Kenneth Griffith Movies

A proud Welsh community finds their civic pride and sense of community threatened by a team of surveyors in this charmingly eccentric comedy. Reginald Anson (Hugh Grant) and George Garrard (Ian McNeice) are a pair of British cartographers with Her Majesty's Ordnance Survey Office, who arrive in the small Welsh town of Ffynnon Garw, where, thanks to a linguistic quirk stemming from the British domination of Wales, many of the citizens in this town lack proper surnames and instead are identified by occupations or personal characteristics, such as Ivor the Grocer (Robert Blythe) or Johnny Shellshocked (Ian Hart). The town's greatest pride and most prominent landmark is a mountain (named, like the town, Ffynnon Garw), which they claim is the first mountain in Wales, and which helped protect the village from any number of Romans, Saxons, Norsemen, and other foreign invaders over the centuries. However, Reginald and George have some bad news for the townsfolk: under British law, a land mass must be at least 1,000 feet tall to qualify as a mountain, and according to their measurements, Ffynnon Garw comes in at only 930 feet, making it just a big hill. The citizens are shocked, insulted, and angry, and after much debate and careful measuring, Anson and Garrard conclude that they did shortchange Ffynnon Garw, but the most generous estimate still puts it at only 984 feet. Convinced that the town's honor and reputation is at stake thanks to these meddling Englishmen, the good people of Ffynnon Garw hatch a plan by which they will add fifteen feet to their "hill;" meanwhile, the easily befuddled Anson finds himself falling under the romantic spell of a beautiful but firm-willed local woman, Betty of Cardiff (Tara Fitzgerald). Believe it or not, this seemingly fanciful comedy was actually based on a true story. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Originally aired as a British mini-series, Shaka Zulu follows the rise of Shaka (Henry Cele) to the king of the Zulus during the early 19th century when the British were beginning to gain control of Africa. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Movie Guide

Released in the U.S. under the title The Final Option, this action thriller was produced and set in Great Britain. The British Special Air Services, an anti-terrorist group, is pitted against an organization of international terrorists who plan to take over the U.S. Embassy in London and hold everyone hostage. Captain Skellen (Louis Collins), a member of the Special Air Services, assumes a false identity in order to infiltrate the terrorists, who are rogue members of the anti-nuclear-weapons movement -- and uncover their plans. Judy Davis appears as Frankie, a key member of the anti-nuclear group. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide

In recognition of the 20th anniversary of the infamous Berlin Wall, CBS offered the made-for-TV drama Berlin Tunnel 21. Richard Thomas stars as Sandy Mueller, a former US army officer. Shortly after the erection of the Wall, Mueller masterminds a plan to unite five West Germans with their Eastern-sector loved ones. Horst Buchholtz costars as Emerich Weber, a structural engineer who oversees the construction of an underground tunnel. This true story had previously been dramatized in the 1962 TV special The Tunnel. Also starring Jose Ferrer, the location-filmed Berlin Tunnel 21 was first broadcast March 25, 1981. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The plot of this of this adaptation of the Daniel Carney's novel, sprinkled throughout a series of extended Sam Peckinpah-inspired action sequences, deals with a collection of mercenary toughguys -- Colonel Allen Faulkner (Richard Burton), Lieutenant Shawn Fynn (Roger Moore), Rafer Janders (Richard Harris), Pieter Coetzee (Hardy Kruger) -- who are hired to parachute into the African bush country and abscond with deposed African president Julius Limbani (Winston Ntshona) and reinstall him as a reigning monarch of an African country, to satisfy British mercantile interests. The action sequences were successful enough to spawn a sequel -- appropriately titled Wild Geese II. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

In 1974, flanked by such filmic monuments to paranoia and corruption as Chinatown and The Parallax View, Elliott Gould and Donald Sutherland tried to re-create the screwball nonchalance of their earlier M*A*S*H performances in this lightweight spy spoof, directed by Irvin Kershner. Gould and Sutherland play two CIA agents -- Griff and Bruland -- who are marked for death by their own agency after botching the defection of a Russian ballet dancer (Michael Petrovich). As they repeatedly mess up their assignments and wriggle out of tight corners, they not only find themselves pursued by the CIA, but also by the KGB, the Chinese Communists, and a terrorist group that wants to destroy the CIA. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

This dark drama unfolds in an unnamed community outside of London, where a beleaguered and grief-stricken tavern owner named Jim Radford (James Booth copes with the rape and murder of his young daughter. The remainder of his family shares his distress, and in time, it begins to rip the clan apart. When the young man who is being tried for the crime is let off thanks to paltry connecting evidence, Jim grows desperate and teams up a buddy of his named Harry (Ray Barrett) whose daughter suffered from a like fate - presumably, though not definitively, at the hands of the same killer. The two hone in on the young man who they believe is responsible, kidnap him and torture him in a number of ways. Unfortunately, the youth will not talk and ends up dead. Moreover, in time it becomes apparent that this might not have been the correct individual. ~ Iotis Erlewine, All Movie Guide

The Assassination Bureau is loosely based on a turn-of-the-century yarn written by Jack London. Nellie Bly-style girl reporter Sonya Winter (Diana Rigg) tries to get the goods on shady businessman Ivan Dragomiloff (Oliver Reed). Ivan is in charge of a wide-reaching organization which, for a price, assassinates those who "need killing." As a challenge, Sonya offers to pay Ivan a huge sum if he'll instruct his minions to assassinate him; Ivan agrees, hoping that it will put a little kick in his work. Despite his profession, Ivan isn't the villain of the piece; that honor goes to evil nobleman Lord Bostwick (Telly Savalas), whose perfidy leads Sonya into joining forces with the Assassination Bureau. A wild climactic chase in a zeppelin caps this tongue-in-cheek escapade. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

First broadcast in England on January 21, 1968, "The Girl Who Was Death" was written by Terence Feely, from an idea by David Tomblin, producer of The Prisoner and director of this episode. Again mysteriously transported from The Village, Number Six finds himself in an isolated lighthouse with a girl named Sonia (Justine Lord) who by some fluke of fate has apparently caused the deaths of at least three men. Referring to herself as "Death", Sonia insists that she and Number Six are made for each other, inasmuch as he has survived so many previous attempts on his life. As the story progresses, it becomes painfully obvious that the so-called lighthouse is actually a nuclear missile, designed by Sonia's demented father (Kenneth Griffith) to destroy London. Originally intended as a two-part episode, "The Girl Who Was Death" was diminished to a single installment because of star Patrick McGoohan's commitment to the theatrical feature Ice Station Zebra; in fact, McGoohan is absent from much of the proceedings, requiring the producers to use doubles and stock shots for certain linking scenes. The episode made its American TV debut on September 7, 1968. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The year is 1183. Like many a modern-day politician, Britain's King Henry II (Peter O'Toole) finds it occasionally useful to take his wife out of mothballs and parade her before the public. Henry's Queen Eleanor (Katharine Hepburn), long exiled to a faraway castle, is "invited" to join Henry and their three sons for a family reunion. In this way, Henry hopes to maintain a stronghold on his Empire and to prevent the balance of power from shifting to Eleanor or to one of his sons: Richard the Lion-Hearted (Anthony Hopkins in his movie debut), Prince Geoffrey (John Castle), or Prince John (Nigel Terry). Also on hand for the get-together is Henry's mistress Princess Alais (Jane Merrow) -- who covets the King's influence -- and the Princess' brother, King Philip of France (Timothy Dalton). Despite Henry's efforts to keep his wife and offspring at arms' length (and away from the throne), Eleanor successfully reunites the brood, assuring that her power will not only be restored, but will last long after her death. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The Whisperers stars Dame Edith Evans as a lonely old woman whose imagination is getting the better of her sanity. She insists that she hears "whisperers" plotting and planning against her at all times; she also believes that these imaginary entities are spying on her. So suspicious is Ms. Evans of her nonexistent whisperers that she fails to notice the very real predators around her. She is robbed of her life's savings by a nasty "friend" (Avis Brunnage), and is exploited by her estranged con-artist husband (Eric Portman) and her no-good son (Ronald Fraser) Even when she catches on to the duplicity of others, Ms. Evans is so far gone with her "whisperers" that the authorities refuse to believe her. Seedy and sordid though it may be, The Whisperers won Edith Evans the Best Actress award from the New York Critics' Circle. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Koroshi combined the final two episodes of the Patrick McGoohan series Secret Agent (aka Danger Man), "Koroshi" and "Shindo Shiba," into one feature-length film that was released theatrically into overseas markets. They were also the only two episodes of the series filmed in color, and even the original "Koroshi" episode had slightly different credits from the rest of the series and featured two credited directors: Michael Truman and Peter Yates. John Drake (McGoohan) arrives in Tokyo to investigate the death of a British agent (Yoko Tani). He doesn't for a moment believe that the death was from natural causes, and follows up on the origins of a distinctive amulet photographed near the body. He finds that the image is the emblem of an ancient Japanese murder cult that, as far as anyone knew, was wiped out hundreds of years earlier. Following the trail, he discover a young woman now living in the dead agent's home; she becomes his link to Mr. Sanders (Ronald Howard), who displays a morbid fixation on what he calls "the poetry of death," as depicted in Kabuki theater. The cult is, in turn, connected to events on the remote island of Shindo Shiba ("Murdered Island"), whose inhabitants have been driven off by a series of unexplained deaths. Drake crosses paths with an unexpected ally who nearly gets him killed, and is forced to mount a direct assault on the stronghold from an unexpected quarter. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide