Severn Darden

A naive monk, named Brother Ambrose (Marty Feldman), is sent by the abbot on a mission to raise $5,000 in order to save their monastery from closing. He goes to Hollywood where he encounters a number of eccentric characters. He is at first robbed and later befriended by con artist Dr. Sebastian Melmoth (Peter Boyle), and meets a prostitute named Mary (Louise Lasser) who lets him stay at her apartment. Mary grows to care for Ambrose and seduces him while he is taking a cold shower to try to alleviate his lustful thoughts about her. While he is in Hollywood, he visits several churches including a service at the Church of Divine Profit, performed by the televangelist Armageddon T. Thunderbird (Andy Kaufman) in which he sees the focus of the sermon being a request for money in exchange for salvation. Ambrose is angered by this message and tries to meet a number of times with Thunderbird, being ejected each time. Dr. Melmoth and Ambrose travel the city in a modified schoolbus, in which they hold church services for donations. During one service, the brakes of the bus release and the bus rolls downhill into a river. The passengers escape safely in the river and are shown on the local news being baptized by the pair, which catches Thunderbird's attention. He prays to G. O. D. for guidance and it tells him to work with Ambrose to make more money because Ambrose is an innocent and has a clean image. Thunderbird has his minions kidnap Ambrose and bring him to his office where he outlines a plan for his own brand of church on wheels. He says he will pay Ambrose the $5,000 the monastery needs if he assists him. While they are talking, Thunderbird mentions that G. O. D. (Richard Pryor) audibly talks to him when he prays to him and Ambrose is surprised because he himself has never heard from God in this way. Ambrose agrees to work with Thunderbird and they go across the country from town to town holding services in their own bus. One day at Thunderbird's headquarters, Ambrose overhears Thunderbird praying to G. O. D. in his private chamber and when he hears G. O. D. speak back to him, he is intrigued. When Thunderbird leaves, he sneaks into the chamber and discovers that G. O. D. (General Organizational Directivatator) is a sophisticated master computer, linked to all of Thunderbird's finances and operations. He talks with G. O. D. and reads the Bible to it, giving it morality and a conscience. G. O. D. decides to give all of Thunderbird's money away and tells Ambrose what to do to accomplish this, which results in bags of money being poured out of the office's window. Thunderbird discovers someone has been interfering with the computer and rushes back to headquarters where he tries to capture Ambrose and destroys the computer. Ambrose grabs the paid monastery mortgage certificate from Thunderbird's office and escapes in a chase through the city. While Mary and Dr. Melmoth look for Ambrose during his escape, she learns that Melmoth is the father that left her family when she was a child, due to a distinctive tattoo she sees on his leg. They eventually find Ambrose and rescue him from the people chasing him. Ambrose goes back to the monastery and gives the abbot the mortgage certificate, then leaves and marries Mary, who is pregnant from their single night together. The end titles show Melmoth's bus traveling down the road, saying they "all lived happily hereafter".

Following a North American pandemic from a space-borne disease that wiped out all dogs and cats in 1983, the government has become a series of Schutzstaffel-patterned police states that took chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans as pets before establishing a culture based on ape slave labor. These events were foretold in 1973 as testimony by two chimpanzee scientists who came from the distant future, Cornelius and Zira, before they were killed. Widely believed to be dead, their baby was secretly raised by the circus owner Armando as a young horseback rider. In 1991, now fully grown and named Caesar, the ape is brought to one of the cities to distribute flyers for Armando's circus. During their trip, Armando advises Caesar not to speak in public for fear of his life. After seeing a gorilla being beaten and drugged, Caesar shouts "Lousy human bastards!". Armando attempts to defuse the ensuing commotion by taking responsibility for the exclamation. He plans to turn himself in to the authorities and bluff his way out while instructing Caesar to hide among the apes for safety. Caesar obeys and hides in a cage of orangutans, finding himself being trained for slavery through violent conditioning. He is then sold at auction to Governor Breck. Caesar is then put to work by Breck's chief aide MacDonald, whose African American heritage allows him to sympathize with the apes to the disgust of his boss. Meanwhile, Armando is interrogated by Inspector Kolp, who suspects his "circus ape" is the child of Cornelius and Zira. Kolp's assistant puts Armando under a machine that psychologically forces people to be truthful. Realizing he cannot fight the machine, Armando jumps through a window and dies. When Caesar learns of Armando's death, he loses faith in human kindness. In secret, he begins teaching the apes combat and has them gather weapons. Unfortunately, Breck eventually learns that Caesar is the ape the police are hunting. Meanwhile, Caesar realizes MacDonald is an ally to the apes' cause and reveals himself to him. MacDonald understands Caesar's intent to depose Breck, but expresses his doubts about the revolution's effectiveness. Caesar is later captured by Breck's men and is electrically tortured into speaking. Hearing him speak, Breck orders Caesar to be killed. With MacDonald's help, the heroes manage to trick Breck into believing Caesar died. Once Breck leaves, Caesar kills his torturer and escapes. To build his numbers, Caesar takes over Ape Management. While setting the city on fire, Caesar and the rest of the apes proceed to the command center, killing most of the riot police that attempt to stop them in the process. After succeeding in this, Caesar has Breck marched out to be executed. MacDonald pleads with Caesar not to succumb to brutality and be merciful to the former masters. Caesar ignores him, deciding to dedicate his life to man's downfall. This is the original uncut ending of the movie. After a bad reception from the first audiences due to its dark tone, the ending was reworked to add a dubbed follow-up to the speech from Caesar: As the apes raise their rifles to beat Breck to death, Caesar's girlfriend Lisa voices her objection, saying "No!". She is the first ape to speak other than Caesar, but the other apes are concerned about Caesar's bloodlust as well. Caesar reconsiders and orders the apes to lower their weapons, deciding that they can afford to be humane, since the fight is already won and they "have seen the birth of the planet of the apes".

George is unemployed, broke, about to be drafted to Vietnam, and suddenly madly in love with the divine Lola, a woman he has only briefly glimpsed. Now George searches for his potential amour through the City of Angels. George Matthews is a young man who is having a bittersweet affair with a French divorcée in Los Angeles. Waiting to be drafted, he is unable to commit himself to anything or anybody, including his girlfriend Gloria. While trying to raise money to prevent his car from being repossessed, George is attracted to Lola, a Frenchwoman who works in a "model shop" (an establishment which rents out beautiful pin-up models to photographers). George spends his last twelve dollars to photograph her, and discovers that she is as unhappy as he. Although Lola is unwilling to respond to George, their brief night of lovemaking gives both the will to deal with their respective problems. —alfiehitchie Twenty-six year old Angeleno George Matthews is floundering in life and somewhat directionless. An architect by trade, he is currently unemployed because his aspiration to build grand structures does not match the work of an architect just starting out. In addition, he is unable to make a long term commitment to his live-in girlfriend Gloria, who has given him opportunity after opportunity to show her if she means as much to him as he does to her. His short term concerns are waiting for his draft notice to come through which he is dreading, and scrounging $100 from friends so that he can pay off the collection agents who will repossess his car otherwise. His goals change when he spots a beautiful woman with whom he becomes infatuated. As the day progresses, he learns that she is a French woman named Cecile, who works as a model - stage named Lola - in a tawdry studio specializing in erotic photographs. Despite the issues that she too is facing in life, George sees her as a possible new beginning. —Huggo

A psychiatrist suddenly gets assigned to be the US president's shrink. Paranoid from the many spies tailing him in hope of kidnapping him, he runs away, and dozens of spies, and the FBI, CIA, and various agencies scramble to retrieve him. At first, Dr. Sidney Schaefer feels honored and thrilled to be offered the job of the President's Analyst. But then the stress of the job and the paranoid spies that come with a sensitive government position get to him, and he runs away. Now spies from all over the world are after him, either to get him for their own side or to kill him and prevent someone else from getting him.

A paroled conman co-ordinates the robbery of an L. A. Airport bank with the arrival of the Soviet premier. Involved crime drama about an intricate plan to rob an airport bank. Watch for the surprise ending and look quickly for a barely-recognizable Harrison Ford in his film debut, playing a bellhop. —Brett England Eli Kotch is a manipulative conman who seduces his prison psychiatrist in order to gain parole. Utilizing his skill with various accents and disguises, he further seduces a variety of women in order to raise the money he will need to buy the security plans of L.A. Airport bank from a fellow inmate and finance its robbery. Under yet another identity, he also charms and marries beautiful Inger Knudson as she unknowingly helps him in the preparations for the heist. Kotch is able to co-ordinate the robbery with the high-profile arrival of the Russian Premier at the airport as he and his accomplices cleverly tries to utilize the resultant commotion as a diversion. —Gabe Taverney (duke1029@aol.com) In seducing Dr. Marion Hague, the psychiatrist at the San Francisco area prison where he's being confined, convict Eli Kotch is able to secure parole, which he quickly violates in the reason for his want to get out of prison at this time: to carry out a heist at the bank at LAX, the heist which he plans to carry out at the same time as the Soviet premier's visit to Los Angeles when the authorities, including the airport police, would be preoccupied with security for that visit. A large part of the front end of the plan requires Eli to raise an additional $85,000 to purchase the bank layout blueprints. In doing so and to carry out the heist itself, Eli relies on his usual M.O.s of seducing women, much like he did with Dr. Hague, dropping them after he's gotten what he needs from them, and using a variety of personae, which not only includes disguises but also foreign accents. What happens with the heist may be affected by two unexpected things for which Eli may not have made contingencies. First, secret service discovers a breach in their security making them have to change their security detail from their original arrangements. And second, Inger Knudson, the personal secretary to a New England matron, Inger the woman on who he has the longest con, his seduction which includes a sham marriage, has something happen in her and by association his life. —Huggo