Johnny Crawford Movies

When a young woman believes that she is being controlled by spirits, she hires a parapsychologist to root out the source of her torment. ~ Iotis Erlewine, All Movie Guide

Retreating to a placid Maine lake resort in order to finish her latest novel without distractions, Jessica (Angela Lansbury) decides to go birdwatching one fine morning. During this pursuit, Jessica witnesses what seems to be a struggle between a man and a woman in a boat on the lake, ending with the woman falling overboard. The man is accused of murder, but Jessica believes that the victim was not pushed in the water but instead jumped on her own accord--and the mystery deepens when it turns out that the drowned woman was a champion swimmer! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Known to superstitious actors the world over as "The Scottish Play," MacBeth is widely considered one of Shakespeare's masterpieces. This particular rendition of the tale of a power-hungry Scottish general and his loyal, cold-hearted wife differs from others in that the actors eschew the traditional affected accents of Shakespearean performers. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide

About ten minutes into The Shootist, Doctor Hostetler (James Stewart) tells aging Western gunfighter John Bernard Books (John Wayne), "You have a cancer." Knowing that his death will be painful and lingering, Books is determined to be shot in the line of "duty." In his remaining two months, Books settles scores with old enemies, including gambler Pulford (Hugh O'Brian) and Marshall Thibido (Harry Morgan) and reaches out to new friends, including a feisty widow (Lauren Bacall) and her hero-worshipping son (Ron Howard). Throughout the film, Books' imminent demise is compared with the decline of the West, as represented by the automobiles and streetcars that have begun to blight the main street of Books' hometown. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Exploitation film vixen Claudia Jennings stars with Jocelyn Jones in this all-trash rip-off of Bonnie and Clyde with Jennings and Morgan playing a pair of sexy bank robbers who blast their way into countryside banks with a carload of fresh dynamite. The story literally begins with a bang as Candy Morgan (Claudia Jennings) dynamites her way out of jail and proceeds to blow up a bank where Ellie-Jo Turner (Jocelyn Jones) has just lost her job. Candy and Ellie-Jo team up and go on a bank-robbing crime spree. When Ellie-Jo is detained for shoplifting, the outlaw girls take Slim (Johnny Crawford) as a hostage. Slim and Ellie-Jo become lovers and Slim joins the merry band, playing the role of hostage during the gals' bank robberies. However, the law is slowly closing in on them. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

In this Canadian drama, set on the coast of British Columbia, a university student visits his brother George who has been paying for the younger man's education. The brother is now hoping that George will give him a job too. Unfortunately, George has no openings. Instead, the younger brother hooks up with an Indian fisherman. Trouble ensues as big brother hates Indians. Bar-room mayhem ensues culminating with George killing his younger brother's friend. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

An inner-city point man is on the run from both the cops and the crooks in this streetwise blaxpolitation drama. T (Robert Hooks) is a combination pool shark, private detective, and all-purpose ghetto fixer who operates out of a billiards parlor in South Central Los Angeles. T has done well for himself -- he drives a fancy new car, wears expensive suits, and lives in an upscale apartment -- but he also looks out for folks on the block, and knows how to tell the good guys from the bad guys on either side of the law. T is approached by Chalky (Paul Winfield) and his partner, Pete (Ralph Waite), who run a floating dice game in the neighborhood. Chalky tells T they've been ripped off by a band of thieves several nights running, and they want him to find out who the masked stick-up men are. T is willing to do the job for the right price, but it turns out Chalky and Pete are trying to take down rival crime kingpin Big (Julius Harris), and when one of Big's underlings turns up dead, T is blamed for the crime by both Big and corrupt police captain Joe Marx (Bill Smithers). Trouble Man also stars Paula Kelly's as T's love interest, and features an original score by Marvin Gaye. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Having struck pay dirt with his 1958 western Rio Bravo, Howard Hawks more or less remade the picture twice in the 1960s. The first of these rehashes was El Dorado, with Rio Bravo star John Wayne back for more. Wayne plays a gunfighter who rides into El Dorado to link up with his old pal, sheriff Robert Mitchum ("It's the big one with the big two!" declared the film's advertisements). Wayne has turned down a job with evil land baron Ed Asner, who'd hoped to drive a family off the land that he needed for its water. That family, headed by R.G. Armstrong, is convinced that Wayne is working with Asner; when Armstrong's son Johnny Crawford dies, Wayne is held responsible, earning him a bullet in the spine from Crawford's sister Michele Carey. A year passes: Wayne returns to El Dorado, in the company of his new saddle pal James Caan. They find that Asner is still up to his old tricks, and that Mitchum has descended into alcoholism. Several plot twists and power shifts ensue, leading to the slam-bang climax, with the partially paralyzed Wayne, the newly crippled Mitchum (on crutches), and the concussion-suffering Caan battling together to stave off Asner's minions. The final long-shot, of Wayne and Mitchum limping off together arm-in-arm, is one of the most enduring images in the entire Hawks canon. If they loved it twice they'll love it thrice: in 1969, John Wayne and Howard Hawks teamed up for a third Rio Bravo derivation, Rio Lobo--which, like the first two films, was scripted by Leigh Brackett. Incidentally, that's famed artist Olaf Weighorst (whose paintings appear in the title sequence) in a cameo as the gunsmith. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this religious movie, a married pair of television writers begin researching a script on restless teenagers and end up as born-again Christians. Meanwhile their own adolescent son runs away with a pregnant teen who is looking for the child's father. When she cannot, she tries to kill herself. Later, the son goes to a Billy Graham crusade with his dad, and he too is saved. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

This episode reunites Branded star Chuck Connors with Johnny Crawford, who from 1958 through 1963 had played Connors' son on the popular western series The Rifleman. With all of the menfolk out prospecting for silver, the town of Jefferson City has been left unguarded, save for callow young deputy sheriff Clay Holden (Crawford), a few old people and children, and a one-legged bartender (Richard Arlen). Enter a group of outlaws who kidnap Clay's young wife Karin (Charla Doherty) and order him to stay out of their way while they rob the town's bank. Riding into this tense situation, so-called coward Jason McCord (Connors) must teach young Holden the true meaning--and proper application--of courage under fire. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The fifth and final season of the ABC western The Rifleman opens with one of its best-ever episodes, the two-part "Waste", directed by cult favorite Joseph H. Lewis (Terror in a Texas Town) and written by actor Robert Culp (I Spy), in which rancher Lucas McCain (Chuck Connors) and his son Mark (Johnny Crawford) conduct a desperate search for their friend Marshal Torrance (Paul Fix) in a hellish Mexican ghost town. The next episode introduces Patricia Blair in the role of Lou Mallory, an attractive red-headed sharpster who quickly gains control of the North Fork hotel and merrily begins buying up all the neighboring property--only to be stopped short by Lucas, who won't sell at any price. Lou Mallory was a replacement for the previous season's resident female lead Millie Scott (Joan Taylor), a more demure (and frankly less interesting) character. It was Ms. Blair's bravura work on The Rifleman that would land her the much longer gig as the wife of frontiersman Fess Parker in the NBC series Daniel Boone. In other episodes, Edward Platt, the future "chief" on Get Smart, plays a senator whom a gang of desperadoes target as the first man to be assassinated by Gatling gun; Sammy Davis Jr., who'd scored a hit in a guest-star stint the previous season, returns in a different role as a "fast gun" who turns out to be all brag, no fact; future film director Paul Mazursky appears as a rustler who adopts a Halloween disguise to pull off his perfidy; and in a tense episode undoubtedly inspired by the classic Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode "Poison", it is up to young Mark to save his father from a deadly snake. The series' final episode, "Old Tony", shows how far The Rifleman has come since its first episode in 1958; Mark McCain, only 12 years old when the series started, is now squiring a toothsome young lady named Laurie, played by Karen Sue Trent. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide