It seems appropriate to me that the week I reviewed Airport I should also review the spoof that signaled the end of the Disaster movie era, 1980's classic Airplane!, which is still one of the funniest movies ever made.
The story goes that while writing Kentucky Fried Movie, Jim Abrahams, Jerry Zucker, and David Zucker would record late night television, specifically looking to spoof the commercials. One night they recorded the 1957 movie Zero Hour! with Dana Andrews having to land a plane after the pilots succumb to food poisoning. They lifted whole scenes, including line for line dialogue, right from the movie and managed to create comedy gold.
Robert Hays plays Ted Striker, who hasn't been near an airplane since a disastrous mission in The War (what war is never specified). His relationship with girlfriend Elaine (Julie Hagerty in her screen debut) is on the rocks. She's a stewardess on a flight from L.A. to Chicago and is planning to leave him. Desperate, he boards the plane. While in flight, everyone who has fish for dinner--which includes the pilot, co-pilot and navigator--becomes violently ill and it's up to Striker to land the plane.
Given the premise, what's a surprise is just how damn funny the movie really is. One of the genius things Abrahams, Zucker, and Zucker--or ZAZ as they were referred to in the 80s--did was to hire actors better known for dramatic parts instead of comedic actors. We may think of Leslie Neilson and Lloyd Bridges as great comic actors now, but before 1980, they were straight arrow dramatic guys. Bridges is even a serial hero in 1945's Secret Agent X-9 and Neilson is probably best remembered before this for Forbidden Planet. Peter Graves, who plays Captain Ouver, was best known for Mission: Impossible. Robert Stack was best known as Eliot Ness on The Untouchables. And yet, as Stack himself is reported to have pointed out, the actors were the joke in Airplane!--a joke that works beautifully. The actors' deadpan delivery is a large portion of what makes the movie work. Because while the actors are doing their lines, all manner of chaos is playing out around them, something they largely seem oblivious to.
In fact, the only actor that you could argue had comedy experience at the time was Hays, who was appearing on the TV show Angie when this was done. There's also Stephen Stucker and William Tregoe, both of whom were in Kentucky Fried Movie. If Tregoe's name is unfamiliar, he basically reprises his Count/Counterpoint character from KFM ("I say, let them crash!").
The movie also had the great humor to hire Maureen McGovern as the singing nun. McGovern, of course, did the Oscar winning theme songs to two of the biggest disaster movies of the 1970s, namely The Poseidon Adventure ("A Morning After") and The Towering Inferno ("We've Never Loved Like This Before").
The film is loaded with insane sight gags such as the shelves of mayo in the Mayo Clinic to the horse in the bed. You can literally see it twenty times and still not catch every joke in the movie. That alone might be what makes this film so great. While not quite every joke works, it hits far more than it misses. If this isn't the funniest movie ever made, it's in the top five for sure.
Friday, January 31, 2014
About Favorite Fridays...
I really don't like writer's block, the worst form of which is not even knowing what you want to write about. When you're doing a blog and looking at a blank screen, that's pretty lousy. I found myself in that position tonight when I hit upon an idea. If Thursday is 3D Thursday and Saturday is supposed to be Serial Saturday (I'm actually restarting that idea), what in the world could Friday be? The simple answer would be Fright Friday, but a lot of people do that. Then it occurred to me. Favorite Fridays. On those days, I would watch and review my favorite movies.
Note that these are my personal favorites. When I sometimes tell people that my all time favorite is Raiders of the Lost Ark, they look at me as if I have two heads. What people miss is that favorite doesn't necessarily equate to best. Certainly there are technically better movies than Raiders, but Raiders does something for me that those others don't. I never get sick of it nor do I think I ever will.
So sometimes you may see a film reviewed on Favorite Fridays and scratch your head and say "That's a favorite of his?" Yep. Deal with it. Age has nothing to do with it, either. The movie can be ancient like Horsefeathers, from within my lifetime but still considered old like Jaws, or from just the past few years like Captain America: The First Avenger. It may be a film that is universally considered a great or it may be something that's considered an absolute stinker but I still love it. It can be from any genre: horror, comedy, action, musical. So, sit back, enjoy the ride, and welcome to Favorite Fridays.
Note that these are my personal favorites. When I sometimes tell people that my all time favorite is Raiders of the Lost Ark, they look at me as if I have two heads. What people miss is that favorite doesn't necessarily equate to best. Certainly there are technically better movies than Raiders, but Raiders does something for me that those others don't. I never get sick of it nor do I think I ever will.
So sometimes you may see a film reviewed on Favorite Fridays and scratch your head and say "That's a favorite of his?" Yep. Deal with it. Age has nothing to do with it, either. The movie can be ancient like Horsefeathers, from within my lifetime but still considered old like Jaws, or from just the past few years like Captain America: The First Avenger. It may be a film that is universally considered a great or it may be something that's considered an absolute stinker but I still love it. It can be from any genre: horror, comedy, action, musical. So, sit back, enjoy the ride, and welcome to Favorite Fridays.
Thursday, January 30, 2014
3-D Thursday: Doctor Who: The Day of the Doctor (2013)
Before anyone says, "hey, this is a blog about movies not TV!", I will kindly point out that this is my blog and if I decide to write something about a TV program, I will. Besides, for all intent and purposes, Doctor Who: The Day of the Doctor is a TV movie since, at 80 minutes, it runs longer than a normal show. Plus it got showings in movie theaters. Besides, one of these days, I'm going to review Spielberg's Duel, which was also a TV movie.
Anyhow, this was the 50th Anniversary episode of the show, shown originally on the actual 50th Anniversary. Like all the decade anniversary episodes of Doctor Who, it was a multi-Doctor story. And like the last decade anniversary episode, the infamous 30th anniversary episode Dimensions in Time, it's in 3D.
For the three people in the world who have never heard of Doctor Who, the show started on the BBC on November 23, 1963. The premise was that The Doctor was a time traveling alien who zipped through time and space in a machine called The TARDIS (which stood for Time And Relative Dimensions In Space). The TARDIS looks like an old London police telephone box. The Doctor always has a companion, usually human and usually female. The companion is the audience surrogate, there to be placed into danger and have said danger explained to them by The Doctor. Every few years, The Doctor dies and regenerates into someone else. There have been 11 Doctors playing on the TV show over the years, with a 12 Doctor (Peter Capaldi) just taking over the reigns. In addition, Peter Cushing played The Doctor in two movies in the 1960s which were adaptions of episodes of the TV series. The original series ran from 1963-1989, making it the longest running Sci-Fi show of all time. There was an attempt to do an Americanized version of the show in 1996 with a Fox TV movie that was to serve as a pilot. It failed but 9 years later, the BBC revived the series, which ultimately allowed for this particular episode.
Okay, history lesson over. On to the actual review.
There's an A and B story going on in The Day of the Doctor. The A story involves the 11th Doctor (Matt Smith) investigating weird happenings at the London Gallery, events that are the result of a Zygon invasion. The Zygons are big rubbery monsters with suckers all over their bodies that were last seen in a 1970s episode featuring the Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker). It turns out that the invasion actually began in England in 1562. The 10th Doctor (David Tennant) stumbles on the Zygons first and is eventually joined by the 11th Doctor and the War Doctor (John Hurt). The B story is of the last day of the great Time War between the Doctor's people (The Time Lords) and his greatest--or at least most famous--enemy The Daleks (aliens that look like salt and peper shakers--I kid you not). On that day the War Doctor has stolen a Doomsday device known as The Moment and is planning to destroy all participants in The Time War, Time Lords and Daleks alike. Problem is, The Moment has a
conscience and takes the form of one of the Doctor's future companions in an effort to talk him out of what he's planning. The two stories intersect when the three Doctors meet. At first bickering (as always happens when in multi-Doctor stories), the three eventually team up and work together. They discover that the key to disrupting the Zygon's plan is also the key to ending the Time War.
If you're what's known as a Whovian (the Doctor Who equivalent of a Trekkie), this episode is, to put it bluntly, your wet dream. It's riddled with Easter eggs from both Classic and Nu Who. From the opening credits (and opening shot) basically duplicating the opening credits and shot of the very first episode to a line Patrick Troughton (2nd Doctor) had in two of the anniversary specials to a "machine that goes ding", and so on. However, if you've never seen an episode of Doctor Who but want to watch this because you're a 3D fan or a John Hurt fan or whatever type of fan, forget it. You'll miss most if not every reference in the episode. I'm a Who fan and I missed some of the references. Curiously, the minisode that acts as a prequel, Night of the Doctor, has the same thing. If you know Who, it's the greatest minisode you'll ever see. If not, you just won't get the references.
That's not to say it isn't a good film. It's an excellent episode, even if it does have it's issues. For instance, the Zygon plot is kind of just dropped without actually being resolved. That, in fact, is the single biggest knock on the program. However, the three leads are wonderful to watch, playing off each other in a better way than any other multi-Doctor storyline had. Come to it, this is probably the best of the multi-Doctor stories. Although the Time Crash minisode that had the 10th Doctor meet the 5th Doctor is pretty amusing, too.
Hurt himself threatens to steal the show from Smith and Tennant. His War Doctor is weary and at first shocked and dismayed at his younger selves. "Am I having a mid-life crisis?" he asks when he realizes Tennant and Smith are later regenerations of him. Over time, however, he grows to respect and admire them. As for Tennant and Smith, they start out with fear and loathing of the War Doctor. He is, theoretically, the Doctor who committed Double Genocide. Again, they soften and are even willing to help him do the terrible deed at one point. The chemistry between the trio is marvelous and makes the entire episode worth watching again and again.
However, this isn't a boy's only show. Jenna Louise Coleman as the 11th Doctor's current companion Clara and Billie Piper as The Moment both play Jimminy Cricket to the Doctors and do so fantastically if differently. Who fans know Piper as the first companion on Nu Who, but she's not playing that character here, which is just as well. That character's arc was over during the fourth season. Interestingly, Piper only interacts with Hurt the entire episode.
As for the 3D, it was revealed that this was the BBC's last experiment in 3D (for now at least). That's a shame since, being actually shot in 3D (as opposed to post converted), it looks great. Point in fact, it looks better than some big budget 3D movies that get released. And it has a few fun gimmick shots. It may actually be one of the best modern 3D films you'll get to see. So if you can see it that way, by all means see it. The 3D Blu Ray is properly stunning looking and loaded with bonus material, including two minisodes, behind the scenes material, and a handy special about the history of the show called Doctor Who Explained.
If you love Doctor Who, this is probably the best of the Anniversary specials and one of the best of Nu Who, making it a must watch and own. If you've never seen Who, the episode is still enjoyable--especially in 3D--but you'll miss out on a lot. Of course, that just means you'll have to go back and watch all those episodes so that when you re-watch it, you'll get it.
Anyhow, this was the 50th Anniversary episode of the show, shown originally on the actual 50th Anniversary. Like all the decade anniversary episodes of Doctor Who, it was a multi-Doctor story. And like the last decade anniversary episode, the infamous 30th anniversary episode Dimensions in Time, it's in 3D.
For the three people in the world who have never heard of Doctor Who, the show started on the BBC on November 23, 1963. The premise was that The Doctor was a time traveling alien who zipped through time and space in a machine called The TARDIS (which stood for Time And Relative Dimensions In Space). The TARDIS looks like an old London police telephone box. The Doctor always has a companion, usually human and usually female. The companion is the audience surrogate, there to be placed into danger and have said danger explained to them by The Doctor. Every few years, The Doctor dies and regenerates into someone else. There have been 11 Doctors playing on the TV show over the years, with a 12 Doctor (Peter Capaldi) just taking over the reigns. In addition, Peter Cushing played The Doctor in two movies in the 1960s which were adaptions of episodes of the TV series. The original series ran from 1963-1989, making it the longest running Sci-Fi show of all time. There was an attempt to do an Americanized version of the show in 1996 with a Fox TV movie that was to serve as a pilot. It failed but 9 years later, the BBC revived the series, which ultimately allowed for this particular episode.
Okay, history lesson over. On to the actual review.
There's an A and B story going on in The Day of the Doctor. The A story involves the 11th Doctor (Matt Smith) investigating weird happenings at the London Gallery, events that are the result of a Zygon invasion. The Zygons are big rubbery monsters with suckers all over their bodies that were last seen in a 1970s episode featuring the Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker). It turns out that the invasion actually began in England in 1562. The 10th Doctor (David Tennant) stumbles on the Zygons first and is eventually joined by the 11th Doctor and the War Doctor (John Hurt). The B story is of the last day of the great Time War between the Doctor's people (The Time Lords) and his greatest--or at least most famous--enemy The Daleks (aliens that look like salt and peper shakers--I kid you not). On that day the War Doctor has stolen a Doomsday device known as The Moment and is planning to destroy all participants in The Time War, Time Lords and Daleks alike. Problem is, The Moment has a
conscience and takes the form of one of the Doctor's future companions in an effort to talk him out of what he's planning. The two stories intersect when the three Doctors meet. At first bickering (as always happens when in multi-Doctor stories), the three eventually team up and work together. They discover that the key to disrupting the Zygon's plan is also the key to ending the Time War.
If you're what's known as a Whovian (the Doctor Who equivalent of a Trekkie), this episode is, to put it bluntly, your wet dream. It's riddled with Easter eggs from both Classic and Nu Who. From the opening credits (and opening shot) basically duplicating the opening credits and shot of the very first episode to a line Patrick Troughton (2nd Doctor) had in two of the anniversary specials to a "machine that goes ding", and so on. However, if you've never seen an episode of Doctor Who but want to watch this because you're a 3D fan or a John Hurt fan or whatever type of fan, forget it. You'll miss most if not every reference in the episode. I'm a Who fan and I missed some of the references. Curiously, the minisode that acts as a prequel, Night of the Doctor, has the same thing. If you know Who, it's the greatest minisode you'll ever see. If not, you just won't get the references.
That's not to say it isn't a good film. It's an excellent episode, even if it does have it's issues. For instance, the Zygon plot is kind of just dropped without actually being resolved. That, in fact, is the single biggest knock on the program. However, the three leads are wonderful to watch, playing off each other in a better way than any other multi-Doctor storyline had. Come to it, this is probably the best of the multi-Doctor stories. Although the Time Crash minisode that had the 10th Doctor meet the 5th Doctor is pretty amusing, too.
Hurt himself threatens to steal the show from Smith and Tennant. His War Doctor is weary and at first shocked and dismayed at his younger selves. "Am I having a mid-life crisis?" he asks when he realizes Tennant and Smith are later regenerations of him. Over time, however, he grows to respect and admire them. As for Tennant and Smith, they start out with fear and loathing of the War Doctor. He is, theoretically, the Doctor who committed Double Genocide. Again, they soften and are even willing to help him do the terrible deed at one point. The chemistry between the trio is marvelous and makes the entire episode worth watching again and again.
However, this isn't a boy's only show. Jenna Louise Coleman as the 11th Doctor's current companion Clara and Billie Piper as The Moment both play Jimminy Cricket to the Doctors and do so fantastically if differently. Who fans know Piper as the first companion on Nu Who, but she's not playing that character here, which is just as well. That character's arc was over during the fourth season. Interestingly, Piper only interacts with Hurt the entire episode.
As for the 3D, it was revealed that this was the BBC's last experiment in 3D (for now at least). That's a shame since, being actually shot in 3D (as opposed to post converted), it looks great. Point in fact, it looks better than some big budget 3D movies that get released. And it has a few fun gimmick shots. It may actually be one of the best modern 3D films you'll get to see. So if you can see it that way, by all means see it. The 3D Blu Ray is properly stunning looking and loaded with bonus material, including two minisodes, behind the scenes material, and a handy special about the history of the show called Doctor Who Explained.
If you love Doctor Who, this is probably the best of the Anniversary specials and one of the best of Nu Who, making it a must watch and own. If you've never seen Who, the episode is still enjoyable--especially in 3D--but you'll miss out on a lot. Of course, that just means you'll have to go back and watch all those episodes so that when you re-watch it, you'll get it.
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
Airport (1970)
Contrary to popular belief, Airport was not the first Disaster movie. The genre goes back to at least 1901 with a movie called Fire!, which concerned some firefighters battling a blaze in a burning building and rescuing a couple of people. A little over a decade later, the sinking of the Titanic inspired a couple of films. The 1930s gave us a minor wave that included one about a Tsunami (Deluge, 1932), the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake (San Francisco, 1936), the great Chicago fire (In Old Chicago), and a hurricane (The Hurricane, 1937). The genre kicked back up in the 50s with a pair of movies about the Titanic and a couple of airline disaster pics, including The High and The Mighty (1954) with John Wayne and the movie that actually inspired Airplane!, Zero Hour (1957), which happened to be written by the same guy who wrote the book this movie was based on. So, as I say, the Disaster Genre was nothing new when Universal released this adaption of Arthur Hailey's novel in 1970.
The formula seems to have been set up in the 1950s with films like The High and The Mighty. Get a bunch of characters each with their own storyline, toss them together like a salad, and then converge the multiple storylines into one by putting as many of the characters into danger through either a natural or man made disaster. Airport follows this and adds a couple of things they couldn't have gotten away with in the 1950s. Humorously, Airport was rated G nonetheless, despite including such family friendly themes as people having extra-marital affairs and planning to blow up airplanes over the ocean. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Burt Lancaster is in charge of a fictional Chicago airport and he's up to his control tower with problems:
a)The worst blizzard in years is pounding the airport
b)a plane gets stuck on a runway blocking it
c)Local residents are protesting the one working runways since it cause planes to take off right over their houses
d)His marriage to shrewish wife Dana Wynter is falling apart due to his never being home--though that's okay since he's actually having an affair with co-worker Jean Seberg
e)A little old lady stowaway (Helen Hayes) is causing all sorts of havoc
f)His pilot brother-in-law (Dean Martin) is sending reports to the higher ups trying to undermine him
g)There's a mad bomber (Van Heflin) about to board the flight to Rome.
Martin is one of the pilots on that Rome flight, checking main pilot Barry Nelson (who OO7 fans know as the actual first person to play James Bond on TV). Martin is having an affair with stewardess Jacqueline Bissett, who it turns out is pregnant with his kid. Hayes is on the flight, too, and happens to be sitting right next to Heflin. Meantime, on the ground, Lancaster enlists George Kennedy's help in trying to get the stuck airplane off the runway, especially when he finds out about Heflin.
Beyond the people listed above, we also have Maureen Stapleton as Heflin's wife--she's the one who inadvertently tips the airline off to him--Barbara Hale as Martin's patient wife, Whit Bissell (Creature From the Black Lagoon) as a passenger, and Lloyd Nolan as a Customs Officer who has a niece on the flight.
Interestingly, the actual disaster--that is, the bomb going off--is a pretty small part of the movie. In fact, the disaster actually doesn't hit until around 90 minutes in. In this respect, the movie is very much like The High and The Mighty. It concerns itself much more with the characters and their stories than it does just throwing them into danger. We're given time to know these characters and get to care about them. Later Disaster movies couldn't wait to get the carnage going, which might be why so many of them fail. But Airport is good, old fashioned storytelling and I can appreciate that. It also helps that everyone in the cast turns in excellent performances. Hayes actually won an Academy Award for her performance and she deserved it. She's a delight in the role and steals every scene she's in, even from such major stars as Lancaster and Martin. Plus she plays a crucial role in the attempt to stop Heflin.
Airport did big business in 1970 and helped start the trend of the all-star big budget Disaster film. The Poseidon Adventure, released two years later, made sure that these sort of movies were a thing for the next eight years. Make of that what you want. At least those eight years gave us The Towering Inferno, a film that pretty much justifies the existence of the entire genre. That said, Airport runs a close second. It's also a fascinating snapshot of the pre-9/11 world of airline travel. Universal released this on Blu Ray in 2012 and did a nice job of it, even if they didn't do a making of documentary. Still, if you can sit for storytelling and don't need action and dead bodies every two minutes to hold your attention, I can safely recommend giving Airport a try, especially on a snowy day.
The formula seems to have been set up in the 1950s with films like The High and The Mighty. Get a bunch of characters each with their own storyline, toss them together like a salad, and then converge the multiple storylines into one by putting as many of the characters into danger through either a natural or man made disaster. Airport follows this and adds a couple of things they couldn't have gotten away with in the 1950s. Humorously, Airport was rated G nonetheless, despite including such family friendly themes as people having extra-marital affairs and planning to blow up airplanes over the ocean. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Burt Lancaster is in charge of a fictional Chicago airport and he's up to his control tower with problems:
a)The worst blizzard in years is pounding the airport
b)a plane gets stuck on a runway blocking it
c)Local residents are protesting the one working runways since it cause planes to take off right over their houses
d)His marriage to shrewish wife Dana Wynter is falling apart due to his never being home--though that's okay since he's actually having an affair with co-worker Jean Seberg
e)A little old lady stowaway (Helen Hayes) is causing all sorts of havoc
f)His pilot brother-in-law (Dean Martin) is sending reports to the higher ups trying to undermine him
g)There's a mad bomber (Van Heflin) about to board the flight to Rome.
Martin is one of the pilots on that Rome flight, checking main pilot Barry Nelson (who OO7 fans know as the actual first person to play James Bond on TV). Martin is having an affair with stewardess Jacqueline Bissett, who it turns out is pregnant with his kid. Hayes is on the flight, too, and happens to be sitting right next to Heflin. Meantime, on the ground, Lancaster enlists George Kennedy's help in trying to get the stuck airplane off the runway, especially when he finds out about Heflin.
Beyond the people listed above, we also have Maureen Stapleton as Heflin's wife--she's the one who inadvertently tips the airline off to him--Barbara Hale as Martin's patient wife, Whit Bissell (Creature From the Black Lagoon) as a passenger, and Lloyd Nolan as a Customs Officer who has a niece on the flight.
Interestingly, the actual disaster--that is, the bomb going off--is a pretty small part of the movie. In fact, the disaster actually doesn't hit until around 90 minutes in. In this respect, the movie is very much like The High and The Mighty. It concerns itself much more with the characters and their stories than it does just throwing them into danger. We're given time to know these characters and get to care about them. Later Disaster movies couldn't wait to get the carnage going, which might be why so many of them fail. But Airport is good, old fashioned storytelling and I can appreciate that. It also helps that everyone in the cast turns in excellent performances. Hayes actually won an Academy Award for her performance and she deserved it. She's a delight in the role and steals every scene she's in, even from such major stars as Lancaster and Martin. Plus she plays a crucial role in the attempt to stop Heflin.
Airport did big business in 1970 and helped start the trend of the all-star big budget Disaster film. The Poseidon Adventure, released two years later, made sure that these sort of movies were a thing for the next eight years. Make of that what you want. At least those eight years gave us The Towering Inferno, a film that pretty much justifies the existence of the entire genre. That said, Airport runs a close second. It's also a fascinating snapshot of the pre-9/11 world of airline travel. Universal released this on Blu Ray in 2012 and did a nice job of it, even if they didn't do a making of documentary. Still, if you can sit for storytelling and don't need action and dead bodies every two minutes to hold your attention, I can safely recommend giving Airport a try, especially on a snowy day.
Scream For Your Lives: The Tingler is loose!
Of all the directors to have come and gone in Hollywood, perhaps no other director had such a P.T. Barnum sense of showmanship than William Castle. Castle made gimmick shot laden 3D films in the 1950s before doing a string of successful gimmick films in the late 50s and early 60s. His best known gimmicks were Emergo, used for The House on Haunted Hill, where an inflatable skeleton was wheeled over the audience's heads in one scene, Illusion-O for 13 Ghosts with it's silly ghost viewer (not a 3D movie as some have speculated), and perhaps most (in)famous of all, Percepto used for 1959's The Tingler. Percepto was the gimmick where certain theater seats were wired to give off an electric shock. At a certain part of the movie, the screen goes black and Vincent Price warns the audience to scream for their lives. In order to ensure that screams would follow, yes, the seats would give off a shock. Nobody could even dare such a gimmick today but in 1959, William Castle did.
The story of the movie manages to mostly hold it's own. Vincent Price plays a pathologist with an unhealthy interest in the tingling sensation you get when afraid. He thinks that the sensation is caused by a thing which can crush spines and determines he's going to find out more about it. He scares his unfaithful wife and manages to get X-Rays of an insect like creature on her spine. Dubbing it The Tingler, he's determined to catch a specimen for study. Naturally, the best way to do this is to scare himself by using LSD. Sadly for Vinnie, he screams before the creature can kill him and thus be captured (don't ask--Vinnie is just shy of being his usual nuts self in this). Interestingly, this is the first use of LSD in a movie and unlike later movies that made taking a Trip look like a gas, this one actually makes it look kinda frightening. Vinnie might oversell it a bit, but then again maybe he doesn't. I've never actually seen someone Trip, but I'm not counting on this for authenticity either.
Luckily for him, however, the deaf mute wife of a silent movie theater owner experiences some very weird things and ends up dying of fright. A full fledged Tingler is found attached to her spine. Price detaches the creature to study it. His wife uses it to try to kill him, but a well timed scream from the wife's ward stuns the creature.
Meantime, Price figures out that the theater owner killed his wife. He takes the Tingler back to the theater to put the Tingler back in the wife's body, thinking that that would be the only way to kill the beastie. Unfortunately, the creature escapes into the movie theater itself, cueing our long awaited gimmick scene, which admittedly is pretty pointless on TV.
Vincent Price, like Bela Lugosi before him, was one of those actors who was always professional. No matter how good, bad, or indifferent the movie he was in, he always put forward an effort and was frequently the best thing about the movie. The Tingler isn't a bad movie but it does take a while to get going. Point in fact, it takes nearly a full hour for the creature to show up, and this is only an 85 minute movie. Much of that first hour is a little too talky and in the hands of a lesser actor than Price would be almost deadly dull. The weird events that beset the deaf mute are great, but again that's almost an hour in. And while the film is somewhat suspenseful and scary when the creature is running around, some of it is pretty darn hokey and silly, too. There's a misplaced sense of timing when the creature starts into the theater with too many shots from the silent movie To-lable Dave taking away from the moment. Compared to the movie theater scene in The Blob, released just one year before, The Tingler falls down on the job big time.
A lot of people complain that 3D effect shots in 3D movies are pretty pointless in 2D. This is true, but of all the gimmicks, Percepto is perhaps the most pointless on TV. Unless you're actually going to wire your sofa up to duplicate the effect, the shots were the screen goes black and Price urges everyone to scream for all their worth because the Tingler is loose in the theater are downright goofy and pointless. New York's Film Forum theater occasionally shows The Tingler in Percepto and I guess under those circumstances it would be more fun.
All in all though, one watches this movie wanting to like it much better than one ends up doing. Price's other Castle production, The House on Haunted Hill, is much scarier and more fun and his best work--the Corman Poe productions--was still in front of him. I won't call The Tingler a bad movie, but it could and should have been better. Watch it if you want, but watch it primarily for Price and don't expect too much out of it.
The story of the movie manages to mostly hold it's own. Vincent Price plays a pathologist with an unhealthy interest in the tingling sensation you get when afraid. He thinks that the sensation is caused by a thing which can crush spines and determines he's going to find out more about it. He scares his unfaithful wife and manages to get X-Rays of an insect like creature on her spine. Dubbing it The Tingler, he's determined to catch a specimen for study. Naturally, the best way to do this is to scare himself by using LSD. Sadly for Vinnie, he screams before the creature can kill him and thus be captured (don't ask--Vinnie is just shy of being his usual nuts self in this). Interestingly, this is the first use of LSD in a movie and unlike later movies that made taking a Trip look like a gas, this one actually makes it look kinda frightening. Vinnie might oversell it a bit, but then again maybe he doesn't. I've never actually seen someone Trip, but I'm not counting on this for authenticity either.
Luckily for him, however, the deaf mute wife of a silent movie theater owner experiences some very weird things and ends up dying of fright. A full fledged Tingler is found attached to her spine. Price detaches the creature to study it. His wife uses it to try to kill him, but a well timed scream from the wife's ward stuns the creature.
Meantime, Price figures out that the theater owner killed his wife. He takes the Tingler back to the theater to put the Tingler back in the wife's body, thinking that that would be the only way to kill the beastie. Unfortunately, the creature escapes into the movie theater itself, cueing our long awaited gimmick scene, which admittedly is pretty pointless on TV.
Vincent Price, like Bela Lugosi before him, was one of those actors who was always professional. No matter how good, bad, or indifferent the movie he was in, he always put forward an effort and was frequently the best thing about the movie. The Tingler isn't a bad movie but it does take a while to get going. Point in fact, it takes nearly a full hour for the creature to show up, and this is only an 85 minute movie. Much of that first hour is a little too talky and in the hands of a lesser actor than Price would be almost deadly dull. The weird events that beset the deaf mute are great, but again that's almost an hour in. And while the film is somewhat suspenseful and scary when the creature is running around, some of it is pretty darn hokey and silly, too. There's a misplaced sense of timing when the creature starts into the theater with too many shots from the silent movie To-lable Dave taking away from the moment. Compared to the movie theater scene in The Blob, released just one year before, The Tingler falls down on the job big time.
A lot of people complain that 3D effect shots in 3D movies are pretty pointless in 2D. This is true, but of all the gimmicks, Percepto is perhaps the most pointless on TV. Unless you're actually going to wire your sofa up to duplicate the effect, the shots were the screen goes black and Price urges everyone to scream for all their worth because the Tingler is loose in the theater are downright goofy and pointless. New York's Film Forum theater occasionally shows The Tingler in Percepto and I guess under those circumstances it would be more fun.
All in all though, one watches this movie wanting to like it much better than one ends up doing. Price's other Castle production, The House on Haunted Hill, is much scarier and more fun and his best work--the Corman Poe productions--was still in front of him. I won't call The Tingler a bad movie, but it could and should have been better. Watch it if you want, but watch it primarily for Price and don't expect too much out of it.
Monday, January 27, 2014
"And I Was Thankful To Have It!" or The Back-In-My-Day Post
It seems odd to me that, though I'm only 43, I'm actually writing a blog post called Back In My Day. Back In My Day is the sort of thing you usually hear cranky old men say, usually describing how horrible and tough things were and how people have no appreciation for how easy they have it today and how society has gone to hell because of it. It's also usually also tinged with nostalgia for a simpler time. I was born in the 1970s and a teenager in the 1980s. I freely admit to still enjoying music and certain movies from that time period, but I have no real desire to relive it and am actually not particularly nostalgic for it, either. Nonetheless, this is a Back In My Day post and it's being written for a reason.
Back in my day, if you wanted to see an old movie, you had to wait for it to be shown on TV. If it was a widescreen movie, it was being shown pan and scan, which meant you could be missing up to 2/3 of the picture. It was also edited for commercials, and there were commercials every five to ten minutes. And the TV screens weren't wide 16X9, they were square 4X3 screens.
Back in my day, we didn't have 110" screens with surround sound. The biggest TV we had was 25" and mono. My personal TV was 13", mono, and black and white. I watched many a late show on that TV. For those of you under the age of 20, the late show used to show movies on independent stations.
Back in my day, we didn't have Blu Ray or DVD. If you were lucky, you had a Super 8 projector with a 3 foot screen and could watch 10 to 20 minute digests of feature length movies. They were still putting these out in the 1980s, in fact. I have a 20 minute digest of The Empire Strikes Back still. If you had some money, you could get a VHS player. If you had some more money and the inclination, you could get a LaserDisc player, which gave a better image and had its movies in widescreen format. Of course, only 30 to 60 minutes of the movie would fit on a single side of a LaserDisc, so that meant either flipping the disc or changing it over. A simple two hour movie could be on two double sided discs. My family got the VHS player.
Back in my day, 3D TV was an occasional special shown on an independent station. You had to buy cardboard red and blue glasses from a local fast food or convenience store, turn out the lights, sit six to eight feet back, fiddle with the tint on the TV, and get next to no effect.
Back in my day, being a movie buff--especially a young one--really kinda sucked. The Three Stooges shorts and Looney Tunes cartoons were always cut up, Charlie Chan came on at 11 pm, and renting a movie meant going to a video store. And if the movie you wanted was out of stock...too bad so sad. Only a few video stores had a selection good enough to satisfy a classic fan. There was no On Demand or Netflix Streaming (which also sucks, but that's a different rant for a different day).
Why am I bringing all this up? Because it occurs to me that all too many movie buffs today--and not even the young ones per se--remember back in my day. And they should, because back in My day was--unless they're under the age of 25--back in their day, too.
We live in a high definition world now. We have Blu Ray with it's incredible image and sound quality. We have Surround Sound, to help put you in the middle of the action. We have widescreen TVs which allow 1:85 movies to be shown without black bars and Scope movies to be shown with minor black bars. Our screen sizes are bigger, too. I have a 42" 3D TV. It's the largest TV I've ever had. Every so often, I think it's too small, but that's just a fleeting thought. This thing is a monster compared to what I grew up on.
When I was a teenager--or back in my day, if you prefer--the thought of seeing the 3D movies from the 1950s the way they were originally shown seemed like it would never happen. I watched most of those movies flat on TV, complete with commercial interruptions and no doubt editing. Except for the titles I saw on American Movie Classics, which were complete but also flat. Now I own four 50s titles on 3D Blu Ray, with at least one more promised to come out and have, in the past 14 years, managed to see nearly every one that still exists in 3D in the movies. I consider myself outrageously lucky in that regard. After all, 30 years ago, seeing Creature From the Black Lagoon in 3D meant tracking down the lousy anaglyphic VHS Universal released in 1980 or, if I was super lucky, seeing the anaglyphic 16mm print somewhere. Now, I not only own a 3D Blu Ray of it, which is gorgeous, I've managed to see it in the movies in full polarized 3D, exactly the way it was shown in 1954. 30 years ago, seeing Kiss Me Kate meant seeing it flat on VHS. There isn't a 3D Blu Ray of it (yet), but I have seen it on the big screen in proper 3D at least 4 times. Needless to say, I'm happy about both.
Point in fact, I have seen, either on TV or in the movies, 42 of the 43 movies that still exist in 3D prints from the 1950s. I may never get to see the 43rd in 3D, but I really can't complain about the rest of them.
I bring all this up because I have seen on the web and in person an awful lot of complaining about the so-called imperfect presentations of classic movies. The most recent bout has concerned the new Criterion Blu Ray of It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, which has caused all manner of insane complaints, from the fact that the reconstructed footage doesn't look as good as the rest of the movie to the two or three scenes that have light Japanese subtitles to the complaints about the spaces between the radio calls during the intermission.
Good grief as Charlie Brown would say. Of course the reconstructed footage doesn't look as good. The trims were in bad shape to begin with. There's only so much that can be done. And as for the Japanese subtitles--try watching a whole movie like that. I've done it. I so wanted 3D copies of House of Wax and Dial M For Murder that for 10 years I had DVD-Rs of faded copies of the Japanese VHD disc in the field sequential format. And yes, I was thankful to have them.
When I first saw It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, guess what? It was the short version. On TV. In Pan and Scan. Mono. Edited for commercials. With the ending lobbed off, too! I didn't even know there was an intermission until someone taped the LD version off of TCM for me about ten years ago. Maybe I'm the easiest person in the world to please--I'm sure someone could accuse me of that--but I'm pretty happy getting to see this new extended version. Is it perfect? No, but I kinda knew that going in. Is it better than what I first saw 30 years ago? Oh, God, yes. I am in no way outraged by this Blu Ray. I am, however, a little outraged and disgusted by the people who are screaming that the Blu Ray is a rip off since it's not exactly what they want. Seriously? Seriously? Anyone who thinks that seriously needs to get a grip. This Blu Ray is far from a rip off.
Similarly, I went to the World 3D Film Expo III back in September in Hollywood. I'm surprised that this is my first mention of it on this blog as it was a really wonderful experience, but then again it may be like my friend Bob Bloom once said: when people enjoy something, they don't talk about it. They only talk if they hate it.
Well, I didn't hate the 3D Film Expo. I loved it. 10 days, 35 movies, 31 of which were from the 1950s. Some extremely rare material, including the 1947 Russian version of Robinson Crusoe. I was in my element for those 10 days, you can believe it. I am also willing to bet that that was my last time getting to see most of those movies in 3D. I think if I'm ever going to get to see them again, it'll be in boring old 2D. Some of them might hit 3D Blu Ray, some of them might get shown again in NYC. But I think I won't get to see quite a few of them in 3D ever again. Some of them, the last time I saw them in 3D was in 2006 at the second World 3D Film Expo. So yeah, it was pretty special for me.
Which is one of the reasons why certain people at the Expo drove me bonkers. They would sit in their seats and throw near full on temper tantrums about the presentation of some of the titles. One guy was literally slamming his fists on his chair because--are you ready for this?---Phantom of the Rue Morgue was being shown in 1:85 and not 1:33 like he wanted it to be. Really? Beyond the fact that 1:85 was the proper aspect ratio for the movie, really? How childish does one get? I could see getting up in arms if the movie was being shown out of sync, but it wasn't. Hell, I would have complained if it was out of sync, since that's a perfect way to get a 3D headache. But complaining that it's not in the aspect ratio you want it to be? Again, a grip needs to be gotten.
Part of the problem, I think, is that movie buffs--or at least certain ones--are so hung up on the presentation that they can't really sit back and enjoy the movie itself. All too often, I see complaints of one absurd nature or another--one guy complained about seventeen seconds of Digital Noise Reduction being used during opening credits (though nowhere else in the movie he admitted)--but nobody actually talking about the movie. Yes, we do have a right to expect certain movies to look perfect on Blu Ray--there's really no excuse for a new movie looking anything less than perfect and there are quite a few classics like The Wizard of Oz or Casablanca that should look perfect. But there are films that are rare and that rarity should be kept in mind far more than any perceived imperfections. Being able to see that rarity should also be cause for joy, not childish anger because it's not precisely what you want. You don't always get precisely what you want--and sometimes you don't deserve it either. I am of the opinion that more movie buffs should stop and consider the marvel of what they're seeing and be glad to see it once in a while. Because you never know. Something like it may never come around again.
Besides, back in my day, everything had imperfections. But we watched them and were thankful to have it!
Back in my day, if you wanted to see an old movie, you had to wait for it to be shown on TV. If it was a widescreen movie, it was being shown pan and scan, which meant you could be missing up to 2/3 of the picture. It was also edited for commercials, and there were commercials every five to ten minutes. And the TV screens weren't wide 16X9, they were square 4X3 screens.
Back in my day, we didn't have 110" screens with surround sound. The biggest TV we had was 25" and mono. My personal TV was 13", mono, and black and white. I watched many a late show on that TV. For those of you under the age of 20, the late show used to show movies on independent stations.
Back in my day, we didn't have Blu Ray or DVD. If you were lucky, you had a Super 8 projector with a 3 foot screen and could watch 10 to 20 minute digests of feature length movies. They were still putting these out in the 1980s, in fact. I have a 20 minute digest of The Empire Strikes Back still. If you had some money, you could get a VHS player. If you had some more money and the inclination, you could get a LaserDisc player, which gave a better image and had its movies in widescreen format. Of course, only 30 to 60 minutes of the movie would fit on a single side of a LaserDisc, so that meant either flipping the disc or changing it over. A simple two hour movie could be on two double sided discs. My family got the VHS player.
Back in my day, 3D TV was an occasional special shown on an independent station. You had to buy cardboard red and blue glasses from a local fast food or convenience store, turn out the lights, sit six to eight feet back, fiddle with the tint on the TV, and get next to no effect.
Back in my day, being a movie buff--especially a young one--really kinda sucked. The Three Stooges shorts and Looney Tunes cartoons were always cut up, Charlie Chan came on at 11 pm, and renting a movie meant going to a video store. And if the movie you wanted was out of stock...too bad so sad. Only a few video stores had a selection good enough to satisfy a classic fan. There was no On Demand or Netflix Streaming (which also sucks, but that's a different rant for a different day).
Why am I bringing all this up? Because it occurs to me that all too many movie buffs today--and not even the young ones per se--remember back in my day. And they should, because back in My day was--unless they're under the age of 25--back in their day, too.
We live in a high definition world now. We have Blu Ray with it's incredible image and sound quality. We have Surround Sound, to help put you in the middle of the action. We have widescreen TVs which allow 1:85 movies to be shown without black bars and Scope movies to be shown with minor black bars. Our screen sizes are bigger, too. I have a 42" 3D TV. It's the largest TV I've ever had. Every so often, I think it's too small, but that's just a fleeting thought. This thing is a monster compared to what I grew up on.
When I was a teenager--or back in my day, if you prefer--the thought of seeing the 3D movies from the 1950s the way they were originally shown seemed like it would never happen. I watched most of those movies flat on TV, complete with commercial interruptions and no doubt editing. Except for the titles I saw on American Movie Classics, which were complete but also flat. Now I own four 50s titles on 3D Blu Ray, with at least one more promised to come out and have, in the past 14 years, managed to see nearly every one that still exists in 3D in the movies. I consider myself outrageously lucky in that regard. After all, 30 years ago, seeing Creature From the Black Lagoon in 3D meant tracking down the lousy anaglyphic VHS Universal released in 1980 or, if I was super lucky, seeing the anaglyphic 16mm print somewhere. Now, I not only own a 3D Blu Ray of it, which is gorgeous, I've managed to see it in the movies in full polarized 3D, exactly the way it was shown in 1954. 30 years ago, seeing Kiss Me Kate meant seeing it flat on VHS. There isn't a 3D Blu Ray of it (yet), but I have seen it on the big screen in proper 3D at least 4 times. Needless to say, I'm happy about both.
Point in fact, I have seen, either on TV or in the movies, 42 of the 43 movies that still exist in 3D prints from the 1950s. I may never get to see the 43rd in 3D, but I really can't complain about the rest of them.
I bring all this up because I have seen on the web and in person an awful lot of complaining about the so-called imperfect presentations of classic movies. The most recent bout has concerned the new Criterion Blu Ray of It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, which has caused all manner of insane complaints, from the fact that the reconstructed footage doesn't look as good as the rest of the movie to the two or three scenes that have light Japanese subtitles to the complaints about the spaces between the radio calls during the intermission.
Good grief as Charlie Brown would say. Of course the reconstructed footage doesn't look as good. The trims were in bad shape to begin with. There's only so much that can be done. And as for the Japanese subtitles--try watching a whole movie like that. I've done it. I so wanted 3D copies of House of Wax and Dial M For Murder that for 10 years I had DVD-Rs of faded copies of the Japanese VHD disc in the field sequential format. And yes, I was thankful to have them.
When I first saw It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, guess what? It was the short version. On TV. In Pan and Scan. Mono. Edited for commercials. With the ending lobbed off, too! I didn't even know there was an intermission until someone taped the LD version off of TCM for me about ten years ago. Maybe I'm the easiest person in the world to please--I'm sure someone could accuse me of that--but I'm pretty happy getting to see this new extended version. Is it perfect? No, but I kinda knew that going in. Is it better than what I first saw 30 years ago? Oh, God, yes. I am in no way outraged by this Blu Ray. I am, however, a little outraged and disgusted by the people who are screaming that the Blu Ray is a rip off since it's not exactly what they want. Seriously? Seriously? Anyone who thinks that seriously needs to get a grip. This Blu Ray is far from a rip off.
Similarly, I went to the World 3D Film Expo III back in September in Hollywood. I'm surprised that this is my first mention of it on this blog as it was a really wonderful experience, but then again it may be like my friend Bob Bloom once said: when people enjoy something, they don't talk about it. They only talk if they hate it.
Well, I didn't hate the 3D Film Expo. I loved it. 10 days, 35 movies, 31 of which were from the 1950s. Some extremely rare material, including the 1947 Russian version of Robinson Crusoe. I was in my element for those 10 days, you can believe it. I am also willing to bet that that was my last time getting to see most of those movies in 3D. I think if I'm ever going to get to see them again, it'll be in boring old 2D. Some of them might hit 3D Blu Ray, some of them might get shown again in NYC. But I think I won't get to see quite a few of them in 3D ever again. Some of them, the last time I saw them in 3D was in 2006 at the second World 3D Film Expo. So yeah, it was pretty special for me.
Which is one of the reasons why certain people at the Expo drove me bonkers. They would sit in their seats and throw near full on temper tantrums about the presentation of some of the titles. One guy was literally slamming his fists on his chair because--are you ready for this?---Phantom of the Rue Morgue was being shown in 1:85 and not 1:33 like he wanted it to be. Really? Beyond the fact that 1:85 was the proper aspect ratio for the movie, really? How childish does one get? I could see getting up in arms if the movie was being shown out of sync, but it wasn't. Hell, I would have complained if it was out of sync, since that's a perfect way to get a 3D headache. But complaining that it's not in the aspect ratio you want it to be? Again, a grip needs to be gotten.
Part of the problem, I think, is that movie buffs--or at least certain ones--are so hung up on the presentation that they can't really sit back and enjoy the movie itself. All too often, I see complaints of one absurd nature or another--one guy complained about seventeen seconds of Digital Noise Reduction being used during opening credits (though nowhere else in the movie he admitted)--but nobody actually talking about the movie. Yes, we do have a right to expect certain movies to look perfect on Blu Ray--there's really no excuse for a new movie looking anything less than perfect and there are quite a few classics like The Wizard of Oz or Casablanca that should look perfect. But there are films that are rare and that rarity should be kept in mind far more than any perceived imperfections. Being able to see that rarity should also be cause for joy, not childish anger because it's not precisely what you want. You don't always get precisely what you want--and sometimes you don't deserve it either. I am of the opinion that more movie buffs should stop and consider the marvel of what they're seeing and be glad to see it once in a while. Because you never know. Something like it may never come around again.
Besides, back in my day, everything had imperfections. But we watched them and were thankful to have it!
Sunday, January 26, 2014
It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
After several years of making serious--and somewhat depressing--message films, director Stanley Kramer decided to try to make THE comedy of all time. So he gathered most of the greatest comedians of the day, took a huge script that by legend was two scripts--one for dialogue and one for action--and gave us It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, a film that originally ran almost as long as The Ten Commandments. Point in fact, the first actual cut was, according to legend, 5 1/2 hours. It was trimmed down to 210 minutes (3 1/2 hours) before being cut back to 202 minutes. It played at that length for four weeks before being trimmed down to 163 minutes. 9 additional minutes--consisting of the overture, intermission, entr'acte, and exit music were then cut out leaving the movie at 154 minutes. For roughly 30 years, this was the only version possible to be seen. It was the version I first saw when a local station would run it on New Year's Day. And they cut it even further than that, even lopping off the very ending of the movie.
In 1991, roughly 20 minutes of 70mm trims were found and put back into the movie along with the overture, etc, bringing the movie up to 182 minutes. That version was released on VHS and Laserdisc (remember those?) and became, for the most part, the fan favorite version. However, MGM never properly restored the footage, so when the DVDs and first Blu Ray came out, it was the 163 minute version. Fans howled for the longer version and it looked like it would never happen. However, this past week, The Criterion Collection, through the efforts of Film Restorationist Extraordinaire Robert A Harris, put together a 197 minute version, which is probably as close to the original Roadshow as we're ever going to get.
The movie involves a group of motorists who witness a horrific (but spectacular) car crash on a California road. They try to help the driver of that car, a gangster named Smiler Grogan (Jimmy Durante), but he's already dying. Before he (literally) kicks the bucket, he tells them about $350,000 he's hidden under a "Big W" in Santa Rosita State Park. The motorists fail to tell the cops (one of whom is Norman Fell) about the money. They decide instead to go dig the money up themselves. At first, they try to work out a plan where everyone gets shares. But it takes no time at all for them to decide that it's every man--"including the old bag"--for himself and a wild chase for the money ensues. Unknown to the participants, they are being watched by the police, especially Santa Rosita Capt. T.G. Culpepper (Spencer Tracy), who wants someone to lead them to the money. Others get involved, wanton destruction of personal and private property ensues and the film just gets more and more frantic as it goes along.
Like quite a few epics from the 1960's, this film is rife with cameos and guest appearances. Not quite everyone who was someone in comedy is in it, but it comes close. If you know anything about classic comedy from the first six decades of the 20th Century, you'll be delighted at spotting all the actors. The principals were mostly TV actors at the time--Sid Caesar, Milton Berle, Buddy Hacket, Jonathan Winters, Dorothy Provine, Edie Adams, Ethel Merman, and Mickey Rooney are the primary motorists who kick the whole thing off. Phil Silvers, Terry Thomas and Dick Shawn end up entering the race, as does Peter Falk and Eddie "Rochester" Anderson. Along the way, there's appearances by Jack Benny, Jerry Lewis, Sterling Holloway, Paul Ford, Edward Evert Horton, The Three Stooges, Don Knotts, Buster Keaton, Carl Reiner, Arnold Stang, Marvin Kaplan, Leo Gorcey and Jim Backus. On the side of the cops we have Alan Carney, William Demearest, Harry Lauter, Roy Roberts, Zazu Pitts, and Madalyn Rhue. Selma Diamond is the voice of Spencer Tracy's wife. And the list goes on.
Some people have complained that all the cameos make the film distracting to watch, much like The Greatest Story Ever Told. Frankly, I find the latter film much more distracting with it's cameos. It's hard to take a movie about Jesus seriously when you have the actor who played Klinger as one of his disciples, Sidney Poitier helping to carry the cross, Charlton Heston screaming "Repent!" for ten minutes as John the Baptist, and John Wayne as a Roman Centurion wearing a wristwatch and saying "Truly this man was the son of God". In Mad World, the cameos fit. The only sad thing is that many of the cameos will be lost on a lot of young people. It's like watching The Muppet Show nowadays--some of the stars may be remembered and quite a number of them get the question of "Who?". Yes, if you know classic comedy, then almost everybody in the movie will pop out at you. If you're under a certain age, however, it's possible that the only people you may recognize now are Jonathan Winters, Peter Falk, The Three Stooges and Jim Backus. And even poor Jim Backus is a little shaky in this day and age. Actually, you might be surprised to that you would know more of the people than you would think, For instance, Jimmy Durante is the narrator of Frosty the Snowman (Jonathan Winters did the same duty for the awful Frosty Returns). Sterling Holloway was the voice of Winnie the Pooh (and Kaa the Snake in The Jungle Book). Edward Evert Horton narrated Fractured Fairy Tales on Rocky and Bullwinkle. Selma Diamond was on Night Court and in the Steve Martin movie All of Me. Don Knotts did a couple of movies with Tim Conway for Disney like The Apple Dumpling Gang. Jack Benny did a Looney Tunes cartoon spoofing himself (Rochester was in it, too) called The Mouse That Jack Built. Ethel Merman is in Airplane! as herself. Dick Shawn voiced The Snow Miser in The Year Without a Santa Claus. Carl Reiner is in the Clooney Oceans 11 trilogy. Sid Caesar is the gym teacher in Grease. And so on. Do a little research and you may be surprised.
Everybody who was in the movie was a great in their field. Spencer Tracy is one of the finest actors who ever lived. He's essentially playing the straight man in this and he's terrific as Culpepper, whose life slowly unravels during the course of the movie. He holds our attention whenever he's onscreen, even when he's just walking around. As for the comics...well, what can be said? Everyone will have their own favorite among the leads--Jonathan Winters seems to be the biggest favorite, with his hysterical destruction of Kaplan and Stang's gas station one of the best set pieces in the movie. It is to be hoped that should young people actually watch this that they may seek out other works from these great comedians to see what they've missed. I'm probably dreaming there, but I'm allowed.
Funny enough, there's nothing really in the movie to actually date it. Most comedies, even the truly great ones from the past forty years like Blazing Saddles and Airplane! have humor or other elements that firmly put them in their era. It can be argued that Airplane! is funnier than Mad World, but the disco scene--funny as it is--makes it a product of 1980. But the only thing outside of the cars to date Mad World is the appearance of pay phones. Everything else is timeless. The movie could literally have been shot at any given time. That could be why it still works so well and remains so funny. The complete lack of topical humor is the genius of the movie. You could watch it two hundred years from now and the jokes still wouldn't date. Two hundred years from now, people are going to watch Airplane! and scratch their heads at the disco scene (sadly). I'm not knocking Airplane!, mind you. I love the film and it's one of only a few comedies I bothered getting on Blu Ray (I by and large don't need to see comedies in hi def), but the reality is that it's already dating badly while Mad World manages not to.
Oh, and for the young people who wonder why Ethel Merman just doesn't pull out her cell phone to call her son, the answer is they didn't have them back then.
The Criterion Collection Blu Ray is a joy for fans of the film. It includes the "general release version", that is the 163 minute version in gorgeous high definition. But it also includes the reconstruction of the Roadshow version. Now again, this is a reconstruction, so parts of it aren't perfect. Remember, MGM didn't restore the trims, so Criterion could only do so much with them. As a result, there's a noticeable shift in quality whenever the film goes to restored footage. Some restored footage has burned in Japanese subtitles, which are fortunately a little light and small and not particularly obtrusive. Sometimes they have picture but no sound, so subtitles show up. And in at least four or five scenes, there's audio but no picture, so stills get used instead. That, to use Dick Shawn's slang, tends to bug some people, but I'm fine with it. None of those sequences are particularly long and at least three of them explain certain things that happen within the movie. At least one is full on hilarious and never should have been cut and one has a major plot point in it. It's also loaded with great extras, including the most fascinating commentary track I've ever heard. The track not only has great info on who was in the movie but who wasn't in the movie. Bob Hope, Lucille Ball, Ed Wynn and Groucho Marx among others were penciled in but didn't make it.
The Blu Ray also reinstates the police calls that played during the films intermission. Those radio calls are interesting since they clear up a couple of plot points in between the two acts. The history of those calls is that they were piped in throughout the theaters during the original Roadshow engagement until a little old lady complained that they made her think strange men were with her in the ladies room. I'll leave the snarky comments about that to my readers.
This Blu Ray is an absolute joy. Like Twilight Time's Man in the Dark release this week, it's a must buy for anyone who owns a Blu Ray player. The restoration by Robert Harris truly adds to this wonderful movie. All of the general release footage is amazing to look at and the reconstructed footage, though not as nice, doesn't look that bad either. There's some great extras, including a five minute piece on how the restoration was pulled off. Being a Criterion release, the disc is a little pricey--49.95, dual format DVD and Blu Ray, but then again it is 5 discs, so that works out to $10 a disc. "And that's tax free money, my friend." At any rate, it's well worth the purchase. Extremely highly recommended.
In 1991, roughly 20 minutes of 70mm trims were found and put back into the movie along with the overture, etc, bringing the movie up to 182 minutes. That version was released on VHS and Laserdisc (remember those?) and became, for the most part, the fan favorite version. However, MGM never properly restored the footage, so when the DVDs and first Blu Ray came out, it was the 163 minute version. Fans howled for the longer version and it looked like it would never happen. However, this past week, The Criterion Collection, through the efforts of Film Restorationist Extraordinaire Robert A Harris, put together a 197 minute version, which is probably as close to the original Roadshow as we're ever going to get.
The movie involves a group of motorists who witness a horrific (but spectacular) car crash on a California road. They try to help the driver of that car, a gangster named Smiler Grogan (Jimmy Durante), but he's already dying. Before he (literally) kicks the bucket, he tells them about $350,000 he's hidden under a "Big W" in Santa Rosita State Park. The motorists fail to tell the cops (one of whom is Norman Fell) about the money. They decide instead to go dig the money up themselves. At first, they try to work out a plan where everyone gets shares. But it takes no time at all for them to decide that it's every man--"including the old bag"--for himself and a wild chase for the money ensues. Unknown to the participants, they are being watched by the police, especially Santa Rosita Capt. T.G. Culpepper (Spencer Tracy), who wants someone to lead them to the money. Others get involved, wanton destruction of personal and private property ensues and the film just gets more and more frantic as it goes along.
Like quite a few epics from the 1960's, this film is rife with cameos and guest appearances. Not quite everyone who was someone in comedy is in it, but it comes close. If you know anything about classic comedy from the first six decades of the 20th Century, you'll be delighted at spotting all the actors. The principals were mostly TV actors at the time--Sid Caesar, Milton Berle, Buddy Hacket, Jonathan Winters, Dorothy Provine, Edie Adams, Ethel Merman, and Mickey Rooney are the primary motorists who kick the whole thing off. Phil Silvers, Terry Thomas and Dick Shawn end up entering the race, as does Peter Falk and Eddie "Rochester" Anderson. Along the way, there's appearances by Jack Benny, Jerry Lewis, Sterling Holloway, Paul Ford, Edward Evert Horton, The Three Stooges, Don Knotts, Buster Keaton, Carl Reiner, Arnold Stang, Marvin Kaplan, Leo Gorcey and Jim Backus. On the side of the cops we have Alan Carney, William Demearest, Harry Lauter, Roy Roberts, Zazu Pitts, and Madalyn Rhue. Selma Diamond is the voice of Spencer Tracy's wife. And the list goes on.
Some people have complained that all the cameos make the film distracting to watch, much like The Greatest Story Ever Told. Frankly, I find the latter film much more distracting with it's cameos. It's hard to take a movie about Jesus seriously when you have the actor who played Klinger as one of his disciples, Sidney Poitier helping to carry the cross, Charlton Heston screaming "Repent!" for ten minutes as John the Baptist, and John Wayne as a Roman Centurion wearing a wristwatch and saying "Truly this man was the son of God". In Mad World, the cameos fit. The only sad thing is that many of the cameos will be lost on a lot of young people. It's like watching The Muppet Show nowadays--some of the stars may be remembered and quite a number of them get the question of "Who?". Yes, if you know classic comedy, then almost everybody in the movie will pop out at you. If you're under a certain age, however, it's possible that the only people you may recognize now are Jonathan Winters, Peter Falk, The Three Stooges and Jim Backus. And even poor Jim Backus is a little shaky in this day and age. Actually, you might be surprised to that you would know more of the people than you would think, For instance, Jimmy Durante is the narrator of Frosty the Snowman (Jonathan Winters did the same duty for the awful Frosty Returns). Sterling Holloway was the voice of Winnie the Pooh (and Kaa the Snake in The Jungle Book). Edward Evert Horton narrated Fractured Fairy Tales on Rocky and Bullwinkle. Selma Diamond was on Night Court and in the Steve Martin movie All of Me. Don Knotts did a couple of movies with Tim Conway for Disney like The Apple Dumpling Gang. Jack Benny did a Looney Tunes cartoon spoofing himself (Rochester was in it, too) called The Mouse That Jack Built. Ethel Merman is in Airplane! as herself. Dick Shawn voiced The Snow Miser in The Year Without a Santa Claus. Carl Reiner is in the Clooney Oceans 11 trilogy. Sid Caesar is the gym teacher in Grease. And so on. Do a little research and you may be surprised.
Everybody who was in the movie was a great in their field. Spencer Tracy is one of the finest actors who ever lived. He's essentially playing the straight man in this and he's terrific as Culpepper, whose life slowly unravels during the course of the movie. He holds our attention whenever he's onscreen, even when he's just walking around. As for the comics...well, what can be said? Everyone will have their own favorite among the leads--Jonathan Winters seems to be the biggest favorite, with his hysterical destruction of Kaplan and Stang's gas station one of the best set pieces in the movie. It is to be hoped that should young people actually watch this that they may seek out other works from these great comedians to see what they've missed. I'm probably dreaming there, but I'm allowed.
Funny enough, there's nothing really in the movie to actually date it. Most comedies, even the truly great ones from the past forty years like Blazing Saddles and Airplane! have humor or other elements that firmly put them in their era. It can be argued that Airplane! is funnier than Mad World, but the disco scene--funny as it is--makes it a product of 1980. But the only thing outside of the cars to date Mad World is the appearance of pay phones. Everything else is timeless. The movie could literally have been shot at any given time. That could be why it still works so well and remains so funny. The complete lack of topical humor is the genius of the movie. You could watch it two hundred years from now and the jokes still wouldn't date. Two hundred years from now, people are going to watch Airplane! and scratch their heads at the disco scene (sadly). I'm not knocking Airplane!, mind you. I love the film and it's one of only a few comedies I bothered getting on Blu Ray (I by and large don't need to see comedies in hi def), but the reality is that it's already dating badly while Mad World manages not to.
Oh, and for the young people who wonder why Ethel Merman just doesn't pull out her cell phone to call her son, the answer is they didn't have them back then.
