Edward Binns Movies

This Trilogy, Danger originally created for television by Sidney Lumet consists of three individual episodes, all in the film noir thriller style The Lady on the Rock, Death Among the Relics, and The System. The cast includes Kim Stanley and Eli Wallach. Director Lumet began his filmmaking career in television, directing episodes for Omnibus, Alcoa Theater, and Goodyear Playhouse. Despite several blacklisting attempts, his career, based on his excellent television work, thrived and he went on to make feature films. This fine trilogy includes the some of the best of his early work. ~ Linda Rasmussen, All Movie Guide

Though both Edward G. Robinson and Paulette Goddard were at career low points when they filmed Vice Squad, both actors were too professional to give anything less than their very best. Robinson plays Captain Barnaby of the titular squad, who during a routine day at the station takes charge of a case involving the killing of a patrolman. Barnaby holds Jack Hartrampf (Porter Hall), a witness to the murder, in protective custody. Hartrampf had been making a clandestine meeting with a pretty young lady, and is afraid to tell the police what he knows for fear of losing his reputation and getting the girl involved in the mess. With the help of Mona (Goddard), head of the so-called escort bureau who arranged the tryst, Barnaby is able to follow the trail of clues to bank robbers Barkis (Edward Binns) and Pete (Lee van Cleef). There's many an additional complication -- including a kidnapping and a false arrest -- before Barnaby is able to call it a day. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The Scarlet Hour was a relatively bold experiment for a mid-1950s Paramount release. The studio expended a great deal of money on the project and enlisted the services of top-flight director Michael Curtiz -- then populated the cast with young unknowns. Carol Ohmart and Tom Tryon (yes, the future novelist) star as Paulie and Marsh, respectively the film's villainess and protagonist. Knowing that Marsh is hopelessly in love with her, Paulie uses him as a dupe in an upcoming jewelry heist. Only after a killing has occurred does Marsh come to his senses. Jody Lawrance, whose previous career as a Columbia contract player had led nowhere, is "introduced" as the good girl to whom Marsh eventually retreats. Other comparative newcomers in the cast include Elaine Stritch, James Gregory and Edward Binns. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Virtually every major city in the 1950s harbored some sort of political corruption or other, providing plenty of material for the "exposé" school of filmmaking. Portland Expose is a fact-based account of skullduggery in the Oregon metropolis. Inspired by revelations made during the Senate's McClellan Committee hearings, the story concentrates on an honest tavern owner named George Madison (Edward Binns) who is involuntarily sucked into the city's rotten-to-the-core political machine. When Madison refuses to allow his establishment to serve as the gathering place for hoods and delinquents, the powers-that-be threaten to harm his family. Only after his daughter is attacked by a syndicate flunkey does Madison decide to fight back. At great personal risk, he manages to tape-record damning evidence against Portland's "untouchable" criminal kingpin (Russ Conway). The supporting cast includes such radio and TV "regulars" as Virginia Gregg, Larry Dobkin, Frank Gorshin and Joe Flynn. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A wild young buck settles down and becomes a decent fellow after he falls in love with a sweet young girl in this youth drama. He is a delinquent with a reputation when they meet. During their first date, they end up at the police station. Her protective parents are outraged and forbid her to see him again. Soon they are seeing each other on the sly, and fortunately her natural goodness begins to rub off and he changes his ways. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

While having lunch at the Plaza Hotel in New York, advertising executive Roger O. Thornhill (Cary Grant) has the bad luck to call for a messenger just as a page goes out for a "George Kaplan." From that moment, Thornhill finds that he has stepped into a nightmare -- he is quietly abducted by a pair of armed men out of the hotel's famous Oak Room and transported to a Long Island estate; there, he is interrogated by a mysterious man (James Mason) who, believing that Roger is George Kaplan, demands to know what he knows about his business and how he has come to acquire this knowledge. Roger, who knows nothing about who any of these people are, can do nothing but deny that he is Kaplan or that he knows what they're talking about. Finally, his captors force a bottle of bourbon into Roger and put him behind the wheel of a car on a dangerous downhill stretch. Through sheer luck and the intervention of a police patrol car and its driver (John Beradino), Roger survives the ride and evades his captors, and is booked for drunk driving. He's unable to persuade the court, the county detectives, or even his own mother (Jesse Royce Landis) of the truth of his story, however -- Thornhill returns with them to the mansion where he was held, only to find any incriminating evidence cleaned up and to learn that the owner of the house is a diplomat, Lester Townsend (Philip Ober), assigned to the United Nations. He backtracks to the hotel to find the room of the real George Kaplan, only to discover that no one at the hotel has ever actually seen the man. With his kidnappers once again pursuing him, Thornhill decides to confront Townsend at the United Nations, only to discover that he knows nothing of the events on Long Island, or his house being occupied -- but before he can learn more, Townsend gets a knife in his back in full view of 50 witnesses who believe that Roger did it. Now on the run from a murder charge, complete with a photograph of him holding the weapon plastered on the front page of every newspaper in the country, Thornhill tries to escape via train -- there he meets the cooly beautiful Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint), who twice hides him from the police, once spontaneously and a second time in a more calculated rendezvous in her compartment that gets the two of them together romantically, at least for the night. By the next day, he's off following a clue to a remote rural highway, where he is attacked by an armed crop-dusting plane, one of the most famous scenes in Hitchcock's entire film output. Thornhill barely survives, but he does manage to learn that his mysterious tormentor/interrogator is named Phillip Vandamm, and that he goes under the cover of being an art dealer and importer/exporter, and that Eve is in bed with him in every sense of the phrase -- or is she? ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Compulsion is a compelling, stylish thriller, loosely based on the famous 1924 murder trial of thrill-killers Loeb and Leopold, two homosexual students who murdered a young boy to demonstrate their intellectual superiority. Artie Straus (Bradford Dillman) is a sadistic, mother-dominated bully. Judd Steiner (Dean Stockwell) is a submissive, introverted sissy. Having been raised by wealthy, arrogant families, both Artie and Judd consider themselves above conventional morality. Unfeeling and conceited, the boys, after the killing, take delight in offering to aid in finding the culprits. It is this arrogance which leads to their capture and prosecution for the murders. Jonathan Wilk (Orson Welles), playing a Clarence Darrow-like criminal defense attorney, takes on the case, and puts on a defense, without the cooperation of his clients, who will offer no explanation for what they have done. Bradford Dillman gives an outstanding performance, as does Dean Stockwell as the utterly unsympathetic murderers. Orson Welles is flamboyantly imposing as Wilk, who must use all his wits to try to save the boys from execution. Compulsion is a suspenseful courtroom drama, even though most viewers will know the outcome. Tautly directed by Richard Fleischer, the film is an outstanding, believable courtroom drama. ~ Linda Rasmussen, All Movie Guide

During a manned space flight, a spaceship crashlands on a distant, desolate terrain, which may be an uncharted asteroid. The three surviving astronauts -- Donlin (Edward Binns), Corey (Dewey Martin), and Pierson (Ted Otis) -- begin a long and arduous search for food and water. Unfortunately, Corey gets greedy, and he ultimately murders his two comrades. Only at the very end does Corey realize that his homicidal behavior was totally unecessary. First telecast January 15, 1960, "I Shot an Arrow into the Air" was scripted by Rod Serling from a story idea by Madelon Champion. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Raymond Burr was already three years into Perry Mason when he decided to return to his movie-villain roots with Desire in the Dust. Burr, playing the patriarch of a Southern family, befriends the ex-convict (Ken Scott) who'd supposedly killed Burr's son in an auto accident. Actually the accident was caused by Burr's daughter (Martha Hyer), who hopes that she can buy the accused man's silence and thus secure her daddy's political future. The ex-con goes along with the deception, having fallen in love with the daughter, but soon learns that Burr plans to double-cross him. Based on a novel by Harry Whittington. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Victor Salazar (Pat Hingle) is a "junk man" in every sense of the word, using his scrap-metal business as a front to distribute illegal drugs. In his efforts to get the goods on Salazar, Elliot Ness (Robert Stack) gets into a fracas with the junk man's torpedo Barney Howell (Pat Hingle), unaware that Howell is actually an undercover Federal narcotics agent. But even though Salazar unwittingly has a Fed in his operation, he may actually less to fear from Barney than from his "trusted" associate Steve Ballard (Edward Binns), who is plotting to double-cross Salazar and skip town with all the profits. Character actor Than Wyenn is particularly repulsive in the role of crooked chemist Martin Pegler, who peddles heroin-laced candy to innocent schoolkids. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

After the end of World War II, the world gradually became aware of the full extent of the war crimes perpetrated by the Third Reich. In 1948, a series of trials were held in Nuremberg, Germany, by an international tribunal, headed by American legal and military officials, with the intent of bringing to justice those guilty of crimes against humanity. However, by that time most of the major figures of the Nazi regime were either dead or long missing, and in the resulting legal proceedings American judges often found themselves confronting the question of how much responsibility someone held who had "just followed orders." Judgment at Nuremberg is a dramatized version of the proceedings at one of these trials, in which Judge Dan Haywood (Spencer Tracy) is overseeing the trials of four German judges -- most notably Dr. Ernst Janning (Burt Lancaster) and Emil Hahn (Werner Klemperer) -- accused of knowingly sentencing innocent men to death in collusion with the Nazis. Representing the defense is attorney Hans Rolfe (Maximilian Schell), while prosecuting the accused is U.S. Col. Tad Lawson (Richard Widmark). As the trial goes on, both the visiting Americans and their reluctant German hosts often find themselves facing the legacy of the war, and how both of their nations have been irrevocably changed by it. Judgment at Nuremberg also features notable supporting performances by Marlene Dietrich, Judy Garland, and Montgomery Clift. Originally written and produced as a play for television, the screen version of Judgment at Nuremberg was nominated for 11 Academy Awards, with Maximilian Schell and Abby Mann taking home Oscars for (respectively) Best Actor and Best Adapted Screenplay. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide