Del Russell Movies
- 1990
Richard Crenna returns as Lt. Frank Janek of the NYPD in the TV movie Murder in Black and White. As in his previous appearances in Doubletake (85) and Internal Affairs (89), Janek is called upon to solve a bizarre and baffling murder. This time the victim is Janek's own boss, the new commissioner of police. The lieutenant deduces that this murder is tied in with the killing of a physician, which occurred only a few hours earlier. Diahann Carroll plays the commissioner's widow, who may or may not be privy to a departmental cover-up. Murder in Black and White was the first made-for-TV movie to be telecast in 1990. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
In 1963, this colossal and opulent $60 million spectacular was epic in every sense of the word -- an epic investment, an epic in the annals of Hollywood gossip, and, ultimately, an epic flop that nearly dragged 20th Century Fox down the Nile along with Cleopatra's barge. Handsomely mounted by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, who replaced Rouben Mamoulian as director after six days of shooting), the drama follows the eighteen tumultuous years that led to the founding of the Roman Empire. Cleopatra (Elizabeth Taylor) meets up with Julius Caesar (Rex Harrison) and plans to lure Caesar to her boudoir in order to forge an alliance with Rome so that she may hold on to her Egyptian empire. When Caesar is stabbed to death in the Roman Senate, Cleopatra is left without an ally, and Egypt is up for grabs. When Roman general Mark Antony (Richard Burton) comes along, she seduces him in order to make him over into her new protector. But, under the charms of Cleopatra, Mark Antony is reduced from a an awesome and dominating general to a sniveling, drunken wimp. At the Battle of Actium, Mark Antony is defeated and Cleopatra withdraws her troops, dooming Mark Antony and his army. With Egypt in peril, Antony and Cleopatra, the doomed lovers, meet each other for the last time, as the enemy forces close in. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, (more)
Tony Church (Burt Reynolds) is a Chicago detective who loses his job when he is blamed for the deaths of his fellow officers gunned down in a botched drug bust. He becomes a bodyguard to hooker Della Roberts (Liza Minnelli), the lone witness who can identify the killer (James Remar). Bernie Casey is Church's ill-fated partner Lamar, and Dionne Warwick appears briefly as the head of a call-girl ring in this unremarkable feature. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Burt Reynolds, Liza Minnelli, (more)
Willem Dafoe plays Jesus Christ in this extraordinarily controversial adaptation of Nikos Kazantzaki's novel. The film depicts a sometimes reluctant, self-doubting Jesus, gradually coming to accept His divinity and the inexorability of His ultimate fate. The much-maligned sex scene with Mary Magdalene (Barbara Hershey) occurs as an hallucination experienced by Jesus as he suffers on the cross. This particular sequence was what infuriated the film's most rabid critics, but in fact it is just one of many iconoclastic musings to be found in the film and its source novel. Equally volatile are the intimations that, as a carpenter, Jesus indifferently shaped the crucifixes for other condemned prisoners long before his own fate was sealed, and that Judas (Harvey Keitel) was literally manipulated into betrayal by a Christ whose preoccuption with his own destiny compelled him to "use" others. None of these departures from the normal interpretation of the scriptures are offered as any more than theory; as such, it was accepted as food for thought by the more open-minded clerics and Biblical scholars who recommended the film. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Willem Dafoe, Harvey Keitel, (more)
The production team responsible for the twisted cult classic Re-Animator -- including director Stuart Gordon and producer Brian Yuzna -- returned the following year with this equally depraved (perhaps more so) follow-up, based once again (and very loosely) on the pulp-horror fiction of H.P. Lovecraft. Also returning to the fray is Jeffrey Combs, here playing the mild-mannered Crawford Tillinghast, apprentice to the dangerously obsessed Dr. Pretorious (Ted Sorel) and co-inventor of an enigmatic and ominous-looking device known as "The Resonator" -- a machine designed to stimulate the vestigial sensory apparatus contained within the human pineal gland. Such stimulation allows participants to "see" the slimy creatures which occupy a dimension parallel to our own, but with some chilling side effects -- the first of which being that the interdimensional vision works both ways. When a powerful sentient force devours Pretorious and assumes his consciousness, Tillinghast panics and destroys the Resonator -- soon to find himself in a padded cell, accused of his mentor's murder. Called to the case are Dr. McMichaels (Barbara Crampton, another Re-Animator alum) and amiable cop Bubba Brownlee (Dawn of the Dead's Ken Foree), who escort Tillinghast back to the shattered laboratory in an attempt to corroborate his deranged account by re-creating the experiment. Their attempts are all too successful, and the Pretorious-thing emerges to take control of the reactivated Resonator and draw the others into its hideous realm. Also called forth are the participants' darkest sexual desires -- another interesting by-product of pineal stimulation -- and, in Tillinghast's case, an uncontrollable urge to devour human brains. Just when it seems it can't get any weirder...it does. Gordon explores this demented scenario with relish, allowing nearly every scene to go completely over the top into surreal mayhem while retaining the dark brooding sense of menace characteristic of Lovecraft's work. (It's not likely, however, that the author's dignified upbringing would have explored the psychosexual dimensions of the premise -- at least not in the kind of detail seen here.) All manners of perversities abound, accompanied by the wizardry of four dueling special-effects studios and the rich, creepy score by Richard H. Band, bringing the film to a literally explosive climax and a chillingly poetic final shot. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jeffrey Combs, Barbara Crampton, (more)
Sometime far into the future international powers settle their differences in gigantic arenas where each nation sponsors an incredible robot gladiator. These gladiators duke it out to determine the distribution of world territories. This might be best appreciated by pre-teen video warfare fans. ~ All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Gary Graham, Anne-Marie Johnson, (more)
- 1971
- PG
In this drama, a former sergeant accompanies his deceased friend, a black man, home from Vietnam. There he tries to persuade the deceased's white girlfriend and the Indian leader of his motorcycle gang to come to the funeral. The ex-sarge also tries to understand the ins-and-outs of biker life. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
