James Kirkwood, Jr. Movies
Jimmy Zoole (Steve Guttenberg, also making his directing debut) has been having bad, bad day. Not only has his one-man version of Hamlet (performed with hand puppets) just tanked, his girlfriend has left him, his cat is gravely ill, and his unfinished novel has been stolen. Plus, it's New Year's Eve. So when Jimmy finds Eddie (Lombardo Boyar), a gay burglar, lurking in his apartment, he isn't exactly thrilled. On the verge of a major breakdown, he ties up Eddie and uses him as an outlet for his multitude of frustrations. Eddie, it turns out, has a few of his own, including an ex-wife who won't let him see his child. What follows is a New Year's celebration replete with party hats, rope, and some very, very deep emotional issues. Based on James Kirkwood's cult novel (Kirkwood also won a Pulitzer as the author of A Chorus Line), P.S. Your Cat is Dead was screened at the 2002 Philadelaphia Gay and Lesbian International Film Festival. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Steve Guttenberg, Lombardo Boyar, (more)
- 1986
- R
The terror in this chiller is more implied and the blood and gore is minimal as it tells of the strange adventure of an African-American female Army Sergeant and her recruits as they head through the forest of Alabama on a survival mission. It all begins when a lieutenant sees the apparition of a mysterious woman. Next a private finds a skull while others are made nervous by bizarre winds and the strangely burned ground thy find. Eventually the unit finds an empty subterranean bunker and that's when people begin to die. Eventually a mysterious fog rolls in and they see that their killers are the ghostly remains of Confederate soldiers who do not realize that the war is over. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Maxwell Caulfield, Nichelle Nichols, (more)
Broadway's celebratory musical about rejection makes it to the screen in a fizzless adaptation by Richard Attenborough that misses the whole point of the Broadway show -- i.e. the dancing and the dancers. Instead, the dancers become a limp Greek chorus for the dead love affair between a choreographer, Zach (a pre-Gordon Gekko Michael Douglas) and his old flame, Cassie (Alyson Reed) the star dancer. Zach is holding try-outs for a new Broadway musical and, as armies of dancers are brought on stage to audition for Zach, he sits in the darkened recesses of the theater, puffing on a cigarette, as he winnows out hopeful dancers who want to become part of the chorus line for Zach's new show. Finally, Zach has reduced the dancers to 16 men and women, and he asks each of them to step to the footlights and tell him about their lives and their dreams. But backstage, while the dancers are confessing their pasts to Zach, Zach's past walks through the stage door. Cassie, Zach's ex-lover, whom Zach met, courted and broke up with in the theatrical environs, has returned. Once a big star, Cassie has returned to the theater -- not to see Zach but to audition for Zach's musical. She needs the work. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Michael Douglas, Terrence Mann, (more)
Richard Pryor gives a compelling performance in Some Kind of Hero, playing a Vietnam veteran who tries to readjust to civilian life. Pryor plays Eddie Keller, who has just spent five years in a North Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camp. Most of the time there, Eddie was able to hold his own against his captors, but he eventually was forced to sign a statement denouncing United States involvement in the Vietnam War. Eddie decided to sign the document in order to insure that his friend Vinnie (Ray Sharkey) would be given proper medical treatment. Because of this denunciation, when Eddie returns home from the war he is denied his back pay. He also discovers that his wife has left him for another man, his business has fallen apart, and his mother has been sent to an asylum. Eddie falls into a deep depression and hits rock bottom. But he meets a friendly prostitute, Toni (Margot Kidder), who helps him straighten out his life. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Richard Pryor, Margot Kidder, (more)
When her adoptive mother Joan Crawford died in 1977, erstwhile actress/author Christina Crawford and her brother Christopher were left out of Joan Crawford's will, "for reasons which are well known to them." Industryites have suggested that it may have been this posthumous act of rejection rather than an alleged lifetime of parental abuse that inspired Christina Crawford to pen her scathing autobiography Mommie Dearest. The 1981 film version of this tome was evidently meant to be taken seriously, but the operatic direction by Frank Perry and the over-the-top portrayal of Joan Crawford by Faye Dunaway (whose makeup is remarkable) has always seemed to inspire loud laughter whenever and where-ever the film is shown. According to the film (and the book that preceded it), Joan Crawford was a licentious, child-beating behemoth, who stalked and postured through life as though it was one of her own pictures-more Strait-jacket than Mildred Pierce. This is the film with the notorious "wire coat hanger" scene, just in case you need a reminder. Surprisingly, one emerges from Mommie Dearest with more sympathy for the monstrous but intensely vulnerable Crawford than for her whining daughter (played as an adult by Diana Scarwid, and as a child by Mara Hobel). Our favorite scene: Joan Crawford dazedly replacing her ailing daughter in the cast of a daytime TV soap opera. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Faye Dunaway, Diana Scarwid, (more)
- 1959
Millie Crest (Ruta Lee) is in big trouble. Already framed for embezzlement, Millie could also face a charge of "stolen identity" by posing as Fern Driscoll (Helene Stanley), a woman who is supposed to have died in a car accident in which Millie was involved. The beleagured girl has also stabbed seedy private eye Carl Davis (Robert Bray) in self-defense--and now Davis is dead. Perry Mason (Raymond Burr) is going to have to work overtime to earn the retainer (all of 38 cents!) given him by poor Millie (or is it poor Fern)? Based on a 1958 novel by Perry Mason creator Erle Stanley Gardner, this episode was remade in 1965 as "The Case of the Fanciful Frail". ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1958
Practical joker Bradley (Albert Salmi) chooses as his next victim Pop Henderson (Roscoe Ames), the nearsighted, hearing-impaired attendant at the local morgue. Sneaking onto a slab, Bradley pretends to be a corpse -- and when he "comes to life," the terrified Henderson nearly jumps out of his skin, and almost loses his job. But there's a comeuppance in store for Bradley when one of his previous victims knocks him unconscious, leaving him in a state of complete paralysis.... ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
