Gary Conway Movies

This, the third issue in the American Ninja series, stars karate expert David Bradley who goes to Japan for ninja training so he'll be able to avenge his father's murder. Once trained, he enters in an international karate contest held by some no-goods who'd like to get their hands on the world's toughest fella so they can try out a new artificial disease they've created. (They figure the best way to test the disease is upon the toughest guy they can find.) Most action occurs on a Caribbean island. ~ Rovi

After winning the heavyweight boxing championship and single-handedly winning the war in Vietnam for America, Sylvester Stallone moves on to a real challenge -- arm wrestling -- in this action drama with a family undercurrent. Lincoln Hawk (Stallone) is a long-haul truck driver who years ago abandoned his wife Christina (Susan Blakely) and their son Michael (David Mendenhall). Hawk comes to see the error of his ways and wants to reconcile with his loved ones, only to discover that Christina is in the hospital suffering through the last stages of a terminal illness. Her wealthy and powerful father, Jason Cutler (Robert Loggia), has come to hate Hawk for the way he left his daughter to fend for herself, and he wants full custody of the boy upon her death. But Hawk is desperate to mend his relationship with Michael. He kidnaps the boy, and as Jason's hired goons give chase, Hawk points his truck toward the one place where he can win the money and recognition that will earn his son's respect -- a wrist-wrestling championship in Las Vegas. Actor Sylvester Stallone also co-wrote the screenplay. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

In this interesting and well-developed teen adventure movie by Gary Conway, based on a novel by Colin Thiele, Ernie (Paul Smith) and a few of his friends in an opal-mining town in Australia take on the challenge of finding about $300,000 (Australian) in stolen opals. Sophie (Linda Hartley) joins up with the group and chases mercilessly after Ernie, who seems a willing target underneath it all, and Willie (Andrew Gaston) often has his hands full throwing back racist barbs with different degrees of intensity, depending on whether his "detractors" are friends or enemies. Surrounded by his friends and the adventure of discovering the stolen opals, Ernie's real drama lies in trying to work out a failing relationship with a father who has not known a day of responsibility in his life. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Sara Dane (Juliet Jorden) is an 18th-century gal who marries her way up the social ladder until she's able to get into business for herself and compete in what was almost solely a man's world. ~ Rovi

Any Old Port in a Storm is another two-hour TV cat and mouse session with Lt. Columbo (Peter Falk). Donald Pleasance portrays a winemaker whose covetous brother plans to sell the family vineyard. Pleasance puts the kibosh on this transaction by killing his sibling. He tries to make it look like an accident, but Columbo endeavors to prove otherwise--all the while exhibiting a hitherto unrevealed expertise in the field of fine wines. Julie Harris costars in this 1973 episode of the Columbo TV series. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Even Bette Davis showed up in a TV-movie pilot from time to time. The Judge and Jake Wyler stars the indestructible Davis as a hypochondriac former judge who becomes a private detective. Davis puts paroled ex-con Doug McClure to work as her "leg man," searching for clues in the supposed suicide of the heroine's (Joan Van Ark) businessman father. Had Judge and Jake Wyler sold as a series, Davis would have had to choose between this project and another projected weekly, Madame Sin; the decision was made for her when neither series sold. Two years later, Judge and Jake Wyler was rewritten, recast with Lee Grant and Lou Antonio, and repitched as a pilot under the title Partners in Crime (which also didn't fly). ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The basic premise of Land Of The Giants, along with most of the attributes of the seven characters, is established in the first episode, "The Crash". The sub-orbital passenger ship Spindrift, en route from Los Angeles to London, is drawn into a glowing space apparition that carries them to a world exactly like Earth -- except that everything, people, animals, plants etc., is 12 times larger than on Earth. And as the crew and the passengers soon discover that they are subject to capture and experimentation by whatever inhabitants of this planet might trap them.

Within that framework, however, the series did undergo changes during the first season. In the first episode, the giants -- who are seen mostly in the guise of a scientist and his assistant -- are seen as distant, distorted figures, the size differential almost disorienting to the camera; and they are heard only indistinctly, speaking in muffled and distorted voices, and it's not clear at first what language they might be speaking. In other words, the size differential is emphasized to the degree that the giants and the "little people," as we later learn Earth visitors are referred to, are isolated from one another even in each others' presence, as sentient beings. This creates an eeriness to their interactions and adds an element of isolation in the point of view of the main characters in the early episodes that was lost in subsequent shows, as the point-of-view changed along with the way that the giants were presented.

In later shows, the giants' voices are fully comprehensible and they are speaking English and communicating with the "little people." And we discover that there is a government bounty on them. And we learn that most of the planet seems to be organized as a worldwide totalitarian state, similar to some of the Eastern bloc communist countries, with a secret police service -- a similarity that residents of many of those countries picked up on and resonated to very strongly, once the series started running in Eastern Europe in the 1970's. One such member of that service, Inspector Kobick (Kevin Hagen), investigates enough cases involving the Sprindrift's complement, that he actually at one point refers to the ship's commander, Captain Steve Burton (Gary Conway), by his last name -- a major concession to Burton's essential humanity and Kobick's own inability to ignore it, despite his official position.

During the first season, many of the episodes revolve around the Spindrift's crew and passengers trying to patch up their vessel for an eventual attempted return to Earth -- if they can get the equipment they need, if they can reach escape velocity, and find a space-warp that will take them back to Earth. There are so many barriers to their escape, that sheer curiosity about how they might overcome any of these obstacles made one want to tune in from week to week, this despite the fundamental concept behind the series being scientifically absurd -- people and animals (or anything else) 12 times larger than normal will, of necessity, weigh 144 times as much, and be incapable of movement, and it's not even a matter of weight so much as mass, which is independent of gravity. But the series was presented with enough of a brisk pace and sense of adventure so that few viewers were bothered by this matter (anymore than anyone ever tuned out The Adventures of Superman over the matter of how he flies . . . .).

The visitors are still learning about the giants' planet and social order during this season, and coping with their own individual motivations. This is especially true where Alexander Fitzhugh (Kurt Kasznar), an embezzler on the run with a million dollars, is concerned; he has a soft spot for the orphaned boy Barry Lockridge (Stefan Argrim), who looks up to him because Fitzhugh is wearing a US Navy commander's uniform (which is clearly a disguise, but one maintained for the run of the show), but otherwise is a sometimes unstable personality. The others aren't too much better -- Mark Wilson (Don Matheson) is a high-powered businessman and engineer who has an agenda of his own; and Valerie Scott (Deanna Lund) is a wealthy playgirl accustomed to getting her own way in most things. There were enough places for friction to keep the show interesting on a basic character level across the first season.

The first season credit sequence of the series has always been a point-of-interest for television and music mavens. Most of it is comprised of an animated motif in which a diminutive figure, representing the "little people," is being stalked by a much larger shadowy figure with a searchlight, while John Williams' sting-laden theme music plays, building gradually in intensity, in the background. Both the design and the music for this sequence bear a striking resemblance to the opening credits for Kraft Suspense Theater, which had aired across the early and middle 1960's on network television -- and had a similar musical accompaniment by . . . John Williams. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi

No sooner has he arrived at Fort Casper than Beau (Roger Moore) is framed for the murder of Indian brave Swift Rider (Miguel Landa). The actual killers were Marsh (John Zaccaro) and Lawson (Richard Coogan), a pair of crooked shopkeepers who have been systematically cheating Swift Rider's tribe, and are hoping to stir up a war between the Indians and the Army to cover their tracks. Locked up in the stockade, Beau is rescued by Chief Standing Bull (Robert Warwick)--but only so he can be married to Swift Rider's sister Pale Moon (Andra Martin, a marriage slated to end as quickly as it begins with Beau's swift and ignominious demise. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

From the folks who brought you I Was a Teenage Werewolf comes this relentlessly shlocky variation on the Frankenstein legend. Whit Bissell stars as Professor Frankenstein, descendant of you-know-who, who harbors a few radical theories about limb transplantation. Laughed at by students and colleagues alike, the good professor intends to prove the efficacy of his theories in his own lab at home--keeping an alligator as a "pet" to dispose of discarded body parts. When a carful of teenagers crashes near his home, Frankenstein and his assistant Carlton (Robert Burton) gather up the bodies and begin stitching up the fragments, adding a few chunks of flesh recovered from a convenient plane wreck. The result is a teenaged monster (Gary Conway) with a bad attitude. Already a bit off in the coop to begin with, Professor Frankenstein goes completely bonkers, using the monster to dispose of such awkward witnesses as the professor's fiancee Margaret (Phyllis Coates). The film's final burst of violence is filmed in color, for no discernable reason. If for nothing else, I Was a Teenage Frankenstein would be memorable for Professor F's deathless line to his sullen creation: "Answer me! You have a civil tongue in your head! I know, I sewed it in there!" ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi