Movies: David Downing

In a fantastical 1940s where magic is used by everyone, a hard-boiled detective investigates the theft of a mystical tome....

Swope—the only black man on the executive board of an advertising firm—is accidentally put in charge after the death of the chairman....

Free-thinking student tries to put up with life at a straight-laced college in 1958....

Townsfolk discover a warped secret while clearing out the house of a recently deceased, aristocratic spinster....

Broad satire and buffoonery presented as a series of movie trailers. Among the titles and subjects are: "The Howard Huge Story", "Skate-boarders from Hell", "The Invasion of the Penis Snatchers", Woody Allen (pre-Mia), movie trailer come-ons, Charlie...

Innovative drama mixing film and video, with a teenager obsessed with watching his late mother, killed in an auto accident, on tapes he recorded of their daily lives. The mother is seen in extreme close-up only on tape....

Bored with day-to-day life in New York City and neglected by her husband, a young wife and mother slips into increasingly outrageous fantasies: her mother breaking into the apartment, an explorer's demonstration of tribal fertility music at a party c...

Mickey Spillane's hard-hitting '50s private eye, Mike Hammer, returns to television in the guise of Kevin Dobson to track down the killer of his best friend who was driving Hammer's car. Joining in the hunt are the detective's Girl Friday, the ever-...

An elderly widow must find meaning and activity in her life when her son suggests she is no longer capable of handling her own affairs....

A black soldier comes home to Harlem after a tour in Vietnam and discovers that his wife had become a heroin addict and died of an overdose. Infuriated, he gathers three of his ex-GI buddies and they lay out plans to fight the drug dealers....

The life and times of the flamboyant showman who built his legendary Follies around beautiful women -- as told by the women in his life....

Meet the Raisins! spoofs musical documentaries with its use of anthropomorphic food characters. Through its historical perspective, the special also provided an opportunity to elaborate on the personalities and introduce names of the simple yet popul...