Baynes Barron Movies

Faulkner (Christopher George) is an ATF agent who shut down the moonshine operation of Burl (Ralph Meeker) in his Southern state hideaway. Along with agent Martin (Ron Rifkin), the duo uses eight escaped prisoners for the job, promising their freedom should the mission succeed. Fabian stars as one of the more unlikely criminals and Leslie Parrish drips with sweet Southern charm as a honeysuckle rose in this routine adventure film. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

The fast-paced world of stock-car racing provides the backdrop for this drama that centers upon a driver who is forced to retire after a blackout causes the death of another driver. He then begins working at a "Thrill Circus" as a stunt driver. There he meets the proprietor's daughter, who also drives there, and her lover. The professional driver is bored by his new job and so begins training the girl's beau to be a professional. The training is good and the young man wins his first race. This causes the banished driver's gold-digging ex-girl friend to try to steal the hot young driver away from the daughter which creates some problems between the younger and the older drivers. They reconcile when they are paired up during a crucial 500-mile race. In the midst of the race, the older pro feels another blackout coming on. By the end of the film, he realizes that the fainting spells are a psychological reaction to a childhood trauma. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In this musical aimed at teenagers, Frankie Avalon, and Fabian battle it out for Annette Funicello's affections on the stock car track. The tale begins when smugglers trick Avalon into taking on contraband during a cross-country race. He catches on to their ploy and helps the Feds capture the crooks. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Once again, Gladys Kravitz catches Samantha in the act of witchcraft, and once again is unable to convince her husband Abner of the fact. This time, Gladys looks on in fascinated horror as Sam "twitches" open her garage door -- a neat trick, considering that the door isn't automated. To cover Sam's tracks, the Stephenses immediately install a remote-control opener, only to be plagued by a series of malfunctions caused by passing jets (for which, of course, Darrin holds Sam responsible). Its title a play on a once-popular song, "Open the Door, Witchcraft" was written by Ruth Brooks Flippen, and originally aired on April 8, 1965. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this exciting Korean War drama, a yellow-bellied sergeant stays back after sending his courageous unit to attack a communist bunker. Most of the men are slaughtered, but still the rest press on and successfully secure the bunker. The cowardly sergeant takes all the credit and then accuses the surviving fighters of cowardice. He waits expectantly for a medal, but one of the sergeant's superiors isn't sure he deserves it. One of the evil sarge's soldier's threatens to tell and so is killed. The sergeant then leads his men to disregard a cease-fire and attack a regiment of disarmed communist troops. This enrages the enemy who manages to kill him. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In this dreadful science-fiction film from director Leonard Katzman, four astronauts fly to the moon in the year 2000 in hopes of finding it suitable for colonization. Instead, they are diverted by a spaceship piloted by an alien monster and a deadly meteor shower, ending up on an uncharted planet where they are menaced by gillmen and giant crabs. Originally titled The First Woman in Space (for co-star Francine York), this low-budget atrocity features ridiculous monsters previously seen in The Wizard of Mars and other films. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide

Juli Eng (Irene Tsu) travels from San Francisco to Hong Kong to claim the cache of precious diamonds left to her by her grandfather. Alas, the gems are missing, so Juli returns to America and asks Perry Mason (Raymond Burr) to help her track them down. Eventually, the identity of the thief, Ralph Iverson (Jerry Oddo), is revealed--but by this time Iverson has been murdered, and poor Juli has been charged with the crime. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Nehemiah Persoff is back as Jake "Greasy Thumb" Guzik, hated rival of Frank "The Enforcer" Nitti (Bruce Gordon). As Nitti busies himself forcing other bootleggers out of business, Guzik moves in and orders Nitti to forget about booze and start trafficking in narcotics. The argument between the two mob chieftans forces the Syndicate to vote on Guzik's proposal--which in turn obliges Nitti and Guzik to smuggle a deported mobster back into the country to cast the deciding ballot. Needless to say, this is one election that Elliot Ness (Robert Stack) is determined to derail before it even gets on track. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Lewis Martin (Wynn Pearce) considers himself lucky to be alive; he has been kidnapped, driven way in the country, and forced to get drunk, apparently as part of an elaborate frame-up. After his ordeal, Martin contacts Perry Mason (Raymond Burr), accusing his stepfather Judson Bailey (Bruce Gordon) of arranging the abduction in order to get Martin out of the way so that Bailey could take over the family business. Perry is asked to locate a photograph showing Bailey conspiring with the mysterious kidnapper--but the lawyer ends up defending Martin when Bailey turns up dead. H.M. Wynant makes his first appearance as Deputy DA Sampson, one of several temporary replacements for absentee series regular William Talman (DA Hamilton Burger). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

While having lunch at the Plaza Hotel in New York, advertising executive Roger O. Thornhill (Cary Grant) has the bad luck to call for a messenger just as a page goes out for a "George Kaplan." From that moment, Thornhill finds that he has stepped into a nightmare -- he is quietly abducted by a pair of armed men out of the hotel's famous Oak Room and transported to a Long Island estate; there, he is interrogated by a mysterious man (James Mason) who, believing that Roger is George Kaplan, demands to know what he knows about his business and how he has come to acquire this knowledge. Roger, who knows nothing about who any of these people are, can do nothing but deny that he is Kaplan or that he knows what they're talking about. Finally, his captors force a bottle of bourbon into Roger and put him behind the wheel of a car on a dangerous downhill stretch. Through sheer luck and the intervention of a police patrol car and its driver (John Beradino), Roger survives the ride and evades his captors, and is booked for drunk driving. He's unable to persuade the court, the county detectives, or even his own mother (Jesse Royce Landis) of the truth of his story, however -- Thornhill returns with them to the mansion where he was held, only to find any incriminating evidence cleaned up and to learn that the owner of the house is a diplomat, Lester Townsend (Philip Ober), assigned to the United Nations. He backtracks to the hotel to find the room of the real George Kaplan, only to discover that no one at the hotel has ever actually seen the man. With his kidnappers once again pursuing him, Thornhill decides to confront Townsend at the United Nations, only to discover that he knows nothing of the events on Long Island, or his house being occupied -- but before he can learn more, Townsend gets a knife in his back in full view of 50 witnesses who believe that Roger did it. Now on the run from a murder charge, complete with a photograph of him holding the weapon plastered on the front page of every newspaper in the country, Thornhill tries to escape via train -- there he meets the cooly beautiful Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint), who twice hides him from the police, once spontaneously and a second time in a more calculated rendezvous in her compartment that gets the two of them together romantically, at least for the night. By the next day, he's off following a clue to a remote rural highway, where he is attacked by an armed crop-dusting plane, one of the most famous scenes in Hitchcock's entire film output. Thornhill barely survives, but he does manage to learn that his mysterious tormentor/interrogator is named Phillip Vandamm, and that he goes under the cover of being an art dealer and importer/exporter, and that Eve is in bed with him in every sense of the phrase -- or is she? ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Mr. Johnson (Edgar Stehli) claims to have had a vision of the serial strangler who is terrorizing the city. Unfortunately, no one will listen to Mr. Johnson: not the police, not his priest (Rusty Lane), not even his own wife (Edith Evanson). Besides, the cops already have a suspect in custody, and the case against the man seems airtight. But Johnson insists that his vision is accurate -- and tragically, it turns out to be just that. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Practical joker Bradley (Albert Salmi) chooses as his next victim Pop Henderson (Roscoe Ames), the nearsighted, hearing-impaired attendant at the local morgue. Sneaking onto a slab, Bradley pretends to be a corpse -- and when he "comes to life," the terrified Henderson nearly jumps out of his skin, and almost loses his job. But there's a comeuppance in store for Bradley when one of his previous victims knocks him unconscious, leaving him in a state of complete paralysis.... ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This uproariously bad monster mess is set on a remote tropical island, where a native prince places a curse on the elders just prior to his execution for breaking tribal law, promising to return from the dead for revenge. He does, of course -- but he can only manage to return from the grave as a giant walking tree. (His obvious displeasure with having assumed this shape is indicated by the tree-thing's permanently constipated expression.) There is some indication given that his resurrection has something to do with atomic testing taking place on the island, but this is obviously incidental to the real plot, which treats viewers to endless scenes of natives running in horror from a shambling, ticked-off rubber stump. In print, this sounds like broad comedy material, but the only laughs to be found in this clunker are purely unintentional. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide