David O'Malley Movies

A trio of lifelong friends returns to their hometown of Kalamazoo, MI, for their ten-year high-school reunion, only to discover that their graduation time capsule contains embarrassingly unmet goals for all of them in director David P. O'Malley's affectionate comedy. For Carol Cavanaugh (Josie Davis), Maggie Goldman (Mayim Bialik), and Joan Branson (Joanna Clare Scott), life hasn't necessarily been as fruitful and as glamorous as they may have hoped in the idealistic days of their carefree youth. Though still relatively young and hopeful about the road that lies ahead, the prospect of having all of their unfulfilled dreams trumpeted before every member of their graduating class is much too humiliating to take lying down. Now, as the three lifelong friends attempt to recover the capsule before it can be read aloud, the spirits of their deceased grandmothers appear to offer solace and consolation in an uncertain time of progress and transition. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

The third in director Sam Raimi's stylish, comic book-like horror trilogy that began with The Evil Dead (1982), this tongue-in-cheek sequel offers equal parts sword-and-sorcery-style action, gore, and comedy. Bruce Campbell returns as the one-armed Ash, now a supermarket employee ("Shop Smart...Shop S-Mart") who is transported by the powers of a mysterious book back in time with his Oldsmobile '88 to the 14th century medieval era. Armed only with a shotgun, his high school chemistry textbook, and a chainsaw that mounts where his missing appendage once resided, the square-jawed, brutally competent Ash quickly establishes himself as a besieged kingdom's best hope against an "army of darkness" currently plaguing the land. Since the skeleton warriors have been resurrected with the aid of the Necronomicon (the same tome that can send Ash back to his own time) he agrees to face the enemy in battle. Ash also finds romance of a sort along the way with a beautiful damsel in distress, Sheila (Embeth Davidtz), and contends with his own doppelganger after mangling an important incantation. ~ Karl Williams, Rovi

Advertised as a parody of cheapo-sleazo biker flicks, Easy Wheels looks so much like the real thing that one wonders whether or not we were originally supposed to take the whole megillah seriously. Biker Bruce (Paul Le Mat) and She Wolf (Eileen Davidson) forget their mutual animosity long enough to plan a mass abduction of female babies. The idea is to create a race of super biker chicks, who will enslave mankind and set up a leather-jacketed matriarchy. Bruce isn't completely sold on this idea and bides his time until he gets a chance to undermine She Wolf. Filmed in glamorous Des Moines and Dubuque, Easy Wheels makes all those American-International flicks of the 1960s look like the collected works of Antonioni. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Popular C&W singer Jim Stafford heads the cast of the "four waller" Kid Colter. The main character is not Stafford, however, but young Jeremy Shamos, playing a city boy abducted by mountain men. Shamos is abandoned in the wilds of the Pacific northwest by his captors. Though it is assumed that the boy will die from exposure, he proves to have hitherto untapped reserves of strength. The boy's methods of surviving his ordeal, and his ultimate reunification with his family, are played out before some of the most breathtaking natural backdrops in America. Though the plot reeks of "movie of the week" exploitation, Kid Colter is eminently suitable for every member of the family. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

This monster movie involves the reopening of a Utah silver mine which had been closed for nearly 70 years after a catastrophic cave-in, the circumstances of which remain one of the nearby town's most legendary mysteries. When attempts are made to explore the mine shaft, the investigating party never returns. It seems the mine's collapse had served to seal in a nest of weird, multi-tentacled, bloodsucking creatures -- which are now free to seek new prey on the outskirts of town. ~ Cavett Binion, Rovi

A curious pure-entertainment offering from the same team responsible for the "Classics Illustrated" TV movies of the 1970s and 1980s, Nashville Grab stars Jeff Conaway as country-western singer Buddy Walker. While rehearsing for a prison concert, Buddy is kidnapped by female convicts Maxine (Betty Thomas) and Rita (Mari Gorman), who force him to accompany them on a cross-country escape in an old van. Adhering to the formula established by the theatrical feature Sugarland Express, the fugitives are hotly pursued by a variety of colorful characters, including Buddy's mercenary agent Ross (Slim Pickens) (who hopes to "merchandise" the kidnapping), the singer's ex-partners Frank (Gary Sandy) and Laurel (Cristina Raines, a goofy detective, a SWAT team, and a TV news crew. Played for laughs--and occasionally getting a few--Nashville Grab debuted October 18, 1981 on NBC. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

This family adventure chronicles the adventures and exploits of George Clark (Denver Pyle), one of the early naturalists. Clark was a friend and peer of John Muir, the man whose writings did so much to encourage the development of the national park system in the U.S. The two men attempt to save Yosemite Valley in California from the lumbermen and managed to get Abraham Lincoln to sign a piece of national legislation which would do just that. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

The Adventures of Frontier Fremont was one of the better Sunn Classics "four-wallers." Fremont (Dan Haggerty), a mild-mannered citizen of 19th-century St. Louis, gives up his job as a tinsmith in favor of a life in the mountains. Here he becomes friends with the animals and with other like-minded frontiersmen. Denver Pyle, a veteran Sunn Classics performer, co-stars as "the old mountaineer." Frontier Fremont star Dan Haggerty continued in this singular vein of wide-open-spaces entertainment in his TV series The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi