Matthew Tobin Movies

Goofy medical students have all kinds of rip roaring fun pulling crazy pranks such as scaring first year students by pretending to be cadavers. When the hijinks accelerate, the dean of the school tries to stop them. Filled with vulgarity, sexist and bathroom humor, the film's director Rod Holcomb, not wanting to take responsibility for the film, billed himself as "Allen Smithee," the official pseudonym of the Directors Guild. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In this martial arts film, a twisted cult lead by the evil Reverend Rhee (Bong Soo Han) has kidnapped a young girl, and it is up to renegade Jerry Martin (Joe Lewis) and his friends to rescue her before it is too late. ~ Iotis Erlewine, All Movie Guide

Quincy (Jack Klugman) is invited to appear on the talk show emceed by Dick Wilcox (Ron Masak). Also appearing on the same show is Corinne O'Connor, the author of a best-selling diet book. Almost immediately, Quincy goes on the offensive against Corinne, claiming that her controversial diet was a contibuting factor in the death of young model Gretchen Stone (Lori Street). Although no real crime is committed on this episode, there is plenty of punishment to go around--especially when Corinne slaps Quincy with a multimillion-dollar libel suit. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A guy who lives for cars and girls find both on Los Angeles's main drag for cruising in this teen-oriented comedy from the '70s. Bobby (Bill Adler) is a kid from middle-of-nowhere California who is crazy for cars. Bobby's girlfriend Jo (Susanne Severeid) is more interested in settling down than racing, so when he hears about Van Nuys Boulevard in Los Angeles, the number-one place for hot rodders to cruise in California, he hops in his souped-up van and hits the highway. Arriving in L.A. Bobby hits Van Nuys and soon meets a handful of other gearheads, including Chooch (David Hayward), who has been king of the strip for years and lives with his car in his garage; Greg (Dennis Bowen), a nice guy chasing his dream girl; Zass (Dana Gladstone), a hard-nosed cop trying to shut down the hot-rodders; and Wanda (Tara Strohmeier), a beautiful carhop who serves up sex along with cheeseburgers. But things really take a turn for Bobby when he crosses paths with Moon (Cynthia Wood), a pretty girl who also digs cars and whose van is a match for his own. Cynthia Wood, who played Moon, was Playboy Magazine's Playmate of the Year in 1974, and later played a model for the magazine visiting troops in Vietnam in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Albert Brooks made his feature-length debut as a writer and director with this wickedly funny satire, in which Albert Brooks plays "Albert Brooks," an arrogant and self-centered comedian who has decided to make a documentary film. Following the lead of the infamous pre-Real World PBS series An American Family (in which a "typical" family was filmed during most of their waking hours and eventually self-destructed on camera), Brooks moves in with the Yeager family of Phoenix, Arizona and chronicles their lives, with the support of a battery of psychiatrists and sociologists. He arrives at the Yeagers' doorstep with a two-man crew, wearing high-tech cameras that look like space helmets from a grade-B sci-fi movie, and it quickly becomes obvious that he is incapable of being unobtrusive. The Yeagers are driven to distraction by Brooks, who repeatedly ignores the advice of his team of experts and wishes there were some way to make the family's life more interesting (leading to perhaps the least expected homage to Gone With the Wind in film history). Of all Brooks' features, Real Life most resembles his cutting but deadpan short subjects for Saturday Night Live; Brooks never fails to cast himself in an unflattering light, and the supporting cast does admirable work in reacting to him, especially Charles Grodin and Lee McCain as Mr. and Mrs. Yeager. Harry Shearer contributed to the screenplay and plays a small role. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

This lively musical comedy pays tribute to the birth of rock & roll in the late 1950s and the instrumental role played by disc jockey Alan Freed who helped bring the new sound into vogue. Much of the story centers on the daring deejay's attempts to put on the very first live rock & roll stage show at the Paramount Theatre in Brooklyn. To do this he must overcome the protests of concerned and angry parents, conservatives, and local police. Several performers of the era appear in the film including Chuck Berry, and Jerry Lee Lewis. ~ Sandra Brennan, 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