Wolfgang Preiss Movies

Noted French director Claude Chabrol helmed this oddity, a remake of German director Fritz Lang's 1922 classic Dr. Mabuse. The film features an all-star international cast as it tells the futuristic horror story of a bizarre epidemic which has swept West Berlin leaving a grim trail of grisly suicides. Meanwhile, the media broadcasts weird, highly suggestive propaganda. The authorities are appalled by all the bloodshed, but only one lone cop suspects that the "suicides" are really the work of a demented criminal mastermind. The film is also known as Dr. M. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

The first victory in The Second Victory is the Allied triumph in World War II. British major Anthony Andrews, in charge of the occupation troops in a remote Austrian village, must deal with the uncooperative attitude of the locals when one of his men is killed by a deranged Axis soldier. Andrews also pursues a romantic involvement with Birgit Doll, the niece of crooked lawyer Max Von Sydow. The lawyer kills himself when his crimes are revealed, whereupon Birgit, heretofore the only "sympathetic" villager in the film, turns on Andrews, holding the Major responsible for her uncle's death. We strongly suspect that the title The Second Victory was meant to be ironic: Nobody wins in this one. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In the final episode of the seven-part, eighteen-hour miniseries The Winds of War, Ambassador-at-large "Pug" Henry (Robert Mitchum) represents the US in a series of conferences with the intansigent Russian premier Josef Stalin (Anatoly Chauginian). Dallying briefly with his erstwhile British sweetheart Pamela Tudsbury (Victoria Tennant), Pug stays in Moscow long enough to witness the attempted Nazi invasion. Meanwhile, Pug's daughter-in-law Natalie (Ali McGraw) and her Uncle Aaron (John Houseman) are among the Jewish refugees being smuggled into Palestine. And back in the Western Hemisphere, Pug's sons Byron (Jan-Michael Vincent) and Warren (David Dukes) are swept up in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The Winds of War was adapted by Herman Wouk from his own novel. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In this occasionally humorous but generally grim story, a young psychologist just out of school decides to undertake a one-woman crusade to investigate abuses in mental institutions, and she voluntarily checks into one of the worst she can find. There, she is horribly abused by the staff. When they visit, her parents are fooled -- by the psychiatrists and by her behavior on the medications prescribed for her -- into believing that she is a legitimate tenant of the institution, and they refuse to help her check out. Eventually, the head psychiatrist's exceptionally loony behavior becomes sufficiently outrageous that the institution is investigated by outsiders, and she (and others) are released. This drama is based on a true story. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

This film of Ira Levin's novel The Boys from Brazil wastes no time in establishing the fact that several seemingly unrelated men have been mysteriously murdered. Elderly Jewish Nazi hunter Ezra Lieberman (Laurence Olivier), brought into the case when the clues seem to point to a neo-fascist plot, traces the trail of evidence to Paraguay. Here he finds an unregenerate Auschwitz doctor, patterned on Joseph Mengele and played by -- of all people -- Gregory Peck. Lieberman discovers that the murdered men had all fathered sons who were identical -- the results of a cloning experiment, designed to create a race of incipient Hitlers. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

It's late 1944, and the Allied armies are confident they'll win the World War II and be home in time for Christmas. What's needed, says British general Bernard Law Montgomery, is a knockout punch, a bold strike through Holland, where German troops are spread thin, that will put the Allies into Germany. Paratroops led by British major general Robert Urquhart (Sean Connery) and American brigadier general James Gavin (Ryan O'Neal) will seize a thin road and five bridges through Holland into Germany, with paratroops led by Lieutenant Col. John Frost (Sir Anthony Hopkins) holding the most critical bridge at a small town called Arnhem. Over this road shall pass combined forces led by British Lieutenant Gen. Brian Horrocks (Edward Fox) and British Lieutenant Col. Joe Vandeleur (Michael Caine). The plan requires precise timing, so much so that one planner tells Lieutenant Gen. Frederick Browning (Dirk Bogarde), "Sir, I think we may be going a bridge too far." The plan also has one critical flaw: Instead of a smattering of German soldiers, the area around Arnhem is loaded with crack SS troops. Disaster ensues. Based on a book by historian Cornelius Ryan, A Bridge Too Far is reminiscent of another movie based on a Ryan book, The Longest Day. Like that movie, it is loaded with more than 15 international stars, including Sir Laurence Olivier, Robert Redford, Hardy Krueger, Gene Hackman, Maximilian Schell, and Liv Ullman. ~ Nick Sambides, Jr., Rovi

This espionage thriller is based on a spy novel by Helen MacInnes and tells the tale of a Yankee lawyer who goes to the lovely little Austrian city on vacation and ends up hopelessly entangled in an international web of rival spies and neo-Nazis searching for a chest that holds the names of Nazi collaborators and war criminals. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Luigi Bazzoni (Le Orme) directed this outstanding giallo thriller starring Franco Nero as a hard-drinking newspaperman who gets involved in a string of brutal murders. After he investigates the first, he becomes a suspect himself but eventually manages to unravel a complex plot involving blackmail, adultery, and private sex shows. Wolfgang Preiss plays a creepy doctor, and Edmund Purdom is around as well. The impressive score is by Ennio Morricone, and the film looks great thanks to cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, on his way to his triumph with Last Tango in Paris. ~ Robert Firsching, Rovi

An international cast headlines this espionage comedy that centers on a world-wide hunt for stolen American defense papers. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

In this exciting war drama, a hard-nosed army colonel helps to prepare French beaches for D-day using a band of convicted criminals. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

The success of several 1960s-era cat-burglar movies depended upon the suave and agreeable machinations of the film's antiheroic hero, as he stylishly worked to remove surplus wealth from the obscenely wealthy. That formula reaped a box-office bonanza, and here the producers are back with it again, with Jeff Hill (George Hamilton) learning the ropes of being a gentleman-thief from the redoubtable Ace of Diamonds (Joseph Cotton). Unfortunately, there is a reason these fine gents weren't cast in the original films, and despite good performances (and direction) all around, the magic just didn't strike this time. Three female movie stars (Carroll Baker, Zsa Zsa Gabor and Lilli Palmer) play themselves as the burglar's wealthy victims. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

An extremely sub-James Bond orientation drives this thriller -- made in Europe but trying to look and sound American -- about a counter-intelligence operative (identified as a "super-agent" by his boss) investigating a leak to the Soviets. Dark, good-looking Ray Danton plays Larson, the "super-agent" in this awkward (but, on that level, enjoyable) yet knowing spoof of the genre. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi