Bert Remsen Movies

Mariette Hartley portrays Candy Lightner, the founder of Mothers Against Drunk Drivers, in this made-for-television movie produced and written by Michael Braverman. After her daughter is killed by a drunk driver in a hit-and-run accident, Lightner forms M.A.D.D. to enact legislation curbing the spread of alcohol-related driving. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide

After a string of box-office hits, including Coming Home and Being There, director Hal Ashby announced in 1979 that his next film would be a "personal" project called The Hamster of Happiness. Two years would pass before this effort would appear on screen, by which time it had been heavily retooled in the editing room (by Ashby himself) and retitled Second-Hand Hearts. Robert Blake plays a boozing drifter, who while drunk as a skunk marries waitress Barbara Harris. The newlyweds set off on a long car trip to California, with Harris' two wretched children in tow. For this we waited two years? Weighted down with allegory, symbolism and "meaningful" character names, Second-Hand Hearts was the beginning of the end of Hal Ashby's glory days. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this suspenseful horror movie, four rape victims team up to bring their brutal attacker to justice. He had been tried before on similar charges and acquitted on a technicality. Now the women, led by a determined young doctor are determined to make him pay for destroying their lives. Unfortunately, the man is a prominent and powerful citizen. Fortunately, this doesn't stop them and justice is served. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In Robert Kaylor's Carny, the world of the carnival is an illusion manipulated by the carnies to fleece the suckers. The marks generally deserve what they get, because of their greed, corruption, or just plain stupidity. It's share and share alike for Frankie (Gary Busey) and Patch (Robbie Robertson), partners in a dunk-the-bozo act in a carnival travelling through the American South. At one of the small-town stops, Donna (Jodie Foster), an alienated teenager, dumps her obnoxious boyfriend and, with Frankie's encouragement, joins up and moves into their trailer (and Frankie's bed). Feeling displaced, Patch schemes to get Donna out of the carnival. However, the carnival's owner needs Donna to foil a loathsome pair of local officials who demand payoffs. She plays her part perfectly and is accepted by all, although she moves into another trailer. ~ Steve Press, All Movie Guide

Adapted from the novel by Pete Hamill, Flesh and Blood stars Tom Berenger as Bobby Fallon, a street punk who develops into a topnotch boxer while in prison. Upon his release, Bobby is taken under the wing of manager John Cassavetes. Outwardly tough and unmovable, Bobby is tortured with memories of his miserable childhood, which included an incestuous episode with his mother (Suzanne Pleshette). This two-part TV movie concludes with a heavyweight championship bout, bankrolled by Bobby's long-estranged father (Mitchell Ryan). Photographed with Rocky-like intensity by Vilmos Zsigismond, Flesh and Blood first aired on October 14 and 16, 1979. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Hot on the heels of his Welcome Back Kotter success, Gabe Kaplan starred in this hastily assembled theatrical feature. Kaplan plays David Greene, the coach of a Nevada collegiate basketball team. Inasmuch as the local talent is pretty pathetic, Greene convinces a group of jive-talking New York street kids into playing for the college. Culture-clash jokes abound, with the black cast members usually coming out on top. In keeping with sports-comedy tradition, one of Greene's team members is a girl, and a very attractive one. Though it hasn't an original bone in its body, Fast Break is breezy entertainment, with a particularly thrilling climax. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this tearjerker, an impoverished jazz musician falls into a deep depression following the deaths of his wife and child in a terrible fire. Just as the man begins to contemplate suicide, he encounters a handicapped youth. The two become friends and manage to shore each other up through their rough times. Maynard Ferguson dubbed the trumpet playing. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

After a plane crash, killer tarantulas escape from the cargo, threatening orange groves and scaring the crop out of the locals in this arachnorama. ~ Kristie Hassen, All Movie Guide

"Truth is whatever gets the loudest applause." Debunking western myths even more than he did in McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971), Robert Altman's Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson (1976) sardonically explores the gap between western history and legend in show biz-obsessed America. Megalomaniac "Buffalo Bill" Cody (Paul Newman) assumes the legend created for him by writer Ned Buntline (Burt Lancaster), aided and abetted by his producer (Joel Grey) and his publicist (Kevin McCarthy), perpetuating myths of white triumph over savage "Injuns" in his Wild West show, as audiences cheer him on and buy his merchandise. But when Sitting Bull (Frank Kaquitts) joins the troupe with his interpreter (Will Sampson), his request for authenticity threatens to throw a wrench into the proceedings. Regardless of how Bill may feel about the facts, he must bow to the preferences of the paying public. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

Harry and Walter Go to New York was born of the theory that, the more stars and money that you throw into a film, the better the film will be. The theory has seldom been proven true, and it certainly wasn't in this case. Harry (James Caan) and Walter (Elliot Gould) are a third-rate vaudeville team, playing tank towns in turn-of-the-century USA. Thrown into the hoosegow on a petty-theft charge, our heroes make the acquaintance of big-time crook Adam Worth (Michael Caine). Once they're sprung, Harry and Walter follow Worth to New York, with the intention of pulling off a huge bank robbery. Lissa Chestnut (Diane Keaton), a bird-brained suffragette, is also mixed up in the proceedings though she never seems certain of who or what her character is from one scene to the next. The film's one tangible asset is its meticulous re-creation of 1890s New York, courtesy of art director Harry Horner. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this made-for-television drama, a fugitive mental patient kidnaps an illiterate girl from a nearby farm and forces her to go to a lonely mountain cabin. There he teaches her to read and, ultimately, how to love. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Released in the same 12-month span as Terrence Malick's Badlands (1973) and Steven Spielberg's The Sugarland Express (1974), Robert Altman's Thieves Like Us (1974) also tells a story of doomed outlaws in love. Depression-era criminals T-Dub (Bert Remsen), Chicamaw (John Schuck), and Bowie (Keith Carradine) band together to rob banks after escaping from a prison farm. Hiding out with Dee Mobley (Tom Skerritt) and Keechie (Shelley Duvall), and then with T-Dub's in-law Mattie (Louise Fletcher) between bank jobs, the three crooks are a loyal group, but increasingly sensational news accounts of their bloodless robberies force them to split up before their next crime. After a car accident, Chicamaw leaves the injured Bowie in Keechie's care. Love blossoms between the two naïfs, compelling Bowie to find a way to balance his bond to Keechie with his loyalty to his friends and the need for money to head for Mexico. With the law closing in, Bowie and Keechie learn the hard way about the finite honor among thieves, and the need to survive. Adapted from the same Edward Anderson novel as Nicholas Ray's They Live By Night (1949), Altman, writers Calder Willingham and Joan Tewkesbury, and Altman's acting "regulars" reworked not just the classical crime movie but also the 1967 hit Bonnie and Clyde, presenting a resolutely unglamorous portrait of this Coke-swilling outlaw couple and the survivors' stoic drive to carry on. With the radio providing soundtrack and commentary, and the newspapers sending a veiled warning, Bowie and Keechie cannot escape the outside world, but they also cannot transcend it into the realm of myth. Rather than turning the crimes into stylish exploits, Altman's camera remains outside most of the robberies, observing the banal action on the street; he saves the slow-motion in the climactic shoot-out for the witnesses rather than the dead. His zoom shots hover between fragments of emotion and place, while they maintain their observational distance. Unfortunately for Altman (and Malick and Spielberg), audiences preferred outlaw glamour to genre-bending introspection. Still, with its deceptively laid-back tone, eye for expressive detail, and ear for ironic juxtaposition, Thieves Like Us takes its place in Altman's exceptional body of early 1970s work. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide