Joe Turkel Filmography

Blade Runner

Actors: Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, Edward James Olmos, M. Emmet Walsh, Daryl Hannah

Synopsis: A blend of science fiction and noir detective fiction, Blade Runner (1982) was a box office and critical bust upon its initial exhibition, but its unique postmodern production design became hugely influential within the sci-fi genre, and the film gained a significant cult following that increased Read More

The Shining

Actors: Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Danny Lloyd, Scatman Crothers, Barry Nelson

Synopsis: "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" -- or, rather, a homicidal boy in Stanley Kubrick's eerie 1980 adaptation of Stephen King's horror novel. With wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and psychic son Danny (Danny Lloyd) in tow, frustrated writer Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) takes a job as the Read More

Which Way Is Up?

Actors: Richard Pryor, Lonette McKee, Margaret Avery, Morgan Woodward, Marilyn Coleman

Synopsis: This Americanized remake of Lina Wertmuller's The Seduction of Mimi offered audiences the novelty of seeing Richard Pryor performing three different roles in the same film. Which Way Is Up? tells the tale of Leroy Jones (Pryor), a poor orange picker who gets fired from his job when he accidentally Read More

Kojak: When You Hear the Beep, Drop Dead

Synopsis: Several people overhear a phoned-in murder threat aimed at prominent ecologist Kenneth Krug (Eric Braeden). The caller seems to be a hooker with whom Krug is having an affair--and after a bloody shoot-out, it appears as if the woman has carried out her threat, even though no body is found. Read More

The Commitment

Actors: Richard Grand, Joe Turkel, Jon Ian Jacobs

Synopsis: Troubled by huge gambling debts, Steve (Richard Grand) is a salesman whose life and prospects are dreary indeed. His wife is anxious to move upward economically and socially, and he is caught between her desires and the grimness of his situation if he is unable to repay the debts. ~ Clarke Read More

The Hindenburg

Actors: George C. Scott, Anne Bancroft, William Atherton, Roy Thinnes, Gig Young

Synopsis: "The German Air Force is not at all what it used to be," says Anne Bancroft's Countess, about 16 minutes into The Hindenburg, pausing and then adding, "But then, nothing is these days." That seems to sum up the ponderous, irony-laden script and plot of Robert Wise's movie, which is posited -- in Read More

The Sex Symbol

Actors: Connie Stevens, Shelley Winters, Don Murray

Synopsis: Connie Stevens appears both with and without clothing in this made-for-TV a clef version of the Marilyn Monroe saga. The script, based on Alvah Bessie's novel The Symbol, contrives to have Stevens portray La Monroe in everything but name, right down to entering into a marriage with a famous Read More

Cycle Psycho

Savage Abduction

Synopsis: This is a "hunt & find" film where two girls are kidnapped while on vacation in Los Angeles. An all-out search is conducted, in hopes of locating their crazed abductor ~ All Movie Guide Read More

Wild in the Sky

Actors: Brandon de Wilde

Synopsis: This action/comedy picture follows the adventures of a group of anti-war, anti-establishment guerillas, who come up with a scheme to destroy Fort Knox with an atom bomb. The most notable feature of this film is that it features Brandon de Wilde in his last performance. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Read More

Five Savage Men

Actors: Michele Carey, Henry Silva

Synopsis: Abducted by a vicious band of outlaws and left for dead after being violated and tortured, a young teacher teams with the Apache chief who nursed her back to health to take revenge on her attackers in this violent western starring Michele Carey and Henry Silva. Alice (Carey) was an innocent Read More

Adam-12: Log 43: Hostage

Synopsis: Wounded and in a state of shock, Officer Pete Malloy (Martin Milner) is held captive by two escaped convicts in a small café. Malloy's partner is told that unless he frees the convicts' comrade from jail, Pete will be killed. It is at this point that the department's S.W.A.T. team swings into Read More

The Devil's 8

Actors: Christopher George, Fabian, Tom Nardini, Leslie Parrish, Ross Hagen

Synopsis: Faulkner (Christopher George) is an ATF agent who shut down the moonshine operation of Burl (Ralph Meeker) in his Southern state hideaway. Along with agent Martin (Ron Rifkin), the duo uses eight escaped prisoners for the job, promising their freedom should the mission succeed. Fabian stars as one Read More

Bonanza: Trouble Town

Actors: Lorne Greene, Michael Landon, Dan Blocker, David Canary, Robert J. Wilke

Synopsis: Candy makes good his long-standing promise to quit the Ponderosa to join his longtime sweetheart Lila Holden (Elizabeth MacRae) in the town of River Bend. His dreams of starting life anew are shattered when he is arrested on a trumped-up charge and held without bail. Hoping to help Candy out, the Read More

The St. Valentine's Day Massacre

Actors: Jason Robards, Jr., George Segal, Ralph Meeker, Jean Hale, Clint Ritchie

Synopsis: Schlockmeister Roger Corman produced this graphically violent chronicle of the Chicago gangster wars of the 1920s and the events that lead to the bloody title showdown between rival mobsters Al Capone (Jason Robards) and Bugs Moran (Ralph Meeker) that marked a brutal end to a terrifying era. Fred Steiner Read More

The Sand Pebbles

Actors: Steve McQueen, Richard Attenborough, Richard Crenna, Candice Bergen, Marayat Andriane

Synopsis: Steve McQueen received his only Academy Award nomination for his performance in this epic-scale war drama, based on the novel by Richard McKenna. In 1926, as China teeters on the edge of political revolution in the midst of a civil war, the USS San Pablo, is ordered to patrol the Yangtze Read More

King Rat

Actors: George Segal, Tom Courtenay, James Fox, Patrick O'Neal, Denholm Elliott, John Mills, Todd Armstrong

Synopsis: James Clavell incorporated a few of his own experiences as a British POW in his novel King Rat. Bryan Forbes' film version stars George Segal as the mastermind of all black market operations in a Japanese prison camp. He is called "King Rat" because of his breeding of rodents to serve as food for Read More

Village of the Giants

Actors: Tommy Kirk, Johnny Crawford, Beau Bridges, Ronny Howard, Joy Harmon, Tisha Sterling

Synopsis: Based on the same H.G. Wells story as his later Food of the Gods, this silly but good-looking fantasy from Bert I. Gordon is among his more entertaining films. The young Ron Howard plays Genius, who develops a substance which causes animals to grow to monstrous size. After eight kids (led by Beau Read More

Bonanza: Alias Joe Cartwright

Actors: Lorne Greene, Pernell Roberts, Michael Landon, Dan Blocker

Synopsis: A deft blend of comedy and suspense, "Alias Joe Cartwright" affords series regular Michael Landon the opportunity to play a dual role: His usual characterization of Joe Cartwright, and murderous Army deserter Angus Borden. Mistaken for Borden, Joe is sentenced to a firing squad by martinet Captain Read More

The Carpetbaggers

Actors: George Peppard, Alan Ladd, Martha Hyer, Elizabeth Ashley, Carroll Baker

Synopsis: Edward Dmytryk brings Harold Robbins' trashy, dirt-dishing Hollywood best-seller to the screen with George Peppard starring as Jonas Cord, a rancidly-sketched portrait of Howard Hughes. In 1925, when his father dies of a stroke, Jonas inherits the Cord Chemical factory, a manufacturer of dynamite Read More

Combat!: The Pillbox

Synopsis: Trapped behind enemy lines, Lt. Hanley (Rick Jason) and a wounded GI named Stark (Warren Oates) take refuge in a deserted pillbox. Before long, a thunderstorm aries, and the two men are joined by three others--all German soldiers. Thus are mortal enemies thrown together by circumstance, forced to Read More

The Yellow Canary

Actors: Pat Boone, Barbara Eden, Steve Forrest, Jack Klugman, Jesse White

Synopsis: Written by mystery master Rod Serling, The Yellow Canary stars Pat Boone as insufferable singing idol Andy Paxton. Barbara Eden plays his wife Lissa, who is fed up with her husband's egotistical attitude and is ready to leave him. When their baby son is kidnapped, Andy Paxton refuses to enlist the Read More

The Untouchables: The Case Against Elliot Ness

Synopsis: With the 1933 Chicago World's Fair opening in a few days, the three Endicott brothers manage to secure several franchises on the fairgrounds. But not for long: the Endicotts are murdered, and gangsters are put in their place. It's all the handiwork of Mitchell Grandin (Pat Hingle), a wealthy and Read More

Portrait of a Mobster

Actors: Vic Morrow, Leslie Parrish, Peter Breck, Norman Alden, Robert McQueeney

Synopsis: Prolific director Joseph Pevney is better known for his next venture -- the Star Trek television series -- than this conventional docudrama on mobster "Dutch" Schultz (played by Vic Morrow). Rather than take the focus of 1997's Hoodlum, in which Schultz's attempt to move into Harlem is thwarted Read More

Tormented

Synopsis: In this low-budget, campy horror film, a murderous pianist pays for his crime when body parts from the lover he pushed from a lighthouse come back to haunt him just before he is to marry a prominent socialite. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

The Purple Gang

Actors: Barry Sullivan, Elaine Edwards, Marc Cavell, Jody Lawrance

Synopsis: Although this story of the making of a gangland hoodlum reflects only some of the real history of the Detroit Purple Gang in it, the violence portrayed is completely truthful. The sense of reality here is increased by the use of newsreel footage. Robert Blake is "Honeyboy" Willard, a juvenile Read More

The Boy and the Pirates

Actors: Charles Herbert, Susan Gordon, Murvyn Vye, Paul Guilfoyle, Joe Turkel

Synopsis: Quickie-flick entrepreneur Bert I. Gordon makes a bid for the kiddie trade in The Boy and the Pirates. Charles Herbert, the juvenile star of 13 Ghosts, plays a contemporary kid who finds a bottle on the beach. The bottle contains genie Joseph Turkel (a loyal member of Stanley Kubrick's "stock Read More

Warlock

Actors: Richard Widmark, Henry Fonda, Anthony Quinn, Dorothy Malone, Dolores Michaels

Synopsis: Warlock offers us a mean-spirited, mercenary Henry Fonda and an honest, peaceloving Richard Widmark. A Wyatt Earp-like frontier marshal, Fonda agrees to protect the small town of Warlock from an outlaw gang, but only if he's permitted to plunder the town's cash reserve. Widmark, the town deputy Read More

Here Come the Jets

Actors: Steve Brodie, Lyn Thomas, Mark Dana, John Doucette, Jean Carson

Synopsis: The creation and testing of jet planes is the focus of this action film. The story centers on a boozy hero from the Korean War who is hired as a test pilot by an aircraft executive on the condition that he sober up for good. It is a long road for the alcoholic aviator, and at one point he almost Read More

Verboten!

Actors: James Best, Susan Cummings, Thomas Pittman, Paul Dubov, Harold Daye

Synopsis: Director Samuel Fuller skillfully intercuts footage of the German death camps with scenes from this thought-provoking drama about a forbidden, post-war love affair. David (James Best) is a G.I. stationed in Germany with the American Military Government. He falls in love with Helga (Susan Read More

The Case Against Brooklyn

Actors: Darren McGavin, Maggie Hayes, Warren Stevens, Peggy McCay, Tol Avery

Synopsis: Case Against Brooklyn was based on an "expose" article by Ed Reid. Darren McGavin plays rookie cop Pete Harris, who goes undercover to help smash a Brooklyn bookie ring. The problem here as that the crooks have been bribing other cops to look the other way. As if Harris wasn't courting enough Read More

The Beast of Budapest

Actors: Gerald Milton, John Hoyt, Greta Thyssen, Michael Mills, Violet Rensing

Synopsis: This gripping drama uses archival footage combined with new footage to re-create the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. It is also the love story between a devout communist woman and the liberal son of a prominent professor. Because of their political differences, the two can never be together. Central to Read More

The Bonnie Parker Story

Actors: Dorothy Provine, Jack Hogan, Richard Bakalyan, Joe Turkel, William Stevens

Synopsis: Dorothy Provine gives her all to the title role in The Bonnie Parker Story. Billed in the picture's ad campaign as "the cigar-smoking she-devil of the thirties", the tommy-gun wielding Bonnie cuts quite a swath across the South after her husband (Richard Bakalyan) is sent to jail for life . Read More

Dragnet: The Big Juke Box

Synopsis: A gang of racketeers has set up an illegal juke-box racket in the LA area. Tavern and restaurant owners are being strongarmed into installing jukeboxes under threat of damage to their property or worse. Friday (Jack Webb) poses as the owner of a small bar to bring the extortionists out in the Read More

Paths of Glory

Actors: Kirk Douglas, Ralph Meeker, Adolphe Menjou, George Macready, Wayne Morris

Synopsis: Adapting Humphrey Cobb's novel to the screen, director Stanley Kubrick and his collaborators Calder Willingham and Jim Thompson set out to make a devastating anti-war statement, and they succeeded above and beyond the call of duty. In the third year of World War I, the erudite but morally bankrupt Read More

Jeanne Eagels

Actors: Kim Novak, Jeff Chandler, Agnes Moorehead, Charles Drake, Larry Gates

Synopsis: Kim Novak is clearly out of her depth as legendary Broadway actress Jeanne Eagels, but one can't fault her for trying very hard. As this filmed biography gets under way, wide-eyed Eagels finds herself stranded in a tank town by a smooth-talking traveling salesman. Carnival operator Sal Satori Read More

Hellcats of the Navy

Actors: Ronald Reagan, Nancy Davis, Arthur Franz, Robert Arthur, William Leslie

Synopsis: Future "first couple" Ronald Reagan and Nancy Davis made their only joint film appearance in Hellcats of the Navy. Ronnie plays Casey Abbott, commander of a WW2 submarine, while Nancy portrays navy nurse Helen Blair, Abbott's off-and-on girlfriend. During a delicate mission in which his sub is Read More

The Killing

Actors: Sterling Hayden, Coleen Gray, Marie Windsor, Elisha Cook, Jr., Vince Edwards, Jay C. Flippen

Synopsis: The Killing was director Stanley Kubrick's first major film effort -- though, like Kubrick's earlier films, it was economically produced with an inexpensive cast. In a variation of his Asphalt Jungle role, Sterling Hayden plays veteran criminal Johnny Clay, planning one last big heist before Read More

Friendly Persuasion

Actors: Gary Cooper, Dorothy McGuire, Anthony Perkins, Marjorie Main, Robert Middleton, Richard Eyer

Synopsis: Adapted from the best-selling novel by Jessamyn West, Friendly Persuasion is set in Southern Indiana in the early days of the Civil War. Gary Cooper plays Jess Birdwell, patriarch of a Quaker family which does not believe in warfare. Birdwell's son Josh (Anthony Perkins) wishes to adhere to his Read More

Mad at the World

Synopsis: In this downbeat exploitation drama, a vengeful father vents his wrath on the teenage terrors who bashed his baby's head with a booze bottle. With the hospitalized infant teetering toward death and the cops unable to catch the offending punks, the father suffers a blind rage and goes after the Read More

Inside Detroit

Actors: Dennis O'Keefe, Pat O'Brien, Tina Carver, Margaret Field, Mark Damon

Synopsis: This probing drama offers an inside look into corruption within the United Auto Workers and is loosely adapted from the true tale of the Reuther brothers. The story begins when someone bombs the union headquarters. Blair Vickers (Dennis O'Keefe), the head of the union, is an honest man whose Read More

The Naked Street

Actors: Anthony Quinn, Anne Bancroft, Peter Graves, Else Neft

Synopsis: A ruthless crime lord saves his sister from social embarrassment by working diligently to get the gangster who fathered her unborn baby off death row and out of prison so he can do the decent thing and marry the girl. The freed gangster is not thrilled with his new bride, but stays loyal until the Read More

Duffy of San Quentin

Actors: Louis Hayward, Joanne Dru, Paul Kelly, Maureen O'Sullivan, George Macready

Synopsis: Duffy of San Quentin is an Allied Artists low-budgeter based on the life of the warden who first introduced reforms in the infamous California penal institution. Appalled by conditions in San Quentin, the grey-haired Duffy inaugurates a series of improvements. He also sets up an honor system Read More

Down Among the Sheltering Palms

Actors: William Lundigan, Jane Greer, Mitzi Gaynor, David Wayne, Gloria de Haven

Synopsis: This colorful musical comedy was obviously inspired by the success of Broadway's South Pacific. Army Captain Bill Willoby (William Lundigan) is ordered to make sure that his men do not fraternize with the girls at a South Sea island base. His mission is forgotten when he himself falls in love with Read More

The Glass Wall

Actors: Vittorio Gassman, Gloria Grahame, Ann Robinson, Douglas Spencer, Robin Raymond

Synopsis: This drama chronicles the exploits of Peter, a European desperate to enter the United States. Because he can't be granted asylum due to the lack of proper papers, he resorts to jumping ship and sneaking in. In the Big Apple, he is assisted by two people who know about his past. One of them is a Read More

A Slight Case of Larceny

Actors: Mickey Rooney, Eddie Bracken, Elaine Stewart, Marilyn Erskine, Douglas Fowley

Synopsis: "Slight" is right: this harmless comedy programmer is as inconsequential as it is enjoyable. It's the tale of two Army buddies: go-getter Geechy Cheevers (Mickey Rooney) and sedate family man Freddie Clopp (Eddie Bracken). Inveigling his way into Freddie's household, Geechy drives everyone bonkers Read More

Man Crazy

Actors: Neville Brand, Christine White, Irene Anders, Colleen Miller, John Brown

Synopsis: Neville Brand receives top billing by default in 20th Century-Fox's Man Crazy. The main characters--three larcenous Minnesota girls who travel to Hollywood with stolen funds--are played by newcomers Christine White, Irene Anders and Coleen Miller. The ladies have a high old time while trying to Read More

Starlift

Actors: Doris Day, Gordon MacRae, Virginia Mayo, Gene Nelson, Ruth Roman

Synopsis: Starlift was Warner Bros' attempt to revive the "all-star patriotic musical" format which had worked so well during WW II. The wisp of a plot concerns Mike Nolan (Dick Wesson) and Rick Williams (Ron Hagherty), San Francisco-based airmen who serve as crew members on a shuttle to Korea. To impress a Read More

Lucky Losers

Actors: Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Hillary Brooke, Gabriel Dell, Lyle Talbot

Synopsis: Lucky Losers is an uncharacteristically dramatic entry in Monogram's "Bowery Boys" comedy series. Incredibly enough, Slip Mahoney (Leo Gorcey) and Sach Jones (Huntz Hall) have gotten jobs in the office of Wall Street broker David J. Thurston (Selmer Jackson). Soon afterward, Thurston apparently Read More

Federal Man

Actors: William Henry, Pamela Blake, Robert Shayne, Lyle Talbot, George Eldredge

Synopsis: Former juvenile star William Henry is the all-grown-up hero of Federal Man. Henry is cast as a government agent who dogs the trail of illegal narcotics peddlers. This requires several trips south of the US-Mexico border and back again. Scenes of startlingly vivid violence are counterpointed with Read More

Triple Trouble

Actors: Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Gabriel Dell, Richard Benedict

Synopsis: No good deed goes unpunished in the "Bowery Boys" entry Triple Trouble. When Slip (Leo Gorcey), Sach (Huntz Hall) and the rest of the Bowery Boys attempt to stop a robbery, it is they who wind up in prison. Once behind bars, the boys learn of an escape plan, but when they try to relay this Read More

Angels in Disguise

Synopsis: The 15th film in the Bowery Boys series, Angels in Disguise combines lowbrow humor with "film noir" melodramatics. Bowery boys Slip (Leo Gorcey) and Sach (Huntz Hall) are copy boys for a crusading newspaper, whose publisher (Ray Walker) is trying to crush the notorious "Loop Gang". When the boys' Read More

Sword in the Desert

Actors: Dana Andrews, Märta Torén, Stephen McNally, Jeff Chandler, Phillip Friend

Synopsis: Sword in the Desert is set in Palestine during World War II. Dana Andrews plays an American seaman engaged in smuggling European Jewish refugees into the Holy Land, despite the restrictions levied by the British occupation troops. Fifth-billed Jeff Chandler makes his movie debut as an Israeli Read More

City Across the River

Actors: Stephen McNally, Thelma Ritter, Luis Van Rooten, Jeff Corey, Sharon McManus, Tony Curtis

Synopsis: This slightly bowdlerized version of Irving Shulman's The Amboy Dukes was used by Universal-International to showcase several of its new male contractees. Set in the slums of Brooklyn, the film follows the exploits of the Amboy Dukes, a teenaged street gang. Foremost among the Dukes is Frank Read More