Marianne McAndrew Movies

Did Greg and Marcia really do the nasty? Was Brady dad Robert Reed a bumbling lush? These and other burning Brady questions are in turn answered and skirted around in Growing up Brady, an account of the torrid machinations at work behind the laughter and polyester lapels of America's 1970s alpha-clan. Maureen McCormick (Kaley Cuoco) uses pouty sexuality to try to lure her TV brother, Barry Williams (Adam Brody) into her amorous clutches, while Florence Henderson (Rebecca Bush) feels more than motherly instincts toward her TV son. Meanwhile, poor Robert Reed (Daniel Hugh Kelly) drinks a lot, and everyone revels in a Brady Bunch of dysfunction. Growing up Brady was co-executive produced by none other than Greg Brady himself, Barry Williams. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, Rovi

The staff of "FYI" is all agog when the Museum of Broadcast Arts plans to honor the program with a major award. Unfortunately, along with this honor comes a major upsurge in the egos of Murphy (Candice Bergen) and her colleagues. The personalities continue to clash right up to the awards ceremony, leading to the inevitable, mass-embarrassment disaster. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Dick Van Dyke is the Drop-Out Father in this lighthearted TV movie. A successful but unsatisfied insurance executive, Van Dyke decides one day to kick over the traces. As his wife (Mariette Hartley) and family listen in fascinated horror, our hero announces his plans to move from the suburbs to a Manhattan loft, there to "find himself." With the exception of his loyal youngest daughter, Van Dyke's family elects to stay put, permitting him to carve out a new life on his own. Peter Matz won an Emmy nomination for his sprightly musical score. Originally telecast September 17, 1982, Drop-Out Father was followed in 1988 by a made-for-TV sequel, innovatively titled Drop-Out Mother. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Posing as a prison pathologist, Quincy (Jack Klugman) conducts an investigation of the death of a convicted embezzler who was about to provide testimony against his mob bosses. The man's death has been ruled accidental, but Quincy doesn't believe it. The trick now is to figure out how a murder was committed in a maximum-security prison wing, without any tangible evidence (hint: the episode's title is a key to the solution). This episode was originally scheduled to air on April 15, 1977. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

One of the least interesting efforts from American International Pictures, this dreary monster flick involves a scientist who is bitten by a rabid vampire bat while honeymooning in the desert, thereby transforming into a vampire-like creature (well, really more of a "were-bat") and setting out on nightly blood-drinking binges. He eventually puts the bite on his bride, and she undergoes a similar transformation. Apart from atmospheric photography, neat desert settings and some clever effects work from Stan Winston (mostly lost to sloppy editing), this dismal creature feature will probably lose viewers' interest long before the gory climax. Originally released as It Lives By Night. ~ Cavett Binion, Rovi

Russ Meyer followed-up his delirious Beyond the Valley of the Dolls with this surprisingly straighforward drama, which offered little of Meyer's traditional tongue-in-cheek humor or remarkably proportioned women in favor of a serious message about the evils of censorship. A bookstore sells a copy of a notorious erotic novel, entitled The Seven Minutes, to a teenager who is later arrested for rape. A prosecutor on a crusade against pornography seizes upon this as an opportunity to have the book declared obscene, and the trial sparks a heated debate about the issue of pornography vs. free speech, as well as revealing a startling revelation about the novel's true author. Adapted from a novel by Irving Wallace, The Seven Minutes featured one of Meyer's more interesting casts, including veteran character actors John Carradine and Alexander D'Arcy, a post-Munsters Yvonne de Carlo, a pre-Magnum P.I. Tom Selleck, lounge comic Jackie Gayle, and Wolfman Jack as himself. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

In the first episode of a two-part story, criminal genius Curtis Breer (Bradford Dillman) masterminds a $1,800,000 amusement park robbery with three confederates. Though it looks like the perfect crime, the conspirators have failed to bring into consideration such intagibles as greed, betrayal, and revenge. Featured in the cast is Deanna Martin, the daughter of entertainer Dean Martin. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Twenty-seven-year-old Barbra Streisand seemed an inappropriate choice for middle-aged, match-making widow Dolly Levi, but her energy carries her right through the role and dominates the lackluster movie around her. The plot, drawn from Thornton Wilder's The Matchmaker (itself based on a 19th-century British farce), is set in motion when Yonkers feed store clerk Cornelius Hackl (Michael Crawford) celebrates his promotion by taking his pal Barnaby Tucker (Danny Lockin) to New York City for a "corking good time." But Cornelius and Barnaby can't avoid crossing paths with their boss Horace Vandergelder (Walter Matthau), who'd give them Holy Ned if he saw them in a fancy restaurant with two fancy girls instead of tending the store. Mr. Vandergelder himself is the object of Dolly's affections, though she pretends to have only a professional interest in the widowed merchant, going through the motions of finding him a new wife when in fact she'd like to be the lucky bride herself. The film's musical set pieces include a show-stopping rendition of the title number, with Louis Armstrong more or less playing himself. The biggest number is "Before the Parade Passes By," in which thousands of costumed marchers and atmosphere extras cavort before a huge replica of a New York City thoroughfare in the 1890s (actually the main entrance of the 20th Century-Fox studio, with period facades adorning the office buildings). An artifact of an era in which Broadway musicals were a significant part of popular culture, Hello Dolly seemed bizarrely irrelevant in the social turmoil of the late 1960s, and it became one of the late-1960s big-budget failures that led Hollywood studios toward a different kind of filmmaking in the 1970s. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi