4 Movies Directed by Jack Smight

Harper

Harper

Basic Info:

Released Date:

1966-02-23

Languages:

English

Countries:

USA

Runtime:

121 min

Rated:

APPROVED

IMDB Ratings:

(5492 Reviews)

Director:

Jack Smight

Cast:

Writer:

William Goldman (screenplay)

Ross Macdonald (novel)

Fullplot:

Lew Harper is a Los Angeles based private investigator whose marriage to Susan Harper, who he still loves, is ending in imminent divorce since she can't stand being second fiddle to his work, which is always taking him away at the most inopportune of times. His latest client is tough talking and physically disabled Elaine Sampson, who wants him to find her wealthy husband, Ralph Sampson, missing now for twenty-four hours, ever since he disappeared at Van Nuys Airport after having just arrived from Vegas. No one seems to like Ralph, Elaine included. She believes he is cavorting with some woman, which to her would be more a fact than a problem. Harper got the case on the recommendation of the Sampsons' lawyer and Harper's personal friend, milquetoast Albert Graves, who is unrequitedly in love with Sampson's seductive daughter, Miranda Sampson. Miranda, who Harper later states throws herself at anything "pretty in pants", also has a decidedly cold relationship with her stepmother, Elaine. As Harper begins his investigation, he is often joined by one or two new sidekicks, Miranda, and/or Allan Taggert, Sampson's private pilot who was the last person to see him before his disappearance. Living on the Sampson estate, Allan is also Miranda's casual boyfriend who Harper coins "Beauty" because of his preppy good looks. They discover that Sampson has indeed been kidnapped as they receive a ransom note. As Harper follows leads, he ends up in the underbelly of Los Angeles society, which includes encounters with Betty Fraley, a junkie lounge singer, Fay Estabrook, an ex-movie ingènue now overweight alcoholic, and Claude, a religious cult leader. At each of Harper's stops, people seem to want to beat him up or worse kill him. The case takes a slight turn after they decide to pay the $500,000 ransom to see where it leads.

Kaleidoscope

Kaleidoscope

Basic Info:

Released Date:

1966-09-22

Languages:

English

Countries:

UK

Runtime:

103 min

IMDB Ratings:

(506 Reviews)

Director:

Jack Smight

Genres:

ComedyCrime

Cast:

Writer:

Robert Carrington

Jane-Howard Carrington

Fullplot:

Romantic comedy which has Barney Lincoln and Angel McGinnis as a pair of amorous adventurers in the gambling places of London and the Riviera. Barney Lincoln is a rambling gambling man who scores sensational wins at poker and chemin de fer because he has succeeded in marking the original plates for the backs of all the playing cards manufactured in a plant in Geneva and used in all the gambling joints in Europe. In his gambling depredation, Barney is spotted by Angel McGinnis, the daughter of a Scotland Yard Inspector 'Manny' McGinnis on the lookout for a man to do a job. The inspector enlists Barney's help in playing poker with a shady London character whom Scotland Yard wants to force to financial ruin.

No Way to Treat a Lady

No Way to Treat a Lady

Basic Info:

Released Date:

1968-03-20

Languages:

English

Countries:

USA

Runtime:

108 min

Rated:

UNRATED

IMDB Ratings:

7.1 (1355 Reviews)

Director:

Jack Smight

Cast:

Writer:

John Gay (screenplay)

William Goldman (based on the novel by)

Fullplot:

Christopher Gill is a psychotic killer who uses various disguises to trick and strangle his victims. Moe Brummel is a single and harassed New York City police detective who starts to get phone calls from the strangler and builds a strange alliance as a result. Kate Palmer is a swinging, hip tour guide who witnesses the strangler leaving her dead neighbor's apartment and sets her sights on the detective. Moe's live-in mother wishes her son would be a successful Jewish doctor like his big brother.

The Illustrated Man

The Illustrated Man

Basic Info:

Released Date:

1969-03-26

Languages:

English

Countries:

USA

Runtime:

103 min

Rated:

M

IMDB Ratings:

(2042 Reviews)

Director:

Jack Smight

Genres:

Sci-Fi

Cast:

Writer:

Ray Bradbury (book)

Howard B. Kreitsek (screenplay)

Fullplot:

The Illustrated Man is classic Bradbury, a collection of eighteen startling visions of humankind's destiny, unfolding across a canvas of decorated skin, visions as keen as the tattooist's needle and as colorful as the inks that indelibly stain the body. The images, ideas, sounds and scents that abound in this phantasmagoric sideshow are provocative and powerful: the mournful cries of celestial travelers cast out cruelly into a vast space of stars and blackness, the sight of gray dust settling over a forgotten outpost on a road that leads nowhere, the pungent odor of Jupiter on a returning father's clothing. Here living cities take their vengeance, technology awakens the most primal natural instincts, Martian invasions are foiled by the good life and the glad hand, and dreams are carried aloft in junkyard rockets.

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