Cindy Pickett Movies

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

Released to cable TV in 1985, Breach of Contract was completed at least three years earlier. Starring in this domestic drama are Michael Margotta, Cindy Pickett, and George DiCenzo. Margotta and Pickett play a husband and wife, both of whom are career-oriented and want to continue pursuing their pre-nuptual jobs. They agree never to step on the other's ambitions. Unfortunately, both become too ambitious for their own good, and, true to the film's title, their verbal "contract" is shattered. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

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

During the peak of the slasher-movie boom of the early '80s, there were numerous attempts at Airplane!-style horror parodies, all of which fell considerably short of their comic targets and vanished into cable-TV obscurity. Hysterical, an abortive vehicle for the questionable comic talents of the Hudson Brothers, is perhaps the weakest of the lot. Bill Hudson plays Fred Lansing, a writer vacationing at a rustic lighthouse in the deceptively idyllic Oregon fishing town of Hellview, where he is tormented by the apparition of Venecia (Julie Newmar), a local woman who killed herself one hundred years ago. The lovelorn Venecia wishes to use Fred's body as the vessel for the spirit of her dead husband, Captain Howdy (Richard Kiel, once again typecast as a great big guy), and isn't particularly interested in Fred's opinion on the matter. When Howdy apparently grumbles to life, several townspeople are subsequently murdered in ghastly ways, leading a pair of bumbling detectives (Mark Hudson and Brett Hudson) to investigate the horrific history of the Hellview lighthouse and generally make nuisances of themselves. Filled with insipid puns, tired sight gags, silly musical numbers, and unfunny cameo appearances from the likes of Bud Cort and Charlie Callas, this inept spoof has perhaps three genuine laughs scattered throughout its ninety-minute runtime, amounting to only one decent joke per half-hour of wasted film. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide

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

Based on a 1981 book by Leonard Michaels, focuses on a lawyer (Richard Jordan) who brings together a singularly dysfunctional group of men in a kind of venting, loquacious therapy session. All that talk brings out the worst in everyone. Cavanaugh (Roy Scheider) is a retired baseball star whose wife wants to leave him, Harold (Frank Langella) is an uptight lawyer, Terry (Treat Williams) is a self-centered doctor, Phillip (David Dukes) is the stereotypical, irritating college professor, and Solly (Harvey Keitel) is a blue-collar worker with a warm heart, the closest to normal among the lot. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

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

An aspiring writer faces up to the responsibilities of marriage and family in this romantic comedy from writer, director, and producer John Hughes. Despite the misgivings he pours out to best friend Davis McDonald (Alec Baldwin), Jake Briggs (Kevin Bacon) marries high-school sweetheart Kristy (Elizabeth McGovern). After an abortive attempt at graduate school in New Mexico, the couple settle in suburban Chicago. Jake fakes his way into a job as an advertising copywriter, while Kristy settles into her own corporate job. The couple face the typical ups and downs of any new marriage, especially after Davis visits with a bimbo on his arm, regaling his pal Jake with tales of the good life. A few years later, Kristy decides to stop taking her birth-control pills -- and tells Jake about it three months later. Plagued by doubts, unfulfilled ambitions, and images of a fantasy girl (Isabel Lorca) he once spotted in a club, Jake resists the idea of fatherhood. Then he finds out he has low sperm count and, his manhood thus challenged, lines up for fertility clinic-assisted stud duty. The birth doesn't go as smoothly as Jake expected, however, setting the stage for climactic realizations. Edie McClurg, who played the nosy school secretary in Hughes' Ferris Bueller's Day Off, makes a cameo appearance as an officious neighbor. In addition, a who's who of other Hughes alums and Hollywood stars lend their faces and voices to a series of closing-credits shots in which each suggests a name for the titular baby. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide

Friday the 13th director Sean S. Cunningham helmed this sea-monster opus about a team of engineers on an undersea missile platform who disturb the slumber of a huge, killer crustacean, which soon develops a taste for human-flavored snacks. The rubbery-looking beastie is quite a laugh, but there are some genuine freak-outs as it chomps away at the crew -- that is, while they're not reducing their own numbers through sheer incompetence. In the end, it's B.J. & the Bear's Greg Evigan (alas, minus chimp) who saves the day. One of a dozen-or-so subaqueous Alien clones (half of which were produced by Roger Corman) designed to trade on the building hype of James Cameron's long-awaited The Abyss, this soggy little picture managed to reach theaters first. Not that it's the least impressive of the lot -- actually, it succeeds on its own terms as a thoroughly intense and fast-paced "B"-monster flick, aided by good performances (Evigan is a likable, sensitive hero, and Miguel Ferrer quaffs the scenery as a high-strung jerk). At least it's better than Leviathan, which tells essentially the same story but wastes considerably more money. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide

In this earnest, socially conscious drama, a prominent young lawyer rethinks his yuppie lifestyle and risks it all to become a staunch defender of homeless people's rights. Look for Martin Sheen (a strong advocate for the homeless) in a cameo role as a street person. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In this sci-fi movie, the residents of a Northwest logging town go to the moon after their hometown is destroyed by accidentally released toxins. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

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

Meaning to thwart the advances of a hometown boy, a college student takes her California surfer roomie to her Midwestern home for Thanksgiving and passes him off as her husband-to-be. After a few complications, the visiting couple falls for each other, the family finally accepts him and the suitor-hopeful is no longer a threat. Pauly Shore and Carla Gugino star in this light comedy. ~ Kristie Hassen, All Movie Guide