John Roper Movies
Bobbie Gentry's hauntingly enigmatic 1967 hit single served as the inspiration of this story of unrequited teenage love. In 1953, Bobbie Lee Hartley (Glynnis O'Connor) is 15 years old and in love with 18-year-old Billy Joe McAllister (Robbie Benson). Unfortunately, Bobbie's father (Sandy McPeak) and mother (Joan Hotchkis) forbid her to date until she's 16, and until then, Billy Joe and Bobbie Lee are supposed to be content with occasional meetings after church on Sunday. The teenage lovers sometimes steal away for meetings on the Tallahatchie Bridge, but while the other local boys are able to slake their frustrations with the prostitutes imported for the occasional town dances, a booze-addled Billy Joe succumbs to another sort of temptation, and his guilt first destroys his relationship with Bobbie Lee, and then leads to his self-destruction. Ode to Billy Joe was produced and directed by Max Baer,Jr., best remembered as Jethro Bodine on The Beverly Hillbillies. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
- Starring:
- Robby Benson, Glynnis O'Connor, (more)
In this high-suds potboiler based on the best-selling novel by Jacqueline Susann, Mike Wayne (Kirk Douglas) is a past-his-prime movie producer who lives to make his college-age daughter January (Deborah Raffin) happy. January is also very fond of her father, perhaps more so than would seem healthy to the casual observer. Desperate to keep financing the good life for his daughter, Mike weds Deidre Granger (Alexis Smith), a wealthy bisexual who isn't about to give up her long-term relationship with Karla (Melina Mercouri). January finds herself pursued by suave playboy David Milford (George Hamilton), but she's more strongly attracted to Tom Colt (David Janssen), a middle-aged alcoholic novelist who reminds January of her father. Brenda Vaccaro won a Golden Globe award (and received an Oscar nomination) for her supporting performance as the man-crazy editor of a fashion magazine. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
- Starring:
- Kirk Douglas, Alexis Smith, (more)
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, Rovi
- Starring:
- Keith Carradine, Shelley Duvall, (more)
- 1972
In his second Adam-12 guest appearance, singer Trini Lopez plays Steve Hernandez, a compassionate parole officer. When Larry Ciprio (John Roper) a once-promising basketball player turned drug addict, violates his parole, Steve does everything he can to help the man get back on the right path. Assisting Lopez in this not inconsiderable task are police officers Jim Reed (Kent McCord) and Pete Malloy (Martin Milner). ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- 1972
The Fergusons are a family of nomadic con artists, led by the father-son team of Angus (George Voskovec) and Albert (Michael Ansara), who have managed to bilk an entire San Francisco neighborhood in their latest scam. The newest addition to the clan is greedy son-in-law Josh Evans (Christopher Jones), who adds murder to their litany of crimes. With Stone (Karl Malden) and Keller (Michael Douglas) breathing down their necks, the Fergusons' family solidarity is rapidly disintegrating--and in the process, the lives of several innocent bystanders are placed in jeopardy. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
Filmed on locations ranging from Denmark to the Universal backlot, Alfred Hitchcock's Topaz is based on a novel by Leon Uris. Frederick Stafford, a veteran of European-filmed James Bond rip-offs of the 1960s, is cast as Andre Devereaux, a French secret agent assigned to snoop around Cuba in the months prior to the 1962 missile crisis. Someone is supplying Castro -- and, by extension, Moscow -- with NATO secrets; it is up to Devereaux to liquidate the "mole." Aiding Devereaux is CIA agent Nordstrom (John Forsythe) and aristocratic anti-Castro Cuban Juanita (Karin Dor), who happens to be the girlfriend of pro-Castroite Rico Parra (John Vernon). The director seems to be in awe of the fact-based storyline, and as a result, the film is more cut-and-dried than most Hitchcock efforts. Three different endings were filmed for Topaz; the Laserdisc version carries all three, as does the print available to the American Movie Classics cable service. According to the MPAA, the film was originally rated M but later changed to PG; however, a number of home-video issues of Topaz officially list it as "Not Rated." ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Frederick Stafford, Dany Robin, (more)
