Cec Linder Filmography

Hitler's Daughter

Synopsis: This made-for-cable speculative fantasy centers on the illegitimate daughter of Adolf Hitler, who grows up to become a candidate for the United States Presidency. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide Read More

The Last Best Year

Synopsis: Terminally ill Bernadette Peters develops a deep friendship with psychologist Mary Tyler Moore in this drama. ~ All Movie Guide Read More

Betrayal of Silence

Bridge to Silence

Actors: Marlee Matlin, Lee Remick

Synopsis: This made-for-TV film represented the first speaking role for hearing-impaired actress Marlee Matlin. A happy wife and mother, Matlin is grief-stricken when her husband is killed in a car accident. Still not fully recovered after several weeks, Matlin must rely on her mother Lee Remick to care for Read More

Blades of Courage

Actors: Christopher Jorgens, Jorgito Vargas Jr., Blair Wingo, Claudette Mink, Adrienne Carter

Synopsis: This Canadian made-for-TV movie was originally telecast under the title Skate. Should give you a clue as to its content, yes? no? Under any name, the film is a prosaic biopic of Olympic skating-star Lori Larouche. Lynn Nightingale plays the leading role, while the real Lori is seen in longshot. Read More

George and Rosemary

Fight for Life

Actors: Barry Morse

Synopsis: In his TV-movie debut, Jerry Lewis plays Dr. Abrams, an Ohio optometrist, whose beloved 6-year-old daughter (Jaclyn Bernstein) falls victim to a rare form of epilepsy. The traditional means to keep the girl's seizures under control fail to work, putting a strain on the Abram's (Lewis and Patty Duke Astin Read More

Christmas Eve

Actors: Arthur Hill, Ron Leibman, Loretta Young

Synopsis: Christmas Eve was actually first telecast on December 22, 1986, but nobody cared about the "error" then, so why should we? Making her first television appearance in 23 years, Loretta Young (her ageless beauty undimmed by her silvery hair) plays a wealthy New York matriarch who learns that she is Read More

The High Price of Passion

Actors: Richard Crenna, Karen Young

Synopsis: The fact-based NBC movie The High Price of Passion was adapted by Mel Frohman from the book by Russell M. Glitman. Set in and around Tufts University, this is a sad story of obsession and murder, focusing on middle-aged anatomy professor Williams Douglas (Richard Crenna) and greedy 21-year-old Read More

Deadly Business

Synopsis: This TV-movie was based on a true story of criminal culpability in the ecological crisis. Alan Arkin stars as an ex-convict hired in 1972 by smooth-talking Armand Assante, who runs a successful garbage disposal business. Even when Arkin finds out that Assante is a functionary of the mob, he Read More

Perry Mason: The Case of the Shooting Star

Actors: Raymond Burr, Barbara Hale, Joe Penny, William Katt, Ron Glass

Synopsis: Perry Mason (Raymond Burr) is once more dragged out of retirement to defend a murder suspect. This time the defendant is an obnoxious actor (Joe Penny) who was seen by an audience of millions in the act of shooting a vitriolic TV talk show host (Allan Thicke). The actor claims the shooting was a Read More

Strange Tales: Ray Bradbury Theatre

Synopsis: At 10:20 PM on June 16, 1985, an avuncular chap named Ray Bradbury, sitting at his typewriter in a room overflowing with clutter, introduced the first of HBO's dramatizations of his off-kilter short stories. Strange Tales: Ray Bradbury Theatre is a videotaped collection of three of those stories Read More

Lune De Miel

Actors: Nathalie Baye, John Shea, Richard Berry, Maria Lukovsky, Michel Beaune

Synopsis: In a standard psycho-killer thriller, Cecile (Nathalie Baye) goes from her home in Canada to New York after her boyfriend is thrown in the slammer there for drug-running -- she still wants to be near him. Unable to stay past her visa's limits, Cecile literally contracts a legal marriage to an Read More

Perry Mason Returns

Actors: Raymond Burr, Barbara Hale

Synopsis: In the first of a series of made-for-TV films shot two decades after the original Perry Mason television series ended in 1966, Mason (Raymond Burr), now an Appellate Court Judge, must step down from the bench in order to defend his longtime secretary Della Street (Barbara Hale) against murder Read More

Heavenly Bodies

Actors: Cynthia Dale, Richard Rebiere, Walter George Alton, Laura Henry, Stuart Stone

Synopsis: In this frothy drama, the "heavenly bodies" belong to Samantha (Cynthia Dale), a woman determined to open a dance instruction school, and the people who come to learn dance there. Once the deserted warehouse-cum-dance-studio is refurbished, Cynthia's first class already has as much finesse as Fred Astaire Read More

Vengeance Is Mine

Actors: Ernest Borgnine, Hollis McLaren, Michael J. Pollard

Synopsis: Listed as a 1984 release in most sources, Vengeance is Mine was filmed in 1976. As the leading character, a taciturn farmer, Ernest Borgnine offers something of an extension of his characterization in the 1955 melodrama Violent Saturday. The farmer's solitude is shattered when bank robbers invade Read More

Heartsounds

Actors: Mary Tyler Moore, James Garner, Sam Wanamaker, Wendy Crewson, David Gardner

Synopsis: Successfully sustaining its dramatic intensity for 150 minutes, Heartsounds was adapted by Fay Kanin from the autobiographical best-seller by Martha Weiman Lear. James Garner stars as Mrs. Lear's husband, Manhattan urologist Harold Lear. At 53, Lear suffers a debilitating heart attack. His Read More

Virus

Actors: Sonny Chiba, Chuck Connors, Stephanie Faulkner, Glenn Ford, Stuart Gillard

Synopsis: A double disaster film with both an American and a Japanese cast, Virus presents some pretty wild probabilities to viewers. First of all, a virus has been developed that gets loose and starts to destroy humanity on a grand scale. The only people who are remotely safe are a group of eight hundred Read More

Rats

Actors: Sam Groom, Sara Botsford, Scatman Crothers, Lisa Langlois, Cec Linder

Synopsis: A super breed of rats is accidentally given large doses of steroids, and the rodents grow five to ten times their usual size. While the city is being overrun, a science teacher (Sam Groom) and a health inspector (Sara Botsford) struggle to survive while plotting the rats' demise. The film was Read More

F.D.R. The Last Year

Actors: Eileen Heckart, Kim Hunter

Synopsis: Jason Robards stars as the ailing, 62-year-old President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in F.D.R.: The Last Year. Though visibly frail and weary, Roosevelt runs for a precedent-setting fourth term. He also oversees plans for the D-Day Invasion and engages in tempestuous summit meetings with his wartime Read More

Atlantic City

Actors: Burt Lancaster, Susan Sarandon, Michel Piccoli, Kate Reid, Robert Joy

Synopsis: Burt Lancaster stars as Lou, an aging mob flunkey, barely making a living in Atlantic City. Susan Sarandon plays Sally, a casino croupier whose husband Dave (Robert Joy) steals a large supply of drugs from the mob. When he is killed, the narcotics pass to the unwilling Sally. Lou, in the midst of Read More

Something's Rotten

Actors: Charlotte Blunt, Geoffrey Bowes, Trudy Weiss, Christopher Barry, Cec Linder

Synopsis: Somebody should have told the novice filmmakers in charge of this Canadian work to utilize a less critic-baiting title than Something's Rotten. The story is borrowed from such classic forebears as The Corsican Brothers, Prisoner of Zenda and The Iron Mask. A set of twins, one good and one bad, vie Read More

Lost and Found

Actors: George Segal, Glenda Jackson, Maureen Stapleton, Hollis McLaren, John Cunningham

Synopsis: Adam (George Segal) is an English instructor at a U.S. college who hopes to win a professorship and tenure. Tricia (Glenda Jackson) is an English divorcee. They both wind up on a French ski slope at exactly the wrong time, and in the resulting collision, break one another's legs. While they are Read More

An American Christmas Carol

Actors: Henry Winkler

Synopsis: Made up to look like a septuagenarian, Henry Winkler plays Benedict Slade, a Scrooge-like miser living in a tiny New England town during the Depression. Slade goes Scrooge one further by repossessing items from a poor farm couple and an orphanage on Christmas eve. While reading a copy of Dickens' Read More

I Miss You, Hugs and Kisses

Actors: Elke Sommer, Donald Pilon, Chuck Shamata

Synopsis: In this crime drama, set in 1975 and based on a true story from Toronto, Canada, the different ways in which a prominent realtor may have had his wife brutally murdered are presented. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

High Ballin'

Actors: Peter Fonda, Jerry Reed, Helen Shaver, Chris Wiggins, David Ferry

Synopsis: Peter Fonda and Jerry Reed star as truckers pitted against a rival big-rig boss who wants them off the highway. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide Read More

City on Fire

Actors: Barry Newman, Susan Clark, Shelley Winters, Leslie Nielsen, James Franciscus

Synopsis: City on Fire, a disaster thriller filmed in Canada with dialogue in both French and English, tells the story of an oil-refinery explosion in a small town. Dr. Frank Whitman (Barry Newman) and his co-workers, including Nurse Harper (Shelley Winters) and Dr. Matwick (Donald Pilon), fight bravely to Read More

Tomorrow Never Comes

Actors: Oliver Reed, Susan George, Raymond Burr, John Ireland, Stephen McHattie

Synopsis: This police melodrama is set in a coastal resort where a young man becomes insanely jealous after learning that his girl has been with another. He takes her hostage in the town hotel and threatens to kill her. Now a hot-tempered police chief and his peace-loving lieutenant must somehow team-up to Read More

The New Avengers: Complex

Actors: Patrick Macnee, Gareth Hunt, Joanna Lumley, Cec Linder, Harvey Atkin

Synopsis: The first of four New Avengers episodes filmed in Canada finds our dauntless trio of dogooders in Toronto, on the trail of an elusive Russian agent known as Scapina. Getting separated from her colleagues, Purdey (Joanna Lumley) finds herself trapped in a computerized building. Even worse: The Read More

Age of Innocence

Synopsis: Veterans and war-sympathizers get angry when a Canadian professor begins speaking out with his pacifist ideals shortly after World War II. The tension rises as threats and violence soon erupt. ~ All Movie Guide Read More

Clown Murders

Actors: Stephen Young, Susan Keller, Lawrence Z. Dane, John Candy, Gary Reineke

Synopsis: In this thriller, a group of young professionals decides to play a practical joke on one of their ex-girlfriends who married a rich man who is about to close a major real estate deal. They will kidnap her and mess up the deal. Unfortunately, the joke becomes deadly serious when someone gets Read More

Second Wind

Actors: James Naughton, Lindsay Wagner, Ken Pogue, Tedde Moore, Tom Harvey

Synopsis: A stock broker overcomes ennui and finds new meaning in his life when he becomes a long-distance runner. His new obsession has a bad effect on his marriage, but fortunately that is only temporary. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Death Among Friends

Synopsis: Canadian actress Kate Reid plays a lady p.i. in Death Among Friends. Kate is hired to solve the murder of a multimillionaire financier. As tipped off by the title, she need look no farther than the dead man's circle of friends. Refreshingly, both the heroine and her police contact, John Anderson Read More

Sunday in the Country

Actors: Ernest Borgnine, Michael J. Pollard, Hollis McLaren, Louis Zorich, Cec Linder

Synopsis: In this grim Canadian drama a gentle farmer gets gruesome revenge against a group murderers by capturing and tormenting each of the culprits. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Why Rock the Boat?

Actors: Patricia Gage, Tiiu Leek

Synopsis: The scene is Canada in the 1940s. Fledgling reporter Harry Barnes (Stuart Gillard) finds his dreams of journalistic fame dampened by the disillusioned older journalists surrounding him. Harry never does get that "big scoop," but he does excel in the romance department. After a brief assignation Read More

The Devil's Web

Synopsis: When she's hired to nurse the daughter of an American ambassador, a woman begins influencing the girl's actions, as well as those of her two sisters. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide Read More

Innocent Bystanders

Actors: Michael Poole, Stanley Baker, Geraldine Chaplin, Donald Pleasence, Dana Andrews, Sue Lloyd

Synopsis: Innocent Bystanders stars Stanley Baker as a Bondlike British secret service agent. In collaboration with fellow spies Geraldine Chaplin and Dana Andrews, Baker is sent behind the Iron Curtain to locate a Russian scientist who has escaped from Siberia. There's a likelihood that the scientist was Read More

A Touch of Class

Actors: Eve Karpf, George Segal, Glenda Jackson, Paul Sorvino, Hildegard Neil, Cec Linder

Synopsis: Producer/director Melvin Frank struck box-office gold when he teamed George Segal with Glenda Jackson in A Touch of Class. Segal plays married insurance executive Steve Blackburn, who can't seem to avoid bumping into divorced fashion designer Vicki Allessio (Glenda Jackson) wherever he goes. Read More

Explosion

Actors: Don Stroud, Michelle Chicoine, Cec Linder, Robin Ward

Synopsis: In this timely melodrama, a young man encounters psychological problems when he tries to deal with his brother's death. Alan Evans (Gordon Thomson) seeks counseling when his brother Peter (Robin Ward) is killed in Vietnam. Their pompous and patriotic father (Cec Linder) talks the boy into Read More

Ironside: The Challenge

Synopsis: Ironside (Raymond Burr) launches an investigation when his psychologist friend Paul Bragen (Noah Keen) is murdered. It seems that the dead man possessed a large collection of rare artworks, created by several artists whom he had been consulting. A passing remark provides a vital clue as to the Read More

Quatermass and the Pit

Actors: James Donald, Andrew Keir, Barbara Shelley, Julian Glover, Maurice Good

Synopsis: Nigel Kneale's Quatermass TV series spawned a brief film series produced over an eleven-year period; 1967's Quatermass and the Pit, released in the US as Five Million Years to Earth, was the third and (until 1979's Quatermass Conclusion) last. As in previous chapters in the Kneale saga, the Read More

Tecnica Di Un Omicidio

Actors: Robert Webber, Franco Nero, Jean Valerie

Synopsis: In this thriller, an assassin is lured out of retirement with an offer to kill a former gangster who is hiding out in Europe. With the help of an assistant, the killer travels to Paris and begins stalking his victim. He is further helped by a lovely drug addict who shows him the mark. He fulfils Read More

The Verdict

Synopsis: In this crime drama a Yankee visiting England ends up arrested for murder. Not wanting to go to prison, he tries to convince his partner into rigging the jury. Unfortunately for him, the partner double-crosses him and justice is served. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Goldfinger

Actors: Sean Connery, Gert Fröbe, Honor Blackman, Harold Sakata, Shirley Eaton, Bernard Lee

Synopsis: With Goldfinger, the James Bond series took a turn away from relatively straightforward spy thrillers and toward campy gadgetry, extravagant sets, and kitschy jokes. Bond (Sean Connery) has to prevent a notorious gold smuggler, appropriately named Goldfinger (Gert Fröbe), from robbing Fort Knox. Read More

Lolita

Actors: James Mason, Shelley Winters, Peter Sellers, Sue Lyon, Marianne Stone

Synopsis: "How did they make a movie out of Lolita?" teased the print ads of this Stanley Kubrick production. The answer: by adding three years to the title character's age. The original Vladimir Nabokov novel caused no end of scandal by detailing the romance between a middle-aged intellectual and a Read More

Crack in the Mirror

Actors: Orson Welles, Juliette Greco, Bradford Dillman, Alexander Knox, Catherine Lacy

Synopsis: Three stars appear in two separate but intertwined stories of romantic triangles gone wrong in this ambitious drama. In the first segment, Hagolin (Orson Welles) is a loutish construction worker with an unhappy wife, Eponine (Juliette Greco). The wife becomes involved with a swarthy working man Read More

Too Young to Love

Actors: Thomas Mitchell, Joan Miller, Austin Willis, Vivian Matalon

Synopsis: Based on the stageplay Pick-up Girl, this film adaptation by director Muriel Box retains enough of the verbose theatrical styling and single-set focus to wobble as a cinematic effort. The story centers around an unfortunate period in the life of Elizabeth (Pauline Hahn), a fifteen-year-old girl Read More

S.O.S. Pacific

Actors: Richard Attenborough, Anna Maria Pier Angeli, John Gregson, Eva Bartok, Eddie Constantine

Synopsis: Five passengers on a seaplane find that a crash has stranded them on an island used for nuclear testing in this disaster movie. Just to get to the island, they had to endure many hardships including a hurricane, a gun-battle, shark-infested seas, and a fire on the plane. Panic ensues when the Read More

Subway in the Sky

Actors: Van Johnson, Hildegarde Neff, Katherine Kath

Synopsis: Berlin provides the backdrop for this crime drama that centers on a military doctor falsely accused of dealing illegal drugs. Determined to prove his innocence, he escapes from the MPs and ends up holing up in the apartment his wife rented. He doesn't know that she has sublet the flat to a Read More

Jet Storm

Actors: Richard Attenborough, Stanley Baker, Hermione Baddeley, Bernard Braden, Diane Cilento

Synopsis: In this airborne disaster movie, a has-been brilliant scientist plants a bomb on a transatlantic jet to exact revenge upon a passenger whom he blames for his daughter's death -- she died during a plane crash. When the booby-trap is discovered and the passengers learn the motive for the scientists' Read More

Flaming Frontier

Synopsis: In this western a half-Sioux cavalry officer tries to mediate between settlers and the angry Sioux. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Quatermass and the Pit

Actors: Andre Morell, Cec Linder, Anthony Bushell, John Stratton, Christine Finn

Synopsis: The original 1958 BBC television production of the last of Nigel Kneale's classic Quatermass scripts -- which is best known in association with the 1967 Hammer Films adaptation by Roy Ward Baker -- runs circles around the feature-film version. As with the other Quatermass serials, Kneale's Read More

It's the Law [TV Series]

Actors: Frank Peddie, Cecil Wright, William Needles, Ed McNamara, Sandy Webster

Synopsis: Created by Eric Koch and David Walker, It's the Law represented a collaboration between the CBC and the Canadian Bar Association. In the traditon of the old Saturday Evening Post feature "You Be the Judge," the series illustrated everyday legal situations, usually by dramatizing actual court Read More