Edward Albert Movies

Adapted by Jay Presson Allen from the French farce by Pierre Barillet and Jean-Pierre Gredy, Forty Carats is a standard-issue sex comedy elevated by the performances of its stars. Fortyish Realtor Ann Stanley (Liv Ullman) finds herself attracted to Peter Latham (Edward Albert) - a man literally half her age. After a summer fling in Greece, Ann and Peter come to a parting of the ways, and that, Ann supposes, is that. Imagine her surprise when Peter comes to visit her back in New York. Though at first dismissed as a fortune hunter, Peter turns out to a financial whiz with a lot more in the bank than his lady friend. Both Ann's mother (Binnie Barnes, whose husband Mike Frankovich produced the film) and daughter (Deborah Raffin) are delighted at the prospect of Ann's romance with Peter -- the only one unsure is Ann herself. Lending his considerable comic expertise to Forty Carats is Gene Kelly as Liv Ullman's ex-husband-who also takes a liking to the personable Edward Albert and encourages the May-December romance. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this mystery, a vengeful husband goes looking for the six people who tortured him and then killed his wife. The husband is a WW II vet and one of the killers is now a high-ranking German official. The plot is based on a Mario Puzo story. The film is also titled Seven Graves for Rogan. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Blood Feud was a two-part TV drama, originally presented as an "Operation Prime Time" special. Robert Blake is disturbingly convincing as labor leader Jimmy Hoffa, engaged in a decade-long war of words with attorney (and later attorney general) Robert F. Kennedy. Cotter Smith makes his TV debut as Kennedy, a role he'd repeat on future occasions. Thoroughly compelling when sticking to the facts, the drama falls apart whenever indulging in flight of fanciful speculation (Sample: two of Hoffa's lieutenants watch the live telecast of Lee Harvey Oswald's murder, then celebrate the fact that Oswald will never be able to reveal their complicity in the JFK assassination!) Blood Feud was syndicated to local TV stations beginning April 24, 1983. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Kimberly Foster stars as the heir to her zillionaire father's estate. With her newfound wealth comes a passel of trouble; for one thing, Foster's relatives are already working overtime to cheat her out of her legacy. Even when she sets herself up as head of her late dad's many corporations, she finds herself at the mercy of avaricious business associates. How long will it be before the terminally trusting Foster figures out that she can trust no one-not even her own husband? Nick Cassavetes, Kathryn Harris, Don Swayze, and Edward Albert costar in this slick, pulpish concoction. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Pia Zadora stars in an over-cooked melodramatic adaptation of the 1946 James M. Cain novel that is every bit as smutty and sleazy as Zadora's vampish character of Kady. The location of the novel has been switched from Appalachia to the barren lands of Arizona and Nevada in 1937. Stacy Keach plays Jess Tyler, a desert hermit who has spent years guarding an abandoned silver mine. Suddenly, Jesse is confronted by his very grown-up and sexy daughter, who, when she was a baby, had been taken away from him by his wife, Belle (Lois Nettleton). Kady, it so happens, hasn't come home for a family reunion -- she has just been dumped by a rich young man who is the father of her illegitimate child and whose family owns the very silver mine that Jess is guarding. Kady hopes to use her feminine wiles to seduce Jess and reopen the mine and extract the money from the earth that she feels is due her from the family. As if his seductive daughter walking around bare-breasted in front of him isn't enough, Jess must also deal with the sudden return of his older daughter, Janey (Ann Dane), who appears with Kady's son; Belle, who comes back to Jess dying of tuberculosis; and Moke Blue (James Franciscus), the man who stole Belle away from Jess years ago. Also squeezing his way into Jess's shack is Wash Gillespie (Edward Albert), the father of Kady's child, who now wants to marry her. Butterfly also features Orson Welles as Judge Rauch. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Set in New England but actually filmed in Africa for some strange reason, this derivative demon-possession opus is one of the less-inspired releases from Roger Corman's direct-to-video outfit New Horizons. The story involves an occult soiree at the palatial home of a phony-baloney psychic, where an arcane recitation summons the feral demon Asmodeus, who appears under the pretense of answering some pressing questions about the afterlife. Instead, the nefarious visitor decides to commit a serious social blunder by possessing one guest after another, setting them at each other's throats until nearly everyone is dead -- not even the family dog is spared from demonic possession. By the time the police arrive, the sole survivor (Dirk Benedict), who is also the only genuine psychic in the bunch, is blamed for the murders. Essentially a tired Exorcist knockoff (the kind which even the Italians had given up on making a decade before), this shabby, poorly-written mess also borrows the standard '80s slasher-movie convention of requiring its characters to behave like absolute morons in order to propel the plot. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide

In this goofy comedy, a widow marries a wealthy geezer to provide for her sons. Her husband is a cripple and so it is easy for her to engineer his gruesome death and rank him with the rest of her accident-prone late husbands. Unfortunately, the black widow does not count on the intelligence of her vengeful stepdaughter, who starts her own little killing spree. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

A spitfire coffeehouse poet catches the attention of a conservative publisher, only to find that her attempts to get him to take part in an underground poetry-reading contest mask a much deeper motivation in the feature directorial debut of longtime television writer E. Paul Edwards. To Jake Thompson, poetry is the purest way of expressing his inner rage. Marni Elliot is an attractive publisher who is drawn to Jake's use of words, and convinced that he could take home the top prize at the Los Angeles Poetron -- a competitive poetry contest that has set the underground literary community ablaze. Though Jake at first refuses on the grounds that competition spoils the purity of art, he is intensely drawn to Marni and soon relents after the pair fall into bed together. When Marni reveals to Jake that she is HIV-positive, he quickly breaks the relationship off. As the Poetron draws near and Jake learns that he will be competing against Marni's former lover, however, he comes to realize that he cannot get the publisher out of his mind, and that his sympathy for her condition has helped him to overcome his anger as it transforms him into both a better poet, and a more capable competitor. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Also known as Planet of Horrors, this film follows a group of astronauts as they travel into space to retrieve the survivors of a spaceship crash. When they arrive on the planet, the crew runs into some hostile aliens who attempt to gorily wipe them out. ~ Iotis Erlewine, All Movie Guide

A man trained for a life of excitement and danger is given a new and unexpected challenge -- minding a grouchy old woman -- in this comedy. Doug Chesnic (Nicolas Cage) is a Secret Service agent who takes great pride in his job, performing his duties with the utmost professionalism and always minding the details. However, his assignment for the last three years has been a severe test of his patience; Tess Carlisle (Shirley MacLaine) is the widow of a former U.S. president who is well-known for her diplomatic and philanthropic work, and Doug has been in charge of her security force. But Tess tends to regard Doug less as a security officer and more as a domestic servant, like her chauffeur Earl (Austin Pendleton) or her nurse Frederick (Richard Griffiths). While Doug regards it as beneath his professional dignity to perform little chores around the house or bring Tess her breakfast in bed, she orders him to do so, and he's in no position to say, "no." Sometimes, Tess even refuses to obey Doug's security instructions, and should he argue his point too strongly, Tess will contact her close friend, the President of the United States, and ask him to give Doug a severe dressing down. So when Doug's three year hitch with Tess comes to an end, he asks to be given a more exciting and challenging assignment. However, Tess has other ideas; she's decided that she likes working with Doug, and she demands that his assignment be made permanent. Director Hugh Wilson also provides the voice of the President. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Killer Bees a made-for-TV thriller, directed by Curtis Harrington, is the story of a strong willed woman with a curious power. Madame von Bohlen (Gloria Swanson) matriarch of a family and controller of the family wine business rules her family with an iron hand. What is becoming increasingly obvious, after a series of mysterious bee attacks, is that she also has psychic control over a swarm of bees that reside in her vineyard. This silly, fun thriller has a great cast including Kate Jackson, Craig Steven and Edward Albert, and they all seem to be having as much fun with their roles as Gloria Swanson. Swanson attacks her role with the same feline energy that make her a star. She is outstanding as the controlling, iron-willed woman who will stop at nothing to get her way. A fun time is had by all in this outlandish, well-acted thriller. ~ Linda Rasmussen, All Movie Guide

An expensive war epic, Midway emulates The Longest Day and Tora! Tora! Tora! in attempting to re-create a famous World War II battle from both the American and Japanese viewpoints. The 1942 battle of Midway was the turning point of the War in the Pacific; the Japanese invasion fleet was destroyed, and America's string of humiliating defeats was finally broken. Though the battle itself was sufficiently dramatic to fill two films, Midway also has plotline involving the mixed-race relationship between Ensign Garth (Edward Albert), son of Navy Captain Matt Garth (Charlton Heston), and Haruko Sakura (Christina Kokubo), a Hawaiian girl of Japanese descent. The real-life personages depicted herein include American Admirals Nimitz (Henry Fonda), Halsey (Robert Mitchum) and Spruance (Glenn Ford), and Japanese Admiral Yamamoto (Toshiro Mifune, his voice once again dubbed by Paul Frees, whom Mifune personally selected for the job). For its original road show release, Midway was offered in the "Sensurround" process, which electronically shook and vibrated the audience's chairs during the battle sequences. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Angela Lansbury's former MGM colleagues Van Johnson and June Allyson are prominently featured in this episode. A double-dealing businessman is killed when he is run over by a remote-controlled station wagon. Suspicion immediately falls upon the victim's disgruntled former partner, an oddball inventor--who happens to be a neighbor of our gal Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury). Can it be that the death car's curious license plate number will turn out to be a clue? (Well, maybe not.) ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide