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- 1978
Karen Valentine, who's probably starred in more unsold pilots than McLean Stevenson and Don Meredith combined, stars in this made-for-TV comedy western. Playing a "Nellie Bly" type reporter, Karen heads thattaway, hoping to interview Billy the Kid (Richard Jaeckel). This might prove difficult in that Billy has supposedly been dead for years. Valentine is joined in her quest by Billy's sister (Sandra Will), a cavalry officer's widow who likewise doesn't swallow the official story of Billy's final, fatal showdown. "They've Taken Off Their Petticoats and Strapped On Their Guns!" read the TV Guide ad copy for Go West, Young Girl. No one watched anyway. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1978
A village girl with ambitions has schemed and connived to get to the big cities in Colombia. Though she is beautiful and finds plenty of romance, nothing quite works out. She even tries prostitution for a while. Eventually, she decides that her discontent has nothing to do with the city and that she's a country girl at heart. She hitches a ride in the empty trailer of a tractor-trailer truck going back to her village. There she finds a dejected American man (Stuart Whitman), whose wife has just died. The two of them converse and get to know one another and even make love. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Stuart Whitman, Laura Gemser, (more)
- 1978
- PG
A lame racehorse is healed with the aid of a youngster's loving care and is able to enter the famed Kentucky Derby. ~ All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Vera Miles, Stuart Whitman, (more)
- 1978
This four-hour TV movie is one more of novelist Harold Robbins' "guess who everyone is supposed to really be?" wallowfests (with nary a Jolly Roger in sight). The "pirate" is Baydr (Franco Nero), an anti-Semitic Lebanese oil sheik, who, unbeknownst to himself, is actually an Israel-born Jew fathered by Ben Ezra (Eli Wallach). Baydr marries a haughty American WASP, Jordana (Anne Archer as a blonde), whom he meets at JFK's 1960 presidential campaign, and fathers a son by her. Meanwhile, Leila (Olivia Hussey), one of Baydr's two daughters from a prior marriage, trains to become a PLO terrorist and plots to kidnap Jordana and her son by Baydr. The modern viewer is luckier than those poor TV fans of 1978 who had to sit through two nights of this nonsense: the currently available syndicated version of Harold Robbins' The Pirate (retitled simply The Pirate) runs a mere 150 minutes. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1977
J. Lee Thompson directs Charles Bronson in this strange western variation on Herman Melville's Moby Dick. Bronson plays a man named James Otis, who is disturbed by dreams of a giant white buffalo. He returns to the west under his new name --Wild Bill Hickok. Amongst his travels, he meets Chief Crazy Horse (Will Sampson), who is roaming the plains in an obsessive search for the giant white buffalo that killed his young daughter. Chief Crazy Horse wants to slay the beast in revenge for his daughter's death, and Wild Bill Hickok teams up with him to hunt down the giant white buffalo. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Charles Bronson, Jack Warden, (more)
- 1977
In this "B" grade film noir wannabe, the U.S. government releases David Fox (Richard Lynch) from prison on the condition that he help them trap a tax-shelter specialist working for the mob. Armed with $1,000,000 in hot money, Fox is chased all over Miami and back as he vacillates between fulfilling his obligation and finding the man who killed his brother. On the way, he unintentionally picks up Karen (Priscilla Barnes) via the unlikely method of stealing her landscaping truck, and she soon joins him as the adventure continues to the final showdown, back in Miami. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Richard Lynch, Priscilla Barnes, (more)
- 1977
The Hardy Boys, Part 7 was first aired over the ABC TV network as "The Mystery of the African Safari." Joe and Frank Hardy (Shaun Cassidy and Parker Stevenson), Franklin W. Dixon's famed teenaged sleuths, are dispatched to Africa by their investigator father Fenton Hardy (Edmund Gilbert). Things get ticklish when the Hardys both fall in love with professional hunter Trevor Masters' pretty daughter Sarah (Anne Lockhart). Originally telecast October 16, 1977, "The Mystery of the African Safari" also features Peter Bromilow and Harold Sylvester. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1977
- R
Piper Laurie (the mother in the horror film Carrie) appears here as the mother of a deranged deaf-mute girl. The mom runs a drive-in theater which shows mostly horror films. The girl is deranged because she is possessed by the spirit of her long-dead dad, a gangster who was gunned down by the mob. The vengeful spirit uses his daughter to gain vengeance on his assassins, many of whom now work at the drive-in. One by one the mobsters bite the dust as the demonized little girl extracts revenge for her deceased daddy. ~ All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Piper Laurie, Stuart Whitman, (more)
- 1977
The fourth of the feature-length Quincy, M.E. episodes produced for the NBC Sunday Mystery Movie anthology takes place on the Fourth of July, as medical examiner Quincy (Jack Klugman) is relaxing on the beach with the girlfriend Lee (Lynette Mettey). Quincy's idyll is cut short when a seriously injured swimmer washes onto the shore. During the subsequent lab examination, Quincy discovers that the swimmer had been poisoned by a fish--one that is usually found thousands of miles away, in warmer waters. Convinced that the swimmer was the victim of foul play, Quincy launches an investigation which leads him to a multimillion-dollar jewel robbery and a conspiracy spreading across two different countries. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
This heist film stars Stella Stevens as a robber who enlists her friends--a trapeze artist and a magician's aide--to help her make off with $500,000 in casino cash. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Stella Stevens, Stuart Whitman, (more)
- 1976
- R
In this violent actioner, a misanthropic Ottawa police captain searches for the person who poisoned his little sister, who was attending the university in Montreal. So desperate is he for vengeance that he casts protocol to the winds and begins using his own brutal methods to find the killer. Soon he discovers that his "innocent" kid sister was involved in the theft of a valuable string of pearls and that she had been hanging around an appalling assortment of creeps and weirdos. The story was originally titled Blazing Magnum. The new title has nothing to do with the film. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Stuart Whitman, Carole Laure, (more)
Director Tobe Hooper's follow-up to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre presents yet another Southern-fried psycho (this time in Louisiana) in the form of a scripture-mumbling, one-legged cracker named Judd (Neville Brand). The proprietor of a seedy bayou inn, Judd keeps a pet gator in the nearby swamp, to which he frequently tosses the remains of his unfortunate victims -- including anyone who offends his delicate sensibilities. One such casualty is Harvey Wood (Mel Ferrer), arriving at Judd's hotel in search of his missing daughter... who, unbeknownst to her old man, has already met her own doom courtesy of the scythe-wielding madman. Other patrons include one of the most annoying families on record -- with Chainsaw veteran Marilyn Burns as the strangely-bewigged mom, William Finley as the browbeaten husband and future Halloween tyke Kyle Richards as the endlessly-shrieking daughter (whose adorable puppy becomes a light gator-snack). Nightmare on Elm Street fans can spot a young, pre-Freddy Robert Englund in a small role as a lecherous cracker. Originally titled Death Trap and known by many aliases, including Starlight Slaughter, Horror Hotel Massacre and Legend of the Bayou. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Neville Brand, Mel Ferrer, (more)
- 1975
- R
A Vietnam War veteran (Fred Williamson) is discharged from the Army, and becomes involved with mobsters when he is unable to find a job. The gang uses him on a job when one of the thugs (Roddy McDowall) and his girlfriend (Jenny Sherman) decide to provoke a gang war. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide
Cloris Leachman stars as Melba, a woman with whom violence is a way of life, in Jonathan Demme's high-pitched "B"-movie Crazy Mama. The film spans three decades in the violent life of Melba, beginning in Jerusalem, Arkansas in 1932, when law enforcers kill her father (Clint Kimbrough), turning her mother Sheba (Ann Sothern) into a bitter widow. Mother and daughter take off to Long Beach, California, and the time jumps to 1958, when the two are thrown out of their beauty salon for non-payment of back rent. Melba now has an attractive (and pregnant) teenage daughter Cheryl (Linda Purl). The three generations take to the road, stealing cars and creating general mayhem across the United States, robbing a motorcycle racetrack box office and a bank. But in 1959, Melba and Cheryl are picked up again, running a Miami Beach snack bar, their lives wasted in free-living terror. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Cloris Leachman, Stuart Whitman, (more)
- 1974
- R
Mr. Shatter (Stuart Whitman) is an international assassin, hired to bump off a top government official. He is compelled to fend off a host of Oriental kung-fu and karate experts. Peter Cushing and Anton Diffring make brief appearances. The film -- shot simultaneously with Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires, which also co-starred Peter Cushing -- was something of an experiment for the ailing Hammer studios in the mid-'70s, shortly before they expired, attempting to mix an Oriental style with their own distinctly British brand of filmmaking. In most markets, Call Him Mr. Shatter was released simply as Shatter. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Stuart Whitman, Ti Lung, (more)
- 1974
- R
The consumption of human flesh is the main course of this off-beat horror movie that centers on a war veteran who returns to California a cannibal. His sister likes peopleburgers too. The trouble begins when a gentle hippie chick encounters the hungry duo enthusiastically eating their latest meal. The terrified girl heads for the police, but they refuse to believe her. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1973
Cat Creature is a heady Curtis Harrington combination of high-gloss production values and spinechilling terror. A curse imposed thousands of years ago by a cat goddess wreaks havoc in the 20th century--all for the purpose of retrieving a long-lost golden amulet. Gale Sondergaard, whose association with things horrific went back to 1944's Sherlock Holmes and the Spider Woman, is suitably hissable as the cat queen; also in the cast is fright-flick veteran John Carradine and second-generation spooker Peter Lorre Jr. Screenwriter Robert Bloch intended this film as an affectionate throwback to the stylized horror films of old. Cat Creature is the sort of film that removes the "potboiler" stigma from the made-for-TV form. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1973
Filmed in Spain, this TV movie stars Stuart Whitman as a painter who drops out of sight for seven years. Upon resurfacing, he discovers that his name has been affixed to high-priced forgeries. What's more, a crooked art dealer is capitalizing on Whitman's supposed death. While mulling through all these plot developments, Whitman falls in love with Brigitte Fossey, whose previous lover is the duplicitous dealer who is benefitting from reports of the artist's demise. Originally titled A Spanish Portrait, this film was shot in 1970, then lay unseen on the shelf for nearly three years. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Stuart Whitman, Bernard Lee, (more)
- 1973
Con artist Rex Benning (Stuart Whitman) is quite a piece of work, ruthlessly swindling not his wealthy victims but also his own accomplices. Currently, Benning is preparing to fleece both a multimillionaire and a small-time crook with big-time ideas. Inspector Erskine (Efrem Zimbalist Jr.) hopes that Benning will outfox himself this time and fall into an FBI trap--but things may not be that simple. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1973
Stuart Whitman guest stars as retired hit man Nick Carl, returning to San Francisco after a long sojourn in France. What Nick is unaware of is the fact that he has himself been targeted for a "hit" by his ex-boss Johnny Harmon (Jason Evers)--and that he is being surreptitiously set up for slaughter by his best friend Tim Murphy (Jack Albertson. Singer Claudine Longet makes a brief but compelling appearance as Nick's wife Michelle. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1972
In this nature adventure, a courageous cougar must struggle to survive after a cruel human hunter kills her mate. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1972
In this made-for-TV film, the rich Dina Hunter (Barbara Eden) believes that someone is out to kill her in order to steal her jewels. However, as she attempts to get help, Dina's fears are laughed off as being paranoid and unfounded. ~ Iotis Erlewine, All Movie Guide
