William Campbell Movies

An unusually long pre-credits sequence establishes the roots of faded Southern belle Charlotte's (Bette Davis) insanity; she'd been witness to the dismemberment murder of her fiance (Bruce Dern) and the suicide of the murderer, her own father (Victor Buono). Years later, Charlotte remains a recluse in her decaying southern mansion, zealously guarding the secret of her father's guilt; she is cared for by her slatternly housekeeper (Agnes Moorehead). When her house is targeted for demolition, Charlotte fears that this will uncover her lover's body parts and thus confirm that her father was a murderer. She desperately summons her seemingly sweet-tempered cousin Miriam (Olivia De Havilland) to help her fight off the house's destruction. Miriam brings along the family doctor (Joseph Cotten) to calm Charlotte's frayed nerves. When Charlotte begins to be plagued by horrific visions of the homicide/suicide of so long ago, it appears that she has gone completely insane. But soon we learn who is behind these delusions...and why. Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte was intended by director Robert Aldrich as a follow-up to the successful Joan Crawford/Bette Davis horror piece Whatever Happened to Baby Jane (1962). Ms. Crawford was originally slated to play Miriam, but became seriously ill shortly before filming started. Davis, who disliked Crawford intensely, suggested that the role of Miriam be filled by her best friend, De Havilland. On the first day of shooting, Davis and DeHavilland pulled a "Ding Dong the Witch is Dead" routine by toasting one another with Coca-Cola--a catty observation of the fact that Joan Crawford's husband was an executive with the Pepsi Cola company! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A young Francis Coppola was given the job of directing this moody low-budget chiller after begging producer Roger Corman for the opportunity to reuse the sets for another film which Corman was shooting in Ireland. The story centers on the dysfunctional Haloran family, who live in a state of perpetual sorrow in a spooky Irish castle. Still mourning the death of her young daughter Kathleen -- who drowned in the lake seven years ago -- Lady Haloran (Ethne Dunn) tortures herself regularly by visiting the girl's grave (when she's not shrieking and collapsing in anguish every five minutes). When daughter-in-law Louise Haloran (Luana Anders) loses her husband to a heart attack, she manages to conceal the body for fear of being cut out of Lady Haloran's will. To further complicate matters, a mysterious interloper begins prowling the grounds with an axe to grind... a very big axe. This enjoyable, quirky psycho-thriller is enlivened by Coppola's inventive camera setups, atmospheric locations and Patrick Magee's over-the-top performance as the leering family doctor. Despite some ragged editing (probably not Coppola's doing), this has relatively high production values for a spare-change Corman project. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide

In this campy melodrama, a high school girl gets involved in the wrong crowd, and though innocent of wrong doing is sent to reform school. Soon after her release, she enters and wins the Miss Colorado contest, making her a contender for the Miss America title. Not long after winning the state pageant, she falls for and secretly marries an ex-convict. Unfortunately, he isn't reformed and is arrested for attempted kidnapping. When that happens, his secret marriage to the woman is exposed and she is publicly disgraced. The woman is distraught and becomes a kooch dancer. Her depression continues and this leads her to buy a gun and try to kill herself. Unfortunately, she fails. Later she tries to rob a drugstore, but ends up in prison. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Feeling neglected by her rich husband Carl (Howard Petrie), Alice Gorman (June Dayton) is attracted to Carl's no-good, leeching nephew Jim Ferris (William Campbell). What follows is a treacherous morass of greed, grand robbery ($80,000 worth) and murder, with innocent secretary Betty Wilkins (Sue Randall) taking the rap and Perry Mason (Raymond Burr) rushing to her defense. Originally identified by TV Guide as Perry Mason's fourth-season opener, this episode was actually that season's third entry, preceded by a brace of episodes left over from Season Three. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Kenneth More portrays a British gunsmith who travels to the American West. After winning a rigged poker game, More is appointed sheriff of Fractured Jaw, a wide-open town where law officers are plugged and planted on a regular basis. He befriends hard-bitten saloon gal Jayne Mansfield, who doesn't give the gentlemanly More much chance of survival. Using his wits, and blessed with a generous amount of raw luck, Sheriff More escapes death at every turn, finally becoming the "blood brother" of a previous hostile Sioux tribe. With the help of his Native American friends, More brings law and order to Fractured Jaw. The film's main advantages are Kenneth More, who is superb as always, and Jayne Mansfield, giving one of her best and least mannered performances. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Despite an ad campaign wherein RKO Radio congratulated itself for its "guts", this long-delayed film version of Norman Mailer's bestselling WW2 novel The Naked and the Dead still had to pull most of its punches (especially when it came to four-letter words). Aldo Ray heads the cast as sadistic sergeant Croft, who'd as soon kill one of his own men as he would the Japanese. Sensitive, moralistic Lieutenant Hearn (Cliff Robertson) tries to put a leash on Croft, but he's ordered to keep out of the situation by psychotic General Cummings (Raymond Massey), who is convinced that soldiers will fight harder the more they hate their superiors. The film wavers uncomfortably between excessive violence and excessive moralizing, with time out for a few ill-conceived slapstick setpieces (including an outsized barroom brawl) and romantic interludes with such zaftig beauties as stripteaser Lili (Lili St. Cyr) and good-time girl Mildred (Barbara Nichols). In one of his first film appearances, comedian Joey Bishop plays Pvt. Roth, whose reaction to Sgt. Croft's relentless anti-semitism culminates in a spectacular death scene. Distribution of The Naked and the Dead was taken over from the failing RKO Radio operation by Warner Bros., who also changed the name of the film's widescreen process from SuperScope to WarnerScope. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Elvis Presley made his motion picture debut in the Civil War drama Love Me Tender. Elvis, however, is not the star of the proceedings: that honor goes jointly to Richard Egan and Debra Paget. The story concerns three brothers--Egan, William Campbell and James Drury--who steal a Union payroll on behalf of the Confederacy, only to discover that the war is over and that they're now technically outlaws. Rather than return the money, the brothers divvy it up amongst themselves. Upon returning home, Egan discovers that his sweetheart (Debra Paget) has married Elvis, his youngest brother. Since Love Me Tender has been played incessantly on TV since the early 1960s, it is giving away nothing to reveal that the film is one of two in which Elvis Presley's character dies at the end. Naturally, Elvis is afforded plenty of opportunities to sing: the scene in which he launches into an anachronistic hip-swivelling performance at a county fair is one of the high points of mid-1950s kitsch. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Frank Gruber's novel The Lock and the Key was adapted for the big screen by Burt Kennedy as The Man in the Vault. William Campbell stars as a locksmith who is forced to work for a gang of thieves. The bad guys want Campbell to make duplicates of the keys to a safety deposit box containing nearly a quarter of a million dollars. As if this wasn't enough for our hero to worry about, he has to choose between his mercenary sweetheart Karen Sharpe and gang moll Anita Ekberg (poor fellow!) The film benefits from its on-location photography in and around Beverly Hills. Man in the Vault was produced by John Wayne's Batjac company, and directed by one of the Duke's favorite coworkers, Andrew V. McLaglen (son of frequent Wayne costar Victor McLaglen). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

