Mike Kellin Movies

In this psychological horror movie, an art student begins to seriously question his sanity after a terrifying nightmare recurs over a long period of time. In the dream, his twin, who died at birth is trying to kill him. The dream eventually becomes so intense that the young man is barely able to function. The film is also titled Brainwaves. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Terror at Alcatraz indeed! This 1982 TV movie is comprised of two never-shown pilot episodes for the short-lived TV series Fitz and Bones, which was telecast for a couple of months in 1981. Tom and Dick Smothers star as Fitz and Bones, a TV news team with a penchant for getting involved in causes. The main plotline concerns an old man (Tom Ewell) who, disgusted at the ill treatment afforded the elderly in the United States, begins bombing several San Francisco landmarks, including Alcatraz--hence the barely relevant title. A secondary plot (remember that this is a cobbled-together TV movie) concerns a shooting at San Francisco International airport, where the target may have been either the President or a notorious mob boss. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The directorial debut of actor and stand-up comedian David Steinberg concerns a single man who decides that he wants to be a dad -- without the complication of a wife. Burt Reynolds stars as Buddy Evans, the manager of Madison Square Garden. A longtime lothario, Buddy has always been very content as a bachelor, but he has begun to feel lately that he'd like to experience fatherhood. His yearnings receive plenty of fuel from his best friends Larry (Norman Fell) and Kurt (Paul Dooley), and from his parental-mentor relationship with a young boy, Tad (Peter Billingsley). So Buddy decides to seek out a woman who will bear his baby for a price, with no strings attached. He finds Maggie Harden (Beverly D'Angelo), a beautiful young music student working as a waitress and yearning for the financial resources to study in Paris. She agrees to serve as Buddy's temporary companion, but as the months pass and her pregnancy progresses, Maggie begins to fall in love with Buddy, who doesn't return her affections -- at first. Steinberg would go on to have greater success as a television sitcom director, calling the shots for several episodes of hit series in the '80s amd '90s. ~ Karl Williams, Rovi

Jason Robards stars as the ailing, 62-year-old President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in F.D.R.: The Last Year. Though visibly frail and weary, Roosevelt runs for a precedent-setting fourth term. He also oversees plans for the D-Day Invasion and engages in tempestuous summit meetings with his wartime allies Stalin (Nehemiah Persoff) and Churchill (Wensley Pithey). Eileen Heckart co-stars as Eleanor Roosevelt, while Kim Hunter plays his "great and good friend," artist Lucy Rutherfurd, who is at his side when he suffers his fatal cerebral hemorrhage in April of 1945. The 3-hour, made-for-TV F.D.R.: The Last Year was first telecast May 15, 1980. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Director Jeff Lieberman followed his horror-science fiction film Blue Sunshine with this effort, which rehashes many of the themes explored in Wes Craven's seminal horror work The Hills Have Eyes. The plot concerns a teenage land owner who heads for the mountains of Oregon with a deed to his new property and an RV full of young friends only to discover (to their extreme peril) that words on paper mean less than nothing up there... or, in the words of horticulture-loving park ranger George Kennedy, "Those mountains can't read, son." By nightfall, the youths learn the gravity of this warning, as they are set upon by a hulking Mongoloid in a knit cap and pilot's glasses who seems capable of being in two places at once. ~ Cavett Binion, Rovi

Midnight Express is a harrowing tale of a naïve American caught in a nightmare of his own making thousands of miles from his home. Billy Hayes (Brad Davis) is an American tourist visiting Turkey with his girlfriend Susan (Irene Miracle) when he's caught by customs officials trying to smuggle a large amount of hashish out of the country. The crime would normally carry a sentence of four years, but officials decide to make an example of Billy, and he draws a 30-year sentence despite the promises of his Turkish legal counsel. While Susan and Billy's father (Mike Kellin) pledge to do everything they can to speed Billy's release, in fact there's little than can be done. Billy quickly finds himself in a hellish prison that's a nightmare of filth, violence, rape, inedible food, and unspeakable health conditions. However, Billy gains a few confidantes behind bars: Jimmy (Randy Quaid), an American in a constant state of emotional overdrive; Max (John Hurt), an intelligent, drug-addicted Englishman; and Erich (Norbert Weisser), a gay Scandinavian who is attracted to Billy but accepts his gentle refusals of sex. Before long, Billy is convinced that he can take no more, and he makes plans to take the "midnight express" -- jailhouse slang for escape. While his friends are willing to help, they also make clear that almost no one who has tried to escape has lived to tell the tale. Based on a true story, Midnight Express was a box-office hit which won wide acclaim for the performances of Brad Davis and John Hurt; and the screenplay, by Oliver Stone, won an Academy Award. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Released theatrically as God Told Me To, this inventive film from "B"-movie auteur Larry Cohen was later re-named Demon after television distributors refused to air it under the original title. The convoluted, tabloid-flavored storyline (predating the kind of stories frequently featured on The X-Files) involves a series of motiveless murders committed by various New York residents: a sniper picks off targets from a water tower; a mild-mannered father murders his entire family; and a cop (Andy Kaufman, of all people) opens fire during a St. Patrick's Day parade. The only consistent pattern to the crimes involves the perpetrators' calm admissions of guilt, explaining, "God told me to." While investigating the murders, devoutly-Catholic police detective Peter Nicholas (Tony Lo Bianco) is increasingly troubled by evidence of a Christ-like figure named Bernard Phillips (Richard Lynch) who appeared to each of the killers and can't seem to shake the feeling that his own fate is inexplicably linked to this mysterious being. As he comes closer to the truth, his worst fears are confirmed -- particularly after a telling conversation with Bernard's tormented mother (Sylvia Sidney), who reveals the horrifying secret of her son's unnatural birth. Cohen has often used the "B"-movie format to address rather lofty concepts, and this is certainly no exception -- tackling no less than the existence of God and the nature of human beliefs -- but clumsy editing and an outrageous FX-heavy finale tend to obscure this film's unique vision. ~ Cavett Binion, Rovi

Archie seems unusually nervous when Edith invites her former classmate, Dolores Mancheney, to dinner at the Bunkers'. What the audience knows, but Edith doesn't, is that Archie and Dolores had carried on a brief but torrid romance -- while he was dating Edith. Oscar-winner Estelle Parsons, who later became a series semi-regular in the role of Blanche Hefner, is here cast as Dolores. Written by Michael Loman, "Archie's Secret Passion" first aired on December 4, 1976. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Michael Parks guest stars as MacDane, a college professor who for years has been a good friend of Sgt. Ed Brown (Don Galloway). Now MacDane is "persona non grata" on campus, due to the suicide of a female philosophy student for which the professor is held responsible. With someone making anonymous death threats, MacDane turns to Ed for help--which of course brings Ironside onto the scene to sift through a malaise of contradictory clues and sinister secrets. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The Mad, Mad Movie Makers is the alternate title of The Last Porno Flick. The plot (yes, there is a plot!) concerns a pair of two-bit movie producers who are anxious to cash in on the Deep Throat craze (the film, not the Watergate informant). They end up producing a lampoon of Deep Throat, meaning that they've produced a lampoon of a lampoon. Setting this one apart from the usual sleaze is its cast, peopled with such respectable names as Michael Pataki, Mike Kellin, Mariana Hill, and Anthony Carbone. At 88 minutes, The Mad, Mad Movie Makers wears out its welcome long before the final fadeout. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Scenes of the real Munich are interspersed with shots of studio mockups in Assignment: Munich. Roy Scheider stars as an American expatriate running a saloon in Munich (shades of Casablanca). He agrees to help the US government locate a cache of gold, appropriated by the Nazis during the war. This TV pilot was a long time in getting a network commitment--so long, in fact, that star Roy Scheider took another job in the interim. By the time the series premiered in the fall of 1972, the role played by Scheider had been rewritten several times for several actors; Robert Conrad, who was then "between jobs", ended up playing the part. The city of Munich was also "replaced", and the series was retitled Assignment: Vienna. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Have you ever longed for the day when James Brown, Martha Raye, and Col. Harland Sanders would appear in a movie together? Well, that's barely the tip of the improbable casting iceberg in this bizarre cold-war spoof. The leaders of the American intelligence organization the S.S.A. ("Super Secret Agency") are becoming increasingly alarmed by the disappearance of a number of B-list celebrities, who are being spirited off to Communist Albania. Eager to bring the fading stars back to the Land of the Free, the S.S.A. come up with a simple plan: They'll find four typical guys in their mid-twenties, have them form a rock group, make them into international stars, and wait until they get invited to play a gig in Albania, which will allow them to find out what's become of Rudy Vallee, Butterfly McQueen, and Huntz Hall, among others. Unemployed philosopher Michael A. Miller, Native-American honor student Ray Chippeway, phys-ed major Dennis Larden, and male model Lonny Stevens are drafted by the S.S.A., and after some intensive training by experts (Trini Lopez shows them a few guitar chords, and Richard Pryor gives them a crash course in soul), they become an overnight sensation as The Phynx (yes, it's pronounced "Finks"). Their album sells 17 million copies on the strength of songs like "What Is Your Sign?," and their groupies have to be cleared away by forklift. But fun and games have to go to the back burner when Albanian ruler Markevitch (George Tobias) and his wife, Ruby (Joan Blondell), invite the Phynx to perform at the behest of their son. Pat O'Brien, Xavier Cugat, Patty Andrews, and Dick Clark are just a few of the other notables who make cameo appearances in The Phynx, which had a very brief theatrical release before being sold to television in the early '70s. Legendary songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller penned the songs performed by The Phynx (and Stoller composed the background score), though for some reason they're not covered nearly as often as "Jailhouse Rock," "Hound Dog," or "Yakkety Yak." ~ Mark Deming, Rovi