The Angel Levine 1970  PG-13, 105 min.
Genre: Drama
Director: Jan Kadar
Cast: Zero Mostel, Harry Belafonte, Ida Kaminska, Milo O'Shea, Gloria Foster, Barbara Ann Teer, Eli Wallach, Anne Jackson, Stephen Strimpell, Sam Raskyn
An old Jewish man has lost faith in God due to the setbacks he and his family have suffered over the years. Then along comes an Angel-in-training (Harry Belafonte) whose task is to convince the man to change his outlook.
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Du Barry Was a Lady 1943  N/R, 96 min.
Genre: Musical / Comedy
Director: Roy Del Ruth
Cast: Red Skelton, Lucille Ball, Gene Kelly, Virginia O'Brien, Rags Ragland, Zero Mostel, Donald Meek, Douglass Dumbrille, George Givot, Louise Beavers
This musical comedy is the film adaptation of a popular Broadway show. Although most of the musical score was dropped from the movie version, two classics "Friendship" and "Do I Love You?" were saved and add to the lighthearted entertainment of this enjoyable film.
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 The Enforcer 1951 N/R, 86 min.
Genre: Action / Drama
Director: Bretaigne Windust
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Zero Mostel, Ted de Corsia, Everett Sloane, Roy Roberts, King Donovan, Bob Steele, Don Beddoe, Michael Tolan, Adelaide Klein, Jack Lambert, Tito Vuolo, John Kellogg
This is one good flick about district attorney Martin Ferguson's (Humphrey Bogart) attempt to break up the mob-system of "killers for hire."
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The Front 1976 PG, 95 min.
Genre: Drama
Director: Martin Ritt
Cast: Woody Allen, Zero Mostel, Michael Murphy, Andrea Marcovicci, Herschel Bernardi, Remak Ramsay, Josef Sommer, Lloyd Gough, David Margulies, Danny Aiello, Marvin Lichterman, Joshua Shelley
The 1950s' black-listing of suspected Communists in the Hollywood film industry is the focus of this film. Howard Prince (Woody Allen) must deal with his conscience when he agrees to pass off his friends' scripts as his own because of their black-listed status.
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A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum 1966 N/R, 99 min.
Genre: Comedy
Director: Richard Lester
Cast: Zero Mostel, Phil Silvers, Jack Gilford, Buster Keaton, Michael Crawford, Michael Hordern, Annette Andre, Pamela Brown, Roy Kinnear, Alfie Bass
Pseudolus (Zero Mostel) is a Roman slave who tries to gain his freedom and attain riches at the same time in this very funny story about ancient Rome. The film won an Oscar for Best Musical Score.
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The Great Bank Robbery 1969  N/R, 97 min.
Genre: Comedy / Western
Director: Hy Averback
Cast: Zero Mostel, Kim Novak, Clint Walker, Claude Akins, Akim Tamiroff, Larry Storch, John Alexander, Sam Jaffe, Mako, Elisha Cook Jr., Ruth Warrick, John Fiedler, John Larch, Peter Whitney, Norman Alden
When a con man, the Reverend Pious Blue (Zero Mostel), attempts a bank robbery, he is met by a Texas Ranger (Clint Walker) and his six Chinese agents who are on the scene investigating a crooked mayor. When their paths cross, chaos becomes the name of the game. This is a pretty good spoof on Westerns; the tale takes place in the aptly named town of Friendly.
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The Hot Rock 1972 PG, 105 min.
Genre: Comedy
Director: Peter Yates
Cast: Robert Redford, George Segal, Ron Leibman, Paul Sand, Zero Mostel, William Redford, Moses Gunn, Charlotte Rae, Graham Jarvis, Harry Bellaver
John Dortmunder (Robert Redford) and Kelp (George Segal) plan a jewelry heist that does NOT go off as planned in this entertaining comedy/suspense film.
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Journey Into Fear 1975 R, 103 min.
Genre: Drama
Director: Daniel Mann
Cast: Sam Waterston, Zero Mostel, Yvette Mimieux, Scott Marlowe, Ian McShane, Shelley Winters, Stanley Holloway, Donald Pleasence, Vincent Price, Joseph Wiseman
This remake of Orson Welles' film is about a geologist (Sam Waterston) and his venture into the world of espionage. Skip this one and watch the original 1942 version instead.
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Mastermind 1976 G, 86 min.
Genre: Comedy / Thriller
Director: Alex March
Cast: Zero Mostel, Keiko Kishi, Gawn Grainger, Bradford Dillman, Jules Munshin, Frankie Sakai, Sorrell Booke, Felix Silla, Zaldy Zshornack, Phil Leeds, Kichi Taki, Tetsu Nakamura
This is an enjoyable spoof of Charlie Chan movies as the very funny Zero Mostel plays Inspector Hoku Ichihara who tries to protect a "special" robot from foreign efforts to capture it. Good car/motorcycle chase scene, complete with sidecar.
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Mr. Belvedere Rings the Bell 1951  N/R, 87 min.
Genre: Comedy
Director: Henry Koster
Cast: Clifton Webb, Joanne Dru, Hugh Marlowe, Zero Mostel, Billy Lynn, Doro Merande, Warren Stevens, J. Farrell MacDonald, Thomas Browne Henry, Hugh Beaumont
This is another film in the series of "Mr. Belvedere" comedies. This time, Mr. Belvedere (Clifton Webb) heads for a retirement home where he gets the residents up and out of their rocking chairs.
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Panic in the Streets 1950 N/R, 96 min.
Genre: Drama
Director: Elia Kazan
Cast: Richard Widmark, Paul Douglas, Barbara Bel Geddes, Jack Palance, Zero Mostel, Dan Riss, Tommy Cook, Tommy Rettig, Alex Minotis, Lewis Charles
This Oscar winner (Best Writing/Story) is set in New Orleans where Blackie (Jack Palance) and Fitch (Zero Mostel), unknowingly, are carriers of a deadly virus after they murder an illegal alien. Now, police race against time to track them down.
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 The Producers 1968   N/R, 88 min.
Genre: Comedy
Director: Mel Brooks
Cast: Zero Mostel, Gene Wilder, Kenneth Mars, Dick Shawn, Lee Meredith, Christopher Hewett, Estelle Winwood, Renee Taylor, Frank Campanella, Andreas Voutsinas, David Patch, William Hickey, Barney Martin, Shimen Ruskin, Josip Elic
Mel Brooks won the Oscar for Best Screenplay in this film about two characters, Max Bialystock (Zero Mostel) and Leo Bloom (Gene Wilder), who con people into investing in a non-existent Broadway show: "Springtime for Hitler." Wilder received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. 2 User Reviews
| User Reviews |
| | Parts of this are the funniest movie ever made | 1fatts 03/27/2007 | Mel Brooks is a cannon on the loose. It is his strength and his weakness. The 2000-year-old man sketches with Carl Reiner are classic for Brooks' unpredictable leaps from political humor to burlesque inuendo to bizarre non-sequitur. At his best, he can take your breath away. At his worst, he is a runaway train.
Stand-up comedy benefits most from this kind of wildness; movies suffer most. Movies need plot and structure and discipline.
Brooks' best film, as a work of cinema, is probably Young Frankenstein because Gene Wilder shared writing credit and imposed some order which Mel Brooks simply cannot supply -- see all the shotgun "sometimes the magic works and sometimes it doesn't" humor of "Robin Hood - Men in Tights", "Spaceballs", et al.
But even in a movie that is all over the map (they pretty much run out of central joke and plot in The Producers after the play is a hit), there are a half a dozen scenes that are perhaps the funniest stuff every put on film. Brooks' writing is certainly a major factor, and the other is the casting. Only Zero Mostel was Zero Mostel. He was a life force, a stampede, a landslide. He defined this role . . . and Tevye in Fiddler . . . and Pseudolus in "Funny Thing Happened. . . " Other people may have played his roles, but they were never near the standared. His Max Biolystock is incomparable. His teaming with the young, intensely neurotic Leo Bloom (Wilder), the outrageous Hold Me Touch Me (Estelle Winwood), Kenneth Mars' Nazi, Christopher Hewitt's gay director ("Max, he's wearing a dress."), etc. are the best scenes Brooks has every directed, the funniest filmwork he has ever done.
The first twenty minutes of the film are incomparable. I forgive Brooks all the dead ends and ramblings that may go on elsewhere. I take it as the price we have to pay to be allowed into the near-perfection of the scenes that work.
You can't call youself knowledgeable in comic film if you haven't studied The Producers. |
| | Outstanding | Googleeyes 03/01/2007 | | One of Mel Brooks finest achievements, maybe the best of his achievements. |
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Rhinoceros 1973 PG, 102 min.
Genre: Comedy / Drama / Fantasy / Mystery / Romance
Director: Tom O'Horgan
Cast: Zero Mostel, Gene Wilder, Karen Black, Robert Weil, Joe Silver, Marilyn Chris, Robert Fields, Melody Santangello, Lou Cutell, Don Calfa, Lorna Thayer, Percy Rodriguez
People turn into rhinoceroses in a French village in this "theater of the absurd" adaptation of Eugene Ionesco's play. Stanley (Gene Wilder) is the only one noticing the transformation of everyone else.
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Sirocco 1951 N/R, 97 min.
Genre: Action
Director: Curtis Bernhardt
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Marta Toren, Lee J. Cobb, Everett Sloane, Gerald Mohr, Onslow Stevens, Zero Mostel, Nick Dennis, Ludwig Donath, Harry Guardino
Gunrunner Harry Smith (Humphrey Bogart) operates in the middle of the 1925 war between the French and the Syrians in Damascus.
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 Watership Down 1978 PG, 92 min.
Genre: Animation / Adventure / Drama / Fantasy
Director: Martin Rosin
Cast: Zero Mostel, Ralph Richardson, John Hurt, Richard Briers, Roy Kinnear, Denholm Elliott, Harry Andrews, Nigel Hawthorne, Michael Hordern, John Bennett, Michael Graham Cox, Simon Cadell, Terence Rigby, Richard O'Callaghan, Lynn Farleigh
This animated film tells the story of rabbits fleeing the effects of humans on their habitats. While finding new homes, they are subjected to attacks from dogs, hawks, and other rabbits. Excellent score, and overall, cleverly made.
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| 1. The Angel Levine (1970)
2. Du Barry Was a Lady (1943)
3. The Enforcer (1951)
4. The Front (1976)
5. A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966)
6. The Great Bank Robbery (1969)
7. The Hot Rock (1972)
8. Journey Into Fear (1975)
9. Mastermind (1976)
10. Mr. Belvedere Rings the Bell (1951)
11. Panic in the Streets (1950)
12. The Producers (1968)
13. Rhinoceros (1973)
14. Sirocco (1951)
15. Watership Down (1978)
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