George Duning Movies

The 1980 Winter Olympics at Lake Placid provides the setting for this drama that centers on a man's mid-life crisis. While there, he gets involved with love, sex and other diversions. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In The Man With Bogart's Face, an affectionate send-up of the Bogart detective films of the 1940s, Robert Sacchi plays a man who idolizes Humphrey Bogart so much he has his features altered to look exactly like his idol. He then opens up a detective agency under the name Sam Marlowe (an amalgam of the names of Bogart's characters from The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep). Sam hires the Duchess (Misty Rowe) as his secretary ("She looked like Marilyn Monroe and made about as much sense as Gracie Allen") and "Sam Marlowe, Private Eye" is in business. Sam gets a meager response until a shooting puts his picture in the paper and business starts to flourish. Particularly attracted to Marlowe's services are a collection of characters -- Gena (Michelle Phillips), an attractive Gene Tierney type; Commodore Anastas (Victor Buono), a Greek shipping tycoon and Sidney Greenstreet lookalike; and the mysterious Mr. Zebra (Herbert Lom doing a Peter Lorre imitation). They are all trying to find the famous Eyes of Alexander -- a priceless set of stones from a statue of Alexander the Great. Also on hand are old Hollywood pros George Raft, Yvonne DeCarlo and Mike Mazurki. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Murder abounds at a wax museum after the owner decides to sell it, and seemingly waxen figures come alive. By the way, are wax images normally supposed to breathe when being filmed? ~ Kristie Hassen, All Movie Guide

Gay Talese's bestseller Honor Thy Father is given a superb, albeit slightly expurgated, treatment in this made-for-TV movie. Joseph Bologna plays Bill Bonanno, the son of New York City Mafia-don Joe "Bananas" Bonanno (Raf Vallone). When his father disappears in 1964, Bill is compelled to take over the "family business." This proves well-nigh impossible as several Mafiosi fall over themselves trying to stake their own claims within the Bonanno empire. Lewis John Carlino, the script writer for the 1968 Mafia flick The Brotherhood, adapted the Talese novel for television. Joseph Campanella "appears" as the slyly noncommittal off-screen narrator. Honor Thy Father was first telecast March 1, 1973. The producers sagaciously withheld the film from the critics until that night to make certain no reviewer would spoil the audience's enjoyment by prematurely cataloging the differences between the film and the book. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The made-for-TV Climb an Angry Mountain revives the reliable "country cop vs city cop" concept, with Fess Parker and Barry Nelson on either side of the argument. New York City officer Nelson wants to use state-of-art methods to track down a fugitive Indian criminal (played by former football star Joe Kapp) who is hiding out on California's Mount Shasta. Local rancher/sheriff Parker wants to handle the case on his own, since his son (Clay O'Brien) is the fugitive's hostage. The rival authority figures eventually come to the "united we stand" understanding in trailing their quarry. Climb an Angry Mountain benefits mightily from extensive location shooting. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Black Noon is a witchcraft-on-the-prairie endeavor starring Roy Thinnes as a minister and Lyn Loring (Mrs. Roy Thinnes) as his wife. Newly arrived in a small western town, Thinnes finds his spirtual leadership challenged by a mysterious force that is causing misfortune to befall the settlers. Once he gets past the closed-mouthed residents, Thinnes learns that the town's controlling force is a cult of devil worshippers who practice voodoo. The allegorical elements of Black Noon are on the spell-it-out level of those religious pamphlets one frequently finds stuffed under one's windshield wiper. The film was shot in the desert regions just north of Los Angeles. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This made-for-TV movie stars Herschel Bernardi as a middle-aged widower, contentedly resigned to his bachelorhood. Bernardi's well-meaning friends and relatives are tireless in their efforts to hitch him up with a new bride. All the candidates are played by prominent actresses (Shirley Jones, Tina Louise, June Lockhart et. al.); few of them are compatible with poor Mr. Bernardi. The bemused bachelor is determined to remain unmarried until he meets a lovely widow who is similarly indisposed to matrimony. Under the directorial guidance of Jerry Paris, But I Don't Want to Get Married rolls along with TV-sitcom efficiency. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Quarantined is set in a clinic maintained by a famous family of physicians. Dr. John Dehner and his son Dr. Gary Collins struggle to control a widespread cholera epidemic. One plot complication involves a testy movie star (Sharon Farrell), who refuses treatment when she exhibits the symptoms of cholera. Another problem involves a kidney transplant: Where to find a suitable organ donor in a city full of sick people? Quarantined was the February 24, 1970 entry in ABC's Movie of the Week. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

My Blood Runs Cold was a typically lurid horror chiller produced and directed by William Conrad during his 1960s tenure on the Warner Bros. staff. Heiress Joey Heatherton falls prey to the charms of a handsome young man (Troy Donahue) who claims to be the reincarnation of a legendary lothario. Troy further insists that Joey had been his lover in a previous life. Pretty soon Joey nearly has the opportunity to check out the veracity of Troy's story in the Hereafter, for Mr. Donahue is actually a psychopath who hopes to claim Ms. Heatherton's fortune and then bump her off. My Blood Runs Cold is silly enough to have been dreamt up by Bill Conrad while he was narrating Rocky and His Friends. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This family comedy stars James Stewart as Dr. Robert Leaf, a college professor who dislikes science and tries to instill in his children a love of art and music. So Robert and his wife Vina (Glynis Johns) are dismayed to discover that their eight-year-old son Erasmus (Billy Mumy) is tone-deaf and color-blind; what's worse, he has a genius-level talent for mathematics. Robert isn't sure what to do about Erasmus, but while his older sister Pandora (Cindy Carol) puts his skills to work by getting him to do her homework, his older friend Kenneth (Fabian) has a better idea. Kenneth and Erasmus come up with a foolproof plan for picking the winners in horse racing -- so foolproof that it draws the attention of two con men, Upjohn (John Williams) and Argyle (Jesse White), who want to use Erasmus's skills to clean up at the track. Robert at first refuses, and then relents only when they agree to use a cut of the proceeds to endow a humanities scholarship, though Robert is about the only one surprised when the men prove not to be good to their word. Meanwhile, Erasmus is head over heels in love with French screen siren Brigitte Bardot -- so much so that he's been writing her love letters. In return, the lucky boy has received an invitation to come meet her, and Robert and Erasmus use some of their racetrack winnings to fly to Paris and take her up on her offer. Nunnally Johnson, who received no credit, contributed to the screenplay; Miss Bardot, of course, plays herself (who else could?). ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Julian Berniers (Dean Martin ) return from Illinois with his young bride Lily (Yvette Mimieux) to the family in New Orleans. Sisters Carrie (Geraldine Page) and Anne (Wendy Hiller) welcome the couple, who arrive with expensive gifts for the spinsters. The sisters hope brother Julian will help with much needed expenses, and he tells them his profitable factory went out of business but that he managed to save some money. It turns out Julian pulled of a real estate scam and took off with the dough. Carrie wishes to welcome her brother back with more than just her open arms. Carrie's jealousy of Lily pushes her to discover the shady land deal for herself as she tries to wreck the marriage. Lily returns to her mother Albertine (Gene Tierney), and is horrified to find her having an affair with their black chauffeur Henry (Frank Silvera). This film version of the Lillian Hellman play proves that Tennessee Williams is not the only playwright mining the twisted psychological profiles of characters from the deep South. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

This romantic adult comedy finds psychiatrist Jason Steel (Dean Martin) the leader of a women's group therapy session. Jill St. John, Elizabeth Frazier, Macha Meril, Yoko Tani and Diane Foster all seek the advice of the handsome doctor, while husbands Louis Nye, Jack Soo, Richard Conte, and Martin Balsam ignore them in their usual poker game every Wednesday night. Jason plays doctor with pretty fiance Melissa (Elizabeth Montgomery) and Carol Burnette is his scatter brained secretary who does a hilarious striptease when she and Melissa can't pay for their dinner at a local nightclub after being stuck with the bill. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide