Patrick McGoohan

Billy Zane stars as The Phantom in this thrill-a-minute actioner based on one of the most successful comic series of all time! The story begins as an expedition lands on the island of Bengalla, seeking the legendary skulls of Touganda. Believed to harness an energy force of incalculable power, the skulls could spell disaster for mankind. And that's exactly what ruthless tycoon Xander Drax has in mind. . . Unless one man can save it. Now evil has met its match and great movie adventure has a new name - The Phantom!

Despite the presence of hack director Arthur Hiller, this hybrid comedy-thriller works most of the time as pleasant faux Hitchcock. Gene Wilder is a book editor who is relaxing by taking a cross-country train ride. Then he gets caught up in a murder--and becomes a suspect. It's up to him to prove his own innocence. As noted, the script, by Colin Higgins, owes a big debt to Alfred Hitchcock; but the mystery isn't all that mysterious and the comedy isn't all that hilarious--at least not until Richard Pryor shows up, which is at least halfway through the film.

One of Clint Eastwood's two most important filmmaking mentors was Don Siegel (the other was Sergio Leone), who directed Eastwood in Dirty Harry, Coogan's Bluff, Two Mules for Sister Sara, and this enigmatic, 1979 drama based on a true story about an escape from the island prison of Alcatraz. Eastwood plays a new convict who enters into a kind of mind game with the chilly warden (Patrick McGoohan) and organizes a break leading into the treacherous waters off San Francisco.

Mel Gibson stars on both sides of the camera, playing the lead role plus directing and producing this brawling, richly detailed saga of fierce combat, tender love and the will to risk all that's precious: freedom. In an emotionally charged performance, Gibson is William Wallace, a bold Scotsman who used the steel of his blade and the fire of his intellect to rally his countrymen to liberation.