Harold Sylvester Movies

In the first episode of a two-part story, Al (Ed O'Neill) incure the wrath of Marcy's (Amanda Bearse) feminist organization FANG when he throws a nursing mother (Cynthia Steele) out of the shoe store. Enraged by FANG's reaction, Al mounts a counterprotest by his own group, NO MA'AM. Betwixt and between the two angry groups, no one bothers to patronize the store. Meanwhile, Al's wife Peg (Katey Sagal in her first Season Nine appearance after maternity leave) encounters unexpected delays while making her way home. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Hoping to trap a suspected murderer, Kelly (David Caruso) tries to get the suspect to confess to a recent string of cab robberies. A topless dancer (Ginger Lynn Allen) helps Sipowicz (Dennis Franz) nail one of the Mob's top moneymen. Laura (Sherry Stringfield) is saddled with an unethical law partner while prosecuting the Giardella murder case. And the squad is shaken up by the arrival of sexy administrative aide Donna Abandando (Gail O'Grady, in her first series appearance). ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Love and Curses...And All That Jazz is a made-for-TV effort starring Gerald McRaney (who also directed) and his wife Delta Burke. The stars portray married MDs, who head to New Orleans to renew their vows (true Southerners both, they don't feel that their Northern wedding ceremony "took"). Upon arriving in Mardi Gras land, the couple becomes involved in a murder case tied in with a voodoo curse. If the film resembles the Thin Man movies of old, that was McRaney and Burke's avowed intention. Elizabeth Ashley also stars in this amiable vanity production. Filmed on location, Love and Curses...And All That Jazz premiered on September 21, 1991. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Corbin Bernsen, fresh out of LA Law, plays a real-life attorney in Line of Fire: The Morris Dees Story. As Dees, Bernsen goes head to head with the Ku Klux Klan in the Alabama of the 1980s. Despite having his name included on the "hit list" of every wacko white supremacist in the Nation, Dees manages to break the back of the KKK is his own particular corner of the world. Line of Fire is elaborately produced and hits all the right emotional buttons, but falls short of perfection thanks to stereotypical villains and excessive melodrama. The film was first telecast on Martin Luther King Day in 1991. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

James Farentino plays the chief of a big-city underground narcotics unit. When a drug buy goes awry, a shotgun blows away one of Farentino's best men--and closest friends. As the once-harmonious drug unit disintegrates into recriminations and guilt, Farentino becomes more and more withdrawn, until he's of little further value to the force. A chance for redemption for everyone arrives in the form of another big-time drug bust. In the Line of Duty: A Cop for the Killing was based on a true story, as were all the In the Line of Duty films produced for television in the late 1980s--early 1990s. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Comic actress Jackee serves double duty in this made-for-TV comedy. A top female FBI agent is injured in the midst of an important assignment, and a look-alike replacement is needed in short order, so her superiors are forced to enlist her identical twin sister for the job. Unfortunately, she lacks her sister's skills as a crime fighter, and the bulk of her work experience is as a waitress; will she be able to save the day? Also screened as Double Your Pleasure, The Reluctant Agent co-stars Dan Hedaya, Richard Lawson, and Cynthia Stevenson. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Jerry Orbach makes a return appearance as Boston P.I. Harry McGraw, who in this episode has given up sleuthing to enter the world of professional boxing. No, Harry hasn't donned the gloves himself, but he is a suspect in the murder of a crooked boxing manager. Enter Jessica (Angela Lansbury), who has inherited a percentage of the dead man's prize boxer, and who of course is convinced that her old friend Harry is innocent. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In this sci-fi/western film set two hundred years from now, a bank robber, Grange is captured and sentenced to the penal colony on the mining planet Proxima Centauri 3 where he meets bounty-hunter Walker, and the Colonel, a retired policeman from LA who was considered the best of his kind. Grange is a dangerous lunatic and Walker and the Colonel must team up to keep him from escaping. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

The Atlanta Child Murders is a five-hour, two-part dramatization of one of the most tragic and controversial homicide cases of the past twenty years. From 1979 through 1982, some 28 African-American children and young adults disappeared from Atlanta--some without a trace, but others to later turn up as murder victims. Part One (which debuted February 10, 1985) details the beginning of the manhunt conducted by the Atlanta Chief of Police (James Earl Jones). Screenwriter Abby Mann uses the actual events as a springboard for his thesis that the case and its outcome revealed many uncomfortable truths about the still-fragile state of race relations in the New South. Both parts of The Atlanta Child Murders were later combined into one 245-minute "feature film."

The second part of the five-hour TV docudrama The Atlanta Child Murders originally aired February 12, 1985. After 28 African-American children and young adults have either disappeared or been murdered, the Atlanta police finally have a suspect in custody: Small-time show business entrepreneur Wayne Williams (Calvin Levels). Scriptwriter Abby Mann utilizes actual court transcripts of Williams' trial, which results in a conviction on one count of murder. This decision in essence leaves the cases of the other 27 victims unresolved--and in so doing, Mann opens the door to speculations that Williams, a black man, was a "convenient" suspect, who might possibly have been railroaded in the authorities' haste to find a solution to the sordid case. Whatever Mr. Mann may have felt concerning Williams' guilt or innocence, the fact remains that the murders and disappearances stopped cold once Williams was in custody (as of this writing, Williams persists in his efforts to reopen the case, claiming that he was framed by the white power structure). Morgan Freeman served as narrator for both installments of The Atlanta Child Murders. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Ted Kotcheff continues his First Blood fervor with Uncommon Valor. Gene Hackman stars as Cal Rhodes, a former Marine Colonel who has been getting the run-around for ten years from the government concerning the disappearance of his son and his buddies - all Marines who enlisted years prior and served in Vietnam. Rhodes' son was last seen in Laos, where he was fighting in the war and captured as a POW. When word gets back to Rhodes that the men may still be alive and held in prison camps, but the government still has the men listed as missing in action, Rhodes decides to take matters into his own hands. Contacting an old friend, oil baron MacGregor (Robert Stack), Rhodes is granted financial backing to form his own incursion force. He assembles a crack team of men, puts them through an intensive period of training. and heads back with them into the Laotian jungles to search for the MIAs. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

Premiering January 17, 1981, on NBC, the hour-long crime drama Walking Tall was based on a extremely popular series of theatrical features -- which in turn, were inspired by the real-life exploits of relentless Tennessee sheriff Buford Pusser (Pusser's story also served as the basis of a 1978 TV movie, A Real American Hero). Dedicated to smashing the political corruption all around him, Pusser was not averse to driving his points home with brute force, usually with the home-made club that he wielded at every opportunity. Naturally, the local bad guys did everything they could to put Pusser out of the way, including a number of assassination attempts -- one of which had claimed the life of the sheriff's wife, making his crusade against crime personal as well as professional. Starring as the TV version of Buford Pusser -- here in charge of McNairy County, TN -- was Bo Svenson, who had previously played the role in two of the three theatrical films, succeeding the original Walking Tall's star Joe Don Baker (the real Pusser had died in a highly suspicious car crash just before he was to star in one of the films himself). Others in the cast included Walter Barnes as Buford's dad Carl Pusser, Rad Daly and Heather McAdam as the sheriff's children Mike and Dwana, and Harold Sylvester, Jeff Lester, and Courtney Pledger as loyal deputies Aaron Fairfax, Grady Spooner, and Joan Lytton. Ultra-violent even by the standards of its era, Walking Tall remained on NBC's nighttime docket until June 6, 1981. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi