Darrell Zwerling Movies

Jessica (Angela Lansbury) is invited to speak at an exclusive club where only men are permitted as members. Despite her gender, Jessica is asks by the club's governing committee to help them solve a mystery involving the murder of a "rogue" member. This proves difficult when it becomes apparent that the killer may himself be on the committee. This episode is chock full of sly science-fiction and fantasy references--no surprise, inasmuch as it was written by J. Michael Straczynski, a guiding force behind the popular series Babylon 5. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Academy Award-winning screenwriter John Patrick Shanley's first foray into the director's chair is a quirky romantic fantasy, featuring Bo Welch's signature production design. Tom Hanks plays Joe Banks, a man who hates his job, thinks the overhead fluorescent lights are making him sick, and quakes at the presence of his boorish boss Frank Watori (Dan Hedaya). He is attracted to the office secretary DeDe (Meg Ryan) but is afraid to speak to her. Then his life changes when he visits Dr. Ellison (Robert Stack). Dr. Ellison tells Joe that he has something called "a brain cloud" that is rapidly spreading throughout his brain. He will feel great, but he'll be dead within five months. Instead of being depressed at this bleak prognosis, Joe suddenly feels free. He quits his job, asks DeDe out, and is contacted by a rich millionaire named Graynamore (Lloyd Bridges). Graynamore owns an island named Waponi Woo, whose natives need to be placated. The natives require a sacrifice to their island volcano, the Big Woo, so that the island won't sink beneath the Pacific. Graynamore offers unlimited wealth to Tom in exchange for Tom's becoming the object of human sacrifice. Joe has nothing to lose, so he accepts the offer. As he heads out to the island, Joe meets Graynamore's daughters -- Angelica, a Los Angeles socialite, and Patricia, Angelica's blonde half-sister (both roles played by Ryan). Joe arrives at the island, and as he stands at the lips of the Big Woo he has to decide whether he really wants to leap into the maw of the fiery volcano. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

"Not since Columbo has catching a killer been this clever!" That was the ad come-on for Diary of a Perfect Murder, a 1986 TV movie starring Andy Griffith as a homespun Georgia defense attorney. Griffith takes the case of a TV reporter (Steve Inwood) who has been accused of the murder of his ex-wife. In the tradition of Perry Mason, Matlock plays his cards close to the vest, then reveals the identity of the true murderer right in the courtroom. Sound familiar? It should: Diary of a Perfect Murder was the pilot film for Andy Griffith's still-running Matlock series. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Barbra Streisand and Ryan O'Neal attempt to recapture the screwball spark of What's Up, Doc? in the labored farce The Main Event. Streisand plays Hillary Kramer, a bankrupt perfume executive who discovers that one of her tax write-offs from more prosperous times was the ownership of prizefighter Kid Natural (Ryan O' Neal). Kid Natural is now a driving instructor who wants nothing to do with boxing, but Hillary is determined to resurrect the Kid's less-than-spectacular boxing career. She installs herself as the Kid's manager and tries to get him in shape to go the distance. Along the way, the two fall in love. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

In this drama three contemporary couples prepare for their upcoming nuptials. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

"Grease," said the poster and the Barry Gibb song, "is the word." Transferring its setting from Chicago to sunny California, and adding a dash of disco to the ersatz '50s score, producer Allan Carr and director Randal Kleiser turned this long-running Jim Jacobs-Warren Casey Broadway smash into the biggest blockbuster of 1978. 1950s teens Danny (John Travolta) and Australian transfer Sandy (Olivia Newton-John) spend their "Summer Nights" falling in love, but once fall comes, it's back to Rydell High and its cliques. As one of the bad-boy T-Birds, Danny has to act cool for best pal Kenickie (Jeff Conaway) and their leather-clad mates Sonny (Michael Tucci) and Doody (Barry Pearl, in the role Travolta played on-stage). Despite befriending Frenchy (Didi Conn), one of the rebel Pink Ladies, virginal Sandy is "too pure to be Pink," as the Ladies' leader, Rizzo (Stockard Channing), acidly observes. Declaring their devotion in such ballads as "Hopelessly Devoted to You" and "Sandy," Sandy and Danny split, reconcile, and split again amidst a pep rally, dances, drive-ins, and a drag race, before deciding "You're the One That I Want" at the climactic carnival. With Travolta white-hot from Saturday Night Fever (1977), Grease soundtrack singles climbed the charts and summer movie crowds poured in. With the presence of Joan Blondell, Eve Arden, Sid Caesar, Edd "Kookie" Byrnes, and Frankie Avalon appealing to grown-up memories, Grease became the highest-grossing film of 1978, the highest-grossing movie musical ever, and the third most popular film of the new blockbuster '70s after Star Wars (1977) and Jaws (1975). Its sequel, Grease 2, did not exactly set the world on fire in 1982. ~ Lucia Bozzola, Rovi

This is Mel Brooks' spoof of over ten Alfred Hitchcock classics, including Psycho, Vertigo, and The Birds (Brooks actually used the bird trainer from that classic suspense movie in making his film). Brooks plays Dr. Richard H. Thorndyke, a renowned Harvard psychiatrist with a concealed fear of heights, or High Anxiety. Thorndyke takes over as the newest director of the PsychoNeurotic Institute for the Very, Very Nervous after the last director dies under suspicious circumstances. He soon finds himself to be in the company of some very strange colleagues, including longtime Brooks collaborators Cloris Leachman and Harvey Korman, with Madeline Kahn as Victoria Brisbane, the eccentric daughter of a patient at the institute and Thorndyke's love interest. Korman takes on the role of Dr. Charles Montague, a psychiatrist with a closeted habit of his own. Leachman plays Charlotte Diesel, a charge nurse with a dark sneer and tendency towards domination. As Thorndyke heads to a psychiatry conference, he is faced with saving the Institute, his reputation, and his own sanity. Although the film was not well-received by critics, it picked up a 1978 Golden Globe nomination for best picture (musical or comedy) and landed Brooks a nomination for best actor. The movie has a number of cameos, from a young Barry Levinson's spot as an unstable bellboy to a small part by Hitchcock's right-hand special effects man, Albert J. Whitlock, who plays Kahn's father. ~ Rachel Koetje, Rovi

Welcome Back Kotter star John Travolta headlines the made-for-TV Boy in the Plastic Bubble. Douglas Day Stewart's fact-based teleplay casts Travolta as Tod Lubitsch, a teenager who was born without disease immunities. Tod is forced to live out his life in incubator conditions; whenever he vetnures into the outdoors, he must be encased in a huge plastic bubble. When he falls in love with Gina Biggs (Glynnis O'Connor), Tod must decide between staying safe and following his heart, which would mean facing near-certain death. Diana Hyland won an Emmy for her portrayal of Travolta's mother. Incidentally, Hyland and Travolta became real-life lovers, a relationship that was tragically terminated when the actress died of cancer. Boy in the Plastic Bubble was first telecast November 12, 1976. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

A rancher, a rustler, and a regulator face off in Arthur Penn's eccentric western. As a cover for their horse thievery, a gang of Montana rustlers, led by the laid-back Tom Logan (Jack Nicholson), buys a small farm adjacent to the ranch of their latest target/nemesis, Braxton (John McLiam). When the gang leaves Tom on the farm and heads to Canada for another score, Tom takes a shine both to farming and Braxton's rebellious, strong-willed daughter, Jane (Kathleen Lloyd). The slightly loco Braxton, however, hires the psychopathic regulator Lee Clayton (Marlon Brando) to root out the rustlers. With a series of unorthodox methods (and costumes), Clayton hunts down Logan and his gang one by one, even after Braxton fires him, but Logan isn't about to let Clayton (or Braxton) make him obsolete. ~ Lucia Bozzola, Rovi

George Pal's final film is a kiddie action saga based on the popular comic strip and action book series by Kenneth Robeson. Ron Ely is all flash and charmless brawn as the blonde-haired superhero Doc Savage, the Man of Bronze. When his father is mysteriously murdered, Savage gathers together five of his cronies -- The Amazing Five -- to head off on an expedition to South America to find some answers. There he battles Captain Seas (Paul Wexler) and "the green death." Along the way, he charms native girl Mona (Pamela Hensley), who immediately falls for the blonde chiselhead. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

"You may think you know what you're dealing with, but believe me, you don't," warns water baron Noah Cross (John Huston), when smooth cop-turned-private eye J.J. "Jake" Gittes (Jack Nicholson) starts nosing around Cross's water diversion scheme. That proves to be the ominous lesson of Chinatown, Roman Polanski's critically lauded 1974 revision of 1940s film noir detective movies. In 1930s Los Angeles, "matrimonial work" specialist Gittes is hired by Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) to tail her husband, Water Department engineer Hollis Mulwray (Darrell Zwerling). Gittes photographs him in the company of a young blonde and figures the case is closed, only to discover that the real Mrs. Mulwray had nothing to do with hiring Gittes in the first place. When Hollis turns up dead, Gittes decides to investigate further, encountering a shady old-age home, corrupt bureaucrats, angry orange farmers, and a nostril-slicing thug (Polanski) along the way. By the time he confronts Cross, Evelyn's father and Mulwray's former business partner, Jake thinks he knows everything, but an even more sordid truth awaits him. When circumstances force Jake to return to his old beat in Chinatown, he realizes just how impotent he is against the wealthy, depraved Cross. "Forget it, Jake," his old partner tells him. "It's Chinatown." Reworking the somber underpinnings of detective noir along more pessimistic lines, Polanski and screenwriter Robert Towne convey a '70s-inflected critique of capitalist and bureaucratic malevolence in a carefully detailed period piece harkening back to the genre's roots in the 1930s and '40s. Gittes always has a smart comeback like Humphrey Bogart's Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe, but the corruption Gittes finds is too deep for one man to stop. Other noir revisions, such as Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye (1973) and Arthur Penn's Night Moves (1975), also centered on the detective's inefficacy in an uncertain '70s world, but Chinatown's period sheen renders this dilemma at once contemporary and timeless, pointing to larger implications about the effects of corporate rapaciousness on individuals. Polanski and Towne clashed over Chinatown's ending; Polanski won the fight, but Towne won the Oscar for Best Screenplay. Chinatown was nominated for ten other Oscars, including Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, Cinematography, Art Direction, Costumes, and Score. ~ Lucia Bozzola, Rovi

A young James Woods delivers a powerhouse performance as Caz Mayer, a brilliant but demented college student. Feeling he has been humiliated in a police-science class conducted by Lt. Kojak (Telly Savalas), Caz vows to get even by proving beyond doubt that he's capabe of committing the perfect robbery--and murder. As icing on the cake, the student arranges the evidence so that Kojak himself will be implicated. Pamela Hensley has a key role as another student who finds herself a helpless pawn in Caz's master scheme. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Kojak (Telly Savalas) begins his search for the murderer of a womanizing Wall Street lawyer. What he doesn't know is that the perp is one of his own detectives, Nick Ferro (Hector Elizondo). Having committed the crime after discovering that his own wife (Barbara Rhoades) was one of the victim's lovers, Ferro cunningly sets up an airtight alibi--and even arranges to join the investigation team. Inevitably, Kojak's instincts kick in and he deduces that something is amiss...while Ferro desperately tries to halt the steady strem of evidence that is flowing inexorably in his direction. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi