Jo McDonnell Movies
- 1986
- R
This is a sports drama with an unconventional theme -- volleyball. The story revolves around several college athletes who train especially hard in hopes of being accepted onto the U.S. Men's Olympic Volleyball team. Whether they win or lose is not really the point so much is if they make the team or not. One superstar player cannot take the coach's tough attitude and walks off the team, while another is sidelined with an injury., and a third has problems at home with his wife. In spite of the fast-paced story, the story does not lead to a climactic, winning game and this might disappoint some avid sports fans. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Patrick Houser, Kristi Ferrell, (more)
- 1983
Fed up by the interference of her overprotective cousins Bo (John Schneider) and Duke (Tom Wopat), Daisy (Catherine Bach) moves out of the Duke farmhouse. Our heroine's new independence lasts only long enough for her to be kidnapped by Milo Beaudry (played by future Night Court regular Richard Moll), the son of a Tennessee moonshiner in league with Boss Hogg (Sorrell Booke). Unless her cousins can engineer a rescue, Daisy will soon be Mrs. Milo Beaudry--and there's a brace of shotguns backing up the boy's proposal! This is the final episode of The Dukes of Hazzard's fifth season. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1981
This early-'80s made-for-TV movie includes most of the cast of the original Munsters TV series. An evil scientist creates android replicas of the Munster family in order to frame them for the robbery of an art-gallery. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide
- 1980
A virtual remake of Roger Corman's drive-in classic Attack of the Crab Monsters, this Florida-lensed cheapie is more than just a throwback to low-budget monster movies of the 1950s -- it's a throwback in every sense of the word. The claw-wielding killer crustaceans here are the product of a nuclear plant accident off the Florida coast, which causes crabs used in a nearby growth-research experiment to bulk up to the size of sport-utility vehicles. Strangely, there's only one mega-crab on display, and even that one's not visible until the film's climax. In the meantime, we're treated to dull scenes of the clawed critters scampering around in search of human meals. Star Robert Lansing had already garnered a bit of experience battling giant mutated animals in similarly ridiculous movies such as Empire of the Ants. Also released as Night of the Claw. ~ Cavett Binion, 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
- Starring:
- Chuck Norris, Karen Carlson, (more)
When faced with graduation, four seniors plot to prolong their college experience for fear of steady employment, but they're also loathe to leave behind their accommodating housemate Sylvia (played with mute, topless allure by a pre-Three's Company Priscilla Barnes), who functions as a live-in maid and concubine ("Where else are we going to find a nympho who loves to cook and clean house?"). In between sumptuous meals and bouts in the sack, the boys pester their parents to pay for post-graduate studies, without success. Luckily, a Poindexter science major named Arnold is desperate to lose his virginity to Sylvia, so the guys trade her sexual favors for his complicity in an elaborate scam. He's the only trusted assistant of reclusive genius Professor Heigner (Alan Reed, the voice of Fred Flintstone), a three-time Nobel Prize winner studying the mating habits of mosquitoes. Foundations are eager to fund the professor's work with generous grants, and since Heigner signs anything Arnold hands him without question, the seniors draft their own letter of request for cash and claim to be studying the sexual habits of college-age girls. It works, and with a 50,000-dollar-grant they offer coeds a 20-dollar honorarium to participate in the study by engaging in any kind of sex they like with our four heroes as the only male volunteers. Eventually, exhaustion and avarice lead them to expand the study and allow local businessmen to take part for a 50-dollar fee, which leads to huge profits. Only the intervention of "the establishment" will show the seniors the folly of their ways, when they enter into partnership with a feminine hygiene corporation and find themselves targeted for murder. The female head of the foundation that funds the seniors' project mistakenly believes that Professor Heigner is some sort of sexual dynamo and pursues him endlessly, leading the misanthropic scientist to chase her away by firing a rifle at her, spraying her with sticky white fire extinguisher foam, and setting a blaze beneath her while she frantically climbs up a chimney. Endless lines of co-eds wait breathlessly for the chance to copulate with strangers for a double sawbuck (it's all in the name of science, after all, and why not earn money for something they'd be "giving away" otherwise?). ~ Fred Beldin, All Movie Guide
