Fred Murphy

Birth : 1942-01-01, New York

History

Fred Murphy works as a director of photography for film and television productions.

Movies

Ghost Town
Director of Photography
Bertram Pincus, a cranky, people-hating Manhattan dentist, develops the unwelcome ability to see dead people. Really annoying dead people. Even worse, they all want something from him, particularly Frank Herlihy, a smooth-talking ghost, who pesters him into a romantic scheme involving his widow Gwen. They are soon entangled in a hilarious predicament between the now and the hereafter!
Drillbit Taylor
Director of Photography
Three kids hire a low-budget bodyguard to protect them from the playground bully, not realising he is just a homeless beggar and petty thief looking for some easy cash.
Anamorph
Director of Photography
A psychological thriller based on the concept of anamorphosis, a painting technique that manipulates the laws of perspective to create two competing images on a single canvas.
RV
Director of Photography
Climbing aboard their mammoth recreational vehicle for a cross-country road trip to the Colorado Rockies, the Munro family – led by dysfunctional patriarch, Bob – prepares for the adventure of a lifetime. But spending two weeks together in one seriously small space has a way of cramping their style.
Dreamer: Inspired By a True Story
Director of Photography
Ben Crane believes that a severely injured racehorse deserves another chance. He and his daughter Cale adopt the mare and save it from being sacrificed by the owner.
Secret Window
Director of Photography
Mort Rainey, a writer just emerging from a painful divorce with his ex-wife, is stalked at his remote lake house by a psychotic stranger and would-be scribe who claims Rainey swiped his best story idea. But as Rainey endeavors to prove his innocence, he begins to question his own sanity.
Freddy vs. Jason
Director of Photography
Freddy Krueger enlists Jason Voorhees to kill on his behalf on Elm Street, in order to restore fear and haunt children's dreams.
Cheats
Director of Photography
While other kids buy into countless hours of studying just so they can get a mark in some teacher's report book, Handsome Davis sees it as nothing more than a system of control over your mind. That's why Handsome and his three best friends Sammy, Victor and the cribsheet genius Applebee have banded together and found ways to cheat on their tests all through their school years.
Auto Focus
Director of Photography
A successful TV star during the 1960s, former "Hogan's Heroes" actor Bob Crane projects a wholesome family-man image, but this front masks his persona as a sex addict who records and photographs his many encounters with women, often with the help of his seedy friend, John Henry Carpenter. This biographical drama reveals how Crane's double life takes its toll on him and his family, and ultimately contributes to his death.
The Mothman Prophecies
Director of Photography
Reporter John Klein is plunged into a world of impossible terror and unthinkable chaos when fate draws him to a sleepy West Virginia town whose residents are being visited by a great winged shape that sows hideous nightmares and fevered visions.
Soul Survivors
Director of Photography
A college freshman involved in a fatal car crash discovers she may not have survived after all when she becomes caught between the worlds of the living and the dead.
Witness Protection
Director of Photography
Would you be willing to walk away from everyone and everything you've ever known in exchange for your safety? This is the question facing career criminal Bobby "Bats" Batton (Tom Sizemore); on the outs with the mob and facing prosecution for a number of serious crimes, Batton is offered a deal by the FBI in which he will be given immunity in exchange for testifying against his former partners. However, Batton will have to join the Federal Witness Protection Program, which means that he, his wife, and his children will never again see their friends and family.
Stir of Echoes
Director of Photography
After being hypnotized by his sister in law, Tom Witzky begins seeing haunting visions of a girl's ghost and a mystery begins to unfold around her.
October Sky
Director of Photography
Based on the true story of Homer Hickam, a coal miner's son who was inspired by the first Sputnik launch to take up rocketry against his father's wishes, and eventually became a NASA scientist.
Dance with Me
Director of Photography
Young Cuban Rafael just buried his mother, and comes to Houston to meet his father John for the first time. The difficult part is that John doesn't know he is Rafael's father. John runs a dance studio, and everyone prepares for the World Open Dance championship in Las Vegas. It soon becomes clear Rafael is a very good dancer, and Ruby is the biggest hope for the studio at the championship.
Metro
Director of Photography
Roper, a hostage negotiator catches a murderous bank robber after a blown heist. The bank robber escapes and immediately goes after the man who put him behind bars.
Faithful
Director of Photography
A depressed housewife whose husband is having an affair contemplates suicide, but changes her mind when she faces death by a killer hired to do her in.
A Family Thing
Director of Photography
Earl Pilcher Jr., runs an equipment rental outfit in Arkansas, lives with his wife and kids and parents, and rarely takes off his gimme cap. His mother dies, leaving a letter explaining he's not her natural son, but the son of a Black woman who died in childbirth; plus, he has a half brother Ray, in Chicago, she wants him to visit. Earl makes the trip, initially receiving a cold welcome from Ray and Ray's son, Virgil. His birth mother's sister, Aunt T., an aged and blind matriarch, takes Earl in tow and insists that the family open up to him.
Murder in the First
Director of Photography
Inspired by a true story. A petty criminal sent to Alcatraz in the 1930s is caught attempting to make an escape. As punishment he is put in solitary confinement. The maximum stay is supposed to be 19 days, but Henri spends years alone, cold and in complete darkness, only to emerge a madman and soon to be a murderer. The story follows a rookie lawyer attempting to prove that Alcatraz was to blame.
The Pickle
Director of Photography
Harry Stone always dreamed of making "The Great American Movie." Instead he made The Pickle - a teenage sci-fi flick about a flying cucumber. Harry just wanted to get out of debt; now everyone he's ever known, loved and neglected is standing in line for tickets.
Jack the Bear
Director of Photography
Story of the relationships between two sons and their father, who moves the family to California and becomes a tv horror show host after the death of his wife.
Scenes from a Mall
Director of Photography
A comedy about a married couple -- he's a sports lawyer, she's a psychologist -- which takes place on their 16th wedding anniversary, when they make some startling confessions.
Funny About Love
Director of Photography
When Duffy Bergman, a New York cartoonist, meets Meg Lloyd, a gourmet chef, he discovers the love of his life and they marry -- yet love alone isn't enough to make them happy. Meg decides she wants to have a baby, a goal that initially makes Duffy frantic, but soon becomes his most important desire as well. When they are unable to have a baby, Meg begins concentrating on her career and the two slowly drift apart -- eventually separating. Later, when Duffy is speaking at a convention of the Delta Gamma sorority, he reveals that the Delta Gamma girls have always been his dream girls -- his Love Goddesses. There he meets the young and uninhibited Delta Gamma girl, Daphne Delillo. When Daphne moves to New York to work as a network sports reporter, their mutual attraction and Daphne's spontaneity spark an adventurous new relationship for Duffy. Now Duffy must decide which is more valuable to him -- the relationship he has given up, or the relationship he has always dreamed of having.
Enemies, a Love Story
Director of Photography
A ghostwriter finds himself romantically involved with his current wife, a married woman and his long-vanished wife.
The Final Days
Director of Photography
The Final Days concerns itself with the final months of the Richard Nixon presidency.
Night Game
Director of Photography
A police detective tracks a serial killer who is stalking young women on a beach front after each game that a baseball pitcher wins.
Full Moon in Blue Water
Director of Photography
Floyd, the owner of a bar on the Texas coast, has been depressed for a year after his wife disappeared in a swimming accident. He lives with his senile father-in-law "The General" and is helped by Jimmy, a former asylum inmate, and the good-natured Louise. The bar is rapidly losing money and Charlie wants to buy it cheaply before it becomes publicly known that a nearby bridge is to be built. Louise offers her savings to go into partnership with Floyd, but Floyd decides to sell when he is forced to pay his back taxes.
Fresh Horses
Director of Photography
A Cincinnati college student breaks off his engagement to his wealthy fiancée after he falls in love with a backwoods Kentucky girl he meets at a party. She says she's 20, but he finds out she's 16 and married to an abusive husband.
Laguna Heat
Director of Photography
Tom Shepard returns to his home town of Laguna Beach to escape his turbulent past. But the tranquility is shattered when he gets involved in the investigation of a series of grisly and bizarre murders.
Best Seller
Director of Photography
Hit man Cleve approaches writer/cop Dennis about a story for his next book: How Cleve made a living, working for one of the most powerful politicians in the country. To get the story right, they travel around the country to gather statements and evidence, while strong forces use any means they can to keep the story untold.
Five Corners
Director of Photography
A psychotic young man returns to his old neighborhood after release from prison. He seeks out the woman he previously tried to rape and the man who protected her, with twisted ideas of love for her and hate for him.
The Dead
Director of Photography
After a convivial holiday dinner party, things begin to unravel when a husband and wife address some prickly issues concerning their marriage.
Hoosiers
Director of Photography
High school basketball is king in small-town Indiana, and the 1954 Hickory Huskers are all hope and no talent. But their new coach -- abrasive, unlikable Norman Dale -- whips the team into shape ... while also inciting controversy.
Death of an Angel
Director of Photography
Grace, a priest, tracks her missing daughter to a religious community where the strange father Angel is keeping a wooden Jesus figure that sheds actual blood. When the cross is stolen, Grace decides to help out to get her daughter back.
The Trip to Bountiful
Director of Photography
Carrie Watts is living the twilight of her life trapped in an apartment in 1940s Houston, Texas with a controlling daughter-in-law and a hen-pecked son. Her fondest wish – just once before she dies – is to revisit Bountiful, the small Texas town of her youth which she still refers to as "home."
Key Exchange
Director of Photography
A young woman wants to get her boyfriend to commit to her, but the most she can get him to do is exchange apartment keys.
Trackdown: Finding the Goodbar Killer
Cinematography
This made-for-TV sequel to the 1977 theatrical film "Looking For Mr. Goodbar" follows a New York City detective's quest to find the murderer of a schoolteacher.
Sessions
Director of Photography
High-priced call girl Lee Churchill, is examining her life via therapy "sessions". Her double life is unknown to her parents, sister and "straight" man with whom she falls in love.
Eddie and the Cruisers
Director of Photography
A television newswoman picks up the story of a 1960s rock band whose long-lost leader — Eddie Wilson — may still be alive, while searching for the missing tapes of the band's never-released album.
Q
Director of Photography
New York police are bemused by reports of a giant flying lizard that has been spotted around the rooftops of New York, until the lizard starts to eat people. An out-of-work ex-con is the only person who knows the location of the monster's nest and is determined to turn the knowledge to his advantage, but will his gamble pay off or will he end up as lizard food?
The Ghost Dance
Director of Photography
The spirit of a long-dead warrior possesses the body of an Indian medicine man and turns him into a homicidal maniac.
The State of Things
Director of Photography
On location in Portugal, a film crew runs out of film while making their own version of Roger Corman's The Day the World Ended (1956) . The producer is nowhere to be found and director Munro attempts to find him in hopes of being able to finish the film.
Music Lessons: The Kodaly Method in the American Classroom
Director of Photography
Hungarian composer Zoltán Kodály believed that music could be taught to children as readily as reading. The method he developed uses a child's own natural instrument, the voice. Beginning with simple musical intervals, the child progresses from folk tunes and children's songs to the complex notes and rhythms of composed music--from Bye baby bunting to Bach. [The film] is a look at the Kodály method of music training in public elementary schools in San Jose, California, and West Hartford, Connecticut. Ordinary children are shown in the film, but they exhibit extraordinary self-confidence, discipline, concentration, and an eagerness to learn. There is no such thing as failure in a Kodály classroom; in fact, the children are able to correct their mistakes themselves. Moreover, the children will bring much of 'how' they learn in their music lessons--counting and problem-solving, left-to-right progression, following directions--to their study of reading, writing and arithmetic.
Heartland
Director of Photography
Widowed Elinor Randall and her young daughter Jerrine arrive in a barren stretch of Wyoming in 1910 after Elinor's application for work as a housekeeper is accepted by Clyde Stewart, a rancher. The work is back-breaking and the isolation is brutal, particularly as winter arrives. Elinor begins to think about homesteading her own property near Stewart's ranch, but Stewart tries to dissuade her with explanations about the killing conditions and poor rewards, especially for a woman with no man to help her ranch. Although their temperaments are different and little affection exists, Elinor and Stewart agree to marry and combine homesteads. What lies ahead is the severest test of all.
Impostors
Director of Photography
One of Mark Rappaport's later narratives (which won the Gold Hugo for Best First Feature at the Chicago International Film Festival in 1979), Impostors is an off-kilter comedy/mystery focused on two magicians trying to find Egyptian jewels, their promiscuous assistant, and a man who loves the assistant.
Girlfriends
Director of Photography
A photographer and her best friend are roommates. She is stuck with small-change shooting jobs and dreams of success. When her roommate decides to get married and leave, she feels hurt and has to learn how to deal with living alone.
The Scenic Route
Director of Photography
An experimental drama that spins the tale of a woman, her sister, and the man who completes the triangle. Told through such fertile sources as grand opera, classical painting, and Victorian melodrama.
Local Color
Director of Photography
Mark Rappaport's off center soap opera parody concerning several characters including a barber, his wife, and a pair of incestuous twins.
Visions: The Gardener's Son
Director of Photography
Based on true events which took place in the mill town of Graniteville, South Carolina in 1876, the story follows the rich Greggs, who run the mill, and the poor McEvoys, who work there. The animosity between their sons leads to tragedy.
Not a Pretty Picture
Director of Photography
Mixing narrative and documentary filming in a unique way the story is autobiographical and is about a date rape dissecting the characters and circumstances around it. Restored in 2022 by the Academy Film Archive and The Film Foundation. Restoration funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation.
Submission
Director of Photography
A psycho sex-fiend keeps his infantile girlfriend Vicky in Submission with candy bars, toys and, yes, hot wax. But when they plan on killing a wealthy lesbian, Vicky discovers she likes a woman's touch and plans a nasty surprise for her boneheaded boyfriend!