Joseph Running Fox Movies

A newlywed's infant meets a fate worse than death in this horror movie. She believes the child has died, but then she learns the awful truth--her husband and his coven of witches are using the infant in their terrifying rituals. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

The 3-part TV miniseries Roanoak traces the history of North Carolina's "Lost Colony". The story begins in 1584, when British settlers land upon Carolina's shores. There they are confronted by Native Americans who at first regard the visitors as evil spirits. This mistrust is briefly reciprocated before the settlers and Indians learn to depend upon one another. One of the Englishmen, artist John White (Victor Garber), endeavors to teach the English language to two of the tribesmen, Manteo (Tino Juarez) and Wanchese (Joseph Runningfox), who are then selected to return to England with White, there to acquaint the locals with Indian customs and traditions. Part Two takes place during the first winter at Roanoak, as a diminishing food supplies rekindles hostilities between the whites and the Indians. And in Part Three, Sir Walter Raleigh gives White permission to return to the Roanoak colony-which has mysteriously vanished from the face of the earth. A collaborative effort of the PBS network and South Carolina Educational Television, Roanoak first aired May 26, June 2 and June 10, 1986, on the American Playhouse anthology series. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

When a successful half-Native American Harvard-grad returns from college to take over the family ranch, two resentful half-brothers scheme to implicate him in a crime. ~ All Movie Guide

For the first (and thus far the only) time in his career, Chevy Chase plays a genuinely sympathetic character in Neil Simon's Seems Like Old Times. This time around, Chase is a divorced novelist who is abducted by crooks and set up as the fall guy in a bank robbery. Arrested, Chase manages to escape and to make his way to the home of ex-wife Goldie Hawn, now a highly respected liberal defense attorney. Chase's unexpected arrival coincides with an important dinner party on behalf of Goldie's current husband, district attorney Charles Grodin. At first making every effort to give Chase the boot, Hawn, ever the champion of the underdog finally decides to help him out of his dilemma--much to the discomfort of her politically ambitious husband. Wisely, Grodin does not play his character as an unpleasant stuffed shirt; he is as likeable as Chase and Hawn, giving the farcical plot convolutions a tinge of reality. We care about the people involved, thus the laughs spring as much from characterization as they do from the situation. If only Seems Like Old Times didn't have that lame-brained final close up..... ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Made for television, Ishi: The Last of His Tribe is based on the book by Theodora Kroeber. Kroeber's anthropologist husband Alfred was the man who, in 1911, discovered the last surviving member of the Yahi Indian tribe living in a barn in Oroville California. Dennis Weaver plays the Kroeber counterpart, here named Professor Fuller, who befriends the Native American Ishi and learns his language (much of the film is subtitled). Ishi is played by Joseph Running Fox as a teenager and Eloy Phil Casados as an adult. This informative and deeply moving project was conceived for TV by Dalton Trumbo, who died in 1976 before finishing his script, which was completed by his son Christopher Trumbo. Ishi: Last of His Tribe is to some people's way of thinking superior to the more expensive cable-TV retelling of the same story, 1992's Last of His Tribe, which was bogged down in revisionism and political correctness. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide