Jill Banner Movies

L.G. Floran (Burt Reynolds) is released from prison after serving six years for manslaughter -- convicted of killing his own brother in a drunk driving incident in which he always denied being involved. He returns to his home, in the California wine country, hoping to put his life back together, but that won't be easy -- in the interim, his mother has died, but his hostile stepfather Keller Floran (Mevlyn Douglas) won't let him get anywhere near any inheritance he might have coming, or the home he grew up in. And the local law, led by police chief Wade Hamilton (Martin Balsam), is mostly arrayed against him, especially when Hamilton realizes that his married daughter Barbara (Suzanne Pleshette) is still attracted to L.G. Most of the town is convinced that L.G. got off too easy for killing his brother, and wouldn't mind someone evening the score -- add to that the presence of a bored (and randy) 17-year-old Holly Farnell (Jill Bennett), who is attracted to L.G.'s rebel, outcast persona; and Rudy LeRoy (Larry Storch), a nightclub owner whose testimony helped convict L.G. (and who has his thugs beat him up), and the stage is set for an explosive mix of violence and retribution that will touch almost everyone in L.G.'s hometown. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi

The President's Analyst is James Coburn, whose position makes him privy to any number of delicate government secrets. Thus Coburn becomes a most desirable prize for several secret-agent organizations, including the CEA and the FBR (we know who these folks are really supposed to be, even though the phony names were crudely dubbed onto the soundtrack after the film was completed). When Coburn becomes expendable, he finds a pair of strong allies in the form of likeable political assassin Godfrey Cambridge and gay Soviet spy Severn Darden. The main plot involves an insidious, unnamed concern that wishes to harness Coburn's talents in order to brainwash the president -- and everyone else in America -- into submission. The President's Analyst is a terrific, on-target satire of virtually every sacred cow of the late 1960s; the satire was so potent, in fact, that when the NBC network broadcast the film in the early 1970s, it was compelled to remove the picture's punchline. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In this 1967 drama, resourceful British agent Bulldog Drummond, who appeared onscreen in a series of spy stories between 1929 and 1951, returned to duty in the wake of James Bond. Here, Drummond (Richard Johnson) is on the trail of Carl Petersen (Nigel Green), a corrupt industrialist who has a bad habit of stealing the ideas of others and then killing them so he can reap their profits. The nefarious Petersen has a team of female assistants willing to kill on command, led by Irma (Elke Sommer) and Penelope (Sylva Koscina). One more Bulldog Drummond vehicle, Some Girls Do, followed in 1969 before the series was retired again. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

In this gory sequel to the spaghetti western Stranger in Town, a mysterious stranger masquerades as a postal inspector and rides out to round up a ring of thieves who are racing across the West in a stage coach made of gold. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Exploitation titan Jack Hill, who went on to make such cult favorites as Switchblade Sisters, The Swinging Cheerleaders, and Foxy Brown, made his solo directorial debut with this fascinating, offbeat shocker. The three surviving children of Titus W. Merrye, who represent the end of his family's line, live in a dilapidated mansion where patient servant Bruno (Lon Chaney, Jr.) watches over the increasingly eccentric Virginia (Jill Banner), Ralph (Sid Haig), and Elizabeth (Beverly Washburn). All three Merrye siblings suffer from the same rare disease that felled their father and the other members of his family -- "Merrye Syndrome," a neurological ailment that begins to manifest itself at the age of ten, causing the brain to slowly decay and sending its victims into an alternately violent and infantile state. Bald, inarticulate Ralph is supposed to be a vegetarian, but "can eat anything he can catch," while Virginia, who seems to be in a perpetual dream state, imagines herself as a human spider and catches people in her "web" (a large net) and then kills them. While it might seem best to let nature to take its course and allow the family's sad legacy to die out, the Merrye siblings have two distant cousins, Emily Howe (Carol Ohmart) and Peter Howe (Quinn K. Redeker), who are interested in laying claim to the family mansion and any money remaining in the Merrye Estate. But not long after they pay a visit to Bruno, they start to have serious regrets about their decision to see the family. Shot in 1964, Spider Baby sat on the shelf until 1968, when it was briefly released as the second half of a horror double-bill on the drive-in circuit. But after it appeared on home video in the early '80s and was the subject of an enthusiastic essay in the book RE/Search: Incredibly Strange Films, the film began to develop a potent cult following and is now regarded as a minor classic of '60s horror. The film has also appeared under the misleading titles Cannibal Orgy and The Liver Eaters, as well as Spider Baby, or the Maddest Story Ever Told. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi