Nicholas Georgiade Movies

Adrian Lyne buffs the premise of Honeymoon in Vegas to a fine gloss in this yuppie melodrama that poses the conundrum of whether the loving husband of an equally loving wife will accept $1 million to allow his wife to spend one night with a billionaire who looks like Robert Redford. All the cynics please take a number and form a line at the right. Demi Moore and Woody Harrelson play Diana and David Murphy, high-school sweethearts who marry and who are doing very well -- Diana is a successful real-estate agent, and David is an idealistic architect who has built a dream house by the ocean -- until the recession hits. Suddenly, David loses his job, and they can't make the mortgage payments. Dead broke, they borrow $5000 from David's father and head to Las Vegas to try to win money to pay the mortgage on their house. At first, they get $25,000 ahead -- but inevitably the house always wins, and they end up losing it all. While Diana is in the fancy casino boutique trying to lift some candy, she is spotted by billionaire John Gage (Robert Redford), who is immediately attracted to her. John invites Diana and David to an opulent party, and it is there that John offers David $1 million for a night with his wife. David is wracked by this moral dilemma, but Diana finally makes the decision on her own, with ensuing consequences for their ideal marriage and their bank account. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

An autopsy X-ray reveals that the corpse of a murdered courier contained a sack of diamonds worth $2,000,000, hidden within a pacemaker. Under pressure from a team of U.S. Customs officials, Quincy (Jack Klugman) agrees to go undercove in hopes of flushing out a dangerous gang of international jewel smugglers. This explains why Quincy shows up at a Las Vegas beauty contest ("Miss Coroner", no less), offering to sell the diamonds to a notorious gangster...and acting very, very nervous about the whole thing. The climax of this episode bears a striking resemblance to the film noir classic D.O.A. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The final episode of Kojak features an impressive non-comic performance by Danny Thomas) as Howard Brocure, a hard-nosed, by-the-book police inspector who commandeers Kojak's investigation of an upsurge in mob violence. As the case progresses, Brocure turns out to be more hindrance than help, but Kojak (Telly Savalas) is duty-bound to give the veteran inspector a wide berth. As it turns out, Brocure is going through a "Captain Queeg"-like breakdown as a result of being passed over for promotion--and his desperate efforts to restore his reputation may prove dangerous for everyone. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This convoluted mystery centers upon a seductive private investigator who must look into the background of the potential recipient of an enormous inheritance. Unfortunately, she finds herself more deeply involved in the situation than she wanted to be and trouble soon follows. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Albert Paulsen guest-stars as Albert Zembra, a terminally ill Syndicate drug dealer. The IMF's mission: to extract details of Zembra's operation from the dying mobster, thereby severely crippling the heroin trade. The strategy: Paris poses as an underworld kingpin who aspires to become Zembra's most trusted friend--and his most likely successor. Seen in the supporting role of Eve is Victoria Vetri, aka Ahna Capri, whom film buffs will remember as the Coven's first victim in Rosemary's Baby. Scripted by David Moessinger from a story by Moessinger and Walter Brough, "Squeeze Play" first aired on December 12, 1970. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

With this all-star Cinerama epic, producer/director Stanley Kramer vowed to make "the comedy that would end all comedies." The story begins during a massive traffic jam, caused by reckless driver Smiler Grogan (Jimmy Durante), who, before (literally) kicking the bucket, cryptically tells the assembled drivers that he's buried a fortune in stolen loot, "under the Big W." The various motorists setting out on a mad scramble include a dentist (Sid Caesar) and his wife (Edie Adams); a henpecked husband (Milton Berle) accompanied by his mother-in-law (Ethel Merman) and his beatnik brother-in-law (Dick Shawn); a pair of comedy writers (Buddy Hackett and Mickey Rooney); and a variety of assorted nuts including a slow-wit (Jonathan Winters), a wheeler-dealer (Phil Silvers), and a pair of covetous cabdrivers (Peter Falk and Eddie "Rochester" Anderson). Monitoring every move that the fortune hunters make is a scrupulously honest police detective (Spencer Tracy). Virtually every lead, supporting, and bit part in the picture is filled by a well-known comic actor: the laughspinning lineup also includes Carl Reiner, Terry-Thomas, Arnold Stang, Buster Keaton, Jack Benny, Jerry Lewis, and The Three Stooges, who get one of the picture's biggest laughs by standing stock still and uttering not a word. Two prominent comedians are conspicuous by their absence: Groucho Marx refused to appear when Kramer couldn't meet his price, while Stan Laurel declined because he felt he was too old-looking to be funny. Available for years in its 154-minute general release version, the film was restored to its roadshow length of 175 minutes on home video; the search goes on for a missing Buster Keaton routine, reportedly excised on the eve of the picture's premiere. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In hopes of breathing life into the series' dormant ratings, ABC moved The Untouchables from the Thursday to Tuesday evening, removing the threat of NBC ratings-grabbing Sing Along with Mitch and counterprogramming the now four-year-old crime drama opposite the presumably "soft" competion of The Dick Powell Show and The Jack Benny Program. Alas, both of the competing programs held tightly to their timeslots, and The Untouchables was cancelled. In the months before the inevitable axing, the series' producers tried to hypo the show by encouraging star Robert Stack to lighten up his portrayal of flinty-eyed 1930s treasury agent Elliott Ness and make the character more human and vulnerable. There are also a handful of attempts to generate audience interest by offering potential Untouchables spinoffs. One of these, "Elegy", was planned as the pilot for a series starring Barbara Stanwyck as Lt. Aggie Stewart of the Bureau of Missing Persons. Two others, "Bird in the Hand" and "Jake Dance", were designed as trial balloons for a weekly show featuring Dane Clark as Dr. Victor Garr of the US Public Health Service. And finally, Scott Brady was headlined in "The Floyd Gibbons Story", an effort to transform colorful one-eyed journalist and globetrotter Gibbons into a viable TV-series leading man. More interesting than these failed pilots are the guest appearances by a number of stars in the making during The Untouchables' fourth and final season. The episode "Snowball" featured not only Robert Redford but also Star Trek's future "Chekov" Walter Koenig; Robert Duvall was given ample screen footage in "Blues for a Gone Goose"; and though Lee Marvin is officially the guest star in "A Fist of Five", it was hard to ignore the up-and-coming James Caan in a supporting role. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Perhaps inevitably, the more popular the ABC crime drama The Untouchables became, the louder the series' detractors complained. Reaching its ratings peak as America's eighth-most-watched program during its second season, the series, which elaborated in the most violent fashion imaginable on the career of treasury agent Elliot Ness (Robert Stack) as he and his team of "Untouchables" challenged the criminal element of Depression-era Chicago, was besieged by a flock of clean-up-TV advocates, church and school groups, and especially the Italian Anti-Defamation League, which condemned the series for its preponderance of Italian villains. Executive producer Desi Arnaz argued that many of the real-life gangsters were indeed Italian, whereupon their critics counter-argued that the scriptwriters tended to use Italian-sounding names even for the series' fictional bad guys. Everyone from the Longshoreman's Union (which threatened not to deliver the sponsors' product) to singer Frank Sinatra converged upon Arnaz, and there were even rumors that The Mob had put out a contract on the beleagured producer (reportedly, the higher-ups figured that killing Desi wouldn't be worth the trouble). Finally, the producers agreed that, beginning with the series' third season, none of the fictional gangsters would be Italian, and that the genuine Italian miscreants would be counterbalanced with honest, upright and incorruptible Italian-American supporting characters--notably Nick Georgiade in the recurring role of "Untouchable" Enrico Rossi. Highlights of Season Two include Elizabeth Montgomery's bravura, Emmy-nominated portrayal of a duplicitous gun moll in the opening episode, "The Rusty Heller Story"; "Jack 'Legs' Diamond", with future Law&Order star Steven Hill in the title role and Robert Carricart as Lucky Luciano; "Augie 'The Banker" Ciamino" with Keenan Wynn, who ironically had played straight-arrow "Untouchable" Joe Fuselli in the series' two-hour pilot; and "Mr. Moon", which garnered a great deal of critical attention due the starring performance by 23-year-old Victor Buono. And as had happened with the first season "The Unhired Assassin", the second season of The Untouchables is distinguished by another elaborate two-part episode, "The Big Train", which brings Neville Brand back as Ness' number one nemesis Al Capone--and which got the producers into trouble (again!) by suggesting that the incarcerated Capone had been given preferential treatment in the Atlanta Pentitentiary. Also in the tradition of "The Unhired Assassin", "The Big Train" was later released theatrically as Alcatraz Express. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide