Joe Spinell Filmography

Rapid Fire

Synopsis: Rapid Fire is about a U.S. agent who's up against some violent terrorists. ~ All Movie Guide Read More

Married to the Mob

Actors: Michelle Pfeiffer, Matthew Modine, Dean Stockwell, Mercedes Ruehl, Alec Baldwin

Synopsis: Michelle Pfeiffer is Married to the Mob in this comedy. The wife of Mafia hitman Alec Baldwin, Pfeiffer regularly chastizes her husband for his underhanded line of work. Baldwin refuses to entertain any thoughts of quitting the mob-and besides, he's got a good thing going with Nancy Travis, the Read More

The Undertaker

Actors: Joe Spinell

The Pick-Up Artist

Actors: Molly Ringwald, Robert Downey, Jr., Dennis Hopper, Danny Aiello, Mildred Dunnock

Synopsis: With this rote but well-cast romantic comedy, writer-director James Toback began his long association with actor Robert Downey, Jr. The latter stars as Jack Jericho, a grade school teacher and smooth operator who zealously polishes his cliched pick-up lines in front of a mirror. Jack's come-ons Read More

Deadly Illusion

Actors: Billy Dee Williams, Vanity, Morgan Fairchild, John Beck, Joe Cortese

Synopsis: A gumshoe gets in deep kim-chi when he agrees to murder a fellow's wife in exchange for $25,000 up front. No sooner does he accept the money than he is running off to his intended victim to first warn her and then sleep with her. As soon as they finish making love, he learns that she was not the Read More

The Whoopee Boys

Actors: Michael O'Keefe, Paul Rodriguez, Denholm Elliott, Carole Shelley, Marsha Warfield, Andy Bumatai

Synopsis: In this comedy, a relocation to Florida throws lowlife New Yorkers Barney (Paul Rodriguez) and Jake (Michael O'Keefe) into a dilemma when Jake falls for a beautiful schoolteacher, Olivia Farragut (Lucinda Jenney), who is struggling to find enough money to keep her school open. However, when they Read More

The Messenger

Actors: Fred Williamson, Sandy Cummings, Val Avery, Michael Dante, Christopher Connelly

Synopsis: This enjoyably sleazy action film stars Fred Williamson as Jake Turner, a burglar who also happens to be an ex-con and a former Green Beret. When Turner's drug-addicted wife dies, he begins murdering the dealers and mobsters whom he holds responsible, including genre favorite Joe Spinell (Maniac). Read More

Il Cugino americano

Actors: Brad Davis, Tony Lo Bianco, Vincent Spano, Barbara de Rossi, Arnoldo Foa, Ricky Tognazzi, Maria Conchita Alonso

Synopsis: Blood Ties began life as a 4-hour Italian TV movie. The American version, which premiered December 14, 1986 on the Showtime Cable network, runs 125 minutes, and "runs" is the right word. Brad Davis plays an American naval engineer with familial ties to Sicily. Before he can offer a protest, Davis Read More

The Children of Times Square

Actors: Joanna Cassidy, Brandon Douglas, Danny Nucci

Synopsis: The Children of Times Square are alienated and disenfranchised kids from all over the country. With nowhere to go and no real purpose in life, they converge on the streets of New York, totally vulnerable despite their outward toughness. Howard Rollins plays a ruthless cocaine dealer who, in the Read More

Hollywood Harry

Actors: Robert Forster, Kathrine Forster, Joe Spinell, Shannon Wilcox

Synopsis: Written, directed by, and starring Robert Forster and his daughter Katherine, Hollywood Harry is a routine detective/human interest story about a low-end P.I. who sleeps with women at a rate of $5.00 each (they pay him) and is drinking his way into oblivion when his niece (Katherine Forster) Read More

Walking the Edge

Actors: Robert Forster, Joe Spinell, A. Martinez, Aarika Wells, Wayne Woodson

Synopsis: In this action-crime drama, Jason Walk, an L.A. cab driver, suffers a luckless life. He not only has marital woes at home, he is unable to collect the money from the people he runs numbers for. One day the luck changes when the gun-toting Christine enters his hack. She is out to get revenge upon Read More

The Last Fight

Actors: Rubén Blades, Fred Williamson, Joe Spinell, Darlanne Fluegel

Synopsis: Fred Williamson produced and directed The Last Fight, but he didn't take the starring role. That honor is reserved for singer Ruben Blades, playing a chronic gambler who turns to prizefighting to pay off his debts. He rises to the top of the pugilistic world, disregarding the warnings of his Read More

The Big Score

Actors: Fred Williamson, John Saxon, Richard Roundtree, Nancy Wilson, Ed Lauter

Synopsis: A Chicago cop is wrongly accused of theft and dismissed from the force. In order to clear his name, he goes after the real culprits -- without the extra baggage of police regulations that might have made his task more difficult if he were still active in the department. This script was originally Read More

Trackdown: Finding the Goodbar Killer

Actors: Shelley Hack, George Segal

Synopsis: Trackdown: Finding the Goodbar Killer is a TV movie inspired by the same real-life 1982 murder that formed the basis of the Judith Rossner novel (and 1977 movie adaptation) Looking for Mr. Goodbar. George Segal plays the diligent detective who tries to rout out the murderer of a "swinging" Read More

Vigilante

Actors: Robert Forster, Fred Williamson, Richard Bright, Rutanya Alda, Don Blakely

Synopsis: The excessive violence in this action thriller makes New York City look like the site of a civil war -- or rather, a nauseatingly uncivil war fought between factory workers allied with neighborhood citizens against their enemies: drug pushers and other low-lifes. At first the worker Eddie Merino (Robert Forster Read More

Monsignor

Actors: Christopher Reeve, Geneviève Bujold, Fernando Rey, Jason Miller, Joe Cortese

Synopsis: An ambitious priest discovers that honoring the Ten Commandments isn't as easy as he imagined in this drama. Father John Flaherty (Christopher Reeve) is a Catholic priest who was ordained during World War II, and soon found himself forced to fight enemy forces while serving as a chaplain in the Read More

Losin' It

Actors: Tom Cruise, Jackie Earle Haley, John Stockwell, Shelley Long, John P. Navin, Jr.

Synopsis: There is hardly any variation on the stereotyped teens-and-sex movie in this story about four high school seniors who travel to Mexico to find a brothel and have something to brag about when they get back home. Among the four is the sensitive Woody (Tom Cruise) who is not sure he wants this trip Read More

The Fanatic

Actors: Caroline Munro, Joe Spinell, Judd Hamilton, Devin Goldenberg, David Winters

Synopsis: In this slice-n-dicer, a cabbie becomes obsessed with a lovely movie scream queen and decides to follow her to the Cannes Film Festival. Though she is a cult favorite, few take the horror-movie actress seriously. The taxi driver does and is sure that with a little of his expert direction she could Read More

One Down Two to Go

Actors: Fred Williamson, Jim Brown, Jim Kelly, Richard Roundtree, Paula Sills

Synopsis: This violent martial-arts film features a galaxy of the blaxploitation genre's best known stars, including Jim Kelly (Black Eliminator) in his final role. Richard Roundtree stars as a tournament promoter who gets shaken down by an evil gangster (Joe Spinell) and must call on his three friends Read More

Night Shift

Actors: Henry Winkler, Michael Keaton, Shelley Long, Gina Hecht, Pat Corley

Synopsis: Straight-laced Henry Winkler takes a night-shift job as a morgue attendant. Winkler falls under the spell of wheeler-dealer coworker Michael Keaton, whose catchphrase "Is this a great country or what?" is the clarion call for his many get-rich-quick schemes. His latest plan is to turn the morgue Read More

Eureka

Actors: Gene Hackman, Theresa Russell, Rutger Hauer, Jane Lapotaire, Ed Lauter

Synopsis: A reclusive, unhappy gold magnate finds his isolated tropical paradise threatened by the intrusion of organized criminals in director Nicolas Roeg's convoluted, arty drama. Gene Hackman stars as Jack McCann, a one-time gold prospector who his parlayed the discovery of a rich deposit in the Read More

National Lampoon's Movie Madness

Actors: Peter Riegert, Diane Lane, Candy Clark, Teresa Ganzel, Anne Dusenberry

Synopsis: Originally divided into four segments and now cut to three, National Lampoon Goes to the Movies is a story about a man who is determined to get in touch with himself and sends his wife away so she can do the same thing. The next tale features a female business magnate who wreaks appropriate Read More

Nighthawks

Actors: Sylvester Stallone, Billy Dee Williams, Rutger Hauer, Nigel Davenport, Persis Khambatta

Synopsis: Deke DaSilva (Sylvester Stallone) and Matthew Fox (Billy Dee Williams) are New York police officers specially assigned to a special multi-national team dedicated to tracking down terrorist Wulfgar (Rutger Hauer). Wulfgar planted a bomb in a London department store, killing several children and he Read More

Brubaker

Actors: Robert Redford, Yaphet Kotto, Jane Alexander, Murray Hamilton, David Keith

Synopsis: Fact-based drama starring Robert Redford as Henry Brubaker, the new inmate at a run-down Southern prison that's become notorious for corruption and violence. After he witnesses several instances of gross misconduct and defuses a tense confrontation with a crazed inmate (Morgan Freeman), Brubaker Read More

Forbidden Zone

Actors: Herve Villechaize, Susan Tyrrell, Marie-Pascale Elfman, Viva

Synopsis: Oingo Boingo fans and midnight movie mavens will love this bizarre black-and-white feature packed with music, madness, and members of the Elfman clan. The story revolves around the Hercules family, who live in a house that just happens to hide a secret entrance to the Sixth Dimension in the Read More

The First Deadly Sin

Actors: Frank Sinatra, Faye Dunaway, Brenda Vaccaro, James Whitmore, George Coe, David Dukes, Joe Spinell

Synopsis: The First Deadly Sin was Frank Sinatra's final starring movie vehicle. Based on a novel by Lawrence Sanders, it casts Sinatra as Edward Delaney, a big-city detective on the verge of retirement. Beset with profound personal problems--including a gravely ill wife (Faye Dunaway)--Delaney nonetheless Read More

Cruising

Actors: Al Pacino, Paul Sorvino, Karen Allen, Richard Cox, Don Scardino

Synopsis: New York City detective Steve Burns Al Pacino receives orders from Captain Edelson Paul Sorvino to solve a series of brutal murders in the gay community. Steve scours the gay bars that caters to same-sex sadomasochism in a desperate attempt to solve the crime. As he infiltrates the scene, he Read More

Nightside

Synopsis: Action star Doug McClure plays for light humor in Nightside. This turned out to be a wise move on McClure's part, because it's next to impossible to take this made-for-TV cop drama seriously. McClure and Michael Cornelison portray two graveyard-shift L.A. patrolmen who must deal with various Read More

The Little Dragons

Actors: Charles Lane, Ann Sothern, Chris Petersen, Pat Petersen, Sally Boyden

Synopsis: Preteen kung-fu masters are on the case when a young girl is kidnapped by hillbillies in this adventure for kids. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide Read More

Maniac!

Crew: Executive Producer, Screen Story, Screenwriter

Actors: Joe Spinell, Caroline Munro, Gail Lawrence, Kelly Piper, Rita Montone

Synopsis: Joe Spinell, who appeared in Taxi Driver, stars in this unsavory horror film as Frank Zito, a character reminiscent of an even more disturbed Travis Bickle. Frank is an embittered loser who talks to himself and his dead mother, stalks a pretty model (Caroline Munro), and spends his spare time Read More

Winter Kills

Actors: Jeff Bridges, John Huston, Anthony Perkins, Sterling Hayden, Eli Wallach

Synopsis: Based on a novel by the iconoclastic Richard Condon (of Manchurian Candidate and Prizzi's Honor fame), Winter Kills was one of the vanguard efforts in the "JFK conspiracy" school of literature. Jeff Bridges stars as Nick Kegan, the scion of a powerful Kennedyesque family, who has done his best to Read More

The Ninth Configuration

Actors: Stacy Keach, Scott Wilson, Jason Miller, Ed Flanders, Neville Brand, Moses Gunn

Synopsis: William Peter Blatty, author of The Exorcist, proved a workmanlike producer/director for 1979's The Ninth Configuration. Army psychiatrist Col. Kane (Stacy Keach) (teetering on the sanity brink himself) tries to minister to the patients in a military mental hospital. The fact that the hospital is Read More

The Last Embrace

Actors: Roy Scheider, Janet Margolin, Christopher Walken, Sam Levene, John Glover

Synopsis: In 1979, Jonathan Demme was still a cutting-edge director and The Last Embrace was his first effort at a completely commercial assignment. Very much in the Hitchcock vein, The Last Embrace is an intense suspense film concerning Harry Hannan (Roy Scheider), a government agent recovering from a Read More

Rocky II

Actors: Sylvester Stallone, Talia Shire, Burt Young, Carl Weathers, Burgess Meredith

Synopsis: By concentrating on character development with this first of several sequels to his Oscar-winning smash Rocky (1976), writer/director Sylvester Stallone earned critical praise that would desert him with the boxing saga's shallower subsequent chapters. Stallone returns as Rocky Balboa, a Read More

Big Wednesday

Actors: Jan-Michael Vincent, William Katt, Gary Busey, Patti D'Arbanville, Lee Purcell

Synopsis: Jan-Michael Vincent plays a self-destructive beach bum to whom surfing is a Zen experience. We first meet Vincent in the devil-may-care 1960s, in the company of his carefree buddies William Katt and Gary Busey. The boys reunite ten years later, after one has served time in Vietnam. The beach is Read More

Star Crash

Actors: Marjoe Gortner, Caroline Munro, Christopher Plummer, David Hasselhoff, Robert Tessier

Synopsis: Italian schlock-master Luigi Cozzi (billed as Lewis Coates here) directed this low-budget Star Wars rip-off in 1978, right when the sci-fi craze was hitting audiences on a world-wide scale. The story begins familiarly enough, with a huge spaceship tracking through an extremely colorful space scene Read More

Nunzio

Actors: David Proval, James Andronica, Morgana King, Tovah Feldshuh, Vincent Russo

Synopsis: In this touching tale, an amiable retarded delivery boy from Brooklyn works to help support his mother. Meanwhile his older brother keeps him safe from local punks; this sometimes creates turmoil for him as he must maintain a strong exterior to mask his love. While delivering his groceries, the Read More

The One Man Jury

Synopsis: In this extremely violent copy of Dirty Harry, a cynical cop tires of seeing guilty crooks get off scott-free and so decides to leave the force and become a one-man vigilante force. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Paradise Alley

Actors: Sylvester Stallone, Kevin Conway, Anne Archer, Armand Assante, Joe Spinell, Lee Canalito

Synopsis: Film auteur Sylvester Stallone wrote, directed, and stars in this re-working of Rocky to fit an old-fashioned Hollywood formula, depicting three brothers from New York's Hell's Kitchen of the 1940s who want to claw their way out of poverty. Lee Canalito is the muscle-brained iceman Victor, and Armand Assante Read More

The Godfather Saga

Actors: Al Pacino, Marlon Brando, Robert De Niro, Diane Keaton, Robert Duvall, James Caan, John Cazale

Synopsis: Originally screened as a mini-series on the NBC television network, this epic-length feature combines the entirety of The Godfather and The Godfather Part II with 15 minutes of outtakes from the two films, recutting the material into chronological order (clarifying the complex structure of The Read More

Sorcerer

Actors: Roy Scheider, Bruno Cremer, Francisco Rabal, Ramon Bieri, Peter Capell

Synopsis: The plot of William Friedkin's suspense thriller originated with the same Georges Arnaud novel that inspired Henri-Georges Clouzot's French suspense classic The Wages of Fear (1953). Roy Scheider, Bruno Cremer, Francisco Rabal, and Amidou play four men who, for various reasons, cannot return to Read More

Taxi Driver

Actors: Robert De Niro, Cybill Shepherd, Peter Boyle, Albert Brooks, Harvey Keitel, Jodie Foster

Synopsis: "All the animals come out at night" -- and one of them is a cabby about to snap. In Martin Scorsese's classic 1970s drama, insomniac ex-Marine Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) works the nightshift, driving his cab throughout decaying mid-'70s New York City, wishing for a "real rain" to wash the Read More

Rocky

Actors: Sylvester Stallone, Talia Shire, Burt Young, Carl Weathers, Burgess Meredith

Synopsis: Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone), a Philadelphia boxer, is but one step removed from total bum-hood. A once-promising pugilist, Rocky is now taking nickel-and-dime bouts and running strongarm errands for local loan sharks to survive. Even his supportive trainer, Mickey (Burgess Meredith), has Read More

Next Stop, Greenwich Village

Actors: Lenny Baker, Shelley Winters, Ellen Greene, Lois Smith, Christopher Walken

Synopsis: An aspiring actor leaves his home in Brooklyn for adulthood in Manhattan in Paul Mazursky's loosely autobiographical comedy-drama. In 1953, would-be thesp Larry Lapinsky (Lenny Baker) flees his hysterically clinging mother (Shelley Winters) for a $25-a-month (!!) apartment in bohemian Greenwich Read More

Stay Hungry

Actors: Jeff Bridges, Sally Field, Arnold Schwarzenegger, R.G. Armstrong, Robert Englund

Synopsis: In this offbeat comedy, Jeff Bridges plays Craig Blake, a rich kid who works with a group of hard-living Southern real-estate men led by Jabo (Joe Spinell), who are buying up a business district in Birmingham, Alabama in order to clear the space and put in a new project. Craig is supposed to work Read More

92º in the Shade

Actors: Peter Fonda, Warren Oates, Margot Kidder, Burgess Meredith, Harry Dean Stanton

Synopsis: Though set in Key West, Florida, a goodly portion of 92 in the Shade was filmed in England. Peter Fonda plays Tom Skelton, a bum who gets a job as a fishing guide in his old home town. Nobody wants to have anything to do with Skelton, least of all rival guides Nichol Dance and Carter (Warren Oates Read More

Farewell, My Lovely

Actors: Robert Mitchum, Charlotte Rampling, John Ireland, Sylvia Miles, Jack O'Halloran

Synopsis: Previously filmed in 1942 as The Falcon Takes Over and in 1944 as Murder, My Sweet, Raymond Chandler's Farewell My Lovely was given its third cinematic go-round under its original title in 1975. Spouting the Chandlerish prose as if it were second nature, Robert Mitchum stars as 1940s private eye Read More

Rancho Deluxe

Actors: Jeff Bridges, Sam Waterston, Elizabeth Ashley, Charlene Dallas, Clifton James

Synopsis: In Frank Perry's curious, off-center comedy Western, Jeff Bridges and Sam Waterston play Jack McKee and Cecil Carlson, a couple of cattle rustlers whose special target is taciturn rancher John Brown (Clifton James). Both men are outcasts by choice; McKee can't stand being around his stuck-up Read More

Strike Force

Synopsis: Originally made as a pilot for a failed television pilot, this action crime drama centers on the exploits of a special strike force that is comprised of a Federal agent, a state trooper (a very young Richard Gere), and a New York City police officer who busted up a ring of drug dealers. The film Read More

The Godfather Part II

Actors: Al Pacino, Robert Duvall, Diane Keaton, Robert De Niro, John Cazale, Lee Strasberg

Synopsis: Francis Ford Coppola's legendary continuation and sequel to his landmark 1972 film, The Godfather, parallels the young Vito Corleone's rise with his son Michael's spiritual fall, deepening The Godfather's depiction of the dark side of the American dream. In the early 1900s, the child Vito flees Read More

The Seven-Ups

Actors: Roy Scheider, Victor Arnold, Jerry Leon, Ken Kercheval, Tony Lo Bianco

Synopsis: This was the only directorial effort of Philip D'Antoni, producer of the action classic Bullitt (1968). Roy Scheider stars as Buddy Manucci, a New York City Police Department investigator running a task force charged with taking down criminals guilty of offenses that would get them a minimum Read More

Cops and Robbers

Actors: Jacob Weiner, Cliff Gorman, Joseph Bologna

Synopsis: In this comedy from director Aram Avakian, New York police officers Cliff Gorman and Joe Bologna turn crooked. Their plan is to steal $10 million worth of investment certificates, using a Manhattan parade as their "cover". Gorman and Bologna display an amazing degree of dexterity and Read More

The Godfather

Actors: Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, John Cazale, Robert Duvall, Diane Keaton

Synopsis: Popularly viewed as one of the best American films ever made, the multi-generational crime saga The Godfather is a touchstone of cinema: one of the most widely imitated, quoted, and lampooned movies of all time. Marlon Brando and Al Pacino star as Vito Corleone and his youngest son, Michael Read More