David Ladd Movies

A high school senior with brains but no sense of direction attempts to choose between his own ambitions and his devotion to the ones he loves after his mother announces that her new boy toy is moving in. Andrew may live with his mother, but the roles of parent and child have been reversed for years. One night, over dinner, Andrew's mother announces that her younger boyfriend, an aspiring country singer, is coming to live with them. Everything Andrew knows is changing, and in order to keep from getting swept up in the rising tide he'll have to take stock of his own life, and finally decide what it is that he really wants. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

A man trying to save his relationship with the woman he loves finds himself sinking into a quicksand of small lies and half-truths in this comedy. Paul (Jason Lee) is a regular guy who is engaged to marry Karen (Selma Blair); while Paul loves Karen, he's more than a bit nervous around her family, even though her father (James Brolin) has already given him a job in the family business. Shortly before the wedding, Paul's friends throw him a bachelor party, complete with a boatload of liquor and a squadron of grass-skirt-clad tiki dancers. Paul strikes up a conversation with one of the dancers, the cheerful if inept Becky (Julia Stiles), and the next morning, he wakes up bleary-eyed with a massive hangover -- and Becky in bed next to him. Paul soon receives a phone call from Karen saying she's stopping by for a visit, and Paul scrambles to get Becky out of his apartment. Paul attempts to explain some incriminating evidence with a few white lies, but a messy situation gets messier when Paul runs into Becky at a pre-wedding family get-together...and discovers she's Karen's cousin. A Guy Thing also features Shawn Hatosy, Lochlyn Munro, and Julie Hagerty. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Horror maven Wes Craven attempted a slight change of pace from his usual slasher movie milieu with this chiller loosely based on a true story. Bill Pullman stars as Dennis Alan, a Harvard researcher sent to Haiti by a pharmaceutical company to investigate the zombie legend and any possible connection it might have to a rumored drug that could be used as a new breed of powerful anaesthetic. Once on the Caribbean isle, Alan is aided by a good voodoo priest or "houngan" (Paul Winfield) and his daughter (Cathy Tyson), who runs a local clinic. Alan's search also pits him against an evil houngan, Dargent Peytraud (Zakes Mokae). Peytraud also controls the Tonton Macoute (the Haitian secret police), who are involved with soon-to-be-deposed dictator "Baby Doc" Duvalier. The Serpent and the Rainbow was based on the book of the same name by Wade Davis, an ethnobotanist whose real-life hunt for the zombie drug was credited with cracking the medical mystery behind the myth. ~ Karl Williams, Rovi

This sci-fi film, set in the year 2100 A.D., follows the struggles of an Earth family who are held hostage by the Styrolilans, a war-like alien race whose spaceship crashed nearby. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

The plot of this of this adaptation of the Daniel Carney's novel, sprinkled throughout a series of extended Sam Peckinpah-inspired action sequences, deals with a collection of mercenary toughguys -- Colonel Allen Faulkner (Richard Burton), Lieutenant Shawn Fynn (Roger Moore), Rafer Janders (Richard Harris), Pieter Coetzee (Hardy Kruger) -- who are hired to parachute into the African bush country and abscond with deposed African president Julius Limbani (Winston Ntshona) and reinstall him as a reigning monarch of an African country, to satisfy British mercantile interests. The action sequences were successful enough to spawn a sequel -- appropriately titled Wild Geese II. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

The Day of the Locust is anything but a cheerful, light look at Hollywood in the '30s. It recreates both the town as well as the filmmaking world around which much of the town revolved with devastating accuracy. The movie tells the twin tales of talentless wannabe actress Faye Greener (Karen Black) and Homer Simpson (Donald Sutherland), a lovelorn accountant who couldn't care less about movies. Around this framework, a huge and intricate social network is tellingly revealed, until the film's gruesome and tragic ending. Not for those who prefer to hang onto their illusions about the glory days of Hollywood, The Day of the Locust, based on the novel by Nathanael West, is a must-see for serious film buffs. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

The setting is Atoka County, Alabama -- the time is somewhere after the peak of the civil rights movement, after cities such as Birmingham, Alabama were out of the headlines. The movement is coming to the sticks, including Atoka County, and a lot of the white residents don't like it and are prepared to commit felonious assault, rape, or murder to get their point across. In the middle of this powder keg are two men on either side of a very dangerous line -- County Sheriff "Big Track" Bascomb (Lee Marvin) and Mayor Hardy (David Huddleston). Each man is playing both ends against the middle in the impending race war -- Bascomb wants to keep the peace as best he can, blocking the local klavern of the Ku Klux Klan from their worst excesses and making sure that the Klan's business and the county's business remain separate; Hardy, who also owns the lumber company that employs most of the county and the bank on which most of the residents depend, wants a good environment for business, which includes keeping enough poor blacks around to do the most menial work for the miserable pay he's willing to fork over; this, in turn, requires that they be too scared to ask for too much, including better treatment, but not so scared that they leave the county altogether, which would wipe out his business. Between them is Breck Stancill (Richard Burton), an eighth-generation resident with lots of land but little money and even fewer friends; a wounded war veteran and loner, he still resents the lynching of his grandfather and no longer respects what the white south purports to stand for -- he's even allowed dispossessed blacks to live for free on his property, angering the poor whites around him even more. Bascomb would like Stancill to be a little less high profile, while Hardy would like him to sell out and disappear, and wouldn't mind it if the local Klan helped that process along by trying to kill him. Bascomb's balancing act fails because of two events -- Nancy Poteet (Linda Evans) is raped one night, apparently by a black man, which precipitates the murder of a black teenager and her being violently ostracized by the white community; and a civil rights rally is planned for the town, bringing in lots of "outside agitators" and getting the local klavern eager to act against them. The prime mover in all of this is Big Track's deputy, Butt Cut Bates (Cameron Mitchell), a hardcore klansman who won't be reined in by Hardy and who is not above raping a black woman prisoner (Lola Falana) that he's arrested illegally, or trying to kill Stancill; directly opposed to him is Garth (O.J. Simpson), a young black man who witnessed a Klan murder and, in response, gets a rifle and starts meting out justice on his own. Before it's over, a major part of the county is at war and the bodies are falling everywhere. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi

Hal Bartlett co-wrote and directed this film curiosity, based on Richard Bach's best-selling fable, featuring an overbearing music score by Neil Diamond. The story begins as a flock of seagulls are pecking at the garbage left by a boat that has dumped a bunch of fish heads in the surf. One of the seagulls, Jonathan (voice of James Franciscus), would rather leave his life of garbage-picking and fly high in the sky to see other parts of the earth. Jonathan leaves the flock and flies around the world. He travels so far that he reaches an aviary heaven, where he meets Maureen Seagull (voice of Juliet Mills). Maureen introduces Jonathan to new experiences, and Jonathan returns to the flock to tell them the news. The other seagulls scorn him, but then they take notice when he heals a seagull that has died. Then the entire flock greets him as "the Son of the Great Gull." ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

Cissy (Kathy Garver) is reunited with her former boyfriend Russ Brooks (David Ladd), now a member of the Peace Corps. This reunion sparks jealousy in the heart of Cissy's current beau Gregg (Gregg Fedderson)--especially when it appears as though Cissy plans to join the Corps as well, and accompany Russ to his new assignment in South America. Sidelines observer Uncle Bill (Brian Keith) hopes that Cissy will ultimate make the right choices in her life, but the evidence doesn't seem to point in that direction! ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Marguerite Henry's beloved novel Misty of Chincoteague is given a charmingly old fashioned cinemadaptation in this 1961 second feature. David Ladd (son of Alan) plays a pre-teen boy who with his sister Pam Smith live with their grandparents on a Virginia coastal island. Each year, the local citizens celebrate Pony-Penning day, when they round up the wild ponies on the neighboring islands to sell them at auction. Ladd and Smith capture a mare known as "Phantom" because it has never previously been corralled by the locals. The kids hope to buy Phantom's colt Misty, but are disheartened when a stranger purchases both colt and mare. With the help of the sympathetic townspeople, a happy ending is secured. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The story of a boy and his fish is chronicled in this heartwarming children's drama. The story centers around Raymie, a young boy who is determined to catch 'Old Moe,' a big barracuda who has become a local legend. Along with a variety of older fisherman, he sets up his gear on a California pier and patiently begins fishing for his prize; when he finally catches it, the tender-hearted lad decides to release the great creature. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

A depressed race horse and a lonely boy come together in this touching drama. The horse gets the blues when it loses the dog that was his constant companion. The boy is lonely after his father remarries and sends him to live on his grandfather's ranch. While wandering around one day, the boy and his own dog encounter a rattler and a cougar; they then meet a young girl and the blue racer. Upon seeing the boy's dog, the horse immediately perks up, and the two become friends. This causes the girl to beg the boy to let the dog stay with the horse. At the story's end, the boy finally relents and allows the dog to be with his new friend. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Produced by Alan Ladd's own Jaguar company, The Big Land stars Ladd as Texas cattleman Morgan. As a means to expedite shipment of his stock to Missouri, Morgan convinces several Kansas farmers to build a small town as a railroad link between the Rio Grande and Kansas City. He is opposed in this by crooked cattle buyer Brog (Anthony Caruso), who realizes that any speed-up of Morgan's shipments will increase livestock prices. Surprisingly, Alan Ladd seems tired and listless throughout the proceedings; in fact, Virginia Mayo, cast as a saloon hall gal, delivers the film's liveliest performance. Still, the Ladd name brought in plenty of business, encouraging the star to stick with westerns well into the next decade. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi