Frank Arnold Movies

In the sixth Josh Kirby adventure, typical American teenager Josh Kirby (Corbin Allred) is once again thrust from the 20th century into the future, where he finds himself trying to save Earth from total destruction as he comes into contact with a race of mushroom people. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

In this light-hearted sci-fi adventure, the title teen and his fellow time travellers find themselves marooned on a weird planet held captive by huge alien creatures. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Waltz Through the Hills is set in the Australian outback. A pair of orphans, not wishing to be separated, attempt to traverse the Down Under continent in order to reach a ship bearing their loving grandparents. They are aided during their odyssey by affable native Ernie Dingo (wanna bet that's not his real name?) Though initally frightened by Dingo, the children come to love him as dearly as any blood relative. A Waltz Through the Hills debuted in the US as a two-part presentation on PBS' Wonderworks television series. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In a memorable, 41/2-hour documentary on the trial of five Nazi concentration camp guards who worked at the Lublin-Majdanek extermination site, director Eberhard Fechner has valiantly narrowed down a total of 250 hours of courtroom proceedings to the most compelling and crucial testimony. The trial was held in Düsseldorf and the guards sentenced in 1981 -- to growing controversy about the nature of their sentences (some thought they were too light). About 70 people from two dozen cities in Germany, Austria, Poland, and Israel were interviewed regarding the liberation of the Lublin-Majdanek camp, and archives in several major European cities were searched for relevant, valuable photographic and written material. Between the 26 eye-witnesses and the lawyers who interrogated them, a clear picture of the extermination camp emerges. When this documentary was completed, Fechner turned over his footage to the Federal Film Archive in Koblenz and to the Israeli archives. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

In the first of the 13 episodes comprising Five Mile Creek's first season, San Francisco-bred Maggie Scott (Louise Caire Clark) and her daughter Hannah (Priscilla Weems) arrive in the Australia of the 1860s, in search of Maggie's husband Adam, a prospector who'd headed "Down Under" during the territory's celebrated Gold Rush. Maggie and Hannah settle in Five Mile Creek, a community set up as a stagecoach stop, and quickly befriend local hotel owner Kate (Liz Wallace). At the same time, the Australian Express stagecoach service makes its maiden run, with co-owners Con (Jay Kerr) and Jack (Rod Mullinar) at the reigns. Despite the stiff resistance of their competitors and a variety of scurrilous "bushrangers", Con and Jack complete their first run with the help and moral support of Maggie, Kate and Kate's enigmatic Irish handyman Paddy (Michael Caton). In due time, big-hearted Kate will also rescue orphaned youngster Sam (Martin Lewis) from a life as a bandit (she'll also advertise for a husband in order to legally adopt the boy). Although overt violence is avoid during the series' inaugural season, there is action and suspense aplenty thanks to a variety of outlaws, claim jumpers and mysterious strangers. Midway through the season, Maggie becomes a widow, thereby opening up the possibility of a romance between herself and the headstrong Jack. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Scenes from the Vietnam war are enacted by Asian and white actors, captioned, and juxtaposed with a slow-paced commentary that gives time for reflection on the message conveyed. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Few actresses other than Joan Crawford could have successfully pulled off the melodramatic excesses of Autumn Leaves. Though a very attractive fortysomething, Crawford remains aloof from romance until she meets Cliff Robertson, a young man half her age. An ardent and persistent suitor, Robertson finally breaks down her resistence to marriage. After a few weeks of wedded bliss, Crawford is confronted by Vera Miles, who claims to be Robertson's first wife. Miles further insists that Robertson is mentally unbalanced...and his subsequent behavior seems to bear this out. What Crawford doesn't know-but the audience does-is that the real villains of the piece are Miles and her middle-aged lover, Robertson's own father (Lorne Greene). Autumn Leaves works far better on screen than it does in print, thanks to the virtuoso performances of practically everyone in the cast. And, as anyone who's listened to top-40 radio during the past four decades already knows, the film also yielded a hit title song, written by Joseph Kosma, Jacques Prevert, and Johnny Mercer and performed during the credits by Nat King Cole. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

For his initial effort from his own Norma Productions, Burt Lancaster picked a winner in Ten Tall Men. Lancaster stars as "Sergeant Mike," a two-fisted Foreign Legionnaire presiding over a lovable band of mercenaries, sneak thieves and cutthroats. While sitting in the stockade for the umpteenth time, Mike learns of a Riff plan to attack his fort. He and his men break jail and embark on their own attack of the Riffian encampment. Part of their strategy (much of which is improvised on the spot) is to kidnap Mahia (Jody Lawrence), the toothsome daughter of the Riffian sheik. Understandably, Mahia despises her captors until she realizes that the film's real villain is the covetous Caid Hussan (Gerald Mohr). This one's got everything, from a campy reenactment of a key scene in Beau Geste to the old reliable threat of a red-hot iron upon female flesh. Mari Blanchard, fully clothed for a change, shows up early in the film as a coquettish French mademoiselle who foments an all-out donnybrook among Mike and his fellow legionnaires. With the exceptions of Jody Lawrence and Gerald Mohr, no one in Ten Tall Men takes the proceedings too seriously; the film has some of the cheeky insouciance of Lancaster's subsequent swashbuckler The Crimson Pirate. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

One of the most oft-revived of the pre-Technicolor Nicholas Ray efforts, Born to Be Bad offers us the spectacle of Joan Fontaine portraying a character described as "a cross between Lucrezia Borgia and Peg O' My Heart". For the benefit of her wealthy husband Zachary Scott and his family, Fontaine adopts a facade of wide-eyed sweetness. Bored with her hubby, she inaugurates a romance with novelist Robert Ryan. All her carefully crafted calculations come acropper when both men discover that she's a bitch among bitches. She might have gotten away with all her machinations, but the censors said uh-uh. Originally slated for filming in 1946, with Henry Fonda scheduled to play the Robert Ryan part, Born to Bad was cancelled, then resurfaced as Bed as Roses in 1948, this time with Barbara Bel Geddes in the Fontaine role. RKO head Howard Hughes' decision to replace Bel Geddes with the more bankable Fontaine was one of the reasons that producer Dore Schary left RKO in favor of MGM. Based on Anne Parrish's novel All Kneeling, Born to be Bad is so overheated at times that it threatens to lapse into self-parody; though this never happens, the film was the basis for one of TV star Carol Burnett's funniest and most devastating movie takeoffs, Raised to be Rotten. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

1950's Emergency Wedding is a remake of 1940's You Belong to Me. The later film stars Larry Parks, who'd had a bit role in the original. Parks plays wealthy Peter Kirk, a playboy, while Barbara Hale co-stars as female doctor Helen Hunt. When Peter marries Helen, it is a "given" that he'll stay home while she works. Unfortunately, Peter becomes jealous of the amount of time Helen spends at the hospital with her patients. Out of pique, Peter makes the supreme sacrifice and offers to get a job himself. All sorts of misunderstandings and remonstrations ensue before the title Emergency Wedding is explained at the very end. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

When a man dies under suspicious circumstances, the law must decide if it was murder or an accident. Francis Macomber (Robert Preston) is a wealthy, carefree gentleman who hires Robert Wilson (Gregory Peck), an expert hunter, as his guide when he sets off on a safari in Kenya. Francis' wife Margaret (Joan Bennett) regards her husband as a fool and a coward, and before long, she develops a strong attraction to Robert -- which she does not bother to keep secret. However, Robert informs her that as a matter of personal ethics, he would not consider becoming involved with her. After several weeks on the African savannah, Francis feels himself changing; he's developed a new bravery and sense of confidence, and as a test of himself, he one day stands in the path of a charging buffalo as he prepares to shoot. However, shots ring out from behind him, and Francis falls dead. Margaret insists that she was trying to kill the animal before it could trample Francis and missed, but given her well-documented contempt for her husband, the widow finds herself on trial for murder. The Macomber Affair was based on the short story "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" by Ernest Hemingway, though director Zoltan Korda found it necessary to rework the material (with the input of the featured cast) in order to appease the industry censors of the day. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

The troublesome years "between the wars" provide the backdrop for the romantic drama The Searching Wind. Adapted by Lillian Hellman from her own stage play, the film stars Robert Young as Alex Hazen, an idealistic but incredibly naïve US ambassador who fails to heed the warning signals when Mussolini and then Hitler ascend to power in Europe. Feeding into Hazen's ingenuousness is his beautiful but shallow wife Emily (Ann Richards), who is far more preoccupied with tuxedos and dinner gowns than with brown shirts and Nazi armbands. Only journalist Cassie Bowman (Sylvia Sidney), a character obviously based on playwright Hellman, can foresee the impending horror-even when her judgment is occasionally clouded by her undying love for Hazen. Benefiting from the mistakes of his elders is the Hazens' son Sam (Douglas Dick), who represents the "Never Again" viewpoint of the post-WW2 years. The Searching Wind was the sort of politically supercharged fare that earned Hellman condemnation as a "premature anti-fascist" during the infamous Hollywood Blacklist. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide