Richard Lester Filmography

Paul McCartney: Get Back

Crew: Director

Actors: Paul McCartney

Synopsis: Richard Lester, who directed A Hard Day's Night and Help!, was the man behind the cameras for this documentary look at Paul McCartney's 1989-1990 world tour. McCartney and his band perform 20 songs spanning Macca's solo career as well as his years with the Beatles, including "Band on the Run," Read More

The Return of the Musketeers

Crew: Director

Actors: Michael York, Oliver Reed, Frank Finlay, C. Thomas Howell, Richard Chamberlain, Kim Cattrall

Synopsis: Richard Lester returned to his double-barreled successes of the 1970s, The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers, with Return of the Musketeers, a film that was inexplicably shelved for several years, making its belated premiere on cable television. Based on Alexandre Dumas's novel Twenty Years Read More

Finders Keepers

Crew: Director, Executive Producer, Producer

Actors: Michael O'Keefe, Beverly D'Angelo, Louis Gossett, Jr., Ed Lauter, David Wayne

Synopsis: In this slapstick chase-adventure, some unlikely heroes try to outwit each other for possession of a huge stash of cash hidden on the train they are all riding together. The comedy is a little uneven here or at least not to everyone's taste, and the pace is fast-forward frantic. Josef (Ed Lauter) Read More

Superman III

Crew: Director

Actors: Christopher Reeve, Richard Pryor, Jackie Cooper, Marc McClure, Annette O'Toole, Annie Ross

Synopsis: In a major departure from the tone of the preceding two Superman adventure films, this mix of vile deeds and fantasy heroics drops the "S" out of cosmic and goes for comic instead. Right at the starting gate, Gus Gorman (Richard Pryor) and a subsequent slapstick sequence upstage (Christopher Reeves Read More

Superman II

Crew: Director

Actors: Christopher Reeve, Gene Hackman, Margot Kidder, Ned Beatty, Jackie Cooper, Terence Stamp

Synopsis: Between giving up his super powers, confronting criminals from outer space, and having problems with his girlfriend, it's a bad time to be the Man of Steel in this sequel to the 1978 blockbuster. When terrorists threaten to destroy Paris with a thermonuclear device as they hold reporter Lois Lane (Margot Kidder Read More

Butch and Sundance: The Early Days

Crew: Director

Actors: William Katt, Tom Berenger, Brian Dennehy, John Schuck, Peter Weller, Michael Gwynne, Jeff Corey

Synopsis: This "prequel" to the Newman/Redford vehicle Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was written by TV sitcom veteran Allan Burns and stars Tom Berenger as Butch and William Katt as Sundance. The film, per its title, traces the formative days of Butch and Sundance's careers as soft-hearted western Read More

Cuba

Crew: Director

Actors: Sean Connery, Brooke Adams, Jack Weston, Hector Elizondo, Chris Sarandon, Denholm Elliott

Synopsis: In director Richard Lester's Cuba, Sean Connery plays British soldier-of-fortune Robert Dapes, sent to Havana during the last days of the Batista regime. He is supposed to train Batista's soldiers for their upcoming confrontations with Castro's followers. As Dapes becomes increasingly sympathetic Read More

Robin and Marian

Crew: Director

Actors: Sean Connery, Audrey Hepburn, Robert Shaw, Richard Harris, Nicol Williamson

Synopsis: Though the story told in Robin and Marian is unfamiliar to most audiences, it is actually quite faithful to several of the ancient Robin Hood legends. During the Crusades, Robin (Sean Connery) is still loyal to King Richard the Lionheart (Richard Harris), but even he has trouble adjusting to the Read More

The Ritz

Crew: Director

Actors: Jack Weston, Rita Moreno, Jerry Stiller, Kaye Ballard, F. Murray Abraham

Synopsis: With The Ritz, Terrence McNally's hit Broadway play of the same name is cinematized by director Richard Lester. Jack Weston plays Gaetano Proclo, a minor mob flunky who's been targeted for elimination by his brother-in-law, Carmine Vespucci (Jerry Stiller). Gaetano takes refuge in what he thinks Read More

Royal Flash

Crew: Director

Actors: Malcolm McDowell, Alan Bates, Florinda Bolkan, Oliver Reed, Britt Ekland

Synopsis: Novelist George MacDonald Fraser penned the script for this swashbuckling, picaresque adventure tale. The story is based on one of the books in his "Harry Flashman" series, loose sequels to "Tom Brown's Schooldays" that followed that story's central bully character through his checkered Read More

The Four Musketeers

Crew: Director

Actors: Oliver Reed, Raquel Welch, Richard Chamberlain, Michael York, Frank Finlay

Synopsis: This comic interpretation of Alexandre Dumas's classic adventure saga picks up where 1974's The Three Musketeers left off, as D'Artagnan (Michael York), Athos (Oliver Reed), Aramis (Richard Chamberlain), and Porthos (Frank Finlay) scuttle the plans of Lady de Winter (Faye Dunaway) to remove Queen Read More

Juggernaut

Crew: Director

Actors: Richard Harris, Omar Sharif, David Hemmings, Anthony Hopkins, Shirley Knight

Synopsis: Following his successful foray into swashbuckler comedy with The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers, director Richard Lester made what has proved to be one of the few quality films from the disaster craze that dominated filmmaking in the mid-'70s. Juggernaut is the pseudonym of a madman (Freddie Jones Read More

The Three Musketeers

Crew: Director

Actors: Oliver Reed, Charlton Heston, Raquel Welch, Faye Dunaway, Richard Chamberlain, Frank Finlay, Michael York

Synopsis: Richard Lester's adaptation of The Three Musketeers was only the latest of many when released in 1974, but it arrived with a spirit all its own, one influenced as much by Lester's '60s work as the Alexandre Dumas classic. Even so, it followed the plot of Dumas' novel fairly closely, its liberties Read More

The Bed Sitting Room

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Rita Tushingham, Ralph Richardson, Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Spike Milligan

Synopsis: The specter of atomic warfare raises its head once again in this bizarre 1969 black comedy, directed by Richard Lester and hatched from the mind of twisted British comic Spike Milligan. England lays in ruins after World War III, and a number of dazed survivors try to carry on as if nothing is Read More

Petulia

Crew: Director

Actors: Julie Christie, George C. Scott, Richard Chamberlain, Arthur Hill, Shirley Knight

Synopsis: Petulia is Richard Lester's ode to the Swinging Sixties: a time of psychedelic instability when neither those who were square, nor those who were hip, really had it right. George C. Scott is Archie Bollen, a divorced San Francisco doctor in the midst of "discovering himself." Julie Christie is Read More

Mondo Teeno

Crew: Director

How I Won the War

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Michael Crawford, John Lennon, Roy Kinnear, Lee Montague, Jack MacGowran

Synopsis: Among the first of the late 60s anti-war films that reflected growing concern over the Vietnam War, How I Won the War takes a cold, dark look at the Good War, World War II. In adapting Patrick Ryan's 1963 novel, screenwriter Charles Wood and director Richard Lester offered a narrative fractured by Read More

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum

Crew: Director

Actors: Zero Mostel, Phil Silvers, Buster Keaton, Jack Gilford, Michael Crawford

Synopsis: Director Richard Lester uses the Burt Shevelove/Larry Gelbart/Stephen Sondheim Broadway musical hit as a launching pad for some of his wildest slapstick gaggery. Zero Mostel repeats his stage role as Pseudolus, the cunning Roman slave who'll do anything to win his freedom. The plot hinges on three Read More

The Knack ... And How to Get It

Crew: Director

Actors: Rita Tushingham, Ray Brooks, Michael Crawford, Donal Donnelly, John Bluthal

Synopsis: Colin (Michael Crawford, who much later won a Tony Award for his role in Broadway's Phantom of the Opera) is an uptight schoolteacher whose housemate, Tolen (Ray Brooks) is a consummate womanizer. Colin imagines a long line of young women in tight white sweaters on his stairwell, waiting to get Read More

Help!

Crew: Director

Actors: The Beatles, Leo McKern

Synopsis: In their second feature with director Richard Lester, who oversaw the massive hit A Hard Day's Night, the Beatles again aim for a mix of goofy comedy and sterling pop music. There is slightly more of a plot this time, though it is a patently ridiculous one: a sacred ruby ring comes into Ringo's Read More

The Mouse on the Moon

Crew: Director

Actors: Margaret Rutherford, Bernard Cribbins, Ron Moody, David Kossoff, Terry-Thomas

Synopsis: From Richard Lester, the director of 1980's Superman II and the 1964 A Hard Day's Night, comes this less-successful sequel to the The Mouse that Roared. The Prime Minister of the Duchy of Grand Fenwick (Ron Moody) is in a bind because he has no money to renovate his castle and there is a serious Read More

It's Trad, Dad!

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Helen Shapiro, Craig Douglas, Timothy Bateson, Felix Felton, Frank Thornton

Synopsis: The youthful residents of a small British town stand united in their struggle to be allowed to listen to rock & roll and jazz in this comical musical. The trouble really begins when the village mayor tries to ban the jukebox in the local coffee house. Determined to prove that modern music has Read More

The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film

Crew: Cinematographer, Composer (Music Score), Director, Editor, Screenwriter

A Show Called Fred [TV Series]

Crew: Director, Producer

Synopsis: Goon Show stalwart Spike Milligan was the prime mover behind the pioneering BBC sketch-comedy series A Show Called Fred. An outgrowth of the earlier The Idiot Weekly Price 2d, A Show Called Fred went even further in its pursuit of irreverent, non sequitur humor. Reportedly, this series introduced Read More