Movie profile

The Three Kings

The made-for-TV film stars Jack Warden, Lou Diamond Phillips and Stan Shaw as three patients in a Los Angeles-area mental institution. Dressed as the Three Wise Men for a Christmas pageant, the trio is suddenly struck with the delusion that they are really their Biblical counterparts on a quest to find the Baby Jesus. As TV cameras grind away, the three ersatz Kings surreptitiously ride out of the gates of the asylum—on camels—and into the mean streets of LA. As the story draws to its conclusion, the three escapees find themselves providing a Christmas miracle (but not in the form of rap) for a group of homeless people on the outskirts of the city.

Directed by Mel Damski