George Edwards Movies

Rock star Adam Ant tops the cast in Trust Me. The premise is as old as dirt, maybe older: art dealer Ant decides that his paintings would be far more valuable if the artists were dead. Now comes the twist: Ant fully intends to make certain that his artists are dead. In particular danger is Ant's chief protege, Brian Packer, who is on the verge of outliving his usefulness. Slapstick, satire and irony are blended in equal measure, resulting in a diverting (if not brilliant) filmic experience. Cast as another art dealer is Barbara Bain, who after years on stage and television is here making her theatrical-feature debut. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

After 1970's Diary of a Mad Housewife, actress Carrie Snodgress found her career moving in frets and starts rather than barrelling ahead. By 1979, Snodgress was making do with gothic horrors like The Attic. In a variation on a theme previously explored in The Barretts of Wimpole Street and The Heiress, Snodgress plays a shy, withdrawn young woman who is totally dominated by her tyrannical father Ray Milland. At father's insistence, she remains sequestered in her attic room, denied contact with any men. When she finally breaks free, a spectacularly bloody denouement is the result. ~ Hal Erickson, 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

This genuinely perverse horror film stars John Savage as a young man forced to participate in the beachfront gang rape of Sue Bernard by his nasty friends. After two years in jail, he returns to the boardinghouse run by his mother (Ann Sothern), who does things like kissing him on the mouth and photographing him in the shower. Before long, he freaks out and strangles a cat while peeping at a new tenant (Cindy Williams), then almost drowns the poor girl in the pool before slashing her panties with a razor and choking her in the bathtub. He forces Bernard's car off a cliff, then makes his lawyer (Ruth Roman) drink herself stupid at knifepoint before setting her on fire. Savage and Sothern are fabulous and Luana Anders is creepy as the librarian next door who keeps trying to seduce the disturbed man. Quite a twisted little chiller, with several priceless bizarre moments like a dream sequence featuring a diapered Savage in a crib on the beach surrounded by laughing neighbors. The ubiquitous Gary Graver did 2nd unit photography. ~ Robert Firsching, Rovi

The slimy denizens of the Everglades organize a particularly nasty rebellion in this enjoyable entry from the "nature-run-amok" horror subgenre which favored drive-in venues of the mid-'70s. The story takes place amid the festivities honoring the birthday of crotchety, wheelchair-bound Southern patriarch Jason Crockett (Ray Milland), a chemical-industry magnate whose pesticides are responsible for much of the toxic pollution found in the swamplands. The revelry ends quickly, however, when thousands of local fauna decide to crash the party. Under the apparent telepathic guidance of the less-than-menacing swamp bullfrogs, armies of snakes, insects, and snapping turtles tear their way through the cast. Competent direction, great use of swampland ambience, and spooky sound effects help provide a suitably large dose of the creepy-crawlies. ~ Cavett Binion, Rovi

The stars of the witty TV series I Spy were reunited for this downbeat crime thriller, which takes a much darker and more violent look at the lives of two detectives for hire. Al Hickey (Bill Cosby) and Frank Boggs (Robert Culp) are a pair of private eyes who are approached by an attorney to find his girlfriend, who has gone missing. Their investigation leads them to a large sum of money from a Pittsburgh bank robbery. It seems that the woman in question has married the leader of a leftist radical group, which is now trying to find a buyer for the tainted money. An attempt to recover both the money and the girl goes awry when Hickey and Boggs infiltrate a meeting with the radicals; the girl slips away and takes the burgled cash with her. Adding to the disaster, the meeting tips off the identity of the detectives to mobsters dealing with the radicals, and the gangsters execute Hickey's wife in an effort to keep him away from their activities. Hickey and Boggs also features Rosalind Cash, Michael Moriarity, Vincent Gardenia, Isabel Sanford, and James Woods. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Director Curtis Harrington (The Killing Kind) teams with screenwriter Henry Farrell (Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte) for this quietly disturbing tale of a man driven to psychosomatic blindness by a horrific family tragedy. Unable to cope with the fact that he has been blamed for the fire that killed his father and disfigured his sister (Julie Harris), psychologically unsound Allan (Anthony Perkins) is committed to a mental institution. Some time later, Allan is deemed fit for release and sent to live at his sister's house. But Allan's sister is far from happy to have her brother back home, and begins to sadistically toy with his fragile psyche to the point that he starts hearing disembodied voices and sensing an ominous presence. Could it be that Allan's father is actually reaching out for revenge from beyond the grave, or have Allan's sister's continued attempts to wear at her ailing brother's fragile psyche finally had the intended results. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Shot on a miniscule $50,000 budget, and including footage from a 1959 Russian film that was later purchased by Roger Corman, this science fiction feature finds a tiny planet slowly dying. With the inhabitants in danger of perishing, some kind-hearted astronauts bring a green-blooded female alien back to Earth. The extraterrestrial shows her gratitude by going wild for human blood in the fashion of a blood-sucking vampire. John Saxon, Basil Rathbone and Dennis Hopper are some of the actors sentenced by their vindictive agents to appear in this 1966 film. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

Cosmos 1, an interstellar spacecraft, is heading to its home base after a long mission when it receives a distress call from its sister ship, Cosmos 3. Some of the ship's Centaurian crew -- members of a once proud race who are now subservient to humans from the fleet's home world -- have rebelled. Cosmos 3 crashes on Solarius, an unexplored planet in a young star system, leaving behind five survivors, among them the Lt. Anderson and Zenda, human/Centaurian couple. The Cosmos 1, under the command of Admiral King (Wendell Corey), makes the three month journey to Solarius at the speed of light, during which, because of the time paradoxes involved in light-speed travel, 18 years elapse on the planet. A landing party led by First Officer Scott (Keith Larson) begins searching for the wrecked ship and any survivors, and discover that this is a tropical world, beautiful and dangerous, filled with exotic birds and flowers, huge lizards and snakes, deadly insects and other animals, and crystaline pools and boiling pits. Meanwhile, Linda (Irene Tsu), a young Centaurian from Cosmos 1, gets lost in the jungle and is rescued by Tang (Robert Ito), a young man living in the primordial forests -- she discovers that he is a Centaurian and the son of Anderson and Zenda. The two are attracted to each other, even as the crew of the Cosmos 1 is trying to rescue her and keep themselves alive. A conveniently timed volcanic eruption forces the issue of how far the admiral can carry this mission. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi

An old man learns the sad truth of the old saw about being careful what you wish for in this horror outing that is based on the enduring cautionary tale. It all begins with an army sergeant who is given a magical monkey's paw while fighting in India. He learns that the paw contains three wishes. Later the soldier is seen visiting an elderly couple in England. He tells of the paw and how no wish it grants comes without a terrible price. Despite the warning, the old man is tempted by the paw's power and so slyly steals it from the soldier as he departs in the morning. the old man's first wish is for enough money to pay the dowry of the girl her son wants to marry. Sure enough the wish is granted. Unfortunately, money comes from the son's life insurance, for the boy is killed at work. Horrified, the father wishes for his son to be alive, but then fearing that the paw will do something even more dreadful wishes that he had never said that. The next day, as if by magic, the man awakens to find his son hale and hearty. Whew! It was all but a bad dream. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi