Lou Jacobi Movies

The 1987 portmanteau comedy feature Amazon Women on the Moon lampoons several film genres in general and the 1954 sci-fi cheapie Cat Women of the Moon in particular. Other sketches in Amazon Women include an opening bit with Arsenio Hall; a vignette titled "Son of the Invisible Man" wherein a naked Ed Begley Jr. runs around in full view of the nonplussed supporting cast; the It's Alive parody "Hospital", which offers the spectacle of Michelle Pfeiffer giving birth to Mr. Potato Head; and a Siskel & Ebert takeoff, featuring Arche Hahn as a TV viewer whose entire life is given a "thumbs down." Directed by several hands, including Joe Dante, Carl Gottleib, Peter Horton, John Landis, and Robert K. Weiss, Amazon Women on the Moon also features a satire of the Kroger G. Babb school of "sex hygiene" exploitation cheapies, with syphilis victim Carrie Fisher being counseled by unctuous doctor Paul Bartel. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The third of director Barry Levinson's autobiographical "Baltimore Trilogy" (the first two entries were Diner and Tin Men), Avalon covers nearly forty years in the lives of an immigrant Jewish family. Sam Krichinsky (Armin Mueller-Stahl) emigrates to Baltimore in 1914, where Sam's brothers Gabriel (Lou Jacobi), Hymie (Leo L. Fuchs), and Nathan (Israel Rubinek) are awaiting his arrival. By and by, Sam meets his future wife, Eva (Joan Plowright). With the introduction of the Krichinsky's grown son Jules (Aidan Quinn), the film ventures into culture-clash country. Unwilling to become a manual laborer like his dad, Jules opts for the life of a door-to-door salesman. Eventually, he teams with his cousin Izzy (Kevin Pollak) to open the first TV store in Baltimore. Thereafter, the disintegration of the Krichinsky family is paralleled by the rise of TV's omnipresence in the American home. Avalon's elegiac and melancholy effect is underlined by Randy Newman's soulful musical score. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Reginald Arkell's backstage novel Charley Moon made a successful transition to the screen in 1956. Comic actor Max Bygraves stars as Moon, a small-time music-hall performer with an eye for the ladies. A string of lucky breaks, and a little bit of ruthlessness on Charley's part, allows him a chance at the Big Time in London. His West End engagement is successful, but before long the bloom is off the rose and Charley Moon is back where he started. The impressive supporting cast includes fabled impressionist Florence Desmond and American character actor Lou Jacobi. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

A dirty joke that became a "clean" TV movie, Coffee, Tea or Me stars Karen Valentine, cast to type as a perky stewardess. In a chaste variation of The Captain's Paradise, Valentine finds herself married to two different men in two different countries. Since the men are played by John Davidson and Michael Anderson Jr., each in his own way as cute as Valentine, the girl's dilemma is profound. Until its cop-out ending, Coffee Tea or Me glides through its risque situations with class and finesse. The film was directed by Norman Panama, who earlier had been responsible (in collaboration with Melvin Frank) for such comedies as Danny Kaye's The Court Jester (56) and the film version of the Broadway musical Li'l Abner (59). ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Woody Allen's in-name-only adaptation of the once notorious sexual reference guide by Dr. David Reuben contains seven episodes based on "helpful" questions answered in the book. In "Do Aphrodisiacs Work?", Allen appears as a court jester who uses a love potion to spark the erotic interests of the Queen (Lynn Redgrave). "What Is Sodomy?" stars Gene Wilder as a doctor who throws away his marriage, career, and position in the community when he falls madly in love with an Armenian sheep named Daisy. "Why Do Some Women Have Trouble Reaching Orgasm?" is a parody of stylish Italian films of the '60s in which a slick playboy (Woody Allen) discovers his wife (Louise Lasser) can climax only when they make love in public places. In "Are Transvestites Homosexuals?," Sam (Lou Jacobi) has his little secret revealed at a most inopportune moment. "What Are Sex Researchers Actually Accomplishing?" features John Carradine in a great parody of his mad-scientist roles as Dr. Bernardo, whose research into human sexuality has led to a fearsome mutation -- a 50-foot tall female breast! "What Are Sexual Perversions?" takes us to a broadcast of the popular game show What's My Perversion?, in which Jack Barry leads a panel of celebrities (including Regis Philbin and Robert Q. Lewis) in guessing the erotic obsessions of their guests. And "What Happens During Ejaculation?" takes the audience inside the body of a man in the throes of passion; The Brain (Tony Randall) guides the body's functions, with the help of his assistant (Burt Reynolds), while Allen plays a nervous sperm cell not sure if he can make the big jump. While the quality of the episodes is uneven, the best rank with the funniest moments of Allen's career, especially Gene Wilder's touching romance with the sheep ("I think we can make this work, Daisy") and the final sequence inside the male body ("What if he's only masturbating? I'll end up on the ceiling somewhere!"). ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Legendary scientist Albert Einstein (played here by Walter Matthau) takes a break from theoretical physics to try to set up his intellectual niece with a handsome auto mechanic in this romantic comedy. The movie's central conceit is that Einstein's brilliance extends to matters of the heart, allowing him to immediately sense that Ed Walters (Tim Robbins), a bright, lower-class mechanic obsessed with Popular Science Magazine, would be perfect for his niece Catherine (Meg Ryan). Unfortunately, Catherine is already engaged to a stiff Princeton man. In order to defeat Catherine's resistance, Uncle Albert decides to help Ed pretend to be a revolutionary scientist, a charade that inevitably leads to much farcical confusion. Einstein's scientist pals are portrayed as a Greek chorus of Catskills-style kibitzers, featuring such notable perfomers as Lou Jacobi as Kurt Godel and director Gene Saks as Boris Podolsky. ~ Judd Blaise, Rovi

This romantic comedy opens with a resounding warning: its chief concerns are passion, bloodshed, desire, and death. "Everything," exclaims the narrator, "that makes life worth living." Irma La Douce (Shirley MacClaine) is Paris' most prosperous prostitute. Wise, endearing, and compulsively clad in green, Irma rules the rue Casanova. She triumphantly works the most coveted corner on a street where the cops gladly look the other way and the naughty johns leave tips. Her street is a content community of live and let live and good-natured desire, an Augean stable of human understanding. However, to upright Nester Patou (Jack Lemmon), the area's new policeman, genial wrongdoing is still wrongdoing. Freshly promoted from day patrol at a children's playground, the scrupulous Nestor arrests Irma and her colleagues in a bumbling, unauthorized raid. He takes pity on Irma, but harasses the guilty johns -- including the police captain. Promptly unemployed, Nester returns to the scene of his crime, the rue, and to Irma. After physically besting her pimp, Nester unwittingly takes his position. The two fall madly in love, but Nestor quickly grows jealous of Irma's patrons. Thus, he masquerades as a wealthy English aristocrat and becomes Irma's sole customer -- only to eventually grow violently jealous of himself. Soon enough, this formally righteous cop is comically jailed for his own brutal murder! As the film's prologue promises, Irma La Douce is a celebration of life from beginning to end -- unabashedly adoring lust, emotion, fervor and, above all, foolish love. ~ Aubry Anne D'Arminio, Rovi

In this children's movie, a young boy, the son of a loutish, irresponsible hockey player and a Canadian Indian woman is adopted by a Jewish storekeeper who wants to raise the boy as a Jew. The poor lad, trapped between three different cultures, gets confused and then rebellious. He soon finds himself constantly defending himself against a family of bullies. During one fight, he beats the tar out of one of the kids. Their family gets even by torching his step-father's store. This angers the boy who grabs a gun and takes a young girl hostage. The leads to a reconciliation between the troubled youth and his real father. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

In Richard Benjamin's directorial debut, Mark Linn-Baker stars as Benjy Stone, junior writer on the popular 1950s TV comedy/variety series The King Kaiser Show. Kaiser (Joseph Bologna)'s guest star this week is Hollywood matinee idol Alan Swann (Peter O'Toole), a swashbuckling Errol Flynn type, right down to his indiscriminate womanizing and fondness for mass quantities of booze. Stone is assigned to keep the actor out of trouble during rehearsals and deliver him sober to the performance. Becoming fast friends, Stone and Swann alternate baby-sitting responsibilities: Swann takes the young writer to the Stork Club and on an early-morning jaunt through Central Park with a "borrowed" police horse, while Stone takes Swann to his home, where the star is fawned over by Benji's mom (Lainie Kazan) and asked embarrassing questions about his love life by Uncle Morty (Lou Jacobi). Despite a few anxious moments, all goes well until Swann, panicking at the discovery that King Kaiser's show will be telecast live and not on film, walks out just before airtime. Shamed by Benjy into honoring his committment, Swann makes a spectacular, timber-smashing entrance, saving the show and rescuing Kaiser from being rubbed out by a gangster (Cameron Mitchell) whom the comedian has offended. The film co-stars Jessica Harper, Gloria Stuart and Selma Diamond, a real-life comedy writer for Sid Caesar. My Favorite Year was converted into an unsuccessful Broadway musical in the early 1990s. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In this comedy, the aged residents of Flo Adler's Mapleview Nursing Home revolt against the corporate conglomerate threatening to take over their home. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

New York's Roseland ballroom was in 1977 the traditional gathering place of senior citizens who wanted briefly to relive the good old days. Appropriately, the cast of Merchant/Ivory's Roseland includes a quartet of always-welcome showbiz veterans: Teresa Wright, Lou Jacobi, Helen Gallagher. The episodic storyline is unified by an unending flow of vintage hit songs, including "Slow Boat to China", "Stranger in Paradise" and "Rockin' Chair". The most effective vignette involves cleaning-lady Skala, whose minimum-wage job supports her weekly ballroom nostalgia-fests. The film was written by Merchant-Ivory perennial Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Hoping to recapture the success of its 1945 Frederic Chopin biopic A Song to Remember, Columbia Pictures concocted the 1960 Technicolor costume drama Song Without End. Dirk Bogarde is cast as musical genius Franz Liszt. Bogarde's piano scenes are dubbed with another's singing voice, but this hardly matters in that the film is preoccupied with Liszt's infamous romantic entanglements. The crux of the matter is Liszt's desire to wed the already married Russian princess Carolyne (Capucine), which will necessitate an unpleasant breakup with his current lover, Countess Marie (Genevieve Page). Director Charles Vidor died after only a few weeks on the picture; he was replaced by George Cukor, who graciously insisted that Vidor be billed in letters larger than his. The chief selling point of Song Without End is its wall-to-wall music; the film won an Oscar for "best musical arrangement." ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi