Rose Michtom Movies

In this comedy, a group of randy young interns turn City Hospital upside down with their romantic liaisons and their blunders. ~ Iotis Erlewine, All Movie Guide

Comedian Marty Feldman directed and co-wrote this satire of the less-scrupulous side of organized religion. Brother Ambrose (Marty Feldman) is a monk who has spent nearly his entire life within the walls of his monastery and knows little of the outside world. However, when he learns that the monastery has fallen on economic hard times and may be forced to close, he takes it upon himself to raise the funds to save his home. Ambrose ends up on Hollywood Boulevard, where he solicits donations from passers-by and gets a crash course in life in the fallen world from Mary (Louise Lasser), a smart-mouthed hooker. Ambrose and Mary soon encounter Armageddon T. Thunderbird (Andy Kaufman), a fire-and-brimstone televangelist who agrees to help Ambrose by making him a partner in his house of worship, The Church of the Divine Profit. However, Thunderbird's methods don't agree with Ambrose, and eventually he turns to God Himself (Richard Pryor) for help. In God We Trust was Feldman's second and last directorial assignment; the supporting cast also includes Peter Boyle, Wilfrid Hyde-White, and Severn Darden. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

George Hamilton confounded his detractors by turning in a first-rate comic performance in Love at First Bite. Hamilton plays Count Dracula, who is evicted from his Transylvanian domicile when the Communist government decides to nationalize his castle. With faithful toady Renfield (Arte Johnson) at his side, Dracula heads for the Big Apple, where he finds the vampire pickings radically different from those on his home turf: for example, ol' Drac suffers the mother of all hangovers when his sinks his fangs into the neck of a wino. Klutzy Cindy Sondheim (Susan Saint James) falls in love with Dracula, not fully aware of his colorful background. But Cindy's stuffy fiance Dr. Jeff Rosenberg (Richard Benjamin), a descendant of Dracula's perennial foe Professor Van Helsing, knows what Dracula's up to and does his best to thwart the vampire's plan. This proves very difficult, since such time-honored remedies as the stake through the heart are frowned upon by the New York City authorities. So successful was Love at First Bite that Hamilton was encouraged to have a satiric go at another literary icon in 1982's Zorro, the Gay Blade. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Three's a crowd in Mike Nichols's period caper comedy -- or is it? To dodge the 1920s Mann Act barring the transport of women across state lines for "immoral purposes," not-yet-divorced Nicky (Warren Beatty) has felonious buddy Oscar (Jack Nicholson) marry Nicky's runaway heiress sweetheart Freddy (Stockard Channing) so they can all escape New York for Los Angeles. The three set up house together, but trouble starts brewing when odd man out Oscar decides to get Nicky's attention by exercising his rights as a husband to Freddy. Exasperated with being stuck in the middle of the bickering pair, Freddy threatens to donate her impending inheritance to charity, inciting Oscar and Nicky to hatch a plan to bump her off and keep the money. But Freddy just will not die, prompting the three to reconsider the whole arrangement. With a period setting and pair of stellar lead actors similar to the 1973 blockbuster The Sting, a screenplay by Five Easy Pieces author Carol Eastman (under the name Adrien Joyce), and deft comedy director Nichols, The Fortune seemed like a can't-miss proposition. But it resoundingly flopped, as audiences preferred to see Beatty in his earlier 1975 starring role as a racy L.A. hairdresser in Shampoo, and to wait for Nicholson's later 1975 incarnation as an archetypal iconoclast in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. As with other late '60s-early '70s period films like Beatty's own Bonnie and Clyde (1967), The Fortune lends an updated sensibility to its old-fashioned milieu, complete with a very modern happy ending. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide