Susan O'Connell Movies

Somewhere in San Francisco, Olya (Daphne Rubin Vega) is an exotic dancer who works at an upscale strip club. A mysterious woman who harbors numerous past lives, she lives with her lover Trisha (Ria Pavia), a novelist who is writing a book about none other than Olya. In her spare time, Olya engages in secret liaisons with Anna (Serena Scott Thomas), an advertising executive trapped in a stagnating marriage to Victor (Tony Denison). Victor, however, is no dummy and one day, after following his wife to her meeting, he confronts Olya. She has no idea who Victor is, but spontaneously engages in a liberating bout of open-air nookie with him, all of which she later relays to Anna, who is less than thrilled. When it becomes apparent that the two women met in a cancer support group, and that neither has told her respective spouse about her illness, an already complicated love triangle takes on added portent. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide

Featuring Lila Kedrova and Melvyn Douglas as elderly couple Eva and David who, after forty years of a less-than-satisfying marriage, find the lost love they once had for each other as they travel to San Francisco to visit their grandchildren. Actress Lee Grant's first directorial feature, this drama is based on a novella by Tillie Olsen. ~ Kristie Hassen, All Movie Guide

Two men from widely opposite spectrums in life are trapped in the same dilemma. Highly respected police detective Dave Lambert (Barry Primus) and seedy informer Art DeVoe (Mills Watson) have both witnessed a cop killing--and the murderer has sent his minions forth to get rid of them both. Featured prominently in the supporting cast is Robert Walden, on the cusp of his stardom as gonzo reporter Rossi on Lou Grant. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Originally telecast the week following the premiere of its two-hour "TV movie" pilot, the opening episode of Emergency wastes no time getting down to business. Squad 51 of the LA County Fire Department's Paramedical Rescue Service is kept busy with a heart-attack victim (Jock Mahoney) whose friends think he's only kidding, an apparent drunkard (Jeff Davis) who has actually gone into insulin shock, and a hunter trapped high on a treacherous precipice. On a lighter note, paramedic John Gage (Randolph Mantooth) is forced to play nursemaid to Bonnie, a troublesome dog belonging to auto-accident victim Paula Slayton (Pat McAnery). Real-life fireman Dick Hamner) appears as the Squad's captain (named, coincidentally, Dick Hamner), in this and all subsequent first-season episodes. ~ 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

What would a late-1960s detective series be without the obligatory "flower child" episode? After Detective Ed Brown (Don Galloway) busts a Haight-Ashbury drug house, he is accused of beating a hippie to death. To clear Ed's name, Ironside (Raymond Burr) follows a trail of clues to a group of outwardly clean-cut students in a private school--and runs up against a vast and sinister conspiracy of silence, involving not only "the kids" but also a few grownups. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide