Lee H. Katzin

Directing

Lee H. Katzin

Born 1935-04-12 · Detroit, Michigan, USA

Lee H. Katzin (April 12, 1935 – October 30, 2002) was an American film director. He was born in Detroit, Michigan and became a TV director in the late 1960s for TV shows that included Bonanza, Mission: Impossible and Police Story. He also directed the 1971 feature film Le Mans. Starting in 1969, he did an array of theatrical films starting with Heaven with a Gun and other films like The Break and the cult classic What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice? In 1972, he directed the film The Salzburg Connection, which starred Barry Newman and Anna Karina. In 1975, he directed the launch episode "Breakaway", and other early episodes, of the Gerry Anderson live-action series Space: 1999. He also directed the pilots for the television series Man from Atlantis and Spenser: For Hire. He was primarily known as a prolific episodic television director, and he worked on series such as MacGyver, Police Story, The Young Riders, and Mission Impossible.

Acting credits

Behind the camera

Le Mans poster
6.8

Filmed during the annual 24-hour endurance race at Le Mans, Michael Delaney is a Porsche driver haunted by the memory of an accident at the previous year's race in which a competing driver was killed. Delaney also finds himself increasingly infatuated with the man's widow.

Le Mans

1971

The Dirty Dozen: The Fatal Mission poster
5.2

A renegade team of World War II soldiers. This time, one of the 12 is a woman and, with a Nazi spy within their midst, they're up against German wartime geniuses out to establish a Fourth Reich.

The Dirty Dozen: The Fatal Mission

1988

The Dirty Dozen: The Deadly Mission poster
5.0

Learning of a Nazi plot to attack Washington, D.C. with a deadly nerve gas, Major Wright leads twelve convicts on a suicide mission deep into occupied France to destroy the secret factory where the poison is made.

The Dirty Dozen: The Deadly Mission

1987

Voyage of the Yes poster
5.0

Two teenagers set out on a 2000-mile sailboat journey from California to Hawaii and en route combat the natural challenges and their inner shortcomings.

Voyage of the Yes

1973

Heaven with a Gun poster
5.5

Jim Killian arrives in a small Arizona town hoping to establish a peaceful life as the local preacher, but he soon finds himself in the middle of a feud between sheep ranchers and cattlemen. Leloopa, a young Native American woman, pleads for Killian's help after her shepherd father is hung by Coke Beck, the vicious son of the head cattle rancher. Killian must weigh his actions carefully lest he perpetuate the cycle of retribution and revenge.

Heaven with a Gun

1969

Zuma Beach poster
5.3

A fading rock singer goes to the beach to get away from it all and winds up getting involved in the lives of the teenage beachgoers.

Zuma Beach

1978

Hondo and the Apaches poster
7.2

Two episodes from the TV series "Hondo" edited together and released as a feature.

Hondo and the Apaches

1967

The Salzburg Connection poster
5.8

An American lawyer on vacation in Europe is asked by a book publisher to stop by the Austrian town of Salzburg to see a photographer who's taking pictures for a book on picturesque Austrian lakes. Upon his arrival he senses that something is wrong when the photographer seems to have vanished, leaving a near panic-stricken wife and a sinister, secretive brother. Before he knows it, the lawyer finds himself mixed up with spies, assassins, and the hunt for a list made up by the Nazis during World War II of people who collaborated with them.

The Salzburg Connection

1972

Hoodwinked poster
6.3

Burnt-out private dick Jacob Aloysius Spanner teams up with his brother to help an old adversary track down his one remaining loved one, his kidnapped granddaughter. But who's the hood and who's being hoodwinked?

Hoodwinked

1989

World Gone Wild poster
5.2

In the nuclear ravaged wasteland of Earth 2087 water is as precious as life itself. The isolated Lost Wells outpost survived the holocaust and the inhabitants guard the source of their existence. Now an evil cult of renegades want control of their valuable water supply. And the villagers are no match for such brute military force. Only one man can help the stricken community - a mercenary living in a distance cannibal city. But even he, and his strange henchmen, may not be able to survive in the world gone wild.

World Gone Wild

1987

What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice? poster
6.2

An aging widow hides a deadly secret which she will do anything to keep buried.

What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice?

1969

The Stranger poster
3.9

An astronaut enters a vortex and crash-lands on a parallel planet where he's not welcome.

The Stranger

1973

No artwork available
8.5

A small-town sheriff is surprised to see his brother show up in town, a man whom he hasn't seen in 20 years--and who has graduated from petty thievery to murder.

Strange Homecoming

1974

The Phynx poster
3.6

A rock band is invented by the government as a cover to find hostages in a remote castle in Albania held by communist enemies of the USA.

The Phynx

1970

The Last Survivors poster
4.6

When a passenger ship sinks, a ship's officer must decide which passengers in an overcrowded lifeboat must be sacrificed so the rest can survive an approaching typhoon.

The Last Survivors

1975

Sky Hei$t poster
5.3

A husband and wife come up with a plan to steal $10 million in gold, using the hijacking of a police helicopter as a diversion.

Sky Hei$t

1975

The Quest poster
8.5

Eight years ago, Cheyenne Indians attacked the Baudine Family wagon and captured Morgan, whom they renamed Two Persons. Now Two Persons, raised in the ways of the Indians, has been reunited with his brother Quentin, a doctor and a stranger to frontier ways. Together the brothers set out in search of their sister Patricia, who was also captured and who Two Persons believes is still alive.

The Quest

1976

Space: 1999 poster
6.7

A moonbase crew fights for survival in the aftermath of a massive explosion that shifts the moon from its orbit into space.

Space: 1999

1975

Samurai poster
9.0

Lee Cantrell, a young San Francisco attorney by day, at night becomes a samurai warrior, and battles a crazed multi-millionaire who is planning to destroy the city with an earthquake machine.

Samurai

1979

Alien Attack poster
6.5

Earth's Moon is the site of Moonbase Alpha, a scientific research colony nestled in the crater Plato. Staffed by over 300 men and women from Earth, it is the operations center for several space expeditions. It is also a watchdog for vast amounts of atomic waste from Earth stored in silos on the Moon's far side. Magnetic radiation builds up and causes the wastes to explode with such force that the Earth's centripetal pull on the Moon is overcome, and the Moon is broken free of Earth's orbit to drift at incredible speed out of the Solar System off the plane of the ecliptic. The survivors on Moonbase Alpha are unable to return to Earth and must survive in unknown space on their wandering Moon. They encounter a planet whose advanced people project an illusion of a devastating attack on Moonbase. This TV movie was edited from scenes of two episodes ("Breakaway" and "War Games") of "Space: 1999" (1975).

Alien Attack

1980

Terror Out of the Sky poster
5.6

TV sequel to "The Savage Bees" featuring more rampaging insects. This time a marching band and a school bus get in the path of the bees.

Terror Out of the Sky

1978

Journey Through the Black Sun poster
6.3

"Journey Through the Black Sun" (1982) made by ITC New York combined the first season episodes "Collision Course" and "Black Sun" from the TV series "Space: 1999".

Journey Through the Black Sun

1982

Man from Atlantis poster
8.0

A water-breathing human, the sole survivor of an underwater civilization called Atlantis, emerges from the ocean and has to learn to deal with the air-breathers on the surface.

Man from Atlantis

1977

The Break poster
6.1

A washed-up tennis pro begins coaching a hopeful teen, Joel Robbins, whose overbearing father wants to discourage him from playing.

The Break

1995