Brenda Kempner Movies

In the first episode of the three-part Doctor Who adventure "Ghost Light," the Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) accompanies Ace (Sophie Aldred) on a visit to her home town of Perivale. Arriving during the Victorian era, the time travelers try to determine the source of a terrifying experience in Ace's childhood -- one which has given her nightmares ever since. Written by Marc Platt, "Ghost Light, Episode 1" originally aired on October 4, 1989. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Three purloined video tapes create all sorts of problems for the two teens who stole them in this horror trilogy that was originally made for television. The tapes they swiped, so they could have movie night with their girl friends, are "Killer Punch," featuring a cruel puppeteer using his craft to torment his family; "Scream House," about a young couple living in a house haunted by the spectre of a deranged killer; and "Garden of Blood," a chronicle of two hapless gardeners assigned to tend a haunted yard. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In this comedy, two soldiers stationed in Singapore set off in pursuit of the fairer sex instead of carrying out their orders. Soon after their arrival on the exotic island, the two visit a local brothel and there encounter a pair of lusty nurses who have also come in for a bit of erotic R&R. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

The British television series Til Death Do Us Part was the forerunner to the American TV hit All in the Family. The original series' Archie Bunker was Alf Garnett, a bigoted, profane cockney played by Warren Mitchell. The "Edith" was the dimwitted Else, portrayed by Dandy Nichols. The British series' catchphrase was not "Stifle yerself, dingbat" but instead "You silly moo!" Eschewing the heavy-handed social commentary indulged in by All in the Family producer Norman Lear, Til Death Do Us Part existed principally to invoke loud (and sometime embarrassed) gusts of laughter. Several feature films were spun off from the property: the first of these, Alf 'N' Family flashed back to Alf and Else's marriage, skipped ahead to the wedding of the Garrett's daughter Rita (Una Stubbs) to unwashed hippie Mike (Anthony Booth), and concluded with the family's move from their crowded flat to a home in the suburbs. Alf 'N' Family was scripted by Til Death Do Us Part creator Johnny Speight. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Forgotten 20th Century Fox starlet Geneviève Waïte and forgotten "trendy" director Michael Sarne teamed for the eminently forgettable Joanna. Waïte stars as the title character, a swinging London art student who uses up men like other people use Kleenex. Her carefree lifestyle comes to an end when she is impregnated by Gordon (Calvin Lockhart) -- one of the first black-white relationships in a major motion picture. Joanna frequently becomes a musical, notably in the final sequence, in which the heroine joins in a chorus with the entire cast and production crew Donald Sutherland co-stars as one of Joanna's wealthy paramours. Director Michael Sarne went from Joanna to Myra Breckinridge, then disappeared from view. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Adapted from his own Royal Shakespeare Company production of Peter Weiss' play entitled The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates at Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade, Peter Brook directs this fascinating look into revolution, power, and human frailty. During the 19th century, fashionable theatergoers would attend ostensibly therapeutic stage performances by mental asylum inmates. The film opens on July 19, 1809, with Monsieur Coubnier (Clifford Rose), the officious head of the Charenton asylum, introducing that night's show -- a drama about the assassination of French Revolutionary War firebrand Jean-Paul Marat, written by that institution's most notorious resident, the Marquis de Sade (Patrick Magee). The play begins conventionally enough , considering that the lead actress (Glenda Jackson) is a narcoleptic, the actor playing Marat (Ian Richardson) is a paranoiac, and another actor, a sex maniac with very pressing urges, is kept in chains. But the work soon evolves into a dialogue between Marat and De Sade. Though both men were early supporters of the Revolution, their ideas of the shape of the movement took very different courses. Espousing a form of proto-Marxism, Marat is at first presented as the sort of tyrannical idealist that became depressingly familiar in the 20th century, a la Lenin and Pol Pot. But then later, Marat seems haunted by the terror he has unleashed and unable to understand where he went wrong. De Sade, on the other hand, preached his own unusual brand of Nietzschean existentialism. Unlike Marat, he not only recognizes the inherent weakness of the human character, but he revels in it. Murder as an act of individual passion should be celebrated, De Sade at first argues; murder as an anonymous act of statecraft should be deplored. The individual is not given meaning though politics but through acts of spontaneous passion and desire. As the play progresses, the revolution depicted in the play soon develops into an outright revolution on the stage. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide