Ernest Day Movies

The whole story is in the title of this made-for-TV heartstopper. Based on a true 1988 incident, the film details the breakout of a fire in a Los Angeles high-rise. The LA fire department does what it can, but their ladder equipment falls short of the 37-story requirement. Lee Majors, Lisa Hartman and Peter Scolari comprise the all-TV star cast of this Towering Inferno clone (which improves upon its role model): Majors is the LAFD supervisor, while Hartman and Scolari are the unlucky entrapped office workers. The focal point of Fire! Trapped on the 37th Floor is not the conflagration itself but the resourcefulness of the professional firefighters and the improvisational skill with which they utilize their equipment. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In this bizarre and very black comedy set in 1950s suburbia, Michael Laemle (Bryan Madorsky) comes to suspect that his conventional parents (Randy Quaid and Mary Beth Hurt) have a little secret which they have kept from him. Nothing too major - - just that they happen to be cannibals. It seems that Dad has been bringing home some extra meat from his place of work, a mortuary. As the lad grows ever more hysterical, he confesses his suspicions to the school psychologist (Sandy Dennis). She ridicules his notions and even comes to the house to show him how foolish he's being. Instead, she becomes an entree in the next family dinner, as Michael's parents attempt to indoctrinate him into their odd lifestyle. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

The third entry in the ultra-macho Rambo action movie series finds muscle-bound warrior John Rambo (co-writer and star Sylvester Stallone) refusing a request from his former Vietnam superior, Green Beret Colonel Trautman (Richard Crenna). Trautman is to lead a mission to aid the mujahedeen rebels fighting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, but the Buddhist Rambo turns his friend down. When the mission goes awry and Trautman is subsequently captured and tortured within a prison fortress, Rambo launches a rescue effort of his own, armed with his trademark bow and exploding arrows. Along the way, he allies himself with the freedom fighters and runs afoul of the villainous Russian commander Zaysen (Marc de Jonge). At the time of its release, Rambo III -- released in the same month in 1988 that Russian troops began withdrawing from Afghanistan -- was the most expensive film ever made, at 63 million dollars. ~ Karl Williams, Rovi

As Summers Die was produced as an "HBO Premiere" attraction. Set in the segregationist South of the 1950s, the film pits the wealthy but decadent members of a landed-gentry white family against a feisty old black woman, on whose property oil has been discovered. Idealistic attorney Scott Glenn bucks the family--and the inbred prejudices of the community--to protect the woman's interests. He finds himself with two unsuspected allies in the forms of young Jamie Lee Curtis and ancient Bette Davis, two "renegade" members of the very family that wants to grab the oil-rich land. As Summers Die had its cable-TV debut on May 17, 1986. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

A Passage to India, director David Lean's final film (for which he also received editing credit), breaks no new ground cinematically, but remains an exquisitely assembled harkback to such earlier Lean epics as Doctor Zhivago and Ryan's Daughter. Based on the novel by E. M. Forster, the film is set in colonial India in 1924. Adela Quested (Judy Davis), a sheltered, well-educated British woman, arrives in the town of Chandrapore, where she hopes to experience "the real India". Here she meets and befriends Dr. Aziz (Victor Banerjee), who, despite longstanding racial and social taboos, moves with relative ease and freedom amongst highborn British circles. Feeling comfortable with Adela, Aziz invites her to accompany him on a visit to the Marabar caves. Adela has previously exhibited bizarre, almost mystical behavior during other ventures into the Indian wilderness: this time, she emerges from the caves showing signs of injury and ill usage. To Aziz' horror, he is accused by Adela of raping her. Typically, the British ruling class rallies to Adela's defense, virtually convicting Aziz before the trial ever begins. Though he is eventually acquitted due to lack of evidence (in fact, director Lean never shows us what really happened), Aziz is ruined in the eyes of both the British and his own people-as is Adela. Woven into these proceedings is a subplot involving Adela's elderly travelling companion Mrs. Moore (Peggy Ashcroft), who through a series of plot twists too complex to describe here becomes a heroine of the Indian Independence movement. A Passage to India was nominated for several Academy Awards, scoring wins in the categories of Best Supporting Actress (Peggy Ashcroft) and Best Original Score (Maurice Jarre). A theatrical version of A Passage to India, written by Santha Rama Rau, was previously adapted for television by the BBC in the mid-1970s. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In this easily predictable romantic comedy, Gail (Anne Archer) is a no-nonsense geologist from the East Coast and John (Terry Jastrow) is a down-home, intuitive Texan whose expertise lies in guessing where petroleum is located -- Gail, as a geologist, is not in the habit of guessing. As the two meet and work together on a wildcat well in Texas, their romantic and financial fortunes are transparently tied together, and nothing at all comes as a surprise after their first initial meeting and disagreement. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

After a string of hits that included Planet of the Apes (1968), Patton (1970), Papillon (1973), and The Boys from Brazil (1978), director Franklin J. Schaffner stumbled badly with this expensive wannabe cousin to Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). Based on a novel by author Robin Cook, this romance-adventure stars Lesley-Anne Down as Erica Baron, a female archaeologist who is searching for a lost Egyptian tomb, hoping that she will be responsible for the next discovery along the lines of King Tut's Tomb. Erica witnesses the murder of a native, Abdu Hamdi (John Gielgud doing his best Alec Guinness impersonation) and when she attempts to solve the crime, she becomes the target of a campaign to kill her using a variety of creative methods, including bats and entombment. In the course of her adventures, Erica also falls in love with a handsome Egyptologist, Ahmed Khazzan (Frank Langella). Sphinx (1981) was a box office disaster from which Schaffner never recovered, directing only three more pictures. ~ Karl Williams, Rovi

In Revenge of the Pink Panther, for the final time, the bumbling but impeturbable Inspector Clouseau (Peter Sellers) maddens his long-suffering boss Dreyfus (Herbert Lom), sharpens his wits and martial skills with his manservant Cato (Burt Kwouk) and foils the bad guys without ever having a clue about what he is doing. In the story, Clouseau allows a gang of drug racketeers to believe that he has been assassinated and dons a series of disguises as he travels all over the world in order to apprehend the culprits. He is assisted by Simone Legree (Dyan Cannon), the former girlfriend of the drug-lord Douvier (Robert Webber). Though it received a very mixed reception from critics, this, the sixth of the Pink Panther series, did very well at the box-office. Sadly, it was actor Peter Sellers' final Pink Panther performance before his death in 1980 (the later film, The Trail of Pink Panther was composed of outtakes from previous Pink Panther films). ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

Fifty secret agents and civil servants, all apparently healthy and robust, have died of unknown causes over a two-year period. Steed (Patrick MacNee), Gambit (Gareth Hunt) and Purdey (Gareth Hunt) investigate the health farm where all of the victims had worked out before their untimely demises. Cult-movie favorite Caroline Munro appears as a health-farm employee who may or may not be in on the sinister plot. Clips from previous episodes of The New Avengers) are seen during Steed's drug-induced flashback. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Also titled The Price of Freedom, Operation Daybreak is a retelling of the terrible consequences attending the assassination of Nazi-occupation leader Richard Heydrich. When Heydrich puts all of Czechoslovakia under his thumb, a group of Czech expatriates parachute into their homeland to kill the man known as "The Hangman." They succeed, and in retaliation the Nazis wipe the tiny Czech village of Lidice off the map, killing its male residents and carting off its women and children to concentration camps. For the purposes of the plot, assassins Timothy Bottoms and Martin Shaw survive the massacre, albeit only briefly. The Heydrich/Lidice tragedy was previously dramatized in two wartime films, Hangmen Also Die (1943) and Hitler's Madman (1943). Operation Daybreak was adapted from Seven Men at Daybreak, a novel by Alan Burgess. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In this adventure, an anthropologist takes his son to Africa to chronicle the rituals performed by the Masai during a solar eclipse. When they first arrive, both father and son are terribly self-absorbed and aloof, but after spending time with the friendly tribe and making friends with the chief and his son, the two begin to mellow out and become caring human beings. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

In 1973, the seminal rock band Led Zeppelin, one of the founders of the music genre known as "heavy metal," went on tour and performed in Madison Square Garden. This documentary has concert footage, including the 23-minute-long version of the song "Dazed and Confused." The film also shows the musicians at home, pursuing some of their hobbies including drag-racing. The concert coverage also has scenes revealing what took place backstage, and a discussion of the theft of the band's cash during their visit to New York. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi