Harry Guardino Movies

District Attorney Sam Belden (William Shatner) is accused of murdering his wife and lover. Belden claims it was impossible, because he was 150 miles from the murder scene and he can prove it. It is up to prosecutor Bob Mathews (George Grizzard) to blow holes into Belden's alibi -- a difficult and painful assignment, since Mathews is Belden's best friend. Myrna Loy makes a rare TV appearance as the judge in the case. Indict and Convict made its ABC "Movie of the Week" premiere on January 6, 1974. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Partners in Crime was the second attempt by Richard Levinson and William Link to create a TV series featuring a female ex-judge and male ex-con: the first was 1971's The Judge and Jake Wyler. This time, Lee Grant is the former jurist turned sleuth, while Lou Antonio is the onetime prisoner turned legman. In this 90-minute pilot film, Judge Grant searches for a stolen $750,000. Partners in Crime was telecast on March 24, 1973, back-to-back with the pilot for the Jack Webb TV series Chase. Chase flew, while Partners never got off the ground. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A police detective is shot down on the pistol range. What seems like an accident is revealed to be premeditated murder. Another revelation: The killer may well be a fellow cop. Dabney Coleman is among the many beady-eyed authority types in this taped 90-minute thriller. Moving Targets was first telecast as part of The ABC Wide World Mystery anthology series on October 10, 1973. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A scientific expedition to a remote Mexican fishing community discovers unhealthy amounts of radiation in the local waters. They also find a small mutant octopus with nearly-human eyes that can crawl on land and make mewling sounds like a baby. In order to receive further funding for their project, Dr. Rick Torres travels back to the States to make a deal with circus owner Johnny Caruso, who is interested in the bizarre mutation as a carny act. They return to the camp to discover that their crew has been slaughtered by someone (or something) and the octopus specimen is missing. A young man from the village says that a local legend about a creature said to be half man and half sea serpent is true, and offers to take the scientists to the lake where it is purported to live. What they find is a seven foot tall walking octopus with amazing strength and a lust for killing, and soon the expedition realizes that the monster is now hunting them. ~ Fred Beldin, All Movie Guide

"You've got to ask yourself a question: 'do I feel lucky?' Well, do ya, punk?" Dirty Harry provoked a critical uproar in 1971 for its "fascist" message about the power of one, as it also elevated Clint Eastwood to superstar status through his most enduring screen persona. Harry Callahan (Eastwood, in a role meant for Frank Sinatra) is a sardonic, hard-working San Francisco cop who can't finish his lunch without having to foil a bank robbery with his 44 Magnum, "the most powerful handgun in the world." When hippie-esque psycho Scorpio (Andy Robinson) goes on a killing spree, Harry and new partner Chico (Reni Santoni) are assigned to hunt him down, but not before the Mayor (John Vernon) and Lt. Bressler (Harry Guardino) admonish Callahan about his heavy-handed tactics. Racing against a deadline to save a kidnap victim from suffocating to death and unbothered by the niceties of Miranda rights and search warrants, Callahan brings in Scorpio, only to see him released on technicalities. "The law's crazy," opines Harry in disgust, before taking it upon himself to ensure that Scorpio doesn't kill again. Directed in violent and efficient fashion by Don Siegel, with a propulsive score by Lalo Schifrin, Dirty Harry was the fourth Siegel-Eastwood collaboration after Coogan's Bluff (1968), Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970), and The Beguiled (1970). Critics at the time strongly objected to the heroic image of a cop's violations of a suspect's Miranda rights, forcing Siegel and Eastwood to deny that they were right-wing reactionaries. All the same, Dirty Harry proved to be highly popular and spawned four sequels: Magnum Force (1973), The Enforcer (1976), Sudden Impact (1983), and The Dead Pool (1988). ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

Lovers and Other Strangers became a "sleeper" hit, based on a play by Renée Taylor and Joseph Bologna. The story is essentially a series of vignettes and anecdotes, unified by an impending marriage. Father of the bride Hal (Gig Young) has problems with his long-suffering mistress, Cathy (Anne Jackson), who spends much of the film sitting on the toilet, crying her eyes out; Wilma (Anne Meara), the bride's sex-starved sister, can't wrest her husband, Johnny (Harry Guardino), away from the TV; and Frank (Richard S. Castellano), as the groom's father, slips comfortably into Bartlett's Familiar Quotations with his oft-repeated query "So what's the story?" Twelfth-billed Diane Keaton makes her film debut as a garrulous wedding guest. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Actor Jon Voight and director Paul Williams, who'd previously collaborated on the campus-angst comedy Out of It (69), were reunited for The Revolutionary. Hans Konigsberger adapted his novel for this filmization of the life of a contemporary revolutionary (Jon Voight), known only as "A." He begins his activities on a small scale, handing out leaflets at his university, then becomes involved with a radical organization along with like-minded Robert Duvall, Seymour Cassel, Collin Wilcox-Horne and Jennifer Salt. Groomed as a political assassin, Voight permits himself to be drafted, then while still in uniform stalks his target, an anti-labor jurist. Surprisingly easygoing in its chronicle of an idealist turning killer, The Revolutionary was shot in London, but avoids identification with any specific city or country--and, refreshingly, refuses to take sides. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Two former World War II pilots take to running an air-freight company in South Africa after the war. They get mixed up with Lee Harris (Harry Guardino), the dangerous black-market crime boss who flaunts his beautiful mistress Elana (Claudia Cardinale). Brynie (Rod Taylor) and Mike (Peter Deuel) are the former ace flyboys who get on the wrong side of Harris and his henchmen. The action starts at Al Poland's (William Marshall), a favorite watering hole where everyone has one ear on the live music as the other listens to the next sordid smuggling plan hatched by shadowy underworld types. Harris and his gun-wielding thugs mean to bring down the high-flying operation. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

It's a seemingly peaceful spring morning in New York City -- graduation day at the Police Academy -- and Police Commissioner Anthony X. Russell (Henry Fonda) is looking forward to giving a speech to the new officers. But all isn't well: Russell's been given apparently incontrovertible evidence that his oldest friend, Chief Inspector Charles Kane (James Whitmore), is shaking down a bar owner, and a black minister (Raymond St. Jacques) is claiming that his son was brutalized when he was picked up for questioning in a rape/assault case. Then Russell gets a call informing him that two first-grade detectives, Daniel Madigan (Richard Widmark) and Rocco Bonaro (Harry Guardino), allowed small-time hood Barney Benesch (Steve Ihnat) to get the drop on them, steal their guns, and escape while they were trying to pick him up for questioning at the request of Brooklyn detectives -- and Benesch is now a suspect in that earlier murder in Brooklyn. Madigan has other problems, including the fact that the commissioner -- his ex-captain -- doesn't trust him, always believing him to be a loose cannon who has taken advantage of the badge in accepting favors and cutting corners where peoples' rights were concerned. Madigan also has a beautiful, upwardly mobile wife (Inger Stevens) who loves him but can't abide all the time his job takes him away from her or crimps her socializing; and he has never fully gotten over Jonesy (Sheree North), a saloon singer he knew before he was married. Madigan and Bonaro are given 72 hours to bring in Benesch and begin beating the bushes for leads. They get help from "Midget" Castiglione (Michael Dunn), a bookmaker and an old enemy of Benesch's, and a nervous, long-haired punk named Hughie (Don Stroud). While the clock ticks away on Madigan's and Bonaro's careers, the commissioner must decide how to deal with Kane, whose father -- also a police officer -- was like his own, and he must also fathom how a four-star chief could be involved with anything as tawdry as pressuring a tavern owner. Russell genuinely believes that there must be "one standard, one rule" for any member of the department, but in the course of this one weekend, he finds this notion shattered by what he discovers about Madigan, King, and himself. Meanwhile, Benesch is still on the loose, acting like a complete psycho and a threat to anyone who crosses his path. Russell's and Madigan's paths finally cross personally, as the detective proves -- and the commissioner discovers -- just how good a cop he is. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

In this adventure, a commercial plane crashes in a remote South American jungle. All but one of the passengers survive. Unfortunately, he was the sheriff in charge of taking a dangerous criminal to the executioner. During the excitement of the crash, the prisoner killed the lawman. Among the other survivors is a famous singer, a washed-up funnyman, a mentally ill teacher, and a writer looking for his sister who married a missionary and is now living in the jungle. Amazingly, she is rumored to live fairly close to the crash sight. The survivors manage to make it to the isolated village where she resides. There the writer learns that his sister's husband has gone insane and that she is dead. The megalomaniacal missionary now believes himself king of the natives and is preparing the author and a few others to become human sacrifices when a neighboring tribe intervenes and saves them. The amiable natives then take the survivors back to the wreckage where navy rescue helicopters are preparing to land. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In the eighth volume in a collection culled from the 1963-1965 science fiction anthology television series, a bizarre experiment causes a psychiatrist and his unbalanced patient to swap identities. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide

Ivan Tors, the man who made dolphins and grizzlies lovable with Flipper and Gentle Ben respectively, tries to make the magic happen for a different species in Rhino! Robert Culp and Harry Guardino play hunters without bullets, armed only with tranquilizer guns to defend themselves from African wildlife. Culp and Guardino's mission is to locate the rare white Rhino, then herd them out of harm's way to save them from extinction. Complications ensue when zoologist Culp is tricked by the avaricious Guardino, who really wants the rhinos for their horns and pelts. Filmed on location in South Africa. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide