Patricia Owens Movies

For reasons which he prefers to keep secret, wealthy industrialist Cameron Burgess (Paul Stewart) hires shady music promoter Clete Hawley (Richard Carlson) to groom a likable but untalented British rock singer named Sandy Chester (Martin Horsey) for superstardom. Soon afterward, Hawley is murdered, and Sandy is charged with the crime. Fortunately, Burgess is a client of Perry Mason (Raymond Burr), who agrees to defend the shaggy-haired suspect in court. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this complex mystery, an American woman is married to a British businessman. The trouble begins when the woman suspects that she is being stalked. She tells this to her husband and his friend. They then go home. While the friend is upstairs making a phone call, the stalker sneaks in and kills her husband. The friend hears the commotion and rushes downstairs. He gets there just in time to hear the killer requesting payment from the wife for services rendered. Later the killer is arrested and makes a full confession. Though he claims the woman paid him to kill her husband, the court remains skeptical. The friend believes the killer, but says nothing. After the trial, he learns that the woman's ex-husband had been blackmailing her with the claim that they were never actually divorced. He pushed her into killing her new husband. When the friend learns the truth, he has no choice but to phone the police and tell them all he knows. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

The actors do the best they can with this undistinguished wartime melodrama about a group of women caught in New Guinea just when the Japanese are taking over Indonesia and its contiguous islands in 1942. The women range from an ornithologist, to a nurse, to a thief, and a waitress, all captured and put into a Japanese prison camp. But the women manage to escape, though not all survive, and later on they encounter a double-dealing plantation owner (Cesar Romero) who unknown to them, is collaborating with the Japanese and plans on sending them back to their captors. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

This standard wartime drama is divided into three chronological segments and is based on the experiences of the real Guy Gabaldon (played as an adult by Jeffrey Hunter, and as a boy by Richard Eyer). In the first segment, Guy is a homeless waif without many prospects when he is adopted by a Japanese-American family. He grows up just in time to be drafted into battle in World War II -- the bombing of Pearl Harbor has a particularly devastating effect on his family and their friends. After a wild last fling with two buddies (David Janssen and Vic Damone) and some women, Guy heads off to war where he distinguishes himself because of his fluency in Japanese. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Don Murray stars as a humble cowboy with aspirations for bigger things. He borrows money from his dance-hall girlfriend Lee Remick to buy a ranch, then dumps Remick in favor of banker's daughter Patricia Owens. Murray runs for political office, and in so doing is compelled to join a posse in search of his best friend Stuart Whitman, who has turned rustler. Anxious not to compromise his climb to the top, Murray stands by in silence as Whitman is lynched. In the end, however, Murray regains his essential decency when he is shot while trying to protect his ex-girlfriend Remick from bullying land baron Richard Egan. Based on a novel by A. B. Guthrie Jr., These Thousand Hills may look and sound like a western, but it has "film noir" written all over it. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The third and (as of 2005) the last film adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's short story To Have and Have Not, The Gun Runners was as topical as this morning's news when it came out in 1958. Audie Murphy plays Sam Martin, a charter-boat skipper based in Key West, whose bad luck has enlarged from the gambling tables to his business. He's managed to stay honest up to this point, with a little help from his boozy friend and first-mate, Harvey (Everett Sloane), and a lot from his loyal, loving wife, Lucy (Patricia Owens), both of whom represent the best things in Sam's life. But then he finds himself about to lose his boat, and the only opportunity he has to save it lies with a larcenous American arms seller named Hannagan (Eddie Albert), who isn't above murder to get what he wants. Sam falls in with him, first for a quick trip in and out of Cuba and then up to his neck, and he is suddenly faced with destroying the most decent part of himself and the only people who care about him. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Wealthy Helene Delambre (Patricia Owens) is discovered late at night in the factory owned by her husband Andre (David Hedison). Helene stands beside a huge metal press, which has crushed the head and arm of her husband. Held for murder, the near-catatonic Helene refuses to tell anyone--not even Andre's brother Francois (Vincent Price)--why she did it. Francois cannot help but notice that Helene reacts in mortal terror when a tiny flies zips through the room. Nor can he disregard the statement made by Helene's son Philippe (Charles Herbert) that the fly has a curious white head and leg. When Francois pretends that he's captured the fly, Helene relaxes enough to tell her story. It seems that Andre, a scientist, had been working on a matter transmitter, which he claimed could disintegrate matter, then reintegrate it elsewhere. After a few experiments, Andre tried the transmitter himself. Just as he stepped into the disintegration chamber, a fly also flew into the chamber. We aren't immediately shown the results of this, save for the fact that Andre afterward insists upon keeping his head and arm covered. Alone with her husband, Helene abruptly removes the covering, revealing that Andre now bears the head of a fly! His atoms have become mixed up with the fly, and now he is unable to reverse the procedure. Deciding that his transmitter will be a bogy rather than a blessing to mankind, Andre smashes the apparatus and burns his notes. He then instructs Helene, via body language, to crush his fly-like head and arm in the press. Neither Francois nor inspector Charas (Herbert Marshall) believe the story...until, while staring intently at a spider's web in the garden, they see a tiny entrapped fly with Andre's head and arm, tinnily screaming "Help me! Help me!" as the slavering spider approaches (If you're wondering why Vincent Price and Herbert Marshall do not look one another in the eye during this scene, it is because they couldn't deliver their dialogue without dissolving into laughter). Infinitely subtler than the admittedly excellent 1986 remake, the 1958 The Fly is one of the definitive big-budget horror films of its decade. Best bit: the prismatic "fly's eye view" of the screaming Patricia Owens. The Fly was adapted from George Langelaan's short story by James (Shogun) Clavell. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Sayonara takes its own sweet time to unfold; in so doing, it permits us to make intimate acquaintance with its characters, so as to better understand their multitextured motivations. The film is set in Japan during the Korean War. While on leave, pugnacious American soldier Red Buttons falls in love with Japanese maiden Miyoshi Umeki. Given the army's official policy against interracial marriage, Buttons is courting a court-martial. His best friend, major Marlon Brando, tries to talk Buttons out of "ruining" his life. Brando himself is about to marry Patricia Owens, the daughter of general Kent Smith. Fighting back his own prejudices, Brando agrees to be Buttons' best man at the latter's wedding to Umeki. Later, Brando himself falls for Miiko Taka, a beautiful Kabuki dancer. This sparks an all-out onslaught of racial bigotry from the Army brass, and an official edict sending American soldiers back to the states without their Japanese wives. Buttons cannot bear being parted with Umeki; as a result, the two commit suicide. The tragedy compels the army to soften its attitudes towards miscegenation. Brando is reunited with Taka, who in a parallel situation has had to ward off the inbred prejudices of her people. Nominated for ten Academy Awards, Sayonara won five, including "Best Supporting Actor" (Red Buttons, whose moribund career was revitalized herein) and "Best Supporting Actress" (Miyoshi Umeki). And yes, that is Ricardo Montalban in Japanese makeup as a Kabuki actor. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A tycoon is conned into believing a homeless man is in actuality the exiled prince of a Balkan nation. The tycoon agrees to bank roll the revolution that is needed to reinstall the prince onto his rightful throne. ~ All Movie Guide

The Good Die Young is a psychological crime yarn, exploring the motivations of four participants in an armed robbery. American ex-GI Joe (Richard Basehart) hopes to use his share of the haul to bring his British wife to the US. Professional boxer Mike (Stanley Baker) finds himself unable to work in his chosen profession when his hand is broken, while his life savings are stolen by his disreputable brother-in-law. American airman Eddie (John Ireland) has deserted upon discovering that his wife (Gloria Grahame) is unfaithful. And shabby aristocrat Rave (Laurence Harvey) needs to pay off his wife's gambling debts. In other words, all four amateur criminals would have been better off staying single, which may or may not be the subliminal message of The Good Die Young. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This anthology tells three stories of feminine crime. In the first vignette, a woman must decide whether or not to rat upon her lover, a killer. In the second a kleptomaniac girl faces prison until her true love shows up to save her. The third tale centers on a wife who knows that her husband has killed his accountant, but loyally keeps silent until she learns that he has been cheating upon her. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

This waterlogged adaptation of an obscure Grand Guignol stage play finds a hapless couple (Dermot Walsh and Hazel Court) convinced that their newly-acquired yacht is haunted by mysterious and deadly forces. After numerous fatalities, the couple eventually hires a paranormal investigator (John Robinson), who uncovers the yacht's bloody history and determines that the craft is occupied by the vengeful ghosts of the former owner's wife and her lover, who were murdered and subsequently entombed somewhere aboard. Writer-producer-director Vernon Sewell -- who filmed most of the scenes aboard his own private yacht -- executes a few interesting paranormal twists on the Old Dark House scenario, and he would revisit the seagoing thriller theme (on the same boat) somewhat less successfully with Terror Ship two years later. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide