Cindy Pickett Movies
Lead actress, onscreen from the late '70s. ~ All Movie Guide- 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
Teenaged Ferris Bueller (Matthew Broderick) is a legend in his own time thanks to his uncanny skill at cutting classes and getting away with it. Intending to make one last grand duck-out before graduation, Ferris calls in sick, "borrows" a Ferrari, and embarks on a one-day bacchanal through the streets of Chicago. Dogging Ferris' trail at every turn is high-school principal Rooney (Jeffrey Jones), determined to catch Bueller in the act of class-cutting. Writer/director John Hughes once again tries to wed satire, slapstick, and social commentary, as Ferris Bueller's Day Off starts like a house afire and goes on to make "serious" points about status-seeking and casual parental cruelties. It brightens up considerably in the last few moments, when Ferris' tattletale sister (Jennifer Grey) decides to align herself with her merry prankster sibling. A huge moneymaker, Ferris Bueller's Day Off eventually spawned a TV sitcom. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Matthew Broderick, Alan Ruck, (more)
- 1986
- R
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
- Starring:
- Roy Scheider, Frank Langella, (more)
- 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)
- 1983
- PG
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
- Starring:
- Bill Hudson, Mark Hudson, (more)
- 1982
- R
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
- 1982
- R
Also known as Mystique, Brainwash and The Naked Weekend, Circle of Power is not recommended viewing for any aspiring executive about to undergo leadership classes. Yvette Mimieux plays the head of an organization called Executive Development Training, or EDT for short. Her grueling technique requires that both the male trainees and their wives participate. Few of the participants seem psychologally suited for the EST-like excesses of EDT: one man is a closeted homosexual, another an alcoholic, a third a transvestite. Nor is Yvette about to cater to the more sensitive of her charges: at one point, an obese trainee is forced to eat garbage. It's hard to tell if we're supposed to take all this seriously or not. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Yvette Mimieux, Christopher Allport, (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
