Film Diary: 1981

Avakum (Henry Brandon) is an old trapper who is having a harder and harder time getting by because of the dwindling wildlife in the region. One day he is on a tiger hunt when a big cat attacks his friend's son. Ava tries to shoot the tiger but accidentally kills the boy instead. Thinking he's accused of murder, he flees civilization, and eventually adapts to life among these same tigers. Boris (Herbert Nelson) , knows that his son's death was an accident, and tries to find Avakum and tell him he's innocent and should came back to the village. In the year that follows, Ava survives the harsh Siberian winter and finds himself at home beyond civilized life, to the point where when Boris finally does find him, it is a very touching goodbye, since the two old friends have drifted apart and have to remain in their separate worlds.

A French convict in the 1930s befriends a fellow criminal as the two of them begin serving their sentence in the South American penal colony on Devil's Island, which inspires the man to plot his escape.

John Deakin is being transported, as a prisoner, on a train with supplies and medicine to Fort Humboldt, Nevada.

A property developer wants to flatten the street to make new buildings. Householder George Roper is happy to take the offered money and run but his wife Mildred join with other residents to take a stand and keep things as they are.

Mortimer Brewster, a Brooklyn writer of books on the futility of marriage, risks his reputation after he decides to tie the knot. Things grow complicated when he learns that his beloved maiden aunts Abby and Martha are serial murderers.

In eighteenth century Scotland, during the Jacobite Rebellion, David Balfour claims his inheritance from his uncle who has him shanghaied on a ship where David meets fugitive Jacobite rebel Alan Breck.

When D. C. Dangerous Davies, not held in high regard by his superiors, is assigned to find a notorious criminal kingpin, he uncovers the details of 15 year old cold case.

Steve Howard, a British sales executive living in Middlesex, England, begins an affair with a young hitchhiker, Ella Patterson, to emotionally get away from his marriage to his wife Frances. But when Ella moves into a room in Steve and Frances's house, he must keep the true nature of his relationship with Ella under wraps at all costs.

A town Marshal, despite the disagreements of his newlywed bride and the townspeople around him, must face a gang of deadly killers alone at "high noon" when the gang leader, an outlaw he "sent up" years ago, arrives on the noon train.

A disillusioned college graduate finds himself torn between his older lover and her daughter.

Tough cop Dave Bannion takes on a politically powerful crime syndicate.

A football player and his friends travel to the planet Mongo and find themselves fighting the tyranny of Ming the Merciless to save Earth.

When a mysterious artifact is uncovered on the Moon, a spacecraft manned by two humans and one supercomputer is sent to Jupiter to find its origins.

After being fired from the bus company for crashing two buses, Stan and Jack seek bus-driving work at a holiday camp - only to find that Inspector Blake too now works there.

A widower, his three young children, and an Italian nanny get to know each other better when circumstances have them living together aboard a badly neglected houseboat.

A stern father and lenient mother try to deal with the ups and downs of their four children's lives in working-class Bolton.

A dog that is a minion of Satan terrorizes a suburban family.

A young Asian-American martial artist is forced to participate in a brutal formal street-fighting competition.

The construction of a steel skyscraper becomes a race against time and challenges the sanity of a building foreman and his crew.

Henry VIII marries Marie of Normandy but struggles with her garlic consumption. He seeks to annul the marriage without angering her cousin, the French king, by finding legal grounds for the annulment to avoid political conflict.

An Italian criminal mastermind, impersonating a film director, plans to grab the loot on a beach where a bogus movie is being filmed.

Released from a British prison, an American is hired as an electrician for a London bank - but his criminal acquaintances show up, and force the reluctant Yank to join them as the inside man in a well-planned bank heist.

Doctors Burke and Hare leave the confines of St. Swithin's for the world of general practice, stopping off on the way as patients at the Foulness anti-cold Unit. Hare then takes up a position as junior in a well-heeled general practitioner's surgery, while Burke continues to sow his doctorial wild oats.

A crime lord hires black private eye, John Shaft, to find and retrieve his kidnapped daughter.

An English mother leaves husband and two children to follow her Italian lover to a lakeside villa. Her children follow her, intent in breaking up her affair.