Mike J. Frankovich Movies

Travelling to Las Vegas to pick up a criminal suspect for extradition, Crocker (Kevin Dobson), his prisoner, and sexy "topless" magcian Sally Addison (Priscilla Barnes) are all kidnapped. This the first stage of an elaborate scheme to throw the cops off the trail of what be a bigger crime. Arriving in Vegas to investigate Crocker's abduction, Kojak ends up interrogating Sally's twin sister (also Priscilla Barnes)--and even exchanges a few pointed words with the fabulous Liberace. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Written and directed by Frank D. Gilroy, this Western casts Charles Bronson as Graham Dorsey, a two-bit Western outlaw who has a three-hour affair with lonely Amanda Starbuck (Jill Ireland). When Dorsey is reported killed, Starbuck capitalizes on her liaison by building up the "legend" of the supposed deceased outlaw. Soon Dorsey has become an icon, glorified in song, fable, and dime novels. Imagine Starbuck's discomfort when he turns up very much alive, and extremely upset at being turned into Amanda's own private cottage industry. At the end, Dorsey isn't even left with his own identity. This picture is somewhat unconventional for a Western, downplaying violence in favor of characterization and dark humor. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Adapted by Jay Presson Allen from the French farce by Pierre Barillet and Jean-Pierre Gredy, Forty Carats is a standard-issue sex comedy elevated by the performances of its stars. Fortyish Realtor Ann Stanley (Liv Ullman) finds herself attracted to Peter Latham (Edward Albert) - a man literally half her age. After a summer fling in Greece, Ann and Peter come to a parting of the ways, and that, Ann supposes, is that. Imagine her surprise when Peter comes to visit her back in New York. Though at first dismissed as a fortune hunter, Peter turns out to a financial whiz with a lot more in the bank than his lady friend. Both Ann's mother (Binnie Barnes, whose husband Mike Frankovich produced the film) and daughter (Deborah Raffin) are delighted at the prospect of Ann's romance with Peter -- the only one unsure is Ann herself. Lending his considerable comic expertise to Forty Carats is Gene Kelly as Liv Ullman's ex-husband-who also takes a liking to the personable Edward Albert and encourages the May-December romance. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This gag-filled movie makes a stab at examining the women's liberation movement but never quite gets there. The effects of the movement are shown through a series of comic and romantic episodes between men and women. The story is loosely tied together as the research of Sheila Hammond (Jacqueline Bisset), a fashion magazine editor who is preparing an article on women's liberation. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Originally billed as merely $, Dollars stars top box office draws Warren Beatty and Goldie Hawn. Beatty plays a security whiz, employed in Hamburg, Germany. He devises a clever method of robbing the secret bank vaults of notorious criminals, reasoning that the crooks will never turn to the cops. The notion that the crooks may have a few words to say to him does not dissuade Beatty as he and gold-hearted hooker Hawn work out their carefully calculated, meticulously timed robbery. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Among a cliquish set of country club doctors and surgeons, it seems that sleeping around is the norm. Early in the film, however, one husband murders his promiscuous wife (Dyan Cannon) while she is in bed with a rather unlikely adulterer. The various alliances and rivalries in this close-knit community are further stressed as the murderous husband uses his knowledge of the community for a wide-ranging blackmail scheme. While the police investigate, the doctors who do open-heart surgery on their patients experience heart-rending situations themselves. The film has a large and distinguished cast of actors, including Richard Crenna, Dyan Cannon, Caroll O'Conner, Ralph Bellamy, Gene Hackman, John Colicos, Diana Sands and Janice Rule. The story is based on Doctors' Wives by Frank G. Slaughter. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

In this tense and suspenseful science fiction thriller, Charles Keith (Gregory Peck) is the ground commander in Houston who monitors the space mission of three astronauts. Buzz (Gene Hackman), Jim (Richard Crenna) and Clayton (James Franciscus) have their lives put in jeopardy when the oxygen supply in the space capsule drops. Ted Dougherty (David Janssen) is sent to try and rescue the doomed astronauts. When it becomes clear there is not enough oxygen, it is suggested that one of the men commit suicide to allow the other two to live. Jim, the unit commander, makes an excuse to spacewalk. Under the guise of making repairs, he cuts himself loose from the life line and drifts away into the cold darkness of space. Russian cosmonauts race against time to try and save their American counterparts. An Oscar-winner for "Best Special Visual Effects," the film also picked up nominations for "Best Cinematography" and "Best Sound." It was later retitled Space Travelers. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

"Consider the possibilities," read the ads for Paul Mazursky's 1969 satirical comedy about what happens when the sexual revolution hits affluent bourgeois life. After a weekend of "beautiful" emotional honesty at an Esalen-type retreat, married wannabe hipsters Bob (Robert Culp) and Carol (Natalie Wood) return to their well-heeled Los Angeles life determined to apply the principles of free love and complete openness to their marriage. To the respective curiosity and repulsion of their married best friends, Ted (Elliott Gould) and Alice (Dyan Cannon), Bob and Carol have affairs that they happily reveal to everyone. Inspired by all that openness during the quartet's trip to Vegas, Ted admits an affair of his own, provoking the outraged Alice to demand that this new ethos be taken to its obvious conclusion: a mate-sharing foursome. Once they're bedded down and ready to go, however, they start to have second thoughts. Without sacrificing authenticity for comedy, first-time director Mazursky and co-writer/producer Larry Tucker delve into the confusion of the Eisenhower generation when faced with the temptations of the counterculture. Too old to be hippies and too young to be fogies, the would-be California swingers sincerely attempt to try on the lifestyle, but it never looks quite right. A then-controversial example of the New Permissiveness both onscreen and off, Bob & Carol debuted at the New York Film Festival to great praise, particularly for Gould and Cannon. Whether they wanted to laugh at their elders' faux looseness or see what their peers might be doing, audiences turned Bob & Carol into a substantial hit, and its observations about marriage and sex remain humorously sharp even if the encounter group jargon is past its vogue. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

Wicked as They Come stars Arlene Dahl as Kathy Allen, whose sour attitude on life has been formed by a sexual assault in her childhood. Rising out of the shabbiness of the Lower East Side, Kathy ruthlessly climbs the social and financial ladder by using and then abandoning a series of gullible older men. When she finally gets what she wants out of life, it still isn't enough, and it is this insatiability that leads to her downfall. Extensive location filming in London and Paris adds an exotic touch to this predictable melodrama. Wicked as They Come is based on Portrait in Smoke, a novel by Bill Ballington. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

It took nerve to transpose Shakespeare's Macbeth into a 1930s gangster story using "tough guy" jargon, but Joe Macbeth very nearly pulls the trick off successfully. Paul Douglas plays Joe MacBeth, a successful mobster whose wife (Ruth Roman) has ambitions to be even more successful. Mrs. MacBeth talks her husband into killing his boss while the two of them are swimming, and when Joe timorously leaves the knife behind, his wife dives in after the weapon. Now near the top of the heap, Joe begins to believe that everyone is out to get him. He kills his best pal Banky, whose ghost shows up a banquet later that night (Joe dispenses with Shakespeare's iambic pentameter by shouting "What is this? A gag?") As Joe deteriorates, his wife goes crazy, screaming "Joe! There's blood on my hands!" in her sleep. Both Joe and his wife are killed in a shootout with rival gangsters. Straining to create suitable counterparts for the Shakespearian characters in 20th century Chicago -- the three witches are sidewalk peddlers, while Hecate is a sandwich-board man -- Joe Macbeth veers towards the laughable at times; but the basic story has been a good one for nearly 500 years now, so Joe Macbeth succeeds as often as it falters. Incidentally, despite the American characters and Chicagoland setting, Joe Macbeth was filmed in England, with principally British supporting actors. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Director Hugo Fregonese and writer George Oppenheimer do the unthinkable: they manage to transform Giovanni Boccaccio's bawdy -- and downright raunchy -- medieval tales of martial discontent and infidelity into harmless white-bread treacle. Louis Jourdan plays Boccaccio in a framing story set in a villa in the Florentine hills. With a widowed woman and her sex-starved female wards hungrily hunched over listening to his every word, Boccaccio spins three tales of illicit romance involving a trio of medieval husbands and wives. All three tales feature Jourdan as the romantic male lead and Joan Fontaine -- spruced up in a collection of bright costumes -- as the misunderstood and mistreated women of the tales. The first story concerns the bored housewife, of a middle-aged husband, who willingly jumps into the arms of a roustabout. The second tale tells the story of a husband who is highly suspicious of his wife's fidelity and the wife's circumspect way of proving her virtue to her husband. The third story is an ineffectual lark about a wife who fools her indifferent husband into demonstrating his proper marital role. Boccaccio had to wait for Pier Pasolini in order to get the spirit of his Decameron right. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

The first of director Frank Capra's independent productions (in partnership with Robert Riskin), Meet John Doe begins with the end of reporter Ann Mitchell's (Barbara Stanwyck) job. Fired as part of a downsizing move, she ends her last column with an imaginary letter written by "John Doe." Angered at the ill treatment of America's little people, the fabricated Doe announces that he's going to jump off City Hall on Christmas Eve. When the phony letter goes to press, it causes a public sensation. Seeking to secure her job, Mitchell talks her managing editor (James Gleason) into playing up the John Doe letter for all it's worth; but to ward off accusations from rival papers that the letter was bogus, they decide to hire someone to pose as John Doe: a ballplayer-turned-hobo (Gary Cooper), who'll do anything for three squares and a place to sleep. "John Doe" and his traveling companion The Colonel (Walter Brennan) are ensconced in a luxury hotel while Mitchell continues churning out chunks of John Doe philosophy. When newspaper publisher D.B. Norton (Edward Arnold), a fascistic type with presidential aspirations, decides to use Doe as his ticket to the White House, he puts Doe on the radio to deliver inspirational speeches to the masses -- ghost-written by Mitchell, who, it is implied, has become the publisher's mistress. The central message of the Doe speeches is "Love Thy Neighbor," though, conceived in cynicism, the speeches strike so responsive a chord with the public that John Doe clubs pop up all over the country. Believing he is working for the good of America, Cooper agrees to front the National John Doe Movement -- until he discovers that Norton plans to exploit Doe in order to create a third political party and impose a virtual dictatorship on the country. The last of Capra's "social statement" films, Meet John Doe posted a profit, although Capra and Riskin were forced to dissolve their corporation due to excessive taxes. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Filmed on a B-picture budget, Buck Privates was Universal's biggest box-office hit of 1941, firmly securing the movie popularity of the studio's hot new team of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello. The story is fairly evenly divided between the antics of Bud and Lou-here cast as sidewalk salesmen Slicker Smith and Herbie Brown-and the romantic triangle involving Randolph Parker III (Lee Bowman), Judy Gray (Jane Frazee) and Bob Martin (Alan Curtis). Escaping the wrath of policeman Mike Collins (Nat Pendleton), Slicker and Herbie duck into a nearby movie theater, which unbeknownst to them has been converted into a US Army recruiting center. As the boys are reluctantly inducted into the Service, wealthy draftee Parker hopes to pull a few strings to avoid putting on a uniform, while Parker's former chauffeur Martin willingly answers his call to the Colors. Once ensconced in boot camp, Slicker and Herbie continually run afoul of their sergeant, who is none other than their old nemesis Mike the cop. Meanwhile, Parker and Martin vie for the attentions of USO hostess Judy, who'll have nothing to do with Parker until he proves his worth as a soldier. Poor Slicker and Herbie are shunted into the background as the romantic subplot is resolved, but at least our heroes get to steal the film's closing scene. It's hard to believe that anyone cared about the Parker-Martin-Judy triangle with Abbott & Costello on hand to perform their classic "dice game", "awkward squad", "turn on the radio" and "boxing ring" routines-not to mention their timeless verbal exchanges, the best of which finds Bud convincing Lou that if he marries an underage girl, she'll eventually be older than he (it plays better than it reads!) As a bonus, the film spotlights the Andrews Sisters, performing such top-ten tunes as "Apple Blossom Time" and "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy". Even from the vantage point of six decades, with the WWII draft but a dim memory, it is easy to see why Buck Privates was such a huge success. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide