Joel Marston Movies

Opting for light entertainment after the critical satire of Shampoo (1975), producer-director-writer-star Warren Beatty remade the 1941 comic fantasy Here Comes Mr. Jordan. Dimly amiable L.A. Rams quarterback Joe Pendleton (Beatty) is prematurely called to Heaven by an over-eager escort (Buck Henry, who co-directed) after a traffic accident. When archangel Mr. Jordan (James Mason) discovers the error, he offers to return Joe to his body, only to find that it has been cremated. On the verge of playing in the Super Bowl, Joe demands a fit body rather than the old about-to-be-murdered industrialist Farnsworth he has been offered, but he reconsiders when he sees environmentalist Betty Logan (Julie Christie) in Farnsworth's house. Assuming Farnsworth's body while keeping his sweet self, Joe hires his beloved coach Max Corkle (Jack Warden) to get him in shape (after convincing Max who he really is), sets Farnsworth's business on an eco-friendly path, and romances Betty. Farnsworth's homicidal wife (Dyan Cannon) and secretary (Charles Grodin), however, are still determined to succeed in their plan to kill him. When Mr. Jordan finally finds the Super Bowl body Joe wanted, Joe has to trade his old self for the new life -- but will he remember his love for Betty? Heaven Can Wait offered contemporary yet old-fashioned escapism and tapped into the late-1970s vogue for nostalgic fun, becoming one of 1978's most popular summer movies after Grease. Updating the original while following its blueprint, Beatty and co-writer Elaine May switched Joe's sport and turned Joe into a man of his '70s moment, adoring Betty for her convictions and favoring "green" policies over corporate greed. Gently breathing life into a classic form, Heaven Can Wait found romantic innocence in a jaded time, and it went on to receive nine Oscar nominations, including Best Picture. ~ Lucia Bozzola, Rovi

In the spirit of the then-popular Batman TV series, this episode finds Lucy (Lucille Ball) going the "superhero" route. When Mooney (Gale Gordon) drops a one-ton computer on his toe, Lucy lifts the heavy machinery with the greatest of ease. It turns out that a malfunctioning adrenal gland has endowed Lucy with super-strength far beyond that of any ordinary mortal redhead. This was the final episode of The Lucy Show's fourth season. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

This is the first of several Branded episodes in which fictional ex-military officer Jason McCord (Chuck Connors) has a significant influence upon actual American history. In this instance, Jason is hired to survey the vast territory of Alaska, recently purchased for the U.S. by William Henry Seward (Ian Wolfe). Jason soon discovers that the supposedly worthless land is rich with gold and oil--and so do a pair of scoundrels who plan to steal Jason's maps and bump him off before he can make his discoveries public. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Robert Stack and Dorothy Malone are Cliff and Laurie Henderson, a married couple on a vacation with their young daughter (Tammy Marihugh), taking their first sea voyage aboard the aging ocean liner Claridon. All is well for them, but not for the ship below decks, where a fire has broken out. The engine room crew, led by Chief Engineer Steven Pringle (Jack Kruschen) and 2nd Engineer Walsh (Edmond O'Brien) extinguish the blaze, but the ship's captain (George Sanders) refuses their request to shut down the boilers and check for further damage. Disaster follows as the boilers explode, taking Pringle with them and blasting a hole through to the upper decks and an opening to the sea that's not only too big to patch but allowing in too much water for the pumps to handle. Still, the Captain won't order the passengers to the lifeboats -- he hopes that the engine room crew under Walsh can hold the bulkhead and keep the ship afloat. Meanwhile, Cliff has to rescue his daughter from their wrecked stateroom, and must do what he can to help Laurie, who is trapped beneath a huge piece of steel bulkhead, while the ship slowly loses its battle with the sea. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi

In this sea-going suspense drama, Edwin Rumill (James Mason) is the former first mate of an ocean liner who leaps at the chance to have a vessel under his full command. However, the S.S. Berwind is no ship to write home about, a freighter from the mothball fleet whose captain has recently died. The crew is often ill-tempered, and Mahia (Dorothy Dandridge), the wife of the ship's cook, doesn't make anyone more comfortable with her flirtatious nature. Rumill learns that the bad attitude of his crew has a sinister undercurrent: two of the hands, Leroy Martin (Stuart Whitman) and Henry Scott (Broderick Crawford), have hatched a scheme to murder Rumill and the rest of the crew, bring in the ship as salvage, and sell it to the highest bidder, expecting to earn close to a million dollars. Rumill must rally support if he and the other men hope to survive. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Julie is most enjoyable if one doesn't take it too seriously. Doris Day plays Julie Benton, whose off-the-coop musician husband Lyle Benton (Louis Jourdan) confesses that he in fact killed Julie's first husband. She immediately recognizes that he is so possessive of her that he would sooner rub her out than lose her altogether, and leaves Lyle, seeking protection under the wing of a country club acquaintance, Cliff Henderson (Barry Sullivan).
The San Francisco police deduce that Julie is in danger from Lyle, and begin to close in on the poor woman to protect her, but she inadvertently misses them. In the film's thrilling final sequence, Julie has returned to the stewardess job she once held - without realizing that Lyle has boarded the plane sans detection, planning to murder out most of the crew and take her out next. Silent film star Mae Marsh, a "regular" in the films of director Andrew L. Stone, appears in the closing scenes as an hysterical passenger. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Battle Taxi is set during the height of the Korean War. Sterling Hayden plays an officer of the Helicopter Air Rescue Service, whose job it is to save wounded or stranded soldiers from hostile territory. Arthur Franz costars as a lieutenant assigned to the copter service, who at first resents his position but eventually realizes his importance in the scheme of things. The film sticks to basics, eschewing any and all romantic subplots -- in fact, there isn't a single female character in the picture! ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Sir James Barrie's whimsical play Rosalind was updated and urbanized as the 1953 film Forever Female. Ginger Rogers plays a veteran Broadway star who has optioned a play written by William Holden. Though on the less sunny side of 40, Rogers expects to play the leading role, that of a 19 year old girl. Producer Paul Douglas--who also happens to be Rogers' husband--insists that Holden alter the age of the main character. Meanwhile, iron-willed ingenue Patricia Crowley, who is far more suited to the part than Rogers, begins her own campaign to win the role. Far more enjoyable than the plot mechanics of Forever Female are the sly showbiz inside jokes, courtesy of screenwriters Julius and Philip Epstein. It's also fun to tick off the familiar faces in the supporting cast, including George Reeves as a stuffy suitor, future Mrs. Bing Crosby Katherine Grant as an auditioning actress, and Gunsmoke and Dragnet villain Vic Perrin as an effeminate set designer. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Director Leslie Selander invests the Allied Artists "special" Fighter Attack with the same energy that he'd previously applied to his many westerns. Set during World War II, the film concerns an effort to destroy a Nazi supply depot. Though he's flown enough missions to be sent home, squadron leader Steve (Sterling Hayden) insists upon leading the offensive--and, on cue, is shot down behind enemy lines. Rescued by resistance fighters (Joy Page and J. Carroll Naish), Steve becomes the "inside man" for his squadron, laying the groundwork for the destruction of the German supplies. Fighter Attack was pleasingly filmed in the two-color Cinecolor process, as were many Monogram/Allied Artists "A"s of the period. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

H.G. Wells's War of the Worlds had been on the Paramount Pictures docket since the silent era, when it was optioned as a potential Cecil B. DeMille production. When Paramount finally got around to a filming the Wells novel, the property was firmly in the hands of special-effects maestro George Pal. Like Orson Welles's infamous 1938 radio adaptation, the film eschews Wells's original Victorian England setting for a contemporary American locale, in this case Southern California. A meteorlike object crash-lands near the small town of Linda Rosa. Among the crowd of curious onlookers is Pacific Tech scientist Gene Barry, who strikes up a friendship with Ann Robinson, the niece of local minister Lewis Martin. Because the meteor is too hot to approach at present, Barry decides to wait a few days to investigate, leaving three townsmen to guard the strange, glowing object. Left alone, the three men decide to approach the meterorite, and are evaporated for their trouble. It turns out that this is no meteorite, but an invading spaceship from the planet Mars. The hideous-looking Martians utilize huge, mushroomlike flying ships, equipped with heat rays, to pursue the helpless earthlings. When the military is called in, the Martians demonstrate their ruthlessness by "zapping" Ann's minister uncle, who'd hoped to negotiate a peaceful resolution to the standoff. As Barry and Ann seek shelter, the Martians go on a destructive rampage. Nothing-not even an atom-bomb blast-can halt the Martian death machines. The film's climax occurs in a besieged Los Angeles, where Barry fights through a crowd of refugees and looters so that he may be reunited with Ann in Earth's last moments of existence. In the end, the Martians are defeated not by science or the military, but by bacteria germs-or, to quote H.G. Wells, "the humblest things that God in his wisdom has put upon the earth." Forty years' worth of progressively improving special effects have not dimmed the brilliance of George Pal's War of the Worlds. Even on television, Pal's Oscar-winning camera trickery is awesome to behold. So indelible an impression has this film made on modern-day sci-fi mavens that, when a 1988 TV version of War of the Worlds was put together, it was conceived as a direct sequel to the 1953 film, rather than a derivation of the Wells novel or the Welles radio production. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Edmond O'Brien stars as an idealistic state's attorney assigned to crack down on a crime syndicate. This proves more dangerous than first suspected, since the syndicate has a number of city officials in its pocket--including the father of one of the investigating committee's chairpersons. William Holden is the crusading newspaperman who attempts to help O'Brien, but even his efforts are compromised by deeply entrenched political corruption. The climax is staged at a crowded boxing arena, where Holden is struck down by an assassin's bullet intended for O'Brien. Inspired by the real-life Senate investigations of 1951, The Turning Point is neither a remake of a 1917 Paramount silent of the same name, nor was the 1977 ballet-oriented Turning Point a remake of the 1952 film. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The backstory of The Red Badge of Courage involves the toppling of MGM's old Louis B. Mayer regime in favor of Dore Schary and his young Turks. It is also the tale of how an intended epic was ruthlessly whittled down to a lower-berth programmer. Since this story has already been related in detail in Lillian Ross' Picture (not to mention several John Huston biographies), the focus here will be what shows up on screen in Red Badge of Courage. Based on the novel by Stephen Crane, the film stars real-life war hero Audie Murphy as a Civil War soldier who must redeem himself in his own eyes after an act of cowardice. When he finally gets his opportunity, he realizes that he is no less frightened than before; it is simply that he has learned to push on in spite of that fear. A comparative newcomer to films, Murphy acquits himself magnificently in the difficult title role; equally impressive are political cartoonist Bill Mauldin as "The Loud Soldier," John Dierkes as "The Tall Soldier" and Royal Dano as "The Tattered Man." When Red Badge of Courage tested poorly in preview, the studio sliced it down to 69 minutes and added a narrator (James Whitmore) to clarify the more obscure plot passages. Further hurting the film was Bronislaus Kaper's overbaked musical score, which seemed more suited to a gung-ho John Wayne flick than a comparatively intimate tale of personal fortitude. Though the finished product plays like a Reader's Digest adaptation, a few brilliant passages remain, notably the sequence in which a commanding officer ingratiatingly lies to his troops for the sake of morale. Like Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons, Red Badge of Courage is a truncated classic -- but a classic, all the same. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi