Michael Rougas Movies

In yet another rubber-stamped, mid-'80s teen dancing film, hot on the success of Flashdance, a group of high schoolers called the "Adventurers Eight" from Sandusky, Ohio (known by Midwest teens for its large amusement park), decide to undertake a journey to New York City to enter the Big Showdown, a dance competition with corporate sponsors. As though Sandusky were somehow insulated from the teen culture that otherwise spreads new trends like wildfire, these teens are not aware of the latest dance crazes on the streets of New York, something they pick up while in the city. But misfortune strikes, and they lose their one connection to entering the big contest. They then have to survive the usual con artists or worse -- look for another way to get into the competition. If this script had been rehauled by teens familiar with their real language and attitudes, then the title Fast Forward would apply more to the action in the movie than the remote control. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

When plans to launch a second Star Trek television series in the late 1970s were scrapped by Paramount Pictures, the show's creator, Gene Roddenberry, instead transformed the aborted program's 2-hour pilot into this big budget theatrical feature. Five years after the legendary voyages of the starship Enterprise, James T. Kirk (William Shatner) is an unhappy, desk-bound admiral at Starfleet headquarters. Kirk goes aboard his old vessel to observe its re-launch under new captain Will Decker (Stephen Collins). Soon, however, an escalating crisis causes Kirk to take command of his old ship. A mysterious, planet-sized energy force of enormous power is headed for Earth. Reunited with Spock (Leonard Nimoy), Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy (DeForest Kelley), and the rest of his former colleagues, Kirk takes the Enterprise inside the massive energy cloud and discovers that it is the long-lost NASA space probe Voyager. Now a sentient being after accumulating centuries of knowledge in its deep space travels, the alien, which calls itself V'ger, has come home seeking its creator. Although not a critical home run, box office receipts for Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) were strong enough to inspire a revamped television series and a long-running line of theatrical sequels. ~ Karl Williams, Rovi

Grand Jury is a minor theatrical-release melodrama with all the trappings of a made-for-TV movie. Meredith MacRae and Bruce Davison play a wide-eyed young couple who fall for an insurance scam. When they attempt to go to court to recoup their losses, they become involved in a wide-ranging corporate espionage scheme. The presence of Leslie Nielsen in the cast was more foreboding than funny back in 1977. Though nothing special, Grand Jury is helped along by the confident direction of young Christopher Cain. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

While on a hunting trip, Laura (Melissa Sue Anderson) accidentally shoots and wounds her father, Charles (Michael Landon). The only other person within miles of the accident is Sam (Burl Ives), a blind recluse who is reluctant to offer assistance, feeling that he is totally worthless. It is up Laura, and Laura alone, to restore Sam's self-confidence to the extent that the old hermit will help her find someone who can tend for her injured father. This 90-minute episode is one of several Little House on the Prairie installments filmed on-location in California's Gold Rush Country (though the action is set in Minnesota!). ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

A top-secret Soviet spy satellite -- using stolen Western technology -- malfunctions and then goes into a descent that lands it near an isolated Arctic research encampment called Ice Station Zebra, belonging to the British, which starts sending out distress signals before falling silent. The atomic submarine Tigerfish, commanded by Cmdr. James Ferraday (Rock Hudson), is dispatched with orders to get to Ice Station Zebra carrying three passengers, a Englishman going by the name of David Jones (Patrick McGoohan), a Soviet turncoat named Boris Vaslov (Ernest Borgnine), and an American Marine officer, Captain Anders (Jim Brown), who is supposed to command the Marine unit assigned to the mission. Jones is problem enough, as he is in command of the mission and he prefers to withhold as much information as it's possible to do from Ferraday, even at the risk of the Tigerfish's safety. Add to that the fact that Anders is suspicious of Vaslov, and Vaslov seems much too inquisitive and is telling even less of what he knows about the mission, and Ferraday has his hands full trying to get these men to the polar ice -- 600 miles of dangerous travel -- in just two days. When an attempt to break through the ice -- coupled with some timely sabotage -- kills one man and nearly destroys the boat, the men surrounding these contending parties start to understand just how high the stakes are for everyone. It turns out that the Soviets want what was aboard that satellite as much as the West does; indeed, both sides are frantic to get it, and, just as much, to keep the other side from getting it -- and they're prepared to take it by brute force. Once Ferraday and his men arrive at Zebra, they find a disaster and still more mystery, with most of the men dead and the object that Mr. Jones is supposed to secure nowhere in evidence, and he and his two fellow men of mystery suddenly showing their killing instincts quite freely. And with the storm clearing from the Soviet side first, their planes and their paratroops are closing in on Ferraday, and his relative handful of men. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi