J. Lee ThompsonFilmography

Messenger of Death

Crew: Director

Actors: Charles Bronson, Trish VanDevere, Laurence Luckinbill, Daniel Benzali, Marilyn Hassett

Synopsis: Even though Charles Bronson doesn't carry a gun in this feature, there are still plenty of the fights, car chases, and explosions -- all hallmarks of Bronson's action films. Bronson plays Denver Tribune crime reporter Garrett Smith, who investigates the murder mystery of a Mormon family. Smith Read More

Death Wish 4: The Crackdown

Crew: Director

Actors: Charles Bronson, Kay Lenz, John Ryan, Perry Lopez, George Dickerson

Synopsis: Charles Bronson, weary and comatose, is trotted out again as the cocked crusader Paul Kersey in Death Wish 4: The Crackdown. Director Michael Winner has jumped ship for this installment, replaced by J. Lee Thompson (who has seen better days). Kersey is back in L.A. and dating attractive reporter Read More

Firewalker

Crew: Director

Actors: Chuck Norris, Louis Gossett, Jr., Melody Anderson, Will Sampson, Sonny Landham

Synopsis: Firewalker stars Chuck Norris as Max Donigan, an ex-Marine, and Louis Gossett, Jr. as his buddy, Leo Porter. Both set out to help Patricia Goodwyn (Melody Anderson) find a lost Aztec city and a temple filled with gold. After a few misadventures, their nemesis "El Coyote" (Sonny Landham) comes into Read More

Murphy's Law

Crew: Director

Actors: Charles Bronson, Kathleen Wilhoite, Carrie Snodgress, Robert F. Lyons, Angel Tompkins, Richard Romanus

Synopsis: An officer of the law becomes a wanted man while trailing a killer in this crime drama. Jack Murphy (Charles Bronson) is a police detective who helped to put Joan Freeman (Carrie Snodgress), a psychotic murderer, behind bars ten years ago. However, Joan is now back on the street and determined to Read More

King Solomon's Mines

Crew: Director

Actors: Richard Chamberlain, Sharon Stone, Herbert Lom, John Rhys-Davies, Ken Gampu

Synopsis: The action in this routine adventure film would be modeled on the enormously successful Indiana Jones but it is too much, too fast, too deja vu. It all starts when Jessie Huston (Sharon Stone, before stardom) talks adventurer Allen Quatermain (Richard Chamberlain) into helping her find her father Read More

The Evil That Men Do

Crew: Director

Actors: José Ferrer, Charles Bronson, Theresa Saldana, Joseph Maher, Rene Enriquez

Synopsis: In yet another slick, formulaic Charles Bronson vengeance film (they would continue until the actor was in his mid-70s, still playing the morally insulted friend/husband/lover), Bronson is Holland, an assassin for hire who has just come out of retirement to finish off a Guatemalan thug by the name Read More

The Ambassador

Crew: Director

Actors: Robert Mitchum, Ellen Burstyn, Rock Hudson, Fabio Testi, Donald Pleasence

Synopsis: Robert Mitchum plays as U.S. ambassador to Israel whose efforts at reaching a peace agreement with the Palestinians run afoul of the somewhat questionable ambitions of security advisor Rock Hudson. Meanwhile, Mitchum's wife Ellen Burstyn embarks upon an affair with a PLO leader. When this fact Read More

10 to Midnight

Crew: Director

Actors: Charles Bronson, Lisa Eilbacher, Gene Davis, Andrew Stevens, Geoffrey Lewis

Synopsis: Charles Bronson at 63 or so, continues his vigilante persona in this run-of-the-mill crime drama about a Richard Speck-style killer who knifes young nurses to death. There is no doubt that the film exploits both the heinous, 1966 Speck murder of eight nurses in Chicago and an audience's Read More

Cabo Blanco

Crew: Director

Actors: Charles Bronson, Jason Robards, Jr., Dominique Sanda, Fernando Rey, Simon MacCorkindale

Synopsis: In this strange, unsatisfying remake of Casablanca, directed by J. Lee Thompson, a bar owner helps a woman find a missing fortune. Right after the end of WWII, Giff Hoyt (Charles Bronson) owns a bar in Peru into which Marie Allesandri (Dominique Sanda) enters one day, in search of her lover and Read More

Code Red

Crew: Director

Synopsis: In this action film, firefighters fight a series of arson fires and try to figure out who set them and why. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Happy Birthday to Me

Crew: Director

Actors: Melissa Sue Anderson, Glenn Ford, Tracey E. Bregman, Jack Blum, Matt Craven, Lawrence Z. Dane, Frances Hyland, Sharon Acker

Synopsis: Certainly the low point in Glenn Ford's acting career, this Canadian production is, nevertheless, one of the slickest-looking slasher films from that subgenre's early-'80s heyday. The plot (what one can make of it) involves an unseen killer stalking a group of college students at the prestigious Read More

The Passage

Crew: Director

Actors: Anthony Quinn, James Mason, Malcolm McDowell, Patricia Neal, Kay Lenz

Synopsis: Director J. Lee Thompson directed this World War II adventure drama from a script by author Bruce Nicolaysen who adapted the screenplay from his novel The Perilous Passage. Anthony Quinn stars as a brave Basque mountaineer who is hired by the American military to guide Professor Bergsson (James Read More

The Greek Tycoon

Crew: Director

Actors: Anthony Quinn, Jacqueline Bisset, Raf Vallone, Edward Albert, James Franciscus

Synopsis: The producers of The Greek Tycoon insisted that their film was not based on any "actual persons, living or dead." Yeh, right. Anthony Quinn stars as Greek shipping-magnate Theo Tomassis, who becomes the second husband of socialite Liz Cassidy (Jacqueline Bisset). It seems that Liz is the widow of Read More

The White Buffalo

Crew: Director

Actors: Charles Bronson, Jack Warden, Will Sampson, Kim Novak, Clint Walker

Synopsis: J. Lee Thompson directs Charles Bronson in this strange western variation on Herman Melville's Moby Dick. Bronson plays a man named James Otis, who is disturbed by dreams of a giant white buffalo. He returns to the west under his new name --Wild Bill Hickok. Amongst his travels, he meets Chief Read More

St. Ives

Crew: Director

Actors: Charles Bronson, John Houseman, Jacqueline Bisset, Maximilian Schell, Harry Guardino

Synopsis: Ex-crime reporter turned novelist Raymond St. Ives (Charles Bronson) is drawn back into the world of his former profession by wealthy Abner Procane (John Houseman). St. Ives is hired to locate a stolen set of ledgers that, if made public, could trigger an all-out mob war. Amazingly, St. Ives fails Read More

Widow

Crew: Director

Synopsis: In this drama, based on a story by Lynn Caine, a vulnerable widow tries to deal with her own substantial grief, that of her children, and the prospect of raising them alone with no money. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

The Blue Knight

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Based on a Joseph Wambaugh story, this police drama centers on tough, aging cop Bumper Morgan's search for the man who killed his partner. His investigation leads him deep into the bowels of the drug world. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

The Reincarnation of Peter Proud

Crew: Director

Actors: Michael Sarrazin, Jennifer O'Neill, Margot Kidder, Cornelia Sharpe, Paul Hecht

Synopsis: Max Ehrlich adapted his own novel for the screen in this fitfully amusing paranormal thriller. College professor Michael Sarrazin feels that someone else is inside him, and is led by his dreams to a small town where Margot Kidder (Black Christmas, Superman) has murdered her cheating husband. She Read More

Huckleberry Finn

Crew: Director

Actors: Odessa Cleveland, Jean Fay, Kim O'Brien, Jeff East, Paul Winfield, Harvey Korman

Synopsis: One of Mark Twain's best-loved stories becomes a screen musical in this family-friendly adaptation. Mischievous Huckleberry Finn (Jeff East) is a 15-year-old boy who has long had a difficult relationship with his often violent father. When Dad tried to kidnap him, Huck decides to run away from Read More

Battle for the Planet of the Apes

Crew: Director

Actors: Roddy McDowall, Claude Akins, Natalie Trundy, Severn Darden, Lew Ayres, John Huston

Synopsis: The fifth and last of the original series of motion pictures based upon author Pierre Boulle's imaginative novel Monkey Planet, this science fiction film was the least-liked by the series' legion of fans. Roddy McDowall returns as Caesar, the rebellious intelligent chimp of the previous film, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes Read More

A Great American Tragedy

Crew: Director

Synopsis: The Great American Tragedy is a melodrama about an aerospace engineer and his family who struggle to survive after he suddenly loses his job. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Movie Guide Read More

Conquest of the Planet of the Apes

Crew: Director

Actors: Roddy McDowall, Don Murray, Ricardo Montalban, Natalie Trundy, Hari (Harry) Rhodes

Synopsis: The fourth Planet of the Apes film is set in 1991, 20 years since the assassination of talking, time-traveling apes Cornelius and Zira at the end of Escape From the Planet of the Apes. The couple's infant son, Caesar (Roddy McDowall), has grown to adulthood in the care of kindly circus owner Read More

Brotherly Love

Crew: Director

Actors: Peter O'Toole, Susannah York, Michael Craig, Harry Andrews, Cyril Cusack

Synopsis: In this British tragi-comedy taking place among emotionally bankrupt upper-class Scottish countrymen, Peter O'Toole plays Sir Charles Henry Arbuthnot Pinkerton Ferguson, a mentally disturbed Scotsman, living on his uncared-for farm, who also harbors an incestuous yearning for his sister Hilary (Susannah York Read More

Before Winter Comes

Crew: Director

Actors: David Niven, Topol, Anna Karina, John Hurt, Anthony Quayle

Synopsis: In this bitter drama that takes place in the immediate aftermath of World War II, British Major Giles Burnside (David Niven) is assigned to a Austrian refugee camp, his orders to send the masses of displaced civilians to either the Russian or the American zone. Burnside is a by-the-books commander Read More

The Chairman

Crew: Director

Actors: Gregory Peck, Anne Heywood, Arthur Hill, Alan Dobie, Conrad Yama

Synopsis: J. Lee Thompson (The Guns of Navarone) directed this Cold War action thriller. Gregory Peck is the American Dr. John Hathaway, a Noble Prize-winning scientist, teaching at a university in London. Lieutenant General Shelby (Arthur Hill), from the American Embassy, asks Hathaway to go on a mission Read More

MacKenna's Gold

Crew: Director

Actors: Gregory Peck, Omar Sharif, Telly Savalas, Camilla Sparv, Julie Newmar, Keenan Wynn, Lee J. Cobb, Burgess Meredith, Edward G. Robinson, Eli Wallach

Synopsis: Mackenna's Gold is a colorful, action-packed western feature with an all-star cast. Mackenna (Gregory Peck) has committed to memory the map that leads to some hidden Apache gold. The Indians now want the gold to finance their fight against the white men who invade their territory. Mexican bandit Read More

Eye of the Devil

Crew: Director

Actors: Deborah Kerr, David Niven, Donald Pleasence, Edward Mulhare, Flora Robson

Synopsis: A fine cast distinguishes this unusual supernatural thriller. When London-based vintner Phillippe de Montfaucon (David Niven) receives the bad news that dry weather is expected to destroy crops in his vineyard in France for the third year in a row, he immediately leaves for his castle on the Read More

Return from the Ashes

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Maximilian Schell, Samantha Eggar, Ingrid Thulin, Herbert Lom, Talitha Pol

Synopsis: Ingrid Thulin plays a Polish inmate of the Dachau concentration camp who is liberated at the end of the war. Presumed dead, Ingrid returns to visit her husband (Maximillian Schell) She finds that his grief was fleeting at best; his new mistress is his "deceased" wife's daughter (Samantha Eggar) Read More

John Goldfarb, Please Come Home

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Peter Ustinov, Shirley MacLaine, Richard Crenna, Jim Backus, Scott Brady

Synopsis: Politics and sports clash in this occasionally funny spoof centered around a downed U2 pilot and an extravagant oil sheik. John Goldfarb (Richard Crenna), a former football player, now pilot, sent on a reconnaissance mission over the Soviet Union, is lost and crash-lands in the Middle Eastern Read More

What a Way to Go!

Crew: Director

Actors: Shirley MacLaine, Paul Newman, Robert Mitchum, Dean Martin, Gene Kelly

Synopsis: This lavishly produced, big-budget comedy (it cost $20 million in 1964 dollars) stars Shirley MacLaine as Louisa, a widow who is worth $200 million dollars. However, she's convinced that her fortune is cursed, and she wants to give all her money to the IRS. As she explains her sad tale to her Read More

Kings of the Sun

Crew: Director

Actors: Yul Brynner, George Chakiris, Shirley Ann Field, Richard Basehart, Brad Dexter

Synopsis: In this historical adventure saga, Balam (George Chakiris) is the son of the ruler of the Mayan people; when his father is killed in battle, Balam succeeds his father as King and leads his followers out of Mexico to a coastal region. The Mayan's new home, however, is already the province of a Read More

Cape Fear

Crew: Director

Actors: Gregory Peck, Robert Mitchum, Polly Bergen, Lori Martin, Martin Balsam

Synopsis: After an eight-year prison term for rape and assault, Max Cady (Robert Mitchum) is set free. Immediately making a beeline to Sam Bowden (Gregory Peck), the former prosecutor responsible for Cady's conviction, Cady laconically informs Sam that he intends to "pay back" the attorney for his years Read More

Taras Bulba

Crew: Director

Actors: Tony Curtis, Yul Brynner, Christine Kaufmann, Sam Wanamaker, Brad Dexter

Synopsis: The spectacular hordes of Cossack horsemen flying across the steppes to do battle with first one enemy and then another are the highlights of this otherwise thinly scripted costume drama set in the 16th century in the Ukraine. After the Cossack leader Taras Bulba (Yul Brynner) makes a pact with Read More

The Guns of Navarone

Crew: Director

Actors: Gregory Peck, David Niven, Anthony Quinn, Stanley Baker, Anthony Quayle, James Darren

Synopsis: The guns of Navarone are huge Nazi cannons, installed on an Aegean island behind enemy lines. Anthony Quayle is the officer assigned by the British to lead a task force to put the guns out of commission. When Quayle is injured, the mission winds up in the relatively inexperienced hands of Gregory Peck Read More

Northwest Frontier

Crew: Director

Actors: Kenneth More, Lauren Bacall, Herbert Lom, I.S. Johar

Synopsis: Northwest Frontier was the original British title for Flame Over India. When the Moslems attack a British fortress in colonial India, it is imperative that the local Maharaja's son be taken to safety. The man for the job is commander Kenneth More, who uses a rusty old train for that purpose. Among Read More

Tiger Bay

Crew: Director

Actors: John Mills, Horst Buchholz, Hayley Mills, Yvonne Mitchell, Megs Jenkins

Synopsis: Twelve-year-old Hayley Mills made her film starring debut in the location-filmed melodrama Tiger Bay. Horst Buchholz plays a Polish sailor who, while docked in Cardiff, jealously murders his ex-girlfriend Yvonne Mitchell. The killing is witnessed by Hayley, a lonely, hoydenish preteen whose only Read More

I Aim at the Stars

Crew: Director

Actors: Curd Jürgens, Victoria Shaw, Herbert Lom, Gia Scala, James Daly

Synopsis: The career of rocket scientist Wernher von Braun (Curt Jurgens) is the focus of this film. Supposedly bullied by the Nazis into working for the Third Reich, the end of the war leaves the rocket man with a decision to take his talents to either Russia or the United States. He chooses the U. S., but Read More

Ice Cold in Alex

Crew: Director

Actors: John Mills, Sylvia Syms, Anthony Quayle, Harry Andrews, Diane Clare

Synopsis: The British Ice Cold in Alex was released in the US as Desert Attack. John Mills stars as Captain Anson, a grumbling alcoholic sent on a WW2 mission to Alexandria. Travelling to his destination by ambulance, Anson becomes acquainted with his fellow passengers, nurses Sister Diane Murdoch (Sylvia Read More

No Trees in the Street

Crew: Director

Actors: Sylvia Syms, Herbert Lom, Ronald Howard, Stanley Holloway, Joan Miller

Synopsis: In direct contrast to his later lush-budgeted international epics, director J. Lee Thompson turns his lenses towards the London slums in the sincere but saccharine No Trees in the Street. Based on the play by Ted Willis, the film is set in the years just before World War II, when England hadn't Read More

Woman in a Dressing Gown

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Yvonne Mitchell, Sylvia Syms, Anthony Quayle, Andrew Ray, Carole Lesley

Synopsis: Based on a popular British television drama, this 1957 film features a riveting performance from Yvonne Mitchell as a housewife who can't keep house. Mitchell plays Amy Preston, who after 25 years of marriage still hasn't mastered the domestic arts necessary to sustain a traditional 1950s-style Read More

The Good Companions

Crew: Director

Actors: Eric Portman, Celia Johnson, Hugh Griffith, Janette Scott, John Fraser

Synopsis: 1957's The Good Companions was the second film version of the well-known J. B. Priestly play. The story revolves around the Dinky Doos, a provincial musical troupe living from hand to mouth. Eric Portman, Celia Johnson and John Fraser are three Britons from various classes and walks of life who Read More

Yield to the Night

Crew: Director

Actors: Diana Dors, Yvonne Mitchell, Michael Craig, Marie Ney, Geoffrey Keen

Synopsis: Mary Hilton (Diana Dors) is a young salesgirl in the cosmetics department of a major London store, who chances to meet -- and fall hopelessly in love with -- Jim Lancaster (Michael Craig), a young would-be professional musician. She is attracted to him sufficiently to leave her own, neglectful Read More

An Alligator Named Daisy

Crew: Director

Actors: Donald Sinden, Diana Dors, James Robertson Justice, Jean Carson, Stanley Holloway

Synopsis: You gets what you pays for in An Alligator Named Daisy. Donald Sinden stars as a young songwriter who accidentally picks up someone else's alligator suitcase. Somehow this leads to the luckless Sinden being saddled with a baby alligator, who prefers to sleep within his piano. Glamour girl Diana Dors Read More

As Long As They're Happy

Crew: Director

Actors: Jack Buchanan, Janette Scott, Jean Carson, Brenda de Banzie, Diana Dors, Susan Stephen

Synopsis: Not quite a full-fledged musical, As Long as They're Happy can be described as a romantic comedy with song-and-dance interludes. Adapted from the London stage hit of the same name, the film stars Jack Buchanan as stockbroker John Bentley, whose household is thrown into a tizzy when popular singing Read More

The Weak and the Wicked

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Glynis Johns, John Gregson, Diana Dors, Jane Hylton, Sidney James

Synopsis: Had the women-behind-bars drama The Weak and the Wicked been made in Hollywood, the cast would probably have included the likes of Ida Lupino, Marie Windsor, Peggie Castle and Hope Emerson. Instead, the film was lensed in Britain, with Glynis Johns and Diana Dors heading the cast. Framed on a Read More

For Better for Worse

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Dirk Bogarde, Susan Stephen, Cecil Parker, Eileen Herlie, Athene Seyler

Synopsis: Arthur Watkyn's droll theatrical piece For Better, For Worse was expertly adapted for the big screen in 1954. Popular young star Dirk Bogarde and strangely forgotten newcomer Susan Stephen star as a young married couple who struggle to make things run smoothly in their first year together. The Read More

The Yellow Balloon

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Andrew Ray, Kathleen Ryan, Kenneth More, Bernard Lee, William Sylvester

Synopsis: Twelve-year old Frankie (Andrew Ray) feels guilty after his best friend falls to his death when they are playing in a bombed-out London building. Len (Sylvester) is a petty thief who has just become a murderer by killing the pub owner in a botched robbery. Frankie and Len's paths cross, and Len Read More

Murder Without Crime

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Dennis Price, Derek Farr, Patricia Plunkett, Joan Dowling

Synopsis: Future "spectacle" director J. Lee Thompson is confined to the theatrical limitations of his source material in Murder Without Crime. After a bitter quarrel with his wife Jan (Patricia Plunkett), Stephen (Derek Farr) goes off on a bender, picking up bar hostess Grena (Joan Dowling) along the way. Read More

No Place for Jennifer

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Leo Genn, Rosamund John, Beatrice Campbell, Guy Middleton, Janette Scott

Synopsis: Jennifer (Janette Scott) is the 12-year-old daughter of divorcing couple William (Leo Genn) and Paula (Beatrice Campbell). Though both parents profess their love for Jennifer, both mentally abuse the poor girl during the custody tug-of-war. Unable to withstand the pressure, Jennifer runs away from Read More

For Them That Trespass

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Stephen Murray, Richard Todd, Patricia Plunkett, Rosalyn Boulter, Michael Laurence

Synopsis: In this drama, a frustrated upper-class writer decides that he will find real inspiration by examining his subjects first-hand. This leads him to begin wandering about the seamiest side of town where he witnesses a murder. When an innocent man is arrested, the writer refuses to assist him as the Read More

The Weaker Sex

Crew: Director

Synopsis: In this British WW II drama, a British housewife proves herself to be as patriotic and courageous as any soldier. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

East of Piccadilly

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Judy Campbell, Sebastian Shaw, Henry Edwards, George Pughe

Synopsis: Possibly inspired by the 1937 British melodrama They Drive By Night, East of Piccadilly is an austere shocker set in London. Novelist Sebastian Shaw finds himself in a "Nick and Nora" relationship with girl reporter Judy Campbell, as together they seek the whereabouts of a silk-stocking killer. Read More

The Strangler

Crew: Screenwriter

Synopsis: The Strangler is the American title of the British East of Piccadilly. London's Soho district is terrorized by a strangler who favors silk stockings as his method of disposal. All evidence points to American millionaire George Pughe. Thanks to the diligence of girl reporter Judy Campbell, Pughe is Read More

The Middle Watch

Crew: Screenwriter

Synopsis: In this comedy, a battleship captain has a large party to celebrate their next voyage and is dismayed to find that two glamorous women are still aboard after they set sail and cannot turn back. To protect them, and himself, he hides the unwilling stowaways in his quarters. Unfortunately, they are Read More

The Price of Folly

Crew: Screenwriter