Gift SubscriptionsWilliam Atherton
- 1986
First telecast October 6, 1986, A Fight for Jenny is the compelling study of an interracial couple's struggle for happiness. White Kelsey Wilkes (Leslie Ann Warren) is married to African American David Caldwell (Philip Michael Thomas). Casting a shadow over the couple is Kelsey's first husband Ben (Drew Snyder). Using antiquated laws as his weapons, Ben demands custody of his daughter Jennifer (Jaclyn-Rose Lester), insisting that a mixed-marriage household is the wrong environment for the girl. A Fight for Jenny enjoyed a healthy second life in reruns, thanks to the Miami Vice-generated popularity of co-star Philip Michael Thomas. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Joe D'Amato, notorious director of numerous Euro-porn epics, manages to exploit even more perverse theme material in this necrophiliac love story about a disturbed young taxidermist so bereaved over the loss of his fiancee that he exhumes and preserves her corpse to keep him company. When the stuffed cadaver no longer offers erotic satisfaction, he sets out with the help of his spooky housekeeper to find a new bride, murdering any prospects who don't measure up to his twisted standards -- or sometimes just for the fun of it -- and dissecting them in his convenient in-home mortuary. As grotesque and graphic as this film may be, it is made all the more grim by its straightforward dramatic presentation (as if this were no more than a slightly off-kilter romantic tragedy), with atmospheric photography and a moody score by Goblin. Viewers who might consider the devouring of a human heart in poor taste are advised to avoid this film. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Kieran Canter, Cinzia Monreale, (more)
The "slobs versus snobs" formula of lowbrow comedy gets a twist in this mindless Pauly Shore vehicle that pits slobs against scientists. Shore plays Bud Macintosh, a Tucson, Arizona, slacker and junior college student. Bud and his best pal Doyle Johnson (Stephen Baldwin), have just suffered the humiliation of being dumped by their girlfriends when they stumble into what they think is a new mall. However, the facility is a scientific research laboratory known as a bio-dome, a self-sustaining habitat in which five scientists, led by Dr. Noah Faulkner (William Atherton), are to conduct experiments. The catch is that the bio-dome has just been sealed for a year and cannot be opened. As their twelve months pass, Bud and Doyle with their amorous behavior and toilet humor are a constant source of irritation and annoyance to the legitimate residents, but they find romance and eventually get an unexpected chance to prove themselves. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Pauly Shore, Stephen Baldwin, (more)
- 1995
Tom Selleck stars in this made-for-television movie about a judicial sting operation. Selleck stars as Judge Timothy Nash, a respected judge who's approached by special agents to take part in an undercover sting to expose a fellow judge's corrupt activities. At first Judge Nash is willing, but as the investigation grows, he gets cold feet and wants out -- only to find that it's too late to back out. ~ Bernadette McCallion, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Tom Selleck, Elizabeth McGovern, (more)
- 1990
Produced for cable TV, this pedestrian thriller (also known as Till Death Do Us Part) purports to be a riff on Edgar Allen Poe's "The Premature Burial" but actually bears more of a resemblance to Diabolique. It stars Tim Matheson as a cheated-upon husband who can't stay down after his wife's (Jennifer Jason Leigh) unsuccessful attempt to poison him results in his being buried alive. The film's one real moment of horror comes in a claustrophobic sequence where Matheson desperately claws his way out of his coffin. The story then settles into a standard revenge motif, capped with an admittedly potent payoff that, though intriguing, is probably not as shocking as the filmmakers had intended. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Tim Matheson
- 1978
The longest (26-1/2 hours), most expensive ($25 million) and most complicated (four directors, five producers, five cinematographers, almost 100 speaking parts, several hundred extras) project made for television up to that time, Centennial was shown in two- and three-hour installments over a period of four months. An adaptation of James Michener's best-selling novel, it told the story of the settling of the American West by looking at the founding of the fictional town of Centennial, Colorado, from the settling of the area in the late 18th century to the present. Emmy-nominated for film editing and art direction, it boasts of sterling performances from Richard Chamberlain as frontiersman Alexander McKeag, Robert Conrad as the French-Canadian trapper Pasquinel, and a surprisingly powerful performance from former football star Alex Karras as compassionate but iron-willed immigrant farmer Hans Brumbaugh. ~ Brian Gusse, All Movie Guide
- 1992
In this made-for-cable actioner a quintet of Vietnam vets team up and hop on their Harleys to round up a no-good gang of drug dealers from their tiny home town. They also take on the town's crooked politicians. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Gary Busey, Ray Sharkey, (more)
- 1973
- PG
Paul Bogart directed this ho-hum follow-up to Robert Mulligan's Summer of '42 in which the three adolescents begin their college years during the waning years of World War II. Hermie (Gary Grimes), Oscy (Jerry Houser), and Benjie (Oliver Conant) graduate from high school and head off in different directions. Benjie takes off to join the Marines and disappears from the story line, while Hermie and Oscy fret about entering college. Hermie falls for beautiful college freshman Julie (Deborah Winters), and the boys have to deal with a fractious fraternity president (William Atherton) who is the supervisor of the fraternity hazings. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Gary Grimes, Jerry Houser, (more)
- 1992
In a 1991 episode of Jake and the Fatman, Dick Van Dyke guest-starred as Dr. Mark Sloan, who couldn't seem to keep his nose out of a murder investigation. Diagnosis of Murder is the two-hour TV-movie spin-off of that episode. This time, Dr. Sloan tags along with his police-sergeant son (Barry Van Dyke, the real life son of you-know-who) on another homicide case. The victim is a powerful business magnate whose questionable ethics have given plenty of people plenty of motive for the killing. Somehow or other, Dick Van Dyke finds time between his hospital rounds and his clue-hunting to perform a brief soft shoe. Diagnosis of Murder was the pilot for a potential series, which was sold under the slightly truncated title Diagnosis Murder. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Dick Van Dyke, Mariette Hartley, (more)
It's Christmas time in L.A., and there's an employee party in progress on the 30th floor of the Nakatomi Corporation building. The revelry comes to a violent end when the partygoers are taken hostage by a group of terrorists headed by Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman), who plan to steal the 600 million dollars locked in Nakatomi's high-tech safe. In truth, Gruber and his henchmen are only pretending to be politically motivated to throw the authorities off track; also in truth, Gruber has no intention of allowing anyone to get out of the building alive. Meanwhile, New York cop John McClane (Bruce Willis) has come to L.A. to visit his estranged wife, Holly (Bonnie Bedelia), who happens to be one of the hostages. Disregarding the orders of the authorities surrounding the building, McClane, who fears nothing (except heights), takes on the villains, armed with one handgun and plenty of chutzpah. Until Die Hard came along, Bruce Willis was merely that wisecracking guy on Moonlighting. After the film's profits started rolling in, Willis found himself one of the highest-paid and most sought-after leading men in Hollywood. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bruce Willis, Alan Rickman, (more)
"Another basement, another elevator...how can the same thing happen to the same guy twice?" asks John McClane (Bruce Willis), in what is doubtless the key question of this film. A year after foiling the terrorist takeover of a high-rise office building in the first movie, McClane is waiting to pick up his wife, Holly (Bonnie Bedelia), at Dulles International Airport just outside Washington, D.C., on Christmas Eve. Scheduled to arrive the same evening is Ramon Esperanza (Franco Nero), a South American political figure who is being brought to the United States to stand trial for his role in a drug-smuggling ring. However, a group of terrorists, led by renegade American military officer Col. Stuart (William Sadler), take control of the airport, scuttling radio transmissions and placing their own men in the control tower. Stuart and his men ensure that Esperanza's plane lands safely, and then demand that Stuart and his men be given a fully-fueled 747 and free passage wherever they choose to go. Otherwise, they will guide the many circling jets waiting for landing instructions into definite crash landings, killing the many passengers on board. Not willing to stand aside as terrorists once again threaten his wife's life, the wise-cracking McClane once again leaps into action to foil Stuart's plans and bring the passenger jets safely to the ground. William Atherton, John Amos, Dennis Franz, and John Leguizamo highlight the supporting cast. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bruce Willis, Bonnie Bedelia, (more)
This made-for-TV thriller was based on Robin Cook's bestseller Outbreak, but had to be retitled to avoid conflict with a similarly plotted theatrical feature of the same name (which in fact had been conceived long after Cook's novel hit the stands in 1987). Somewhere, somehow, someone has released a rare and deadly African ebola virus into the United States, apparently for the purpose of devastating major cities with death and disease. In her efforts to track down the root cause of this virus, fearless female medical researcher Marissa Blumenthal (Nicollette Sheridan) uncovers a sinister conspiracy that may involve her own colleagues--and in so doing, all but signs her own death warrant. First aired by NBC on May 8, 1995, Robin Cook's Virus has since been rebroadcast on cable TV under the title Robin Cook's Formula for Death, thereby distancing itself even farther from Outbreak (but not from another Cook novel called Coma, vestiges of which can be discerned in the plotline of this film!) ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Nicollette Sheridan, William Devane, (more)
- 1984
- PG
Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson star as a quartet of Manhattan-based "paranormal investigators". When their government grants run out, the former three go into business as The Ghostbusters, later hiring Hudson on. Armed with electronic paraphernalia, the team is spectacularly successful, ridding The Big Apple of dozens of ghoulies, ghosties and long-legged beasties. Tight-lipped bureaucrat William Atherton regards the Ghostbusters as a bunch of charlatans, but is forced to eat his words when New York is besieged by an army of unfriendly spirits, conjured up by a long-dead Babylonian demon and "channelled" through beautiful cellist Sigourney Weaver and nerdish Rick Moranis. The climax is a glorious sendup of every Godzilla movie ever made-and we daresay it cost more than a year's worth of Japanese monster flicks combined. Who'd ever dream that the chubby, cheery Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man would turn out to be the most malevolent threat ever faced by New York City? When the script for Ghostbusters was forged by Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis, John Belushi was slated to play the Bill Murray role; Belushi's death in 1982 not only necessitated the hiring of Murray, but also an extensive rewrite. The most expensive comedy made up to 1984, Ghostbusters made money hand over fist, spawning not only a 1989 sequel but also two animated TV series (one of them partially based on an earlier live-action TV weekly, titled The Ghost Busters. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, (more)
- 1989
- R
An entertaining hybrid of Amicus-style horror anthology and gritty low-budget western, this first-time effort from writer-director Wayne Coe succeeds where many such genre-bending attempts have failed. The quartet of uneven but well-mounted stories are spun around a desert campfire by grizzled, menacing bounty hunter Morrison (a rousingly hammy James Earl Jones) and wet-behind-the-ears city slicker Farley (Brad Dourif). Morrison starts off with the tale of an Indian tribe's ritual revenge against the drunken cracker who desecrates their sacred burial ground; When Farley seems interested but unfazed, Morrison follows up with the more visceral story of a Good Samaritan who succumbs to temptation while rendering aid to a pregnant woman, leading to a particularly disgusting (though definitely original) demise. Appalled by the storyteller's lack of taste, Farley counters with a down-to-earth morality tale involving a prairie settler's young daughter who witnesses her father's horrifying act of hate, realizing that the man she trusted with her life is a very human breed of monster. Morrison acknowledges his companion's skill but offers another violent story according to his own idiom -- that of a slick gunfighter who gets his comeuppance by his own hand after winning a deadly competition. The stories feature fine acting and direction but are ultimately overshadowed by the engaging framing story and lack much of the dramatic payoff of their earlier British counterparts. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- James Earl Jones, Brad Dourif, (more)
A twenty-five year old man whose chance encounter with a mysterious stranger has found his intellect rapidly expanding finds himself at the center of a gruesome murder case in an award-winning horror thriller starring Olivia Hussey, Sean Young, Dee Wallace Stone, and Udo Kier. Alex Borden is rapidly becoming a genius, but as the power of his mind grows so does the mystery of a brutal series of murders. Now, as the killer seems to set his sights on Alex, the frightened genius must use his newfound brain power to put an end to the mayhem once and for all. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Christopher Denham