One of the earliest examples of the hot rod/juvenile delinquency flick, Running Wild featured William Campbell as a rookie cop infiltrating a gang of teenagers that are stealing cars for Ken Osanger (Keenan Wynn), a nasty type who uses a gas station as a front for his nefarious purposes. Going undercover as a teenage rebel, Ralph Barclay (Campbell) not only saves pretty Leta Novak (Kathleen Case) from being ravaged by Osanger, but wins the love of voluptuous Irma Bean (Mamie van Doren), the former girlfriend of teenage gang leader Scotty Cluett (Jan Merlin). John Saxon, Walter Coy, and teen flick regular Kenny Miller also appeared in this highly exploitative crime drama from Universal directed by character actor Abner Biberman. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

In this deceptively titled and paced Western, Kirk Douglas shines in the hyper-macho role of Dempsey Rae, a good-natured drifter with a mysterious past up from Texas, a top hand with a gun, a horse, or a herd, who can even play the banjo and sing. He rides into a Wyoming town in a freight car, in the company of much younger drifter Jeff Jimson (William Campbell), who knows even less about the West than he does about life. Dempsey gets Jeff out of a few scrapes with the law, and both get hired by the foreman (Jay C. Flippen) of the Triangle Ranch. With 8,000 head, the Triangle is already the largest spread in the territory, but the new owner from back east, Miss Reed Bowman (Jeanne Crain), arrives with plans to move in another 22,000 head onto the open range, threatening to squeeze out the smaller ranches completely. Meanwhile, the other ranchers plan on saving some of the grass for winter feed and fence it off with barbed wire. When Bowman discovers that she can't hold onto Dempsey as either a man or a foreman, she seduces Jeff -- who's too quick to become a man -- to run interference on him, and hires a crew of gunmen led by Steve Miles (Richard Boone) to tear down the wire. A range war is about to break out, and Dempsey, who wants no part of barbed wire and carries the scars to show why, plans on pulling out. But then Miles and his men overplay their hand, and Dempsey throws in with the smaller ranchers. The body count suddenly starts going against Miles, who digs in for a final fight, and now it's Jeff and Bowman who find themselves caught between two unstoppable forces that they've helped unleash. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Big Leaguer was the inauspicious feature-film debut for director Robert Aldrich. Edward G. Robinson stars as the real-life Hans Lobert, the baseball scout in charge of the New York Giants' Florida training camp. Each year, a new crop of would-be ballplayers are given a two-week tryout under Lobert's supervision. The aspirants this time out include, Adam Polachuk (Jeff Richards), the son of a Polish immigrant who wants Adam to become a lawyer; Julie Davis (William Campbell), a tough guy from the streets of New York; Bobby Bronson (Richard Jaeckel), a cocky Ohio lad; and Chuy Aguilar (Lalo Rios), a Mexican youth whose skill on the ballfield compensates for his tenuous grasp of the English language. Gradually, Adam emerges as the film's central character, as he simultaneously tries to make good for Lobert, romance Lobert's niece Christy (Vera-Ellen), and keep his dad from finding out that he's not attending law school. Though Big Leaguer was held in such low esteem by distributor MGM that it became the first Edward G. Robinson picture not to be given a regular playdate in Manhattan, the film is worth seeing today, if only for the presence of such genuine big leaguers as Al Campanis, Carl Hubbell, Bob Trocolor and Tony Ravish. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The modest MGM programmer Code Two follows a group of police academy aspirants from the grueling training process to their first days on the job. The plot concentrates on three of these trainees: self-satisfied Chuck O'Flair (Ralph Meeker), bridegroom-to-be Harry Whenlon (Jeff Richards) and married rookie Russ Hardley (Robert Horton). Eschewing the usual Hollywood cliché, it is Whenlon, rather than Hardley, who is the first to be killed in the line of duty. The film then segues into a lengthy chase, with O'Flair and Hardley hot on the trail of the truck hijackers responsible for Hardley's death. While most of Code Two is presented in the clipped, straightforward style of TV's Dragnet, the producers find time to display leading lady Elaine Stewart in a brief two-piece bathing suit. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide