Elke Sommer Movies

Harry has grown up amongst the dregs of society and so it is little wonder that he, like Willi, the estranged father he idolizes, ends up in prison; his young girlfriend Marlies is also incarcerated. Following convictions for car theft, the two are fatefully sent to the same coed penitentiary where Willi and his girlfriend reside. With a little wangling, Harry manages to become his father's new cellmate. Marlies is placed with Willi's girl. The four communicate via toilet pipes as do other inmates. Thus the stage is set for a series of funny and earthy conversations that illuminate and educate both generations of crooks. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Eurocentric arrogance prompts all the people who handle and acquire a strange Ceylonese curio to dismiss the legend surrounding it, which is that it is a death stone, and holding it presages an early demise. The first to discover it is Jane, who is the fiance of an architect. When she is killed in a run-in with some drug dealers, her fiancee goes on the rampage, dealing out plenty of lethal martial arts kicks and blows and setting up the villains for some serious revenge while the Ceylonese locals celebrate their colorful festivals. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

This two-part TV movie recounts the life of Anna Anderson, who until the day she died at age 82 insisted that she was really Anastasia Romanov, daughter of Czar Nicholas. Anna first makes her claim in 1920, when she is an inmate in a Berlin asylum. Her story of escape from the Bolsheviks who killed the rest of her family in 1918 seems so vivid that many Russian expatriates are willing to believe her. The film concludes in 1928, with Anna restating her claim before the surviving Romanovs living in New York. Amy Irving plays the leading character in a lady-or-the-tiger fashion, so that we never know if she truly swallows her own tale or if she's merely a clever charlatan. Olivia DeHavilland, Rex Harrison, Claire Bloom, Omar Sharif and Susan Lucci co-star in this opulent, location-filmed production, which originally aired on December 7 and 8, 1986. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this gripping Swedish drama, a South African girl is captured and forced to become a hooker. It is a horrible life, but eventually the girl escapes and finds sanctuary and love on a remote game preserve. Unfortunately, her former employer finds her and carves up the girl's face, causing her lover to head off for bloody revenge. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

The two-part TV movie Inside the Third Reich was based on the extraordinary revelatory (if self-serving) autobiographical book by Albert Speer. Played herein by Rutger Hauer, Speer is a young man of privilege in pre-Hitler Germany who happens to be a brilliant architect. Becoming a member of Hitler's inner circle, Speer is appointed the Nazi regime's master builder. According to this film, Speer is egomaniacal and ambitious, but somewhat blinded to the inherent evils of Nazism. Though he'd later claim to be ignorant of Hitler's horrific policies aimed at the Jews, he was certainly aware of the use of Jewish prisoners as slave labor: as Germany's armaments minister during World War II, Speer exploited these enslaved unfortunates as much as anyone, if not more so. The cast includes Derek Jacobi as Hitler, Blythe Danner as Speer's wife Margarethe, John Gielgud as Speer's father, Ian Holm as Goebbels, Maurice Roeves as Hess, and George Murcell as Goering. Originally running 5 hours, Inside the Third Reich was filmed in Munich; it was first telecast on May 9 and 10, 1982. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The 1980 Winter Olympics at Lake Placid provides the setting for this drama that centers on a man's mid-life crisis. While there, he gets involved with love, sex and other diversions. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square was the original title of this British caper film. David Niven does his suave 'n' blase bit as a criminal mastermind planning a giant bank heist. Richard Jordan co-stars as an American ex-con tapped to oversee the operation. Gloria Grahame, in one of her last roles, masticates the scenery as Jordan's rude-and-crude mom. The Big Scam picked up a third title when it was released to video as The Mayfair Bank Caper. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Star Rod Taylor co-wrote the screenplay for Jamaican Gold. For centuries, the treasure of Morgan the Pirate has been resting somewhere beneath the waters of Carribean. Diver Taylor goes after it, hoping to beat his rivals Stuart Whitman, Elke Sommer and Jeremy Kemp to the punch. All four adventurers must contend with a few scurvy criminal types. Keenan Wynn also shows up as the gloriously yclept "Meat Cleaver Stewart." Filmed in the early 1970s, Jamaican Gold underwent several title and distributor changes before it was released in 1979 as The Treasure Seekers. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Four disparate scuba divers go to the Caribbean in search of lost treasure. ~ Kristie Hassen, All Movie Guide

In this crime drama, set in 1975 and based on a true story from Toronto, Canada, the different ways in which a prominent realtor may have had his wife brutally murdered are presented. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

An Italian-French-Spanish version of the much-filmed Agatha Christie story, this film is strangely set in Iran, not Great Britain. Ten guests are invited to a remote desert inn and informed that the mysterious host has described in a nursery rhyme how they will all die during the gathering. One by one, the characters, played by such Continental stars such as Elke Sommer and singer Charles Aznavour as well as Britons Oliver Reed and Richard Attenborough, dwindle in number, each in accordance with a verse of the nursery rhyme, until only a few remain. The final characters then plot to ensnare the criminal mastermind behind the weekend of mayhem. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide

In this chiller from Italian director Mario Bava, Elke Sommer stars as Lisa, a young tourist who keeps running into a strange bald man who carries around a mannequin. The bald man is Leandre (Telly Savalas), the butler at the estate of a blind Countess (Alida Valli) and her slightly off-kilter son Max (Alessio Orano). In a bizarre turn of events, Lisa kills a man in self-defense and winds up hitching a ride with Frances Lehaf, his wife Sophia (Sylva Koscina), and her chauffeur/lover George. Car troubles land them at the Countess' estate where Lisa is plagued by strange dreams and visions of the man she killed. More troubling for Lisa is that both the dead man and Max appear to know her. Meanwhile, the other guests begin to die: George is murdered by an unseen assailant, Sophia runs over her husband with the car, and then is dispatched herself by a killer who is revealed to be Max. Lisa awakens in Leandre's room full of dummies and runs off through the house. She encounters Max, who shows her the skeletal remains of Eleanor, the lover he killed for having an affair with his stepfather. Max believes that Lisa is Eleanor reincarnated. After an odd sex scene, he is confronted by his mother whom he winds up stabbing to death. Moments later, she reappears and the shock sends Max falling to his own death. Lisa awakens in the house, which now appears to have been abandoned for decades. She boards an airplane to head home, but in a chilling climax, she discovers the plane devoid of all passengers...except for a few old friends including the diabolical Leandre. ~ Patrick Legare, All Movie Guide

Low-brow British humor abounds in this farcical account of Edwin Anthony, the first man to receive a successful penis transplant. Anthony becomes quite attached to his new appendage and even gives it the title name. The alleged humor comes in when Anthony and Percy set out to investigate the life of the latter's former owner. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide