Diana Hale Movies

Horror journeyman Larry Cohen, writer and director of numerous quirky horror projects, made his first foray into the genre with this low-budget cult favorite about a murderous mutant baby on a suburban rampage. The story opens with a delivery-room massacre as the newborn child of Frank and Lenore Davies (John P. Ryan and Sharon Farrell) answers the doctor's slap by tearing him to pieces -- along with a few other medical personnel -- before fleeing the hospital for whereabouts unknown. The subsequent hunt for the killer baby creates a rift between Frank, who wants the child destroyed, and Lenore, whose maternal instincts convince her that her child is not deliberately homicidal but merely frightened and defending itself. The baby's bloody rampage continues with several murders (including the creepy scene in which the terrible tyke savages the neighborhood milkman), until it is cornered by Frank and a police task-force. At the crucial moment, Frank has a sudden change of heart and tries to defend the infant from the police. Despite painfully low production values that render the monster scenes a bit silly (Rick Baker's creepy-looking but inarticulate baby model was simply pulled along on a string), Cohen's concept shines through, presenting a skewed but sincere interpretation of family values that could only be pulled off in the horror genre (see also Wes Craven's The Hills Have Eyes for another example). The script makes passing suggestions that the mutation was a result of an inadequately tested fertility drug, a concept explored more fully in the sequel It Lives Again and quite extensively in the third installment, Island of the Alive. ~ Cavett Binion, Rovi

This sequel to 1943's My Friend Flicka stars Roddy McDowell, recreating his role in the earlier film. The son of a horse rancher (Preston S. Foster), McDowell takes it upon himself to train Thunderhead, a white colt with the same rebellious streak that distinguished its mother (Flicka). Thunderhead helps McDowell round up several horses that had been stolen from his father, and also attracts the attention of a racing aficionado (Ralph Sanford). Once fully grown, Thunderhead indicates that he'd be happier running wild, so McDowell tearfully but proudly gives the horse his freedom. Like My Friend Flicka, Thunderhead, Son of Flicka was based on a novel by Mary o'Hara. The original film would engender one more sequel, Green Grass of Wyoming (48), and later would inspire a brief TV series. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

An utterly enchanting Technicolor filmization of Mary O'Hara's novel, My Friend Flicka is the story of a beautiful colt and the boy (Roddy McDowell) who loves her. The boy's rancher father (Preston S. Foster) isn't keen on the horse that his son chooses to train: Flicka, the offspring of a tempestuous mare that has shown traces of madness. The training of Flicka is an arduous process for both boy and horse, and there are times that it appears that father was right. But by applying both love and perseverance, the boy raises the colt into a magnificent specimen. My Friend Flicka was filmed in the Rocky Mountains on a near-epic scale by director Harold Schuster and cinematographer Dewey Wrigley. The film was popular enough to spawn two theatrical sequels and a 1956 weekly TV series. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi