Alan Fudge Movies

Whenever one of their fellow Vietnam veterans is in trouble, you can count on the A-Team to come to the rescue. On this occasion, there are three disabled Vietnam vets, who in partnership with heroine-of-the-week Amanda (Robin Riker) have opened a desert resort called the Stagecoach Hotel. In his efforts to drive the vets off their property, evil land developer Frank Gaines (Alan Fudge) shuts down the water supply of both the hotel and a neighboring village. In order to foil the villain, the Team sets about to dig their own water well--and, as is customary, chaos ensues! ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Attack on Fear was based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning series of newspaper articles by Dave and Cathy Mitchell. Paul Michael Glaser and Linda Kelsey play the Michaels, who labor away at a tiny California daily. Upon hearing of iniquities at the famed Santa Monica drug-rehab center Synanon, the Michaels begin publishing their evidence. Despite legal pressure from Synanon and bizarre anonymously mailed threats, the Mitchells' story results in a major investigation of the revered institution. Completed in 1982, the made-for-TV Attack on Fear was not telecast until October of 1984, and then only after (presumably) being reshaped to satisfy Synanon's battery of attorneys. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The film version of The Natural pulls off the neat trick of conveying the spirit of the Bernard Malamud novel upon which it is based, even while changing both the outcome and the meaning of Malamud's closing chapters. In his first film appearance in four years, Robert Redford plays Roy Hobbs, a farm boy with a hankering to be a great baseball player. With his faithful homemade bat "Wonderboy" in hand, Roy heads to the big city. En route, he arouses the fascination of the mysterious Harriet Bird (Barbara Hershey). Luring the boy to a hotel room, Harriet asks Roy what he wants out of life. Roy brashly responds he wants to be "the best there is," whereupon Harriet whips out a gun and shoots Roy down. Sixteen years later, a humbler Roy Hobbs emerges from the bush leagues to become a 35-year-old "rookie" on the 1939 lineup of the New York Knights. He soon becomes the team's star player, and in so doing once more attracts enigmatic woman Memo Paris (Kim Basinger), the glamorous niece of the Knights' manager Pop Fisher (Wilford Brimley) and the mistress of Rothstein-like gambler Gus Sands (a curiously unbilled Darren McGavin). Roy's fascination with Memo compromises his ability to play, but this time he finds salvation in the form the angelic Iris Gaines (Glenn Close), his childhood sweetheart. From this point forward, the script for The Natural bears very little resemblance to the Malamud original. Without giving anything away, it can be said that Roy Hobbs is given a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to compensate for the mistakes of his youth, despite the demonic intrusion of inexplicably spiteful sports writer Max Mercy (Robert Duvall). The Natural elevates the art of slow-motion photography to new heights; while this technique would become precious and boring in later baseball films, it works beautifully here, as does the decision by director Barry Levinson and cinematographer Caleb Deschanel to convey the symbolism inherent in the story in purely visual rather than blatantly verbal terms. (If the characters told you that the story was a retelling of the Camelot legend in baseball terms, would you have watched?) Another plus is the pastoral theme music by Randy Newman, which has been well utilized on sports broadcasts and "human interest" TV documentaries ever since. The baseball scenes in The Natural were staged at War Memorial Stadium in Buffalo, New York. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

This made-for-TV effort from horror director Wes Craven and Salem's Lot producer Richard Kobritz involves a case of cryogenic suspension gone horribly wrong. A wealthy industrialist (Michael Beck) arranges for his body to be kept on ice in a high-tech cryonic chamber with specialized instructions regarding his revival at a future date when medical science can restore him to life. Thanks to a computer malfunction, these instructions are not followed properly, and Beck emerges from the frozen crypt as an empty, soulless creature and a vessel of pure evil with an appetite for destruction. So evil, in fact, that his own mother (Beatrice Straight) decides he must be destroyed and sets out to do the deed herself. ~ Cavett Binion, Rovi

Billionaire Boys Club is the two-part TV adaptation of a book by Sue Horton (unpublished at the time of the film's first telecast). In flashback form, the story recounts the murder of Beverly Hills con artist Ron Levin (Ron Silver). The culprit is yuppie Joe Hunt (Judd Nelson), a sharp young commodities trader who has organized an investment firm with several of his prep school buddies, known as the Billionaire Boys Club. Part one, originally telecast November 8, 1987, traces Hunt's meteoric rise to wealth and power, and the means by which Levin worms his way into Hunt's confidence. In part two, shown the next evening, Hunt has already murdered Levin and carefully disposed of the body. The next step of the scheme is take over where Levin left off by conning an Iranian millionaire out of a huge sum of money. Meanwhile, other members of the Club begin to have qualms over Hunt's finagling. Their whistle-blowing leads to Hunt's arrest and convinction for murder. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Raquel Welch's astonishing performance in the made-for-TV Right to Die compensates for any number of script deficiencies. Ms. Welch plays a successful psychologist with a happy home life who is suddenly stricken with the dreaded neurological affliction ALS (aka "Lou Gehrig's Disease"). At first, she is determined to fight for her life, but as her conditions deteriorates and she becomes more of a human vegetable, Ms. Welch begs her husband (Michael Gross) to help her die. The producers of Right to Die chose Raquel Welch not so much for her resemblance to the real-life person upon whom the story is based, but in the hopes that this "offbeat" piece of casting would attract a large TV audience. Ms. Welch accepted the role to counter industry accusations that she was impossible to work with. Thus the motivations behind Right to Die were more commercially oriented than the film's subject matter deserved, but this can be excused in the light of Welch's harrowingly accurate portrayal of a woman literally dying by inches before our eyes. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

A telephone prank by 2 teenagers leads to their stalking by a psychotic killer, the person who answered the prank call. ~ Rovi

Based on a true story, the two-part TV movie I Know My First Name Is Steven tells the tragic story of Steven Stayner. At age seven, Steven was kidnapped by two men who held him captive in a tiny shed for seven years. One of the men, a habitual child abuser named Kenneth Parnell, sexually assaulted Steven on an almost daily basis during the boy's ordeal. At age 14, Steven finally was able to escape and return to his family. But we are shown that Steven's safe return was far from the happy ending it appeared to be. He's forced to adjust to a family he'd never really known, to convince himself that his parents had never forgotten him, and to put his seven-year hell behind him. While I Know My First Name Is Steven ends on an upbeat note, the real Stayner died in a motorcycle accident only a few months after this film was first telecast in May 1989. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

After an absence of nearly a decade, Peter Falk returns to the role of dishevelled detective Columbo in Columbo Goes to the Guillotine. The special guest murderer this time out is professional psychic Anthony Andrews. The victim is magician Anthony Zerbe, a onetime cellmate of Andrews' who had been the psychic's co-conspirator in a plan to steal military secrets. Zerbe is found lying next to his guillotine trick, his head neatly severed from his body. An accident, says the coroner. Maybe not, says Columbo, whose efforts to tighten the noose around Andrews' neck are complicated by the latter's ESP prowess. The 2-hour Columbo Goes to the Guillotine was telecast February 6, 1989, as the opening volley of The ABC Monday Mystery Movie. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands opens as an eccentric inventor (Vincent Price) lovingly assembles a synthetic youth named Edward (Johnny Depp). Edward has all the essential ingredients for today's standard body, with the exception of a pair of hands. For what is initially thought to be a temporary period, he is fitted with long, scissor-like extremities that, while able to trim a mean hedge, are hardly conducive to day-to-day life. When the kindly inventor dies, however, Edward is left lonely and cursed with some very heavy metal for hands. He is eventually taken in by Peg Boggs (Dianne Weist), an Avon lady who takes pity on him after seeing his bleak existence. Edward, in spite of his inherent ability to slay anyone he comes across, is a gentle soul whose only wish is to be loved. His impromptu family has, at best, a limited understanding of Edward, but he finds himself drawn to Peg's weary but sympathetic daughter, Kim (Winona Ryder), who is dating Jim (Anthony Michael Hall), the neighborhood bully. Meanwhile, Edward finds himself a local celebrity after the town realizes that his talents include creative hedge trimming and an unrivaled ability to cut hair. His so-called friends are proven fair-weather when Edward is accused of a crime, after which his only supporters are Peg and Kim. ~ Tracie Cooper, Rovi

Like 1976's Sybil, Voices Within: The Lives of Truddi Chase was a two-part TV movie based on the true story of a woman plagued with multiple personalities. Shelly Long stars as a woman whose abused childhood has resulted in the fragmentation of her psyche into 22 separate personalities. Before her therapy is finished, Long reveals that 70 more personalities are struggling within her to break free. The film was based on Truddi Chase's autobiography When the Rabbit Howls. That Voices Within was not the ratings grabber that Sybil turned out to be can be chalked up to its network competition during its initial 1990 telecast: The final episode of Newhart. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Coin thief Jack Colefax (Patrick St. Esprit) is himself robbed of a rare coin by a pair of hookers. In his efforts to prevent Colefax from committing murder to retrieve the coin, Hunter (Fred Dryer) finds himself in a potentially explosive situation: one of the hookers turns out to be Jodi Prescott (Kimberley Neville)--the daughter of Hunter's longtime enemy, Councilman Henry Prescott (Alan Fudge). Meanwhile, Novak (Lauren Lane) tries to prevent her friend Pam Sutton (Denise Crosby) from exacting vengeance against the petty crook who robbed and mugged her. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi