John Davis Movies
In Ernest Goes to Jail, Jim Varney returns as leering idiot savant Ernest P. Worrall, star of scores of TV commercials and feature films. Varney also takes on a second role in the film: an unrepentant, cold-blooded murderer named Felix Nash. When Ernest serves on the jury for Nash's murder trial, Nash arranges for look-alike Ernest to go to jail, while he stays on the outside to plan a major bank heist. Fortuitously for the criminal, it's the same bank where Ernest works as a security guard. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jim Varney, Gailard Sartain, (more)
- 1980
- PG
Susan Sarandon gives a sprightly performance in this sex farce involving couples swapping mates. Shirley MacLaine is Evelyn, a doctor, who is spending some quality time horseback riding when she is spotted by Greg (Stephen Collins), who is driving his sports car. Greg looks at her a bit too long and crashes the car, and since Evelyn is a doctor, she feels free to ride up to the prone Greg and rip off his pants. Soon the two are having an affair behind the backs of Greg's TV weather-girl lover Stephanie (Susan Sarandon) and Evelyn's workaholic husband, Walter (James Coburn). When Walter finds out about the affair from Stephanie, the two decide to reciprocate and engage in an affair of their own. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Shirley MacLaine, James Coburn, (more)
- 1957
Parson and the Outlaw is a cheapjack rally of washed-up movie actors, leftover sets and cobwebbed cliches. Anthony Dexter, who failed to scale the heights after starring in the 1951 biopic Valentino, plays Billy the Kid, once more as a victim of society. The parson of the title is Sonny Tufts, who by 1957 was already a national joke ("Sonny TUFTS?") Billy the Kid tries to mend his ways thanks to the intervention of the parson, but he winds up plugged and planted trying to avenge the preacher's murder. Even such able supporting actors as Marie Windsor, Jean Parker and Bob Steele look embarrassed by their tawdry surroundings. One of the last and least of Columbia's programmer westerns, Parson and the Outlaw is best buried on Boot Hill and forgotten. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Anthony Dexter, Sonny Tufts, (more)
- 1953
In this murder mystery, a police detective begins suspecting that his sister's newest beau is a murderer. Unfortunately, he is dead wrong. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1950
The Lawless was director Joseph Losey's second feature-length film. The story concerns a group of Mexican-American migrant workers who are subjected to all sorts of abuse and intolerance by their California bosses. A violent clash between whites and Latinos at a dance results in a torrent of bigotry. Seemingly the only Californian willing to champion the workers' cause is crusading newspaperman Larry Wilder, and soon he too is the victim of senseless mob violence. The story boils to a manhunt for a fugitive fruit-picker who has been accused of fomenting the aforementioned riot. Director Losey, producers William Pine and William Thomas and screenwriter Geoffrey Homes (aka Daniel Mainwaring) are to be commended for tackling a controversial issue in an honest, no-nonsense fashion; even so, the film ends in standard Hollywood-liberal fashion with a white man coming to the rescue. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- MacDonald Carey, Gail Russell, (more)
