Brian Libby Movies

This made-for-cable sequel to the 1990 TV-movie thriller Buried Alive picks up where the earlier film leaves off, with the death of the sheriff who solved the mystery in the original. Old Sam has left his money (a hefty sum indeed) to his niece Laura (Ally Sheedy), who is married to a no-account named Randy (Stephen Caffrey). Hoping to get his mitts on all of Laura's dough, Randy conspires with his mistress Roxanne (Tracey Needham) to arrange an "accidental" demise for his unwitting wife. On cue, Laura dies after consuming a poisoned meal, the authorities are satisfied that no foul play has occurred, and the girl's body is shipped off to the embalmer. Thanks to a power outage, the embalming process is halted and Laura is buried "intact" -- and of course, still alive! Once she's dug herself out of her grave, Laura embarks upon a campaign of vengeance, aided and abetted by a shadowy stranger who turns out to be the "murder victim" from the earlier Buried Alive, Clint Goodman (played again by Tim Matheson, who also directed this film). Entertaining in its own "they liked it once, they'll love it twice" fashion, Buried Alive II premiered February 4, 1997, on the USA network. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A successful career criminal considers getting out of the business after one last score, while an obsessive cop desperately tries to put him behind bars in this intelligent thriller written and directed by Michael Mann. Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro) is a thief who specializes in big, risky jobs, such as banks and armored cars. He's very good at what he does; he's bright, methodical, and has honed his skills as a thief at the expense of his personal life, vowing never to get involved in a relationship from which he couldn't walk away in 30 seconds. Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino) is an L.A.P.D. detective determined to catch McCauley, but while McCauley's personal code has forced him to do without a wife and children, Hanna's dedication has made a wreck of the home he's tried to have; he's been divorced twice, he's all but a stranger to his third wife, and he has no idea how to reach out to his troubled step-daughter. While McCauley has enough money to retire and is planning to move to New Zealand, he loves the thrill of robbery as much as the profit, and is blocking out plans for one more job; meanwhile, he's met a woman, Eady (Amy Brenneman), whom he's not so sure he can walk away from. The supporting cast includes Val Kilmer as Chris, one of McCauley's partners; Ashley Judd as his wife Charlene; Jon Voight as Nate; Hank Azaria as Alan Marciano; and Henry Rollins as Hugh, who is beaten up by Hanna. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Clint Eastwood delivers one of his finest performances, as a secret service agent haunted by his past in Wolfgang Petersen's taut thriller In the Line of Fire. Eastwood plays Frank Horrigan, a secret service agent who keeps thinking back to November 22, 1963, when, as an agent hand-picked by President Kennedy, he became one of the few agents to have lost a president to an assassin. Decades later, psychotic Mitch Leary (John Malkovich) is stalking another president (Jim Curley) running for re-election. He has spent long hours studying the psyche of Frank Horrigan, and he taunts Horrigan (feeling that there is a bond between them), telling him of his plans to kill the president. After his conversation with Leary, Horrigan makes sure he is assigned to presidential protection duty. Horrigan has no intention of failing his president this time around, and he is more than willing to take a bullet. But everything goes Leary's way -- he is smart and cagey and the president's aides refuse to alter the itinerary. As the election draws closer, Horrigan's chances to catch Leary look to be less and less a possibility, and he begins to doubt his own abilities -- both now and in the past, when Kennedy was murdered. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Produced for cable TV, this pedestrian thriller (also known as Till Death Do Us Part) purports to be a riff on Edgar Allen Poe's "The Premature Burial" but actually bears more of a resemblance to Diabolique. It stars Tim Matheson as a cheated-upon husband who can't stay down after his wife's (Jennifer Jason Leigh) unsuccessful attempt to poison him results in his being buried alive. The film's one real moment of horror comes in a claustrophobic sequence where Matheson desperately claws his way out of his coffin. The story then settles into a standard revenge motif, capped with an admittedly potent payoff that, though intriguing, is probably not as shocking as the filmmakers had intended. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide

Ex-football player Carl Weathers stars in this violent action film as Detroit policeman Jericho Jackson. The dedicated but brutal cop is plunged into nefarious doings concerning a crooked industrialist (Craig T. Nelson) and his drug-addicted girlfriend (pop-singer Vanity), breaking many people's bones before solving the case. Sharon Stone stands out in a cast of genre veterans including Nicholas Worth, Sonny Landham, and Robert Davi. Heavy on the sex and violence, this film harkens back to the glory days of 1970s blaxploitation, but is a bit too mean-spirited to be as much fun. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide

A San Francisco narcotics officer goes undercover to South America in an attempt to bust a drug lord and his operation. Of course, the assignment involves her ability to participate in a certain breast-altering operation to smuggle the goods into the States, though her brassiere size may be too large for her to pull off her candidacy. ~ Kristie Hassen, All Movie Guide

Lieutenant Jeff Knight (Michael Dudikoff) is an idealistic young officer who arrives in Vietnam to lead a group of fighters from the 103rd Airborne division in jungle combat. Sergeant Michael McNamara (Robert F. Lyons) is a combat veteran who helps Jeff after most of the platoon is wiped out. George S. Clinton provides the music for this low-budget war film that features plenty of gratuitous violence. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

Released at the height of Stephen King's popularity in the 1980s, this home video pairs two short films adapted from the horror author's earliest (and most revered) short-story compilation. The first tale, "The Woman in the Room," marked a promising genre debut from writer-director Frank Darabont, who would later garner critical acclaim, as well as Oscar and Golden Globe nominations, for The Shawshank Redemption, adapted from King's superb non-horror novella. A study of internalized horror and fear of mortality, "Woman" involves a distraught young man's inner torment over the suffering of his terminally ill mother and his ultimate solution to both her woes and his own. The second entry, Jeff Schiro's "The Boogeyman," though not as technically polished and sublime as the first, is nevertheless wonderfully entertaining, providing horrors of a far more visceral nature. It is told from the perspective of a deeply disturbed man, who confides in his therapist that his childhood fears of the closet-dwelling title monster may have caused the death of his own children, perhaps by his own hand... perhaps something else. The gritty, low-budget style of these shorts actually enhances the pervasive sense of dread, together with tight plotting and fine performances which heighten the level of terror, placing this compilation a cut above most Hollywood renderings of King's work. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide

Great special effects do not always make for a great film, but Dreamscape comes awfully close. Dr. Paul Novotny (Max Von Sydow) and Dr. Jane Devries (Kate Capshaw) run a clinic for the study of dreams. Hoping to alleviate the pain of those plagued with recurring nightmares, Novotny hires a team of psychics to "inhabit" the subconsciouses of the patients. Alex Gardner (Dennis Quaid), a small-time hustler who uses his ESP gifts for financial gains, is hired to work at the clinic. He helps to disperse the fears of a young nightmare-plagued boy, then reverts to type by "raping" the thoughts of the lovely Dr. Devries. Things come to a head when one of the patients, the American president (Eddie Albert), decides to purge himself of his apocalyptic dreams by making a lasting peace with the Soviets. Bob Blair (Christopher Plummer), the political reactionary who finances the clinic, decides to assassinate the president by acting upon Dr. Novotny's pet theory: if a person dies in his or her dream, he/she will die in real life. The finale pits Gardner against psychic assassin Tommy Ray Glatman (David Patrick Kelly). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The sheriff of a small Texas town is pitted against a genetically engineered super-villain. ~ All Movie Guide

Karate champ Chuck Norris returns for another chop-socky vigilante flick in The Octagon, one of a handful of undistinguished Ninja pictures released during the early '80s. Norris appropriately plays a retired karate champ hired as a bodyguard for a wealthy woman (Karen Carlson) plagued by a gang of vicious ninjas. Reluctant at first to take the job, he reconsiders when he learns the gang is headed by his longtime arch rival Tadashi Yamashita (Lee Van Cleef). The script -- as is the case in nearly every Ninja film -- has holes bigger than Okinawa, and the acting is downright atrocious, particularly that of Norris, who, thankfully, improved with time. However, the production values are fair, as is the direction, and the action sequences are often exciting and comparatively realistic. Recommended for genre fans only. ~ Jeremy Beday, All Movie Guide

A young racer attempts to win a dragstip competition where the outcome has already been fixed by the local mob, in this film alternately known as Hotrod and Rebel of the Road. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide