Patricia Huston Movies
Blonde, fresh-faced supporting actress Patricia Huston never made it to stardom, but still enjoyed a busy career in feature films and television. Her film credits include Hot Shots (1956) and Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (1965). On television, she guest starred on series ranging from Westerns (Wells Fargo) and mysteries (Columbo) to medical dramas (Dr. Kildare) and sitcoms (Cheers). ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
An ex-cop trying to stay away from trouble finds it literally crashing into his backyard in this crime thriller. Dave Robicheaux (Alec Baldwin) is a former New Orleans police detective who, after kicking an addiction to alcohol and confronting some serious problems with his partners, has left law enforcement behind to run a bait shop in a small Louisiana bayou town. One day, Dave and his wife Annie (Kelly Lynch) see a small plane plummet from the sky and crash into the swamp; the pilot dies, but Dave is able to rescue a young Hispanic girl from the wreckage. Dave and Annie take the child in, but as they try to find out more about the plane crash and who the little girl might be, they discover that she's actually an illegal alien from Salvador and that the pilot was involved with a local drug ring. Dave, constitutionally unable to let a mystery go unsolved, begins asking enough questions and making enough trouble that he finds himself on the bad side of his old High School friend Bubba Rocque (Eric Roberts). Bubba is a local crime boss who controls the area's drug traffic, keeps a boxing ring in his front yard, and has a wife Claudette (Teri Hatcher) who enjoys greeting her guests naked. Dave's inquiries eventually become too much for Bubba and his henchmen, and in the midst of a violent raid on their home, Annie is killed. Dave becomes obsessed with bringing Bubba and his men to justice and gets some unexpected help from Robin Gaddis (Mary Stuart Masterson), an exotic dancer with a heart of gold. While it was originally scheduled for release in 1994, Heaven's Prisoners didn't arrive on theater screens until two years later, by which time Teri Hatcher had risen to stardom on the TV series Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Alec Baldwin, Kelly Lynch, (more)
- 1992
This is one of the many made for TV movies revolving around the popular disheveled character created by Peter Falk - Lieutenant Columbo, of Homicide. In this one, the Lieutenant is called upon to use his expertise to help out the family when his nephew's new bride is kidnapped on their wedding night. ~ Tana Hobart, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Peter Falk, Joanna Going, (more)
- 1991
Jerry Orbach makes a return appearance as Boston private eye Harry McGraw. Deep in Kentucky Horse Country, Harry investigates the murder of horse owner Randolph Sterling (Kevin McCarthy), who had been embroiled in a feud with his neighbor Lamar Morgan (Gregory Walcott) concerning a stud fee and two unexpected foals sired by one of Sterling's thoroughbreds. Real-life attorney Melvin M. Belli is appropriately cast as a judge. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1985
In Cheers' fourth-season opener, Frasier Crane (Kelsey Grammer) is still smarting from the humiliation of being deserted by his fiancée Diane Chambers (Shelley Long) in Europe. Returning to Cheers, Frasier begs Sam Malone (Ted Danson) not to try to contact Diane, who after several months of debauchery on the continent is now paying penance in a Boston convent. On another front, Sam hires a new bartender to replace the late and beloved Coach: country bumpkin Woody Boyd (Woody Harrelson, in his first series appearance), Coach's former pen pal. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1964
Sleazy movie producer Tony Fry (Richard Carlson) plans to raise money for his next picture by threatening to reveal the sordid past of Joanne Pennington (Constance Towers), the wife of millionaire J.J. Pennington (Paul Stewart). What Tony doesn't know is that his fiancee Kathy (Mimsy Farmer) is actually the daughter of a man whose career he ruined years earlier, and who hopes to use Tony's extortion scheme to destroy him. But things don't quite work out that way, and by the episode's halfway point Perry Mason (Raymond Burr) is defending Kathy on a charge of bludgeoning Tony to death with a film-award trophy (no, it isn't an Oscar; evidently the Motion Picture Academy was not about to allow its sacred statuette to be used as a murder weapon!) ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1962
In this prison drama, a remake of Caged, House of Women (1950), a pregnant woman is wrongly convicted of armed robbery. She is sentenced to five years in prison. After her child is born, the inmate is allowed to keep it. She then has three years to earn parole. If she does not, the babe will be put up for adoption. When the prison warden finds himself attracted to the woman, he makes her his personal maid. Time passes and he falls in love with her resulting in better treatment for the other prisoners. Three years pass and the woman's parole seems assured until the sadistic warden, not wanting to lose the woman he loves, decrees that she will not be paroled and that all imprisoned mothers will lose custody of their children. This harsh action spawns a bloody revolt amongst the inmates. It is the brave woman that quells the uprising. Later media coverage of the event results in her release. The warden is fired. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Shirley Knight, Andrew Duggan, (more)
Bank teller Lee Remick is accosted in her garage one dark night by asthmatic psycho Ross Martin. He forces her to go through with an elaborate robbery scheme, threatening to kill Lee's teen-aged sister Stefanie Powers if the police are summoned. FBI agent Glenn Ford suspects that something is amiss and advises Lee to play along with Martin, hoping in this way to capture this dangerous criminal with a minimum of bloodshed. Unfortunately, Martin is as clever as he is deadly, always managing to stay one step ahead of Ford. The now-famous climax of Experiment in Terror finds the feds closing in on Martin during a crowded night baseball game at San Francisco's Candlestick Park. Experiment in Terror is based on the Gordons' novel Operation Terror. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Glenn Ford, Lee Remick, (more)
- 1962
'Tis murder most foul when actor Franz Lachman (Jeff Morrow), starring in a stage production of Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet", is stabbed to death during Romeo's duel with Paris. There needs no ghost come from the grave to tell you that the police charge Steve Brock (Rex Reason), the actor playing Paris, with murder. In his efforts to save the star-cross'd Brock from the gas chamber, Perry Mason (Raymond Burr) concludes that "the play's the thing," wherein he'll catch the conscience of the real murderer. Thus, Perry moves the trial to the scene of the crime--then asks the "Romeo and Juliet" troupe to re-enact the events leading up to the moment that Lachman shuffled off his mortal coil. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1960
Mayor Henderson (Arthur Franz) is up for an appointment to the state crime commission, but he is danger of being sabotaged by his overambitious wife Mona (Patricia Huston), who has been purloining city plans and passing them along to crooked real estate agent Tom Stratton (Edward Platt). Now Stratton is blackmailing Mona, hoping to enrich himself at Henderson's expense. When Mona is murdered, however, Lt. Tragg (Ray Collins) bypasses both Henderson and Stratton and arrests Susan Connolly (played by future Oscar winner Louise Fletcher) for the crime. Thank heaven that Perry Mason (Raymond Burr) is on hand to expose the real killer. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1959
This routine wartime drama of bravery and misunderstanding stars (Richard Bakalyan) as Charlie, a soldier who suffers the scorn of his paratroop unit because he accidentally kills one of their own men. The setting is World War II in North Africa, Sicily, and Italy. There seems to be no clear way to square himself with his own conscience, or to right the fatal mistake he made, and so Charlie has to somehow live with the retribution and the tensions his act causes among the other paratroopers. But since everyone is in the same combat situation, he might one day get a chance to redeem himself. Director William Witney made his reputation in action films like this one. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Richard Bakalyan, Ken Lynch, (more)
- 1958
Dorothy Provine gives her all to the title role in The Bonnie Parker Story. Billed in the picture's ad campaign as "the cigar-smoking she-devil of the thirties", the tommy-gun wielding Bonnie cuts quite a swath across the South after her husband (Richard Bakalyan) is sent to jail for life . Teaming up with a young bucko named Guy--not Clyde!--Barrow (Jack Hogan), Bonnie robs banks, kills people, and broods about the pointlessness of her existence. Put as charitably as possible, this isn't Bonnie and Clyde, not by a long shot. The Bonnie Parker Story was originally released on a double bill with Machine Gun Kelly. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Dorothy Provine, Jack Hogan, (more)
