David Moody Movies

Comedy falls as flat as a blowout in this film by Joseph Sargent about a down-to-earth trucker (Robert Blake) and the rich and looney witch (Dyan Cannon) he is forced to take on a haul from New York to L.A. Madie (Cannon) is running away from her money-grubbing husband who is conniving to get the most inexpensive divorce he can. Charlie (Blake) the trucker is under pressure from a ruthless creditor and is in desperate need of cash. As the mismatched duo continues in a stressful journey across country, sparks fly but fail to ignite much of anything along the way. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

San Francisco's Delancey Street is the locale of a halfway house for ex-convicts, former drug users, and other society castaways. The founder of this operation is himself a paroled convict (Walter McGinn), who hopes to help others get back on their feet as he has. His touchiest assignment is the regeneration of a 56-year-old man who has just spent 36 years in the slammer for murder. This TV movie was the pilot for an unsold series based on the real-life activities of ex-con Joseph Maher, who in his heyday was a favorite subject of several TV newsmagazines. Sadly, the semi-happy ending of Delancey Street was not borne out in real life: Joseph Maher lapsed into alcoholism in the early 1980s, was forced out of his own rehab program, and died in poverty in 1988. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Surrounded by the authorities after a bungled attempt to break through a police checkpoint, five terrorists take several people hostage. Unless they are given safe passage out of San Francisco, the terrorists will detonate a bomb, killing themselves and their prisoners. Making the situation personal for investigating detective Mike Stone (Karl Malden) is that one of the hostages is his own partner Steve Keller (Michael Douglas). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

John-Boy (Richard Thomas) catches his friend Yancy Tucker (Robert Donner) stealing chickens, but decides not to tell their sheriff. This may prove to be the wrong decision when chicken farmer Charlie Potter (Richard O'Brien) is shot--and Yancy is the only likely suspect. And speaking of thievery, Ben (Eric Scott) gets himself in hot water when he "borrows" one of John-Boy's old poems, "A Winter Mountain", to win a literary competition. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The John Gardner novel A Complete State of Death became this bloody crime flick that united frequent action genre collaborators Charles Bronson and director Michael Winner. Bronson stars as Detective Lieutenant Lou Torry, a grizzled undercover New York City cop who ruins his career when he is caught going violently overboard while apprehending a ghetto punk. As punishment, Torry is banished all the way to the L.A. Police Department, where he begins investigating a mysterious chain of events involving ex-soldiers that seem to be Mob related. It turns out that Don Alberto Vescari (Martin Balsam), an aging Mafia chieftain, is planning the use of mentally disturbed Vietnam vets as assassins in a campaign of murder. With one broad, gory stroke, Vescari schemes to wipe out his underworld enemies, retaliating for a massacre that wiped out a generation of Sicilian mobsters 40 years earlier. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

"What do we do now?" Director Michael Ritchie and executive producer/star Robert Redford satirically explore the machinations and manipulations of media-age political campaigns in this cynical political drama. Rumpled left-wing California lawyer Bill McKay (Redford), the son of a former governor (Melvyn Douglas), is enlisted by campaign maestro Marvin Lucas (Peter Boyle) to challenge Republican incumbent Crocker Jarmon (Don Porter) for his Senate seat. McKay agrees, but only if he can say exactly what he thinks. That approach is all well and good when McKay does not seem to have a chance, but things change when his honesty unexpectedly captivates the electorate. As McKay inches up in the polls, Lucas and company start to do what it takes to win, leaving McKay to ponder the consequences of his political seduction. Working without studio interference from a script by Jeremy Larner, a speechwriter for 1968 Presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy, Ritchie enhanced the behind-the-scenes realism of Larner's insights with a realistic, cinéma vérité approach. He orchestrated a campaign parade for "candidate" Redford that drew such a considerable unstaged audience that local politicians wanted to draft Redford for a real election. Redford's resemblance to the telegenic Kennedys, and his character's resonance with the future career of California governor Jerry Brown, only emphasized how close to the bone The Candidate was (and is). Released the fateful year of Richard Nixon's reelection, the film garnered accolades, if not substantial box office; Larner won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay and thanked the "politicians of our time" for inspiration. Creating a documentary fiction about the semi-truths manufactured to market a candidate, The Candidate shrewdly exposed the effects of the media on the increasingly cynical political process, posing unanswerable questions that have become all the more pressing with every soundbite-ruled election. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

Uptight is an updated remake of John Ford's The Informer (35). The Irish Republican rebels of the original are replaced by black activists, Dublin becomes the Cleveland ghetto, and "the troubles" of 1921 are transformed into the days just following the assassination of Martin Luther King. Julian Mayfield plays an itinerant street sweeper who betrays his militant friends to the fuzz, resulting in an underground all-points bulletin to exact vengeance on the squealer. Ruby Dee portrays a prostitute who befriends the snitch as he eludes his revolutionary ex-buddies. Jules Dassin's unrelenting directorial pace is complemented by the driving jazz score of Booker T. Jones. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide