Judy Brown Movies
- 1985
Based on the true story that took place in Harlem during 1971, this made-for-TV crime drama centers on assistant district attorney Robert Tanenbaum's desperate search for a trio of cop killers. Tanenbaum (James Woods) is assisted by an equally determined detective (Yaphet Lau Kotto). ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- James Woods, Yaphet Kotto, (more)
- 1983
- R
In this run-of-the-mill romantic drama, the title Independence Day refers to the usual Fourth of July fireworks festival in the U.S. but also to the dilemma of Mary Ann Taylor (Kathleen Quinlan) who lives in a small town but has a big ambition to go to the city and study photography for a profession -- should she go, or should she stay in her hometown with the man she loves? Focus on Mary Ann's dilemma slips to other characters -- her boyfriend's suicidal sister (Dianne Wiest) who is abused by her husband, the abusive husband's equally nasty father, and Mary Ann's boyfriend himself who is preparing his Camaro for the annual Fourth of July race. With the story moving from here to there, hampered by some extraordinary leaps of imagination, the narrative is thinned considerably by the time the Fourth is at hand. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Kathleen Quinlan, David Keith, (more)
- 1979
- PG
In mid-1978, the cult fantasy guru and comic book illustrator Bill Richert -- after months directing Jeff Bridges and Belinda Bauer in the scattergun carnival of a political satire, Winter Kills -- faced a real head-scratcher. With Winter yet to be completed, Richert's backer, Avco-Embassy, lopped off all funding and suspended production indefinitely. Projectless, Richert spun around, picked up an unproduced feature script by drive-in director Larry Cohen (Q, It's Alive!), and somehow found the cash to churn out a second piece of eccentricity with Bridges and Bauer in the leads, this one for Columbia Pictures -- hoping he could use the latter's earnings to polish off Winter. Thus began a very shaky history over the next 30 years for a little film originally called The American Success Company. This ghost of a picture bombed at the box office in 1979, was later reedited twice by Richert under distinct titles (first as American Success in 1981 and then as Success in 1983), and received limited theatrical distribution. It has since fallen through the cracks of movie history, never receiving official distribution on home video but popping up in bootleg versions under the titles Good as Gold and The Ringer. The movie tells the story of Harry Flowers (Bridges), a Milquetoast employee of a Munich-based credit card company, AmSucCo (did AmEx raise any eyebrows at that?), married to the daughter (Bauer) of his slightly tyrannical boss (Ned Beatty). Flowers allows himself to be shoved around and coddled by everyone, until he suddenly decides to slip into an assumed identity -- that of a gruff, bull-by-the-horns modern-day prince, determined to "rescue himself" from wimpdom by learning sexual aggression from a prostitute (Bianca Jagger) and ultimately wresting millions from the hand that feeds him. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jeff Bridges, Belinda Bauer, (more)
- 1976
In this crime drama, the sister of a Hong Kong gangster is cooperating with the police in investigating the rumored plan of her brother's gang to assassinate the Queen. While that chase is on, the gang is simultaneously attempting to profit from the visit of a refugee Cambodian princess who has brought along a lot of gold. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jimmy Wang Yu, Ko Chung-hsiung, (more)
A former Green Beret who set out to settle a score with the mob finds they don't give up easy in this action-packed blaxploitation drama. After killing the mobster who killed his parents in Mexico, Slaughter plans to return to a quiet life in Los Angeles, but police detective Reynolds (Brock Peters) warns him that his life is in danger -- it seems crime boss Duncan (Ed McMahon), an associate of the man Slaughter killed, isn't about to allow his killing to pass without retaliation. After an ambitious assassination attempt involving a World War I biplane fails dramatically, Duncan recruits a vicious new hit man, Kirk (Don Stroud), and one of Kirk's first assignments is to take care of Slaughter once and for all. Duncan also has ties to the L.A.P.D., and rather than put Slaughter in protective custody at Reynolds' suggestion, the war hero is put back on the street. However, as Slaughter tracks down the men who murdered his family and threatened the life of his girlfriend Marcia (Gloria Hendry), it looks as if the crooks may need protection from Slaughter more than he needs to be protected from them. A sequel of the successful Jim Brown vehicle Slaughter, Slaughter's Big Rip-Off included an original score by James Brown and his long-time musical partner Fred Wesley. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Willie Dynamite (Roscoe Orman) is a Manhattan pimp whose life and career are documented in this blaxploitation flick. Willie makes it to the top of his precarious profession, only to hit rock bottom again in record time. In her last movie role, Diana Sands plays an ex-hooker who becomes a social worker. She tries to get Willie to clean up his act before it's too late. Willie Dynamite was produced by Richard Zanuck and David Brown, who shortly afterward collaborated on a more upbeat project, The Sting. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1972
Murray Hamilton guest-stars as deranged nuclear scientist Dr. Jerome Cooper, who threatens to destroy an unspecified American city with a hydrogen bomb unless the President capitulates to his demands. Normally, the IMF would have no trouble defusing such a bomb; the problem here is to find out where the bomb has been planted--and the agents have only 15 hours to do so. Barbara Anderson again subs for series regular Lynda Day George as the resident female IMF agent. Scripted by Harold Livingston from a story by Livingston and Sheyrl Hendrix, "Ulitmatum" was originally broadcast on November 18, 1972. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Peter Graves, Greg Morris, (more)
- 1971
Jack Hill directed this alternately brutal and campy look at desperate women behind bars. An American named Collier (Judy Brown) has been convicted of murder in the Philippines and is sentenced to a grim women's prison in the jungle, where a mysterious German woman, Miss Deitrich (Christiane Schmidtmer), is the warden, and her head guard, sadistic Lucian (Katheryn Loder), keeps her charges in line through intimidation and violence. Collier shares a cell with tough-talking bisexual prostitute Grear (Pam Grier), hard-boiled political prisoner Bodine (Pat Woodell), thick-skinned but good-humored Alcott (Roberta Collins), drug-addicted Harrad (Brooke Mills), and tight-lipped Ferina (Gina Stuart). Bodine's boyfriend is the leader of an underground revolutionary faction, and when she learns he and his comrades are in danger, she begins to plot an escape for herself and her cellmates, with travelling peddlers Harry (Sid Haig) and Fred (Jerry Frank) becoming her unwitting collaborators. Meanwhile, Lucian is stepping up her torture of the prisoners at the behest of a mysterious masked stranger, and Collier is determined to find out who is behind the systematic brutality. The Big Doll House was the first "Women In Prison" exploitation epic produced for Roger Corman's New World Pictures; it was a big hit on the dive-in and grind house circuit, and spawned dozens of imitations (which are still being produced today). By the way, that's Pam Grier singing the theme song! ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- 1971
In this prison melodrama set in a women's reformatory, a sadistic lesbian guard takes great pleasure in tormenting her inmates in the grim confines of "The Playpen." The film is called Women's Penitentiary III on video. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1969
A fashion designer (Jorgen Kiil) returns to Denmark with his American wife Ursula (Judy Brown). She is leery of the excesses of female nudity and the relaxed moral standards of the country. A visit to a psychiatrist reveals feelings of latent lesbianism, but the doctor is not sure and recommends she be hospitalized. She befriends a recovering drug addict before he breaks into the medicine cabinet and kills himself with a drug overdose. She flees the facility into the willing arms of a beautiful fashion model (Marianne Tholstadt) resulting in an erotic tryst between the two women. Ursula later is forced to watch heterosexual pornography in an attempt to change her lesbian leanings. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Judy Brown, Jørgen Kiil, (more)
- 1969
Ironside (Raymond Burr) investigates when a local college campus is besieged with phony bomb threats. It happens that there is another potentially explosive situation involving the bitterness between college newspaper editor Neal Morgan (Philip Chapin) and a pair of Army bomb-disposal squad members (played by stars-in-the-making Ed Asner and Gerald S. O'Loughlin). Things reach the crisis stage when a "fake" bombing turns real and one of the Army men is killed. This is the final episode of Ironside's second season. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1968
What would a late-1960s detective series be without the obligatory "flower child" episode? After Detective Ed Brown (Don Galloway) busts a Haight-Ashbury drug house, he is accused of beating a hippie to death. To clear Ed's name, Ironside (Raymond Burr) follows a trail of clues to a group of outwardly clean-cut students in a private school--and runs up against a vast and sinister conspiracy of silence, involving not only "the kids" but also a few grownups. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1968
This episode runs the gamut from comedy to tragedy for LAPD mobile officers Pete Malloy (Martin Milner) and Jim Reed (Kent McCord). On the lighter side, the two cops break up a loud and nasty argument between a pair of "peace and love" cultists. Thing take a grimmer turn when the officers answer a call for help from a hysterical babysitter, and arrive on the scene of a calamitous swimming-pool accident. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
