Ken Clark Movies

The author of the famous late 1930's antiwar book Johnny Got His Gun wrote and directed this film adaptation. It concerns a nameless young soldier (Timothy Bottoms) in a veteran's hospital in the World War I period. The young man has had his face blown off, he is without the use of any of his senses save touch, and also has no arms or legs. He is in a coma at the beginning of the film, and his doctors doubt that he will regain consciousness. This is also what they hope. A nurse, while changing his dressings, discovers that he is awake and responsive. The unrelieved awfulness of his situation is apparent to many. However, in order to keep the "good order" of the military, the regular Army general commanding the hospital will not allow the boy to be seen or his family notified, nor will he permit anyone to perform a mercy killing. Interspersed with this horror are flashbacks of the youth's life before the war. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

In this drama, a CIA agent must race against time to find a purloined nuclear bomb, "Bloody Mary", which had been taken by a ring of foreign spies. He soon finds himself aboard an Athens-bound freighter where he encounters Russian and Chinese agents. Will he find the weapon in time? ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

When Indians threaten a rancher, he is helped by a young cowboy in this western film. (AKA Apache Fury) ~ Rovi

Mark Forest stars as Hercules in this sword-and-sandal affair from 1960 (its American release occured two years later). The film bears a striking resemblance to the like-vintage Hercules Against the Barbarians, right down to the choice of leading man. We suspect that both films were excerpted from a longer Hercules epic, then released separately to engender a higher box-office take. Oh, yes the plot: Hercules takes on the three sons of Genghis Khan, quite a remarkable feat for a superhero from ancient Greece. Jose Greci also appears in this tribute to testosterone. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Bumping along over several flaws, this is an odd sci-fi film directed by David Bradley, best known for his incredibly vast private film library rather than his stints in the director's chair. A very motley crew is winging its way through space with the moon as its objective. On board the spaceship are a dozen scientists, engineers, and researchers from the U.S., Sweden, Russia, Israel, Germany, and even Turkey. The flight captain has not only a variety of nationalities to juggle but must also contend with the dissension between the German and Israeli due to a certain holocaust tragedy in World War II. The romance between the magnificent Swedish chemist and the Turkish biologist is also heating up. But the worst is yet to come. After landing on the moon, the crew discovers that underneath the lunar surface is a whole civilization of peace-loving moon-beings who never asked for visitors. Their reaction is rather chilling. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

This hysterical drive-in favorite pits a community of swamp-dwelling yokels against the silliest-looking monsters since the shag-rug aliens of The Creeping Terror. Despite the strange sucker-marks found on a dead trapper's blood-drained body, and a man's story of seeing his unfaithful wife and her lover dragged into the swamp by the creatures, the police refuse to acknowledge that something freaky is going on. Only after more trappers disappear does the local game warden decide to take action, which he does with a vengeance. When the leech lair is discovered in a cave beneath the swamp, explosives are employed to blow them to little rubber bits. It's hard to be too critical of this early film from prolific TV-director Bernard L. Kowalski (Night of the Blood Beast), since executive producer Roger Corman allocated a budget for this production that would hardly cover the catering bill on a major studio film -- even in 1960! Look carefully to spot the scuba tanks beneath the leech costumes. ~ Cavett Binion, Rovi