William Devane

Rolling Thunder

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Major Rane in dark glasses

A guy comes back from Vietnam and runs into a whole load of trouble in 1977’s Rolling Thunder, the sort of “guy comes back from Vietnam” movie they used to make around then. Except this one’s all messed up. William Devane plays the guy, Major Charles Rane, who returns from seven years in a Vietnam prisoner-of-war camp where he’s been tortured but has survived. At what personal cost is what the film sets out to examine, until it decides to stop doing all that and instead turn into a genre movie. A film ostensibly about survivor’s guilt, PTSD and the sexual revolution that’s changed America while Rane has been inside, Rolling Thunder gets … Read more

Family Plot

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Bruce Dern at a graveside

If you were idly flicking through the TV channels on a wet afternoon and hit upon Family Plot, chances are you wouldn’t immediately think it was a Hitchcock movie – it looks more like an episode of Columbo. That bright TV lighting, those mid-range actors who look like they’re trying not to be fingered as this week’s criminal, one who’s once again not as smart as the man in the mac. I’ve looked up Bruce Dern, Karen Black, Barbara Harris and William Devane and not one of them ever did make an appearance on Columbo but they don’t quite fit the standard Hitchcock bill either, or not the bill containing Cary Grant, Grace Kelly, … Read more