Sandra Knight Movies

The uneasy relationship between a naive shrink and the psychotic husband of one of her patients forms the basis for this thriller. After poor Veronica runs screaming hysterically from a theater she is placed in an asylum. Dr. Marcia Stevens who did the initial observations of Veronica places the distraught woman under the care of Dr. Lisa Kelner, an innocent young psychiatrist in the midst of her residency. Dr. Kelner soon learns that Veronica is being abused by her husband Adam Cestare. Despite strict hospital regulations forbidding personal contact the intrigued young Dr.. visits the husband. Lisa is entranced by the charismatic Adam. For a psychiatrist she is incredibly gullible and masochistic. When Adam sees Dr. Lisa accidentally murder someone, he begins to blackmail her and mold her to suit his will. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

This low-budget vampire quickie is distinguished mainly by the presence of director Stephanie Rothman, who emerged from Roger Corman's New World Pictures (for whom she directed the exploitation classic The Student Nurses) to become an acclaimed feminist filmmaker. The piecework story incorporates footage shot by original director Jack Hill, combined with incongruent elements from a Yugoslavian supernatural thriller titled Operation Titian which Corman obtained for a song, tied loosely together by new vampire material shot by Rothman. This may partially explain why the ancient Slavic vampire featured in the film decides to possess the body of a cheesecake photographer in California, who then murders his models in the name of Art. As one might imagine, this is pretty difficult to follow, but there are some good performances -- particularly from William Campbell as the haunted shutterbug -- and some fairly suspenseful scenes. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide

In this violent western, a Mexican gunslinger is permanently disabled while trying to save his boy from the hangman's noose. After the incident, the former gunfighter is sentenced to four years in prison. Following his release, he gets revenge upon the lawman responsible for his conviction by abducting eight people. He informs the sheriff that he will kill one hostage every ten minutes until he comes to see him. Following the death of three people, the sheriff finally agrees, the story ends on a brutal and ironic note. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Every time the family of teenager Alice Denning (Luana Anders) moves to a new town, mysterious fires begin breaking out. Circumstantial evidence would suggest that Alice is responsible for these fires, even though she is never anywhere near the flames. Can it be that the girl is demonically possessed. . .or have the fires been caused by that curious phenomenon known as spontaneous combustion? Featured as Alice's long-suffering father is Edward C. Platt, better known as "The Chief" in the 1960s sitcom Get Smart. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Robert Mitchum (who also wrote the story and served as executive producer) stars in Thunder Road as Lucas Doolin, a Korean War veteran who returns home and promptly rejoins the family's bootlegging business. His father, Vernon (Trevor Bardette), runs the still and heads the family, while Lucas handles the driving and transporting of the moonshine (mostly to Memphis), and his younger brother, Robin (James Mitchum), takes care of the car he uses to outrun the competition and the Treasury agents; and their mother, Sarah (Frances Koon), keeps the home. Lucas is a better driver than anyone around, and he and Robin have rigged a few tricks on the car that surprise the Treasury men -- but Robin is nearly 17 and tired of just working under the hood; he wants to drive like Lucas. Lucas doesn't want his brother to become a transporter, though, preferring that the teenager stay in school and stay straight with the law. But Lucas is pretty easy to idolize, looked up to by most of their neighbors for his driving skills, among other attributes, and the object of affections of lots of women between Harlan and Memphis, most especially teenaged neighbor Rozanna Ledbetter (Sandra Knight). He appreciates her admiring and lustful gaze, though he has all the woman he can handle and wishes that she were that interested in Robin, who's her own age and just as attracted to her in his own awkward way. Lucas and his family have always been able to outrun the revenue agents, even with a new man, Troy Barrett (Gene Barry), assigned to the territory and out to get him -- they're dedicated and tough, but they're not killers. However, now they're hearing of a new threat in the guise of a Memphis-based gangster named Carl Kogan (Jacques Aubuchon), who wants to take over the Doolins' operation and all the other moonshining activity in Harlan County. He's already offered a lot of money, but the Doolins and most of their neighbors running stills are too independent for that, and now he's sending in muscle, and that gets a young neighbor of theirs (Jerry Hardin) killed. But Lucas was pretty tough before the war, and he learned a thing or two about combat in Korea, and is not about to let either revenue agents or a bunch of strong-arm men from the city get in his way, and he has the car and the firepower to back up those sentiments.

When Kogan goes too far and kills a Treasury man, Lucas also picks up an unintended ally in agent Barrett, whose highest priority becomes indicting Kogan. The problem is that indictments and prosecutions aren't what Lucas is about -- he means to meet shot-for-shot and take more personal action, especially when his family becomes involved in Kogan's machinations. One thing he always swore to any and all within hearing range was that he'd keep Robin from becoming a transporter, and kill anyone who tried to make him one. And when Kogan manipulates a situation where Robin is lured into driving, Lucas means to make good on that vow. Director Arthur Ripley (1895-1961), a music and dance student-turned-editor-turned-gagman and short-subject specialist and academic (whose preceding feature film, 12 years earlier, had been the eerie Cornell Woolrich-based thriller The Chase), working in tandem with second unit directors James Casey and Jack Lannan and second unit photographer Karl Malkames, keeps the action moving at a brisk pace. Robert Mitchum is the center of gravity to the movie, though, which contains the quintessential Mitchum performance, the actor making his work look so easy that he could almost seem lazy if he weren't so magnetic in the role. He helped make Thunder Road into a national success, but the movie always had an extra-special resonance in the South, where it was shot and set. Thunder Road continued to generate annual five- and six-figure ticket sales from drive-ins in the border and Southern states for 25 years after its original release, a factor that caused United Artists and its successor organizations to purposefully delay its release on home video until the end of the 1980s. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide