Mary Munday Movies

Adapted by John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion from Dunne's novel, True Confessions uses the still-unsolved "Black Dahlia" murder as the foundation for a devastating attack on big-city corruption -- in which it appears that many of the perpetrators wear clerical collars. In, 1948 Los Angeles detective Tom Spellacy (Robert Duvall) is assigned to investigate the death of a priest, who apparently suffered a heart attack while being serviced by a prostitute. Meanwhile, Tom's brother, young Catholic monsignor Des Spellacy (Robert De Niro), is reluctantly currying favor with crooked contractor Jack Amsterdam (Charles Durning), the better to finance an expansion of Des' church. The unifying factor between Tom and Des, beyond their sibling relationship, turns out to be the grisly murder of a hooker. The key words in the labyrinthine proceedings are power, ambition, and hypocrisy. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

By the admission of its own producers, the made-for-TV Marian Rose White was "extremely loosely based" on a true story. The real Marian Rose White was a 1930s teenager who suffered from a congenital visual defect. This led to her being misdiagnosed as "feebleminded," and locked away in a Sonoma, California institution. Despite the entreaties of sympathetic staffers, Marian was forced to undergo a legally mandated sterilization--which her widowed, impoverished mother readily agreed to. Thirty years passed before this terrible wrong was addressed and Marian was allowed to re-enter society. For the purposes of this film, those three decades were telescoped into four years. The result is a sincere (if somewhat rushed) "injustice of the week" TV effort. Katherine Ross is top-billed as a compassionate nurse, while Valerie Perrine is cast as Marian's unfeeling mother. Marian Rose White is brilliantly essayed by Nancy Cartwright, who is best known today as the voice of cartoon character Bart Simpson. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Quincy (Jack Klugman) finds evidence of food poisoning while performing an autopsy on a construction worker who died in a fall just outside the town of Rosewood. Investigating further, Quincy determines that the victim was laid low by contaminated tomatoes, the byproduct of lethal pesticides which a local company has buried in steel drums--which are now apparently leaking. Once the crusading medical examiner sets his sights on forcing the company to assume responsibility for what threatens to be a wide-ranging health disaster, it is obvious that this episode was inspired by the Love Canal/Three Mile Island debacle. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Anthony Hopkins is a ventriloquist psychologically tormented by his dummy in the Richard Attenborough thriller Magic (a film with a story that may seem familiar to those who have seen the Michael Redgrave segment of Dead of Night, or the Cliff Robertson episode "The Dummy" from The Twilight Zone television series). William Goldman based his screenplay on his best-selling novel. Hopkins plays Corky, a seedy magician who is hooted off the stage in the low-rent clubs that will stoop to hire him. But when he comes across a dummy named Fats, his career is energized. Corky sees in Fats everything he lacks himself -- confidence, creativity, and verbal agility. With the help of his agent Ben Greene (Burgess Meredith), Corky rises to the top of the nightclub circuit. But with Corky's success comes an increased paranoia, and he turns down a TV contract, believing that it would mean taking a medical examination and that rumors of his mental instability might leak out. Corky takes off to a Catskills resort, run by Peggy Ann Snow (Ann-Margret), an old girlfriend now unhappily married to a volatile hick (Ed Lauter). While a frustrated Ben high tails it to the Catskills to find Corky, Corky discovers that he still has feelings for Peggy, but lands in the middle of a love triangle between the woman and her husband, where his schizophrenic personality manifests itself and additional murders occur. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

The Hawaiians is the sequel to 1969's Hawaii; both films were adapted from the same sprawling novel by James A. Michener. Charlton Heston is top-billed as a sailor who returns to his Hawaiian homestead, only to learn that his grandfather's fortune has been bestowed upon his hated cousin Alec McCowan. As a reprisal, Heston sets up his own pineapple plantation in competition with his cousin. Heston's son John Phillip Law falls in love with the daughter (Virginia Ann Lee) of a Chinese farmer (Mako). The issue of miscegenation rears its ugly head, but by the end of this very long film Heston's family is united by marriage to the Chinese clan. The British title of The Hawaiians was Master of the Islands. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

After the intense bloodshed of The Wild Bunch (1969), this comic western fable took the opposite approach to director Sam Peckinpah's continuing examination of the end of the West. Left for dead by a couple of lizard-slaughtering desperados in the middle of the desert, prospector Cable Hogue (Jason Robards) is saved by his unexpected discovery of water "where there wasn't any." Hogue turns the water hole, felicitously located near a stagecoach route, into a thriving business, creating a rest stop for a never-ending series of parched travelers. On his occasional trips to the closest town, he meets chipper prostitute Hildy (Stella Stevens), who joins him in his oasis, completing Hogue's little paradise. But even though Hogue may be able to succeed and avenge himself against his original attackers, there is one thing that he cannot stop: progress. Completed before The Wild Bunch was released, and replete with comical and even musical interludes, Peckinpah's gently picaresque telling of Hogue's rise and fall stands in distinct contrast to the visual violence of its predecessor. The underlying message about the cost of modernity, however, equals The Wild Bunch in seriousness. The callous randomness of Hogue's fate is as shocking as the Bunch's final blaze of glory; as in Robert Altman's McCabe and Mrs. Miller from the same period, a tool of "civilization" provokes a most uncivilized end for an Old West dreamer. Although the film was as light-hearted in approach as the 1969 smash hit revisionist western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Warner Bros. mishandled the release and it did barely any business; Peckinpah returned to his trademark gore in his next film, the controversial Straw Dogs (1971). Still, The Ballad of Cable Hogue is less an anomaly for a master of violence than an ironically charming chapter in Peckinpah's career-long elegy to the western. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

Returning to work after a four-week absence, Perry Mason (Raymond Burr) makes up for lost time by agreeing to represent cantankerous orange grower Amos Keller (Arthur Hunnicutt). To get even with Amos for messing up his plans to bulldoze the local orange groves, land developer Gerald Thornton is suing the old coot, claiming to have been bitten by Amos' dog Hard Tack. Things turns deadly serious, however, when Thornton is murdered and Amos' granddaughter Sandra (Natalie Trundy) is charged with the crime. Watch for future spaghetti-western icon Lee Van Cleef in a supporting role. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Unable to get through to a particularly hostile patient, psychiatrist Peter Falk goes to gray-haired senior shrink Sidney Poitier for advice. This prompts Poitier to recall his experiences during World War II. While working on behalf of the government, Poitier was assigned the case of psycho Nazi sympathizer Bobby Darin. A complex flashback structure reveals the various influences that led to Darin's warped state of mind and to his life of crime. Poitier perceives that Darin is potentially dangerous, and insists that he needs further treatment. The government sees things differently, and allows Darin, who on the surface shows signs of recovery, to leave the hospital. The horrible results of this decision serve to convince Poitier to follow his own gut feelings no matter what his fellow "experts" might advise, and to continue probing even the most recalcitrant or deceptively "cured" of patients. Essentially a conformist psychological melodrama, Pressure Point truly comes to life whenever Bobby Darin is on the screen. His performance was outstanding, far better than his Oscar-nominated turn in 1963's Captain Newman MD. Unfortunately, the critics were aligned against Darin, possibly because of the singer/actor's well-publicized arrogance; Judith Crist went so far as to compare Darin to Dr. Samuel Johnson's walking dog, quipping that the most remarkable aspect of Darin's performance was not that he did it well, but that he did it at all. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Spending six years in prison for a crime he did not commit, embittered Ernie Walters (Rip Torn) decides to become a criminal for real in order to "justify" his incarceration. To do this, he robs a tax office, but wears a disguise to avoid going back to jail. He needn't have bothered, however, as the police ruefully explain when he is hauled in on suspicion. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This Sam Katzman costume quickie stars Sterling Hayden as 17th-century privateer Kit Gerardo, and (inevitably in a buccaneer meller of this sort) Rhonda Fleming as a gorgeous female pirate named Rouge. When Rouge's vessel is besieged by the minions of evil Caribbean governor Luis del Toro (John Sutton), Gerardo comes to her rescue. As the film unfolds, it turns out that practically no one is who they seem to be--especially the mysterious Rouge. Producer Katzman cannily fleshes out the film with miles of stock footage from earlier pirate epics. Apparently contemptuous of his role, Sterling Hayden delivers an uncharacteristically awful performance, but Rhonda Fleming makes the whole enterprise worthwhile. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide