Vernon Rich Movies

Andy hopes to beat his longtime rival Sheriff Blake (Ken Mayer) at the Mount Pilot Sheriff's Annual Barbershop Quartet Sing-Off. Unfortunately, on the eve of the contest, Mayberry's star tenor Howard gets laryngitis. A desperate Andy finds an unexpected replacement in the form of golden-throated Jeff Nelson (Hamilton Camp)-who happens to be a prisoner in the Mayberry jailhouse. First telecast on September 26, 1966, "The Barbershop Quartet" was written by Fred S. Fox. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

A father-son team of circus aerialists, Gino and Mario Patruzzio (Robert Carricart, Mike Conners), quarrel bitterly over Mario's slatternly young wife Carlotta (Yvette Vickers) just before beginning their act. An accident occurs in mid-air, causing Gino to plunge helplessly to the ground. Though exonerated of any blame, Gino still feels responsible for the tragedy and becomes dangerously suicidal. Can Gino save his son from destroying himself--even though the elder Patruzzio lies paralyzed in a hospital bed? ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In this frothy romantic comedy, a hard-working female Army shrink (Janet Leigh) devises the "perfect furlough" for battle weary men and convinces the brass to let her try it on selected men stationed at her base. According to her plan, selected men would be given three weeks, tailor made to fit their deepest desires. Her first test-case is a handsome ladies' man (Tony Curtis) who chooses to go to Paris with his favorite movie star. Naturally the psychologist chaperones. Romantic mayhem ensues and eventually the furloughed soldier and the shrink fall in love. The story is also titled Strictly for Pleasure. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

The "Bridey Murphy" craze of the 1950s was the catalyst for I've Lived Before. Jock Mahoney plays a contemporary pilot who survives a plane crash. Upon awakening, he is under the delusion that he is another airman, who died during the first World War. The authorities pass this insistence off as delirium, until Mahoney starts recounting events and intimacies that only the long-dead pilot would know. Ann Harding portrays the ageing former lover of the soul trapped within Mahoney's body. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Who else but Randolph Scott could be the Tall Man Riding in this rugged western? Forced to lay low for several years after being forced out of town by land baron Tucker Ordway (Robert Barrett), Larry Madden (Randolph Scott) returns to wreak vengeance against Ordway and claim the land that is rightfully his. Madden also hopes to rekindle the flames of romance with his ex-fiancee, Ordway's daughter Corinna (Dorothy Malone). The tension lies not in whether or not Madden will get what he wants but whether or not he can be dissuaded from becoming a murderer--and, by extension, a fugitive for the rest of his life. Tall Man Riding benefits from the brisk, no-nonsense direction of Lesley Selander, in one of his few Warner Bros. assignments. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Inspired in part by the true story of baseball great Ted Williams, who after serving in World War II was drafted to serve in the Korean War just as his baseball career was taking off, Strategic Air Command stars James Stewart as "Dutch" Holland, a star third baseman with the St. Louis Cardinals. "Dutch" served with distinction as a fighter pilot during World War II, and as the Air Force adds new B-36 and B-47 jets to their arsenal, they need experienced men to fly these new weapons in our atomic deterrent force, and Holland is called back to duty. He's not terribly happy about this development: he loves baseball, his team is doing well, and his wife Sally (June Allyson) is expecting a baby. But you can't fight Uncle Sam, and Holland becomes a reluctant but proud member of the S.A.C., where he and his fellow pilots man the jets that will be our first line of defense should the cold war turn hot. While Strategic Air Command's story hasn't dated well (and for a military drama, there's surprisingly little action), James Stewart and June Allyson make the most of their material, and the aerial footage remains impressive. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

A man with a strangely misshapen face wanders out of the desert near a small town and falls to the ground dead. The county sheriff (Nestor Paiva) tentatively identifies the dead man as Eric Jacobs, a laboratory assistant to Professor Deemer (Leo G. Carroll), a research scientist living a few miles out in the desert. But there's something strange about Jacobs; his facial features and bodily extremities are distorted to a point where he's barely recognizable. The sheriff calls in Dr. Matt Hastings (John Agar), the local physician, who makes a diagnosis of acromegalia, a glandular disorder that affects the body's growth. He also tells the sheriff that it can't possibly be acromegalia, because symptoms as pronounced as those he sees in this case take years to develop, and the man was in perfect health just three months earlier. Hastings refuses to believe the professor's account of Jacobs' rapid deterioration, but the sheriff takes the word of the scientist. Back in his laboratory, Deemer continues his work, going over tests of a chemical on various animals, all of which are jumbo-sized, including guinea pigs the size of rabbits, baby mice the size of full-grown rats, and a tarantula three feet long. Suddenly, the professor is attacked by his assistant (Eddie Parker), whose face and hands are distorted in the same manner as Jacobs, and who injects the helpless scientist with the experimental chemical before collapsing dead. A fire starts during the attack and in the confusion, the tarantula's glass cage is broken and it escapes the burning laboratory, wandering out into the desert. Weeks go by, and a new assistant, Stephanie "Steve" Clayton (Mara Corday), arrives to begin work for the professor. When Hastings gives her a ride to Deemer's home, the scientist explains to the doctor that he's been working on a radioactive nutrient, that, if perfected, could feed the entire world's population. He also says that Eric Jacobs made the mistake of testing the chemical on himself and it caused the disease that killed him. Hastings and Steve begin a romance, unaware that wandering around the desert is the tarantula from Deemer's laboratory, now grown to the size of an automobile and getting bigger with each passing day. Soon livestock and then people begin disappearing, and the sheriff is at a loss to explain any of it, or the one clue left behind in each case: large pools of what seems to be some kind of venom next to the stripped skeletons of the victims. Hastings takes some of the material in for a test; meanwhile, Steve notices that Deemer is going through some bizarre changes. His mood has darkened and his features now appear to be changing, as the acromegalia, caused by the injection, manifests itself. Hastings learns that one of the professor's test animals was a tarantula, which was presumed destroyed. When he learns that the pools near the deaths are composed of spider venom -- equivalent to what it would take many thousands of spiders to generate -- he's certain that the tarantula from the laboratory survived. By this time, the title creature is bigger than a house and ravaging the countryside, killing everything in its path and knocking down power lines and telephone poles as it moves. Hastings arrives just in time to rescue Steve from the attacking creature, which destroys Deemer's house and kills the professor. The sheriff and the highway patrol are unable to slow the creature, now the size of a mountain and moving at 45 miles an hour, even with automatic rifle fire, as it follows the road through the desert toward the town. Even an attempt to blow it up with dynamite fails when the monster walking right through the blast. Finally, the creature is poised to attack the town, when jets scrambled from a nearby Air Force base (led by a young Clint Eastwood, barely recognizable behind an oxygen mask) swoop in. When rockets fail to divert the monster from its path, the jets roar in for a second pass and drop enough napalm to incinerate the creature. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi

The infamous Benedict Arnold affair is the basis of the lively MGM costumer The Scarlet Coat. Arnold is played with suitably subtle menace by Robert Douglas, while his principal co-conspirator, Major John Andre, is essayed by Michael Wilding. The largely speculative storyline concerns the efforts of one Major John Boulton (Cornel Wilde), a colonial counterspy, to foil Arnold's plans. Thanks to some deft scriptwriting, the much-abused Major Andre emerges as the most sympathetic character in the film, if only because he is willing to face the consequences for his actions. Less sympathetic is George Sanders in another of his patented "cad" roles, while Anne Francis is the spunky (if unnecessary) heroine. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Tony Curtis stars as Johnny Dark, a moody automobile designer. Rejected by a major auto firm because of his "radical" notions, Johnny sets out to prove the efficiency of his cars on the racetrack. He is aided and abetted by pretty Piper Laurie and less pretty Paul Kelly, while motor mogul Sidney Blackmer fumes and fusses until he realizes that Johnny's designs will save his company. Most of the film is devoted to a marathon race, pitting Johnny against his friendly enemy Don Taylor. Johnny Dark is a must for racing buffs, as well as a prime example of Tony Curtis in his beefcake period. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

H.G. Wells's War of the Worlds had been on the Paramount Pictures docket since the silent era, when it was optioned as a potential Cecil B. DeMille production. When Paramount finally got around to a filming the Wells novel, the property was firmly in the hands of special-effects maestro George Pal. Like Orson Welles's infamous 1938 radio adaptation, the film eschews Wells's original Victorian England setting for a contemporary American locale, in this case Southern California. A meteorlike object crash-lands near the small town of Linda Rosa. Among the crowd of curious onlookers is Pacific Tech scientist Gene Barry, who strikes up a friendship with Ann Robinson, the niece of local minister Lewis Martin. Because the meteor is too hot to approach at present, Barry decides to wait a few days to investigate, leaving three townsmen to guard the strange, glowing object. Left alone, the three men decide to approach the meterorite, and are evaporated for their trouble. It turns out that this is no meteorite, but an invading spaceship from the planet Mars. The hideous-looking Martians utilize huge, mushroomlike flying ships, equipped with heat rays, to pursue the helpless earthlings. When the military is called in, the Martians demonstrate their ruthlessness by "zapping" Ann's minister uncle, who'd hoped to negotiate a peaceful resolution to the standoff. As Barry and Ann seek shelter, the Martians go on a destructive rampage. Nothing-not even an atom-bomb blast-can halt the Martian death machines. The film's climax occurs in a besieged Los Angeles, where Barry fights through a crowd of refugees and looters so that he may be reunited with Ann in Earth's last moments of existence. In the end, the Martians are defeated not by science or the military, but by bacteria germs-or, to quote H.G. Wells, "the humblest things that God in his wisdom has put upon the earth." Forty years' worth of progressively improving special effects have not dimmed the brilliance of George Pal's War of the Worlds. Even on television, Pal's Oscar-winning camera trickery is awesome to behold. So indelible an impression has this film made on modern-day sci-fi mavens that, when a 1988 TV version of War of the Worlds was put together, it was conceived as a direct sequel to the 1953 film, rather than a derivation of the Wells novel or the Welles radio production. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi