Cameron Mitchell Movies

The setting is New Orleans, where a prominent jazz musician is killed onstage in full view of a nightclub audience. It turns out that the victim was done in by a rare South American poison. So what does all this have to do with Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury? Well, it seems that a similar murder with the same weapon occurred in one of Jessica's mystery novels--a most embarrassing turn of events, especially since Jessica was in the audience at the time of the real murder! B-picture icons Robert Clarke and Jackie Joseph show up in supporting roles in this episode, which also boasts an unusually strong (for 1985!) cast of prominent African American actors. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This unusual horror anthology mixed edited-down versions of one unreleased feature and two previously released films (Death Wish Club and The Nightmare Never Ends) with newly shot wraparound footage to create a surreal combination of crazed plotting and grindhouse gore. The framing device consists of God and Satan on a train full of breakdancing teenagers telling each other stories about humans. The first story focuses on an institute for the mentally ill that is really a cover for a black market organ-harvesting operation. The second story focuses on a man who falls for a woman who is part of group of people that attempt suicide for fun. The final story tells the tale of a group of mortals who attempt to stop Satan from returning to earth to begin the apocalypse. Each episode combines deranged plot twists with heaping helpinds of sex and violence, resulting in a film that plays like a lysergic and deranged variant on comparatively sedate horror anthologies like Creepshow. Night Train to Terror didn't enjoy a great deal of box-office success, but has gone on to enjoy a lengthy life on home video, where it continues to astound (and confound) viewers with its blood-spattered weirdness. ~ Donald Guarisco, All Movie Guide

The remote stiff acting of the policemen and detectives in this police action film, combined with the emphasis on gore and blood, leaves a large blank space between the two extremes of boring or violent. Lt. James Long (martial arts expert Leo Fong) is on the trail of some gunrunners who have stolen weapons from the National Armory in L.A. and are selling them to the highest local bidders. The chief gun honcho (Cameron Mitchell) is a crazed killer who is obsessed with torturing and then murdering women. Just by coincidence, Lt. Long's wife was brutally raped and murdered and he is out to avenge her death at all costs. Actual policemen and members of the coroner's office portray themselves in this film, at least guaranteeing an audience of family and friends. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

This pseudo-documentary on the life of President John F. Kennedy stars Robert Hogan as the President, James F. Kelly as Robert Kennedy, and Kenneth Mars as Lyndon Johnson, and includes some actual documentary footage intercut with the major dramatic events in Kennedy's Presidential career. Because the depictions of the Kennedys are not as strong as the real-life brothers, the actual footage and the factual accounting of well-known events are more convincing than the fictionalized time inventing private conversations in the Oval Office or elsewhere. Robert Guillaume as Martin Luther King, Jr. in the segment on the Cuban missile crisis presents a dignified and noble portrayal of the slain religious leader, and his performance stands out against the more mediocre portrayal of the private personae of the assassinated Kennedys. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

In this period adventure, Cameron Mitchell and Peter Graves star as a pair of Americans seeking their fortune overseas at the dawn of the 20th century. When they discover valuable oil reserves in Persia, they attempt to claim them for themselves, but their plan is not received enthusiastically by the locals, and they soon find themselves battling foes on all borders. Guns and the Fury also stars Michael Ansara and Albert Salmi. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

When the Burbank Karate Club embarks upon a relaxing cruise, the last thing they expect to encounter is hippie smugglers, white slavery, and man-eating monks looking to raise Karate masters up from the grave, but they do in this lively and decidedly off-beat and campy Hong Kong martial arts adventure. Much of the film is comprised of footage from Roger Corman's 1978 horror film Piranha. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Richard Benjamin's directorial debut is an engaging slice of nostalgia, purportedly based on an incident in life of Mel Brooks. Mark Linn-Baker stars as Benjy Stone, junior writer on the popular 1950s TV comedy/variety series The King Kaiser Show. Kaiser (Joseph Bologna)'s guest star this week is Hollywood matinee idol Alan Swann (Peter O'Toole), a swashbuckling Errol Flynn type, right down to his indiscriminate womanizing and fondness for mass quantities of booze. Stone is assigned to keep the actor out of trouble during rehearsals and deliver him sober to the performance. Becoming fast friends, Stone and Swann alternate baby-sitting responsibilities: Swann takes the young writer to the Stork Club and on an early-morning jaunt through Central Park with a "borrowed" police horse, while Stone takes Swann to his home in the Bronx, where the star is fawned over by Benji's mom (Lainie Kazan) and asked embarrassing questions about his love life by Uncle Morty (Lou Jacobi). Despite a few anxious moments, all goes well until Swann, panicking at the discovery that King Kaiser's show will be telecast live and not on film, walks out just before airtime. Shamed by Benjy into honoring his committment, Swann makes a spectacular, timber-smashing entrance, saving the show and rescuing Kaiser from being rubbed out by a gangster (Cameron Mitchell) whom the comedian has offended. Though it fluctuates between wistful realism and the manic exaggeration of a TV comedy sketch, My Favorite Year holds together quite well, delivering a plentitude of solid laughs. Jessica Harper, usually the star of bizarro films like Inserts and Suspiria, is quite appealing as Benjy Stone's girlfriend; that lady dancing with O'Toole at the Stork Club is 1930s film star Gloria Stuart, later an Oscar nominee for Titanic; the King Kaiser Show wardrobe mistress is played by Selma Diamond, a real-life comedy writer for Sid Caesar. My Favorite Year was converted into an unsuccessful Broadway musical in the early 1990s. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Magnum is hired to protect a prize racehorse named Norman, who has been receiving kidnapping threats.. It so happens that the horse's owner, Adelaide Malone (Christine Belford), is the niece of Charles Cathcart (Cameron Mitchell), a former military officer who saved Magnum's life in Vietnam, at great personal cost to himself. Not only is Cathcart deeply disappointed that Magnum chose to leave the Navy, but he is also dead set against the detective carrying out his assignment with Norman. As it turns out, Adelaide is a more likely abduction candidate than her horse--and what's the deal with those two lawyers with the same name? ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

No less than three directors contrived to piece together this crazy-quilt story (written by Dillinger scripter Phillip Yordan) of a newly-appointed Antichrist who rises up amid a morass of religious wackos, assorted demons, and Nazi war criminals. The identity of this evil agent is discovered by a relentless Nazi-hunter, who eventually convinces a couple of grizzled cops (Cameron Mitchell and original gangster Marc Lawrence) that his story is true. This long-shelved, low-budget occult weirdness was originally seen in condensed form (with the addition of some hokey stop-motion monster effects) in the horror anthology Night Train to Terror and appeared on home video as both Satan's Supper and the aptly-titled The Nightmare Never Ends. Look for Night Court's "Bull," Richard Moll (listed as "Charles Moll" in the credits), as the Nobel-winning (and far-from-bald) author of an atheist manifesto. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide

This sci-fi film, set in the year 2100 A.D., follows the struggles of an Earth family who are held hostage by the Styrolilans, a war-like alien race whose spaceship crashed nearby. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In this ecologically aware drama, local farmers rally together to stop an avaricious power company from running million-volt lines across their lands. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide