Gary Allen Movies

Joel Coen and Ethan Coen concocted this stylish screwball comedic amalgam of Frank Capra and Howard Hawks. Tim Robbins stars as Norville Barnes, a dull-wit from Muncie, Indiana who wrangles a job with the big Hudsucker Industries. He has a singular idea for a new children's toy that he wants to present to corporate executive Sidney J. Mussberger (Paul Newman). As he makes his way up to Mussberger's office, the company president Waring Hudsucker (Charles Durning) is on his way down -- through the window of the forty-fourth floor boardroom! Hudsucker's death sets off a panic that Mussberger sees as an opportunity for taking over the company -- by installing a total incompetent in Hudsucker's place and devaluing the stock. When Barnes stumbles into Mussberger's office, Mussberger sees his pigeon and appoints Barnes as the new company president. The only problem is that the new product Barnes proposes for the company, the Hula Hoop, turns out to be a tremendous success, and Mussberger has difficulty manipulating his new corporate president. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

Popular African-American comedian Jo Jo Dancer is severely burned while free-basing cocaine. Producer/director/writer Richard Pryor insists that the movie is not autobiographical. While hovering between life and death, Dancer flashes back to his childhood, when he grew up in a brothel. Producer/director/writer Richard Pryor insists that the movie is not autobiographical. Dancer decides to become a comic, but has a great many difficulties rising to stardom until he begins making scatological comments about race relations. Producer/director/writer Richard Pryor insists that the movie is not autobiographical. As he rises to fame, Jo Jo has problems controlling his drug addiction and womanizing. Producer/director/writer Richard Pryor insists.....Well, you've caught on by now. If one were able to excise the excruciatingly boring "introspection" scene, Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life is Calling would stand as an excellent testimonial to Richard Pryor's cutting-edge comic brilliance. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Tom Smothers and Carol Kane co-star with Paul Reubens and Judge Reinhold in this uneven comedy spoof of slasher films. Sergeant Cooper (Smothers) is a Canadian Mountie who investigates the death of cheerleaders attending a summer camp at Indiana's It Had To Be University. Cameo appearances by Eve Arden, Kaye Ballard, Eileen Brennan, Tab Hunter, and Donald O'Connor fail to add anything to the thin, sophomoric plot. This film should not be confused with the similarly titled 1988 Australian feature directed by Hadyn Keenan. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

As if in some way Billy Wilder sensed that Buddy Buddy would ultimately turn out to be his final feature film, Wilder lets loose scatter-shot stingers at a wide range of pop-culture targets -- from sex clinics, to 60 Minutes, to movie references, to disco, to Betamax video recorders. Based on Francis Veber and Edouard Molinaro's L'emmerdeur (known in the United States as A Pain in the A. . .), Buddy Buddy concerns the unlikely pairing of a gruff hitman and a suicidal klutz. Walter Matthau plays a professional killer going by the name of Trabucco, who is on his way to rub out gangster Rudy "Disco" Gambola (Fil Formicola), set to testify against the mob. As Trabucco heads off to a hotel across the street from the courthouse where he plans to set his hit, he runs into the depressed Victor Clooney (Jack Lemmon), who laments the fact that his wife has left him for the head of a weird Californian sex clinic. Trabucco keeps walking and sets up his rifle in a hotel room. He is disturbed by Victor trying to hang himself in the adjoining hotel room and tries to prevent him from killing himself by restraining him, but Victor breaks loose and climbs onto the ledge of the hotel window. To get Victor to come back in, he agrees to drive him to the clinic to see his wife. The two go to the clinic where Victor's wife Celia (Paula Prentiss) informs Victor that she is in love in the head of the clinic, quack Dr. Zuckerbrot (Klaus Kinski). When Victor finds out that Celia is filing for divorce, he heads back to the hotel to kill himself, with Celia and Dr. Zuckerbrot in pursuit. Arriving at the hotel, they plan to inject Victor with a sedative but stick Trabucco with the needle instead. Trabucco reveals to Victor his assignment to kill Rudy, and Victor tries to help him with the killing. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

This mix of drama, camp, and brutal violence is anchored by the performance of Nicholas Worth. Worth plays Kurt Smith, a sweaty, balding maniac who strangles women with a stocking, raping and mutilating them during and after death. A Vietnam veteran, Smith prowls the streets of Hollywood posing as a photographer, then sells his violent porn to sleazy smut-peddler Sam (Porky's star Chuck Mitchell). At home, Smith lifts weights and tells off his dead father, whose abuse was obviously one cause of his mania. Sometimes he calls the radio show of psychiatrist Lindsey Gale (Flo Gerrish), posing as a Puerto Rican named Ramon and asking for advice about his headaches. Dedicated cop McCabe (James Westmoreland) has no luck solving the case until Smith murders one of Dr. Gale's patients, in an unforgivably sick scene. The patient (Paula Warner) was molested by her father, which Smith overhears. When he breaks into her house that night, Smith ties her up while cooing, "Daddy loves his little girl," and pouring hot wax on her as she cries into her teddy-bear. ~ Robert Firsching, Rovi

Woody Allen's romantic comedy of the Me Decade follows the up and down relationship of two mismatched New York neurotics. Jewish comedy writer Alvy Singer (Allen) ponders the modern quest for love and his past romance with tightly-wound WASP singer Annie Hall (Diane Keaton, née Diane Hall). The twice-divorced Alvy knows that it's not easy to find a mate when the options include pretentious New York intellectuals and lifestyle-obsessed Rolling Stone writers, but la-di-dah-ing Annie seems different. Along the rocky road of their coupling, Allen/Alvy weigh in on such topics as endless therapy, movies vs. TV, the absurdity of dating rituals, anti-Semitism, drugs, and, in one of the best set pieces, repressed Midwestern WASP insanity vs. crazy Brooklyn Jewish boisterousness. Annie wants to move to Los Angeles to find that fame that finally does in the relationship -- but not before Alvy gets in a few digs at vacuous, mantra-fixated California. Originally entitled Anhedonia (the inability to enjoy oneself), Annie Hall blended the slapstick and fantasy from such earlier Allen films as Sleeper (1973) and Bananas (1971) with the more autobiographical musings of his stand-up and written comedy, using an array of such movie techniques as talking heads, splitscreens, and subtitles. Within these gleeful formal experiments and sight gags, Allen and co-writer Marshall Brickman skewered 1970s solipsism, reversing the happy marriage of opposites found in classic screwball comedies. Hailed as Allen's most mature and personal film, Annie Hall beat out Star Wars for Best Picture and also won Oscars for Allen as director and writer and for Keaton as Best Actress; audiences enthusiastically responded to Allen's take on contemporary love and turned Keaton's rumpled menswear into a fashion trend. ~ Lucia Bozzola, Rovi

The shockingly brutal murder of a little girl in a church where she was just about to receive her first Communion sets a strong tone for terror in this disturbing horror film. The prime suspect in the death of Karen Spages (Brooke Shields) is her sister, Alice (Paula Sheppard), who happily tormented Karen by donning a mask and a raincoat to scare her. Comforting the grieving mother, Catherine Spages (Linda G. Miller), is her sister, Annie (Jane Lowry); local priest Father Tom (Rudolph Willrich); and Catherine's estranged husband, Dominick (Niles McMaster). Other characters include Father Tom's quirky housekeeper, Mrs. Tredoni (Mildred Clinton); a pair of detectives (Tom Signorelli, Michael Hardstark); and Catherine Spages' obese, cat-loving landlord (Alphonso De Noble). While the police investigation and all visual clues quickly point to Alice, director Alfred Sole manages to cast doubt on the killer's identity while the masked madman strikes several more times. About two-thirds of the way through the movie, Sole allows the viewer to see the killer. However, he smartly keeps his characters in the dark setting up a tense finale which culminates in yet another bloody slaying on holy ground before the lunatic is finally stopped. ~ Patrick Legare, Rovi

The life and times of demagogic Louisiana governor Huey Long has been fictionalized by two Hollywood films, All The King's Men (1949) and A Lion is in the Streets (1953). Made for television, The Life and Assassination of the Kingfish endeavors to tell the true story, with few names changed. Played by Edward Asner, Long rises to the top of state politics on such placebo-like programs as "Every Man a King" and "Share the Wealth." He remains an enigma to friends and enemies both: He cheats and lies his way to power even while providing such important benefits to Louisiana as a strong school system and network of highways; he plays the buffoon in public while behaving like a fascist dictator on the floor of the legislature; and so on. In 1935, Long, on the verge of running for president, is shot down by an old enemy. Director Robert Collins begins his script at this point, with Long's career related in flashback as he hovers between life and death in a hospital bed. Life and Assassination of the Kingfish was first aired March 21, 1977; eighteen years later, another Huey Long biopic, Kingfish, was presented on the TNT cable service, with John Goodman as Long. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In this western (filmed entirely in New Jersey), two mad hombres ride out to get revenge upon the Indians who raped one of their girlfriends. Along the way they encounter bad guys bullying an old man and his lovely daughter. Later the heroes catch the crooks brutally sullying another girl and they finally get their own brand of violent revenge. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

It sure doesn't take Beaver Cleaver (Jerry Mathers) very long to get into trouble as Leave It to Beaver launches its first season on the air (and its only season on CBS). Matter of fact, Beav's in the doghouse in the very first episode -- or at least he thinks he is. When his teacher Miss Canfield (Diane Brewster) hands Beaver a sealed note to give to his mom and dad, his classmates Whitey (Stanley Fafara) and Judy (Jeri Weil) convince him that he's going to get expelled -- or, as he puts it, "spelled." Thus it is that Beav and big brother Wally go to great and inordinate lengths to hide the note from parents Ward (Hugh Beaumont) and June (Barbara Billingsley). Like many other first-season episodes, this one opens with a "preview," narrated by Hugh Beaumont. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi