Michael Strong Movies

Bull Meechum (Robert Duvall) loves fighting almost as much as he loves the Marine Corps. Profane, cocky, and arrogant, he's a great fighter pilot -- and he knows it. His boss hates his guts, but knows that if he's going to straighten out his lagging squadron, Meechum is the man to do it. The story and irony of The Great Santini is in Meechum's total intolerance of family life and fatherhood. Meechum has a lovely, supportive wife, Lillian (Blythe Danner), an earnest, likeable son, Ben (Michael O'Keefe), three smaller children, and a good home, but Meechum finds the pastoral nature of peacetime totally incompatible with his gung-ho nature. So he begins to drink. He drills his family unmercifully, like recruits. He hammers his son relentlessly until, in a basketball game, his son fights back, and the family cheers Ben's efforts. Tension builds in the household until, during one drunken night, Meechum breaks down. Based on a best-selling novel by Pat Conroy, The Great Santini earned critical raves but fared poorly at the box office. Duvall's performance as Meechum is generally regarded as one of his greatest. ~ Nick Sambides, Jr., Rovi

Quincy (Jack Klugman) and Sam (Robert Ito) come across a human skull while travelling through the desert. With the help of forensic artist Lynn Peters (Zohra Lampert), Quincy concludes that the skull is that of a controversial labor leader who had mysteriously vanished a few years back (guess which famous person was the inspiration for this episode: and we always thought that he wound up as an off-ramp of the Jersey Turnpike). This places our hero--and his friends--in danger at the hands of the mob boss who has risen to labor-union prominence during his missing predecessor's absence. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In an intriguing change of pace, gimlet-eyed SFPD detective Mike Stone (Karl Malden) dons the greasepaint, red nose and floppy shoes of a circus clown. It's all part of an undercover assignment to ferret out the murderer of two retired circus riggers whose deaths occur just before a gala Big Top performance at San Francisco's Cow Palace. Featured in the cast as "Sparky" is former Sugarfoot star Will Hutchins, who in real life had retired from acting to pursue a career as a professional clown. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The scene is a high-rise hotel in midtown San Francisco. Confronted by mobsters who are angry because he refused to throw a fight, an aging boxer manages to beat up two of his assailants and throw the third out the window to his death! Arriving on the scene to investigate the killer, Stone (Karl Malden) and Keller (Michael Douglas) conduct a room-by-room search for the fugitive boxer, who is now on the run from cops and crooks alike--and is presently hiding in the same room with a pair of adulterous lovers. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

When one of the key witnesses in a mob trial is murdered, Stone intensifies his protection of sole remaining witness Roy Chaffee (Sandy Kenyon). Stone and Keller install Chaffee in a nondescript house across the street from the apartment of shy, spinsterish English teacher Mary Rae Dortmunder (Shirley Knight). At the same time, Mary Rae is being ardently courted by a kind, soft-spoken gentleman (Steve Forrest)--actually a contract killer who hopes to use the woman's living room as a stakeout, the better to murder the hapless Chaffee! ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In 1943 North Africa, George Patton (George C. Scott) assumes command of (and instills some much-needed discipline in) the American forces. Engaged in battle against Germany's Field Marshal Rommel (Karl Michael Vogler), Patton drives back "The Desert Fox" by using the German's own tactics. Promoted to Lieutenant General, Patton is sent to Sicily, where he engages in a personal war of egos with British Field Marshal Montgomery (Michael Bates). Performing brilliantly in Italy, Patton seriously jeopardizes his future with a single slap. While touring an Army hospital, the General comes across a GI (Tim Considine) suffering from nervous fatigue. Incensed by what he considers a slacker, Patton smacks the poor soldier and orders him to get well in a hurry. This incident results in his losing his command-and, by extension, missing out on D-Day. In his final campaign, Patton leads the US 3rd Army through Europe. Unabashedly flamboyant, Patton remains a valuable resource, but ultimately proves too much of a "loose cannon" in comparison to the more level-headed tactics of his old friend Omar Bradley (Karl Malden). Patton won 7 Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actor for Scott, an award that he refused. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Conspiracy to Kill was one of two pilot films for the Jack Webb-produced TV series The D.A. Robert Conrad stars as LA deputy district attorney Paul Ryan. This time around, Ryan reopens a case that he's already won. New evidence indicates that a supposedly victimized drugstore owner (William Conrad) was the brains behind a robbery and murder that occurred at his own establishment. The D.A. series proper ran from September 17, 1971, through January 7, 1972. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

FBI Inspector Erskine (Efrem Zimbalist Jr.) agrees to act as go-between for jeweler Victor Toler (played by eminent Shakespearian Maurice Evans), who wants to ransom a fortune in stolen diamonds. This requires the Inspector to take a crash course in the diamond business, the better to convince the villains that he is a genuine gem expert rather than a federal agent. Featured in the supporting cast is future Rookies star George Stanford Brown. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

This psychologically twisted tragedy begins when the boozy prostitute Leonora (Elizabeth Taylor) encounters a young woman on a London bus. Cenci (Mia Farrow) looks very much like Leonora's late daughter. The two lonely women start talking and seem to get along quite well, so Cenci invites Leonora to stay at her house. The two return to the rambling Gothic mansion that appears to be haunted. The wealthy younger woman plays the daughter and Leonora the mother, developing a close (maybe too close) relationship. With the return of Cenci's stepfather Albert (Robert Mitchum), he reveals to Leonora that Cenci is a mentally disturbed nymphomaniac who contributed to the breakup of her mother and himself. Cenci orders Leonora to leave before she commits suicide with an overdose of sleeping pills. A shaken Leonora pays tribute at the coffin of her dead companion, but the sight of the lecherous Albert causes her to pick up a knife and attack him in this macabre murder melodrama. Farrow was coming off the immense success of Rosemary's Baby. Taylor reprised her role of the pill popping, booze guzzling whore that she played in Butterfield 8 , for which she won an Oscar, and the drunken, promiscuous professor's wife in Who's Afraid Of Virginia Wolf?. Taylor's off screen behavior at the time of this release has to raise the question; Does art imitate life, or is it the other way around? Either way, on or off the screen, Elizabeth Taylor always puts on a memorable performance. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

Communist agent Stephan Gomalk (Michael Strong) intends to take control of the small European democracy ruled by his "friend", President Beyron Rurich (Pernell Roberts). Caught in the middle is archaeologist William Bennett (Aaron Fletcher), who stumbled onto Gomalk's scheme, suffered a heart attack, and has been placed under maximum security by the villain's henchmen. The IMF agents have only 24 hours to rescue Bennett and squelch Gomalk's plans--and this will require a convincingly staged assassination attempt. Written by John O'Dea and Arthur Rowe, "Operation 'Heart'" first aired October 22, 1967. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Based on Donald E. Westlake's novel The Hunter, John Boorman's gangster film hauntingly merges a generic revenge story with a European art cinema sensibility. In Alcatraz to divvy up the spoils from a robbery, thief Walker (Lee Marvin) is instead shot point blank by his double-crossing friend Mal Reese (John Vernon) and left to die while Reese takes off with Walker's wife Lynne (Sharon Acker) and his $93,000. Resurrected, the stone-faced Walker returns to Los Angeles a couple of years later to seek revenge on Mal with the help of the enigmatic Yost (Keenan Wynn) and Lynne's sister Chris (Angie Dickinson). Wanting little but his cash, Walker implacably penetrates Mal's lair and the hierarchy of the shady "Organization," registering no emotion about the string of murders left in his wake, as his thoughts repeatedly return to the past that brought him there. In his first American feature, Boorman transforms a stripped-down revenge plot into a surreal meditation on the gangster's spiritual demise, using flashbacks and startling shifts in setting to interweave Walker's fractured memories with his extraordinarily photographed odyssey through L.A. Marvin's chillingly stoic presence further hints at the ambiguities in Chris's observation that Walker "died at Alcatraz, all right." Brutal in the violence that it shows and suggests, Point Blank opened in the U.S. in the same period as Bonnie and Clyde, becoming one more testament to the genre-bending and ground-breaking possibilities of the nascent Hollywood New Wave. Although Point Blank was mostly overlooked in 1967, Boorman's visual adventurousness, and Marvin's amoral and apathetic antihero, have since made Point Blank seem one of the key films of the mid-late '60s, a precursor to revisionist experimentations from Martin Scorsese to Quentin Tarantino. It was remade as the 1999 Mel Gibson vehicle Payback. ~ Lucia Bozzola, Rovi

In desperate need of money for his daughter's operation, research chemist Edward Lennan (Arthur Hill) agrees to sell some stolen vials to foreign spy Jago (Michael Strong). Lennan is convinced that the vials contain only a newly developed cosmetic base. In truth, they are contaminated with a deadly bacteria--and unless FBI Inspector Erskine (Efrem Zimbalist Jr.) acts quickly, millions of lives will be lost on both sides of the Iron Curtain. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Little does Richard Kimble (David Janssen)--alias "Paul Miller"--know what he is getting into when he traces the elusive one-armed murderer Fred Johnson (Bill Raisch) to the town of Clark City, Kentucky. It seems that Johnson, travelling under the name "Cramer", is employed by the gambling syndicate which owns the town lock, stock and barrel. Johnson orders Kimble to be beaten and chased out of town by a pair of corrupt cops, but Kimble turns the tables and arranges for Johnson's arrest. Unfortunately, the gambling bosses have decided that under the circumstances, both of the "fugitives" are eminently disposable. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi