Jack Kosslyn Movies

Year after year, the staff at Gary's Old Towne Tap has defeated the gang at Cheers in one athletic contest after another. This year, however, it looks as if Cheers will be able to best Gary's at their annual bowling match. All Sam (Ted Danson) has to do is convince the reluctant Woody (Woody Harrelson) to stop hiding his kegling skills under a bushel basket. By the way, catch those cooool shades on Cliff (John Ratzenberger). ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The 8-hour TV miniseries Blind Ambition was originally telecast May 20 through 23, 1979. This 105-minute feature-film version, prepared in 1982, seems a bit rushed at times, but overall does a credible and coherent job of storytelling. Based on John Dean's book Blind Ambition, with elements of Maureen Dean's Mo woven in by screenwriter Stanley R. Greenberg, this is the saga of the Watergate affair, as experienced by Dean (Martin Sheen) and hia wife Maureen (Theresa Russell). As the Nixon administration goes down in flames, the Deans' marriage is sorely tested-as is Dean's success-at-any-price credo. Rip Torn plays Nixon like something out of a Greek Tragedy; some viewers accepted his interpretation, others found it jarringly inaccurate. Others in the cast of "usual suspects" include Michael Callan as Charles Colson, Lonny Chapman as L. Patrick Gray, William Daniels as G. Gordon Liddy, Fred Grandy as Donald Segretti, Christopher Guest as Jeb Magruder, Lawrence Pressman as H. R. Haldeman, William Windom as Richard Kleindienst, James Greene as E. Howard Hunt, Logan Ramsey as J. Edgar Hoover, and Al Checco as judge John Sirica. Also known as The John Dean Story, Blind Ambition earned two Emmy nominations. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Clint Eastwood both directed and starred in this thriller based on a novel by Trevanian. Dr. Jonathan Hemlock (Eastwood) is a professor of art history who formerly had a deadly secret life; he was a hired assassin working with an international intelligence organization. Normally content to collect and study art, Hemlock is forced by blackmail to perform one last hit, or, as the organization euphemistically calls it, a "sanction." The victim will be one of three men attempting a dangerous ascent of the Eiger, a beautiful but punishing mountain range in Swiss Alps. While Hemlock is an experienced mountaineer and willing to make the climb, he's troubled to discover that he does not know which of the other three men scaling the Eiger is his true target. The supporting cast includes George Kennedy and Jack Cassidy; the latter earned enthusiastic reviews for his over-the-top performance as a flamboyantly gay secret agent. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

In this Counterculture vs. Establishment romance, Frank Harmon (William Holden) is a middle-aged businessman, recently divorced and a bit bitter about the state of his life and the world in general. One morning, he discovers a pretty, hippie-esque girl who calls herself Breezy (Kay Lenz) asleep on his front porch. Frank asks her to leave and she politely follows suit; she forgets her guitar, however, and returns the next day to retrieve it. Breezy also asks Frank if he would be so kind as to let her take a bath; he agrees, and even lets her sleep at his house that night. A few days later, Breezy turns up at again at Frank's doorstep, with a cop in tow -- after being arrested for vagrancy, she told the police that she lived here with her uncle Frank. Frank plays along and, against his better judgment, agrees to let her stay with him. After spending some time together, Frank and Breezy begin opening up to each other, discussing their feelings on a variety of issues. A friendship grows between them that, in time, becomes a love affair, but Frank's friends find fault in his new romance, and he breaks it off -- a decision he comes to regret. This was the first film Clint Eastwood directed in which he did not star, something he would not do again until Bird in 1988. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

"Who are you?" the dwarf Mordecai (Billy Curtis) asks Clint Eastwood's Stranger at the end of Eastwood's 1973 western High Plains Drifter. "You know," he replies, before vanishing into the desert heat waves near California's Mono Lake. Adapting the amorally enigmatic and violent Man With No Name persona from his films with Sergio Leone, Eastwood's second film as director begins as his drifter emerges from that heat haze and rides into the odd lakefront settlement of Lago. Lago's residents are not particularly friendly, but once the Stranger shows his skills as a gunfighter, they beg him to defend them against a group of outlaws (led by Eastwood regular Geoffrey Lewis) who have a score to settle with the town. He agrees to train them in self-defense, but Mordecai and innkeeper's wife Sarah Belding (Verna Bloom) soon suspect that the Stranger has another, more personal agenda. By the time the Stranger makes the corrupt community paint their town red and re-name it "Hell," it is clear that he is not just another gunslinger. With its fragmented flashbacks and bizarre, austere locations, High Plains Drifter's stylistic eccentricity lends an air of unsettling eeriness to its revenge story, adding an uncanny slant to Eastwood's antiheroic westerner. Seminal western hero John Wayne was so offended by Eastwood's harshly revisionist view of a frontier town that he wrote to Eastwood, objecting that this was not what the spirit of the West was all about. Eastwood's audience, however, was not so put off, and an exhibitors' poll named Eastwood a top box-office draw for 1973. ~ Lucia Bozzola, Rovi

In this fun-filled adventure-fantasy, a rookie knight embarks upon a valiant quest to save a princess who has been captured by a malicious magician. Along the way he must battle the usual assortment of dragons, ogres and other mythical beings. He is assisted by a good witch who gives him a magic sword. Unfortunately, the magic fails and suddenly he must find his own magic from within. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

War of the Colossal Beast picks up a year after the end of The Amazing Colossal Man -- Joyce Manning (Sally Fraser), sister to the first film's 70-foot-tall Colossal Man, Lt. Col. Glenn Manning (Glenn Langan), believes that her brother is still alive, despite his fall off of Boulder Dam at the denouement of the first movie.Her hope is based on reports out of Mexico about a "very big man" attacking truckers and other passersby in a remote part of the country. As it turns out, Manning (played here by Dean Parkin, since Langan turned down the request to star in a sequel) is alive and hiding somewhere in the mountains, bigger than ever and suffering from serious brain damage, with a hideously deformed face that is covered in scar tissue and missing an eye. Every effort at communicating with the giant fails, and as things always transpire in movies of this sort (at least since the silent version of The Lost World), he breaks out of the place where he is being held and goes on a rampage. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi

A man driving along a lonely back road at night is suddenly startled by what he sees, and is promptly killed by something that crashes through his windshield. The next day, in the nearby town of River Falls, teenagers Carol Flynn (June Kenney) and Mike Simpson (Gene Persson) decide to go looking for her father, who didn't get home last night. They find his wrecked truck and enter a nearby cave to begin searching for him. There they find his blood-covered hat and other signs of human remains and, as they go deeper inside, suddenly get trapped in a huge web -- then they spot its maker, a spider the size of a small house. They manage to escape and alert the county sheriff (Gene Roth), who doesn't take them seriously but does heed the warning of Mr. Kingman (Ed Kemmer), the science teacher at the local high school, to bring a pest-control crew along with his deputies, and a tanker loaded with DDT. They encounter the creature, and, after losing one of their men, dispatch it with the insecticide. Kingman persuades the sheriff to bring the carcass into town so that he can arrange to have it studied, leaving it in storage at the high school recreation room, for lack of anywhere bigger to keep it. As it turns out, the creature isn't dead, just stunned. As the local rock & roll band rehearses, the giant spider comes to bloodthirsty consciousness, breaking out of the building and ravaging the town. Bullets won't hurt it -- as Kingman says, you could punch holes in it all day without hitting a vital spot -- and the town is soon cut off when the telephone lines are knocked down. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi

Actor Cornel Wilde branched out into directing with The Devil's Hairpin--reserving the starring role for himself. Wilde plays a motor racing champion who ruins his career through his reprehensible behavior on and off the track. Thrown off the racing circuit in disgrace after crippling his brother in an accident, Wilde tries to make a comeback, and to compensate for his past recklessness. Jean Wallace, who was Mrs. Cornel Wilde at the time, plays the girl who supervises Wilde's redemption. The Devil's Hairpin set the standard for Cornel Wilde's later directorial efforts: Pedestrian dialogue sequences, first-rate action highlights. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi