Welsey Pfenning Movies
In this low-budget exploitation actioner, white slavers make the mistake of kidnapping the daughter of a Vietnam veteran and taking her to Manila. Now the veteran has come to find her and nothing nor no one can stop him. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
Another "get even with Hollywood" satire in the tradition of SOB and Movers and Shakers, The Big Picture is an elongated inside joke complete with un-billed celebrity cameos. In this first feature-film directorial effort by actor/writer Christopher Guest, Kevin Bacon plays a "boy wonder" director whose willingness to compromise his ideals allows him to keep afloat in Tinseltown. Bacon's corruption begins when his first Hollywood project, a black-and-white experimental film about an over-40 menage a trois, is distorted beyond recognition into a color, big-budget "youth trip". Bacon hasn't really sold out; he's merely waiting to accrue enough industry clout to strike back at the Philistines in charge. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Kevin Bacon, Emily Longstreth, (more)
When a quintet of college classmates take summer jobs, their adventures lead to comic consequences. Max (Paul Reiser) gets a job working for the Cabrizzi Brothers moving company. Dwight (Robert Townsend) and Byron (Paul Provenza) become caddies, while Woody (Scott McGinnis) waits tables and Roy (Rick Overton) sells vacuum cleaners door-to-door. When all five get fired from their jobs, they combine forces to form a moving company in direct competition with the Cabrizzi Brothers. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Paul Reiser, Robert Townsend, (more)
- 1982
Gary Coleman stars as a teen-age angel who must return to Earth to help out three troubled families in order to earn his wings. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide
- 1981
Originally produced as part of the ABC Afterschool Special series, the Emmy- and Peabody Award-winning The Wave proved so powerful that the network chose to debut the film as one of three entries in its prime-time ABC Theater for Young Americans. Based on a real-life incident that occurred in Palo Alto, CA, in 1969 (and was subsequently chronicled as both a magazine article and a full length book), the film stars Bruce Davison as high-school history teacher Bruce Ross. Frustrated because his students evince a lack of interest in and comprehension of Adolf Hitler's rise to power in the 1930s, Ross decides to stage a dramatic "social experiment." He indoctrinates his unwitting charges in a radical new movement called "The Wave," which he claims will give them "a feeling you're part of something that's more important than yourself." Part and parcel of The Wave is a strict set of social-behavior guidelines, unquestioning loyalty to the cause, and an open contempt for those "inferiors" who have not been invited to join the movement. Not unexpectedly, The Wave gets out of hand, and soon the entire school is held in the thrall of a frightening new form of neo-fascism. Just when the experiment threatens to go too far, Ross shocks his students back to their senses by running newsreel footage of The Wave's "true leader" (guess who!). The Wave finally made its ABC Afterschool Special bow on March 30, 1983, two years after its initial nighttime presentation. ~ All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bruce Davison, Lori Lethin, (more)
