Fred Dekker Movies

The fifth weekly TV series in the indefatigable Star Trek franchise, Enterprise took the viewer "back to where it all began" (or so read the promotional copy). Set 100 years in the future -- yet still 150 years before the "original" Star Trek series -- the new show charted the origins of the starship Enterprise, beginning with the first close encounter between humans and Klingons. Brought to Starfleet Medical after crash-landing in a rural area, the injured Klingon Klaang is treated with hostility by the attending Vulcan physicians, something that the earthling staffer cannot understand. Pioneering Starfleet pilot Jonathan Archer (Scott Bakula), skipper of the recently constructed Enterprise starship, volunteers to take Klaang back to his home planet of Kronos. The continuity proper begins when Klaang is kidnapped en route by the genetically enhanced Sulibans, prompting Archer and his crew to embark upon the first of many bold forays into "where no man has gone before." Much of the series' entertainment value was engendered by displays of "primitive" pre-Federation equipment and paraphernalia, with new technology being introduced with each passing week -- new, that is, to those three or four people who have never seen any of the various Star Trek incarnations. Featured in the cast were Jolene Blalock as Archer's somewhat condescending Vulcanian first officer, T'Pol; John Billingsley as brilliant Vulcan medical doctor Phlox; Linda Park as hyper-kinetic linguistics expert Ensign Hoshi Sato; Connor Trinnear as wisecracking good-ol'-boy engineer Trip Tucker ; Dominic Keating as weapons expert Malcolm Reed; and Anthony Montgomery as navigator Travis Mayweather. Making its much-anticipated UPN premiere as a two-hour special on September 26, 2001, Enterprise settled into its standard 60-minute weekly length thereafter. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Ricochet, a suspenseful, exciting police thriller that loses its way at the end, is the story of a good cop whose life is destroyed by an obsessed psychotic criminal whom he sent to prison years before. Nick (Denzel Washington) is a successful happily married police officer with a distinguished record. He is drugged, kidnapped and framed by Blake (John Lithgow) who has never forgiven him for arresting him years before. Nick must redeem himself both to the police force, his family and the public who had come to love and respect him. Denzel Washington is excellent in his role of the good man in an impossible situation. John Lithgow, while always interesting, is completely over-the-top as the psychotic criminal, and the film looses plausibility during an extended and highly improbable and unbelievable final chase sequence around the Watts Towers. Despite these flaws, Ricochet is an exiting suspense film with a fine performance by Washington and worth watching despite its disappointing conclusion. ~ Linda Rasmussen, Rovi

A group of adolescent monster movie enthusiasts form a club that meets in a treehouse in this pre-teen horror feature. When Dracula, The Mummy, Frankenstein, and The Wolfman are joined by Gill-Man in the search for a magic amulet, the boys form the Monster Squad to battle the forces of evil. The boys get unexpected help from Frankenstein when the monster grows tired of being continually bossed around by Dracula. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

A mild box-office hit for New World Pictures, this lightweight attempt at horror parody from Friday the 13th producer Sean S. Cunningham stars former Greatest American Hero William Katt as a best-selling pop-horror novelist Roger Cobb (à la Stephen King) who suffers an insurmountable case of writer's block after separation from his soap-star wife (Kay Lenz) and the disappearance of their young son. Hoping to purge his personal demons by writing his Vietnam War memoirs, he moves into the massive mansion once occupied by his deceased aunt (who hanged herself in her bedroom), and finds himself surrounded by demons of a completely different kind. Roger takes the weirdness in stride, attempting to face down marauding monsters, interdimensional trap doors, and other supernatural horrors while concealing his predicament from the neighbors (except for the befuddled Harold Gorton [George Wendt], who tries gamely to play along with Roger's hare-brained monster-fighting schemes). ~ Cavett Binion, Rovi