Warren Oates Filmography

Blue Thunder

Actors: Roy Scheider, Malcolm McDowell, Warren Oates, Candy Clark, Daniel Stern

Synopsis: Ex-Vietnam chopper pilot Roy Scheider is now in charge of Blue Thunder, a high-tech copter designed to quell possible terrorism during the 1984 LA Olympics. His onetime comrade-in-arms Malcolm McDowell, now his bitter enemy, will stop at nothing to neutralize Blue Thunder and expedite an armed Read More

Tough Enough

Actors: Dennis Quaid, Carlene Watkins, Stan Shaw, Pam Grier, Warren Oates

Synopsis: In this sports-oriented drama, Art Long (Dennis Quaid), a loser as a country singer, starts competing in local fist-fight matches in order to bring home a little extra cash -- and is caught up in his successes enough to continue on to the big national finals. Predictable from the first round Read More

The Blue and the Gray

Actors: Lloyd Bridges, Colleen Dewhurst, Stacy Keach, Gregory Peck, Robert Vaughn

Synopsis: Originally networkcast in three installments, the 8-hour Blue and the Gray is a sprawling adaptation of a story concept by Civil War historian Bruce Catton. The drama begins in 1859, with young war correspondent-to-be John Hammond meeting future Union officer Stacy Keach at the trial of Read More

The Border

Actors: Jack Nicholson, Harvey Keitel, Valerie Perrine, Warren Oates, Elpidia Carrillo

Synopsis: Tom Jones director Tony Richardson might seem a curious choice to direct the contemporary western The Border, but he does his best to emulate Sam Peckinpah. Jack Nicholson stars as an El Paso border guard, saddled with avaricious wife Valerie Perrine. Hoping to stifle her nagging about money Read More

East of Eden

Synopsis: The 1955 film version of John Steinbeck's East of Eden will always be popular because of the presence in the cast of James Dean. Even so, the film covered only a small portion of the original novel. For those Steinbeck completists who prefer a more thorough treatment, we submit for your approval Read More

Stripes

Actors: Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, Warren Oates, P.J. Soles, Sean Young, John Candy

Synopsis: Bill Murray decides to be all that he can be -- and it ain't pretty -- in this hit comedy. John Winger (Murray) is a quick-witted but unambitious loser who comes home after getting fired to discover that his car has been repossessed and his girlfriend is leaving him. With no idea of what to do Read More

Baby Comes Home

Actors: Colleen Dewhurst, Warren Oates

Synopsis: The sequel to the popular 1979 TV movie And Baby Makes Six, Baby Comes Home reteams Colleen Dewhurst and Warren Oates as middle-agers who find themselves the parents of a newborn child. The first film dealt with the impact of the 47-year-old mother's unexpected pregnancy on her three grown Read More

Prime Time

Synopsis: This satirical comedy answers the question "What would happen to television if the censors took a day off?" ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

My Old Man

Actors: Eileen Brennan, Kristy McNichol, Warren Oates

Synopsis: My Old Man was adapted from Ernest Hemingway's short story of the same name by Jerome Kass. Hemingway's story told of a down-on-his-luck horse trainer who is given a second chance at making something of his life by his son. This made-for-TV version changed the son to a daughter, played by Kristy McNichol Read More

And Baby Makes Six

Actors: Colleen Dewhurst, Timothy Hutton

Synopsis: Middle-aged Colleen Dewhurst shocks her family-and herself-when she announces she is pregnant. Partly out of concern for her health, and partly out of selfishness, the family argues over whether or not she should go to term. Husband Pat Hingle is indecisive until he witness the baby's development Read More

1941

Actors: Dan Aykroyd, Ned Beatty, John Belushi, Lorraine Gary, Murray Hamilton, Toshiro Mifune, Christopher Lee, Nancy Allen

Synopsis: It's December of 1941, and the people of California are in varying states of unease, ranging from a sincere desire to defend the country to virtual blind panic in the wake of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Thus begin several story threads that comprise the "plot" of this strange period Read More

The Brink's Job

Actors: Peter Falk, Peter Boyle, Warren Oates, Gena Rowlands

Synopsis: In 1950, a Brink's armored truck in Boston was robbed by a highly organized gang decked out in Halloween masks. The Brink's Job is an occasionally humorous account of that "perfect crime." Peter Falk stars as the mastermind behind the robbery, who assembles a bunch of two-bit hoods who in any Read More

True Grit

Synopsis: The 1978 series pilot True Grit is based on the 1969 John Wayne film of the same name. Warren Oates brings his own characteristic touches to the old Wayne role of Rooster Cogburn, the "one-eyed fat man" (now a one-eyed thin man with a beard) who agrees to help headstrong orphaned teenage girl Read More

Black Beauty, Part 2

Synopsis: The locale of Anna Sewell's 1906 novel Black Beauty was changed from England to Maryland in this five-part TV miniseries. Still, the script adheres to the basic chronology of the Sewell original. In Part One the wife of incapacitated farmer Tom Gray sells the frisky colt Black Beauty. In Part Two Read More

Day of Terror, Night of Fear

Synopsis: In this entry from the "Police Story" series of police dramas, bank robbers have taken five hostages in a besieged skyscraper. It is up to the SWAT negotiator to see to their safe release. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

China 9, Liberty 37

Actors: Fabio Testi, Warren Oates, Jenny Agutter, Sam Peckinpah, Isabel Mestres

Synopsis: China 9, Liberty 37 falls halfway between the Hollywood backlot-western school and the Italian "spaghetti" western genre, borrowing the best elements from both. Fabio Testi plays a gunfighter who is saved at the last moment from a hangman's noose. His liberators are a cartel of railroad men who Read More

Sleeping Dogs

Actors: Sam Neill, Bernard Kearns, Nevan Rowe, Ian Mune, Ian Watkin

Synopsis: Director Roger Donaldson's directorial debut was also a breakthrough film for New Zealand filmmakers, being the first film from New Zealand to open in the United States. Sam Neill stars as a man named Smith who lives in a near future of economic collapse in New Zealand. Smith is a husband who Read More

Prime Time

Synopsis: In this drama, a mysterious group of political rebels seize the controls of a national television network. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

The African Queen

Synopsis: In 1963, The Dick Powell Theatre aired an hour-long episode titled "Safari", starring James Coburn as a scruffy steamboat captain and Glynis Johns as an English missionary. What this really was was a pilot for a TV series based on the 1951 Humphrey Bogart- Katharine Hepburn film classic The Read More

Dixie Dynamite

Actors: Kathy McHaley

Synopsis: Two sisters (Jane Johnstone, Kathy McHaley) seek vengeance when they are evicted from their farmhouse and a gunslinging sheriff shoots down their moonshining father. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide Read More

Drum

Actors: Warren Oates, Isela Vega, Ken Norton, Pam Grier, Yaphet Kotto

Synopsis: It is hard to get more deliriously fever-pitched than the ending of Mandingo -- in which a plantation master is shot and his main slave gets boiled in oil -- but Drum (Mandingo's mangy sequel) certainly tries. Hammond Maxwell (Warren Oates), the late slave-owner's son (from Mandingo), is trying to 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

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

The White Dawn

Actors: Akshooyooliak, Namonai Ashoona, Atcheelak, Higa Ipeelie, Oolipika Joamie, Meetook Mallee, Neelak, Seemee Nookiguak, Jacob Partridge, Sagiaktok, Aupalotak Simonee, Warren Oates, Timothy Bottoms, Louis Gossett, Jr., Simonie Kopapik, Joanasie Salomonie

Synopsis: Director Philip Kaufman took his production of Eskimo life to actual locations in the Arctic Circle, making it only the third film in history (after Nanook of the North and Eskimo) to shoot there. Kaufman also employs authentic Eskimo dialect in the film, which adds a heightened bit of realism. Read More

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia

Actors: Warren Oates, Isela Vega, Gig Young, Robert Webber, Helmut Dantine

Synopsis: Wealthy Mexican Emilio Fernandez puts a million-dollar bounty on the head of Alfredo Garcia, who has seduced and knocked up Fernandez's daughter. Trouble is, Alfredo Garcia is already dead and buried. Barkeep Bennie (Warren Oates) is appointed by two of Fernandez's hit men (Robert Webber and Gig Young Read More

Cockfighter

Actors: Warren Oates, Richard B. Shull, Harry Dean Stanton, Troy Donahue, Millie Perkins

Synopsis: Frank Mansfield (Warren Oates) is a game cock trainer who has taken a vow of silence; he once bragged too loudly about his cockfighting prowess and ended up losing his best fowl in a drunken, late-night match before an important tournament. To regain his pride after such hubris, Frank refuses to Read More

Tom Sawyer

Actors: Johnny Whitaker, Celeste Holm, Warren Oates, Jeff East, Jodie Foster

Synopsis: Mark Twain's classic tale is brought to the screen for the fourth time, this time with a tuneful score by Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman, who also wrote the screen adaptation. Johnny Whitaker stars as Tom Sawyer, with Jeff East in his first film role as Huck Finn. Jodie Foster is also on Read More

Dillinger

Actors: Warren Oates, Ben Johnson, Michelle Phillips, Cloris Leachman, Harry Dean Stanton

Synopsis: John Milius's first directorial effort in its own small way set the stage in the 1970s for a subgenre of action films that depict a nostalgia for historical figures tinged with a hard-edged skepticism. Warren Oates stars as John Dillinger, whose short-lived career as Public Enemy No.1 was, at Read More

The Thief Who Came to Dinner

Actors: Ryan O'Neal, Jacqueline Bisset, Warren Oates, Jill Clayburgh, Charles Cioffi

Synopsis: Bud Yorkin directed this middling comedy, written by Walter Hill from a novel by Terrence Lore Smith. Ryan O'Neal plays a computer expert named Webster, who alleviates on-the-job doldrums by moonlighting as a successful jewel thief. Webster invites himself to upscale soirees, where he cases out Read More

Badlands

Actors: Martin Sheen, Sissy Spacek, Warren Oates, Alan Vint, Ramon Bieri

Synopsis: "He wanted to die with me and I dreamed of being lost forever in his arms." A young couple goes on a Midwest crime spree in Terrence Malick's hypnotically assured debut feature, based on the 1950s Starkweather-Fugate murders. Fancying himself a rebel like James Dean, twentysomething Kit (Martin Sheen Read More

Kid Blue

Synopsis: In this western set at the turn-of-the-century, an outlaw finds himself at one of life's crossroads as he must decide whether to go straight or continue a life of crime. After bungling a train robbery he decides he should go straight and settle down. He chooses the town of Dime Box, Texas. There Read More

Two-Lane Blacktop

Actors: James Taylor, Warren Oates, Laurie Bird, Dennis Wilson, David Drake, Harry Dean Stanton

Synopsis: A '55 Chevy takes on a '70 GTO in a race across the Southwest in Monte Hellman's cult favorite. The Driver (James Taylor) and the Mechanic (Dennis Wilson) phlegmatically slouch from race to race, pitting their gray Chevy against any and all gearheads in order to make money for gas and food. They Read More

The Showdown

Synopsis: A famous gunfight is chronicled in this lively western. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Chandler

Synopsis: In this murder mystery, a private investigator falls for the former mistress of a racketeer who is slated to be a witness for the state. He is supposed to be quietly guarding her. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

The F.B.I.: The Turnabout

Synopsis: Warren Oates guest stars as Richie Billings, a professional thief who ends up the only survivor of a bloody armored car robbery. As he escapes to Canada with $50,000 in stolen money, Billings undergoes a radical personality change--and it may not be for the better. It is up to the FBI's Inspector Read More

The Hired Hand

Actors: Peter Fonda, Warren Oates, Verna Bloom, Robert Pratt, Severn Darden

Synopsis: Meeting largely mixed reviews during its first run in 1971, counterculture icon Peter Fonda's directorial debut was restored and remastered for its 30-year anniversary. The film opens with three drifters greeting the morning by cavorting in a sun-dabbled mountain river. Harry Collings (Fonda) Read More

The Reluctant Heroes

Synopsis: In this war drama, things are looking quite hopeless for a besieged regiment under enemy attack. It is their commanders knowledge of history that ultimately saves them. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

The Movie Murderer

Synopsis: Nostalgia is selling angle of this made-for-TV suspenser. Someone is going around breaking into movie vaults and setting precious tins of rare film ablaze. An insurance investigator and a detective investigate this seemingly pointless crime. As it turns out, the "movie murderer" is an extortionist Read More

There Was a Crooked Man

Actors: Kirk Douglas, Henry Fonda, Hume Cronyn, Warren Oates, Burgess Meredith

Synopsis: An offbeat 1970s black-comic Western with an all-star cast, this Joseph L. Mankiewicz film is set in 1883 in Arizona. Paris Pitman, Jr. (Kirk Douglas) is the leader of a band of outlaws that steals $500,000 from a wealthy businessman named Lomax (Arthur O'Connell). The other gang members die in a Read More

Barquero

Actors: Lee Van Cleef, Forrest Tucker, Warren Oates, Kerwin Mathews, Mariette Hartley

Synopsis: Lee Van Cleef plays a fiercely independent river ferryman in the Old West. Bandit Warren Oates, fresh from decimating a local town, rides up with his gang and demands that Van Cleef transport the crooks and their booty across the river. He refuses, and is taken prisoner. Biding his time, Van Cleef Read More

Crooks and Coronets

Actors: Telly Savalas, Edith Evans, Warren Oates, Cesar Romero, Harry H. Corbett

Synopsis: Herbie Hassler (Telly Savalas) and Marty Miller (Warren Oates) are American gangsters who plan to rob an opulent aristocratic home of valuable art treasures. Under the orders of crime boss Nick Marco (Cesar Romero), the duo charms Lady Fitzmore (Edith Evans), a wealthy dowager and proprietress of Read More

The Wild Bunch

Actors: William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan, Edmond O'Brien, Warren Oates

Synopsis: "If they move, kill 'em!" Beginning and ending with two of the bloodiest battles in screen history, Sam Peckinpah's classic revisionist Western ruthlessly takes apart the myths of the West. Released in the late '60s discord over Vietnam, in the wake of the controversial Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and Read More

Smith!

Actors: Glenn Ford, Nancy Olson, Dean Jagger, Keenan Wynn, Warren Oates

Synopsis: One of the better Disney features of the late 1960s, Smith relies not upon humanized Volkswagens or singing bears but on the considerable talents of its cast. Glenn Ford stars as Smith, a tenacious modern-day rancher who comes to the aid of a fugitive Native American boy (Frank Ramirez). When a Read More

The Split

Actors: Jim Brown, Diahann Carroll, Julie Harris, Ernest Borgnine, Gene Hackman

Synopsis: A pair of crooks conspire to rob the ticket booth at the Los Angeles Coliseum during a Rams game. Before they can perform the heist, the two must find precisely the right henchmen to join them. Each potential gang member must undergo a rigorous test of skill. Thanks to care and precise planning Read More

The Mystery of Edward Sims

Synopsis: The Mystery of Edward Sims is based on one of the many "Gallegher" stories by Richard Harding Davis. Roger Mobley stars as Gallegher, a turn-of-the-century teenaged newspaper reporter. Gallegher tries to use his journalistic knowhow to help a Cornish immigrant accused of murder. Once this is taken Read More

Something for a Lonely Man

Synopsis: Dan Blocker made his first non-Bonanza appearance in nine years in the 1968 TV movie Something for a Lonely Man. Blocker plays a blacksmith, John Killibrew, who leads several Easterners to a boomtown in the High Sierras -- only to discover that the town is slated for extinction because the Read More

In the Heat of the Night

Actors: Sidney Poitier, Rod Steiger, Warren Oates, Lee Grant, James Patterson, Scott Wilson

Synopsis: The winner of the 1967 Oscar for Best Picture (as well as four other Oscars), In the Heat of the Night is set in a small Mississippi town where an unusual murder has been committed. Rod Steiger plays sheriff Bill Gillespie, a good lawman despite his racial prejudices. When Virgil Tibbs (Sidney Poitier Read More

Welcome to Hard Times

Actors: Henry Fonda, Janice Rule, Keenan Wynn, Janis Paige, John Anderson, Warren Oates

Synopsis: Long before he scored with the epic Ragtime, novelist E.L. Doctorow wrote a minor novel upon which this stark 1967 film is based. It was adapted for the screen by veteran western director Burt Kennedy. In a forlorn town called Hard Times in the Old West, a cowardly mayor, Will Blue (Henry Fonda) Read More

The Shooting

Actors: Warren Oates, Will Hutchins, Millie Perkins, Jack Nicholson

Synopsis: Director Monte Hellman used his beloved "hunter as hunted" theme for his near-existential western The Shooting. Jack Nicholson and Warren Oates are starred in this bare-bones tale of an ex-bounty hunter (Oates) with a price on his head and the cocky young gun (Nicholson) who hopes to collect. The Read More

Cimarron Strip: Battleground

Return of the Magnificent Seven

Actors: Yul Brynner, Robert Fuller, Julián Mateos, Warren Oates, Jordan Christopher, Claude Akins

Synopsis: The first of two sequels to The Magnificent Seven (1960), this bloody western featured only Yul Brynner from the original picture's all-star cast. Once again, the residents of a pastoral Mexican village become enslaved by a maniacal brute, this time the insane rancher Lorca (Emilio Fernandez), who Read More

Shenandoah

Actors: James Stewart, Doug McClure, Glenn Corbett, Patrick Wayne, Rosemary Forsyth

Synopsis: The year is 1863. Wealthy Virginia landowner Charlie Anderson (James Stewart), a man of peace despite his autocratic behavior, steadfastly refuses to take sides in the Civil War. Bit by bit, Anderson's isolationism--and his way of living--is torn apart.
Charlie's daughter, Jannie Anderson (Rosemary Forsyth Read More

Branded: Judge Not

Synopsis: Branded switches from black-and-white to color for its second season, which begins with this taut, tense "Mexican Standoff" yarn. Still roaming the west in hopes of proving that he was not a coward at the battle of Bitter Creek, Jason McCord (Chuck Connors) finds himself sharing a stagecoach ride Read More

Lost in Space: Welcome, Stranger

Synopsis: The first Lost in Space episode comprised entirely of "new" footage, with no stock shots from the original pilot film, is also the first to feature a guest star--in this case Warren Oates, cast as cowboy-turned-astronaut Jim Hapgood. Like the Robinson family, Hapgood has been stranded in space Read More

The Fugitive: Devil's Carnival

Synopsis: In Bayou country, Kimble (David Janssen) hitches a ride with Hanes McClure (Warren Oates), an obnoxious braggart who happens to be wanted by the authorities of a variety of crimes. Local police captain Charles Shafter (Philip Abbott) is grateful when Kimble subsequently helps him capture McClure 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

Mail Order Bride

Actors: Buddy Ebsen, Lois Nettleton, Warren Oates, Barbara Luna

Synopsis: Many viewers avoided Mail Order Bride upon its first release, assuming (thanks to MGM's shoddy promotional campaign) that the picture had been slapped together to capitalize on the popularity of Beverly Hillbillies star Buddy Ebsen. In truth, the film is an engaging and involving western drama Read More

The Outer Limits: The Mutant

Synopsis: In Volume 25 of a collection culled from the 1963-1965 science fiction anthology television series, a scientist on a remote world mutates into a vicious killer following a strange rainstorm. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide Read More

The Outer Limits: Behold, Eck!

Synopsis: In Volume 35 of a collection culled from the 1963-1965 science fiction anthology television series, a two-dimensional alien finds himself transported to Earth. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide Read More

The Twilight Zone: The 7th is Made Up of Phantoms

Actors: Randy Boone, Warren Oates, Robert Bray, Greg Morris

Synopsis: While on maneuvers near the site of Custer's Last Stand, a modern-day Army tank crew encounters evidence that they have travelled back in time. This evidence is largely gleaned from the crew's knowledge of the events leading up to the Custer debacle. The climax is inevitable -- but fascinating Read More

The Fugitive: Rat in a Corner

Synopsis: Working at a store under the alias "Dan Crowley", Kimble (David Janssen) is on hand when two-bit thief Herbie Grant (Warren Oates) is shot while holding up the place. Hiding out from the authorities, Herbie begs fellow fugitive Kimble to help clear him of other crimes of which he has been Read More