Bella Bruck Movies

During the 1970s, the Gong Show was a game/talent show phenomenon. With equal measures of parody, camp and pure lowest-common denominator exploitation, it presented a bizarre assortment of talented and untalented contestants (for example, the musician who played his trumpet with his bellybutton) making their bid for stardom, and a ridiculous prize of $516.32 while three rambunctious minor celebrity judges looked on offering scores for acts they liked, or instantly stopping showing disapproval by pounding furiously on a large Chinese gong. The co-creator, producer and acid-witted but smarmy daytime host of this tawdry kitsch pastiche was Chuck Barris (AKA "Chuckie Baby"). This attempt at a serious drama chronicles a day in his hectic life as he tries to prepare a new episode of his crazy show. As he deals with a seemingly unending string of increasingly freaky acts, the pressure begins to get to the sensitive, caring (as portrayed in the film) Barris and by the day's end he becomes a true lunatic. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

A guy who lives for cars and girls find both on Los Angeles's main drag for cruising in this teen-oriented comedy from the '70s. Bobby (Bill Adler) is a kid from middle-of-nowhere California who is crazy for cars. Bobby's girlfriend Jo (Susanne Severeid) is more interested in settling down than racing, so when he hears about Van Nuys Boulevard in Los Angeles, the number-one place for hot rodders to cruise in California, he hops in his souped-up van and hits the highway. Arriving in L.A. Bobby hits Van Nuys and soon meets a handful of other gearheads, including Chooch (David Hayward), who has been king of the strip for years and lives with his car in his garage; Greg (Dennis Bowen), a nice guy chasing his dream girl; Zass (Dana Gladstone), a hard-nosed cop trying to shut down the hot-rodders; and Wanda (Tara Strohmeier), a beautiful carhop who serves up sex along with cheeseburgers. But things really take a turn for Bobby when he crosses paths with Moon (Cynthia Wood), a pretty girl who also digs cars and whose van is a match for his own. Cynthia Wood, who played Moon, was Playboy Magazine's Playmate of the Year in 1974, and later played a model for the magazine visiting troops in Vietnam in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Spoofing the entire 1940s detective genre, and his own performances as a bumbling private detective, Peter Falk plays Lou Pekinpaugh, a San Francisco private detective accused of murdering his partner at the instigation of his mistress, the partner's wife, Georgia Merkle (Marsha Mason). Police Lieutenant DiMaggio (Vic Tayback) has his eye on Lou and blunders around in a way which complicates Lou's efforts to clear his name. Lou gets a new client when Mrs. Montenegro (Madeline Kahn) and her cronies (John Housman, Paul Williams and Dom DeLuise) hire him to search out a dozen diamond eggs. Marlene DuChard (Louise Fletcher) also comes to him for help of a complicated nature. In this madcap comedy written by Neil Simon, obstacles and complications appear every few minutes, and a great many famous actors show up in hilarious cameos. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

Barbra Streisand returns to the screwball-comedy milieu of What's Up Doc? in the lightweight For Pete's Sake. As a Brooklyn hausfrau named Henry (!), our heroine will do anything to help her cabdriver husband Pete (Michael Sarrazin) get ahead. When Pete begins to play the stock market, Henry borrows three grand from a loan shark, thereby setting off a series of comic catastrophes. Molly Picon is perfection itself as a money-savvy madam who holds the key to Pete and Henry's happiness and well-being. For Pete's Sake was originally titled July Pork Bellies, a curious cognomen that makes perfect sense within the context of the plotline. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

A young Steven Spielberg helmed the made-for-TV Something Evil. Johnny Whitaker (Family Affair) is cast as Stevie Worden, an angelic child whose parents move into a foreboding Pennsylvania mansion. It isn't long before Stevie is possessed with the house's resident demonic spirit. In anticipation of The Exorcist and The Omen, the spirit within Stevie never lets anyone know when it's going to strike -- but everyone knows full well when it does. Spielberg evokes horror throughout by contrasting the most terrifying events with the plodding commonplace of day-to-day life. Something Evil was Spielberg's last TV-movie assignment. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

An unhappy couple discover breaking up really is hard to do in this satiric comedy. Richard Harmon (Dick Van Dyke) and his wife, Barbara (Debbie Reynolds), are a typical married couple in American Suburbia -- which is to say they're not very happy with each other. After 15 years together, Richard and Barbara decide they've reached the end of their collective rope, and after several rounds of marriage counseling proves fruitless, they file for divorce. Between negotiating child custody, alimony, and finding new places to live, Richard and Barbara discover divorce isn't appreciably easier than being married; meanwhile, Richard makes a new friend in Nelson Downes (Jason Robards), a fellow divorcé who would love nothing more than for Richard to marry his former wife, Nancy (Jean Simmons), and take away the burden of alimony. Also featuring Van Johnson, Lee Grant, Shelley Berman, and Eileen Brennan in her first film role, Divorce American Style earned an Oscar nomination for Norman Lear and Robert Kaufman's original screenplay. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Despite an unending stream of failures, Mrs. Drysdale has not given up her efforts to rid Beverly Hills of those "dreadful" Clampetts. This time around, Mrs. D hires a pair of gypsy fortune tellers, Narda (Bella Bruck) and Yerko (Leon Belasco), to throw a scare into the hillbillies, one that will send them skeedaddlin' back to the Ozarks. A gypsy curse, a marriage omen, and an elaborate scam are part and parcel of this episode. "The Gypsy's Warning" first aired on March 1, 1967. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

After a spat with Laura (Mary Tyler Moore), Rob (Dick Van Dyke) angrily stalks off to see a movie. Before the evening is over, Rob is sporting a black eye and has attracted the attention of the local constabulary. One thing leads to another (they usually do), and Rob ends up in jail, charged with roughing up a little old lady (Bella Bruck) in a barroom. The best moment occurs during a police lineup, in which a capricious suspect (Tiny Brauer) invokes memories of the old TV quiz show To Tell the Truth. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

During a family jaunt to the beach, Herman (Fred Gwynne) goes scuba diving with full regalia. No sooner has he submerged than Herman is scooped up by a net cast from a Russian submarine. The Soviet sailors are thrilled at their "catch", believing that they've at last found the Missing Link. But a gimlet-eyed commissar (Jan Arvan) is convinced that Herman is an American espionage agent and acts accordingly--thereby nearly bringing down the fall of the USSR some 24 years ahead of schedule! ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The satire in Evelyn Waugh's darkly comic novel The Loved One was originally double-edged. The book was not only an attack on the Southern California funeral industry but also a lampoon of Hollywood's "British colony," those clannish, cricket-playing English actors of years gone by who bemoaned the artificiality of Tinseltown while eagerly accepting the demeaning and insignificant movie roles they were offered. The film version of The Loved One, anxious to live up to its ad-campaign promise of containing "something to offend everybody," downplays the British-colony business (save for the presence of the magnificent Robert Morley) and pumps up the "death" gags. Innocent British poet Dennis Barlow (Robert Morse) falls in love with funeral-home cosmetician Aimee Thanatogenos (Anjanette Comer), who in turn is loved by prissy funeral director Mr. Joyboy (Rod Steiger). The latter lives with his obese mother (Ayllene Gibbons), whose eating sequence is far more hilarious (and more tasteless) than many of the film's calculatedly "black" jokes. A huge guest-star cast is headed by Jonathan Winters in a dual role as a funeral home manager and his covetous twin brother, who operates an elaborate pet cemetery. Musician Paul Williams is also on hand as a 13-year-old aeronautics genius who develops a method of sending corpses into "eternal orbit" (a plot device that Waugh neglected to include in his novel). Film historian William K. Everson has commented that The Loved One is one of the best and most underrated comedies of the 1960s. For others, especially those who might feel guilty chuckling at the sight of Anjanette Comer committing suicide with an embalming needle, it's purely a matter of taste...or lack of same. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

This is the second Maverick episode to be based on a story by Robert Louis Stevenson (the first, "The Wrecker", was seen during the series' inaugural season). Bart Maverick (Jack Kelly) finds himself the unwelcome guest of Mexican aristocrat Don Felipe when his "host"'s hacienda is surrounded by guerilla forces, determined to overthrow the Mexican government. Making things particularly dicey is th fact that the leader of the guerillas, Don Manuel (Joe De Santis), is the father of Don Felipe's fiancee Soledad (Lisa Gaye)--whose own loyalties are highly in doubt. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi