George Kennedy

Fresh off the bus from Kokomo, Indiana, a cat named Danny has one dream: to become a movie star in the glamorous world of Hollywood. However, unknown to Danny, is that animals have no leverage in show business, and fulfill minor and often thankless roles. Wandering into a talent agency, Danny is signed onto a role in child star Darla Dimple's next film, "Little Ark-Angel." At the filming, he meets a number of other animals, who try to temper his enthusiasm. One of them is Sawyer, a white cat whom Danny is paired with for the film's big production number. However, Danny is not content with his one-worded script ("Meow"), and tries to add some panache to his role. This ends up infuriating Darla Dimples, who calls on her Frankenstein-like butler named Max, who ends up frightening Danny into submission. After the filming has wrapped, a little penguin named Pudge, who was also in the big production number, tells Danny that he enjoyed his added song-and-dance. As the two head off the studio, the sound of a piano reaches their ears, and they follow it to a small trailer, where they are introduced to Woolie Mammoth. Woolie has a musical talent, but is only kept at Mammoth Studios for the purposes of appearing in their opening title sequence. While in the trailer, Danny notices a picture of Sawyer, whom Woolie explains also has musical talent, but hides it from most people behind a tough exterior. The next day, Danny and some other animals create a small song-and-dance routine while waiting for the film production to get underway. As Sawyer arrives, she begins to get with the beat, and the rhythm even reaches the ears of Darla, who is getting made-up nearby. Darla listens in, and hears Danny mention that he could maybe tell the studio head, L.B. Mammoth, about the talent they (as animals) have. Darla then decides to invite Danny to her mansion for tea. At her mansion, Darla 'tricks' Danny into believing that she wants to help him and the other animals. Promising use of the "Little Ark-Angel" movie set. The next day, as the animals are on the movie set, Darla and Max sabotage the stage, causing the water system to overflow, causing the animals to damage the set, just as L.B. Mammoth is holding a press conference for the new Darla Dimples picture. Infuriated by what has happened, the entire animal staff are kicked off the lot. With no jobs, many of the animal actors are now on the streets, and with his dream seemingly dashed, Danny gets on a bus to return to Kokomo, Indiana. However, several blocks into the trip, Danny has a second thought, and gets off. Finding Pudge the Penguin, they sneak into the studio's mailroom, and send invites to all the animal actors for the premiere of Darla's new film. During the production, Danny again plans to show the human public that animals are talented, and intends to take the stage once the film premiere is over. However, Darla's butler Max senses something, and finds Danny, chasing him to the roof of the theater. Things turn in Danny's favor, when Max gets entangled in a giant inflatable balloon resembling Darla, and is sent aloft. Danny races back to the theater, where several of the animals have appeared onstage. They then begin to sing and dance for the audience. During the production, Darla sneaks backstage, attempting to sabotage the performance, but in the end, all her tricks end up improving it, til' at the very end, the audience gives the animals a standing ovation! Once the musical number ends, Darla angrily rushes onto the stage, proclaiming that she is the star, and offhandedly admits that it was she who flooded the stage at the studios. Darla realizes she's in error, but it's too late. The film ends with L.B. Mammoth signing the animals back to the studio, and placing them in high-profile pictures as the lead actors.

When a scientist promoting renewable energy gets kidnapped, Lieutenant Frank Drebin bumbles his way into solving the mystery while trying to win back his ex-girlfriend.

Leslie Nielsen stars as Police Squad`s own granite-jawed, rock-brained cop Frank Drebin, who bumbles across a mind-control scheme to assassinate Queen Elizabeth.

Operation Eagle Claw, in Apr 1980, is the American operation to rescue American hostages being held at the U.S. embassy to Tehran. The operation is being aborted after a fatal helicopter crash, with the U.S. Delta Force evacuating to their C-130 transports. Among them is Major Scott McCoy (Chuck Norris), who, against orders, rescues his wounded comrade Pete Peterson (William Wallace) from the burning helicopter before the team finally evacuates. Peterson was trapped under the burning debris of a jeep. McCoy put his own life and limb on the line to lift the jeep, extract Peterson and carry him to the C-130 transport all by himself. Colonel Nick was worried about the entire squadron and wanted to lift off but holds the transport long enough for McCoy to bring Peterson back. McCoy expresses his disgust for the politicians and military hierarchy that forced the mission to launch despite the risks, and announces he is resigning his commission. McCoy says that for 5 years he saw people planning missions in Vietnam and soldiers dying on the ground as a result of it. Overall, 8 members of the special forces were killed and 13 wounded in the disastrous operation. Five years later, a group of Lebanese terrorists armed with a Colt M1911, PM-63 machine pistol and AK-47s hijack American Travelways Boeing 707 (ATW) Flight 282 that is on a flight from Cairo, Egypt to Athens, Greece to Rome, Italy and then to New York City. The flight is currently in Athens and going to Rome. The flight has couples Harry Goldman (Joey Bishop) and Sylvia (Lainie Kazan), Ben Kaplan (Martin Balsam) and Edie, and Robert Levine (Jerry Lazarus) and Debra (Susan Strasberg). Debra is travelling with her daughter Ellen (Natalie Roth). A flight mechanic had stowed the weapons on-board before the flight departed and the hijackers retrieved them after the flight took off from Athens. Taking all passengers and crew hostage, the group, the pro-Khomeini New World Revolutionary Organization, led by Abdul Rifai (Robert Forster) and Mustafa (David Menachem), forces Captain Roger Campbell (Bo Svenson) and his crew to fly the plane to Beirut (they force the cockpit to be opened by threatening to blow up the plane with a grenade), Lebanon, where they make demands to the United States government that, if not met, will result in the death of the hostages. During the flight, the hijackers realize that the passengers include Hebrews from Israel on board. They collect everyone's passports and also find that the flight has 3 Marine Divers on board. Abdul separates the Marines in first class cabin and binds their hands and legs. At the hijack, the captain switched on the emergency beacon, indicating to Athen's ground control that the flight has been hijacked. The news soon reaches the Pentagon. General Woodbridge (Robert Vaughn) US general, Army Chief of Staff is in charge of the US operation. Woodbridge and the President authorize a Delta Force unit to neutralize the terrorists. The plane has over 100 Americans on board. During the crisis, the terrorists segregate the Hebrew passengers from the Americans by forcing a reluctant flight purser of German heritage named Ingrid Harding (Hanna Schygulla) to identify them. Another passenger, Catholic priest William O'Malley (George Kennedy), joins the Hebrews in solidarity. Unbeknownst to the authorities, once the plane lands in Beirut, the Hebrew hostages and O'Malley are then taken off the plane and transported to a militant-controlled area of Beirut, while a dozen additional henchmen (Jaffar (Avi Loziah), Jamil Rafai (Uri Gavriel), Salim (Adiv Gahshan)) are brought on board. The flight departs for Algiers, where the terrorists release the female hostages and children. Meanwhile Delta Force, led by Colonel Nick Alexander (Lee Marvin) is deployed to resolve the crisis. McCoy joins the task-force when he hears the news on TV. The Delta force believes that there are only 2 terrorists on board. Once the female hostages are evacuated in Algiers, they launch their assault, only to discover too late that there are additional hijackers and inadvertently alert the terrorists. Abdul kills one hostage, a US Navy diver named Tom, taking the other two US divers with them as well as dozens of male Hebrew passengers on board to Beirut. Delta Force gives chase to rescue the remaining hostages. Upon landing in Beirut, the terrorists gather their hostages and transport them to a militant-controlled area of Beirut. The pilots and two male flight attendants remain in the 707. Using a sympathetic Greek Orthodox priest Father Nicholas (Shaike Ophir), Israeli Army Intelligence prepares an operation to free the hostages. McCoy and Peterson are able to enter into Lebanon disguised as a Canadian television crew. In a prolonged campaign against the terrorists, the Delta Force bide their time to identify the terrorist leaders and locate the hostages. Once their location is discovered, Delta Force assaults the terrorist holdout, freeing the hostages and evacuating them to the airport. During the battle, McCoy, Peterson, and their team hunts down Abdul and his men, killing most of the militants before Abdul shoots Peterson, gravely injuring him. McCoy chases Abdul and tracks him down to an abandoned home. He then engages him into a vicious hand-to-hand fight, breaking Abdul's arm. As the terrorist leader prepares to shoot McCoy, he is killed after McCoy launches a rocket into his car. With the hostages and rescue teams secured, the team seizes Flight 282 by secretly infiltrating the airfield through a cotton field. Using silenced weapons, Alexander and the Delta team assassinates the terrorist guards including the last hijacker and saves the crew, ordering them to fly to Israel. The team boards the plane with all of the hostages, taking off just as McCoy is the last one to board the plane after having destroyed several terrorist jeeps on the runway with his motorcycle armament. On board the team tends to the wounded passengers and Pete who is now dying. After having confirmed that the hostages are safe and on route home, Pete says his farewells to McCoy before succumbing to his wounds. In the main cabin the ex-hostages and Delta commandos join together in a rousing rendition of "America the Beautiful", not knowing about Pete's death. In Israel, the Boeing 707 lands safely and the hostages are greeted by their families, while Delta Force disembarks with Peterson's body in tow to their C-130. The team concludes their operation and departs for the United States in the middle of celebrations by the people.

December 1979. An American-owned French operated Concorde super-sonic jet takes off from the Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris. Captain Paul Metrand (Alain Delon) makes conversation with Isabelle (Sylvia Kristel), the purser whom is his current lover. They land at Dulles Airport in Washington DC. Maggie Whalen (Susan Blakely) is an investigative reporter who recaps the arrival of the Concorde and reports on the "Goodwill" flight on the Concorde the following day, which leads to a story of future boyfriend Kevin Harrison (Robert Wagner) and his Buzzard missile project. Carl Parker shows up at Maggie's house with a claim about documentation of illegal arms deals to communist nations. Carl is shot before a passerby triggers a fire alarm, scaring the assailant away. Meanwhile, Captain Joe Patroni (George Kennedy) introduces himself to Captain Metrand as being the pilot for the Concord flight to Paris and to Moscow for the upcoming 1980 Summer Olympics to be held eight months from then. The next morning, Maggie tells Harrison about her ordeal and the rumor of documents. Kevin claims someone is framing him. He sends Maggie off in a limo while he waits for his business partner Willie Halpern to arrive. Kevin tells Willie that Parker is dead, but they do not have the documents. Kevin asks what time the next launch of the Buzzard is. Willie replies 6:30; Kevin wants it delayed until 8:00 and the drone test reprogrammed. Metrand and Patroni board the Concorde. It is difficult to determine the pilot-in-command as both of them are captains. Peter O'Neill (David Warner), the 2nd officer and flight engineer, is living with a controlling girlfriend. Kevin surprises Maggie at the airline check-in desk to see her off. He asks if the documents showed up, but they have not. As he is walking away, Carl Parker's wife delivers the documents to Maggie as she steps on the mobile lounge. She looks them over on the lounge and realizes that Kevin lied to her. The Concorde takes off from Washington/Dulles enroute to Paris where, unbeknownst to the flight crew, an off-course ground-to-air missile is headed straight for them. At company headquarters, Kevin tells his controllers to alert the government. Patroni takes over the Concord as it goes into evasive action manouvers to evade the missile. The USAF scrambles F-15 fighter jets to intercept the missile just as it locks onto the Concorde. An F-15 shoots down the missile before it collides with the Concorde. As the Concorde is approaching the European coastline, an F-4 Phantom fighter jet, piloted by a mercenary, is sent by Harrison and engages the Concorde with air-to-air missiles as well as gunfire as French Air Force Mirages scramble to help the Concorde. The Mirages shoot down the F-4 and the Concorde continues to Paris, although it diverts to Le Bourget Airport instead of Charles de Gaulle because it is damaged by the F-4's gunfire. The Concorde reaches the French coastline, landing with a damaged hydraulic system and just barely stopping at the last safety net. Captain Metrand and Isabelle invite Joe to dinner as they wait for the Concord to be repaired. Meanwhile, Kevin arrives at Charles de Gaulle Airport, where an associate meets him, stating that he has another plan to stop Maggie from making public the documents before she reaches Moscow. Joe, Paul and Isabelle meet for dinner with a date for Joe as promised by Paul. Maggie meets Kevin for dinner. He promises to go public with the documents but attempts to bribe Maggie into "polishing" his statement. After being paid by Kevin, a mechanic, Rollie, places a device in the Concorde's cargo door control unit, timed to open during flight to depressurized the aircraft. The next morning, as the passengers re-board the Concorde for the second stage of the flight to Moscow, a well-dressed woman (Charo) attempts to smuggle a dog aboard. She is caught by an alert Isabelle and leaves the aircraft. Inside the terminal, Rollie is in line at the security checkpoint when his money falls out of his pants leg. The X-ray technician attempts to return it, but Rollie pretends not to hear and runs off. The security guard tells his partner to call security before chases Rollie. Rollie runs onto the runway where the Concorde is taking off. The aircraft's wake scatters the money he received from Kevin. The aircraft is en route to Moscow when the automatic device opens the cargo door. When Captain Metrand investigates, he sees the carpet tear down the middle of the aisle, signifying the fuselage is under tremendous stress and the aircraft is about to break apart. The cargo door is ripped off, extensively damaging the aircraft and ripping the floor of the cabin from the Concord as it spirals toward the ground. The airline founder's seat lodges in the hole, acting as a plug. The pilots attempt to fly to Innsbruck for an emergency landing, but realize they do not have enough fuel. Paul realizes they are flying towards a ski area he used to go to in the Swiss Alps; they could make a gear-up landing on a mountain-side. The aircraft approaches the landing site while the Swiss ski patrol marks a runway. The aircraft lands successfully. Maggie immediately gives a report of the accident to a news reporter and gives details about a major story she is about to release. In his office back in Paris, Kevin hears the newscast and commits suicide by shooting himself. At the crash site, Patroni and the last of the crew leaves the Concord shortly before fuselage caves in and the entire aircraft explodes from the leaking fuel.

As Hercule Poirot enjoys a luxurious cruise down the Nile, a newlywed heiress is found murdered on board. Can Poirot identify the killer before the ship reaches the end of its journey? Based on the Dame Agatha Christie novel, our favorite Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot (Sir Peter Ustinov), is on a cruise up the Nile. He is surrounded by an interesting assortment of characters, including a wealthy heiress and her husband, on their honeymoon. It appears that everyone hates the heiress. —grantss As brilliant Belgian detective Hercule Poirot enjoys a lavish cruise down the Nile, an arrogant, newlywed millionairess is found in a pool of blood, murdered on board. With every one of the eclectic passengers on board the luxurious SS Karnak having a good reason to want the wealthy heiress dead, meticulous Hercule Poirot arms himself with patience and dogged perseverance to ferret out the killer in their midst. Surrounded by clues hidden in plain sight, can Poirot shed light on the knotty case of the death on the Nile before another one ends up dead? —Nick Riganas Almost everyone on the S.S. Karnak, cruising the Nile, has a reason to want spoiled, selfish and beautiful heiress Linnet Ridgeway Doyle (Lois Chiles) dead. Her jewels are coveted by elderly Mrs. Van Schuyler (Bette Davis); her maid, Louise, is upset because Linnet won't give her a promised dowry; writer Salome Otterbourne (Angela Lansbury) is facing a libel suit brought by Linnet; Salome's daughter Rosalie Otterbourne (Olivia Hussey) wants to protect her mother; Andrew Pennington (George Kennedy) has been embezzling from the Ridgeway family; and former friend Jacqueline De Bellefort (Mia Farrow) is more than a little angry and upset that Linnet stole her fiancé, Simon Doyle (Simon MacCorkindale). Renowned Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot (Peter Ustinov) must unravel the mystery when Linnet (and some others) turn up dead. —Ron Kerrigan <mvg@whidbey.com>

Jonathan Hemlock, a former government assassin, is forced to do one last job. A member of a climbing expedition is a killer and Hemlock must find him before he strikes again.

Columbia Airlines' Flight 409 is a red-eye Boeing 747-100 en route from Washington Dulles International Airport to Los Angeles International Airport. One of the passengers on board is a teenage girl named Janice Abbott (Linda Blair) who is sceduled to have a kidney transplant in L.A. and she is being wheeled onto the plane on a stretcher. Another passenger is the actress Gloria Swanson (herself) going to L.A. for another movie deal. Barney (Sid Ceasar) and Bill (Norman Fell) are two gambling friends whom are planning just another good time in California. Also on board are two nuns named Sister Beatrice (Martha Scott) and Sister Ruth (Helen Reddy) whom take pitty on the ailing Janice and Sister Ruth borrows a guitar and sings a song for Janice and the rest of the passengers. Meanwhile, Scott Freeman (Dana Andrews) is a businessman living in Santa Fe, New Mexico with an urgent sales meeting in Boise, Idaho. Failure to make this meeting threatens half his sales commissions for the coming year. He is en route in his private Beechcraft Baron. However, an occluded storm front has the entire West Coast socked in, with Los Angeles reporting zero visibility. That not only affects the Columbia flight but also precludes Freeman making his meeting in Boise. Both flights are diverted to Salt Lake City International Airport. Freeman's small plane and the giant Boeing 747 enter Salt Lake's entry pattern. Air traffic control assigns the jumbo to enter the pattern first at a low altitude of 10,000 feet, followed by the Beechcraft. As Columbia 409 is making its final approach, the co-pilot and First Officer Urias (Roy Thinnes) feels a vibration on one of the adjacent panels and rises to check it out. Freeman, anxious about his missed meeting, makes a call to the Salt Lake Tower asking about the delay. The tower confirms that he is second to land after the big jet. Freeman suddenly suffers a massive heart attack. As he grabs his chest, the Baron falls out of the pattern and descends into the approach of Columbia 409. The Beechcraft impacts the flight deck just above the co-pilot seat. Freeman is instantly killed by the impact as his small plane explodes. First Officer Urias, still standing, is instantly blown from the cockpit. Navigator and Flight Engineer Julio (Erik Estrada) is struck on the head by debris and killed. Captain Stacey (Efrem Zimbalist, Jr.) is struck in the face by debris and is blinded. The impact knocks a male flight attendant from the upper lounge down to the cabin below. Nancy Pryor (Karen Black), the head flight attendant, rushes up to the flight deck to find Urias gone, Julio dead, and Stacey badly maimed. Fortunately, the captain is able to engage the autopilot and the altitude hold switch to keep the aircraft in the air before losing consciousness. Nancy informs the Salt Lake control tower that the crew is dead or badly injured and that there is no one to fly the plane. She is told to stay on the same radio frequency. Nancy gives the assessment of the damage as a large hole on the starboard side of the flight deck that wiped out most of the instrument gauges over the engineer station. Joe Patroni (George Kennedy), Columbia's Vice President of Operations, is apprised of Flight 409's situation. He seeks the advice of Captain Al Murdoch (Charlton Heston), Columbia's chief flight instructor, who also happens to be Nancy Pryor's former lover. Patroni takes a personal intrest in Flight 409 because his wife (Susan Clark) is on board the plane with their eldest son. Patroni and Murdoch take the airline's executive jet to Salt Lake City. En route, they communicate with Nancy, who is still in the cockpit in the pilot's seat. While the autopilot is keeping the aircraft in level flight, it is inoperable for turns. Something has to be done, as the jet is heading into the Wasatch Mountains. After successfully guiding Nancy by radio on how to perform the turn, radio communications are interrupted and the Salt Lake tower is unable to restore contact. With the low-flying plane unable to turn, leaking fuel, and dodging the peaks of the Wasatch Mountains, an air-to-air rescue attempt is undertaken from a jet-powered HH-53 Super Jolly Green Giant helicopter flown by the USAF Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Service. While the pilot is preparing to be released on a tether, it becomes apparent that Flight 409 is heading straight into the side of a mountain. With radio communications still out, Nancy flies the plane unaided. The badly wounded Captain Stacey is able to give a cryptic clue regarding the decrease in airspeed during a climb in altitude. Nancy realizes that she must accelerate the engines to be able to climb over the mountain and successfully does so. After Flight 409 has leveled off, the pilot is released on a tow line from the helicopter towards the stricken airliner. Just as Nancy is helping him in, the release cord from his harness becomes caught in the jagged metal surrounding the hole in the cockpit. As he climbs in, his harness is released from the tether and he falls to his death. The only other person on the helicopter who can land a 747 is Captain Murdock. He is tethered to the rear of the helicopter, lowered to the jet and successfully enters it through the hole in the cockpit. Despite the controls being smashed and with serious damage to the landing breaks, he then lands the plane safely at Salt Lake City Airport, where the flight attendants successfully conduct an emergency evacuation of the passengers via the inflatable slides on the left side of the 747. Patroni is reunited with his wife and son, and Nancy and Captain Murdock walk away from the damaged plane.

With the help of an irreverent young sidekick, a bank robber gets his old gang back together to organize a daring new heist. Seven years after a daring bank robbery involving an anti-tank gun used to blow open a vault, the robbery team temporarily puts aside their mutual suspicions to repeat the crime after they are unable to find the loot from the original heist, hidden behind a school chalkboard. The hardened artilleryman and his flippant, irresponsible young sidekick are the two wild cards in the deck of jokers.

The film opens on Stewart Graff (Charleton Heston) jogging underneath the Hollywood sign. Back home, as he finishes his workout on a resistance machine, his shrewd wife Remy Royce-Graff (Ava Gardner) starts her morning by picking a fight with him. At the peak of their argument, Stewart says to Remy, "You'd hardly call this a marriage wouldn't you?" After he's showered and preparing to leave, Stewart finds Remy unconscious with a bottle of pills nearby. Accustomed to her periodic suicide attempts, Stewart prepares to induce vomiting when a violent tremor shakes the bedroom. Remy bolts out of bed, revealing that she was faking. At the Mulholland Dam, two workers begin a routine inspection of the structure in response to the tremor. One of them is drowned in an elevator shaft which has filled with water after the quake. In downtown Los Angeles, Sgt. Lou Slade (George Kennedy) and his partner Emilio Chavez (Pedro Armendáriz, Jr.) are in pursuit of a suspect. They chase him out of their jurisdiction, finally crashing into the hedges at Zsa Zsa Gabor's house. After a Beverly Hills Sheriff yells at Lou for ruining Gabor's hedges, the angry Lou punches him out. When reprimanded, Lou explains to his supervisor that the suspect had stolen the car, gotten stoned, and then driven over a 6-year old Mexican girl without stopping. To his disgust, he receives a temporary suspension from his unfeeling superior. On his way to work, Stewart visits Denise Marshall (Geneviève Bujold), an actress who is the widow of one of his friends and co-workers. He drops off an autographed football for her son and helps Denise run her lines for a scene she is shooting later that day. A junior staffer, Walter Russell (Kip Niven), at the California Seismological Institute has calculated that Los Angeles will suffer a major earthquake in the next day or two. He frantically tries to reach his superior, Dr. Frank Adams (Bob Cunningham), who is busy placing seismic sensors in the field. Another tremor hits as Adams and his assistant are working in a deep trench and they are buried alive. The scientists at the center argue about whether or not to go public with their prediction of a major quake. The acting supervisor, Dr. Willis Stockle (Barry Sullivan), insists that if they are wrong their funding will be jeopardized. He also argues that the panic such a warning would cause could be worse than the earthquake itself. They agree on a compromise to alert the National Guard and police so that they can at least mobilize to help deal with the fallout. While checking out at a grocery store, a poor young woman named Rosa Amici (Victoria Principal) realizes she does not have enough money to pay for all her items. Jody Joad (Marjoe Gortner), the seemingly kind store manager, insists that she keep the items and make up the deficit the next time she shops. Later, when he hears that the National Guard reserves are being called up on the radio, Jody leaves the store in the middle of his shift, revealing himself to be part of the reserve army. He goes to his run-down boarding house and changes into his NCO uniform, enduring the abuse and harassment of his bullying housemates who accuse him of being homosexual because he's got pictures of bodybuilders on his wall. Blowing off steam at a bar, Lou orders a double bourbon and ignores all the illegal activity he sees. A drunk (Walter Matthau) periodically wakes up to toast random people like 'Bobby Riggs'. Daredevil motorcyclist Miles Quade (Richard Roundtree) arrives with his partner Sal Amici (Gabriel Dell) and his sister Rosa. A pool shark collects $50 that Miles owes him, leaving him short for the propane tank he needs to do a stunt for a talent scout. Miles convinces Lou to loan him the money by having Rosa reveal a tight-fitting t-shirt he's marketing with his name on it. The tremor cancelled Denise's shoot; so, she heads to Stewart's office, pretending to meet with a friend. When she runs into him, he is headed out for a drink. They go back to Denise's house for the drink and end up making love. He promises to come back later that night and invites her to spend the summer with him in Oregon, where he will be overseeing a project. Back at the office, his boss Sam Royce offers to hand over the company presidency to Stewart. He asks for some time to consider the idea. Stewart calls Denise and breaks off their plans for later that night. He goes to Sam's office to accept his offer but is stunned to see Remy there. He assumes she has convinced her father, Sam (Lorne Greene), to offer the promotion to Stewart in order to save their marriage. He storms out and she follows him, accusing him of cheating with Denise. He explains that he never had until that day. When they get outside the building, the main earthquake begins, rupturing the San Andreas Fault, and causing thousands of buildings to collapse and causing hundreds of thousands of people to die while shaking Southern California for nearly six to nine minutes. The earthquake is measured 9.9 on the richter scale at the Seismological Institute. When the earthquake subsides, Sam and most of his employees are trapped on the upper floors of their skyscraper, as the elevators have crashed to the ground. They descend most of the way by the stairs, but the earthquake has sheared off a portion of the building, leaving an impasse of about two stories. Sam rigs a fire hose to a chair and lowers his staff down one at a time. When everyone is safe, he suffers a heart attack, and Stewart climbs up to lower him down in the chair. Meanwhile, Denise's son was caught on a bridge over a freeway causeway when the quake struck. She spies him unconscious on the concrete and climbs down to save him. Unable to climb back out with her son, she hails Miles and Sal who are passing by in their truck. After saving Denise and her son, they drive in search of help, coming across Lou who is organizing rescue efforts in the street. Lou commandeers their truck to use it as an ambulance. After nibbling on a donut in a ruined diner, Rosa has been arrested by the National Guard for looting. Jody, now a sergeant, picks her out of a group of prisoners. Recognizing him from the grocery store, Rosa assumes he is going to let her go, but he claims that the streets are too unsafe for her to go anywhere and he orders her to stay inside a secluded store. Another group of troops arrive with Jody's housemates as prisoners. Jody executes them in an act of revenge for all the long time bullying he endured from them, terrifying Rosa and his subordinates as they now see his dark psychopathic side. Once Stewart gets everyone from his office safely to a shopping center named Wilson Plaza, which has been converted into a triage center, he goes off in search of Denise and her son. He ends up driving Lou around in search of survivors and they come across Jody and his regiment. Jody threatens to fire on them if they come any closer and Rosa emerges when she sees Lou, begging for his help. Lou and Stewart pretend to comply with Jody by driving off while Sgt. Joad's scared men look for an officer to have him face a court martial and detainment. But Lou sneaks back and gets the jump on Jody, who's enraged at Rosa for betraying and rejecting him and tries to rape her. Lou shoots Jody dead in self-defense when Jody tries to kill him with his rifle and rescues Rosa. As they drive away, they hear that another aftershock has threatened Wilson Plaza. After a quick survey of the building, Stewart realizes there are survivors trapped in an underground garage. He and Lou crawl into the sewer and through some rubble with a jackhammer, which they use to drill through to the garage. Stewart is overjoyed to find Denise, who is one of the people trapped inside. As he hugs her, he sees his wife standing just behind her. During the rescue, the Mulholland Dam finally gives way, sending water down the sewers. Lou and Denise make it up the ladder to safety, but as Remy climbs out, a man steps on her hand. She falls back into the water which is sweeping people away. Stewart looks up at Denise, but he cannot bring himself to abandon his wife to her death. He sacrifices himself when he swims after her and both of them are swept away and presumably drown. Denise walks away from the manhole in shock and grief. Lou is holding Rosa when a doctor walks up to him and says, "This used to be a helluva town, officer." Lou mumbles, "Yeah" as he tries not to cry. The camera pans back to reveal a completely destroyed Los Angeles.

A tough Marshal has a difficult task when his two sons join a gang and rob a bank. J.D. Cahill is the toughest U.S. Marshal they've got, just the sound of his name makes bad guys stop in their tracks, so when his two young boys want to get his attention they decide to rob a bank. They end up getting more than they bargained for. —Christopher D. Ryan <cryan@direct.ca>

Gunslinger Chris Adams is hired by a Mexican revolutionary to organize the rescue of his cause's leader from a brutal Army prison. With six of the original Seven decimated after the life-altering events in The Magnificent Seven (1960) and Return of the Seven (1966), the team's sole survivor, Chris Adams, is recruited to free the incarcerated Mexican revolutionary, Quintero. As the rebels do battle with the ruthless dictator, Diaz, and his pitiless right-hand man, Colonel Diego, legendary Chris enlists the help of a lethal sextet of professional gunfighters to rescue the brave leader of the Revolution. Now, once more, Chris' men are called in to save the day. Can the outnumbered Magnificent Seven pull off a glorious victory? —Nick Riganas

During World War II, the fate of the world depends on 12 American military prisoners who are offered parole if they complete a suicide mission in Nazi Germany just before D-Day.

It is about May of 1948 in a small northern Florida town. As the film opens, Lucas Jackson (Paul Newman) is using a pipe cutter to cut the tops off of parking meters. He is drinking, possibly drunk, but not violent. When the police arrive, he is peacefully arrested. Luke and three other men arrive at a rural Florida prison where they serve on a road gang performing hard labor. When he arrives at the prison, the warden reads his record. He remarks that Luke had been in the Army, attained the rank of Sargeant, was awarded several medals, but was discharged as a private. Something he did got him busted back down to the same rank at which he entered the Army. Luke is sentenced to two years. Dragline (George Kennedy) is clearly the leader of the prisoners. He is uneducated and illiterate, but smarter, stronger, bigger, and does not hesitate to exercise his power over them. Most of the prisoners willingly submit to Dragline, but Luke does not. There is no open opposition to Dragline, just a casual refusal to change his behavior in order to please others. Nevertheless, Dragline sees this as a threat to his power and dominance. The men leave at sunset and perform over 12 hours daily of grueling hard labor under intense heat and humidity on the side of the road cutting grass with a sickle or shoveling dirt. One of the new prisoners passes out the first day and another one tries to get out of the detail by sweeping, which was a trick played on him. Luke makes it the first day, but exhausted and barely able to get back into the truck. At the end of the first day for the new men, Alibi, the one who tried to get out of the hard labor by sweeping, is made to sleep in the box the first night, a cramped isolation unit outside to learn a lesson to not challenge the guards. After Luke says something that Dragline takes as a challenge to his authority, Dragline arranges for he and Luke to have a boxing match. Being much larger, Dragline simply pounds Luke into a pulp, but Luke will not give up, or stay down on the ground. What begins as a boxing match with enthusiastic prisoners and guards watching slowly turns into a sad spectacle. Prisoners begin to plead with Luke to lay down and refuse to get back up, and eventually Dragline himself pleads with Luke to simply stop fighting back, but Luke will not stop. The prisoners begin to walk away, unable to watch the sad scene any longer. Dragline himself wants the fight to end, and at one point has to catch the beaten and exhausted Luke from falling down, carrying him across his shoulder and gently setting him on the ground, only to have Luke use what little strength he has left to tap Dragline with one last punch. Finally, even Dragline cannot continue. The only men who are still watching are the guards and the warden, but the warden seems concerned about Luke's stubbornness and the guards remain indifferent. Luke becomes the prisoners' hero, and even Dragline is now respectful of Luke during a card game that night of having tricked a fellow opponent on betting with a bad hand dealt, giving him the name "Cool Hand Luke." On the chain gang, Luke encourages the other prisoners, by his own attitude and energy, to excel at their menial tasks. This not only encourages camaraderie among the prisoners, it deprives the guards of a stick to hold over the prisoners' heads. The prisoners are forced to shovel sand over a freshly tarred road, and they perform the job so quickly and with such a sense of competition that they complete the job early, and thus by default earn a few hours of relaxation, because there is no more road on which to work. On a Sunday, Luke's mother comes to visit him, visibly ill and dying of cancer or emphysema and still chain-smoking, and it is clear that Luke gets his independent streak from her. He admired her ability to live life on her own terms, and has tried to emulate that, but with much different results. During one very hot and rainy night, Luke decides out of the blue that he can eat 50 eggs. Most of the other prisoners oppose and that it's impossible or will kill him, but Dragline begins to take bets. Luke barely succeeds at it and collects all the money from bets. Soon after, Luke receives a telegram that his mother has died. The warden uses the death of Luke's mother as an excuse to lock him in "the box," solitary confinement in a hot wooden shed. The warden claims that men will often run away when their relatives die, so he locks Luke up until after Luke's mother is buried. This has the opposite effect, and Luke promptly escapes after being released from solitary. Luke is later caught, after mailing a picture and magazine back to his former fellow prisoners. He is double-chained, but escapes a second time. Again, he is recaptured. While Luke is becoming the "hero" of his fellow prisoners, it is a role he does not want. He admonishes them to "stop feeding off me," to stop living life vicariously through his acts. The guards and warden determine to break Luke's will. They force him to dig and bury, then re-dig and re-bury, a ditch. He is beaten and tormented, until he finally begs God to spare him from the warden and guards. They take this as a sign that he is finally a broken man, and Luke himself later admits that it did break him. A few days later, the guards have now made Luke a trustee. Nonetheless, when he is later given an opportunity, he seizes it and escapes again, stealing one of the prison trucks to make his get-away. This time, Dragline decides to go with Luke. Only later, after their escape, does Dragline weigh out the consequences. He had only two years left on his sentence, but now - if caught - will probably have many more years in prison. Dragline wants to team up with Luke, but Luke tells him that he wants to go alone. Luke has always been an individual, not a conventional leader, and does not want to take on that role now. Luke goes into a church, after being completely irreverent to God through the entire film, and asks God to help him escape. But the warden and guards arrive, and when Luke mocks them from the church window, he is shot. The local police want to take Luke to the hospital, but the warden insists that they take him back to prison instead. It is clear that Luke will not make it that far, but the warden heads off with Luke in his car. The one guard who always wears sunglasses is attacked by Dragline, and though Dragline is subdued, he managed to take off the guard's mirror-like sunglasses (and the warden runs over them with his car). In the final scene, Dragline is regaling the prisoners with stories of Luke's final moments, and it is clear that Luke is dead. He is the true anti-hero, never wanting to be anybody's role model, just wanting to live life on his own terms. But like the guard's sunglasses, Luke managed to unmask the injustice and hypocrisy of the system in which he was confined. Basically, he gave up his life over a parking meter, but in the final analysis he could not be broken by the system.

Drama of a ruthless Southern opportunist who tries to buy his cousin's land, and when thwarted, brings several tragedies to the lives of his loved ones. Following World War II, a northern cannery negotiates for the purchase of a large tract of uncultivated Georgia farmland. The major portion of the land is owned by Julie Warren, and has already been optioned by her unscrupulous husband Henry. Now the combine must also obtain two smaller plots; one owned by Henry's cousin Rad McDowell, the other by Reeve Scott, a young black man whose mother had been Julie's childhood mammy. But neither Rad nor Reeve is interested in selling, and they form a partnership to improve their land. Although infuriated by the events, Henry remains determined to push through the big land deal. —alfiehitchie

Ranch owner Katie Elder's four sons determine to avenge the murder of their father and the swindling of their mother. The Elder boys return to Clearwater, Texas for their Mother's funeral. John, the eldest, is a well-known gunfighter and trouble follows him wherever he goes. The boys try to get their ranch back from the town's gunsmith who won it from their father in a card game, after which he was murdered. Troubles come, however, just because they carry the Elder name. —anonymous

Various flashbacks and images introduce Lucy Harbin [Joan Crawford], a young woman who comes home unexpectedly to find her husband in bed with another woman. Carol, their very young daughter, is in bed right in the next room, but she is awake. Heartbroken, Lucy suffers a moment of fury and confusion that leads her to spontaneously pick up a nearby axe and decapitate her husband and his lover while they sleep. Carol watches in terror and shock as Lucy hacks the two bodies to pieces. Lucy is declared insane and sent to an asylum, where she endures traumatic shock treatments for her mental breakdown. The narrator of the flashback is revealed to be Carol, now a young woman. It is twenty years later, and Carol is opening up about her past to her boyfriend, Michael Fields. After Lucy's incarceration, Carol was taken in by her aunt and uncle, Bill and Emily, and the family lives on a farm in a rural location. Carol is revealing the family history to Michael because Lucy is being released from the asylum, and is coming to live with the family. When Lucy arrives, she is skittish. She cautiously acclimates to the farm, exploring the area with Carol and meeting the gritty-looking farm hand, Krause. But she is clearly thrilled to see Carol again, and is touched by the lovely young woman Carol has become. Carol is a sculptress and has a spacious studio filled with her work, and she thrills Lucy by giving her a bust of herself just as she was in her youth. Things quickly start to get strange. Carol shocks Lucy by presenting her with two bracelets she used to wear when she was a young woman, large dangling charm bracelets that jangle when she walks. Carol seems intent on recreating Lucy as a young woman, taking her clothes shopping and buying her a wig that mimics the hairstyle she wore the last time Carol saw her. Lucy is uncomfortable with this, but agrees to dress this way to please her daughter, whom she desperately wants to make amends with. While they are in the wig shop, Lucy hears strange voices, as if children are singing a morbid nursery rhyme about her crimes. She dismisses it as nerves. Later, she suffers a terrible nightmare and wakes up to discover two bloody heads in bed with her, with a bloody axe lying nearby. When she wakes the others, the items are gone from her room. Lucy starts to think she is relapsing. Things get worse when Carol attempts to introduce Michael to her mother. When Michael stops by for drinks, Lucy seems to try and seduce him, all with Carol right there in the room. The embarassing scene is interrupted by Lucy's former psychiatrist, Dr. Anderson, who makes an unexpected visit. When he sees how unstable Lucy seems, Dr. Anderson makes comments to the family that suggest he would like to take Lucy back to the hospital. When the doctor gets Lucy alone, his comments upset her and she runs off. As Dr. Anderson searches for her around the farm, he enters the darkened barn and a shadowy figure corners him--it appears to be Lucy, the silhouette revealing her hairstyle and figure, right down to the jangling bracelets she wears. The figure is holding an axe, and quickly decapitates Dr. Anderson. Carol returns to the farmhouse to find her mother alone in the darkened living room. The doctor's car is still outside, and Carol quickly comes to the conclusion that her mother has killed him. In a panic, Carol drives the doctor's car into a barn and locks it in, but she is spotted by Krause, who is lurking the shadows. The next day, Carol sees Krause painting the car a different color and angrily confronts him, but he smugly suggests that he knows what happened to the doctor, and that he'll turn Lucy in to the authorities if Carol fires him. Lucy overhears the conversation from the window. Later that evening, Krause is stalked and murdered with the axe. Lucy prepares for an evening that she dreads, a dinner party intended to introduce her to Michael's parents. If Michael and Carol are to be married, these will be their in-laws, and Michael's family is very wealthy, his father being the proprietor of a very successful dairy farm. Lucy has a panic attack in the powder room while at the Fields'--after spilling coffee on her dress, she retreats to the washroom and suffers a flashback because of the wallpaper, which resembles the bars of a prison cell. Carol calms her down and takes her back to the party. Mr. & Mrs. Fields are cordial until they plot to get Lucy alone so they can have a private conversation with her: Mrs. Fields is suspicious of Lucy, and poor Lucy makes a terrible misstep by revealing to Mr. & Mrs. Fields that her daughter and Michael are planning to be married. The Fields had not been informed of this yet, and they react disapprovingly. Mrs. Fields in particular gets very haughty with Lucy, making suggestions about her past, and Lucy suddenly snaps at her, revealing that she was in an asylum for twenty years. She says that under no circumstances will she allow the Fields' to interfere with her daughter's happiness, and she storms out of the house. Michael drives Emily and Carol back to their house while he and Bill go out looking for Lucy, who has disappeared. Emily sends Carol to bed, but Carol is restless and cannot sleep. With Michael gone from the Fields' house, Mr. and Mrs. Fields are alone in their house and they hear sounds to suggest someone is prowling around. Mr. Fields is oblivious, but when he goes into his closet to get undressed for the evening, he is attacked by the figure of Lucy, brandishing an axe. Mrs. Fields becomes suspicious and goes looking for her husband, eventually finding his body in the dressing room. Horrified, she retreats, only to be confronted by the figure of Lucy in the bedroom. Before the axe can fall, the bedroom door opens and the real Lucy comes in; after scuffling with the other figure, Lucy tears off a mask to reveal her daughter's face underneath. Carol has been committing the murders while dressing as her mother; scarred by witnessing the double homicide committed by her mother, Carol's mind was unstable ever since. Certain that Mr. and Mrs. Fields would never allow Michael to marry her without a great deal of trouble, she plotted to make it appear as if Lucy murdered them in a rage, which would send Lucy back to the asylum and allow her to marry Michael. Her mind shattered, Carol clutches the mask of her mother and screams at it "I hate you! I hate you! Oh I'm sorry, I love you! I hate you! I love you!" Outside on the porch, Lucy hears her daughter's insane ravings and weeps, perhaps remembering her own moment of insanity. An epilogue reveals Lucy discussing her plans with Bill. With Carol now committed to an asylum just as she once was, Lucy intends to stand by her daughter and be whatever kind of support that she needs.

After her husbands death, Reggie finds herself being chased by three men who stake a claim to her husbands fortune, but a mysterious stranger named Peter helps her get away.

An employee at Diner's Club issues a credit card to a well-known mobster and has to retrieve it in order to keep his job. Mobster Foots Pulardos, who operates a health gym as a front, plans to flee to Mexico to evade government tax officials. His girlfriend Sugar Pye suggests that he first arrange for the cremation of a man having his own peculiar identifying characteristic--feet of different sizes--then apply for a Diners' Club card to use to pay his fare. The credit-card request comes to the desk of timid clerk Ernie Klenk. Nervous about his forthcoming marriage to the boss' secretary Lucy, Ernie inadvertently OKs the application; when he discovers his mistake, he rushes to the health gym to recover the club card he had issued. —Canon y mus

The movie opens with modern day cowboy Jack Burns (Kirk Douglas) stretched out beside a dying campfire at dawn, awakened by the roar of fighter jets above the vast, open scrub-lands of New Mexico. Burns is a cowboy ill at ease with the modern world of the early 1960s. He rolls his own smokes and cuts through fences when they block his path. He carries no ID, not even the requisite draft card. He is on a collision course with the world around him. His only constant companionship comes from Whiskey, his spirited and beloved buckskin mare. Burns rides into Duke City, New Mexico, crossing a busy highway atop his spooked horse and nearly getting killed in the process. He surprises Jerry Bondi (Gena Rowlands), the wife of his best friend, in her kitchen. Her husband Paul (Michael Kane) is in jail, having been sentenced to two years in prison for assisting Mexican immigrants who have crossed into the United States illegally. Burns wants to go see him, but Jerry explains that the next visiting opportunity is several days off. Burns divulges that he has been forced to herd sheep just to earn a living. He says he started for Duke City as soon as he learned of Paul's plight. Meanwhile, a long-distance truck driver (Carroll O'Connor) exits a diner in Joplin, Missouri and climbs into the cab of his vehicle, headed for Duke City. He is hauling a load of porcelain toilets in his tractor-trailer. Burns plans to go into town, get drunk, and somehow get thrown in jail in order to see his friend. He finds a Mexican bar and heads for a back table with his beer and a whiskey chaser. On the way to his table, he trips over the intentionally outstretched foot of a one-armed man (Bill Raisch). Burns starts to complain, then notices the man's missing arm and apologizes. Burns sits down, drains a glass of whiskey, and starts nursing his beer, but the one-armed man suddenly throws a whiskey bottle across the room and over Burns' table. Burns calmly tells the man to watch himself and returns to his beer. The man then throws his whiskey glass and hits Burns with it. Burns once again tries to avoid a confrontation, but the man gets up from his table and approaches threateningly. He obviously has a chip on his shoulder and wants Burns to fight him. He kicks the chair out from under Burns, dumping him onto the floor. Amazingly, Burns still tries to avoid a fight, offering the truculent man a drink. The man calls Burns a coward, provoking Burns to slap him. Burns offers to even things up by putting one arm behind his back, and a savage fight ensues. The one-armed man is more than a match for Burns, using his good arm, the stump of his missing arm, a chair, a billiard ball, and a cue stick to attack Burns. A wild melee erupts with a group of patrons before the police arrive. Burns is taken to the police station, only to discover that the cells are overloaded and he is therefore being released. When he realizes he won't get to see Paul, he intentionally slugs a policeman, earning a one year jail sentence.. Sheriff Morey Johnson (Walter Matthau) arrives at the police station, where he is greeted by his deputy (William Schallert). Discipline at the police station and jail is noticeably lax. A sadistic deputy named Gutierrez (George Kennedy) enjoys riding roughshod over the prisoners. Burns quickly earns the attention of Gutierrez. Burns confides in Paul that he intends to spring him from the jail, but Paul says he doesn't intend to escape and risk a longer sentence. Burns reveals that he has smuggled two hacksaw blades into the jail. He and two Navajo cellmates spend the night sawing through one of the bars before Gutierrez shows up and calls Burns out of the cell for a supposed phone call. Gutierrez brutally beats Burns and knocks out a tooth before bringing him back. The two Navajo have escaped and Burns hurriedly resumes his escape efforts before daylight can arrive. As Burns slithers through the opening in the bars, Paul once again declines to escape. Burns is disappointed but understands the difference in their situations. Paul has a wife and child to think of; Burns is all alone. Burns climbs down the side of the jailhouse with the aid of a blanket for a rope and returns to Jerry's house. Jerry packs him some food before he gathers up spare ammunition and puts a saddle on Whiskey. It is now revealed that Burns and Jerry were once in love before Jack selflessly backed away in favor of Paul. Burns kisses Jerry goodbye and rides off, certain that his pursuers won't be far behind. Sheriff Johnson soon learns that escapee Jack Burns served in the army during the Korean War, earning a Purple Heart and the DSC, along with jail time for striking an officer. Up in the foothills, Burns watches over his shoulder for activity down below and heads for a distant mountain ridge that promises safety. The route gets steeper and more difficult with every switchback. Burns spots several armed deputies in pursuit far below. He is forced to dismount and lead Whiskey up the slippery and treacherous mountain face. Sheriff Johnson is lent the use of a helicopter by a general at the local army base to locate Burns. The skittish horse causes Burns considerable delay, allowing the helicopter crew to spot him. Burns expertly puts a rifle bullet through the tail rotor to cause the helicopter to have to land and it spirals down and crashes without killing the crew. Deputy Gutierrez, involved in the chase, eventually comes across the tethered horse and thinks he has gotten the drop on Burns, but he feels a rifle barrel pressed up against his face. Burns repays his earlier vicious beating with a rifle butt across the face of the sadistic deputy, knocking him out cold. Burns now leads Whiskey up an incredibly steep talus slope where the horse nearly plunges down the mountainside. They are rapidly approaching the summit and freedom, but the deputies are closing in. Just as the deputies are able to get a clean shot at him, Burns reaches the crest and quickly mounts up, spurring his horse into a thick stand of timber on the other side with complete concealment. Burns discovers that a bullet has passed through his boot and into his lower leg. He gingerly slides off the horse and fashions a splint from his rifle stock. Mounted up again, Burns rides down to the edge of an interstate highway at night during a heavy downpour. Across the highway is Manzano Mountain and the freedom of Mexico. Barreling down the rain-slick highway is the tractor-trailer introduced earlier, carrying the load of toilets. Burns desperately tries to maintain control over his nervous horse and coax him across the highway through the heavy traffic. At the critical moment, Whiskey spooks and rears up in the middle of the highway. The truck driver cannot possibly stop in time, slamming into man and horse and hurling them onto the shoulder. As a crowd gathers and surrounds the injured Jack Burns, Whiskey screams in agony. Burns is in obvious shock, but every scream from the horse is registered on his contorted face. Sheriff Johnson and a deputy soon arrive at the accident scene. Johnson sends the deputy to dispatch the badly injured horse, and the resulting gunshot causes Burns to wince noticeably. Sheriff Johnson is asked to identify Burns as the escaped fugitive, but the sheriff declines claiming he's never seen him closeup. Burns is loaded onto an ambulance and driven away as his cowboy hat washes across the rainy highway.