Rita Gam

Amy (Olivia Hussey) is a widow who is held captive by her insane Aunt Margot (Piper Laurie) in this predictably routine mystery. After she believes her husband has died, Amy is comforted by a group of society women with lesbian tendencies and is drugged when she goes to live with her aunt who tries to convince her she is insane. Amy begins to have nightmarish hallucinations and believes she sees the decayed remains of her late husband. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

Rocky (Noah Beery Jr.) is delighted at the prospect of his son Jim (James Garner) being reunited with interior decorator Valerie Pointer (Patrick Crowley), who'd been Jim's girlfriend back in the late 1950s'. But Val has a habit of stirring up trouble wherever she goes--and on this occasion, she is being stalked by a would-be murderer. Likely suspects include Val's son-in-law Eric (Ted Shackelford) and her rather formidable new client Zarakarian (Robert Quarry)--and what about Jean Ludwig ($Elizabeth Brooks}), who offers a job to Jim for the express purpose of getting him out of town and far away from the luckless Val? ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A strange gardener who can turn into a tree can also create people-killing posies. He does just that, and sends the fatal flowers to a woman who has caught his interest. ~ All Movie Guide

The first part of his "paranoia trilogy," Alan J. Pakula's 1971 thriller details the troubled life of a Manhattan prostitute stalked by one of her tricks. Investigating the disappearance of his friend Tom Gruneman (Robert Milli), rural Pennsylvania private eye John Klute (Donald Sutherland) follows a lead provided by Gruneman's associate Peter Cable (Charles Cioffi) to seek out a call girl who Gruneman knew in New York City. The call girl is Bree Daniels (Jane Fonda), an aspiring actress who turns tricks for the cash and to be free of emotional bondage. Klute follows Bree's every move, observing the city's decadence and her isolation, eventually contacting her about Gruneman. Bree claims not to know Gruneman, but she does reveal that she has received threats from a john. As Bree becomes involved in Klute's search and realizes that she is in danger, she reluctantly falls in love with Klute, despite her wish to remain unattached to any man. When she finally comes face to face with the killer, however, she is forced to reconsider her detached urban life. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

Based upon the novel by Lois Gould and adapted (under the pseudonym Esther Dale) by Elaine May, Such Good Friends focuses on Julie Messinger (played by Dyan Cannon), a woman with intense, often wild emotions that are held in check beneath a rather conventional façade. After her chauvinistic and self-centered husband Richard checks into the hospital for a simple mole removal that goes seriously wrong, Julie discovers that he has been titanically unfaithful to her. This is the straw that breaks the camel's back, and Julie decides it is time for her to break out of her shell, no matter what the consequences. She begins to exhibit a sexual interest in other men (sometimes indiscriminately, as when she seduces her family doctor, played by James Coco), and speaks her mind to others, including her egocentric mother (Nina Foch) and her hypocritical best friend (ennifer O'Neill). At the end, Julie wanders into Central Park and, presumably, a new life. ~ Craig Butler, All Movie Guide

Nelson (Richard Basehart) and the Seaview are sent to rescue an embattled Latin American president from his country, where he is being held by his own military. But the mission turns out to be a trap laid by the junta -- with help from a major military power hostile to the U.S. -- to embarrass the United States. Crane (David Hedison) and three crewmen are taken prisoner and sentenced to death unless the publicly confess their "guilt." Nelson must mount a rescue mission, not realizing that he has a traitor in his midst among the freedom fighters. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

One major film star referred to director Nicholas Ray as a "loser," because of Ray's alleged willingness to let his more temperamental actors walk all over him. Evidently, Ray had a very compliant and cooperative cast in King of Kings, inasmuch as the film emerged as one of the most disciplined Biblical epics ever made. Jeffrey Hunter is cast as Jesus Christ, delivering a wholly credible performance in this most taxing of roles (never mind the wags who referred to the film as "I Was a Teenage Jesus"). Siobhan McKenna is a radiant if somewhat overaged Mary; Hurd Hatfield offers a properly preening Pontius Pilate; Rip Torn portrays Judas more for the tragedy than the treachery; Robert Ryan (a personal favorite of Ray's) is one of the best John the Baptists you're ever likely to see; and Harry Guardino convincingly interprets Barabbas as a firebrand political extremist. The only false note in the casting is the MGM-dictated selection of teenaged Brigid Bazlen as Salome. The best aspect of the film is its handling of the days after the Resurrection; the "Jesus sightings" are offered as secondhand information, so as to retain some of the mystery inherent in the Scriptures. King of Kings was previously filmed in 1927 by Cecil B. DeMille, with a middle-aged H.B. Warner as Jesus. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In a series of comedic episodes, wildly disparate individuals pass through the French Riviera and live out their dramas and traumas in this uneven but happy farce by director Vittorio Sala. Of all the sketches, that of top Italian comic Alberto Sordi as a fruit vendor going with his wife for a film shoot on location on the Riviera is the most notable. After the wife is deleted from the cast, the vendor mistakes the director's interest in him as a play for his acting talents. His wife eventually wises him up that his thespian abilities are not the attraction here, and so another career in film bites the dust. The rest of the skits, including an over-the-top jealous husband who is having a hard time on his honeymoon, are amusing enough to keep an audience entertained. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

In this western set in the California territory in the mid-19th century, a rancher tries to protect his Spanish land grant from greedy American landgrabbers. Unfortunately the eastern interlopers bring in a Texas gunfighter to frighten the man. The gunfighter ends up falling in love with the rancher's sister, and decides to spare them. In the end, the gunman is killed during the climactic shoot out. The girl who loved him is devastated. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Filmed in Germany (where it was released in 1954), Republic's Magic Fire is the life story of controversial 19th century composer Richard Wagner. Alan Badel comes off more as villain than hero as Wagner, which though historically accurate makes it hard for the audience to pull for the central character. Wagner's bizarre relationship with Ludwig II (Gerhard Riedmann), the "mad king" of Bavaria, is downplayed, while the composer's vitriolic anti-semitism is ignored altogther. The women in Wagner's life are played by Yvonne de Carlo, Valentine Cortese and Rita Gam, while Carlos Thompson does the "best friend/severist critic" bit as fellow composer Franz Liszt. Dramatically uneven, Magic Fire is rescued by Erich Wolfgang Korngold's orchestrations of Wagner's most famous operatic and symphonic works. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

"You've never SEEN Gregory Peck until you've seen him in CINEMASCOPE." So read the publicity hype for 20th Century-Fox's Night People. Actually, Peck is his usual solid, stoic self as Col. Van Dyke, a CIA officer stationed in West Berlin. When an American soldier is kidnapped by the Soviets in the Eastern sector, Van Dyke is verbally assaulted by the soldier's influential industrialist father Leatherby (Broderick Crawford), who demands that something be done immediately. The Colonel realizes that it's not as simple as that: in return for the soldier, he is expected to turn over an elderly couple, both former anti-Nazi activists, to the East Germans, who will probably execute the couple. Leatherby backs off a bit when he meets the couple, then agrees to let Van Dyke handle the crisis in the most diplomatic manner possible. Things come to a head when the Colonel discovers that one of his trusted aides (Anita Bjork) is in league with the Soviets. Filmed on location in Germany, Night People is capped by a deliciously ironic coda. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

For his directorial debut, Ray Milland went out on a creative limb, resulting in the first American film since Chaplin's City Lights without any spoken dialogue. The Thief stars Milland as Allan Fields, a nuclear physicist who has sold out to a foreign power. With only a few tinges of conscience, Fields sets about to steal vital scientific secrets and smuggle them out of the country. With the FBI on his trail, he briefly hides out in a rundown tenement house, where he inaugurates a desultory romance with a sluttish woman (Rita Gam, making her auspicious film debut). On the verge of escaping without detection, Fields is forced to commit a murder and things quickly go downhill from there. The novelty of silence (except for natural sound effects) is intriguing at first, though it wears off rather quickly; still, Ray Milland deserves at least a gold star for trying. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide