Raymond St. Jacques

After he finds himself the target of mysterious assassins, an amnesiac (Michael Biehn) convinces a psychiatrist (Patsy Kensit) to help him remember his past. It would seem he was involved in a CIA operation that the agency does not want him to reveal. ~ Kristie Hassen, All Movie Guide

Glory is a celebration of a little-known act of mass courage during the Civil War. Simply put, the heroes involved have been ignored by history due to racism. Those heroes were the all-black members of the 54th Regiment of the Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, headed by Col. Robert Gould Shaw (Matthew Broderick), the son of an influential abolitionist (played by an uncredited Jane Alexander). Despite the fact that the Civil War is ostensibly being fought on their behalf, the black soldiers are denied virtually every privilege and amenity that is matter of course for their white counterparts; as in armies past and future, they are given the most menial and demeaning of tasks. Still, none of the soldiers quit the regiment when given the chance. The unofficial leaders of the group are gravedigger John Rawlins (Morgan Freeman) and fugitive slave Trip (Denzel Washington), respectively representing the brains and heart of the organization. The 54th acquit themselves valiantly at Fort Wagner, SC, charging a fortification manned by some 1,000 Confederates. Glory was based on Lincoln Kirstein's Lay This Laurel and Peter Burchard's One Gallant Rush; the latter book was founded on the letters of Col. Robert Gould Shaw, the real-life character played by Matthew Broderick. The film won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for co-star Denzel Washington, and additional statuettes for Best Cinematography (Freddie Francis) and Sound Recording. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This episode was intended to introduce Katie Rich as a recurring character named Cougar, a member of Denise's philosophy class. After becoming Cougar's study partner, Denise (Lisa Bonet) invites the girl to crash in her dorm room, on condition that she make herself scarce whenever dorm director Lettie appears. Unfortunately, the girl finds it impossible to be inconspicuous, and ends up getting Denise in plenty of trouble--especially when it is revealed that Cougar isn't even a registered student. Curiously, though Katie Rich makes an excellent impression in this episode, her character was never seen again. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

When a pregnant woman is caught in the crossfire of a mob hit, Hunter (Fred Dryer) and McCall (Stepfanie Kramer) find themselves faced with two daunting tasks. Not only do they have to locate the killer, but they must also establish the identity of the brain-dead victim in order to save the life of her unborn child. A crucial decision by the compassionate McCall caps this pivotal episode, which was directed by series star Fred Dryer. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The opening episode of Murder She Wrote's second season marks the first occasion in which matronly mystery writer and amateur sleuth Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury) assumes a different identity in the cause of justice. Summoned to a Caribbean resort by a desperate letter from her old friend Antoinette Farnsworth (Reggie Savage), Jessica arrives to find that Antoinette has been murdered. To ferret out the guilty party, who has already been pinpointed as a jewel thief, our heroine poses as a very wealthy--and very reclusive--widow. Len Cariou, who previously costarred with Angela Lansbury in the hit Broadway musical "Sweeney Todd", makes his first appearance as redoubtable British secret agent Michael Haggerty. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In yet another slick, formulaic Charles Bronson vengeance film (they would continue until the actor was in his mid-70s, still playing the morally insulted friend/husband/lover), Bronson is Holland, an assassin for hire who has just come out of retirement to finish off a Guatemalan thug by the name of Moloch (Joseph Maher). Moloch tortures and terrorizes the good guys and is protected by a misguided American government agency -- though nothing can stop Holland once he starts killing his way to the chief villain. No one except the wife of one of Moloch's victims -- and perhaps a few viewers now and again -- raises any questions about Holland's trail of corpses. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Assignment: Kill Castro was originally released as Cuba Crossing. Stuart Whitman stars as a mercenary hired to "off" the Cuban dictator. He soon discovers that he will be immediately expendable once the deed is done, and that co-stars like Robert Vaughn should not automatically be trusted. Raymond St. Jacques, Woody Strode and Caren Kaye are among the good actors who appear fitfully in the film; the bulk of the story, however, is carried by such inexpensive unknowns as Mary Lou Gassen. Don't miss jewelry-bedecked pop star Monty Rock III as a "cruiser"--and we don't mean the Evinrude variety. A giveaway that Assignment: Kill Castro had trouble finding an audience is its plethora of alternate titles; in addition to Cuba Crossing, the film was also known as Kill Castro, The Mercenaries and Sweet Violent Tony. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

President Richard Nixon's legal counsellor Charles Colson was tried for several criminal charges relating to the Watergate cover-up, eventually spending some time in prison. This film explores Colson's personal crisis, and the religious convictions which, crossing party boundaries, worked to bring about his conversion from being a cynical politician to becoming a committed Christian. Far from being corrupted in prison, Colson (Dean Jones) became a missionary for his beliefs and worked to reform many of the 'hard cases" he encountered there. After the period covered by the film, it is worthwhile to note that Colson chose a new career for himself following his release from prison -- prison missionary. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Larry Cohen's pseudo-biography of J. Edgar Hoover (Broderick Crawford) was virtually howled off the screens upon its release in 1977. Today, with the cross-dressing Hoover so much a matter of historical record that even Oliver Stone didn't bother to make too much of a point of it in Nixon, the Cohen film plays more like a dramatic re-enactment rather than the puerile paranoid fantasy it appeared to be at the time. Unfortunately, Cohen's method is part exploitation and part historical tableau. On the one hand, Cohen dramatizes historical moments in Hoover's momentous life story -- the shooting of John Dillinger in front of Chicago's Biograph Theater, his first arrest -- with a deadening solemnity (even abandoning the backlot facsimiles to shoot on the actual historical locations). On the other hand, Cohen relishes his scenes of Hoover's homosexuality and his propensity for sitting in the dark with a bottle of whiskey, replaying tapes of the amorous liaisons of high government officials -- the decadently homosexual Hoover built his political power base by getting all the dirt he could on the government's movers and shakers -- particularly their sexual liaisons -- and blackmailing them for their support when he could not get it in any other way. A true schizophrenic masterwork in its time, the film is now muted by a reality more incredible than Cohen ever imagined in his wildest dreams. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Three intrepid archeologists head into Pueblo country in New Mexico in search of Mankind's origins. The group hopes to locate an ancient medallion, which may or may not prove that the Earth was once a stopping-off point for extraterrestrial beings. But just finding the medallion turns out to be the easy part; complicating matters is a fierce struggle over possession of the artifact, with several would-be possessors indicating that they're willing to kill to get what they want. Filmed on location in Taos, New Mexico as the pilot for a proposed (but unsold) weekly series, Search for the Gods made its ABC network bow on March 9, 1975--where it was handily trounced in the ratings by a competing Barbra Streisand special. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Lost in the Stars was an American Film Theatre adaptation of the musical play by Maxwell Anderson and Kurt Weill--which in turn was based on the Alain Paton novel Cry the Beloved Country. Brock Peters portrays a South African minister who goes to the Big City to locate his son Raymond St. Jacques, who is now a criminal in the eyes of the white rulers. The minister forges a curious, foredoomed friendship with a white farmer (Paul Rogers). Lost in the Stars has sometimes been accused of blunting the edge of Paton's angry study of the cruelties of Apartheid; fans of musical theatre will be more politely inclined to this loving filmization of the Broadway play. On its own, Cry the Beloved Country was previously filmed in 1951, with Canada Lee, Sidney Poitier and Charles Carson. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This sequel to Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970) brings back Coffin Ed Johnson (Raymond St. Jacques) and Gravedigger Jones (Godfrey Cambridge), two freewheeling African-American police detectives working the beat in Harlem. Joe (Peter DeAnda) is a famous photographer who has mounted a crusade to drive drug dealers out of Harlem, but his intentions are hardly civic-minded; he hopes that by cutting out as much competition as possible, he can take over the business and corner the neighborhood's dope market. Caspar (Maxwell Glanville), one of Harlem's biggest dealers, is the only one who has figured out Joe's angle, and he carefully guards his territory. When a few local dealers begin turning up dead, Joe announces that the ghost of a powerful Harlem gangster, Charleston Blue, has returned to clean up the neighborhood; the small-time dope men are a suspicious lot, and many of them flee the city. But Coffin Ed and Gravedigger know that something fishy is going on, and they struggle to get the goods on Joe and Caspar, as well as solving the mystery of Charleston Blue. Like its predecessor, Come Back Charleston Blue was based on a novel by crime writer Chester Himes. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide