David Burton Movies

Deadbeat dads be damned. Patrick Swayze plays a con man who tries to live up to the ideals of "family values" by kidnapping his son and daughter from the evil clutches of a corrupt orphanage and taking them on a cross-country trip in his vintage convertible. To complicate matters, his daughter has been sexually molested by the head of the orphanage, who fears that she may prosecute if given the opportunity. This family drama is also a zany road movie as the re-united father and children flee the police on a quest to restore their family. ~ Laura Abraham, All Movie Guide

Academy Award-winning screenwriter John Patrick Shanley's first foray into the director's chair is a quirky romantic fantasy, featuring Bo Welch's signature production design. Tom Hanks plays Joe Banks, a man who hates his job, thinks the overhead fluorescent lights are making him sick, and quakes at the presence of his boorish boss Frank Watori (Dan Hedaya). He is attracted to the office secretary DeDe (Meg Ryan) but is afraid to speak to her. Then his life changes when he visits Dr. Ellison (Robert Stack). Dr. Ellison tells Joe that he has something called "a brain cloud" that is rapidly spreading throughout his brain. He will feel great, but he'll be dead within five months. Instead of being depressed at this bleak prognosis, Joe suddenly feels free. He quits his job, asks DeDe out, and is contacted by a rich millionaire named Graynamore (Lloyd Bridges). Graynamore owns an island named Waponi Woo, whose natives need to be placated. The natives require a sacrifice to their island volcano, the Big Woo, so that the island won't sink beneath the Pacific. Graynamore offers unlimited wealth to Tom in exchange for Tom's becoming the object of human sacrifice. Joe has nothing to lose, so he accepts the offer. As he heads out to the island, Joe meets Graynamore's daughters -- Angelica, a Los Angeles socialite, and Patricia, Angelica's blonde half-sister (both roles played by Ryan). Joe arrives at the island, and as he stands at the lips of the Big Woo he has to decide whether he really wants to leap into the maw of the fiery volcano. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

After the phenomenal box-office and critical success of David Cronenberg's 1986 remake of The Fly, a series of big-budget remakes of '50s horror favorites rode in on its coattails in the late 1980s -- though none managed to rise above mere camp clones of their elders, albeit garnished with modern makeup effects in an attempt to draw modern teen horror-junkies. One remake that managed to live up to its cheesy inspiration was Chuck Russell's version of The Blob, in which the title goo crashes to earth and promptly begins digesting the residents of a small California town while growing to gargantuan proportions. The clean-cut teen hero originally portrayed by Steve McQueen (his first starring role) is replaced here with a rebellious outsider (Kevin Dillon) whose preppie rival (Donovan Leitch) for the affections of the cute heroine (Shawnee Smith) is quickly eliminated by the all-consuming space-gelatin. No sooner has the plasma menace set up house in the town sewers when a shadowy government Blob Squad shows up under the direction of the grandfatherly Dr. Meddows (Joe Seneca), to clean up the mess... or not. This high-spirited remake replaces the '50s "Daddy-O" conventions of the original with '80s cynicism -- not even likeable characters are spared from the slaughter -- and anti-government sentiment. It also pushes the gore envelope in ways unavailable to its low-budget parent -- e.g. the scene in which one victim is sucked through a sink drain was only hinted at in the 1958 film, but here viewers are treated to the entire bone-crunching ordeal. Though the quality of blob effects seems inversely proportional to the creature's size (some of the climactic "wall-of-blob" footage is painfully cheap-looking), the end result is more blob for the monster-movie fan's dollar. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide

In this hit '80s hybrid of the horror movie and the teen flick, a single mom and her two sons become involved with a pack of vampires when they move into an offbeat Northern California town. Lucy (Dianne Wiest) and her sons, Michael (Jason Patric) and Sam (Corey Haim), move to Santa Carla to live with Lucy's lovable but curmudgeonly father (Barnard Hughes). Lucy gets a job from video store-owner Max (Edward Herrmann), then begins dating him, while Sam hangs out with Edward and Alan Frog (Corey Feldman and Jamison Newlander), a pair of vampire-obsessed comic-shop clerks. Soon Michael falls in with some actual vampires after becoming enamored of one of their victims: Star (Jami Gertz), a gypsy-like vixen who is trying to hold onto her humanity even though vampire leader David (Kiefer Sutherland) wants to play Peter Pan to her Wendy. When Michael visits the cavernous hangout of David and his cronies and unwittingly drinks from a wine bottle full of vampiric blood, he becomes an unwilling member of the bloodsucker biker gang. Soon, it's up to Sam and the Frog brothers to destroy David and his ilk without killing Michael and Star. Shot on location in the coastal California town of Santa Cruz and directed by Hollywood pro Joel Schumacher, The Lost Boys became a pop-culture phenomenon thanks to its attractive young stars, offbeat soundtrack, and hip, clever marketing campaign; the film's tagline -- "Sleep all day. Party all night. Never grow old. Never die. It's fun to be a vampire." -- perfectly captured its knowing mixture of attitude and gore. The effects team who transformed Sutherland and company into snarling blood-suckers would go on to provide equally gruesome effects for Blade, another revisionist vampire flick, more than a decade later. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide

Filled with enough cameos to keep film buffs entertained, this otherwise routine action-comedy by John Landis boasts Michelle Pfeiffer as one of its major attractions. She plays Diana, a woman prone to having affairs with some very dangerous men, and Jeff Goldblum is Ed Okin, an aerospace engineer whose lot is thrown in with Diana's when the woman is caught in a bind at the airport. The beautiful Diana is an airhead on the scale of the Hindenberg, her only concerns are clothes and men -- which she either most attractively wears or wears out, depending. While Ed is at the airport one day trying to sort out his life, Diana arrives with six smuggled emeralds in tow and is immediately welcomed by several hired assassins. Fear and expediency propel her into Ed's car, and the two are off on a series of narrow escapes that has them pursued by everyone from Iranians to baddies played by well-known international directors (Roger Vadim) or singers (David Bowie) or comedians (Dan Aykroyd). ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

When last we left the crew of the star ship Enterprise, they were heading home following a skirmish with the despotic Khan. The unpleasant incident had cost the life of Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy)--or so it seemed. Admiral Kirk (William Shatner) is informed by Spock's father Sarek (Mark Lenard) that his son is being kept alive in the thoughts of one of the crew members. It now becomes necessary to search for Spock's body, so that flesh and soul can be rejoined on Vulcan. It turns out that Spock's spirit is residing within the mind of the Vulcan's longtime shipmate, "Bones" McCoy (DeForrest Kelley). Finding the body is another matter, since the Enterprise has been consigned to the trash heap and thus is out of Kirk's jurisdiction. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Comedian Marty Feldman directed and co-wrote this satire of the less-scrupulous side of organized religion. Brother Ambrose (Marty Feldman) is a monk who has spent nearly his entire life within the walls of his monastery and knows little of the outside world. However, when he learns that the monastery has fallen on economic hard times and may be forced to close, he takes it upon himself to raise the funds to save his home. Ambrose ends up on Hollywood Boulevard, where he solicits donations from passers-by and gets a crash course in life in the fallen world from Mary (Louise Lasser), a smart-mouthed hooker. Ambrose and Mary soon encounter Armageddon T. Thunderbird (Andy Kaufman), a fire-and-brimstone televangelist who agrees to help Ambrose by making him a partner in his house of worship, The Church of the Divine Profit. However, Thunderbird's methods don't agree with Ambrose, and eventually he turns to God Himself (Richard Pryor) for help. In God We Trust was Feldman's second and last directorial assignment; the supporting cast also includes Peter Boyle, Wilfrid Hyde-White, and Severn Darden. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide