Roberta Haynes Movies

Originally shot in 3-D, Gun Fury opens with wealthy rancher Ben Warren (Rock Hudson) and his fiancée Jennifer Ballard (Donna Reed) aboard a stagecoach bound for California. Having recently fought in the Civil War, Ben is looking forward to returning to a peaceful life with his soon-to-be wife. Unfortunately, the coach is set upon by embittered ex-Confederate soldier Frank Slayton Philip Carey) and his gang. In the ensuing conflict, Ben is shot and left for dead, while Jennifer is kidnapped by Slayton, who claims her for his own interests. Ben recovers from his wounds and sets off to find Jennifer, trying to enlist the aid of others in his fight against Slayton. Most are unwilling to help, a fact which impresses upon Ben the responsibility every man must have in protecting society from people like Slayton. Eventually he succeeds in putting together a team of his own -- including a former member of Slayton's gang and a Native American with a grudge against the crooks -- and sets off for the border to bring about justice. ~ Craig Butler, Rovi

Though Humphrey Bogart is the official star of Knock on Any Door, the film is essentially a showcase for Columbia's newest young male discovery John Derek. The first production of Bogart's Santana company, the film casts Bogart as attorney Andrew Morton. A product of the slums, Morton is persuaded to take the case of underprivileged teenager Nick Romano (Derek), who has been arrested on a murder charge. Through flashbacks, Morton demonstrates that Romano is more a victim of society than a natural-born killer. Though this defense strategy does not have the desired result on the jury thanks to the badgering of DA Kernan (George Macready), Morton does manage to arouse sympathy for the plight of those trapped by birth and circumstance in a dead-end existence. As Nick Romano, John Derek would never be better, nor would ever again play a character who struck so responsive a chord with the audience. Nick's oft-repeated credo--"Live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse"--became the clarion call for a generation of disenfranchised youth. Director Nicholas Ray would later expand on themes touched upon in Knock on a Any Door in his juvenile delinquent "chef d'oeuvre" Rebel without a Cause. Viewers are advised to watch for future TV personalities Cara Williams and Si Melton in uncredited minor roles. Knock on Any Door spawned a belated sequel in 1960, Let No Man Write My Epitaph. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Based on Donald E. Westlake's novel The Hunter, John Boorman's gangster film hauntingly merges a generic revenge story with a European art cinema sensibility. In Alcatraz to divvy up the spoils from a robbery, thief Walker (Lee Marvin) is instead shot point blank by his double-crossing friend Mal Reese (John Vernon) and left to die while Reese takes off with Walker's wife Lynne (Sharon Acker) and his $93,000. Resurrected, the stone-faced Walker returns to Los Angeles a couple of years later to seek revenge on Mal with the help of the enigmatic Yost (Keenan Wynn) and Lynne's sister Chris (Angie Dickinson). Wanting little but his cash, Walker implacably penetrates Mal's lair and the hierarchy of the shady "Organization," registering no emotion about the string of murders left in his wake, as his thoughts repeatedly return to the past that brought him there. In his first American feature, Boorman transforms a stripped-down revenge plot into a surreal meditation on the gangster's spiritual demise, using flashbacks and startling shifts in setting to interweave Walker's fractured memories with his extraordinarily photographed odyssey through L.A. Marvin's chillingly stoic presence further hints at the ambiguities in Chris's observation that Walker "died at Alcatraz, all right." Brutal in the violence that it shows and suggests, Point Blank opened in the U.S. in the same period as Bonnie and Clyde, becoming one more testament to the genre-bending and ground-breaking possibilities of the nascent Hollywood New Wave. Although Point Blank was mostly overlooked in 1967, Boorman's visual adventurousness, and Marvin's amoral and apathetic antihero, have since made Point Blank seem one of the key films of the mid-late '60s, a precursor to revisionist experimentations from Martin Scorsese to Quentin Tarantino. It was remade as the 1999 Mel Gibson vehicle Payback. ~ Lucia Bozzola, Rovi

Gary Cooper stars as an island drifter who falls in love with a lovely Polynesian girl (Roberta Haynes) and defies a dominating bible-toting preacher who's out to dominate all island life. With Cooper as an example, the natives gain courage and are able to overcome the rule of the despot orator. ~ Rovi

The F.B.I. inagurates its ninth season (originally telecast in a 7:30PM Sunday timeslot, one half-hour earlier than its traditional 8 PM berth) with an all-points-bulletin manhunt for three clever ex-cons. The crooks have pulled off a $4,000,000 heist at an armored car firm, leaving Inspector Erskine (Efrem Zimbalist Jr.) eating their dust. The only clues Erskine has to work on are eyewitness accounts of a blue pickup truck (a Ford, of course!) and a tiny sample of type-B blood. This episode marks the first appearance of Shelly Novack as Special FBI agent Chris Daniels. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Sotiris (George Linjeris) is the grandson of Orsetta (Katina Paxinou), the wealthy matriarch of a Greek family. As she lingers near death, Sotiris is repulsed by the ghoulish death watch prompted by greed for the old woman's fortune. He takes off for an unknown country in the Middle East where he joins a bunch of hash smoking hippies. Although no one is actually seen smoking anything, the hippies spend their days in burned out splendor. This is the directorial debut for John Crowther, son of former critic turned studio executive Bosley Crowther. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

In this romantic comedy, a grocery store employee endeavors to attract the attention of a wealthy playboy by pretending to be a high society girl. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Set in the Cuba of 1933, We Were Strangers stars John Garfield as revolutionary-minded Tony Fenner. A member of an underground movement dedicated to toppling the despotic Machado regime, Tony supervises the booby-trapping of a cemetery where several top Cuban officials are planning to converge for a state funeral. Also involved in the assassination scheme is China Valdes (Jennifer Jones), whose brother had been executed by the government. As often happens in a John Huston film, the best-laid schemes of the protagonists go tragically awry. Based on a portion of Robert Sylvester's novel Rough Sketch, We Were Strangers was scripted by frequent Huston collaborator Peter Viertel. The film has the curious distinction of being lambasted by both the left-wing and right-wing critics in the U.S. Audiences were likewise underwhelmed, compelling Columbia Pictures to withdraw the film from distribution early on. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi