Mal Jones Movies

In this adventure drama for the family, based on the popular TV series of the mid-'60s, Sandy Ricks (Elijah Wood) is a moody teenager from Chicago who is not dealing well with the recent divorce of his parents. In the hope that a change of scenery will do him good, Sandy is sent to spend the summer with his Uncle Porter (Paul Hogan), an aging hippie and fisherman who lives on Coral Key, an island off the coast of Florida. The sun and sand do little to improve Sandy's outlook on life, even after he meets Kim (Jessica Wesson), a pretty girl who lives nearby, but he becomes sunnier when he encounters Flipper, a friendly dolphin, while boating with Porter. When Sandy helps save Flipper from a pack of bloodthirsty charter-boat fishermen, led by the mean-spirited Dirk Moran (Jonathan Banks), the dolphin becomes the boy's loyal companion (at least when Sandy is close to the water). But Sandy soon discovers that Dirk is dumping toxic waste into the waters of Coral Key, and with the help of Cathy (Chelsea Field), a friend of Porter's with a background in marine biology, Sandy and Porter try to gather enough evidence so that Sheriff Buck Cowan (Isaac Hayes) will be able to put Dirk behind bars. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

In this comedy, stockbroker Jon Aldrich (Tom Selleck) is the man who has it all, until his ill, aging parents (Don Ameche and Anne Jackson) move in with him. As his perfect life begins to disintegrate bit by bit, Jon becomes more and more depressed and disillusioned. Finally, broke and friendless, Jon begins to listen to his addled parents' insistence that he do away with them and use their insurance money to start again. ~ Iotis Erlewine, All Movie Guide

In this third entry in the raunchy, sophomoric comedy series, the riotous students of Angel Beach High endeavor to get even with their old nemesis Porky who is trying to force the basketball coach into throwing the championship game. It seems Coach has been on a losing streak at Porky's newest establishment, a riverboat converted into a casino. Plenty of slapstick mayhem ensues when his team rallies to save him and the big game. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

The real world once more takes a back seat to a caricature of itself as the same Florida high-school teens who grossed profits in Porky's by grossing out, have to band together to stop their Shakespeare festival (!!) from being cancelled, due to a crusading, right-wing reverend's attack on the bard's "lewd" content. The reverend is joined by Miss Balbricker(Nancy Parsons) the girls' gym teacher and also the Ku Klux Klan who object to Romeo being played by an Indian. These unlikely allies come up against the libido-laden teens who strip the Ku Klux Klanners and send them running through town naked. Similar styles of revenge are taken to handle Miss Balbrick and the right-wing reverend -- apparently all's well that ends well at the box office. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

This dark, brooding low-budget effort opens in Vietnam, where young infantryman Andy Brooks (Richard Backus) is struck down by a sniper's bullet. At the same time in Andy's hometown, his poor mother is uttering a desperate prayer for Andy to come home... and shortly thereafter, he does. Despite Mrs. Brooks' exultation at her son's safe return, it becomes apparent to the rest of the family that there's something terribly wrong with Andy; he won't do much more than sit in a chair, staring blankly at the walls of his room... that is, until nightfall, when he prowls the town in search of human blood, which he extracts from his victims through a syringe and injects into his own veins. The first horror effort from director Bob Clark, who followed with Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things! and the effective thriller Black Christmas, this haunting film (released as The Veteran in 1972) functions as a Vietnam-era variant on the classic story of "The Monkey's Paw" and was one of the first films of the genre to address the stateside reactions to the horrors of that war. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide