cult film freak: robert stack

Showing posts with label robert stack. Show all posts

Written by James M. Tate / 4/16/2025 / No comments / action , adventure , constance forslund , eighties , fred ward , gene hackman , harold sylvester , patrick swayze , reb brown , robert stack , ted kotcheff , tim thomerson , vietnam , war , wings hauser

GENE HACKMAN COMMANDS TED KOTCHEFF'S 'UNCOMMON VALOR'

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_iuyoT90Q0AFhlHAsFRV03yfRoakpJGgXee9oH3nt53BXcMAtNYYIuRlLR38ZH5JcwBj6BiwRadR17Ag-1hiV8_QYupzbggupDPF5FE7gvB15iQdFgELNbGBU_S394ljp6Pvcpzfp_oUJPLdzTPXLfQ9nfkm9i4l78mjyhARKOPH1ktZKilNXfyd2kJpd/s2046/Screen%20Shot%202025-04-17%20at%206.07.38%20PM.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1026" data-original-width="2046" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_iuyoT90Q0AFhlHAsFRV03yfRoakpJGgXee9oH3nt53BXcMAtNYYIuRlLR38ZH5JcwBj6BiwRadR17Ag-1hiV8_QYupzbggupDPF5FE7gvB15iQdFgELNbGBU_S394ljp6Pvcpzfp_oUJPLdzTPXLfQ9nfkm9i4l78mjyhARKOPH1ktZKilNXfyd2kJpd/s16000/Screen%20Shot%202025-04-17%20at%206.07.38%20PM.jpeg"></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Randall Tex Cobb & Kelly Junkerman in UNCOMMON VALOR Year: 1983 Rating: ****</td></tr></tbody></table>Recently, three important people connected to 1983's UNCOMMON VALOR have died: the most significant being the legendary Gene Hackman, who stars as Colonel Jason Rhodes, gathering a group of Vietnam veterans who served with his captured son — training them to bring his boy back home a decade later... Then there's director Ted Kotcheff, who had already tackled a similar subject in FIRST BLOOD (also featuring a kind of lonesome French horn soundtrack albeit by different composers); and actor Wings Hauser, who hasn't a part here, and isn't credited as writer, but his original screenplay (formerly titled Youth in Asia) became what's now a somewhat forgotten, equally cult-and-mainstream post-war action/thriller...

action, adventure, constance forslund, eighties, fred ward, gene hackman, harold sylvester, patrick swayze, reb brown, robert stack, ted kotcheff, tim thomerson, vietnam, war, wings hauser

GENE HACKMAN COMMANDS TED KOTCHEFF'S 'UNCOMMON VALOR'

Randall Tex Cobb & Kelly Junkerman in UNCOMMON VALOR Year: 1983 Rating: **** Recently, three important people connected to 1983's UN...

REGENERATING THROUGHOUT 'THE TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE'

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAhf-QUzXSTmd3egCt2tDL9JN6GQRPdo3FLWH0HH7gDO0n7PBxrqFDoOET1DTUfAcgDh6DS1BvJ1dmE5CMjG159A6k0bUh7nMDJkzViAL5yAl2Lt6aa6TkQA6cZRRD9P-x_MBYHpHFS9-YfCQsMz03YBbpo7SeoWVuqXwkvbgfmbnbK2B9xXOV_ZDYeQjR/s1620/Screen%20Shot%202024-09-27%20at%204.47.27%20PM%202.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="822" data-original-width="1620" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAhf-QUzXSTmd3egCt2tDL9JN6GQRPdo3FLWH0HH7gDO0n7PBxrqFDoOET1DTUfAcgDh6DS1BvJ1dmE5CMjG159A6k0bUh7nMDJkzViAL5yAl2Lt6aa6TkQA6cZRRD9P-x_MBYHpHFS9-YfCQsMz03YBbpo7SeoWVuqXwkvbgfmbnbK2B9xXOV_ZDYeQjR/s16000/Screen%20Shot%202024-09-27%20at%204.47.27%20PM%202.jpeg"></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Orson Welles heads THE TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE Year: 1986 Rating: ****</td></tr></tbody></table>Critics unfairly blasted THE TRANSFORMERS MOVIE as nothing but a prolonged toy commercial while it's really a collected hybrid of brisk, adult-oriented, ultra-violent HEAVY METAL-inspired animation; stylized Japanese anime; 1970's expository-filled Marvel sci-fi comics; Roger Dean's proggy planets inhabited by those titular robots that turn into motor-vehicles and spaceships or are already (in the best scenes) metallic dinosaurs, lizards and sharks... while a planet-engulfing planet derived from George Lucas's STAR WARS weapon The Death Star and V'Ger from <a href="http://www.cultfilmfreaks.com/2022/07/STMP.html">STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE</a> is the truly formidable antagonist... In the budding-hero lead, Judd Nelson turns in a kind of deliberately cornball 1950's throwback, befitting the equally cheesy wall-to-wall 1980's stadium-rock/arcade-jukebox soundtrack... while Orson Welles provided his last professional job, voicing that immense world-engulfing villain, splendidly named Unicron...

action, adventure, cartoon, david mendenhall, eighties, eric idle, fantasy, judd nelson, leonard nimoy, orson welles, robert stack, science-fiction

REGENERATING THROUGHOUT 'THE TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE'

Orson Welles heads THE TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE Year: 1986 Rating: **** Critics unfairly blasted THE TRANSFORMERS MOVIE as nothing but a prol...

SAMUEL FULLER'S TOKYO-BASED FILM NOIR 'HOUSE OF BAMBOO'

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisAT4lYSn5oopgBCbIFGdXoVuGBY_f8NyHcDPSYLkzkHfB3lB03ti2qDijYVwjuhloNZF3d4N65oiNuZWcviyVdHnVkjoJZGpZmA1Fq4g28fXNsDj3Ag6-47nk9FuKQG5jG3P0val4y5-vgAZ-AOAY_EeiysNd-yrYHuLEB_HhkBJtbd6wu9uq2S7vCS2x/s1437/Screen%20Shot%202021-10-08%20at%2011.51.35%20AM.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="717" data-original-width="1437" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisAT4lYSn5oopgBCbIFGdXoVuGBY_f8NyHcDPSYLkzkHfB3lB03ti2qDijYVwjuhloNZF3d4N65oiNuZWcviyVdHnVkjoJZGpZmA1Fq4g28fXNsDj3Ag6-47nk9FuKQG5jG3P0val4y5-vgAZ-AOAY_EeiysNd-yrYHuLEB_HhkBJtbd6wu9uq2S7vCS2x/s16000/Screen%20Shot%202021-10-08%20at%2011.51.35%20AM.jpeg"></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cameron Mitchell's the boss's thug in HOUSE OF BAMBOO Year: 1955 Rating: ****</td></tr></tbody></table>One of Sam Fuller's greatest movies is a Noir remake set in Tokyo, and the 1948 FBI-propaganda THE STREET WITH NO NAME is the best cinematic venture J. Edgar Hoover was ever connected to and starring Mark Stevens as an agent going undercover, literally on Skid Row, first as a boxer and then joining a gang of gangsters more like crooks...In HOUSE OF BAMBOO the head baddie's Robert Ryan, slowburn and professional, the polar opposite of Richard Widmark's signature tantrum-spouting hood. More a crooked businessman, he's cold to the bone yet eventually finds trust in seemingly wayward stranger-in-town Robert Stack...

brad dexter, crime, deforest kelley, FBI, fifties, film noir or melodrama, heist, japanese-based, robert ryan, robert stack

SAMUEL FULLER'S TOKYO-BASED FILM NOIR 'HOUSE OF BAMBOO'

Cameron Mitchell's the boss's thug in HOUSE OF BAMBOO Year: 1955 Rating: **** One of Sam Fuller's greatest movies is a Noir rema...

FARRAH FAWCETT SERVES AIRLINE MYSTERY 'MURDER ON FLIGHT 502'

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIVwr8ThObhvKnAFV3EYZcpjxzu_r2T9TOwrhku1JJGSF_HTZayUheymSqJ_KL38VuwL8oif1gHorBvtVWvUZCPZd8c8q01KYCAfOkGgiudmu_AYteuy6pe9QqIPCAwONJKHDCKsxBWSrRqqVwywhS6AsLD_C0sSPK2T0ZzHsuaUlqnlX95Jfz-JQ-pg/s1206/Screen%20Shot%202023-06-14%20at%202.02.32%20AM.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="940" data-original-width="1206" height="311" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIVwr8ThObhvKnAFV3EYZcpjxzu_r2T9TOwrhku1JJGSF_HTZayUheymSqJ_KL38VuwL8oif1gHorBvtVWvUZCPZd8c8q01KYCAfOkGgiudmu_AYteuy6pe9QqIPCAwONJKHDCKsxBWSrRqqVwywhS6AsLD_C0sSPK2T0ZzHsuaUlqnlX95Jfz-JQ-pg/w400-h311/Screen%20Shot%202023-06-14%20at%202.02.32%20AM.png" width="400"></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Farrah Fawcett in Murder on Flight 502 Rating: ****</td></tr></tbody></table>Different than most airline disaster flicks in that a gun's drawn literally minutes before the New York to England 747 makes a landing...But MURDER ON FLIGHT 502 is really a whodunnit, and for a mystery it's pretty great; for a thriller it's surprisingly taut; as a TV movie it's creatively shot by <a href="http://www.cultfilmfreaks.com/2016/01/borden-frogs.html">FROGS</a> director George McCowan and, like the AIRPORT franchise, there's a B-list of ensemble actors ranging from Laraine Day to Dane Clark to Fernando Lamas, Danny Bonaduce, Hugh O'Brien, Theodore Bikel, Walter Pigeon, and Sonny Bono, a has-been rocker romancing the girl-next-door... While the plane itself provides an intriguing set including a plush First Class section up to the cockpit where pilot Robert Stack stands between a doctor saving the life of one of several culprits, investigates the plane and passengers along with cop Hugh O'Brien as his co-pilot does the work. Meanwhile Farrah Fawcett... alone on the DVD cover as if this AIRLINE were her very own vehicle (three years before CHARLIE'S ANGELS, sharing producer Aaron Spelling)... is the perfect eye-candy stewardess, and able to actually act a few times since there's an ongoing tension. Even providing George Maharis some nice edgy scenes back at the tower, where most plane-in-peril thrillers remain on cruise control.

airplane, dane clark, disaster, ensemble, farrah fawcett, george maharis, george mccowan, hugh o'brien, mystery, robert stack, seventies, sonny bono, thriller, tv movie

FARRAH FAWCETT SERVES AIRLINE MYSTERY 'MURDER ON FLIGHT 502'

Farrah Fawcett in Murder on Flight 502 Rating: **** Different than most airline disaster flicks in that a gun's drawn literally minutes ...

CAROLE LOMBARD AND JACK BENNY STAR IN 'TO BE OR NOT TO BE'

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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Title: TO BE OR NOT TO BE Year: 1942 </td></tr>
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Ernst Lubitsch takes a 
complicated plot and with an easygoing acting style of the performers 
under tightly-wound direction, headed by Jack Benny and Carole 
Lombard, it flows from beginning to end as the ups and downs, curves, 
twists and turns provide both subtle humor and edgy suspense, centering on
 a group of stage actors in Poland before and during the Nazi takeover on the boot-heels of World War II... 
 
They must trick their antagonists into thinking Benny... who plays a hammy stage actor (exactly the opposite of his famously deadpan style)... is a scientist who's a traitor to the 
good guys and... well it really doesn't matter because TO BE OR NOT TO 
BE has to be seen, heard and concentrated on for the plot to make clear and interesting (as well as intriguing) sense...

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imposing and formidable to instill enough danger for all the verbal laps to 
matter beyond hitting punchlines at the right moment... 
 
Although everything does rely on the actors-within-the-movie hitting their own marks for the ruse to work, hence the title taken after a 
pivotal line from William Shakespeare's Hamlet that, if spoken by a novice stage 
performer, can hinder the entire show... 
 
The fun's watching Benny trying to outdo 
his character's own lack of talent (scenes with German actor Sig Ruman work splendidly, as with Tom Dugan, who plays a fictional Hitler) while Lombard is the real trickster, weaving in and out of both the bad guys and a handsome young lieutenant Robert Stack (whose role is played by Tim Matheson in the Brooks remake, and both starred in another WWII comedy involving romance in a bomber plane, Steven Spielberg''s 1941): If anyone on board has the most work, it's Lombard... in what's sadly, tragically, her last picture.

carole lombard, comedy, ernst lubitsch, espionage, forties, george lynn, jack benny, lionel atwill, nazi, parody, robert stack, romance, sig ruman, stanley ridges, tom dugan, war, world war II

CAROLE LOMBARD AND JACK BENNY STAR IN 'TO BE OR NOT TO BE'

Title: TO BE OR NOT TO BE Year: 1942 Ernst Lubitsch takes a complicated plot and with an easygoing acting style of the performers unde...

SAM FULLER TOKYO NOIR 'HOUSE OF BAMBOO' W/ ROBERT STACK

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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ryan's on top of the world ma, in Toyko Year: 1952</td></tr>
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The writer of HOUSE OF BAMBOO is billed as Harry Kleiner; additional dialogue is credited to director Samuel Fuller... 
 
 
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fox Film Noir DVD</td></tr>
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Turns out Kleiner wrote 1946's THE STREET WITH NO NAME, and what's said to be "additional" could possibly refer to the entire script in remaking Kleiser's source material, but instead of that nameless American boulevard we journey to the gorgeous region of Tokyo (and other nearby locales) where the city and its backdrops are a character all its own, inhabited by these shady human "characters" who, whether armed with a pistol or not, get wonderfully lost in the maze-like backdrop... 
 
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Limited Edition Twilight Time BluRay</td></tr>
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This includes a wandering Robert Stack as Eddie Spanner, with a name so smooth and cool he's gotta be cool and crooked as hell. Bullying local stores out of small wads of cash, he's asking for... exactly what he gets in a scolding Robert Ryan, who winds up hiring the failed maverick as one of his own goons. Ryan's Sandy Dawson already has his heels dug so far into the post-War location there's no room for two people "running things," or even having a sole opinion. Leading the viewer into smoky backrooms and dingy apartments, where the gangsters plot their schemes. 
 
And at first, from when he wanders in a criminal shrug off the boat to the real locale full of floating slums clashed with vivid and vibrant, beautiful colors, Stack really seems like a man on his own; but with that voice, even for those not familiar with the original, he's obviously snooping around for some reason... For the Military Police, actually... Sent by Noir stock actor Brad Dexter to find out who killed a local during a rushed prelude. Sure this is a spoiler but anyone familiar with the original sees it coming. Although it must be said, Stack does a pretty good job playing slimy and shady... while it lasts...

cameron mitchell, color noir, deforest kelley, fifties, film noir or melodrama, gangster, robert ryan, robert stack, twilight time

SAM FULLER TOKYO NOIR 'HOUSE OF BAMBOO' W/ ROBERT STACK

Ryan's on top of the world ma, in Toyko Year: 1952 The writer of HOUSE OF BAMBOO is billed as Harry Kleiner; additional dialogue i...

ROBERT HAYS CARRYING 'AIRPLANE!' WITH JULIE HAGERTY

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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">year: 1980 rating: ****1/2 </td></tr>
</tbody></table>Like any Mel Brooks vehicle and especially those "early, funny" films of Woody Allen, where there's a joke a minute encapsulated by and parodying a specific theme or genre, and being an outright spoof of the AIRPORT films while intentionally mirroring the names and plot of the 1950's Dana Andrews/Sterling Hayden camp melodrama ZERO HOUR, the classic, groundbreaking, joke-loaded AIRPLANE!, written and directed by the team of Jerry Zucker, David Zucker and Jim Abrahams, still holds up... And with a barrage of famous veteran character-actors playing their usual ultra-serious roles within (and despite of) the constant zaniness, the real stars are Robert Hays as Ted Stryker and Julie Hagerty as Elaine Dickinson, alleviating the hilarious parts by actually moving the story along: Ted is lovestruck, intentionally stuck on the same plane as Elaine's stewardess and, suffering flashbacks from the Second World War, might have to fly the damn thing to save all the passengers, and himself, while attempting to rekindle his former flame... Sound serious? 
 
Well what makes AIRPLANE! work aren't just the perpetual jokes but the fact the real story carries everything else, without getting in the way and still, in itself, delivering genuine laughs. Standout characters include Peter Graves as a pilot who gives a little boy very shady advice, Robert Stack as Kramer, the stern chief inside the Tower along with Lloyd Bridges keeping the nervy pace moving and especially Stephen Stucker, stealing every scene as the flamboyant Johnny while the titular vessel remains hilariously grounded by Leslie Neilson's Dr. Rumack, Lorna Patterson's patient stewardess Randi, and with oh so many hilarious gags (some better than others) there's nothing left but to but highly recommending this flight be your next one...

airplane, comedy, disaster, eighties, ensemble, julie hagerty, peter graves, robert hays, robert stack, spoof