Paul Bruce Movies

Actor/auteur Tom Laughlin created the character of Billy Jack in the motorcycle flick The Born Losers. Wandering Christlike through the Southwest, Native American Vietnam veteran Billy Jack -- soft-spoken, but well-versed in martial arts -- champions the cause of a progressive school run by Jean Roberts (Delores Taylor, Laughlin's real-life wife). The bigoted white townsfolk don't cotton to Jean's minority-group students, so they do everything they can to humiliate and physically abuse the kids. When one of her charges is cruelly coated with white flour, Billy Jack goes berserk. Thus begins an orgy of self-righteous violence, culminating with our hero being hunted down on a murder charge. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Two outcasts find one another as their lives go into a tailspin in this moody grade-B drama. Tony (Sebastian Gregory, aka Anthony Vorno) is a Navy veteran who was a top man in underwater demolition during his time in the service; now he's trying to put his life back together after a messy divorce and he runs a junkyard that's seen better days. Gangster Nick (Paul Bruce) gets wind of Tony's experiences in the Navy and offers him 10,000 dollars to put his skills to work as part of an armored-car robbery. Tony grudgingly agrees, and arrives at a grimy strip club to seal the deal with Nick. There, Tony meets Sandy (Rue McClanahan), a would-be actress working at the club as a dancer who has been taking heat from the management for her reluctance to bare all on-stage. Tony and Sandy soon fall in love, but good luck doesn't follow them; Sandy falls for the empty casting-couch promises of a shifty screenwriter, and the carefully planned robbery fails to go like clockwork. An early credit for Golden Girls star Rue McClanahan, Hollywood After Dark was also screened under the titles Walk the Angry Beach and The Unholy Choice; it was filmed in 1965, but wasn't released until 1968, with some brief nude inserts added so the film could be sold as a sexploitation item. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

In the first episode of a two-part story, Elliot Ness (Robert Stack) is convinced that Al Capone (Neville Brand) is receiving prefential treatment while serving a sentence for tax evasion at the Federal prison in Atlanta. Pulling a few strings, Ness arranges for Big Al to be transferred to a newer, tougher penal institution called Alcatraz. While several of Capone's flunkeys take financial advantage of his absence, there are others who find it advantageous to cook up a scheme to spring "Scarface" from the prison train that is transporting him to "The Rock." The opening scenes in which Capone is seen being pampered by corrupt penitentiary officials resulted in a protest from the Bureau of Prisons, who demanded that the episode be preceded with a disclaimer insisting that it was complete work of fiction. Parts One and Two of "The Big Train" were lated combined into a feature film and released theatrically as Alcatraz Express. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi