Eddy Donno Movies

This preposterous thriller stars Tom Berenger (Platoon) as Ernie Dewalt, a drug-addicted ex-cop with a catheter, and that isn't the worst of it. Ernie teaches creative writing at a small college where prominent professor Alex Laughton (Stephen Lang) has been blown apart with a shotgun while groping the frequently nude Jeri Kari Wuhrer in a car on Lover's Lane. Laughton's widow, Elizabeth (Valeria Golino) drags the reluctant Ernie out of retirement to clear her name, as she is the prime suspect. When he's not mainlining drugs or trading japes with investigating detective Robert Davi, Ernie is haunted by visions of Jeri, taunting him about his incompetence. It's not really Jeri, of course, and may even be the spirit of his former alcoholism, but the plot is so muddled that it's hard to tell. Ernie has a vision of himself snapping nude photos of Jeri and Laughton having sex in a field; Elizabeth is loudly whispered about in the local supermarket; and the ridiculous resolution will please no one. Bad film buffs should get a kick out of Ernie weeping to Elizabeth about his catheter, but other viewers should avoid this jaw-dropping stupidity at all costs. ~ Robert Firsching, Rovi

Playing in a manner that can be conservatively described as larger than life, Kurt Russell plays a macho truck driver who agrees to go to the San Francisco airport and pick up his friend's (Dennis Dun) fiancee (Suzee Pai, freshly arrived from China. Suddenly, a gang of Chinatown toughs kidnap the girl right before Russell's eyes. After a wild chase sequence, Russell discovers that the girl has been abducted by a genuine, bonafide sorceror (James Hong), the ghost of a 3000 year old warlord. And that's just for starters. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

John Wayne toplines this biography of the cattle owner John Simpson Chisum, a controversial figure who was the most powerful man in New Mexico during the Wild West era. A founder and prominent citizen in the town of Lincoln, Chisum is slow to act when ruthless land baron Lawrence Murphy (Forrest Tucker) moves in on several local businesses and takes them over. By the time Chisum and his ally, fellow rancher Henry Tunstall (Patrick Knowles), decide to go to the law, Murphy's already bought and paid for influence there, as well. The only recourse left to the cattlemen is to take Murphy on in all-out range war that embroils everyone in the county, including Tunstall's hand Billy the Kid Bonney (Geoffrey Deuel) and his comrade Pat Garrett (Glenn Corbett). Screenwriter and producer Andrew J. Fenady based the script for Chisum (1970) on his own short story, a very loosely fact-based account of Chisum, Billy the Kid and their involvement in the Lincoln County wars. ~ Karl Williams, Rovi

This lifeless action feature finds mafia hitman Carmine Longo (Mike Lane) seeking vengeance against the Zebra Force led by Cougar (Timmy Brown). Frank Barnes (Jim Mitchum) joins the group when his Zebra Force buddy is killed. Lindsey Crosby (son of Bing) plays a police sergeant, and Frank Sinatra, Jr. appears briefly as the mob lawyer Kozlo. Only those interested in the offspring of aging or dead performers could find anything of interest in this film. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

Adapted from the novel by Pete Hamill, Flesh and Blood stars Tom Berenger as Bobby Fallon, a street punk who develops into a topnotch boxer while in prison. Upon his release, Bobby is taken under the wing of manager John Cassavetes. Outwardly tough and unmovable, Bobby is tortured with memories of his miserable childhood, which included an incestuous episode with his mother (Suzanne Pleshette). This two-part TV movie concludes with a heavyweight championship bout, bankrolled by Bobby's long-estranged father (Mitchell Ryan). Photographed with Rocky-like intensity by Vilmos Zsigismond, Flesh and Blood first aired on October 14 and 16, 1979. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Somewhere amid the filmmakers' attempts to disorient the viewers of this film with the old movie-within-a-movie trick, it would seem they also got themselves completely lost in the process. The story opens with a false start, depicting an elderly woman being stalked by a faceless maniac (actually a scene from a retired special-effects artist's demo reel). The "real" story begins as the man's daughter (horror's head-spinning sweetheart Linda Blair) is waylaid by a band of hooligans en route to her dad's mountain cabin. This incurs the wrath of Blair's mutant brother, who lives in a hidden compartment within the cabin. As if that weren't enough, even more monsters from Blair's gnarled family tree show up for a lightning bonus round -- including Tab Hunter as a homicidal plastic surgeon. All is revealed (sort of) as yet another movie-within-a-movie, clear evidence of a writer in way over his head. Cable TV prints actually contained an additional twist ending, apparently for no reason whatsoever. ~ Cavett Binion, Rovi

Star James Caan made his directorial debut in the fact-based Hide in Plain Sight. Caan plays a divorced husband and father who comes to visit his ex-wife and children, only to discover that they've evidently disappeared from the face of the earth. Running up against the stonewall tactics of the authorities, Caan eventually learns that his wife's present husband is a witness against the mob, and that his family members have been given a new home and new identities via the Justice Department's new witness relocation program. Denied information concerning his children's whereabouts, Caan desperately attempts to find them himself. Hide in Plain Sight was adapted by Spencer Eastman from the book by Leslie Waller. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Filled with enough cameos to keep film buffs entertained, this otherwise routine action-comedy by John Landis boasts Michelle Pfeiffer as one of its major attractions. She plays Diana, a woman prone to having affairs with some very dangerous men, and Jeff Goldblum is Ed Okin, an aerospace engineer whose lot is thrown in with Diana's when the woman is caught in a bind at the airport. The beautiful Diana is an airhead on the scale of the Hindenberg, her only concerns are clothes and men -- which she either most attractively wears or wears out, depending. While Ed is at the airport one day trying to sort out his life, Diana arrives with six smuggled emeralds in tow and is immediately welcomed by several hired assassins. Fear and expediency propel her into Ed's car, and the two are off on a series of narrow escapes that has them pursued by everyone from Iranians to baddies played by well-known international directors (Roger Vadim) or singers (David Bowie) or comedians (Dan Aykroyd). ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

A hapless outlaw discovers he isn't any better off on the right side of the law in this offbeat western comedy set at the turn of the century. While Bickford Waner (Dennis Hopper) is known to lawmen as notorious bandit Kid Blue, his reputation far outstrips his actual success as a crook, and after a train robbery falls apart moments after it began, Bick decides it's time to go straight. Bick settles in Dime Box, Texas, a shabby little town dominated by a ceramics factory that makes novelty ashtrays, and manages to find a lose a series of odd jobs through his innate clumsiness and his short temper. Bick moves into a rooming house where he's befriended by Reese Ford (Warren Oates), a good natured man fascinated with the ancient Greeks and their ideals of male friendship, and his wife Molly (Lee Purcell), who doesn't believe their relationship need be platonic. Bick also finds a friend in pill-popping Preacher Bob (Peter Boyle) and makes an especially fierce enemy in foul-tempered sheriff "Mean John" Simpson (Ben Johnson). After his personal and professional lives take unexpected turns for the worse, Bick decides he needs to go back to a life of crime, though he hasn't gotten much better at armed robbery than he was before. Also starring Janice Rule, Ralph Waite and Clifton James, Kid Blue was shot in 1971, but not released until 1973, after the box-office failure of Dennis Hopper's The Last Movie sent his career into a tailspin; it would be his last role in an American feature until 1979's Apocalypse Now. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

In this emotional roller coaster ride, Robert Harmon (John Cassavetes) is a street-wise, sometimes obnoxious writer currently working on a book about the seamier side of buying/selling love, and Sarah Lawson (Gena Rowlands) is an emotive wife and mother struggling through a divorce and custody battle. When Sarah lands on Robert's doorstep with her suitcases, it seems at first that she has returned to her husband. Robert has several women staying at his place (research sources!), but when his real ex-wife arrives with their young son, he sends the women packing. Sarah, it turns out, is Robert's sister. As the two work out their own live's hurdles -- Robert, the unaccustomed father with his 8-year-old son, and Sarah, trying to cope with her custody battle and its results -- their way of handling adversity and personal burdens becomes the real subtext of the film. This film won the Golden Bear Award at the 1984 Berlin Film Festival. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Piper Laurie (the mother in the horror film Carrie) appears here as the mother of a deranged deaf-mute girl. The mom runs a drive-in theater which shows mostly horror films. The girl is deranged because she is possessed by the spirit of her long-dead dad, a gangster who was gunned down by the mob. The vengeful spirit uses his daughter to gain vengeance on his assassins, many of whom now work at the drive-in. One by one the mobsters bite the dust as the demonized little girl extracts revenge for her deceased daddy. ~ Rovi

Robert DeNiro continues to lampoon his tough-guy persona with this spoof of buddy cop movies that teams him with comic co-star Eddie Murphy. DeNiro is L.A.P.D. detective Mitch Preston, a gruff, no-nonsense 28-year veteran whose bust of a drug gang is botched one night by Trey Sellars (Murphy), a bumbling patrolman who's really a frustrated actor at heart. When Mitch's aggravation is captured by a television news crew, he fires his gun in their direction and becomes an instant media celebrity, while earning himself a temporary suspension at work. After his fame draws the attention of network TV producer Chase Renzi (Rene Russo), Mitch is soon informed that the only way he can get back to work is to allow a production crew to trail him on the job for a new cop reality series called "Showtime". In order to make the taciturn lawman more palatable to the viewing public, he's paired with the camera-friendly, fast-talking Trey. The new partners drive each other crazy, but their mismatched sensibilities make for great TV, while their newfound fame has its advantages in getting them back on the trail of those escaped drug dealers, who possess a powerful new weapon. Showtime co-stars Frankie Faison and William Shatner, who sends up his own TV cop role in T.J. Hooker. ~ Karl Williams, Rovi