James Harrell Filmography

Flesh and Bone

Actors: Dennis Quaid, Meg Ryan, James Caan, Gwyneth Paltrow, Scott Wilson

Synopsis: Small-time Texas businessman Arlis Sweeney (Dennis Quaid) can never shake the memory of his father's (James Caan) wasted life. What particularly sticks in his craw is the murder committed years earlier by his father and a teenaged accomplice. While going through the by-rote motions of his job (he Read More

Leap of Faith

Actors: Steve Martin, Debra Winger, Lolita Davidovich, Liam Neeson, Lukas Haas

Synopsis: Steve Martin has one of his best roles in Leap Of Faith as Jonas Nightengale, a high-tech faith healer and revival preacher who takes pride in the money he squeezes out of people, convincing himself that he can't deliver hope, but "I give my people a good show." As the film begins, Nightengale's Read More

JFK

Actors: Kevin Costner, Sissy Spacek, Joe Pesci, Tommy Lee Jones, Gary Oldman

Synopsis: The November 22, 1963, assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy shocked the nation and the world. The brisk investigation of that murder conducted under the guidance of Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren distressed many observers, even though subsequent careful investigations have been Read More

Another Pair of Aces: Three of a Kind

Actors: Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Rip Torn, Joan Severance, Shelby Lynne

Synopsis: The original made-for-TV Pair of Aces starred Kris Kristofferson as a Texas Ranger who, while searching for a serial killer, is aided and abetted by introspective safecracker Willie Nelson. The Kristofferson-Nelson combo proved so unbeatable in the ratings that a sequel was immediately Read More

Wild Texas Wind

Actors: Gary Busey, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton

Synopsis: Dolly Parton goes dramatic in Wild Texas Wind--with plenty or songs in her repertoire to gloss over the script's shortcomings. This made-for-TV movie costars a curiously hammy Gary Busey as the manager of a country western band fronted by Parton. Through his business acumen, Parton's aggregation Read More

The Hot Spot

Actors: Don Johnson, Virginia Madsen, Jennifer Connelly, Charles Martin Smith, Bill Sadler

Synopsis: This hard-boiled throwback to the film noir dramas of the 1940s and '50s is directed by filmmaker and actor Dennis Hopper, based on the novel Hell Hath No Fury by Charles Williams. Don Johnson stars as Harry Madox, a drifter who settles in a small Texas town and begins secretly setting small Read More

Texasville

Actors: Jeff Bridges, Cybill Shepherd, Annie Potts, Timothy Bottoms, Cloris Leachman

Synopsis: Texasville is Peter Bogdanovich's much-delayed sequel to The Last Picture Show. Adapted from Larry McMurtry's novel and told as a series of episodes, Texasville follows the characters from The Last Picture Show as they reunite in a small Texas town nearly 30 years after the end of the last movie Read More

Lost Angels

Actors: Donald Sutherland, Adam Horowitz, Amy Locane, Don Bloomfield, Celia Weston

Synopsis: Adam Horovitz, of Beastie Boys fame, plays a troublesome teen who is shipped off by his wealthy parents to an institute for "problem" youths. This is the sort of place where any sign of rebellion is dealt with in draconian fashion. The strapped-down Horovitz tells his life story to psychiatrist Donald Sutherland Read More

Riverbend

Actors: Steve James, Margaret Avery, Tony Frank, Julius Tennon, Alex Morris

Synopsis: In this made-for-TV actioner, three rebellious black army officers disobey orders in Vietnam and refuse to destroy a village filled with innocent people. They are sent to Georgia where they undergo a court-martial. The officers know that they are going to be railroaded and so manage to escape. The Read More

Nadine

Actors: Jeff Bridges, Kim Basinger, Rip Torn, Gwen Verdon, Glenne Headly

Synopsis: A woman trying to keep a momentary indiscretion quiet finds herself in more trouble than she ever imagined in this comedy written and directed by Robert Benton. Nadine Hightower (Kim Basinger), who is significantly more beautiful than intelligent, is fast-talked into posing for some cheesecake Read More

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2

Actors: Dennis Hopper, Caroline Williams, Bill Johnson, Jim Siedow, Bill Moseley

Synopsis: Over ten years after making the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Tobe Hooper returns to his deranged family of reclusive cannibals for another round of chainsaw chases and non-stop screaming. Hooper brings a real budget this time (having recently directed Poltergeist for Steven Spielberg) and the Read More

Adam: His Song Continues

Actors: Daniel J. Travanti, JoBeth Williams

Synopsis: Adam: His Song Continues is a sequel to the highly regarded fact-based 1983 TV movie Adam. The first film was the heartrending story of Floridians John and Reve Walsh (Daniel J. Travanti, JoBeth Williams) whose six-year-old son Adam was kidnapped and murdered in 1981, whereupon the Walshes lobbied Read More

Celebrity

Synopsis: After twenty-five years, a trio of old high school friends are held responsible for a rape incident they have, until now, kept secret in this television miniseries based on Thomas Thompson's novel. ~ Kristie Hassen, All Movie Guide Read More

Country

Actors: Jessica Lange, Sam Shepard, Wilford Brimley, Matt Clark, Therese Graham

Synopsis: Released in the mid-1980s, this farm drama stars Jessica Lange and Sam Shepard as Jewell and Gil Ivy, who run a small farm in Iowa that has been in Jewell's family for several generations; her father Otis (Wilford Brimley) lives with them, along with their three children. While the work is hard Read More

The Dollmaker

Synopsis: Jane Fonda stars in this made-for-TV movie, which uses the backdrop of World War II and urbanization to tell the story of one woman's fight to keep her family together. Gertie Nevels (Fonda), the wife of a Kentucky sharecropper, wants nothing more than to one day own her own farm. Thriftily hiding Read More

Noon Wine

Actors: Fred Ward

Synopsis: Noon Wine is adapted from a short story by Katharine Ann Porter. Fred Ward stars as a taciturn Swede who is hired to work on a Texas dairy farm. After he puts in nine years of hard and faithful effort, Ward's secret is revealed: when he applied for his job, he was a fugitive from a murder charge. Michael Fields Read More

Raggedy Man

Actors: Sissy Spacek, Eric Roberts, William Sanderson, Tracey Walker, Henry Thomas

Synopsis: Sissy Spacek was directed by her husband Jack Fisk in 1981's Raggedy Man. Spacek plays a divorced mother of two who tries to go it alone in mid-1940s Texas. Shunned by the "respectable" townsfolk because of her marital breakup, Spacek must endure the unwanted attentions of every low-life man in Read More

Urban Cowboy

Actors: John Travolta, Debra Winger, Scott Glenn, Madolyn Smith, Barry Corbin

Synopsis: "You a real cowboy?" John Travolta traded disco for a mechanical bull in this adaptation by James Bridges and Aaron Latham of Latham's article on Western nightlife. Texas country boy Bud (Travolta) moves to Houston to work on an oil rig with his Uncle Bob (Barry Corbin), and he swiftly becomes Read More

Resurrection

Actors: Ellen Burstyn, Sam Shepard, Richard Farnsworth, Roberts Blossom, Clifford David

Synopsis: Ellen Burstyn plays Edna McCauley, the wife of a man (Jeffrey DeMunn) who is killed in an auto crash. Edna herself survives, but not before enduring an "out of body" experience. Crippled in the accident, Edna heads to her hometown in Kansas to recuperate. There she discovers that she has the power Read More

The Whole Shootin' Match

Synopsis: One of a plethora of "regional" films dealing with backwoods buffoonery, The Whole Shootin' Match stars Lou Perry and Sonny Davis as a pair of rustic perennial losers. Unable to make a go at any other line of work, Perry and Davis decide to tap the "rich hippie" market (they weren't called Read More

Outlaw Blues

Actors: Peter Fonda, Susan Saint James, John Crawford, James Callahan, Michael Lerner

Synopsis: A musician discovers that there's no such thing as bad publicity when a murder charge makes him a star in this comedy-drama. Bobby Ogden (Peter Fonda) is an ex-con trying to go straight and build a career as a country and western singer. Bobby gets the opportunity to show off some of his tunes to Read More

The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald

Synopsis: In a spin off from the actual event of U.S. President Kennedy's assassination, this drama examines what the trial of Lee Harvey Oswald may have been like had he not been shot by Jack Ruby. This made-for-television movie was aired in two parts. ~ Kristie Hassen, All Movie Guide Read More

Mackintosh and T.J.

Actors: Roy Rogers, Clay O'Brien, Billy Green Bush, Andrew Robinson, Joan Hackett

Synopsis: After sixteen years of cinematic retirement, Roy Rogers made a surprise return before the cameras in Mackintosh & T. J. Rogers plays Mackintosh, an ageing, tale-spinning ranch hand who befriends T.J., a sullen young boy (Clay O'Brien). The film is low-key, like Rogers himself, and Rogers' faithful Read More

Race with the Devil

Actors: Peter Fonda, Warren Oates, Loretta Swit, Lara Parker, R.G. Armstrong

Synopsis: This novel fusion of car-chase film and spooky horror became a surprise box-office hit in 1975. The story begins with car enthusiasts Frank (Warren Oates) and Roger (Peter Fonda) taking their wives, Kelly (Lara Parker) and Alice (Loretta Swit), on a vacation in a recreational vehicle. Their Read More

The Great Waldo Pepper

Actors: Robert Redford, Bo Svenson, Bo Brundin, Susan Sarandon, Geoffrey Lewis

Synopsis: Robert Redford plays Waldo Pepper, a former World War I pilot who exaggerates his accomplishments in order to impress the rabble. After a brief rivalry with air-show entrepreneur Axel Olsson (Bo Svenson), Pepper teams with Axel to barnstorm all over the Midwest; later, after a series of unexpected Read More

Don't Open the Door

Synopsis: Amanda (Susan Bracken) receives a strange phone message beckoning her to the side of her ailing, elderly grandmother (Rhea MacAdams). She hasn't been to her hometown for 13 years, not since the night that her mother was butchered in bed by an unknown maniac. Amanda returns to her grandmother's Read More

The Sugarland Express

Actors: Goldie Hawn, Ben Johnson, Michael Sacks, William Atherton, Gregory Walcott

Synopsis: Based on an actual incident, Steven Spielberg's first theatrical feature follows the adventures of a Texas outlaw couple striving to keep their family together by any means necessary. Determined not to lose her child to the authorities, Lou Jean Poplin (Goldie Hawn) gets her obedient convict Read More

Paper Moon

Actors: Ryan O'Neal, Tatum O'Neal, Madeline Kahn, John Hillerman, P.J. Johnson

Synopsis: The year is 1936. Orphaned Addie Loggins (Tatum O'Neal, in her film debut) is left in the care of unethical travelling Bible salesman Moses Pray (Ryan O'Neal, Tatum's dad), who may or may not be her father. En route to Addie's relatives, Moses learns that the 9-year-old is quite a handful: she Read More

A Bullet for Pretty Boy

Actors: Fabian Forte, Jocelyn Lane, Astrid Warner, Michael Haynes, Adam Roarke

Synopsis: This plodding crime drama concerns the life of Depression-era gangster Pretty Boy Floyd. Imprisoned for the manslaughter of a jealous rival for his affections, Floyd escapes from jail a hardened criminal with ties to the mob in Kansas City. After meeting up with a whorehouse madam, he goes on a Read More