José Ferrer

In northern Italy, a group of Roman Catholic clerics led by a shadowy robed figure (Jose Ferrer) meet and Monsignor Franchino (Arthur Kennedy) portends danger. Meanwhile, in New York City, elite fashion model Alison Parker (Cristina Raines) seeks her own apartment, but her boyfriend, lawyer Michael Lerman (Chris Sarandon), wants to get married. In Baltimore, Maryland, Alison's father dies suddenly and she returns home, where she recalls being so traumatized from walking in on her father participating in an orgy that she attempted suicide. She collects a cross that her father tore from her neck during the incident. Alison's mother tells her she stayed with Mr. Parker because she had nowhere else to go. Back in New York City, Alison meets with real estate agent Miss Logan (Ava Gardner) who shows her a "perfect" apartment to rent. Alison rents a furnished apartment in Brooklyn Heights. On the top floor of the building lives a blind, senile priest named Father Halliran (John Carradine), who stares blankly out of his window. After fainting during a photo shoot, Alison is visited by an eccentric neighbor, Charles Chazen (Burgess Meredith), who drops by with his pet cat and bird and tells Alison about the other tenants in the building. When he leaves, she notices a photograph of Charles in her apartment. That night, at a party in the apartment, Michael again presses Alison for marriage. In the morning, Alison meets two more neighbors, the wisecracking Gerde (Sylvia Miles) and the mute Sandra (Beverly D'Angelo), who are lovers. At a commercial shoot, Alison again collapses, frustrating Jack (Jeff Goldblum) the photographer. Charles throws a birthday party for his cat and Alison meets more of her strange neighbors. Later, she has a disturbing dream and is awakened by noise from the supposedly empty apartment above her. Alison meets with Miss Logan and learns that aside from the priest, the apartment building has been empty for years and the building is owned by the Holy Diocese of New York. Meanwhile, Father Halliran is visited by Monsignor Franchino. (In some versions, Franchino meets with a group of priests who are a secret order to protecting the world from evil to give them an update them on the events unfolding.) Elsewhere, Michael Lerman asks private investigator James Brenner (Hank Garrett) to check out Alison's building. Alone the next night, Alison hears more noises and investigates. She sees Chazen's cat eating the pet bird and is pursued by an apparition of her father, whom she stabs repeatedly. Alison flees into the street, where she is found, covered in blood, by residents of nearby buildings. The next day, two police detectives, the veteran Gatz (Eli Wallach) and his rookie partner Rizzo (Christopher Walken), visit Michael and question him about his dead wife Karen's suicide and a second suicide attempt by Alison, implying that he is involved in the previous night's incident. Meanwhile, police find nothing suspicious in Alison's apartment and match the blood type on her nightgown to her own. Michael discovers that Mrs. Clark, one of the supposed guests at Chazen's cat's birthday party, was the name of a convicted murderer, who was executed in 1949. Later, Brenner, the private eye, is found stabbed to death in his car and his blood type matches Alison's. Detective Gatz connects Brenner to Michael and suspects that Michael hired the investigator to kill Karen and is now trying to drive her insane. When the detectives arrive at Michael's apartment to confront him, Alison leaves her boyfriend's home for a walk and stops by a Catholic Church. There, she confesses to Monsignor Franchino that she has committed adultery, twice attempted suicide, and is feeling suicidal again. The monsignor assures her that if she embraces Jesus and returns to the church, the feelings will vanish. When Alison returns to Michael's apartment, he suggests that she may not have imagined the events and they visit her apartment in Brooklyn Heights. There is no evidence that Alison killed anyone there, but she says that some of the things in the room, such as the carpet, are different. In a book, Alison sees the same Latin phrase on every page, but Michael only sees English. When Alison writes the text, Michael takes it to Professor Ruzinsky (Martin Balsam), who reports that it is a passage from Milton's Paradise Lost. Alison returns to the church and meets the rector, who tells her he does not know of the priest she claims to have met there earlier. Meanwhile, Michael visits Monsignor Franchino under the pretense that he has a bequest for Father Halliran. Franchino tells him that Halliran has been retired since 1952, suffers from palsy and is unable to accept visitors. Michael shows Franchino the excerpt from Milton, but the monsignor claims not to recognize it. Franchino refuses Michael's request to make a copy of Father Halliran's file. That night, Michael asks Alison's friend, Jennifer (Deborah Raffin), to stay with her while he attends to business. Michael meets a man named Perry (William Hickey), an ex-convict that he represented in the past and bribes him some cash to assist with breaking into the diocese to look at the official files on Halliran. Michael discovers that Father Halliran was originally named Daniel O'Rourke, and, after a suicide attempt, disappeared and re-emerged as Halliran. Michael finds files on several more people who attempted suicide, gained new identities and became priests or nuns and all have lived and died in the very same apartment building in Brooklyn where Alison lives. When one dies, another takes his or her place. A file for Alison states that Halliran will die the very next day and Alison will become a woman named Sister Theresa. Meanwhile, detectives Gatz and Rizzo determine that the eight people Alison claims were at the birthday party for the cat were murderers executed long ago. Michael has Alison attend a party at Jennifer's while he investigates the apartment in Brooklyn Heights. At the party, Alison faints and her friends put her to bed, but at midnight she sneaks away. In Brooklyn Heights, Michael discovers a hidden portal behind a wooden wall of the building which reads: "Through me you go into the city of grief. Through me you go into the world of pain. Through me you walk among people lost. Abandon hope all yee who enter here". Father Halliran appears and tells him that this whole building is the entrance to Hell. Michael pursues the priest upstairs and demands answers as he attempts to strangle him. Alison arrives at the building and is met by Michael, who calmly explains that the Latin they found was a warning from the angel Gabriel to the angel Uriel, stationed at the Gateway to Eden. Since that time, a series of sentinels have stood watch, guarding the world against evil. Currently, it is Father Halliran, but that night, Alison is to become the next sentinel upon his passing. The people Alison met in the building, the murderers, were actually reincarnated devils, who could only stop her from becoming the next sentinel by driving her to suicide. Michael goes on to explain that he is dead, killed by Monsignor Franchino minutes earlier for trying to strangle Halliran. He is damned to eternal hell for his sins, including hiring Brenner to murder his wife, Karen. Michael turns his head, revealing a gaping wound, and his head splits open. Alison flees downstairs where Chazen and the demons confront her. She returns upstairs and sees Gerde and Sandra feasting on Michael's dead body. Just then, all of the demons of hell come forth from behind doors and walls. Among the demons, Alison sees her father and Chazen. Cornered by the deformed and hideous demons in Halliran's apartment, Chazen approaches Alison and urges her to join them by killing herself; he gives her a dagger. Franchino and Halliran appear bearing a cross and drive back the demons. Chazen exhorts the demons to fight, but Alison takes the cross. The devils fade back into the walls and the monsignor leads Father Halliran away. The next morning, Gatz and Rizzo arrive at the apartment building where Father Halliran is carried out of the building in a body bag, with the medical examiner's report that he just died of a heart attack. A search of the building leads to no other people around. The building is later demolished. Some time later, Miss Logan, the real estate agent who is still working for the shadowy priesthood in protecting the new apartment building, shows a young couple (Tom Berenger and Nana Tucker) an apartment in the new building. They ask about the neighbors and are told that there are only two: one is a musician and the other is a reclusive blind nun who lives on the top floor. In that apartment, the blind Alison, now known as Sister Theresa, sits silently, wearing a white habit and staring blankly out the window, holding the cross... now the new sentinel and protector of the entrance to Hell.

A nuclear-powered bus driving cross-country from New York City to Colorado is destined for disaster because of the machinations of a mysterious group allied with the oil lobby. The ultimate disaster movie parody: A nuclear-powered bus is going non-stop from New York City, New York to Denver, Colorado, and is plagued by disasters because of the machinations of a mysterious group allied with the oil lobby. When the driver is injured, a washed-up, down-on-his-luck-but-used-to-be-great type who used to be engaged to the inventor's daughter is brought in to drive the giant bus, which includes a one-lane swimming pool and a one-lane bowling alley. —John Vogel <jlvogel@comcast.net>

A varied group of passengers boarding a ship bound for pre-WWII Germany represents a microcosm of early-1930s society. In 1933, an ocean liner belonging to a second-rate German company is making a 26-day voyage from Veracruz, Mexico to Bremerhaven, Germany. Along the way it will stop in Cuba to pick up a large group of Spanish farm laborers who are being shipped home and will be housed like cattle in steerage. It will also pick up La Condesa, a Spanish countess. It will stop in Tenerife, where the farm workers will disembark and La Condesa will be sent to a German-run prison for her "traitorous" activities in Cuba. This voyage will be the last of three for the ship's doctor, Willi Schumann, who has a serious heart ailment and thought he could find some meaning to his life through this job. Willi and La Condesa fall in love, but the ship's Captain Thiele, Willi's closest friend on board, believes that drug-addicted La Condesa is only using him to get her fixes. Willi and La Condesa must figure out if they have a future after the voyage, as Willi has a wife and sons back in Bremerhaven. The other passengers include: Mary Treadwell, a middle-aged American divorcée who is trying to recapture her youth; Tenny, a middle-aged American ex-baseball player who laments that he never made it big in the game; young American couple David and Jenny, who are in love but must overcome differences in social standing and life outlooks; Rieber, a middle-aged German Nazi sympathizer who is traveling with a young female companion and lords his beliefs over the other German passengers, who are either absorbed in their own lives or just don't care to notice what's happening in Germany with the Nazis; and Lowenthal and Glocken, a German Jew and a German dwarf who are "paired" as the outsiders among those in first class. Their encounters, plus those with a rambunctious pair of children, two German teenagers who are coming into their sexual being but having problems overcoming issues they face, and a troupe of gypsy entertainers whose women are pimped out by their leader, make for an interesting voyage. —Huggo Passengers on a ship traveling from Mexico to Europe in the 1930s represent society at large in that era. The crew is German, including the ship's doctor who falls in love with one of the passengers, La Contessa. A young American woman, Jenny, is traveling with the man she loves, David. Jenny is fascinated and puzzled by just who some of the other passengers are. The once-famous Mary Treadwell gets much of her attention. —Dale O'Connor <daleoc@interaccess.com>

One of cinema`s grandest epics, the movie recounts the life of T.E. Lawrence, a British officer who united and led the Arabs across a desert to attack the Turks in World War I.

In March of 1942, Royal Marine Captain Hugh Thompson reports for duty at the Portsmouth Marine Barracks. Later that day, Marine Acting Major Stringer reports for duty and introduces himself to Thompson. Stringer will command a special unit assigned to travel by canoe up the Gironde River in occupied France to Bordeaux and there to blow up several German supply ships in the docks. Forty-three men arrive to contend for places on the team. All are volunteers for hazardous service, the sort of man of which Thompson is openly skeptical. Stringer begins by interviewing the men, one at a time, asking, "Why did you volunteer for hazardous service?" He throws out many obvious rejects and then tests the rest by dropping them by parachute 300 miles north, dressed in German uniforms with neither money nor ID, and telling them to get back to barracks in 48 hours. Eight of the men make it back, and they are the final selection. Stringer now has his crew--but the friction between him and Thompson only grows, because Stringer's methods grate on Thompson's professional sensibilities. The appalling lack of discipline of the men irk Thompson even more, but Stringer insists on doing things "his" way. Then comes an exercise to attempt to penetrate the Thames--and not a man reaches his objective, and all of them get picked up within hours. Stringer humbles himself before Thompson, who delivers a bracing lecture on the meaning of command, leadership, and discipline. Stringer takes the hint and retrains his men far more rigorously, with promising results. The operation is approved, and when Stringer and Thompson receive their orders, Thompson suggests that they go get drunk. Alone in a dining room with a bottle of brandy between them, Thompson confesses that he had been disgraced in the Battle of Cambrai and lost his chance to make things up when the war ended. He tells Stringer that he has his chance to be a hero, and not to muff it. Their men take their own liberty in a local pub, and start a brawl with Royal Navy men during which one of them (Marine Ruddock) slips out unnoticed. He is missed the next morning. Thompson, thoroughly angry, confines the other men to barracks and goes after Ruddock personally. He sees for himself that Ruddock's wife is cheating on him, and then finds Ruddock in another pub and tells him to take fifteen minutes and "do a good job of it; that's an order." Ruddock, of course, obeys--and his fight with the "other man" takes place entirely off-screen, with Captain Thompson and a London "Bobby" looking on and agreeing, like gentlemen, to take no official action. Finally Stringer, Thompson, and their men board a Royal Navy submarine and set out for the mouth of the Gironde River. On the last night, a depth-charge attack causes Marine Lomas to injure himself fatally by bumping his head against a metal strut. Thompson pleads with Stringer to let him take Lomas' place rather than idle a canoe, and Stringer reluctantly agrees. The canoes are launched, and the men begin paddling toward the mouth of the Gironde. The heavy seas of the tide race swamp one of the canoes; its crew swim to shore and are captured by the Germans. The leading sergeant has his crewman shot dead at another point on the river; the sergeant takes his revenge by tossing a fast-detonating mine into a patrol boat so that the other three canoes can escape. A third canoe is about to be captured when its crew detonates its fast-detonating mine and blows up all the other mines that they carry. Now two canoes remain, manned by Stringer and Marine Clarke, and Thompson and Marine Ruddock. They reach Bordeaux and attach twelve limpet mines to the hulls of several ships. Thompson and Ruddock are captured by the Germans and interrogated, and tell them nothing. Eventually Thompson, Ruddock, and the original crew who had gotten swamped in the tide race, are shot by a firing squad. Stringer and Clarke are rescued by French fishermen and given disguises in which they start to make their way out of France--after having the chance to witness all those mines blowing up and sinking all those cargo ships. Thus Operation Cockleshell is a success, though at the cost of nine lives. As Stringer and Clarke walk up the road from Bordeaux, nine ghosts briefly join them.

Callow, rich Ensign Willis Seward "Willie" Keith (Robert Francis) reports for duty aboard the Caine, his first assignment. Homeported in Pearl Harbor, he is disappointed to find the Caine to be a small, battle-scarred destroyer-minesweeper. Its gruff captain, Lieutenant Commander William H. DeVriess (Tom Tully), has almost completely discarded discipline, and the crew has become slovenly and superficially undisciplined - although their performance is excellent. Keith has already met the executive officer, Lieutenant Stephen Maryk (Van Johnson), and is introduced to the communications officer, Lieutenant Thomas Keefer (Fred MacMurray), a novelist in civilian life. Keith has an opportunity to transfer off the ship for a more glamorous command, but decides to stay aboard. However, Keith remains frustrated with the ship's lack of discipline, despite his own shortcomings. The captain is soon replaced by Lieutenant Commander Phillip Queeg (Humphrey Bogart), a no-nonsense career veteran and graduate of the United States Naval Academy. He quickly attempts to re-instill discipline into the crew but soon displays erratic behavior. He regularly clicks a pair of steel ball bearings in his hands. At first, Keith is elated to have a strict commander. The next day, the Caine is assigned to tow a target for gunnery practice. Queeg is distracted berating Keith and Keefer over a crewman's appearance after giving an order to turn, and he cuts off the helmsman's attempt to warn him that they are turning back on their own towline. After the Caine continues in a circle and cuts the towline, Queeg tries to cover up his responsibility for the incident. Other incidents serve to undermine Queeg's authority. When strawberries go missing from the officers' mess, the captain-once again clicking the bearings-goes to absurd lengths to hunt down the culprit. Despite being told by one of his officers that the mess staff had eaten the fruit, Queeg insists on believing otherwise. He relates a story to Maryk and Keefer of when he, as an ensign, was commended for unmasking a cheese thief. Under enemy fire, Queeg abandons escorting a group of landing craft during an amphibious assault long before they reach the fiercely defended shore, instead dropping a yellow dye marker in the water and leaving the landing craft to fend for themselves, much to the crew's disgust. Afterward, Queeg speaks to his officers, not explicitly apologizing, but bending enough to ask for their support. His disgruntled subordinates do not respond. Keefer begins trying to convince Maryk that he should relieve Queeg on the basis of mental illness under Article 184 of Navy Regulations. At first Maryk displays loyalty to Queeg, even threatening Keefer with a charge of insubordination. Maryk begins keeping a journal, documenting Queeg's behavior. Keefer convinces Maryk and Keith to join him in presenting the case to Admiral William F. Halsey, Jr.. While aboard Halsey's flagship, Keefer realizes that Queeg's documented actions could be interpreted as reasonable attempts to instill discipline, leaving the officers open to a charge of conspiring to mutiny. When Halsey's aide tells the Caine officers that Halsey will see them, Keefer talks Maryk and Keith out of making the complaint. Matters come to a head during a violent typhoon. Maryk urgently recommends that they steer into the waves and take on ballast, but Queeg refuses to deviate from the fleet-ordered heading and declines Maryk's request for ballast. He fears that it would foul the fuel lines with salt water. When Queeg appears to become paralyzed in action, Maryk relieves him, with Keith's support. Upon returning to port, Maryk and Keith face a court-martial for mutiny. After questioning them and Keefer, Lieutenant Barney Greenwald (José Ferrer) reluctantly accepts the job of Maryk's defense counsel, which a number of other lawyers have already turned down. The proceedings do not go well, as Keefer has carefully covered himself and denies any complicity. Navy psychiatrist Dr. Dixon (Whit Bissell) testifies that Queeg is not mentally ill, but when Queeg is called to testify, he exhibits paranoid behavior and begins to click the ball bearings together in his hand under Greenwald's tough cross-examination. Maryk is acquitted, and Keith is spared any charges. The Caine officers celebrate the trial's results at a hotel. Keefer shows up, telling Maryk privately he did not have the guts not to. Greenwald appears and clears his "guilty conscience". Apparently drunk, he berates the officers for not appreciating the years of danger and hardship endured by Queeg, a career navy man. He lambastes Maryk, Keith, and finally Keefer, for not supporting their captain when he most needed it. Under his attack, Maryk and Keith admit that if they had given Queeg the support he had asked for, he might not have "frozen" during the typhoon. Greenwald turns to Keefer, denouncing him as the real "author" of the mutiny, who "hated the Navy" and manipulated the others while keeping his own hands officially clean. The lawyer exposes Keefer's double-dealing to the other officers, throws a glassful of champagne in his face and tells Keefer that if he wishes to do anything about the drink in the face, the two could fight outside. Keefer does not respond to the challenge and the other officers depart, leaving him alone in the room. A few days later, Keith has received his promotion to Lieutenant, junior grade and reports to his new ship. He is surprised to find he is serving again under DeVriess, who has been promoted to Commander. DeVriess lets Keith know that he will start with a clean slate.

At the end of the Second World War on a military base on a small South Pacific island, U.S. Marine Sgt. Phil O'Hara and his fellow soldiers await their discharges while attending to mundane peacetime duties. On a routine supply pickup, Phil and several of his men meet arriving sea passengers Dr. Robert MacPhail and his wife, and missionaries Alfred and Margaret Davidson who are returning to the island after a year's absence. With two free hours between transports, Davidson and MacPhail are intent upon revisiting the missionary hospital they established on the island. Phil and the men are more enthusiastic about the arrival of the mail boat, which brings another passenger between ships, singer Sadie Thompson, who is headed to New Caledonia. While Phil and the men excitedly smuggle the gregarious Sadie to Bill's Bar in the village, Davidson and MacPhail visit the missionary hospital. Later, when Davidson hears robust singing emanating from Bill's, he stops by to chastise the Marines for breaking the Sabbath. Upon returning to the harbor to catch her boat, Sadie discovers that a week-long quarantine has been issued for the entire island. Phil and the men cheerfully escort Sadie to Joe Horn's modest hotel, where she is forced to accept a small spare room because the Davidsons and MacPhails have already taken the larger rooms. The following day as the monsoon season begins, Davidson expresses dismay at Sadie's boisterousness and the Marines visiting her room. When Davidson criticizes Sadie's character, MacPhail protests, accusing Davidson of intolerance. That evening, Sadie sings and dances for the men at Bill's, as Davidson, playing cards with the MacPhails, recalls having seen Sadie in Honolulu, outside of the notorious Emerald Club, a house of prostitution. MacPhail defends Sadie, upbraiding Davidson for his presumption that Sadie was employed at Emerald's. That night, Phil and the men drunkenly escort Sadie back to her room. Angered by their rowdiness, Davidson bursts in, ordering the men to leave, which prompts Phil to attack the missionary before being stopped by the others. After the soldiers leave, Davidson asks Sadie why she left Honolulu abruptly. Startled, she insists that he clarify his insinuations, but Davidson maintains that he only wishes to offer her redemption. The next day, Davidson visits the governor and demands Sadie's arrest, claiming she is a fugitive from America. Back at Horn's, Phil finds Sadie packing, determined to move into the village, fearful that Davidson may try to prevent her passage to New Caledonia. In the village, however, the native families refuse to take Sadie in, not wanting to incur Davidson's displeasure. Angry and frustrated, Sadie returns to Horn's, where Phil asks her to forgo her plans for New Caledonia and instead meet him in Australia, where he intends to settle upon his discharge. Sadie agrees just as a messenger brings her notice from the governor's office of her deportation to San Francisco in three days. Phil accompanies Sadie to the governor's office, but she insists on seeing him alone. When Sadie pleads with the governor to be allowed to go to Australia, he tells her that if Davidson allows it, he will approve. At Horn's, Sadie confronts Davidson but he accuses her of fleeing from the American police. Sadie admits to having been involved with a man who committed murder and for behavior for which she is not proud. Davidson insists she must pay for her immorality. Later, Phil visits Sadie and when he realizes Davidson is responsible for the deportation order, seeks him out. Learning of Sadie's past, Phil berates her, and declares that he could never marry her. After Phil departs, Davidson visits the distraught Sadie and prays over her. Confused, Sadie withdraws for the next couple of days and begins reading the Bible. When MacPhail expresses concern for her, Sadie reassures him, revealing that Davidson has helped her face up to her past and that she has accepted that she must return to San Francisco. As the transport arrives on the island, Phil visits Sadie to apologize for his reaction and to tell her he has arranged for her passage to New Caledonia. Sadie insists the only way that she will feel free is to accept punishment for her actions and return home. Davidson arrives and Sadie asks a disappointed Phil to go away. Davidson praises Sadie for her strength and she thanks him for providing her with confidence. To Sadie's amazement, Davidson then abruptly demands to know why she is leaving him and coldly tells her she can never change what she is and attacks her. The following morning Davidson commits suicide by jumping from a cliff. Phil rushes to Horn's, worried about Sadie's reaction to Davidson's death. Embittered, Sadie is nevertheless stunned and paralyzed by the news, until MacPhail convinces her she cannot let Davidson's actions ruin her. When Phil insists he wants to resume their plans for Australia, Sadie asks him if he can forget her past and he says he wants the opportunity to try. She agrees and sets off for Australia after Phil promises to meet her there in a month.

The abbreviated life of the 15th-century French heroine. In the 15th century, France is a defeated and ruined nation after the Hundred Years War against England. 14-year-old farm girl Joan of Arc claims to hear voices from Heaven asking her to lead God's Army against Orleans and crowning the weak Dauphin Charles VII as King of France. Joan gathers the people with her faith, forms an army and conquerors Orleans. When her army is ready to attack Paris, the corrupt Charles sells his country to England and dismisses the army. Joan is arrested, sold to the Burgundians England and submitted to a shameful political trial in Rouen castle. —Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil During the Hundred Years' War, peasant girl Joan of Arc hears voices instructing her to save France from the English. Convinced that these unsummoned murmurings are divine messages from God, Joan consults the uncrowned Charles VII who, startled by the accuracy of her clairvoyance, assembles an army and installs her as its leader and spiritual guide. Her victorious forces reclaim much of their homeland from the English, but she herself falls into enemy hands. —Jwelch5742 In the 15th Century, France is a defeated and ruined nation after the One Hundred Years War against England. The fourteen-year-old farm girl Joan of Arc claims to hear voices from Heaven asking her to lead God's Army against Orleans and crowning the weak Dauphin Charles VII as King of France. Joan gathers the people with her faith, forms an army, and conquers Orleans. —yusufpiskin