Tim Stafford Movies
In this youthful actioner, two young hot-rodding hoods torment a family while they are en route to a motel in the California desert. The film is also known as 52 Miles to Midnight. The family goes there to take over the establishment. When they finally arrive, tired and frightened by their ordeal, they are horrified to discover that the ramshackle inn is all but abandoned but for the teens who use it as a place to drink. The father and his clan then head for his brother's house 52 miles down the road. Again the young hoodlums launch a vicious attack. Something inside the father snaps. Suddenly stopping his speeding car, he aims his headlights right into the windshield of the oncoming teens, blinding them with the light. The kids crash. The father then forces them to promise to mend their delinquent ways. If they don't, he will send them to jail for a long, long, time. The creepy kids decide to reform. The father, decides to return to the motel and try to fix it up. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Dana Andrews, Jeanne Crain, (more)
- 1966
When two strangers, Sonny (Dick Peabody) and Jesse (Walter Burke), help Ben Cartwright get his wagon out of the mud, Ben invites them to supper at the Ponderosa, then secures them both jobs. Ben's son Hoss immediately bonds with Sonny, who has the strength of Hercules but the mind of a child. A crisis develops when Sonny cannot comprehend the fact that Jesse has been killed-and, according to Sheriff Coffee, Sonny has been known to turn killer himself when he gets confused. The Steinbeckesque teleplay was written by Robert Baron. "Destiny's Child" first aired on January 30, 1966. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Lorne Greene, Michael Landon, (more)
- 1964
Posing as "Frank Jordan", Kimble (David Janssen) hires on as gardener for wealthy Mike Pryor (John Lasell) and his family. Meanwhile, Harold Cheyney (Leslie Nielsen), embittered over a crippling accident suffered while working for Pryor, has sworn revenge on his former partner. Cheyney plans to kidnap Pryor and hold him for ransom--but through a fluke, he ends up snatching Kimble instead. Now the perennial fugitive is trapped between the proverbial rock and hard place: Even if he manages to escape from Cheyney, he faces the likelihood of returning to Death Row. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1964
Written by Earl Hamner, Jr., this late Twilight Zone episode shows evidence of production difficulties and post-production tampering, as indicated by the curious repetition of several key scenes and the decision to dub the voice of child actress Mary Badham (of To Kill a Mockingbird fame) with that of adult actress June Foray. Whatever the case, this is the story of Sport (Badham) and Jeb (Tim Stafford), two wealthy southern kids who would give anything to escape their parents' constant quarrelling. While lolling near the swimming pool in their suburban backyard, the kids are astonished when a Huck Finnish young boy suddenly emerges from the water and beckons them to dive in. They do so, resurfacing in an idyllic backwoods setting, populated by disenfranchised children and presided over by benevolent "earth mother" Aunt T (Georgia Simmons). With the telecast of "The Bewitchin' Pool" on June 19, 1964, the five-year saga of Twilight Zone came to an end. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Joseph Newman, Mary Badham, (more)
John Ford's last film to deal with World War II, Donovan's Reef is an alternately comical and sentimental look back on the fighting Navy men from that war, and how and where -- in Ford's eyes, and Frank Nugent and James Edward Grant's script -- they should have ended up. Michael "Guns" Donovan (John Wayne), Thomas "Boats" Gilhooley (Lee Marvin), and Dr. William Dedham (Jack Warden), a trio of navy veterans who fought on the Pacific island of Haleakalowa during the war, now live on the island. Donovan and Gilhooley, biding time and enjoying themselves, engage in rough-house hijinks among themselves, and are both part of the doctor's extended family, enjoying the good will of the islanders for whom they fought during the war. While Dedham is away on a call to a neighboring island, his grown daughter, Amelia (Elizabeth Allen), from his first marriage, whom he has never seen, announces that she is arriving from Boston to determine Dedham's fitness of character to inherit the majority shares in the family shipping business. Donovan contrives to present Dedham's three Polynesian children, whom the doctor had with the island's hereditary princess, as his own, and also squires Amelia around the island in her father's absence. In the process, the cold Bostonian woman discovers a whole world -- of passion, joy, heroism, and a life among men and women whose lives have been about something other than making money -- that she's never known. She also understands all of the good that her father has accomplished away from Boston, even though it entailed abandoning her. Sparks and even a few fists fly between Donovan and Amelia (and between Donovan and several other characters), in the usual Ford rough-house manner, before their eventual reconciliation and a romantic clinch at the end, in this sweet, sentimental comedy-drama. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- John Wayne, Lee Marvin, (more)
