Nina Van Pallandt Movies
Glamorous Danish cabaret singer Nina Van Pallandt became a baroness by marriage in the 1960s, but this domestic accomplishment paled in comparison to her involvement in "l'affair Irving." When writer Clifford Irving made headlines in 1972 for allegedly gaining access to the elusive Howard Hughes, it became public knowledge that Nina Van Pallandt had been having an affair with Irving. Shortly after publishing a series of Hughes "interviews," Irving was exposed as a literary fraud, having completely fabricated the interview sessions. While Irving protested the authenticity of his writings, Van Pallandt drove the nail in his credibility coffin by insisting that Irving had been vacationing in Mexico with her at the time he was supposedly picking Hughes' brains. Even as Clifford Irving was being escorted to prison, Van Pallandt's singing career soared. Nina Van Pallandt was able to finesse her 15 minutes of fame into a 15-year film career; merely ornamental in many of her films, Nina Van Pallandt actually delivered a semblance of a performance in Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye (1973). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide- 1988
John (Alan Olsen) is a Danish-born son who sets out to locate his father in this comedy thriller. While traveling to Los Angeles, John is caught in a small town in New Mexico and promptly has his money stolen. The main suspect is the waitress Lucy (Patricia Arquette), but she offers herself to him sexually. John soon is watched closely by the local sheriff (Richard Bright) and the suspicious hotel owner (Vincent Schiavelli). He joins a survivalist group run by Lucy's father, a local preacher who has more than fatherly love for his daughter. John and the father soon lock horns in an inevitable showdown. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Allan Olsen, Patricia Arquette, (more)
- 1987
The problems encountered by the sixteen-year-old beauty in this comedy might not strike north-of-the-border feminists as particularly amusing. One of six children, Eulalia leaves her country home to work as a maid in a rich person's house in the city. She lives with her young male cousin, who has the hots for her, and at work she must fight off both the father of the household and his son. Finally, her fortunes change when the woman of the house she is working in discovers these two wolves making fools of themselves over her. She gets work at a Pizza Hut, then gets pregnant, marries an old man for convenience, and so on. Her difficulties are compounded by the fact that the over-the-hill old gent she hoped to have a "safe" marriage with is so turned on by her youth and beauty that he is potent once more. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Juan Diego, Antonio Banderas, (more)
- 1987
Three college friends are reunited after 10 years in this routine drama. Told in a series of flashbacks, Tomas (Massimo Ghini) is a concert pianist who returns to Spain in hopes of looking up his two old friends. He finds one working in a recording studio, while the other has lost the use of his left arm after a series of setbacks that included time in prison and a suicide attempt. Juan Diego and Antonio Banderas co-star with Nina Van Pallandt and Anna Vasoni. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Massimo Ghini, Juan Diego, (more)
- 1986
Second Serve is that rare TV movie which refuses to sensationalize its so-called "sensational" material. This is the true story of Richard Raskind (here named Richard Radley): Yale grad, Naval officer, brilliant surgeon and tennis champ. What Richard has successfully hidden from practically everyone is the fact that he feels like a woman trapped in a man's body. In 1975, he goes so far as to endure a sex-change operation, emerging as Renee Richards. The film is not so much about this "alteration" as its ramifications, particularly the fierce opposition from the US Tennis Association when Renee wants to qualify as a female pro player. Rather than cast two actors to play the "before and after" protagonist, Vanessa Redgrave plays both Richard and Renee. While it's no great shock to see Ms. Redgrave with short hair, her performance as a man in Second Serve is the sort of work for which the phrase "tour de force" was coined. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
In what can only be described as a dramatic change of pace, Robert Altman directed this raunchy teen comedy based on the antics of two characters featured in a series of stories published in the National Lampoon. Oliver Cromwell Ogilvie (Daniel Jenkins), aka O.C., and his buddy Mark Stiggs (Neil Barry), are a pair of misfit teenagers whose greatest joy in life is making those around them miserable. O.C.'s ancient grandfather (Ray Walston) has just had his insurance cancelled, and when he discovers that suburbanite salesman Randall Schwabb (Paul Dooley) is responsible, O.C. and Stiggs swing into a summer-long campaign to get revenge on Schwabb and his family. While it received some of the most brutally negative reviews of Altman's career, O.C. and Stiggs is worth a quick look for its cast, which includes fellow outcast auteurs Dennis Hopper and Melvin Van Peebles, comics Louis Nye and Jane Curtain, the one-time glamour girl of the Clifford Irving scandal Nina Van Pallandt, and Thomas Hal Phillips, reprising his role as Hal Phillip Walker from Nashville. World music superstars King Sunny Ade and his African Beats appear and provide the musical score. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Daniel Jenkins, Neil Barry, (more)
- 1984
This routine actioner is about several models caught in a South American jungle battle between drug lords and drug busters. Cesar (Paul L. Smith) and Don Vito (John Vernon) are about to conclude a cocaine deal in Peru, and a drug enforcement agent is about to bust both men by sending a secret agent, disguised as a model, into the jungle with several other models, a photographer (Nina Van Pallandt), and their manager (Marjoe Gortner). Cesar shoots down the plane carrying the models, captures them alive and unharmed, and keeps them imprisoned where they are tortured by his evil sister (Sybil Danning). Just as everything looks the darkest, the final battle arrives at last. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Paul L. Smith, John Vernon, (more)
This is an unusual entry in the knights-in-armor genre. Set in medieval England, the film follows the exploits of a young swordsman, Talon (Lee Horsley). Working as a mercenary knight, Talon possesses a unique three-bladed sword which fires its two extra blades when he touches a button. By chance, Talon learns that he is a prince who has forgotten his royal heritage. Using his sword and his wiles, he attempts to regain control of his kingdom, which has been taken over by a sadistic tyrannical knight and an evil sorcerer. In doing so, he can save a princess who has been taken hostage by the usurpers. Comedy is interspersed with gory and licentious drama throughout the film, which was directed and written by Albert Pyun. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Kathleen Beller, Simon MacCorkindale, (more)
- 1982
Elaine (Marilu Henner) is convinced that an invitation to a fashionable art-society party is her ticket to success in the art world. But she is not so certain that burned-out hippie Jim "Iggy" Ignatowski (Christopher Lloyd) is the right person to escort her to the party. Alas, just as Elaine has feared, Jim's anti-social behavior threatens to mess up everything. But a hitherto untapped musical talent saves the day for everyone...sort of. This episode won an Emmy Award for writer Ken Estin. ~ All Movie Guide
After emigrating to the United States in 1969, Czech-born director Ivan Passer finally broke through to American audiences with his fourth film, a unique blend of mystery and social commentary. Cutter's Way is set in Santa Barbara, CA, a community of wealth and power. Its main characters, however, are among the town's have-nots: Richard Bone Jeff Bridges, a beach-boy gigolo starting to go to seed; Bone's best friend Alex Cutter (John Heard), a Vietnam veteran maimed in body and spirit; and Mo (Lisa Eichorn), Cutter's alcoholic wife. When Cutter spots one of the community's most prominent citizens in the act of covering up a murder, Bone insists that the police would never take their word over that of a man of wealth and prestige. Cutter seizes the opportunity to blackmail the killer, as a means of striking back at a system he thinks sent him off to an unjust war and ruined his life. The film was fortunate to fall into the hands of United Artists Classics, a new division of the company crippled by the financial disaster of Heaven's Gate. UA Classics adroitly marketed Cutter's Way, riding a wave of rave reviews and good word-of-mouth among more discriminating filmgoers to modest box-office success. ~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jeff Bridges, John Heard, (more)
- 1980
- PG
This is a routine story about Bradley (David Carradine), a stunt flyer who loves flying more than anything else, as apparently does the director, Barry Brown. Bradley is devoted to his brother who suffers from Downs syndrome and he helps a new flyer to ditch a potentially disastrous flirtation with drugs. He is clearly a "good guy" even though humanity in general tends to take a backseat to flying, as far as he is concerned. He is less successful in his relationship with his girlfriend Helen (Jennifer O'Neill) partly because of his interest in flying. The extended stunt flying sequences might cause some viewers to wish the pilot spent more time on the ground handling his personal relationships than in the air looping and twirling. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- David Carradine, Jennifer O'Neill, (more)
A slick Los Angeles callboy finds love and redemption in Paul Schrader's ultra-stylish drama. High-living prostitute Julian Kay (Richard Gere, stepping in for John Travolta) has it all: the Mercedes, the clothes, access to Beverly Hills' swankiest establishments, and a stable of rich, older female clients. But it all falls apart after he does a favor for his former pimp (Bill Duke) and the trick turns up dead a short while later; Julian's actual client won't give him an alibi, and police detective Sunday (Hector Elizondo) doesn't believe the gigolo's denials. The one person who can help him is frustrated politician's wife (and sole non-paying bedmate) Michelle (Lauren Hutton), if only Julian could let down his defenses and accept her gesture of love. Mixing his admiration for European art cinema with a voyeuristic view of the seamier side of sex and affluence, Schrader renders Julian an inscrutable, emotionally disengaged purveyor of pleasure, decked out in Giorgio Armani clothes coordinated with Ferdinando Scarfiotti's meticulous production design. Amid critical doubts about its artiness and distanced eroticism, American Gigolo surprised everyone by not dying on the box office vine. With some audiences reportedly showing up for repeat viewings of Gere's seductive charms, it became a moderate hit, turning Gere into a star and Armani into the new fashion sensation. Whatever reservations one may have about the movie, it provided two indelible images of 1980s decadence to come: Gere's perusing his "artist's palette" of shirts, ties, and jackets, and Gere's cruising down the Pacific Coast Highway in his convertible to the New Wave strains of Blondie's "Call Me". ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Richard Gere, Lauren Hutton, (more)
- 1979
The eponymous young comic is Richard Lewis, Mr. Jewish Angst himself. Lewis agonizes over moving from his native New York to Los Angeles. No matter how successful he becomes, he is never satisfied. Fortunately, he is able to channel his inner demons into his morbidly hilarious nightclub act. Cowritten by Lewis and Bennett Trainer, Diary of a Young Comic was directed by Gary Weis, whose short films were once a mainstay of TV's Saturday Night Live. In fact, Young Comic was first offered to the world as a one-shot replacement for SNL in 1979. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1979
- R
Perhaps the least seen but most talked about film of Robert Altman's career, Quintet is a somber science fiction tale that takes place after a nuclear holocaust has thrown the world into another Ice Age. A man named Essex (Paul Newman) and his pregnant wife Vivia (Brigitte Fossey) are wandering the desolate, frozen landscape and attempting to find Essex's brother, Francha (Tom Hill). They finally locate him in a frozen city, occupied by a number of apocalyptic survivors who who pass their time playing a mysterious game called "Quintet." No one is able to explain just how it is played, but Grigor (Fernando Rey) appears to act as the referee, and the stakes of the game are unusually high - losing means being thrown out into the snow and devoured by Rottweilers. Francha is soon killed, not as a casualty of Quintet per se, but for playing an assassination game on the side to relieve his own ennui. As 'collateral damage,', Vivia and the rest of Francha's family are soon extinguished as well. Essex is not happy with the way they've been rubbed out, but as he attempts to seek revenge, he is only drawn deeper into the lethal competition of Quintet. While this picture received negative reviews on its initial release, in retrospect it is worth noting that the photography (by Jean Boffety) and production design (by Leon Ericksen) are beautiful and striking, and that the film boasts one of Altman's strongest international casts, including Vittorio Gassman, Nina Van Pallandt, and Bibi Andersson, as befits its European-art-movie ambiance; the influence of the equally opaque, allegorical, game-playing Last Year at Marienbad (1961) is especially strong. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Paul Newman, Vittorio Gassman, (more)
Robert Altman's over-frenetic satire on American marriage rituals and hypocrisy concerns the upper-crust marriage between Dino Corelli (Desi Arnaz Jr.) and Muffin Brenner (Amy Stryker). As the film begins, a senile bishop forgets the lines to the wedding ceremony and Nettie Sloan (the groom's grandmother) drops dead in an upstairs bedroom. Nettie's death is not disclosed to the two families who converge at the wedding reception. As the two sets of in-laws slam into each other, the bride and groom disappear in the ensuing whirlwind of chaos as both extended families vie for sexual favors and try to keep hidden never-discussed family secrets. Regina Corelli (Nina Van Pallandt) is revealed to be a drug addict, while Luigi, is endeavoring unsuccessfully to keep his Mafia connections under wraps. Meanwhile, the bride's family, although more down to earth, are revealed to be no better. Tulip Brenner (Carol Burnett) begins to flirt with one of the wedding guests, Mackenzie Goddard (Pat McCormick), while Snooks Brenner (Paul Dooley) acts like a lout and drinks heavily. And flying around the edges of the action like Tinkerbell is Buffy Brenner, the Brenners' youngest daughter, who is pregnant by the groom. As other characters bang into each other -- sexual degenerates, hard-nosed radicals, raw-boned emotional wrecks -- the wedding reception heads for its inevitable nuclear explosion. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Carol Burnett, Paul Dooley, (more)
- 1975
Laslo Benedek's adaptation of the Alan Caillou suspense novel never received a Greek theatrical release, despite its being shot entirely in Greece and co-produced (with the British Nine Network) by its Greek star, Nico Minardos. The film tells the tale of a World War II guerrilla leader named Agathon (Yiorgos Moussou), long believed to be dead, who has resurfaced to plot a revolution in the Balkans. Minardos plays Cabot Cain, an Interpol agent who travels to Greece in order to discover Agathon's lair and prevent the uprising. The film employed a demented set of casting decisions which put everyone from Nina Van Pallandt and John Woodvine to Marianne Faithfull and Kostas Baladimas into the fray, and resembles such international misfires as Jungle Warriors (which also featured Van Pallandt) more than the big-budget mainstream actioner which it was obviously intended to be. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Nico Minardos, Nina Van Pallandt, (more)
- 1975
Long before Dr. Richard Kimble's one-armed man, there was Dr. Sam Sheppard's "curly-headed man." On July 4, 1954, Dr. Sheppard's wife was found murdered in their Cleveland home. Sheppard, the prime suspect, insisted that he'd seen a man with curly hair fleeing from his home. No matter: he was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. His road to salvation was paved by columnist Dorothy Kilgallen, who revealed that the presiding judge was convinced of Sheppard's guilt before the trial even started. Further revelations proved that Sheppard's trial was, in the words of one Federal Court, a "mockery of justice." After 10 years, thanks to the efforts of attorney F. Lee Bailey, an embittered Sheppard was set free. But Sheppard, who'd had a reputation as a "short fuse" even before his wife was killed, was unable to adjust to freedom, nor was his reputation restored in the eyes of those who still believed him guilty. After a disastrous second marriage, Sheppard tried to eke out a living as a professional wrestler. He died in 1970 at the age of 46. The 150-minute TV movie Guilty or Innocent: The Sam Sheppard Murder Case does not presume to decide the guilt or innocence of Sheppard; rather, it traces the disintegration of an already troubled man, as well as his infamous "trial by publicity". George Peppard stars as Sam Sheppard, while Walter McGinn plays F. Lee Bailey and Nina VanPallandt is seen as Sheppard's second wife Ilse Brandt. Guilty or Innocent originally aired on November 17, 1975. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
"It's OK with me...." Applying his deconstructive eye to the "film noir" tradition, Robert Altman updated Raymond Chandler in his 1973 version of Chandler's novel, The Long Goodbye. Smart-aleck, cat-loving private eye Philip Marlowe (Elliott Gould) is certain that his friend Terry Lennox (Jim Bouton) isn't a wife-killer, even after the cops throw Marlowe in jail for not cooperating with their investigation into Lennox's subsequent disappearance. Once he gets out of jail, Marlowe starts to conduct his own search when he discovers that mysterious blonde Eileen Wade (Nina Van Pallandt), who hired him to find her alcoholic novelist husband Roger (Sterling Hayden), lives on the same Malibu street as the absent Lennox and his deceased spouse. As numerous variations on the title song play in unexpected places, Marlowe encounters a shady doctor (Henry Gibson), a bottle-wielding gangster (director Mark Rydell), and a guard aping Barbara Stanwyck (among other stars), before heading to Mexico to stumble onto the truth once and for all. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Elliott Gould, Nina Van Pallandt, (more)
