Ben PiazzaFilmography

Never Forget

Actors: Leonard Nimoy, Dabney Coleman, Blythe Danner

Synopsis: In this fact-based made-for-cable docudrama, Leonard Nimoy stars as Mel Mermelstein, a Nazi death camp survivor who wages a court battle against the revisionist Institute for Historical Review over their claims that the Holocaust never occurred. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide Read More

Clean and Sober

Actors: Michael Keaton, Kathy Baker, Morgan Freeman, M. Emmet Walsh, Brian Benben, Tate Donovan

Synopsis: The directorial debut of Glenn Gordon Caron, the creator of the television series Moonlighting (1985-89), this intense, gritty drama was received as one of the best-ever cinematic treatments of substance abuse. Michael Keaton stars as Daryl Poynter, a hustling, successful Philadelphia real estate Read More

Moonlighting: Here's Living With You, Kid

Synopsis: This is the only Moonlighting episode in which neither Cybill Shepherd nor Bruce Willis appear. Instead, the focus is on nerdish detective Bert Viola (Curtis Armstrong), who has gone into a deep blue funk over an imagined slight from Blue Moon secretary Agnes Dipesto (Allyce Beasley). In the Read More

Billionaire Boys Club

Actors: Judd Nelson, Ron Silver

Synopsis: Billionaire Boys Club is the two-part TV adaptation of a book by Sue Horton (unpublished at the time of the film's first telecast). In flashback form, the story recounts the murder of Beverly Hills con artist Ron Levin (Ron Silver). The culprit is yuppie Joe Hunt (Judd Nelson), a sharp young Read More

Scene of the Crime

Synopsis: The made-for-television Scene of the Crime is an anthology crime film, featuring three different short films--"The Newlywed Murder," "Medium is the Murder" and "Vote for Murder"--which is narrated by Orson Welles. At the end of each film, Welles asks the audience to solve the murder, and offers Read More

Mask

Actors: Cher, Sam Elliott, Eric Stoltz, Estelle Getty, Richard Dysart

Synopsis: This is the true story of Rocky Dennis (Eric Stoltz), a personable young man suffering from "lionitis," a fatal disease which causes hideous facial disfigurement. The son of freewheeling biker Rusty Dennis (Cher), Rocky is accepted without question by his mom's boyfriends and cycle buddies, but Read More

Consenting Adult

Actors: Talia Balsam, Marlo Thomas, Barry Tubb, Martin Sheen

Synopsis: Martin Sheen, who in 1972 co-starred in That Certain Summer, the precedent-setting TV movie concerning homosexuality, is cast as the father of an "out of closet" gay son in Consenting Adult. Sheen and his wife Marlo Thomas are devastated when their college-age son Barry Tubb comes forth with Read More

The A-Team: Bullets and Bikinis

Synopsis: Season Three of The A-Team begins as Hannibal (George Peppard), B.A. (Mr. T), Face (Dirk Benedict) and Murdock (Dwight Schultz) head to Miami at the request of two pretty young lasses, Sandy (Kimberly Ross) and Tina Betsy Russell). The girls run a tourist hotel which may be put out of business by Read More

Waltz Across Texas

Actors: Anne Archer, Terry Jastrow, Noah Beery, Jr., Mary Kay Place, Josh Taylor

Synopsis: In this easily predictable romantic comedy, Gail (Anne Archer) is a no-nonsense geologist from the East Coast and John (Terry Jastrow) is a down-home, intuitive Texan whose expertise lies in guessing where petroleum is located -- Gail, as a geologist, is not in the habit of guessing. As the two Read More

Grace Kelly

Actors: Cheryl Ladd, Ian McShane

Synopsis: Grace Kelly, the high-society beauty who became an Oscar-winning actress and then a European princess, is the subject of this TV biopic. Cheryl Ladd has the looks and poise of the original Grace, though she isn't quite as charismatic. The early portion of the film retraces the stormy relationship Read More

The Wall

Synopsis: It could be said that without the incredible success of the ABC miniseries Holocaust in 1978, CBS might have thought twice before greenlighting the ambitious, three-hour TV docudrama The Wall four years later. Adapted by Millard Lampell from his own 1960 Broadway play, which in turn was inspired Read More

The Five of Me

Synopsis: Historically, most multiple-personality cases have been women. Based on the autobiographical book by Henry Hawksworth, The Five of Me centers on a rare male victim of this bizarre syndrome. David Birney plays Hawksworth, who for his first 36 years lived with four separate personalities. When a Read More

A Matter of Life and Death

Synopsis: This fact-based made-for-television drama tells the story of nurse Joy Ufemal and her invaluable work with those dying of incurable diseases. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

The Murder That Wouldn't Die

Actors: Lane Caudell, Tommy Aguilar

Synopsis: Originally intended as the pilot for a never-sold cop series titled Battles, this made-for-TV meller stars William Conrad as William Battles, a retired Los Angeles police detective spending his golden years in Hawaii. Somewhat bored by inactivity, Battles takes a job at a local college as Read More

The Blues Brothers

Actors: John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, James Brown, John Candy, Ray Charles, Carrie Fisher

Synopsis: Expanding on their Saturday Night Live characters, John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd star as Jake and Elwood Blues, two white boys with black soul. Sporting cool shades and look-alike suits, Jake and Elwood are dispatched on a "mission from God" by their former teacher, Sister Mary Stigmata (Kathleen Freeman Read More

The Rockford Files: Deadlock in Parma

Synopsis: In the 122nd and final episode of The Rockford Files, Jim Rockford (James Garner) heads to the small community of Parama for a peaceful fishing trip; instead, he ends up in the middle of a violent Mob power struggle Last episode. If only Jim hadn't agreed to cast a proxy vote for "Propostiion Read More

The Last Song

Synopsis: A singer finds herself terrorized by the same killers who murdered her husband after he discovered an industrial waste cover-up. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide Read More

The Children of an Lac

Actors: Ina Balin

Synopsis: While Shirley Jones is given top billing in the made-for-TV The Children of An Lac, the film's true star is the late actress Ina Balin--who plays herself in this re-enactment of an episode of conspicuous courage during the Vietnam war. On the eve of the fall of Saigon in 1975, an effort is made to Read More

Nightwing

Actors: Nick Mancuso, David Warner, Kathryn Harrold, Stephen Macht, Strother Martin

Synopsis: In this chiller, a trio of heroes must enter a black Southwestern cave and destroy an entire colony of plague-bearing bats, vampire bats. The story is based on a novel by Martin Cruz Smith. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Kojak: Mouse

Synopsis: In a desperate effort to pay his gambling debts, Dr. Shane (Peter Brandon) performs unecessary surgery on an old woman who subsequently dies. Shane then applies pressured upon the dead woman's timid son Irving (Ben Piazza), demanding that he pay for the fatal operation. When Irving refuses, a Read More

Kill Me If You Can

Actors: Alan Alda, Talia Shire, Walter McGinn

Synopsis: The story of "red light bandit" Caryl Chessman, previously dramatized in the 1955 film Cell 2455, Death Row (based on Chessman's own book), was adapted for television as Kill Me If You Can. In a radical departure from his usual duties as MASH's Hawkeye Pierce, Alan Alda plays Chessman, who in 1948 Read More

I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

Actors: Bibi Andersson, Kathleen Quinlan, Ben Piazza, Lorraine Gary, Martine Bartlett, Darlene Craviotto

Synopsis: Without ever revealing the diagnosis, this film chronicles the inner life and outer circumstances of Deborah Blake (Kathleen Quinlan), a young mental patient. As the film opens, she is being accompanied by her subdued parents to yet another mental hospital. This one looks clean and cheerful, at Read More

The Bad News Bears

Actors: Walter Matthau, Tatum O'Neal, Vic Morrow, Joyce Van Patten, Ben Piazza, Jackie Earle Haley

Synopsis: The success this underdog comedy from director Michael Ritchie almost single-handedly spawned the kids' sports film boom of the 1980s and '90s. When beer-breathed ex-minor-league ball player and professional pool cleaner Morris Buttermaker (Walter Matthau) agrees to coach a little league team in Read More

Fear on Trial

Actors: William Devane, George C. Scott, Dorothy Tristan, William Redfield

Synopsis: William Devane stars as John Henry Faulk, a popular radio and TV entertainer of the 1950s. In 1956, Faulk is blacklisted on the basis of an attack from the self-appointed anticommunist group AWARE. Fired by CBS, Faulk decides to sue AWARE for libel. His attorney Louis Nizer (George C. Scott) warns Read More

The Waltons: The Five Foot Shelf

Synopsis: Feeling sorry for travelling book salesman George Reed (Ben Piazza), Olivia (Michael Learned) makes a sizeable deposit on the "Five-Foot Shelf" collection, consisting of fifty "Harvard Classics." When he finds out that Reed has spent the money to buy his little girl a doll, John (Ralph Waite) is Read More

The Candy Snatchers

Synopsis: A gang of ruthless but inept kidnappers pull off a crime with startling and unexpected consequences in this tough, nervy thriller which has won a cult following. Candy Phillips (Susan Sennett) is a sixteen-year-old student at an exclusive private Catholic school who, while walking home from Read More

Fer-De-Lance

Synopsis: In this s-s-suspenseful drama, a submarine carrying a load of poisonous snakes accidentally wedges itself amidst the rocks near the bottom of the sea. Now the crew must somehow avoid the unwanted slitherers and manage to extricate themselves. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

The Outside Man

Actors: Jean-Louis Trintignant, Ann-Margret, Roy Scheider, Michel Constantin, Angie Dickinson

Synopsis: This French-produced thriller was shot entirely in English. Jean-Louis Tritignant stars as Lucien, a hit man who goes to Los Angeles to end the life of an important local mobster. The mobster's heirs, who hired Lucien, had already hired yet another hit man (Roy Scheider) to kill him. He speaks Read More

Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon

Actors: Liza Minnelli, Ken Howard, Robert Moore, James Coco, Kay Thompson

Synopsis: Upon completing Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon, a tearful Liza Minnelli declared publicly that she would never, ever work with tyrannical director Otto Preminger again. Worse luck for her: Junie Moon contains what may well be Minnelli's best non-musical performance. Based on the novel by Marjorie Kellogg Read More

The Fugitive: The Old Man Picked a Lemon

Synopsis: Working as a fruit picker for wealthy citrus grower Leland Hagerman (Byron Morrow), Kimble (David Janssen)--alias "Jim Wallace"--promises his dying boss that he'll look after Hagerman's ne'er-do-well son Blaine (Ben Piazza). This proves difficult when, upon Blaine's return home, he turns out to be Read More

No Exit

Actors: Viveca Lindfors, Rita Gam, Morgan Sterne, Ben Piazza, Susana Mayo

Synopsis: Perhaps the most stunning moment in this interesting adaptation of the famous play by Jean-Paul Sartre is the last scene itself when the finality of three antagonist people being doomed to spend an eternity together hits home hard. The three are a journalist who betrayed members of the resistance Read More

Naked City: Vengeance is a Wheel

A Dangerous Age

Synopsis: In this romance, a young girl runs away from boarding school with the hope that her boyfriend will marry her. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

The Hanging Tree

Actors: Gary Cooper, Maria Schell, Karl Malden, Ben Piazza, George C. Scott

Synopsis: Gary Cooper plays a frontier doctor with a checkered past who works in a rowdy Montana mining camp. Cooper falls in love with Maria Schell, a young Swiss girl whom he has treated for shock after she was the victim of a holdup. He finances Schell's grubstake, which makes her rich. When Schell's Read More