Anthony James Movies
American actor Anthony James has been playing unlovable, unsavory film roles since the late 1960s. James' lean-and-hungry appearance has usually led him to be cast as characters named Skinny (1975's Hearts of the West) or Slim (1992's The Unforgiven). His larger film assignments include Blue Thunder (1982, as Grundeltus) and Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear (1991, as Hector Savage). Anthony James should not be confused with the "Anthony James" who appeared in the 1949 British film Last Days of Dolwyn. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide- 1975
- PG
Hearts of the West (British title: Hollywood Cowboy) stars Jeff Bridges as Lewis Tater, a 1930s-era aspiring novelist who harbors dreams of becoming the next Zane Grey or Peter B. Kyne. He arrives in Nevada to seek out the correspondence school that has "graduated" him. After learning that he's been taken to the cleaners by crooks, he stumbles onto a threadbare film-unit grinding out "B" westerns. He is given a job by unit manager Kessler (Alan Arkin), then falls in love with spunky script girl Miss Trout (Blythe Danner). With the help of crusty stunt man Howard Pike (Andy Griffith), Tyler fends off the correspondence-school crooks who want the money that he has accidentally stolen from them. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jeff Bridges, Andy Griffith, (more)
Jay North (Dennis the Menace of television fame) stars as a student who learns more about the birds and bees than the basic schoolroom courses from his teacher (Angel Tompkins). Meanwhile, a homicidal maniac (Anthony James) chooses to harass them. ~ Kristie Hassen, All Movie Guide
"Who are you?" the dwarf Mordecai (Billy Curtis) asks Clint Eastwood's Stranger at the end of Eastwood's 1973 western High Plains Drifter. "You know," he replies, before vanishing into the desert heat waves near California's Mono Lake. Adapting the amorally enigmatic and violent Man With No Name persona from his films with Sergio Leone, Eastwood's second film as director begins as his drifter emerges from that heat haze and rides into the odd lakefront settlement of Lago. Lago's residents are not particularly friendly, but once the Stranger shows his skills as a gunfighter, they beg him to defend them against a group of outlaws (led by Eastwood regular Geoffrey Lewis) who have a score to settle with the town. He agrees to train them in self-defense, but Mordecai and innkeeper's wife Sarah Belding (Verna Bloom) soon suspect that the Stranger has another, more personal agenda. By the time the Stranger makes the corrupt community paint their town red and re-name it "Hell," it is clear that he is not just another gunslinger. With its fragmented flashbacks and bizarre, austere locations, High Plains Drifter's stylistic eccentricity lends an air of unsettling eeriness to its revenge story, adding an uncanny slant to Eastwood's antiheroic westerner. Seminal western hero John Wayne was so offended by Eastwood's harshly revisionist view of a frontier town that he wrote to Eastwood, objecting that this was not what the spirit of the West was all about. Eastwood's audience, however, was not so put off, and an exhibitors' poll named Eastwood a top box-office draw for 1973. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Clint Eastwood, Verna Bloom, (more)
- 1973
Several inconvent truths about "equal consideration under the law" come to surface as Stone (Karl Malden) and Keller (Michael Douglas) investigate two separate murders. One of the victims was a wealthy and well-connected white foreign businessman; the other was an impoverished black police informant. Judyann Elder delivers a stunning performance as the black victim's embittered wife, who challenges the cops to pay as much attention to her husband's death as to the executive's murder. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Gary Grimes stars in this revisionist western as Ben Mockridge, a 16-year-old boy who has long dreamed of living the life of a cowboy. Wanting adventure, he persuades Frank Culpepper (Billy Green Bush) to take him along on a cattle drive, and Ben learns the hard way just how lonesome, exhausting, and violent the life of a cowhand can be. As one of the men on the drive puts it, "Being a cowboy is what you do when you can't do anything else." Hal Needham, who would later direct a string of successful films starring Burt Reynolds, can be spotted in a small role as Burgess, one of the cowboys. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Gary Grimes, Billy Green Bush, (more)
Richard Sarafian directed this minimalist chase film, starring Barry Newman as ex-marine, ex-race car driver and cop named Kowalski. He drives into Denver to deliver a car and pick up another vehicle to drive to San Francisco. To make the fifteen-hour drive to San Francisco bearable he pops a load of pep pills and drives off. Almost immediately, he is told to pull over by the police, but Kowalski refuses to stop. Ignoring the cops, a police chase ensues. Egging Kowalski on is a blind black disc jockey, Super Soul (Cleavon Little), who announces his comings and goings on his local radio show, praising Kowalski to the skies as "the last American to whom speed means freedom of the soul." Super Soul's hype makes Kowalski a media sensation and Kowalski fans mount up -- as do the police cars chasing him -- as he races against time to deliver both the car and himself to his San Francisco destination. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Barry Newman, Cleavon Little, (more)
- 1971
Fran (Elizabeth Baur) is devastated when word arrives that her cousin Bobby has committed suicide by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. But the lack of a corpse, and the sudden appearance of several letters allegedly written by Bobby and declaring his unrequited love for Fran, lead Ironside (Raymond Burr) to suspect that the boy may not have killed himself after all--or that someone else is trying to drive Fran insane with grief and guilt. The episode's highlight is a performance of the original song "Growing Up is Hard to Do". ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1970
When Jimmy Price (Jim Brown) wins an upset victory for sheriff, he becomes the first black man ever to hold the job (or any elective office) in anyone's memory in his rural southern county. He also sets off an ominous rumblings as the entire county seems split apart by his presence -- Mayor Parks (Fredric March) offers him the support of his office, but many whites aren't prepared to accept a black man as sheriff, while most of the whites that can accept him aren't saying so too loudly; a lot of older black residents, remembering decades of Jim Crow laws that only lately disappeared, are more confused than encouraged by Price's victory, while younger, more radical black citizens like George Harvey (Bernie Casey) have little use for Price's straight-arrow personality; they expect him to show them favoritism, and when he doesn't, they suspect him of being an nothing but a white man in black skin. Even Price's own wife (Janet MacLachlan) wonders if the cost of his being sheriff is too high. He finds himself alone, walking a tightrope between all of the forces pulling at him, and then the whole situation threatens to explode when he arrests the good-for-nothing son (Bob Random) of a wealthy man from the next county, who has killed a child while driving drunk. Soon the local klavern of the Ku Klux Klan is planning a meeting, and a lynch mob seems to be gathering across the county line to break the prisoner loose and take care of the sheriff. Price finally gets some unexpected help from his embittered predecessor, John Little (George Kennedy) -- Little would like nothing more than to sulk over losing his longtime job, but with his wife's coaxing he realizes that he can't let Price fail without the risk of destroying everything he worked for years to build. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jim Brown, George Kennedy, (more)
- 1970
In this thriller a police detective must find a renegade assassin who is not only wanted by the cops, he is also wanted by his bosses at Murder, Inc. Conspiracy abounds as the hitman controls other assassin's who keep the police preoccupied by their attempts on the life of a multimillionaire. The film climaxes with an exciting car crash. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1970
Oscar winner Strother Martin is cast as Joad Bruder, the father of jailed stagecoach robber Randy Bruder (Anthony Colti). Aware that Joad is holding the Ponderosa money that was stolen by Randy, Joe and Hoss hatch another of their hare-brained schemes to retrieve the loot. Heading to Pineville, the Cartwright boy pose as two members of Randy's gang-a ruse that threatens to burn and crash when the wife of one of the gang members shows up unexpectedly. Originally shown on December 13, 1970, "The Impostors" was written by Robert Vincent Wright. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Lorne Greene, Michael Landon, (more)
This light western comedy finds the lovely widow Laura Breckenridge (Angie Dickenson) offering a $20,000 reward for the return of some gold her late husband had stolen from the Denver mint. She seduces the virginal Sam (Burt Reynolds) into leading a team to retrieve the gold, now lying at the bottom of the Platte River. With the help of local blacksmith Jedidiah Hooker (Ossie Davis) and the inventor O.W. Bandy (Clint Walker), the trio agrees to go for the gold in order to receive the reward and restore the good name to the Breckenridge family. Meanwhile, the villains (Rick Davis and Del Reeves) trail the heroes in hopes of grabbing the gold for themselves. The good guys must break into the mint to put back the money, but they need to fool the wary watchman and superintendent (William Shallert). ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Burt Reynolds, Clint Walker, (more)
The winner of the 1967 Oscar for Best Picture (as well as four other Oscars), In the Heat of the Night is set in a small Mississippi town where an unusual murder has been committed. Rod Steiger plays sheriff Bill Gillespie, a good lawman despite his racial prejudices. When Virgil Tibbs (Sidney Poitier), a well-dressed northern African-American, comes to town, Gillespie instinctively puts him under arrest as a murder suspect. Tibbs reveals himself to be a Philadelphia police detective; after he and Gillespie come to a grudging understanding of one another, Tibbs offers to help in Gillespie's investigation. As the case progresses, both Gillespie and Tibbs betray a tendency to jump to culture-dictated conclusions. Still, the case is solved thanks to the informal teamwork of the two law officers. Based on the novel by John Ball, In the Heat of the Night inspired two sequels, both starring Poiter as Virgil Tibbs. In 1987, a TV series version of In the Heat of the Night appeared, with Carroll O'Connor as Gillespie and Howard Rollins as Tibbs. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sidney Poitier, Rod Steiger, (more)
- 1967
Prescription: Murder, a 1967 TV movie, represents the first appearance of Peter Falk as the rumpled but crafty detective Columbo. Gene Barry plays a distinguished doctor whose happiness is thwarted by his drunken wife (Nina Foch). Barry is in love with a pretty actress (Katherine Justice), and to smooth the path of his romance he murders his wife and arranges the evidence to pin the blame elsewhere. Enter Columbo, who seems to be slow on the uptake but who in fact is suspicious of the doctor's story. Snooping, prodding, puttering, and forever stopping at the doorway with the inevitable "just one more question," Columbo gets to the truth by playing a psychological trick on Barry, with the grudging cooperation of Barry's mistress. Written by Richard Levinson and William Link, Prescription Murder began life as a Broadway play in the late 1950s, starring Thomas Mitchell in the Columbo part (with a different character name), Joseph Cotten as the devious doctor, Agnes Moorehead as the victim and Patricia Medina (Mrs. Cotten) as the mistress. It would be adapted into a one-hour special on NBC in 1961 (with Bert Freed as the disheveled detective) before finally hitting weekly-series paydirt with Peter Falk in the lead. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Peter Falk
- 1966
Though based on an Edgar Wallace novel, Traitor's Gate was not part of the long-running British series of second features based on the works of Wallace. Albert Lieven plays a London businessman who doubles as a high-tech crook. He organizes an elite gang of thieves to steal the crown jewels. Their escape at sea is complicated by the rivalry between Lieven and his brother Gary Raymond. Traitor's Gate provides an interesting contrast to The Jokers (67), a "mod" comedy in which another pair of brothers pilfer the crown jewels. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1949
A movie based on a true story, this is the story of a man who was exiled as a thief from his village but later returns for revenge. He plans to buy the entire district up as part of a water reservoir project but an old woman and her stepson stand in his way. Revenge, murder, desperation and love all intertwine in this moving account. This was Richard Burton's first screen role, having been a stage actor prior to his stint in the Royal Air Force as a navigator during WWII. ~ Tana Hobart, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Richard Burton, Anthony James, (more)
