Allen Garfield

A nosy cab driver gets a hot tip on a race horse and wins big, but he can't seem to stop gambling. Will he go broke or walk home with a pretty penny? An average kind of guy who has a slight problem with gambling goes to the track, and mystically, it seems as though he can't lose, no matter how he bets; and he has an incredible day.

Axel Foley is back where he doesn`t belong! He`s going `deep, deep, deep undercover`, unleashing his blazing gunfire and rapid-fire gags against international munition smugglers.

A teenager loses his horse in Morocco and gets him back after various daredevil adventures. The Black is stolen from Alec by his former Arabian owners. Alec sets off on an adventure to Arabia to reclaim his beloved horse. Based on the books by Walter Farley. —Lisa

Chicago Sun-Times newspaper reporter Ernie Souchak (John Belushi) investigates a crooked alderman named Yablonowitz (Val Avery) in Chicago, Illinois. Souchak's informant, Hellinger (Bruce Jarchow), brings his son to their meeting in an alley and the boy wants to climb a fire escape, but Hellinger is afraid of heights. Later, when Souchak's column exposes Yablonowitz's dubious metro contract, Yablonowitz orders his men to find the informant. That night, Souchak is hospitalized after a savage beating by two of Yablonowitz's men. His editor, Howard (Allen Goorwitz), wants Souchak to leave town for a few weeks in order to lay low, and Howard's wife, Sylvia (Carlin Glynn), convinces a reluctant Souchak to write a piece on Nell Porter (Blair Brown), an ornithologist studying eagles in the Rocky Mountains. In Wyoming, a mountain guide, Deke (Liam Russell), leads Souchak on the long trek into the mountains. It is an arduous climb for the overweight Souchak and he is even more upset when bears steal his cigarettes. From afar, Deke and Souchak watch a wild mountain man, Possum, hunt elk and fish. Deke learns that Souchak's visit is unexpected and warns that Nell hates reporters. Nell's cabin is locked and empty when they arrive and Deke leaves Souchak on her doorstop, promising to return in two weeks. When evening descends, Souchak breaks into the cabin, builds a fire and sleeps. Later, Nell returns and, assuming Souchak is a lost hiker, lets him stay. The next morning, she learns he is a reporter and orders him to leave, but Souchak claims he will die in the wilderness and must stay until Deke returns. Nell agrees, but insists he cannot write about her. The next day, Souchak struggles to keep up with Nell as she observes and photographs eagles. The following morning, Souchak shivers outside while inside, Nell bathes in the open shower stall. He decides to stay at the cabin to build a makeshift shower door. The following day, on a trek, Souchak and Nell hear gunshots, and Nell descends upon two hunters. Destroying their rifles, Nell declares that she is a federal agent and it is a felony to shoot bald eagles. She orders the hunters to surrender at the sheriff's office within three days, warning that the FBI will go after them. That night, Souchak tries to kiss Nell and is rebuffed, but she decides he can write an article about her. The next day, when Souchak asks about her background, Nell admits she does not like to talk about herself and asks about his life instead. After dinner, Souchak tries to kiss Nell again and is rejected a second time. Nell informs Souchak that she must work alone the following day. In the morning, however, Souchak follows her and is surprised to see Nell and Possum making love. The next morning, Nell is surprised that Souchak does not want to go to the eagle's nest. Instead, he attempts to chop wood and, when Nell leaves, a jealous Possum attacks Souchak. Nell returns for her forgotten walking stick, sees the men fighting, and orders Possum to stop. She introduces the men to each other and Souchak is awestruck to learn that Possum is actually Max Birnbaum, a former football player who walked away from a successful career. Max is equally impressed to meet the famed reporter. Later, Nell amicably ends her relationship with Max, who realizes that she is attracted to Souchak. The next day, Nell and Souchak journey to observe eagles higher in the mountains. While camping in a tent that night, Souchak kisses Nell, but she will not make love to him. They reach the eagles' nest the next morning and are excited to see that baby eagles born in the spring are thriving. Later, in their tent, Nell gives Souchak an eagle feather, claiming it is a sign of strength and courage. As they descend over icy terrain, Souchak falls down the rocky mountainside, injuring his back. Nell fashions a sled out of rope and ice, straps Souchak onto it, and journeys back to her cabin. Days later, Souchak has recuperated enough to move around with a walking stick and Nell returns to her work. While she is gone, Souchak leaves the cabin door open and a mountain lion attacks. Later, Nell returns home, sees Souchak's shredded hat outside and runs inside to find her companion bloody but alive. Nell bandages Souchak's wounds, kisses him, and they make love. Souchak returns to Chicago but he misses Nell and cannot write. Howard orders him to resume investigating Yablonowitz, but Souchack is not interested. He writes a sappy travel piece about the mountains that Howard considers unprintable. Howard leaves the article on his desk and takes Souchak out for a drink. While they are at the bar, a clerk notices Souchak's article on Howard's desk and prints it in the newspaper. At a newsstand, bystanders scoff at his article, but Souchak ignores them as he reads that Hellinger fell to his death from a fire escape. Remembering that Hellinger had a fear of heights, Souchak realizes that his informant was murdered and is inspired to write multiple articles revealing Yablonowitz's misdeeds. Souchak's apartment is blown up, but he is undeterred. When he links Yablonowitz to Hellinger's death, the alderman flees the country. As Souchak celebrates with Howard, he learns that Nell is lecturing at a conference in Chicago. Souchak attends the lecture and the lovers reconnect, but still face the problem that her life is in the mountains and his life is in Chicago. Feeling it is too difficult to say goodbye, Nell does not wait for Souchak to escort her to the train station and goes alone. However, he rushes to the train and finds her as the final boarding call is announced. Souchak decides to ride to the next stop and they make love in her train compartment. He does not get off at the next station and they continue to make love all the way to the final stop in Victor, Wyoming. The return train to Chicago leaves in half an hour and, while saying their bittersweet farewells, the couple decides they can make their unconventional relationship work. They get married just before Souchak jumps on the return train, promising to see his new wife in the summer.

A biography about the love affair between 1930s Hollywood superstars Clark Gable and Carole Lombard.

Harry Caul (Gene Hackman), a prominent private surveillance expert in San Francisco, has been hired by the CEO (Robert Duvall, known throughout simply as the director) of a large, unnamed company to follow and record a conversation between the director's wife, Ann (Cindy Williams) and her suspected lover, Mark (Frederic Forrest), who's a major executive at the company. Using three separate microphones and two cameras, Harry and associates follow the couple on a seemingly casual walk in Union Square, where the director suspects they go to talk without, they think, the possibility of being surveilled. Later, in his lab, Harry laboriously reconstructs their conversation, which clearly indicates the two are in a relationship, which seems about to be consummated again the following Sunday at 3 pm at a room in the Jack Tar Hotel. He obsessively homes in on a particularly hard-to-hear sentence Mark whispers in Ann's ear, and eventually, with the aid of a complex state-of-the-art electronic board of his own invention, pieces together what Mark whispered: "He'd kill us if he had the chance." Harry is secretive and paranoid (not totally without reason). He alienates his assistant, Stan (John Cazale), because Harry won't teach him more about audio surveillance nor share the details of his cases, and his girlfriend, Amy (Teri Garr), because he won't open up to her. A deeply religious man, his guilt over a previous case he conducted for the U.S. Justice Department that resulted in the death of a mafia accountant and his wife and child makes him fear that his work will again lead to the death of innocents, and he refuses to deliver the tape or its contents to the director's assistant, Martin Stett (a very young Harrison Ford). Amy breaks up with Harry, and he goes off to attend a surveillance convention at which he's a featured guest. There he spots Martin, whom he accuses of following him. Martin says he's just delivering a message: give up the tape. Harry discovers that Stan has overnight gone to work for Bernie Moran (Alan Garfield), a Detroit-based surveillance-device inventor looking to acquire the rights to Harry's celebrated electronic surveillance inventions. Bernie demonstrates a device he sells that turns any telephone into a live remote microphone. Harry pooh-poohs the device to Stan, and persuades him to come back and work for him. He invites Moran, Stan, and four other friends from the convention back to his lab for a party. Moran's sexy (but aging) product demonstrator Meredith (Elizabeth McRae) flirts brazenly with Harry, and in a tëte-a-tëte outside the lab he opens up to her about his troubles with Amy. Back in the lab, Stan gets Harry to explain his sophisticated surveillance method for the Union Square conversation. Harry is drunk and exuberant, but his mood is broken when Bernie reveals that he successfully planted a pen mike on Harry and plays back the very private conversation with Meredith. Harry is outraged and kicks everybody out. Meredith stays and sleeps with him on the small bed in the lab. Harry dreams that he's pursuing Ann through fog, telling her about how he nearly died from a childhood disease and warning her that her husband plans to kill her. "I'm not afraid of death," he tells her as she disappears in the mist, "but I am afraid of murder." When Harry awakens in the morning, he discovers that Meredith is gone, along with the composite tape, and the original individual tapes. He tries unsuccessfully to reach the director from a pay phone, then hurries home. Harry has told everyone that he doesn't have a telephone and is shocked when Martin calls him right back. Martin tells him that it was he who hired Meredith to take the tapes, and that he's delivered them to the director. Martin instructs him to come to the corporate office to pick up his $15,000 cash fee. When Harry complies, he finds the director listening to the tape in disbelief, which is turning, as he feared, quickly to anger. The upset director curtly dismisses Harry, telling. him to "please go count your money somewhere else." At the appointed time, Harry goes to the Jack Tar Hotel assignation Ann and Mark mentioned, takes an adjoining room, and inserts a microphone through a hole he drills in the bathroom wall to listen in. He hears the director yelling at Ann, followed by confusing shouting, and rushes to the balcony, where he sees bloody hands slap up against the glass partition. Terrified, he collapses in his room, and falls asleep, curled up like a fetus. (Some commentators wondering about his unusual last name note that the gray, semi-transparent raincoat Harry Caul sports throughout the movie eerily resembles the caul, a membrane that protects a baby in the womb.) Upon reviving, he breaks into the room Mark and Ann had rented. The room has been completely cleaned and restored to rentable status. In the bathroom, he inspects the covered-with-a-"sanitized"-label toilet, and hesitantly lifts the lid. It's immaculate inside, to his visceral relief. But when he flushes it, bloody water wells up and gushes surreally and relentlessly onto the floor. Harry goes to see the director but is forcibly ejected by guards before he can even get past the first floor. On the street, he spies a waiting limo which he expects to be occupied by the director. But it's Ann inside. He passes a newspaper box and sees that the headline story reveals the death of the director in a car accident. Suddenly he revisualizes the central line from the conversation, "He'd kill us if he had the chance," and realizes that because of his sympathy for Ann and Mark, he'd misapplied his modulator to emphasize the word "kill", and suppress the real emphasis that was on the word "us". The whisper wasn't about Mark's fears, but was instead a justification for the director's planned murder that they had been finalizing in the conversation. Ann now controls the company. Later, as Ann, Mark and Martin try to escape reporters pestering them about the director's death and the company's future, they spot Harry in the crowd. He runs. Back in his apartment, Harry sits and stews, and goes into his habitual form of meditation, playing a saxophone in accompaniment to a jazz record. His phone rings, but no one seems to be on the other end. He hangs up and resumes playing. It rings again; this time Martin is on the other end and warns him that he, Ann and Mark know that he has figured out what happened, and that they will be watching him. Martin then plays back a recording of Harry's record and sax playing from seconds before. Harry methodically tears apart his apartment looking for the bug, which he can't unearth (even in the phone, à la Bernie's device). He may be a widely celebrated surveillance expert, but he's got nothing on these guys. Exhausted, he resignedly goes back to playing his sax amidst the ruins of his apartment.

Chicago, Illinois, 1929. Outside a criminal courts building, police build a scaffold and bleachers for the public hanging of Earl Williams, who has been convicted of killing a policeman. Upstairs, reporters play poker in the press room. Newspaper editor Walter Burns (Walter Matthau) calls from the Chicago Examiner, looking for reporter Hildebrand 'Hildy' Johnson (Jack Lemmon) to put him on the story, but he's not there. Walter leaves word that Hildy should immediately come to his office. Later, Hildy wanders into Walter's office at a leisurely pace and informs the editor that he's in love. Walter tells Hildy he wants him to cover the hanging the next morning and snap an illegal picture of the hanged man with a hidden camera. Minutes after the execution, an ambulance will be waiting for Hildy outside so that he can type his story in the back and beat the other newspapers to press with a morning extra. Hildy tells Walter he's quitting to get married and move to Philadelphia. He plans to take an advertising job so that he can spend time with his future wife instead of continuing as a workaholic reporter. Walter resents Hildy for betraying him, insisting that he taught Hildy everything he knows. Determined to keep Hildy in town and on the Williams story, Walter tracks down Hildy's fiancee, Peggy Grant (Susan Sarandon), an organist who works at a movie theater. Posing as Otto Fishbein, a probation officer, he tells Peggy that Hildy is on probation and cannot legally move to another city. Hildy then calls his fiancee, and, over the phone, realizes that Walter is playing a trick. Hildy explains to Peggy that Fishbein is actually Walter, and she sends him away. At the criminal courts press room, Hildy's replacement, Rudy Keppler (Jon Korkes), arrives and informs the others that Hildy has left the business. Mollie Malloy (Carol Burnett) arrives moments later, and yells at the reporters for writing lies about her, claiming she is Williams' girlfriend. Mollie confesses that she had befriended Williams but was not his girlfriend. Unlike the reporters, Mollie believes that Williams didn't intentionally kill anyone. As Mollie leaves, Hildy shows up with drinks to celebrate his new advertising job. Just then, the sheriff (Vincent Gardenia) visits the press room to hand out tickets to the hanging. Hildy accuses the sheriff and mayor of reprieving Williams twice so that the hanging would take place just before an election. The sheriff insists that Williams is a communist who is very sane and shot the policeman to make a political statement. Hildy disagrees, claiming that Williams is "just a screwball." At the jailhouse, Williams (Austin Pendleton), a diminutive, soft-spoken man, is escorted to the sheriff's office for his final psychological examination. Williams calmly explains to Dr. Eggelhofer (Martin Gabel) that he once sent a bomb to J. P. Morgan's office on Wall Street, then contradicts himself by saying he loves people and would never abuse anyone. Eggelhofer borrows the sheriff's gun to demonstrate his theory about why Williams shot at the police officer. Upstairs, Hildy's celebration is interrupted by gunshots. Sirens blare, more shots are heard, and the reporters realize Williams has escaped. Hildy gets on the phone to tell Walter the news. The editor laments that Hildy is no longer reporting, but Hildy promises he's "right on top of it." Downstairs, the sheriff tells reporters about Williams' escape, but insists he doesn't know where the prisoner got a gun. Hildy runs into Jennie (Doro Merande), the building's janitor, who overheard the incident. She tells Hildy she had better not reveal what she overheard, as the sheriff would fire her. Meanwhile, the injured Eggelhofer's stretcher falls out of an ambulance. As the stretcher speeds down the street, Eggelhofer yells repeatedly that Williams is a "fruitcake." Hildy phones Walter to tell him what he's learned from Jennie, that Eggelhofer used the sheriff's gun to reenact the crime, and Williams stole it, shot Eggelhofer, and made his escape. Hildy then informs Walter that Peggy is picking him up in 15 minutes and he can no longer follow the story. The Mayor (Harold Gould) addresses reporters in his office and tells them he has utter faith in the sheriff. After the reporters leave, the Mayor reprimands the sheriff for letting Williams get away. A man named Plunkett (Paul Benedict) arrives and delivers a reprieve for Williams, sent by the Governor. The sheriff receives a phone call that police have trapped Williams. The Mayor tells Plunkett that the reprieve is not applicable because Williams has escaped custody, but he may try to serve the reprieve again tomorrow. The Mayor then sends orders, via the sheriff, for the police to "shoot to kill," now that Williams is in their sights. Headed for a night train to Philadelphia, Hildy joins Peggy in a taxi outside the courthouse. However, when he realizes he left the wedding rings, he runs back inside. There, Hildy finds the rings moments before Williams falls through a window and points a gun at him. Hildy reminds Williams that he conducted an interview with the convict at his jail cell a few days ago. Williams then passes out, and Hildy drags him to the bathroom, draws the curtains, and calls Walter to tell him that he has Williams in his custody. Mollie shows up, and Williams emerges at the sound of her voice. Hildy sends Peggy to pick up their luggage while he finishes up some last-minute business. Hildy hides Williams inside a roll-top desk when the other reporters demand entry to the press room. The men suspect Hildy is hiding something. To cover for Hildy, Mollie claims to know where Williams is, then jumps out the window. The reporters run outside to see if she's still alive. As the room clears, Walter appears at the door. He orders a delivery truck and six large men to move the desk, with Williams inside, to the Chicago Examiner office. Hildy types up a story while Walter takes Williams' picture and sends Keppler to develop the negative. Just then, Peggy returns to find Hildy typing away with Walter at his side. Distracted, Hildy suggests Peggy go to the train station ahead of him, and she leaves, dejected. When he finishes the story, Hildy becomes frustrated with Walter's persistence and heads off to the train station. Before he can leave, however, the sheriff shows up with the other reporters, all of whom accuse Hildy of hiding something. A policeman holds Hildy, while the sheriff demands Williams' whereabouts. The sheriff finally realizes Williams is inside the desk. Police escort Williams away, and the sheriff arrests Hildy and Walter for hiding the convict. In a jail cell, Hildy blames Walter for keeping him from Peggy. In a neighboring cell, Plunkett, who has been arrested for drunkenness, overhears Walter and informs him that he has Williams' reprieve. The Mayor arrives at the jail, and Walter presents him with the reprieve, accusing him of ignoring it so that he could hang Williams before the election. The Mayor lets Walter and Hildy out, and Walter arranges for Hildy to be rushed to the train station to meet Peggy. Just before the train pulls away, Walter gives Hildy his pocket watch as a gift for service to his newspaper. After the train pulls out of the station, Walter (crafty and evil to the end) arranges for Hildy to be arrested at the next stop for stealing his watch! The film closes with a series of texts that say that some time later, Hildy returned to the Chicago Examiner to become Managing Editor. Walter retired, lecturing from time to time at the University of Chicago on the ethics of journalism. Williams, now freed, got married to Mollie, and the two run a health-food store together.

In the middle of the night in San Francisco, a group of six people wearing plastic masks pose as a maintenance crew in order to infiltrate the Century Furniture Factory. With silent efficiency, they kidnap factory manager John Bishop (Johnny Haymer), knock out guard George Morgan, and force Bishop to open the office vault, wherein lies their target: $4 million worth of heroin. Upon leaving, they blow up the building gate. Soon after, detective Lt. Virgil Tibbs (Sidney Poitier) and his partner, Lt. Jack Pecora (Gerald S. O'Loughlin), are called in to investigate and find Bishop dead at his desk. Tibbs begins by questioning Morgan, who was knocked out, about why the robbers would have blown up the gate when they could have made their escape without opening the gate. Assistant manager William Martin (Graham Jarvis) is also questioned, but has no idea why anyone would have killed Bishop, who has no obvious enemies. Upon returning to their office, the police learn that Bishop was shot with two guns, execution-style; that the robbers entered from outside a window five stories high; and that they had only four minutes after tripping the alarms to exit the building. Meanwhile, corporate executives Bob Alford (Fred Beir) and Zach Mills (John Lasell), the leaders of the drug syndicate that supplied Bishop with the heroin, speak to their colleagues in Istanbul and Paris. Using code, they inform them that the heroin has been stolen and Bishop killed. At home that night, Tibbs is bantering with his wife Valerie (Barbara McNair) and their children, Andy and Ginny, when he receives an anonymous phone call asking him to walk alone along a city street at a certain hour. Instructing Pecora to come after him in 30 minutes, Tibbs does as he is told and is soon ushered into an apartment where the robbers have gathered. Leader Juan Mendoza (Raul Julia) introduces Rev. Dave Thomas (Billy 'Green' Bush), Annie Sekido, Charlie Blossom, Stacy Baker and Joe Peralez, who admit they robbed the factory but insist that they did not murder Bishop. The vigilante group, each member of which has lost a loved one to drug addiction or overdose, wants to destroy "the organization." When they ask for Tibbs's help, pointing out that they deliberately blew up the gate in order to tip off the authorities, he refuses, stating that he cannot risk his career by banding with criminals without the knowledge of the police force. When he returns to Pecora, however, Tibbs says nothing about the group. That night, narcotics captain Grayson shoots himself, causing the men in the station to assume he was corrupt. After Bishop's wife lies to the police that she drove her husband to the factory the night of his murder, Tibbs realizes that she is being pressured not to admit that he was kidnapped. He arranges to meet Dave, Annie and Juan on a ferry, where he reluctantly acknowledges that they are not the killers and agrees to work with them, as long as they do not make a move without his approval. Tibbs re-questions Morgan, and when the guard refuses to admit that another car came in after the robbers broke in, Tibbs takes him in for further questioning. On way to the station, however, a car drives by and the passenger shoots Morgan, killing him before he can talk. Back at the station, Pecora wonders why Tibbs did not take him along to interrogate Morgan, but Tibbs deflects his questions and visits Morgan's widow Gloria to question her. She reveals that Morgan was rich, suggesting that Bishop was paying him off. Later, two toughs beat up Joe and offer him half a million dollars to meet them at Washington Square with information about where the heroin is hidden. Joe tells Juan, who urges him to meet the thugs in order to glean more information about them. Meanwhile, Pecora suggests that Tibbs call in the narcotics squad to help with the case, but Tibbs manages to hold him off. Joe goes to the designated meeting place and, while Juan and Annie watch nervously, a car arrives and takes him away. He shows the thugs a sample of the heroin and asks for $5 million, and in response, they threaten his life and order him to meet them that night. Annie, fearful for her friends, informs Tibbs, who instructs her to convince them that they must include him in their dealings, for their own safety. They arrange for Annie to call the station and anonymously tip off Pecora to the meeting point that night. As she hangs up the phone, however, the thugs follow her, and despite her efforts to elude them, they trap her in her car. Meanwhile, Jessop, the head of the narcotics division, assigns four men to help Tibbs and Pecora that night. The undercover police tail Joe, but when no one shows up at the meeting place, Tibbs is excoriated for wasting their time. Soon, Tibbs hears that Annie's dead body has been found, and meets the remaining five men to tell them that, because Annie was tortured to inform on them, they have been exposed and must flee. Tibbs and Pecora then question Martin again and, upon running through the complex alarm system with him, deduce that the murderers must have had an outside accomplice. Soon after, Tibbs learns from Dave that Joe's apartment is being watched by the thugs, and Tibbs rushes there, arriving just as the thugs run over Joe with their car. Although Tibbs arrests one of the men, the severely injured Joe blames the policeman for failing to protect him. When Jessop arrives at the hospital to question Joe, he learns of Tibbs's involvement, and soon Tibbs is called in to his superior, Capt. Stacy, and suspended for withholding information from the department. As Tibbs leaves, Jessop caustically informs him that Grayson killed himself not because he was corrupt but because he was dying of leukemia. Tibbs, unwilling to abandon the surviving vigilantes, asks his friend, the lawyer Sgt. Leo Chassman, for help in investigating Century. Chassman learns that the company has myriad "dummy" corporations as stockholders, and informs Tibbs about its complex financial workings. Meanwhile, Juan calls his friend Benjy, a small-time dealer, and offers to exchange the heroin for half a million dollars, on a crowded street. As Juan has hoped, Benjy arranges for the transfer with Alford and Mills, who arrive on the street to supervise the transaction. Just as Benjy and Juan swap bags, Charlie grabs the bag of heroin and runs off. While Tibbs's men, whom Juan has informed about the meeting, arrest Benjy, the organization's men chase Charlie into the unfinished subway system, followed by Tibbs. Together, Charlie and Tibbs shoot some of the thugs, and when the police arrive to finish the job, Tibbs runs off so they will not know he has been involved. He goes to Gloria's house and there casually reveals that he knows, based on the fact that Chassman's research has revealed that she is a major, wealthy stockholder in Century, who worked as a drug runner for the organization and facilitated Bishop's murder by tripping the alarms for the killers. After letting Pecora into the house, Tibbs advises Gloria to identify her bosses before they kill her, then uncovers a stash of heroin hidden inside a cut of beef in her refrigerator. Trapped, Gloria admits that Alford and Mills were behind the murder. The two men are arrested, but as they are being transported to testify, a sniper shoots them both before they can talk. Realizing that the organization will continue its dirty dealings, the reinstated Tibbs accepts a ride home from Pecora.