Jerry Wasserman Movies

A woman fears that her amnesia-stricken husband may be a serial killer in this made-for-cable thriller. After family man Ed Vinson gruesomely murders his wife and kids and skips town, police investigator Joe Steiner (Richard Widmark) becomes obsessed with capturing the monster -- even after he's forced to retire from the force. Meanwhile, hundreds of miles away, a traffic accident kills one man and leaves another (Keith Carradine) a hideously disfigured amnesiac. Police can't figure out who the survivor is, so he takes the name Allen Devlin and, after reconstructive surgery, falls in love with and marries his recently divorced nurse, Chris Graham (Kathleen Quinlan). Several years later, Steiner shows up in town, convinced Devlin is really Ed Vinson; his dogged pursuit threatens the happiness the Devlins have carved out for themselves and their children -- especially after a series of gruesome rapes begins to occur. The evidence seems to implicate Allen in the attacks, but Chris suspects that her old boyfriend, cop Mike Patterson (Michael Beck), is trying to frame him. The tension escalates as Chris suffers through a series of anonymous phone calls from a man who seems to think he's Ed Vinson; when her son finds a grotesque fetish mask in the garage, even Chris begins to doubt her husband's innocence. Directed by British horror veteran Douglas Hickox and written by Amityville 3D scribe David Ambrose, Blackout premiered on the Home Box Office network in 1985. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide

In this children's drama, a con artist's dog leads two children to his former master's secret cache of loot. The children's lives change dramatically after that. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Hands of a Stranger was adapted by playwright Arthur Kopit from the best-selling novel by Robert Daley. Armand Assante plays a New York City narcotics officer who aids DA Blair Brown in her investigation of a rape case in which drugs were involved. In the subsequent days, Assante becomes something of an expert in rape evidence. Thus, when his wife Beverly D'Angelo is sexually assaulted while en route to a rendezvous with her lover, Assante suspects something even though D'Angelo remains mum about the incident. Conducting his own investigation, Assante determines the rapist's identity while wiretapping a phoned-in attempt to blackmail his wife. Will Assante forget everything he's learned about police procedure and attempt to take the law into his own hands? Co-starring in Hands of a Stranger is Arliss Howard as the scummy rapist. Preceded by a warning that the film contained scenes of a violent and graphic nature, Hands of a Stranger was originally broadcast in two parts, on May 10 and 11, 1987. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this crime drama, a Manhattan police detective looks into the strange death of a peer who was ritually killed in Chinatown. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

A wealthy woman (Robin Givens) is stalked by her ex-boyfriend, who escaped from an asylum. He traps her in her penthouse. ~ All Movie Guide

In this chilling drama, the outbreak of a strange and virulent disease causes a tyrannical government leader to separate its victims from the rest of society by interring them in concentration camps where they will eventually be executed. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Gregg Champion, the son of dance stars Marge and Gower Champion, made his feature film directorial debut with this sitcom-influenced cop comedy. Dabney Coleman stars as Burt Simpson, a police detective one week short of retirement, who is told he has a rare blood disease called Wechsler's Curtain and that he will be dead within two weeks. Before receiving the dire news, Burt was the kind of guy who made it a point to be cautious when in pursuit of criminals. He also was unable to tell his wife (Teri Garr) that he loved her. But now that he has only two weeks to live, Burt undergoes a complete personality reversal -- much to the shock of his partner Ernie Dills (Matt Frewer). Burt throws his well-known caution to the wind and volunteers for double-duty in the city's most dangerous neighborhood to take on the notorious psychotic Carl Stark (Xander Berkeley). The reason for this sudden turnaround? Burt figures that if he is killed in the line of duty, his son can go to Harvard on the $320,000 worth of department insurance, rather than die after retirement and collect a paltry $22,000 on his regular insurance policy. Paradoxically, Burt finds that comedy is easy but dying is hard. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

An innocent law student gets accused of murdering a mob chief's son when a casino poker game turns into a fistfight that ends with a fatality. Soon the mob and the corrupt local police are after the kid whose only respite in this film is a short romance with a new-found sweetheart. ~ All Movie Guide

Based on the 1989 earthquake that rocked San Francisco, this is the true story of the rescue workers who at their own peril tried to free the people trapped under a collapsed highway. ~ Tana Hobart, All Movie Guide

In this Disney adventure, the third in a series, Chip, the android boy, must save his father from the cruel business magnate who has abducted him. To do so, he reconfigures his father's robotic look-a-like and then prepares to face the spooky Spartacus, his robotic nemesis. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

This is the first mainstream film to deal with the harrowing true story of a Uruguayan rugby team whose plane crashed in the Andes mountains in October of 1972 and who were forced to resort to cannibalism to survive more than two months of isolation. (The only other film to tackle the subject, Rene Cardona's Survive! was a seedy little mess that delighted in exploiting the cannibalism aspect.) The events depicted are primarily based on the novel of the same name by Piers Paul Read. The interview-style prologue features an uncredited John Malkovich as one of the survivors, whose spiritual ruminations on the disaster kick off the film's main action. We are briefly introduced to the characters before disaster strikes, in the film's most horrifying set-piece -- the depiction of the crash in grueling detail. The handful of survivors who manage to extricate themselves from the twisted wreckage seem incapable of working through their panic as they hope against all odds that a rescue party will locate them. One of the survivors, Nando (Ethan Hawke), awakens from a coma and makes a remarkable recovery -- enough to demonstrate level-headed leadership after team captain Antonio (Vincent Spano) begins to lose his nerve. As the weeks wear on and rations are depleted, the survivors are forced into a moral dilemma: the only remaining source of food seems to be the bodies of the dead. Those who choose for religious reasons not to consume their former companions must face the realization that they will soon starve or freeze to death. In the end, three men who choose survival above all else find the strength to set out on a treacherous mission to a ridge, where hopefully one of them will make it to civilization. Director Frank Marshall infuses the proceedings with sufficient intensity to keep the story moving, but the film fails to fully explore the often-recounted spiritual aspects of the ordeal as established in the opening monologue. Ironically, the writers' apparent attempts to remain true to Read's account of events -- resulting in some rather odd stretches of dialogue -- impede the drama even more than the Hollywood glamorization of the story's nominal "heroes," who remain rugged and handsome despite months of malnutrition and severe frostbite. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide

When the police don't seem to be giving their all in the investigation of a young woman's disappearance, her sister decides to look into the mystery herself. The more evidence she finds, the more the finger of guilt points towards her brother-in-law. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide