Patrick McGoohan Movies

Carl Lee Hailey (Samuel L. Jackson) takes the law into his own hands after the legal system fails to adequately punish the men who brutally raped and beat his daughter, leaving her for dead. Normally, a distraught father could count on some judicial sympathy in those circumstances. Unfortunately, Carl and his daughter are black, and the assailants are white, and all the events take place in the South. Indeed, so inflammatory is the situation, that the local KKK (led by Kiefer Sutherland) becomes popular again. When Hailey chooses novice lawyer Jake Brigance (Matthew McConaughey) to handle his defense, it begins to look like a certainty that Carl will hang, and Jake's career (and perhaps his life) will come to a premature end. Despite the efforts of the NAACP and local black leaders to persuade Carl to choose some of their high-powered legal help, he remains loyal to Jake, who had helped his brother with a legal problem before the story begins. Jake eventually takes this case seriously enough to seek help from his old law-school professor (Donald Sutherland). When death threats force his family to leave town, Jake even accepts the help of pushy young know-it-all lawyer Ellen Roark (Sandra Bullock). ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Eight years before the dinosaur mania created by Jurassic Park, Bill L. Norton released this more dinosaur-friendly story about a 10-foot baby dinosaur in dire straits in Africa because Dr. Eric Kiviat (Patrick McGoohan), an evil paleontologist, is after it with a vengeance. He is the nemesis of Dr. Susan Matthews-Loomis (Sean Young) -- determined to save the baby from its hunters -- and her husband George Loomis (William Katt), a sportswriter who shares her protective instincts. Kiviat has recruited a revolutionary army to help him capture the baby's mother -- which they manage to do without killing her. The army has already shot down the father dinosaur, and so their own instincts are far from protective. As the husband and wife and baby dinosaur are united at last in their attempts to survive, the next step is to recapture Mom dinosaur and get away from the army and Kiviat, not an easy feat. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Mel Gibson, long-time heartthrob of the silver screen, came into his own as a director with Braveheart, an account of the life and times of medieval Scottish patriot William Wallace and, to a lesser degree, Robert the Bruce's struggle to unify his nation against its English oppressors. The story begins with young Wallace, whose father and brother have been killed fighting the English, being taken into the custody of his uncle, a nationalist and pre-Renaissance renaissance man. He returns twenty years later, a man educated both in the classics and in the art of war. There he finds his childhood sweetheart Murron (Catherine McCormack), and the two quickly fall in love. There are murmurs of revolt against the English throughout the village, but Wallace remains aloof, wishing simply to tend to his crops and live in peace. However, when his love is killed by English soldiers the day after their secret marriage (held secretly so as to prevent the local English lord from exercising the repulsive right of prima noctae, the privilege of sleeping with the bride on the first night of the marriage), he springs into action and single-handedly slays an entire platoon of foot soldiers. The other villagers join him in destroying the English garrison, and thus begins the revolt against the English in what will eventually become full-fledged war. Wallace eventually leads his fellow Scots in a series of bloody battles that prove a serious threat to English domination and, along the way, has a hushed affair with the Princess of Wales (the breathtaking Sophie Marceau) before his imminent demise. For his efforts, Gibson won the honor of Best Director from the Academy; the movie also took home statuettes for Best Picture, Cinematography, Makeup, and Sound Effects. ~ Jeremy Beday, All Movie Guide

This 2-hour TV movie was originally presented as an installment of The ABC Saturday Mystery Movie in February of 1990. Patrick McGoohan (who also directed) plays a vice presidential candidate whose best friend murders a blackmailing racketeer. With "damage control" foremost in his mind, McGoohan arrange to make the murder look like a suicide. At this point, Lt. Columbo (Peter Falk) enters, and it's "cat and mouse" for the remaining 90 minutes. The 1990 Columbo episodes alternated on the Saturday Mystery Movie with three other series: Cristine Cromwell, B.L. Stryker and Kojak. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this suspense movie, Lt. Colombo thwarts the evil scheme of a military academy commandant who is planning on murdering the school board chairman to further his career. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Religion and medical ethics clash in this provocative drama that tells the story of a man prosecuted by the system because he refused to grant his dying daughter badly needed blood transfusions because he had faith that God would miraculously heal her. Unfortunately, the girl dies and now, in addition to dealing with the courts, angry doctors and an embittered wife (who had finally caved-in and signed the papers too late), he must also wrestle with his own conflicting feelings. ~ Tana Hobart, All Movie Guide

Patrick McGoohan starred in this weekly, half-hour actioner as NATO agent John Drake. Danger Man ran in the U.S. from April 5 through September 13, 1961. The series was followed four years later by a more popular 60-minute version. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this episode from the popular BBC spy series, agent Drake looks into the supposed suicide of a prominent financier. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Secret Agent John Drake investigates the surfeit of American money on the international market in this episode of the popular BBC spy series. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In this romantic comedy, a young woman spends all her time caring for her ailing mother. The one bright spot in her life is her African pen pal. Her mother finally dies, and the woman immediately sets off for Africa to meet the pen pal. There she finds that he is too busy chasing elephants to notice her. Instead she ends up falling for his brother.The two brothers find themselves entangled in various adventures involving African wildlife. The film was shot on location in Africa. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In this efficient British crime drama, Tom Yately (Stanley Baker) is an ex-con looking for honest work. He thinks he's found it when he takes a job as a truck driver, but he soon discovers that the trucking firm he's signed on with is not playing by the rules. Red (Patrick McGoohan), the company's best driver, and Cartley (William Hartnell), the manager, have created five fictional drivers who have been added to the payroll. The other staff drivers are given the shifts that the phony drivers are supposed to be working, while Red and Cartley divide their pay packets. When Tom attempts to expose the corruption at the trucking firm, he soon discovers that he's taken his life in his hands in the process. Keep an eye peeled for a supporting performance by a young Sean Connery (it was only his fifth screen role); the cast also includes Herbert Lom, Jill Ireland, Peggy Cummins, and David McCallum. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Dutch cult filmmaker Rene Daalder (Massacre at Central High, Habitat) directed this surreal tale of thought-control experiments on the inmates of an insane asylum. Like his other films, Hysteria is a rich and thematically dense sociopolitical allegory, but this time around the concept is overwhelmed by a particularly risible execution. Patrick McGoohan stars as Dr. Harvey Langston, a mad genius who spouts twisted philosophical nonsense while conducting experiments in universal consciousness and group thought. His latest guinea pig is Veronica (Emmanuelle Vaugier), who hallucinates ants all over her body and attempts to stab her doctor (Michael Maloney) in the eye with a corkscrew. Langston implants a computer chip in Veronica's head, and she enters the group consciousness of a contrived assembly of patients including a mannish Tourette's sufferer who speaks in rhyme, a musician who has separate identities in each of his arms, and Amanda Plummer as a wheelchair-bound dancer. Plummer has the film's most memorable scene, spinning about in her chair as the asylum's inmates copulate in every possible combination for the orgiastic finale. Whether the entire escapade is a dangerous cult or a radical new model for a communal civilization (as in the similarly offbeat Phase IV) is open to interpretation, but most of the time the events onscreen are too laughable for it to really matter. Daalder's unique vision walks a very thin line, and he is capable of taking outrageous concepts and making them believable (as in Habitat), but this time he misses the mark by a mile. Nevertheless, McGoohan does his best and the film is still worth watching, for even if it is a failure (and it is), it's at least an interesting one. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide

A top-secret Soviet spy satellite -- using stolen Western technology -- malfunctions and then goes into a descent that lands it near an isolated Arctic research encampment called Ice Station Zebra, belonging to the British, which starts sending out distress signals before falling silent. The atomic submarine Tigerfish, commanded by Cmdr. James Ferraday (Rock Hudson), is dispatched with orders to get to Ice Station Zebra carrying three passengers, a Englishman going by the name of David Jones (Patrick McGoohan), a Soviet turncoat named Boris Vaslov (Ernest Borgnine), and an American Marine officer, Captain Anders (Jim Brown), who is supposed to command the Marine unit assigned to the mission. Jones is problem enough, as he is in command of the mission and he prefers to withhold as much information as it's possible to do from Ferraday, even at the risk of the Tigerfish's safety. Add to that the fact that Anders is suspicious of Vaslov, and Vaslov seems much too inquisitive and is telling even less of what he knows about the mission, and Ferraday has his hands full trying to get these men to the polar ice -- 600 miles of dangerous travel -- in just two days. When an attempt to break through the ice -- coupled with some timely sabotage -- kills one man and nearly destroys the boat, the men surrounding these contending parties start to understand just how high the stakes are for everyone. It turns out that the Soviets want what was aboard that satellite as much as the West does; indeed, both sides are frantic to get it, and, just as much, to keep the other side from getting it -- and they're prepared to take it by brute force. Once Ferraday and his men arrive at Zebra, they find a disaster and still more mystery, with most of the men dead and the object that Mr. Jones is supposed to secure nowhere in evidence, and he and his two fellow men of mystery suddenly showing their killing instincts quite freely. And with the storm clearing from the Soviet side first, their planes and their paratroops are closing in on Ferraday, and his relative handful of men. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide