Zero Mostel Movies

Kermit and Fozzie find treasure in the lost episodes that include cooking lessons with a Swedish Chef and episodes from "Pigs in Space" and "Veterinarian's Hospital." ~ All Movie Guide

Unique in the annals of animated films, Watership Down is a serious, even grim tale that many will find relentless and depressing and others will find poetic and moving. It doesn't pull any punches. Death -- violent, disturbing death -- is ever present, portrayed in a manner that is astonishingly honest for a cartoon. As a result, it is that rare animated film that really aims for a mature audience, despite its superficial funny animal trappings. It has a brilliant opening, most likely created by UPA veteran John Hubley, which in a primitive and simplistic style relates a creation myth as told by rabbits. The style changes thereafter, with beautiful watercolor backgrounds and a more natural approach to character animation. Unfortunately, the animation suffers somewhat from this point, becoming a bit sloppy, although it continues to portray the characters' movements as realistically as possible. The character designs themselves are rather too similar, with the result that it is sometimes difficult to tell the various rabbits apart. The story is also sometimes told in too-broad strokes, leaving those unfamiliar with the novel confused as to exactly what has happened and, more importantly, why. However, these flaws are redeemed by some unforgettable sequences, including a chilling segment detailing the destruction of the rabbits' warren and a devastatingly sad end sequence in which the Black Rabbit of Death gently takes one of the heroes away with it. Voiced by a fine cast, with stellar work from John Hurt and Richard Briers, Watership Down is an imperfect film with some of the most powerful moments ever created for the genre. ~ Craig Butler, All Movie Guide

The McCarthy-era "witch hunts" in the entertainment industry set the stage for this comedy drama set in the 1950s. Howard Prince (Woody Allen) is a cashier at a corner bar who works as a small-time bookie on the side, with little success. One day, Howard's old friend Alfred Miller (Michael Murphy), a successful television writer, makes a business proposal to him; Alfred's leftist political views have resulted in him being blacklisted from the major television networks, and he can no longer get work. Alfred asks Howard to act as a "front" -- Howard puts his name on Alfred's scripts, sells them, and takes a cut of the payment for his trouble. Howard's new career as a "writer" is an instant success, and soon Howard is fronting for a handful of blacklisted scribes while earning a healthy income and becoming the toast of the television industry; another fringe benefit is a romance with beautiful network employee Florence Barrett (Andrea Marcovicci). However, comic Hecky Brown (Zero Mostel), who had a brief fling with socialism years before, now finds his past catching up with him, and he's told in order to save his job as host of a weekly television show, he has to get the goods on some suspicious figures, among them Howard Prince, whose background looks a little too clean for comfort. The Front was written by Walter Bernstein, who was himself blacklisted during the 1950s, as were co-stars Zero Mostel, Herschel Bernardi, and Lloyd Gough. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

This remake of the Orson Welles film stars Sam Waterston as a researcher who finds himself entangled in intrigue and danger in Turkey. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide

In this comedy, a greedy Mexican don, the biggest landowner around, is used to getting his own way. The trouble begins when he casts his avaricious eyes upon a pretty lass who is most inconveniently betrothed to another. He takes care of that by tossing her beloved into jail. Knowing that only the Don has the power to insure her lover's release, the girl and her aunt devise a devious scheme. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Peter Yates directs the early '70s comedy caper The Hot Rock, based on the Donald Westlake novel and adapted for the screen by William Goldman. Robert Redford stars as John Archibald Dortmunder, a former jewel thief just released from prison. His brother-in-law, Andrew Kelp (George Segal), recruits him to steal a diamond from a museum. They are hired by Dr. Amusa (Moses Gunn), an ambassador from Central Fatawi, whose people consider the stone to be sacred. John and Andrew assemble a team with Alan Greenberg (Paul Sand) and Stan Murch (Ron Leibman). They successfully pull off the job until the guards arrest them and Alan swallows the diamond. Alan's father (Zero Mostel) helps him break out of jail, which leads to a series of other heist attempts. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide

This hilarious parody pokes fun at Charlie Chan movies and features Zero Mostel as an inscrutable Asian detective, Inspector Hoku, who must keep international spies from getting hold of a newly developed robot. In-jokes abound and slapstick mayhem ensues. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Theatrical producer Max Bialystock (Zero Mostel) was once the toast of Broadway. Now he lives in his seedy office, cadging cash contributions from wealthy old ladies in exchange for sexual favors. Even worse, he's reduced to wearing a cardboard belt. Max's new accountant, Leo Bloom (Gene Wilder), the soul of honesty, suggests that Max produce a hit to try to recoup his losses, but Max knows that it's too late for that. Offhandedly, Leo muses that, if Max found investors for a flop, he could legally keep all the extra money. Suddenly, Max's eyes light up -- and in that moment, Leo Bloom is gloriously corruptible. "I want everything I've ever seen in the movies!" cries Leo as Max embraces him. Together, Max and Leo conspire to select the worst play, the worst playwright, the worst director, and the worst actor to collaborate on their guaranteed flop. That play is Springtime for Hitler, "a delightful romp...with Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun." The playwright is Franz Liebkind (Kenneth Mars), an unreconstructed Nazi who, in drunken delirium, insists that Hitler was a better painter than Churchill -- "He could paint an entire apartment in one afternoon, two coats!" The director is pompous transvestite Roger De Bris (Christopher Hewett), who is preparing to go to a costume party garbed as Marie Antoinette when Max and Leo come calling ("Max, Max, he's wearing a dress"). And the star, selected after extensive auditions, is hippie-freak Lorenzo St. DuBois (Dick Shawn) -- "L.S.D." for short.

At the end of several weeks, Max has sold 25,000 percent of the show; and, as a finishing touch, Max bribes the opening-night critics for a favorable review, knowing full well that such a gesture is the kiss of death. The curtains part, and Springtime for Hitler opens with perhaps the most tasteless production number in the history of films. At the end of this extravaganza, the audience sits in dumbfounded silence. Gleefully, Max and Leo repair to a corner bar to celebrate their failure. But then.... The first directorial effort of Mel Brooks, The Producers didn't do so well on its first release, but since that time it has taken its place as one of the all-time great movie comedies. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A documentary video designed to find information on a group of children who arrived in Israel in 1947 after the Holocaust. ~ All Movie Guide

Humphrey Bogart plays Martin Ferguson, a prosecutor about to put Albert Mendoza (Everett Sloane), the head of a murder-for-hire ring, on trial. But the night before the trial, his key witness, Joe Rico (Ted de Corsia), dies in a fall out of the window of the room in which he's been guarded, part of an abortive escape attempt to keep from testifying. His case in shambles, Ferguson and detective Captain Nelson (Roy Roberts) try to piece the entire four-year investigation back together from square one, trying to find something that might give them another way to prosecute Mendoza. The main body of the movie is told in flashback, starting when a small-time hood named Duke Malloy (Michael Tolan, then billed as Lawrence Tolan) walks into a police station to turn himself in for killing his girlfriend -- and says that someone made him kill her. He babbles to the bewildered detectives about "hits" and "contracts" and men nicknamed Philadelphia, Big Babe, and Smiley. The body isn't found, but they arrest Malloy, who hangs himself in his cell. That dead end leads, almost by accident, to Philadelphia Tom Zaca (Jack Lambert), an asylum inmate who has to be put under sedation at the mention of Malloy's name. They find another suspect's body burning in his building's incinerator, and then Big Babe Lazick (Zero Mostel), a two-bit hood, hiding in a church in mortal fear of his life. He begins weaving a tale of a murder-by-contract ring and its head operator, Joe Rico, of a murder contract that Duke Malloy never filled on a girl who had to change her name, of mistaken identity and the murder of the girl's cab-driver father, and the connection between that and a murder that they both witnessed eight years earlier. In the midst of all of those interlocking stories (spread across ten years), there's something Ferguson missed -- when he had Rico to testify -- that he has to sort out from the reams of testimony and evidence, and he has to figure it out before Mendoza does, or lose the last witness he has. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

The title character (Paul Douglas) is a pro football player of the early 1940s at the end of his career. Douglas is offered a coaching job, but he stubbornly turns it down in hopes of making a comeback. Day after day he sits in his den watching movies of his past gridiron triumph, much to the dismay of his wife (Joan Bennett). When she chews him out for living in the past, Douglas walks out and takes up with a younger woman (Linda Darnell). To prove that he's still in top shape, Douglas takes a job as a professional wrestler. His new girl friend, realizing that Douglas is miserable without his wife, conspires with the other woman to get Douglas back on his old team. The wartime need for warm bodies allows Douglas a few more years in football, but eventually he gets wise to himself and takes the coaching job. Ironically, Guy Who Came Back star Paul Douglas was in his youth an football pro who retired from active play to become a sports announcer. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In Sirocco Humphrey Bogart is cast as Harry Smith, a casino operator in 1925 Damascus. For a tidy profit, Smith runs guns to the Arab insurrectionists attempting to overthrow the French Protectorate. Chastised by French Colonel Feroud (Lee J. Cobb) for his lack of morals and political convictions, Smith merely sneers in agreement. Before long, he has become romantically involved with Feroud's mistress Violetta (Marta Toren), who hopes to use Harry as means of escape to Cairo. Only after being betrayed by the Arabs and roughed up by the French authorities does our "hero" begin to behave ethically -- but by then, it's too late. A weak attempt by Bogart's Santana Productions to duplicate the success of Casablanca. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide