Andrew Duncan Movies

When Chanticleer the Rooster (Glenn Campbell) is tricked into leaving town to seek fame as an Elvis-style Las Vegas singer, his farm is plunged into eternal darkness. This animated musical from Don Bluth centers on a young farm boy who embarks on a magical journey into the animal world to try and bring Chanticleer home. ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide

An ambitious father thinks nothing of using his own son to achieve his political goals in this adolescent comedy. The lonely boy has spent the last seven years tucked away and ignored by his parents, Senator Tom Morgan and his social-climbing wife Nancy, in a distant boarding school. As the story begins, he receives the depressing news that once again they will be too busy to have him home for the holidays. But then, out of the blue, they change their minds and invite him home to stay there for good. The boy is elated, but soon after his arrival, he learns the bitter truth: his father only brought him back because it is an election year and his campaign manager thought he might do better if the public saw him as more of a family man. The boy then decides that it is high time some changes were made around the house and mayhem ensues. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Used Cars is one of Robert Zemeckis' pre-Roger Rabbit and pre-Forrest Gump efforts starring Kurt Russell is a devious car salesman who goes to work for affable but monumentally unsuccessful used car dealer Jack Warden. Warden's principal rival is his more prosperous twin brother, also played by Warden, who schemes to take over the "good" brother's lot. After a series of raunchy vignettes, the film boils down to an every-man-for-himself price war between the two Wardens, which rages on even after we're one Warden short. The supporting cast of Used Cars is populated by such reliables as David L. Lander, Michael McKean, Al Lewis, Dub Taylor, Dick Miller and Betty Thomas. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Attica is a probing, no-nonsense TV-movie re-creation of the tragic events which followed the Attica (New York) Correctional Facility rebellion of September 9, 1971. Inmates demanding better food and living conditions used jerry-built weapons to take 38 guards as hostage. Negotiations begin immediately, only to continually break down thanks to uncompromising stubbornness on both sides. Four days into the crisis, the rebellion ends in a bloodbath, with state troopers firing on the prisoners-- killing several of the guards in the process. Based on the eyewitness reporting of the New York Times' Tom Wicker (here played by George Grizzard), who was one of the civilian negotiators during the stalemate, Attica was first telecast on March 3, 1980. (Perhaps significantly, Governor Nelson Rockefeller, whom many hold responsible for the climactic carnage at the prison, is never seen in either factual or fictional form during the film). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The miracle of plastic surgery is the unifying factor for this made-for-TV movie. Three women, all "of a certain age," are having problems with the men in their life. Rich widow Millie Gorman (Janet Leigh) is convinced that her sex appeal has waned along with her looks and youth; bored housewife Sandy McLaren (Loretta Swit) is none too pleased that her husband regards her more as a pal than a lover; and former model Vanessa Wagner (Lee Meriwether) fears that her much-younger sweetheart will begin seeking out a partner his own age. As the story progresses, Sandy gets a breast implant which has precisely the opposite of the desired effect on her husband; Vanessa gets an eye-lift, only to find out that her lover isn't worth the trouble; and Millie suffers the consequences of one too many face-lifts. Mirror, Mirror first aired October 10, 1979, on NBC. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Set in the Caribbean, Firepower is one of those "celebrity salads," featuring a glittering all-star cast. Sophia Loren heads the ensemble as Adele, the widow of a murdered chemist. Believing that a multimillionaire industrialist is the culprit, Adele determines that she can expect no help from the authorities. Thus she engages the services of retired professional assassin Jerry Fanori (James Coburn), who in turn enlists the aid of troubleshooter Catlett (O.J. Simpson). Watch for Jake LaMotta, the ex-prizefighter whose life was dramatized in Raging Bull, in a supporting part. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Zunar J5/90 Doric 4-7, also known as Jake, is an alien cat who crash-lands on earth. He heads off to the nearest scientist to find gold ($120,000 worth!) in order to repair his spaceship. Jake reveals that he can predict the winners in sporting events and soon the military is trying to track him down. The plot becomes more complicated when a wacky veterinarian inadvertently puts Jake into a deep sleep; now he must hide the alien cat from government authorities. The Cat from Outer Space was written by cartoonist Ted Key, who also wrote other Disney family fare, including Gus and The $1,000,000 Duck. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Paul Newman plays Reggie Dunlop, the coach of a pathetic minor-league American hockey team. His career at a standstill and his marriage in tatters, Dunlop has nothing to lose by taking on a new group of players who are one evolutionary step above Neanderthals. Only when the team begins winning does he decide to get behind these players, and to encourage the rest of the team to play as down-and-dirty as the newcomers. Straight-arrow team member Ned Braden (Michael Ontkean) resents this influx of gonzo talent, preferring to play clean. As the film's multitude of subplots play themselves out, Dunlop does his best to keep the outraged Braden on the team. Slap Shot is the sort of film for which the "R" rating was invented: Its nonstop barrage of profanity and its raunchy action sequences are of such intensity that the film will probably never be shown intact on commercial television. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this drama, a Vietnam vet, living in the psycho ward of a V.A. hospital, has difficulty coping with the crazy world he returned home to. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

This drama contains a strongly anti-military message as it presents the supposed abuses that go on inside US military stockades. The story is set in the fictitious Fort Nix (based on Fort Dix, New Jersey where many of the accounts the film is based on came from), and contains scenes of graphic violence as it tells the prisoners' tales. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Jerry Paris's Star Spangled Girl (1971), based on Neil Simon's play (a notorious Broadway flop), never made much of an impression in theaters, which is understandable with a cheap, overlit television look to most of it and Davy Jones singing the song "Girl" over the main titles (which got a lot more visibility from its use in the Brady Bunch episode in which Marsha has to get the singer to appear at her school), it looked too much like a small-screen production blown up; it was dated from the first frame of its opening credits. Tony Roberts and Todd Susman play Andy Hobart and Norman Cornell, a pair of self-styled political radicals living in California, beating the system by stealing as much as they can from neighborhood shops and conning the rest out of anyone around, all for the greater goal of keeping their underground newspaper alive and kicking. Their lifestyle is a cross between the ideas in Abbie Hoffman's Steal This Book and Max Bialystock's dalliances in The Producers. Into their midst moves a transplant from rural Florida, Amy Cooper (Sandy Duncan) (who was called Sophie Rauschmeyer in the play), a perky aspiring Olympic swimmer and old-fashioned, patriotic Southern girl, and as corn-fed a hick as you found in movies in 1971 without a cynical bone in her body. Norman, a hopelessly neurotic and sexually dysfunctional writer, falls in love with her almost instantly upon encountering her; not, mind you, based on her personality or even her looks, but her smell. Andy is, at first, oblivious to her charms and content to maintain his relationship with their libidinous landlady (Elizabeth Allen, totally wasted here), paying their rent with all-night barhopping and trysts involving skydiving. At some point, however, Amy decides she has to have Andy (based on his smell...), and he feels the same way. Andy and Norman end up -- Odd Couple-style -- in conflict over their differing approaches to life; the Odd Couple allusions are further amplified by Roberts' remarkable resemblance to Walter Matthau in his manner and delivery of dialogue. The story is resolved as unconvincingly as it's played. It's also a sign of just how unfunny the play was in that the funniest moment in the movie is new to the screenplay and comes just a minute after the opening credits with a gag referring to a certain John Schlesinger movie from 1969. It's not much of a gag, but it's funnier than anything in the main body of the movie, which otherwise plays like a terminally extended version of a Love American Style episode. The original Broadway production, incidentally, starred Richard Benjamin, Anthony Perkins, and Connie Stevens. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

In director Arthur Hiller's hit tearjerker -- based on Erich Segal's novella -- Ryan O'Neal plays Oliver Barrett IV, a comfortably off Harvard pre-law student who falls in love with Radcliffe music student Jenny Cavilleri (Ali MacGraw), a freewheeling, delightfully profane product of a blue-collar Italian-American family. Oliver's father (Ray Milland) heartily disapproves of the subsequent marriage and cuts off his son's allowance. Despite financial travails (the pampered Oliver actually has to go to work!), the couple is blissfully happy....until Jenny is diagnosed as having an unnamed disease that consigns her to an early death. The movie's tagline "Love means never having to say you're sorry" became an iconic American catchphrase, the film's theme a number one hit. One of the early products of Paramount guru Robert Evans, Love Story grossed more money than any Paramount production before it. This enormously successful film inspired a 1978 sequel, Oliver's Story. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide