Robert Carradine Movies

This television miniseries derives its plot from The Sun Also Rises, the 1926 novel by Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961). Set in France and Spain, the miniseries follows the lives of several expatriate Americans and their acquaintances in the decade after World War I. These expatriates -- part of the so-called lost generation of Americans bitter about the war and disillusioned by prevailing U.S. values -- drink, roam, ruminate, and chase women. The central character, journalist Jake Barnes (Hart Bochner), pals up with fellow countrymen Bill Gorton (Zeljko Ivanek), an amiable war veteran, and Robert Cohn (Robert Carradine), a novelist and college-trained boxer, to enjoy Paris night life. Barnes runs into beautiful and sophisticated Lady Brett Ashley (Jane Seymour), whom he romanced in England while she was a volunteer nurse and he was recuperating from a war wound that left him impotent. She is soon to divorce her husband to marry Mike Campbell (Ian Charleson), a hard-drinking Scot. Still smitten by her, Barnes follows her everywhere. So do Gorton and Cohn. Cohn falls hard for her. But Lady Brett says she wants to live happily ever after with many men, not just one, in spite of her betrothal to Campbell, a liaison with Cohn, and her affection for Barnes. Such is the scope of her appetite for men. For a new diversion, bullfighting, all of the principals -- including Campbell -- go to Pamplona, Spain. There, matador Pedro Romero (Andrea Occhipinti) whets Lady Brett's appetite all over again with his derring-do in the bullring. After Cohn discovers her in bed with Romero, he beats the bullfighter livid. It is all for naught. To Lady Brett, Cohn is an interesting toy, nothing more. The story reaches its conclusion when Romero -- purple with Cohn's bruises -- enters the arena to challenge a bull. Will Romero survive? Will Lady Brett choose him over Barnes? Will she marry Campbell? ~ Mike Cummings, All Movie Guide

In this standard human interest comedy, Susan Berlanger (Kristy McNichol) has been crippled since a child and has to wear a leg brace in order to get around, but that does not in any way prevent Sam (Robert Carradine) and several other men from being very attracted to her. Susan is a professional flautist with a ballet-company orchestra and is given a chance to travel to Europe for a concert tour, which she is more than happy to accept. Since she has doubts about relationships (do these men feel sorry for her?), she puts a cast on her leg and goes to a ski resort to find out what it is like to be treated "normally" by others. Once there, she meets a captivating photographer (Michael Ontkean) and falls in love -- but does not tell him the truth about her leg. Making matters even worse, a wealthy Frenchman courting Susan's roommate at the resort is an amputee -- he lost a leg in an automobile accident. Sooner or later, Susan will have to come to grips with her deception, her forthcoming marriage, and her interest in the photographer. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

In this sci-fi film, rock musician Bobby Sinclaire (Robert Carradine) and his girlfriend, Iris Longacre (Cherie Currie), discover that the U. S. government is holding a group of benign aliens prisoner. When the government threatens to experiment on these unfortunate extraterrestrials, it is up to Bobby and friends to help them escape. The musical group Tangerine Dream provided the music for this film. ~ Iotis Erlewine, All Movie Guide

In this exciting Gold Rush adventure, the trials, tribulations and joys experienced by sourdoughs in the Canadian Yukon are chronicled. The tale is taken from a Jack London story. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Samuel Fuller's valedictory war picture, The Big Red One follows the First Infantry Division from Africa to Europe during the years 1942 through 1945. Lee Marvin portrays the division sergeant; he's tough and experienced, to be sure, but he takes on his job with cool professionalism rather than Hollywood bravado. Based on Fuller's own experiences, the film is a loosely constructed series of anecdotes. Among them are an insane asylum under bombardment while the inmates applaud and a climactic vignette in which a very young concentration camp internee dies while a friendly soldier plays piggy-back with the boy. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Little House on the Prairie star Melissa Sue Anderson heads the cast of the made-for-TV The Survival of Dana. Dana Lee (Anderson) is a basically decent high school girl who suffers severe culture shock when her family moves to another town. A victim of oppressive peer pressure, Dana begins hanging around the "wrong crowd." Despite the affluence of their parents, these aimless kids get their kicks out of petty crime-and before long, there's nothing petty about their activities. Marion Ross, Robert Carradine Talia Balsam and Frederic Forrest costar in The Survival of Dana, which debuted May 29, 1979. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Hal Ashby's 1978 melodrama examines the impact of the Vietnam War on the "war at home" among the men who fought it and the women in their lives. Left alone in Los Angeles when her gung-ho Marine husband Bob (Bruce Dern) heads to Vietnam in 1968, proper wife Sally Hyde (Jane Fonda) decides to volunteer at the V.A. hospital where her new friend Vi (Penelope Milford) works. There she meets Luke Martin (Jon Voight), a former high-school classmate and Marine who has returned from 'Nam a bitter paraplegic. As their relationship grows, Sally sees the effect of the war on the soldiers after they come back, inspiring her to rethink her priorities; Luke's spirits begin to lift, and a hospital tragedy helps focus his anger toward meaningful protest. After a Hong Kong visit with her increasingly withdrawn husband, Sally finds a love and companionship with Luke that she had never known with her husband. Once Bob comes home with his own injury, however, the three must find a way to deal with a changing world and with a system that betrayed the men fighting for it. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

Hoping to break out of the boring lives they knew in L.A., a group of young people make the journey to Alaska to work on the oil pipeline that is being built. However, they soon start getting into trouble. Life on the oil pipelines is difficult, violent, and expensive, and soon these city kids turn to robbery to make ends meet and to keep the thrills coming. The movie is most notable in that it stars a large number of famous actors' children: Desi Arnaz, Jr. (son of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz), Robert Carradine (one of John Carradine's many actor sons), Melanie Griffith (daughter of Tippi Hedren) and others. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Paul Bartel rips off his own Death Race 2000 in this mindless car-crash saga, containing more twisted metal than a bombed-out steel mill. The nominal storyline concerns an illegal auto race from Los Angeles to New York that promises the winner 100,000 dollars. David Carradine is Coy "Cannonball" Buckman, the race leader who drags his girlfriend, Linda (Veronica Hamel), along for the ride. Cade Redman (Bill McKinney) tools around in a loud red Trans Am, while Cannonball's nemesis barrels along in a big, black Plymouth, trying to outsmart Cannonball at every turn and exit ramp. The pile-ups keep building, and the cameos (Roger Corman, Martin Scorsese, Sylvester Stallone, Joe Dante, Paul Bartel) keep coming, but Cannonball must make it to New York to collect his winnings. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Dutch cult director Rene Daalder's fascinating debut was this unfairly neglected and richly idea-laden political allegory set in an American high school. Derrel Maury stars as David, a new student at Central High School who is shocked at the degree of control wielded by three preppie thugs who run the school with an iron fist. At first befriended by Mark (Andrew Stevens), David is soon the victim of bullying when Mark believes that he is courting his girlfriend, Teresa (Kimberly Beck), and points him out to the "ruling class." The worst is still to come, however, when David threatens the pecking order by foiling the three boys' attempted gang rape of a female student and has his leg crushed for his efforts. Eventually, the crippled David politicizes the underclass to fight their oppressors, and all three are killed by falling (from political power, the analogy clearly suggests). Daalder then takes the film in a different direction, with the newly liberated student body becoming an oppressive force themselves, and David enraged to the point of mass murder, deciding to wipe out the entire school. Stirred to action, it is up to the formerly apolitical Mark and Teresa to stop him. Daalder shrinks the entire political spectrum into the crucible of what seems on the surface to be a standard exploitation film. There are representatives of the extreme left, extreme right, disaffected center, intellectual bourgeoisie, and so forth, and all are nicely sketched without sacrificing the film's visceral appeal. Beyond the portraits, however, Daalder also skillfully shows the transitions which occur in many political movements, notably those which start as populist and develop into oppressively hierarchical castes. Perhaps disheartened by the failure of Massacre at Central High at the box office, Daalder did not direct again for nearly two decades, but returned with two more conceptually challenging (if equally unsuccessful) genre films, Hysteria and Habitat, in the mid-'90s. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide

The long-standing blood feud between the Hatfield family of West Virginia and the McCoy clan of Kentucky is effectively dramatized in this made-for-TV movie. Jack Palance and Steve Forrest star as the family's respective patriarches, Devil Anse Hatfield and Randall McCoy. Remaining faithful to the facts (more so than the 1949 Sam Goldwyn production Roseanne McCoy), the film charts the fluctuating relationship between the two warring factions -- sometimes they actually made overtures of peace, which of course didn't last too long -- as well as the star-crossed romance between Devil Anse's daughter Rose Ann (Karen Lamm) and Randall's son Johnse (Richard Hatch). Featured in the cast are Palance's former wife Virginia Baker as Devil Anse's present wife Levicy and his daughter Brooke as Mary Hatfield. The Hatfields and the McCoys first aired January 15, 1975. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide