Anthony Waller Movies
Nine-year-old Tony (Jerry Maguire's Jonathan Lipnicki) has just moved with his parents (Tommy Hinkley and Pamela Gidley) to a small town in the Scottish Highlands, where his father is overseeing the building of a golf course for old squire Lord McAshton (John Wood). Tony is picked on by his new classmates and starts dreaming about vampires at night, until one fine evening his dreams seem to summon Rudolph (Rollo Weeks), an aristocratic, wee vampire. Rudolph is among the vegetarian variety of vampires, but tells Tony that his diet has weakened his flying powers. After Tony guides Rudolph to some unsuspecting cows, on whose blood his new friend feasts, a friendship is born. Rudolph introduces Tony to his father (Richard E. Grant), mother (Alice Krige), and siblings, all of whom have been in hiding for three centuries as they wait for a comet to pass by that will make them human if they possess a magic amulet. Rudolph's dad, however, is missing part of the amulet, which turns out to have been stolen by Rudolph's uncle centuries ago and is now in the possession of none other than Lord McAshton. To further complicate matters, a vampire hunter (Jim Carter) is skulking around and causing no end of trouble. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jonathan Lipnicki, Richard E. Grant, (more)
Defense lawyer and all-around sleaze Callum Crane (Bill Pullman) has a nice wife (Joanne Whalley), two daughters by his wife's first marriage, and an obscenely perfect house. He also has a drinking problem and a penchant for sexual assault. The second proclivity is on ample display when Crane meets Sophie (Gabrielle Anwar), the new secretary. After a brief flirtation, they go back to Sophie's apartment, where Crane proceeds to rape her. Within a few days of her rape, Sophie is fired, and Crane is appointed to a federal judgeship. Understandably outraged, Sophie demands that he resign and threatens to go to the police or newspapers with her story. Meanwhile, somewhere on the wrong side of the tracks, car thief Nat (Devon Sawa) has just been released from prison and discovers that his real father is none other than Crane. Deciding that it's high time he met his long-lost father, Nat searches for Crane and finds him just in time to save him from a mugging. Crane believes that his would-be savior is a hardened criminal, and he offers him the contract to kill Sophie. Coincidentally enough, Nat only knows two people in town: Sophie's roommate, Tanya (Angela Featherstone), and Sophie herself. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bill Pullman, Gabrielle Anwar, (more)
This British-Dutch-Luxembourgian co-production is "based on characters created by John Landis" for his An American Werewolf in London (1981). In the opening, a man is seen under attack, almost managing an escape from the Parisian sewers before an unseen creature pulls him back. Meanwhile, tourist Andy (Tom Everett Scott) is seeing the sights of Paris with his pals Brad (Vince Vieluf) and Chris (Phil Buckman). When Serafine (Julie Delpy) leaps off the Eiffel Tower just before Andy is about to do a bungee-jump, he executes a mid-air rescue. She vanishes into the night, leaving Andy intrigued -- and also unaware that she is the offspring of the couple (Jenny Agutter, David Naughton) seen 16 years earlier in An American Werewolf in London. Andy tracks her down, asks for a date, attends a party, and winds up in her bed. When he awakens, he has toothmarks on his leg and is informed that he's making a transformation into a werewolf, confirmed by his sudden taste for rare steaks. Serafine explains that her stepfather (seen in the film's opening scene) had been working on a drug to control her werewolf transformations. Beneath a full moon, the lycanthropic love story continues. Filmed in Luxembourg, Amsterdam, Paris, and New York, with special effects mainly from California's Santa Barbara Studios. Werewolves were created by combining prosthetic devices and animatronics with computer-generated creatures. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Tom Everett Scott, Julie Delpy, (more)
A mute American working on a low-budget movie runs afoul of the Russian mafia in this internationally produced thriller. Billy (Marina Zudina), a special-effects makeup artist who is unable to speak, is in Moscow working on a cheapie slasher flick directed by Andy (Evan Richards), her sister's boyfriend. Late one night, Billy returns to the set to pick up some equipment and stumbles on what appears to be the filming of an actual snuff film. Watching, unseen, as an "actress" (Olga Tolstetskaya) is bludgeoned to death before her very eyes, Billy flees the set, pursued by the snuff film's crew. Eventually, she escapes and tells her story to her sister, Karen (Fay Ripley), and Andy. The film crew convinces the police that it was simply some special effects that Billy witnessed, then they start a deadly cat-and-mouse game with the hapless Americans. The intrigue soon leads Billy and her friends to "The Reaper" (Alec Guinness), the shadowy financier of an entire snuff-film underground. Director Anthony Waller's screenplay for Mute Witness began as a tale of gangsters in 1930s Chicago, but he rewrote it to take advantage of Russia's analogous present-day climate -- and the country's cheap sets and labor. Unexpected problems, from a diptheria epidemic to unexpected fines at the customs gate, nearly sank the production. The director convinced Guinness to appear in the film several years before principal photography began; the veteran thespian was paid nothing for his scenes, which were shot in a single morning in Germany. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Marina Zudina, Oleg Yankovsky, (more)
