Robert Shayne Movies

Captain Stanley (Michael Norell) confuses the emergency staff when he begins showing signs of uncharacteristic nervousness and paranoia. The reason? Stanley's former commanding officer Captain McConnike (William Boyett) is scheduled to make inspection of the Rampart team. Back on the job, Marco (Marco Lopez) is seriously injured during a gas station fire; a car crashes into a truck full of toxic pesticides; two professional clowns aren't terribly funny when they start a fight at a skating rink; and a man is "shot" by a nail gun. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

First telecast September 14, 1971, "The Priest Killer" was originally identified as the two-hour opening episode of Ironside's fifth season. In truth, it is the second pilot film for the TV cop series Sarge, starring George Kennedy as cop-turned-priest Father Samuel "Sarge" Kavanaugh. Though based in San Diego, Sarge teams with wheelchair-bound San Francisco detective Robert Ironside (Raymond Burr) to track down an unknown serial killer who has murdered two priests. Though the motive for the murders is at first unknown, given the presence of Anthony Zerbe in the supporting cast it isn't difficult to ascertain the identity of the killer. The weekly, hour-long series version of Sarge would premiere one week after "The Priest Killer", on September 21, 1971. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this drama, a stripper leaves the stage and becomes a grape picker at a California vineyard. There she soon arouses the suspicion of her co-workers; things get worse when the vineyard manager and his brother begin vying for her affection. Eventually tells her female co-workers who she is; she then gives them her jewelry and perfume. Later her manager shows up to bring her back to the nightclub circuits and dives. Instead the girl opts to marry the vineyard manager. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

After a dangerous tiger turns on its trainer and escapes from the circus, a small town in Texas finds itself in an uproar over its capture. As it is hunted by numerous parties, a young girl begins protesting and starts a nationwide movement to plead for the tiger's safety. As the situation gains more attention, the local attitude is torn by politics and outside pressure. At the time of its release, this feature (taken from a book by Ian Niall) was quite different for Disney as it portrayed realistic small-town politics rather than an ideal community. The titular tiger, on the other hand, seemed to have an uncanny knack of choosing baddies to prey upon while leaving all well-meaning folks alone. ~ Kristie Hassen, All Movie Guide

Well-made considering its six-day shooting schedule, this "B"-grade cops 'n robbers drama by Jack Leewood features Gene Nelson as Dan, an ingenious thief living on the edge at the moment. Dan has just cheated a mobster out of some stock in order to use it as collateral on a loan -- and now he has to save himself by replacing the stock with the money its worth. In order to do that, he figures out a complex scheme to steal some diamonds from a display case in a museum, use them to get an insurance sum, and put the real diamonds back before his fake substitutes are found. He co-opts a few people to help him on this plot, and the action begins. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

In this taut thriller, an aging safe-cracker's daughter gets involved with a petty gangster who is always looking for the big heist that will make him a rich man. The fellow reminds her of her father, but this doesn't stop her from attending his latest crime and acting as a look out. Her boyfriend proves to be a lousy safe-cracker and the heist fails. The woman goes back to her night club singing gig. She then gets involved with the club owner. Meanwhile her father has found a female lock-picker and fallen in love. Later the girl is forced to join her father and his lover on a heist. The club owner also comes and ends up shot by the father's girl friend. The poor daughter ends up convicted of the crime and given the death penalty. Just before she is to fry, the real killer bursts in and confesses. ~ 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

Wanting to cash in on the launching of Russia's Sputnik satellite, director Roger Corman hastily made this Earthlings vs evil aliens space opera. The trouble begins when an extraterrestrial warns humans that any attempt to send a man into orbit will result in the destruction of the planet. Despite his threats, the stubborn U.N. agrees that Mankind must not be stopped and so call in a prominent astro-scientist to begin preparations for the first manned space flight. Unfortunately, he is killed in an accident. Eventually another scientist is given the task. Just before the launch, the supposedly dead scientist (actually his alien-reanimated corpse) shows up with dire warnings. Even though it is suspected that the recently returned researcher is a zombie, he is allowed on the first flight. Once in the air, he tries all he can to sabotage the mission. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Filmed under the title Prehistoric World, Teenage Caveman stars future Man From UNCLE Robert Vaughn as the eponymous hero, known only as The Boy. A member of a primitive tribe living in a desolate valley, The Boy has been warned never to journey into the Forbidden Area, lest disaster or death befall him. But after participating in a bear hunt, The Boy and his spear-carrying fellow tribesmen head into the Forbidden Area in search of fresh game. One by one, the intrepid hunters are killed off by quicksand, stock-footage dinosaurs and other such impediments to progress. Exiled by his tribe for venturing into the Forbidden Area, The Boy is compelled to live for a time in an isolated cave, where he is comforted by the Maiden (Darrah Marshall), who has fallen in love with him. Later on, the Boy once more risks life and limb by entering the Forbidden Area. It is at this point that he is told the horrible truth of the Valley's history by a very old man who is dressed in what looks like a 20th-century radiation suit. Without revealing the "surprise" denoument (surprising only to those who've never seen a post-apocalyptic movie), it can be noted that Teenage Cavemen comes to a close with the words "The Beginning." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A alien satellite enters close orbit around the Earth and releases a projectile that takes over the body and mind of Dr. Hubbell Eliot (John Emery), the director of Lab Central, America's top astrophysics research facility. Even as Elliot is falling victim to the invaders, Lab Central scientist Dr. Leslie Gaskell (Jeff Morrow) and his colleagues, Vera Hunter (Barbara Lawrence) and Dr. Arnie Culver (George O'Hanlon), have begun tracking the object -- not certain what it is -- and determine that it is going to hit the Earth in less than 24 hours. An attempt to destroy it with nuclear warheads fails, and the vehicle comes down off the coast of Mexico. While Eliot tries to resist the invaders' control and is hospitalized in a state of collapse, Gaskell, Vera, and Culver fly to the site of the landing, where the submerged craft emits a powerful energy pulse that spreads across the surface of the ocean and toward the beach. When it clears, there stands on the beach a huge metallic object -- a towering robot, inadvertently christened "Kronos" by Gaskell, in a relative moment of whimsy. Hundreds of feet tall and possessing immense power, Kronos proceeds to rampage across the countryside, destroying everything in its path as it seeks out and absorbs all sources of electrical and atomic energy. Back at Lab Central, Eliot temporarily breaks free of the aliens' control, long enough to tell Gaskell of the robot's purpose and mission -- Kronos is a accumulator, sent to Earth by a race whose own planet is depleted of energy, and it will continue to grow stronger unless someone can find a way of reversing the process; worse yet, if Kronos isn't destroyed, other accumulators will be sent to drain the Earth of all its energy. The robot advances relentlessly, growing in destructive power as it moves up the coast, and not even a hydrogen bomb can slow it down. Finally, as it heads toward an H-bomb depository and prepares to destroy the city of Los Angeles in its path, Gaskell devises a possible method of stopping Kronos, based on an untested, untried scientific theory. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

When a city cafe owner buys himself a peaceful country manse to relax in, the Bowery Boys are quite excited. Unfortunately, they arrive to discover the house in a terrible stage of decay and so agree to help fix it up. No sooner do they begin repairs than they find a fortune hidden inside the house. The boys use the money to pay off the house. The makes the greedy real estate agent suspicious. Suspecting there is more money hidden around, the agent decides to convince the gang to sell back the house by making it seem as if it were haunted. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Season Five of The Adventures of Superman) begins as the title character (played by George Reeves) arrives in Paris to help actress Anna Constantine (Lilyan Chauvin) defect from an Iron Curtain country. It turns out, however, that Anna is the dupe of a smuggling ring which is attempting to escape Europe with a cache of valuable jewels--and before long, Superman has been duped as well. The main attraction of this episode is the presence of series regular Robert Shayne), normarly cast as Metropolis police inspector Bill Henderson, herein adopting an outraaaaaageous French accent in the role of Parisian police inspector Lona! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Lt. Dick Chasen (Casey Adams) narrates the strange story of Charles "Butcher" Benton (Lon Chaney, Jr.), a condemned man who came back for revenge. In prison, Butcher refuses to reveal to his crooked lawyer Lowe (Ross Elliott) where he hid $600,000 from a bank robbery. Even though he's due to be executed, Butcher vows revenge on Lowe and his partners, Squeamy (Marvin Ellis) and Joe (Ken Terrell). Lowe visits stripper Eva (Marion Carr), to whom Butcher has sent a map of the spot in the Los Angeles sewer system where he hid the loot, but Lowe opens the letter first, and secretly takes the map. After the execution, Butcher's body is taken to San Francisco scientist Prof. Bradshaw (Robert Shayne) who's trying for a cure for cancer, but instead his experiments bring Butcher back to life. His cellular structure has been increased to the point where he's nearly indestructible, and he is incredibly strong. He kills the scientist and his assistant, and heads for Los Angeles. When stripper Eva turns out to be very different from the person he was expecting, Dick becomes attracted to her. Butcher, who can no longer speak, arrives and learns she doesn't have the map. Aware of Butcher's vow, he tries to inform Squeamy, but Butcher kills both Squeamy and Joe. The panic-stricken Lowe punches a cop and gets tossed in jail as a way of hiding from Butcher; when the cops threaten to release him, he talks and reveals the map. Butcher overhears Dick and the others planning to take care of him with flamethrowers, but just as he finds the loot, he's hit with a bazooka and blasted with the flamethrowers. Hideously burned, he leaves the sewers and climbs to the top of a big crane, which runs into high tension wires, and Butcher is disintegrated. And in the end, Dick and Eva get together. ~ Bill Warren, All Movie Guide