breakfast-food concern, unaware that it's Dexter's secret ingredient that makes the cereal work. Meanwhile, when word gets out about the new strength-boosting cereal, several competing companies decide that they need to wipe the new product off the market. Cesar Romero returns from the first film as A.J. Arno, with Phil Silvers, Eve Arden, and Richard Bakalyan highlighting the supporting cast. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Kurt Russell, Joe Flynn, (more)
