Mark Goddard Movies

This $90 million science fiction adventure is adapted from the television series, created by Irwin Allen, which originally ran on CBS from 1965 to 1968. The original series employed a Swiss Family Robinson in outer space premise; sent to colonize a planet in the Alpha Centauri system, the Robinson family was thrown off course by a stowaway and was left wandering from planet to planet (and changing along the way from a black-and-white series to a color series). The 1998 remake is set in the year 2058, when the United Global Space Force sends Professor John Robinson (William Hurt) and family -- wife Maureen (Mimi Rogers), daughter Judy (Heather Graham), teen Penny (Lacey Chabert), and 10-year-old Will (Jack Johnson) -- on a promotional space jaunt to herald the "offshore" future for the human race (now saddled with eco problems on Earth). Major Don West (Matt LeBlanc), more accustomed to fighting menacing Global Sedition forces, is reluctant to sign on as the Jupiter II pilot but quickly changes his mind after he gets a good look at Judy in her fetish-fashioned space togs. Space spy Dr. Smith (Gary Oldman), hired to sabotage the mission, programs in problems but winds up aboard the craft unconscious. Once awake, he summons the Robinsons from suspended animation, and they save the ship just in time, passing through hyperspace to arrive near an Earth ship where they encounter space-pet Blawp and hordes of teethy spiders. A spider bite makes the villainous Smith mutate, one of some 750 special effects, from animatronics (Jim Henson Creature Shop) to CGI, and other adventures await throughout the galaxy. Cameos include actors from the original series, including June Lockhart and Robot Voice Dick Tufeld. In a curious coincidence, the TV series took place in the future of 1997, the year this movie was produced. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide

In this melodrama, a fourteen-year-old son tries to keep his father, who is suffering a mid-life crisis, just lost his job and his wife, from killing himself. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

This lively film was made to cash in on the roller skating craze that swept Southern California in the late '70s. The story centers upon a poor-little-rich-girl runaway who heads for the Venice boardwalk to join the other hipsters on wheels. She and her new friends then team up to keep an avaricious developer from razing the local roller rink and putting a shopping mall in its stead. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Much to his dismay, Quincy (Jack Klugman) finds himself at odds with his friend and mentor Dr. Herbert Stone (Barry Sullivan) at a coroner's inquest. At stake is a huge insurance settlement, which will be decided only after the identity of a charred corpse is firmly established. Called in as an expert witness, Dr. Stone insists that the dead man is indeed a wealthy businessman, who has apparently died in a fire. But Quincy is unconvinced that the businessman was the victim, or even that he's actually dead--and worse, he suspects that Stone has "sold out" to the dead man's greedy family. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Made for television, Death Squad focuses on a group of renegade police responsible for the murder of shady crooks--especially the ones who have avoided conviction on small technicalities. The commissioner decides to hire an ex-cop to bring the vigilantes to justice. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide

When an experiment in atomization goes awry, John (Guy Williams) is thrust into a bizarre antimatter world, festooned with orange grass and polka dot leaves--and the home of John's own evil lookalike. While his villainous doppelganger takes his place at the Robinson camp, the "real" John is closely guarded by "Drun", the nasty antimatter twin of Don West (Mark Goddard), and by an evil clone of the Robot. It is up to the genuine Robot, with the help of Will (Billy Mumy) and the hindrance of Dr. Smith (Jonathan Harris), to set things right. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Season three of Lost in Space finds the Space Family Robinson and company escaping from the planet they had been marooned on throughout season two. Their vessel, "Jupiter II," is now able to hop from planet to planet, galaxy to galaxy, with the addition of a hitherto unseen space pod in which the travelers are able to shuttle back and forth. Alas, they are no closer to returning to their own world than they had been in previous seasons. The closest the travelers come to Mother Earth is in the episode "A Visit to a Hostile Planet," in which the Jupiter II passes through a time warp and emerges in 1947, where it is promptly assumed to be an alien UFO! By now, the series' nominal stars -- Guy Williams as Professor John Robinson, June Lockhart as Maureen Robinson, Mark Goddard as pilot Don West -- had been all but relegated to the background by permanent "special guest star" Jonathan Harris in the role of shifty, cowardly space stowaway Dr. Zachary Smith. Most of the episodes deal with the interplay between Dr. Smith and young Will Robinson (Bill Mumy), who innocently refuses to see any bad in the old reprobate, and between Smith and the Jupiter II's talking robot, who trades one-liners and insults like an intergallactic vaudeville team. With all this going on, the two other female cast members, Marta Kristen and Angela Cartwright as Judy and Penny Robinson, barely get any screen time at all. As was the case in season two, the third and final season of Lost in Space boasts an impressive array of guest stars, all of whom enter into the spirit of things with ripe, Armour Star Ham performances. Worth noting this season are future Hill Street Blues stars Daniel J. Travanti as the punkish leader of an outer-space motorcyle gang in "Collision of the Planets"; and best of all, Stanley Adams as a disgruntled giant carrot in the unforgettable episode "The Great Vegetable Rebellion." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The sequel to 1963's Misadventures of Merlin Jones finds young Mr. Jones (Tommy Kirk) still in college and still going out with Jennifer (Annette Funicello). In this movie, he must help football players pass their tests and invent a flying machine win a contest for the school. Funicello and the Beach Boys sing the title song. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide

This soapy melodrama based on the novel by John O'Hara earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Costume Design. Suzanne Pleshette stars as Grace Caldwell, a newspaper heiress and nymphomaniac whose numerous dalliances threaten to destroy her wealthy Pennsylvania family's image. Taken on a vacation to the Bahamas by her widowed mother Emily (Carmen Mathews), Grace can't resist a tryst with a waiter, which causes Emily a fatal heart attack. Back home, Grace meets a new beau, Sidney Tate (Bradford Dillman) at a Christmas party. The gentlemanly Sidney wins Grace's heart and she marries him, promising to end her sexually wild ways. A few years later, however, Grace sleeps with a construction worker and the resulting scandal when her lover dies in a drunken car wreck leads Sidney to believe that Grace is also having an affair with an old friend, Jack Hollister (Peter Graves). ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

As originally conceived by executive producer Irwin Allen, the weekly, 60-minute Lost in Space was to have been a relatively serious sci-fi opus called The Space Family Robinson. Set in 1997, the series focused on astrophysicist Dr. John Robinson (Guy Williams), his wife, Maureen (June Lockhart); and their children, Judy (Marta Kristen), Will (Bill Mumy), and Penny (Angela Cartwright), all of whom were blasted into space on the "Jupiter II." Placed in suspended animation, the family was on a mission to colonize a planet in the Alpha Centauri star system four light years from Earth. But the Jupiter II's computer malfunctioned, the ship was thrown way off course, and the family woke up several years ahead of schedule to find themselves lost in space. In the series pilot, the main characters were joined by Jupiter II's pilot, Don West (Mark Goddard) -- and no one else. CBS was impressed by Space Family Robinson, but the network insisted upon a title change and also demanded that a villain be added to the proceedings. Thus the project was re-christened Lost in Space, and the pilot episode was reshot so the Jupiter II's malfunction was due to the treachery of an enemy spy named Dr. Zachary Smith (Jonathan Harris), who had sabotaged a robot aboard the ship and programmed it to kill the Robinsons and abort the mission. Unfortunately for Dr. Smith, he was accidentally trapped in the Jupiter II and hurtled into space along with the Robinsons, hence the new title of the pilot show, "The Reluctant Stowaway" (portions of the original pilot, which was top-heavy with expensive special effects, were edited into the series' first five episodes). It had been planned that both Dr. Smith and the killer robot would be eliminated from the series after its inaugural five-episode story arc, but CBS saw potential in both characters and insisted that they be retained.

The network's decision proved to be a brilliant one in terms of the series' ratings: gradually morphing from a cold-hearted assassin to a supercilious, cowardly buffoon, Dr. Smith was easily the show's most popular character -- next to the now-benign robot, who turned out to be a veritable cornucopia of useful technical information and also came in handy when warning the Robinson family of impending danger. Between the Lost in Space pilot and the series proper, it had also been decided to drop the original intention of serializing the episodes, though each installment ended with a coming-attractions "cliffhanger." Finally, what started out as a straightforward, straight-faced endeavor gradually evolved (or, in the minds of less enchanted viewers, devolved) into a semi-humorous exercise in Batman-style camp, replete with such colorful guest villains as a scurvy space pirate (with a robotic parrot), a Brandoesque space-cruising cycle bum, and even a huge talking carrot! The first season, filmed in black-and-white, found the Robinsons stranded on an uncharted planet. The series switched to color for the second season, in which the "Jupiter II" was repaired and the space travelers blasted off -- only to be marooned on another mysterious planet. Season three did a more efficient job of living up to the series' title, as the Jupiter II hopped from planet to planet, galaxy to galaxy, though no closer to "home" than before. The 83 episodes of Lost in Space have flourished in syndication and on such cable-TV services as The Sci-Fi Channel ever since the series' initial CBS run, which lasted from 1965 to 1968. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Using the name "Douglas Beckett", Kimble (David Janssen) is hired as a chauffeur by the wealthy Glenn family. Rebellious Joanne Glenn (Katherine Crawford) is in love with impoverished pool boy Dan Holt (Mark Goddard), a romance her imperious mother Madge (Joan Tompkins) does everything in her power to break up. Discovering Kimble's true identity, Dan blackmails the fugitive into helping him woo Joanne without arousing the family's suspicions. Watch for a young Peter Duel (Alias Smith and Jones) as a handsome socialite. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide