Dick Smith Movies

This feature-length spin-off of the popular television horror anthology is directed by John Harrison, who directed many episodes of the television series. The film consists of four grisly and gruesome horror teasers. "The Wraparound Story" stars Deborah Harry as Betty, a chef with a kitchen complete with Cuisinart and dungeon. She plans to cook a little boy, who delays his execution by telling Betty three tales of terror. The first tale is "Lot 249," based on the mummy story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The tale concerns Bellingham (Steve Buscemi), a bug-eyed graduate student who has raised a mummy from the dead. The second tale, "Cat from Hell," adapted by George A. Romero from a Stephen King story, deals with a broken-down millionaire (William Hickey), who has made his millions by developing habit-forming painkillers. He is convinced that, since 5,000 cats have been killed in his lab experiments in order to develop his pills, a stray cat has killed his family. He hires a hit man (David Johansen) to track down the cat and rub him out. The third tale, "Lover's Vow," is based on "Woman in the Snow," one of the episodes in Kwaidan.James Remar plays an artist who strikes a deal with the devil and is rewarded with a beautiful wife (Rae Dawn Chong) and a respectful art career. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Everybody's All American covers 25 years in the life of college football hero Gavin Grey (Dennis Quaid). When he marries campus sweetheart Babs Rogers (Jessica Lange) and is picked up by the pros, a happily-ever-after denouement is predicted by friends and family. It is clear from the outset, however, that Grey is going to have to do a lot of growing up over the next few decades. Babs does her best to keep in step with her husband's career and mood swings, and in so doing becomes the "parent" in the family. John Goodman also stars as Grey's best buddy, and Timothy Hutton is on hand for a romantic-triangle subplot. Everybody's All American is based on the novel by longtime Sports Illustrated scrivener Frank Deford. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

For this film adaptation of Peter Shaffer's Broadway hit, director Milos Forman returned to the city of Prague that he'd left behind during the Czech political crises of 1968, bringing along his usual cinematographer and fellow Czech expatriate, Miroslav Ondricek. Amadeus is an expansion of a Viennese "urban legend" concerning the death of 18th-century musical genius Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. From the vantage point of an insane asylum, aging royal composer Salieri (F. Murray Abraham) recalls the events of three decades earlier, when the young Mozart (Tom Hulce) first gained favor in the court of Austrian emperor Joseph II (Jeffrey Jones). Salieri was incensed that God would bless so vulgar and obnoxious a young snipe as Mozart with divine genius. Why was Salieri--so disciplined, so devoted to his art, and so willing to toady to his superiors--not touched by God? Unable to match Mozart's talent, Salieri uses his influence in court to sabotage the young upstart's career. Disguising himself as a mysterious benefactor, Salieri commissions the backbreaking "Requiem," which eventually costs Mozart his health, wealth, and life. Among the film's many pearls of dialogue, the best line goes to the Emperor, who rejects a Mozart composition on the grounds that it has "too many notes." Amadeus won eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Actor for F. Murray Abraham. In 2002, the film received a theatrical re-release as "Amadeus: The Director's Cut," a version that includes 20 minutes of additional footage. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The exquisitely beautiful Catherine Deneuve plays Miriam, a centuries-old vampire capable of bestowing the gift of immortality on her lovers -- namely her current partner John (David Bowie). To sustain their sanguinary requirements, the pair cruises New York nightclubs in search of victims (as illustrated in a stunning opening sequence to the accompaniment of "Bela Lugosi's Dead" performed by seminal Goth band Bauhaus). When John awakens one morning to discover telltale signs of aging, it is revealed that his own sustained youth is not permanent, and his physical decrepitude begins to increase at an incredible rate. In a panic, John visits the clinic of scientist Sarah Roberts (Susan Sarandon), who has recently published a book on reversing the aging process, but she initially dismisses him as a crank, leaving him to sit in the lobby for several hours... during which his body ages several decades. After learning of his condition, Sarah traces John to his uptown flat. John is nowhere to be found, having been consigned by Miriam to a box in the attic with her legions of undead loves, leaving Miriam to deal with Sarah -- which she does quite effectively, seducing her into a steamy lesbian tryst. Their passion is consummated by a mingling of Miriam's blood with Sarah's, which later manifests itself as a psychic link between the two women and leaves Sarah with a rapidly-increasing appetite for blood. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide

Deke DaSilva (Sylvester Stallone) and Matthew Fox (Billy Dee Williams) are New York police officers specially assigned to a special multi-national team dedicated to tracking down terrorist Wulfgar (Rutger Hauer). Wulfgar planted a bomb in a London department store, killing several children and he is now an outcast, hunted by both the police and his fellow gang members. He has extensive plastic surgery and resumes his activities aided by Shakka (Persis Khambutta), a completely psychotic fellow outcast. Soon DaSilva and Wulfgar are engaged in a violent battle of wits as Wulfgar resumes his terrorist activities and threatens New York . This very effective thriller features a chilling performance by Rutger Hauer as the handsome, ruthless cold-blooded killer who charms women into helping him and then kills them. Sylvester Stallone gives an unusually understated emotionally vulnerable performance as a man trying to save lives while he saves his own marriage. The film makes excellent use of New York locales, particularly during a terrifying hijacking of a cable car where Wulfgar coolly decides which of the hostages will live or die. ~ Linda Rasmussen, All Movie Guide

This 1981 John Irvin picture constitutes an adaptation of Peter Straub's colossal, bestselling novel. The central plot -- shared by both book and film -- revolves around the four elderly members of the Chowder Society (Fred Astaire, Melvyn Douglas, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. and John Houseman), who gather in each other's drawing rooms each winter to sip cognac and spin elaborate ghost stories. The four men also share a dark secret far more unsettling than fiction -- a secret which has literally come back to haunt them, as well as their own adult offspring. Each man is visited by a hideous specter bearing the likeness of a young woman (Alice Krige) they accidentally killed 50 years ago when spurning her mischievous sexual advances. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide

Doc Levy (Roy Scheider) is an American secret agent who has been running interference between the U.S. government and escaped Nazi war criminal Szell (Laurence Olivier). Believing that Doc has stolen a valuable cache of gems, Szell emerges from his South American hiding place and heads for New York. He has Doc killed, then kidnaps Doc's in-the-dark brother, Babe (Dustin Hoffman). Repeating the phrase "Is it safe?" over and over, Szell, a onetime concentration camp dentist, tries to extract information from Babe by performing sadistic "oral surgery" upon him. Babe, who still doesn't know about the gems, escapes, breaking his own self-imposed rule of nonviolence to defend himself against his pursuers and gearing up for sadistic revenge. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

"All the animals come out at night" -- and one of them is a cabby about to snap. In Martin Scorsese's classic 1970s drama, insomniac ex-Marine Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) works the nightshift, driving his cab throughout decaying mid-'70s New York City, wishing for a "real rain" to wash the "scum" off the neon-lit streets. Chronically alone, Travis cannot connect with anyone, not even with such other cabbies as blowhard Wizard (Peter Boyle). He becomes infatuated with vapid blonde presidential campaign worker Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), who agrees to a date and then spurns Travis when he cluelessly takes her to a porno movie. After an encounter with a malevolent fare (played by Scorsese), the increasingly paranoid Travis begins to condition (and arm) himself for his imagined destiny, a mission that mutates from assassinating Betsy's candidate, Charles Palatine (Leonard Harris), to violently "saving" teen hooker Iris (Jodie Foster) from her pimp, Sport (Harvey Keitel). Travis' bloodbath turns him into a media hero; but has it truly calmed his mind?

Written by Paul Schrader, Taxi Driver is an homage to and reworking of cinematic influences, a study of individual psychosis, and an acute diagnosis of the latently violent, media-fixated Vietnam era. Scorsese and Schrader structure Travis' mission to save Iris as a film noir version of John Ford's late Western The Searchers (1956), aligning Travis with a mythology of American heroism while exposing that myth's obsessively violent underpinnings. Yet Travis' military record and assassination attempt, as well as Palatine's political platitudes, also ground Taxi Driver in its historical moment of American in the 1970s. Employing such techniques as Godardian jump cuts and ellipses, expressive camera moves and angles, and garish colors, all punctuated by Bernard Herrmann's eerie final score (finished the day he died), Scorsese presents a Manhattan skewed through Travis' point-of-view, where De Niro's now-famous "You talkin' to me" improv becomes one more sign of Travis' madness. Shot during a New York summer heat wave and garbage strike, Taxi Driver got into trouble with the MPAA for its violence. Scorsese desaturated the color in the final shoot-out and got an R, and Taxi Driver surprised its unenthusiastic studio by becoming a box-office hit. Released in the Bicentennial year, after Vietnam, Watergate, and attention-getting attempts on President Ford's life, Taxi Driver's intense portrait of a man and a society unhinged spoke resonantly to the mid-'70s audience -- too resonantly in the case of attempted Reagan assassin and Foster fan John W. Hinckley. Taxi Driver went on to win the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, but it lost the Best Picture Oscar to the more comforting Rocky. Anchored by De Niro's disturbing embodiment of "God's lonely man," Taxi Driver remains a striking milestone of both Scorsese's career and 1970s Hollywood. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

In the William Goldman-scripted, Bryan Forbes-directed adaptation of Ira Levin's savagely satiric sci-fi novel The Stepford Wives, housewife Joanna (Katharine Ross) moves with husband Walter (Peter Masterson) and their children to the "ideal" suburban community of Stepford, CT. Slowly, Joanna deduces that something is amiss; most of the other housewives are vapid creatures who speak in trivialities and live only to please their husbands. Together with new friend Bobby (Paula Prentiss), she investigates this curious status quo. When Bobby also succumbs to cloying sweetness, Joanna discovers that Stepford's husbands have conspired with male chauvinist scientists to replace all the wives with computerized android duplicates. The Stepford Wives became a massive, runaway hit, earning four million dollars domestically. Mega-producer Scott Rudin and director Frank Oz teamed up for a remake in 2004. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Novelist William Peter Blatty based his best-seller on the last known Catholic-sanctioned exorcism in the United States. Blatty transformed the little boy in the 1949 incident into a little girl named Regan, played by 14-year-old Linda Blair. Suddenly prone to fits and bizarre behavior, Regan proves quite a handful for her actress-mother, Chris MacNeil (played by Ellen Burstyn, although Blatty reportedly based the character on his next-door neighbor Shirley MacLaine). When Regan gets completely out of hand, Chris calls in young priest Father Karras (Jason Miller), who becomes convinced that the girl is possessed by the Devil and that they must call in an exorcist: namely, Father Merrin (Max von Sydow). His foe proves to be no run-of-the-mill demon, and both the priest and the girl suffer numerous horrors during their struggles. The Exorcist received a theatrical rerelease in 2000, in a special edition that added 11 minutes of footage trimmed from the film's original release and digitally enhanced Chris Newman's Oscar-winning sound work. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Georgie Soloway (Dustin Hoffman) is an unbelievably successful composer of popular music. Just in the last year, he has written over 60 hit songs. That kind of output worries him, however. Now that he is getting to be middle-aged, he wonders if he will be able to keep the pace he has set. He also has a rich crop of neuroses, and his worries go way beyond what might seem reasonable. For instance, Georgie believes that someone named Harry Kellerman sabotaged each of his previous relationships, and he is worried about his current one with Alison (Barbara Harris), a singer. He seeks the aid of his psychiatrist (Jack Warden) but gets little satisfaction. He then tries to get comfort from his business associates (Dom De Luise and Gabriel Dell), but they don't have a clue about how to help him. Turning to home, he visits his mother (Betty Walker) and father (David Burns) but is further distressed when he learns that his father is dying. Still highly agitated, he takes to the air in his private jet. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Recounting how the West was won through the eyes of a white man raised as a Native American, Arthur Penn's 1970 adaptation of Thomas Berger's satirical novel was a comic yet stinging allegory about the bloody results of American imperialism. As a misguided 20th-century historian listens, 121-year-old Jack Crabb (Dustin Hoffman) narrates the story of being the only white survivor of Custer's Last Stand. White orphan Crabb was adopted by the Cheyenne, renamed "Little Big Man," and raised in the ways of the "Human Beings" by paternal mentor Old Lodge Skins (Chief Dan George), accepting non-conformity and living peacefully with nature. Violently thrust into the white world, Jack meets a righteous preacher (Thayer David) and his wife (Faye Dunaway), tries to be a gunfighter under the tutelage of Wild Bill Hickock (Jeff Corey), and gets married. Returned to the Cheyenne by chance, Jack prefers life as a Human Being. The carnage wreaked by the white man in the Washita massacre and the lethal fallout from the egomania of General George A. Custer (Richard Mulligan) at Little Big Horn, however, show Crabb the horrific implications of Old Lodge Skins' sage observation, "There is an endless supply of White Men, but there has always been a limited number of Human Beings." ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide