Keye Luke Movies

Where the original Gremlins was a horror film spiked with comedy, Gremlins 2: The New Batch is essentially a black comedy, with a couple of horrifying touches. As the film starts, the fantastical trinket shop in Chinatown, which sold the Mogwai in the first film, is demolished by a crazed multi-media businessman called Daniel Clamp (John Glover). The heroes from the first movie, Billy (Zach Galligan) and Kate (Phoebe Cates), happen to work for Clamp in his huge high-rise. They find the Mogwai within Clamp's building, but not before he has accidentally spawned legions of mischievous, lizard-like Gremlins. Soon, the Gremlins are wreaking havoc throughout the building. In the original film, their misdeeds were violent, but here they're also goofy and satirical. Director Joe Dante has filled the film with quick verbal and visual jokes, which, for many, makes Gremlins 2: The New Batch a satire and inversion of the typical horror film. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Rovi

Although many genre filmmakers have managed to blend horror and humor with great success, movies employing this formula often run the risk of both elements canceling each other out, resulting in a horror comedy that is neither scary nor funny. Alas, Dead Heat is a textbook example of this kind of failure. It details the weird misadventures of a pair of mismatched L.A. cops -- the straitlaced and by-the-book Roger Mortis (Treat Williams) and wisecracking loose cannon Doug Bigelow (muscle-headed Saturday Night Live alum Joe Piscopo). Their quest is to reach the heart of a sinister crime ring that employs indestructible undead henchmen. In a strange twist, their inept handling of the case results in both cops -- first Williams, then Piscopo -- being killed in action and subsequently reanimated in a secret laboratory managed by the barely seen Vincent Price (whose walk-on role is more entertaining than the combined performances of the two leads). The potential for "splatstick" comedy in the mode of Evil Dead 2 or Peter Jackson's Bad Taste is defeated by two major obstacles: first, the painfully unfunny mugging of Piscopo, who was unwisely allowed to ad-lib much of his performance; and second, the MPAA's trimming of several minutes from Steve Johnson's sensational makeup effects in order to avoid the dreaded X rating -- including a clever scene involving a zombie go-go girl played by Linnea Quigley. ~ Cavett Binion, Rovi

Not to be confused with the 1975 TV movie Bloodsport, this 1986 production was a spin-off of the recently cancelled police drama series T.J. Hooker. William Shatner is back as the aforementioned Hooker, a cop on special assignment to Hawaii (where the film was lensed). Accompanied by longtime professional colleagues Stacey Sheridan (Heather Locklear) and Jim Corrigan (James Darren), Sgt. Hooker endeavors to protect U.S. Senator Stuart Grayle (Don Murray) and his wife, Barbara (Kim Miyori), from terrorists, only to find that the assignment isn't quite as cut and dried as it seems. Telecast May 21, 1986, on CBS, Blood Sport did not result in a wholesale weekly revival of T.J. Hooker, as the producers evidently had hoped, though reruns of the original series continued to be seen on CBS' late-night schedule until September 17, 1987. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Blake Edwards comes a cropper in this lunk-headed slapstick homage to Laurel and Hardy, Mack Sennett, and Jerry Lewis. Ted Danson and Howie Mandell play Spence Holden and Dennis Powell, a couple of idiots who find themselves involved with a pack of gangsters. Spence is a two-bit actor who is at a racetrack location with his pal Dennis, when he overhears two small-time thugs, Wayne "Turnip" Parragella (Richard Mulligan) and Maurice "Binky" Drundza (Stuart Margolin), talk about doping a horse set to run a race. It turns out that Turnip and Binky are under orders to carry out the dastardly scheme by their underworld boss Tony Pazzo (Paul Sorvino). When Spence and Dennis are found out, they find themselves pursued all over the Los Angeles area by an angry Tony Pazzo mob in an ever-escalating series of races and chases, crashes and smashes, and shouting and screaming. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

Twenty-one years after ending its original ABC prime-time run in 1965, the Hanna Barbera animated adventure series Jonny Quest was revived with 13 brand-new episodes as a component of the weekend syndicated package "Funtastic World of Hanna Barbera." All of the original characters were revived: globetrotting research scientist, Dr. Benton Quest; his tousled-haired son, Jonny; Jonny's bodyguard-tutor, Race Bannon; his mystical young Indian friend, Hadji; and the pet bulldog, Bandit. Of the original voice actors, only Don Messick (as Dr. Quest and Bandit) and Victor Perrin (as perennial villain Dr. Zin) were heard on the later series. In the sixth of the "new" episodes, another member of the Quest team was introduced, a "Monolith Man" named Hardrok. Slightly better animated than the original -- and with markedly wittier dialogue as well as a refreshing increase in its sci-fi-fantasy content -- the Jonny Quest (1986 series) was later incorporated in the same package as the 26 "original" Jonny Quest episodes. Under the blanket title "Classic Jonny Quest," this manifest was seen on cable's Cartoon Network from 1992 to 1995. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

"Don't expose him to bright light. Don't ever get him wet. And don't ever, ever feed him after midnight." This sage advice is ignored midway through Gremlins, with devastating results. This comic Joe Dante effort is set in a Norman Rockwell-esque small town at Christmastime. Seeking a unique gift for his son an erstwhile inventor (Hoyt Axton) purchases a cute, fuzzy little "Mogwai" from a Chinatown shopkeeper's (Keye Luke) grandson (John Louie), who dispenses the above-mentioned warning before closing the deal. Meanwhile, young bank clerk Billy Peltzer (Zach Galligan) must suffer such antagonists as rich-bitch Mrs. Deagle (Polly Holliday) and priggish Gerald (Judge Reinhold) while pursuing his romance with Kate (Phoebe Cates). These and a variety of other plot strands are tied together when the lovable mogwai (named Gizmo) is exposed to bright light and gotten wet. In short order, the town is invaded by nasty, predatory Gremlins, who lay waste to everything in sight as Billy and Kate try to contain the destruction. Like most of Joe Dante's works, Gremlins is chock-full of significant cameo appearances: in this instance, such pop-culture icons as Dick Miller, Jackie Joseph, Chuck Jones, Scott Brady, Harry Carey Jr., Steven Spielberg (the film's executive producer) and even Robby the Robot all show up briefly on screen. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Magnum (Tom Selleck) embarks upon a personal vendetta against the unknown culprit who nearly killed Higgins (John Hillerman) by tampering with the brakes of his car. It turns out that this murder attempt is linked with Higgins' current efforts to research an incident which occurred in 1942 at an Honolulu internment camp for Japanese-Americans. One of the camp's guards is alleged to have killed an inmate--and despite the passage of 40 years, there is still someone around and about who is willing to kill again to keep the full story of this incident from ever seeing the light of day. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The made-for-TV Fly Away Home was intended as the pilot for a weekly series. Bruce Boxleitner stars as Carl Danton, a combat photographer assigned to Vietnam. This time around, Danton is compelled to cover the Tet Offensive--and to battle with bureaucratic red tape in order to maintain his journalistic integrity. A subplot concerns internal corruption involving an otherwise respectable Vietnamese family. Featured in the cast as Denton's Vietnamese lady friend Mai is Tiana Alexandra, the wife of the film's producer/screenwriter Stirling Silliphant. Fly Away Home first aired September 18, 1981. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In this comedy, an elderly ex-vaudevillian is surprised to find a naked young woman in the trunk of his car. He soon discovers that she is a runaway fleeing from both the police and an enraged drug dealer she cheated out of $20,000. Meanwhile, the codger's daughter continually attempts to get him committed because of his overly generous support of his former colleagues. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

The busiest person on this M*A*S*H episode is an adroit Korean jeweler, Mr. Shin (Keye Luke). His knowhow comes in quite handy when an emergency replacement is needed for Margaret's (Loretta Swit) wedding ring, which Klinger (Jamie Farr) unwittingly threw in the trash. But Mr. Shin's biggest assignment is a specialized surgical clamp, without which Hawkeye (Alan Alda) and B.J. (Mike Farrell) might lose a patient. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Robert Mitchum seems more aloof and detached than usual in the Hong Kong-produced crime caper Amsterdam Kill. Mitchum plays a washed-up police officer, hired by DEA agent Bradford Dillman to help plug up a security leak. Someone is blabbing the name of the department's contacts in Hong Kong, and that someone must be stopped before every one of the informants is pushing up daisies. With but a single clue-the word "Juliana"--Mitchum flies off to Amsterdam, where he mingles with the city's drug culture before his final showdown with the villains. Other familiar faces lurking about in Amsterdam Kill include Richard Egan, Leslie Nielsen, and Keye Luke. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Season three of Kung Fu occasionally relieves the loneliness of Kwai Chang Caine (David Carradine), the ex-Shaolin priest who, escaping from his native China after the justifiable killing of a nobleman, has found his way to the American West of the 1860s in search of his long-lost American brother -- and in search of lasting peace and inner tranquility. This season, Caine is occasionally joined in his perambulations by his American cousin Margit (Season Hubley), who of course needs protection every so often, thus prodding the pacifistic Caine into vanquishing various villains with his awesome martial-arts skills (and also of course, the big fight scenes are virtually always filmed in slow motion). Also requiring Caine's help and support during Kung Fu's third and final season are a whole new crop of guest stars, including Stefanie Powers, Sondra Locke, William Shatner, Lew Ayres, Patricia Neal, Eddie Albert, José Feliciano, Leslie Nielsen, David Carradine's father, John Carradine, and the star's then-girlfriend Barbara Hershey, who at the time was billing herself as Barbara Seagull. ~ Rovi