Robert Ginty Movies

Filmed in a record five days, Gold Raiders was an attempt by producer Jack Schwartz to inaugurate a new western series starring old favorite George O'Brien. Adding novelty value to the proceedings are the Three Stooges: Shemp Howard, Larry Howard and Moe Howard. The action is fairly divided between O'Brien, who plays a frontier insurance investigator, and the Stooges, cast as itinerant snake-oil peddlers. The star and his comedian cohorts team up to squash a gang of thieves who've been hijacking gold-mine shipments. It is no surprise to anyone that the villain is local bigwig Sawyer (Lyle Talbot), but the plot does manage to sneak in quite a few interesting twists, including a red-herring character who turns out to be a spy for the baddies, and then turns out to be working for the good guys! For all their buffoonery, the Stooges perform heroically during the climactic shootout (even Larry)! Sheila Ryan co-stars as the granddaughter of bibulous doctor Clem Bevans, while Monte Blue enjoys a larger part than usual as the local mine owner. Gold Raiders was reissued in a shortened version (shorter even than its original 56-minute running time!) as The Three Stooges Go West. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Jolene Hyland (Shelley Fabares), the wife of prison convict Gerald Hyland (Don Eichner), hires Jim (James Garner) to locate the stolen $500,000 which her husband claims to have hidden somewhere in Caledonia County. Before long, several shady characters are pressuring Jim to be cut in on the hidden loot. The trail of clues proves to be a painful one for the detective, but he soldiers on until reaching his destination--a Caledonia chicken ranch which harbors more than its share of surprises. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Larry Peerce directed this tired disaster movie about a mad sniper loose in a football stadium. At the beginning, the sniper picks off a cyclist for practice and then takes roost in the top tower of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Sent in to stop the terror is Captain Peter Holly (Charlton Heston), who wants to get his hands on the sniper without endangering the lives of the people in the stadium. Unfortunately, there is a second group of law enforcement officers, a tactical commando group, who want to go into the stadium and rush the sniper -- regardless of the danger such an action would cause to the crowd watching the game. The sniper plans to start blasting at the two-minute warning signal of the football game. Holly has to find the sniper before the two-minute warning is given -- not merely to prevent the killings threatened by the sniper but to head off the tactical force before any other unnecessary deaths are incurred by the force's bulldog techniques. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Hal Ashby's 1978 melodrama examines the impact of the Vietnam War on the "war at home" among the men who fought it and the women in their lives. Left alone in Los Angeles when her gung-ho Marine husband Bob (Bruce Dern) heads to Vietnam in 1968, proper wife Sally Hyde (Jane Fonda) decides to volunteer at the V.A. hospital where her new friend Vi (Penelope Milford) works. There she meets Luke Martin (Jon Voight), a former high-school classmate and Marine who has returned from 'Nam a bitter paraplegic. As their relationship grows, Sally sees the effect of the war on the soldiers after they come back, inspiring her to rethink her priorities; Luke's spirits begin to lift, and a hospital tragedy helps focus his anger toward meaningful protest. After a Hong Kong visit with her increasingly withdrawn husband, Sally finds a love and companionship with Luke that she had never known with her husband. Once Bob comes home with his own injury, however, the three must find a way to deal with a changing world and with a system that betrayed the men fighting for it. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

When one of the twin babies of Madeline and Bill Estes (Tyne Daly, Robert Ginty) dies under mysterious circumstances, the initial evidence points to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. But thanks to a small but criticial error in the coroner's office, Dr. Bob Gage (Jonathan Segal) suspects thar Madeline Estes actually murdered his child--and before long, even Madeline's husband Bill thinks that she's guilty. Can Quincy (Jack Klugman) come to the rescue before another tragic blunder occurs? ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

"B"-movie legend Charles Band cranked out this deadly-dull black magic flick through his then-fledgling Empire Pictures company in 1980, though the film never saw widespread American distribution until its video release five years later. The main character is an ageless glassmaker (Robert Ginty) who, thanks to a feud with the evil sorcerer Delgado (Robert Glaudini) in the 19th century, is not only doomed to live forever but regularly transforms into a barely-seen, werewolf-like monster. A century later (the 1950s, for no apparent reason), Ginty meets a woman at his mountain cabin whom he believes to be the reincarnation of his dead wife (Lucinda Dooling), who was the chief catalyst for the feud in the first place. The climactic battle (sort of) between the rival wizards involves low-budget demons called up by Glaudini from a gateway to hell. Despite a decent employment of attractive woodland locations and occasional bouts of cheap but creative effects, this is a rather tedious exercise, bogged down by slow pacing, shoddy lighting and bland performances by the entire cast. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide

John Sebastian's musical score lends an appropriately anachronistic touch to the endearingly outdated The Act. Robert Ginty and Sarah Langenfield are the principal participants in this satiric tale of political dirty trickery, with emphasis on underhanded union tactics. Also on hand are veterans Jill St. John, Eddie Albert and Pat Hingle, who laudably behave as if the dialogue they're spouting actually has some artistic value. If you don't remember The Act making the scene at your local theatre in 1982, don't feel bad. The film barely received a release at all until it was committed to videotape several years later. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This drama is adapted from the true story of Barbara Graham, a woman sentenced to die in the mid-1950s after she allegedly committed a murder during a robbery. Graham pleaded innocent until the day she died in the San Quentin gas chamber. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

First telecast September 14, 1984, the weekly TV series Hawaiian Heat starred Robert Ginty and Jeff McCracken as Mac Riley and Andy Senkowski, a pair of Chicago cops forced to leave the City of Big Shoulders when Mac's police-officer father is accused of taking a bribe. Moving to Honolulu, Mac and Andy are hired as troubleshooters by Major Oshira (Mako) of the city's police department. In this 2-hour opening episode, our heroes' first mission is to pose as drug buyers in order to smash a gang of heroin smugglers. A lot of Hawaiian Heat's thunder was stolen when the remarkably similar Miami Vice premiered two days later. By the end of the 1984-85 TV season, Miami Vice was one of the top-rated series in networkdom, while Hawaiian Heat had already expired after 13 epsiodes. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A plane with a cargo of $200 million in gold is searched for in the Jungle of Laos by a dedicated secret agent team. ~ All Movie Guide

Robert Ginty, star of James Glickenhaus's The Exterminator (1980), returns for a similar outing in the 1985 actioner Mission Kill. He plays Cooper, an explosives expert summoned by a Green Beret friend Harry (Cameron Mitchell), on a mission to smuggle arms into the (fictional) South American country of Santa Maria. The picture co-stars Merete Van Kamp and Harry Darrow. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide

Weapons expert Cooper (Robert Ginty) travels to Central America to help deliver arms to a rebel force, but his friend (Cameron Mitchell) is killed by a mercenary force. Cooper takes over command of the rebel army, determined to finish what his friend started. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide

In this drama, the witness to a brutal killing launches a private investigation and discovers a seething hotbed of local corruption. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide