Peter Jason Movies

Set in a future American metropolis, Metro City, this sci-fi-thriller features a policewoman heroine who like the hero in Robocop was brought back from the dead and turned into a super-human fighter. Unlike the aforementioned robot-man, however, she is brought back not with hardware, but with special drugs and a heavy duty training program. The woman dislikes the drugs because of the nightmares they create, but she is dedicated and so completes her regimen so successfully that she is called the Demolitionist and sent out to clean up the city's crime-fouled streets. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

This film is a remake of the classic 1960 science-fiction thriller, Village of the Damned, which was based on the novel The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham. Veteran horror director John Carpenter is at the helm this time, with Christopher Reeve replacing George Sanders in the starring role. Aliens put the entire village of Midwich to sleep for 24 hours and impregnate many women. Reeve plays Alan Chaffee, the town doctor, whose wife Barbara (Karen Kahn) is one of the women carrying an alien baby. Visiting scientist Dr. Susan Verner (Kristie Alley) is monitoring the situation for the government. She supervises a mass birthing in a barn. The children turn out to be white-haired, glassy-eyed, and telepathic. Their plan is to use their supernatural powers to kill the villagers and help the aliens take over, and only Chaffee and Verner can stop them. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide

Hired to help locate a missing author, an insurance investigator discovers to his terror that the nightmarish events depicted in the writer's best-selling horror novels are coming true. Wishing to be both a horror film and a parody of the genre, John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness combines supernatural thrills with winking references. For instance, the vanished author, Sutter Cane (Jürgen Prochnow), is modeled on writers like Stephen King and Howard Phillips Lovecraft, from his great popularity to his obsession with small-town New England. Indeed, it is to one such hamlet that investigator John Trent (Sam Neill) and Cane's female editor (Julie Carmen) travel, discovering a town filled with terrifying scenes right out of Cane's books, from random axe murders to far worse. Have Cane's fans gone psychotic and begun imitating his writings, or are Cane's stories of an otherworldly evil invading the earth actually true? In the Mouth of Madness's mix of self-referential satire and real frights anticipates the later Scream (1996). ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide

Horror virtuoso John Carpenter hosts this goofy horror anthology, originally produced for Showtime as a gory stepchild of HBO's Tales from the Crypt series. Playing an emaciated, eye-rolling "coroner," John introduces the audience to a triptych of creepy vignettes in the EC horror-comics mode while paddling about in the guts of assorted cadavers and cracking jokes more gag-inducing than anything oozing on the slab. Two of the stories are directed by Carpenter himself: "The Gas Station" is a retread (pun intended) of Halloween-style scare tactics as a pretty gas-station attendant watches various oddballs pass by her window after hearing that an escaped killer is on the loose; "Hair" is a morbid, hilarious look at man's obsession with his own virility in which Stacy Keach turns to a bizarre hair-growth clinic (run by David Warner & Debbie Harry) which promises instant results, but at a horrific price. The third segment, directed by Tobe Hooper, involves a baseball player (Mark Hamill) who receives an eye transplant after a car accident and soon begins having optical flashbacks revealing (you guessed it) the identity and tendencies of the eye's former owner -- a serial killer. The second segment is by far the most entertaining, featuring a wonderfully neurotic performance by Keach, but the first and last chapters are too derivative to offer much for the discriminating horror buff, although the same fans will enjoy several cute cameos from other genre directors, including Wes Craven, Sam Raimi and Roger Corman. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide

This riveting, fact-based made-for-cable drama follows the fight of Air Force widow Janet Harduvel to clear the name of her late husband, a pilot who died when his F-16 crashed. The official cause of the mishap was listed as "pilot error," but Harduvel refuses to believe this and so launches her own investigation. She soon discovers that the problem was with the plane itself and that the Air Force is trying very hard to conceal crucial facts. Despite the bureaucracy and obstacles, the determined widow continues fighting until she finds herself facing down a major military contractor, General Dynamics, in court. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In Marked for Death, Steven Seagal is told to "try to find the gentle person inside yourself." But he doesn't spend too much time looking, preferring instead to crack the spines of his victims. Seagal plays John Hatcher, a burned-out narcotics agent who resigns from the Drug Enforcement Administration after his partner is killed. He returns to his hometown and finds the city in the thrall of a vicious Jamaican drug gang, led by the nasty Screwface (Basil Wallace). He meets an old friend, now a high school football coach, who tells John about losing his best player and his 13-year-old nephew to drug overdoses. Soon John's family is threatened and his prize Mustang stolen, so John joins forces with his buddy to take on Screwface and the drug gang themselves. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Small-time crook Mickey Rourke is mockingly named Johnny Handsome because of his grotesquely deformed face. While in stir on a robbery rap, Rourke is knifed by convicts in the employ of his former partner--and now bitter enemy--Lance Henriksen. While in the prison hospital, Rourke is cared for by a kindly doctor (Forrest Whitaker), who believes that the key to Rourke's rehabilitation might be a literal change of face. Undergoing plastic surgery, Rourke emerges as virtually unrecognizable to everyone but the audience. Paroled, Rourke seems to be willing to follow a straight and narrow path. Seems to be. Only Morgan Freeman, playing a hard-bitten law officer, sees through Rourke's "new leaf." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Director Blake Edwards departed from his customary sex farces to direct an unusual satirical Western comedy-thriller. In 1927, legendary lawman Wyatt Earp (James Garner) comes to Hollywood to serve as an advisor to a film studio making a movie about Earp's life. He meets silent screen cowboy star Tom Mix (Bruce Willis). The two stumble upon a murder that has apparently occurred on the set but is linked to a renowned bordello. The aging cowboy and the young actor set off on a series of time-warp misadventures to try to solve the mystery. Along the way, they encounter the shady Alfie Alperin (Malcom McDowell) and the intriguing Cheryl King (Mariel Hemingway). ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide

In this vaguely allegorical science fiction-crime film, a Los Angeles cop tries to solve the murder of his best friend with the help of his new partner -- a member of a star-faring alien race. In the near-future world of Alien Nation, the "Newcomers" are a race of formerly enslaved humanoids seeking refuge and integration into Earth society. These unusual immigrants face anger and resentment from some humans, including Matthew Sykes (James Caan), a cop whose partner, Tug (Roger Aaron Brown), was killed in a shoot-out with several Newcomers. In order to get some insight into Newcomer society and track down the "slags" who killed Tug, Sykes volunteers to take on a new partner,Sam "George" Francisco (Mandy Patinkin), the first alien ever promoted to the rank of detective. As Sykes tries to overcome his bigotry against George and his kind, who eat raw beaver and get drunk on spoiled milk, the friendly, helpful George soon learns the identity of Tug's killer: William Harcort (Terrence Stamp), a pillar of Newcomer society who is secretly manufacturing the same powerful narcotic that was used to enslave his race. It's up to Sykes and George to stop Harcort before he turns his fellow Newcomers into drooling addicts and pulls the skeletons out of his race's closet for all of humankind to see. Omen 3 director Graham Baker made his screenwriting debut with Alien Nation, as did co-writer Rockne S. O'Bannon. Kenneth Johnson, creator of the miniseries V, would adapt Alien Nation into a weekly television show in 1989 and several made-for-TV movies in the mid-'90s. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide

Proving that you can never guess what you'll find when you clean out the basement, a man of the cloth discovers that ultimate evil has made a hiding place in his cellar in this tale of terror. Father Loomis (Donald Pleasance) is a priest who discovers a strange object in a church basement -- a canister filled with a swirling and volatile green substance. With the help of Professor Birack (Victor Wong), Loomis discovers the startling truth about his find -- it seems that Satan, who is actually an alien life form, had a son, and the essence of the devil's spawn is trapped inside the canister. The evil spirit has been guarded by a group calling themselves "The Brotherhood of Sleep," but the spirit has the ability to free itself whenever it decides the time is right...and it seems that time is just around the corner. Prince of Darkness was directed by horror master John Carpenter; he also wrote the screenplay under the pseudonym Martin Quatermass. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Gena Rowlands won an Emmy for her towering portrayal of former first lady Betty Ford. After surviving breast cancer, the feisty Ford earns the love and admiration of the entire country. This makes it all the harder for her to keep private her biggest personal battle -- against alcohol and prescription-drug addiction. Josef Sommer and Nan Woods co-star respectively as Gerald and Susan Ford in this sensitive but candid adaptation of Betty Ford's autobiography The Times of My Life. Made for television, The Betty Ford Story was first telecast on March 3, 1987. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Billionaire Boys Club is the two-part TV adaptation of a book by Sue Horton (unpublished at the time of the film's first telecast). In flashback form, the story recounts the murder of Beverly Hills con artist Ron Levin (Ron Silver). The culprit is yuppie Joe Hunt (Judd Nelson), a sharp young commodities trader who has organized an investment firm with several of his prep school buddies, known as the Billionaire Boys Club. Part one, originally telecast November 8, 1987, traces Hunt's meteoric rise to wealth and power, and the means by which Levin worms his way into Hunt's confidence. In part two, shown the next evening, Hunt has already murdered Levin and carefully disposed of the body. The next step of the scheme is take over where Levin left off by conning an Iranian millionaire out of a huge sum of money. Meanwhile, other members of the Club begin to have qualms over Hunt's finagling. Their whistle-blowing leads to Hunt's arrest and convinction for murder. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide