Susanne Benton Movies
- 1976
This TV movie delves into the unhappy later years of novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald (here played by Jason Miller). Broke and virtually written-out by the late 1930s, Fitzgerald is compelled to accept screenwriting work in Tinseltown where he is frustrated that his work is extensively rewritten and revised -- if not rejected altogether. On a personal level, Fitzgerald must deal with his wife Zelda (Tuesday Weld), now sequestered in a North Carolina mental institution. Seeking some reason for living, Fitzgerald inaugurates an affair with Hollywood columnist Sheila Graham (Julia Foster). Not all that incisive, and saddled with an unsympathetic drunkard as a central character, F. Scott Fitzgerald is still superior to Hollywood's previous version of the Fitzgerald/Graham romance, Beloved Infidel. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Based on the novella by Harlan Ellison, A Boy and His Dog is set in a post-apocalyptic future where canned goods are used as currency and where entertainment often consists of old porn reels. Vic (Don Johnson) is a violent, illiterate scavenger, principally interested in getting laid. He communicates telepathically with his deceptively cute-looking dog Blood (voiced by Tim McIntire); Vic finds food for Blood, while Blood sniffs out girls for Vic. One of these girls is the sexy Quilla June (Susanne Benton), who, unbeknownst to Vic is a spy for an underground society, headed by a Mr. Craddock (Jason Robards Jr.). This subterranean civilization needs a human "sperm bank" to stay alive, and the oversexed Vic fills the bill. Produced by character actor Alvy Moore (Mr. Kimball of TV's Green Acres), A Boy and His Dog was written and directed by another veteran actor, L.Q. Jones. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Don Johnson, Susanne Benton, (more)
- 1975
The eponymous best friends are Jesse (Richard Hatch) and Pat (Doug Chapin). Buxom Kathy Suzanne Benton swivels into the scene, sorely testing Jesse and Pat's friendship. The film should not be confused with the 1982 Burt Reynolds vehicle of the same title. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Richard Hatch, Susanne Benton, (more)
- 1973
There's little chance that the made-for-TV Guess Who's Sleeping in My Bed? will ever be confused with either Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? (67) or Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed? (63). The plot: Dean Jones divorces Barbara Eden, but finds that he can't live in the style to which he's accustomed without his ex-wife's income. Circumventing Eden, Jones ingratiates himself with his children and convinces them to allow him to move back in. Eden, meanwhile, has a new "significant other" in the form of Kenneth Mars, but since Mars has never gotten the girl in any previous film, it's no trick to guess the outcome of this story. Guess Who's Sleeping in My Bed? is elevated by the direction of the always inventive Theodore J. Flicker, who once upon a time gave us that imperishable movie satire The President's Analyst (68). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1973
Leslie Nielsen guest stars as Edward Hudson, a former convict now leading a quiet, respectable life as a farmer. Unfortunately for Hudson, his home is invaded by his former cellmate Parrish (Lou Antonio), who has just stolen a valuable jeweled religious icon. Parrish insists that Hudson help him find a buyer for the "hot" merchandise--or else. In addition to the usual solid job by Efrem Zimbalist Jr. as FBI Inspector Lewis Erskine, this episode boasts a snarlingly vicious performance by starlet Susanne Benton (best known as the "heroine" of the cult fantasy film A Boy and His Dog) as Parrish's gun moll. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1970
- PG
An amoral film student will stop at nothing to gain a movie contract in this pretentious effort. Tony Hall (Robert Forster) insults his cinema professor (Reegis Toomey), degrades his girlfriend Sondra Locke), and alienates his agent. Ken Kerchival and Sam Waterston also appear in this dreary film. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Robert Forster, Sondra Locke, (more)
Director Mike Nichols and writer-actor Buck Henry followed their enormous hit The Graduate (1967) with this timely adaptation of Joseph Heller's satiric antiwar novel. Haunted by the death of a young gunner, all-too-sane Capt. Yossarian (Alan Arkin) wants out of the rest of his WW II bombing missions, but publicity-obsessed commander Colonel Cathcart (Martin Balsam) and his yes man, Colonel Korn (Henry), keep raising the number of missions that Yossarian and his comrades are required to fly. After Doc Daneeka (Jack Gilford) tells Yossarian that he cannot declare him insane if Yossarian knows that it's insane to keep flying, Yossarian tries to play crazy by, among other things, showing up nude in front of despotic General Dreedle (Orson Welles). As all of Yossarian's initially even-keeled friends, such as Nately (Art Garfunkel) and Dobbs (Martin Sheen), genuinely lose their heads, and the troop's supplies are bartered away for profit by the ultra-entrepreneurial Milo Minderbinder (Jon Voight), Yossarian realizes that the whole system has lost it, and he can either play along or jump ship. Though not about Vietnam, Catch-22's ludicrous military machinations directly evoked its contemporary context in the Vietnam era. Cathcart and Dreedle care more about the appearance of power than about victory, and Milo cares for money above all, as the complex narrative structure of Yossarian's flashbacks renders the escalating events appropriately surreal. Confident that the combination of a hot director and a popular, culturally relevant novel would spell blockbuster, Paramount spent a great deal of money on Catch-22, but it wound up getting trumped by another 1970 antiwar farce: Robert Altman's MASH. With audiences opting for Altman's casual Korean War iconoclasm over Nichols' more polished symbolism, the highly anticipated Catch-22 flopped, although the New York Film Critics Circle did acknowledge Arkin and Nichols. Despite this reception, Catch-22's ensemble cast and pungent sensibility effectively underline the insanity of war, Vietnam and otherwise. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Alan Arkin, Martin Balsam, (more)
- 1969
- R
A spinster goes to extraordinary lengths to assuage her loneliness in Robert Altman's 1969 drama. Wealthy Frances Austen (Sandy Dennis) conducts herself as if she were older than she actually is, but when she spies a blond youth (Michael Burns) sitting alone in a rain-swept Vancouver park, she takes him to her apartment. Apparently mute, the boy accepts Frances's ministrations, content to have a bed of his own and to listen to her talk, even if he has to come and go through his window after she locks his bedroom door at night. But when he leaves his bed empty on the night that Frances attempts to seduce him, the boy soon learns who is in control of their relationship and how far Frances will go to keep it that way. This film began Altman's 1970s effort to experiment with established movie genres: in this case, the Gothic thriller. Making the most of Frances's creepy apartment, cinematographer Laszlo Kovacs zooms in to symbolic details of Frances's life and zooms out to reveal her unnerving isolation in her own space. Altman maintains an awareness of the world outside Frances and the boy through mobile visuals and snippets of other conversations whenever either is in public, signaling the emphasis on the periphery that marked his future films, while underlining Frances's and the boy's estrangement from "normal" life. Too odd, distant and, well, cold, That Cold Day in the Park flopped. Producer Ingo Preminger claimed that if he had seen That Cold Day in the Park, he never would have hired Altman to direct his next film: the 1970 smash hit MASH. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sandy Dennis, Michael Burns, (more)
- 1968
In this thriller, Jonathan Fields (Bradford Dillman) awakens in a strange apartment and finds a dead woman floating in the bathtub after he suffered an LSD-flashback the night before. Finding blood upon his hand, he can only wonder how he is involved in the woman's death. He hires private detective Arthur Belding (Harry Guardino) who has him take another dose of LSD in order to see if he can remember what had happened. They learn that Fields' co-worker Lew Haley (Pat Hingle) had slipped acid into his coffee as part of a blackmail conspiracy. Haley was after his girlfriend and after his job in a government think tank. They also learn that his supervisor Dr. Arkroyd (Victor Jory) had been in a relationship with the deceased woman. She too was being blackmailed by Haley, who killed her when she threatened to call the cops. Dr. Arkroyd knew about it all and did nothing. Eventually Fields and Haley fight it out. The blackmailer ends up crashing through a high-rise window and falling to the unforgiving pavement below. Hope Lang, Susan Saint James, James Doohan and Michael J. Pollard also star in this psychedelic murder mystery. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Harry Guardino, Bradford Dillman, (more)
- 1967
Advice columnist Francesca Kirby (Lee Grant) is being plagued by death threats and attempts on her life, prompting Francesca's old friend Ironside (Raymond Burr) to offer his protection. It turns out that there are several people in San Francisco who'd probably prefer to see Francesca dead, among them her two-timing husband Mitch (Farley Granger) and her own sister Doris (Maria Lennard). Quincy Jones, who composed the Ironside theme music, appears in a key supporting role; also, Raymond Burr's longtime stand-in Lee Miller shows up in a speaking part. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1967
Prescription: Murder, a 1967 TV movie, represents the first appearance of Peter Falk as the rumpled but crafty detective Columbo. Gene Barry plays a distinguished doctor whose happiness is thwarted by his drunken wife (Nina Foch). Barry is in love with a pretty actress (Katherine Justice), and to smooth the path of his romance he murders his wife and arranges the evidence to pin the blame elsewhere. Enter Columbo, who seems to be slow on the uptake but who in fact is suspicious of the doctor's story. Snooping, prodding, puttering, and forever stopping at the doorway with the inevitable "just one more question," Columbo gets to the truth by playing a psychological trick on Barry, with the grudging cooperation of Barry's mistress. Written by Richard Levinson and William Link, Prescription Murder began life as a Broadway play in the late 1950s, starring Thomas Mitchell in the Columbo part (with a different character name), Joseph Cotten as the devious doctor, Agnes Moorehead as the victim and Patricia Medina (Mrs. Cotten) as the mistress. It would be adapted into a one-hour special on NBC in 1961 (with Bert Freed as the disheveled detective) before finally hitting weekly-series paydirt with Peter Falk in the lead. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Peter Falk
