Cindy Pickett Movies
Lead actress, onscreen from the late '70s. ~ All Movie Guide- 2007
David Arquette (star Patricia Arquette's brother) directed this episode, in which Allison's brother (Ryan Hurst), a phone-hotline psychic, helps a troubled customer whose husband was killed. ~ Dean Maurer, All Movie Guide
A quiet community reveals an ugly underside in the wake of a horrible crime in this independent drama. Robbie Levinson (Seth Peterson) and Trey McCoy (Brian J. Smith) are a gay couple who've been together for six years; they've been sharing a comfortable home in suburban Dallas most of that time, and are planning to get married once the legalities work themselves. Robbie and Trey are good neighbors who get along well with the other folks in the community until Chris Boyd (Chad Donella) moves in next door. Chris is a youth pastor at a church run by his father (Bruce Davison), a fundamentalist Christian who preaches often and with great vehemence about the evils of homosexuality. Chris doesn't keep his feelings about gays to himself, and when Trey is found dead in a nearby park, the victim of a sadistic beating with a baseball bat, Robbie believes Chris may be involved. However, Chris' father and mother provide an alibi for him, and the police hand the case from Detective Fisher (Farah White), who investigates hate crimes, to Sgt. Esposito (Giancarlo Esposito) in the homicide department. Robbie is appalled to discover he's now the leading suspect in the murder, and begins making his own investigation into Trey's death. Hate Crime was the first feature film from writer and director Tommy Stovall. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Seth Peterson, Chad E. Donella, (more)
- 1998
A family has no idea that the two adorable puppies they have adopted are the mutant spawn of a vicious radioactive dog. When the irradiated mother shows up to get her babies back, the family must fight for their lives. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Isabella Hofmann, Cindy Pickett, (more)
- 1997
Small screen veterans Soleil Moon Frye (Punky Brewster), Ari Meyers (Kate & Allie, Evening Shade) and Tess Harper (Tender Mercies) co-star in the melodrama The Secret (AKA The Killing Secret), which took its initial bow on Mon., Jan. 6, 1997 as an NBC prime-time telemovie, but is now available in this home video release. While fictional, the story nonetheless bears eerie parallels to such real-life incidents as the Scott Peterson homicide. It tells of Greg (Mark Krassenbaum), a well-to-do high school senior and football star who divides his time and attention between two girlfriends: ritzy cheerleader Nicole (Meyers) and poor-as-dirt Emily (Frye). All is well until Emily drops the bombshell that she's expecting - and Greg does away with mom and the baby. Although Greg protests his innocence, his vice tightens when Nicole and Emily's mother become friends, and the authorities discover Emily's body in a lake. Noel Nosseck directs, from a teleplay by Rob Fresco. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Mark Krassenbaum, Ari Meyers, (more)
- 1996
Critics were somewhat amused when this made-for-TV movie first aired over CBS on February 21, 1996. They could understand why someone would want to make a biopic about notorious "Hollywood madam" Heidi Fleiss (here played by Tricia Leigh Fisher)--but of what possible dramatic value was a film about Heidi's father, California consulting pediatrician Paul Fleiss? Well, that question was sufficiently answered throughout the film's 90 minutes, told largely in flashback from the point of view of Dr. Fleiss, portrayed by Michael Gross. According to Karol Ann Hoeffner's teleplay, Fleiss was a good, caring, almost saintly family man, whose misguided liberal sympathies led him to excesses of self-indulgence when it came to raising his children. So far as as the spoiled and pampered Heidi is concerned, Dr. Fleiss doesn't believe in discouraging her on any issue, including sex--and this, coupled with the neurotic attitudes of Heidi's repressed, high-strung mother Elissa (Cindy Pickett) led the girl into her life's work, using sex for profit while remaining coolly detached from her work and using her associates and customers rather than ever allowing them to use her. That Heidi is clearly the villain of the piece is made obvious not only by actress Fisher's vitriolic performance, but also by the dramatic core of the story, in which Dr. Fleiss ends up being charged with fraud when Heidi pressures him into signing a highly suspicious bank loan application. The sweeping inaccuracies in The Good Doctor: The Paul Fleiss Story evidently didn't hurt its ratings, nor did the film lack viewers when it was subsequently rerun on cable TV under the title The Making of a Hollywood Madam. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
A teenager wins an interactive robot that plays shooting games. Soon it starts loading with real ammo and hunting down other kids. This film is a stupid thriller but still manages to be occasionally fun. ~ Sean D. MacLaggan, All Movie Guide
- 1995
Made for television, Not Our Son is the tragically true story of the "Seattle Specter", who at one time was designated the worst serial arsonist in US history. Over an astonishingly short period, the "Specter" was responsible for over 100 fires--one of them resulting in the deaths of several senior-home residents. What no one knew, until it was nearly too late, was that the elusive firebug was a profoundly troubled teenager named Paul Kenneth Keller (played, in a masterpiece of contra-casting, by Neil Patrick Harris). Ultimately, it was up to Paul's family to determine his fate--a decision that forced them to choose between love and duty, and to suffer the pangs of ceaseless guilt in the process. Inspired by an article in The Reader's Digest, Not Our Son first aired March 3, 1995 (it has originally been slated for January 31 that same year). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1995
Kellie Martin stars as a teen wrongly accused of setting a deadly arson fire in this made-for-television drama. Martin plays Billie Calhoun, a girl who has been held in a juvenile detention facility since being accused of killing her mother and sister in a fire. Up for a possible early release on her 18th birthday, Billie is again denied her freedom. Steadfastly denying any involvement and determined to find out the truth on her own, Billie escapes from the center. Out on her own, she disguises herself and befriends a young cop named Matt Samoni (Antonio Sabato Jr), and together they set out to uncover the truth. ~ Bernadette McCallion, All Movie Guide
- 1994
Season Ten of Murder, She Wrote concludes as a small-time carnival pitches its tents just outside Cabot Cove. The troupe's arrival coincides with a series of mysterious burglaries which plagued the town. Then, the carnival's larcenous magician Carl Dorner (Bradford Dillman) is murdered--and that's when Jessica (Angela Lansbury) stars performing a bit of verbal prestidigitation in order to figure out which of Dorner's many enemies perpetrated the deed. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1992
In this action adventure, the mysterious Preacher, a "special forces" veteran, card sharp and ex-clergyman, is called to a town on the Texas-Mexico border to investigate a suspicious helicopter crash involving a Vietnam veteran pilot. His investigation reveals that the town is totally corrupt. Mayhem ensues, but justice somehow prevails. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1989
Based on a true story, the two-part TV movie I Know My First Name Is Steven tells the tragic story of Steven Stayner. At age seven, Steven was kidnapped by two men who held him captive in a tiny shed for seven years. One of the men, a habitual child abuser named Kenneth Parnell, sexually assaulted Steven on an almost daily basis during the boy's ordeal. At age 14, Steven finally was able to escape and return to his family. But we are shown that Steven's safe return was far from the happy ending it appeared to be. He's forced to adjust to a family he'd never really known, to convince himself that his parents had never forgotten him, and to put his seven-year hell behind him. While I Know My First Name Is Steven ends on an upbeat note, the real Stayner died in a motorcycle accident only a few months after this film was first telecast in May 1989. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1987
This made-for-cable thriller stars Powers Boothe as a former policeman whose son (C. Thomas Howell) has fallen prey to a band of white supremacists. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide
- 1987
As the brainchild of writer-director-producer Donald Wrye, the 14 1/2 hour ABC movie event Amerika marked one of the most expensive and controversial miniseries in the history of prime time television when it bowed over the course of seven nights in February of 1987. Regarded as something of a conservative counterpoint to Nicholas Meyer's The Day After (which screened on ABC, four years prior and allegedly demonstrated leftwing bias - prompting very outspoken criticisms from Republican pundit Ben Stein), this $40 million production imagines a dystopian future set in the late 1990s. When the drama opens in May of 1997, the Russians have effectively won the Cold War by wresting control over the United States, with the backing of a U.N. Peacekeeping Force. Although the initial takeover was not annihilative or even apparently violent, the consequences are overwhelming; a puppet leader holds court in the Oval Office, the American economy has fallen to pieces with Midwesterners lining up for vegetables, and gulag prisons are scattered across the land; meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of refugees have hit the countryside and wander aimlessly. The majority of the action unfurls in a rural Nebraska community, where onetime antiwar protester and presidential candidate Devin Milford (Kris Kristofferson) has just been released from a gulag, and now discovers his family farm being whittled away by the Russians. Meanwhile, his childhood friend Peter Bradford has somehow landed a position in the government hierarchy and finds himself being drawn in more deeply. Across the land, Russian stormtroopers engage in acts of violent intimidation, such as burning farmhouses and brainwashing abductees, while the Russian occupiers systematically maneuver on the political front to bring the once-powerful republic tumbling down. The supporting cast includes Christine Lahti, Wendy Hughes, Sam Neill, Armin Mueller-Stahl and many others; the title, of course, was intended to reflect "America" as modified to a slightly more Russian spelling. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Kris Kristofferson, Wendy Hughes, (more)
- 1987
Based on a best-selling book by Joseph Wambaugh, this is the story of the investigation of the murder of a Philadelphia school teacher and the search for her missing children, which eventually leads the police to two rather eccentric colleagues involved in the dead woman's life. ~ Tana Hobart, All Movie Guide
- 1984
Call to Glory was intended as an ABC miniseries, depicting the turbulent 1960s as seen through the eyes of an Air Force family. A pre-Coach Craig T. Nelson stars as Colonel Raynor Sarnac, with Cindy Pickett as his wife Vanessa and Elizabeth Shue and Gabriel Damon as the Sarnac children. The 2-hour pilot concentrates on the 13 fateful days of the Cuban Missile Crisis in the Fall of 1962. This pilot, and the miniseries itself, was originally slated for telecast in May of 1984, but ABC smelled potential in the project and ordered that it be expanded to a 13-week series. The premiere was moved up to August 13, 1984, with the pilot film unveiled right after ABC's Olympics coverage. Call to Glory was a huge ratings hit at the outset; alas, ABC's decision to move away from the historical aspects of the program to concentrate on the soapish goings-on within the Sarnac family prompted a severe drop-off in viewer interest. The program was finally axed in February of 1985. Later that year, scenes from the untelecast Call to Glory episodes were stitched together into another 2-hour TV "movie", Call to Glory: JFK. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1984
Magnum (Tom Selleck) is reunited with his very first client, champion surfer Karen Teal (Cindy Pickett) who way back in 1979 had hired him to protect her from whomever was sending her threatening letters. Now Karen is being harrassed again, and so is her daughter Leah (Rosetta Tarantino). When the girl is kidnapped just before a major surfing meet, Magnum's first impulse is to hold Karen's vindicative ex-husband responsible. . .but there may be a lot more to the story than that. In keeping with the "déjà vu" ambience of the story, the action continuously switches back and forth between the "now" of 1984 and the "then" of five years earlier. This is the only Magnum, P.I episode directed by series regular Roger E. Mosley (T.C.) ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1983
Cocaine and Blue Eyes was the pilot film for a TV detective series starring former footballer O.J. Simpson (who also produced the film). Playing a private eye in San Francisco, Simpson is hired by a man who ends up seriously dead. The deceased client had wanted Simpson to locate a former girl friend, and in carrying out his assignment Simpson unearths a deadly (and very well connected) cartel of drug dealers. Cocaine and Blue Eyes gathered dust until O.J. Simpson's murder trial in 1994. After that, this tiresome old TV movie became a staple of "Late Late Shows" everywhere. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- O.J. Simpson, Candy Clark, (more)
- 1982
In this mystery a psychiatrist and his wife are surprised to find that the quiet seaside town they just moved to is plagued by strange deaths that occur during mysterious storms. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1981
A 1981 made-for-TV movie, Margin for Murder focuses on detective Mike Hammer. His investigation into a friend's murder eventually leads to a gang of smugglers. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide
- 1980
Set in Bermuda, this TV movie focuses on a hunt for a rare Albino gorilla, recently captured in Africa by ruthless big-game hunter Marc Kazarian (Jack Palance). Dedicated government agent Baxter Mapes (Steven Keats) and his ex-girlfriend, Lil Tyler (Cindy Pickett), conduct a humanitarian search for the ape, which has slipped through the fingers of the greedy Kazarian. But hero and heroine had better hurry; the villain has convinced the locals that the ape is a killer, and must be brought in dead or alive. One of the few live-action efforts from the animation firm of Rankin-Bass (whose previous productions included Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and The Little Drummer Boy), The Ivory Ape made its ABC network bow on April 18, 1980. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Hair is the only thing two people have in common before they come into each other's lives in this independent comedy-drama. For thirty years, Arthur Leroldi (John Ratzenberger) has operated a barbershop with his business partner Enzo. Arthur is a fine barber, but Enzo is the member of the team with the business sense and a talent for charming people, so when Enzo suddenly dies, Arthur soon finds himself flirting with bankruptcy. As Arthur scrambles to pay his bills, his landlord Jacobi (Amos Glick) would love nothing more than to move a higher paying tenant into his place. Arthur advertises for a new barber to help him run the shop, and his best applicant turns out to be Gloria (Shelly Cole); while Arthur doesn't like the idea of having a woman working in the shop, she's a licensed and experienced cosmetologist, she knows how to keep track of the books, and customers like her. Sharon may be a boon to business, but she has some serious problems of her own; her boyfriend has just left her, she has no where to live besides the trailer she's swiped from her ex, and she's just found out she's pregnant. The Village Barbershop was the first feature film from writer and director Chris Ford. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- John Ratzenberger, Shelly Cole, (more)
A woman searches for her biological mother with her mind set on murder in this suspense thriller. Susan Miller (Andrea Roth) was born to an unwed mother who felt she would be unable to care for her properly; after being put up for adoption, Susan bounced from one set of abusive foster parents to another. Now grown to adulthood, Susan is beautiful on the outside, but inwardly has been twisted into a violent hatred of her mother, even serving time in a mental institution. Now free, Susan has vowed to track down the woman she believes abandoned her and get her revenge. Susan discovers her birth mother was Maggie Conner (Cindy Pickett), whose husband Jesse (Gil Gerard) operates a successful horse-breeding operation. Susan ingratiates herself with the Connor family, landing a job working at their ranch and moving into their home, but Maggie and Jesse's daughter Linda (Lisa Dean Ryan) senses there's something odd about Susan, and when she uncovers Susan's secret, the whole family is thrown deep into danger. The supporting cast includes Jaimz Woolvet, Matt Farnsworth, and Lee Dawson; director Peter Liapis appears in a supporting role as a plumber. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Andrea Roth, Lisa Dean Ryan, (more)
Country music star Dwight Yoakam plays a rodeo clown in this actioner. Virgil Kidder is running from his girlfriend and his son. He left them seven years ago and finds a haven working in small-time rodeos. At night he occupies himself with brief, meaningless affairs. As the story really opens Virgil is pushed by his old buddy Brownie to return to Waco and face his past. Among those he must deal with is Sheriff Gil Acuff who blames Virgil for his debilitating rodeo accident. Soon after his arrival to town, Acuff's delusional niece, who thinks she is a vampire, is found dead in Virgil's car with a stake protruding from her chest. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Dwight Yoakam, Michelle Joyner, (more)
Stephen King wrote his first original screenplay for this horror gore fest that features cameos by directors Clive Barker, Joe Dante, Tobe Hooper, John Landis, and King himself (playing a cemetery attendant). The story concerns a twilight people named "sleepwalkers" --creatures similar to vampires and werewolves whose faces turn animalistic whenever they are frightened or angry and who require the lifeforce of a virgin to survive. A single-parent sleepwalker family, consisting of Mary Brady (Alice Krige) and her son Charles (Brian Krause), have taken up residence in a small Indiana town. Charles has expressed a romantic interest in the attractive Tanya Robertson (Madchen Amick), a girl in his high school literature class. Mary wants Charles to lure Tanya home so that she can suck out her life force, but it appears that Charles has fallen in love with her --that is, until their first date, at a picnic at the cemetery. There Charles changes from a shy romantic suitor into a brutal and violent force, slapping Tanya around and attempting to rape her. But Tanya wards off his advances by plunging a corkscrew into his torso. Charles staggers back home to mother, where she nurses him back to health. Then Charles and his mother seek vengeance upon the Robertson family. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Brian Krause, Mädchen Amick, (more)
