Catherine Wilmer Movies

Dick Richards directed this French Foreign Legion adventure that's at once parodies and pays tribute to the venerable Hollywood epics that preceded it. Gene Hackman stars as Major William Sherman Foster, a soldier who has been kicked out of West Point but has managed to obtain command of a group of Legionnaires after the end of World War I. His troops have been ordered to accompany an archeological expedition traveling to Morocco headed by Francois Marneau (Max von Sydow). Foster's motley band includes an on-the-lam cat burglar named Marco Segrain (Terence Hill), an ex-guardsman from the deposed Russian monarchy named Ivan (Jack O'Halloran), an adventure-seeking aristocrat named Fred Hastings (Paul Sherman), and an alluring beauty named Simone Picard (Catherine Deneuve). As the band makes their way to Morocco, they cross paths with the fervid and bloodthirsty Arab leader El Krim (Ian Holm), who vows to unite his people to expel foreigners from their land. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

The Boy Friend began life as Sandy Wilson's small-scale pastiche of British musical comedies of the 1920s. When the play was brought to America in 1954, its star was the
teenage Julie Andrews. Because The Boy Friend requires a minimum of sets, props, and costumes, it has become a favorite of amateur theater groups throughout the world. But director Ken Russell, notorious for his onscreen excesses, abandoned the film's simplicity. He fashioned a humongous parody of the Busby Berkeley film musicals of the 1930s, staged on a scale that made Berkeley seem stylistically modest. Fashion model Twiggy plays Polly Browne, an aspiring musical comedy star, working as stage manager of a production of The Boy Friend. She is transformed into a star when she replaces leading lady Rita Monroe (Glenda Jackson, unbilled), who twists her ankle seconds before the curtain goes up. Before the evening is over, Polly is scampering over outsized sets, and ducking around seemingly thousands of chorus girls and boys. Christopher Gable, who plays Polly's on-stage leading man, also choreographed the lavish musical numbers. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Conscience Bay is a British film, set (and photographed) in Nova Scotia. Rosemary Anderson plays the adopted daughter of a local preacher. Mark Dignam is the clergyman's natural son, a hunchbacked malcontent who goes around stealing lobsters from the hard-working village fisher folk. Anderson is the only person who shows compassion for Dignam. As inevitably as night follows day, the two fall in love. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi