Desmond Davis Movies

The made-for-TV Freedom Fighter is set in the divided Berlin of 1961. Tony Danza plays an idealistic American GI whose sweetheart is among those stranded in East Berlin by the erection of the Wall; he vows to help as many Easterners as possible escape to the freedom of the West. Other cast members include Sid Caesar as a philosophical holocaust survivor and David McCallum as a martinet Communist military officer. The film was lensed in West Berlin, one year before the Wall was bulldozed into oblivion. The script for Freedom Fighter was loosely based on The Berlin Wall, a book by Pierre Galante. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Love With a Perfect Stranger was the first of a series of made-for-cable movies based on the Harlequin Romance novels. Fabulously wealthy widow Marilu Henner falls for mysterious Irishman Daniel Massey the moment she spots him on a Florence-bound train. All she knows about Massey is that he lives in sumptuous fashion, and that he insists that she give up her business interests to marry him. If you're familiar with the Harlequin formula, you know where this is going. However, if we didn't tell you here, you might not know that the film was directed by Desmond Davis; for reasons of his own, Davis had his name removed from the credits. Adapted from a novel by Pamela Wallace, Love With a Perfect Stranger debuted over the Showtime cable service on October 12, 1986. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Based on the novel by Agatha Christie and set in the late 1950s, this unevenly told film starts when Dr. Arthur Calgary (Donald Sutherland) comes back to England after two years on an Antarctic expedition and discovers that the man he is searching for has been executed for murder. At the beginning of his expedition he had given a ride one night to a hitchhiker and accidentally ended up with his address book. To his horror, the hitchhiker's mother was killed on that night, and he had been the alibi that would have saved him from execution. Spurred on by his sense of shock and guilt, Calgary makes contact with the family and is put off by their disinterest in finding the real killer. It seems that the mother had many enemies among her close family members: her husband was having an affair, there was a blackmail scheme in the works, and many felt that she had already excluded them from any inheritance. Although the acting is uneven and the plot may seem predictable or contrived to non-Christie readers, the story retains interest, and Dave Brubeck's jazz score adds a special dimension to the proceedings. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Based on a Sherlock Holmes story, the Sign of Four is about an ex-convict out to wreak vengeance on an army major (Thorley Walters) who left him stranded in a penal colony while making off with a valuable stash of treasure. But with a flat, dull treatment of both the story and its characters, including Holmes and Watson, this first in an intended series of 13 such adventures is not likely to lead others to the next Holmes mystery. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Vincentio (Kenneth Colley), Duke of Vienna, is a good and kindly ruler, but his leniency has allowed vice to thrive. So he decides to leave town temporarily, putting in charge his stern chief deputy, Angelo (Tim Piggott-Smith). Immediately, Angelo condemns the young nobleman, Claudio (Christopher Strauli), to death for getting his sweetheart, Juliet (Jacqueline Pearce), pregnant. Isabella (Kate Nelligan), an aspiring nun who is Claudio's sister, is disgusted by Angelo's suggestion that she "lay down the treasures" of her body to save her brother's life. Meanwhile, the Duke returns to town in the guise of a friar to see how his domain is faring in his absence. When he spies around, he learns of Claudio's imprisonment, and he overhears the dilemma that Angelo has created for Isabella. The helpful ''friar'' then suggests to Isabella that Mariana (Jacqueline Pearce), who was once betrothed to Angelo, take her place in the darkness of Angelo's bedroom. Mariana agrees, and the scheme goes according to plan. However, Angelo reneges on his promise because he fears Claudio will seek revenge if he is released, and instead he orders Claudio's immediate execution. However, Duke Vincentio, still disguised as a friar, persuades the prison warden to spare Claudio and to trick Angelo into thinking Claudio is dead. When Duke Vincentio doffs his disguise and reappears as himself, Angelo, realizing the game is up, asks to be executed to avoid a degrading trial. But Mariana, steadfast in her love for Angelo, pleads for his life. Mercy and a happy ending triumph. Claudio returns from the dead to wed Juliet. Angelo is spared and marries Mariana. The Duke then begs the hand of Isabella. He tells her, ''Dear Isabel, I have a motion much imports your good; whereto if you'll a willing ear incline, what's mine is yours and what is yours is mine.'' ~ Mike Cummings, All Movie Guide

This romantic comedy finds Candida (Barbara Ferris) going to live with her elderly spinster aunts after the death of her father. Finding things very unexciting there, she quickly leaves for Paris and enrolls in a university to study. She becomes pregnant after meeting a young student at a museum. When the baby is born, she manages to convince the nosey relatives she is just caring for the baby of a friend. A trip to Italy finds her in the arms of an American man and Candida is soon pregnant again. A woman gives her baby to Candida as she prepares to leave for home at the train station. She suddenly has two young babies and another on the way, getting far more education than she had bargained for. Her main confidant is Savage (Harry Andrews), her late father's caretaker, to whom she reveals the truth about her experiences. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

Based on the novel by Margaret Adams, this British drama features young Rupert Davies as David, a seven-year-old boy who is unsure of how to act around his seven-year-old nephew. He wants to be a child but feels he should take responsibility for his nephew. His confusion grows and he becomes unsure about how he should act around any children. David even begins to withdraw from his schoolmates and his family. Eventually, he comes to understand that everyone in his family, including his father, with whom he's had some disagreements, wants him just to be himself. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide

In this adventure, set in 19th-century India when the British were attempting to stop the slave trade against the Sudanese Moslems, a brave trooper and a new lieutenant must help a governess and her charge get to safety. The two soldiers despise each other. The experienced trooper has little tolerance for the naive bumblings of the lieutenant. As they travel, they encounter a variety of adventures including bouts with wild animals, dangerous geography, and Moslem guerrillas. The two men begin to respect each other. The older soldier also falls in love with the governess. Eventually, the rag tag travelers end up blowing an arsenal sky-high and rescuing several British soldiers. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Tony Richardson's adaptation of Henry Fielding's classic novel was one of the most critically acclaimed and popular comedies of its time, winning four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. The film follows Tom Jones (Albert Finney), a country boy who becomes one of the wildest playboys in 18th century England, developing a ravenous taste for women, food, and rowdy adventures. Over the course of the film, Jones tries to amass his own fortune and win the heart of Sophie (Susannah York). Not only does John Osborne's Oscar-winning screenplay stay true to the tone of the novel, but the cast -- including Lynn Redgrave in her first screen role -- tears into the story with spirited abandon, making the movie a wildly entertaining and witty experience. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Movie Guide

Filmed in Germany by American director John Huston, Freud is a sincerely felt but overly simplistic biopic of the pioneering psychotherapist. The brooding, introspective Montgomery Clift was a curious choice for the role of Sigmund Freud; at times he looks more off the beam than some of his patients (his comic-opera Viennese accent doesn't add to the credibility). The screenplay takes the shape of a detective mystery, attempting to link various crises in Freud's private and professional life with his theoretical conclusions, most often doing so within well-staged dream sequences. Less successful are the scenes with the poor unfortunates who come to Freud for help, notably an embarrassing sequence with a young man suffering from an Oedipus complex. Freud was at one point supposed to have been scripted by existentialist playwright Jean-Paul Sartre, who gave up after he realized that the subject would require a four- or five-hour film at the very least. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Although there may be a few minor gaps here and there in the storyline, Faces in the Dark is a suspenseful drama by director David Eady. Richard Hammond (John Gregson) owns a factory, and on the very day his wife Christine (Mai Zetterling ) is coming to his office to tell him she wants a divorce, he is accidentally blinded during an experiment. His wife relents in her decision, but Richard is still as abrasive as ever, and now the bumpy spots in his personality are made worse by self-pity and a suspicion that he is losing his sanity. Meanwhile, Richard begins to suspect that the cool and aloof Christine and Richard's partner conspire against him, but as a blind man he has fewer resources to pinpoint why he is suspicious. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

The Trollenberg Terror, authored by Peter Key and directed by Quentin Lawrence, started life on British television as a six-part installment of ITV's Saturday Serial in late 1956 and early 1957. The big-screen version, was adapted by Jimmy Sangster, who compressed most of the best horrific and mystery elements of the original into an under-90-minute vehicle, which Lawrence directed. At a remote Alpine village, mountaineers suddenly start dying, their bodies horribly multilated -- at first, these incidents seem like they could just be accidents. But the arrival of a pair of sisters (Janet Munro, Jennifer Jayne), one of whom feels an almost telepathic connection with someone or something on the mountain, attracts the interest of American Alan Brooks (Forrest Tucker), a trouble-shooter for the United Nations. He and Prof. Crevett (Warren Mitchell), who has been monitoring the radiation levels in the area from a research station set up by the government, determine that there is a pattern to these deaths that Brooks has seen before, in a prior incident in the Andes Mountains. They determine that the Earth has been invaded, at high altitude, by a race of gigantic, tentacled aliens who live in thin atmosphere and at extremely low temperatures. Camouflaging themselves in a dense radioactive cloud, they've been content up until now to hide their existence while experimenting with the inhabitants of their new world -- they've taken over some human subjects telepathically, and also re-animated dead bodies. And they've killed those -- such as the hapless mountaineers who have stumbled upon their new lair, or those few humans whose stronger-than-usual mental powers have allow them to sense the aliens' presence -- who threaten to discover them. But now Crevett sees that the aliens are adapting and moving down the mountain, the cloud bringing their necessary cold temperatures with them, and threatening to engulf the village as prelude to an attack on it and all that lies beyond. The Trollenberg Terror was retitled The Crawling Eye when it was released in the United States, in an obvious attempt to draw the same audience that had made the previous year's British film adaptation of a tv serial -- The Quatermass Xperiment, renamed The Creeping Unknown -- into a huge hit in the US. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide