Madeline Kahn Movies

This dismal sci-fi comedy is based on a novel by Kurt Vonnegut and features Jerry Lewis and Madeline Kahn in dual roles as wealthy, respected parents who give birth to two gigantic, and ugly twins. The appalled parents try to keep them hidden away for they do not know that their "children" are really alien ambassadors who have come to help make the Earth a better place. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

This routine drama-comedy about the trials of walking out of the closet has some notable performances such as that of Madeleine Kahn as a salty, warm-hearted, and terribly promiscuous neighbor, and Robert Viharo as an outgoing father. Francis Geminiani (Alan Rosenberg) has a romance going with Judith (Sarah Holcomb) until he drops her after a few nights of intimacy. Besieged by guilt and misgivings, Francis is eventually forced to admit that he is really in love with her brother Randy (David Marshall Grant), who does not really live up (or down) to his name. Randy is a wealthy, conservative Harvard student and Francis is a poor and liberal Harvard student. The story is based on the play Gemini by Albert Innaurato. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Gilda Radner, Bob Newhart, and Madeline Kahn star in this comedy. The farce sends up an idiotic First Family in the persona of a bumbling president (Newhart), his semi-alcoholic wife (Kahn), and his oversexed daughter (Radner). Satirizing the artificial, formal speech of real-life First Families in television interviews, director Buck Henry carries this mode of speech into their private lives as well. The trio travel to an African country where the First Daughter is kidnapped and white Americans are traded as slaves in exchange for some special animal dung that is able to accelerate plant growth. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Kermit the Frog and Fozzie Bear, from of the large crew of loveably fuzzy characters created by puppetmaster Jim Henson, have embarked on a quest for stardom. They take a trip to Hollywood, riding in or on a wide variety of vehicles along the way. They begin their journey on a bicycle pedalled by Kermit, but friends accumulate along the way, and they change vehicles to accomodate them. They have the additional challenge of fending off the entreaties of the heartless Doc Hopper (Charles Durning), who wants Kermit to make some advertisements promoting fried frog legs. Kermit must also cope with his amorous feelings for Miss Piggy, and hers for him. This appealing children's adventure movie has numerous scenes which do homage to classic films, and features a huge cast of Hollywood greats, from Edgar Bergen to Orson Welles, in cameo roles. A great box-office success, this movie paved the way for a number of sequels. One of the film's many songs, The Rainbow Connection, was nominated for an Oscar. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

This is Mel Brooks' spoof of over ten Alfred Hitchcock classics, including Psycho, Vertigo, and The Birds (Brooks actually used the bird trainer from that classic suspense movie in making his film). Brooks plays Dr. Richard H. Thorndyke, a renowned Harvard psychiatrist with a concealed fear of heights, or High Anxiety. Thorndyke takes over as the newest director of the PsychoNeurotic Institute for the Very, Very Nervous after the last director dies under suspicious circumstances. He soon finds himself to be in the company of some very strange colleagues, including longtime Brooks collaborators Cloris Leachman and Harvey Korman, with Madeline Kahn as Victoria Brisbane, the eccentric daughter of a patient at the institute and Thorndyke's love interest. Korman takes on the role of Dr. Charles Montague, a psychiatrist with a closeted habit of his own. Leachman plays Charlotte Diesel, a charge nurse with a dark sneer and tendency towards domination. As Thorndyke heads to a psychiatry conference, he is faced with saving the Institute, his reputation, and his own sanity. Although the film was not well-received by critics, it picked up a 1978 Golden Globe nomination for best picture (musical or comedy) and landed Brooks a nomination for best actor. The movie has a number of cameos, from a young Barry Levinson's spot as an unstable bellboy to a small part by Hitchcock's right-hand special effects man, Albert J. Whitlock, who plays Kahn's father. ~ Rachel Koetje, All Movie Guide

This spoof makes fun of a certain famous German shepherd movie star from the 1920s. The mayhem begins when the head honcho of a financially struggling studio turns a lost dog into a legend. The story features a number of old stars making cameo appearances. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Comic actor Gene Wilder made his debut as a writer and director in this period comedy in which he plays Sigerson Holmes, the older bother of famous detective Sherlock Holmes. For years, Sigerson has been living in his little brother's shadow, and he is convinced that he must constantly prove his superiority to his brother in all things at all times. Of course, he often fails, but one can't argue with his determination. In this story, Sherlock (Douglas Wilmer) and his faithful assistant, Watson (Thorley Walters), are called away from England on an assignment, and Sherlock asks Sigerson if he wouldn't mind looking into a case for him. With typically misguided enthusiasm, Sigerson is hot on the trail of a cache of missing government documents, whose theft may be the dirty work of the wicked Moriarty (Leo McKern). Sigerson is assisted in his investigation by Olville Sacker (Marty Feldman), a bumbling Scotland Yard detective who claims to have photographic hearing, and the mysterious and seductive Jenny Hill (Madeline Kahn). Gene Wilder rose to fame in the offbeat comedies of director Mel Brooks, so it was fitting that, for his first film as a director, Wilder cast Brooks in a cameo role (he's heard but not seen after discovering that the door he chose had the tiger, not the lady). ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Lending his burlesque touch to 1970s genre revision, Mel Brooks followed his hit "western" Blazing Saddles with this parody of 1930s Universal horror movies. Determined to live down his family's reputation, Dr. Frederick Frankenstein (co-screenwriter Gene Wilder) insists on pronouncing his name "Fronckensteen" and denies interest in replicating his grandfather's experiments. But when he is lured by Frau Blucher (Cloris Leachman) to discover the tantalizingly titled journal "How I Did It" in his grandfather's castle, he cannot resist. With the help of voluptuous Inga (Teri Garr), wall-eyed assistant Igor (Marty Feldman), and a purloined brain, Frankenstein creates his monster (Peter Boyle). Igor, however, stole the wrong brain, and the monster tears off into the countryside, encountering a little girl and a blind hermit (Gene Hackman). Frankenstein finds the monster and trains him to do a little "Puttin' On the Ritz" soft-shoe, but the monster escapes again, this time seducing Frankenstein's uptight fiancée Elizabeth (Madeline Kahn) with his, ahem, sweet mystery. His love life and experiment in shambles, Frankenstein finally finds a way to create the being he had planned. Shooting in gleaming black-and-white, with sets and props from the 1930s and appropriate fright music by John Morris, Brooks' cheeky attitude towards the Hollywood past attracted a large audience, turning it into one of the most popular 1974 releases after (what else?) Blazing Saddles. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

In this children's movies, a young brother and sister escape from the boredom of their suburban neighborhood and high-tail it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. There they wind up hiding within the maze of hallways until the girl finds a beautiful white statue. She is captivated by it and becomes obsessed with trying to discover if it is really a Michaelangelo. This leads her and her brother to the mansion of a 70-year old recluse with whom the girl becomes friends. They begin sharing their secrets and talking about art. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

With Howard Hawks's Bringing Up Baby (1938) as his blueprint, Peter Bogdanovich resurrected and payed homage to 1930s screwball comedy in What's Up, Doc? (1972). When wacky co-ed Judy Maxwell (Barbra Streisand, in the Katharine Hepburn part) spies nebbishy musicologist Howard Bannister (Ryan O'Neal in bespectacled Cary Grant mode) in a San Francisco hotel lobby, she decides that Howard and his precious igneous rocks are right up her alley. Too bad Howard already has a fiancée, the propriety-fixated Eunice (Madeline Kahn in her film debut). Using all her arcane knowledge from brief stays at numerous colleges, Judy tries to charm her way to a $20,000 grant for Howard, and Howard himself, at a banquet with grantor Frederick Larrabee (Austin Pendleton). Things get even more complicated the next day when Judy's underwear-filled overnight bag gets mixed up with Howard's rock bag, which gets mixed up with Mrs. Van Hoskins' bag of jewels, which gets mixed up with Mr. Smith's bag of top secret government papers. All sides converge at Larrabee's mod townhouse and the chase begins. Retaining Hawks' machine-gun pace (as well as the sly pop culture referentiality of Billy Wilder), Bogdanovich and writers Buck Henry, David Newman, and Robert Benton updated the opposites-attract screwball convention for contemporary times. O'Neal gently parodied not only Grant but also his own Love Story (1970) preppy, while Kahn represents stiff-wigged 1950s manners as opposed to Streisand's long-haired, pants-wearing free spirit. The happy ending, in which Cole Porter-belting youth wins out over old manners, found favor with audiences, as What's Up, Doc? became one of the most popular films of 1972, and the second hit in a row for Bogdanovich after 1971's The Last Picture Show. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

Sleep rituals have been a part of families for thousands of years. But for the past four decades, children have been demanding to have Dr. Seuss' The Sleep Book read to them every night. Random House has brought the book to video, thereby breathing life into Snorter McPhail and his Snore-a-Snort Band as well as Jo and Mo Redd-Zoff, the world champion sleep-talkers. Young snoozers will enjoy seeing all ninety-nine zillion nine trillion and three creatures fall asleep. Recommended for ages three to six. ~ Heather M. Fierst, All Movie Guide