The Criterion Collection Blu Ray is a joy for fans of the film. It includes the "general release version", that is the 163 minute version in gorgeous high definition. But it also includes the reconstruction of the Roadshow version. Now again, this is a reconstruction, so parts of it aren't perfect. Remember, MGM didn't restore the trims, so Criterion could only do so much with them. As a result, there's a noticeable shift in quality whenever the film goes to restored footage. Some restored footage has burned in Japanese subtitles, which are fortunately a little light and small and not particularly obtrusive. Sometimes they have picture but no sound, so subtitles show up. And in at least four or five scenes, there's audio but no picture, so stills get used instead. That, to use Dick Shawn's slang, tends to bug some people, but I'm fine with it. None of those sequences are particularly long and at least three of them explain certain things that happen within the movie. At least one is full on hilarious and never should have been cut and one has a major plot point in it. It's also loaded with great extras, including the most fascinating commentary track I've ever heard. The track not only has great info on who was in the movie but who wasn't in the movie. Bob Hope, Lucille Ball, Ed Wynn and Groucho Marx among others were penciled in but didn't make it.
The Blu Ray also reinstates the police calls that played during the films intermission. Those radio calls are interesting since they clear up a couple of plot points in between the two acts. The history of those calls is that they were piped in throughout the theaters during the original Roadshow engagement until a little old lady complained that they made her think strange men were with her in the ladies room. I'll leave the snarky comments about that to my readers.
This Blu Ray is an absolute joy. Like Twilight Time's Man in the Dark release this week, it's a must buy for anyone who owns a Blu Ray player. The restoration by Robert Harris truly adds to this wonderful movie. All of the general release footage is amazing to look at and the reconstructed footage, though not as nice, doesn't look that bad either. There's some great extras, including a five minute piece on how the restoration was pulled off. Being a Criterion release, the disc is a little pricey--49.95, dual format DVD and Blu Ray, but then again it is 5 discs, so that works out to $10 a disc. "And that's tax free money, my friend." At any rate, it's well worth the purchase. Extremely highly recommended.
Saturday, January 25, 2014
Classic 3D Movie on Blu Ray: Man In The Dark (1953)
This week Twilight Time Home Video released their first classic 3D Blu Ray, Columbia's underrated 1953 noir thriller Man In The Dark. Okay, classic may be a bit of a strong word to apply to this movie. It's not as good as House of Wax or Dial M For Murder. But it's not nearly as bad as something like Cat Women of the Moon from that era. And it's certainly better than any 3D movie that came out in between 1956 and 2003. Come to it, it's better than quite a few of the modern era films, too. It definitely has better 3D than most modern films, as tends to be the case with these vintage releases.
Man In The Dark stars Edmond O'Brien and Audrey Totter, a pair of noir icons if ever there any. O'Brien is best remembered today as the doomed protagonist of 1950's D.O.A. while Totter tends to get remembered for the oddball version of Lady In The Lake that was shot almost entirely from the hero's perspective. The movie is an apparently loose remake of a 1936 Ralph Bellamy movie called The Man Who Lived Twice. In it, O'Brien is gangster Steve Rawley, convicted of a Christmas Eve payroll heist of $130,000. He agrees to a brain operation that will remove his criminal tendencies in order to cut down on his 10 year sentence. The operation is a success but leaves him with no memory whatsoever of his former life, much to the annoyance of an insurance investigator and Rawley's old gang members, both of whom want to know where he hid the money. Rawley's gang abducts him and tries forcing him to remember. Rawley's moll (Totter) also initially wants him to remember, but then starts to fall in love with the new Rawley. Slowly, through a couple of bizzare dreams, the location of the dough comes back to him, leading up to a climactic chase through a carnival and a battle on top of a rickety wooden coaster.
Man In The Dark was the second 3D movie of the 1950s. After the runaway success of the genuinely bad Bwana Devil, Warner's announced they were working on House of Wax to be the first 3D film by a major studio (Bwana Devil was an independent production). Columbia honcho Harry Cohn decided to steal Warner's thunder and had Man in the Dark quickly rewritten for 3D and shot in 19 days. To pour salt in the wound, they even released the movie two days ahead of House of Wax. Because of this, the movie tends to get a bad rep since it was a low budget quickie. But the 3D camerawork is excellent, with a great sense of depth. The script is at least serviceable and the actors all do professional jobs. The movie also tends to get beat on by certain 3D enthusiasts for having too many gimmick shots. I'm not sure if I saw a different cut than they did, but it doesn't seem to me to be too much. Oh, sure, if you're going to compare it to Dial M For Murder or Miss Sadie Thompson, it's gimmicky. But it's no Comin' At Ya! or Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over either. And almost every gimmick shot in the movie is motivated by the story, not just throw in there unlike too many 80s films. No straws or popcorn being tossed at the audience. And hey, isn't part of the fun of 3D the gimmick shots to begin with? I'd much rather watch something like this than a lot of the modern films which have neither good depth nor good gimmick shots.
The movie is a fun 3D ride but it does have it's issues. The major one is the fact that at 68 minutes, it's actually too short (there's a complaint you don't hear every day). The movie has some interesting
ideas but doesn't have the length to expand on and explore them. Take the insurance investigator Jawald (Dan Riss) for instance. He's as creepy a character as any in the film, knowing where Rawley is being kept but not tipping the police off despite the APB on Rawley. He's also perfectly content to let the gang keep working Rawley over so that he gets led to the money. Then there's the implications of the entire brain operation in the first place. Unfortunately, the movie blows over these things simply because it doesn't have the time to get into them. One gets the feeling that this could have been as classic as noir as D.O.A., but it just misses the mark. That said, it does have some great noir dialogue and more than competent performances from it's cast. And Twilight Time's Blu Ray is exceptional looking. Limited to only 3,000 copies (as all Twilight Time's Blu Rays are), this is a must own for any fan of 3D or noir.
Man In The Dark stars Edmond O'Brien and Audrey Totter, a pair of noir icons if ever there any. O'Brien is best remembered today as the doomed protagonist of 1950's D.O.A. while Totter tends to get remembered for the oddball version of Lady In The Lake that was shot almost entirely from the hero's perspective. The movie is an apparently loose remake of a 1936 Ralph Bellamy movie called The Man Who Lived Twice. In it, O'Brien is gangster Steve Rawley, convicted of a Christmas Eve payroll heist of $130,000. He agrees to a brain operation that will remove his criminal tendencies in order to cut down on his 10 year sentence. The operation is a success but leaves him with no memory whatsoever of his former life, much to the annoyance of an insurance investigator and Rawley's old gang members, both of whom want to know where he hid the money. Rawley's gang abducts him and tries forcing him to remember. Rawley's moll (Totter) also initially wants him to remember, but then starts to fall in love with the new Rawley. Slowly, through a couple of bizzare dreams, the location of the dough comes back to him, leading up to a climactic chase through a carnival and a battle on top of a rickety wooden coaster.
Man In The Dark was the second 3D movie of the 1950s. After the runaway success of the genuinely bad Bwana Devil, Warner's announced they were working on House of Wax to be the first 3D film by a major studio (Bwana Devil was an independent production). Columbia honcho Harry Cohn decided to steal Warner's thunder and had Man in the Dark quickly rewritten for 3D and shot in 19 days. To pour salt in the wound, they even released the movie two days ahead of House of Wax. Because of this, the movie tends to get a bad rep since it was a low budget quickie. But the 3D camerawork is excellent, with a great sense of depth. The script is at least serviceable and the actors all do professional jobs. The movie also tends to get beat on by certain 3D enthusiasts for having too many gimmick shots. I'm not sure if I saw a different cut than they did, but it doesn't seem to me to be too much. Oh, sure, if you're going to compare it to Dial M For Murder or Miss Sadie Thompson, it's gimmicky. But it's no Comin' At Ya! or Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over either. And almost every gimmick shot in the movie is motivated by the story, not just throw in there unlike too many 80s films. No straws or popcorn being tossed at the audience. And hey, isn't part of the fun of 3D the gimmick shots to begin with? I'd much rather watch something like this than a lot of the modern films which have neither good depth nor good gimmick shots.
The movie is a fun 3D ride but it does have it's issues. The major one is the fact that at 68 minutes, it's actually too short (there's a complaint you don't hear every day). The movie has some interesting
ideas but doesn't have the length to expand on and explore them. Take the insurance investigator Jawald (Dan Riss) for instance. He's as creepy a character as any in the film, knowing where Rawley is being kept but not tipping the police off despite the APB on Rawley. He's also perfectly content to let the gang keep working Rawley over so that he gets led to the money. Then there's the implications of the entire brain operation in the first place. Unfortunately, the movie blows over these things simply because it doesn't have the time to get into them. One gets the feeling that this could have been as classic as noir as D.O.A., but it just misses the mark. That said, it does have some great noir dialogue and more than competent performances from it's cast. And Twilight Time's Blu Ray is exceptional looking. Limited to only 3,000 copies (as all Twilight Time's Blu Rays are), this is a must own for any fan of 3D or noir.
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