John Vernon Movies

Comedian David Brenner hosts this appreciative look at some of America's funniest standup comics and how their careers unfolded. Several of the comedians share how they create their material and collaborate with others. All of the featured comedians perform in front of live audiences on this video. Brenner speaks with some of them off-stage to capture their personal reflections on their careers. The profiled comedians include Henny Youngman, known to many for his "take my wife" joke; Carl Ballantine; Jackie Gayle; George Gobel, who appeared "slow" but often displayed a sly, quick wit; and Jackie Vernon and Shelley Berman. ~ Elizabeth Smith, All Movie Guide

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

The B-grade genres of sexploitation, blaxploitation, and jailhouse flicks mixed with this grotesque sex- and violence-filled melodrama. Linda Blair stars as Carol Henderson, a naïve and inexperienced teenager who is sentenced to 18 months in a women's prison after accidentally killing a man. Once she arrives, Carol meets sadistic, perverted Warden Bacman (John Vernon), who keeps a hot tub in his office. She also encounters the two top-dog prisoners, Ericka (Sybil Danning) and Duchess (Tamara Dobson), who are at war with each other, the leaders of factions in the facility's simmering racial tensions. Then there are the drug-dealing lesbian rapists and the prostitutes, who answer to the warden's snugly-outfitted assistant, Captain Taylor (Stella Stevens). In the meantime, Taylor's lover is secretly carrying on an affair with Ericka. It's a cauldron of fear and rage, but when the prison's corrupt management goes too far, race considerations are set aside as black and white convicts band together. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

Heather (Linnea Quigley), the deaf-mute sister of Brenda (Linda Blair) is gang-raped in a drawn-out, violent scene at the beginning of this routine vengeance movie, a scene that provides the motivation for Brenda's rampage through the rest of the film. Dressed in a special outfit that bares enough skin to suit the standards of this genre and armed with a crossbow, Brenda goes after the young punks in the "Scars" gang who raped her sister -- with predictably gory results. Surrounding this miniature Charles Bronson is a society burdened with parodies of "good" people: the school principal who is only superficially tough, and the upper-class teens whose thought processes were arrested shortly after kindergarten. Stereotypical and transparent, this teen movie is interesting because it does promote a woman in a "hero" role, but the subject matter and violence will not appeal to everyone. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

This time the A-Team takes up the cause of migrant workers who are being treated as slaves--and cheated out of their meager salaries in the bargain--by evil landowner Ted Jarrett (played by prison-movie perennial John Vernon). Once on the scene, the Team sets about to organize the beleagured workers into a union, a task that necessitates the conversion of a huge cabbage-bailing machine into an armored vehicle. Meanwhile, the Team's perennial nemesis Col. Decker (Lance LeGault) continues to breathe down the Good Guys' necks. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

With the Jerry Zucker-Jim Abrahams-David Zucker team absent, this sequel to the cash-cow 1980 spoof Airplane once again finds garrulous man-with-a-past Ted Striker (Robert Hays) compelled to take over the controls of crippled aircraft, all the while trying to patch up his relationship with stewardess Elaine (Julie Hagerty). This time, the first passenger space shuttle is launched into orbit -- and takes off for the moon - but the on-board computer malfunctions and sends the craft hurtling toward the sun, threatening the lives of everyone on board. Lloyd Bridges and Peter Graves return from the first Airplane, while William Shatner, Chad Everett, Sonny Bono, Raymond Burr and Chuck Conners join the cast, as they too lampoon their established images. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Mark Warren's comedy Heartbreak High concerns the antics taken by students and faculty of rival high schools attempting to sabotage the other the week before their annual battle on the football field. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide

In the fourth installment of the "Herbie" series of Volkswagen Bug fantasies, the magical car has lost a lot of its sheen as it is retreaded into a journey through Central America. D.J. (Charles Martin Smith) and Pete (Stephan W. Burns) want to enter their supernatural car in a special, high-stakes race in Brazil. And so they set off driving with that goal in mind. Along the way the car ends up in a bullring playing the role of matador, the best of several incongruous adventures. Most audiences will still favor The Love Bug, the 1969 hit that spawned this third sequel. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

The made-for-television western The Sacketts combines the plotlines from two seperate Louis L'Amour novels, The Daybreakers and The Sacketts. In this film, the three Tennessee-raised Sackett brothers migrate to the West following the conclusion of the Civil War. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Movie Guide

Director John Landis put himself on the map with this low-budget, fabulously successful comedy, which made a then-astounding 62 million dollars and started a slew of careers for its cast in the process. National Lampoon's Animal House is set in 1962 on the campus of Faber College in Faber, PA. The first glimpse we get of the campus is the statue of its founder Emil Faber, on the base of which is inscribed the motto, "Knowledge Is Good." Incoming freshmen Larry "Pinto" Kroger (Tom Hulce) and Kent "Flounder" Dorfman (Stephen Furst) find themselves rejected by the pretentious Omega fraternity, and instead pledge to Delta House. The Deltas are a motley fraternity of rejects and maladjusted undergraduates (some approaching their late twenties) whose main goal -- seemingly accomplished in part by their mere presence on campus -- is disrupting the staid, peaceful, rigidly orthodox, and totally hypocritical social order of the school, as represented by the Omegas and the college's dean, Vernon Wormer (John Vernon). Dean Wormer decides that this is the year he's going to get the Deltas expelled and their chapter decertified; he places the fraternity on "double secret probation" and, with help from Omega president Greg Marmalard (James Daughton) and hard-nosed member Doug Neidermeyer (Mark Metcalf), starts looking for any pretext on which to bring the members of the Delta fraternity up on charges.

The Deltas, oblivious to the danger they're in, are having a great time, steeped in irreverence, mild debauchery, and occasional drunkenness, led by seniors Otter (Tim Matheson), Hoover (James Widdoes), D-Day (Bruce McGill), Boon (Peter Riegert), and pledge master John "Bluto" Blutarsky (John Belushi). They're given enough rope to hang themselves, but even then manage to get into comical misadventures on a road trip (where they arrange an assignation with a group of young ladies from Emily Dickinson University). Finally, they are thrown out of school, and, as a result, stripped of their student deferments (and, thus, eligible for the draft). They decide to commit one last, utterly senseless (and screamingly funny) slapstick act of rebellion, making a shambles of the university's annual homecoming parade, and, in the process, getting revenge on the dean, the Omegas, and everyone else who has ever gone against them. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Two weapons dealers are ambushed in Africa, but their luck changes when a wealthy widow hires them. She blames the natives for her husband's death, so she uses her power to control the water in the arid region to ration the natives' water. ~ All Movie Guide

Mary Jane Harper Cried Last Night stars Susan Dey as a young mother with a history of mistreating her 3 year old daughter. Ms. Dey's erratic behavior is rooted in her own unhappy childhood and her failed marriage. Tricia O'Neil plays the doctor who endeavors to help both Dey and her daughter, despite the interference of well-meaning bureaucrats. Joanna Lee's script for this TV movie would have been twice as effective had it not relied so heavily on character stereotypes. The title character of Mary Jane Harper Cried Last Night was played by little Natasha Ryan, who portrayed several battered children during her short career. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this subpar Canadian film, Sophia Loren is Angela, a prostitute who has decided to become a waitress after she gets pregnant by Ben Kincaid (John Vernon) and needs a better way to support her baby. When Ben gets back from service in the Korean War, he does not believe Angela's little boy is his, and after he starts working for his old mob boss, he says he cannot continue as long as the boy is in the house. So his boss Hogan (John Huston) has the child kidnapped, which triggers Angela to seek revenge, and she informs the police about Ben's planned robbery. He is caught and goes to jail for more than two decades, and when he gets out, his only goal is to get even. Meanwhile, Angela has worked her way up to the ownership of an elegant restaurant and has fallen in love with handsome young Jean Labrecque (Steve Railsback), who delivers meat to the kitchen -- without either knowing at the time that they are mother and son. With dim lighting, a dim script, and dim chances, this turkey was quickly made into dim-sum and shelved in video cassettes. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide