Robert Karnes Movies

After 15 miserable years of matrimony, mousy Gerald Swinney (a superbly cast Bob Newhart) asks his wife, Edith (Jane Withers), for a divorce. She refuses, at which point Gerald stammers, "Well, uh, Edith, I guess I'll, uh, have to get rid of you." No, Gerald doesn't intend to murder Edith -- merely to make her think he is going to murder her. Before long, Edith is going crazy with anxiety...and that is only step one of Gerald's master plan. (Trivia note: the famous Leave It to Beaver house on the Universal studio lot is very much in evidence in this episode -- four years before it was converted into the equally famous Marcus Welby, M.D. house.) ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The only episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour directed by Hitchcock himself (though he'd previously helmed several of the anthology's half-hour installments), "I Saw the Whole Thing" draws its suspense from the reliability -- or lack of reliability -- of eyewitness testimony. Arrested on suspicions of causing a fatal car accident, mystery writer Michael Barnes (John Forsythe) insists upon acting as his own attorney. Five witnesses insist under oath that they saw Barnes run a stop sign -- and in each case, Barnes discredits their testimony by proving that the witnesses only thought they saw what they saw, based on their own experiences and personal prejudices. Things take an unexpected turn when a sixth witness offers a sixth version of the accident. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Paladin (Richard Boone) is hired by Marion Sutter (Dianne Foster), the wife of Virginia-born "officer and gentleman" John Sutter (Kent Smith). John's life has been threatened by Logan Adcock (Mike Kellin), a sadistic town boss who hates all Southerners and has stirred up a lynch mob to do his dirty work. Paid off by Marion's jewelry, Paladin quickly discovers that the gems are phony--the first of several indications that John Sutter is not only in physical danger, but is also merely a hollow shell of the proud aristocrat he once was. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

One more stock western in a long line stretching back to the turn of the 20th century, this oater by peripatetic director Edward L. Cahn has nothing particularly distinctive in its story about a group of outlaws. Billy Wade (played by the athletic James Brown) is an ex-gunslinger who is approached by his outlaw brother Matt (Robert Karnes), not long out of prison, to help him with a big-time robbery. Matt forces Billy's participation with an offer he cannot refuse, unaware that Billy is actually working on the side of the law. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

A young woman on a business trip travels by train from L.A. to San Francisco and finds herself implicated in a murder in this crime drama. The trouble begins as she retires to her sleeping compartment and is knocked unconscious. The next day she wakes up beside the dead body of the woman she had been sharing it with. A police detective arrests her and escorts her off the train. She escapes and is picked up by a passing motorist. He takes her to her home where she discovers another corpse, a friend of hers who was an alcoholic writer. She was letting him stay at her apartment while she was gone. The distraught woman tells the motorist all she knows. She then admits that she is a former mental patient. The motorist becomes suspicious and takes the woman back to her boss, who denies that he sent her on the business trip. Trouble ensues until they learn that the boss was behind it all. The first corpse was his wife. He put the body beside the girl so that so she would be suspected of being a homicidal maniac. The boss kidnaps his hapless employee and takes her to the mountains where he plans to kill her and make it look like a suicide. Fortunately, the motorist trails them and saves the day. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

When The Lawless Years was canceled by NBC in the spring of 1960 after only two short seasons and 27 episodes, the series' fans decried its loss, opining that this saga of organized crime during the Prohibition Era was in many ways superior to the more popular ABC offering The Untouchables. Ironically, it was The Untouchables' success which moved NBC to commission producer Jack Chertok to revive Lawless Years in early 1961, churning out a third and final season of 20 half-hour episodes. Fortunately, Chertok was able to secure the services of the series' original star James Gregory in the role of real-life NYC police detective Barney Ruditsky, upon whose exploits the program was based. This last season focuses not only on the big-time gangsters of the 1920s and 1930s, but also on such flamboyant small-timers as Mad Dog Coll, whose career was the basis of a two-part episode. Also, Season Three of Lawless Years yielded an elaborately produced five-part story arc, "Louy K," chronicling the rise and fall of a Meyer Lansky-like mob boss played by Paul Richards. Reportedly, "Louy K" was slated to be re-edited into a theatrical feature, to be released overseas in the manner of the two-part pilot episode of The Untouchables. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Racketeer Larry Fay (Sam Levene) gains control of New York's dairy industry, forcing the price of milk to an astronomical (for 1933) price of 13 cents a quart. Hoping to put Fay out of business, Elliot Ness (Robert Stack) appeals to the better nature of singer Sally Kansas (Claire Trevor), star attraction of Fay's popular nightclub (Sally is a thinly disguised caricature of real-life entertainment Texas Guinan, of "Hello, suckers!" fame ). Though she has managed to steer clear of her boss' criminal activities, Sally isn't about to bite the hand that feeds her--until Larry goes one step too far and orders the murder of Sally's kid brother Tommy (Tommy Cook). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Boris Sagal directs this film about a pair of crime-fighting motorcycle cops. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

Burt Reynolds appears in this episode as truck driver Bill Davis, who with his brother Andy is piloting a huge tanker through the desert. When the road is blocked by a stalled car, Bill and Andy climb out of their truck to offer assistance. The disabled auto turns out to be owned by a pair of kidnappers (Murray Hamilton, Robert Karnes) who are escaping with their female victim (Venetia Stevenson). Getting the drop on the Davis brothers, the kidnappers steal their tanker, leaving Bill, Andy and the girl to roast under the desert sun. Fortunately, good is rewarded and evil punished by episode's end -- with the fate of the villains proving most ironic in light of the "cargo" being hauled by the Davis boys. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

It looks like suicide when hasbeen concert pianist David Carpenter (Gregory Morton) plunges off a cliff. Then the suspicion arises that Carpenter was actually murdered so that his wife Anita (Virginia Field) could collect his life insurance. But Anita is not the client of Perry Mason (Raymond Burr) in the subsequent preliminary hearing: instead, Carpenter's sexy protegee Donna Ross (Kathie Browne) has been charged with the murder. (Trivia note: the original TV Guide listings identify the suspect as "Donna Loring", a name presumably changed at the last minute for legal reasons). Robert Karnes makes his first appearance as Deputy DA Chamberlin, one of several temporary replacements for absentee regular William Talman (DA Hamilton Burger). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The experiences of real-life NYC police detective Barney Ruditsky during the Prohibition Era are vividly dramatized in the first season of the crime drama The Lawless Years. James Gregory is seen as Ruditsky, with Robert Karnes as his sidekick Max. The season begins with "The Nick Joseph Story", a true-but-with-the-names-changed saga of a cocky gangster, with Vic Morrow in the leading role. Other guest stars of note showing up in the season's subsequent 18 half-hour episodes are Robert Fuller in "The Story of Cutie Jaffe", Burt Reynolds in "The Payoff", Tige Andrews in "The Tony Morelli Story" and Martin Landau in "Lucky Silva." Although, as mentioned, many of the "real" names are changed for legal reasons, a few exceptions are made during Season One, notably "The Dutch Schultz Story", featuring John Dennis as the title character. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Another example of a fairly interesting Japanese monster film rendered nearly incomprehensible by ham-fisted editing and substandard English dubbing, the original Yeti epic Jû Jin Yuki Otoko was shorn of nearly half its 100-plus-minute length, then crudely spliced back together with additional English scenes (shot by Kenneth G. Crane) and stodgy narration by John Carradine. The original film's scenario involved a pair of father-and-son Neanderthals living in a remote cave, the villagers who worship the beast-men, and the big-city circus promoters who try to capture them for a public exhibit. When the younger monster is accidentally killed, the father goes on a violent rampage, culminating in a volcano-set climax. Directed by Godzilla guru Inoshiro Honda, this film's original edit was marginally more interesting, though Honda would soon fare better with monsters of the scaly, radioactive variety. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide