Harry Fleer Movies

A successful retired jock and his geeky younger brother play out their sibling rivalry by coaching rival little league football teams in this family comedy. Ed O'Neill plays the older brother, Kevin O'Shea, a former Heisman Trophy winner whose gridiron exploits have made him a local hero in his small Illinois hometown. Kevin is the almost unanimous choice to head up the town's Pop Warner football team, and he happily builds an imposing team from the best local players. One of the few objectors is Kevin's young brother Danny (Rick Moranis), an awkward, bespectacled gas station owner who empathizes with the kids rejected from the team, including his own athletic daughter Becky (Shawna Waldron). As revenge, Danny starts his own competing team of misfits, taking on the coaching duties himself. Naturally, despite the total ineptitude of Danny and his players, they eventually find themselves major underdogs in a climactic battle against Kevin's well-trained juggernaut. Director Duwayne Dunham and a team of four screenwriters hit all the expected sports film conventions, throwing in a few innocent romantic subplots and cameos by real football players for good measure. ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide

Still anxious to serve his country in the military, Jethro heads to what he thinks is an Army-reserve recruiting office, and is immediately inducted into the ranks of the costumed movie extras appearing in a Civil War epic. The confusion is compounded when Granny, spotting the maneuvers of the "Union Army," is convinced that the War Between the States is starting all over again. William Mims appears as the tippling bit player cast as General Grant, while Lyle Talbot is seen as the film's military advisor, Colonel Blake. The first episode in a three-part story arc, "The Reserve Program" first aired on November 22, 1967. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This family comedy stars James Stewart as Dr. Robert Leaf, a college professor who dislikes science and tries to instill in his children a love of art and music. So Robert and his wife Vina (Glynis Johns) are dismayed to discover that their eight-year-old son Erasmus (Billy Mumy) is tone-deaf and color-blind; what's worse, he has a genius-level talent for mathematics. Robert isn't sure what to do about Erasmus, but while his older sister Pandora (Cindy Carol) puts his skills to work by getting him to do her homework, his older friend Kenneth (Fabian) has a better idea. Kenneth and Erasmus come up with a foolproof plan for picking the winners in horse racing -- so foolproof that it draws the attention of two con men, Upjohn (John Williams) and Argyle (Jesse White), who want to use Erasmus's skills to clean up at the track. Robert at first refuses, and then relents only when they agree to use a cut of the proceeds to endow a humanities scholarship, though Robert is about the only one surprised when the men prove not to be good to their word. Meanwhile, Erasmus is head over heels in love with French screen siren Brigitte Bardot -- so much so that he's been writing her love letters. In return, the lucky boy has received an invitation to come meet her, and Robert and Erasmus use some of their racetrack winnings to fly to Paris and take her up on her offer. Nunnally Johnson, who received no credit, contributed to the screenplay; Miss Bardot, of course, plays herself (who else could?). ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Shock Corridor represents filmmaker Samuel Fuller at his most excessive, but few would have it otherwise. Peter Breck plays a ruthless journalist who believes that the quickest way to a Pulitzer Prize is to uncover the facts behind a murder at a mental hospital. To glean first-hand information, Breck pretends to go insane and is locked up in the institution. While pursuing his investigation, Breck is sidetracked by the loopy behavior of his fellow inmates. During a hospital riot, Breck is straightjacketed and subjected to shock treatment. By now almost as crazy as he's previously pretended to be, Breck begins imagining that his exotic-dancer girlfriend Constance Towers (a Samuel Fuller "regular") is actually his sister! Typical of the Fuller ouevre, the characters in Shock Corridor are either saved or destroyed by their individual obsessions. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

23-year-old Victor Buono appears in one of his first starring assignments as Melanthos Moon, a brilliant counterfeiter who uses a Chinatown curio shop as a front. In order to flood the country with $100,000,000 in "funny money", Mr. Moon arranges to steal an enormous supply of government currency paper, then engineers the escape of imprisoned forger Hans Dreiser (Karl Swenson). Elliot Ness (Robert Stack) is unable to get a line on Mr. Moon until the careless Mr. Dreiser allows his fondness for classical music to cloud his better judgment--leading to a literally explosive finale. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The second season of Twilight Zone came to a powerful conclusion with this Rod Serling-scripted "message" drama. In a futuristic society where books and religion have been outlawed, librarian Romney Wordsworth stands on trial for his life. Adjudged "obsolete" by the imperious Chancellor (Fritz Weaver), Wordsworth is sentenced to death, whereupon he makes one last, unusual request: He wants to have his execution televised, and he wants the Chancellor to be in attendance. The episode's Kafkaesque ending might have packed even more of a punch had director Eliot Silverstein's original concept been carried out to the fullest. "The Obsolete Man" was originally telecast June 2, 1961. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Hired by elderly Cynthia Parker (Eleanor Audley), Paladin heads to Cedar Wells to rout out the town's resident "bad guy" Amos Saint (Don O'Kelly) and his gang. Paladin is also supposed to persuade Cynthia's timid nephew, schoolteacher Laredo Perkins (William Joyce, to return to the East. But Laredo is anxious to impress his girl friend Ruth (played by Leave It to Beaver's beloved "Miss Landers", Sue Randall), and he begs Paladin to teach him how to handle a gun--at least long enough to take on the Saint gang himself! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this low-budget, campy horror film, a murderous pianist pays for his crime when body parts from the lover he pushed from a lighthouse come back to haunt him just before he is to marry a prominent socialite. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Republic's The Unearthly was originally released on a double bill with The Beginning of the End. John Carradine chews the scenery as Professor Conway, who claims to have discovered a gland which enables his patients to live forever. Alas, most of Conway's human experiments are failures, left to scream and gibber in the doctor's cellar. His latest "volunteer", a beautiful neurotic named Grace (Allison Hayes), arouses Conway's libido, and as a result he is hesitant to operate upon her; the same does not apply to another patient (Sally Todd), whom Conway inadvertently transforms into a nonagenarian. Fortunately, a police officer (Myron Healey) posing as an escaped convict manages to put an end to Conway's unearthly experiments. Harry Thomas' makeup work on Dr. Conway's hideously deformed human guinea pigs is the only worthwhile aspect of The Unearthly. Tor Johnson makes another of his appearances as mute monstrosity Lobo. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide