Hortense Petra Movies

Three teenage runaways leave home for life in the big city. Shelly (Brooke Bundy) runs away from her father (Lloyd Bochner), when communication breaks down between the success-minded dad and his daughter. Dewey (Kevin Coughlin) leaves behind life on the farm when his girlfriend suggests she may be pregnant. Deanie (Patty McCormick) is the sex-starved teen who runs away from her promiscuous mother (Lynn Bari) and her father who doesn't have a clue (Norman Fell). Dick Sargent plays the kind soul who offers the teens temporary refuge in his home. Richard Dreyfuss makes an early film appearance as a lazy, draft-dodging car thief in this youthful exploitation feature. The Gordian Knot delivers two songs as the runaways fall victim to drugs, prostitution and other urban nightmares. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

In this dated, satirical drama, a college professor 'drops-out,' 'turns-on' and becomes a hippie guru after two students who publish an underground newspaper are unjustly expelled. The new guru promotes the dropping of LSD to find true enlightenment. After he is kicked out of his pad, the psychedelic prof moves in with the two radical journalists who revere him. He then manipulates the woman journalist into sleeping with him. The young man finds out and is crushed. He then uses his newspaper to expose the professor. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

In this drama set during the real life riots of the mid-1960s, an LA police sergeant attempts to service the Strip businessmen who object to the hippie youths that hang out, by setting a curfew. Unfortunately, the cop also believes that the kids have a right to be there, until he discovers that his estranged daughter, whom his drunken ex-wife took away from him, has come back to LA and has joined the counter-culture crowd. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Narrative takes a back seat to music in this loose remake of Girl Crazy, as Harve Presnell plays a footloose young millionaire who meets perky Connie Francis and hatches a scheme to save her father's failing Nevada ranch by turning it into a resort for people waiting out their quickie Las Vegas divorces. This was an early musical vehicle for then-Broadway star Presnell, who would gain notoriety with film fans years later as a character actor in Fargo, Patch Adams, and Saving Private Ryan. Besides, how often do you get to see a musical that features Louis Armstrong, Liberace, Herman's Hermits, and Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs? ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Perhaps the most popular and influential songwriter in the history of country music, Hank Williams Sr. didn't have a long recording career (only four years), but after passing away on New Year's Day, 1953, at the age of 29, he became a legend of American music practically overnight, and this biopic puts a veneer of Hollywood gloss on the story of his rise to fame. Hank Williams (played by Donald Losby as a young man) is a boy growing up poor in a small Alabama town who learns how to play guitar from itinerant musician and shoeshine man Teetot (Rex Ingram), who looks out for the boy. After Teetot's untimely death, young Hank sets his sights on a career in music; years later, Williams (played as an adult by George Hamilton) is performing as part of a traveling medicine show when he meets Audrey (Susan Oliver), who recognizes the full extent of Hank's talent. At Audrey's urgings, Williams joins forces with manager Shorty Younger (Red Buttons) and music publisher Fred Rose (Arthur O'Connell), and with their help Hank becomes a rising star in country music, developing a loyal following through hit records, heavy touring, and appearances on the Grand Ole Opry. However, Williams doesn't cope well with the pressures of fame, and despite the help of his friends and the guidance of his wife, he begins missing shows, developing a reputation as an unreliable performer, and drinking heavily. Produced by legendary B-movie magnate Sam Katzman, Your Cheatin' Heart featured 15-year-old Hank Williams Jr. re-creating his father's vocals for the film's soundtrack. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

One of an outcropping of "twist" dance craze movies to pop up like mushrooms after a rain, this standard musical drama by director Oscar Rudolph is actually a sequel to producer Sam Katzman's earlier success, Twist around the Clock. The plot on which the many twist dances hinge is the preparation for a TV variety show on the twist. While the special is still in the production stages, jealousies lead to problems -- and a lot of dancing. Performers featured as themselves include Chubby Checker, Vic Dana, Linda Scott, The Dovells, and the Carroll Brothers -- all popular in the early '60s. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

A European princess and her aunt come to New York to buy clothes for the royal coronation, Riff Manson (Jack Jones) is employed by unknown clothier and former junkman Brodine (Hans Conried) to sway the royals to purchase his designs. Broadway revue rehearsals and parties provide the backdrop for the musical selection. George Jessel plays himself and sings "Spring Is The Time For Remembering". The princess (Jo Morrow) sings "Let's Fall In Love". Jones sings the title tune. Other songs are performed by the Earl Grant Trio, The Treniers and The Nitwits, while Johnny Otis renders the classic rock & roll anthem "Willie And The Hand Jive". ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

The 1934 B western Tombstone Terror could also have been titled All in the Family. Its star is Bob Steele, and its director is Steele's father Robert N. Bradbury. Once more, Our Bob is wrongly accused of being an outlaw. And once more, he clears himself and tracks down the murderer of his father (not Bradbury!) George Hayes also appears as a pre-"Gabby" sidekick. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

According to the trade-paper Variety, this "educational" exploitation melodrama was "possibly the strongest and most daring of so-called hygiene and sex warning pictures ever made." That was certainly the intention of roadshow entrepreneur S.S. Millard, who combined a rather tawdry white slavery melodrama with inserted footage depicting ravaged victims -- including children -- of venereal disease. The film's alternate title being The Girl in the Glass case, Millard advertized his film by having a woman posing in a glass construction outside the theater. The film industry's self-governed censorship board, the MPPDA, refused to give the film its seal of approval, making Millard's little melodrama even more exploitative. Like most late-silent exploitation films, Is Your Daughter Safe? had much more in common with the white slavery dramas of the early 1910s than the more enlightened fare emanating from the major studios, its moralistic views belonging to the "uplift" movement of pre-World War I. Vivian Winston eschews her virtuous boyfriend (Jerome Young) in favor of dallying with a libertine (William Dennis). She is saved in the nick of time from a fate worse than death by refusing to follow the example of a friend (Bernice Breacher), who is led down the garden path to a life of prostitution and venereal disease. Leading lady Winston, who appeared in the B-Western Land of the Lawless that same year, joined a semi-professional cast that also included rotund Henry Roquemore as a character depicted as The Beast; Palmer Morrison as a doctor; Hugh Saxon as a gambler; Joe Bonner, as a seducer of young women; Georgia O'Dell as a madam, and, to insure the film's acceptance by the strict censorship board of Chicago, Mayor William Hale Thompson of that city's Vice Commission, as himself. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi