Jill Schoelen Movies

Another psychopath haunts another baby sitter in this made-for-TV sequel to the 1979 feature When a Stranger Calls. When prim schoolgirl Julia (Jill Schoelen) accepts a last-minute baby-sitting assignment from a doctor and his wife (Kevin McNulty and Cheryl Wilson), she follows all the rules: She studies diligently, checks often on the kids, and refuses to open the door for strangers -- even when a stranded motorist asks to come in and call his auto club. Julia offers to call for him, but the phone is dead, and rather than alert a strange man that she's without a link to the outside world, she lies and says they're on their way. The man returns to the door repeatedly, angrily wondering why help hasn't arrived; as he continues to badger Julia, she notices things aren't right in the house. Slips of paper disappear, doors mysteriously unlock themselves, the children vanish, and Julia barely escapes with her life. Five years later, Julia is an introverted college student with some heavy-duty locks on her door. Nevertheless, she starts getting that familiar feeling that something isn't right. Enter Jill Johnson (Carol Kane), survivor of a similar baby-sitting atrocity many years earlier. Now a guidance counselor at Julia's university, she offers to help the girl track down her stalker. With the help of an old friend, private eye John Clifford (Charles Durning), Jill picks up the trail of a disturbed ventriloquist (Gene Lythgow). But when Julia ends up with a bullet in her head in an apparent suicide attempt, even John thinks Jill's investigation is a wild goose chase. Reuniting stars Carol Kane and Charles Durning with writer/director Fred Walton, When a Stranger Calls Back features another horror veteran in its cast. Jill Schoelen previously starred in 1990's Popcorn. ~ Brian J. Dillard, Rovi

Adventures in Spying brings the Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew formula kicking and screaming into the 1990s. During the dog days of his summer vacation, young Bernie Coulson tumbles to the fact that one of his neighbors is a presumed-dead fugitive drug lord. Since no adult is going to swallow this story, Bernie is forced to rely upon his preteen friend Jill Schoelen to help him get the goods on the criminal. There's a $50,000 reward at stake-which seems like small potatoes as the kids confront one life-threatening situation after another, compounded by a preponderance of crooked authority figures. The adult cast of Adventures in Spying is certainly eclectic enough, ranging from onetime John Cassavetes associate Seymour Cassel to none other than G. Gordon Liddy as the bad guy! ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In this off-beat horror outing, a band of film students decide to scare up some cash by holding a film festival celebrating horror films from the '50s. Its all great fun until they discover that the projectionist is a homicidal maniac. Gory violence ensues as audience members begin dying in horrible ways. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Gaston Leroux's classic tale of love and suspense gets a face-lift in this horror story loosely adapted from Leroux's novel. Christine (Jill Schoelen) is a young classical vocalist who, in the midst of performing a recently discovered piece by an obscure composer, is struck on the head by a sandbag and wakes up in London in 1884. Eric Destler (Robert Englund) is a composer who is desperate to succeed -- so much so that he sells his soul to the devil in exchange for writing songs that people will love. However, the devil adds a twist to the bargain by horribly scarring Eric's face, which can only be disguised by flesh from a living victim. Living below the London Opera House, Eric works night and day on his music; when he hears Christine's voice he falls in love, he and lures her to his lair. Eric decides that Christine is the perfect woman to sing his music; he coaches her to a perfect interpretation of his work, and he kills anyone who stands between her and success. Future Saturday Night Live star Molly Shannon made her film debut in a small role in the film's modern day sequences. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

This in-name-only sequel to the mediocre H.P. Lovecraft adaptation The Curse is a slight improvement on its predecessor, eschewing any trace of Lovecraft in favor of a standard nuclear-mutant-beast plot but imbuing this theme with a menagerie of brain-damaged setpieces. When the protagonist and his girlfriend stumble across an abandoned atomic test site, he's bitten on the arm by an irradiated snake-monster; in a creative but excessively grotesque twist, only the venom-infected arm begins to undergo the inevitable transformation into a fanged beast (sort of a reptilian variant on Bruce Campbell's rebellious demonic hand in Evil Dead 2), which leads to some unpleasant quirks in the young couple's relationship. Before long, the poor guy becomes a veritable snake-factory, churning out baby serpents at an incredible clip. The performances are quite good and the makeup effects (by Screaming Mad George) deserve credit for their disgusting audacity. Very weird but more fun than its predecessor, this is probably the film that Sssss! wished it could have been. ~ Cavett Binion, Rovi

Billionaire Boys Club is the two-part TV adaptation of a book by Sue Horton (unpublished at the time of the film's first telecast). In flashback form, the story recounts the murder of Beverly Hills con artist Ron Levin (Ron Silver). The culprit is yuppie Joe Hunt (Judd Nelson), a sharp young commodities trader who has organized an investment firm with several of his prep school buddies, known as the Billionaire Boys Club. Part one, originally telecast November 8, 1987, traces Hunt's meteoric rise to wealth and power, and the means by which Levin worms his way into Hunt's confidence. In part two, shown the next evening, Hunt has already murdered Levin and carefully disposed of the body. The next step of the scheme is take over where Levin left off by conning an Iranian millionaire out of a huge sum of money. Meanwhile, other members of the Club begin to have qualms over Hunt's finagling. Their whistle-blowing leads to Hunt's arrest and convinction for murder. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

While Walt Disney's 1961 filmization of Victor Herbert's Babes in Toyland pales in comparison to the 1934 movie version starring Laurel & Hardy, the Disney film is an unqualified classic when compared to the ill-starred 1986 TV version. Adapted for television by playwright Paul Zindel, the 1986 film stars Drew Barrymore as Lisa Piper, a contemporary girl whisked off Wizard of Oz fashion to Toyland. Here her friends and family from the "real" world are reincarnated as villainous Barnaby (Richard Mulligan), Old Mother Hubbard (Eileen Brennan), Jack-Be-Nimble (Keanu Reeves) et. al. Only "March of the Toys" and "Toyland" have been retained from the original Victor Herbert score; the rest of the songs were specially written for this adaptation by Leslie Bricusse-and, suffice to say, these were hardly classics. Irreparably damaging this version was its 180-minute length-over twice as long as the Laurel & Hardy version, and not even half as good. Filmed in Munich, Babes in Toyland was first telecast December 19, 1986. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Emilio Estevez adapted S.E. Hinton's teen coming-of-age novel for the screen in this film adaptation directed by Christopher Cain. Estevez also takes the lead role of Mark Jennings, a troubled teenager who has been living with his best friend Byron Douglas (Craig Sheffer) and his mother (Barbara Babcock) ever since his father went to prison for murdering his mother. Byron is like a brother to Mark and the two grow very close. But as the two best pals grow into young men in high school, Byron begins to think more seriously about life after high school. He also starts to spend more time away from Mark and with the more mature Cathy (Kim Delany). Jealous of Cathy and fearful of losing Byron, Mark becomes more and more erratic and rebellious. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

Hot Moves lives up to its title: naked males and females (mainly females) on sizzling beaches run in slow motion through the surf, while teenage guys put forth Herculean efforts to bed down the women of their choice. Young, chubby Barry (Michael Zorek) swipes his father's telescope to scope out the scene at the nearby beach-in-the-buff. While Barry is thus entertained, his friend Mike (Adam Silbar) has running argument with his girlfriend Julie Ann about whether or not their relationship should remain virginal -- true to form, Julie Ann says yes and he says no. With these kinds of profound decisions at hand, pre-pubescent boys will probably be the most enthusiastic audience for this teen comedy. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Happy Endings was the pilot for a TV series conceived by Chris Beaumont and produced by Beaumont and several of his Fame collaborators. The film is based on Beaumont's own teenaged years, a time during which his writer father Charles (Twilight Zone) Beaumont died of "premature senility" at the age of 37. Lee Montgomery plays the Chris Beaumont counterpart, an 18-year-old college dropout who spends several days in court to gain custody of his three younger siblings. Representing the adults in Montgomery's world are Oliver Clark as a friend of the family, and Robin Gammell as a doubting uncle. Halfway down the cast list of Happy Endings appear the names of two celebrities-in-the-making: Laura Dern and John Hancock. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi