Dennis Waterman Movies

A star-studded cast highlights this musical adaptation of the classic fantasy tales of Lewis Carroll. One day young Alice (Fiona Fullerton) takes a nasty spill down the rabbit-hole and finds herself in the bizarre kingdom of Wonderland, where she encounters a number of strange and enchanted characters, including the playful White Rabbit (Michael Crawford), the manic March Hare (Peter Sellers), the mysterious Caterpillar (Ralph Richardson), the Doormouse (Dudley Moore), the imperious Queen of Hearts (Flora Robson), and the quizzical Mad Hatter (Robert Helpmann). The cast also includes Spike Milligan, Peter Bull, Roy Kinnear, and Michael Jayston as Lewis Carroll. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland won two prizes at the 1973 British Academy of Film and Theatre Awards -- for Georfrey Unsworth's photography and Anthony Mendelson's costume design. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

This comedy features a 12-step Program for habitual hoods. The recovering criminal takes a job as a department store Santa, and again finds himself confronted with temptation. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In this violent, grim thriller, a baby-sitter's routine job turns out to be anything but when she and her young charge are terrorized by an escaped mental patient who bursts in and holds them hostage. He claims to be the three-year-old boy's father and has come to murder his ex-wife. Meanwhile to stall for time until the cops can save them, the baby-sitter seduces the fugitive father. A deadly stand-off ensues when the cops finally surround the place and he begins threatening to slice the throats of the girl and his son. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Not a sequel to Richard Harris' A Man Called Horse as is sometime alleged, 1971's Man in the Wilderness nonetheless bears a marked resemblance to that earlier film. Star Harris plays a trapper who joins a Northwest Territory expeditionary group. Left for dead after running afoul of a grizzly bear, Harris struggles to regain his strength and exact vengeance against John Huston, the man who deserted him. Flashbacks reveal who Harris is and how he's come to this. Man in the Wilderness alternates between a blood-spattered retribution tale and a gutsy one-man show for frostbitten Richard Harris. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The British/American co-production My Lover, My Son stars Romy Schneider as Frances, the unhappy wife of businessman Robert (Donald Houston). When her lover is accidentally drowned, Frances turns to her teenaged son James (Dennis Waterman) for comfort. Her husband doesn't like this set-up and bundles James off to college, but upon his return the boy enters into an affair with his own mother. Robert discovers the incestuous couple in an embrace and reacts violently, whereupon Frances kills him in self defense. Knocked unconscious during the struggle, James thinks he is the killer and takes the rap. The boy is released on the grounds of self defense and returns to his mother -- only to renounce her when he discovers that he's the illegitimate son of his mother's dead lover. MGM was the American distributor for My Lover, My Son, and that low vibration you feel is Louis B. Mayer spinning in his grave. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This pilot movie made for British television spawned the popular series, The Sweeney, and made a star of John Thaw as a tough, rule-breaking detective named Regan, who here single-mindedly hunts down the murderer of a fellow policeman. ~ Mark Hockley, All Movie Guide

A little boy learns the dangers of chronic lying the hard way in this thriller. He is only eleven when he tells a story that causes a neighbor, an ex-POW with amnesia, to die. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In this feature-film version of the popular British television cop show, Regan (John Thaw) and Carter (Dennis Waterman) are two British Scotland Yard detectives who find themselves involved with the exchange of oil resources on the political and economic fate of the world. Ian Bannen plays Baker, an alcoholic foreign minister involved in a scheme to manipulate a worldwide oil crisis to his benefit. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

A close-knit group of blind British college students inadvertently overhear an assassination plot. The authorities are skeptical, but the assassins are well aware that the students are privy to their plans. Seemingly helpless, the students combine their cognitive, sensory and olfactory skills to halt the killing and to prevent their own elimination. The Eyes Have It was taped in Britain, then telecast in the US as part of the ABC anthology Wide World Mystery. The leading lady is Sinead Cusack, daughter of actor Cyril Cusack and the future host of the 1991 TV cartoon series The World of Peter Rabbit and Friends. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this high-seas adventure, a wicked one-eyed, one-armed pirate forces a young man, who was wrongfully imprisoned, to take him and his band to his Caribbean island home where the pirate believes great treasure is buried. Once there, the pirate begins fighting for control of the island and begins slaughtering the lad's family and friends. The young man is utterly appalled and with his step-sister, a young woman and her beloved, somehow escape. Later the pirate discovers a large statue of pure gold. He and his men haul it to the beach and put it on a raft. As they are floating toward their ship, they are ambushed by the man and the other survivors causing the precious statue to fall overboard and sink to Davy Jones' locker while the pirate is killed. Later the survivors return to their ravaged home. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

The Sweeney was a groundbreaking British police show of the 1970s that turned John Thaw into a major television star. Created by Ian Kennedy Martin, the series told of Scotland Yard's Flying Squad (roughly the equivalent of the Major Case Squad in New York and other major American cities), nicknamed "The Sweeney" in rhyming slang (Flying Squad/Sweeney Todd) -- the focus of the series was the squad's senior field officer, Detective Inspector Jack Regan, portrayed by John Thaw. A bull of a man who has been known to bend the rules when necessary (or when it suits him), Regan disparages his desk-bound superiors and prefers to stay in the field, often working neck-deep among England's professional and habitual criminals, who are every bit as violent as their American counterparts. Tolerated by his superiors because he gets results, Regan is in a constant struggle to keep his squad ahead of the criminals and free of interference from higher command, the press, or politicians -- with his partner, Detective Sergeant George Carter (Dennis Waterman), Regan and his squad are as tough and ruthless when they have to be as the criminals they pursue.

The series was considered revolutionary in its time on British television for introducing levels of violence and cynicism -- though defenders would call it realism -- that had previously only been seen in American-produced series and movies; the language, the action, the cutting, and the shooting all exuded a gritty, no-nonsense approach to crime-story narrative that was spellbinding. The series started life as part of a series of made-for-television movies produced by Euston Films for its parent company, Thames Television. Regan introduced the character of Jack Regan, and its success got it pegged as the source for a 13-episode series, ultimately titled The Sweeney, starring Thaw and Waterman. That season and the one that followed were immensely popular and yielded a pair of feature-film releases, The Sweeney (1977) and Sweeney 2 (1978). The series shut down after its fourth season, but it is still one of the most talked about series in England a quarter century later. In 2003, the complete series was released on DVD in England, with a brace of bonus materials including commentary tracks, interviews, and special introductions by various guest stars. Seen today, it still comes off as very gritty and violent, and, in many ways, a distant antecedent to the American made-for-cable series The Shield. ~ All Movie Guide