Sam's Son

Sam's Son is a 1984 American semi-autobiographical coming-of-age drama film written and directed by Michael Landon loosely based on his early life and is also the only feature film ever made by him. The film stars Eli Wallach, Anne Jackson, Timothy Patrick Murphy, Hallie Todd, Jonna Lee, James Karen, and even Landon in a cameo at the beginning and the end. The film was produced independently by Landon himself and released by Utah-based distributor Invictus Entertainment.

The film begins when a private jet descends on a runway of a small airport in Collingswood, New Jersey. Famous movie director Gene Orman (Landon) has visited the town to attend the premiere of his latest film, Sam's Son. On the way to the theater, he orders his driver to have the limo stop across the street from his childhood home where he grew up. He gets out and looks at the house, while tearfully saying, "We did it, Sam." We are then transported back to the year 1953 when Gene was still known as Eugene Orowitz, an ordinary, shy teenager struggling with his identity. He has a father Sam (Wallach), a movie theater manager who is constantly bullied and his sharp-tongue mother Harriet (Jackson) who has no patience for Eugene's privacy in the bathroom. Eugene also has a girlfriend Bonnie (Lee) who grows increasingly disdained when with him, especially when the new transfer student and resident bully Bob Woods (Hayes) begins to take a liking to Bonnie. One night, when Eugene and Bonnie are at the movies, they are constantly harassed by Woods in the theater until Sam firmly escorts him out. To get revenge, he challenges Eugene to a fight when he takes Bonnie home, but Eugene doesn't back down and Woods calls him a wimp for chickening out. While running home, Eugene is met up with classmates who drag a reluctant Eugene to a rowdy neighborhood bar where they eventually get into a fight with a loutish patron, but they escape before the cops are called.

At the same time, the high school track coach Sutter William Boyett is impressed with Eugene's work on throwing the javelin and he offers to help him compete in future track meets, providing his grades doesn't suffer because of it. That night, at the theater, Eugene watches Samson and Delilah and he quietly discovers if he can grow his hair, he can be strong enough to win the track meets. The next day, fellow schoolmate Cathy Stanton (Todd), who had been witnessing Eugene's work for several weeks, offers to help him with tutoring to make sure his grades don't fail if he wins a scholarship to USC. However, soon after, the unsympathetic principal Mr. Collins (Karen) discovers Eugene hasn't cut his hair for quite some time and he orders him to or he will be barred from future track meets, even after Eugene tries to convince Collins he has to let his hair grow so he doesn't lose his strength.