Gary Kent Movies

In this exciting actioner, maverick ex-Philadelphia cop Mike "Street" Justus lands in Southern California, rounds up a gang of ex-cons who owe him favors and violently purges a Los Angeles suburb of the hard-core crooks who plague it. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

From time to time, U.S. fighter pilots have been known to develop a messianic complex. Trainee Eddie Gordon (William O'Leary) goes a bit farther than that: he begins fantasizing that he's the Angel of Death. Armed with nuclear weaponry, Gordon flies toward Las Vegas, intending to bomb "sin city" back to the stone age. It is up to squadron leader Matt Ryan (Peter Strauss) to stop him. The made-for-TV Flight of Black Angel debuted February 23, 1991, over the Showtime Cable service. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In this action film, an uprising in the Middle East prompts the United States to ship a group of pilots over to restore order. ~ Iotis Erlewine, Rovi

This is a winning, upbeat story about a Hispanic kid from the streets who suffers through a battle against cancer and discrimination at the same time. When Neekos Valdez (Esai Morales) was swiping a radio from a pickup one night, he was accidentally dragged along the street behind the pickup. Rushed to the hospital, the doctors treat him but also discover he has cancerous tumors in his abdomen. Shocked into an awareness of the impermanence of human life, Neekos puts up a valiant fight against the cancer, follows his prescribed regimen, and in the process, he makes friends with another cancer patient, Jack Marti (Chuck Bail), an ex-boxer. When up-tight hospital administrators discover that Neekos is the son of an illegal immigrant, they decide that deportation proceedings should be started against him. His social worker and his doctor do the best they can to help him, but they have no authority over the hospital administration. His only hope may be Jack, the one man who was inspired by his fight against cancer, and the one man with enough courage to step into the ring when others see the contender as too formidable to face.
~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

This amateurish backwoods horror opus finds a quartet of annoying California campers embarking on an idyllic mountain getaway, only to be terrorized by a cave-dwelling cannibal cracker (Michael Brody) who, it turns out, is himself plagued by the ghosts of his murdered wife and children (as revealed in flashback). Undoubtedly disgusted by Daddy's unpleasant eating habits, the ghosts conspire to end the killer redneck's reign of terror before he murders again. Viewers will probably find themselves wishing the same upon the filmmakers. A lifeless hodgepodge of Deliverance, The Hills Have Eyes and Friday the 13th, this cheap direct-to-video project waffles between horror and black comedy, failing completely on both counts. ~ Cavett Binion, Rovi

Freebie (James Caan) and the Bean (Alan Arkin) are a pair of San Francisco cops. Red Meyers (Jack Kruschen) is the mobster whom Freebie and the Bean would like to see behind bars -- or, failing that, six feet under. Nothing stands in the way of the cops' pursuit of Meyers, meaning that private property is given quite a going-over in this picture. The film's most memorable scene finds Freebie and the Bean crashing their car into a poor schnook's living room. TV favorites Loretta Swit and Valerie Harper play the only female roles worth mentioning. The racist and sexist humor in Freebie and the Bean may not go over as well today as it did in the politically incorrect early '70s. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

A filmmaker and his crew get more than they bargained for in this low-budget haunted house film directed by Paul Harrison. Director Eric Hartman (John Ireland) chooses the old Beal mansion for the setting to his latest horror outing, taking little heed of the house's eerie past. As shooting commences, Hartman demands his leading lady, Gayle (Faith Domergue), recite passages from the Tibetan Book of the Dead. However, by doing so, the tormented spirits of the Beal family that had been trapped in the mansion are set free and begin restaging the grisly deaths that met the doomed family several years ago. As various crew members turn up dead, the remaining filmmakers desperately attempt to escape the house's evil spirits, while also trying to piece together the secrets of the house. ~ Rovi

Bikers, Nazis, Mafiosi, and the FBI all clash in this wild and wooly exploitation picture from director Al Adamson. Mark Adams (John Gabriel) is an FBI agent who has been assigned to infiltrate an organized crime ring that has obtained a set of printing plates that will allow them to produce nearly perfect counterfeit 20-dollar bills. The plates were made in Germany during World War II, and were discovered by a radical right-wing group hoping to restore the Nazi Party to power. The American gangsters are in cahoots with a group of wealthy American neo-Nazis sympathetic to the new German cause, led by fugitive war criminal Count von Delberg (Kent Taylor); the count has in turn recruited a vicious motorcycle gang, the Bloody Devils, to do his dirty work. Also featuring Broderick Crawford, John Carradine, and Col. Harland Sanders (the latter in a shameless plug for Kentucky Fried Chicken), Hell's Bloody Devils was produced under the titles The Fakers and Operation M as a straightforward espionage thriller; when distributors balked at the finished product, Al Adamson and producer Samuel M. Sherman added the biker subplot, and gave the product a more exploitive title. Shorn of the motorcycle gang footage, the film was also released as Smashing the Crime Syndicate. Nelson Riddle co-wrote the film's theme song, and Laszlo Kovacs and Gary Graver were among the cameramen. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

The Hard Road is a 1970s exploitation flick posing as a crusading expose. Connie Nelson plays a "nice" girl who goes from bad to worse after she becomes pregnant. Kicked out of school and virtually driven from her home, Nelson finds solace in drugs. She starts out with pot, graduates to the hard stuff, and ends up selling her body in order to support her habit. This is your brain on drugs: any questions? ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The Mojave desert becomes a battleground when vicious bikers go on a killing spree, causing innocent would-be victims to get bloody revenge. Classic exploitation film violence and action ensues. This low-budget film marks the comeback of formerly popular child actor Russ Tamblyn who goes against type and plays the leader of the motorcycle pack. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Together with Orson Welles' Citizen Kane and John Singleton's Boyz 'n the Hood, director Peter Bogdanovich's Targets is among the most impressive first features ever made. When Bogdanovich's cinematic mentor Roger Corman suggested that Bogdanovich might want to make his directorial debut, he offered to "donate" 20 minutes worth of footage of the Corman-directed The Terror and the services of Boris Karloff, who owed Corman two days' worth of work (at a cost of $22,000). Karloff became so caught up in the 29-year-old Bogdanovich's enthusiasm that he agreed to work an additional two days at a bare-minimum salary.

The script, by Bogdanovich and his then-wife, Polly Platt, was inspired by the 1966 shooting spree of Texas Tower sniper Charles Whitman. Karloff, as Byron Orlock, more or less plays himself: an aging horror star, consigned to low-budget drive-in fare. Unlike the workaholic Karloff, Orlock wants to retire from films, noting that his movies seem inconsequential in light of the real-life horrors occurring every day. As Bogdanovich, playing young-and-hungry director Sammy Michaels, desperately tries to convince Orlock to star in just one more picture, the film's attentions shift to Vietnam veteran Bobby Thompson (Tim O'Kelly). An otherwise amiable, normal-looking lad, Bobby seems to harbor an inordinate fascination with guns, particularly high-powered rifles. One bright and sunny morning, Bobby suddenly and unexpectedly shoots and kills his wife, his mother, and an unlucky delivery boy. He leaves behind a note confessing to these crimes, noting that, while he fully expects to be captured, many more will die before the day is over. From this point onward, the film switches from Bobby's day-long bloodbath (from the vantage point of an oil storage tank, calmly picking off passing freeway motorists) to Orlock's grumbling preparations to make a personal appearance at a local drive-in movie.

Inevitably, Bobby also shows up at the drive-in, hiding himself behind the huge screen and shooting down the patrons as they sit complacently in their cars, watching the latest Byron Orlock film (actually The Terror, in which Karloff also starred). Once the reality of the situation sets in, panic ensues, leading to the ultimate confrontation between the escaping Bobby and the bewildered Orlock. ("Is this what I was afraid of?" Orlock ruefully exclaims as Bobby cowers at his feet.) The tension never lets up throughout Targets' jam-packed 90 minutes. The film was virtually thrown away by its distributor, Paramount Pictures, which was uncertain about packaging a film about a sniper in the wake of the King and Kennedy assassinations. Only when it was reissued to college campuses and film societies did Targets begin building up its much-deserved reputation. Though Targets was not, technically, Boris Karloff's last film, it serves as a worthy valedictory for this cinematic giant. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi