Edward Binns Movies

The Plainsman was a Technicolor remake of the 1936 Cecil B. DeMille film, all about the fictional romantic triangle of Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane and Buffalo Bill. DeMille had the advantage of a topnotch cast: Gary Cooper as Hickok, Jean Arthur as Calamity (complete with a Wally Westmore cosmetic job!) and James Ellison as Buffalo Bill. David Lowell Rich, director of the 1966 The Plainsman, had to make do with Universal contractees Don Murray, Abby Dalton and Guy Stockwell. Denied DeMille's budget, Rich turned out a cut-rate western, wherein the "big" Indian attacks look more like Disneyland exhibits. The usually reliable Abby Dalton further weakens the film with a Southern accent that wouldn't convince a prairie dog. Originally made for television, The Plainsman was instead released theatrically--then went promptly to the small screen. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Just before embarking upon a 40-year space journey, Cmdr. Douglas Stansfield (Robert Lansing) falls in love with the beautiful Sandra Horn (Mariette Hartley). Blasting into space, Stansfield in placed in a state of suspended animation, which will enable him to retain his youth and vitality during the long journey. Thus does he spend most of the flight in despair, knowing that when he returns, Sandra will have aged four decades. . .or will she? Also appearing in this low-key Twilight Zone installment are veteran movie heavy George Macready and TV-series perennial Edward Binns. Written by Rod Serling, "The Long Morrow" was originally telecast January 10, 1964. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Based on the novel by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler, Fail-Safe is set for the most part at Strategic Air Command headquarters, where a misguided transmission sends a squadron of bombers hurtling towards Russia, fully prepared to drop their atomic weaponry on Moscow. Air Force commander Frank Overton desperately tries to establish radio contact with the bombers, but once the pilots have passed the "fail safe" point, they've been instructed to disregard any reversal of orders. Racing against time, US President Henry Fonda, through his interpreter (Larry Hagman), informs the Russian premiere of the impending nuclear disaster. Working in concert with SAC, the Russians send up interceptors to shoot down the American bombers, while some of the planes run out of fuel and crash. Unfortunately, one aircraft, piloted by Edward Binns, manages to escape destruction and continues on its fatal mission. Realizing that Moscow is doomed, the President must decide how to avert World War III. Featured in the cast of Fail Safe are Walter Matthau as a hawkish scientist, Fritz Weaver as a round-the-bend colonel, and Dom DeLuise (billed as "DeLouise") as a weeping sergeant. Fail-Safe is followed by a government-dictated disclaimer insisting that the events leading up to the nuclear disaster depicted in the film could not possibly happen. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

While the police search for a robbery suspect, Kimble (David Janssen) takes refuge in an orphanage. Here he is "adopted" as an uncle by Sean (Donald Losby), a lonely, troubled child who faces institutionalization in a mental hospital. Knowing that Kimble is a fugitive and assuming that he's the holdup man, Sean blackmails Kimble into helping him escape from the orphanage--and taking three other "problem" kids along. One of the youngsters is played by eleven-year-old Ronny Howard, who at the time was still going strong as Opie Taylor on The Andy Griffith Show; also, the actress playing orphanage official Miss Edmonds is Brett Somers, onetime wife of Jack Klugman and later an inescapable presence on the TV gameshow circuit. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Posing as "Harry Carson", Kimble (David Janssen) witnesses an accidental homicide committed by wealthy Martin Rowland (Leslie Nielsen). When a drifter named Arthur Tibbets (Jay Adler) is arrested for the killing, Kimble worries that if he comes forward to exonerate Tibbets, he is almost certain to be exposed as a fugitive from justice. Then there's the matter of Martin Rowland, whose entire life could be irrevocably destroyed because of a tragic mishap. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The "official" title of this film is Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man; its screenplay is adapted from semi-autobiographical "Nick Adams" stories written by Ernest Hemingway. Played by Richard Beymer (West Side Story), Nick Adams is a young Michigan boy who sets out in the early 1900s to learn about life and to pursue a journalistic career. No sooner is he on his way than he gets his first taste of "real life" by being thrown off a train by a railroad agent. He attempts to secure newspaper work, but is laughed out of the office due to his inexperience. He gains valuable insight on the human condition while serving in the Italian army during World War One, where (in Farewell to Arms fashion) a star-crossed romance develops between Nick and a Red Cross nurse (Susan Strasberg). Nick returns to America determined to pursue his destiny by writing of his now-vast experiences. Long and somewhat poky, Adventures of a Young Man is enlivened by the cameo appearance of Paul Newman as a pathetic, punch drunk boxer. ~ 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

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

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