S. John Launer

S. John Launer

Profile

S. John Launer

Movies

Mommie Dearest
Pepsi Chairman
Renowned actress Joan Crawford, at the height of her career, adopts two orphans — Christina and Christopher — to fill the lonely gap in her personal life. However, as her professional and romantic relationships sour, Joan's already callous and abusive behavior towards Christina intensifies. Christina leaves home to pursue an acting path of her own, only to find her mother's presence still overshadowing her.
Inmates: A Love Story
Chairman
Accountant Roy is sentenced to prison because he cooked up balances. He hopes that his companions, who profited from his cheat, will help him to a revision of his judgment. Meanwhile he has to adapt to a life in jail - which works out quite well, especially when he meets the self-conscious convicted thief Jane and falls in love. He starts to woo her. But then, while working in the prison's accounting department, he discovers that the prisoners' accounts are not properly kept. The director tries to keep him in her prison as long as possible.
Scared Straight! Another Story
Judge Wadsworth
A group of young delinquents well on the road to careers in crime, are given a shock course in prison life. Brought face to face with hardened criminals many serving life sentences for rape and murder, they are suddenly confronted with the harsh realities of a top-security U.S. Penitentiary.
The Last Song
Milliken
An aspiring singer unwittingly comes into possession of several tapes for which her engineer husband and his partner, in their electronic eavesdropping business, were murdered, and discovers that she and her daughter are now being stalked by the killers.
All God's Children
Big city judge Parke Denison is involved in a forced busing dispute at the climax of his long career. The friendship between two families -- one white, one black -- and their sons, who are buddies, provides the microcosm of this major social issue that has been argued for several decades.
A Question of Love
The Judge
A lesbian mother fights to keep her son when a custody suit is brought by her ex-husband.
The Girl Called Hatter Fox
Mr. Winton
A doctor must battle against superstition and prejudice to try to save a young Indian girl, who has been sent to a state reform school as an incorrigible.
The Amazing Howard Hughes
Doctor
The Amazing Howard Hughes is a 1977 television movie about American aviation pioneer and filmmaker Howard Hughes, based on the book by Hughes' business partner Noah Dietrich. The film starred Tommy Lee Jones, Ed Flanders, and Tovah Feldshuh.
Gable and Lombard
The Judge
A biography about the love affair between 1930s Hollywood superstars Clark Gable and Carole Lombard.
Crosscurrent
Doctor (uncredited)
Two San Francisco detectives investigating a murder committed on one of the city's famous cable cars discover that the victim was the son of a shipping tycoon. The trail leads to a drug dealer, a shady physician and a nervous police captain
Pendulum
Judge Kinsella
On the evening of his decoration for bringing a murderer to justice, Washington DC Police Captain Frank Matthews' wife, and her lover are murdered in bed. Jailed as the prime suspect, with the aforementioned murderer released on a technicality Matthews escapes in search of the man he believes to be the real killer.
The Doomsday Flight
Major
A bomb on board an airliner has an altitude-sensitive trigger. Unless a ransom is paid, it will explode when the plane descends to land.
Apache Rifles
Gen. Nelson
A young cavalry officer is assigned the job of bringing in a band of Apaches who have been terrorizing the countryside.
Marnie
Sam Ward
Marnie is a thief, a liar, and a cheat. When her new boss, Mark Rutland, catches on to her routine kleptomania, she finds herself being blackmailed.
Zero Hour!
Vancouver Switchboard Operator (uncredited)
In 1950s Canada, during a commercial flight, the pilots and some passengers suffer food poisoning, thus forcing an ex-WW2 fighter pilot to try to land the airliner in heavy fog.
The Werewolf
Dr. Emery Forrest
The arrival in a small mountain town of a dissheveled stranger launches a series of murders committed by some sort of animal. As the town doctor and his daughter attempt to help the stranger, the sheriff investigates the murders; and they uncover a sinister experiment involving two rogue scientists, a car accident victim, his wife and children, and a serum that causes a man to turn into a ravaging werewolf.
Uranium Boom
Mac
Ex-lumberjack Brad Collins (Dennis Morgan) and mining engineer Grady Mathews (William Talman) find uranium in the Colorado badlands. While Grady guards the claim, Brad goes to register it in town, where he meets and marries Jean Williams (Patricia Medina.) Returning to the claim, Brad learns that Jean was once Grady's fiancee. Grady, as one would expect, is somewhat put out and leaves the mine in Brad's hands, while he hooks up with a confidence man and engineers a scheme to break the back of Brad's somewhat rapidly-created mining empire.
Creature with the Atom Brain
Capt. Dave Harris
Murders, with victims dying from spines broken by brute strength, erupt in the city and the killers, when encountered, walk away unharmed by police bullets which strike them. A police doctor's investigation of the deaths leads to the discovery of an army of dead criminal musclemen restored to life, remotely controlled by a vengeful former crime boss and a former Nazi scientist, from the latter's laboratory hidden in the suburbs.