Wilfrid Hyde-White
After the destruction of the Twelve Colonies of Mankind, the last major fighter carrier leads a makeshift fugitive fleet in a desperate search for the legendary planet Earth. This film is adapted from a television series that aired on ABC from September 17, 1978, to August 17, 1980. The first and fifth episodes of the series were edited into this theatrical feature film. Taken together, the two episodes ran 148 minutes, without commercials, while the film runs 125 minutes.
Set in postwar Vienna, Austria, “The Third Man” stars Joseph Cotten as Holly Martins, a writer of pulp Westerns, who arrives penniless as a guest of his childhood chum Harry Lime, only to find him dead. Martins develops a conspiracy theory after learning of a “third man” present at the time of Harry’s death, running into interference from British officer Maj. Calloway and falling head-over-heels for Harry’s grief-stricken lover, Anna.
On one of his bratty son Eric’s annual visits, the plutocrat U.S. Bates takes him to his department store and offers him anything in it as a gift. Eric chooses a black janitor who has made him laugh with his antics. At first the man suffers many indignities as Eric’s “toy”, but gradually teaches the lonely boy what it is like to have and to be a friend.
Frankie Avalon and George Nader (that guy from “The Robot Monster”) are a couple of wise-cracking, swingin’ secret agents. Their enemy is Shirley Eaton as Su-Muru, who plans to remove all of the men who are currently in power and replace them with her army of women.
Happily engaged to her handsome fiance, Charles, Fanny is soon hit with one misfortune after another until she is forced to become a prostitute to survive. This is the story, with many erotic asides, of her struggle to regain her pride in herself and find happiness in life once again.
American GI Ernie Williams, admittedly weak-kneed, has an uncanny resemblance to British Colonel MacKenzie. Williams, also a master of imitation and disguise, is asked to impersonate the Colonel, ostensibly to allow the Colonel to make a secret trip East. What Williams is not told is that the Colonel has recently been a target of assassins. After the Colonel’s plane goes down, the plan changes and Williams maintains the disguise to confuse the Nazis about D-Day.
When billionaire Jean-Marc Clement learns that he is to be satirized in an off-Broadway revue, he passes himself off as an actor playing him in order to get closer to the beautiful star of the show, Amanda Dell.
