Ray SerraFilmography

Deadline for Murder: From the Files of Edna Buchanan

The Silence of the Hams

Actors: Dom DeLuise, Ezio Greggio, Billy Zane, Joanna Pacula, Charlene Tilton, Martin Balsam

Synopsis: In the tradition of Mel Brooks, this Italian comedy offers an episodic parody of classic thrillers and horror movies. Film includes cameos from several stars including Mel Brooks, John Astin, Larry Storch, Phyllis Diller, John Carpenter, and John Landis. The story begins as director Ezio Greggio Read More

Sugar Hill

Actors: Wesley Snipes, Michael Wright, Theresa Randle, Clarence Williams III, Abe Vigoda

Synopsis: Wesley Snipes and Michael Wright play druglord brothers who have a mob-like crime empire in the Sugar Hill section of Harlem. Through flashbacks, we see how Roemello Skuggs (Snipes) and Raynathan Skuggs (Wright) entered the drug culture, with Raynathan helping his mother inject heroin. She died Read More

Murder, She Wrote: Lone Witness

Synopsis: Having just wrapped up four seasons of Doogie Howser MD, Neil Patrick Harris appears in this episode as delivery boy Tommy Ramsen. Having been found kneeling at the body of a murdered woman, Tommy claims that he merely witnessed the crime--and that he himself was shot by the killer. The police Read More

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze

Actors: Paige Turco, David Warner, Ernie Reyes, Jr., Michelan Sisti, François Chau, Kenn Troum, Leif Tilden

Synopsis: The crime-fighting Turtles -- Michaelangelo (Michelan Sisti), Donatello (Leif Tilden), Raphael (Kenn Troum), and Leonardo (Mark Caso) -- return in this quickly made sequel to the popular superheroes' first film. The story concerns arch-enemy Shredder, who kidnaps nutty professor Jordan Perry David Warner Read More

Murphy Brown: Be It Ever So Humboldt

Synopsis: After ten years as "FYI"'s perennial runner-up, Frank (Joe Regalbuto) finally wins the coveted Humboldt Award. The honor causes his chest to swell with pride--right along with his ego, which expands to impossible proportions. Before long, Frank is summarily rejecting news assignments that are "not Read More

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie

Actors: Judith Hoag, Elias Koteas, Josh Pais, Ray Serra, Michelan Sisti, Michael Turney, James Saito, Leif Tilden

Synopsis: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie is the live-action, feature film adaptation of the cult comic book and the popular animated television show. After prolonged exposure to radiation, four teenage turtles--Michelangelo, Raphael, Leonardo, and Donatello--have mutated into ninjas and have begun Read More

Persistence of Vision, Vol. 1: Monitoring the Media

Nasty Hero

Synopsis: In this actioner, an innocent man is framed and imprisoned for car theft. Six months later he is released and out for vengeance. Car chases and violence ensues. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Persistence of Vision, Vol. 2: Outside the Lines

Persistence of Vision, Vol. 3: New Narrative

A Time to Remember

Actors: Donald O'Connor, Ray Serra, Ruben Gomez

Synopsis: Reminiscing, a famous crooner remembers the miracle that launched his career after he lost his ability to sing. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Forever, Lulu

Actors: Hanna Schygulla, Deborah Harry, Alec Baldwin, Annie Golden, Paul Gleason

Synopsis: In this comedy, a young German woman named Elaine Hines (Hanna Schygulla) moves to New York City with dreams of becoming a writer. Elaine becomes entangled in a mystery and falls in with a group of gangsters who lead her through a series of crazy adventures. Released on video under the title Crazy Read More

La Vallée fantôme

Actors: Jean-Louis Trintignant, Laura Morante, Caroline Cartier, Ray Serra

Synopsis: This uneven drama concerns the efforts of an aspiring filmmaker to include an unwilling female in his production. Paul (Jean-Louis Trintignant) finds difficulty deciding on a location for his film and angrily throws out his script. Jean (Jacob Berger) is the film student who is sent by Paul to Read More

Alone in the Neon Jungle

Actors: Georg Stanford Brown

Synopsis: Directed by onetime Rookies co-star Georg Stanford Brown, Alone in the Neon Jungle has all the earmarks of a TV pilot film-albeit a better-than-usual example of the genre. Suzanne Pleshette plays a no-nonsense police captain, assigned to the town's most corrupt police district. In attempting to 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

Stone Pillow

Actors: Lucille Ball, Daphne Zuniga

Synopsis: The ads for The Stone Pillow tended to suggest that this TV movie was Lucille Ball's dramatic debut--completely ignoring the fact that Ball had started out as a "straight" actress in the 1930s who only occasionally played comedy until I Love Lucy came along. Whatever the case, the Ball we see in Read More

The Purple Rose of Cairo

Actors: Mia Farrow, Jeff Daniels, Danny Aiello, Dianne Wiest, Van Johnson

Synopsis: Woody Allen blurs the the boundaries between the real and unreal in this unique comic fantasy. The scene is a small town in the mid-1930s. Trapped in a dead-end job and an abusive marriage, Cecelia (Mia Farrow) regularly seeks refuge in the local movie house. She becomes so enraptured by the Read More

Prizzi's Honor

Actors: Jack Nicholson, Kathleen Turner, Anjelica Huston, William Hickey, Robert Loggia

Synopsis: Richard Condon's delicious black comedy was lovingly translated to the screen by legendary director John Huston in one of his last movies. The Prizzis are a powerful family of mobsters, as devoted to their code of honor as they are to bending laws and breaking skulls. Charley Partanna (Jack Nicholson Read More

Alphabet City

Actors: Vincent Spano, Michael Winslow, Jami Gertz, Ray Serra

Synopsis: This stylishly photographed drama is set in the Lower East Side area known as "Alphabet City." There 19-year-oldJohnny has become a drug lord in charge of the neighborhood gangs and pushers. Unfortunately, he too has a boss and when he asks Johnny to burn down the tenement building that houses his 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

Splitz

Actors: Robin Johnson, Patti R. Lee, Chuck McQuary, Barbara Bingham, Shirley Stoler

Synopsis: The members of an all-girl rock band, hoping to make it big, team up with the members of a sorority house to beat boys at a number of sporting events in order to keep their house from folding. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide 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

Bill

Actors: Mickey Rooney

Synopsis: This Emmy-winning made-for-TV movie, based on a book by Oscar-winning screenwriter Barry Morrow (from his true story), stars Mickey Rooney in the title role of a mentally-challenged adult who has spent his life holed up in a bleak institution. When documentary filmmaker Morrow (Dennis Quaid) and Read More

Wolfen

Actors: Albert Finney, Diane Venora, Edward James Olmos, Gregory Hines, Tom Noonan

Synopsis: Wolfen, a frightening horror movie based upon a novel by Whitley Strieber, is an absorbing update on the werewolf legend. Detective Dewey Wilson (Albert Finney) is assigned to investigate the strange murder of a millionaire and his wife in a downtown park. Wilson and his friend, city coroner Read More

Arthur

Actors: Dudley Moore, Liza Minnelli, John Gielgud, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Jill Eikenberry

Synopsis: The ads for Arthur suggested that this was an obnoxious film about an obnoxious man, an eternally drunken millionaire indulging his every whim. Instead, Arthur (Dudley Moore) is a sweet, somewhat pathetic character whose millions have left him lonely and with no motivation in life. When the film Read More

Hardhat and Legs

Actors: Ruth Gordon

Synopsis: Made for television and initially telecast February 9, 1980, Hardhat and Legs is a new-fashioned romance from the old-fashioned writing team of Garson Kanin and Ruth Gordon. The "hardhat" is pugnacious construction worker Kevin Dobson. The "legs" is Sharon Gless, a high-class NY divorcee who Read More

Manhattan

Actors: Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Michael Murphy, Mariel Hemingway, Meryl Streep

Synopsis: On the heels of Annie Hall, the Oscar-winning romantic comedy that rocketed Woody Allen to the front ranks of American filmmakers, Manhattan continued Allen's romantic obsessions in a slightly darker, more pessimistic vein. Allen stars as Isaac Davis, a TV comedy writer sick of the pap he is Read More

Voices

Actors: Michael Ontkean, Amy Irving, Alex Rocco, Viveca Lindfors, Barry Miller

Synopsis: Amy Irving plays a deaf woman whose ambition is to become a professional dancer in this drama. Rosemarie Lemon is unhappy with the support she is getting from her family for her dreams. She meets a sensitive truck driver, Drew Rothman (Michael Ontkean), and they become lovers. Rothman's family is Read More

Kojak: I Was Happy Where I Was

Synopsis: Lt. Kojak (Telly Savalas) assigns Enrique Alvarez (Tony Diaz), a police officer of Puerto Rican descent, to work undercover in his old neighborhood. Alvarez's job is to investigate reports of a murder-extortion ring operating in the vicinity. Eventually, the young cop uncovers a scheme to play one Read More

Contract on Cherry Street

Actors: Frank Sinatra, Martin Balsam, Verna Bloom, Harry Guardino, Henry Silva

Synopsis: Contract on Cherry Street represented Frank Sinatra's TV movie debut--an event deemed worthy of a TV Guide cover story. Sinatra plays NYPD veteran Deputy Inspector Frank Hovannes, in charge of a special unit set up to battle organized crime. The murder of Hovannes' partner, coupled with Read More

Hooch

Synopsis: A family of Southern moonshiners is the target of New York mobsters in this film from Edward Mann. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide Read More

Marathon Man

Actors: Dustin Hoffman, Laurence Olivier, Roy Scheider, William Devane, Marthe Keller

Synopsis: Doc Levy (Roy Scheider) is an American secret agent who has been running interference between the U.S. government and escaped Nazi war criminal Szell (Laurence Olivier). Believing that Doc has stolen a valuable cache of gems, Szell emerges from his South American hiding place and heads for New Read More

The Gambler

Actors: Starletta DePaur, James Caan, Paul Sorvino, Lauren Hutton, Morris Carnovsky, Jacqueline Brookes

Synopsis: James Toback made his screenwriting debut with this taut drama, loosely adapted from the story by Dostoevsky. Axel Freed (James Caan) is an intelligent and well-respected professor of literature at a noted New York university, who uses great writing as a springboard for examining moral and Read More