Stuart Whitman Movies
Stuart Whitman, with a rugged build and sensitive face, rose from bit player to competent lead actor, but never did make it as a popular star in film. The San Francisco-born Whitman served three years with the Army Corps of Engineers where he was a light heavyweight boxer in his spare time. He next went on to study drama at the Los Angeles City College where he joined a Chekhov stage group. He began his film career in the early '50s as a bit player. Although never a star, he did manage to quietly accumulate $100 million dollars through shrewd investments in securities, real estate, cattle, and Thoroughbreds. For his role as a sex offender attempting to change in the 1961 British film The Mark, Whitman was nominated for an Oscar. In addition to features, Whitman has also appeared extensively on television. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide- 1985
Hannibal (George Peppard) is reunited with his old flame Dana (played by Toni Hudson, real-life wife of A-Team costar Toni Hudson), who is the mother of race-car driver Kid Harmon (Ken Clandt). Naturally, Harmon is in dire need of assistant from Hannibal and the rest of the A-Team; one of his racetrack rivals, Kyle Ludwig (Wings Hauser), is the nephew of a vicious gangster, and as such will resort to any means necessary to win an upcoming race. In his efforts to thwart Ludwig, Hannibal becomes a hero to Dana's son--which arouses the jealousy of Dana's current husband Jack (Stuart Whitman), whose anger nearly scuttles the Team's mission. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1985
Not long after he lost that "chicken run" to James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause (1955), actor Corey Allen switched professional gears to become a prolific film and TV director. Allen was responsible for putting television perennials James Brolin and Lisa Hartman through their paces in Beverly Hills Cowgirl Blues. Brolin plays a Beverly Hills cop who teams up with a luscious female private eye from Texas (Hartman, of course). While Brolin prefers peace and quiet, Hartman insists upon rooting out the murderer of a debutante-turned-hooker. Since both stars were gainfully employed on other TV series when Beverly Hills Cowgirl Blues first aired on October 5, 1985, we hesitate to suggest that this film was the pilot for a potential series. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1985
Hunter (Fred Dryer) and McCall (Stepfanie Kramer) go undercover to find out why a seemingly insignificant accountant has been murdered gangland-execution style in the small resort town of Campo Alto. It turns out that the dead man was using an alias--and that he was somehow connected with the town's richest and most powerful citizen, Raymond Bellamy (Stuart Whitman). Doing everything he can to impede the two detectives' progress is town sheriff Johnson (Don Stroud), who like everyone else in the vicinity seems to be harboring a terrible secret. Oh, and did we mention that series star Stepfanie Kramer gets to show off her singing talents again? ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1985
Greed was originally released as Treasure of the Amazon, the literal translation of its Spanish-language title. Ostensibly based on a true story, the film stars Stuart Whitman as Gringo, an aging but still virile soldier of fortune. Right now, Gringo is foraging deep into headhunter country in South America, in search of a cache of diamonds. Meanwhile, ex-Nazi Klaus (Donald Pleasance) is likewise searching for the gems, and unlike the essentially honorable Gringo, Klaus is willing to leave a few corpses in his path in pursuit of his goal. The international supporting cast includes Emilio Fernandez, Bradford Dillman, John Ireland, and Pedro Armendariz Jr. all of whom seem to have been recently graduated from the Take-The-Money-And-Run School of Dramatic Art. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1985
Originally released in 1985, this fictional Cold War thriller revolves around the Soviet Union's nefarious attempt to steal the U.S. Navy's submarine ballistic missile codes and trigger what could potentially become the downfall of the United States. Once the codes are successfully retrieved, the U.S.S.R. launches an attack on oil-rich areas of the Middle East in hopes of tricking the inhabitants into believing America was responsible for the strike. The film features Stuart Whitman and Persis Khambatta. ~ Tracie Cooper, All Movie Guide
- 1984
An action adventure about a group of fortune hunters who search for gold and jewels in the jungles of South America. ~ All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Stuart Whitman, Emilio Fernández, (more)
- 1984
Angela Lansbury's former MGM colleagues Van Johnson and June Allyson are prominently featured in this episode. A double-dealing businessman is killed when he is run over by a remote-controlled station wagon. Suspicion immediately falls upon the victim's disgruntled former partner, an oddball inventor--who happens to be a neighbor of our gal Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury). Can it be that the death car's curious license plate number will turn out to be a clue? (Well, maybe not.) ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1983
The A-Team shows up in rural California, where ruthless landowner Chuck Easterland (Stuart Whitman) is trying to drive Penhall Produce Farms out of business. Championing the cause of Joe Penhall (Robert Sampson) and his daughter Ellen (Devon Ericson), the team volunteers their services to deliver the farm's crop of watermelons to market. Unfortunately, they're blocked every inch of the way by Easterlands hired goons--and melons are a mighty perishable commodity. This is the episode in which the precious car owned by reporter Amy Allen (Melinda Culea) is reduced to a pile of scrap iron. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1983
This peculiar thriller was directed by Paul Leder (I Dismember Mama) and features the husband-wife team of Greg Mullavey and Meredith MacRae, who appeared in several of his films. Another low-budget shocker concerning the murders of a greedy family gathering around the deathbed of a dying man, Vultures deserves points for its sheer outlandishness and an oddball cast. Female impersonator Jim Bailey appears in half a dozen different roles and does a Barbra Streisand imitation. Stuart Whitman, Aldo Ray, and Yvonne DeCarlo are among the suspects, and such obscure cult figures as Maria Perschy show up as well. Genre buffs are likely to find it amusing, while most other viewers will be left perplexed. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Stuart Whitman, Yvonne De Carlo, (more)
Pia Zadora stars in an over-cooked melodramatic adaptation of the 1946 James M. Cain novel that is every bit as smutty and sleazy as Zadora's vampish character of Kady. The location of the novel has been switched from Appalachia to the barren lands of Arizona and Nevada in 1937. Stacy Keach plays Jess Tyler, a desert hermit who has spent years guarding an abandoned silver mine. Suddenly, Jesse is confronted by his very grown-up and sexy daughter, who, when she was a baby, had been taken away from him by his wife, Belle (Lois Nettleton). Kady, it so happens, hasn't come home for a family reunion -- she has just been dumped by a rich young man who is the father of her illegitimate child and whose family owns the very silver mine that Jess is guarding. Kady hopes to use her feminine wiles to seduce Jess and reopen the mine and extract the money from the earth that she feels is due her from the family. As if his seductive daughter walking around bare-breasted in front of him isn't enough, Jess must also deal with the sudden return of his older daughter, Janey (Ann Dane), who appears with Kady's son; Belle, who comes back to Jess dying of tuberculosis; and Moke Blue (James Franciscus), the man who stole Belle away from Jess years ago. Also squeezing his way into Jess's shack is Wash Gillespie (Edward Albert), the father of Kady's child, who now wants to marry her. Butterfly also features Orson Welles as Judge Rauch. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Stacy Keach, Pia Zadora, (more)
This quaint horror anthology is loosely based on the works of horror novelist R. Chetwynd-Hayes -- who is portrayed by John Carradine as an active participant in his own tales. The author is invited by a suave vampire (Vincent Price) to accompany him to the title establishment, where he observes the secret social customs of various species of monsters -- which apparently include drinking, dancing, and watching undead strippers remove more than just their clothing. He is also made privy to the mating patterns of these creatures, whose tendency to inter-breed creates such new strains of monsters as the "shadmock" (a vampire-like entity with a deadly high-pitched whistle) and the "humgoo" (the sullen offspring of a human and a flesh-eating ghoul). Price's descriptions of these new beasties trigger accompanying vignettes far less entertaining than the framing story, which is rife with horror movie in-jokes, cheesy rubber monster masks, and music by pop-reggae band UB40(!). Accomplished horror-omnibus director Roy Ward Baker seems to delight in the opportunity for pure camp, although the overall silliness of the proceedings has put off more than a few horror buffs. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Vincent Price, Donald Pleasence, (more)
Escorting a valuable gold shipment through the jungles of occupied Philippines in 1945, a group of Japanese troops are ambushed and killed by cannibals, although not before a dedicated few manage to hide the gold in a nearby cave. Several years later, a group of money-hungry businessmen hire a fearless mercenary to guide them to the lost treasure. As they draw ever closer to the gold, their number soon dwindles as they contend with cannibals, fearsome jungle animals, harsh elements, and the most dangerous foe of all: human greed. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Stuart Whitman, Harold Sakata, (more)
- 1981
- R
This inept horror film is a rare treat for fans of laughably bad cinema. From the opening flashback, in which a group of hooded cultists chop off a woman's hand and the obviously rubber appendage bounces to the floor, Macabra starts to amuse. By the time the action shifts to present-day Mexico, and the film's heroine (Samantha Eggar) has a discussion with a silver-mine worker as to the sex of a mine and whether silver mines get jealous, it becomes hilarious. The plot concerns the fabled "left hand of power" belonging to Satan, which possesses people's minds, forcing them to chop off their own hands until a priest (Stuart Whitman) turns back the evil. The most unintentionally amusing scenes involve the victims doing everything in their power to chop off their own possessed left hands. They roll around on the floor, put their hands under speeding trains, and force doctors to amputate them at gunpoint. Meanwhile, director Alfredo Zacharias films some explosions and many authentic ruins to promote the idea that Macabra is a professional motion picture. Even in its best moments, however, this film can only approximate a particularly weak episode of Fantasy Island. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Samantha Eggar, Roy Jenson, (more)
- 1980
Condominium is a two-part, four-hour TV adaptation of the novel by John D. McDonald. The setting is a hastily constructed Florida high-rise, assembled at the least possible cost by its greedy owners. An oncoming hurricane threatens to topple the structure and its residents into the ocean. Various degrees of greed, lust, terror and concern are displayed by stars Steve Forrest, Dan Haggerty, Ralph Bellamy, Barbara Eden, Stuart Whitman, Jack Jones and Pamela Hensley. Produced for the syndicated "Operation Prime Time" series, Condominium was first made available to local stations on November 20, 1980. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
"Names have been changed to protect the innocent" in this infamous fictionalization of the tragic mass suicide of 914 followers of Jim Jones' "People's Temple" in Guyana in the fall of 1978. Rev. James Johnson (Stuart Whitman) is a charismatic but deeply paranoid man of the cloth who moves his flock from Northern California to a settlement in Guyana, where he intends to create an interracial socialist utopia. Addicted to prescription drugs and convinced he is surrounded by enemies, Johnson rules his colony, "Johnsontown," with an iron fist, torturing anyone who violates his rule, seducing both women and men from his congregation, confiscating money and property from his followers, and forcing them to work long hours in the fields for meager rations. Lee O'Brien (Gene Barry), a California congressman who represents the district Johnson and his followers once called home, has received complaints from friends and relatives of the Johnsontown settlers, convinced something is wrong. O'Brien and a team of reporters fly to Guyana to find out the truth about what is happening; Johnson is convinced O'Brien has seen too much, and armed gunmen ambush his party before they can return to the United States (with a number of Johnsontown residents who wish to leave). After a failed attempt to arrange exile in the Soviet Union, Johnson convinced his followers to perform a "final revolutionary act" before authorities arrive. This oddball blend of fact and fiction also features Joseph Cotten and John Ireland as Johnson's lawyers, Yvonne de Carlo as Johnsontown's press officer, and Bradford Dillman as the doctor who mixes the punch for Johnson's final gathering. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Stuart Whitman, Gene Barry, (more)
Assignment: Kill Castro was originally released as Cuba Crossing. Stuart Whitman stars as a mercenary hired to "off" the Cuban dictator. He soon discovers that he will be immediately expendable once the deed is done, and that co-stars like Robert Vaughn should not automatically be trusted. Raymond St. Jacques, Woody Strode and Caren Kaye are among the good actors who appear fitfully in the film; the bulk of the story, however, is carried by such inexpensive unknowns as Mary Lou Gassen. Don't miss jewelry-bedecked pop star Monty Rock III as a "cruiser"--and we don't mean the Evinrude variety. A giveaway that Assignment: Kill Castro had trouble finding an audience is its plethora of alternate titles; in addition to Cuba Crossing, the film was also known as Kill Castro, The Mercenaries and Sweet Violent Tony. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Stuart Whitman, Robert Vaughn, (more)
- 1979
The Seekers was the third and last TV movie based on John Jakes' Kent Family Chronicles (the others were The Bastard and The Rebels). Heading the huge all-star cast is Randolph Mantooth as Abraham Kent, son of elderly Revolutionary War vet Andrew Kent (played by Martin Milner, replacing the first two films' Andrew Stevens), who has resettled in the treacherous Northwest Territory. Part One of this two-part, four-hour production finds young Abraham trying out a series of occupations, while his brother Gilbert (George Deloy) goes into his father's publishing business. Part Two takes us up to the War of 1812, as seen through the eyes of Jarod and Amanda Kent (Timothy P. Murphy and Sarah Rush), who shortly thereafter head westward. Originally syndicated as part of the Operation Prime Time package, The Seekers made its debut during the week of December 2, 1979. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1979
Star Rod Taylor co-wrote the screenplay for Jamaican Gold. For centuries, the treasure of Morgan the Pirate has been resting somewhere beneath the waters of Carribean. Diver Taylor goes after it, hoping to beat his rivals Stuart Whitman, Elke Sommer and Jeremy Kemp to the punch. All four adventurers must contend with a few scurvy criminal types. Keenan Wynn also shows up as the gloriously yclept "Meat Cleaver Stewart." Filmed in the early 1970s, Jamaican Gold underwent several title and distributor changes before it was released in 1979 as The Treasure Seekers. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1979
In this drama, the new chief of staff at a Florida hospital tries to get the place to run smoothly. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1979
Four disparate scuba divers go to the Caribbean in search of lost treasure. ~ Kristie Hassen, All Movie Guide
