Warren Oates

Making of 'Blue Thunder'

An account of the life and work of American film director Sam Peckinpah (1925-84), a tortured artist whose genius and inner demons changed the Western genre forever.

A retrospective of the work of the late actor Warren Oates, with clips from his films and interviews with cast and crew members who worked with him.

An aspiring country singer, whose money is disappearing faster than his career opportunities, enters a "Tough Man" amateur boxing contest to earn some cash to pay his bills. Amazingly enough, he wins it, and is picked to go onto the national finals. He's torn between his first love, music, and the glitz, glamor and money of the "Tough Man" world.

Los Angeles, California. Officer Murphy, a veteran Metropolitan Police helicopter pilot suffering from severe trauma due to his harsh experiences during the Vietnam War, and Lymangood, his resourceful new partner, are tasked with testing an advanced and heavily armed experimental chopper known as Blue Thunder.

A corrupted border agent decides to clean up his act when an impoverished woman's baby is put up for sale on the black market.

John Winger, an indolent sad sack in his 30s, impulsively joins the U.S. Army after losing his job, his girlfriend and his apartment.

In this sequel to "And Baby Makes Six," a middle-aged couple deals with familial upheaval after giving birth to an unplanned fourth baby --- 17 years after their last child.

In the days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, panic grips California, where a military officer leads a mob chasing a Japanese sub.

An unlucky horse trainer, Frank Butler, wins big at the track and buys his 16-year old daughter a horse to salvage their relationship. When Frank is hurt prior to the opening race, Jo must go it alone.

A middle-aged couple with three grown children discovers that they soon will be parents once more and faces a variety of emotional responses from friends and family.

In 1950, a group of unlikely criminal masterminds commits the robbery of the century. Led by Tony Pino (Peter Falk), a petty thief fresh out of prison, and Joe McGinnis (Peter Boyle), who specializes in planning lucrative capers, the gang robs Brink's main office in Boston of more than $2 million. However, things begin to go awry when the FBI gets involved, the cops start cracking down on the gang and McGinnis refuses to hand over the loot...

Gunslinger Clayton Drumm (Testi) is about to be hanged when he is given a chance to live if he will agree to murder Matthew (Oates), a miner who has steadfastly refused to sell his land to the railroad company. Matthew’s refusal is a major obstacle to the railroad’s plans for expansion.

The further adventures of 'True Grit' Rooster Cogburn which has him battling injustice in his own unorthodox way while contending with a teenage girl bent on reforming him.

Recluse Smith is drawn into a revolutionary struggle between guerrillas and right-wingers in New Zealand. Implicated in a murder and framed as a revolutionary conspirator, Smith tries to maintain an attitude of non-violence while caught between warring factions.

Some unknown source has interrupted all television transmissions around the world. In place of the regular broadcasts, a lineup of extremely tasteless programs and commercials have been substituted. Included in the mix are such show as The Shitheads, The Charles Whitman Invitational, and commercials for a number of improbable products.

After the events of The African Queen (1951), Charlie and Rose are recaptured by the Germans and forced to tug one of their big cannons that could bring the Nazis victory against the local Allied forces.

A mid-19th century mulatto slave is torn between his success as a pit-fighter and the injustices of white society.

When their moonshiner father is killed by a corrupt deputy, two young girls decide to take over his business and get revenge on the men who had him killed

A young drifter returns to his home in Key West, Florida and attempts to open a fishing charter business, provoking a dangerous feud with a rival fishing sea captain.

Two couples vacationing together in an R.V. from Texas to Colorado are terrorized after they witness a murder during a Satanic ritual.

Jack McKee and Cecil Colson are two bumbling drifters who make a living by rustling cattle from other peoples herds in the wilds of Montana. Jack is from a wealthy background but left his parents as he resented their posh lives, and Cecil is a Native American half-breed seeking his own path in life away from his father. Both hustle and rustle their way in the world by targeting cattle owned by wealthy ranch owner John Brown. Frustrated that someone is killing his cattle, John hires a pair of ranch hands Burt and Curt to find the rustlers. When Brown realizes he cannot trust his two inept ranch hands, he turns to the grizzled former rustler Henry Beige to find the cattle thieves, while Jack and Cecil are always one step ahead of them, not realizing that their luck will eventually run out sometime.

A man who trains fighting cocks vows to remain silent until one of his birds wins a championship.

An American bartender and his prostitute girlfriend go on a road trip through the Mexican underworld to collect a $1 million bounty on the head of a dead gigolo.

In 1896, three survivors of a whaling ship-wreck in the Canadian Arctic are saved and adopted by an Eskimo tribe but frictions arise when the three start misbehaving.

An impressionable teenage girl from a dead-end town and her older greaser boyfriend embark on a killing spree in the South Dakota badlands.

After a shoot-out kills five FBI agents in Kansas City the Bureau target John Dillinger as one of the men to hunt down. Waiting for him to break Federal law they sort out several other mobsters, while Dillinger's bank robbing exploits make him something of a folk hero. Escaping from jail he finds Pretty Boy Floyd and Baby Face Nelson have joined the gang and pretty soon he is Public Enemy Number One. Now the G-men really are after him.

Tom Sawyer and his pal Huckleberry Finn have great adventures on the Mississippi River, pretending to be pirates, attending their own funeral, and witnessing a murder.

A computer programmer decides to become a thief. And when he starts making waves, an insurance investigator hounds him. He also meets a woman who becomes his accomplice.

Bickford Waner, an apparently naive young man from Fort Worth, arrives in the tiny Texas town of Dime Box and takes on a variety of menial jobs. He's befriended by Reese Ford and his wife Molly, but before long Molly has seduced Bickford. Only with the arrival of Bickford's former girlfriend Janet Conforto is it revealed that Bickford is actually the notorious train robber Kid Blue. Humiliated by a scandal arising from his affair with his friend's wife, Bickford gives up on going straight and plots a crime.

A private eye is hired to follow a mobster's former mistress.

An army tale about an egghead ninety-day-wonder who relies on ancient tactics he remembers from the history books to save his beleaguered squad on an important mission in Korea.

Harry Collings returns home to his farm after drifting with his friend, Arch. His wife, who had given up on him, reluctantly allows him to stay, and soon believes that all will be well again. But then Harry has to make a difficult decision regarding his loyalties and priorities.

A driver and a mechanic travel around the United States hopping from drag strip to drag strip in a 1955 Chevy Bel-Air coupe. They race for money, betting with their competitors. The pair gains a young and talkative female stowaway. Along the way they unintentionally attract a well-to-do drifter driving a new Pontiac GTO. This older man, looking for attention, antagonizes their efforts.

Arizona Territorial Prison inmate Paris Pitman, Jr. is a schemer, a charmer, and quite popular among his fellow convicts — especially with $500,000 in stolen loot hidden away and a plan to escape and recover it. New warden Woodward Lopeman has other ideas about Pitman. Each man will have the tables turned on him.

Jake Remy leads a gang of outlaw cutthroats making their escape toward Mexico from a successful robbery. Barring their way is a river--crossable only by means of a ferry barge. The barge operator, Travis, refuses to be bullied into providing transport for the gang and escapes across river with most of the local populace--leaving Remy and his gang behind, desperately seeking a way across. A river-wide stand-off begins between the gang and the townspeople, both groups of which have left people on the wrong side of the river.

An experienced arson investigator takes along his young associate as they try to find an arsonist who is burning down movie sets.

Tilman and Lanton Mills, two cowboys who set off on horseback to rob a bank. On the way, they stop to see their boss, the "Old Man", only to discover he has been murdered by another cowboy, John Sparks.

An aging group of outlaws look for one last big score as the "traditional" American West is disappearing around them.

Two crooks are hired to rob an eccentric old lady's estate, but once they get to know her, they can't bring themselves to do it.

When the Indian Jimmyboy is accused of murder of a white man, he flees onto the ranch of Smith, who's well known for his tolerance for Indians, since he was raised by the old Indian Antoine. Smith helps Jimmyboy against the mean Sheriff and promises to speak for him in court, thus persuading him to surrender himself to the police.

The blacksmith of a small western town finds himself an outcast. He had led the townspeople west in hopes of starting a new life, only to find the town that they founded is to be bypassed by the railroad.

A group of thieves attempt a daring robbery of a football stadium.

The cub reporter, Gallegher, becomes involved in a land fraud, when some valueless land is sold to a group of Cornish immigrants. A murder implicates one of the immigrants, and it is up to Gallegher to prove that a local resident is actually the murderer and the swindler is a local banker.

African-American Philadelphia police detective Virgil Tibbs is arrested on suspicion of murder by Bill Gillespie, the racist police chief of tiny Sparta, Mississippi. After Tibbs proves not only his own innocence but that of another man, he joins forces with Gillespie to track down the real killer. Their investigation takes them through every social level of the town, with Tibbs making enemies as well as unlikely friends as he hunts for the truth.

A sociopathic stranger all but destroys a small hardscrabble town but the 'mayor' convinces its survivors to stay and rebuild.

Chico one of the remaining members of The Magnificent Seven now lives in the town that they (The Seven) helped. One day someone comes and takes most of the men prisoner. His wife seeks out Chris, the leader of The Seven for help. Chris also meets Vin another member of The Seven. They find four other men and they go to help Chico.

Two miners agree to guide a mysterious woman, who has appeared in their camp from nowhere, to a nearby town; but soon, because of her erratic behavior, they begin to suspect that her true purpose is quite different.

Charlie Anderson, a farmer in Shenandoah, Virginia, finds himself and his family in the middle of the Civil War he wants nothing to do with. When his youngest boy is taken prisoner by the North, the Civil War is forced upon him.

During the last winter of the Civil War, cavalry officer Amos Dundee leads a contentious troop of Army regulars, Confederate prisoners and scouts on an expedition into Mexico to destroy a band of Apaches who have been raiding U.S. bases in Texas.

Ben (Glenn Ford) and Marion (Henry Fonda) are two cowboys who make a meager living breaking wild horses. Their frequent employer Jim (Chill Wills), who always gets the better of them, talks them into taking a nondescript horse in lieu of some of their wages. Ben finds that the horse is un-rideable, he comes up with the idea of taking it to a rodeo and betting other cowhands they cannot ride it.

Elderly Will Lane arranges marriage of wild son of dead friend to tame him.

A family shipwrecked on an island must deal with escaped convicts and pirates.

An ex-lawman is hired to transport gold from a mining community through dangerous territory. But what he doesn't realize is that his partner and old friend is plotting to double-cross him.

Jack Diamond and his sickly brother arrive in prohibition New York as jewelry thieves. After a spell in jail, the coldly ambitious Diamond hits on the idea of stealing from thieves himself and sets about getting close to gangster boss Arnold Rothstein to move in on his booze, girls, gambling, and drugs operations.

A hoodlum (Corey Allen) plots to seduce a lonely housewife (Kate Manx) and turn her over to his virginal friend (Warren Oates).

A fur-trapper named Kelly, who once saved the life of a Sioux chief, is allowed to set his traps in Sioux territory during the late 1870s. Reluctantly he takes on a tenderfoot assistant named Anse and together they give shelter to a runaway Arapaho woman. Tensions develop when Anse falls in love with this woman and when the Sioux chief arrives with his warriors to re-claim her.

Lieutenant Braden discovers that Sally, the woman he's been falling in love with, has actually been checking out his qualifications to be a U.S. Navy frogman. He must put his personal life behind him after being assigned to be smuggled into a Japanese-held island via submarine to photograph radio codes.

A recreation and commentary on how people reacted to the radio broadcast of The War Of The Worlds in 1938.