Peter Maloney Movies
Small, sad eyed actor, onscreen from the '70s. ~ All Movie Guide- 1979
A Manhattan priest with a fondness for dabbling in detective work investigates a series of unnerving, mysterious attacks, seemingly designed to terrify a young actress. This made-for-television film, retitled for its video release, is inspired by the books of mystery author G.K. Chesterton. ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide
The disarming comedy A Little Romance features Diane Lane as a 13-year-old American, living in Paris with her businessman stepfather (Arthur Hill) and her promiscuous mother (Sally Kellerman). Mom is currently enamored with pretentious-filmmaker David Dukes, and it is on the set of Dukes' latest picture that Lane meets another 13-year-old, insatiable French film buff Thelonious Bernard. A likeable street-smart petty thief and gambler, Bernard is instantly attracted to Lane. With the help of roguish old Laurence Olivier, Lane and Bernard arrange a romantic rendezvous under the Bridge of Sighs in Venice. Naturally, when the kids disappear it's a cause for international concern, but all ends as it should. Some of the best moments in A Little Romance belong to Broderick Crawford, unselfconsciously playing "himself" at a movie party. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Laurence Olivier, Arthur Hill, (more)
Dennis Christopher stars as a recent high school graduate in Bloomington, Indiana, who is caught with his friends -- Dennis Quaid, Daniel Stern, Jackie Earle Haley -- coasting between high school and deciding what to do with the rest of their lives. The four friends are snobbishly looked down upon by the college students of the town as "cutters," since they were born in Bloomington and their parents worked in the local limestone quarries that built the university. Dennis Christopher's character Dave wants to be a champion bicycle racer and he idolizes the Italian racing team -- so much so that he speaks, thinks, and acts Italian, all to his father's (Paul Dooley) forlorn exasperation. Dave falls for a college girl (Robyn Douglass), but is ashamed to admit he is a cutter and poses as an Italian exchange student to impress her. Dave is particularly excited when his heroes -- the Italian racers -- come to town for a race. But they are even more snobbish than the college students and rely on dirty tricks to keep Dave from winning a race against them. After that ordeal, Dave throws away his false identity and convinces his friends to enter the university's "Little 500" bicycle race against the college students. This light-hearted and heartwarming tale was a surprising word-of-mouth success at the box-office and won several awards, including an Academy Award for "Best Screenplay." ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Dennis Christopher, Dennis Quaid, (more)
"For God's sake, GET OUT!" was the ad campaign for the 1979 shocker The Amityville Horror. The film was based on the allegedly true story of the luckless Lutz family, who move lock, stock, and barrel into a new home, only to find that it is possessed by the demonic spirits of its previous owners. Variations of the Seven Deadly Plagues emanate from virtually every household fixture, while other forms of otherworldly mischief are suffered by the Lutz children. Enter kindly Father Delaney (Rod Steiger), who does his utmost to exorcise the house. The Amityville Horror was frequently greeted with laughs from its first-run audiences, especially after it was discovered that the "actual" events depicted in the film (based on a book by Jay Anson) were complete fabrications. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- James Brolin, Margot Kidder, (more)
Don Murray plays Lacy, a blatantly bigoted New York cop who finds that his rabid hatred forces him into a bloody rampage in order to save himself and his job in the derivative cop melodrama Deadly Hero. At one point in the film, Lacy rehearses a speech to be given to a cadre of right-wingers by intoning, "These are troubled times." This is certainly the case for Lacy, since this 18-year veteran of the NYPD has been demoted from detective to patrol car because of his liberal use of deadly force on nasty perpetrators. When Lacy, a lit fuse of seething anger and racial epithets, encounters nasty black mugger Rabbit (James Earl Jones), who is terrorizing young schoolteacher Sally (Diahn Williams) at knifepoint in her apartment, it doesn't take much for the cop to decide to put the thug on terror alert by shooting him. Is Sally grateful for blowing away the object of her torture? To Lacy's surprise, she instead testifies against him, accusing him of being a cold-blooded killer. Now Lacy has to figure out a way out of this high-shootin' mess. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Don Murray, Diahn Williams, (more)
- 1975
- R
Ben Gazzara stars in this low-level depiction of legendary gangster Al Capone, who rose to command the mob underworld in 1920's Chicago. Born in Brooklyn, Capone joins his first gang at the age of 11. From there, he graduates to the infamous "Five Points Gang" run by Johnny Torrio (Harry Guardino). After moving to Chicago a few years later and wiping out Torrio's crimeboss uncle, Capone becomes Torrio's right hand man. Capone becomes head of the area's prostitution and racketeering business, but, as his mind deteriorates from syphillis, so does his empire. There's not much to recommend here, aside from a surprisingly good appearance by Sylvester Stallone as fellow gangster Frank Nitti. Gazzara is frankly awful in the title role and producer Roger Corman uses stock shootout footage from other gangster films, including footage of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre from his own, earlier movie on the subject. ~ Don Kaye, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ben Gazzara, Susan Blakely, (more)
Brian De Palma takes on late 1960s media culture in his followup to Greetings (1968). Seeking a place in New York life one way or another, Vietnam vet John Rubin (Robert De Niro) moves into a Greenwich Village dive, with hopes of becoming a director for porn king Joe Banner (Allen Garfield). Rubin sells Banner on his idea to make "Peep Art" by filming the racy action in the building windows across from his apartment. He plans to seduce talky window denizen Judy (Jennifer Salt) to get the film he wants; but when that plan fails, John trades his camera for a TV and joins a radical theater troupe for their performance piece, "Be Black Baby." Inspired by the radicals, John decides to make his own violent political statement -- or does he just want to be on TV? Mixing long passages of the TV-framed "Be Black Baby" with John's misadventures in Manhattan, the film sends up political extremism, liberal guilt, and the Chicago 1968 protestors' mantra that "the whole world is watching," as it all becomes one big staged performance for the cameras. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Robert De Niro, Charles Durnham, (more)
After several years working along the margins of the underground film scene in New York, director Robert Downey broke through to wider recognition with the arthouse hit Putney Swope, a wildly irreverent satire of race and advertising in America. Putney Swope (Arnold Johnson) is the token African-American executive at an otherwise all-white advertising agency when the chairman of the board unexpectedly drops dead. Through a fluke in the chain of command, Swope becomes the new head of the firm, and decides its time to do things his way. He fires nearly all the staff (except for his one token white employee), renames the agency Truth and Soul, Inc., and announces they'll no longer accept accounts advertising tobacco, alcohol, or war toys. The ads they do produce -- for acne remedies and breakfast cereal, among other things -- are wildly successful, and the iconoclastic ad agency (which only accepts payment in cash) is targeted by government operatives as a threat to the national security. Antonio Fargas and Allen Garfield lead the supporting cast; Mel Brooks makes a cameo appearance. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Stanley Gottlieb, Allen Garfield, (more)
If for nothing else, Greetings would be memorable as the second feature-length directorial effort of Brian DePalma (his first, 1966's The Wedding Party, was released shortly afterward). A satire of late-1960s manners and mores, the film aims its barbs at Lyndon B. Johnson, Vietnam, the draft, the counterculture, Greenwich Village and the John F. Kennedy assassination. Billed first, Robert DeNiro actually has a supporting role as a young longhair who tries to help his best pal (Jonathan Warden) flunk his Army physical. Gerrit Graham is a JFK conspiracy theorist who may well have good reason to be paranoid. Though largely ignored by the mainstream press in America, Greetings was effusively honored at the 1969 Berlin Film Festival. The film was originally rated X due to its considerable sexual content. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jonathan Warden, Robert De Niro, (more)