The white-run Mafia and the black-run numbers game meet head on with explosive impact in this period crime thriller. Ellsworth "Bumpy" Johnson (Laurence Fishburne) is an African-American ex-con who, after a stay in prison, returns to Harlem at the height of its renaissance before World War II. Looking for work, Bumpy becomes a lieutenant for Stephanie St. Clair (Cicely Tyson), the queen of Harlem's numbers racket. Bumpy's old friend Illinois Gordon (Chi McBride) gently expresses his concern about Bumpy's life of crime, and social worker Francine Hughes (Vanessa L. Williams), who is attracted to Bumpy (and vice versa), suggests he should be doing something more positive with his life. But Bumpy contends that the numbers game is the only business in the community that blacks are able to control themselves. The numbers game is very profitable -- enough so that mob boss "Lucky" Luciano (Andy Garcia) wants in on the action. He assigns one of his key men, "Dutch" Schultz (Tim Roth), to try to strike a deal with Stephanie, but negotiation isn't Dutch's strong suit -- he finds that murder is a far more effective tactic in taking control of a business, and Dutch is not the sort of person who's bothered by violence. Hoodlum was director Bill Duke's second film set in the milieu of the Gangster days of the 1920s and 1930s, after his breakthrough picture A Rage in Harlem. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Laurence Fishburne, Tim Roth, (more)
- 1976
Historical overview of the events and personalities involved in the creation of the United States Declaration of Independence in 1776. ~ Tana Hobart, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- William Atherton, Pat Hingle, (more)
- 1988
A spy is tracked down in this made-for-television espionage thriller. When a secret agent goes in search of his former mentor -- who has since defected -- he finds that the man wants come back to the United States. They go on the lam and try to escape the KGB and CIA, who aren't through with the master spy just yet. ~ Bernadette McCallion, All Movie Guide
- 1990
This made-for-TV thriller stars Robert Loggia as a onetime CIA agent who defected to the Soviet Union to join the KGB. Discovering he has just months to live, the agent wants to return home to America; Scott Glenn plays the U.S. agent assigned to retrieve him. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide
Dorothy Dandridge was a singer, nightclub entertainer, and actress who became the first African-American woman to receive an Academy award nomination as Best Actress (for her standout performance in 1954's Carmen Jones; she lost to Grace Kelly). However, despite her striking beauty and obvious talent, Dandridge was a sexy, glamorous black femme fatale at a time when Hollywood pin-up queens were supposed to be giggly blondes. The film industry didn't know what to do with her, and while her nightclub act was a bit too smooth for the Southern roadhouse circuit, as a black performer she wasn't allowed to stay in many of the hotels and resorts where she performed. Dandridge also had a sad personal life, filled with tragedy and romantic disappointment, and she died of an overdose of pills in 1965, at the age of 41. This made-for-cable biographical drama stars Halle Berry as Dorothy Dandridge, supported by Brent Spiner, Obba Babatunde, and Klaus Maria Brandauer. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Halle Berry, Brent Spiner, (more)
- 2003
In the first episode of a two-part story, the Justice League rushes to the scene of a prison break, orchestrated by convict John Dee, alias "Dr. Destiny." It turns out that the escape was a mere diversion, to allow Dr. Destiny enough time to steal a new ESP machine that is capable of invading and manipulating people's dreams. With this device, Destiny hopes to rule the world through mind control -- and, incidentally, destroy the League, whom he holds responsible for all the tragedy in his life. ~ All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- William Atherton, Clancy Brown, (more)
- 2003
In the conclusion of a two-part story, the vengeful Dr. Destiny continues using his ESP machine to control the dreams -- and the minds -- of others, and to destroy the Justice League. At this point, virtually all the Leaguers are enslaved in their own personal nightmares, with seemingly no way out. Only Batman and J'onn J'onnz remain free to battle the insidious Destiny -- but in order to triumph of evil, our two heroes must stay awake...stay awake...STAY AWAKE!!! ~ All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- William Atherton, Dana Delany, (more)
When a skittish crack-head disappears with a ten pack of Kush, the naïve drug dealers who fronted him the buds must scramble to raise $30,000 before word spreads to the higher ups. While their plan to kidnap the thieves' teenage brother at first seems like a stroke of genius, the scheme is complicated when the frightened adolescent unexpectedly dies. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bret Roberts, Mike Erwin, (more)
- 2002
A covetous young wife of a wealthy attorney is found murdered on an apartment terrace. The detectives interview the elderly husband, who seems to be too "dazzled" by his late wife to be of any help. After running through such suspects as a disgruntled former boyfriend and an alcoholic ex-wife, the police and the D.A.'s office finally zero in on a person whose motives, under any other circumstances, could be described as noble and selfless. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
