Renata Vanni Movies

Based on the novel by John Fante, this film follows the trials of the Bandini family as they try to struggle through hard times in 1920s Colorado. Out of work and in need of money, Svevo Bandini (Joe Mantegna) tries to scrounge up the money his family needs to make it through the winter, while putting up with his nasty mother-in-law (Renata Vanni), his anxious wife (Ornella Muti), and his two young boys. ~ Iotis Erlewine, All Movie Guide

In this supernatural nostalgia piece, a young boy tracks down a murderer with help from the ghosts of a slain little girl and her mother. In a voice-over, grown-up writer Frankie Scarlatti describes the disturbing events that intruded on his idyllic small-town boyhood. Locked in the school cloakroom by some other boys on Halloween 1962, young Frankie (Lukas Haas) encounters the ghost of Melissa Anne Montgomery (Joelle Jacobi), who re-enacts her own death by strangulation just before an unseen adult enters the school and tries to do away with Frankie himself. While recuperating in the care of his widower father (Alex Rocco), Frankie conducts some detective work and learns that Melissa is one of ten children killed over the past decade. Further encounters with the girl's ghost -- and the mournful specter of her mother, the Lady in White (Karen Powell) -- do little to help the boy solve the mystery of who killed the kids. Meanwhile, an innocent black maintenance man becomes the scapegoat on which the police hang the killings. However, thanks to the damning but enigmatic evidence Frankie has discovered, the boy faces imminent danger from the actual killer, who ends up lurking terrifyingly close to home. The sophomore feature from writer/director Frank LaLoggia, who made his name with the low-budget horror film Fear No Evil, Lady in White starred the young Lukas Haas halfway between his appearances in Witness and Rambling Rose. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide

In this high-suds potboiler based on the best-selling novel by Jacqueline Susann, Mike Wayne (Kirk Douglas) is a past-his-prime movie producer who lives to make his college-age daughter January (Deborah Raffin) happy. January is also very fond of her father, perhaps more so than would seem healthy to the casual observer. Desperate to keep financing the good life for his daughter, Mike weds Deidre Granger (Alexis Smith), a wealthy bisexual who isn't about to give up her long-term relationship with Karla (Melina Mercouri). January finds herself pursued by suave playboy David Milford (George Hamilton), but she's more strongly attracted to Tom Colt (David Janssen), a middle-aged alcoholic novelist who reminds January of her father. Brenda Vaccaro won a Golden Globe award (and received an Oscar nomination) for her supporting performance as the man-crazy editor of a fashion magazine. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Anthony Quinn plays Matsoukas, a Greek/American ne'er do well, living in Chicago with his long-suffering wife Caliope (Irene Papas). When Matsoukas discovers that his son (Radames Pera) is dying, he decides that the boy needs to get out of the Windy City and recuperate in the more agreeable climate of Greece. All he needs is the money for the plane fare. One by one, Matsoukas' sources of income dry up until he is forced to fix a dice game in order to raise the cash. It is his wife who finally puts up the money by stealing from her own mother. Matsoukas makes the trip but realizes it would be better if he remain in Greece so as not to further humiliate the loyal Caliope. Inger Stevens co-stars as Quinn's mistress, while Sam Levene plays an old pal whose offer to put up the needed money evaporates when he suddenly drops dead. A Dream of Kings was adapted by Harry Mark Petrakis from his own novel. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Sr. Bertrille is among the travelers taking a pack-mule trip into the mountain community of Santa Thomasina. Upon her arrival, the exuberant little nun is confused by the residents' eccentric behavior. It turns out that the locals are convinced that Sr. Bertrille is their patron saint. Trouble arises when a rival village insists that our heroine is their saint, and are willing to fight over the matter. Written by James Henerson, "The Patron of Santa Thomasina" first aired on November 30, 1967. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Filmmaker George Stevens chose Monument Valley, Utah for his exterior sequences in The Greatest Story Ever Told, this ($20 million) adaptation of Fulton Oursler's best-selling book. The "Greatest Story" is, of course, the life of Jesus Christ, played herein by Max Von Sydow. The large supporting cast includes Dorothy McGuire as Mary, Claude Rains as Herod the Great, Jose Ferrer as Herod Antipas, Charlton Heston as John the Baptist, Donald Pleasence as Satan (identified only as "The Dark Hermit"), David McCallum as Judas Iscariot, Sidney Poitier as Simon of Cyrene, Telly Savalas as Pontius Pilate and Martin Landau as Caiaphas. Even Robert Blake as Simon the Zealot, Jamie Farr as Thaddaeus, and motorcyle-flick veteran Richard Bakalyan as Dismas, the repentant thief, are well-suited to their roles. Originally roadshown at 260 minutes, Greatest Story Ever Told was later available in a 195-minute version. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Scheming Harvey Scott (Tom Tully) has managed to regain control of his mining company while his nephew Rick (Henry Brandt) was in Acapulco, recuperating from an accident. To make certain that Rick doesn't return to the States to restake his claim on the company, Harvey orders his nephew's lovelorn niece Joanna (Anne Whitfield) to keep him occupied in Mexico. Eventually Rick tumbles to this scheme and heads to LA for a showdown. But when Harvey is killed, Rick is nowhere to be found--and Perry Mason (Raymond Burr) finds himself defending poor Joanna on a murder charge. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Jim Stockton (James Davis) leads a group of pioneers into California and trouble in this routine western by director Edward L. Cahn. Stockton gets caught up in the battles and grievances between the Mexicans, white Californians, and Native Americans that rage during the 1840s -- the Mexican-American war, in other words. With enough action scenes to keep the story, such as it is, moving right along, and with scenic views of the scrub-filled desert and lead female Consuela (Nancy Hadley), the 68-minute running time passes fairly quickly. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Based on real incidents in the life and death of Lt. Joseph Petrosino (Ernest Borgnine) of the New York police force, this tale set between 1906-1909 details the history of the lieutenant's fight to prove Sicilian Mafia involvement in crimes in his city. Lt. Petrosino has a series of dangerous close calls as he distinguishes himself by saving singer Enrico Caruso from a Mafia bomb outside the Metropolitan Opera, and by also saving the father of Adelina (Zohra Lampert) the woman he loves. Several other exploits eventually lead to Petrosino's trip to Sicily to nail evidence for the Mafia's activities in New York, and for a final meeting with destiny. This represented the last screen credit of scenarist Bertram Millhauser, who died in 1958; he had received his penultimate credit nine years before that, on the 1949 Tokyo Joe. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

In this western, a Texas Ranger quits his job after he is chastised for bringing back so many dead outlaws. When he gets a deputy sheriff's job, he soon finds himself mixed up in a range war against an avaricious rancher determined to have the whole range for himself. The deputy simultaneously begins an affair with the greedy rancher's wife who wants him to kill her husband. In the end, she kills him herself. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

This meticulous and unusually long cinemadaptation of Sloan Wilson's best-selling novel The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit stars Gregory Peck as an ex-army officer, pursuing a living as a TV writer in the postwar years. Hired by a major broadcasting network, Peck is assigned to write speeches for the network's president (Fredric March). Peck comes to realize that the president's success has come at the expense of personal happiness, and this leads Peck to ruminate on his own life. Extended flashbacks reveal that Peck had experienced a torrid wartime romance with Italian girl Marisa Pavan, a union that produced a child. Peck is torn between his responsibility to his illegitimate son and his current obligations towards his wife (Jennifer Jones), his children, and his employer. Among the many life-altering decisions made by Peck before the fade-out is his determination to seek out a job that will allow him to spend more time with his family, even if it means a severe cut in salary. The superb hand-picked supporting cast of The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit includes Ann Harding as March's wife, Keenan Wynn as the man who informs Peck that he'd fathered an Italian child, Henry Daniell as a detached executive, and an unbilled DeForrest Kelley as an army medic (who gets to say "He's dead, captain"!) ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

With his movie career fading in 1955, Bob Hope was amenable to writer/director Mel Shavelson's suggestion that Hope try something different. The Seven Little Foys was the first of Hope's two "straight" biopics (the second was 1956's Beau James). Though not completely abandoning his patented persona, Hope does an admirable job of impersonating legendary Broadway song-and-dance man Eddie Foy, right down to the soft-shoe shuffle and affected lisp. A successful "single" in vaudeville, Foy meets and marries lovely Italian songstress Madeleine Morando (Milly Vitale). The union results in seven children, moving the Foys' priest to comment "we're running out of Holy water" after the seventh baptism. Hardly an ideal family man, Foy leaves Madeleine and her sister Clara (Angela Clarke) behind in their Connecticut home to raise the kids, while he rises to spectacular career height. Returning home after attending a testimonial for George M. Cohan (James Cagney, who played this unbilled cameo on the proviso that Hope turn over Cagney's salary to charity), Foy discovers that his wife has died of pneumonia. Months pass: Foy sulks in his rambling house, while his seven kids run roughshod. Foy's manager (George Tobias) suggests that the entire family be assembled into a vaudeville troupe called The Seven Little Foys. Though the kids are profoundly bereft of talent, the act gets by on its charm, and before long Foy is a bigger success than ever. But when Foy and the kids are booked into the Palace on Christmas Day, Aunt Clara decides that the kids are being cruelly exploited, and arranges for the authorities to arrest the act on charges of violating a state law barring children from singing and dancing. The authorities decide to drop the charges when the kids rally around their father, declaring their genuine love for him--but the deciding factor is a quick demonstration that the kids can't sing or dance to save their lives! The Seven Little Foys is a standard Hollywood whitewash job, emphasizing Eddie Foy's virtues (including his on-stage heroism during the infamous Iroquois Theatre fire of 1903) and soft-pedaling or ignoring his faults (e.g. his capacity for alcohol). Wisely, the scenes between Bob Hope and the seven children playing the Little Foys (including Father Knows Best's Billy Gray, The Real McCoys' Lydia Reed and Leave It to Beaver's Jerry Mathers) are refreshingly free of cloying sentiment. Also, Hope is a good enough natural actor to convince us that he deeply cares for his children without gooey effusions of emotion. The film's hands-down highlight is the "challenge dance" between Foy (Bob Hope) and Cohan (James Cagney)--a lasting testament of the superb terpsichorean talents of both men. The Seven Little Foys was narrated by Eddie's son Charley Foy, a fine comedian in his own right. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The Command was Warner Bros.' first Technicolor release. Guy Madison, then extremely popular with western fans by virtue of the TVer Wild Bill Hickok, heads the cast as Army medical captain McClaw. When a cavalry commander is killed, McClaw, the next-highest-ranking officer, is forced to assume command, even though his combat experience is practically nil. Overcoming the resentment of the men under his command, McClaw is able to stem an Indian attack and rescue a wagon train--not through any sort of brilliant strategy, but by improvising as he goes along. Harvey Lembeck's comic-relief role as a grousing trooper was later parodied by Billy Crystal in Mr. Saturday Night (alas, this sequence was left on the cutting room floor when Crystal's film hit the screens). Also in the cast are aish Magnificent Obsession. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide